March 27, 2006
Pucker up, buttercup ... in search of the Great Dead, part I.
[Insert quip about wall decor and mortality]
No visit to Paris is complete without a tromp around the famous cemetary, in honor of Richard Cecil.
We're just wilde about Oscar! His grave at Père Lachaise is smothered in lipstick kisses and messages from adoring fans (does that say NIGEL?!), despite the plaque urging us to please not deface items of historical importance, s'il vous plaît et merci beaucoup, y'know.
At least there's only a frosty plaque, unlike Jim Morrison's grave which has a metal fence and its own guard, who, as it turns out, would very much not like my mother to photograph him as part of her aging hippie pilgrimage. When I pointed out that he probably had to commit a police force fuckup of epic proportions to be assigned to Morrison Grave Duty where the only action one sees all day is hauling desecrating trustafarians up by their stinking dreadlocks and the scruff of their hempy necks and profiling middle-aged women with long hair and Indian-print blouses, she seemed to understand. I imagine the only detail more humiliating is pulling apart screwing gothkids in the Catacombs. Patchouli or clown white? Nowhere to go from there but up.
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March 24, 2006
I'm home!
For ten minutes on the hour at night, the Eiffel Tower goes Studio 54, winking strobes in addition to the regular lights. More to come, cheries!
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March 15, 2006
Leaving on a jet plane.
I have euros!
And a passport-sized photo for my Carte Orange!
I have trimmed my mother's luggage down to fighting weight and have thrown a random assortment of clothing into a bag for myself.
Off to Paris for a week, ma cheries ... have a lovely late March!
Au revoir,
EEK
Posted by eek at 03:52 PM | Comments (10)
November 27, 2005
Know Your Sponges.
What I Did on My Thanksgiving Vacation
by EEK!
I went to St. Dorothy's Rest in Camp Meeker, California. I had a nice time with some lovely people.
I'll have more to say later, because camp kinda changed my life and stuff. I learned about sponge systems, fairy rings, and the healing powers of a good old-fashioned potluck.
But for now, here's a flickr set with lotsa smiling faces.
Posted by eek at 07:18 PM | Comments (7)
November 23, 2005
Wet hot American thanksgiving.
Yesterday, J and I went to Sausalito. While fairly pleasant, I think Sausalito is also fairly pointless. There's a cool little bar (named the No-Name Bar!) and a bunch of dorky galleries. That's about it, really. People have been telling me for-evah that when I go to San Francisco, I must go to Sausalito. Now that I have, I never have to go back.
Last night, we drank around a campfire.
This morning, I woke to the sound of several indecent people playing piano and singing at the unholy hour of 7:30 am. When I got up for the day, finally, I walked in on one of our mates playing ukelele in the Main House kitchen.
In the big kitchen, everything's labeled. Katie, the director, was a Montessori kid. I'm entranced by the industrial-sized stove. Eight-burner!
The Douglas firs and redwoods are so very tall, and they smell fantastic. On our first night, we saw a deer.
We're in Sebastopol jacking the library wireless, and then we're off to buy some bottles at Topolos and shop for Thanksgiving stuffed squash ingredients at Andy's Market.
I think tonight is Music Night.
I love camp.
Posted by eek at 03:53 PM | Comments (2)
November 21, 2005
Wireless-less.
We finally found some wireless in Sebastopol. In order to use it, I'm now a proud card-carrying member of the Sepastopol Public Library.
Brigid asked for the closest public wireless at a local cafe, and the counter chick didn't quite know what she was talking about. Three independent book stores in one block but nobody really knows what wireless is. Awesome.
Absolutely no cell phone reception at the camp.
Will likely not be checking in every day.
I think I want to move here.
Over and out, chickadees.
Posted by eek at 04:00 PM | Comments (3)
November 19, 2005
When I get to California, it's goodbye to Southern heat...
