Memory Lapse 1.0

I caught a glimpse of a friend of a friend on the bus this evening, someone whom I've met a bunch of times. Several bunches of times, even. I could not remember her name. Could not. And could not, still. I turned away from her, sinking deeper into my earbuds, and scrolled desperately through the friends list of our mutual connection on Facebook. Perhaps I could slyly glean her name and then make breezy contact, as if I had just been too absorbed in the Judge John Hodgman podcast to notice her sooner.

I failed to find her name, and I failed to remember her name, as we bumped along the 22 route for another fifteen minutes. It became way too late on this bus ride, and seemed too many years into our acquaintanceship, simply to engage in a mea culpa chat and ask her to remind me her name. I slunk off at my stop, feeling both embarrassment and an odd neutrality (or was it numbness?) about the coming storm of my senility.

I’m not even joking.

I’m 43, and it’s been happening for the last two years or so. Words, particularly names, are dropping out of my head. A couple years ago, I asked my sisters, both ahead of me in age by some years, “Do you forget words sometimes?” Both answered yes. “How old were you when you started noticing it?” “Oh, around 40.” Hrm.

After ascending the stairs and starting up my computer, I immediately attempted to Google this person to find out her name. I know a lot of things about her: she’s a published writer, and a Buddhist, and runs writing workshops, and I’ve read pieces she’s written. And, thank whatever deity or spark in my neural pathways, I finally remembered her name without the internet having to jog my memory. I just needed about an hour of active and passive recall time.

Aging is so odd, and fascinating, and scary.

The Wrath of Lacan

I'm very excited to present to you my first attempt at an animated sketch. This dialogue is based on a recent conversation among friends over a few glasses of wine and/or whiskey.

Tech brought to you by xtranormal.com. The URL for this video is at http://www.xtranormal.com/watch/6811497



Shouts out to Nan, DJ, Astrid, and April. Thanks Astrid for editorial feedback.

Mundane tasks, you know, like making life insurance claims...

Today's a pretty typical day for me. Mondays are my days off, and so I often do stuff like walk the dog, do the dishes, pay bills, goof around on Facebook, work on the blogs. But I had a task on my list today that was layered with immense pain, even though I ended up executing it with a reasonable level of business-as-if-it's-usualness. As the title of this post alludes to, the task was to start the process of filing the life insurance claims for the policies my mom left my sisters and me. I took this on as one of the many tasks that the three of us are sharing in the shadow of Mom's death. The phone call was surprisingly easy, even though what it symbolized is not. All we need to provide is the death certificate and some rote forms, and then we've got some money to use to pay off Mom's creditors and make the arrangements to sell her mobile home. Hopefully the house won't suck up too much money, so that there'll be some left over for the three of us to use, but the truth is, mobile homes don't sell quickly, and we have to pay space rent on it every month til it sells. The enormity of the meaning of these perfunctory business transactions is that I will never see my mom again, I will never hear her voice again, I will never have to hear her say, "Why don't you ever call me, you rotten kid?" again, whether she's joking or not.

Both/(And)

The undulations of my moods lately aren't severe, just ripples riding sometimes higher in anxiety and sometimes lower in listlesness. There are some good days too, to be sure.

Lots of the money stress, still. Still. Some relationship ennui has come and gone, the way it does with long standing love. Dr. Mario has been brought out of its 1 1/2 year slumber in order to nurse Astrid and I through our collective anxiety about not accomplishing real things. My private practice is finally turning a "profit" if that's what you call around $400 per month. This is truly a good, good thing. But with just one tiny bookkeeping gig in addition to the therapy work, I'm still making just enough to pay rent and that's absolutely it. I've blogged enough about all this before, so I should get on to other things. Like that I'm hungry, and I should probably eat some lunch.

xo
Bree

2009 Wrap

Before taking a bite out of my seventh annual Wrap, why not try some nicely aged appetizers?

2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004, 2003

The Stuff that Occurred in 2009:

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* Block-rockin' New Year's party * Pacific Grove with the family for the ~Eighth Annual Asilomar weekend. * Heart-to-heart with my mom about keeping in touch more. * Got a Facebook message from Bianca. It was kind of amazing. * Astrid and I made a major domestic commitment: after living together for close to two years, we finally combined our bookshelves. * I got laid off of my bookkeeping gig at CompuTrap. * Astrid and I celebrated our 2-year Shack-Up-Iversary.* Looked for jobs. * DJ moved back to San Diego. Suck. * Visited with Callie and Jacket, in town for the Lesbian Health Summit. * Zombie pub crawl for Dax's birthday * Mustache-and-unibrow pub crawl for Carol * Lovely birthday dinner for Minoba. * The Bewilder reading/writing group commenced and still goes strong! * The Proust reading group failed. (Sorry Nan and Amie!) * Continued looking for jobs. * Luxuriate Day commenced! * Minoba and I dated, then broke it off, then started back up, then broke it off again. Sigh. * Turned 37! Had another fantastic birthday at Zeitgeist. * Attended a meditation group for the first time ever! * Bought panniers for my bike. * Saw Magna graduate from med school! * Got a couple small bookkeeping gigs. * Began preparations for my private practice psychotherapy internship! Holy shit!! * Saw a bunch of dear friends at a 20th reunion gathering for my Jewish youth group. Thanks again, Facebook. * Saw my niece Halina and her beau M. get married in one of the sweetest ceremonies ever. * My mom's husband got diagnosed with terminal liver cancer at the beginning of the year and died in July. R.I.P. Phil.* Almost my entire immediate family moved into a condo complex together. * Finished my two-year internship at the LGBTQ clinic. * Started my private practice! * Had another fantastic visit with Callie! * Took a vacation to Washington, D.C. and North Carolina with the astrobarry to visit dear old pals. * Astrid and I made another major domestic commitment: we got a dog! * Continued looking for jobs while the private practice slowly, slowly grew. * Can't I have a year without someone fucking with my bike? My back wheel was stolen outside of Safeway, from under the nose of a security guard. *

