Mood:  accident prone

Dear Grove, 

What a strange day.  The morning was spent strolling through the contemporary wing of a local art museum with friends, imaginary smoked salmon canape and glass of Chardonnay in hand, looking at paintings and reading artists' statements like Octopi and helicopters are a recurring theme in the work of Ernie Dinkelfwat.  His angry, slashing line evokes the conundrum of the human predicament.  The exhibit had everything from creepy talking dolls in trunks dully repeating "Fire...Fire..." to a red room full of tables and chairs being gnawed by grey plaster foxes.  There were also 30-foot-tall purple velvet bathrobes, neon figures poking each other in the eye, and some urinals made out of red lipstick.  It was delightfully, bizarrely nonsensical.

What the exhibit really needed was something like this:

with a placard: The viewer is asked to accept that this is one of Australia's finest actors; and if unable to do that, then the viewer is invited to have his/her head examined.

In the afternoon, just for a change of pace, I impulsively pulled off the highway and went to a rugby match, after spotting a billboard along the road.  (A certain portion of my life is ruled by impulse.)  The billboard was advertising some sort of North American tournament going on this weekend.  I love unconventional sports, and it was a beautiful day to be outside.  When I pulled up to the stadium, England and Argentina were about to begin their match.

Rugby isn't a sport I know much about. In college I dated a rugby player for awhile, but I never went to any of his games.  I was too terrified he was going to get his head ripped off.  I do know rugby is different from Aussie Rules - no extra posts in the end zones; no fussy flag-waving umpire dressed like Inspector Gadget in a white lab coat and little hat; no bouncing of the ball off the turf every few steps; lots more interruptions in play - but beyond that, I remain happily clueless about the rules.

As I walked into the stadium, some staff members were handing out cardboard placards that read, "TRY".

"Gosh," I thought, "what a lukewarm cheer.  'Try'?  Are both teams so depressed that it's all they can do to make the effort?"  (Later,
perusing the program, all became clear: a "try" is when someone crosses the goal line and plonks the ball down onto the grass).

At first, it was quite enjoyable watching the game without any idea what was going on.  Groups of Shrek-shaped men, bent over like question marks, shoved back and forth and dug at the turf with their heels.  Occasionally the ball squirted out at a random place.  Some hapless victim would grab it, run 18 inches, and instantly get smacked to the ground.  All supine bodies would then freeze in place, like a 300 Spartan Death Tableau, while the survivors frantically rummaged around in the debris looking for the ball.  My favorite part was when two guys would hoist another guy high into the air to swat at the ball, as if they were all at the ballet.  By halftime, Argentina was ahead, 6 - 3.  (Yes, I know it's proper Queen's English to say "Argentina were ahead", but I've never understood that.  On this side of the pond, Argentina refers to one rugby team.  Singular. It's like "math" vs. "maths".  What's with the plurals, Sceptered Isle?)

Up in the stands, passions ran strong on both sides. Everybody, it seems, was an ardent partisan for one team or the other.  The crowd rippled with flags and team colors.  Directly behind me was a mixed group.  Some were Argentina supporters, some were England supporters.  Both were equally loud and obnoxious, and absolutely schnockered on cheap beer.

"England!" howled the guy right behind me.  "ENGLAAAAAAAAAAND!"
"...Sucks!" rejoined an Argentina fan.
"Oh yeah?  Wha' has Argentina done for you lately?" slurred the English fan. "Or the world?"
"Two words: Diego Maradona!"
"Maradona shoulda played rugby.  He's good with his hands."
"That's like saying Picasso should have played piano."
"You know what the problem is with Argentina?...It's full of Argentinians."
"Better than being infested with English maggots."

Falkland Islands War zinger in 5, 4, 3, 2... thought I.  Sure enough:

"Nice try with the Falklands, losers."
"Who wants that crappy bunch of rocks anyway?  You're welcome to 'em.  MANO DE DIOS!"

