A Snacky Treat for Your Saturday

Enjoy.

Say Yes, Say Yay!

Last night I had an epiphany of sorts. I won't go into it, but I will say that I've seen an immediate turn-around. It had to do with submitting to the good things in life, to success and prosperity.

All my life I've thought of submission as a kind of going belly up proposition, a giving in to that which I could not fight. But it occurred to me last night that I need to submit to the good things, not the bad. So I did. Maybe I've been living with a fear of success all my life after all.

This morning, before I was even really awake, I got three new jobs (one is HUGE!) and a bunch of revamping work for my best client. All this before 1:00 in the afternoon. Amazing! It has been so dry around here, and we're behind a month on our rent, so I really appreciate the work.

It wasn't any noble enlightenment I experienced, I just got good and pissed off at living on a thread-thin, fraying shoestring, so I said yes to security and peace of mind. Funny how simplistic it sounds once something dawns, and how much we're in the dark until it does.

Speaking of the 80s...

For a very short time, I worked assisting a guy who provided sound for various Punk bands is L.A.

I don't remember anything about him, except that he was a huge phony. I first met him in 1971 when he looked like the George Harrison of the All Things Must Pass era. Back then, he seemed kind of cool, and we jammed once at a party at his house in Thousand Oaks. Fourteen or fifteen years later I responded to an ad from someone who needed an assistant sound engineer. I had no experience, but hey, it was work. The guy on the phone asked me to meet him at his house the following Friday night before a gig in L.A.

The closer I got to his house though, the more I suspected this was the George Harrison guy. I don't know why--I'd forgotten all about him years before. You know how it is when you meet someone at a party. You forget a lot of people. Sure enough, when I found the address, it was the same house where the party had been. Thinking it couldn't possibly be the same guy, I walked up the steps and rang the door bell. I was stunned to see the guy I'd met before. He still had that long hair, but the beard was gone. And he was still stoned.

In the van, as we rode along the L.A. freeways, I told him we'd met before, but he didn't really remember me either. He remembered the friends I was with that afternoon, and we talked about what we'd been up to. This was all well and good, but after he parked the van in the warehouse district, he pulled out a spiky "punk" wig and tucked all of his long hair up under it. Good God! This guy was my age, and here he was trying to look like he was 20 years younger. And a wig! Didn't he learn anything from the 60s? Didn't he remember the "weekend hippies" cruising the Sunset Strip in their fake Beatle wigs and Rolls Royce Silver Clouds? What had happened to this dude?

The gig sucked. I wasn't into punk, and I felt like someone's mom standing there in my New Age silks and crystal jewelry. I toned that down a bit for the other gigs I worked with him, but I never pretended to be a Punk.

After the gigs we'd go to the Atomic Cafe. Anyone involved in the L.A. Punk scene will remember this place.

During the 1970s and 1980s, artists began to move into nearby aging warehouse spaces in the area, forming a hidden community in the industrialized area. Al's Bar, Gorky's, and the Atomic Cafe were very popular. The Atomic Cafe opened in 1946 in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles by Minoru and Ito Matoba. During the late 70s to mid 80s their daughter, Nancy, quickly transformed the quiet neighborhood bar/cafe into one of L.A.'s most popular hang outs for the local punk rock scene, politicians, and the Japanese mafia. On any given night you could see the likes of Blondie, The Go-Go's, Devo, X, Warhol, David Byrne, or Bowie sitting down having a bowl of noodles in the company of old Japanese men with full body tattoos. The legendary jukebox played everything from The Germs to Mori Shinichi until 4 in the morning as crazy waitresses would be jumping on top of tables trying to serve food.

Two things stand out in my mind when I think back to the Atomic Cafe: a 45 record of Syd Vicious singing "My Way", and the ramen bowls. I'd never had ramen the way they served it. Full of halved hard-boiled eggs, slices of meat, bean sprouts, green onions -- you name, they put it in there. It was the perfect meal after a night of loud music and cheap beer. Unfortunately, the Atomic Cafe closed down in November of 1989.

A little memory... just thought I'd share.

