SassyBlonde

Today was a perfect little gem of summer in a lot of ways, from the moment I got up. I woke to the stretching paws of kitties tap-tap-tapping on me in their quest for food and entertainment and popped up to feed and scratch them as their little fuzzy faces demanded. Then I went back to sleep. Sometimes I think that's the best part of getting up early in the morning, really. The going back to sleep in a cozy bed thing.

I returned my marvelous chariot to the rental car place and then juked out to my in-laws' house, windows and sunroof open, with a large sack of Granddaddy's vegetables in tow. I sat and chatted with my mother-in-law for hours about lots of things, then we stuffed ourselves silly on the simple summer joy of fresh boiled corn and ham and tomato sandwiches.

To cap it off, I swung by Damascus's well-kept and fabulous secret, Jimmie Cone, for a summer favorite-- a chocolate-vanilla twist cone with rainbow jimmies. (Yes, I Lactaid-ed myself. I'm not that masochistic.) Now I'm putting together my rocking chairs and watching Grease, and I'm sure I'll crash here momentarily and crawl back in bed with the cats. Yes-sirree Bob, it's been a great day.

Did you know that Downtown Silver Spring is private property? Thanks to the Silver Spring Penguin, I'm now as outraged as the rest of the people participating in the Downtown Silver Spring Photography Walk. To summarize, basically the private company that leases the land for the DSS development banned photography, claiming that the area was "private property" per their $1 lease from the county. WTF? If it has a public road running through it, you'd think the answer would be a little more cut and dried, people. I realize that the county ceded Ellsworth Drive to Peterson in the lease, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to claim that an outdoor street paid for by $100 million county tax dollars is now private property. Especially when the county has been spending so much time debating the use of public space on Ellsworth Drive. For those of you who have missed the debate going on over Downtown Silver Spring's photography ban, check out these links:

• Photography Protest In Silver Spring Tomorrow (DCist)
• Survey Says "Smile!" (Penguin)
• Public Or Private Space? Line Blurs In Silver Spring(WaPo)
• Photographs Spur Debate On First Amendment (BaltSun)
• Photos On The 4th: Showdown In Silver Spring(WaPo)

Since the lovely Solonor has tagged me to share with you Eight Facts, here I go. First, the rules:

1. We have to post these rules before we give you the facts.
2. Players start with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
3. People who are tagged need to write their own blog about their eight things and post these rules.
4. At the end of your blog post, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
5. Don't forget to leave them each a comment telling them they're tagged, and to read your blog.

1. FACT: I'm allergic to cats, and yet I have two. Good thinking, eh?
2. FACT/HABIT: I can turn my Southern accent on or off depending on who I'm talking to. Drives my mom crazy.
3. HABIT: I bite my fingernails, just like my Dad.
4. FACT: I spend more time playing musical instruments than I do sleeping in any given week.
5. HABIT: I weed other people's gardens when I'm out walking. Weeds are the spawn of Satan.
6. FACT: I love all things Southern, but you couldn't make me move back there permanently for a million bucks.
7. FACT: I love bugs. I spend as much time in the garden watching beetles and ants as I do working.
8. HABIT: I sweep my front walk and porch every day that I'm home, but I rarely dust inside my house. Inside my head is an odd place.

• The Muse
• Dancing Dragon
• JozJozJoz
• Kelly
• StyxsDaughter
• Jen Lemen
• Lefty
• Blue Line

1. If you're not familiar with Lindeman's Raspberry Lambic, your life is empty indeed. Go now, grasshopper, and be educated.
2. The English overdub of the House of Flying Daggers really, really sucks, no matter how many beers you've had.
3. I don't care if it's not real Chinese food-- Crab Meat Egg Foo Young is kick-ass.

So it's been a great Fourth here in the nation's capital city. Tornado warnings, thunderstorms, and Mall evacuations, but the celebration is still going on. As I type, there are about eight different fireworks celebrations visible from my friend's building's roof, just barely peeking out above the tops of the trees every once in a while. One of the cooler moments to be living in D.C., eh? Also as I type, incredible amounts of people are fleeing the Mall toward the nearest Metro stop. Oy vey, I'm glad I'm not all up in that right now for sure.