Actually, the highs in Sonoma County are predicted to be in the low 70s all week, while it's chilly here in Louisville.
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I may or may not be checking in from the road.
Posted by eek at 09:02 AM | Comments (7)
November 13, 2005
Not the dumbest motherfucker on the block.
But close.
The JC and I are flying out to lovely Sonoma County for a week of redwood and red wine frolicking over Thanksgiving. Brigid and I are packing vegetarian recipes, we just booked a rental car, and our digs look splendid.
I bought our tickets months ago. Good price, in and out of SFO, and great flight times ... or so I thought. Upon reviewing our itinerary last week, I discovered that our flight home departs at 12:35 am. Which is not, as I suppose I originally thought, a half-hour after noon.
No, reader, we'll be getting on a plane at half-past midnight.
By far the dumbest trip-related fiasco EVER.
I guess we'll just go down to the city on Friday and play all day, then hop a plane when we're done.
Still. Midnight-thirty! Of course it's not a direct flight. Those two hours in DFW when it's still so early even Cinnabon is closed up tighter than a nun's personal retreat center, those are gonna rock.
Blaach.
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September 19, 2005
TofurkeyFest West.
Scored plane tickets under $300 a piece for Thanksgiving in Sonoma County. Hoo boy! I am very much looking forward to a relaxing Thanksgiving with fellow turkey avoider Brigid and a whole gang of interesting folks.
Redwoods, the Russian River, the Pacific Ocean, good wine, fun people, and best of all ... absolutely, positively no obligations. And how about an average high of 65F and a low in the 40s? In November? Decadent! Gee, I guess I'll pack a sweatshirt!
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June 27, 2005
Newsies.
Yours truly in a Courier-Journal article on Louisville blogs today. In today's small-town-after-all category, I went to college with Ali Sareea, also interviewed for the article.
In the sidebar, of course they used the recent foreign porn comment. It's the kind of thing that makes me glad my mom doesn't read this. Or the C-J. Or anything online that's not sold on ebay. I'm pretty sure she thinks email is just a well-publicized perk for auction site power users.
Thanks to my dedicated publicist for hooking me up with this article. If you've come here from the C-J, take a look at some of the fine-ass people linked down the side of this screen. You won't be sorry.
By the way, San Francisco is amazing as always. And today I got out of the city -- hugged a redwood, tasted tasty wines, and dug my toes into the Pacific at the World's Most Dangerous Goat Beach. Missed the Pride parade but sacrifices had to be made in the name of wine and jellyfish.
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April 06, 2005
Back from the dead.
New Orleans was lovely, not quite humid enough to seem decaying, but otherwise beautiful and sad and tasty and loud.
I'm digging myself out of a big pile of work here, but did you know Harry "Trashmouth Tozier" Anderson owns a shop called Sideshow in the French Quarter? His wife Elizabeth is one hell of a salesforce. I bought a reissued copy of Susan Meiselas' Carnival Strippers. I think it'll help me with the carnival/circus series I'm working on. Sadly, Sideshow didn't have any ephemera related to Tattooed Ladies, lion tamers, aerialists, or cowboy clowns, but I did pick up a cool fortune teller wheel of fortune card, which inspired me to add a new character to my project.
I saw Harry dorking around in the back by the magician stuff, but I didn't call him Yr Honor. His shop sells four-legged ducklings. Nice!
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February 22, 2005
Brulons!
My mother was born an officer's daughter, and The Colonel's calling took the family all over the States and through a few countries before he settled them in Kansas and took off for his second tour in Vietnam. Mom's childhood apocrypha includes chapters on "All Our Toys and Personal Belongings Had to Fit in One Box, Each" and "What I Remember Most About France Is Mom and Daddy Dancing to Edith Piaf." So France has always held a particular wonder for me, thanks to family lore, high school and college language requirements, and an unhealthy attachment to Madeline, and at 28 I retain that wonder because I still haven't been to the land of good wine, bread, cheese, pastries, scarves, Yé-Yé, cathedrals, and did I mention wine? I lust, my friends. Nothing but lust for France.
