Running in the Snow

I'm starting to enjoy it, actually. Plus, I finally watched March of the Penguins last night and realized my winter would be their tropical rainforest. Nothing to complain about at all.

Lifetime Moment

When I blew out the candles on my cake(s?), I didn't -- for the first time in I can't remember how long -- wish for thinness. I wished for happiness. I know it sounds cheesy and chick lit-y, but I'm over self-hate. I just want to love myself as I am right now. It's so much harder than I thought.

Now We Are...Thirty (What?)

Wednesday I thought would be all "Woe is me." Ryan had to work that night, my dad had some doctor-y thing he couldn't get out of, so I planned to have a mellow dinner with my mom and sister. Ryan sent me The Most Amazing Flowers Ever at work, which helped. And then I went to meet Erica and my mom for dinner, and Erica was sitting at a table for...12? I was like, "Why did they put you here?" She explained I'd arrived early for my SURPRISE DINNER! Sneaky Kelly Sue and my mom had gotten together and organized behind my back, those conniving ladies. It was a fantastic convergence of knitting friends, work friends, Pilates friends--all in all, I felt so lucky to know all these amazing people and that they would do something for little old me.

Back at Kelly Sue's, she presented me with a cupcake cake! I clapped. Here's the proof.

My New Favorite Photo

Me, with Applejack, the non-lap dog, on my lap, and Harry, the lap dog, off to the side.

(Applejack belongs to the lovely Kelly Sue.)

Curb Your...

Last night I had a dream that Larry David was my personal trainer. And it wasn't one of those we-went-to-my-house-but-I-lived-inside-my-high-school switches either. He was Larry David, and he was my personal trainer. At one point, he was telling me about how he'd signed some endorsement deal with Adidas, and I was like, "But Larry, you only wear New Balance." His response? "Yeah, but for seven million dollars, I can wear Adidas."

Theories, anyone?

One Hour, One Day, One Month

So one day I'm sweating at Wilco and now I'm freezing my ass off. I've been in Harveyville, Kansas knitting up a storm with a bunch of girls who know this one.

(Note the photo of me looking cheery here.)

My mom I went to Detroit to walk a half-marathon. Lesson learned in the cold? Next time, we run. (It was so cold!)

Ryan: Brownie of the year.

Two totally awesome concerts I've seen in the past week: Broken Social Scene on Halloween night. I usually have a thing against collectives, bands who have more than five members onstage at any time and double drum kits, but I have thrown in the towel. I give in to their charms. Live, they killed me. Seriously.

At the complete other end of the spectrum, my mom and I saw Dolly Parton a few nights ago. Omigod. She's so tiny and cute and all her instruments are covered in rhinestones. I may have to post the pictures of Boris' and my journey to Dollywood.

Disposable Dixie Cup Drinking

I admire the people who come to shows and bring signs. I didn't get a picture, but there was a duo holding a set that read "Rock 'n' Roll" and "Lives." Rad.

We hit Sparky's for some ice cream and headed back home.

(It looks like Erica's eating something in this photo, I know, but she's not. It's just the shadow from my camera.)

What You Once Were Isn't What You Want to be Anymore

They'd blocked off Ninth Street for the show, and on the second floor of one of the buildings, you could barely make out the band before they came outside and onstage. You could also see teeny Tweedy, one of Jeff's sons. During the show, he watched from the windows with his mom, sometimes bobbing his head along.

I started wondering what it must be like to be married to the band. Do you get sick of seeing them night after night? Do you love the band because the person you love is in the band, or do you merely tolerate them? Who could I see over and over and still enjoy?

Wilco, for one.

I Miss The Innocence I've Known

Check it out: Erica got a cute haircut.

We journeyed to Columbia last night for Wilco's street party show to celebrate The Blue Note's anniversary. Despite our shared love of Wilco, this was the first time either of us had seen them. We'll blame that on once living in cities where Wilco shows sold out in a matter of minutes. This show sold out in hours, I think, but tickets were $15 (feel free to reread that)!

We ate dinner at Shakespeare's Pizza (lesson learned: do not try to eat leftover pizza six hours later) and then headed over to the show.

On our way over to the entrance, Jeff Tweedy was on the street, and Erica and I had a moment of totally freaking out. It was awesome. I wish you could have been there.

