So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I really like to complain about non-existent problems on here.

Listening To: Strange Magic by ELO

So I swore to myself on New Year's that this year I actually would write more on here, instead of being a douche and just posting links, videos, and pictures all the time*. And I think I've gotten better, but just when I felt like I was getting back into it, I also decided I was ready to pick the writing project back up and get it proof-ready for the deadline in June.

I can't really live without The Writing. Whether it's stupid writing like I do on here (sorry) or the stuff that I'm really intentional towards, I have to do it. But here's the thing about writing that I realized today: When I work on something that's really important to me, there's this sense of elation and distraction that is really hard to avoid and to deny. I'll write all day and night if you'll let me, and I find myself actually resentful when I have to go to work or follow through on plans..."because it's interrupting my writing," I'll think, as I toss the edge of my Serious Write-tah Sweater over my shoulder in a huff.

I actually had a conversation with Juan Antonio about this around a year ago at my last birthday party, and I never forgot it. Before I thought I was just being neurotic when I would wake up in the morning and immediately ask myself what, about today, matters. But then he told me he did that too, and then, knowing him, I knew I really was neurotic. But it also solidified the feeling I had that I needed to keep asking that question and follow through on what, every day for ten years, had been the answer.

But the problem seems to be that when I do follow through, everything else in my life drops. I don't answer e-mails anymore. I don't return phone calls. My living space becomes a mess ("a creative mess," I once defended to a friend). I don't write blog posts. And I can't do that, either. I mean, NaNoWriMo was fun, but when I finally came up for air I found I had gained about 10 pounds, that a few people were a little annoyed with my lack of social interaction and communication, and that credit card companies don't, in fact, have a clause in their contract that allows for late payments because you're "pursuing your passion".

So I'm shooting for balance. I'm striving for consistency. I'm working towards even flow. I'm going to try to be like that one guy who balances a bunch of plates over his head using broom sticks and his nose and stuff. Only, instead of a guy I'll be a girl...a girl with a sparkling personality, a captivating wit, and a really great rack.

GOALS!



*Just kidding, Taylor. I wouldn't mock you if I didn't like you. Notice how I never link to this guy.

The Jason.

Listening to: Eye of the Tiger by Survivor

Many of you old Amberkateers know how much I adore WCCO reporter and "Good Question" guy, Jason DeRusha. He makes the news worth watching. Besides, you know...the whole news stuff and everything.

And now you can pick up your very own full-spread expose on Jason (by fellow charmer Steve Marsh) in the new February issue of Mpls/St. Paul magazine available on newstands whenever the February issue comes out (that's some crackpot investigating you can do on your own...I'm busy).

I love it when people I know are in magazines and stuff.

Weekend Video Treats: Barbie Q

Titays.

The lovely and vivacious Jen Paulson and I went to this last night, and it was flippin' fantastic. Nadine Dubois is the most entertaining and enchanting emcee I've witnessed to date, and Eric Levold of The Alarmists showed up to sing a tune or two with the house band (sidenote: Jen and I ended up walking behind him when journeying to our cars, and the mechanic enthusiasts out there will be saddened to know that he does not take the time to warm up his vehicle before driving off. That's it. That's all I got, other than he walks really fast when it's cold. Crackerjack reporting at its finest!). My only two complaints was giving the Ned the Magnificent two acts/songs (we get it - you can do cool stuff with chairs and stools. We don't need two loooong songs to figure that out) and that there wasn't more drag (I love me some trannies). Tho' I should say that Barbie Q's performance has forever changed the way I look at harmonicas and thus, life (I'll post a Weekend Video Treat of it so that you, too, may be changed).

As each show is different, I won't tire you with much more of a review, but if you can get tickets (tonight's show is already sold out) do it, and do it with jazz hands.

JAZZ HANDS!

This is why I read a lot of Men's Health and Maxim.

If they did this with every magazine, it would really save me a lot of time.



[Via Jezebel]

Ye Olden Tymes

It gets easier, I think. As you get older, I mean. When I was 21, it took nearly five years to get over my first real heartbreak. 25, two years. Those were great, big, huge blows to both the heart and the whole world order as I saw it. Disastrous, tragic, devastating heartbreaks. But I got over them, and when I did, I remember thinking, "What a great waste of time that was." The recovery, the five stages, the fast-forward (I'm fine, let's start dating!) and then the rewind (Aw shit, I'm still looking for him in an empty room). It's such a waste, I think. I've gotten some great writing out of it, but either the relationship sucked the life out of me or the break-up did. No big win.

