I'm back fuckers. Yes, it's been a while. Largely, this is due to my stunning laziness and incomprehensible lack of anything resembling work ethic. More over, ow. I hurt. Things, so many things. Just senseless pain, I tell you, when will it stop?! (End Phoebe voice.) Or, to be more specific and less dramatic (and when did that ever get anyone anywhere?), sudden and sharp bloody muscle spasms have made their home in me uninvited as Alanis Morissette is so fond of singing. Every so often- and every day in a new and exciting location in the large piece of real estate that is me- a pulsating cramp will rocket through me like the flesh is actively trying to escape from the bone. Oh, I'm sorry, did I promise the theatrics were over? Well live with it, my DStv has been out for a while now, momma needs her some entertainment. Fancy word-play is all I have.
Anyway, along with that, my hands have also been feeling bizarrely bruised or cramped too. I know, that sounds very "dog ate my homework", but alas it be true. Got myself to ye oldde medicine (wo)man, who dun tol' me not to panic when it feels like those spasms are happening in the convenient spacing right over my chest cavity at the same time I'm coincidentally experiencing a very common arrhythmia much as most of the population will at some point in their lives. Yes, my body is just that vindictive. It actually contrives to throw together symptoms of other things to make me feel like I'm in the throws on acute angina at 3 in the morning. She said she figured some of the new things are side effects from the migraine meds (including, she says, my aphasia. Except that started before I began the Toplep. And when a drooling moron is looking at you in utter confusion trying to remember the word "table", I assure you you want to kill it with fire, not switch its medication.), but had a nurse stick a needle in my tender flesh anyway for some blood. Am I the only one feeling a vampire thing here? Yes? Ok. I am to decide if I prefer the feeling of meat trying to samba in the opposite direction from my personhood everyday, or the migraines, since those pills actually work. I tell ya, I'm praying for operable brain tumour. Also, more pills for my stash for the hands. Just so you know it's a real thing. Really.
I had a sleepover a couple of weeks ago with my friend Andrea. I love her, she wonderfully mad. And by "wonderfully mad", I mean "does the shopping at her upscale Pick 'n Pay in her flowing leopard-print Demis Roussos kaftan with more than a little boob-poppage out the side.
She was taking me to her friends' house, where she was making dinner. She's a vegetarian, but don't let that fool you. (Yes, you read that right, it was intoned with all of the mock-condescension and ire you imbibed it with in your mind. I'm a carnivore, OK?) She's an awesome cook. She bought mushrooms to bomb in her food, and was making a sort of bacon pasta with oodles of cream for the rest of the sane people. I had half and half. Let me tell you something brother: portebellini mushrooms? A fucking revelation. So too are wasabi rice crackers, but that happened much later in my own house on a snack binge. Not important. Important: try these mothering mushrooms, they will change your life and bear your children. They also cost more than the average child does to rear, but fuck it, you'll have portebellini mushrooms.
Her friends were lovely people. Genuinely, just lovely. Some celebrity watching for you though, and I do warn you it is an odd coupling, but this is them, or at least their nearest (and I will say they are pretty close matches) celebrity look-alikes.
You will now live with the knowledge that somewhere out there, Professor Sprout is married to Phil from Better Off Ted. What a lovely couple they are too.
They have two really great kids, plus an older girl from a previous marriage- the boy was about 11, and the girl was a believe about 6 or 7. The older sister lives in the Cape. When we arrived, she didn't look up from her colouring station, but about two minutes after we sat down with our individual carafes of wine, she ambled up to her mother and whispered into her ear. "Oh, apparently this is for Loraine." I got handed a drawing, hand-made with loving care, with her name on and everything. I swear, you've never felt special until a little girl singles you out for a picture. Evidently, she was as delighted as I was, and thusly proceeded to bring me her mother's entire garden. Every few minutes she would come up to her mother and shyly whisper for a flower to be handed over to me, and at my clear inability to hide my delight she would simply go and find more. At one point she was humming into her mother's ear, when she replied "No! You can't give her that, it's your sister's!" I got a picture she had made at school, and Andrea- being ever helpful, the bitch- declares "Oh, well Loraine simply must come with you to Show And Tell on Monday! You can show her to the whole class! And then afterwards, she can come with to Monkeynastics!" Of course this idea was met with zealous approval, and I was then illustrated her room as she unpacked it for my viewing pleasure. Luckily, even though Andrea did her best to remind everyone about Show And Tell at every opportunity and at some point it looked like an unavoidable certainty, (Andrea was snorting wine laughing at the prospect of me standing heads tall above a class of 6-year-olds as the poor child showed off her "new best friend") it came to naught. Largely because Andrea got really busy on Monday with an essay for her art course, which I did nothing at all to discourage.
I'm making these little monsters again.
I once made a little voodoo kit as a sort of a lark for Brenda for her birthday, and someone else wanted a voodoo doll after that, but I haven't made one in a while. I figured I need one, so I made Arturo over here. He's hanging from my siamese cat. If you tug him, you can switch the light on and off.
Oh no, you want to give me an exorcism now, don't you? I swear, it's the same look I got when I picked up a lock of my hair at the hairdressers when I made Brenda's original voodoo kit. Does no one understand irony anymore? It's not like the one I made Andrea with the snippable penis and testicles after her divorce, people, it's not for practical use, OK?