The taunts, howls, and good-natured jibes flew thick and fast around me.  I seemed to be the only neutral spectator in that section of the stands.  For a neophyte, there weren't any obvious grounds for picking one team over the other.  Sometimes I go by who has the prettier uniforms, but both teams were fairly bland: England in white, Argentina in white and pale blue stripes.  From an ethnic point of view, the Irish half of me was tempted to cheer for revenge on the murderous English oppressors - and who better than Argentina, the underdog? But then my other half - the murderous, oppressive English half - stirred to the soul by my neighbors' besotted renditions of 'God Save The Queen', wanted to see the glorious motherland triumph.  I decided on a policy of rooting for whoever had the ball.

My neutrality was short-lived, however.  A spray of something wet and sticky went sloshing across my back and elbow.  I turned around and saw the loudest Argentinian fan - a bandy-legged guy with a head of curly hair - waggling his beer cup around as he trash-talked someone behind him.  I slid several feet to the right to sit in front of an English fan.  He leaned over and whispered confidentially, "Sorry about that.  You should root for England.  Our fans don't do shit like that."

A few minutes later, two Japanese ladies came and sat in my recently vacated spot.  Within thirty seconds, they sprang to their feet again. English Fan had knocked over his beer, and there was a flash flood of carbonated malt cascading down the concrete steps.

"You probably should have brought swimsuits and umbrellas," I said to the ladies.

"That's OK, we were just leaving," they said, glaring at the row behind.

I shifted a few more feet to the right, since Lake Beer was rapidly spreading in my direction, and settled in to watch the game again.  Two minutes later there was an urgent tap on my shoulder, this time from two female Argentinian fans.

"Stand up! STAND UP!" they pleaded.  "Quick!"

I leapt to my feet just as a waterfall of spilled Red Bull drenched my rear end, purse, and sandals.

"I don't know whose that was," one of them said.  "It was just sitting here."

"I'm starting to feel like the Hoover Dam," I said through clenched teeth.  "Tell me - and you can be completely honest here - are there any MORE half-empty cups or bottles of random liquid sitting on the floor in your row?"

"No, I think we're clear."

"All righty then.  Watch yourselves."  I perched myself on the 10 remaining square inches of dry concrete and concentrated again on the game.

Three minutes later, there was a pitter-patter of wet droplets on my head.  I looked up.  Curly Haired Argentina Fan was weaving back from the concession stand with two cups of beer.  Correction: one and a half cups of beer.  The other half was now dripping from my hair.

"ARGENTINAAAA!" he screamed. "WOOOO!"

Less than two femtoseconds later, I was sitting down in the front row, cheering lustily for England and pledging my undying rugby loyalty to that green and pleasant land, for now and all eternity. (If the great nation of Argentina is willing to pony up for $4.50 worth of dry cleaning, I may reconsider, but until then: UP WITH SAXONS!). The view wasn't as good from the new seat, but at least it was outside the floodplain.  I could return to letting my jaw go slightly slack and watching the game uncomprehendingly.

As I watched the ball being flicked from hand to hand, and swarms of burly men piling up on one another, I suddenly realized that even though I don't understand the rules, in a primal sense rugby is deeply familiar.  It closely resembles that perennial schoolyard favorite, "Kill The Guy With The Ball" (as it was called in our neck of the woods).  The game consists of a football, tossed into the middle of a huge baying pack of boys. Whoever comes up with the ball runs for his life, with the rest of the crowd in hot pursuit.  Once he's tackled and buried beneath an avalanche of bodies, the ball is dug out and the cycle begins anew.  It's pretty much exactly like rugby, only without boundaries, scoring, or etiquette.  (We girls preferred to play "Watch From The Safety Of The Swings".)

Thinking about that led me to remember another schoolyard game, in some ways just as brutal, called Suicide.  Suicide was one of those rare gender-blind games that everyone played, boys and girls alike.  It was wildly popular at our school. All that's needed are a tennis ball, a brick wall, and a mob of children without any common sense whatsoever. The basics of the game are simple - throw the ball against the wall and catch it - but the rules are extremely complicated, verging on obsessive-compulsive. The ball must be caught and thrown in very specific ways, in the right order, with stern edicts about how to behave if the ball rolls into the grass, if it caroms off the gutter, if it's caught on the fly, if more than one person touches it, which hand may be used to catch it, and so on.  If any of the rules are violated, if the throw and catch sequence doesn't go exactly perfect, you must run and touch the wall before someone else grabs the ball and pegs you with it.