The Year's Culture Consumption in Review:

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My foolproof two-pronged rating system, copyright 2003 (with slight modifications), is still in effect, and is to be interpreted as follows:

Prong #1: The Star System, wherein:

Prong #2: Ranked-order:

In each category, I will rank from top to bottom the book or film or show, etc., that I enjoyed most to least. So if there were a list of department stores like this one:

Mervyn's *** (RIP)
Macy's ****
Nordstrom *****
Gottschalk's **½ (RIP)

…I could justify ranking my favorite department store (Mervyn's) above higher-end stores like Macy's or Nordstrom based not on quality of products or on consistency of customer service, but on my own idiosyncratic enjoyment, nostalgia, and satisfaction. Capische? Onward. (Some spoilers ahead!)

* * *

Books: Non-fiction (or: "Three Books about Nonmonogamy Plus Two Others.")

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Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships by Tristan Taormino (2008) **** A much-needed update and complement to 1997's long hailed "poly bible" The Ethical Slut.
Taormino's book adds to the literature on nonmonogamous relationships by surveying more than 100 respondents and giving examples about the many ways in which people do open relationships. Of course, the book contains working definitions of nonmonogamy, polyamory, swinging, intimate networks, etc., but more importantly, this well-organized and thorough volume offers practical wisdom about creating sustainable relationships and "opening up" to the deeply transformative experiences that these relationships present.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers (2000) **** I found the much-hyped, lauded in some quarters/maligned in others, highly self-conscious and conscious of its self-consciousness Eggers memoir to be highly worth reading, appendices and all.

Open: Love, Sex, and Life in an Open Marriage by Jenny Block (2008) ***½ Another great addition to the lit on polyamory. Block's memoir is an easy and lively read chronicling the development of her own uncompromising brand of sexual and romantic expression, from her days as a horny, curious teenager, to her conventional marriage to a man that withstood the transformation to a polyamorous marriage. More radical poly readers might not gel with Block's life choices, like living in upscale suburbia and her relative secrecy on the poly topic around her child, but these are reflections of the author's authentic self, and presented as just one bi-woman's journey toward realizing her relationship potential in her specific social and cultural context.

Staring at the Sun: Overcoming the Terror of Death by Irvin Yalom (2008?) ***½ Yalom's latest book examines the value of confronting death anxiety in order to maximize our time while alive. Full of invaluable insight from a psychotherapist decades into his career and gracefully navigating the path toward his own inevitable death.

The Myth of Monogamy by David P. Barash, PhD, and Judith Eve Lipton, MD. (2001) *** After reading this book, I now know more about sperm competition and copulatory plugs than I'd ever dreamed of knowing (which is still not much, but hell if I don't flaunt that 'copulatory plug' term). This survey of studies across a vast array of species provides ample evidence for evolutionary nonmonogamy in animals as divergent as fruit flies, cliff swallows, and humans. It is readable and informative to the layperson, and for the most part nonsexist in its language, though the geek-humorous prose rambles at times. I was also disappointed by the last chapter of the book, in which the authors go moralistic and negate the importance of multiple partners in humans by declaring that

"…although 'what comes naturally' is…easy to do, this doesn't mean that it is right. The crowning glory of Homo sapiens is its huge brain. This remarkable organ gives people the ability, perhaps unique in the living world, to reflect on their inclinations and decide, if they choose, to act contrary to them."

And while a discussion of free will, choice, and social impact is relevant in the dialogue about nonmonogamy, it seems sorely out of place in a book debunking biological myths about the dominant relationship paradigm.

Books: Fiction

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The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami (1997) ***** Murakami blends a spare writing style with rich magical elements to create this engrossing story about an unemployed man who loses his cat, then his wife, in an entangled series of events that span WWII battles in Mongolia to contemporary Tokyo.

Where I'm Calling From by Raymond Carver (1988) **** A compilation of Carver's deft minimalist prose, concerning (mostly) male protagonists dealing with intimacy issues and alcoholism. Best of the bunch, the title story (1983) and What We Talk about When We Talk about Love (1981), a story touted to me by my awesome junior college fiction writing teacher back in 1991 that I finally got around to reading in 2009. Shouts out to Barbara Loren, wherever you are, and sorry I dallied so.

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season Eight Comics (2007…) *** Normally I don't enter a continuing series in the Wrap until I'm done with it, but "Season Eight" of Buffy, in comic form, started in '07 and just keeps going, so I wanted to mention I've been reading it religiously. The comic series picks up where the Scoobies left off in the TV series, in a world full of slayers and serious Big Baddies. The artwork is top notch, and many of the narrative arcs are compelling and true to the Buffyverse as we know it. It's a fun fantasy ride for fans jonesing for the old days. And the letters section at the end of each issue is worth the $3.00 alone.


Hotel World by Ali Smith (2001) *** A story of the accidental death of a young woman, a hotel chambermaid, told from the perspective of five different women whose lives intersect around this event in transient and profound ways.


Life After God by Douglas Coupland (1994) **½ Short story collection by the Generation X author and visual artist. A few passages offer some transcendence; I was particularly moved by a story in which dead narrators describe their last moments on Earth as The Bomb hits. Overall, I found the writing to be wan and lacking in depth.


Films in the Theater:
(I was too broke this year to see many films out.)
*Edit 1/29: I forgot to include Star Trek in my film reviews. Sticking it in there now.

