"pizza hut delivered the pasta!"

I'm really pandering today, but I have some big questions about this video (via Austin via Rebecca). Like: How difficult and tedious is pasta to make that ordering it from Pizza Hut would be in any way preferable? Also, is it just YouTube, or does that stuff really look like vomit? (Partial answer: no, it actually kind of does.) Regardless, what does it say about those poor people that they were fooled by this-- were they just really hungry? Easily swayed? Degraded palates? Also, what is wrong with the guy who exclaims, "I like it even more now!"?

"really artsy, but not in a skanky way" is my new favorite vague distinction

ABC: Miley Cyrus 'Embarrassed' by Photo Spread

I know she's 15, but how is this more embarrassing than any of this? She looks like an atrocious teen-bot clown most of the time-- smudging on some red lipstick and draping herself in a sheet for Annie Leibovitz is by far the classiest thing she's ever done. The one with her dad is admittedly far more strange. It looks like an uncomfortable engagement photo, the forced-sexy kind, but that's the only aspect in which it differs from most of the other photos of them together, which are all more of the forced-sweet variety, the kind you'd send to the wedding announcement section of your hometown paper's Life Sunday page.

There was a huge segment about this on the Today show this morning, mothers stopped on New York City streets and confronted with the images and asked how they'd be addressing the subject with their daughters. How do you talk to your daughter about Hannah Montana posing semi-nude in an intelligent, well-respected culture rag? Tell her Miley's moving up in the world, shut off the television, and go outside.

sorry, metro atlanta

It was 43 degrees this morning because last night I boxed up all my long-sleeved shirts and my winter coat. Whoopsie!

letting my geek flag fly

I think the American obsession with the British Royal Family is pretty strange-- hell, I think the British obsession with the British Royal Family is pretty strange-- but last night when I was unpacking from a weekend in Chattanooga I turned on PBS and somehow became completely engrossed in an episode of Windsor Castle: A Royal Year. Apparently it's on re-run from 2005 or 2006, but whatever, if it's on PBS and if my shitty rabbit ear antennas don't turn it purple and green and wobbly (and sometimes even if they do), I'll watch it.

This particular episode, "The Banquet," was the first in the series, and centered around French President Jaques Chirac's visit to the castle. In addition to the titular feast, the castle was also abuzz in preparations for a production of Les Miserables. Really, I was only half watching it until this point, but oh my god, apparently I cannot not watch something having to do with that musical. I am the same person I was at age ten when Chattanooga's PBS affiliate showed the 10th anniversary Royal Albert Hall concert performance seemingly on repeat for weeks, and I swear I watched every single showing of it. And I am the same person I was five years ago when I attended every single dress rehearsal and performance of HARP's production of it, ostensibly because Joe was Val Jean and Sarah was, like, Lovely Lady #17, but really because I am secretly/not secretly obsessed with it.

Naturally, because I have watched (and listened to, on both cassette and CD) the 10th anniversary concert so many times to the point that I kind of can't stand any other recording of the soundtrack, I was pretty excited when the Windsor Castle crew interviewed Michael Ball, who played an adorable, blustery, be-dimpled Marius back in 1995. Thirteen years later, he still has the dimple but otherwise seems way too old for the part, but I thought perhaps the Queen was also similarly obsessed with this one production in particular, perhaps having also watched it obsessively all through fifth grade, perhaps having also awkwardly asked her mother what a prostitute was, and could not bear to see any other strapping young man play Marius, to the point that she would drag in a nearly middle aged Michael Ball just to suit her own whim.

I was totally fine with that. But then they cut to footage of the cast preparing for the performance, including Michael Ball himself being outfitted in a gray, grizzled beard. He wasn't playing Marius-- he was playing Val Jean. My head exploded. They showed a clip of the scene where he confesses his identity to Javert. "I'm Jean Val Jean!" he bellowed, but I'm like, no, no you're not, you're little Marius, and you'll always be little Marius, Val Jean does not have a dimple, plus Val Jean is Colm Wilkinson, and he had a real beard because he is a real old man.

