We R Not Al 1

There used to be a store on Atwood Avenue called Uptown Grillz. I'm serious. Unfortunately, it recently closed. I guess the grill market in Madison just doesn't bring about enough business to warrant an entire store.

On a more positive note, the neighborhood has welcomed a new store this week: Spiritual Vibes. Again, I'm serious. That's the name of the store.

To quote Genia:

I can't believe Madison still gets stores like this. What is this, 1960?

Or 1993, eh Genia? I distinctly remember shopping at stores called Isis Rising and...I don't know...probably a place called Planet Earth. Goddess Central. I loved those places. They sold crystals and incense burners in the shapes of goddesses.

But really. It's 2008! Until about 3 months ago there was a store on Willy St. called Cosmic Object. The storefront windows contained aliens and other space paraphernalia. 2008 guys. Get with the times.

By the way, the title of this blog is inspired by my little brudder Emil who used it as his aol email address. I read it as "we are not all one" but he insists that it's "we are not alone." At aol.com.

Tumbling is Better Than Pumping

I think there was something about running into two olders unexpectedly that made me choose not to run into another older expectantly. Does that make sense?

I was planning on going somewhere tonight where I knew I would 100% see somebody from my past who was a big deal when he was in my life and a bigger deal when he was not supposed to be in it. And it's weird, because I thought I'd been angry and scared for over a year, but recently I found out I wasn't. How bout it. And it made tonight seem easier.

But I didn't go. Because I think I was already shaken up enough from the earlier unplanned run-ins that occurred today, and as confident as I felt about this one being fine, I'm a cautious, cautious lady lately.

I'm trying to keep a close watch.

Yikes. How vague. I hate that. So I will counteract with the following:

Last night at Mickey's I hung out with Genia and Schabow and Shane and his handsome friend Adam. Handsome Adam. Hadam. Hadsome? Adsome. This is a tough one. Anyhow, Shane and Adam informed us of a wonderful video about pumping...remember pumping? It's when somebody is wearing a long sleeved shirt and they put one arm inside the shirt, but the sleeves go together in a loop with the other hand holding the opposite sleeve. The the hand inside the shirt "pumps" like a cartoon heartbeat, alternating with the hand in the sleeve, which creates a loop round the pumping. Jesus. Okay, just watch:

I totally did it in the mirror in the bathroom by myself. Everybody rules.

Gems From Chicago

Here are some things my dad has said this weekend:

1. We're watching Iron Chef and one of the judges has kind of long hair. Nothing out of control...just a bit long. All the judges were arguing with each other and I said to dad "they're all so bitchy!" To which he replies "you know what I'd do with them? I'd start with the long haired one, and I'd go and cut his hair. Then at least his brain would be able to breathe and maybe he'd do some thinking for once."

2. He turns the word "convertible" into "confartible."

3. On NPR they're talking about Big Blue Ball, the Peter Gabriel album that's a collaboration of a bunch of artists. My dad says "blue balls? Is that what they get when they fight and kick each other in the balls?" Later in the night we were talking about the lottery, and I mentioned the Powerball game we have in Wisconsin. I heard my dad giggling quietly to himself. Powerballs.

4. "All you children should go live in the Eastern Block and teach those people about choice." This was about me saying to mom that we should let the guests choose whether they want mango lemonade or blackberry juice. Because it's the new millennium, and we have choices now.

Oh damn. There were more. I'll try and remember.

Auspito

You know when you're texting and you have the auto-spell-guess setting on? I'm pretty sure that's the official name of it. There are certain words that are spelled using the same number key (because there's three letters on every number, see?) so you may be trying to text the word "of" and it shows up as "me."

food = done

home = good

of = me

if = he

go = in

find = dime = dine = fine

rock = soak = sock
crab = arab

There are a billion more that I can't think of. Feel free to add on.

This morning I was texting the word "burrito," because, duh, why wouldn't I be? And it came up as "auspito." For real? Why would "auspito," a totally fake word, show up before "burrito," a valid and spectacular word. What gives?? What is auspito? Is it the noun form of auspicious?

That guy over there, he is a total auspito.

Or maybe it's an Italian businessman. I could see that.

I'm meeting these three auspitos at the bar later and I have a feeling I'm gonna get lucky...in the business sense, because they're investors and will most likely help to finance my newest business endeavor! ZING!

Damn damn damn.

Finally

One Second Time Machine

Somebody recently told me "your brain rocks" after I described a particular dream to them. I liked hearing that, and I thought I'd let the internizzle in on it. So come on in.

There will be some brilliance in there, I promise you. There already is. 

brains and guts

What's in my brains:
I go to therapy and find myself explaining to my therapist about things like myspace and facebook and gmail chat. I watch her as she tries to decipher it all and get why it's somehow important in my life. She doesn't judge, but I feel kind of foolish saying it all. 