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Mein Freund Aus Faro (To Faro)(2008) *** Satisfying story about a German woman in her twenties who, through a case of willful mistaken identity, passes as a young Portuguese man. While it's not a technically brilliant film, and the story relies on some well-worn narrative tropes, it's a welcome addition to the growing list of films dealing honestly and sweetly with genderqueer experience. Screened at Frameline 33.

The Wrestler (2008) ***½ This movie prompted a heated discussion among the gang (it was a gathering for DJ's birthday back in January). Some of us loved it and thought it was brilliant (DJ), some of us absolutely hated it (Calisto & Dave). I fell just short of loving it, but I give it a strong recommendation. Mickey Rourke's Golden Globe-winning performance was pitch-perfect, and the emotional resonance of the story felt all too real. I take some points off for a clichéd depiction of the relationship between Rourke's burned out absent father and his bitter daughter (Evan Rachel Wood).

Up (2009) ***½ Sweetly compelling, and often delightfully funny meditation on life, death, and the importance of making intimate connections. As with last year's Wall-E, family-oriented films which offer emotional and/or philosophical sophistication can be satisfying on an archetypal level that can sometimes transcend "adult" live-action narratives. And like Wall-E, this film packs most of its punch in the first 30 minutes before devolving into the kid-pleasing slapsticky schtick.

Star Trek (2009) ***1/2 Somehow the Star Trek origin story with the shiny new cast didn't make it into my Wrap notes! I guess it didn't leave that much of an impression on me. I liked it, for the most part, but I wasn't a fan of the Kirk childhood scenes set to the Beastie Boys. I also thought the future-Spock mind-meld narration about two-thirds the way into the film was completely unnecessary. Otherwise, a compelling story and visually awesome.

Getting Off and Le Tour de Pants at the Dirt and Desire program at Frameline 33 *** Rude queer raunch-fest! A good time was had by all. [Full disclosure: I know the filmmaker and co-stars of Getting Off].

District 9 (2009) *** People raved about this movie, but I was left feeling emotionally flat afterward. Never mind the constant blood shed and brain splattering throughout (I was prepared for that), the so-called rich metaphor for Apartheid and dehumanizing racial stratification was as blaringly obvious as an enormous spacecraft hovering over Johannesburg. I applaud Neill Blomkamp for mounting an engaging and socially relevant action film on a shoestring budget and bringing attention to the dynamics of race and poverty in South Africa. But I would have liked to see the film set in present day, rather than in the Eighties during the Apartheid era: racial stratification and abject poverty still exist. This is a story that could play out in 2009 East Oakland, Hunter's Point, New Orleans, Cleveland, not just in the shantytowns of Jo'burg.

War Games (rerun, 1982) ***1/2 and Red Dawn (year) ** Double-feature revival at the Castro. I'd never seen Red Dawn before, and apart from the fun in seeing the young '80s celeb cast and the cheesetasticness of the plot, it's really just a jingoistic, racist hodgepodge of violence. I still have an abiding love for War Games, but I have to say for the record that Ally Sheedy's character, Jennifer Mack, was written to be such a fucking airhead that it's maddening to hear her lines. She's stuck in as a proxy for explaining terminology to the audience that doesn't even need to be explained, as in:

Jennifer: What are those?
Falkan: Those are launch codes.
Jennifer: What are they for?
Me: Really?

The Muppet Movie (1979, rerun) ***½ Revival at the Clay. Fun stuff, and cameos galore by every '70s celeb you can think of.

Films on DVD/Download:

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Synecdoche, New York (2008) **** Had to watch it two nights in a row. Can't remember the last time I did that. Charlie Kaufman's latest, and his first directorial effort is not a perfect film. It rambles almost uncontrollably (like the non-narrative of life). It's morbidly self-fascinated, like I find myself more often than I publicly admit. Sometimes it's just too weird. But then there is the awesomeness of philosophical accomplishment, of the structure of the universe Kaufman has created. It's such a difficult film, it demands so much of the viewer, and fuck's sake, I want to see more movies like that.

Happy Go Lucky (2008) **** Truly great performances by Sally Hawkins as a bright and cheery school teacher and Eddie Marsan as a mentally unstable driving instructor. Subtly wrought scripting and direction by Mike Leigh, as always.

Adventureland (2009) *** Jesse Eisenberg continues to be adorably nerdy, Kristen Stewart proves she can act convincingly, the supporting cast is fantastic, and Greg Mottola manages to add sophistication to his superbad oeuvre. If the resolution of the film had been less sugary, I'd have bestowed another half star.

Burn After Reading (2008) ***½ I've never felt so disturbed after watching a film that is primarily a comedy. The Cohen Brothers mix genres again (see Fargo; The Big Lebowski) to deliver a tale of espionage carried out by dimwits which results in ever-devolving consequences.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) *** What I enjoyed: the cinematography, Penélope Cruz's fantastically batty performance, and a more nonjudgmental attitude toward nonmonogamous relationships than we typically see in film. There were some flaws, though: the film-length narration detracted from a story that didn't need further clarification, and went some lengths, in Ms. Astrid's astute observation, to erase Cristina's character, portrayed in Scarlett Johannsson's usual bland timbre.

Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple (2006) **** Gripping documentary about the community that cult leader Jim Jones built first in Northern California, then in San Francisco, and finally in Guyana, South America. Vividly rendered, disturbing, and rich with complexity about the lives changed and shattered at Jonestown.

Coraline (2009) *** I enjoyed it but felt like it was derivative of any standard fairly tale you've already heard. I did not, however, read the Neil Gaiman book from which the film was adapted. Here is a guest review by Ms. Astrid, who knows better:

"I think the best thing about the movie was the titular song by They Might Be Giants. Go read the book. It's short; you have no excuses."

