Not that any other Chicago/Chicago metro dwellers are unaware of this, but it bears repeating: IT'S FUCKING HOT!!!!

Okay, that said, dv and I watched Fat Girl on Saturday night and it really disturbed me. I'm still busily deconstructing the film in order to decide if it was some sort of feminist critique or purely reprehensible. It didn't make me curl fetally (like Requiem For a Dream, but close.

As I was walking back from dv's on Saturday night with the Netflixed movie and half a vegetarian burrito in a sandwich bag, I stopped at the mailbox to return the movie and along with it, mailed the burrito. It was one of those absentminded things -- something that, by the time you become concious of what you're doing, it's too late to stop it. So, I am so sorry to the postal worker who came to collect mail in Andersonville, to find a burrito, ghastly in form and smell after spending a day (for there is no mail pick up on Sunday) in the mailbox. It was not a prank. It was an honest mistake. Furthermore, I am also sorry to little Billy whose birthday card to grandma probably arrived smelling like rotten cheese and avacados. Sorry . . .


Link of the day is not terribly exciting, but I'm posting it because I'm impressed that the driver "came to rest on top of another car." How fast was that old man going? Was this a Starbucks on top of a very steep hill? Do you understand how much momentum and speed it would take to drive a car on top of another car (monster truck notwithstanding). My questions will all make sense after you read THIS.

Employed. Tired.

I slept all of four hours last night. My anxieties were really running high. Then, this morning, as I went to start up my car and book it for Wisco, the bastard went and died on me. Nervous breakdown ensued . . . but lh came to the rescue with his Camry that is in far better shape than my car and has a stereo that sounds really, really good. So, I got to drive to my interview in good comfort and good sound. I heart my friends.

As interviews go, this one was fun. I also heart the man who interviewed me and have always hearted him. Before the interview he gave me a copy of a chapbook I wrote when I was but a little senior in college. I used to have a copy of the chapbook but have since lost it. While browsing through the chapbook in his office all I could say was "I sure was wordy." What I really meant was "oh my god this is EMBARASSING."

Anyway, I got the job. He told me it took him and the other person who interviewed me "thirty seconds" to make their decision. Goode. The much needed foot-in-the-door. Broken toes and all.

ef told me I have to get a cordoroy blazer with leather elbow patches. Indeed.

Link of the day is also, verbatim, the first lesson I'll be teaching my students: THIS.

It’s warm in here . . . because I’ve neglected to open the storm windows. (Note to self: merely seeing the screen doesn’t make the window “open.”)

It’s quite comfortable in here now that I’ve opened the storm windows. I’ve been sweating my face off all day – sitting on the computer, laboriously, tediously preparing for my interview on Friday. Thorough. Must be thorough. And there is but a fine, fine line between thorough and insane . . .

I’m currently apartment/cat sitting for ef. As I told ef in an email, I’m trying to learn her cats’ names,so that I no longer call them (respectively) “kitty” and “other kitty.”

ef not only left me her apartment and her cats, but her Netflix queue. I had a good old time last night rearranging that for her. I’m going to endeavor to watch the first season of The Sopranos (to see what the big deal is about) and also catch up on some indie flicks I’ve had a hard time tracking down.

Most significantly, I learned this morning that I’m going to be an aunt. Normally, I wouldn’t blog about something so immensely important/private – but I’m excited. Some girls dream of being mothers, some dream of being aunts. I am part of the latter category.

(Highly appropriate) Link of the day : THIS

We might eat this year, kids! Mama's got a job interview!

I don't even remember the weekend. Unemployment makes the days seem endless -- one just bleeds into the next without definition. Hopefully that's soon to end. Landed a job interview this week with my (undergraduate) alma mater. I'll be interviewing with someone who taught me back in the day -- so this will take the pressure off a bit. Sounds like a pretty sure thing, but I'm not counting my chickens just yet, the eggs ain't hatched.

If I do get a job at my old school, it will be very Welcome Back Kotter-esque . . . Which works in nicely with my plans to emulate the scenarios played out in sitcoms of the 1970s. Hopefully my dry cleaning business will really take off so I can move to a high rise in Manhattan.
My sister is visiting this week and last night we thoroughly annoyed our parents by continually exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" a la Mr. Slave. For whatever reason, she and I couldn't get enough of the expression/Lord's name. There's something about my sister's presence that causes me to act really juvenile. Causes me to do things like wake her in the morning by strumming an accoustic guitar and singing, "You better get up now."

Speaking of accoustic guitars, my sister told me this crazy story about one of her friends who lives in a funeral home (no, seriously) in Iowa and how she was playing her guitar in the "coffin room" and a coffin fell on her guitar, smashing it to smithereens. How many musicians can say that's ever happened to them?

The subject of today's "link of the day" died at 39, leading me to believe I best "slow my roll" as they say . . .

Link of the day: THIS.

I'm not from around here . . . or am I?

