Le maudit Mo D.

Texas!

Whataburger is pronounced "Water Burger."

FYI.

Splody heart

I was finally put on beta blockers to manage my aortic size. It is apparently borderline-enlarged, so drug intervention should stave off an aortic replacement for awhile. This is par for the course for Marfan patients. I made it to 31 before this had to happen, which I guess is pretty good. For a salsa bowl queen.

Marfan Syndrome is basically having stretchy tissues. So you get stretchmarks, the pectus thing is based on the fact that Marfan patient's cartilage doesn't know when to stop growing. I have a high palate. I do not have flat feet or detached retinas, nor do I have long, spidery fingers. If I did, I would use them to freak you out.

blorck

Though I have it all plotted out, Novel #2 isn't going so well. Maybe because I don't understand and/or like the main character. Maybe I don't understand the rules that I am trying to write about. Blarg.

Bro and I had a good day. We had lunch w/Jules, coffee w/Mads and the other Jules, and tacos with Bob. That's a day of social activity.

LOCAL RESTAURANT NEWS:

For years, I have said that A-town's restaurant scene had one gaping, sucking chest wound: the hard-felt absence of an Ethiopian restaurant. Indeed, friends of mine who live in the Bay Area and greater DC have been told that I will only come and visit if I am guaranteed a meal at a local Ethiopian eatery. Well, soon, that sucking chest wound will be filled when the new Ethiopian Restaurant on i-35 opens. I already have major plans to eat there.

PLUS: Person who are heavily influenced by Southwest Spirit, the in-flight magazine of Southwest Airlines, will be pleased as punch to hear that ATX now has a Brazilian churrascaria a la oft-mentioned/mocked FOGO DE CHAO. Our puppet Sock likes to talk about Fogo de Chao, but his cottony muzzle couldn't take ten hand-cut servings of pork, beef, chicken, duck, lamb, AND sausage! So he's staying home and Bob and I are going. MEAT ON A SWORD!

helicopter fucktards

The front page of the UT website features a shocking article about "helicopter parents." It seems that a noticeable number of micromanaging, hovering parents not only do crazy shit like drive two hours to their child's college to do his laundry and clean his dorm room, but also log into their kids e-mail, call professors who don't give their perfect babies the grade they know they deserve, and even arrange and show up to their kid's job interviews!

WTF? Doesn't that say, "my child is incapable of making their own calls and doing their own business, therefore they would be a liability to your company?"

Some employers, however, are accepting this new phenomenon of FREAK-ASS OVERPROTECTIVE PARENTS WHO NEED TO QUIT WIPING THEIR ADULT CHILDREN'S ASSES AND LET THEM TAKE CARE OF THEMSELVES, EVEN IF IT MEANS FAILING and starting programs designed to ACCOMODATE THESE DAMAGING FUCKTARDS THAT ARE TURNING AN ENTIRE GENERATION INTO A PACK OF ENTITLED-ASS RETARDS WHO CAN'T EVEN GO TO WORK WITHOUT MOMMY TRAILING BEHIND THEM WITH A WET RAG.

I went to college 3000 miles away from my mommy, who was all too happy to let me do my own laundry, make my own doctors appointments, and even get Bs and Cs in my classes! (My stepdad is especially fond of my Cs) The only time my mother ever spoke to one of my professors was at my graduation. I don't even think she ever asked to see my college report card. She also hasn't done my laundry since the early 1990s.

I can't help but feel contempt for these parents, because it seems as if they don't realize that their child is going to have to cope with and get along with a large, diverse population of people in and around the workplace. If they think that they can get away with whatever they want and call up mommy whenever things don't go there way, those of us with adult life skills are going to have to put up with their shit. And woe be to these overparented kids future spouses. Fucking A.

I guess childhood is going to end somewhere around 40 soon. Whee!

time capsule

Talking to my brother is a lesson in remembering the crazy bullshit that our communal mother and his father not mine were up to when I was in high school:

1) Apparently, the stepdad likes to bring up that time I got a C in math in high school. Fifteen years ago. This must be a really fond memory for him. I informed my bro that anyone who talks about their grades past high school is a retard. I mean, obviously this C in math that I don't even remember has ruined my life and therefore I must be held up as an object lesson in what math C's can do to one's adult life.

2) Food Cop By Proxy. Our mother's foodways (drinking anything but skim milk will make you fat and unhealthy and causes premature death) have seeped into the boy's psyche. Although he is taking advantage of his vacation by eating chocolate chip cookies for breakfast.