I know it is entirely ridiculous for me, at my age, to be so enamored with France. I should want to spend a month teaching sign language to precocious Bulgarian babies, or a year running a co-op outside of Hong Kong, or enjoy a luxury weekend snogging Martians in the outer Milky Way or whatever the kids do who've already done everything. The thing is, I haven't really done much. I lived abroad, but when I was a kid. I've travelled a bit, but only here and there and for short jaunts at a time, and it's embarrassing to admit, but I'm excited about visiting France in the way that many of my friends get excited about visiting Tierra del Fuego.
College would have been a perfect time to go, what with the good marks in the language and Madame's urgings to consider studying abroad. I didn't do the junior-year study. Not working for even a semester, even just for spending money, seemed impossibly decadent, something that only kids with fat bank accounts were privileged enough to do, and I didn't have a concept of "under the table" that didn't involve a pint of cheap vodka. I imagine if I had begged my parents for the chance, they would have found a way to send me. They believe in travel, they taught us to take every opportunity and look beyond our immediate surroundings, but by the time my mother had said "enough" to her second job (I know, I know, the pathos!) and I took out my first of many (now consolidated, nice low monthly payment!) Stafford loans, I felt like I had already sucked up more than my fair share of parental resources. My sister was glaring from the sidelines, running a tally in her head, licking her chops. My brother chided me every chance he got. I had scholarships and loans and a campus job and a bright future in making something officey of myself. I didn't need France. I put it off, like deciding on a career and going to the dentist.
But next year, kids. France is mine.
Because the JC has some weird travel block regarding France and we've agreed to visit countries we both agree upon and neither of us have been to before we branch out, I asked my mother if she'd like to go with me. My mom is a great travel partner — she isn't picky about where she sleeps, she's decisive and will help with the itinerary, and she taught us all from an early age to pack up and roll on the road with a minimum of fuss and baggage. She wants to visit some of the towns she lived in as a kid, like Rouen, where Joan d'Arc was burned alive (ooh, Flaubert!), and I want to buy some pretty scarves, skulk around Paris, and read some Jules Superveille at a café in the rain. I'm looking forward to this mother-daughter bonding. No demanding whinging siblings, no obligations, nothing but me and my mom and railpasses and walking shoes. And good bread, and wine. Did I mention the wine?
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February 18, 2005
Uneeda Biscuit.
And I need a vacation. Every grownup should have an easily-accessible, magical destination where responsibility is a four-letter word, where the rich food and tasty liquors ooze from every available surface, where it's perfectly normal to sleep all day, get up for a Sazerac and a bowl of Froot Loops, then go back to bed with an Interview, a Vicodin, and that nice piece of ass you're lucky to be hooked up with. A Disneyland for Adults, if you will. For some folks, that place is Las Vegas, but I hate the desert and am afraid of any town that looks that comfortable with William H. Macy's naked body. Other kids go to New York, but I always end up shanghai'd by family obligations — not that I mind, but it's hard to blow the world off and still get to an 8 pm dinner reservation with the nuns, or watch some putrid animated DVD three times in a row with the babycousins out on Lawn Guyland. So we go to New Orleans.
We've stayed in Metairie (don't ask), the HI in the Garden District, the W Hotel in the CBD (completely ridiculous and overdone in every way, including a Night at the Roxbury every time you stepped into the elevator, but served a killer Bloody Mary), so this time we're staying in the French Quarter at the Biscuit Palace. The weather should still be nice in early April. We're gonna eat at Girod's and the Clover Grill, drink at Molly's (on Toulouse, not on Market), and maybe check in on our old friends at Le Roundup, to see if the bartender's put his teeth back in yet. I plan on breaking my No Beef Rule in the dark hours of some twisted morning with a Lucky Dog, all in the name of literary homage, of course. My valve!