And now, I think, it's just easier. I'm not moaning about turning 30, but it does put things into perspective. When I was 21, I had plenty of time to waste in rumination and angst about what went wrong. What about me wasn't enough? Why am I not loveable enough. But that's just mental suicide: It doesn't provide any worthy answers. There is no life to be lived in that headspace.

I'm not sure when it clicked. It could have been two years ago, or two weeks ago. Doing a rolling sit-up during my Pilates class, I reached for my toes, pushed the air out of my lungs, and thought, "There is nothing wrong with me, I just picked the wrong person." I've never really thought that before. So much responsibility for myself when I was younger...I couldn't chuck it, I had to take some, so most of the time I ended up taking all of it. Not now. He was a great guy, he just didn't love me all that much. And life's too short to stick around and wait for your heart to get broken, so I left (there it is, you've got your story).

And now, like the herpes commercial says, I don't want to lose my days. I feel fine. Good. My life goes on. I know how this goes...I can blame myself, wonder what was wrong with me, vow to never really trust that four-letter word again. I can get angry and bitter, vindictive, but it just ends up being so much energy towards someone who had no energy for me. It's so much bullshit.

I ran into an ex-boyfriend about a month ago. We spied each other from across the bar: He flashed his trademark smile at me and I couldn't help smiling back. He came up to talk, then gave this charming speech about how he had to go do this and that and then he was going to come back and "attempt to apologize". Which he did, and I appreciated it ( he was a total dick at times) but it didn't make me regret ending things. There are things I miss about him, and a long time ago those things might have been enough to make me want to take him up on his offer to contact him if "things don't work out" - his prophesy when he asked if I was seeing someone - but I don't really need a Groundhogs Day series of relationships. That's the great thing about getting older, I think..."I've already dated you," you find yourself saying when you run into someone who is eerily similar to your college boyfriend. "I don't need to visit that land again." Experience trumps curiosity.

And it's the same with break-ups, I think. Greg Beherent is right...it's called a break-up because it's broken. After you get the closure, mend the wrongs or slights, you're done. Moved on. So long, nice to know you. I loved you, so what.

Tea and sympathy.

I've started drinking more tea lately. And I feel totally lame about it.

Coffee just seems so much more...I don't know, cool? Harder. More serious. Less touchy-feely. Cops drink coffee (at least the ones on Law & Order do). The old cowboys drank coffee. The journalists who broke Watergate drank coffee. Rahm "Rahmbo" Emanuel drinks coffee, probably.

Translation? EVERYONE COOL DRINKS COFFEE. NO ONE COOL (THAT I KNOW OF) DRINKS TEA.

Even when I lived in England (did you know that I lived in England once?), I chose to drink instant coffee instead of tea. Even in India (oh, I lived there too, by the way) I only drank Chai because it tasted like a latte. But now...I don't know. Something's changed. I mean, coffee's been great...it's been great, you know, and we've had some really great times together. It will always mean a lot to me, those times. Waking up in the morning and drinking it first thing...brewing pot after pot when I was studying or writing...staring down into it on awkward first dates...those were great times. But then I started learning about me, and how coffee is so acidic that your body starts to build fat cells around your organs to protect them. And, well...it just started letting me down in the taste department. Sometimes, I went an entire week without wanting even a cup of it. It's nobody's fault, and we never meant to hurt each other, but the thrill is just...gone.

I turned to tea. I mean, there'll still be the stops at Starbucks - I'm human, and I have needs - and I'm sure that if there's nothing better around to drink I'll break down and brew some coffee, but tea's just gotta be my new thing, man. I'm a little afraid I'll start wearing shawls everywhere or take up the harpsichord, though. What if tea changes me in ways I don't want to be changed? What if, instead of fun, easily identifiable, and mutually enjoyable movie quotes, I start quoting obscure poets during conversations? And then what's next, after tea? Am I going to start scoffing at beer in favor of sparkling water? Give up meat?! Oh my god.