Muriel's Wedding (1994, rerun) ***½ Always a pleasure to re-watch the ol' gang from Porpoise Spit.

The Double Life of Véronique (1991) *** I love Krzysztof Kieslowski. See the Three Colors trilogy for some absolutely amazing filmmaking, visual direction, symbolism, and compelling women characters. This film, I feel, sacrifices some depth for accessibility.

High Art (1998, rerun) ***½ Still holding steady as my favorite dyke flick of all time.

Colma: The Musical (2007) *** A lot of fun for an extremely low-budget coming-of-age film. Three kids try to bust out of the (almost literally) dead suburb of Colma, California and confront real after-high school life, homophobic parents, love triangle drama, and their own volatile temperaments.

Once (2007, rerun) *** On second viewing, I'm nixing a half star. I'd still say the movie's success is a triumph for indie film, and the ending is a rare example of cinematic restraint in staying true to the narrative instead of handing us a commercially-friendly happy ending. But I have to say that the film relies too much on the music to pull it along and that it lacks sufficient focus on Markéta Irglová's character.

Bandits (1997) **½ A rock band from a German women's prison bust out and become a national phenomenon on the lam. See a deeper review of this shallow but sometimes enjoyable film here.

Midnight Cowboy (1969, rerun) **** Still a piece of master screenwriting and filmmaking, but it's hard to imagine a film being made today with such a torrent of homophobic portrayals, even as it can be coded in some ways as a gay love story.

Sherry Baby (2006) **½ An emotionally flat script that spoon-feeds us every plot point in the narrative detracts from Maggie Gyllenhaal's strong performance as an ex-con addict trying to rebuild her relationship with her young daughter.

17 Again (2009) **½ The big-box video store reeled me in with their shiny promo poster, and I'm a sucker for body-switch and/or I'm young again! comedies (see the original Freaky Friday from 1976 for the best of the bunch). This one has a lot going against it: Zac Ephron and Matthew Perry look nothing alike; we've seen dozens of better films, both comedy and drama, about living a life of regret, and the writing and acting are, on the whole, as broad as you'd expect. But there were some genuinely amusing moments, particularly when supporting characters Ned and the high school principal (Reno 911!'s Thomas Lennon and Melora Hardin) were involved, playing a pair of Star(Wars)-crossed lovers.

La Confusion des Genres (Confusion of Genders) (2003) **½ A bi man is attracted to everyone in his life and ambivalates equally about all. Genders aren't confused in this film so much as the narrative is. The sex scenes are pretty hot, though.

Not Another Teen Movie (2001) **½ Pretty much what you'd expect from a teen-angst genre parody: broad humor, losing your virginity subplots, and some nostalgic references. A satisfying cameo from Molly Ringwald, but you have to endure the movie til the end to see it.

Team America: World Police (2004, rerun) *** Clever, often truly funny, and intentionally offensive spoof on U.S. militarism in the wake of the so-called "war on terror." I appreciate and understand the South Park guys' artistic choice to skewer everyone, left or right, but my own sensibilities are strained by this equal-opportunity bashing. Just as with any extreme relativism, be it political or cultural, if all sides are played equally, any meaning is effectively negated. I'm sure the filmmakers intended the movie to stand alone as a comedy, in which case any "meaning" read into the work can be rendered irrelevant. But the film would be stronger as a political satire, necessitating the choosing of sides, however ambiguous or ineffable that task. Another ding to the film is that much of the humor is derived from racist stereotyping. Whether "self-aware" or not, it's still too offensive at times for my blood.

Choke (2008) ** The tone of this movie is glib, but it takes itself too seriously as a "finding the self" narrative that never finds itself. And for a movie with a lot of sex, it's about as sexy as cold lunchmeat. Sure to be a disappointment after David Fincher's brilliant adaptation of Chuck Palahaniuk's earlier novel, Fight Club.

Lost Highway (1997) * Sorry, Mr. Lynch. I just didn't get this one. Can anyone out there vouch for it or offer interpretations?

TV Shows and Web Series on DVD/download (and one show in real-time):

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Battlestar Galactica, Reimagined Seasons 1 through 4.5 (2003-2009) ***½ I would have rated it a solid 4 stars overall, except that the series finale was so disappointing that it detracts from the appeal of the entire venture. If you're a fan of the series and don't mind plenty of spoilers, check out this detailed analysis of the finale from a similarly disappointed (and far more serious) fan. I still recommend the series highly. Every episode is visually compelling, full of complexly flawed (and sexy!) characters, and dramatically tense as hell.

Dollhouse Season One (2009) **½; Season Two (2009/2010) ***½ Joss Whedon's now cancelled show is high on concept but often low on execution, and I'm one among many fans who is disappointed but not shocked that the show got axed. The premise is ambitious: a secretive corporation employs/(enslaves?) humans by wiping out their personalities with neurotech, imprinting them with desirable personalities (and sometimes mad skills!) and using them as operatives to service the wealthy. And because this is a Joss Whedon project, there are lots of moments of real complexity, profound moral questions, and compelling explorations into character arcs. The premise, however, quickly outpaced both the writing (often hammy and convoluted) and the acting (primary foul committed by lead player Eliza Dushku as Echo, unconvincing in any incarnation if it didn't involve ass-kicking). Many supporting players, however, were fantastic, with special props to Olivia Williams as Dollhouse Chief Adelle DeWitt, and Enver Gjokaj as Dollhouse active Victor.

Note: The second season of Dollhouse is wrapped and the final episode airs January 29, 2010. I'm cheating by reviewing both seasons in the 2009 Wrap. Oh well.

