Sunday Top Ten: Apropos of Nothing

I gotta catch some shut-eye/beauty rest/sleep. You know? You should be sleeping too. Unless you're in Australia, then you should um, have tea.

10. Sunday Bloody Sunday
Of all nights of the week: I loathed Sundays the most. Well, actually -- when Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman aired Sunday nights, my Mom (now gay) and I (now dubious) crushed on Dean Cain, and so we had our viewership rituals together and that was nice. Now, Lois is on that annoying show about the housewives with the ad campaigns that make my corneas hurt. Honestly, there's so much American media that hurts my retinas, corneas, and epidermis, that it's a wonder I'm still alive. [She says from her emo-cave] I actually intended to improve the quality of Sunday nights via the introduction of the Sunday Top Ten--Ryan and I'd always declared Sunday nights the most depressing of all nights, thus the "you cannot make definitive statements about your life on Sunday nights" rule. AND THEN Angela Chase said there's something about Sunday nights that makes you want to like, kill yourself, and thus, it was written. Oh, but during L Word season, Sunday nights are alright for me 'cause I get to see all my friends w/o leaving my laptop or my apartment. I have absolutely no point whatsoever, and I'm not just saying that this time. The topic of this paragraph is "lame?" The topic of this Top Ten is: run on sentences.

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9. Lying's the Most Fun a Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off, But It's Better If You Do
This week's Sunday Top Ten is a bit of a smorgasboard. Speaking of smorgas, this Sunday night I am going to a dancing establishment with Lozo, whom, despite spicy rumors to the contrary, I've never met. There'll also be some random homos there. And Stef. I'm a bit nervous about the strippers, as I'm historically unable to have fun in environments designed to appeal to the heterosexual male libido, e.g., college, faux-dive bars on the Upper East Side, football games, "bar & grill"s, parties, TGI Fridays, Spring Break, professional wrestling. HOWEVER, then I started thinking about how these ladies are probably aspiring artists or writers of some sort, perhaps not so different from myself (except with larger breasts, longer hair, better dancing skills, etc.), just girls in the big city chasing their dreams. You know? Yeah, that's probably it. Also, as I am wont to mention, Alice Ayers in Closer, one of my favorite characters [better in the original play, Alice, but also hot in the movie, Natalie Portman, ow], as quoted above. Below we have Gina Gershon, she's an actress from a bad movie about Strippers. A lot of people wish she was a homosexual, so, in lieu of that, she's a homosexual icon. And bi, holla!

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8. An Update on the 59th Annual Kings County Whathaveyous. (picture reprinted, see right, to refresh your memory)

[Scene: Riese is sitting on the couch, knitting scarves for cold hungry children in freezing cold countries, Zoey enters]

Zoey: Soooo .... Riese. You've uh, got a problem with my King's County sign?
Riese: Excuse me, I have a 5,000 mile walkathon to run in for charity, to cure RABIE'S. JK. FOR RABIES. No, it's for babies. GTG.

I told her I'd clear this misapplication of stupidity points. As Jaime pointed out, "TONY" is actually four letters that stand for other words, and therefore the apostrophe is POSSIBLY appropriate, but, the point is: this sign, which does in fact display a great deal of artistic prowess if you can avert your eyes away from the grammatical catastrophe and towards the cute & tender children illustrated below it, was created for some hooha Putnam County Spelling Bee play thingie oh man, I already forgot. Well, whatever it was, it was for something where a kid was supposed to've made the sign, and kids make grammatical errors all the time, get it? Like how the "8" is just drawn over with a "9." I suggested to Zoey that a better choice to demonstrate the fake artist's age woulda been the classic inversion of the letter "S," often used to indicate childlike scrawls. So, that's that.

Zoey is very smart and very beautiful, she's the best roommate ever, I heart her. Today, in fact, she carried out all the glass bottles for recycling, which was 95% alcohol consumed by yours truly (and Carly, actually, to be fair/honest).