Bye bye!

Weekend Video Treats: THIS JUST MIGHT BE THE BEST VIDEO EVER LINKED ON THIS BLOG.

I am serious. You have to go watch this. If you don't, you will never have the fulfillment that this video brings to your life. And if you do, you will always be touched by the magical, enchanting, breath-taking, crazy-ass, seems-to-have-no-discernible-plot-but-will-totally-make-RenFriends-cream-their-jeans cinematic and musical masterpiece.

WATCH IT!



[via List of the Day]

Rad.

"Thousands began arriving at 8am this morning at the Lincoln Memorial, where later today Barack Obama will appear..." [Via Gawker, image via Getty]

Weekend Video Treats: Props to Propaganda (that was a play on words! DID YOU GET THAT JOKE?!)

Check out these PSA videos on The Way to Happiness website (rumored to be a teen and young adult recruitment campaign for The Church of Scientology). They're remarkably good (esp. the one titled, "Don't Be Promiscious"). In fact, the whole website is remarkably good...offering absolutely no information about what the organization is or what their aim is, all in hopes that your insatiable curiosity will compel you to order their booklets and DVD (and pass them out to your friends!).

It reminds me of most Match.com profiles I used to stumble upon back in my Online Dating Diaries day...I will offer you no substantial information about myself, forcing you to write me a message or take me out on a date to "find out more". Those brilliant fuckers.

Weekend Video Treats: High as F*ck

I've posted this classic by Jon Lajoie on Weekend Video Treats about a billion times, but I'm posting it again because it's Sunday and it's my blog and therefore I can just do whatever the fuck I want, can't I.

Weekend Video Treats: Everyday Normal Crew

Jon Lajoie is back. And he brought his friends with him.

Douchebag Euphoria

There are few things in this world that I am still afraid of...but being stuck in a roomful of these guys just might be the biggest one. Seriously. Where the hell do these guys come from?! It's like they're wayward clones of the Gotti brothers...the ones that didn't come out just right, and were left to wander aimlessy in an Abercrombie & Fitch store until they finally found some "brahs" to go clubbing with.

Gross.

IT'S GOT A UNICORN IN IT!

[via]

I'm creative.

Make yours at Obamicon.me

Because when you think "Inspiration", you think here.

[From List of the Day]

Them's the breaks.

You know the thing I hate the most about break-ups? The whole thing - the crying all the time, the big accomplishment of just getting out of bed, the throwing of shoes at the TV every time some sap scene comes on - doesn't even really start until after the two-week window. That stupid window, where, even though you're crying a lot and you're miserable and you're re-running the last convo a million times to yourself every day, you've still got that hope shred. That little soft piece of blue faded fabric, like the last remenant of a baby blanket. Maybe this isn't it, The End. Maybe he'll come over, or call, or send a singing telegram to tell you that he's sorry, he loves you, misses you so much, he hates this too. Everything that you're thinking and want to say so bad but don't, because it didn't matter before and so it probably won't matter now. Except if he says it.

So you give it two weeks. You get irrationally mad at every text you get because it's, once again, not a text from him (and god help the telemarketer who unwittingly makes your phone ring unexpectedly at night). You stop eating and start working out twice a day because you want to look good when he shows up, but then when people tell you how great you look and how you'll be snatched up again in no time, you smile and thank them but want to cry because who wants to go out with anyone else when the only person you want is him? And you steer away from RomComs on cable because you know you're not ready for them yet but then nothing else is ever on and so you end up watching that goddamn Notebook and it just begins the whole pathetic mess all over again.

And at the end of it, when the two weeks are over, all you've left is the most empty, miserable, sad feeling because you waited. Again. You waited for it to be different, you hoped it would, and now there's nothing left but that sickening certainty that it's not. And you should've known. You should've known, because if it was going to be different, it would have been different from the first conversation. If you were important to him, he would've shown you that a long time ago, instead of waiting to tell you right before you walked out the door. And if he really wanted to be with you, he never would've let you leave in the first place, would've done everything possible to make sure it never even had to come to that.

So slag off, two-week window. I'm closing this motherfucker down.

The song's about doin' it. Just in case you didn't know.