3) Home Haircuts Verboten. Bro came off the plane looking like Ronald McDonald's gay son. He and I share the wildly thick and uncontrollable Armo hair that runs on our mom's side of the family and he had not had a decent haircut in recent memory. "Something needs to be done," I said, sitting his ass down on the toilet and taking a straight razor to the wild mess, something my professional hair custodian has done to me a million times. I took off tons of hair but you'd never know it. I'm taking him to the hair custodian later this week for further pruning. Mom never would have allowed me to do this on her watch, though, since it is better to look like Ronald McDonald's gay son than to have an untrained person cut your hair.

4) Bro is still a little diva and spends much too time in the bathroom making himself look like the gay son of R. McDonald.

5) BAD LIFE ADVICE! Bro has expressed interest in a fine arts degree, so of course the Armenians have to go shit on that and tell him that he needs to major in something "that makes a lot of money." He was asking me about pharmacy school! Even after I have reamed supreme my mother for beating that into me, causing me to make the BIGGEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE (libskool), she continues to hold fast to the notion that you're a big fat loser if you try to pursue a career in something artistic that doesn't bring home the immediate bacon.

the strangeness of our love

Earlier today, after eating bagels and lox with a smattering of Geegsters and their honeys, I came home to find my honey wrapped up in the blue flannel of our bed, babuschka-style. He was being marsupial and cute as fuck, and I immediately jumped into the bed to be with him and put my cold, dirty feet on his legs. He likes that. We had our usual dorky conversation, in which I suggested to him that an appropriate tattoo for him would be a turtle pushing a lawnmower.

This is funny.

Bob plaster-casted my pectus today. We used plaster mask-making strips that you dip in water and then they harden. I had to slather my chest with Vaseline like a porn star. The cast doesn't look quite like what I expected, though it did confirm that the shape of my chest is not such that I would have spent the last half of my life alarmed about the severity of my PE. I am shaped like a hardcover book open to the middle.

There is slippery Vaseline all over my shower.

Little Bro makes his triumphant return to the ATX in exactly one hour. It is his spring break, and he is spending it in style with his sis and bro-in-law, eating cookies and breakfast tacos like the tourist bitch he is.

Before I put on a shirt and depart for points AUS, let me just say that the last handful of NYT "Modern Love" columnists have all had forthcoming novels of the "Los Angeles beautiful person who parties with the stars is forced to confront her booze/drug habit in the face of a devastating breakup/humiliating incident in front of persons more beautiful than her" stripe. If that anal-crustation-passing-as-literature is what's selling these days, I am FERKED.

FERKED, I say.

Home is home

MY MOM GOT THE HOUSE
GREEN HOUSE OURS

SNEEZING FROM CATS
LOVE GEEGSTERS

I NEED TO WORK ON VULNERABILITY.

maudit music review

I am listening to the new Arcade Fire album. I liked "Funeral" a lot, so I got their new one. A lot of people are doing the same as me. "Neon Bible" is named after the first book that this guy wrote:

John Kennedy Toole probably passed my dad on the streets of New Orleans as a boy and didn't even know it. I can see him toddling up Canal St. holding his mother's hand while my father and his first wife Alice strolled in the opposite direction.

JKToole commit suicide in 1969. His mother pressured NO author Walker Percy to read her baby's magnum opus. Percy assisted in getting Confederacy published, which of course won the 1980 Pulitzer. John, you should have stuck around a bit longer.

Anyway, the Arcade Fire, like my dad, are Quebecois. You can tell with this new album that they had a higher budget to record it because they are backed by a string orchestra on much of it. The string orchestra is also from Quebec.

There is a man who haunts the A-town improv scene who reminds me very much of Ignatius Reilly. And one who reminds me very much of my father.

Arcade Fire's new album: B+

warmest wishes

I chose to eschew an evening of fine theatrical delights in favor of working on Novel #2, which has its first mindblowingly Jewish chapter already written. Instead, I find myself having a mental war with myself over the future of my literary stardom: I am congenitally incapable of doing that shitty wistful author look. You know what I'm talking about. I cannot cultivate that kind of sexual relationship with a camera lens. I cannot make myself look vulnerable and therefore deep. I play deep on television.

Still, I face an uphill battle with publishing the Big Armenian Novel. I find that I think everyone else's art is crap, unless it sets the world on fire by making my art look like crap. I'm a lofty self-defeatist. I need to get over this.

