Happy Halloweeny.

Is there anybody in here?

I feel like I'm the only person blogging about anything other than politics lately. I know it's largely a function of the fact that all my blog buds are incommunicado, 'cept a couple of y'all, and that I don't have a lot of time to surf. But I feel like most blogs are either regurgitations of one another in one big circular vomitorium. Eww, grossed myself out. Now I know I am often a fellow regurgitator---don't get me wrong. But I count on the blogosphere to keep me up to date on crap besides Harriet Miers and David Brooks (that's what the Daily Show is for, y'all). And you are falling down on the job! I fear the quality of content here at the RnR Planet is suffering. No wonder all my visitors come looking for pics of The Editors and Tommy Lee (who happens to look like an old boyfriend of mine.) Sad. So here are some important points I've been thinking about lately on the topic of friendships:

• Do you have friends you keep important things from, just because you don't want to make them feel badly about themselves? Not like, you don't tell them you've always hated their hair. Like, you don't tell them you kinda think they're not intelligent... I had a friend tell me she didn't think the Daily Show was funny but she laughs out loud at Mind of Mencia. I wanted to say, well, of course, cause you're not smart you couldn't possibly 'get' Jon Stewart's humor.

Which leads to my next question:

• Can you be friends with people you have absolutely nothing in common with? There are people you met randomly with whom you share no real interests---are those realy friends? My best friends are those I've been through the worst times with, so why do I make the effort with people I'm essentially so different from?
• You know how your oldest friends are your dearest ones? Good theory, but the problem is this: They know you best. Seriously---you've told them all your stories, that is the ones they weren't there to share, and you don't have much to talk about in the way of deeper issues. They know your views already; honestly, sometimes I feel like we know each other so well it's pointless to talk.
• What do you do when your friend tells you s/he's marrying someone you think is a total loser? Or at least, not the right fit for your friend? Do you have a moral obligation to express your opinion, or is it your job as a friend to shut up & say "congratulations!!!"?

Why I love Midtown Memphis

I love walking through my neighborhood regularly:

1. When I walk the dog, I seem to cross paths with this one young transvestite often. Wearing pants, which you don't see every day (think about it!). Very Midtown.
2. Today I saw what I thought was a kid peeking through the fence to her neighbor's yard. It was not. It was a mannequin someone had put facing into the neighbor's yard. I don't know how long it had been there, cause I had an unobstructed view for the first time in many months, due to the falling leaves. Creepy! But so Midtown.
3. I love that my neighbors always stop me, either to ask if I still live here (uh, why else would I be walking around the neighborhood?), or to ask if I still live alone. We're close, we're just not that close. I wouldn't want them all in my business, anyway! (More than they already seem to be, that is....)
4. It is such a luxury to have a fabulous place to walk the dog without driving to the park. If Max gets dirty, so be it---I don't have to drive him home after every walk. Suck on that, Germantown---you don't even get sidewalks!

14 Roommates?!

Sustainable living. Dig it:

What the [Co-op Genereux] members forsake in space and privacy they reclaim in financial reward. The average monthly cost of living at the Genereux Co-op is $320. This includes rent, bills, three telephone lines, high speed wireless Internet, and three square meals a day, five days a week. Monetary gain is not the only advantage to having fourteen roommates. Both Marc and Spencer spoke of the experience they have gained in group facilitation and agenda setting, not to mention such other worthwhile skills as cooking mass amounts of food, making homemade soy milk, building walls and doing renovations, drying herbs, and the plethora of skills and abilities inherent in a group of fifteen. “It is interesting in terms of resource use,” Marc explains, “In North America people don’t tend to share things. Here we share everything from books and music to space and food. It teaches one to be conscious of the space one occupies in terms of both things and behavior.” Beyond being an interesting experiment for the young and daring, the Co-op Genereux is a model of an alternate lifestyle possibility. “There is a narrow range of lifestyles that is perceived as fulfilling, happy, healthy, and feasible in North America. We want to explore possibilities and provide options by putting different ideas into the world,” explains Spencer, “This type of lifestyle acknowledges the impacts of choices we make in our lives about everything from food, to money, to decision making, to socializing. It is freeing to acknowledge and understand the destruction of communities and ecosystems and to then be empowered to make changes.”

