SassyBlonde

Please visit this site and help fund free mammograms for underprivileged women:

Just found out the my friend Lucienne's new guy has his own online journal-- check him out:

Shogun Lunn

I have to say, even though I've never met this guy I already like him-- he likes Guinness, has his own blog, not to mention the fact that he's had my best friend giggling and blushing like a schoolgirl ever since she met him!

YAY! Gingersmack has returned!!! WOOT!

Just surfed over to check out FetchFood, a project that my friend Jason's working on-- what a cool concept!

FetchFood is a site that allows restaurants to take internet orders for take-out & delivery, as well as catering, and is soon to include your favorite neighborhood restaurant in the DC/Baltimore area or beyond!

And mind you, we're not talking TGI Friday's here-- these are the mom-and-pop, best-crabcakes-you-can-get-but-only-at-one-location, favorite-restaurants-that-only-locals-know-about, fabulous-food-finds kind of places that we all know and love around the corner.

So on those days that you can't live without D.P.Dough's, have it come to you-- order it on FetchFood!

I have no idea how he even has a life (and this is the original party host, believe me) with all the work he must be putting into this. The details for one restaurant are staggering, not to metion their expanding client roster. I can't wait to see all of the cool little restaurants in downtown Silver Spring on their list!!!

Hey Chicka!

You know how I feel about orange cheese? Well . . . . I was in Giant yesterday and I swear to God, they have orange cauliflower. I walked past it, looked, giggled out loud, then turned around to see if any one heard me . . . . and then walked over and had to touch it. OMG - it's absolutely dyed.

Now here's my question:

WHY?????

TTYL,
DrMudslide

There are many reasons why I love Jessica Hagy, as do many others. Her blog, Indexed, features often hysterical and always insightful graphs drawn on index cards, ranging from the complex to the simple. All are hilarious and/or thought-provoking-- run grasshopper, go forth and chortle.

From the comments over at finslippy today:

The little bee is a busy soul
He has no time for birth control
And that is why
In times like these
There are so many sons of bees.

Hoot! Go check out finslippy's take on poetry.

A big WHAZZZZZZAP to my bassoonist friend who informed me yesterday that he's now caught up on my blog. I looked at him quizzically and said "The whole THING?"

He grinned and said "Yup."

That, my friend, is devotion. Over four years of mindless drivel and ranting, and he read it all. Damn I love this man... now I just have to come up with a codename for him that's as snazzy as he is. Hmmmm...

That's right guys, don't forget-- ZeFrank ends The Show tomorrow-- make sure you go and get your Meaningless Products today!!!! If you don't know what I'm talking about, visit his page and and get caught up.

In particular, I think everyone needs to listen to Ray. And don't forget a project close to my heart, the Ugly Myspace project.

We loves us some ZeFrank.

If you've never seen Kitty Victorian perform, you've truly missed out. The force behind much of DC's burlesque scene, she's also the headmistress of Burlesque University, where girls (and guys) can go to learn the art of the tease. I swear, I'm in for the next round of classes if my gym habit keeps up. Below is a preview (NSFW) of the Purrrrfect Ecdysiast for your enjoyment:

I loves, loves, LOVES me some classic burlesque. There's nothing better than real women with real curves showing their stuff. Not just tawdry "strippers", these-- good burlesque artists are right up there with the best performers of any Broadway stage (I'll share more examples of my favorite lovely ladies on Friday's YouTube Roundup this week). For now you can get your fix by going to the DC Gurly Show on Wednesday at Chaos. Go forth and see pasties!!!

So here I sit at the wine bar, awaiting Red's emancipation from work. Red is my newly-minted lovely and sassy friend, who I met through the new project last year. Sassariffic. Remember the old layout? Yeah, she's the poster-child for sassy redhead.

Anyway, on a totally different subject, I've been very enthralled with the history of burlesque lately. Especially after watching Michelle L'amour's fan and balloon dances. It got me thinking... wha's the real difference between just "stripping" and "burlesque"? I mean, both basically equate to the removal of clothes, right?

