Le maudit Mo D.

Thunderbird Motors

Peel away the years

In the last year here in Austin, there has been an explosion--sometimes literally--of new construction. Prime real estate means old buildings have to go bye-bye, and in many instances, before these buildings meet their fate with the wrecking ball or the dynamite stick, their outer layers are peeled away to reveal for just a few short days what originally was there: mid-20th-century buildings of historical wonder. To think, asshole architects in the 1970s thought it was a good idea to cover up a gorgeous art-deco building with that fugly dark wood shingle crap (think of an ugly decoupaged owl). Down the street from our home, the boring brick facade of an abandoned used car dealership has come down to reveal what it was fifty years ago: Thunderbird Motors, with requisite '50s-looking sign. I will go snap a picture later.

Last night was our art museum gig. I feel physically ill today from staying up until 4am. I'm not a late-night lady, and by the time the 3am gig rolled around, I felt useless. Bob and I couldn't muster the energy to be engaging improv tour guides, so we staggered around the European art section speaking in loud Russian accents saying that the Rubens painting looked like Cousin Meeshaf or some such stuff. Over 10,000 folks showed up to the museum last night and even more interesting than the art was seeing people I knew everywhere! Bob and I bicker a lot when we improvise together. I hope that does not mean that our relationship is doomed. I don't think it is.

All I remember from walking to the car at 4am was that all the people walking towards me were in triplicate and the ground seemed alternately closer and far away than it should have. I left my car in the garage and just picked it up now. I would have been an unsafe driver. Unsafe at any freakin' speed.

I have to go lie down now. I love books.

Shout-out in the NYTimes

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/29/arts/design/29blan.html

Improv for Insomniacs at 3am? That would be me and Bob and our friends. Thank you, Times.

History

1) I stopped eating at McDonald's about nine or so years ago. I had gotten a vanilla shake from the drive-thru while visiting the fam in SD. I didn't finish it, and the remaining shake sat in the car for a few days. When I went to throw it out, I looked inside the cup and noticed that the shake did not melt in any way. It was the exact same thickness as the day I got it. I realized that McDonald's wasn't real food, only space chemicals designed to be addictive, cheap, and make poor people fat. I haven't touched McD's since.

2) I poop three times a day. (I'm sure you wanted to know this) During a recent late-night improv rag-chewing sesh, it was revealed that few of my fellow improvisers defecate daily. Many of them are WEEKLY poopers. I can't imagine that is healthy. I don't know why I poop three times a day. Maybe because I'm incredibly positive about it and they are from poop-negative families who shamed them for having to eliminate solid waste.

3) I began my violent hatred of celery during the summer of 1996 after having my first taste of V-8. I was in Chicago with Mara. Her mom had a few cans of it in the fridge, so we decided to try it. We each took one swig and determined it was the most vile liquid on the planet. I dry-heaved, it was so vile. And it was celery's fault! That shit is nasty! And V-8 has a jillion grams of sodium. Why people drink it and believe it's healthy is beyond me.

4) I started loving guacamole in high school, shortly after moving to Chula Juana. In high school, I ate many bean burritos at Roberto's. I look back on those burritos now and realize I was eating a giant lard pill. No wonder I put on 20 or so pounds between the ages of 14 and 18.

5) Our hairdresser when I was a kid was a gay man named Jeff. Jeff died of AIDS in 1993. When I think about Jeff I was reminded of my weird kid-perspective on homosexuality. He was a funny guy, good with hair, had a cheesy mustache (t'was the '80s). I used to laugh and misbehave whenever he cut my hair. I was a giant pain the butt. I don't know if that was because he was gay or because I was, like, ten and a generally weird kid. But I knew that he was gay and that made him different in a not-so-good way, but that kids didn't like me so much, but that I wasn't gay and that the same people who hated gays also hated me. So I guess that's when I became what we here in our unfortunate modern times call a liberal, when I was ten and getting haircuts from a gay man who ultimately died of AIDS.