Anyway, I have to wonder if PBS knew this was going to happen-- that by roping in viewers during adolescence with repeated airings of this one episode of Great Performances they were guaranteeing themselves an audience fifteen years down the line for re-runs of a three-year old documentary about some silly vestigial monarchy and its elaborate musical theater productions. That's why they're PBS. Because they are smart.

charlemont

In the town where Marie works in the summer, we housesat. I was creeped out at first by the kind of person who would let two strangers into her home to keep watch over it for three days while they're down in North Carolina for their cousin's 60th birthday, but it turns out that kind of person is a really nice person, doesn't lock their house (doesn't even give her housesitter a house key, because it's out in the middle of nowhere-- safe nowhere, apparently), stocks the fridge full of eggs and cookies and wine and leaves out fancy scented soaps and things from Home Goods in the bathrooms.

There were two animals, an ancient black lab named Jasmine with a big tumor on her shoulder that was the first thing my hand landed on when I reached down to pet her in the dark the first night, and a surly cat. Before, Marie had asked the woman what the cat was named, and the woman said it didn't matter, all it ever answered to was Food. I took this literally and a few times when I was alone with the cat across the room I tried to call it over to me: "Food! Hey, Food! Come here, Food!" It didn't even look at me and then I realized she didn't mean Food, she meant food. As in, a plate of it. Whatever. Turns out, it's actually named Callie. I prefer Food.

I slept in this woman's bed. So weird. She lives alone so there was just this single indendation down the middle from her sleeping there over however many years. Marie took the guest room that I rejected outright due to the strange tribal bird sculpture on the dresser. She's so good to me!

There was a big creek out back, down the hill. There were birches and ferns but there were still big patches of snow in the shadows where the sun hadn't hit. I didn't realize this and we set out on a walk with Jasmine one morning, Marie in her Keens and me in just flip flops. Have you ever sunk your bare feet into snow? You should maybe do it once just to see how it feels. It will probably make you feel dumb like it made me feel dumb. I hung back on the banks while Marie teeter-tottered across fallen tree bridges and pointed out all the eddys and holes. Jasmine ran off into the woods, disappeared and reappeared right as we were heading back to the house, threw herself down in a big unmelted pile of snow and tossed her old self back and forth. My mom's old dog Buster used to do that on the beach when she was in college, only it was always something dead and not snow that he rolled around in. I prefer snow. I bet Jasmine will live to be 100.

of montreal (and massachusetts and vermont)

Photos now, stories soon.

for the record

Montreal only got better after the previously-alluded-to incident.

(I'm home now-- in Decatur-- but just thought I should clear that up. Photos coming soon.)

montreal, so far

Two words: Mongolian barbeque.
Two more words: Never again.

things to acquire upon my return home: a bike, upper-body strength

Yesterday I rode a bicycle for what I think was the first time in eight years. I could be wrong and some other bicylcing experience may have transpired since then, but I don't remember it. On my first refresher lap around Marie's yard my brain suddenly went blank and I forgot how to brake and I plowed into her neighbor's fence and cracked one of the slats. It was a small, unpainted, kind of dinky fence anyway, and I was able to pop the cracked board back in place, like setting a bone, so it's doubtful they'll notice. It's not like when I did basically the same thing when I was eight, only with the tail-light of my mom's mini-van, the evidence of which was shuttled around Chattanooga for the next two years.

Today I went kayaking for what was definitely the first time ever. Marie and one of her fellow Zoar raft guides, Julie, took me down part of the river they work on all summer. The weather has been incredible this whole trip, today included, but the water was a whole new kind of cold. I was wearing a wet suit and a dry top and a skirt and booties and all sorts of neoprene and whatnot, but it was still the most intense cold feeling I have ever experienced, like brain freeze from ice cream but all over my whole body, not just at my brain stem or what have you. And pressing my tongue against the roof of my mouth did not help. I know because I tried.

In the river, when you tip over and come out of your boat, real kayakers don't call it "tipping over and coming out of your boat," they call it "swimming." I was doing okay for most of the trip, didn't come close to "swimming" even once, until about halfway through. One minute, Julie and I were deeply engrossed in a conversation about panda bears. The next minute, I'm suddenly tangled in a bunch of overhanging vines and brush and branches on the shoreline, my boat being dragged across some shallow rocks and then dragged out from under me by the current. Marie and Julie were both shouting directions at me but it was pretty hopeless. My brain went blank again, just like right before I whacked into the fence last night. I was fine-- ironically, it was shallow enough to stand in the water where I "swam," and hardly deep enough to actually "swim"-- and was reunited with my boat a few yards downstream.