Last night, ef, her sister and I went downtown to see "Wicked." ef had printed directions off the Broadway-in-Chicago website that incorrectly informed us the Oriental Theater would validate parking if we used the Self Park on Wabash and Adams when in fact it was the Self Park on Randolph and State that we wanted. Fortunately, we checked with the parking attendant before leaving the car -- and were informed that we were in the wrong place. A woman paying her parking fee overheard us talking to the parking attendant and asked "Oh, are you girls going to see 'Wicked'?" And we told her we were and she offered to draw us a map to where we needed to be.

I basically knew where we needed to go, but she seemed like she wanted to help us out, so I let her draw a map. "Now, you're on Wabash," she told me, drawing a line to represent the street. (I knew we were on Wabash, the school I attended for the past 2 years was a mere block away -- but I played along.) "And you're going to want to go up to Michigan Avenue, which runs along Lake Michigan and it's very busy this time of year . . ."

At this point, I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing. I let her finish the map and thanked her for her help and she told me that we were going to love "Wicked" and that where we were going was the Loop's "theater district" . . . right . . . got it . . .

Chicagoans are so friendly!

After finding the right parking lot (without help from the map) we went to eat at a semi-upscale restaurant in the "theater district." We ordered appetizers -- calamari, misto fritto and illegal duck liver pate and ef and I each had one of the restaurant's micro-brews. Shortly after serving me my beer, our waitress stopped back at the table to ask me, "How do you like Chicago beer?"

Why, it's delicious! Thank you for asking! (I mean, it's not often that people ask me how I "like" things that I regularly consume. "How do you like Camel Lights?" "How do you like coffee?")

"Wicked" was very satisfying. (Shucks! Back in Cornpone, Alabamy we ain't got none o' that high-falutin live theater!)

I was surprised by how invested I became in the storyline and how enchanted I was by the set designs. The music wasn't exactly suited to my tastes . . . but overall it was really enjoyable. Very clever take on the original.

My favorite part? Flying monkeys. If anyone wants to make a three-hour musical all about flying monkeys I, for one, will definitely see it. Flying monkeys totally freak me out. Because it's not often that I'm truly freaked out, I appreciate things that cause me to do so. Bit of advice for "Wicked" producers: MORE FLYING MONKEYS.

Flying monkeys aside -- I'm also a big fan of the Wicked Witch a la The Wizard of Oz. It was kind of hard for me to accept the Wicked Witch of the West as a kind, misunderstood soul when I really like the flame-throwing-manically-cackling-wild-eyed-crystal-ball-gazing-what-a-world-what-a-world-shrieking Margaret Hamilton witch . . .

Link of the day: THIS.

Well, well, well PRESIDENT POTTY MOUTH! And doesn't he know it's rude to talk with a mouth full of food? Then again, maybe Miss Manners is irrelevant at the G8 summitt . . .

Also, ef sent me THIS reminder regarding our theatergoing tonight. I heart John Waters.

ef is taking me to see "Wicked" tomorrow and I am all-too-excited. In addition to being a lover of musicals, it's been a long time since I've seen a theatrical production that did not include cardboard sets, folding chairs or obscure Kafka refrences. (I'm not passing judgement. As a playwright myself, I fully understand and appreciate the need for such productions.) It will just be nice to see something simple and yet elaborate.

The first "fancy" performance I ever saw was Carmen at the Lyric Opera House when I was but knee-high-to-a-grasshopper. I fell instantly in love with the medium and it was not until many years later that, while babysitting, I caught the film West Side Story on PBS and realized how fully sunk I was for all things musical. Since then, I've seen every musical film I could rent or buy and have attended every musical and/or opera that I could afford. I know there are people who don't like opera and who vehemently dislike musicals. My (humble and perhaps flawed) opinion on those two camps? Those who cannot appreciate opera suffer a certain spiritual deficiency. Those who vehemently dislike musicals lack an essential sense of humor.

I am in no way making fun of diabetes (there's nothing funny about it) nevertheless, the Link of the day: THIS.

After a long, hot day of drinking iced mint tea and reading voraciously (Reading Lolita in Tehran - marvelous), I moved on to my second favorite non-activity: surfing the interweb. After paying a visit to all the usual subjects -- .edu email, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail and MySpace (the latter seems semi-sinister to me) -- I read CNN.com within an inch of a nervous breakdown and moved on to my second "favorite" news source, The Chicago Tribune. In truth, I don't have a "favorite" news source. Rather, I'm a news junkie. In the same way Kitty Dukakis drank rubbing alcohol when the the whiskey ran dry -- I will seek news wherever I can get it. Nevermind that Lebanon and Israel are burning, the top story on the website of The Chicago Tribune (a not-so-secretly conservative newspaper) was The Gay Games.