Mad Men, Season One (2007) ****, Season Two (2008) **** It took me a few episodes to adjust to the tone of Mad Men. The overt sexism and racism, inherent in the show's early '60s upper middle class white milieu, were hard to swallow until I grasped its subversive message. Now that I'm hooked, there's no turning back on one of the slickest and smartest shows on TV. Well, DVD, in my case.

Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog (2008) ***½ Buzz-generating web musical from Team Whedon. A brilliant self-produced diversion from the WGA writers' strike in '08. Worthy of the hype.

Arrested Development Season One (2003, no rating) A lot of people in my life absolutely love this show. After seeing the first season, I'm still a bit ambivalent. There are moments of absolute comic brilliance (Gob's Final Countdown; Buster and Liza Minnelli, Tobias) but the pacing is so fast and the snark factor so high that I think I would have to watch it through twice to appreciate it fully and give it a fair rating.

Tipping the Velvet (2002) *** and Fingersmith (2005) *** British TV serials based on the Sarah Waters books. Really fun, if campy, Victorian era teleplays with lesbionic themes.

The L Word, Season Six (2009) ** The final season was infuriating, where it could have been campy and self-aware. It tried to be both those things, really tried, and flailed. Jenny is killed off in the first episode, and the rest of the short season is an extended flashback to fill us in on the three months before the deed is done: three months of vapid, pointless subplots that made me hate characters I'd actually come to enjoy over the course of the series. Jennifer Beals's Bette was the only saving grace of the season, acting sane in the narrative chaos.

The Playlist
(The old and newish music I acquired this year.)

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Fleetwood Mac - Rumours (1977) ***** Pure pop bliss, even if when the songs are rooted in heartbreak.

The Breeders - Mountain Battles (2008) *** Best Breeders album since Last Splash, though not as monumental. Solid post-punk pop like only the Deal sisters know how.

Buzzcocks - Singles Going Steady (1979/1992) **** The libidinal punk explosion of Pete Shelley and the boys sounds as crisp in the Aughts as it did in the late '70s, and only benefits from its compilation-concentration of catchy tracks.

Robyn Hitchcock - (several albums) ***½ Part singer-songwriter, part post-proto-punk ("post-proto-punk" - did I just coin a really redundant term?), always odd and enigmatic. If you like early Bowie, or Marshall Crenshaw, give Mr. Hitchcock a spin.

This Mortal Coil - It'll End in Tears (1984) ***½ One of those old 4AD acts that I'd always wanted to try out, but had never given a listen to. Moody to the nth. Essential listening for your inner clove-smoking, poetry-writing goth kid.

Radiohead - Hail to the Thief (2003) ***½ Another great return to un-form for the band of many incarnations.

Three Dollar Bill - Getting to Know You (1998) **½ Underground queer pop-punk from Chicago. Check it out if you like homopolitik with your poprock. [Full disclosure: I'm friends with a band member, and got this CD for free. I'm sure the new FCC rules don't apply to this situation, but, you know, just in case. I'm clean.] Post-punk, pop, indie.

Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover (2007) *** A small handful of excellent tracks, but disappointing held next to the band's earlier, magnificent records. Sonic swirl, surreal lyrics bordering on cutesy.

Live Shows
(Again, way too broke for shows this year. Sadness.)

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Mount Vicious at the Hemlock Tavern, SF, May, '09 *** Hooky hard rock that incites political outrage. Beware, you'll be holding up lead singer Conan Neutron for like ten stage dives per show. [Full disclosure: I know Conan.] MV-->

Loop!Station at Café du Nord, SF **** - Lush layers of melodic cello overlaid with equally lush vocals. Thanks to K & M for taking me to the show!

~~Fin~~

Bloggage

I love social networking, and I use it to good effect, I think. But I hate that Facebook and Twitter have pulled some of the life out of my blogging here at Toothpick Labeling. It's true, FB and Twitter are tools that I've used to build and promote my more recent blog, a blog that I can't link here because it's attached to my "real" identity (for those who haven't caught on, "Bree" ain't my real name). In order to keep personal subjects somewhat anonymous, at least to all you readers who don't know me in the flesh, I've sacrificed some serious cross-marketing potential for my other blog by not promoting it here. If you're curious about the contents of said blog (they're of a subjective-popculty-music oriented nature), and would like to know the URL, feel free to drop me a line and introduce yourself, and I'll float it your way (if you're nice!). I'm reachable at bree_zip@yahoo.com.

So I think this entry really is somewhat of a 2010 resolution: I'd like to get back into blogging more at TLab. Reflections on daily life, emotional states, health issues, political gripes, cultural and philosohical obsessions, love life updates, the process of becoming a shrink, vintage anecdotes, and the ilk, have been neglected far too long. I'd like to expand on some of the spontaneous ideas that I jot down so noncommitally in my FB updates, and, by gum, this is the forum for it.

Many of you, I know, are also anxiously awaiting the behemoth entry we've all come to know and love as the Year-End Wrap, and writing here more frequently is part of my master plan to make that project a bit less of a behemoth. Example: for the last couple years, I've been saying to myself, "Well if you just take a few minutes to review a movie right after you see it, you'll save yourself the deadline scramble come January. Sheesh!" To that end, look for more entries of brevity about daily goings on and cultural consumption that will ultimately be linked back to in the next Wrap. This is the concept, anyway. We'll see about the follow-through.

As always, thanks for being out there, y'all.

xo
The one who calls herself Bree.