6) I would find it too painful to actually do this, but if I were to calculate the dollar value of my Christmas gifts given to me by my multimillionaire grandparents when I was a kid and compare it to what my cousins got, I bet it would come out to somewhere around $350 spent on them for every $1. Conversely, the dollar value of what they spent on me compared to what they spent on my baby bro would be about $50 on me for every $1 on him.

7) One of the things that irked me about being a so-called indie kid during the college years was that you weren't allowed to be openly critical of bands. Everytime a band that bored the shit out of me came to play and I admitted that they did not entertain me or zazz me with their preternatural brilliance, I was treated like a goddamn Benedict Arnold. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, TULLYCRAFT.

8) I believe that because of Sesame Street, my generation is the first to find monsters comforting.

9) I've been following that Harvard chick's alleged plaigiarism thing in the Times. First, why does everyone get their panties in a wad over fiction writers stealing shit when our current government lies and sends our soldiers to their deaths, ad nauseum? I'd like to see more public outrage over the liars in office than outrage over some 19-year-old college student, who had no business getting a half million dollar publishing deal anyway.

10) I remember when NBC aired music videos, circa 1984.

Moose

Tonight over dinner, Bob and I discussed the northerly phenomenon that is The Moose. As in, the lovable, large mammal. In Maine, it seems that there are lots of common interest stories on the news about Moose Cools Off In Family Pool. Indeed, there are numerous photographs out on Les Internets for you to Google with great abandon: Moose In Pool. There you will see what I'm talking about. Ignore the photo that looks like the moose has been decapitated.

Bob told me that when it is moose rutting season, the male moose will charge anything he deems to be trying to interfere with his gettin' it on the with lady moose. Including...an oncoming train. A moose charging a train equals nothing but a stunned train conductor and an adjacent field of moose niblets everywhere. Google did not deliver on this nature vs. machine phenomenon. HEY MOOSE! THE TRAIN ISN'T TRYING TO ASSERT ITS SUPERIOR MASCULINITY ON YOUR WOMAN THERE! GET OUT OF THE WAY! SSPLAAT!

The Geegsters got an offer to play a paid featured gig at a university in the far northern reaches of Michigan, on the little beret part known as the Upper Peninsula. We are psyched to do this. I don't know how the hell we're gonna get there from TEXAS, but we love improv, and we're officially a touring group as of this October. That's right...GGG can be hired to play your school, college, bridge club, or community centre! For a nominal fee, that is. We're wicked awesome.

Everything is northern in my mind. I wish I could wear a coat and see my breath.

I'm low on greed

I give up. I am Canadian.

I called the local independent radio station this morning to offer my pledge of financial support. I gave my name and told them, yes, they are free to say my name on the air and thank me, because I, like others, enjoy hearing my name on the radio. All I told them was my name, credit card number, address, yes you can thank me on the air, and if I have a favorite DJ, which I don't. So they thank me on the air and they say this:

DJ1: We'd like to thank our latest caller, Mo D---.
DJ:2: Mo D---, hey, that sounds Canadian. I bet she's Canadian.
DJ1: We finally got a Canadian caller!
DJ2: It says here she lives in Austin, but we'll still count her as Canadian.
DJ1: I knew a Canadian woman named Mo. I don't think I know this Mo, but it's good that we have Canadians listening to the station...

I give up. I'm Canadian.

The following provinces are looking to increase their populations by 5% over the next five years:
Nova Scotia
Prince Edward Island
Newfoundland
New Brunswick
Manitoba
Saskatchewan

With the impending nuclear crisis, I think we'd be safe in Newfoundland, or any of the Maritimes. We might have to acquire real estate while we're there in August.

Also, I just bitched out a telemarketer who called me "sir." That was very unCanadian of me.

