a distaste for cous cous, and happy parading.

This weekend: dinner at Ipanema for Blake’s birthday, the Triple for Lauren V’s birthday, the Christmas parade, crafting, visiting Granny at the hospital, cooking, Autocue / Ki:Theory show at Gallery5, Ipanema for Twist and Crawl dance night and seeing rad friends from Norfolk.  After that we tried to go to Cous Cous to meet up with some others and see the magnificent Jason Wood, who was down from NY.  Up to this point I had an amazing night, saw great bands / DJs, and was able to catch up with tons of people.

But here’s where last night got surreal.  So Margo and Maura were in line to get into Cous Cous, and then a couple of guys, and then us.  We were all perplexed because it was busy inside, but not slam-packed like it is some nights…so why were we waiting?  The door guy wasn’t letting one person in for every person who left, which would be standard procedure if the place was at capacity.  He was arbitrarily letting some people walk right up and bypass the line to get in.  But when three or four people would leave, he wouldn’t let anyone new in.  He was incredibly rude to Margo when she asked him what was going on.  His explanation was something that amounted to “Right now, there are too many people in here.  So I have to let out more people before I can let new people in.”  Uh, how did that happen?  And there weren’t “too many people,” because we had all been there tons of times and seen the place about 50% more crowded.  Peering through the glass windows, we could see that there was plenty of space for the eight or so extra folks who were now waiting outside.  Karen ventured the guess that they had craftily decided that “capacity” was way lower on nights when there’s no cover charge.  But there was no cover for any of Kenny’s amazing and packed 240 Minutes nights, so that doesn’t make any sense.  The door guy’s condescension to Karen when she inquired about the door is probably what frayed my patience to its very end.  After waiting for about half an hour, the status was that people continued coming up, seeing the line, asking “there’s a wait?” and then seeing our nods, peeking through the doors, and saying “but it’s not even full in there.”  Exaaaaactly.  It kind of grossed me out, to borrow a favorite phrase of Susan’s.  I’m all about waiting a little while for a good time, when everything is fair and above-board and done in the name of obeying fire codes.  But wasting my valuable Saturday night hangout time so a guy with a raging Napoleon complex can play door commando is humiliating to say the least.  I wanted to wear a sign saying “This bar isn’t cool enough for me to wait in line to get in, I’m just trying to see my friends from New York,” but I forgot my posterboard and Sharpies.  Finally my desire to avoid licking the boots of the door guy overpowered my desire to see Jason, and we split.  At this point it was almost 1am, and I couldn’t give that bearded buffoon the satisfaction of thinking he owned my soul.   This bummed Dan out because he had really wanted to get in and was looking forward to seeing friends who were inside.  Am I crazy or too impatient or complainy just because I want to at least preserve that little dignity?  I think not.  I told Dan that he should stay if he wanted to, but he didn’t stay.

So that’s the explanation for how Cous Cous became yet another of Sticky Rice’s ventures that I’ll avoid like the plague because of its rudeness and crowds, even though the food there is fantastic.  Kenny: time to change venues?  I hated trying to dance around all the 4,000 tables in there anyway.  Let’s discuss.

Edit (12.8.08): Check out the comments for further discussion!

::sigh:: End rant.  Ahhh, always purges the confusion, and never costs a penny.  And of course this way I’ll remember why I haven’t been to Cous Cous in a year.  Also, one of the larger points here is that Richmond needs a bar that’s bigger than a matchbox and smaller than Texas so that it’s the right size for dancing.  Not that I don’t love being all smushed in to tiny spaces with you guys.

But I’m quickly reminded how insignificant things like this are.  This week’s been marked with some sadness because although Granny’s doing better, she had another heart attack while in the hospital.  My sister was told yesterday that our grandfather is also ill, which is disconcerting because he is a superhero and claims to have been alive since before dirt was invented.  And Brandi suffered the loss of her baby niece this week, which is more than I have been able to wrap my mind around.  I’ve thought about her a lot this week, and how much she must be hurting.

