"Oh, The Wire? HBO, right? I get HBO. That's cool."

I am inspired to write a blog post, even though I don't really have anything to say. But I'm in a surprisingly good mood, because despite a miserable week, I had a pretty fantastic weekend.

I went back to Berlin twice this weekend, as is my wont, and I managed to leave without feeling completely lousy. Friday night was Bjork night, which was kind of bizarre, but still rather fun. I managed to not run into anyone I was avoiding - again! - which always feels like a success. I did see this guy I had a brief, two-week thing with that kind of fizzled out for no reason. I only really saw him when we were out, and after the last time we saw each other I never called or texted him back. I was feeling a little bit guilty about that this week, and when I first saw him on Friday night I was nervous. But then when he saw me he said, "I'm so sorry I haven't called you!" It was kind of funny because, honestly, it was fine. And I hung out with him and his friends and it wasn't weird and nothing happened and it was perfect. Maybe that is how I will end up making friends with gay guys: after drunkenly making out and realizing that we really only like each other enough to hang out platonically, and we can do so without it getting weird.

On Saturday night I went to see Todd Barry at the Lakeshore with Mindy, which was my birthday present to her (I got free tickets). Afterward we went to Simon's in Andersonville, which was the first non-gay bar I've been to in forever, and it was nice and relaxing and fun and cheap. They had a jukebox and I was very tempted to play "Oh Comely," because it's a gorgeous song and, also, why the hell is that on a jukebox in a BAR? After I had a few G&Ts, one of which was on the house for some suspicious reason, I left to go back to Berlin. Saturday nights at Berlin are much lamer and, apparently, trashier, as I was hit on (literally, to the beat of some seven-minute house jam) by a guy who tried to have first-date conversation with me in the middle of the dance floor. "What's your favorite TV show? Who is your favorite singer? Are you an artist? I'm not hitting on you, I'm just curious." I don't know; if you have to specify to someone that you're not hitting on them, there's a reason why your behavior could be mistaken for a come-on.

A quick thought.

If M.I.A. was from Maine instead of Sri Lanka, do you think she'd have a song called "Bangor Banga"?

Shake a Fist.

Last night I went with my homies (or something), which included Adam and Jackie, to see Hot Chip. I had fun, although the show didn't blow me away or anything (there was that period in the middle where the songs were really long, kinda slow, and unfamiliar and I got bored).

Everytime I go to The Vic I remember how much I hate shows in medium-sized venues, which are the kinds of places where you get to experience humanity full-on, right in your face. For example, at shows like that there are the assholes who say, "I HAVE TO GET AS CLOSE TO THE STAGE AS POSSIBLE BUT I AM NOT GOING TO GET THERE UNTIL TEN MINUTES AFTER THE HEADLINER STARTS TO PLAY." (I'm pretty sure they think in all caps, and, if it were possible to think in a specific font, their thoughts would be in Comic Sans.) Unfortunately, we were standing near the stairs so most of the traffic bumped into us at some point during Hot Chip's opening song, and Jackie, for one, got a little aggravated, and I think scared a lot of people.

The best part was when this group of three young ladies, two white and one black, who tried to push by Jackie. I noticed it when the black girl yelled at him, "You spilled my beer!" She then turned her almost-empty cup upside down, spilling the rest on Jackie. Immediately, I thought, "DON'T DO ANYTHING JACKIE. IT'S THE ONE BLACK GIRL AT THIS HOT CHIP SHOW AND IT'S PROBABLY BRITTANY." But then I realized that it was, in fact, not Brittany, and I turned around. I approve of you being an asshole if I like you, but if you're some stranger, you get what's coming to you.

(I should mention that about ten minutes later, Jackie turned to me and said, in a daze, "Oh, shit. That wasn't Britticisms, was it?" He had mentioned before the show how he hoped to meet her if we saw her at the show. OH, BLOGOSPHERE.)

Also, why the hell do people stand directly in front of me while I've been dancing? I'm talking to you, my tall, Aryan friend in the red track jacket with "POLSKA" on the back. I was confused; did you want me to grind you? Did you want to be the little spoon? I wasn't going to stop dancing just 'cause some dude was all up on my jank, even though I knew he wasn't REALLY into that. But I had to teach him a lesson, which was that you don't throw off my groove, no matter how straight you are. I have an angry, half-Mexican, possibly-hallucinating gay on my side who will break your face open.

I didn't see that many people I knew last night, which was good because I didn't have to avoid eye contact after all. There was the moment, of course, we all can relate to: you're five feet away from someone you're not really talking to anymore, and you're both aware of it, and you're trying to hold off that uncomfortable, but unavoidable, greeting. That happened, and it wasn't too awful, and I survived, as we all do in those situations.

Also, Hot Chip ended the show with a cover of this song, and it was a delight:

Coincidentally, I'm sure you care about what I have to say, as well.

Adam and I, unfortunately, live in an Internet world where we know who Jako Blodwick (HA HA HA) is, and I'm not proud of it. Adam had a good post this morning about online commenting in the context of Blodwick, and instead of leaving a comment on his Tumblr, I wanted to add my two cents here.

