Hundred Acre Wood characters illustrated by me, aged 5.
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When you’re getting ready, singing and dancing along to Q Lazzarus’s “Goodbye Horses”— AND you have a Bichon Frisé barking somewhere else in the house— it’s hard not to feel just a little Buffalo Bill-ish.
I’VE SEEN MY HOPES AND DREAMS A-LYIN’ ON THE GRRRRROUND
A Simple Guide to Sexy Lighting
Have you ever wondered?
Have you ever wondered, Gee, how do I get the lighting in my room to look more, uh, more, uh—huh. Sexy?
Don’t worry. I’ve got you covered. And, no, the answer, surprisingly, is NOT different-colored lampshades. You don’t need any razzle-dazzle to spice up your plain-ass room! You don’t need gels or filters—GELS? FILTERS? That’s shit you’d use in a fish tank! Your room is not a fish tank.
You know what your room is? Well…It’s a room. You know what your room HAS? Potential. Potential to be a LOVE TANK.
Remember how in Blue Valentine Ryan Goosechild and Michelle Williams go into that cold, retro-futuristic “robot’s vagina” love motel room? Your room can be like that*!
(* But with less heavy-handed metaphorical blue tinting and less arguments and tears. Hopefully. No promises.)
Achieving sexy ambience is simple and you can do it simply by using this simple little simple trick.
1. Got windows in your room? If yes, close them, do not let any light escape into the inside of your room. If no, perfect. You’re good…hermit.
2. Is it completely dark in your room? If no, solve this problem immediately. Perhaps you have a floor lamp, night lights, candles, or those little battery-operated tea lights going on, shedding light for all to see. SHUT. IT. DOWN. Get rid of them. Either throw them out the window, which shouldn’t be an option if you’ve barricaded them like I told you to do so, or shut them off. Flip ‘em off—if you interpret that as giving the finger to your light sources, so be it, but clearly I meant just shut the lights out. In the wise words of Nelly Furtado: Turn Off The Light. Except for one light:
3. There is a light that should never go out: your computer’s…or TV’s…or whatever screen on which you use to watch Netflix things.
4. Ooh, which reminds me: got a Netflix account? If yes, perfect. You’re good. If not, get one. Steal one. Whatever.
5. Great! Now that you’ve hacked into your neighbor’s Netflix account, pick something to watch until your date/lover/Craigslist stranger has arrived at your place. When whatever it is you just watched has ended, keep the screen on the red “You have just finished watching [TITLE OF THING YOU JUST WATCHED]” screen.
The beautiful red glow will make your room, ahem, LOVE TANK, look more sultry and pretty much communicate to your date/lover/neighbor that you’re ready to go Back to Browsing SOME PRIVATE PARTS.**
(**Not the Howard Stern movie.)
Unf! Look at that little red square of light it leaves on your floor. Seductive. Arousing! It’s almost exactly like being on a dance floor lit up by all bunch of crazy colored lights, right?
TRY IT! YOU WON’T REGRET IT!***
*** If you’re in the middle of an intimate practice when Netflix playback times out and the red glow goes away I should not be held accountable for any “lost moods” or “ruined nights.” You should have a back-up. You know? Get some of those battery-operated tea lights. Have some different-colored lampshades on hand. I don’t know. Why is this a thing you should even be caring about? Sexy lighting. Pft.
The vocabulary of eye flirtation, circa 1891.
Closing the left eye slowly, squeezing out a single tear—Try and love me but ultimately disappoint both of us
important question: Assuming that Gable plays the Albert Brooks role, does Spencer Tracy play Bryan Cranston’s character or Ron Perlman’s?
Spence definitely plays Cranston’s character. John Ford throws on his eyepatch and plays a more bad ass version of Ron Perlman’s character, jowls shakin’ about all unruly-like.
I heard about this new, groundbreaking trend in fashion called “color-blocking”—I never even CONSIDERED pairing different colors together before this trend. WOW!
At first I found it a little incomprehensible. Color-block-huh? Is this like that purple Coppertone sunblock from 1998? Fashion does build upon the past, right? I figured it’d be an “I know it when I see it” deal and, boy! did I know it when I saw this woman in a Ralphs grocery store!
This woman is really working those Winnie the Pooh tones and demonstrates a keen understanding of pitting complementary colors like red and cyan against each other ultimately creating an eye-catching harmony of color.
I hope one day I can learn how to color-block!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Woke up from a nap and as I was rubbing my eyes, I thought:
SHIT.