On more positive notes:

• It snowed last night!  Tiny, baby flakes for about three seconds.  But still!
• I’ve spent about 20 hours this week working on a giant neck-bow for Marshe, and although I cannot imagine why I’m working as fast as molasses in January, it’s turning out quite lovely and I’m having fun with it.
• Work is amazing, and I’m not bummed at all to be up this early on a Sunday so that I can go there.
• My neighbors’ crazy rope-lights-in-a-tree Christmas decorations make our block the BEST this time of year.
• We froze our feet off at the parade, but it was so festive and romantic to get up early and huddle with each other on the street and be around so much cheerfulness and so many high school marching bands.
• There were Star Wars costumed characters at the parade!!!!!!!!
• I love NEET Magazine.
• Richmond has made it so easy to avoid malls this holiday season, with at least three different ways to get handmade stuff and bypass the mass-produced.
• Non-boring family portraits: good call.  Nobody wants to see you in your soft focus, Olan Mills, weird makeup that you never wear on normal days type of portrait.  Least of all yourself in ten years.
• Gmail stickers!
• H&M Home: now we’re all in big, big trouble.
• Inspired by a pretty hotel: “Love is meant to make us glad.”  Truth.
• Wesley Willis cross-stitch: THAT is what the world’s been waiting for.
• Not my style at all, but beautiful nonetheless.
• The Church of Crystal Light got press in Style Weekly.

of genetic jerks and green graffiti.

Pretty and poetic.  I like this method of graffiti.

Lookbook.nu is a new site where people post what they’re wearing.  For those of us who find it hard to always rely on fashion magazines to get inspiration, this is great.  It’s just ordinary people showing you what they really wore that day.  Most of the outfits are lovely, and even the ones I don’t like very much are at least interesting.  I also like that from the style of the photos, you can get just a glimpse of the personality of the person in the photo.  Individuality is not dead!  And there was much rejoicing.  Many thanks to oh joy! for the tip-off.

On to some links:

• How can I help but love this extravagant outdoor furniture?  I’ll have to love it from afar though.
• This girl takes some of the best photos I’ve ever seen.  Truly beautiful stuff.
• Today’s Tom Sawyer…
• Cannot resist jewel tones.
• In case you didn’t know about Saint Bono.  I love him.
• And so the genetic labeling begins.  And could be quite helpful, blacklisting those bad Mr. Wickhams from polite society well before they make off with little sisters.
• Finally, somebody is trying to solve the textbook ripoff problem.
• Oh nice excuse, hacker-man.
• A quote about girls, courtesy of Brie.  I like this quote, and hope it’s not misunderstood by many.  Victims exist, and deserve to be acknowledged.  But there’s a beauty in overcoming the role of being a victim, and becoming strong and interesting in spite of it…instead of building your personality (or lack thereof?) all around the role and thereby depending upon it.

the hot liquid magma crisis, and other reflections

To people who have grown up poor, the idea of recycling and reducing and reusing is nothing new.  When my dad was a kid, if his family didn’t live as simply and inconspicuously as possible, they’d starve to death or be evicted from the cinder-block house where they lived.  So even though I always had plenty of food and nice warm clothes as a child, I was still raised in a very spartan manner in a household where every penny was accounted for meticulously, and waste was not an option.  Making frivolous purchases or throwing something away before it was reused a hundred times was like disrespecting your ancestors.  If my grandfather worked so hard to get this family out of the coal mines and into civilized society, I should place some value in the comforts I have, and try to live the same frugal lifestyle that he did.  Don’t be conspicuous, don’t be a burden to others, don’t make a mess and not clean it up.  These are some of the basic principles we were raised on, and they translate easily into our ideas of how we treat our homes and surroundings.

These days it seems like “green” is the all-devouring advertising buzzword that is straight-up irresistible to the huddled masses looking for a way to make up for all those years of un-sustainable living.  And it will take a lot of dollars for them to make it up, too, assuming they account for everything up to and including those very-not-biodegradable teething rings they used as babies.  All these dollars just begging to be snatched up are falling easily into the hands of anyone willing to put out a product that somehow claims to be green / organic / will-not-induce-mutation / whatever, and it’s mildly sickening to see people buy these new products up without so much as an afterthought about the fact that they just paid four times more for dish soap without even taking a second to investigate how the dish soap claims to be “green.”