I Want to Come Back

I guess you could say that I woke up in my 33rd year, that I was somehow mystically reborn. I’d spent a year teaching myself to be a genius (I'm still not quite sure how that turned out). Imagine. A composer is born. Or reborn. Or invented. It really doesn’t matter. The music poured out of me, covering 11x17 sheets of yellow card stock manuscript from Judy Green in Hollywood and I'd never studied composition. Who questions something like that? You don't. You go with it and let it take you down the rabbit hole.

At the same time, I was winding down my Celtic priestess/goddess phase. I’d spent the spring of 1984 writing and recording fifteen songs in the “Cali-Celtic” style that was sweeping the west coast at that time. Tales of elves, windswept beaches and lovers of indistinct gender. It was a good album and it sold well at my gigs. Dressed in embroidery and suede, my long red hair crimped, tresses braided with feathers, I looked every bit the Celt, and it was an image that went over well in Ventura County, especially in Ojai. They loved me up there. It was the 80s, after all, and California was in love with that kind of New Age/Neo-Pagan thing. But as good as that music was, it was my last hurrah to the familiar, safe world of folk music. At home, I sat up nights teaching myself fugues and sonatas. This was before the internet, of course, so I also spent long days at the public library studying music theory and analyzing Bach chorales.

I knew that my dream of fame and fortune was over. I was too old for pop music and besides, I didn't understand a lot of the music I heard on the radio. I was of a different generation and I was worn out from two decades of scratching and clawing on recording company doors. A friend of mine let me borrow his new Yamaha PortaStudio, an 8-channel mixer board with which I soon learned how to ping-pong 11 tracks, accompanying myself on a wide selection of folk instruments and layering my voice several times over in tight three-part harmonies.

The problem was, I couldn't write any of it down. My method of writing music had always been to write out the lyrics, with the guitar chords above them. If the bass note was something other than the root note, I wrote it beneath a slash: C - C/E - F - G, etc. That was all I knew about writing music. That's why it was more than a little disconcerting when a few months later I sat at my piano with some manuscript and emerged after ten hours with a fully-scored orchestral piece. That's why, once I got that first taste of composition I was forever after lost to anything else. That's why this decade-long dry spell is especially painful. I want to compose again, and I try, but my heart just isn't in it. Not since Frank died.

Will I ever get over his death? Probably not, but I know he wouldn't be happy with me, and he would cuss me out if he could. Instead, I've turned to the written word. It will have to do until my muse returns. Music doesn't like competition with the other arts, it's too demanding, too self-absorbed. You can't share it with anyone because most people can't sit down, open your score and say, "I love this part!" or, "Why did you do that with the oboe?" Frank was the only one who could do that for me. Without him, what's the point? I know I need to resolve this. I'm working on it. I have faith that I'll find my way out of this rabbit hole, but I have no idea when. One doesn't press the Muse.

You're Darned Tootin'

I woke up to find a man in a parka standing in our bedroom. No, this isn't him, but you get the idea. It was the DSL Dude, here to reconfigure our modem. Now Nettl's online (she uses the main computer to which all our others connect via wireless), but I'm still having to use the connection I used last night. I'm not awake enough and I don't possess the know-how to figure that out.

After all my griping about not getting winter here this year, we've finally been "blessed" with a two-day ice storm. The streets are like a skating rink, and a car nearly plowed into our house yesterday evening. Fortunately, the driver wasn't driving fast and the curb stopped him.

Waking up to a man in our bedroom was weird. Especially when he looked like something out of Fargo.

Outage

See the time in the mini-blog on my sidebar? That was about 15 minutes before our web host's server went down. Of course, I automatically assumed that the problem was my fault, and I spent the following two hours crawling under the desk, defragging this, rebooting that. I plugged, unplugged, reset and redecorated. Finally, I called the host and found out that they'd experienced an "equipment failure".

Throughout the course of the day I called three more times, and at last I learned that the issue had been resolved. Hm. Then why weren't we online?

It was about 5:30 when I consulted Micah on the issue and found out that I should NOT have poked that reset button on the back of the modem. Now the techs will have to re-configure our IPwhateverthefuckitis. I called the host to alert them of my stupidity.