My friend from the ladycollege, KR, sent Bob and I a ham in celebration of our nuptials. KR hails from the state of Iowa and therefore is well-versed in all things pork. At her wedding in the big DM three years ago, I tasted the most delicious bacon I have ever put in my mouth. It was the most perfectly salted and smoked porcine product and I am still talking about it. Bob and I are very excited about this ham, which we suspect might actually be a prosciutto. I have no idea what to do with a prosciutto other than slice it up and eat it. Or make that cream pasta sauce that causes heart attacks.

Thank you, KR.

My mother had to go piss all over my leg and tell me that my beloved Manny KLP cake mixes contain large quantities of transfats. She drove all the way to La Jolla to buy a box and then she and her squinty health food ways had to actually read the label, then report back to me in a scornful tone. Scornful meaning "I don't want you eating those Hebrew healthbombs!" This after I went to my local Kosher grocer and bought five boxes! This shit ain't cheap. There's a band of Jews out there making bank on boxes of ground matzoh and cottonseed oil. I and my hot, moist leg plan to prepare and eat these delicious Kosher delicacies anyway. They are, as some people say, "off the hook."

Success is a funny thing. When I was younger, I did not sit in my room and fill my notebooks with plans of being in one of the most successful musical improv troupes someday. I stumbled into Geegsterdom by accident and it has been such a blessing. For reasons such as this, I am hesitant to want anything too badly. I did want a cuddly, amusing, and yam-shaped husband and I managed to find one of those, although I had to wait until the age of 27 for that to happen. I suppose the novel-writing career will take much longer. But it only took me seven months to write Norvel #1, meaning I am a word-hurling studhorse.

Seriously

PEOPLE! I am disappointed that only Swilkes has congratulated me on my mom ditching the stepdad. This is huge news! I have been dreaming of this moment for half my life and here it is! Maybe I didn't make myself clear: THIS IS A BIG DEAL TO ME, ON PAR WITH GETTING MARRIED AND PUBLISHING MY NOVEL. This is a good thing, a needed thing, and something that will not only make her life inordinately better but mine and my brother's too. That's how much it has meant to me that my mom lose the loser.

So make with the congratulations already!

always around the house

I woke up this morning with an intense desire to stay asleep. A variety of unfriendly electronic objects were beeping at me and my husband. My husband is not a fancy man. He is from the midwest and his meals are usually served between two slices of bread. However, he is not one to low-ball on the electronics, hence, there is plenty of computertronics to rouse us from our natural slumber. We turned them off and continued our slumber. Then, the door man came to finish what he started. I had to get up.

I enjoy a good soapy rubdown in the shower as much as anyone, but today I didn't stop to inhale deeply the almond scent of my hippie soap. For years I have washed my large, cumbersome and ill-built body with soaps made by San Diego area famous hippie cult guy Dr. Bronner. Dr. Bronner discusses G-d outside of the American Judeo-Christian canon and therefore he is a quack. I buy his soap because it is harmless and gentle and even entertaining.

Hinky Corer departed our home after nine marathon days of hard living here in the ATX. My office/guest room is littered with the detritus of his travels through FXFO. He tried to leave me a very unpleasant voodoo doll that he got in his festival bag and I wordlessly returned it. He also left me a few notepads and a matchbook. Either that or he forgot them here. I am not sure. What I am sure of is that next year, Hinky will rent a large American sedan with a comfy backseat that I can call the Couchmobile. He has for three years running now. I will set my watch by it.

I have not mentioned our new home upgrades yet.

1) THE REFRIGERATOR. We acquired a Kenmore side-by-side refrigerator with water and ice in the door. Since I was a tot I have dreamed of the day that I would not have to open the refrig door to fill a cup with ice and water, that two convenient pedals would be available to me from their little illuminated bay ready to provide me with a cold, refreshing beverage at the slightest touch. A girl can dream and a girl can go to Sears and buy the damn thing.

2) FRONT DOOR! After two years of squabbling, Bob and I finally agreed on a front door to replace the cracked, rotting one. And friends: it is a beaut. It has eight beveled glass windows and a little shelf. I think it is called a "country door." It is so gorgeous that it makes the rest of the house look like shit by comparison. It's like the first girl in school who got tits.

I guess that's it. I've been sitting by the phone anxious to hear if my mom got that house or not. It's like she's having a baby or something. She is giving birth to new life, is she not????