Dorrie

Wow. Astrid's coming home from her parents' house with a dog! Her name is Dorrie, and she's about eight months old, a mix of some sort, maybe pit and terrier. Cute, right? She reminds me of my dog when I was a kid, Biskit, who was also a black and white terrier mutt. Looks as if Dorrie is a bit smaller, and she's got shorter hair. I'm really excited, more so than I thought I'd be - the whole thing is completely unexpected. I didn't even know Astrid's family had a dog they wanted to give away. Seems Dorrie is a real city pooch: she tries to dig her way out of the huge yards she's been given to roam in the high desert, and longs to be with the two-legged creatures on the inside. It's a good deal: she's already housebroken, spayed, has her shots, and reportedly she's a real sweetheart.I've always been really ambivalent about owning pets, and to stretch the metaphor, about having kids. They seem like similar inconveniences to me, kids obviously the more labor-intensive of the two. I could easily live with never owning a pet, and therefore not having to deal with scooping poop, veterinary and care costs, the smell of dog in my carpet, the extra responsibility, the unknowns of their behavior--from potentially whiny bleats to the eventuality of all my shit getting chewed into pulpy sog. But my biggest fear is having to pay another being attention when I want my time to be my own. I live a somewhat solitary and often self-gratifying life. I'm glued to the internet. I contemplate about adult, human concepts. I write. I play with friends, adult, human kind of play. I come and go as I please. Will my self-indulgent life be altered irrevocably? Will I feel guilty if I ignore the dog while I'm doing my thing? Will I resent her for her neediness and be forever frustrated by her lack of sentience? (A crucial distinction if it were kids we were talking about and not dogs.)
I think there will be some benefits to having a lil pooch. It'll get me out for walks every day, which will no doubt be good for exercise, invigoration, anxiety reduction, and for accessing more outward social energy, and it'll be nice one-on-one-on-dog time for Astrid and I. And I think it'll also get us visiting with our friends-with-dogs more. So I think it might be a good way to get me out of my self-imposed shell more frequently. So I'm excited, if cautiously. I wonder how Dorrie will impact my sense of space and home. I wonder how co-parenting a dog will fit for Astrid and I. And I wonder about my threshold for dog slobber.

I've had a productive couple weeks, attending to a long list of to-dos I'd been avoiding for ages. I applied for deferments, forbearances, and other sorts of formal pleading with my lenders to get my student loan debt dealt with, at least for the time-being. I wrote ad copy for my listing on the Psychology Today website. I went through a huge stack of paperwork, billing statements, and receipts that had been sitting around for months waiting to be processed, paid, recycled, or otherwise dealt with. In fact, I went through about four such stacks. I cleared out from my files any financial records more than seven years old.(Fascinating, the kinds of relics you find when you clear out old files. I happened upon the above bank statement from when I was a member of the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union a decade ago, announcing the local area code change from 408 to 831, devastating to me, a lifelong denizen of the 408 until then.)

Hmm, what else did I manage to do? Ooh, I thoroughly dusted Astrid's bedroom, since she's been sneezy lately, and cleared out a junk drawer to help make more room for her voluminous t-shirt collection. Next major project will be counting up my therapy hours for the BBS, a chore I will continue to dread periodically for the next two or four years.

I have no idea where this sudden spurt of organizational energy has come from. Maybe it's related to eating healthier? It feels really great to get all that shit taken care of though, putting things in order that have been chaotic for months, years. I like paring down the details, and therefore the amount of worrying I do about said details. Makes life a little more peaceful.

Chilling...no really...at home

Astrid and I are having a nice evening at home, but this apartment is so fucking ridiculously cold. It's supposed to get down to 39 degrees tonight, and this drafty old plaster-walled house with old wood framed single pane windows lacks a certain wind-breaking quality that I'd like to rely on in times like these. The heating unit does a good job, if warming up a five-foot semi-circle around it is considered "good." The retention of heat in the living area has greatly improved, though, with the addition of a sheet hanging in the doorway between the dining room and the hallway. But still, too much heat is escaping through these rickety windows. We decided that this weekend, we're going to bubble-wrap them for insulation, as demonstrated here. I'll letcha know how it goes.

Working diligently on the 2008 Wrap, and am in some disbelief that the year is almost over.

Ah, our pizza has arrived. If my extremities can't be warm right now, at least my belly'll be. And on that note, I'll stop subjecting you to this, perhaps my most mundane entry ever.

xo

Procrastination Station

Working on a case presentation for my supervision group, and alternating this with glimpses of Facebook, long tangenting click-sessions on Wikipedia, and the writing of this and future blog entries. This pattern is reminding me of my angst-laden thesis days of the year-passed. Case presentations are way too much like homework assignments, informative to write and report with therapy peers, but such a drudgery to produce, if one is not in the mood, which clearly I am not. Give me shiny distractions, please! I pity the clients of mine who struggle with procrastination and think that I can actually help them.

A good thing came of today, though, which definitely portends breaking through some of the stagnation: I finally marched down to the post office and obtained my P.O. Box, a key step in filing my application for my therapy intern status with the Board of Behavioral Sciences. Many of my former classmates have already gotten their intern numbers, and I haven't even filed yet. What's worse is that the longer I wait, the more my already-clocked therapy hours will cease to count toward my license. I've gotten myself into this, and I'll get m'self out, eventually. I'm not too worried.

Tuesday Evenin' at Home

Astrid and I had tender conversation over fresh rice paper rolls tonight. Now we're buying tickets to travel to the Mojave to visit her family for xmas, my second year with Astrid's folks on the holiday, and my third celebrating it with her. Even though I'm a secular atheist-leaning Jew, I've really come to love celebrating xmas in the desert with Astrid's once-fundamentalist and still conservative parents: not the exorbitant gift-buying, or the huge heaps of sugar, really, but just the being with them, the warm exchanges, the awkward exchanges, all the relating through chit chat, and playing dominoes, and long silences, and the buzz of Astrid's rowdy toddler nephews, and the love.

The Grind

The job search has been kinda depressing. Usually, I'm able to get a bookkeeping gig within a week or two of looking, but it's pretty competative out there right now. Got a very humane rejection email from a nonprofit that got over 200 applications! And this is just for a tiny 10 hour/week gig. So I might have to adjust my rates to get more responses on my résumés.