Experiencing serious and utterly disgusting withdrawal symptoms, I decided to see if I could connect via some unsuspecting soul's unsecured network and voila! Here I am! Hey, we've caught people using ours! I'm due the karmic payback.

I still haven't heard back from the techs, who were supposed to call me -- and no one else in our house can connect -- but that will be fixed tomorrow. It will. If I have to call them every hour on the hour, it will.

Fun with Steph and Nettl

See Nettl write.
See Nettl work on her book for two weeks.
See the words flow out of her.
See Nettl's calm, serene manner.
Write, write, write.
See Nettl put Steph to shame.


See Steph write (or not).
See Steph get brain pretzels.
See Steph delete more pages than she writes.
Delete, delete, delete.
See Steph pretend to write.
See Steph play DragonStone instead.

Why I Love Ventura #6: The Anacapa Lighthouse & Arch Rock

Anacapa Island, 12 miles off the coast and visible from Ventura, is a chain of three small islands connected by reefs that are visible at low tide. Together, they are 4 1/2 miles long and a little over half a mile at the widest point.

The eight Chananel Islands were discovered by Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo in 1542, and in 1769, Spanish explorer Gaspar De Portola named Anacapa "Las Mesitas" (Little Tables). Later, Capt. George Vancouver renamed them "Anacapa" from the Chumash word, "Eneeapha", which means "island of deception", or "mirage".

On December 2, 1853, a foggy night, the side-wheel steamer Winfield Scott ran aground on Anacapa, jolting its passengers awake. En route to Panama from San Francisco, the ship's passengers included individuals who had struck it rich during the gold rush. Although everyone made it safely to shore in the ship’s lifeboats, the atmosphere immediately following the wreck was frenzied as, “every one was for himself, with no thought of anything but saving his life and his (gold) dust.” The Winfield Scott was a total loss and its remains still lie submerged just north of the island.

The notoriety of the grounding prompted President Franklin Pierce to issue an executive order reserving Anacapa for lighthouse purposes. The U.S. Coast Survey visited the island in 1854 and concluded that although the island’s position at the eastern entrance to the Santa Barbara Channel was a natural choice for a lighthouse, “it is inconceivable for a lighthouse to be constructed on this mass of volcanic rock - perpendicular on every face, with an ascent inaccessible by any natural means." The painter James Whistler was part of the survey team and produced an etching showing the profile of the eastern end of the island.

In 1874, a lighthouse was established at Point Hueneme (prounounced why-NEE-mee), the nearest point on the mainland. As shipping in the Santa Barbara Channel increased, the Lighthouse Board eventually decided to place a light on Anacapa, but limited the expense of building a station on the inaccessible island, building an unmanned acetylene lens lantern on a 50-foot skeletal tower. In addition to the low-maintenance light, which required servicing just twice a year, a whistling buoy was anchored 5/8ths of a mile off the east end of the island.

On February 28, 1921, the steamer Liebre grounded on the east end of Anacapa, directly under the light. As approximately 9/10ths of all ships trading up and down the Pacific Coast passed inside the islands of the Santa Barbara Channel, the American Association of Masters, Mates and Pilots petitioned for a proper signal on Anacapa. Funds for what would be the last major light station to be built on the west coast were finally allocated in the late 1920s.

The construction of the station was carried out in two phases, beginning in the spring of 1930. A landing dock, a hoisting crane, and roads were added first, then work began on the various station buildings. A 39-foot, cylindrical tower and fog signal were built near the highest point on the eastern end of the island. Four Spanish style, white stucco houses with red tile roofs were provided for the keepers and their families.

In March of 1956, the Coast Guard personnel on the island consisted of three couples (each had one of the residences) and five bachelors (who occupied the fourth dwelling). Lois Boylan, wife of Officer-in-Charge Larry Boylan, claimed that life on the island wasn't as lonely as one might think. The three Coast Guard wives "would gab over the phone just like the girls on the mainland" even though they lived close enough to lean out their windows and talk. Living in isolation also seemed to have a health benefit, as neither of the two Boylan children had been sick one day since moving to the island.