That is the house. She must have this house!

the end of a goddamn era

I thought that I would be able to write this entry sooner, like years ago. Like, before blogs, before the Internet even. But life is what it is, and although I find this news to be much too late, it is also a bit hasty, but here it goes:

MY MOTHER IS FINALLY LEAVING MY STEPDAD!

Let the rafters rise and shake! Let every fat girl in Southern California have an extra large scoop on me! Get me a gospel choir so we can celebrate this with the voice of the LORD!!!

She has just made an offer on a house in northern S. D. county, not too far from a beach an a ritzy mall. I hope that the sale will close swiftly and that we can work in my mother's move before I go in for the chop-socky.

Once, she was lost, but now she is found. She was blind, but now she can see!

Stepdad is reportedly peeved at the developments, but the douche had 16.5 years to act like a man and he failed, so he can rot to death in the 'Juana while the rest of the fam can live it up in a beautiful house near the beach!

YAY!

On an unrelated note, my annual consumption of Manischewitz Kosha-la-paysock cake mixes has begun. The yellow cake is sooooooooooooooooooooooooo delish. I am going to try to find the brownies tomorrow.

I thought I made them up!

I swear, when I wrote the novel, I thought I was inventing these things, but I guess I have something resembling Google telepathy:

Here is where Olivia and Eric Leaf work.
There really is a Boston band called Mollycoddle.
When I made up Wendy Lin, the Asian-American knitting celebrity, I did not know about Lily Chin.
There's already a short film entitled Peace on Earth.
When not working for his parents' raisin business and extorting money out of old rich ladies, Zaven Melkonian can be found playing with a band in Michigan.

emasculate wildly

I've been taking a sketch writing class at Coldtowne for the last couple months. I've noticed in my comedy writing that I tend to write a lot of low-status men with emasculation issues. I suppose deep down, I find this funny, as a sort of antipode of male asshole humor. The only thing is, my recent exposure levels to male asshole humor are quite low. I generally don't roll with the comedians who correlate the female reproductive system with aquarium fodder and who the hell gets married anymore? No stupid wife jokes to make if you're still living with your parents. Yet strangely, no self-deprecating "I still live with my parents jokes?"

Anyway, I rewrote the first ten pages of the novel, so the Writers League mannyscript contest got the old, discarded version, which probably won't impress too many people since it's not written in the present tense. For what it's worth, I find the present tense to be slightly pretentious. Here, a parody of an amalgamation of award-winning short stories:

She is slathered in marmalade not two metres from a beehive buzzing and shaking like an angry fist. She is wild and safe and beautiful. Her ldaughter is mashing leaves in to dirt by the baseboards of their creaky clapboard house. Summers in Kansas had not been kind to the structure, its old white paint peeling like tears. Leila knows that her time here is limited, these acres of corn and wheat that form a fence around her miniscule little world soon to be sold away, leaving barren the flat, dry land.

I write like I improvise: strong character from the get-go. Popular, award-winning fiction writing these days is all cock-tease, all flimsy settings described with pretty words. Here is the new first paragraph of my novel:

I was twenty-eight years old and in the business of trading off between elation and nausea, of silly girlish crushes on unattainable boys well past the time I should have known better. I was having an affair with a married coworker, and I liked it. I took giant handfuls of whatever Eric Leaf offered me and crushed them to my face like a toddler with a cupcake. I thought I knew what I was doing. Remorse or common sense did not factor into it. I was addicted. I was in love with this man, this ridiculous, beautiful man, and he liked to put his hands down the front of my dress.

Okay, I can't really comment on that, but it's not some woman in Kansas standing outside covered with marmalade. The toddler with a cupcake thing is a little pandery, but so what? I want to publish this thing!

calling all armenians

I simultaneously love and hate being Armenian. I love it because it's ridiculous, because I have at my disposal hundreds of odd, gutteral Armenian words that I can whip out to threaten and delight my friends, and because Armenian food is delicious and garlicky and full of meat. I hate it because culturally, the Armos I knew growing up were materialistic assholes who saw me as being something less than they were. Their taste for garish clothing and decor, large expensive autos and poorly executed plastic surgery have all been lampooned in my almost-finished first draft of my novel.

On the heels all this comes Nabaztag, some bunny-shaped wireless remote doodad invented by an Armenian guy in France that Bob reports was being pitched at FXFO Interactive, where he spent a few days brandishing his employer-funded badge. Bob asked me what the Armo word for bunny is, I told him, and then he showed me a picture of the Nabaztag. Even though the bunny and I share the same Franco-Armo heritage, I do not want a plastic rabbit shouting weather reports at me.