Found this online, apparently in a museum exhibit in Canada:
There is apparently a raging thing online (albeit maybe an old raging thing- I never claimed to be current) about the man in the sunglasses. He looks so much like a bona-fide 21st century hipster in a printed T-shirt with modern sunglasses and a hoodie under what can only be described as French Stewart's fuzzy jacket, that the inevitable conclusion reached by the internet as a whole has been "time traveller." Now, my personal beliefs on the noble art of time travel aside (could totally happen), I want to believe this. Of course, this being the internet and people being the pretentious douchebags that they are, a hundred thousand voices strong immediately shouted "FAKE. You can tell by the pixels." I call that cynical. Can we not be whimsical for a moment? Can we not believe in the wonderful magic of the time-travelling hipster who apparently went back in time in his anachronistic attire to a bridge re-opening in small town Canada in 1941 for even just a minute? I leave it up to you, but check out chick in the back's expression. If she hasn't just been smacked in the face with Marty McFly I'm my own Grandpa.
Then, since I've been AWOL for so long, I thought I'd give you a video to show my penance. Just so you'd know how truly sorry I am. I, being the crazy cat lady that I am, kicked off valentine's day with a cat on my lap and with a Peter Sellers classic in the DVD machine. I decided to do a rewatch of The Pink Panther. I remember I was in the Cape when the Steve Martin version came out- and I am the last person in the world to cast aspersions on the integrity of Mr. Martin, he did give us half of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels after all- and I took my then probably about 13-year-old cousin Benji to see it. In an almost genius marketing move, SABC 3 was showing the original movies on TV at the same time. We came home from 1 1/2 hours of Steve Martin affecting a bad French accent that felt somehow more contrived and less funny than when Sellers does it, and it took Benji about 20 minutes to ask the heart-breaking question of "is this meant to be a comedy?" Apparently, 60's slapstick just doesn't translate.
Either way, movie still awesome, if you needed someone to confirm that for you. Peter Sellers was a hairy man-beast, as evidenced by that one shower scene, something I could probably have lived happily the rest of my life without knowing quite so intimately. But here is what I share with you today, either for the first time, or again, depending on your level of taste: the song written for Fran Jeffries near the end of the movie, and apparently recently covered in English by Michael Buble (not cool, Buble, not cool.) Very addictive little ditty, and dear god does this woman have a hypnotic arse- and I say this as a 100% straight woman who would by the way welcome the chance to prove the statistic in any way possible on a certain Mr. Benedict Cumberbatch if he's reading at all.
Right? And that hair doesn't deviate an inch the whole time.
Quick aside, I've rewatched Titanic twice in the last week, plus Romeo + Juliet once, and some Gilbert Grape in there too. It's been a very Leo kind of a week. When Titanic came out I was 8, and we were the absolute verified last people on earth to see it. By the time Jack bites it and Rose unceremoniously dumps him into the freezing cold waters of the North Atlantic- stupid bitch- I was not crying, I was throwing a fucking tantrum. My parents had to wrestle me into bed. I was immediately head over heels in love with ol' Leo, and I think you'll notice that's a trend that has had some staying power. My dad, being the awesome superhero that he is, went online and found me this Leonardo DiCaprio magazine for tweens from the States and even printed out some photos of him, and to this day that is the single best gift I've ever gotten, just because he went to the effort and thought to get me something like that, apropos of nothing. Someone nicked it years ago, but I found a copy of it at a Fascination Books sale not that long ago.
The reason I watched it twice is because my dad realised he hadn't seen it since 1998, so I watched it with him again too. I cannot believe it has been 15 years since the release, it's too freaky. Kate Winslet was 21, he was 22 when they made it. I'm 22 and I have done squat, let me be the first to tell you. But more importantly:
WANT.
WANT.
And then there's the Friends. My dad and I watch TV shows. It's what we do. I find stuff, then I load it up on a flash drive for us and we go through seasons of stuff together, it's our thing. I remember when I first found Friends- we were living in a hellish little house, but the video shop was within walking distance, and they had the whole series on DVD. I painstakingly rented each disc, like 4 episodes at a time, and worked my way through ten seasons. I fucking loved it. The whole Ross and Rachel rollercoaster, Monica ageing in reverse, Chandler being imminently Chandler... when the whole "We were on a break!" thing happened, I was in pieces. I've mentioned it once or twice. You're an astute reader, you've probably picked up on it. My dad, at that time not so much a fan of the TV shows, rolled his eyes and said "It's basically just a soapie. Get over it."
Cut to x amount of years later, and the man sets his alarm for 6 in the morning on Sundays so he can watch East Enders, and once I had him watch Veronica Mars on DVD, he got so hooked he wanted to buy me the third season just so he could find out how it ended. Now he's on Friends, and you'd better believe I bring up every chance I have to throw that little line back in his face- mwa ha ha ha! He's just as hooked as I ever was. Sometimes I worry about him a little, he laughs so hard, and I love it. I've watched it so many times, all those lines are imprinted on my brain, but he's seeing them for the first time.
But more importantly, when he was watching his few episodes before he had to start work this morning, already up to season nine, he looks at Paul Rudd playing Phoebe's boyfriend before he was uber-famous and says "who is that guy? He looks very familiar." I list all of his more famous movies, but none of them hit. We watch a few minutes, and I quip, "he looks like Dirk though, doesn't he?" in reference to one of my favourite people ever, my friend who is rather aptly called Dirk. Now I told you I'm good at the celebrity look-alike game, yes? Cause he goes:
"Oh! THAT'S why he looks so familiar!"
Not sayin' nothing for nothin', but when you're good, you're good. And why do I not have better pictures of my friends on file? But for the record, whenever I picture Dirk, I cannot, upon pain of death, do so without the fedora. I met him with that fedora on, and my mind refuses to remove it. I do not remember what colour his hair is. I'll have to ask him tomorrow.
Happy Valentine's, pie-people, I wish you much confectionary and awesome half-hour multiple camera format sitcoms from the mid nineties. Because I love you.
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