In 1938, under the direction of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Santa Barbara and Anacapa Islands had been designated the "Channel Islands National Monument". In 1980, Congress designated five of the eight Channel Islands, Anacapa, Santa Cruz, Santa Rosa, San Miguel, and Santa Barbara Islands as Channel Islands National Park. Visitors to Anacapa Island can see the lighthouse, fog signal building, one of the original keeper's dwellings, the water storage building, the powerhouse, and the third-order Fresnel lens, which was removed from the tower in 1989 and placed on display in the Anacapa Island Visitor Center, formerly the station's service building.

James W. Baker served on Anacapa Island for almost a year and a half starting in February of 1956. After an absence of more than 40 years, he returned to the island with his wife in 2001 to view the old station. Baker's admiration and affection for the Fresnel lens are evidenced in the following lines he composed after his visit: "The multifaceted crystal lenses, bound in polished brass, are still among man’s most beautiful creations. A static display of a lighthouse lens in a museum, however, is similar to viewing an animal in a zoo. Once removed from its natural habitat it’s never quite the same. I get chills remembering foggy nights when the sweep of the powerful light flashed through the mist, illuminating a small part of the sky."

The island welcomes backpackers and overnight hike-in campers, as long as they are registered with the Park Service and transported by an authorized boating company. Besides hiking, the island offers diving, snorkeling, and kayaking.

At the easternmost point of Anacapa Island is Arch Rock. A natural arch rising 40 feet above the surface of the ocean, it has been carved by the wind and waves. Eventually, it will disappear as it succumbs to the further effects of these forces. On clear days, it can be seen from the mainland. In 1999, some friends of mine took me out on their boat around Anacapa. The top of the arch looks like it has been painted white, but it's actually seagull poop. That afternoon, we saw seals, dolphins, and Humpback whales. I was surprised at how blue the ocean was on the far side of the island. In our part of the California coast, the water is usually dark green, but the other side of the island looked like the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea. We anchored at Frenchy's cove for some onboard lunch and then headed back to the mainland.

When I was a child, there was a story that a couple and their daughter lived on the island. The tale went on to say that the wife died, leaving the man and his daughter alone to tend the lighthouse. I thought it was terribly romantic, and even as an adult, as I gazed out my living room window at night to see the flashes of light from the lighthouse in the distance, I always imagined them still living there. I had to admit that when I learned the truth I was disappointed. Actually, there are three people currently living on the island -- Park Rangers.

Photos by:
K. Berthel
Dave G. Houser
Don Hutter
Betsy Malloy
Kraig Anderson
Patrick Holleran

Resources:
Lighthouse Friends
Channel Islands, Charles Hillinger
Umbrella Guide to California Lighthouses, Sharlene and Ted Nelson
Channel Islands National Park, National Park Service pamphlet

The Funniest Cat Video You'll Ever See

Don't let the boring intro fool you. Nettl and I laughed until we cried when we watched this.

The Noble Nose

The Pink Cowboy has done some research into nose classifications and has asked us to tell him what kind of nose we have. I don't know what the classifications are, except for Roman and Greek; I've always been told that I have an English nose. I've always been proud of my fine, prominent proboscis, and for as long as I can remember, it has been a topic of conversation with my friends. I am known for my nose where my family and friends are concerned.

"A large nose is the mark of a witty,
courteous, affable, generous and liberal man."
Cyrano de Bergerac
(Of course, that applies to everyone, not just men)

Here is a picture of my nose.
That isn't a blur by the way, it's an aura!

This is a photo of  myself and Ville
on New Year's Eve.
We each have a nose worth decorating.

Taking a Night Off

Joel and I finally got the last of the Christmas stuff out of the house this evening. Because nearly the entire household came down with the rotten cold that's taken over this state, we didn't get to it the weekend after New Year. Instead, we did it in fits and starts. For the past week, all that was left was the bare nekkid tree in the corner. But it's out now and everything's back to normal. I even vacuumed the living room, including the stairs. That was fun...

I detest carpet, almost as much as I do wind, and there's way too much of both here.

Nettl (angel that she is) picked up some Trumer Pils for me (my favorite beer, and yes, I even have the cool glass), and even made dinner while I vacuumed. This is the first beer I've had since summer.