I have to say that my favorite character in my novel at this point is Zaven. Zaven is Olivia's counterpoint. Though Olivia thinks she's got it all figured out, Zaven tells her to her face that maybe she needs to think things through a little more.

I'm starting to have this "what have you DONE?!??!" feeling about the novel. I've been corresponding with a noted Armenian writer about it and am now a little fearful of the repercussions I may be in store for if and when this thing hits bookstore shelves. But I must be a brave little soldier and go on with it. This is a good time as any to get my brave soldier self on.

Le Maudit en colère

Frequent readers of the mo-dee might have sensed a certain bit of RAGING ANGER here on le website. I basically attribute it to the surgery. It's hard to NOT be angry about having to have painful, invasive surgery. It's hard having to face being deformed. It's going to be very hard to be in pain, drugged up, dependent, and unable to do the things I love, much less the things I take for granted, like wipe my own butt and get in and out of bed on my own. So in defense of my recent conversion to reflective, sarcastic funny funny bitch, I realize I've turned into a negative, nitpicky just plain bitch. And I'm sorry, but I also don't feel that now is the time to expect me to unleash my good heart and generosity upon the world, because I have no idea where they are.

I find the Sieve of Negativity kind of funny, even if Bob doesn't.

I love Bob.

I have to sell out the body I never really liked in the first place for a body that isn't scary. I am scared of my body. It's like being trapped in a Pinto. I got a Pinto for a body and I live in fear that my gas tank is going to explode. Trading up for a gently used Volvo is going to be painful, but it has to be done.

Naomi Schiller and Barry of the Negev

At every book signing I've ever been to, without a doubt a member of the audience will ask what the author is working on next as part of the Q&A question. Since I'm not that far in my literary career, I will use my blog (recently a site of heavy-handed negativity--if there's anything you want to put through my sieve, just put it in my comments section) to answer that particular question, which no one has yet answered.

You do want to know what I'm working on after Peace on Earth, right?

Treyf: A Love Story. My first (and perhaps last) book about Jews. And the people who love them. Even a Jew for Jesus.

I don't want to put my synopsis up just yet, because I don't want some skank stealing it, and I haven't gotten down the particulars of it yet. Yes, Naomi is based on my old roommate Lydia. She is aware of this and hopefully will help me fill in the Jewish stuff.

So yes. It's my "nice Jewish girl dumps nice Jewish guy over a cheeseburger and ends up dating Jesus Christ before he gets killed a second time" novel

My faith in love is still devout

I hate FXFO.

Maudit's entry to tonight's Dougfest DENIED in favor of asshats with badges who don't heart Doug quite like I do.

Basically, all sorts of entertainment appears in your city, and unless you pay upwards of $400 for a pass, you're screwed. I am not going south of MLK until this shite is over.

Shark!

I worry about my Geegsters. This week has been one of a great deal of alarm, some warranted, some not. Though I am willing to concede that this past week was a menstrual one for most of the cast, and I fully admit that my monthly turns me into an emotional wreck looking to pick a fight, I think the fact that our numbers appear to be dwindling gives me a little reason to fret a tiny bit.

Last night's show was super kick-ass though. Shark Tank: The Musical saw a touching grandfather/grandchild scenario, filthy kitchen staff singing a three part song about peeling potatoes, a team of maniacal scientists giving human powers to a shark, followed by a couple of gruesome shark attacks, with the shark itself singing the finale. Brava! During warm-ups we also had a really kick ass song that could be our new rehearsed opener. It went something like:

DYNAMITE!
FEELS ALRIGHT!
HOLD ME TIGHT!
DYNAMITE!

Looks simple enough, eh? That's what hits are made of. And we can remember that.

Then, Bob, Mike and I kicked it to Coldtowne with none other than our refrigerator salesman Jeff, who we met at Sears earlier that day, in tow. In a bizarre Austiny turn of events, the dude in the appliance section of Sears came out to see our earlier shows and followed us to the other theater to watch Tankprov. Jeff appears to have just moved to town from SA, where he knew the likes of local godfather of improv D. Lampe.

Tankprov can be adequately described as BASSPROV in a WWII German tank instead of a lake in Indiana. Again, Terp + crew took the victory. That dude is mad talented and mad funny for sure, but I still feel like the rest of us are stuck in the nutscratching conundrum. Us trying-hard folks don't stand a chance against the charisma bombs of the world, a lesson I learned all too well in college.