I'm only peripherally interested in the games as anything pertaining to sporting events can cause me to slip into a boredom induced coma. In any case, The Chicago Tribune article, diplomatically entitled "WHY A GAY GAMES?" mentioned an incident out in lovely Crystal Lake, IL where residents debated and wrung their hands and debated some more on whether or not to allow a Gay Games rowing competition to take place in their quaint village. The Crystal Lake/Gay Games "debacle" (I don't know that it was a "debacle," I just like that word) included all the homophobic rhetoric we've come to know and love -- words like "agenda" and "values" were used liberally (no pun intended) but, in the end, The Gay Games were allowed to use a pond in Crystal Lake for a rowing competition.

It was while reading this that I realized I'd make a truly lousy advocate for any group. In spite of my many, strong political convictions regarding a varitable cornucopia of issues, it was while reading about Crystal Lake's "hangups" and the spokesperson for the Gay Games' shrug-and-a-smile response that it occured to me how I would react . . .

The spokesperson for the Gay Games' handled the issue in a very tactful, appropriate, measured manner whereas I would have been all like, "Bitch! I don't want your motherfucking pond, anyway! And furthermore, in the famous words of Mr. Garrison (of South Park fame), 'I hope you go to hell. You go to hell. You go to hell and you die!'"

So, basically, I shouldn't be a spokesperson/politician/advocate. I am too easily riled. Passionate, sometimes, to a fault . . . especially after reading CNN.com for an hour while sipping rubbing alcohol.

Link of the day: THIS.

Before getting to the real "meat" of this entry, I have to share a marvelous quote I re-discovered while recently re-reading Virgina Woolf's memoirs, Moments of Being (if you haven't read them, you should): "I see myself as a fish in a stream; deflected; held in place; but cannot describe the stream." - V. Woolf, "A Sketch of the Past."

Okay, now that that's done . . .

I've lately stored up some text messages on my cell phone. A few months back, I gave a reading in Chicago where -- bereft of more clever ideas -- I turned voicemail messages and text messages into poems and read them with all the somber intonation the genre (often) demands.

I'm now a much older, much more savvy reader and will probably never do another reading like that.

That said, I am not above publishing "text message" poems on Holy Smokes. In rendering these small bits of verse, I change none of the verbiage -- the artistry lies in the way in which I break the lines. Hence, carving pure poetic genius from the crude wooden blocks that are text messages. (Also, I give them titles.)

WOULD YOU
would you
like me to carry
your heaviest things
up/down 3 flights
of stairs? that seems
to be what i do
these days.

PLEASE
please CAPITALIZE
America in future texts or
you minus me plus sunlight
inspired yellow air gas will equal
distant dissapointment that will
both bite and heal
at the same time.

GET THE CAT
I'm saving that one.
"Patrick, get the cat."
Oh the sweet irony
of being beaten
with a cat.

READY
are you ready
to rock?
(the bookstore.)

VIVA LAS VEGAS
Vegas?
Are you
going to be
Celine Dion's
wigmaster?

IN IOWA
In Iowa,
we are not
allowed
to say
"global warming."

Deeply poignant, no?

Link of the day: THIS.

Among friends, I'm the resident "computer expert." Bear in mind that this says more about my friends' technological abilities than it does about my own. My only technological advantage is that my dad has been working with computers since they were babies but the size of double wide trailers. (Indeed the computer is one of the few things on Earth to grow smaller as it grows older.) Because of daddy's profession, I was probably one of the first kids in America to have a personal computer and know how to use it. At a shockingly young age I knew the highly complex DOS formula that made a Christmas Tree out of the letter "x." Needless to say, this knowledge made me very, very popular.

But I digress . . .

About a month or two ago, lw and ef helped me invent my very own tech-based company called "Snakes on a Computer" (in homage to the new Samuel L. Jackson film, "Snakes on a Plane"). "Snakes on a Computer" is a fledgling, one-woman operation . . . and right now, I've largely been working pro-bono. Why, just last month, I spent five hours not helping lw with her new Mac. And last week, I spent half an hour setting up cf's computer in her new apartment, making sure that the printer didn't work. "Snakes on a Computer" is off to a fantastic start! Buy stock now!

Sometimes, "Snakes on a Computer" helps itself. For example, today I decided to finally fix that ten-year-old laptop I bought off Ebay three years ago. Before "Snakes on a Computer" took hold of the antiquated notebook, it didn't even register the letter "S." Now, when you strike the "S" key, it reboots the system!

Because "Snakes on a Computer" is a new company, I will (free of charge) share some lessons learned or (in techie speak) troubleshooting advice.

1. Unless you have a time machine, there's no unspilling that Margarita all over the keyboard.

2. Contrary to popular belief, you cannot punch a virus from the computer's hard drive. It's true the tower will stop making that horrible metallic screeching noise when it is tipped at a 60 degree angle, but it doesn't mean the virus is gone.

3. Nothing can be saved on to the monitor.

4. Removing the "ESC" button from the laptop's keyboard does nothing but disable you from ever using the "ESC" button again.

5. All the excruciating regret in the world will not un-send that drunken email message to your boss.

Consider yourself warned.

Link of the day: THIS.