kidchamp dot net: cautionary tales

11.27.06

there is much to say about thanksgiving, but there is much to do on my first day back at the office. until i can give the holiday its due, then, season's greetings and glaring white cat nipples - that summarizes local sentiment nicely.

11.18.06

i waited out one storm too many to take a decent foliage picture from our window - the midweek rain stripped all of the trees on our block, so we're left with nearly bare branches and the wizened halloween balloons that get stuck right in front of our apartment every single year. i still dig the view from the fire escape, though.

11.17.06

1: okay, it's charades! what classic video game am i? [makes obscene gesture]
2: dig dug?
1: we're soul mates.

i've been dishing out opinions for fun and profit all the live-long week. monday i told two earnest japanese women how to market their tofu to western consumers.* the $50 gift card i received for my weird stories of tofutti and punk rock kitchens has been impossible to spend, on christmas presents or myself. i have big plans to tell six more women about tofu so that i can own one of these - mmm, painty pixel art. monday was also the long-awaited 300 press screening, spiced up with a Q&A session featuring zack snyder (dawn of the dead), the pleasantly scottish gerard butler, and frank miller (hot shit!).** wednesday, in turn, was press duty for bug, a thriller with ashley judd, harry connick, jr., and lukas-as-an-escaped-mental-patient-if-you-squint-really-hard-and-aren't-particular-about-particulars (michael shannon).*** and yesterday - yesterday i was simply asked to rule on whether or not a few dozen strangers were attractive, which is one of the weirdest official duties i've had in a while (since the infamous butt modeling of '05, probably).**** i am, in fact, tired of being judgmental. i fear you, foreign feeling!

*in my opinion, it should be packaged in smaller quantities, with recipes.

**in my opinion, gerry butler used a butt double for the scenes with gorgo, but i was too chicken to confirm. also, it was a bit miserly to show us a mere 30 minutes of the movie, audience full of slavering spoilertastic comic book industry professionals or no.

***in my opinion, this was probably an excellent play - like the house of yes, its theater roots were re-eally apparent, which is occasionally awkward. not bad, though, and joe really liked it.

****in my opinion, americans have strange ideas about what others will consider appealing (both physically and philosophically).

11.15.06

101 in 1001: 013 donate platelets at least 12 times [05/12 as of 11.14.06]
weird factoid of the day, courtesy of my ongoing haunting of the citicorp blood center: apparently hemoglobin levels on the left and right sides of the body, a la foot sizes, don't always match up. i flunked the test when a tech pricked my right hand last night (12.4 g/dl), which usually means that i haven't been a very good vegetarian and get booted from the donation queue. this tech, however, went right on to my left hand, saying that the reading was so close that the occasional slight variation between sides could get me above the 12.5 minimum to fork over the platelets. and how - my reading on that side was 14.0, which is significantly higher than it's ever been. i've been paging through blood journals for the why and wherefore of this, but no luck thus far; in the interim, i've declared myself a superhero and have adopted a nick cave theme song.

You're one microscopic cog
in her catastrophic plan
Designed and directed by
her left iron hand

excellent.

11.13.06

i've never really been afraid of new york city. okay, make that new york city crime - i was pretty terrified of times square in a sensory overload kind of way when i vacationed here in '02. the prospect of getting mugged, on the other hand, no. the neighborhoods i frequent are usually so crowded that (with the exception of guys like last summer's serial subway stabber) no one goes to the trouble of committing violent crimes - too many witnesses, too hard to get away. our home turf was a pretty rough area (when my dad worked in hell's kitchen as a college kid, he actually witnessed a murder), but it feels like times have changed. if you don't count the guy, that is, who was shot and killed a block from our apartment on saturday night, on the sidewalk where george had walked home an hour or two earlier. we always tell him to walk safely, ha ha, when he leaves our place, but - what the fuck? the scariest (and most horrible) part of the story is that apparently the murder was a case of mistaken identity: the victim was a father of four who just happened to be walking to his restaurant job at the wrong time. i love living here, and in general i feel much safer than i did when we lived in san francisco (russian hill was snoozeville, but in most parts of the city, if you walked two blocks in the wrong direction it could get very sketchy very quickly), but gah. sometimes i wish we lived in iowa, and/or that we had a george-sized slingshot.

in other, better news, we discovered on saturday that none of us had availed ourselves of the (free) staten island ferry. it's a lovely ride, though there wasn't much to do when we got there; i tried to take sexy photos of the statue of liberty on the way back, but it refused my advances. in other, amazing news, i now have a sewing machine (our wedding present from dave and melissa). it's a mint green kenmore mini ultra, and it is adorable; expect glamour shots soon. as far as i can remember, i've never actually used a sewing machine, so expect frustrated rants about bobbins and walking feet as well. they will be happy frustrated rants, though - in craftnerdland, a machine of one's own is like a personal jet pack.

11.07.06

i can't vote until my lunch break, but i can represent all day.

naturally, joe is out working the streets. his most recent prediction* was the house by 15, and that we wouldn't take the senate. me, i'm managing my expectations: i'm just glad that i won't have to hear about jeanine pirro any more. side note to my peeps in california: re-elect arnie and you're dead to me.

side note, via our freedom fighting friends at the bassett dispatch: need a button?

*as of when i asked a few days ago, that is.

11.03.06

11.01.06

as predicted, we did a whole lot of nothing yesterday evening. the missus had to be up early for a press event, and i didn't fancy heading out on the town by myself, so we 'weened it with veronica mars like the homebound twentysomethings we are. i'm loath to let the holiday pass without some sort of salute, though, so here's something horrifying.

i have cropped pants, and lord help me, i'm pleased. i'll try to use them for good, not evil, but i don't know that i should be trusted.
Labels: fashion

{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)