We then went to Star Seeds for some post-performative nutriment, where they were playing some music that intrigued me, sort of a lo-fi hippie jam band meets D. Garza-esque canciones singing style, but with more drugs. Turns out it was the early incarnation of T. Rex, as in Bang-a-Gong T. Rex. I have spent much of my morning hunting down this album on the interweb. Here's what I'm talking about: www.myspace.com/tyrannosaurusrex68

In other news, I hit 72,000 words on the novel and am feeling like it's almost done. I was told by a professional teacher of novelizing that a first draft should be roughly 100,000, but I was told by the professional J-Rat that extending the novel just for the sake of making it longer is stoopid and that if I'm done, I'm done. I did a rough word count of Elinor's last novel and if my calculations are correct, that novel is around 100,000 words. I think I might add a couple of things I think the novel needs, which will probably be around 10,000 extra words and see how that goes. It's just a first draft!

By contrast, Doug's Eleanor Rigby appears to clock in at 72,000 words. For the record, Doug is in town for the Fuck-By and this non-passholder does not get to professionally starfuck him until tonight, when (hopefully) he'll be at the US premiere of his movie, Everything's Gone Green.

Insult Humor Unleashed!

FXFO is upon us, as evidenced by the presence in my home of two red rolly suitcases belonging to my Heroes School classmate and compadre Hinky Corer. He makes use of the spare bed every year during the second full week of March, when professional starfuckers descent here to felch and chuff the life out of my beloved city. I will not stand in a long line at a club with my little fingies crossed hoping I'll get to see a band only to get turned away by a surly bouncer getting paid to pronounce some piece of New York trash more deserving than I just because they have some gay black laminate around their necks that their retard employer paid $500 for them to wave around like they own the place. Southwest, the official airline of Le Maudit, decided to jack up their airfares for the week, preventing me from taking my extremely fun vay-cay to the Division of Surgery, Johns Hopkins Medical School while the fungus is here making traffic worse.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE DAY PARTIES?!?!?

I digress. L'annee 2007 is the official year of Maudit Grump as far as I'm concerned. Pre-and-post op, I will filter everything through a sieve of negativity:

ICE CREAM: Thanks for serving me frozen cow teat fat, asshole. You want me to put this in my mouth?
BOB: Hey, you do your conservative retard character really well. You weren't doing a bit? Really? I married you?
SHOES: Goddamn laces flopping all over the place, like some dude's weiner... Get some Viagra, bitches.
IMPROV: So you think it's cool to pretend, eh? A hundred years ago they would have had you committed to an asylum for that shit.
FRESH VEGETABLES: Your time is limited, veggies. An ounce of broccoli is going to be worth more than a goddamn diamond by the time I'm sixty. Munch it down, bitches!
ANAL SEX: Hey, soap-dropper! You dropped the soap! Need some help with that?
THE WORKS OF J.D. SALINGER: Someday some fucked-up dude is going to read MY novel before assassinating someone! Take that, hermit!
MINT: If you want to feel like you just got done blowing your dentist, sure! It's a GREAT flavor!
MICHIGAN: Hey, Michigan! Yeah, you up there! You've got your thumb up Ontario's ass!

Clearly this is the year that I master insult humor.

Honestly, I'm not that hostile. I'm probably jealous that I didn't get a job at some little alterna-paper straight out of college writing insult humor for a column instead of being an ex-librarian/pre-published novelist (that shit is ALMOST DONE, bitches. This lady can complete a gdamn novel in 6 months!) All the Fuck-bys are so much cooler than me. All I do is sit at home and complain. I need to diversify. I've got MAJOR POST-OP PLANS that include international travel (I've got my eye on Patagonia, thanks to last Sunday's Times Travel article), getting a job/more graddy school, and taking up some ridiculous athletic undertaking like MOUNTAIN BIKING. Something that requires more than 62% lung capacity.

It will feel odd not to feel like an orchid or a powderkeg.

As far as houseguests go, Hinky is among the lowest-maintenance. He has his own vehicle, a pre-set schedule of activities, and always treats us to dinner. Houseguests should follow Hinky's example.