It looks like I did land a short-term job with a small home-based company starting tomorrow. It's not what I ultimately want, but I'm grateful to have some money potentially coming in during the next couple weeks. I'm actually at the point of not being able to come up with rent if I don't start earning something, so this is a life saver. As much as she'd like, Astrid just can't be my sugar mamma for long. Sigh.

Blahs

Feeling inexplicably morose right now. The first couple weeks after graduation were relaxing and wonderful, and now I'm settling into a bit of a malaise, probably owing mostly to being unemployed and having only shitty bookkeeping work to look forward to as I continue on at the clinic two days a week. I will get a lot out of working at the clinic for another year, but this decision to stay on was a really stupid thing to do in terms of finances. It leaves me with bookkeeping as the only way to make enough money part-time to live on. If I had found a full-time mental health internship, I could have been accumulating clinical hours while getting paid, but I just didn't have my shit together enough, amid the massive chaos of my school tanking, to procure myself a full-time gig. Now I'm kind of stuck having made this committment to be at the clinic for a whole second year. The good thing about it is that I love working with my clients there, and I get excellent supervision, so ultimately it's not all bad. I just wish I could be doing full-time work in my field this year instead of waiting to really start cranking in the hours and getting paid.

The Daily Grind

Hi friends. I haven't been able to blog so much since school started back up. I'd love to regale you with stories of my wacky adventures, but things have been decidedly unwacky lately. This is pretty much the routine:

Mondays - I leave at 8:45am for the clinic, where I've got a 10:00am process group (kinda like group therapy with the other interns), a clinic staff meeting at noon, and see clients in the afternoon. Then I come home and do school work.

Tuesdays - School work until I leave for class at about 2:30pm; the bike-and-BART commute to Alameda takes about 1.25 hours; then I'm in class til 10:00pm; then I arrive home at about 11:15-11:30pm.

Wednesdays - Clinic - 10:00am didactic training; 1:00pm group supervision; individual clients until 6:00pm; facilitate the grief therapy group til 8:00pm; home by about 9:30pm.

Thursdays - School work; personal therapy at noon; more school work; commute; class 4-10pm; commute; home 'round 11:30pm.

Fridays - Leave for 9:00am individual supervision by 7:45am; clients at the clinic from 11:00 to 4:00pm; do paperwork; home by about 5:30pm.

This morning when Astrid woke up for work, she kissed me and said something like, "See you in several days." The thing that's most sucky about my schedule, apart from the hella annoying commute to my new school, is that Mondays and Fridays are the only weekdays I'm actually home for dinner. Astrid and I pretty much just see each other at bedtime Tuesdays through Thursdays. Thankfully, now that we're back to class, the end is actually in sight. Come August, I might have a life again.

Kisses,
Bree

Narcolepsy in the 'Burbs

Finishing up Shabbat with my family down in San Jose. Long into the food coma, a gorgeous meal of early-season matzo ball soup and roasted chicken with lemon and rosemary (the mouth waters again) I'm feeling very sleepy on the couch, while my sisters and Astrid play "Speed Scrabble" at a folding table. Schmend just asked for the official Scrabble Dictionary to justify her play on the word "cig" as in "cigarette," and that shit is in there! The Scrabble Dictionary is totally bogus, dude. Get the OED, I say!

I've been loopy like that all day. It's on account of having stayed up super late last night (nay, this morning) drinking beers for the birthday of the illustrious Dax. It seems that the Triple Rock Brewery in Berkeley serves up some gluten-free beers, and Dax was free to get as schnokered as she pleased. 'Twas pretty fun.

Ah, Speed Scrabble is over - back to the Big City with us.

xo
Bree

Neverending Winter Break

Wouldn't it be nice if Winter break from school were an endless juggle of skiing, trips to the tropics, relaxing by the fire with expensive whiskey in my coffee mug, communing with friends and family in celebration of various festivals of light?

Well, I did have the celebrations of the season-appropriate holidays. But what if I were to tell you that, come Valentine's Day, I will likely still be out of classes? And as for the skiing and romps to Hawaii, it's a bit hard to vacation when you've been waiting for your financial aid check for months.

I'm sorry to be so cheeky, but that's just the mood I'm in. Truly I can't complain about the extra time off I've had, but on a budget, it's looked more like: sleeping in, playing Tetris, watching the remainder of Angel, Season Five, and cleaning the apartment. Woot, I say, woot!

Don't even ask me if I've worked on my thesis. Don't. I'll sock ya.

So, those of you who have been following the story already know that my crappy-ass college is in the midst of what one of my classmates has called a "hot mess." The latest news is that our faculty are threatening to resign as a group in order to force the administration to permit a "teach-out" to another institution, so that we can get on with our studies. The best case would be that our instructors could follow us to another school and we could continue our curriculum and finish sometime this summer. The worst case is pretty grim: the school shuts down and/or we can't secure a teach-out, and we have to drop out, get jobs, and re-apply to other programs, losing our clinical internships as well as most of the credit for classes we've already taken. And god knows what a pain in the ass it'll be to try to extract our loan money from the black hole that is our financial aid office.

So, yeah, thankful for the free time, but I can't say it's been terribly restful. I will report that my spirits are generally up. I feel really happy about my life other than the hot messiness of the school/money situation. Astrid and I celebrated our 1-year Shack-Up-iversary this weekend, by walking to the Mission to eat yummy tapas, then continuing our stroll for drinks at The Uptown, one of my fave dive bars, and then swing dancing at the Metronome in Potrero Hill. All the while, the evening was filled with oh-my-god-I'm-so-in-love-with-you-cooing and chatting and, yes, I am apeshit in love with that girl.