I love, love, loooooove Bon Iver's cover of Outfield's "Your Love". Mostly because I love the original song soooo much, which would usually make me hate a cover, but instead of sucking it, Bon Iver slows it down and hips it up.

The one thing I want the most - for my birthday, for life - is for this song and Mandy Moore's cover of Rihanna's "Umbrella" delivered directly into my iTunes library.

And my birthday is on February 6th, so...you've got some time.

But don't waste it.


[via been thinking, via beautifulordinare, via The Duty, via Yellow Hat, via everybodycares]

I find I'm more exhausted than usual by pretentiousness and arcane ramblings today. Wish I had a special light saber to wipe it all out.

So, instead, I think I'm going to listen to some Electric Light Orchestra (that's ELO to all you coolies) and hole up with some reality TV, maybe some books, and most likely some internet.

See you next Tuesday.

In case you missed it: Gawker's hilario recap of last night's "Gossip Girl"

People have been telling me about the recaps, but I just didn't believe them. I love Gawker, but seriously...61 posts in one day, on average? Hi, I work for a living...'cept for today, of course, which is why I had the chance to catch up and post about it at 12:47pm (thanks, flu/bad sammich/pent-up feelings!).

So here it 'tis. My roommates usually know if I find something funny if they can hear me wheezing hysterically all the way downstairs for about 10 minutes. Thankfully - for them - they were not at home when I read this...

They're not as cool as unicorns, though.

I saw some of these when Slawson, for no apparent reason other than he's friggin' cool, decided to Google Image "Mystic Wolves" on his iPhone while we were sitting around at The Leaning Tower on Friday night. AND SINCE CHELSEA AND KARAH HAVEN'T UPDATED THEIR BLOG IN ABOUT TWO MONTHS, THUS LEAVING A DARK BLACK HOLE IN MY BLOGGING WORLD, I guess I'm going to have to post these for them:

Romance, Part 4

“What song is dis, Ambah?”
I have this kid that I work with: Punk, as I like to call him. After Munchkin got sick - with leukemia, the second biggest heartbreak of my life - I decided to take a break from behavioral therapy. I just felt like I would never be able to love a kid the way I loved him, and at that point, I didn’t even want to try. The Rebound Theory, in all places. Six months later, though, I was back at it. And now, here is Punk. He makes my heart swell every time I look at him: This adorably awkward kid with biggest little personality. Today he borrowed a Jim Croce CD from his grandfather so he could listen to it during his breaks.
“Photographs & Memories. The best song by Jim Croce in the entire history of the universe,” I answer.
“Evah?”
“Ever.”
“Photoguafs and memowees...” he sings along, trying to memorize the words. “All the giffs you gave to meeee...”
I write down data from our session and watch him out of the corner of my eye as he sits in his chair and sways to the music. The way he tries out the words as he stares up at the ceiling, his little tongue sticking out of his mouth in concentration, caused an involuntary smile as I bend over my clipboard. I don’t want him to know that I’m watching, smiling because of him. He gets very sensitive if he thinks people are laughing at him. The lyric, “Morning walks and bedroom talks” soars over the speakers of the portable player. Suddenly, I feel his eyes on me.
“Did you have mowning walks and bedwoom tawks, Ambah?”
I look up at him. He is staring me, and I can tell his question is given in all seriousness. I thought about being slender and seventeen in the summer sunshine, my hair longer that it is now and almost blond, impossibly in love for the first time with Gabe Hillebrand. Literary, artistic, athletic, intense Gabe Hillebrand. He had made a mixed tape for me once, to listen to while I was on a trip to Colorado. “Photographs & Memories” was one of the songs he had included. I had hugged my knees to my chest and wondered how he had known, and wasn’t it fate, that he had included a song I had loved my whole entire life on this mixed tape. I thought about being twenty-two and standing on the corner of a street in a town on the shore of Lake Superior on a bright autumn day, while a parade passed by, all confetti and drum beats. How I had turned my smiling face up to Hansel as he put his arm around me and kissed me, and then pulled me, laughing, across the street to greet two of his friends we had sighted from across the thoroughfare. Of being twenty-five, laying on my stomach next to Lucas and staring out the huge Victorian windows that flanked the head of my bed. We had propped our chins up on our pillows as we stared out at the pine trees and grey summer sky and then over at each other, asking and answering questions we had wondered about each other. Then I thought about how he had smiled at me once as I jumped, laughing, out of the pool of his apartment building and tried to splash him; how he had told me that I was like a little kid sometimes, and that he loved that about me. And I felt that way, when I was with him. That I was small, and didn’t have anything dragging behind me because he loved me, because I loved him.
“Yeah. A long time ago. Once upon a time.”
“A wong time ago?”
“A long time ago.”
“Like when you weh seven?” Punk just turned seven in January.
“Um, maybe a little older than that.”
“Like when you weh twenny?” Twenty is Punk’s “old age”. Every adult activity starts and stops at twenty years old.
“Yeah, twenty. Maybe a few years older than that, yeah.”
“And now you don’ haf dem anymoah?”
“No, sweetie.”
“Do you wike mowning walks and bedwoom tawks?”
I put down my pen and look at him, smiling at the little pink tongue that has once again escaped his mouth.
“Sweetheart, why don’t we talk about something else?”
“Okay. Wet’s wisten to “Bad Bad Lewoy Bwown! ”