I'm reading this really good book by Michael Ondaatje called Divisadero, and I was on GoodReads and came across this review written by "Tony," and it may be one of the best things I've seen on the Internet all week. Please, take a gander:





Obviously, the best part is this: "First off, he doesn't use quotes for dialogue and I love every writer who can do that. Since I'm actively submitting my novel in it's current form to agents for representation, I can't even push that envelope since the publishing industry is scared of my theme....so why give them something else to be scared about?"

You're right, Tony. Don't push the envelope too much. The industry - nay, the world - can only take so much of your edge.

I love that Goodreads comments are essentially as bad as the comments on YouTube; it just proves that literacy doesn't necessarily equal intelligence, especially when any asshole can call out a Booker Prize-winning novelist on the Internet and expect some sort of response. Everybody knows that Goodreads is just Facebook with a focus on books: you collect friends and show off how smart you are.

Don't you love me anymore, Mama?

I suppose the fact that my mother hasn't called me about possible cougar attacks means that she's finally comfortable with me living in The Big City and Far Away From Home. Perhaps it's because when she said that she probably make a ton of parenting mistakes with me, I replied that I thought "she did things right 90% of the time." (I also think that's why she gave me forty dollars FOR NO GOOD REASON. Flattery, folks!)

But still, it'd be nice to get an email making sure I'm okay and safe from cougars. I suppose she assumes I'd just forward it to other bloggers or post it here.

The absence of any kind of potentially embarrassing missive could be for those reasons, or because I called her today in a panic because my tax returns were rejected for the second time and she knows full-well that I am absolutely safe and in my usual, neurotic state.

I hate MySpace.

Goodbye, Ruby Tuesday.

On the way to the airport, my mother and I stopped at a Ruby Tuesday in Bowie, Maryland. Southern Maryland is a magical place, one which rivals the entire state of New Jersey for the title of Grossest Place on Earth. As we drove north on 301, I thought, "Well, the Northern Neck is sad and slightly pathetic, but at least it's pretty. And not in Maryland."

An aside: We drove by this place:


Anyway, getting to the point: We were sitting in Ruby Tuesday, which has recently gone through some kind of transformation, apparently, into a modern, classy joint. They got rid of the Tiffany lamps and took chicken fingers off the menu, and all of the meals came on square, white plates, the kind one might find at CB2. They still have a salad bar, of course, so they manage to retain an air of lower-middle class despite the fiber-enriched wheat holding my hamburger.

As I stared at my half-eaten burger, I suddenly realized that "I Feel It All" was playing on the radio. It was as if I had entered some strange dimension: a modern eating atmosphere with Feist playing on the stereo... in Bowie, Maryland. (By the way, that is pronounced "Boo-wie," and not like the famous singer.) I kind of chuckled and said, "This feels weird."

My mother replied, "What?"

"Well, Feist is on the radio in small-town Maryland." Again, I had to explain who Feist was, despite hearing "Inside and Out" an hour earlier on a mix-CD I made for my mom two years ago. ("Ooh, I like this one!" she exclaimed.)

"It's just weird that I saw Feist play in a small bar three years ago before she got famous, and now she being nominated for Grammies and being played on the radio in Maryland," I said.

There was a brief pause wherein my mother tried to come up with a response. She then stated: "I saw Seals & Crofts before they were famous."

I think she wins.

Literally and figuratively.

(I know a lot of things, one of them is how hard it is to go into a self-imposed blogging exile.)

I recently finished my third book of the year, which is a terrible thing to admit because I used to be able to read that many in a month. I've always so tired in the mornings that I save my commute downtown for a quick nap (which usually leaves me groggier than I was before I got on the train), and in the afternoons the trains are so packed that it's hard to find room to pull out a book.

Anyway, the book I just finished was the much-lauded Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris. It was hard for me to get into it, honestly, and I felt like it was a little over-hyped. But once I got the thirty-page interlude in the middle that detached itself from the central storyline, everything changed, and the second half of the book was pretty damn good.

Anyway, the book takes place at a Chicago advertising agency at the end of the 20th century. One of the many plot lines is that the workers in the office have to come up with an idea for a pro-bono project for a cancer awareness campaign. Their task is to create an ad that can make a cancer patient laugh, and, of course, they have issues coming up something that's funny about cancer.

I'm not going to give anything else about the story away, but I will share this one that came out of a conversation I had with a friend about a month ago. We were discussing cancer; I was talking about my dad and she was sharing stories about the cancer that her family members have dealt with. I can't remember what relative was stricken with this certain cancer, but she said, "She [a grandmother, or an aunt, whichever] had melanoma...on her anus."

"What?" I said. "You can get it there?"

"You can get it anywhere," she replied, "even where the sun doesn't shine."

Virginia in April.

I'm sorry...

...but I had to come out of my break (I haven't been seeing anyone else, by the way, I promise) to post this picture, because holy eff: