I'm A Monster

I am bleary-eyed this morning because I spent hours - hours - last night and into this morning watching "Arrested Development" on Hulu. It just - you know when you need something? And you don't know what it is you need? And you think it's wine, and then maybe it's nachos, and then maybe it's a handful of semisweet chocolate chips? And then maybe it's more wine? And then it's a canceled, critically-acclaimed series with that freckle-faced Jason Bateman? And you found it! Your thing that you need! Only now it's 1:47 a.m. and a school night (*morning*) and every episode is 21:45 minutes, but you are committed to getting through at least five before trying to sleep?

Coincidentally, Jason Bateman was interviewed by Terry Gross on "Fresh Air" this Thursday. That, while I doodle a bit in my head about the pure mad magic that is every line reading by Tony Hale, and then if you slid a cup of independently, brewed, Fair Trade coffee into my hand? My liberalgasm would be complete.

Just another apocalypse

A wreath

It's officially The Sad Summer of Death, '80s version: MJ, Farrah, Ed, Billy, Teddy and now Dominick Dunne.

It's worse than that, though. I found this list:

Deaths in the Summer of 2009:

May: Dom DeLuise, Chuck Daly.

June: Ed McMahon, Ed Thomas, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Billy Mays, David Carradine.

July: Karl Malden, Steve McNair, Robert McNamara, Dash Snow, Walter Cronkite, Frank McCourt, Merce Cunningham, Gidget the Chihuahua

August: John Hughes, Les Paul, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, Robert Novak, Don Hewitt, Ted Kennedy, Dominick Dunne.

That's right, they've put Gidget the Chihuahua in the same celebrity category as Walter Cronkite. But what's important here is that you and I never hit the big time at any moment between 1968 and the early 1990s: that's what is keeping us off this list today. That, and we're not TV spokesdogs.

And the other three Riders are?

Robert Zemekis, he of "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" and "Back To The Future" fame, is planning to remake "Yellow Submarine."

That's right, that "Yellow Submarine."

So, let's say this is green-lighted and we are not all nauseated by the concept. Who should be cast? I am thinking Zac Efron for Paul, and the Jonas Brothers for the other three, with Miley Cyrus as Max?

Goddamnit

Barbara Card Atkinson's anagram name is BARBARIAN TOAD CRANKS

Chopsticks for Inner Me

I am pretty certain, even with all of the many, many words at my disposal, that I do not have adequate verbiage for the utter, staggering awesomeness that is light saber chopsticks:

Big smoker

So, my beloved section of California has been on fire for several days now and we are pretty miserable and hiding inside all day and cars and gardens are covered in ash.

You know, I was born here and left and then came back, and the fact that I didn't live here for years is the reason, I assume, it all hits me as so exotic. One small example? The lovely woman next door planted several fruit trees on the alley side of her house, the space between our houses, some fifty or so years ago. I can go to the ugliest, barest part of my yard and pick apples and oranges - daily. Like, every day. Free. Pesticide-free fruit, which is free, and has been dropping from those trees longer than I have been alive. And it just falls from the sky. Dude. Dude.

Live in Massachusetts long enough and that is crazy, right there. Fruit? From the ground? And no black ice - ever? Like, ever?

I don't know that I will ever feel at home here, but in the best way. I see my kids smile politely and continue with what they were saying as I point out the otters and sea lions swim past us, and I understand. It's their landscape. But even when things have been the hardest here, for us, I would marvel at the fields of artichokes near my office, and the windsurfers, and the drumming, pot-smoking grannies. I so hope I don't ever just smile and keep talking. Right now? Four years in? I still laugh out loud, delighted at how utterly nuts it is.

Anyway, the Lockheed fire is not right here, but the smoke has been blowing here and I had to drive past it last week, and see people sleeping in their cars, unable to be home, and waiting to see if they had homes. And then tonight, I saw three heart-achingly gorgeous firefighters grabbing coffee before driving back to their own area many towns away, and it is bothering me that I did not buy them those coffees. I've tried explaining it to my kids: firefighter run in to burning buildings, and make less than I do as a copywriter. That's right, men and women run towards flames and yet are paid less than I am when I am trying to convince you to buy super fuzzy pipe cleaners. This is, again, where one uses a well-placed and highly nuanced, "Dude."