Part Five -->

Your wait is over: Concerning The Hills spin-offs, I will now state my opinion(s).

Listening To: Starstruck by Lady GaGa

I quite like that new show, The City. I think it's mostly because Whitney Port seems like she has a brain.

And uses it.

But seriously, Brody Jenner? You're a douche.

Romance, Part 3

That night, I get blitzed-out drunk. “All romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café...”, I think the lines, Joni Mitchell's fake soprano in my head, as I drop down onto the brown leather couch in my friend Chelsea’s living room. I let the conversation flow past me as I stare at the brown beer bottle in my hand, the condensation starting to form a wet gloss, trickling down to my fingers. I can feel myself pulling away from the scene before it really happens, the thoughts in my head causing my face to slacken. Hopefully, hopefully, I’ll come across something smart, something profound, something that I need to know about myself before someone realizes I’m gone and says something to pull me back into the center of things. There is a line from an Ani Difranco song: “And it takes three beers to remember, and five to forget.” Every time I feel like this, I can hear that song in my head. I alternately love and hate that line, both because it’s true. I cannot be fully honest - with anyone, even myself - about how I feel, about anything that pains me, without first plying it free with alcohol. And isn’t that sad. I know you would say it, or at least think it, if I told it to your face.

Dissonance. Is it true. I’ve taken enough psychology courses to know the term and its source, and I remember, when I first learned the definition, thinking that I hoped it would never apply to me. “No one ever really thinks that they’re a bad person...” Tom Ripley says, as he loosens his scarf in grief, right before he uses it to strangle his lover. Tell me that I’m this, and if I cannot agree with you...if I cannot bring myself to admit that it might be true, I will do everything I can, no matter how illogical, to reason and rationalize against it.

It’s the terror of the question. Not the answers I could come up with to answer it. Am I not what I hoped to be, and if I’m not, what can I reason to make myself feel better for it? It causes the anguish. The kind that makes me want to drink heavy and then heave into the grass, because my feeling are too much to take, to keep in. You have named the fear, and it is at its greatest. I think this to myself as I take another pull from the bottle. That maybe I’m not capable of it. Romance. Maybe I’m not anymore, that no matter how I’ve tried, how hard I’ve worked, that it just won’t ever happen, ever again. I don’t have the capacity for it. And maybe I just never will.




Part 4 --->

Weekend Video Treats: I have dream journals of you, FILLED PAGES.

A lot of people don't know that there was a second movie made from the footage of "Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy". This movie, called "Wake Up, Ron Burgundy!" was comprised of extended scenes of original footage and scenes that didn't "mesh" well with the original, theater-released version. Thus, it has almost an entirely different plot, and I have to say it - some of the scenes in this one are more hilarious than both movies put together.

For instance, this scene that I'm about to show you was done almost completely improv. There are few scenes in "Legend" that allude to Champ's feelings about Ron, but this takes it to a whole new level. It's pretty much one of my favorite scenes in the entire history of filmdom.

Skip to 2:35 to get 2 da good stuff:


You can watch the movie in its entirety on YouTube here (I think. I already own the movie...so, you can either come over to my house with popcorn and beer and watch it or take your chances on YouTube. Your choice.)