But honestly, it comes down to art at the end, I think. It's like being a musician: there are people who present the work and people who embody the art. Just taking off your clothes is one thing, but I don't think anyone would have called Sally Rand simply a "stripper". Michelle L'amour definitely qualifies as a true artist of the stage, I think, no matter what Brandy may have thought. Anyway, I'd love to go see her dance any day of the week and twice on Sunday, no matter what people might classify her as out of hand. I think it has more to do with who has the power in the room-- your average stripper is at the mercy of the crowd: dollar bills in the G-string and all. Good burlesque dancers hold the audience in the palm of their hands and are (rightly so) viewed as paragons on a pedestal by the crowd. At any rate, more to come on Friday's RoundUp.

Yeah, just so y'all know, I'm officially old today. But still Sassy as ever. Woohoo!!

If I didn't love Neil Gaiman before (which I totally did), I certainly do now. This is the type of person the world needs more of... the type who stops on the road and loads a lost German shepherd into his Mini and then takes him in, getting him out of a less than ideal situation. I'm just saying. Shout out for sure on that one. Good job, man.

All right, back to pig picking.

Jesus holy effing God. This is what heaven looks like for me.

I have a love-hate relationship with food, but my favorite culinary memories can all be traced to my honeymoon in Paris. Exquisite coffee and breakfast, wonderful dollar-sandwiches, amazing pastries, and incredible wines. I've been trying to replicate some of that for almost seven years and itching to go back and experience it again. Trust Orangette to bring it all back in lovely drool-inducing spades.

Anyway, my friend is out, D and I enjoyed an evening of hanging out with a bottle of Moet (did I tell you I racked up 21 bottles of various forms of alcohol from the bash? Yeah, I need to write about that post-haste; I know), and I got a little dirt therapy in. That being said, I'm going to bed to prepare for a couple of days of crap-tastic running around. Hopefully I can squeeze in a few posts in the meantime, otherwise the RoundUp is the next stop. Cheers, and more soon.

Life is always changing, bringing sudden if not unexpected shifts that can change the scope of your world.

This morning I said goodbye to The Muse for a while. Today she's making the long drive to move back home to Alabama for grad school: maybe not a permanent shift, but still it takes her out of my little circle of DC girls for the forseeable future. I wanted to be strong and smiling when she left my doorstep this morning, but at the last moment I found tears welling up in my eyes as we stood at the back door to embrace. (Nevermind that I'll see her in Birmingham in a month.)

You see, I have a lot to thank her for this past year. When she moved up here, I was in the middle of another big transition/decision, and having her around to lean on kept me sane. Having her here reminded me, the perpetual hermit, of the joys of hanging out with your girlfriends and that it takes time, patience, and intelligent work not only to play the flute or grow a garden, but to grow a friendship.

However, as much as I'll miss her, I'm glad for her that she's going back. She's starting a new chapter in her life as well as returning to the old one, and at the end of today's long drive she goes to the warm embrace of my sister, her other best friend. So tonight I will raise a glass of Morgan Creek Magnolia Muscadine to the Muse as she treks homeward to the South, to home and family, church and tradition, and rejoice that she's back in the place that gives her such joy and inspiration, even if it's only for a while.

I'll miss you, girl. Now Turn it up.

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

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."

Ooooh, the joys of a day off!!

D and I spent the day at the Frankenberrys' house, drinking (woot!) and playing Wii (woot woot!). D and I brought our Wiimotes, two pints of chocolate Guinness ice cream and our best game faces and headed over for our Saturday Showdown.

We got a total tickle out of Frankenberry's selection of Miis, from hilarious versions of himself and his wife (including their alter egos) to TV characters and international and historical figures. In point of fact, F. had made Miis for some of the world's most famous dictators and scary political figures, including Kim Jong-Il, Hitler, Stalin, Ho Chih Min, and Dick Cheney, so immediately we decided that couples tennis wasn't fun enough with our own Miis... we decided on Double Dictator Tennis.