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7. Gossip Girl

As I've mentioned, I read the whole Gossip Girl series. I'll tell you why, totes serious: excellent storytelling. I select most of my reading material with intentions to: get smart, enjoy literary talent, be a better writer. But books like Shopaholic or Gossip Girl aren't about the quality writing, they're quality storytellers. I'm glued to the page, wondering what'll happen next, etc. Cecily Von Whatevs is like, mistress of Plot. Actually I read them initially 'cause I wanted to be a ghostwriter for a book packager but then Don talked me out of it, anyhow, the point is that I kinda like this show. I actually sat down and watched it with undivided attention, which is more than I can say for any other teevee show I've watched in the last like, ten thousand years. Until about three weeks ago, I was consistently insanely out of my mind busy with 500 imperative activities involving other humans; I never sat down, never relaxed, never let my brain take a natural course. It's weird. Suddenly: this. I've still got no time or resources ever, it'd seem, but all at once I'm only answering to myself. Like, "Hi, me. What's up?" Eek.

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6. One Less Duty for my Hypothetical Unpaid Intern

On Friday I went to the dentist. I know, I could hardly believe it myself. I was lying in the chair like, wow, I'm actually at the dentist. The feeling was not unlike the feeling I felt upon finding an anthology with my story in it at Barnes & Noble for the first time. Like: is this really happening? Am I really here, at this point -- this glorious crossroads -- in the rocky road of my smokin' hot life?

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5. Do You Think I'll Make It to the Morning If It's Written

I had this friend, Alina, we met in seventh grade at my private school for weirdos. That's us in the photo doing a lip-sync to "Material Girl," in drag. Alina was Seventh Day Adventist, we were best friends, we laughed so hard we'd collapse all the time, just from a quickly exchanged private joke or biting Ace Ventura imitation or, occasionally, something we'd made up ourselves and then died over. Her Mom, like mine, was super strict and, thus, her and I were often prohibited to attend the same events and I was the only person outside of church she was allowed to have sleepovers with. So we both had overprotective mothers but Alina was also constrained by her ardent observance of the Sabbath. Her Sabbath was sundown Friday night 'til sundown Saturday, like the Jewish Sabbath, I liked that, like we'd read the same book.

Anyhow, the summer of 2001 I was living in New York and my Mom kept telling me; Alina called you, call her [this was back when your Mom could actually be getting phone calls intended for you, before cell phones took over], but I thought Alina was in California or Michigan or Boston or something, I didn't realise all summer she'd been calling me 'cause she was living in the city too.

At the end of the summer after our lease was up, I was staying in Westchester with Becky at her big house with her Kashi and big swirling staircase, high ceilings and jungle pool out back, and I finally called Alina and we made plans for me to stay the night with her at her apartment in Warlem before my flight back to Michigan and so I did. We had dinner at Cafe Mozart, she was always a weird eater, I feel like she had chocolate cake for dinner or something -- in middle school she wouldn't eat in public 'cause she was intensely paranoid she'd get food on the face, wow, she had so many weird "things" like that, it was part of what made her so ridic awesome -- all these randomized quirks she'd already developed even at the age of 12 .

So, back at her place, before bed I asked her to set the alarm for me to catch my flight.

"Oh, I just tell G-d when to wake me up."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah, that's what I've always done. My whole life."

"And it works?"

"Yeah, He always wakes me up when I want Him to."

"Wow--just. Wow, that's amazing. Has it ever not worked?"

"Just once, I was supposed to go to this Church Retreat and I told G-d when to wake me up, and he didn't, I slept through it and missed the departure time for the trip. So I just knew, for whatever reason, G-d didn't want me to go on that trip. I trust that."

"That's so cool."

"So do you want to set an alarm, still? We can, if it'll make you feel better."

"No, I trust you. 5 A.M."

And what do you know, she woke me up at 5 A.M. I got my plane, and got back to Michigan. That was, I guess, thinking about it now, like, end of August, 2001. I flew out of New York City, didn't fly back again 'til October.

