Artificial Intelligence...for REAL

I've just signed back up with Netflix. They pride themselves on their recommendations based on your personal ratings of movies you've watched in the past, and truthfully, they usually do a pretty good job. They don't have the TiVo Achilles Heel where it suddenly decides you're a gay Spanish plumber with a penchant for the History Channel. However, Netflix is not perfect. And of course, those sorts of mistakes inevitably lead to hilarity. Whoo!

First up is a suggestion of "Hooked" - the gritty tale of Demetrius "Hook" Mitchell - an Oakland playground hoops legend who's life was plagued by violence, drug abuse, and incarceration. Now, admittedly, I would watch that shit. It's got my name all over it. But the suggestion was based on my rating of Tipping the Velvet, a BBC-produced period drama of the struggles of Lesbians during the Victorian Era...just like Hook Mitchell!

Odder still was the carefully considered suggestion based on my love of 30 Rock, Seven Samurai, and Amelie. But before I tell you, why don't you guess? Go ahead, I'll wait...Did you guess Flow: For Love of Water, a documentary connecting politics, pollution, human rights, and the global water crisis? Then you can work for NetFlix!
Peter

The Egg and the Chicken

OK, so I have a yard sale planned for this weekend. Saturday. It's on my list of things That Will Be Done, and to ensure that it happens, I've roped two sale cohorts into the whole mess. And what a mess it is. The house is overrun - more so than usual - with piles of stuff to be hauled out to the lawn in a few days time, dragged into the light, exposing my dark shame. I'm simultaneously excited and horrified. Like watching a suspenseful film, I'm anticipating how great it will all be after it's done. How good it will feel to have done it, even if the while doing it part was hell on my heart and equilibrium. One could argue that it's good for me, but mostly I want to die.

I have this egg. It's a ceramic egg with blue flowers, about the size of an egg. I got it when I was little, in my stocking one Christmas, oh, back in the seventies sometime. Yet, I have this egg. We were tchotchke-oriented (and the dictionary would like me to change tchotchke to "crotchless") and happy enough to have another thing to call our own. (Yes, we each got an egg that year. Our stocking gifts were identical unless there were a variety of colors the item came in - we were three young girls, and really what else can you do with three tchotchke-oriented young girls?) But regardless, I think I need to make it clear that the egg was not by any means a favorite possession.

It's a short hop from tchotchke-oriented to packrat, it turns out. You have to be able to cycle your tchotchkes. I can't do that.

The strongest feelings I have about the egg have to do with what I should do with it. Do people throw away stuff like this? It should be obvious by now that I am not one of those people. Would Goodwill put it on the shelf? To sit alone forever? It might be the most useless item ever. These questions arise every time I uncover the egg, and in every case, it seems easiest to just put it back in That Drawer. Which I have done. I'm tempted to keep it as a talisman - yeah, that's it - against this sort of useless collecting, this faulty redistribution impulse. But it was a gift! What if my dad comes to the yard sale? What if he asks me about the egg one day? What will I tell him? I need to see what my sisters did with their eggs. Dollars to donuts, whatever that means, they still have their eggs, too.

Jenny

Brush-a Brush-a Brush-a

There’s a lot of stuff that creeps/grosses me out, the list is lengthy and has no rhyme or reason whatsoever to it. Take for instance the after-lunch brush. I’m a twice a day teethbrusher, or is it toothbrusher, (morning brush & floss/evening brush), that’s who I am. I appreciate that others might take their dental hygiene more seriously (perhaps even a little too seriously), and these people need to immediately rid themselves of any plaque that may have taken hold after the trip to La Salsa. But I just I can’t take it when I see someone brushing her teeth in the bathroom at work. It seriously makes me uncomfortable. And I have no idea why. It’s really just the one woman. The one with the glasses and the cute new haircut. You know, Whatshername Thatonegirl. Yeah. She’s not messy or loud about it, the chick is just brushing her teeth, but the ladies room in an office just seems like the wrong place to do it. I think I’d be okay with it if she were, let’s say, in the kitchen over the sink opposite the copier…or even at her desk, daintily spitting into the trashcan. But in the office bathroom? For me it’s like keeping breast milk in the shared fridge – of course that’s where it has to go, but is it where it belongs? She also flosses in there. Right, people? Is it just me?

It’s just me isn’t it?




And spit,

Gretch

???????????

I can't help it, but this photo speaks to me somehow, someway...

