You're Doing It Wrong

Hi.

I know I said I was going to tell you about my rotten day. You know how when you’re in a rotten mood, you want to tell everyone about it, but it seems like too much energy?

And it seems like too much energy now, but I promise, I will bitch about it later.

Meanwhile, I’m doing hours and hours of yoga this weekend for a workshop which is helping me keep my head together.

And tonight is the giant Paul Westerberg love fest. We’re leaving in a few minutes.

You can find tour data here including the setlist which looks super fantastic, yay. And there’s a Seattle Times article. The tour only just started. Also there’s this blog and this guy also did an interview with Paul for the LA Weekly which I biffed on the link so you’ll have to find it yourself. Read it, Paul fans. Finally, Twintone has some classic vintage Replacements video worth it if you have the time to view a few bits.

Tomorrow yoga is only 3 hours (I know some of you are thinking, “only 3 hours?” but I did about 5 1/2 hours yesterday and another 5 1/2 today) so I can update you on the show AND bitch and whine about the rotten stuff.

I told Bob I wasn’t even going to power up the computer tonight so he said he would so he could download some Cheese which he is doing as we blog.

I had a super rotten day which I will tell you about later. You will agree it was rotten.

One thing that cheered me up was a rerun of the Simpsons. It was the one where Selma married Troy McClure and they have the bit with the Planet of the Apes musical and “Dr. Zaius Dr. Zaius.” If you know what I’m talking about, you are cracking up right now. If you don’t, you wish you did.

#1 – I just checked my gmail account — which I never use for anything other than a typepad blog I was playing around with for about 3 weeks and then pulled the plug on. I had 18 spam. Where could they possibly come from? Those 3 weeks? Geez. Also I have a few gmail invites if you want one. What a genius approach to make something available only by invite so it seems so special and then flooding the market with invites.

#2 – I went to yoga last night which means I was downtown on Fat Tuesday which means there were lots of people and even more police everywhere you looked. The thing is, all the masses of people I saw were young — barely drinking age, if that. They looked like high schoolers. And they hung out in packs and pretty much every guy was wearing dark knit hat. Is this some kind of uniform?

#3 – Bob and I watched Some Kind of Monster this weekend which is the documentary about Metallica. This film is unbelievably riveting. True, I am a fan of the band. (I own Ride the Lightning on vinyl.) I can’t believe they filmed some of this stuff. It’s an intense look at these super successful people trying to hold it together and it’s fascinating. And, not too much music for the metal non-lovers although I’ve had Seek & Destroy stuck in my head all week.

Hey, put your name in the Baby Name Wizard.

The Baby Name Wizard's NameVoyager is an interactive portrait of America's name choices.

It makes a graph of the name you type in — showing its popularity over the years. It’s really cool.

I am reading Nick Hornby’s The Polysyllabic Spree which I mentioned before. It’s a collection of his columns from The Believer magazine and every column starts off with a list of books bought and a list of books read. The lists generally aren’t the same.

For the most part, he writes about books I’ve never heard of and even after hearing about them, most would not make it to my list. My list is extensive, trust me. I appreciate hearing about them in this book, thus my data field is expanded without me having to take action.

In one essay (Oct 04), Hornby talks about Gabriel Zaid’s book So Many Books (Jesus Christ it’s hard to find a link to a book that isn’t pure commerce, that’s what the Internet has reduced us to: lumps of meat that buy things.) Hornby sets forth Zaid’s basic question as “Why bother?” Zaid estimates it would take 15 yrs. to read a list of all the books ever published. And while a person like me would despair at this. I despair walking through Powell’s — just the fiction section — Hornby says, “I was actually rather heartened.”

Getting back to the books bought v. books read. I find I am always wanting to pick up huge collected story volumes such as the Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro books both sitting in my “to read” annex. (The main “to read” pile is by the bed. The annex is specific shelf in the bookcase.) I think I have flipped through both books a half dozen times but don’t think I’ve ever finished a story in either one.

Today, I read the NYT book reviews and saw the review on Carol Shields Collected Stories (593 pages!) and quickly jotted it down for my list. This in addition to the Paul Bowles collection and the Kate Chopin collection and the Mary McCarthy collection (actually essays) that I expect to add to the pile some day.

Because, yes, I completely intend to read them.

Bob brings his lunch to work in — they actually aren’t Tupperware — they’re Pyrex things with plastic covers. He tends to bring them home with food still in them and often doesn’t tend to them immediately resulting in a stinkfest and if I haven’t mentioned it before, I have the nose of the bloodhound and hate all things remotely smelly so he usually hides this from me.

Recently there was a situation … either he left in the car a long time or else it was something that decomposed at an alarming rate. I came home from work and stepped into the room and immediately frowned: “Something stinks.” This wasn’t a light stink, this was like something died and crawled into our kitchen.

“Yeah, I’m working on it,” he said. Bob ran the lid through the dishwasher and soaked it in a solution of baking soda and water. (On his own, no advice from me on this one.)

After dinner tonight he rinsed it off and took a big whiff and then there was a terrible gurgly gag, a pause and another full-body retch — but he kept his dinner down.

We threw it away.