The Return of the Newfie Dude

Newf Researcher is back in Austin. (see June 7, 2005 entry) Call the RCMP. I was superpsyched to see him today--he remembered me, which was cool. And not in a "there's that dorky chick who likes Canada" way. Rawkin! I promise to represent myself as AMERICAN to him. And not CANADIAN. But I do successfully misrepresent myself to real Canadians all the time. I'm good like that. Maybe I can fool Canadian Customs when WWIII starts.

I just watched some online footage of the SimpleMachinesFarewell from '98. I was there. I was in the front row eight years ago of the show I just watched on the internet. WEIRD. I'm weirded out.

I ate spicy pounded chicken with Mexican Mushroom Sauce for lunch and am not hungry for dinner but will probably eat a stick of butter and an oxtail anyway, since I'm such a damn oink.

Warm Weatherette

The sky is growling and micturating. Zeus is taking pictures with an old rusty Poloroid. The sky is black as coal and the snails are slithering along the sidewalks on their way to do their errands. The air is cold and wet and clean and it almost feels like Portland in June or Northampton in May when the physplant guys at Smith hang hundreds of paper lanterns for Illumination. The earth feels calm. The sky is restless. The sound of cars punctures the peace. I am in a city. I yearn for northern perfection, leaves that don't betray you, skies where the hot, merciless sun is set off to the side. I miss seeing daily America's golden age of progress and prosperity's buildings, bragging their age on brass plates. I miss bricks and walking and never worrying about bombs or hate or those in the world intent on destroying it. There is a place so old and smart that even the owls have masters degrees and the birds who return in spring can chirp in three Romance languages.

But here in Texas, in a land that will never own my heart, it pretends to be what I love just for me once in awhile, like tonight. But it is still just a tease. My hair is frizzed in a scary fat halo around my head. The air hangs heavy like a dulling wine. But nature's majesty can playact like this anytime.

The Girl Least Likely To

Today on campus, a nationally-recognized messianic cult was recruiting tender, impressionable coeds via their large red bus. I walked past said bus on my lunch break, and their hippie peacenikness stunk of cult, so I Googled them and sure enough, they are a cult. Any organization that commands you to turn over all your money and cut off contact with your family is a cult. This operation was totally the Movementarians. All the way.

I got to thinking, being an atheist makes you somewhat ironclad against the lure of the cult. Convince me to give them all my money so that I will get to sit on Jesus's lap and be his favorite? Clearly this is a maneuver to weaken me and make it less likely that I'd be able to leave. Cut off contact with my family? So that when I tell them about the forced manual labor, sex slavery, and ritual beatings, they won't call the cops? Some of their long-haired members approached me and I told them to their faces that I don't join cults. And their response was a cheerful, "Great!" HEY, I JUST CALLED YOU A CULT MEMBER! Brainwashed, fer shure.

It is hard to convince me of the promise of a life better than the one I already have, especially if it involves dying before I can get there. I realize they were there to prey on hopeless, lonely, confused college students, and hence their recruiting at UT. Indeed, most cults do target the college population.

If you're reading this: DO NOT JOIN A CULT OR ANY RELIGIOUS GROUP THAT ENCOURAGES YOU TO QUIT SCHOOL TO LIVE ON A COMMUNE IN ANOTHER STATE TO MANUFACTURE SOAP AND MEMORIZE SCRIPTURE AND/OR HAS A CHARISMATIC LEADER THAT CLAIMS TO DIRECTLY SPEAK TO GOD AND/OR JESUS. Because they just want to take your money and force you to not talk to your family.

Personally, I am wary of any group that does not have strict standards for membership. Which is why I am suspicious of the modern-day credit industry.

In other news...