Weekend Hijinks

I love that word. My weekend started early, when on Thursday we all met at Grisanti's to celebrate an old buddy visiting from Virginia Beach. I had an excellent meal of their spinach salad (though the best is the wedge) and the steamed mussels. Many bottles of wine later, everyone else had left the non-smoking room and we completely took it over as our private party room. It's fun to know the employees and you can be as ill-behaved as you like & they still send you free cocktails. The funniest part of the night was looking at pics of my friend & Crunchy Blac (yes, that Crunchy Blac from 3-6 Mafia)---they'd run into him at Side Street Weds. evening. I promise to post them if she ever sends them to me! On Friday night we met up late at the Bayou & squeezed into their bar. I saw a reformed lesbian crying on her husband's shoulders in front of her old girlfriend---regretting the conversion, perhaps? Several hours and several beers later we shut the place down as I heard the bartender telling someone, "It's last call, but you can get 5 beers if you want to---just pay for them now" so I'm not sure when they actually closed. We left & the rest of the crew headed to a friend's house in Cooper-Young to hang out, but I was sure if I didn't go home at 3AM, I'd never make it by daybreak. Late Saturday I met another old friend at Old Zinnie's for our ritual of rum & diet cokes (I mixed it up with vanilla vodka & diet coke, which---small wonder---just tastes like a vanilla coke). We intended to just be out long enough for a cocktail or 2 but I'm sure you all know what happened (we ended up out until almost 4am again). Sunday was, of course, the pumpkin carving for which I will have some photos later (trans. when I get around to it). I made yummy hot cider in the crock pot and we roasted pumpkin seeds in the oven, so my house smelled lovely and fallish. It was a fun afternoon, and a nice change from the way I usually see a lot of these people (out at bars or stuffing ourselves at dinner). In other seasonal news, I had to turn on my heat for the first time this fall. I think it's really not very cold yet and I am just a wuss, but I'm not freezing for a few measly pennies. Or hundreds of dollars, as it's supposed to be very costly to heat with natural gas this winter. It's only money, after all.

well isn't that special

I just got a link on the Washington Post's website for Capote, from Technorati. Gotta love them. The Post also had this to say about the film:

[Philip Seymour] Hoffman is 5 feet 9 inches of boomy-voiced, big-shouldered robustness. He could play Orson Welles, Vince Lombardi or any of his Green Bay Packers. But scrunch down into Capote, a 5-foot-3 pipsqueak?

"It's angles and staging," says [Director Bennett] Miller. He created the illusion of Hoffman's smallness with camera angles that dwarf Hoffman compared with others in the same scenes, and he cast background actors who were taller than Hoffman. In terms of props such as couches, "with all other things being equal, I'll go with the bigger one."

Things I'd be doing were it not for the Great Pumpkin Carving of 2005

That is, I'm hosting a little jack'o'lantern festivity on Sunday, which will be my fun time for the weekend. I can't see squeezing the homecoming game in this afternoon, as much as I want to. I'd love to go see a movie, too, if I had the time.... Apparently Rotten Tomatoes liked Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Like I said, how can you go wrong? It looks like Capote is good, too, according to the brains at the Washington Post. I will have to see it later, I s'pose. First things first! I can pretend I'd be washing my car or doing the yardwork I need to do if I weren't having people over---but it's not true, and y'all know that. The only time I can get that productive is when I have 21 million things to do & housework becomes my method of procrastination.

Daily News Updates

Death by Blog (by Serrabee) TNF is back on the scene, but who knows if it will last. Halloween Parties. Voodoo Music Sun. Night. How will anyone choose what to do next weekend?

• Annual Stonewall Party which has moved to 351 East Butler
• Barbara Cue with Todd Nance---the drummer from Widespread Panic---plays Newby's on Saturday [via Mark Richens]
• "Night of the Living DJ" at Premiere Palace 629 Monroe (across from The Spot/616 Marshall, which I hear tell the owner wants to turn into a strip club--great news for my friend who lives next door)
• Gamble Brothers play at the Young Avenue Deli on Saturday as well
• A swinger's halloween party for the alternate lifestyles (do you have to be married to swing?)---I find their membership fee scale interesting: $100 for single men, only $25 for single women. Reverse discrimination?

Chuckles

Dwayne's family-free weekend. I love his painting and his free verse. Brittney's fall fashion review. Check out the Brittney gallery if you haven't yet. It's like a retrospective of fugliness. The other Brittney's reminiscences of waiting. No need to go see that movie now! Oh, yeah, I did go see a movie this weekend as well---Elizabethtown. Don't believe the hype: It was a really good movie-going experience. I love Cameron Crowe, though. Other movies out/coming out this weekend:

• Good Night, and Good Luck. The must-see movie of the fall for nerds like me. Seriously---I just watched a documentary on Einstein last week.
• North Country. Depressing. Also Oscar-quality. (Are these synonymous?) Could be a good film. Charlize Theron wants us to forget she's gorgeous---Charlize: you can be beautiful and still act, girl. There will be plenty of ime to be ugly when you're over the hill.
• Shopgirl. Does anyone else think it's creepy Steve Martin wrote a book about this old man (oh, say, around his age-ish?) seducing a poor, young retail girl and now he's playing that old man in the film version? This one's a toss-up.
• Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang. Interesting cast, fun action plot, written by the Lethal Weapon guy. Val Kilmer + Robert Downey, Jr. sounds kinda 80's to me too, but in a good way.
• Nicky Cage got hair help. And he's a daddy, too. Go see The Weatherman to support his hair transplant and new baby. I can't think of any other reason to do so.
• and, of course Wallace and Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit. No one won't like this movie.