Earlier in the afternoon, I was able to open the patio door because it was in the mid-70s outside. I didn't know! Damn! If it's like that tomorrow, I'm moving my butt out to my hammock office! I got to enjoy the weather long enough to cut back the roses, water the jasmine and tidy up the patio, and now, I'm taking tonight off. I'm going to sit here, blog-hop, and drink my pils.

Prosit!

* Vielesteine, Not Enough Sleep

I suppose now's the time for me to turn on my charm, my wit, my magnanimous personality, and my articula... articulator... articulitio... my amazing use of the English language. I've been nominated for the Okie Blog Award, and in two categories, too! But all the Einstein brain cells in the world can't help me tonight, so as usual, when I'm tired you get a bullet list.

• I tried to write tonight, but my best client kept emailing me work. I'm not complaining, though, I really, really, r-e-a-l-l-y need it. It's just that my clients have caught onto the fact that I'm up all night, and they've started sending me stuff and asking me questions after 10 pm. I was working with one at three in the morning last night. (?) How's that for time clocking the night away?
  
  
• Did you happen to catch Wintley Phipps' performance of Amazing Grace at the National Prayer Service? Holy Schlamoly! You really need to experience it for yourself.
  
  
• Is it just me, or is it time for summer? If the weather isn't going to give me any snow, then it can just fast-forward a couple of seasons and get over this so-so crapola. I know, I know. Some of you have had enough snow to last a lifetime or two, but what about my needs? I want some snow, damn it.
  
  
• On the table by my chair are three pairs of readers. Black (my favorites), brown, and tortoise shell. I bought a three-pack several months ago for under 10 bucks. Makes me wonder why we spent $300 on a pair of bifocals last spring. I use them when I'm really far away from the TV, or when I'm driving, but usually it's just these cheapo readers that sit on my face, making me look more like a dork than I already am.
  
  
• Since the inauguration, I haven't been paying attention to much else. I've been working, mostly; I promise to get around to your comments and blogs this weekend. Never forget: time is relative.
  
  
• Oh yeah. The two nominations are for Best Looking Blog (ta-da!) and Best Culture Blog. I probably won't win either of them though, because, besides being up against some serious competition, I'm the Susan Lucci of blog awards. I'm nominated for these every year, but I've never won. Even that year in OKC when I was buying the drinks...
  

Over and out.
__________
*Vielesteine (FEE-leh-shtine-eh) - for those who don't know German, it's my little play on words. Babel Fish it...

The Swearing In

It's Sunday, Might as Well

One of my favorite books is Mitch Albom's Tuesdays With Morrie, and I enjoyed the film starring Jack Lemon as much as I'd enjoyed reading the book. Yesterday, I turned across a movie that was just beginning. I didn't know the name of it for about an hour, but it got me hooked immediately. It turned out to be The Five People You Meet In Heaven, starring Jon Voight. It wasn't until after it was over, and I looked it up on the web, that I discovered the film was made from the book of the same title by none other that Mitch Albom. No wonder I liked it.

I love films like this one--my other favorite movie of this type is What Dreams May Come. I have to confess though, I liked the movie better than I did the book.

Still, the life lessons that both of these authors share are invaluable, and of course, they're filled with quotes that you just have to write down. As one who believes in the infinite soul and the universality of all life (I like to say that we're all just energy molecules that make up the cosmic soup of the inifite), I'm always speculating about the so-called afterlife (which is a misnomer, but I won't go into all that right now) I also owe it to two near-death experiences.

Here are some quotes from the book/film:

"People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless."

"The human spirit knows, deep down, that all lives intersect. That death doesn’t just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

"Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."

"No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."

"Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something you regret. It’s something to aspire to. Little sacrifices. Big sacrifices. A mother works so her son can go to school. A daughter moves home to care of her sick father. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else."

"Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down."

"Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is, but what happens on earth is only the beginning."

"Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves."

"There are no random acts. We are all connected. You can no more separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."

"Lost love is still love. It just takes a different form, that's all. You can't hold their hand. You can't tousle their hair. But when those senses weaken another one comes to life. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You hold it. You dance with it. Life has to end. Love doesn't."