Weekend Video Treats: Kathy Griffin maybe loses with CNN, but she wins with me.

I saw this on Emily's blog and had to repost it.

I love Kathy Griffin. More and more, I love, love, LOVE her.

Weekend Video Treats: Dramatic Dance Interpretation

A beautiful dance cover of Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it)". Have I told you yet that my favorite workout of all is pretending to be a sassy R&B back-up dancer?

I now have a new goal for the New Year.

Weekend Video Treats: Maybe next time, don't be dumb.

Video of parachute jump off of Foshay Tower, and the idiots who decided to return to the scene of the crime to...brag about said crime.

Weekend Video Treats: A Dramatic Reading of a Break-Up Letter

"You Make Me Touch Your Hands For Stupid Reasons"

Radness Resolutions.

Listening to: Someone Great by LCD Soundsystem

A couple of years ago, I toyed around with the idea of making a list of all the things I wanted to do and see before I turned 30. I also planned to combine this list with all of the things I still wanted and needed to do/see in order to build Certifiable Minneapolis Street Cred (pretend to be a fawning hipster at one of The Walker's pretentious parties, etc). However, since I tend to become overwhelmed if I am not also rewarded for doing things like "Watch Chick Flicks all day on TLC" or "Go to Chipotle with Katy" or "Drink at the bar during happy hour with friends", this list soon became an Oh-yeah-I-was-going-to-do-that piece of misty colored memory.

But then two things happened: Emily posted a similar list on her blog, but she actually starting doing the stuff, so she wins and I lose. Second, this girl's going to be 30 in February. In some cultures, turning 30 means certain death (either you die of disease or they stone you for fear that you'll become one of those annoying people who continually moans about how old they are because they're 30 now)...and I wanna go out with a bang, mofo's. This also works well into the whole New Year's Resolution thing, which means that I am now the most efficient person you know.

The List, in rough draft and in no particular order:

1. Go to a Roller Girls Derby
(check check! Thanks to last Saturday night and Katykins)

2. Visit the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden

3. See a show at the new Guthrie.
Been to the old one. Saw a play starring Megan Follows, who is - ahem - Anne from Anne of Green Gables. I hardly doubt that any other show can top that, unless it's starring Jon Stewart and includes about 15 nude scenes. But I do love the thee-ah-tah, so this one shall be easy to accomplish, I surmise.

4. Go to the Mill City Museum.
And actually go inside it for once.

5. Go to a Minnesota Wild hocky game.
Did you guys know that Valentine's Day is in February? And did you also know that my birthday is in February? Have you also been in the know about how hockey games are great to go to in February? Going to a hockey game would make a great date, I think. What do YOU think?

6. Get rowdy at Gastof's
I have never been. For someone who highly enjoys beer, highly enjoys drinking from a glass boot, and is an excellent polka dancer, some might say that this is a travesty and an injustice. I agree.

7. Zombie Pub Crawl
I'm going this year, and I'm going as a zombie. AND NO WEDDINGS OR NAY-SAYERS ARE GONNA STOP ME THIS TIME.

8. Cheap Date Nite at Bryant Lake Bowl

9. Lili's Burlesque Revue
Bought tickets. Am going.

10. Dinner at Chino Latino
Yes, I've heard that the scene there is super pretentious and the food's not that great, etc. But you know that because you've been there. I haven't. And I can't complain about it to other people without certifiable proof.

11. Breakfast at Hell's Kitchen

12. Bacon night at Triple Rock
Free, all-you-can-eat bacon. FREE. ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT. BACON.

13. Beers at The Happy Gnome and Muddy Pig.
Just have never been. Want to go.

10. A show at the Turf Club.
I've been to almost every other music venue in the Twin Cities, 'cept this one. This is also part of a larger, more-encompassing goal to take in more shows this year.

11. Go on a Summit Brewery tour.

12. Go to the Hollidazzle Parade.
Can you believe that I've lived around the Twin Cities for the better part of my life and have not gone to the Hollidazzle? (to my credit, I had plans to go a few weeks ago but it was too damn cold)

So that's the list. Will be referencing it and posting throughout the year per my progress.

Hold your breath.