you don't have to be rich - just smart!

The IKEA Cycle: Tiny Domestic Dramas

This is the show I'm in. It just opened on Monday, and it will be running through November 9th. Follow the link, have a look, and if you live in or near Seattle, come and see it!

I mean:

a. It's FREE.
b. You need something from IKEA, admit it. You need candles. You need a lamp. Two birds with one stone, compadres.
c. It's good! This is a great cast, working with a great script.
d. You can buy the set.

It's 13 scenes that you can collect like baseball cards. Three a night. Mondays and Wednesdays. There's a dance scene on the couches! Come see the unsuspecting shoppers freak out and wonder what the hell is going on.

This is a review from the Seattle Times.

Here concludes my plug.

what the mammary pain is like

It's like I have tiny gunmen stationed inside my breasts, and every now and then, with no provocation, they fire out into the world.

the superbowl of australia!

Kalloo Kallay! Wooop Wooop Wooop! Boing Boing Boing Boing Boing! Zeee-oooo Zeee-oooo Zeee-oooo! Coooo-WEEE!

G'day, Mates!! It's a ripper of a day at the home of Mr. Hatrabbit!

FAIR DINKUM, MATES.

Dave's Fay-vo-rite Rugby League team, the team he's followed since he was a boy of 6, have made it to the Grand Final!

Go, Wests Tigers!



When Dave was 6 years old, he played on a tiny little rugby league football team. His team had powder blue jerseys. Fair enough, okay, whatever. But one day, they played against a team that had BLACK and ORANGE jerseys. They were Tigers. Dave looked across the field and knew that this was his destiny. He was not meant to be some kind of wispy powder blue pawn. Dave was meant to be a kick-ass, snarly, awesome TIGER.

Dave became a manic little fan of the Balmain Tigers. His parents took him to a sporting goods store to get him a Tigers jersey, but they only had a very large one. His dad floated out the idea that they order one in his size and come back for it, but the small Tiger was having none of it, so they bought him this enormous jersey that fit him like a dress. Dave wore that Tigers dress with pride.

Two years before, the then Balmain Tigers had won the Grand Final. 1969. That's the last time the Tigers took the Final. They went to the Grand Final in 1989 and 1990, but they lost both times.

The Tigers have almost always been the underdogs. Dave loves them because even when they're losing, they play their guts out until the clock runs out. But this year, they're on fire! They've got a new coach, Tim Sheens, who took his old Canberra team to the Grand Finals 4 or 5 times - one of them in 1990, where they beat the Tigers in extra time. And they've got a player called Benji Marshall, a young guy who looks like he's going to shape up into one of the best players the game's ever seen. Dave's been following the Tigers from over here, and the news has just kept getting better and better.



The Hatrabbit has been feeling some bursts of homesickness, and it's a goddamn shame that he can't be in Australia for this historic Tiger time. But we've got cable, and the game's going to be televised over here; and we've got Tivo, so we won't have to watch it in the middle of the night; and we're going to invite some friends over and make some meat pies and watch the game and make a DAY of it.

Sunday, October 2nd. Telstra Stadium. The Wests Tigers vs. The North Queensland Powder Blue Pawns. (Cowboys if you want to be all technical about it.)

Feel you THERE.

the pastry police

Feeling much better today!

Yesterday, I hit a wall after walking into the lobby of a building downtown and then suddenly lurching over to throw up in a big fake potted plant. A man in the lobby gave me a look that said to me, "Noon, and you're drunk already? Don't get on the elevator with me, hobo."



But the hormones seem to be making their descent into comfortable territory, and today I feel like...900,000 bucks! (I don't want to exaggerate, here.) I woke up very excited to find myself not drooling, and got up and did a dance around the living room, and then Dave and I headed out to give a whirl to eating lunch at my favorite restaurant. It was a miracle, I tell you. I was feeling like, I can eat anything! We drove to the restaurant and I was practically singing in anticipation. But then we walked into the restaurant and it was packed with people, all of whom had different foods in front of them, creating a dense, troubling medley of aromas that knocked me offa my cloud.

So we went to the grocery store, and I decided that I wanted to bring home a little variety of pastries. Metropolitan Market has a fine little selection: brioches, different kinds of perfect croissants, tarts, doughnuts, cinnamon rolls. I loaded up my little box and was digging in my purse to get a pen to write the prices on the top, when an old man wheeled up to me.

Old Man (in a low voice, leaning in close): What are you doing?

Me (thinking he's being conspiratorial and fun): Getting some pastries!

Old Man (suspicious): Getting some pastries?

Me: (blink, blink)

Old Man: Getting them or BUYING them?

Me (getting it, and irritated): .........BUYING THEM.

Old Man: Okay, then.