Have a great Sunday!

You Got Talent, Kid!

It always amazes me how many really talented people there are in the world. It just proves that everyone possesses some talent of some kind.

With the advent of the Internet we are introduced to far more talent than ever before. We saw it on television, heard it on recordings, and applauded it at concerts, etc., but the talent always belonged to those people, the gifted others, the ones who were famous, or about to be.

One of my favorite ways to waste time introduce myself to some of the talent that's out here in Blogsville is to blog-hop. I think we all do it. I go to a blog on my Blog List and randomly click a link on theirs, and so on. There are some really fine writers, humorists, poets and thinkers on the web, and I'm not referring to the big names, I'm talking about people like you, and you, and you.

It's encouraging to know that the web has created more interest in reading and writing as self-education and self-expression--I can remember only a few years ago when it wasn't this way. But more importantly, we're communicating across miles, across states, across nations and across cultures. If we're not at the dawn of a new renaissance, then I don't know it is. Whatever, I like it.

"We are always more anxious to be distinguished for a talent
which we do not possess, than to be praised
for the fifteen which we do possess."
- Mark Twain

Friday Nights

You know what I miss? I miss those Friday nights when my friends and I would all meet in mIRC and play stupid Name That Tune and Music Trivia games, drinking, and passing wavs across the still brand spanking new thing called "online". There wasn't even a real public Internet yet, just DOS-based AOL, CompuServe, and Prodigy. And mIRC, of course.

It was a fun way to spend a Friday night when we were snowed in, and my Denver basement apartment was the coziest place on earth. Ville lived katty-corner across the city, in Aurora, but we were able to have a lot of fun without having to drive the 20 or so miles that lay between us.

Remember how hard it was just to sign on sometimes? That was in the days of dial-up connections, and whenever someone called your phone, you got knocked off line and had to start all over again. I think I must have typed "I got bumped" a million times in those days.

I know that mIRC is still there, but I'm sure it's gotten either all high-tech and user-friendly, uber nerdy, or else completely warez sex. If I knew anyone using mIRC, and if I could afford to buy some wine, I'd do that tonight (play the stupid games, not the warez sex thing).

Addiction

I have a new addiction. It's a game called DragonStone that Micah developed and put on his Mcom Blog. I'd give you the permalink, but beneath the DragonStone entry is a really nice Mahjong game as well. Right now, DragonStone is the second entry from the top.

If you want to see more of his programs, click the XLab link in his sidebar. And give his music a listen, too. Great stuff!

His blog's been getting a lot of hit counts from me this week...

Innocence Lost

When I was a kid my dad always promised to take me to a burlesque show on my 21st birthday. Sadly, by the time that rolled around there were no such places left.

What got me thinking about this was the movie meme I posted earlier in the morning. The list so far is of actors from the Golden Age of Hollywood, Deni's addition being James Cagney. That got me thinking about Vaudeville, and then burlesque came into my thoughts.

There are a few women who perform genuine burlesque, but none so well as Vienna La Rouge. Her act is pure vintage--from the 18th century to 1940s Hollywood--and she never loses her ladylike quality. Sure, she strips, but there's pasties and a thong beneath those big feather fans. In an age when Britney Spears flashes her bare wowzer just getting out of a car, and women in strip clubs bend over and shake their booty four inches from a man's face, Ms. La Rouge's act might seem pretty tame. What she understands though is that the most powerful sexual attraction begins in the imagination, and that there is an art that appeals on more levels than just the mere physical. Today's strippers lack art; Vienna La Rouge is an artist.

My grandfather, who was a Vaudeville performer from childhood used to say, "A woman standing bare naked is okay, but put a wisp of fabric on her and yowza! That's something!"

My Rising Tide of Spam

My main Gmail account gets about 20 pieces of spam every hour. Fortunately, Gmail has an excellent spam filter, so it ends up in the junk file without me having to deal with it. They also automatically delete it every month. Still, I see the number growing over in that left column every time I go in to read my mail, and of course my OCD tendencies force me to clean it out every time. This morning I've decided to let it built up so that I can see how much spam I get in a month's time.

