UNEXPLAINED PHENOMENA.  I tended to my mending pile last night.  Let me elaborate on that a bit so as to fully relay the magnitude of this paranormal experience.  First, The Mending Pile should be described accurately. It is not an approachable pile on the corner of a dresser, say maybe a skirt with a falling hem section and a couple of shirts with stray buttons.  Nay, ye of naive and dare I say it, amateur aspirations in mending, My Mending Pile is often taller than my youngest child (when it deigns to stand of its own volition – the pile, not the child).  My Mending Pile includes articles of clothing purchased for one member of the family and now, once mended must be passed down immediately one, maybe two notches due to what we call…natural growth and passage of time.  My Mending Pile includes pillow sham covers for pillows that were tossed out because the smell of rancid breast milk could no longer be tolerated by the entire family!  I haven’t breastfed a child in eighteen months!!  So I think you are getting the picture.

Last night I tended to my mending pile.  I went upstairs and fetched my sewing machine and sewing kit.  I tossed each piece that had outlived its usefulness (nobody here requires a snappy-crotch closure anymore as far as I’m concerned, unless somebody is developing a fetish they haven’t clued me in on yet), I pre-pinned each piece to be mended, I pre-picked each spool of matching thread, and here’s where I scared even myself:  I had a matching bobbin for each thread color, which, as it turned out was seven.  I changed the thread and bobbin seven times.  Seven times.  What kind of Martha-fuckin-Stewart moment was I having???  And some of these pieces were coming out of the Singer and going into the laundry.  Go figure.  It must be some sort of strange flu.  Vaccinate me now.

So this morning my daughter got to wear the jeans I bought for her two months ago and needed 5-1/2 inches taken off of.   Ummm…okay, she’s not exactly a rail or anything, but for crying out loud, I didn’t buy them in the Future Super Model section!! They’re a size 7, she’s 6 years old,  and she’s the right height for her age (even a little tall) and only a little roly, so do you you think somebody could figure out that she’s not going to be borrowing shoes from Bootsy Collins!?!?!?!?!  puh-lease.

  ARAFAT.  So now that Arafat has died I suppose it would be in poor taste for me to write my long-planned humour piece announcing that one of his “people” had anonymously leaked information that he is not really ill at all, but secretly leaving the world of politics to chase his lifelong Hollywood aspirations and will make a big-screen debut as Cheech and Chong’s new sidekick “Fatty,” right?

 And it would further put me at risk to make up quotes from Cheech Marin like, “See, it’s really funny, man, ’cause his name’s Arafat, so we call him Fatty, but that’s also a name for, you know, like a fat rolled tasty one, man.  Get it?  It’s like a double nintendo.”  

 So i’m thinking I waited entirely too long to write this and my window of opportunity is now closed.  Oh well, i hope my timing is better with the next terminally ill world figure.

Kim

MADAME LUKE’S DICTIONARY. While this may throw me headlong into the world of “chick-lit,” a territory for which I have neither the patience nor the wardrobe, I must say that I (along with some of my dearest and most easily plagiarized friends) often coin terms too good not to pass on to others, at least in our own megalomaniacal minds, and, after all, it’s my blog and I’ll semanticize if I want to (hey, I think that’s one now). In my defense, not all entries involve fashion (in fact, if you knew me you’d chuckle at my whole obsession with lip gloss. It’s like Phyllis Diller and the cocktail dresses.)

FABULOCITY (n): the speed at which one can go from plain to fabulous. (not to be confused with fabulosity (n): slang for fabulousness) i.e. “With the purchase of her new velvet scarf and similarly hued lip gloss, Jill’s fabulocity increased tenfold.”