I suppose it’s my nature to assume that people selling something are always looking out for #1, and not necessarily concerned with whether or not they remembered to leave the poison out of the dish soap for this batch.  I mean how the heck are we supposed to KNOW for sure?  It looks the same, smells the same, cleans your dishes the same.  Are its labels, placed there by someone selling the substance, to be believed without question?  I hope hope hope that these companies really are the fresh-faced, trustworthy lovers of the planet that we think they are, and that there won’t be some Enron-like scandal in the “green” industry a few years down the road.

And yet, the times are pretty exciting when you can tangibly see changes taking place in your own immediate surroundings.  That girl in middle school with the dolphin t-shirt can yell and scream as loudly as she wants to about how badly the earth needs a hug, but as much as everyone else may agree with her they won’t actually change their habits until the problem somehow involves their wallets.  So now people are earnestly trying to conserve fuel, and it didn’t happen because they watched a movie or read a book.  It happened because gas prices went up.  Either way, a helpful trend is a helpful trend, no matter what the motivation is behind it.  Last year seeing a scooter was a relatively uncommon thing, and yesterday four scooters zoomed past me during just my 15-minute bike ride to work.  I’m officially deeming this “tangible results.”

I find myself very tired of the girl-in-the-dolphin-t-shirt brand of trying to plead or shock people into being convinced that the world will be consumed by liquid hot magma in 2.5 seconds and we shall all perish, or whatever it is that they’re claiming will happen.  I’m sure there are stragglers, but at this point pretty much everyone is a believer.  We know about the magma, and we are ready to help.  I like that the focus is slowly shifting off of the moaning and wailing and gnashing of teeth and onto the following questions:

– How can we change the things we buy as much as financially feasible in order to help?
– How can we change our daily routines in small ways in order to help?
– What do we need to try to avoid in order to help?

If a whole lot of people ask those types of simple questions, changes happen.  Dollars are the things that affect companies and prod them to offer certain products, so when you see the major car makers all racing each other to come up with more fuel-efficient cars, you know that lots of people are buying fuel-efficient cars.  These companies don’t want to die just because they’re hanging onto their “large automobiles,” as David Byrne would describe them.  They want to be on top of the next trend, and if that’s fuel-efficient cars, then doggone-it, they want you to buy yours from them.

Speaking of fuel-efficient / fuel-independent cars, Modern Chris showed me this video about air cars today.  Neato!  I hope the streets of the US are simply packed with these things, sooner than Big Oil can have this inventor murdered quietly.

But seriously, all this assuming that people are naturally predictable and always looking out for #1 is not very Jeffersonian.  Mr. Jefferson believed that human beings were inherently good at their core, and that “bad people” were made that way by their circumstances and not born that way.  That’s why he was into the idea that small communities would govern themselves, and that there should be no need for a strong central government and tons and tons of rules about every little thing you can possibly make rules for.  Laissez-faire!  The central government’s job would be to sign treaties and run the post office.  So lovely.  And yet you see how diligently his ideas have been ignored since then.  But let’s hope that in this particular case he was right, and that the human race is genuinely concerned with the earth and not just making a buck, and that their good intentions will bail them out of this liquid hot magma crisis.

Still, even though I didn’t get the idea that most people are looking out for #1 from T.J., it bears further inspection.  Upon doing this, I find that:

1. Almost every single time I’ve ever made this assumption, I’ve been right
2. It was instilled in me over a period of 26 years, by my dad

Although this entry’s beginning may have seemed an unlikely prologue for a treatise on the greening of the world, you see that I’ve taken you from my family to the liquid hot magma crisis and back again.

So this idea of thriftiness and thinking critically about all of your purchases is deeply ingrained in my mind, and this is probably why I’m so persnickety about balancing my checkbook.  And why I’m not quick to jump on the latest bandwagon without thinking it through completely.  For example, even though I’ve been consciously trying to help us out with the hot liquid magma crisis ever since I started living off of more than $100 a week, I find myself constantly questioning purchases made in the name of “green.”  For example, I’m down to use diy, home-made methods of saving the earth all day long.  If you can assemble it from normal stuff in your kitchen and it actually works, it sounds good to me.  And if you’re at the store and the “green” version of something costs the same as the regular, totally poisonous version (this almost never happens), it’s a no-brainer.  But it’s hard to rationalize paying $4.50 for a certain type of cleaner at the store when you could buy the $1.00 generic brand and give the extra $3.50 to another charity.  In the section of my brain where different causes are weighed, the urgency of kids being totally slaughtered in places like Darfur seems to greatly overpower the liquid hot magma crisis.  Sure, the liquid hot magma will “get” all of us and our good friends the animals, but right now, right this second, those kids are being “gotten” as they stare out pitifully from the front page of the Mercy Corps web site.  And for that matter, there are actual needy people living in the park behind my house right now, and if anyone should be paying attention to them and not wondering whether or not to spend $3.50 on dish soap in the cleaning aisle at the store, it should be me.  When I think about those kids, or what a small $50 loan can do for a poor female businesswoman in a third-world country, it makes the dish soap dilemma seem like a prissy, elitist thing that rich people think about just to pass the time.