A Movie Meme

My friend Deni, at Flapdoodle, put this movie meme on her blog last night and I thought it was fun:

If I lived on a desert island, and could only watch one film featuring each of the following stars, these are the films I would chose....

Cary Grant: An Affair to Remember
James Stewart: Rear Window
Humphrey Bogart: The Big Sleep
Audrey Hepburn: Breakfast at Tiffany's
Bing Crosby: White Christmas
Katherine Hepburn: Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Marlene Dietrich: Witness for the Prosecution
Clarke Gable: The Misfits
Ingrid Bergman: Anastasia
Jimmy Cagney: Man of a Thousand Faces

And, if I could add one more star and film of my own choice it would be:

Danny Kaye: Hans Christian Andersen


Pass it on, choosing films for the stars listed (including my personal addition so that the list grows), plus one of your own.

Photos That Are Hard to Explain

I like to visit sites that post silly or weird photographs, but tonight I realized that through the years my friends and I have collected a few of our own, so being the effusive, magnanimous person that I am (a-hem), here are some pictures from my past that are very hard (or dangerous) to explain. Feel free to add captions if the spirit moves you. Click to embigiate. (Also, mouse-over for captions.)

Just a Brain-Dead List

I know that I can't keep at this schedule. It's only a matter of time before my brain's going to hurl itself into full revolt mode and start coming at my body with rakes and pitchforks. That nasty cold I got right after New Year forced me to sleep for nearly a whole week, and I hate that.

Sleep is boring and there's so many things I could be doing if I didn't have to give in to it. Going to the bathroom is a waste of precious time too, as well as that whole morning routine of "Shit, Shower & Shave" or whatever your third S happens to be. In my adult and mature fashion I rebelled by staying up until dawn when I finally felt good enough to do so. Today I'm functioning on about three brain cells and even they can't seem to find each other to rub up against. It rolls downhill--all you get is a bulleted list entry from me today.

~ I can't believe that Slyde gave me a shout out on his bulleted list today! And in the first slot, too. Back atcha, buddy.

~ I'm sick and tired of coughing up lung chips. Honest to God, between Nettl and myself our bedroom sounds like the tuberculosis ward of some old Victorian hospital in a Dickens novel.

~ Where the heck is our snow? Places that never get snow have it and we've not had any. There was that one light dusting in November, but it lasted about five minutes. I'd like some snow please.

~ F*cker Cat (the name I call her) has gotten into the habit of getting up on us at 4:30 in the morning. She "makes bread" on Nettl, then she climbs onto me to roost so that she can stare at Nettl at eye-level. Is it affection? Is it love? No. She's demanding she be fed. Oh, she's a passive-aggressive one. She gives us nose kisses and purrs, but when that doesn't work she gets on the bed tables and knocks stuff off. Then she sharpens her claws on the chairs, which rouses a loud "PSSSSST!!!" from Nettl and a groggy "F*cker cat..." from me. F*cking cats.

~ I need writing gigs. Actually, I need some work, period, but I think a writing gig would be nice. But it has to pay something. I only have 50 cell phone minutes left and I can't afford to add more.

~ Our living room looks weird right now. Because we were all sick the first week following the holidays we didn't get our decorations down like we usually do. We've been doing it piecemeal: whenever one of us goes downstairs (and has the energy) we take something down, so there's Christmas crap on the table, on the bar, over the chair... The tree is still up and it's too bloody cold to take down the outside lights. I unplugged them though, so at least we don't look like a bunch of nerkles to our neighbors.

~ I had to clean up my Blog List a bit. It doesn't mean that I don't love you, it's just that if you haven't updated in three months or so, my OCD tendencies take over. I still have you in my Google Reader though, so when you update I'll be there.

~ I really hate those Mucinex commercials because they're so true. That green dude and his entire green trash family have moved in and will not be evicted. I think they're breeding too, because if snot was an alternative energy source Nettl and I could keep a city of about 15,000 lit up for a year.

And with that lovely visual I'm out of here. I have some business stuff to do online today and it's already after three.