I spent the day at the in-laws' house eating hot dogs and throwing over-chewed tennis balls to Red's dog, in between dodging the rain every hour or so. I got home just in time to watch A Capitol Fourth on WETA, and am now tapping my feet along to the piccolo solo in Stars & Stripes. (As an aside, was it just me or was Bebe Neuwirth's performance really scary? Yikes. The vibrato and the cackle at the end of All That Jazz, people. Double yikes. And surprising but nice that Tony Danza was better. And I totally missed that Hayden Panettiere was a singer before now? Good grief.) Altogether a very nice way to spend a July 4th.

Before I return to working on the stuff for my press deadline, I'd like to give a shout out to Dr. Mudslide, my buddy and regular commenter, who is not having such a great 4th: she's recovering from appendicitis in the hospital, and I'd like to wish her a very speedy recovery. Much love, girl, and I hope I can come up to visit tomorrow or Friday!!!!

*Photo by Thom Watson from Flickr. Used by attribution under Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.

UPDATE: 7/5/2007-- There was much debate in my mind as to whether I should post this entry last night, but I've decided I'm tired of not caring, and I'm tired of being quiet and polite to the people who keep people like George Bush in office by being racist and ignorant and bullying people into silence by calling them unpatriotic and unsupportive. Here's my two cents.

At the outset of this rant, I am going to refer you to the rules of engagement around here. This is my blog and I'll rant if I want to. It doesn't happen very often on this scale, so get over it. And don't forward me any more of this shit please.

Incindiary title, no? Those of you who know me know that I have a real mean streak concerning right-wing politics. I want to cram all the bullshit those guys spout back down their gaping maws and jump on their heads every time they start it up again. One very tangible encounter I have almost daily is those damned email forwards spouting super-"patriotic" navel gazing sewage into my inbox about "killing those terrorist bastards" and "supporting our men over there".*

AND. I. HAVE. HAD. IT.

Here, for your enjoyment, I would like to reply to a crappy, ignorant email forward that has been circulating since March 2003 and that I have received at least three times in the last year from different people who think this shit is funny. I'm just done, people.

I had a very similar experience to Aimee's over at greeblemonkey last night. I've gotten to the point that around July 4th, rather than being proud of our nation and unabashedly patriotic, I feel vaguely sick and don't want to look at the news. Something is wrong and has been wrong for a long time.

I used to be outraged. I was angry and outraged even when it wasn't "patriotic" to do so and we were encouraged to support our president. At this point I'm just tired. Exhausted. Too tired and sick to even make fun of a racist and ignorant email forward I've seen in my inbox more times than I can count sent to me by intelligent people who should know better.

I feel like the outrage I feel toward the Bush administration is pointless, because there are far too many people who would rather vote for a man whose morality they base on his church attendance and pro-life status rather than his commitment to honesty and the good and intelligent stewardship of the control of our nation. Generally I try to stay away from political rants on here, but here I'd like to pass on the statement from Keith Olbermann which so many people have been sending around, simply because it was so much a relief to hear someone articulate what's been running around in my head since 9/11. Enjoy. (Watch the video here)

Keith Olbermann:

I accuse you, Mr. Bush, of lying this country into war.

I accuse you of fabricating in the minds of your own people, a false implied link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11.

I accuse you of firing the generals who told you that the plans for Iraq were disastrously insufficient.

I accuse you of causing in Iraq the needless deaths of 3,586 of our brothers and sons, and sisters and daughters, and friends and neighbors.

I accuse you of subverting the Constitution, not in some misguided but sincerely-motivated struggle to combat terrorists, but to stifle dissent.

I accuse you of fomenting fear among your own people, of creating the very terror you claim to have fought.

I accuse you of exploiting that unreasoning fear, the natural fear of your own people who just want to live their lives in peace, as a political tool to slander your critics and libel your opponents.

I accuse you of handing part of this Republic over to a Vice President who is without conscience, and letting him run roughshod over it.

And I accuse you now, Mr. Bush, of giving, through that Vice President, carte blanche to Mr. Libby, to help defame Ambassador Joseph Wilson by any means necessary, to lie to Grand Juries and Special Counsel and before a court, in order to protect the mechanisms and particulars of that defamation, with your guarantee that Libby would never see prison, and, in so doing, as Ambassador Wilson himself phrased it here last night, of becoming an accessory to the obstruction of justice.

Jee-zus people... where did my week go? I've been home from Alabama for almost a week and I feel like I've got nothing done. D comes home from camp tomorrow and Red comes back from New York, so I'm soon to be sans dog and plus one husband and a lot of dirty laundry. Where the crap did all my time go? *grumble*

All right, must go scrub a toilet before heading off to Baltimore to visit Dr. Mudslide.

Sometimes all a girl needs is a little hot sax.

I've had a monster case of the blahs for the last couple of days, and it's amazing how much better I feel after a little groovin' on the tenor sax. (I'm sitting here at work tonight and surfing in between numbers: hooray for WiFi at the adjoining hotel.)

The tenor is the brooding leading man of the sax section-- all quiet harmonies and dulcet tones until it's time to throw down, and then he rocks your world. There's just something about the sound and vibrations of a good tenor sax lick that sort of cleanses the soul-- it can be raw and screaming and visceral and cathartic or sultry and sweet and ensnare your heart with sound. And playing it is sort of an all or nothing proposition-- there's no nancying around the horn: either you really blow it or it just doesn't work. It's like a good run: after a little while the endorphins kick in and you can't imagine stopping.

Mr. Sassy came back from his jazz workshop today, where he spent the week polishing his improv skills, and he was so excited he was bouncing around the room, full of stories. (On the flight back home he sat next to one of the original members of Three Dog Night, and got autograph goodness as well as an hour of great conversation.) I'm so proud of him for going to that workshop, because that's one of the things about sax playing, or playing anything I guess, that quite simply terrifies me down to my shoes. Improv solos are supposed to be fun when you get the hang of it, but something in my mind just gets all tangled up in the details and I get too caught up in sounding like a complete moron, thus the terror. Hopefully D will have some good ideas on how to help me out now that he's gotten schooled this past week, because learning how to overcome that terror is definitely right at the top of my to-do list.

Because I loves me some good sax.

D.C. drivers are nothing but self-indulgent strutting teenage boys, I swear.

Every time I commute to work I'm struck by the dangerously self-important nature of D.C./Baltimore drivers-- you know exactly the type I'm talking about. They're determined to get where they're going as fast as possible and will go to whatever lengths necessary to get behind, in front of, or around you. This includes merging in front of or behind you with mere inches to spare (I'm not kidding-- literally inches) and will do literally anything to get behind, in front of, or around you.

Maybe I'm just noticing it more since I drove back from Alabama this past week, but more and more this attitude is getting on my nerves. It extends to life in general around here, too: How could anything you're doing possibly be as important as me? Everything I'm doing is more prestigious, more expensive, and therefore matters more than you could possibly matter they seem to be saying. Not only that, but everyone's out to prove how much more important they are by trying to one-up everything someone else is doing. I'm not kidding, either, when I say that it even extends to trivial stuff like how many play-dates their dogs have had. (I shit you not, I actually overheard that conversation between two friends who ran into each other on the Metro last weekend.)

It floors me how being nice is such a lost art in this city. It always surprises the hell out of people when I thank them for holding a door or smile and say hello as I walk to the store or simply tell them to have a nice day-- I can see it on their faces when it happens. Some people here look at you like you're outright weird.

Where I grew up, these are the expected courtesies. If you forget to say thank you, that person would surely think you rude and probably tell your mother because they go to church together. Maybe that's part of the problem here: people are so disconnected from each other. In the South, people all have the common weekly occurrence of church as a social system, where they interact on some level. I can't really think of anything besides the workplace here that functions with the same universal tie. Here, we don't have that, and half the time the most connection they have is seeing other people when they walk their dogs (that's how I know most of my neighbors). That guy in the car next to them becomes just some asshole, not possibly another human being at the very least, or (perish the thought) someone you might encounter again somewhere like in the church aisle*. That has a little bit of moderating power, you know? If you're likely to see that person as someone apart from just another driver there's a much better likelihood that you'll treat them like more than an annoying piece of trash.

At any rate, I can't see it changing any time soon, but all of this swaggering, braying, dick-wagging bull is ridiculous.This rant has been brought to you by the letter T and the number five.

