12.22.2008

IKEA art guerrilla warfare




If there are paintings of ugly pink flowers in the IKEA clearance section, I buy them and paint over them with my new black, grey, and red acrylic paints. This modern masterpiece is hanging in my bathroom but when I run out of wall space, I will give them as gifts and raffle them off.

ps I like actual pink flowers.

Tyskarna från Lund - Achtung X-mas

I haven't had a lot of words lately but my thoughts sound kind of like this.

12.18.2008

I was the mayor

Two night ago, in my dream, I was the mayor.

And apparently I figured out how to run the city in a blackout because I had no memory of it whatsoever. People in the dream just kept telling me, "You're the mayor!"

Which makes me think that I should write the essay that Sunny wants me to after all - Top Ten Things I Like To Do In A Blackout - and put BECOME THE MAYOR on top.

My sleeping brain is wildly overcompensating for my anxiety of not being very useful right now.

At the end of the dream, I decided to believe what people were saying and walked down the street and introduced myself to someone with a firm handshake, "Mayor Roncker," which I'm taking to be either a) a prophesy that it's time for a career change or b) a sign that on most days I need to do more than read, write, and watch two Karate Kid movies back to back in order to feel productive.

12.17.2008

and I'm not usually a fan of Christ imagery

I dare you to find a song more heartbreaking as Johnny Cash's version of Hurt. I remembered this song because his version of Danny Boy (You and your heartfelt covers, Johnny Cash!) came on the iPod which made me think of Mema's funeral in January. The pipes, the pipes are calling lyrics etc.

And then I thought, 'You know what's even more melancholy and touching?' When he manages to siphon all the anger out of a Nine Inch Nails song and makes it sound like just the saddest most beautiful love song. And the next thing you know it's blubber fest 2008 in my kitchen.

12.11.2008

pick u pawhole

A part of me wishes that I'd never figured this sign out.

I was driving through Florence, KY with Matthew when we saw it. PICK U PAWHOLE.

Wait, what?

"That sign makes me think I'm fucked up," Matthew said.

Pawhole? PAW-HOLE? Piehole? What's going on here? A crazy-spelled word in a sentenceish formation? And isn't piehole/pawhole kinda rude for a huge Big Boy sign?

"That signs needs to be translated out of Kentucky," I said.

"And into Ohio," he finished.

After I'd said "pick u pawhole pumpkin pie" out loud and to myself thirty or forty times, I decided to send Matthew a pick u pawhole text message. In the interest of time, I left out the spaces and I noticed that it looked funny, almost like real words.

Pick up a whole pumpkin pie.

Damn it!

12.04.2008

Prop 8, The Musical

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die


Thanks, Jane.

minimal Christmas tree

I like this tree much more than most:



(via emmas designblogg)

Scary purple unicorn!

Not so long ago Matthew walked out of Kroger with a stuffed lavender unicorn under his arm.



I was waiting in the car and he presented it to me with a flourish. I squealed like a little girl, named it Corny, carried it around, and later tucked it into bed. Yes, I know that I'm being ridiculous but I DON'T CARE I LIKE UNICORNS DEAL WITH IT. Plus the unicorn joke Matthew and I had with Mary Beth when we were getting to know each other has not yet gotten old.

It started when Mary Beth said to Matthew, "You know that you and Jessica aren't dating and she's in Berlin. You can go out with other people."

(Namely the girl who hit on him, who he'd had a thing for.)

Matthew's A+++ reply was, "But why should I have a horse when I can have a unicorn?"

Mary Beth told me later and I was thrilled. I am that unicorn!

***

My mom was over and saw it and said, "Jessica. What is that?" in a serious voice.

"It's a unicorn," I answered matter of factly. 

**

One night I was laying on the couch with Corny propped up on my hip. I must have shifted my weight because Corny tipped forward and fell into my peripheral vision and I jumped. Jumped! And my pulse took off like crazy, and a fear that can only be described as prehistoric rushed through me.

Was there was a tarantula creeping onto my stomach? Or something else with fangs and tons of legs? Or cold-blooded? With a shitload of eyes? Can it at least have an exoskeleton?

Nope, just a soft purple unicorn.

12.02.2008

Why wouldn't there be camels backstage?