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January 02, 2005
Cars and girls and drink and song.
We have been to the ends of the Earth. Which is to say we have been to Shirley, Long Island. Though briefly considering changing tracks and jumping a train to Montauk (I am not an impulsive person), we set out on the LIRR to visit my uncle and his family Thursday night. It is so very dark there at night. We saw an actual herd of nuisance deer nosing through someone's Christmas decorations. Apparently, they swim over from Fire Island. Deer can swim. I had no idea, and I can't explain it, but something about this fact fills me with dread.
While we were out there, enjoying an invigorating round of knock-knock jokes with my four-year-old cousin (him: knock knock! me: who's there? him: knock knock! repeat.), we scored not the key to Gramercy Park, but the key to Penny Lane, my uncle's apartment in Gramercy which provided us with much-needed shelter and rest after our New Year's Stella Artois assault on Vol de Nuit. Sing with me, kids (to a Cracker tune): EUROTRASH BAR! Did you know someone made a eurodance version of "The Wall?" Vol de Nuit is Nigel's spiritual home, and I had a Stella for him, shivering in his little canvas muscle shirt on a street in Louisville, covered in snow, cursing our black souls for leaving him in the sticks.
So. New Year's Eve was delightful, New Jersey was restorative as usual, my cousins are fucking adorable, and my uncle's theater has a show opening in February that all you New York Metros should go see. We drove home yesterday, with snacks packed by the Aunties (aren't aunts and uncles wonderful creatures? there's a reason why there's no Fairy Second Cousin Twice Removed), Ike Reilly on the stereo, slightly hungover from this wonderful trip, and finally ready to be home. My head is clear, my ride is clean, I saw tomorrow today.
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December 26, 2004
Magic mushrooms and zebra crossings.
If you'd like anything pierced, a bad knockoff LV mobile cover, a cloak in which to practice your dark artz, or some mushrooms of dubious magickal quality, head to Camden Town. If you'd like to take a photo of yourself on the famous crosswalk at Abbey Road, spare yourself the embarrassment and watch someone else do it instead.
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December 24, 2004
For to get a dish of beef chow mein.
We don't eat beef, so there was little reason to keep looking for Lee Ho Fook's in Chinatown, which we did finally see a block after we left a very satisfying vegetarian meal with 2 kinds of tofu (!) yesterday evening. We dragged ourselves all over London, with a morning stroll through Notting Hill market, then over to the Tower for some blood & guts, then across Tower Bridge (which I had always thought was London Bridge, but then I'm not the most observant kid around) to see the Globe, the Tate Modern, and back up to Leicester Square to gawk at the marquees and circus-type atmosphere and dinner in Chinatown. Cil, there's a big photo of Warren Himself in the window of Lee Ho Fook's.
I'd like to meet his tailor!
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December 23, 2004
Garble yargh faaaahhhck.
Shane was fully incoherent with the between-song banter, with the only distinguishable English word being fuck, but his singing was on full blast, he only forgot a verse once (Monday night, "Old Main Drag"), and I think the stage bottle was more of a prop than anything. He moves a bit like my grandfather, which is to say a brisk, menacing shamble. Cait looked and sounded amazing (I think Elvis must have bought her a new rack!) on "A Man You Don't Meet Everyday" and on the second encore with Shane, of course "Fairytale of New York." Fearnley was fantastic on accordion, as if we didn't all know how fabulous accordion players are. A little sad to see Spider so obviously resentful of Shane's effortless charm, as he stepped over Shane's banter repeatedly, gave him the evil eye constantly, and just about beat his brains out on the Baking Sheet of Doom to out-do Shane at something. But man can that skinny bastard play the tin whistle.
We're off to the Tate Modern today to try and get cultured. Kinda hard after a few nights of cheap whisky and I think I everything I own smells like Guinness. More later, darlings!
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