kidchamp dot net: cautionary tales

04.28.06

today's lesson in wedding strategy is that it isn't always a good idea to muffle one's inner bridezilla. i'd been handling our florist with kid gloves because i was afraid she'd back out on us; after waiting a week for a return message and finally resolving to make a polite transatlantic phone call this morning, i got dumped via e-mail anyway. why this couldn't have happened a week or two (or, hell, a month or two) ago - so that i could have had that time to work with the person who inherited (see 04.18.06) her flower shop - is beyond me; what i do know is that it's really, re-ally tempting to be an ugly american when english reticence fucks with my planning. don't mess with the bride, young man. you'll get the horns.

i caught the last fifteen minutes of pretty in pink on cable last night. for those of you who lack total brat pack recall, that's when molly ringwald bounces back from being dumped for prom by whipping up a weird dress and making all of the rich kids look like conformist suckers. when i burst into tears (as i always do) as the soundtrack kicked into OMD's "if you leave," i realized why this wedding stuff is giving me zombie-filled stress dreams* and making me flip my shit over save-the-date cards; while i can shrug off traditions and don't exactly need to feel like a princess, i do need to feel crafty. i'm hoping the stuff i throw together will stand the test of time a little better than molly's dress did, but the temporary "huh? wow!" is what matters. so...which one of you is going to teach me how to pour my own candles?

*the zombies themselves weren't the problem - it was that i was supposed to be revivifying a horde of them while shopping for a rehearsal dinner outfit and my syringes lacked the proper amount of serum, so they kept coming halfway to life and stumbling all over the store and getting in my way. also there was a small dog on fire.
Labels: fire, floral drama, flowers, weddings, zombies

04.25.06

Labels: central park

04.18.06

that was way too serious. today is come here, go away (tm tomato nation) day.

come here, charoset and bitter herbs. if you're agnostic, passover apparently makes you need hillel sandwiches like a pregnant lady needs pickles and ice cream: joe and i stuffed ourselves with horseradish, apples, and matzoh pretty much throughout seder on saturday.

go away, saw II. i love dreadful horror sequels - for god's sake, i liked hypercube - and the only good thing about you is the "enjoy your PURPLE NURPLE!" line from the scary movie 4 commercials. when you don't get interesting until you're parodied, you're in trouble.

~~go away~~ come here, wedding florist. it's professional of you to honor your commitment to our wedding (even though we didn't sign anything) this summer after you sold your flower shop to devote yourself to your new baby. i don't really understand how you're going to get it done without, um, a flower shop, but you're the best and only show in town and i want to trust you. please send us the estimate you promised to have by last week so my head doesn't break.

go away, guess the dictator or sit-com character. i am not and never will be joey from dawson's creek. have you seen katie holmes lately? when i first followed that link, i thought i was looking at kelly osbourne.

come here, magic hat circus boy (and the weird-ass fortune teller on your website). if you did taste like a hefeweizen, i probably wouldn't like you.

go away, guy on tenth avenue who tried chat me up without actually listening to my responses. i tend to distrust people who tell me that i, too, sound like a good uncle.

come here, asparagus risotto. you gobbled up twice the suggested amount of veggie broth and needed doctoring with benecol and vanilla soymilk (because that's how we roll in The Kitchen That Joy Forgot), but you did your best.
Labels: booze, movies, recipe, television, weddings

04.14.06

a few years ago, a few years after graduation, our college clique got hot and bothered (as twentysomethings do) about working for The Man versus working for The Cause. it was quite dramatic; at the time i was with the SPCA and got terribly upset whenever one of my friends, say, got a nice piece of furniture or joined an entity with punctuation in its name. i remember arguing that we were like babies of different species - we had seemed similar enough in utero, but flippers and claws and such were going to get in the way as we grew up. the discussions were shamefully twee; thank god the whole thing blew over.

the late twentysomething version, i think, is a mutation of town v. gown. i don't want to twee out on it, but this amused the hell out of me when it popped up in my iTunes today:
Come down, come down from your ivory tower
Let love come into your heart
Don't lock yourself in an ivory tower
Don't keep us so far apart

I love you, I love you
Are you too far above me to hear?

Come down, come down from your ivory tower
You'll find true love has its charms
It's cold, so cold, in your ivory tower
And warm, so warm in my arms

I love you, I love you
Are you too far above me to hear?

Come down, come down from your ivory tower
You'll find true love has its charms
It's cold, so cold, in your ivory tower
And warm, so warm in my arms
Labels: academia, misanthropy

04.12.06

101 in 1001: 045 earn (and get) a raise at work [completed mid-march '06]
in a literal sense, this item was in the bag unless i got fired before 22 march (pay tweaks happen on anniversaries at The Company). figuratively, it's still exciting; i have in fact been working my ass off, and my evaluation read like one of jan wenner's rolling stone reviews. moreover, joe and the cats and you lovely people are perennial, but i don't count on a lot of other things hanging in there from year to year. congratulations to The Company, then, for sticking it out with me! and congratulations to me for...having the funds to rent an extra movie each month.

celebrities v. giant inflatable rats: the six degrees of That Guy edition.
it was a long, hard winter for both star- and uniongazing; it's much more difficult to spot the famous when their fleshless little bodies are bundled up against the cold, and i think that if the MTA strikers' rallies featured huge rubber animals, frustrated commuters would have used them as bludgeons. things cleared up recently when i was trundling home from work with a huge box full of wedding dress. visibility was poor: i lurched off the curb at one point, nearly flattening myself and kyra sedgwick. woo, now our wedding's only one person away from kevin bacon! i give the encounter 1.5 points. i also ran into That Guy, in this case a character actor with a recurring role as a serial killer on csi: miami. one could argue that he shouldn't be any points because i can't remember his name; i'm calling 0.5 because, bacon-style, he's attached to the fantastically weird david caruso. if you haven't seen david caruso as csi: miami's horatio kane, friends, you are denying yourselves a rare pleasure.

rats: 3.5
star: 7
Labels: 101 in 1001, celebrities v. inflatable rats, ladymag, television

04.05.06

it's wing, or springer, or something like that. the plaza this morning was a far cry from the drifty blizzard zone of a few months back; our view from the third floor (this is from our stoop) was a sea of blossoms. hours later it was pummeled in a freak snowstorm; snakes on a plane, man. snakes on a plane.

mischa barton quote of the day:
"There's something about not being the quintessential Hollywood person who has to drive to every meeting themselves. You're in your own little area more. Somebody drives me to work - either my mom or an assistant. Or my boyfriend."

(jane, october '04)
Labels: mischa barton, springtime in new york

{champ status log, via twitter}

and you will know us by the stuff we've read (the recent dozen, plus a few stragglers):

faithful place (tana french) :: super sad true love story (gary shteyngart) :: the drowned library (paul kerschen) :: travels in siberia (ian frazier) :: death be not proud (john gunther) :: the magician king (lev grossman) :: mockingjay (suzanne collins) :: catching fire (suzanne collins) :: the hunger games (suzanne collins) :: the silver swan (benjamin black) :: life (keith richards) :: the magicians (lev grossman) :: the pale king (david foster wallace) :: villette (charlotte brontë) :: homer's odyssey (gwen cooper) :: christine falls (benjamin black) :: cloud atlas (david mitchell) :: ghostwritten (david mitchell) :: a visit from the goon squad (jennifer egan) :: neon angel: a memoir of a runaway (cherie currie with tony o'neill) :: the ask (sam lipsyte) :: coco chanel (justine picardie)