Wow. Wow, old pastry fart. Way to patrol the aisle. I think he thought I was stuffing pastries into my purse, rather than getting a writing implement. For the rest of our stay in the store, every now and then I erupted in one of those whiny baby mocking mutters, "...getting them or buying them...."

Doo dee doo dee DOO dee doo.

Now that I'm more fit and more fiddley, I am ON IT in regards to The Icebox, Part Three. I'm working on it right now. I thank you for your patience!

And thanks for your kind comments and concern about the morning sickness freakshow. Much appreciated.

job opening

Are you psychic? Like, highly psychic? Mind-bogglingly, super-specifically psychic? And also, are you presciently psychic? Do you know what’s coming down the pike an hour or two from now?

Can you cook?

Can you live on no dollars a month?

Can you also do magic?




If you answered yes to ALL of the above questions, then I have a job for you, and you can start right now.

I am in desperate need of a psychic personal chef/magician. Pregnancy has turned me into an ultra-finicky, super-volatile-of-tastebud wreck.

Yes, more pregnancy food talk. Yes, yes. I’ve spent the better part of both yesterday and today on a shameful, Britney-Spears-inspired pregnancy diet of chocolate milk and puffy Cheetos.

Here’s what I need: I need this magical “employee” to constantly divine what is going to be palatable to my confused tongue, and I need this “employee” to get it ready for me before I need it. I also need the “employee” to be able too – and this is key – MAKE THE FOOD BE ABLE TO TURN ON A DIME AND CHANGE FORM IN FRONT OF ME SPONTANEOUSLY WHENEVER NECESSARY.

The cooks at the restaurant we went to for breakfast this morning, they did not have this skill. I ordered oatmeal, as it seemed like the safest, kindest item on the menu. It arrived looking kind. The first taste or two were kind. I looked away for a moment, and when I looked back, the oatmeal had changed. But this is the thing. It did not change FORM. It didn’t change from oatmeal to something else. It changed from benevolent oatmeal to malevolent oatmeal.

See, that’s not what I’m looking for. I’m looking for a situation in which, if I have some oatmeal in front of me that’s gotten off to a good start, and I look away and my mouth changes, and then I look back, I won’t see bad oatmeal there. I’ll see a bowl of strawberries and cream! Or pasta with garbanzo beans! Or whatever else the altruistic psychic chef magician has divined that I will need.

In the morning, I’ll wake up, and A.P.C.M. will have read my mind in my sleep. A.P.C.M. will be standing there by my bed with – who knew?- a Belgian waffle with peaches! I will eat a little of it, and when the mechanisms of my mouth begin to wobble, I will suddenly be eating – just what I needed!- a cheddar and jalapeno scone. This will continue all day long, and these combinations of food will provide my body with every nutrient it could possibly need, pre-empting the necessity to take my enormous dogsgusting Russian-roulette-game-of-potential-nausea-inducing PRENATAL VITAMIN.

I seek you, Dream Weaver. Come to me now.

in place of the other

Um.

Came back from Orcas Island tonight, after going to my ex-boyfriend's wedding. Wrote a long, long entry about it. It was a retrospective and a big benediction. It took me almost two hours to write it. Eight Kleenexes.

And Blogger ate it. It disappeared.

It was not meant to be.

Be at peace with it, Tina. Be at peace. Be at peace.

And congratulations to the newlyweds. Two beautiful souls, totally meant to be together.

I had fears about the wedding, none of which came to pass. It was a sweet and magical night.

I guess I'm not supposed to say more.

bean update, or really, plum update

Loyal, charming reader Eve has requested a baby update. Just for her I will provide one!

As far as I know, all is well with the little senator. The doctor says that I'm doing very well -- even told me, "You take very good care of yourself!" to which I was like, really? -- but it'll be a month or so before we can listen in on the little heartbeat and find out more about What Goes On with the wee messiah.

I haven't posted about it because I am in a very tedious state of constant hunger and queasiness, burping and gagging all over the shop. It's all, what will I eat next? No, no, no, no, no, maybe, YUCK, lemme try it, YUCK, wait, maybe, allright, here's something. Here's something I can eat. Eat. Eat. Wait. Quease. Repeat. I'm buh-ored with it! The inside of my mind looks like this:

katrinakatrinabushbarbarabushcheese?nokatrinakatrinathecaffertyfilericepudding?mmphloudobbsisanassholemichaelbrownhorsesbagel?yeahthat'lldoitkatrinaihope

Plus, I gotta lose that ob-gyn. It was a trial situation, she's my mom's gynecologist, and she's a nice enough lady, I suppose. But nope. Not a love connection. She has a very thick Chinese accent so I can't always understand what she's saying, she barks orders, and she's kind of dismissive. She's not relaxing. She's out. I can only imagine her barking an order at me during the birth process. I would WIG OUT on her. I would schedule a fistfight for a later date.