I've been wondering if this is an acceptable/comfortable/satisfying form of communication to me anymore if I'm feeling foolish about it. 

But here it is, all in a blog. On the internizzle. What do you think of that?

To be so conscious of when I sign into something, how often I look at certain people or things, what else is going on in other lives, or at least the stories that are told on fucking social networking sites...it just feels kind of stupid sometimes. Like...to care about any of it at all, or to believe that it's the same as regular face to face conversation.

Building any kind of personal relationship through "chatting" just seems half-assed and lacks much feeling or meaning. It's just not going to work.

I know it's all been written and thought about before, but still. It's in me brains right now.

What's in my guts:
A lot of cheese in various forms, rosemary potatoes from the Old Fashioned, and apple juice from the unbelievably amazing piano recitals from earlier in the day. And two vodka tonics.

More from the brain:
Blog dedicated to sammiches!!!!!

Funny Things I Saw Today

*An old woman riding a bike with a tiny collie in the front basket and two tiny collies in the back basket
*A guy on a motorcycle listening to Rick Astley extremely loudly
*A kid picking his nose at a violin recital
*A kid pretending to conduct at a violin recital (that one never gets old)
*A girl who yelled out "BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP HAD SOME BLACK WOOL" right before she played her song at the same recital.
*My bangs, which get very curly and S-shaped in the slightly warm weather
*Three episodes of Fat Albert

Yes, this all happened today. What a day.

Madison people: Piano Recitals one week from today! Let me know if you want to come.

Car Story Number Whatever, Starring Daniella Maria

Sometimes it's hard to write a blog about an adventure you've had because putting it into words does not do it justice. Look, it's hard work! And I'm burnt out. So I prefer to show you pictures and make a brief, to the point summary of stuff that happened, and you can work out the details in your head. This way, there are several different versions of my story, with all of your own personal twists, which makes it more appealing to each of you individually. Maybe for a few of you, I was in my bathrobe. Maybe for others, I'd just eaten a whole box of Velveeta Shells n Cheese and my stomach was giving out warning signals. And maybe one of you even dares to assume that I wasn't wearing earrings. Well, there, you'd be wrong, my friend. Sorry sucka.

Okay, here is some stuff that happened Sunday night as I was trying to get to Mickey's to have a damn drink with Daniella and Schabow. Jesus...

I pick up Daniella, and although we could have easily walked, it was slightly raining, so eff that noise. We're driving. We get near the bar, and I turn into a driveway on a side street in order to turn around and get to a parking spot on the street. Suddenly there's this awful noise coming from under my car, like a scraping, scratching sound. I slam on my brakes and look at Daniella in horror. Daniella, who apparently knows how to keep cool in situations, looks at me all wide-eyed and starts laughing.

"Okay, it's fine," I say, as I throw the car in reverse and try to back out. Nothing. The car doesn't move an inch. I try going forward again, and again...nothing. Daniella, Ms. Cool-In-Any-Situation, gets out to go look. It is at this point that her laugh turns into some kind of guffaw that echoed throughout the empty street.

"You're effing stuck, girl!" She says to me as she points at my car's front tires, still laughing. "You're stuck in the mud!" I get out to look, and Cool-As-A-Cucumber-Daniella is right. I'm effing stuck.

Look. We tried everything. She pushed, I drove, we turned the wheels every which way, we went forwards, we went backward, we went forward again. We asked three strangers walking by to help us push, which only resulted in one woman getting her pretty shoes all busted up when she stepped in a puddle. I still feel kind of bad about that, by the way.

Anyhow, I eventually decide to call AAA because I have coverage and I may as well use it. They send out a tow truck, saying it will be there by 11:06. We spend the time waiting and leaning against the car, and Daniella "I think this is hilarious even though Reem isn't totally sure yet" Maria keeps saying things to cheer me up and comfort me, such as:

"Just pretend it's not your car. Pretend it's your mom's," to which I respond "that would be a lot worse."

"No problem," she says. "Just pretend it's stolen then."

At this point, because of her marvelous and creative tactics, plus that undeniably hilarious laugh, Daniella became the star of the show.

So anyhow, the tow truck shows up and the guy is like "Yeah, I tow cars out of this very driveway about once a week." Damn. Now I'm just grouped together with the ordinary masses. I fell for the ordinary. Totals unfair.

This is the mud on the side of my car from every time I made the wheels move. What do you think about that sexy light brown/tan color?

Here's the sad face that I'm-the-funniest-person-in-an-emergency-and-also-kind-of-a-hero-Daniella drew on the hood of my car.

Another view of the poor baby, Tommy (that's my car's name, after Tommy from the song "Livin' on a Prayer." My sister's car is named Gina. We're so great.

That's where my car was stuck. Duh.

Look at this stupid driveway! Who does that? Jerks...