I just love this photo. As soon as I get my million dollars I am going to get this photo blown up to a huge size and hang it right by my front door. Right after I get my $100,0000 check from Hollywood.

Kurt

Holy Crap

It's Thursday already. What the eff? I completely missed my blog day and never even noticed it. I think we can all take this as a sign that I have been way too busy than is good for me. But it's crunch time, People. If some of those resolutions aren't put in place soon, they aren't going to happen. So, I'm really very busy with very important things. You'll have to trust me.

Jenny

Why you gotta Lie To Me?

I saw a billboard for the new FOX show Lie To Me the other day…

…and thought, Joel Silver, so what? Joel Silver…is that right? I’m pretty sure it’s Joel Silver. Nope, I’m wrong…this is Joel Silver:

I’m thinking of Ron Silver:

But I’m close, right? I got the Silver right. Okay, so Ron Silver returns to television. I’m sure he’s a fine actor and a good human being – he might have even voted “no” on Prop 8 and is a yearly supporter of KCRW – but can he carry a show? He was on that Romeo and Juliet show about porn a few years back and I think it only lasted a couple episodes. Is Ron Silver really the kind of sexy that can sell another drama series? It’s all about movie actors now. It’s the Toni Colettes out there who are going to take over television, and is there a place for Ron Silver in the new world order? I doubt it. And you gave him the billboard too, FOX? Bad move in my opinion. You’re going to need a bigger name, it’s sad but true, FOX. Not that I’m some kind of marketing genius or anything but Ron Silver? Ron Silver? I’m mean, seriously, Ron Silver?

What?

Oh, that’s Tim Roth? Hmm. Looks like Joel Silver, I mean Ron Silver. Is it me or could they be twins? Sigh. Well, best of luck.

gretch

$15,000 to be a French Chef!

Even if we were enjoying good economic times I would not be a fan of this guy. But since we're struggling right now, I really have a strong distaste for this guy. And this guy that I'm talking about is of course Matthew Lesko. It really bothers me that he makes a living telling people how to get $ from Uncle Sam.

Good for him that he found a way to make $. He did the research "...so you don't have to!"

Of course I blame our government that spends too much money but my displeasure is personified by Mr. Lesko

Kurt

Warm Thoughts of the Season

I had the unmistakable feeling yesterday, as the day warmed to its 80 degrees, and the sky blinded me with blue, that "summer was finally here." Obviously, that's a vestigial impulse. I know that summer isn't here, and that it's January.

But I live in Los Angeles, the universally derided city on the left coast. Maybe I feel at home here because I grew up in New Jersey, the butt of 98% of known locality-based jokes. The difference is, it's much warmer here.

It's yawningly customary when talking to anyone about living in Southern California for them to say something about "missing the seasons." Well, okay. You have to take care of you. I'm telling you, though, I don't think I do. I miss that brisk fall day, sure. I miss the walking mittened-hand-in-mittened hand with my lover through the frigid streets to see the lit-up tree. But you know what? That actually never happened. Most happy, romantic, hot-chocolate sipping, snowball fight, cold-weather stories only exist in retrospect anyway - if they exist at all. I have a long winter history, and an active imagination. I can do better from here, where it's nice and warm.

Warmly,

Jenny

What time is it?

I was running around yesterday doing errands like filling a friends' gas tank and jump starting his car, delivering Terrible Towels, making bread, letting in the refrigerator repairman, exercising, going to the bank, food shopping, and making lentil soup and at some point during the day I noticed my watch. Now yes, this is going to be one of those entries where I write about all of the stuff this watch and I have been through together.

I'm talking about my old-reliable Casio digital watch with digital compass! I got this thing back in like 1993 for $65. I cannot tell you how many showers we've taken together, how many times we've slept together, gone to work together, etc. We've been through a lot.

Here are some of the other activities we've done together... running, tv watching, cleaning the bathroom, haircuts, buying DVD's, talking on the phone. We've been through it all together ya'll!!

Casio has been with me through the good times, like when the pizza place gave me an extra pizza because they made a mistake and I just happened to walk through the door, and the bad times too, like when I realized I was bald.

Together we saw 9-11, Obama win the election, and the 1980 Hockey Team beat the Soviets. Okay we saw a replay of that but we did do it together.

As the New Year is just over a week old, I wonder what Casio and I will experience together. Only TIME will tell.

Oh the irony!