A month ago the Rockettes rehearsed for a week in Cincinnati. If you, like me,  didn't know the Rockettes still existed and thought that the first batch from the 20s and 30s just petered off and died, well, we were quite wrong. Where the hell have I been? Because the new generations of Rockettes have been at Radio City Music Hall kicking away all this time. I just didn't notice until now

It's fairly hard to miss when you're hired as a runner for their Christmas Spectacular production rehearsals. Nor could I miss the LIVE CAMELS in the show and the 54-foot truck that the camels travel in. I spent a good part of that week sending texts to people that said, "I've got one word for you. Camels."

I watched five minutes of the camels onstage with their handlers. One of them looked totally chill, like it was thinking, "I was made for this," but the other was pissed. Where is my desert? Take me back to my desert.

That rehearsal week in October was tiring: wake at 6am, pick up crew at the hotel at 7 am, drop at arena. Do errands and drive around all day until 1 am, bring crew back to the hotel, go to sleep at 2 am and repeat four hours later. 

But you can't complain about a delirium-inducing schedule when everyone on the production crew is doing it for much longer than a week, with much more responsibility. Suck it up. Wanting to die by Wednesday = unacceptable. When I started getting sick, though, my chest rumbling with each breath, re-pulling the same muscle in my back every time I sneezed, I wanted my blankie.

The upside was that the production coordinator I worked for was totally cool, seriously funny, and so much more overworked than I have ever been that I honestly wanted to make her life easier. If that girl needed a burger, I would have hopped the counter at Wendy's to make it myself. (They didn't let me. I had to stand in line and order one like everyone else.) At least I was in line behind Jonas who I haven't seen since junior high when he used to call me Jessica Bonkers at the pool which made me sooooo mad back then, mad like only a junior high girl can get with much eye rolling, glaring, and secret enjoyment. But I didn't tap Jonas on the shoulder to remind him of how witty we were in 1988. I was on a mission and just wanted that burger.

The night the Rockettes crew loaded out, I picked up bus drivers in shifts at 12:30 and 1:30 am. I live so close to downtown that I could go home, read, hop in the car, and be at the hotel in seven minutes. Then I'd turn around and do it again an hour later. I did the last pickup in my pajamas and my downstairs neighbor probably thinks I'm drug dealer but I'm okay with that. That part of the night, the very end of a long day, was funny because I'd chat with the drivers about our respective tours which invariably led to us knowing some of the same people and then we'd gossip.

The Rockettes were back last week for a run of shows and I got out my jingle bells to work for them again. Just kidding, I don't like jingle bells. I was not happy when a wardrobe person walked through the production office shaking jingle bells.

It was almost as bad as having the iPod and speakers set to only play songs from 1979. How relieved was I when someone lost it and demanded that the iPod be changed, that she was going to officially have a breakdown if she was reminded by one more song of how much 1979 sucked?

SPOTLIGHT: Cathy Hickey

Excuse me while I brag for a minute.

Not about me! About Cathy.

Hi Cathy, what's up, could you be cuter?

I just want to carry you around with me and prop you up and make you say funny stuff that makes us giggle. And then I'll get a perm so I can have hair like you.

But seriously, Cathy needs to be like a mayor or something. Of somewhere. I don't know where. Not in Alaska. Maybe New York or San Francisco. This article just came out in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about Cathy and the work she does and I'm so dang proud of her.

When I met Cathy, she worked at a credit union on the corner of my street in the East Village. We first said hello to each other on a subway platform where we agreed to meet after Jane told us to be friends and then we went to an art museum. At the museum we developed girl-crushes and sat and jabbered endlessly in the middle of the galleries because we liked each other too much to look at art.

I didn't really understand Cathy's job, all I knew was that her credit union did taxes free for neighborhood residents and I was cashing in on that. One of her colleagues did my paperwork and then looked up to ask, "You really only made a total of THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS last year in Seattle?"

"I worked a lot under the table," I bit my lip and mumbled.

Since then Cathy has worked for different business improvement districts and neighborhood development organizations, moving up and becoming more and more influential and basically kicking a serious amount of ass. Plus she honestly cares. And finished an entire arm of tattoos last week.

That also makes us laugh: I do this potentially punk rock job but have a really nerdy approach and she does this potentially nerdy job but has a really punk rock approach. Yin and yang, baby. Muah. x