What if every time someone rubbed their eyes their phosphenes looked like the part in Will.I.Am’s “T.H.E. (Hardest Ever)” music video where Will.I.Am is Keir Dullea-ing into J-Lo’s cosmic discotheque vag and Mick Jagger materializes out of star dust & meteors and begins shouting about how he’s ‘hard like geometry and trigonometry’ ?
![thedailywhat:
For Science of the Day: A rare Scaptia (Plinthina) horse fly, which has gone unnamed since being discovered in 1981, shall henceforth be known as Scaptia (Plinthina) beyoncae in honor of world-renowned recording artist Beyoncé.
Why? Researcher Bryan Lessard of CSIRO’s Australian National Insect Collection says he felt the fly’s gold-colored abdomen made it “the all time diva of flies.”
“It was the unique dense golden hairs on the fly’s abdomen that led me to name this fly in honour of the performer Beyoncé,” Lessard said, “as well as giving me the chance to demonstrate the fun side of taxonomy - the naming of species.”
[nzherald / ninemsn.]
If I Were A Beeeeeeeeeeee.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lxpn1yB2oD1qzpwi0o1_500.jpg)
For Science of the Day: A rare Scaptia (Plinthina) horse fly, which has gone unnamed since being discovered in 1981, shall henceforth be known as Scaptia (Plinthina) beyoncae in honor of world-renowned recording artist Beyoncé.
Why? Researcher Bryan Lessard of CSIRO’s Australian National Insect Collection says he felt the fly’s gold-colored abdomen made it “the all time diva of flies.”
“It was the unique dense golden hairs on the fly’s abdomen that led me to name this fly in honour of the performer Beyoncé,” Lessard said, “as well as giving me the chance to demonstrate the fun side of taxonomy - the naming of species.”
If I Were A Beeeeeeeeeeee.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
50 year old David Bowie gets understandably choked up as Scott Walker wishes him a very cool happy birthday back in 1997. Hope 65 year old David Bowie is having just as good a day today!
On the other side of midnight.
Miss New Booty
Okay, I’m not commenting on the official music video, which is imbued with the same infomercial silliness (let’s make a video playlist of music videos that use this infomercial framing format then analyze how, in a sense, it lays the devices bare re: a product being sold in the video and the nature of the song itself being a product) as *Nsync’s “Pop” (remember the part when JT beatboxes? Bnssst chka bnssst-a bnssst) and looks like it was probably fun to shoot, I’m more interested in examining some of the lyrical content and working out some of the images it draws up for me because earlier today I was sitting in the car at the gas station when, seemingly without prompt, I began singing under my breath: “Get it ripe, get it right, get it tight” and that might be an indication that I should spend some time with the song.
Or, perhaps, I must be going through some sort of withdrawal from not living with my roommate anymore; she would blast hip hop songs all the time.
I got home and looked up the lyrics.
“Miss New Booty.” What does this mean? I remember hearing this song when it made its debut and I never really parsed the ontology of these three words. It could be a number of things:
(1) A woman is wearing silicone butt pads/padded panties.
(2) A woman just got an ass implant and she’s showing it off at the club for the first time and Bubba Sparxxx is checking it out.
(3) Bubba could be using the term “booty” as a synonymous noun to denote “new prospect.”
(4) Bubba could be using the term “booty” synecdochally for “sex,” as in: “We stopped midbooty when the pizza* guy knocked on the door”—which is super lascivious and I imagine him transforming into a cartoon wolf in a zoot suit, his tongue rolling out like a red carpet, and pouring tabasco sauce on it wildly—like when you call a businessman “a suit.” It’s weird to be reduced and generalized via synecdoche. Fuck you, synecdoche.
(5) “Miss New Booty” could be the woman’s stripper name. Kind of long, but hey, why not.
Setting. Setting might be able to reveal what is meant by “Miss New Booty.”
»“Hit the players club”
Admittedly, when Bubba said “players club” I thought of just any ol’ casual dance club. But then I realized, “Oh wait, is Bubba at a ‘Gentlemen’s Club’? He says “hit the players club” so I am guessing that Yes, Mhm, He Is. I had forgotten about the term “player.”
My mental image of a ‘gentlemen’s club’ is that of Orlando’s from The Wire so I always imagine Bill Withers’ “Use Me” slinking out of speakers and Shardene wearing her big glasses talking to D’Angelo.