Kim

ELECTION DAY, PART I. It is mid-afternoon on Election Day and I have just received my second movie star phone call. Martin Sheen phoned to tell me that President Bush lied (gasp!) so don’t forget to get out and vote. He was kind of impersonal and hung up really quick so I didn’t get to tell him how much I loved him in the 1975 TV movie “Sweet Hostage” with Linda Blair, and that it really cemented my already forming fixation on “bad boys, ” which was furthered the following year in a more age-appropriate manner with Jackie Earl Haley’s portrayal of badass Kelly Leak in “The Bad News Bears” along with his taller, sexier grown-up rock ‘n roll version: Tom Petty. But that Martin Sheen, he was named Martin, and yet he was sexy! How did he DO that!? There was a boy in my class at The Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary Elementary School (so NOT made up) named Myron, who was sort of as crazy as the guy in “Sweet Hostage,” but in a 10 year old Catholic-y first generation American-Eastern-European immigrant way, I remember thinking, “Well, maybe crazy grows up to be sexy. Martin…Myron…Martin…Myron.” It just didn’t translate.

Our first movie star phone call was, of course, Arnold Schwarzenegger since we live in the Golden State. Now, some may consider this a call from a Governor, but I bet my bippy that more people considered it a call from a movie star, which is sad, and I say that as both a voter and an actor. My dh took Ahnold’s call, and I will say it was the first recorded pre-election call he’s ever sat through without cussing and hanging up. He claims he wanted to hear the end of the message (i.e. what organizations paid for it), but I think he may have been mesmerized by star power. I admit that until recently I could never keep Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone straight until one of them opened his mouth. At one point in the late 80’s Sly started wearing glasses. That helped. Now one is the governor of California. That helps even more.

I’m hoping we get a couple more movie star phone calls before the polls close. Do you think Drew Barrymore could call? I always wanted her to call. I know she is the one person who could teach me to knit. And then maybe Vincent Price, who is admittedly and decidedly dead, but I wouldn’t put it past him to call from beyond the grave to really push for stem cell research, make it sound exciting and all Spielberg-y, say “House of the Stem Cell Wax Terror!” (or is Fun With Stem Cells too “positive spin?”)

Okay, off to avoid CNN, MSNBC, FXNWS, etc. for another few hours. As Harry Shearer said on his show last Sunday, let’s start repeating now, “The American people deserve to know who their next President is…before they sit down for Christmas dinner.”

kim

HALLOWEEN JOY. In case you didn’t get to visit my front porch personally, let me just tell you about it, because it brought me such personal joy (humour me, please). At the last minute my dd and I decided our porch needed some scariness, so after hanging some orange icicle lights that we just happened to have (yes, oh yes) we decide to Build A Witch out of a green velvet goth dress stuffed with our most plentiful natural resource – dirty laundry. We perch her in a chair holding a broom, with a wonderful hat, fringed shawl, pointy witch shoes, gossamer veil and gloves. We give her a floor lamp with an orange light bulb and a red velvety scarf draped around it. We pipe an endless loop of Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue” from a hidden source, but there is something missing. I’ve removed the bike helmets from their hooks on the outside wall by the front door, and I casually ask dear daughter what we could put there instead. What would be creepy to hang here? “Barbies!” she answers, filled with glee, unaware of just how proud I am of her at this moment. “Yeah! We can tie them up like a torture chamber!” And we do. In their best princess attire, upside down, hog-tied at the ankles, our witch’s prisoners. And it is good. So good. So funny. Four Barbies in their finest frilliest dresses upside-down tied at the ankles, arms flailing, spinning in the wind to a loop of Bach as a slopey-shouldered witch sits watching in the dark. And every kid who comes to our door stares sideways, not knowing what the hell is up with that.

kim

MORE MISS AMERICA. Did I mention that the first Miss America Pageant was held in 1921, which was, coincidentally, the very same year that American women won full suffrage? Really? Yes, really.

Ladies, here are your Voter Registration Cards and here your swimsuits…for the swimsuit competition!

PIE IN FACE. So, another public figure got a pie in the face. (Ann Coulter…shudder.) I’m working on a larger piece right now on this whole phenomena, but I want to go on record here and now and say it was the right pie, right place, right time. I’m pro-pie-in-the-face. No matter who gets it. But please, no shaving cream – real pies of the banana/coconut creme variety.