Children by the Millions/Wait for Brian Wilson (Happy Birthday, Mommy!)

After deciding not to go to Brian Wilson because it was too damn expensive, I managed to score a pair of tickets from work. Ryan and I went a few Thursdays ago, after several days of rain threatened to soak us to the bone at the outdoor venue. During a week that felt like everyone and everything was out to get me, nature, thankfully, cooperated.

I fretted that the evening would be a little too '57 Chevy, if you know what I mean--too many surf songs, not enough good stuff. But Brian delivered. His voice is a little thinner than it used to be, and he relies on backing vocalists more than he'd probably like to admit, but we got to see him sing all of Smile. And, freaking sap that I am, I totally wept when he played "God only knows."

I know I'm no good when it comes to coping in the face of tragedy. I've been thinking about this in the past several days, and as the 11th approaches. I'm sure you've done something--anything--and you're sick of reminders to donate. But in honor of my mom's birthday today, I made a donation to the Humane Society's Disaster Relief Fund. After all, my mom's the one who taught me to care.

In Times of Crisis, I Turn to Mike Mills

I love everything he does, design-wise. I can't wait to see his new movie. There's an interview with him on Salon that I must post:

On some level, I still have this mythology about independent directors -- you know, you have to suffer and starve for your art. But people like you and Spike Jonze and Jonathan Glazer and Michel Gondry are coming out of making TV commercials, getting paid serious money, and then making good movies. It's an exciting shift, but to an old college Marxist like me it's also disturbing. I mean, you guys are corporate whores, right?

I had that same viewpoint. I went to Cooper Union, I was a student of [German conceptual artist] Hans Haacke. I was a punk-rock skater kid, but I was bourgeois. I grew up in Santa Barbara, where my dad was a museum director. I was doing record covers for the Beastie Boys and Sonic Youth, so I was in a commercial environment in some ways. But we all left art school hating art museums and galleries, trying to find some way to work in the public sphere and still be somehow subversive. We thought, well the visual glue of the public sphere is design. If you fuck with that you're doing something powerful. This is 20-year-old thinking, but we believed it.

And then, here comes Spike Jonze. I knew Spike from skateboarding and the Alleged Gallery [a legendary downtown Manhattan art space], and he kind of fucked me up. He could be best friends with Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, bastion of independence, and do whatever frickin' ad he wanted. And he shamelessly self-promoted. And he was doing really good work. So who cares what category he's in, right? Whether he was doing a commercial or not, it was really mind-melting.

I wanted to do film stuff and didn't have any film training, I didn't go to film school. And I wanted to do it with a certain legitimacy. I wanted to do it with a certain level of production values, with a certain mainstream-ness. I didn't want to be ghettoized into independent-land. I wanted to play with the big guys. So that meant I had to use tools that were really expensive.

I have no problem with doing videos; videos are totally artistic and wonderful and great. Doing ads is a whole different story, and I was very uneasy about it. I rationalize it as: It's my film school. The first time I made a Nike ad I had no fucking idea how to shoot a medium shot or a wide shot. I was asking people on the set, and pretending I knew how. I really felt Robin Hood-ish: I was stealing from the man.

Eight years later, I don't feel that way anymore. I'm blue chip. I'm a coveted commercial director, and it all feels like something I talked myself into. I did learn a lot, it did get me where I am. I got to practice making "Thumbsucker" for a number of years. I bought a house. And, you know, I just retired. I came to another one of these things: "What the fuck am I doing? I can't be reading Thoreau and doing an ad for DuPont. It just does not work." So I quit. I don't have a great rationalization for it. I kind of like that I don't have a great rationalization for it, and that I'm going to say it in print.

What this has to do with anything else of importance of late, I have no idea. But I love him for being honest.

Existential Harry

harry art shot
Originally uploaded by bravergirl.

How our tiny happy dog can manage to look so soulful so often is a complete mystery to me. It's as if he's sitting there, thinking, "Life, so full of pain of suffering...oh look, they have filled my water bowl." Or maybe it's more like, "Food, food, food, I want food, too tired to get up, lady bring me food, food, food."

We're going to have to call a pet psychic.

Scratch and Sniff

harry responds to a new animal in kind
Originally uploaded by bravergirl.