Return to real life pt 2

Wow, blogger hates me! I had a lovely post all cooked up & ready to go, and it slogged down so much I thought I needed to reboot. It was all a trick, though. Now all I can think of to blog about is my eyebrows. I think they are thinning. Is that possible? Okay, yeah I waxed them for a few years---but they quickly stopped looking so Brooke Shields and so I quit torturing them---and now all I do is pluck the strays. I'm thinking of tattooing them back in. Oooh, yeah, luckily Time posted their 100 Best English-Language Novels (1923 to present day). How many of those have you bought at the library sale and never cracked open? I still remember finding Sons & Lovers (used, of course---old books smell like proper books) and reading in the introduction that is should never be read as one's first-ever DH Lawrence novel. So I put it down until the day I came across one that told me it was okay to read it first (not usually so obedient). Anyway, a lot of these titles I've never even heard of---Day of the Locust?---and some of the authors are foreign to me as well---Christina Stead; Christopher Isherwood; Jerzy Kosinski?? Sadly, a lot of my old faves aren't here. And who knew so many foreigners wrote in Enlish? I personally think they're brilliant but depriving a few translators of much-needed work. **Props to Vonnegut for appearing twice, along with Graham Greene & the inimitable Faulkner. UPDATE: See this post on the Time Magazine list. Absolutely hilarious!

Return to real life pt 1

Finally! Not that I didn't enjoy my trip to VA, but it feels like I've been gone for absolutely ever. It was so nice there---we went to a huge cookout and took a hay ride one night---the weather was perfect for fall/Halloween. Then I come back here to find summer temperatures (minus, thankfully, the humidity). It was so nice when I left last week---what the f#ck happened? I feel like I've been beaten with a stick. Traveling takes so much out of me anymore. Honestly, anything does: going to a show, staying out too late, being nice to people I don't like... well, that one was always exhausing. I hate fake. Speaking of which, faux fur is in this fall. I'm torn, really. It seems gross to wear even fake fur but how much of a statement can it be if every other person's doing it? Also in will be giant belts, the color brown, western wear and mismatched stuff, and those silly trousers that stop at your calves which might not be so silly except you're supposed to wear them with tall boots, and hats. I looked all weekend for a cute new pair of boots but came up completely empty-handed. I think it's a sign not to spend the money. Either that or I'm not stylish enough to buy new clothes... .

Vacation's all I've ever wanted

Gotta love the Go-Go's for the simple, bubble-gum-pop lyrics. Great karaoke song on a girls' night out. Speaking of which, that's what we need when I get back from vacation! It's so much more like fall up here (I know, duh!) but then again, they get real winter here, and you can actually tell spring from summer---as opposed to Memphis' seasons, which all smudge from one into the next. Autumn in Memphis is different from summer more in the absence of humidity than a the drop in temp. alone. You can always tell the seasons by the changing of the light. Summer has direct, intense sunlight; fall's becomes weaker and watery; winter's is cold and thin like glass. Spring I can hardly remember as being different from summer.

Late to the game,

but at least I'm still in it.

Frist accumulated stock in family company outside Senate [blind] trusts from The Tennessean By LARRY MARGASAK and JONATHAN M. KATZ Associated Press Writers WASHINGTON (AP) -- Outside the blind trusts he created to avoid a conflict of interest, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist earned tens of thousands of dollars from stock in a family-founded hospital chain largely controlled by his brother, documents show. The Tennessee Republican, whose sale this summer of HCA Inc. stock is under federal investigation, has long maintained he could own HCA shares and still vote on health care legislation without a conflict because he had placed the stock in blind trusts approved by the Senate. However, ethics experts say a partnership arrangement shown in documents obtained by The Associated Press raises serious doubts about whether the senator truly avoided a conflict. Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law, said she doesn't believe the Senate trusts or the Tennessee trust insulated Frist from a conflict because the senator or his brother were advised of transactions and could influence decisions. "What I find most appalling is the Senate calls it a qualified blind trust when it's not blind," Clark said. "Since the Senate says it's OK, the Senate has made it a political question. It's up to the voter. But there's no doubt it's a conflict of interest."[via DBV]

Take a hike

Sorry to be so dull this week, as if I'm ever all that much fun, but here's some crap to read in the meantime:

• VooDoo Fest does a show in New Orleans (will these people get their sh!t together by the weekend of the show?) [via Rachel; go see her tonight at Murphy's if you don't have a midterm tomorrow.]
• It is donation week at the WKNO stations. If you're not a member, join during the morning drive & you could get cool stuff. If you don't already listen to NPR, you're crazy. Or lazy.
• While you've got your checkbook out, support WEVL, too. You can stream them live, like Amarillo's fm90.
• If you have any cash left, buy your tickets for the Miss Gay America 2006 pagent. I ain't kiddin you!
• And, synchronously, I ran across this breaking news on Boy George just after my last post.