I have a nephew (now a 7th grader) who, in anticipation of turning three, when asked what he wanted for his birthday would answer excitedly to everyone who asked, “A pie in the face! A pie in the face!” So, yes, that’s what he got, and he was so happy. Then again, that might point to my stance being a genetic defect that for some unknown reason runs in my twisted family, but let me say again: Let The Pies Fly!

kim

MISS AMERICA. I read in Wednesday’s paper that the Miss America Pageant lost its network telecast sponsor (ABC) for the first time in 50 years. Happy dance, happy dance. Now, even though I had a fleeting moment of optimism, thinking that maybe the pageant’s demographic, which has always been young women who were lead to believe that being crowned Miss America was the be-all-end-all of a fulfilling post-adolescent,-pre-womanhood, maybe this demographic was finally too educated, too NPR-saturated and high-friggin-falutin to buy into this crap anymore that the contest was finally succumbing to pageantry Darwinism, but, alas, that brief bit of optimism was eventually overtaken by the reality that the REAL reason that Miss America’s tv ratings were dropping so drastically and causing the show to be a money loser (even though they “dropped the talent contest and added skimpier swimsuits”) was that is just wasn’t skanky enough. Maybe if they had re-named it Miss Hot and Nasty America, or Miss America: Under the Sequins they could rope in some viewers, not that I want them to or anything, but I’m a little surprised that they think being Miss America is “all that” anymore. It used to be quite a hot ticket, being 20 and being Miss America. Now it’s like being the Desitin spokes-model or winning the Pillsbury Bake-off (read: Not Hot Ticket.) Although in my household being able to bake AND not having athletes’ foot all at the same time is not only an attainable goal but a respectable one.

In any case, I’m sure the beauties from across this great land of ours will find a home on a cable station somewhere in the ether. It will have no talent contest, which actually did display some modicum of the individual personalities and quirks of these women, but it will have a skimpy swimsuit contest. Could they at least swim? Evening gown competition, I believe, is still intact. The Big Question will be asked be asked (hint: correct answers include world peace, ending world hunger and Calvin Klein.) Wow. How do men get scholarships to college?

FAME AND FORTUNE. Well, online food review anyway. Here’s something I wrote that made it onto my favorite website. Woo and a Hoo!!

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/newfood/

Scroll down till you get to the Hamburger Helper review (yes, that’s right).

Kim

CONFESSION (WARNING: NOT FUNNY.) As certain as I am that I will, after my death (and more certainly before), suffer horrific yet undefined damnation (since at my advanced age I have yet to determine what death and thereafter means to me) due particularly to my abject ambivalence toward family life, I am also certain of one other thing – I will not be alone in said future torture chamber. I have learned many things from mamas, and the most pronounced is that this angry-guilty feeling I get is not unique. Being “not unique” is never something I cherished, but this time it is a relief, little relief, but I’ll take it.

Wordy, wordy, wordy. Can’t I just talk like normal people?

Nope.

Kim

H.G.WELLS & THE PRETTY LADY or LONG RANT ABOUT NOTHING. So I’m watching “Time Machine” (the 1960 version) with my kids yesterday and it’s pretty entertaining, what with my predilection for time travel and all (where/when would you go?), and I’m overlooking Mr. Wells’ main character’s coincidental visits smack dab in the middle of world wars, instead of, say, a totally boring Tuesday afternoon, and then we are taken waaaay into the year 802,701 inhabited by Morlocks (ugly underground cannibals with machinery and some technology) and Eloi (above ground dwelling numbskulls who can’t even feed themselves but are very nice, at least to look at, according to convention). The Morlocks are blue and scary pre-cursers to the Hulk (crazy frayed pants and no shirts – big muscles) and could have been drawn by Hanna-Barbarra. The Eloi are all toe-headed, blue-eyed and dressed in pastel cotton loose fitting slacks and sundresses, quite passive. Apparently the Morlocks feed and house the Eloi, do everything for these helpless minions and then round them up and…eat them.