Anyhow, I was thinking of that 'cause I stopped setting my alarm this week, to try to get my body back to normal and not have so much fibro flare-ups as I'd been having back during Writeathon Mania '07. I've been waking up early anyhow, 8 or 9 every day, so I guess I don't need that much sleep really after all. I don't know, sometimes my days lately feel like so much fog.

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4. Go to the Edge and Barely There
I did a lot of randomised reorganising today. I built a shelf over my desk using things that probably shouldn't be shelves, and sometimes I think; that shelf might fall, maybe I shouldn't've loaded it with burning candles. Also, I got another filing thingie, because there's too much paper around and I'm always digging through it like a manic rabbit and that's no good for anyone, and I had to go through all this stuff today, all these papers, and the words written on the papers. So much recent history, so much not really history at all, but words-in-hands-right-now present tense action. Drawings, too. Things I wrote to myself not so long ago, automatic writing.

There are so many things still on my mind about so many things, so many unanswered questions. So many perceptions I'd like to verify, breaths and instincts and awarenesses and suspensions of belief in irrationalities held inside to best facilitate holding hands into the clear where one could speak clearly if such a time would ever come. So many people with the appropriate degrees who didn't do what should've been done, so many times nearing people who couldn't see what I saw when all I needed was for someone else to see what I saw. So many questions, so much sadness, so much anger, so much retro-frustration, confusion, so much ... what if. So much paper, so many things to file.

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3. New Ice Cream Flavor Idea: Hipster Heaven
Also, the other night, Stef described Williamsburg as "hipster heaven, where hipsters go to die" and Haviland told me to write that down and then put it on my blog. You know what though, I lived there once, and my hips were actually wider than per ush, though I blame, primarily, Lo, because she liked to eat chocolate kisses and mini candy bars out of the bag, like straight out of the bag, and I'd often partake, and also our freezer didn't work so we had to finish the ice cream before it melted. Like, we'd buy a pint of Ben & Jerry's, watch Pretty Persuasion or Grey Gardens for the 40th time, and have to finish the B&J before it melted because our freezer wouldn't freeze it. See, these are the problems that people like me face every single day, out there, in the world. Every day.

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2. The Girl and the Dragon
So, I was "talking" to Crystal about how today I downloaded this audiobook that I thought was gonna be about this girl who is drunk for ten years but then, in the prologue, she's all like "drinking is very bad and all girls drink because they are unhappy and it'll ruin their lives even if they aren't alcoholics" and I was like, whoa, tell me about that time you got drunk, please! Then I was annoyed that I'd used my one monthly audible.com credit on that book, and then I told Crystal about how at first, I'd joined audible to listen to "The Bible Experience"; this group of esteemed African-American actors who do live-recorded readings of books of the bible on audio. It's hosted by Levar Burton. My ex'd wanted me to read Revelation and was unimpressed I'd cheated by listening to a recording with these incredible sound effects, like you could hear all the people dying in the apocalypse and killing each other, and the white horse, sharp double-edged sword and the beholding and coming as a thief and stuff, and I was like, that's semi hilarious in retrospect, like me getting my nails done while in my ears Levar Burton's like: "The one-hundred and forty-four-thousand ... " Haha. Oh, that. Crystal said I should do a top ten of "things I've done to win the hearts of others." It would start in 1992, when my boyfriend and I both quit choir so we could go hang out alone. Luckily, we were both bad singers anyhow.

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1. The Feeling That I'm Here Again
I feel like there's crack in Tegan & Sara. I cannot stop listening to these girls sing songs, sometimes I miss it or need it like crack. And my favorite songs've continued to change, too, from "So Jealous" to "Frozen" & "Underwater" to "Soil Soil" & "Dark Come Soon" to "Nineteen" & "City Girl" & "Back in Your Head" to "Where Did the Good Go?" & "You Wouldn't Like Me" to "More for Me" & "The Con" to "Fix You Up" & "Are You Ten Years Ago" ... it just doesn't stop being exactly the only thing I can even think about hearing, it's just like my life is an elevator and this is my music, and the elevator is stuck. If only Dean Cain, as his character "Superman" from the show Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman could come and rescue us. See that? See how I brought that back around? Yeah you did.