To conclude, I just want to say that a)we promptly parked the car and got to Mickey's and each had a shot and a drink, b)I still haven't looked underneath my car to check out the damage, and c)it ended up being a really fun night, despite it all. Sucks to you, mud!

Rib Hillis

Rib Hillis is a carpenter on the show Extreme Makeover Home Edition. For real...that's his real name.

Yeah. I have very little else to say. So instead of commenting, I am going to write a list of some fantastic names:

Rock Strongo
Chim Richalds
Mike Rithjin
Max Power
Chesty LaRue
Busty St. Clair
Hootie McBoob
Ben Dover
Rip Torn
Ricky Bobby
Bobby Jimmy

I don't even know. It's all so funny.

Also check out Miss Genia's blog: www.geniathequeenia.blogspot.com

That Was Effing Ridiculous

So I'm having this moment of "what the eff," or "WTF" as you more internizzle-savvy people might say. It was kind of the theme of the night. Recently, I've been getting more comfortable with going out by myself to a show or something, and it actually is kind of awesome. I like not being attached to anybody, or having to look out for anybody else, or like make sure nobody is stuck in the bathroom for too long. Look, I'm a damn good friend, probably one of the best you'll ever encounter, but this has gone on long enough. I need some me time or something. No bathroom time.

So the WTF of the night...I don't know. With my newfound going-places-alone-thing hitting me pretty hard tonight, I somehow made it to three clubs and got away with only paying one cover and for two drinks for the entire night. WTF? And those bands at the High Noon...WTF? Bored. I'm sorry, but they were. So I go to The Brink, which to me looks like a glorified Holiday Inn Lobby and there's a band there playing "Sweet Caroline" and the whole place is jumping and waving their arms in the air like it's the best thing to ever hit town. But I guess it kind of was. Then I get to The Annex at about 1:20, hoping to hear Mr. Gnome, who I'd been so excited about for a month because they remind me of the time I watched Pump Up The Volume for the first time and got all nervous about boys and girls and love and music. And WTF? They'd already played. I was, however, fortunate enough to catch Helliphant playing what I can only assume is their greatest hit, "Bullshit." Yeah. That was eye-opening. But still...the touring band went already? WTF?

Okay. I know this is mostly boring and irrelevant to anything cool. But get ready. Because the biggest WTF moment happened not but minutes ago as I pulled my car into the driveway. There's always gotta be some kind of adventure here on my little one-way street. Whether it's Barefoot Lady out sweeping the sidewalk, or that one Tackle Football Guy smoking outside the Wil-Mar center, or that really intense lady I saw last Friday at 3 am as Stacy dropped me off who was crouching in the grass across the street, not blinking, there's always something exciting happening in my neighborhood. Tonight, though, it was actually scary.

As I pulled into my driveway, something caught my eye. There was this huge thing in the path of my car. As I slowed my car, I realized it was an animal. First instinct: dog. Wait, no. Second guess (and this is the thought process, word for word, by the way): Wolf. No, that's stupid. Coyote. It's a coyote. WAIT, no! It's a gaddamn raccoon! And it's the size of a small horse. For serious. It was a giant. And it didn't even move out of the way. As I sat there, contemplating honking at the monstrous beast in front of me, it looked up at me with a menacing stare and ambled off to the side of the driveway, into the bushes.

"Shit," I thought. "Now it will probably get me somehow." So, like my mother has taught me in the parking garage at my father's office in Chicago, I stamped my feet really loud on the paved driveway to try and scare it away. Moms does that in case of rats. But there's this rustling in the plants, and I'm frozen and terrified and don't know what to do because obviously, at this point, the giant raccoon is retaliating. So I take a deep breath, count to three, and run in the opposite direction to the darker, spookier side of the house to try and get to the front door. Let's keep in mind, now, that this is where the garbage cans for us and the Wil-Mar center stay; I'd say altogether there are 843 cans out there. A raccoon's paradise, if I've ever seen one. As I'm running, and I use the term loosely, the heel of my new shoe gets stuck in some mud that smelled suspiciously of poo and I have to tug my leg out while trying not to drop my purse and keeping watch for that stupid wolf-raccoon. I proceed to break free, run the rest of the way to the front porch, trip up the steps, and drop my keys. And eventually, I get inside. But not without much trauma and drama. All because of a gigantor raccoon.

And so it is at this point that I must say to myself...What The Fuck? What was that?

**ADDENDUM**
I just remembered another thing that happened as I was running to the front door. There was a 20 foot ladder propped against the side of the house and I walked under it to get to the front door. As I walked under it, I remembered the superstitious thing about going under a ladder, and even though I don't believe it, I had this moment of paranoia, mostly due to that stupid elephant-sized raccoon, and had to double back under the umbrella and climb around it to get to the door. Jeez...