This has been the Bean Report.

edit: Do you realize that this is my FIFTH POST TODAY? I've gone berserk.

we ignored bumbershoot, and now we're PAYING for it

No-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o!!!!

We screwed up!! We screwed UP!! Arrrrgh....

Those minstrels in the grass are the HI-LARIOUS New Zealand comedy folk duo

Flight of the Conchords

and they were here in Seattle last weekend during Bumbershoot, our big arts festival.

We didn't know!!

Man, when I was in Australia with Dave, there was a stand-up show on television that we relied on, and Flight of the Conchords was on all the time. They were never one drop less than brilliant. And I don't like musical parody as a form AT. ALL. Their homage to Bowie...NO, sir. It can't have been that hilarious. And yet it was.

It was.

And they were here. When is that going to happen again? Maybe NEVER.

Thank you, Flight of the Conchords, for sneaking in and out of town and giving us a new, different kind of pain to feel these days. It aches. Arrgh.

who's my little buddy?

"And, um...over here I got this big laundry
basket full of water wings? That's like, 15 sets,
so...we're feeling pretty good, we're gonna
get those down there next month."

Who's a little Brownie! Little buddy. What a little helper.

have your katrina donation matched

I stumbled across this, and was glad I did.

Here it be:

Ellen/Warner Brothers Matching Donation

Double it up, bup.

oh my god stop saying BLAME GAME

I'm at the end of my tether with that phrase.

It's not a GAME. The assigning of honest-to-God blame must happen, and heads have to roll instantly to prevent more motherfucking fatally dangerous incompetence.

Ah, fuck, I'm breaking the Dan Spees rule already, and I'm not even talking to anyone in particular. I'm arguing with invisible stupid people in the air.

I've got a GAME we can play. Let's play the game where we drop Barbara Bush into the Superdome circa 5 days ago. Hey, there, Smug Face! Is this working out well for you?

the dan spees rule

The blogs are bubbling over out there, in this time of national jackassery. And some of the opinions out there....let's just say I have to bite down and remind myself of The Dan Spees Rule.

Dan Spees was a fellow I went to college with, a smart cookie if there ever were one.

His rule:

Never argue with stupid people because
a. You won't learn anything
and
b. They never know when you've won.

Sage words. Sage words.

a break for some grape-flavored nostalgia

I'm hitting a momentary wall, I'm saturated with all the Katrina outrage, my eyes are rolling off all the new headlines. The quality of my attention is suffering. So I'm going to take a small break, here.

I'm going back to the 1970's.

I'm going back to the time when all I really hoped for was access to:

grape-flavored things

Grape, grape, A-list flavor of my seven-year-old heart. Grape was bad-ass, deeply delicious, far too cool for school.

There were other cool flavors, I allowed. Strawberry, as long as it stayed out of jam form, was cool. Cherry, though I didn't like it as much as I felt like I was supposed to, had cachet. Lime was like the person in school who was cool enough, universally well-liked, good sense of humor, but had no real danger to them. And lemon, let's face it. Although my mom is known to proclaim, "EVerybody LOVES LEmon," and "LEMon is ELegant!", lemon is Doris Day. Lemon is Renee Zellweger. Lemon wasn't an outcast, but lemon was totally goody-goody.

Grape was like the Fonz.

Grape was a whole lifestyle I was not allowed. We were health-food-eating, public-television-watching, rock-and-roll-eschewing (not by choice here! not by choice!) eggheads.

I lived for the times when I had access to grape flavor, and all the things I had metaphorically associated with grape flavor in my young mind. Allison Pykett was my closest friend, and let me tell you, the Pykett household knew how to make a sandwich. Wonder bread, peanut butter and




Yes.

It was the taste of grape, in popsicle form, jam form, candy form, soda form (just not in actual grape form), but it was also the feeling of grape I was looking for.

I will tell you what had it:



1. ABC. The whole network in the 70's was like a Grape fantasia. Every off-limits show was on ABC. Happy Days (!). Three's Company. Charlie's Angels. And the Grape-est show of them all, Donny and Marie.




My friend Cheryl was so lucky, she had the dolls. Look at how they're dressed, both above and below! They know.



2. White shag carpet. Totally Grape. Look at it.


The only people who had thick white shag carpet were people who ran with the Grape. Stylish, up-to-date people.

3. Oreos.



Yes, they're not grape-flavored, I dig that. I dig it. But they were bad-ass like the Grape, and unavailable to me, like the Grape, and somehow that so-dark-brown-it's-black and white combination harmonized with the purpleness of Grape. I was color-sensitive. In that same vein, all dark brunette performers were Grape.