*I'm not saying organized religion is good, but it does have a bona fide social function in the South.


(Above cartoon by Hugh MacLeod, one of my favorite bloggers and artists. Still kicking myself for not buying one of his originals back when he started out. What was I thinking. Honestly.)

Man, I am such an iLike moron. Every time I get on Facebook to do the Challenge, I feel like a complete old geezer. Why?

Because I can easily identify Enya, The Doors, Metallica, Mariah Carey (I am shamed), Britney Spears (gack), and anyone who's been on the radio for more than five years, but seriously people, I have no freaking idea about some of these other bands that I know are popular but I have no feel for whatsoever. Here's what happens in my typical run of questions:

U2? (Score.)
My Chemical Romance? (Who? Not feeling these guys at all.)
Kanye West? (Absolutely. I'm on that.)
Modest Mouse? (I'm so lost.)
Snow Patrol? (Whaa?)
The White Stripes? (Yeah, I know them, but they annoy the crap out of me.)
Panic! At The Disco? (Ermmm...)
Bob Dylan? (Thanks to my fabulous aunt's tape anthology graduation gift, right-o.)
Ween? Muse? (Who?)
The Offspring? (Who knew, but yes.)

Surprisingly, I've managed to get all the Smashing Pumpkins questions wrong, the Korn questions right (those of you who know me know how completely odd that is), and I'm striking out on The Cardigans major-league. Queen, David Bowie, and Jamiroquai are easy tens. I'm not exactly upset that I can't parse the Butthole Surfers, and by some bit of guessing luck I just got two Bjork questions correct (that is so weird.)

Are you beginning to see a pattern here?

Yeah, I'm an old fart.

Bush may be the Idiot Son of an Asshole, but I'm the moron who left the freezer door ajar and accidentally thawed all of my food last night. *giggle*

In honor of the Harry Potter movie coming out this week, I give you a Friday YouTube RoundUp devoted to Potter Puppet Pals. (Don't Listen to the Bananaphone version unless you want to be singing it all week!) It's cornucopia of love!

• Bothering Snape
• The Mysterious Ticking Noise
• Bananaphone PPP Style

Much love to the lovely Styx's Daughter, with whom I spent the last two days eating raw meat, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and listening to jazz. The quote of the trip?

"You may think it's Italian and traditional, but in reality it's American and disgusting."

This morning's wake-up call came in the form of a bright red electrical burst. A little before 8 am, the incredibly huge tree behind my neighbor's house gave up the ghost, and let fly half its mass onto her roof. And the power lines.

This I took to be a sign from the gods that I should go to brunch with D, so we bought ice and moved the cars in case of a full collapse and headed to downtown Silver Spring, where I now sit typing to you at a poached Baja Fresh table. I can't be entirely peeved about the wake-up call because I got to go back to the farmer's market as well and get some lettuces and a beautiful loaf of bread.

Soooo... the agenda today has abruptly changed from website maintenance to... yard work? K bye.

I know, I know. Bad blogger. But I promise that I'll have my back entries from this week up soon. Just as soon as I finish the Harry Potter book and survive the DC Fringe Festival. More later. Including pictures of my new hair.

Oy. Give me a break.

Summer days driftin' away, to uh-oh those summer nights...

Uh well-a well-a well-a huh
Tell me more, tell me more
Was it love at first sight?
Tell me more, tell me more...

So, yeah. I've been working a little hard on the new project's concert series this week:

You Are 96% Burned Out

You are extremely burned out. You work too hard, and you're not getting the results you deserve. It's time for a life change, as soon as you can manage it.

I. REALLY. WISH. I. COULD. SLEEP. RIGHT. NOW.

But instead, I'm here watching YouTube vids. At least that maybe bodes well for the RoundUp, which will be making a reappearance tomorrow.

This version of the RoundUp is for Frankenberry: later this year he'll be donning the mantle, and the jumpsuit of The King for a concert we're doing, so I thought I'd give the King some air time today:

• Hound Dog
• Jailhouse Rock
• Heartbreak Hotel
• Blue Christmas
• Polk Salad Annie (I'd never seen this one until now, and I LOVE. IT.)
• Can't Help Falling In Love (from the first Elvis movie I ever saw)

• The JXL Remix of A Little Less Conversation