As I recall, if you were hit with the ball, you had to assume the "Being Frisked By The Police" stance up at the wall, and present your rear end as a juicy target.  The other players lined up and each got one shot at your tush with the ball.  I never threw very hard (truth be told, I threw like a girl) but some of the boys relished the opportunity to whip stinging fastballs that left welts.  Suicide was one of those nasty, brutal Darwinian games that, for some reason, you never see depicted on nostalgic greeting cards.  Frequent was the day I would limp home from school, rainbowed with bruises, feeling as though Eden Fletcher had worked over my butt with a cudgel.  (Well, okay, I wasn't really thinking that...that would have been an anachronism, since The Proposition hadn't been filmed yet.  Also, Eden Fletcher didn't personally do floggings.  He had a flunky do his dirty work.  Bastard.)  I don't know why we all kept playing Suicide so unquestioningly, but I guess it was just one of those gratuitous tests meant to toughen us up, to prepare us for life's hardships, like P.E. lap running and Sister Mary Agnes with the ruler.  It makes the spectacle of 250-lb. men ramming into each other like locomotives seem almost normal.

On the way home from the rugby match (which England won 25- 20), with my soaked pants smelling like a frathouse floor on a Saturday night, I had the most wonderful daydream.  A daydream of a row of Argentinian rugby fans, lined up and bent over against a brick wall, waiting for me to baptize the asses of their nice trousers with gallons of Budweiser's finest. (I briefly considered using Guinness, but what a waste.)  Only one problem: I can't decide if this act should take place in a stadium, or an art gallery.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 2:53 AM EDT

Updated: June 14, 2009 12:03 PM EDT

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Mood:  caffeinated

I don't understand vampires.

That is, I understand the stories and legends.  I just don't get the ongoing mass pop culture craze.  Vampires seem to be a perennial bestseller.  People go gaga for Anne Rice novels and Buffy and Van Helsing and Twilight.  Females are the biggest audience - they seem to have a particular jones for tall, dark, handsome bloodsuckers.  Really, I don't get the erotic appeal of having your neck punctured by a fanged Lothario, and your crimson life fluids drained off.  It's like being sexually attracted to piranhas.  Or phlebotomists.  Sure, vampires are dapper and look great in a tuxedo, but what's with the razor-sharp canines?  Am I missing some essential part of the female brain that thrills to the prospect of bat creatures flapping in through the window and siphoning off a couple gallons of hemoglobin?  Is this abnormal?

A few evenings ago I was hanging out at Elrond Swooner's house (my friend who loves Hugo Weaving, and also vampires...if Hugo Weaving were ever to play a vampire, she would totally plotz).  We were watching Twilight, based on the series by Stephenie Meyer, which has 13-year-olds everywhere in a neck-baring snit.  Not just 13-year-olds, but otherwise perfectly sensible adult women, including half of my female friends, co-workers, and neighbors.  All around here, they're dropping like flies.  Elrond Swooner has also fallen under the spell, ruefully admitting to having a "huge crush" on Robert Pattinson, who plays Edward, the film's teenaged vampire protagonist.  "Team Edward" T-shirts have been flying off the shelves at Hot Topic, and Elrond Swooner has actually been tempted to buy one.  That's how bad it is.  (My favorite vampire-related bumper sticker:  "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?  It is the East, and Juliet is the ---- AAAAAAAAH!"  -- Vampire Theater)

Twilight's take on vampires differs remarkably from Steven Sommers' interpretation.  Twilight vampires sparkle, brood, and play baseball.  They also stroll around in the daytime, so long as it's overcast, making them not so much Creatures of the Night as Creatures of the Avoid Direct Sunlight.  Van Helsing vampires are more traditionally scary, with an aristocratic manner (in the case of Richard Roxborough) and huge fangs and eagle claws (in the case of the brides).  They're predatory and evil and conform to standard vampire taxonomy.  (Although the part about laying eggs was a little much...I wasn't bothered so much by the reptilian implications, but by the discrepancy between the size of those eggs and Dracula's brides.  Let's hope Dr. Frankenstein was able to conjure up some powerful undead epidurals from his lab, because ow.)  On the whole, I could sort of relate to the Van Helsing vampires, because they were scary, rather than misunderstood.