And by "reunited" I mean I clung on to the back of Julie's boat as she paddled me down to where Marie was blocking my boat from floating further away, and then I crawled out of the water onto some dry reeds as Marie dragged my boat on shore and bailed it out for me-- with a sponge-- as Julie paddled against the current. On the plus side of all this, I got some sun today, so at least I look like less of a total weakling.

Tonight we went to a coffee shop in Shelburne Falls, home of Bill Cosby, where we did not see Bill Cosby but did see a guitar-and-banjo duo perform. The banjo half was a woman in her 50s who kept making dreamy allusions to the 1960s and who played a song about the time she was abducted by aliens and who could not tune her own banjo, which was strange because the photo of her on the flyers for the performance, which featured her posing with a banjo, was at least thirty years old, so she's had a long while to learn. I feel it's likely that these three things are related.

Tomorrow: 6 hours in the car, then Montreal!

arrivals & departures

Yesterday I realized that every time I've been on an airplane in the past year has been for "business," though the topic has never arisen with my airplane seatmates because I either sat next to my "business associates" or had been blessed with untalkative sleepy people who didn't care. For the record, in terms of my airplane seatmate preference, the latter ranks only just behind the former. I do not like talking to new people on planes. I would really prefer to look out the window, or look at SkyMall, or read one of the fifteen old unread issues of The New Yorker stuffed in my purse. Or pick my nose. Or throw up.

This holds especially true because, as I also realized yesterday, I will probably be asked by airplane seatmates if I'm "a student" or "in school" until I am obviously withered and gray. Of course, this was not a problem while I was actually in school, though explaining Oglethorpe ("Oglewha?") did get a little old. I thought I shed that burnden once I graduated, but no. Now I have to explain Oglethorpe AND Paste, apparently. Or at least so far. Maybe one day I will luck out and be stuck with someone like the guy on my very second plane ride ever, who actually grew up in the neighborhood around the school. Only the Paste equivalent, so maybe a subscriber from day one. Though then I'd probably get an earful about the redesign, too.

On my third flight yesterday (apparently extensive layovers are the price you pay for cheap tickets these days, in addition to, you know, the actual price) I sat next to an older guy who told me all about the massive layoffs at his company and how he had to fire over 100 people last week. He told me I should have a back-up plan in case I came to work one day and my keycard didn't work anymore. I told him that wouldn't happen at my office and he told me about his back-up plan, which involves retreating for six months to the cabin his brother owns on 18 acres of land in Florida. "It's his third home, actually," he said. I said something about retreating to my bedroom at my parents' house-- which is untrue, as I'd probably just go shack up with Joe, but jeez, nothing I was gonna say about my backup plan would ever sound that impressive. I think if you have a backup plan that sounds better than your actual current plan, you should reasses your current situation.

My current situation involves a really runny nose, a total lack of tissues in Marie's bedroom (she is the most runny-nosed person I know, this baffles me) and a strange cat on Marie's bed that I think just burped. Meanwhile, downtown Northampton awaits. Reassment: Time to go exploring, I think.

69 bridge road, here I come

Today I'm flying up to visit Marie in Massachusetts for a few days. She has a pretty great street address these days. Last time I went up, she ran psychological tests on me and we visited Louisa May Alcott's house and Walden Pond and I saw the Decemberists for the first time. Time before that, I found Gucci sunglasses in the middle of a field and we weathered a small blizzard in her Hampshire dorm room and weathered St. Patrick's Day in a Boston hostel-- and that pre-dates my use of Flickr, so there's no photo references. On the docket for this trip: house-sitting, Montreal and maybe/maybe not/probably not rafting.

When we were little we used to orchestrate all kinds of elaborately crafted plans, usually involving building something out of limbs in one of our back yards or walking all the way from her house to the Bijou downtown or convincing our parents to let us go to Atlanta and/or Nashville for concerts (and then convincing them to drive us). All that's really changed now is the geographic scope, the cost and the fact that we don't have to ask our parents' permission.