Shall we forsake the earth and help other human beings live to see the next sunrise, or shall we count this generation as a sunk cost and invest in the future of this constant rock that we all stand on?  Or to avoid blame in either direction, shall we just wash our hands of the matter and not help any causes out?  I’m not saying I have the answer to this, I’m just saying it’s something to think about and consider in the complex web of decisions we make every day.  I have to say that I lean toward the cause of other human beings in peril, and it makes sense as the way of life I’ve personally identified as the Best Way and endeavored (however disjointedly) to adhere to, demands that others be put first.  Anyway these are the questions that run around in my mind as I do all of my breathing and eating and living and dying, which is why it’s worth making this deposit of conundrum gold into the friendly bank that is my blog, because it’s awfully heavy to carry around in my purse all the time.

on the subject of preparing advice.

I always feel very unqualified to give advice in every arena except for relationships.  Because outside of that category, what struggles and sufferings have I overcome?  What do I know about anything?  Being raised in the lower-middle-class in this society means having a way cushier life than most people in the world.  Good sources of advice are Thomas Jefferson and Google, not me.

But being a devotee of Valerie’s advice column and reading Matt Moment’s recent post made me think about advice, and what qualifies a person to give it.  Who wants their advice anyway?  Oh right, we readers of their blogs do.  But usually I don’t feel very motivated to send words of wisdom to the world at large.  I forget all the details of my life that make up answers to questions like “how’s life?” or “what did you do over the past five years?” so I document everything for posterity.  But I know my own major life lessons by heart, so why should I type those out?

Then I started trying to think of who would need my general advice.  Yikes…If it pleases the cosmos, in the next few years I’ll start having children, and then I’ll be too busy mothering for the following few years to figure out life and get all my advice prepared so when my teenager eventually asks “how does a person stay happy in this life?” I won’t know what to say.  Scary prospect!  I should get my advice in good order.

Mr. Moment is right about anger and what it usually stems from.  It’s cute that we’re on the same page, because it’s like having something in common with a good friend that you didn’t know you had in common until someone finally said it.

For getting my advice on the pursuit of happiness in order, here’s mostly what I’ve got so far:

Go on frequent adventures.  Take up gardening, or other pursuits like it that require cultivation and yield tangible benefits.  Your own happiness, calmness, and good intentions will speak for themselves to those around you.  You do not need to prove points.  If you think someone’s going about it all wrong, your actions and their results will prove your points.  Do your best to promote good things and curtail bad things.  You will know the difference when you see them.  If you don’t know the difference, ask yourself the question “Is this the better way to show love to others?”  If yes, it’s a good thing.  If no, it’s a bad thing.  Divide everything into two piles: Pile A consists of things you can’t change, and Pile B consists of things you can change.  Throw Pile A away and never think about it again.  Huge changes in the world are only made by a lot of people working on Pile B instead of grumbling about Pile A.

<3

it’s a cheerocracy

The last few days have been splendid, full of getting stuff done around the house, chilling out, etc.  I finished crocheting a beer cozy, made a couple of articles of clothing smaller, covered a bulletin board at Dan’s house with pretty fabric (news flash: I hate the color brown), and started making a tote from my new Simple Sewing book.  We also visited my parents, and that was very nice.  Dan and I owned my sister and her friend at the game Catchphrase.

And get a load of this weather!  Monday it felt like the summer outside, and walking to and from the gym at lunchtime was amazing.  I’m looking forward to warmer days ahead.  But I suppose it’ll get colder before it gets warmer.