Now that I'm thirty, I feel freer than ever to write cranky, critical letters to corporations about how ass their stores and products are. I recently wrote a note to the corporate headquarters of a chain Tex-Mex fast service restaurant wherein I chided their policy of forcing their low-paying service drones to participate in a call-and-response greeting system that I found demeaning, depressing, and unnerving. Indeed, my skin crawled when the counter staff, mostly college kids and Mexicans for whom English is a second language, half-assed their way through the dreary call-and-response script. It would also have creeped me out if it had been a full-voice, enthusiastic performance, because they're just there to make a living, not to entertain me or give me a false sense of belonging or whatever. Clearly, this is a transaction situation wherein they prepare a burrito and I give them money and then I go away. I don't need any fancy performance bullshit. It made my skin crawl.

But, now that I'm thirty, I'll be sending off cranky letters all the time. When I hit forty, I'll be telephoning managers, and at fifty, demaning to speak to them in person! That is, if chain businesses still have in-the-flesh managerial staff in twenty years.

ROBOTS RULE THE EARTH 2026!

and another thing...

I've been thinking a lot about the bad people who claim they are Christians but like to bash the gay people. By their argument, I have figured out, if homosexuality is a choice, then we are all gay. We are all a bunch of homos, deep down, who, through the guidance of a malevolent god, have shunned our natural desire to pork members of the same sex, and the evil ones who give into those urges are the ones to be castigated. Which explains why Gary Bauer looks like a big ugly fag.

Thermometer, Texas

It came early this year: slow-roasting, sizzling Texas heat. That means that it's time again for my annual Six Months of Bitching About The Weather! We clocked upper 90s today...in mid-April! That means that in a few years, I'll be sweating to death on my birthday in early March! I suspect that in my lifetime I will see heat in Texas render most of the state uninhabitable. Diminishing water supplies coupled with the melting of polar ice caps will probably make my house in Austin beachfront property, if not a rotting home for the fishes. On the bright side, global warming means a more temperate Canada!

If you are in Austin, you should plan to attend the 24-hour opening party of the Blanton Museum on April 29. Between midnight and 3am, myself and other local improvisers will be leading mock tours of the museum! Complete with hilarious misinformation. It's gonna rock. I love saying lofty things about art.

Steely

I finished the Julia book and started on dougPod only to find myself three pages in feeling odd and defensive, rolling the phrase "poseury memes" around in my head like a metal pinball in a Dixie cup. I love Doug unconditionally, but the po-mo first line (you gotta read it) coupled with the fact that this is NOT a return to the Ooptastic legoscape of Microsnerfs has made me feel steely and defensive. Steely Mo. I suppose I have to get further in to find the tender, juicy emotional center of the novel. This is the first fiction I've picked up in a year.

I also have Elinor's new book sitting on the couch, but it's in line, so it will have to wait.

I told Bob that I attended a lecture on rare books today and he asked if they were also juicy and tender. I love Bob.

GGG had a show tonight: HOSPITAL: THE MUSICAL, in which I played a doctor who encourages an intern to drink heavily and a newborn baby emerging from the twathole. It was a weird, short show.

greed without impunity

I started a wedding registry on Amazon and I've been carefully selecting crap for it. Go look at it to see what a greedy fuck I've become in the wake of my impending nuptials. Buy me a springform cake pan...if you dare.

I hate stupid haters

I read a disturbing article in the LA Times today about some mushmouth "Christian" suing her university to get them to remove discriminatory protection status from gay people because she's a "Christian" and institutional prevention of her badmouthing and harrassing homosexuals is, in her mind, "discrimination against Christians." Which is just the most absurd thing I've heard.

These so-called Xian assholes really need to be kicked back to elementary school, so they can whine and snivel to their teacher about how unfair it is that they can't beat up on the gay kid and they can sit and cool off in the principal's office. What an infuriating bunch of fucknuts. People that spend so much time hating on homosexuals clearly want a hard fuck up the ass so badly and are so mired in self-loathing that they've got to go all Gestapo on the rest of the world and pick on someone with better taste in clothing and movies. What ever happened to "He's Got The Whole World In HIs Hands?"