Folks, this is what cousins are for.

this could be the year for the real thing

Constantines & Feist - "Islands In The Stream"

Cannot. Stop. Listening. To this.

adieu, adorn

Adorn has now joined the ranks of Harp, Blueprint, No Depression, House & Garden and the eleventy-bajillion other magazines to fold in recent months. (Via here and here).

Each time this happens, I really do feel sad. No Depression going under was the worst, though probably just because it was my dad's favorite magazine and I had to deliver him the bad news. It's a very similar feeling to the one I've experienced the times I've found out about the death of someone who I went to school with but didn't know well. (That might sound harsh, or maybe just really over dramatic, but dammit, I work at a magazine.) And with Adorn, it's like the times few times I had really conflicted feelings about that dead person, didn't fully dislike them but obviously not enough to want them, you know, dead. In my experience with Adorn, its projects were really cute, its emphasis on recycling and reusing materials commendable, its unabashed hipness in the largely-frumpy craft world welcome, but the writing so atrocious as to eventually deter me from picking up the magazine at all. Lots of exclamation points. Lots of cutesy fluff. And lots of that in curlicue fonts, to make matters worse.

One day, perhaps there shall be a magazine for folks who are genuinely interested in things like recovering second-hand ottomans in their grandpa's old sweaters but don't want to be pandered to like victims of DIY crochet hook lobotomies. Still, RIP Adorn, goofy punctuation and all!! You will be missed!!!

avocadomg

I spent the weekend holed up in my apartment, at various points draped across various pieces of furniture in various stages of dishevelment and distress. I was Writing. I was Writing unlike I had Written since this time last year. I didn't think I could still do it, and perhaps I could not have without the assistance of what is perhaps the most delicious thing I have ever assembled with my own two hands.

- Take two slices of sourdough bread
- On one slice, pile up some turkey lunch meat and top with some swiss cheese
- Put both slices in your toaster oven, or under your broiler, or whatever, until they're toasty and melty
- Take a ripe avocado, cut it in half, scoop out all the guts from one half
- Spread avocado guts on meatless/cheeseless slice of toasty bread
- Spread a little mayonnaise and mustard on the meaty/cheesy slice of bread
- Assemble the two slices, ingredient-sides facing
- Slice into two halves, preferably triangular
- EAT IT

I want to be eating this every second of every minute of every day of my life. It's really bumming me out that I brought ravioli for lunch.

see? I don't hate everything this week

I would like to express my appreciation for grad schools who are willing to pay my boyfriend large amounts of money to learn how to write (even better) poetry from them.

falsetto

Rob Sheffield reviews Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago in the new issue of Rolling Stone, categorizes it as a break-up album, profusely compares Justin Vernon to Neil Young, and in doing so makes me wonder what record he was actually listening to.

Is it because he couldn't fit "mother grizzly of a broken romance" into his Gnarls Barkley review? That's all I can figure.

not happy about this, either

Today's Pollen Count: 2,659.

Over 120 is considered "extremely high." Oh god.

not happy about this

AJC: Man found beaten to death in Decatur; 4 arrested

slightly less bemused samaritan

I finally remembered when I'd called 911 before! It was when I got rear-ended at a red-light on North Druid Hills a year and a half ago, on my way to the Target Greatland to buy my new digital camera, because my old one had suddenly stopped working a few weeks before when I was at the beach with my family. I was sitting a few cars back from the light when all of a sudden I saw a car come rushing up behind me in my rear view mirror. Then my car and the two in front of me all lurched forward a few feet. It was this very old man and his very old wife who was already wearing a neck brace. The woman in front of me was from Tortuga, but really I only assumed that because she had a bumper sticker that read TORTUGA and because she immediately jumped out of her car and pulled out her cell phone and started talking to someone in an unintelligibly rapid dialect and refused to take my insurance information or give me hers. Up until that point in my life I'd been under the impression that Tortuga had existed only in Pirates of the Carribean, much like Orlando Bloom's facial hair.