I couldn't resist the short bespectacled figure of Kim Jong-Il, and D decided on Dick Cheney (which, by the way, provided much hilarity as we all made Cheney noises inspired by Lil' Bush-- if you haven't seen it, go now to Comedy Central and fix that problem). F and his wife decided on Stalin and Hitler respectively, and you can imagine how the jokes progressed:

"Ooooh, Kim Jong-Il kill personal trainer!" (after a spectacularly bad whiff)

"Maaahhhhhh..." (said Lil' Cheney)

"Kim Jong-Il kill personal trainer's family!!!" (after another super-awful whiff)

"Mmmm, I think Bob Dole is playing Kim Jong-Il tonight"

"Stalin will show you use of nuclear weapons," (followed by a super-fast ace serve)

"Yeah, and he was a bad painter, too," (of Hitler after he whiffed an easy return)

It's not often that I give out hard-core orders here, but today is a different story: I want every woman, and for that matter, every person, that reads this blog to go over and read this post at ToddlerPlanet. It may be the most important post you ever read:

We hear a lot about breast cancer these days. One in eight women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetimes, and there are millions living with it in the U.S. today alone. But did you know that there is more than one type of breast cancer?

I didn’t. I thought that breast cancer was all the same. I figured that if I did my monthly breast self-exams, and found no lump, I’d be fine.

Oops. It turns out that you don’t have to have a lump to have breast cancer.

I totally forgot to tell y'all-- remember when I asked for y'all to vote for my picture in the Snapfish Shrek The Third photo contest? Well guess what?

I won third place!!!!

(Along with a crapload of other people.) The best part? The third place prize was the only one I really wanted-- an HP Photosmart A616 printer! People, this thing kicks all kinds of ass, not to mention it's totally cute-- they even sent me the fun little carrying bag and a kit full of printing supplies. Fabulous!!
Thanks again to everyone who voted-- y'all totally made my day!!!

I would just like to thank Sir Frankenberry for completely making my night a couple of minutes ago-- I may have to put up with double the usual amount of asshole at tonight's rehearsal, but that will be offset by having him at the other end of the row making me laugh when I'm not making a total ass of myself on my own. (And that's without the happy drugs I was on last week... I'm surprised the maestro didn't fire me or send me home, because I spent the entire night giggling with my friends on either side of me and not doing much of anything else.) Hooray!!

Sometimes the beauty of her thought process just leaves me speechless. Or giggling.

I am so excited I don't know what to do with myself-- by the time I get home tonight The Muse will be at Chez Sassy, back in D.C. for good and all and crashing with us until she finds her own digs. (See, she's scooted back up into the D.C. blogroll over there.)

So what have I been doing all week? Scrubbing and vacuuming and rearranging and washing and filing and generally returning order to a house that has been egregiously out-of-whack ever since I went back to school three or so years ago (geez-- that's a long time.).

As I may have mentioned before, I am a devout believer in the art of the To-Do list, and house cleaning is no exception: every week I endeavor to work my way through a three-column, ten-point-font list of tasks, and every week I somehow fail to finish or reconcile them all. Anal-retentive, yes I guess, but you have to remember that my house is also my place of business and I have kids and parents in and out all week, inspecting the bathroom faucets, lounging on upholstered chairs and sofas and hopefully not getting covereds in cat hair, and perusing the contents of the magazine rack and the bookshelf.

It's always been a point of pride for me to try and keep a clean house-- my mom always had us helping her keep the place ship-shape on Saturday mornings after cartoons and before we went out to play, and I can vividly remember the disgust in my mom's voice when she talked about the house of somebody she knew when she was younger-- clothes thrown everywhere, trash piled up in the corners and dog hair everywhere-- and how it was her worst nightmare. Not that I'm OCD about it necessarily--anyone who's ever been her could tell you that Chez Sassy has its share of clutter-- but the point is that I try.

At any rate, for the first time in a long time, I'm actually close to FINISHING. THE. LIST. I may be one of the oddest people on the planet, but I can also tell you that if that happens I'll be one of the happiest, too.

Frankenberry on making rum and cokes:

"There wasn't that much Diet Coke left in the can, but the glass needed to be full."

I’ve been doing a lot of time in the ER lately. Today I saw a girl after an intentional overdose (she was ok).

I hope I treated her in a way that didn’t make her feel uncomfortable. I don’t know the shrink who was on duty, don’t know if he was any good. I would have offered to do the psych eval but that’s not done in this hospital.