Kurt

Trash Man Jesus

As I’ve done every Christmas since I moved out-of-state in 1995, I returned to my suburban Denver home for the holidays this year. On Christmas Eve-eve, we were sitting having coffee in our jammies when my mom jumped up, “the trash guys are here!” She bolted out the front door into the freezing Colorado morning – no coat, no shoes – clutching a small white envelope. Moments later she returned, cheeks kissed pink by the cold, smiling from ear to ear. “I wanted to give them something extra, they do so much for me throughout the year.” My “trash guys” back in California do a lot for me throughout the year too, and I appreciate it, I really do – lord knows I don’t want to have to haul my trash to the dump once a week in my Civic – but we’re strangers to each other. I wouldn’t even know if it would be okay for me to run after the garbage truck in my jammies or if they would call the West Hollywood police on me.

Later I pulled my mom’s trash cans into the garage (something I never did when I actually lived there) and I noticed something stuck into one of the handles. Thinking it was perhaps an errant piece of holiday wrapping, I pulled it free and realized it was an envelope addressed to my mother. It was from “Trash Man Jesus,” wishing my mother a Merry Christmas.

What?! I can understand a world in which neighborhood residents do a little “something extra” to thank city workers for doing hard, sometimes unpleasant jobs and I’m proud that my mother is one of those people. But a world in which city workers leave holiday cards for those along their route? That’s just nutso crazy town Stepford County. Not that a Stepford County full of pleasant, grateful, thoughtful people would be a bad thing, its just that it’s so far from what I experience on a day to day basis that its hard for me to comprehend fully.

Before this whole episode, Eric reminded me that we should leave something for our mail carrier – even though there’s a different postal employee loading the mailboxes whenever I go downstairs – so I left a Starbucks card clearly marked “for USPS, thank you!” But upon returning after over a week of holiday visits, we found the card still in the mailbox, untouched. We can’t even get a partial, one-sided pseudo utopia started over here. I want my own Trash Man Jesus.

Maybe in 2009...gretch

One, seven, oh nine.

I am diligently working on my afore-mentioned resolutions, and while it's only been a week, I'm happy to report that I'm not as filled with resolution-related despair as I was a scant year ago. Much of my angst has to do with writing - yes, even the act of posting to this blog is fraught with anxiety - and so I've made a couple of appointments with people to meet and write. Not meet and read what you wrote during the intervening days. That way lies disaster. No, this is just about being accountable and getting in the groove. So, that's good.

Similarly, I am planning a yard sale with a couple of friends, in the hopes that this time it will really happen. I have a very hard time throwing stuff away, which stems partly from my mother's ability to throw any of my stuff away without a moment's hesitation, and partly from my deservability issues. Namely that I didn't deserve the item/gift/money that was spent in the first place, and to sell/trade/give it away is to claim some kind of right I never had. Also, Mother Earth and the landfills is related to this - how much space should I really get? - but it's all too much to go into. The point is, the Time is Now. Whether the item sits in a drawer or sits in a landfill, it's biodegrading. Better to confront it, move it along if possible to someone who would like it, or just call it garbage and get it to a dump. All those issues can remain, even, they are undisturbed by any of this.

Also, I'm taking a workshop class thing, that I'm mostly scared to take. I've already spent the money however, and since obviously I didn't deserve to spend it on myself (see above) there's no chance I won't go and make sure I get the maximum I can out of it.

That's my January plan, and I'm pretty darn pleased. I've reached out to two volunteer organizations and have heard back from one of them, so I will be scheduling some time to donate to that, and I will be implementing a semi-regular yoga session in my livingroom, and soon. Also, I might be getting a dog, but that's not so much a resolution as an involuntary necessity, like breathing. I can't believe I've gone this long without one (or two) but I'm sure I'll fill you (the two-five readers of this blog) in as that progresses.

All hail the new year, the new leaf, the new you! Hip, Hip!

Jenny

Werrrrrrk

*sigh*

With the advent of the New Year, comes a return trip to work. I have been asked of late, "what do you *want* to do?" I give a blank stare, since I know that "Rock Star" will not be taken seriously...Don't really want to work at all, I guess.

Unfortunately, that pays very poorly. And in 2009, the year of the the...limping economy, it seems important that, like it or not, we continue in an employed state as long as possible. Watching television has no remunerative benefit. And sitting by the fire sipping coffee, while most pleasant, pays not even 5 pounds per annum.

As you can probably guess, I've been watching a Jane Austen television series. It has left my language a little grand, and my thoughts tending toward entailment and consequence.