Joyce de Witt: Grape.
Valerie Bertinelli: Grape.
David Cassidy: Grape.
Jaclyn Smith: Grape, but finishing school Grape.

In contrast:

Mackenzie Philips: Not Grape. Maybe Strawberry.
Shaun Cassidy: Orange. Forgot to talk about orange.
Cheryl Ladd: Orange.
John Ritter: Lime.

Other things which are Grape:

The Mafia (This is just how it is. There was a lot of Mafia in the neighborhood where I grew up. I'm just saying.)
The Daily Show, as it is so very untouchable.
Certain blogs out there are Grape. (Won't say which - wouldn't be fair. Would that mine were! But I've never deluded myself. I'm working a lime, here, maybe a strawberry, at best.)

The 1970's were completely, deeply Grape. The world was so large to me then, and out of reach, and full of rockin' promise. I was going to get bigger, and if I had any say in it, I was going to get Graper.....

a good new way to help

I can't recall now where I stumbled on this, but if you have time and a computer, then you've got to go here and do this:

Katrina Wiki People Finder Volunteer

It's a matter of taking raw data that people have posted to Craig's List and many other places, and entering the information into forms to be put into one giant database.

Do a little, do a lot, but do it. There are plenty of tips to guide you through any confusion.

a small noise

A small sampling of current bullshit:

*Larry King, interviewing a young black woman whose mother, stepfather, two little brothers, little sister and father of her baby are all missing. She's crying, overwhelmed, talking about her situation. Larry King says, "We know how you feel." Do you, Larry? Really? Been there, have you? Fucking robot.

*Laura Bush giving the most disgusting press conference in Lafayette, talking about how well things are going. Smiling, laughing. What a vacant fucking piece of porcelain. Vacant but for a healthy supply of NERVE.

I can't think clearly, I'm just rambling. Endlessly shocked. The above two examples are just small enough for me to get my mind around. The rest beggar my capacities. I just wanted to yell into the air a little.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

king dave the awesome

People of England! or, um. Hold on. Lords and ladies!

I givest unto you your sovereign ruleyman, King Awesome the Awesome!
Good King Wencesdave! His Royal Highness, Lordy Lordy look who's FORTY!

Slow me down, Lord!

40 years ago, a squalling royal infant was born. And now behold in its place a MAN.

In honor of Dave the Ponyhearted, I give you this list:

Some Reasons Why Dave and Not Elvis
and Not Olaf nor Crimson is King
1. Dave is constantly demanding a pony. Sometimes forcefully, sometimes offhandedly. It's all, get me a pony this, are you coming back with a pony that, will you be stopping by the pony store on your way home from rehearsal.
2. Dave ends all phone conversations with the smallest, shyest, most optimistic little "bye" I've ever heard. He turns into a little flower spirit just for that last word.
3. Sorry, Dave. DAVE IS A MAN, a manly man with hair on his chest. He would bite a shark in half if it came to it.
4. Dave is messy, like I am, so we live in a pit, but there's no judgement.
5. Dave is a fabulous cook.
6. When Dave was seven, he beat on a nun with his fists for taking away his rugby cards.
7. Dave can surf! Ba na na nanana na nanana na nanana na nananana......
8. Dave is fearless, and tries shit out like, I'm going to teach myself how to play the violin.
9. Dave hates wearing ties so much it's like nothing I've ever seen. Did a tie kill his family? Because you would think that one did.
10. Dave draws like the rest of us breathe. He carries a little sketchbook everywhere, and draws the counter he's sitting at in the cafe, the dog on the street, little weird gizmo people out of his imagination.
11. Dave is an amazing writer. We take a writing class together once a week and he blows us away every time.
12. Dave can lose something AT THE VERY SAME TIME AS FINDING IT. He can lose something that is grafted to his hand.
13. Dave loves kids. Good thing!
14. Dave smells great. If you ever have the opportunity to smell him, take it. You won't regret it.
15. Dave has been a rabid fan of the Wests Tigers Rugby League team in Sydney, Australia since he was 4 or 5 years old. Since way back when they were the Balmain Tigers. If I ever start a band, I will call it The Balmain Tigers to show my love for him.
16. Same as #1, only substitute surfboards for ponies.

There you are. A sweet sixteen compendium for a kind old doddering man.

Happy Birthday, my shrivelly carved-apple-head husband. You are the greatest, and not Mohammed Ali.

avast, you fucking pedophiles

Everyone who isn't a pedophilic fuckwit, I'm not talking to you*.

But so help me, those of you who somehow have landed at my blog after typing in searches such as:

very hot kid sex
&
kid fuck sex

You need to get some help and get the living fuck away from my blog.

Also, you're not as anonymous as you think, you fucking maroons.

We now return you, blah blah blah.

*by which I don't mean to say that we're not on speaking terms. We're totally on speaking terms.