Mirror, Mirror Mistletoe

It's weird what you see reflected back from your family members to yourself over the holidays.

My dad and I were talking about grudges. He told me about a work colleague that he has had a grudge against for over 30 years.
I said, "I knew I got it from somewhere."
He said, "You're a chip off the old block. Don't kid yourself."

Marta's Beadations - Here for the X-mas Season

One of my beadations...

Santa Hats = Fashion No-No

Yesterday I saw two people walking around sportin' Santa hats, and they were not wearing Santa suits.

When I was but a twinkle in my parents' eye, my dad would say to me:



"You lose 90% of your body heat out of your head."

Since I heard those words of wisdom, I been very pro snow hat. Why not? It keeps your head warm.

However, I just can't support the wearing of Santa hats for the purpose of headwarming during the holidays. I realize that the purpose is probably two-fold: both festive and warm. But, I think the cutting edge fashion critics of People magazine, and her highness Tyra Banks herself, would agree that Santa hats without a matching Santa suits are better left to the office Christmas party.

Things I've learned from the P&P Project

• I found two people in my life who are obsessed with the Pride and Prejudice story, have seen every movie version (including a 300 hour version), and apparently played a board game!?!?

I repeat: Two people have this in common.

In the time of Pride and Predjudice?

I started a new personal project this week. The project still needs a name, but it has a goal. I want to know and read one of each of my friends' most favorite books.

My first phase is Margaret's book, Pride and Predjudice. Normally, I don't care for "period" books, but I decided to follow my own project rules and give it a try. So far, I'm on page 73 and I find the book to be facinating. I love the subtle dialogue that expresses and exposes social norms and desires. The characters all have so many social rules that they must follow.

At one dance, Elizabeth gets snubbed by Mr. Darcy (and everyone knows it.) At a later dance, she refuses to dance with him. She has a rep to protect! In the world of P&P, a guy couldn't ask a girl to dance, even if they've been to several of the same occasions, unless someone else intimate with both parties introduced them.

"What a bore!" I thought, "I'm so glad we don't have to follow social rules like that today!"

Until I went out to a swing dance club last night.

When I got roped into dancing with a robot named Mork, who danced embarrassingly slow to a mambo beat and couldn't give me a twirl if his life depended on it, when an acquainted man-friend left my friend and I as wilting wall flowers for 100 songs even though he is a great dancer, I was thinking about Pride and Predjudice.

How would these events at the swing dance be seen through the lens of P&P?
Probably, I would have know all about robo-mork and been able to turn him down for a dance to spare myself the awkwardness.

And the man friend? The social slight would not have gone unnoticed. All the society ladies would be talking about what a bad countenance and temperament and manners he had. Well, they would say that to me and my friend until we left the room.

Then, when talking to him, those bitches would talk about my friend and I in the same way.

Ginger Citrus Spritzer

Here's a great recipe for a festive holiday drink:

Boil 1 cup water, 1 cup sugar, and 1 cup sliced ginger for 15 minutes.
Let cool.

Stir in 1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice and 1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon juice.
Add club soda to taste.

No Hamburgers, But United Against Gas Prices

I bridged the gap with my neighbors last night re: our collective gas bills. It seems that the local gas co is jacking up prices, but also that the furnaces at our place are working at a less-than-stellar rate. For the sake of my budget, I need to investigate the situation as my bill reflected the use of 111 therms for the month of November. WTF?!? Am I heating the entire building here???

My plan of attack:
1. make sure the correct meter is hooked up to my unit.
2. check the efficiency of the radiators.
3. check the efficiency of the furnance.
4. check the efficiency of the gas dryer, which is hooked on to MY gas line for at least three people.
5. install plastic on windows.

The Shuffler

I got on the brown line today, and my weirdo-meter was pinging slightly.

I spotted a guy on the platform who had two concern-causing indicators.
#1: Tinted glasses, the number one appearance indicator that warrants suspicion.
#2: An intense stare at everyone who was coming up the stairs to the platform, like he's just waiting to catch someone's eye to strike up a conversation.

Anyway, we all got on the train and settled in for our 45 minute ride downtown.
I sat kitty-corner from this guy, who I noticed took off his gloves and was shuffling a deck of cards. He was the kind of shuffler who doesn't just split the deck into two piles and flip them together. But he splits the deck into all kinds of little parts and combines them in complicated shuffling ways. In other words, a pro.

But also, weird.
It's 10 degrees outside, the brown line is dead quiet with everyone either reading or listening to their earphones, and dude took off his gloves to shuffle cards at 9 a.m.

He kept this up for the entire 45 minute train ride. Not only that, but he was giving everyone an intense vegas stare as if to challenge people to come up to his imaginary blackjack table.

Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
Five of spades.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
Five of hearts.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
Five of clubs.
Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle.
Five of diamonds.

Cards back in the deck, and repeat.

My favorite bridge in Chicago

The Amtrak bridge at Ping Tom Park

My favorite bridge in New York

Crossing the Brooklyn Bridge

Hi from the Brooklyn Bridge

Shout-out to People-Watching in NYC

One of the best parts of the a holiday trip to NYC was the excellent and entertaining people-watching, and the novelty of a new city that allows for the time to notice. What follows is a shout-out to all the characters my brother and I saw...