Alright, well, with that established, wait a second:
»“I found you, MISS NEW BOOTY”
How do you FIND somebody at a club? I mean, yeah, you can find/happen upon a friend who got lost in a crowd, but how do you FIND someone who is employed?
⌘ + F: Miss New Booty
Do people say that when they go to Subway and see a Cute Sandwich Artist: “I found you, Sandwich Cutie.”
The implication of a search or hunt is unsettling to me, gives me the impression that Bubba Sparxxx & Co. are always on the prowl (cue: cartoon wolf image again—minus the zoot suit, stalking a Subway).
But perhaps Bubba Sparxxx discovered this woman while at Subway; he saw her applying for a job at Subway, got mad jealous of the idea that she and the Cute Sandwich Artist might get together, and asked her if she’d be down to work at a club he knows about and/or owns (What a creep, Bubba!). So, okay, in that sense, it could be a matter of discovering a new star or something.
»“Get it together and bring it back to me”
O K. Is he saying she doesn’t have her shit quite together in the club, that she is dancing so erratically and now that he has noticed her he wants her to just quit “rockin’ everywhere” and just grind up against him? Or is her implant or silicone butt pad falling apart because, if so, okay, yeah, you may want to get it together, but it’s up to you whether you want to “bring it back to [Bubba].”
»“Girl I don’t need you, but you need me”
Um, I don’t think so. Girl is just doing her thing and then you were hypnotized by her booty and now you’re, like, commanding her to “take it off, let it flop, shake it freely.” It just sounds so fucked up and makes her seem disposable and how does he know she “needs” him? She could be using him, too! Tables are turned, Bubba, ya jerk! (Cue: Bill Withers’ “Use Me”)
»“Quarter to twelve and we just getting in”
This is funny that he feels the need to note the time. He seems somewhat concerned that he and his entourage are “just getting in,” like, if it were up to Bubba, he would have been there already, but no, one of his friends was probably taking too long in the shower.
Probably the Ying Yang twins were taking forever, maybe styling their hair. And Bubba was probably shaking his leg restlessly, pounding on the door like the daughter in A Serious Man and, unlike the uncle who yells back while draining his sebaceous cyst, lowercase letters slip out from under the cracks of the door and spell out “we’ll be out in a minute” in front of Bubba’s face and, with a vexed expression and a tisk, he swipes at the letters until they dissolve, then he storms into the living room and halfheartedly plays some game on Xbox LIVE.
»“Shhhhh, let me whisper in your ear”
I know the Ying Yang Twins have that “Wait (The Whisper Song)” but I am not super in-the-know; is that their thing? Are they forerunners in WhisperRap? Hushtonecore? Who else does this? What would it sound like if Kanye whispered in all of his songs and made that HENHHH noise of which he is so fond? Would that be sexy?
Bray into my ears, Kanye, softly, slowly, hoooold me closer tiny Kanye (imagine a pocket-sized Kanye? Let’s make Kanye action figures or pull-string talking Kanye dolls).
»“Hi there. How are things?”
Take your platitudes somewhere else, Bubba. MAYBE AT SUBWAY, YA CREEP. I mean, do you even care what’s going on in this woman’s life? I don’t think so because you then go on to tell her shit like this:
»“Your chest is just whatever”
Really?
»“You bring your cook book and I’m gonna fix that stuff up”
Uh, what a stupid mixed metaphor. Is her “cook book” her bottom? Is her booty full of recipes? Why would she have a cook book at a strip club? What do you think Bubba Sparxxx would cook? Of all the things to choose from, Bubba, why would you call her butt a “cook book”?
And with that, now I am going to think about this post whenever I hear this song.