I, too, am using social media to change the world

What a day.

California is on fire again.

Stupid California.

I had a client meeting today. And a migraine. And the trip was from down where I was, to up where they were, maybe 50 miles north, and there was this big raging fire at the middle point, with billowing smoke and people had pulled over to watch helicopters with buckets of water, and then there was me, squinting and coughing and holding in my left eyeball with the palm of my hand and maybe accidentally some swerving when I may or may not have been glancing at the windsurfers.

I had a professional sketch artist (guess who?!) whip up an uncanny representation of my afternoon, because blogs are visual.

Happy Halloween!

There is a local Ross here in town, which is exactly Marshall's or whatever discounty, last-season-clothing-and-weird-lawn ornament-plus-knock-off-picture-frames shop you have in your area. I found terrific, booty-loving jeans there for $16, only after a week they slipped down to squish and enhance where my c-section scar makes my belly fat poof out in what the medical professional seductively refer to as "an apron of fat." And then there are the other fantastic jeans for a mere $20 that fit everywhere except the mild stretch fabric is missing somehow from the upper inner thigh area, leaving me with Implied Adult Diaper Thigh. And the $3 bra that went mad and squeaked very time I inhaled. Or exhaled. It's not that I am cheap. It was only THREE DOLLARS!

Okay, so maybe I am cheap.

The main reasons I shop at the craptasic Ross? A) I am cheap, B) I am broke, and C) the local mall is in the other beach town, so clothing there consists almost entirely of bikinis and resort wear for fourteen-year-olds. And, honestly? I really enjoy wandering the overcrowded aisles, hoping to find a Calphalon saute pan for $5.99 and also maybe stumble across a slightly chipped, hugely obscenely leering, lead-encrusted garden gnome I didn't know I needed.

I went in today looking for yard furniture, as is it August. August. And lo, instead, I found this:

Facebook means never, ever having to make eye contact again.

Maybe I'm Crazy

This article on common modern phobias started me thinking. I'm just as much of a mess as anyone. What phobias and aversions am I working on this summer?

JayKayAightaphpobia: The complete and utter inability to face anything else about "Jon & Kate Plus Eight." Kicked in about three months ago.

Kneephobia: Fear of wearing shorts. This surfaced in 2003 and has yet to abate.

TraderJoeitis: Compulsive ingestion of cheap white wine. Gave up fighting this itch while still in high school.

Rockonimous: Joined RA (Rock Stars Anonymous) when I hit forty and had to admit Step One, which was that I was never going to be discovered and catapulted to stage-and-screen stardom.

Mercury Rising

thinking deep thoughts about
empty bread bags and coffee rings

You know how, when you have weird fever thoughts, you get stuck on one? Mine, at 3 a.m. was waking up wondering, "How much does Iggy Pop weigh?" That was my first clue that maybe something wasn't right with me. I mean, specifically then. We know overall I am on a wobbly ol' braintrack.

I also was wondering if I should wake up someone in my house to let them know I had some port of psychotic break. And then I decided to wait until morning, because if my spouse nudged me awake by announcing that he had been calculating the gross weight of Iggy Pop and also listening to the voices of people debating while they were seated on a gray divan in his mind while I slept next to him? I would go get the big dull bread knife and sit on the couch with my back to the wall.

I woke up considerably less fever-thinking, but I'm still a little off. It wasn't a total loss, though. I calculated that Mr. Pop weighs exactly the equivalent to whatever the weight is of one sweat-soaked all-cotton pocket handkerchief, a gram of coke, one slightly crushed pack of Camels, an antique Zippo lighter, half a large order of fries with Bearnaise sauce, one all-purpose multivitamin and a flat, orange-flavored Fanta.