I know you miss me blind

What was that song all about, anywayz? Bet you got a good gun Bet you know how To have some fun And then You turn it around on me Because I’m better Than the rest of the men I sure don't remember that verse---I probably just mumbled thru it to get to the chorus at the middle-school dances. At least I'm not like Paul, who heard "I know Bill Bixby's mine" instead. So it's officially fall, folks, and I've missed most of the rites (like King Biscuit---yeah, I know I said I was going, but life gets in the way. I had company all weekend). Hopefully my trip to Virginia this weekend will bring me closer to the fall colors we're missing here. I will bring photos & tell you all about it. Sorry such a crappy post in the meantime.

Gorgeous

Wow, was it a beautiful day today, with all white puffy clouds and stuff. I didn't go into work at all but instead spent the day doing yardwork, plus (finally!) washing & waxing my car. Isn't it funny how soon a new car becomes an old car these days? I mean, when I first got this car---my first new car, ever---I washed it all the time, kept it pretty clean, cried when I got a dent in the side, alla that stuff. Now it is 3 years old and I haven't waxed it sinced last year, and I only ever run it through the car wash, never hand-washing it. And I switched to Gain, and washed my comforter in it this week. (Seems like a non-sequitur, but I was going back to the beautiful day thing.) When I was growing up, my family always used no-additives Tide like it was religious practice. Frankly my dear, I love the additives. Scent, softener, bring it on. It's lovely to be a grown-up, in some ways. I always wanted a window seat growing up, too, and now I have one (got it about 12 or 15 years after I originally desired it, but who's counting?). Except when I sit in it I always wish it had a cushion; maybe in 12 years or so I'll get one!

Time wasters!

Hollywood Calls it Quits [via The Onion--duh.] Don't forget to go see Wallace & Gromit this weekend! It's a Halloweenie celebration second only to my upcoming Pumpkin Party. (Do you know what a grommit is? It's apparently a nautical term. Who knew.) Delicious movie tie-ins at Something Awful. She-Ronald McDonald. Yikes! (I always wondered if he was a transvestite.) [via Low Culture] Absolutely creepy---and another reason not to gamble online. [via BoingBoing--duh] And, breaking news on Serrabee! STUDY FINDS WOMEN WHO DRINK WAY MORE FUN TO STUDY Researchers Say Alcohol Affects Women's Blood Pressure, Researchers' Interest "Younger women who drink two or three alcoholic beverages a week have a lower risk of developing high blood pressure than women who do not consume alcohol."-- Reuters

A big treat with cherries on top for Memphis

Justin bids for Elvis's kingdom Joanna Walters in Memphis Sunday October 2, 2005 The Observer [Justin Timberlake] is negotiating to build a huge recording studio complex and to buy up two of the city's world-renowned record labels, Sun, which gave the planet Elvis and rock'n'roll, and Otis Redding's Stax.

Timberlake's move is not without controversy. Smaller studios and labels that have struggled in the city for years fear they could be ruined by such a powerful player signing up local talent.

Senior figures behind the project said Timberlake, 24, could launch a new record label to go alongside the revival of Sun and Stax, or dramatically expand the company he started up this summer, JayTee Records, which signed hip hop's Joshua B as its first act. ...

Timberlake has been in town recently for filming of Black Snake Moan, a movie about 'a Memphis nymphomaniac' in which he stars with Samuel L Jackson and Christina Ricci. [full story] [via Rachel]

A bad day for Rob Thomas

He is playing at Mud Island the Fri. night of Voodoo Fest---so sad for him that no one will go to his stupid show. Not that I don't like his music; he just bugs me for some reason. I think it was the black nail polish phase that started it, and hearing his voice sounding exactly the same on every overplayed song on the radio finished it off. I have pretty much quit listening to local stations now, and I think my life is much better for it. Heard that the Fighters of Foo will not be honoring us with their presence after all. I was so looking forward to them! They're the sort of band I probably wouldn't go see just for them, and this was going to be my opportunity. Neither is Joss Stone, who I did see at BSMF... um, 2004ish? and she was really good live. Rats. On the positive, Queens of the Stone Age, Billy Idol, and others will still be there. And anyway, it's bound to be a fun weekend anyway. This weekend is the King Biscuit Fest, which they have annoyingly changed the name for. I will look it up later & get back to you on the details, but for now I must go get some work done.