Thank You Blogger

It took a few weeks, but Blogger finally fixed the problem with the Recent Comments widget.

Funny how dependent we get on little things.

Thanks Blogger Peoples!

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Don't forget that this is National Delurking Week. Leave a comment and say hi!

Brain Cells in My Front Yard

I really haven't been sleeping, although I just now turned on my "Online" sign. I was out in the front yard cleaning up the brain cells leftover from New Year's Eve.

Every year we host the party, you see, and every year I buy a bunch of confetti. Every other year I've gotten the shiny mylar kind. Through the years we've had some that were cut in the shape of the year, champagne glasses, spirals, stars -- I can't remember them all. This year we couldn't find any that said 2009, so we bought palm trees instead, then a big bag of paper confetti. We also get those little bottle poppers, so there were colored streamers in every shrub, every flower bed, and every potted plant.

Only today did I feel well enough to pick up what I could. I gave up on the mylar confetti years ago, thinking that the mowers and weather would eventually take care of them. Let me tell you something. Mylar confetti will never disappear. Out in my yard right now, deeply packed into the grass are all the years that we've hosted these parties, glinting out at us in the sun.

Years ago -- New Year's eve of 1990 -- I had a party that beat them all. I won't go into every kind of ingestible that people brought with them. Instead, I'll just tell you it was in southern California before the religious right took over the government and narrowed society's tolerance. We had a great time, but I don't remember midnight. The next morning when I woke up, confetti covered every square inch of the floors. I'm not exagerating. Every square inch of floor in every single room. When I moved out two years later, I was still vacuuming up that crap. It seemed to creep out of the baseboards. It was at that party, or rather the next morning, that I started calling confetti, "brain cells", and my friends had killed and lost billions of them the night before.

Today wasn't so bad. There was only the paper streamers to pick up, the little popper bottles, and two blow-ticklers. I'm leaving the palm trees to join the brain cells from parties past, and the paper confetti will eventually decompose.

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Don't forget that this is National Delurking Week. Leave a comment and say hi!

Show Me Yours

A long time ago, when the web was a new and magical place that tinted our faces a pale blue late into the night, we learned simple things, happy things, things that were new revelations. Like not hitting "Send" when we were drinking, or the power of "Esc", "Insert", "Ctrl+Alt+Delete", and "Prnt Scrn".

In those olden days we liked sharing things with each other, including screen shots of our desk tops. Wallpaper, icons, cursors, screen savers -- everything served to tell the world who we were. It was all new, and we had fun.

It has been ages since I sent someone a screen shot of my desktop, so I thought I'd show it to you (if I sent this to someone in an email they'd think I'd finally gone off my rocker). If you have a blog and want to play, post your own screen shot and I'll come look. Don't know how to make a screen shot? Click here for a quick and easy little tutorial.

Click to enlarge

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Don't forget that this is National Delurking Week. Leave a comment and say hi!

Why I Love Ventura #5: The Architecture

Within a grid of about six square blocks you can see so many different styles of architecture that it makes it difficult to give Ventura a single label. The historic downtown district, which had no particular celebrated identity of its own until a little over 10 years ago, has now become famous for its non-unifying style, which has become Ventura's calling card. Like its people, Ventura is hard to pin down, but spend an afternoon walking around and you'll understand our bohemian natures as well as our love of diversity.

From Craftsman
(Bernadette's Cafe, Main St.)

to Italianate,
(the Earl Stanley Gardner building which is now an antiques store, Main St.)

from Beach Town Deco
(the relatively new cinema, built in 1997, Main St.)

to High Victorian,
(once a church, then a wedding chapel, then a B&B, it's now for sale, Main St.)

from Spanish Colonial
(For Your Home furniture store, Main St.)

to Tudor,
(The Somerset Apartments, Santa Clara Ave.)

from the funky
(Johnny's, on the Avenue - best burritos in the county!)

to the ornate,
(Bella Maggiore Inn, California St.)

from the tiny
(The Top Hat hot dog stand, Main St.)

to the grand.
(Old City Hall, Poli St.)

Photos are all by different people whose names I don't know.

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Don't forget that this is National Delurking Week. Leave a comment and say hi!