It’s strange, I didn’t make a long or deep connection with her, but at least that kind of stuff doesn’t freak me out, which probably makes me a better doctor for her than anyone else who could have seen her.I didn’t do the awkward deliberately not asking about what happened, and also didn’t do the “overly sympathetic from someone who has no idea what they are talking about” thing, and I also didn’t do the “gawk at the accident” thing either that some docs do - immediately asking extremely probing and personal questions loudly (”Why’d you do it? Were you raped?”). She could have been seen by that attending who flipped out at me yesterday. At least I spared her that.

I asked if anything particular had happened recently. She said no, she just was tired of it all. I checked her body. I hoped she could tell I wasn’t one of those doctors, the incredulous ones, the holier-than-thou-how-could-anyone-do-such-a-thing ones.

I wanted to let her know that somehow, I understood. I hoped she saw something that made her see it - maybe one of my piercings, or the blue-black nail polish.

When I see how hard it is for some patients to once again face someone who looks down on them (and this isn’t only psych patients - it also is common with gay patients, the elderly), I wish I could give them a secret signal to show them I get it. We need a Crazy Handshake.

--My Sad Alter Ego, "The Emergency Room Visit Guide for Crazy People"

A shout out, because the fantastic Mr. Gaiman asked that this be passed on and around, for the fantastic movie Coraline coming out on February 6th:



I agree that this is my favorite trailer so far-- much more in the style and spirit of the story than some of the more lighthearted trailers I've seen.

I don't think it's a secret that I pretty much unashamedly adore Neil Gaiman's work, and I'm so completely excited to see this film. The fact that it's done all by hand and in old-school stop-motion just blows my mind and I can't imagine a better treatment for such a fantastic story. I first read Coraline just after we moved into the house where we now live, full of its old doors and bendy closets and crawlspaces and was delighted by its darkness and the fantastic warped reality he created-- one of the many reasons I love his writing: the fact that he is utterly committed to the full body of the story in all of its glorious, beautiful, and unabashedly twisted and often frightening dimensions. To see that brought to life on the screen as apparently this production has done will be a dream, or rather a nightmare, come true.

And by the way, have you seen some of the promotions they're doing for this film? It's some of the absolute best P.R. I've seen in ages. For instance, the Coraline boxes. And the Alphabet cards and ads. Fantastic.

You can pretty much bet that I'm skipping a show that weekend to go on opening night somewhere, because honestly, how could I not?

A shout-out to my ladies:



Happy birthday to one of the most fabulous ladies I know, Miss Heidelah. (Card found for her by Annelisa.)

So here's the thing:

I've missed you guys.

I've had some pretty heavy things going on in my life this year, things which basically have changed the face of my entire existence in one way or another. And I haven't really felt comfortable talking about that here, in public, for anyone and everyone to read. More importantly, there are very good reasons why I can't and shouldn't.

And frankly, it's killing me.

Because if you're still reading this, then I've probably known you, or had you as a reader, for long enough that you're probably wondering what the hell happened to me.

Because if you're still reading this, you're probably one of the people whose opinions and love I value enough that I'm going to need your help in the next year.

Because frankly, I need an outlet more in-depth than Twitter and less personal than Facebook.

So here's the other thing:

On March 1st, this blog is getting a makeover. I'll be moving it to a new server, shaking up the layout a little, and converting it to a new CMS, though the site address won't change. The ranting and raving and silliness will stay the same, only there will be some things that I don't want to share with everybody, some things that I may need to share and say, but only within certain circles. I'm tired of keeping it all pent up and I've done that for long enough.

If you're still reading this blog, and you're been a loyal reader or friend or even a long-time lurker, email me at (sassy{at}sassyblonde{dot}net) with the title of this post in the subject line or comment on this post and request an access key. I'd love to have you in the circle.

Til then, I'll be cleaning house and doing some renovation, and I'll see you on March 1st.

UPDATE: So, snow and circumstances being what they've been around here, I'm going to have to ask you guys to wait around a little longer, which actually ends up being appropriate for a lot of reasons. I've gotten all your emails and comments, and if you can hang tight for a few more weeks, I'll have the next phase ready on April 1st.