* 2K12 Resolution: Quit using the consumption/ordering of pizza as (self) effacing humor. Already fucked this one up on Facebook a few nights ago, but it’s okay, there is time to grow—grow fat from eating so much pizza, that is! [gun shot off stage]
Life Events, for Facebook Timeline
- Made my first Tumblr blog
- Convinced [Tagged Friend] to make a Tumblr blog
- Joined Twitter
- Posted my first tweet
- Had a homoerotic dream about [Tagged Friend]
- Watched a shitty movie the whole way through on Netflix
- Was apparently influential about “Matthew McConaughey” on Klout for a period of time
- Followed a link to a Rage Comic posted by [Tagged Friend] and questioned [Tagged Friend]’s sense of humor
- Hovered cursor over “Like” on photo of [Tagged Friend], but did not click “Like”
- Wrote a blog post, saved it as a draft, forgot about it, remembered it when I wrote about forgetting about it when adding it to Timeline
- Downloaded Words with Friends app, forgot password, made new account, still probably will not play
- Googled all the names of people I knew in elementary school that I could remember
- Deactivated Facebook
- Tripped on raised part of sidewalk, looked around to make sure nobody saw
- Unable to find person to take over apartment lease
- Clogged the toilet at [Tagged Friend]’s house
- Woke myself up with my own laughter
- Caught my reflection in the door of the bus and thought I looked like a baby owl in my ugly brown sweater
- Fitter
- Got a hair cut
- Happier
- Rubbed black sockfeet against the bars of the bed, it sounded like a jacket sleeve brushing against the bars on a jungle gym
- And more productive
- Reactivated Facebook
- Thought about jobs
- Scrolled through jobs on Craigslist
- 1 Fish
- E-mailed a bunch of people on Craigslist, asking them if they will take over my lease, but not in those words
- 2 Fish
- Didn’t want to [do something]
- Red Fish
- Walked past a chola in a wheelchair chasing ducks
- Blue Fish
- Discovered library.nu
- Picked at a double double—at In-N-Out, 4:37 P.M.
- Watched an episode of “Toddlers and Tiaras”
- Wanted to [do something]
- Forgot social security number in dire situation
- Slowly acquired taste for beer
- Downloaded Spotify
- A firefighter handed me my laptop cord and iPhone
- A firefighter yelled at me
- A firefighter kissed me on the cheek and told me I smelled nice
- Compiled a list of true and false Life Events
- Sang along to a bunch of Beyoncé songs
Have only seen Ten and now I’m about ten (heh) minutes into Certified Copy, but it is clear Kiarostami enjoys exploring the mother-son tête-à-tête dynamic.
The way the dueling dialogue between his characters plays out is so exhausting because it feels so true; it’s bickering I’ve witnessed between my nephews and my sister, my cousin and his mother, strangers at hair salons, the grocery store, lobbies in car rental agencies; those “Mom, can I go on the computer?” “No, we’re going to leave right now.” “But you’re on the phone!” “The computer is going to take forever to turn on, it’s not going to be worth it. NO.” “Maaaaaan.” exchanges.
I appreciate Kiarostami’s ability to capture not only the exasperation involved in the banal arguments between impudent little boys who want to point out what they may consider “silly” aspects about their mothers and the mothers who are game to put their pugnacious kid in check, but also the effect it has on the spectator.
In both film’s cases, the spectator identifies with the mother, perhaps because the women in both films are the protagonists, but it seems the spectator is more likely to relate to the irritation on the mother’s behalf because, fuck, you want the kid to shut up.
I wonder how a young boy would respond to these mother-son scenes. Would they view the boy as an avatar and relate more with him or would they squirm out of familiarity and see things from the mother’s POV? Perhaps I’ll test it out on my nephews sometime.
The son in Certified Copy comes across as more playful, it’s having a prying question for each of Mom’s responses just for the hell of it, it’s more of an elbow nudge, “Oh, Mom, I’m just pulling your leg” sort of relationship. In the small amount of time I’ve watched this mother and son, it looks like impudence out of pre-adolescent boredom or like a young boy teasing his mother for her apparent obsession with an author, and perhaps he is employing this method to understand her a bit more because being direct about it might be too mushy for someone who likes to keep his distance by carrying on a conversation hiding behind a handheld game (what the hell is he playing with? Is it a cell phone or—what is that?) and a bushy mane.
Setting plays a large part in how these conversations are received as well. In Ten, the conversation takes place inside the fixed space of a car, which becomes suffocating after several minutes whereas, in Certified Copy, the setting is a more open and breathable restaurant space.
The son in Ten was a lot more harsh. If I recall correctly, he was criticizing his mother’s independence—an independence emphasized by the autonomy present in driving—which is not uncommon in a culture that does not wholeheartedly support women’s freedom. He sided with the male authority of his father, was bitter and combative toward his mother, laying all the blame on her for getting a divorce without considering that his father was also to be held accountable for the split. There may have been a few of those moments when you’re arguing and you experience a delay and really ‘hear yourself’ say something and laugh about it, realizing how dumb it is to be arguing about whatever, but I don’t remember their relationship being jocular.
And maybe that’s what made the ping pong interchange between the mother and son in Certified Copy more tolerable and amusing, because it didn’t play out as an attack.