You know you want to see my bitch-ass perform:

Freitag:

GEEGSTERS
10pm
HIDEOUT

followed by

TANKPROV
(me, Bob, and Mike "Hoss" Kinald as a World War II German Tank crew)
11:30pm
COLDTOWNE

writing songs

Most of you know that I have written hundreds, if not thousands, of songs that never make it to paper or a recorded medium. Thanks to the Geegsters, I am about as prolific as Barry Manilow on poppers, only I don't make any money at it. Until the Geegsters get what they deserve, and that is a standing run at the Andy Williams in Branson, or someplace classy in Vegas, that's just the way it's gonna be.

Last night I was treated to some top-shelf American folk music with father/son banjo and moving analog illustrations, and it was fabulous! It made me want to hitchhike to an Appalachian music festival where you can buy your own jug to play jug music on and drink fresh-squeezed lemonade out of a Mason jar. The other thing that really hit my emotional buttons about the father/son banjos is that these dudes are Armenian, and the father reminded me a lot of my grandfather: the same squishy-face-heavy-eyes-big-nose combo that was my granddad. Who, by the way, did not play banjo but did have a mean repertoire of folk songs.

Though I portray my grandfather as a part-time coward/full-time money-lusting SOB who turned fig orchards into strip malls, that's only partly true. When he wasn't enabling sub-cunt's sickest trips to the borders of Borderline, he was actually an artist. Let me say that again: my grandfather, known far and wide as being a ruthless businessman, MADE ART.

I am one of the few who know this. Now you know.

During the War, he had some sort of boring-ass timewaster job watching for something or other. So he had a lot of extra time on his hands to ride horses and paint gorgeous Biblical scenes. My mother has a few sprawling drawings of Jesus and Mary in her possession. These were all done before she was born. The family/responsibility bug bit grandpa hard and he spent the subsequent fifty plus years chasing the almighty dollar instead of illustrating his favorite Bible scenes.

I was inspired to write an American folk song about the villain of my novel, "The Ballad of Dahlia Y." And I was also reminded that I need to be fair to the man whose money allows me to be a Lady of Leisure, so he is going to get softened up in the novel. He deserves it.

I miss him now. I was so mad at him for so long, but now I really do miss him.

we'll see what you're made of by what you make of me

FIRST THINGS FIRST: enjoy a photo of me MCing the 1920s fashion show at the flickr site of one Debbie Smith:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/deborahsmith/412983134/

The eyebrows did look pretty gooby. I hope no one noticed that my shirt was coming untucked. Q of the Day: will Mo ever look totally put-together?

Perhaps the greatest kick-back of my term of employment at the venerable HRC was this gig! Forget getting my knuckles kissed by the French ambassador...

I am tired of the culture war. I was going to write something about it, but I am just tired.

I wish I were 14 so I could have the magnet treatment on my bowl. I might call them tomorrow and beg them to let me have magnets instead of scary surgery. They will probably say no, but I might feel better.

Okay, I don't really wish I was 14. That sucked.

31 Flavors

1) Vanilla bean, with the visually-necessary specks of black bean dust, to remind us that the ice cream is worthy of the designation "Vanilla bean."
2) Indie Rock Snob Fudge
3) Tall Drink of Water
4) Funny Funny
5) Spinach
6) Fresno's Own Strip Mall Stripe
7) Breakfast Taco
8) Baldwin Brickle
9) Bob Apple-thorpe
10) Chestular Ice Cream Dish
11) Swirls Swirls Swirls
12) Kufta Krunch
13) Cardamom Cinnamon
14) Excessive Parmesan
15) Sticky Chewy Chocolate
16) Improvised
17) Novelist 'Nanner
18) Earl Grey from Herrell's
19) Whipped Cream a la Can
20) Sad Tomato
21) I Can't Believe That's Not Pilaf
22) Sun Cheese
23) Grape Ice
24) Revenge of the Soymilk Raiders
25) Everything With Tongs
26) Writers Block Chunk
27) I can't believe it's my fucking birthday again and I'm now "in my thirties" instead of just plain "thirty."
28) Testicle-Threatening Grandmother
29) Borpe & Morpe Slorpe
30) Mo Cakes w/Frosting
31) Clamato

Waking Up Tired

I've been waking up tired in the morning. I feel physically exhausted, and the only reason I can come up with for this is that I have some kind of sleep apnea. Which would make sense. If you're reading this, you've seen Crunchy The 12% Lung.

It could also be depression, which would make sense.

Of course, why would I be depressed when I kicked so much ass MC-ing the fashion show last night? I had the makeup artist cover up my normal eyebrows and repaint them as skinny black lines.