I really have no tolerance for anyone who professes to believe that being gay is a choice, because anyone who has ever spoken to a gay person knows that isn't true. Ever notice that lilt in gay men's speech patterns? Do you think gay boys practice that in their bedrooms? No! There's something biological there at work. I spent four glorious years around a pack of dykes, and I'm testifying with my hand on the works of Ingersoll here, THEY'RE NOT CHOOSING IT. And if they are, so what? These assholes are choosing to be hateful.

My advice to the Holy Haters: get a hobby, look in the mirror, quit being an asshole. And don't come around me, ever, unless you want my gay-loving boot up your dick-craving ass.

Capisce?

Lo-Fi: A Decade of Love

Today on the bus, the girl sitting next to me whipped out a tube of Carmex. I swore off Carmex years ago--that shit has crack in it. Never a more addictive camphor product has ever been on the free market, available for sale to children. The odor of the Carmex whipped me back to those heady camphorlicious days of high school and college, when my moist lips were still trying to work out the ins outs and overs of life.

I've also been fondly relistening to my old Lou B. cds. I love Lou. He probably doesn't remember driving me home from the Folk Implosion show in Northampton in the summer of 1997, but that's okay, I do. That was more his wife's doing. It's hard to believe that Lou and all these bedroom recordings have been part of my life for 11 years now, but they have. It's strange--most of the music I bought back then, I still like. I'm glad it's worked out that way.

Bob dislikes the aural aesthetic of lo-fi, but that's what I love about it. It sounds antique, and it reminds me of the antique buildings and the position of the sun in my gorgeous coming-of-age playground, Northampton. I like the rustic, homemade, raw, honest, and therefore beautiful-ness of it. It's okay if you don't. Just don't start harshing on it.

I don't think I have it anymore, but I remember mail-ordering the issue of Option magazine with Liz Phair and Lou on the cover, and they had a two-person interview about the LO-FI EXPLOSION. It's funny that my Marantz flash recorder, my tiny all-techno recorder, sounds so much cleaner and crisper that the rotty distance of the early '90s four-track recorder.

"Batmobile" makes me think of the Baldwin House punchbowl, Masonic Street, the icky carpet at Bay State, and sucking down Omar's coffee at Sylvester's. "Calix Jauntarah" reminds me of my narrow wood-paneled basement room. Who needs a time machine when I've got the collected works of Sentridoh???

cavalcade of corporate cookies

Now that I'm thirty, I find myself making business deals with local chain hotels on a regular basis. It's one of the perks of being a grown-up, I guess. Hotels just want your business, especially when you're planning both a comedy fest AND a wedding. Oh, crap, I said the W word! They're gonna raise the price 200%, oh deary me!

I've been taking lunch meetings with the sales manager of the D-tree and she has been bogging me down, gloriously, with their signature chocolate chip cookies. Their Hilton-managed schtick is this: they hand you a warm chocolate chip cookie upon check-in. It's a psychological device marketing dreamed up to trip your home/mom/comfort trigger in your brain. So unless you grew up in a crackhouse orphanage situation or with a chocolate allergy, the cookie is supposed to Madeleine you back to your blissful childhood memories.

And what dense fuckers these cookies are! The cookies have their own website, which says something to the effect of "these m-fing cookies are a dense 3 oz!" They are tall and heavy, like me. And they are packed with choc chips, oatmeal, and a tree nut that would make Schrader blow up like a cheap party balloon! So no cookie for you, Dave. Sorry, man. I'll find you a less lethal cookie when you're here.

As I am bringing the hotel $1000 dollars or more worth of business, I have had no fewer than 18 cookies bequeathed to me, most of which have been consumed by people with MLS degrees. I feel bad everytime the nice saleslady orders the kitchen staff to bring me a tin of cookies, but this psychological fuck-with gesture probably only costs them $2 wholesale and they in turn get 50 or so rooms sold to my guests and festies. Marketing wonks, take heed!