• Blow-up doll salsa dancer
• 15-year-old jewfro
• Pin-striped suit tourette's theater-goer
• Baldy in the Starbucks who asked if I was going camping
• "First woman actress" and Manhattan matron
• Dawn, who is "really is loved" by the guy on the message
• Farmer-blow guy on the Brooklyn Bridge
• John Nelson of the Navy Reserves

Blow-up Doll Salsa Dancer

I was passing through Grand Central Station in New York City this week, on my way to turkey paradise. During my few days in New York, I saw a few musicians or dancers in the subway but nothing that made me stop en route.

However, people-watching reached a new high when I saw a well-groomed latino man wearing a black suit. He had a radio that was playing some salsa music, and was dancing a salsa-waltz with a blow-up doll. The doll had long red hair, and a short magenta dress. Quite a crowd was gathered around to see this performance.

Did his salsa partner called in sick?
"Hey sweetie, I can't dance the New York gig today, you're going to have to find a replacement..."

Or was he showing off his "female companion" after hiding in shame for too long?

I delight in the thought of this dance as a sincere gesture, because either of the above options would reflect a ballsy zest for life. But I suppose it's possible that there was irony in this performance.

If this is the new avant-garde, show me more!

Anger Funk Delay

Do you ever listen to Earth, Wind, and Fire?

I swear, it is impossible to listen to that music and maintain an angry or depressed mood.

Yesterday, I almost got mowed down by a bike messenger at the Thompson Center (after a steady series of other day-breaking mishaps.) Lucky for him, I was lost in an EWF reverie. The expletives I was about to shout were on funk delay and he was too far away before I could let him have it. Still listening to "Fantasy" 5 minutes later, EWF smoothed over my angry face and all was okay again.

They make simple lyrics like, "When you feel down and out/Sing a song, and it'll make your day" so... well, believable.

The Maltese Falcon

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."
- Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon

Gypsy Rose Lee

When I was in seventh grade, my grandmother took me to see the musical, "Gypsy" at our local theater.

"Gypsy" is a thrilling musical (based on true-story) about the well-known and sassy stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, and how her overbearing stage mother, Mama Rose, forced her and her sister to come of age on the stage. Gypsy is satisfyingly "turned out" after cowering in her sister's shadow for her entire life; feisty Mama Rose is a woman with a dream that is larger than life (song: Coming Up Roses); the music is lusty and fresh.

One of the choice songs in the show is called "You Gotta Have a Gimmick." In this song, Mama Rose has just pushed young, naive Gypsy into her first burlesque strip show, and the lowbrow strippers are giving her some tips. They each have a tag line to go with each of their respective gimmicks, which they express like this:

"If you wanna grind it, wait 'til you've refined it."
"If you wanna make it, twinkle while you shake it."
"If you wanna bump it, bump it with a trumpet."

Charming, no?

I, of course, shared these lyrics with my friends, and we recycled them heavily into our 7th and 8th grade class performances, and I think even a high school lip-synch. Yikes.

But Gypsy Rose Lee was more than just a stripper with a gimmick, she brought class and culture and art to burlesque. When she became famous for her classy acts, she branched out into movies and books, including a book called "The G-String Murders." I picked up this book at the library, recently. Here's a line when Gypsy discovers the murder victim:

"As long as I live, I'll remember seeing that bloated, bluish face, the twisted, naked body, and the glitter of a G string hanging like an earring from the swollen neck."

A witty performer, a artistic seductress, an entrepreneur? Yes.
A role model for a 7th grader? Sure.
A writer, she ain't.

Cranes landing near Chicago during a migratory trip.

Hamburgers As Peace Offering

I got a note from my downstairs neighbors yesterday, accompanied by a chocolate croissant from Au Bon Pain. The subject of the note is their dumb and naughty puppy (Lulu), who barks himself hoarse every time I go up and down the stairs to my apartment. In the past two days, I had run-ins with Lulu in the yard and on my stairs. A "run-in" consists of me being bum-rushed by Lulu, barked at, and sniffed, but not bitten or humped. Then said neighbors grab a hapless Lulu by the collar and drag her inside with a mumbled, "Sorry."

Lucky for me, my neighbors began to realize that their puppy is, um, a little anti-social. In the aforementioned note, my neighbors proposed that a "formal introduction" to Lulu would surely calm her nerves, and turn her feisty territorial behavior into a charm befitted to a southern belle.
This "proven" ritual of animal taming consists of the soon to be former stranger (me) tossing a bunch of hamburgers to Lulu. After gobbling up the hamburgers, and presumably some sniffing, we are friends and no longer strangers. Clever?

This ritual is set to take place on Sunday, November 13.

Jazzamatazz

"The Valve" was the name of my hip hop radio show in college.
It comes from a quote by Guru of Gangstarr.

He says something like, "hip hop is a valve for youth culture."

I'd posit that Blogging is also a valve of sorts for youth culture.