Here's what the AAS had to say:
Then, in short order, came the fashion show. Naturally, this wasn't a normal fashion show. A mock-fashion skit really. The emcee for the night introduced the women as they walked out and talked about what they were wearing. The idea was to be humorous while still being informative.

I was humorous AND informative! Must have been all that library training.

The AAS photographer took a picture of me that didn't end up on the website. Whoever edits photos seemed to be more concerned with showing all of the 50+ crowd at the hipster club. I was probably axed for having gooby, scary eyebrows.

Anyway, when I am not kicking ass, I am tired, directionless, sad, and scared. I feel like a real artist.

Today, of course, is my last day of being 30 years old. Tomorrow I celebrate a decade of legal drinking with not drinking at all.

Dirty Puppets

Man...last night's Cagematch show (which we lost against the uneven stylings but undeniable charisma of Terp and his krew. Terp could get onstage, scratch his nuts, fart, and leave the stage and he'd still win over anyone else) was super-raunch. Bob never would have consented to such blatant and narsty sexual constent between woman and snail. Standing in for Bob last night was one Jenny Cargz, improv powerhouse and super-pottymouth, who engaged my puppet Snail in some long-distance sex, doobie smokage, a videotape flashback of Snail's mother cutting off his penis* with scissors and then Snail finding it years later, and Jen removing one of her ginormous titties from her shirt and Snail sucking on it. SNAIL PUT HIS MOUTH ON JEN'S BOOB, people.

We felt we had to go blue after Cody mimed old lady masturbation. How do you top that?

Bob would be aghast. But that's what happens when Bob going evil-camping! I'm feeling a little bit like that Punch Drunk sketch about the morning after having sex with all your coworkers. I half expect a mime to come throw up on my floor.

I am a very busy little thing today. Tonight I will be putting my studying of 1920s slang to good use as the MC of the 1920s fashion show. I also have sketch class and have to go pick up that tux.

Don't forget to pick up the tux.

*Snails don't have penises, and my Snail is very proud of being a hermaphrodite, but he played the raunchy male to Jen's vaginally-focused, not-afraid-to-fake-an-O-onstage female.

nasal spray

This blog gets a lot of spam from a cluster of raving assholes. If you plan to spam this blog, just know that within 24 hours your spam will be gone. Though "premature ejaculation nasal spray" sounds like a fascinating product and I wish you clever Koreans the very best in developing that, Le Maudit's musings are not the place to sell your weiner spray. My readership and I do not buy novelty and/or medical sprays via the comments section of my blog. It's bad business and you're only going to get mocked and deleted.

Dre got needled today, being the first Geegster to go under the knife this year. I am thinking of her and sending good thoughts her way. (Feel that, Dre?) In our troupe, we not only sing together, we have surgery together.

I just signed up for my first-ever charity walk. It's for Safe Place, the local battered women's shelter. It's a 2.2 mile walk in April, hopefully on a pretty day, and for an excellent cause. If you are so inclined to donate to our team of comedians walking against sexual and domestic violence, holler and I'll link you to it.

Yesterday, after a yearlong frustrating relationship, I broke up with eMusic. They will no longer be taking my $10/month in exchange for the crusty bottom-scrapings that the music industry has to offer. Every month was an exercise in frustration over their not having exactly what I want music-wise. Though I appreciated being able to sample some stuff I ordinarily wouldn't, I'm relieved to have it out of my life. It made me angry more often than it pleased me.

I got my eyebrows waxed today in preparation for my little trip back to the 1920s and I am looking FINE. Okay, it's in a grotty rock club with CBGB-esque bathrooms, but there will be 1920s fashions! I am serving as the MC of the fashion show portion of the evening. And I can pretend my hunky Northampton boyfriend Calvin Coolidge is president again. I LOOOOOOVE CALVIN! He's silent, you know.

I am also starting to map out my second novel, "Treyf: a Love Story" (working title, or "The Lyd Book"). I am taking this opportunity to hit all my mad Judaism knowledge which is just a phone call away.

This weekend: SOCK AND SNAIL continue their reign of puppety terror over the Cagematch. Sock will be out of town on Friday night, so Snail and I will be joined on stage by Jen and her puppety friend. We aim to shred your sinuses with our extreme hilarity! 11:30 at Coldtowne!

Every jazz step is a step closer to HELL!
1920s Fashion Show
Sponsored by my beloved former employer
Emo's
Saturday 3/3
9pm!

Afterwards,
follow me to
Coldtowne
for
Jen & Erin's goodbye show
which will be devastating