Harry wouldn't pose for a picture in the needlepoint jungle. Instead, he did what dogs do. Oh, Harry...

(By the way, the other day, Hippo and Harry were on the couch, and Harry jumped off with Hippo in his little teeth and ran around with him -- not okay.)

Giraffe and Hippo Say Goodbye

giraffe and hippo hang out in the wild
Originally uploaded by bravergirl.

"You will have fun in Boston," promised Hippo.

"But I will miss you so much!" said Giraffe.

"Sometimes, best friends must be separated," explained Hippo.

Giraffe understood.

A Giraffe For Judy

closeup giraffe portrait
Originally uploaded by bravergirl.

I needlepointed this giraffe for Judy's 30th birthday after she tried to steal my beloved needlepoint hippo. The giraffe was sad to leave the wild, but I know Judy will give him a good home.

In Which We Amuse Ourselves By Dressing Our Dog

harry is a supermodel
Originally uploaded by bravergirl.

I know there's something a little too Paris Hilton about putting clothes on your dog, but Harry seems to be quite fond of his little polo shirt. Is he not the most handsome little man?

Ryan has suggested that our son (please don't comment on the weirdness of referring to our dog as our child; he is our child, okay?) needs to get a little corporate logo embroidered on his polo so he can have a shirt like Daddy's.

That is where I draw the line.

That, and a tiny Harry-size Treo.

My Weekend, Briefly

1. Saturday morning, Ryan walked into our downstairs office to find the carpet totally soaked. We then moved all the furniture out so we could pull up the carpet and remove the quickly mildewing pad. Thanks, rain.
2. Sunday morning, I'm half-awake and Harry, out of nowhere, pukes in my hair.
3. Then he hops off the bed to pee on the floor.
4. My computer, after a few months of good behavior, has gone back to doing the crazy screen thing. Which will either cost $700 to fix or may be the frayed power cord or could stop at any moment or, maybe, just maybe, means I need a new machine.
5. Six Feet Under is over.

Olivia Juice

Ninety-nine percent of the time, I get the Other Music updates, and there’s some re-release, and the writer talks about how, yes, this collection of ´70s Ethiopian girl groups is really rare, so rare that their copy was almost stolen by DJ Shadow, but hey! It’s now on CD for the rest of us to enjoy. Every so often, I actually own the item that’s been re-released.

So hurrah for the weirdos Olivia Tremor Control. I didn’t even realize this was out of print since 1999, but then again, I don’t think I’ve listened to this since then either. I’ve been driving around with it in my car, though, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy this album. Like most albums that you listen to repeatedly at any point in your life, when I first put Music from the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle in the CD player, I started singing along. Because I know all the words. Still.

Also recently ready for the world, Orange Juice! This is new, so I don’t have this already, but I do have something called The Very Best of Orange Juice that I bought in London or Edinburgh in 1996 or so, which probably has the same stuff on it. If you don’t have all the originals, go get this. I promise it’s good.

Cheerier Morning News

Despite the loss of Air America (why? why? why?), Sirius has again been rocking my world with the addition of Radio 1. Now geeksmack Anglophiles like myself can listen to the station that brought the world John Peel. Life is good.

I should mention that all weekend was some sort of Ibiza fest, yet I could not turn off the crappy Ibiza anthem shows. Because I love British people that much. (Okay, and also because "Music Sounds Better With You" is not a bad song. Stop laughing.)

Also, it is blowing my mind that I am listening to the same radio station as, say, Gail, yet we're seperated by an ocean. No one else seems as amazed as this by me.

If You See the Driver of This Car, Please Kick His Ass

Okay, who the hell gets a vanity plate reading "GRENDEL"? Who? The guy who passed me at the on ramp to 35 this morning, that's who. That pissed me off, but then thinking about it, the "Ooh, look at me and my Middle English public wankfest" just chapped my hide a little bit more, to the point that I felt I really had to pass this guy.

Um, road rage much?

My plan failed, due to 35's construction spots (you'd think I would know where these spots are by now, but no) and the whole time, seething to myself about the outright dorkiness of this, I started thinking, you know, if you're going to get a vanity plate reading "GRENDEL," you're just asking to be fucked with. I'm sorry, you just are. However, when I get "BELLJAR," perhaps people will just leave me alone.