Today has been a truly relaxing day, even though I've been doing errands and such. It started with a much needed catch up breakfast date with my old pal Chauncy, for whom I made yummy sherry-poached eggs in a nest of wilted chard, onions and garlic, as well as fresh strong coffee and a bowl of fresh fruit - kiwis, bananas, and tangellos. Shoulda taken a photo of breakfast for you, sorry. Then I went to drop off dry cleaning (you don't wanna know how long it's been since my wool sweaters were laundered) and then I got my vote on. More on the presidential race later, perhaps. Are you curious who I voted for? Need I remind you that I'm registered Green...so I'm out of the Obama-Clinton tug o' war for the moment. Then I did a wee-bit of grocery shopping (I'm trying these high-fiber multi-grain tortillas that my mom has been raving about) and now I'm actually putting words to blog template. It's a good day, and there's so much more of it, ta boot. It really helps that it's sunny out.

On to the next thing.

xo

Pot Makes You Dumb

Before DJ and I got stoned tonight, we were discussing Modernism vs. Postmodernism, shifting subjectivities, and the narrative of the detective and psychoanalytic theory.

Now we're playing the ghetto down-home country version of "jenga" and talking about 1970's French cartoon "The Barbapapas."

DJ points out that when at first we were talking about the construction of memory in a sociocultural way, now we are bringing it to the personal. Indeed, he says that the social and the personal are constituents of one another.

Words for B.M.

"Game Night" at E-Dawg's tonight. I just got home. It's 4:00 AM - no shitting.

Speaking of "shitting," we played the Parlour Game for hours this evening. The crowd at the party were prone to making pretty much everything about sex or bodily functions. The Parlour Game is simple, and usually I've played it with my family on our annual retreat in Monterey. It's a friendly game in which you sit in a circle of folks and take turns thinking of categories. A category is chosen, a 2-minute timer is set, and everyone brainstorms as many things as they can think of in said category. Let's say the category is "Tom Cruise movies" - we all have 2 minutes to come up with as many of 'em as possible, i.e. Top Gun, Rain Man, Risky Business, The Outsiders, Losin' It, etc. Scoring is similar to the game "Boggle"; you get a point for every unique answer, and answers you share with other players are crossed off your list. Anyway, as I was saying, I usually play this game with my family, so it tends to be a pretty much P.G. affair. This evening at E-Dawg's was a bit different. The first category someone picked was "sex toys" which ended up lasting like forty-five minutes in itself (we didn't time the first few rounds - just went around and around the circle for more answers.) Then when we started writing down answers in timed rounds, we did "Ways to say 'having sex'," "Euphemisms for masturbation," and the crowd pleaser, "Words for having a bowel movement." Favorites for that round were "laying pipe," and "voiding the colon." Um, yeah. When I next play the Parlour Game with the family, I'm gonna be so bored when categories like "Beatles songs" and "household appliances" come up.

I can't believe it's 4:30 AM.

Upside down you turn me

Did anyone out there hear about the incident at Montebello High School that happened last year, in which students (apparently from neighboring districts) took down the school's American flag, flipped it upside down, and hung it below the Mexican flag? If you've heard about it at all, it's likely you gleaned the information from a frothy-mouthed mass email message that's been circulating for a year or more since the incident. That's how I got the info, just today, in my inbox, from a friend of my mom's who insists on including me in all her mass mailings, which include dumb jokes, prayers for our soldiers, mainstream-conservative political diatribes, virus alerts (all hoaxes), "Amber" alerts (actual and unsubstantiated), and god knows what else.

It turns out that the Montebello High incident, the result of last year's national walk-out to protest Congressional immigration reforms, is news that I happen to be interested in, when it's not couched in the right-wing vitriol of a random mass emailing:

"If you choose to remain uninvolved (Ed. note: i.e. if we don't stop those uppity brown kids), do not be amazed when you no longer have a nation to call your own nor anything you have worked for left since it will be 'redistributed' to the activists while you are so peacefully staying out of the 'fray.'"

Yeah, our American Way of Life is truly in danger when high school students march in solidarity to protest U.S. immigration law and (ooh, shivers!) turn a flag upside down (the sight of which, by the way, the mass email in question called "heart-stopping!") I guess they're really sullying that old First Amendment by exercising free speech and freedom of assembly. The argument can be made that school officials must keep kids in class; in fact, the Montebello kids weren't the instigators, because they were on lock-down and unable to participate in the demonstration. But shit, if kids are skipping school once in a while to engage in activism of all things, and they didn't even destroy the flag (an act I have no moral qualm with, though I could see someone getting busted for damaging school property,) what is the bloody fucking harm?



So, despite my interest in this particular subject, I decided to attempt to cut off any further junk mailings by my mom's friend. I hit "reply" on the message, and immediately fell into a writer's block when considering how to word such a request in a polite manner. I really wanted to say, "Pardon me, but I have no interest in this racist alarmist crapola and would you kindly remove me from your list?" Hey, at least that statement was half-polite. I found this site, which might be useful to folks finding themselves in a similar dilemma:

ThanksNo.Com

It's a pretty straightforward form letter available for linking to anyone you need to school in mass mail etiquette. After getting inspiration from Thanks No, I opted for my own wording, which I hope was innocuous enough:

I'm emailing you because I'd like to request that you take me off your "group email" list. While I'm always happy to receive personal, one-on-one emails from friends, or invitations to specific events, I'd rather not receive mass-forwarded jokes, political messages, etc.

I don't mean to be ungracious or rude. I'm happy that you include me among your nearest and dearest! I just don't like receiving mass-delivered mail.

Thanks a bunch, and take care!

Viva La Raza!
--Bree