my cryptic week

Sam puts his paw on death’s door, removes it, turns around and comes back, purring, having decided at the last minute to trade in who knows how many of his nine lives.
Amnesia. I had it but don’t remember it.
I establish a new relationship with dead fish. Dead birds under consideration.
I reconsider contra [...]

their needs are simple

A local theater group posted this request for props for an upcoming fundraiser:
>SIX sets of handcuffs (with keys, please)
>At least FOUR 1970’s pornstar wigs (male and female)
>TWENTY-FIVE eye patches

i found a fatal flaw in the logic of love

I was hugely excited when the new Shins CD, “Chutes Too Narrow” appeared. I’d only discovered this group and their first album, “Oh Inverted World,” this year, and it quickly became a favorite. Quirky, pretty melodies, a soaring, burstingly-happy 60s aura, but original, not derivative. “Chutes Too Narrow” continues this sound, and also goes in [...]

tattoos for you

Maggie acquired a tattoo to commemorate her birthday:

It joins the other one on her shoulder from the mid-80s (when women were women and tattoos were bold).

all i got was this lousy hat

Hoping for costume inspiration for the seacompression, I went to the U.W. Theater Department costume sale. Arriving two hours after it began, most of the good stuff was gone. I did find a frayed, black mortarboard hat. No tassel, but strings to tie it under the chin, and flaps to cover the ears. It’s like [...]

recent movies

The Weather Underground
Interesting story of the SDS splinter group. (Confession: I actually remember their “Bring the War Home” posters from a younger lifetime of mine.) I liked the way the film handled the political shift that occurred in the 70s after the war in Vietnam ended. But my biggest reaction came when the movie touched [...]

lord of the nerds

All three “Lord of the Rings” movies will be shown in one long marathon on Dec. 16 at the Cinerama. I’m a little geeky, but not enough for that. Where am I on the nerd scale? Where are you? Check the simple scale below and see where you fall:
LOTR GEEK-O-METER (each level includes all [...]

hi-standard

Hi-Standard is a Japanese band that blasts out short punk/thrash versions of pop songs–either covers (“Can’t Help Falling in Love”) or homemade (“Teenagers Are All Assholes”). I put some of their music in the truck CD player weeks ago and Maggie finally listened to it and was amazed. As she put it, they aren’t [...]