Last night we had a lovely dinner at Enoteca Sogno with Daron and Cam.  The wine and all the dishes I sampled were delicious.  Not just “good,” I’m saying “delicious.”  Full-fledged culinary genius, that place is.  I adore the food there, and was just really bummed out that the pumpkin ravioli was all out.  We definitely liked it the first time we went there, but this time really solidified us as fans.  I think we’ll be frequenting that place on many date nights in the future.  The sparking conversation did help, of course.

A few links have piled up:

• A statewide smoking ban has been proposed (again); I hope it has better luck this time.  I have nothing against smoking, but indoors it contributes to stench, squalor, and dry eyeballs.   If this ban were to pass, it would honestly make my life considerably better.
• Bruce has been blogging it up in the art world.  I’m particularly fond of his Seascape video; please check it out.
• So true: Richmonders really don’t take advantage of the amazing stuff around them.
• The Science Museum of Virginia is having some science classes for grown-ups.  Not sure how I would get there on my lunch break, but the Beginning Beekeeping class did catch my eye.
• Ah, Velvet.  Always trashy, always amusing.  Thanks, Tobacco Ave.
• And yet!  Now look – the darn thing is finally gone!  Thank you, Velvet.  Although you can’t tell me that before the Tobacco Ave. piece, they didn’t know that thing was hideous.  They were just…stating the obvious.
• The Queen owns you once again, this time on Youtube.
• Holy smokes…check out Mothology for some amazing vintage-inspired housewares, etc.  Right down my alley, as it were.  I suspect some items will be appearing on ye olde wishlist from this place.

Photos are finally posted from New Year’s Eve.  There are certainly some mega cute ones.  It definitely turned out to be one of the most useful experiences ever, and I’m very glad of it.  We’ve received many apologies, so that’s been very nice, and all in all it’s been a very telling event.

But on the RSVP topic: come on.   I don’t expect people to know a bunch of obscure etiquette references, and I don’t know them myself.  But this is basic courtesy. 

Pop quiz: “RSVP” means –

a. Do nothing, and maybe show up to the event if you feel like it.
b. Respond to the invitation in one way or another, and even if you have to say “we might come, depending on this or that” it’ll help the host to plan the event.

The answer seems painfully obvious.

At any rate, I love you, you crazy friends of mine.  To all of you that have shown your concern (about the event in general, about your own actions, about the question of etiquette, etc.), thanks very much.  It is nice to know that you care! 

I also have to mention a special thank-you to DC Drew for gracing the NYE party with his presence.  He’s a wonderful guest, an excellent conversationalist, and a person who makes a party unforgettable.  Thanks man.

And now for a very figurative diversion about life.It has been interesting for me to see what happens in my life when a pebble is thrown across my path, since the past couple of years have been so blissfully pebble-free.  But you watch your friends, and you know how little issues affect them.  Does a pebble across their path not phase them at all, just make them frown a little and keep walking, cause them to fold their arms and throw temper tantrums and slam doors and kick and scream, or do they crumple up on a heap on the sidewalk, crying out laments to the cold sky above?  It’s an interesting dance.

For me, finally having a juicy little pebble with which to evaluate myself has been revealing.  I have been very fortunate in my life, fortunate enough I think to have a very calm sense of joy.  When I say “joy” I don’t mean a good mood, I mean a joyful existence…whereas with some folks, a change is mood is a change in overall existence: for example, a bad hair day means doom and destruction for the next month or so.  So I look at my life, and all the awesome things that are always happening in it, and all the bad things that are really just awesome things in disguise, and I see a huge current of joy.  I have good health, I live in a country that’s spoiled rotten to the core, I am constantly blessed, I do and learn new things every day, and I enjoy this life in the most excellent company.  I darn well should be grateful times a million.  On top of the huge current of joy is my current mood, which is just a thin crust.  So when a pebble is thrown across my path, it merely bounces off the crust, or makes a small indentation therein (nothing a little alone time or a productive rant won’t repair).

So I am pleasantly surprised once again.  Current state of affairs = fantastic.  Room for improvement = always huge.  Need to show more love every day.  Every day every day.  Need to construct a more creative mantra.

Last night we watched Bring It On and just in case you were wondering, yes, it is still hilarious.