When the eventual revolution starts and the fighting between the two factions gets scary and my kids start getting freaked out, I distract them by asking “Which Morlock do you figure made those pretty dresses?” This makes them laugh and they’re not scared anymore as they spend the rest of the fight scene yelling, “That one! No, that one!” The battle between “good” and “evil” ends with the Eloi, aided by our time-traveling friend, destroying the Morlocks and their underground world, including all of the machinery that somehow, miraculously whirred and hummed lo these thousands of years in the wild jungles “after the world became un-inhabitable.”

So here’s my question. Um…the Morlocks totally figured out how to stay alive, although they did develop a taste for Eloi along the way, which was unfortunate. The only reason the Eloi were alive was because the Morlocks were feeding them. Now, I’m not saying the Eloi deserved to be slaughtered, but did the Morlocks (and their technology) deserve to be wiped out (baby with the bathwater)? If our “freedom fighter” main character didn’t return to start a new life with the Eloi in the end of the movie (spoiler for a 109 year old book, sorry) wouldn’t they probably die without some trace of what the Morlocks had started?

Sorry, I guess I really don’t like beautiful, stupid people and the way our society caters to them, and relate on a deeper level with the “ugly” and somehow smarter evil Morlocks (setting myself up here for accusations of being neither ugly nor smart).

I guess if I don’t like beautiful stupid people, I have no business watching Hollywood movies, but, alas, I am addicted to the old ones (movies, not people, although I do like my mom, but I could quit her any time I wanted. I just don’t want to).

THEY DRAW HORSES, DON’T THEY? Speaking of movies, I am peeing my pants in anticipation of the new Trey Parker/Matt Stone movie “Team America: World Police.” It’s a musical AND offensive. Both. With marionettes. (Crossing legs tighter.) So excited.

And speaking of animation, does anyone else stay up to watch Sealab before going to bed or is ours the only household that divides all tv viewing between kids’ cartoons and grown-up cartoons? Thank goodness the debates are over so we can get back to business as usual.

“Mommy, who are those guys? They look so…not cartoony?”
“Honey, they are the most cartoony of all.”

Kim

DEMOCRATIC DREAMS. A while ago, before the presidential race got so gosh-darned exciting, say, back before the Democratic National Convention when John Kerry’s official name was still “Not Bush,” I had this dream, and I tell you now this is a real dream I had. I even told my mom about it. It went like this: We (dh and I) are at a political rally where Mr. Kerry is speaking and afterward, while the crowd is cheering and yelling, he looks above the crowd and makes eye contact with me, leans over whispering to his security guard and points me out, rock-star-style, and dh and I immediately understand that I have been chosen as his new “mistress.” I’m the new future White House affair! Well, I am sort of flummoxed by the whole prospect (don’t actually meet him or anything) but am more analytical than anything about his choice of ME, since, not to knock my own inherent hotness or anything, but if I were a presidential candidate seeking extramarital nooky I might just go for less vocabulary and more, uh, stuff. Dh apologizes and agrees. We decide that it was a political move, not a hormonal one, and by picking me, and figuring that our affair will be made public, he will appear to have an open mind in his taste in women, see the “whole woman” and make big fans out of the comfy-dressing/recycling/Volvo-driving/liberal/indie-cinema-mom-voters. I’m the Anti-Monica.

When I wake from this dream and tell dh he tells me that if it comes to pass I can go ahead and “represent” if need be. Thanks, but Mr. K is a little on the equine side for me. He can still have my vote, though.

I have never dreamed of George W. Bush. I have nothing to say on that matter. (Like hell I don’t.)

ANNOYING THING. When a café has an evening open to musicians to come and sing a song, or poets to come and read a piece did you know that they take a person named Michael and open him up? Apparently this is the new trend, as newspapers and magazines are now referring to these events as “open mikes.” It wasn’t that long ago that they were called, correctly, “open mics,” since they are, in fact open microphones, and the first three letters of microphone is…MIC. Maybe there is a dearth of musical equipment across the land and persons named Michael do, in fact, amplify sound better than, say persons named Henry and that’s why we don’t have “open Hanks.” I find this completely annoying and can’t for the life of me figure out why every editor, spell-checker (human) and member of the paid grammar police has let this slip. It’s really awful. Open mike. Open mic. Think about it.

Kim