I brought one home for Bob tonight, because reader, I LOVES ME SOME BOB. All of Bob, actually. Action Pillow!

Congressional District

Something funny I said yesterday:

Upon seeing a young woman emerge from an over-the-top canonically 1980s low-to-the-ground sportscar, Bob suggested I take a look at her bum area. Indeed, she was wearing tight white pants that demanded that I say the following.

"Her ass looks as if it has been gerrymandered into two distinct congressional districts."

Each cheek was individually wrapped. We later caught youths posing for cameraphone pictures in front of the sportscar.

Be Nice To Me

That is an above note to myself. That I should be nice to me. I had a good rehearsal today with the Geegsters, but I panicked and called down a scene I was in early on, and then I was made to go back and continue it, and it turned out to be lovely. We are being coached right now and I am a bit panicky about it.

I volunteered with GoryFloor today. All they had me do was sit in front of the spaceship and answer questions. There are no sound opportunities unless you work for their Nu Yuck office. Sad. I never want to live in Nu Yuck again. But all the cool opportunities seem to be there.

Currently I am flush with reading material:
My Life in France by Julia Child ('34)
jPod (i'm saving this for the right moment--Doug rolls into A-town 6/13!!!)
Blink by M. Gladwell (read part of that today--contempt!)
Sacre Blues: an unsentimental journey through Quebec--it's sitting right here. My first amazon.com suggestion that I've ever bought.

I have a ridiculous amount of knowledge about Canada. I astounded Bob the other day when I observed a dumpster that said Abitibi on it in our neighborhood. Abitibi as in Consolidated or Temiscamengue? I asked. I AM THE ONLY PERSON IN AUSTIN WHO KNOWS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE TWO ABITIBIS. This is what I get for reading Canadian news online. Nothing in Texas is called Abitibi. That's weird.

Happiness is a $3.25 taco plate

I had lunch sola today at the one actually-run-by-real-Mexicans Mexican place close to my work. Their beans rock. I ordered the $3.25 taco plate, consisting of the taco of my choice (today's selection: ground beef), beans, and rice. I also ordered a glass of tasty horchata, but instead of a glass, they brought me a gallon jug and told me no refills. I drank half.

Walking away from that satisfying, affordable meal, I thought to myself, "all it takes in this life to make me happy is a $3.25 taco plate." Indeed, I aim to glorify the simple gifts I receive and share their glory with others, but not in a preachy, asshole way. I won't begrudge you your $11 taco plate, but I bet my $3.25 one is just as good.

I find myself missing my boys, Dan and Ryan, lately. They are no longer a cohesive gay unit, so I must train myself to think of them independently. They are in faraway places where there are no $3.25 taco plates, but other types of happiness. Not everyone can be happy with tacos. Others need state-paid health care and sexy sex. We don't have that here. Just unaffordable health care and repressed humping in the dark. But home is home. What can I say?

The real reason why I can't ever live anywhere but North America? Everywhere else in the world, I wouldn't be considered funny! My ego, my sense of self, would be vanquished, and I'd have to suffer the indignity of being a foreigner who gets laughed at, not with. I can't do that. I am weak.

Shirts

After much whining, bitching, and denouncing, American Apparel finally came through and started making a t-shirt that looks perfect and wonderful on me! Us 5' 11/160lb moo-cow affronts to men's sexual fantasies can now look smashing in our 2XL baby rib basic t-shirts every day of the week! I bought six! Yes I did!

It's sad that a 5'11"/160lb woman is considered 2XL, but I can't find clothes that I like, so I'm gonna look the other way on this one.

Tomorrow I get my improv ass whipped by a greatly respected director from Chicago. Bob's ass is being whipped right now. I'm really looking forward to it.

I'm officially podcasting. The Austin Improv Podcast is currently parked at monique.libsyn.com. You should go listen to it, even if you don't know the people I'm interviewing.