I traded information with the very old man and his very old wife but could hardly read what they wrote in their very old handwriting. Then everyone drove away but me, and I pulled into the gas station parking lot across the street, parked, called 911, hung up, called my dad, and then proceeded to weep profusely until the cop arrived. He looked like Andy from Twin Peaks so I felt better. He told me there was nothing to worry about as long as I wasn't the one that caused the accident, so he left and I left and kept going to Target, where I am sure the teenage guy who rang me up at the electronics counter was really unsure why I was so upset about buying a digital camera. Back at my apartment, I consoled myself with Macro mode for the rest of the afternoon.

It's very strange that I forgot about this because I used to think about it every time I drove by where it happened, and for a while that was single week day, back in when I was still in school and an intern and driving over to Decatur almost every day. Back in Ye Olden Dayes Of Commute Frome Yonder, you might say. I prefer to call them The Dark Times.

psa

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bemused samaritan

Driving west on I-20 yesterday, the traffic wasn't heavy but there was a misty rain falling on the fine yellow-green layer of pollen that already covered everything. I was thinking about something else, something other than driving, maybe about how I hated the fine yellow-green layer of pollen that already covered everything, when suddenly whatever I was thinking about that wasn't driving was interrupted. "Why is that truck turning around in the middle of the interstate?" I found myself wondering. Then I realized, of course, that truck is not turning around. It's just suddenly swerving to the left and now crashing headfirst into the concrete median, now it's bouncing off the medium and there's stuff flying everywhere, bits of bumper and a hubcap, now it's slamming back into the median and still moving forward, its right side scraping steadily along the wall, orange sparks flying out like fireworks.

I turned into a robot and robot-fumbled for my phone, robot-dialed 911 and robot-thought, "I've never called 911 before!" and then immediately robot-felt that maybe I actually had because it felt too familiar. I robot-told the dispatcher in detail what I saw-- the color of the truck, the color of the sparks-- but not what she needed to know, which is where it actually happened. "Was I supposed to stop?" I robot-asked her. A few nights ago I saw on the news a story about a huge wreck on 85 likely caused by a hit-and-run driver, so suddenly I'm frantic-- I have no idea what I was even thinking about two seconds before I saw the truck swerve, so how do I know it wasn't me? Should I have stopped just to make sure? Was anyone still alive? Was anyone in the truck at all? I'd just seen the dark silhouettes of seat backs in the window when I looked over my shoulder as I drove by the stopped, busted-up vehicle.

"No, it's fine," she said. "We'll just send someone out." At least I think that's what she said. My robot-hands were a little shaky and I kept turning my cell phone volume down instead of up.

I can't remember what it was about, but I still feel like I'd called 911 before. Maybe I'm just confusing it with all those times at Oglethorpe that I called Campus Safety to rat out the basketball players having dance parties on the New Res quad at 3 AM during finals. Ooh. I am That Person.

My shift last night at Wordsmiths involved a lost deaf guy, a friend named Damtia that wouldn't answer his/her phone, a possibly unrelated Relay Call hangup, and a lost French woman that kept using the terms "cab" and "limousine" interchangeably. Word of the evening: Disappointment.

apparently all I do is work and blog about work

But really, my love for the new Wordsmiths location is borderline obscene. I worked my first shift in the new store last night and it has even cured me of my hatred of florescent overhead lights. And let me tell you, that was an intense, burning, scintillating hatred. We've traded a spot in the less-amazing-than-you'd-think old Post Office on Trinity for a less-obviously-amazing spot in the old Sun Trust building on Decatur Square, which means it looks less cool from the outside (considerably less cool, actually-- gross plaster versus amazing beautiful white marble) but it finally feels like a Real Store. And it gets Foot Traffic. And when we leave at night we can smell Brick Store. That's going to be dangerous, I can tell.

If you're local, you should go visit. If you're not local, you can still visit it online and see what you're missing on Flickr.

the paste faunomusicology society presents...

...A Field Guide to Animal Bands! It's finally, finally up on the web. You can visit it right here: pastemagazine.com/fieldguide. I still kind of can't believe we did this. (Also, just because I know I'm not the only one suspiciously eyeing everything for potential April Fool's potential, this is actually for serious.)