With Twilight, I tried mightily, I yearned to understand, but I just couldn't get past the obvious artifice, and that made it impossible to suspend disbelief and get swept up by the film and by Robert Pattinson's bouffant hairdo.  It's so perfectly calculated to appeal to young teenage girls:  the klutzy, awkward Mary Sue character who miraculously commands the attention of every male in the vicinity, the gorgeous heartthrob bad boy who in reality is about as dangerous as an angel food cake (Brett Sprague would drop Edward Cullen like third-period French.  Even Carl could beat him up, for that matter.  Wuss.)  Naturally, this supernaturally strong, fast, smart, century-old dreamboat becomes obsessed with the awkward Mary Sue character, and can't leave her alone.  Edward flies into her bedroom and spies on her while she's sleeping (which is supposed to be romantic, but comes across as creepy).  He interrogates her about her taste in music, like a Quizilla meme - "I must know everything about you!" - even though real 17 year old boys couldn't care less.  Let's face it, we gals are the ones who obsess over the inner life of our early male crushes, not the other way around.  (Ever notice how teen magazines aimed at girls devote endless ink to the favorite foods, books, and colors of this month's heartthrob, whereas Sports Illustrated provides minimal information on its swimsuit models, because to the average Joe ogling the photographs, who cares?  Ah, would that it were otherwise...)

In the book, Edward is condescending and overbearing, constantly rescuing and protecting Bella, who is passive and has no personality of her own.  At least they improved on that for the movie, and gave Bella a little bit of spunk.  But I still would have preferred more three-dimensional characters.  Edward just seems too perfect to actually be a threat to Bella, and the force that keeps them apart is mostly internal, not external.  The stakes aren't high enough.  For truly tragic, star-crossed romance, I'll take Romeo & Juliet, Wuthering Heights, or Tristan & Isolde any day of the week.

So now I've watched Van Helsing, I've watched Twilight, I've watched the Count on Sesame Street, and I still don't understand vampires.  It's like being color-blind.

I also don't understand chaps (shouldn't they protect the inside of the cowboy's leg?) but that's a topic for another post.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 4:45 PM EDT

Updated: May 31, 2009 7:19 PM EDT

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Mood:  lazy

With Public Enemies on the immediate horizon, I think it would be appropriate to review a few etiquette tips for robbing banks.  Attention to detail always greases the social gears and makes things go a little more smoothly.

#1:  Don't stuff money spiked with exploding red dye down the front of your pants.  It's hard to be inconspicuous with your crotch on fire.

#2: Don't write your demands on the back of a pay stub that has your name and address printed on it.

#3: A ski lift is not the smartest choice for a getaway vehicle.  Ditto a bus.  Ask yourself: What would Jesus drive, if Jesus robbed a bank and needed a fast getaway car?  (If he were a little bit gay, he'd have a Mazda Miata, or one of those modern Volkswagen bugs with the big flower decals).

Corollary to #3:  Don't photograph yourself with the loot afterwards.

#4: Don't wear a fake robot suit that weighs 300 pounds, unless you're trying to incapacitate the security guards with laughter.

#5: The following do not make good holdup weapons: bananas, zucchinis, breadsticks, beer bottles, wooden table legs, fake hand grenades, live chickens inside paper bags.  In fact, rather than burst in to the lobby yelling and waving a bunch of Tommy guns and upsetting the tellers, why not just hack into the ATM?

#6: Speaking of ATMs, does anyone else's ATM make a noise like the Woody Woodpecker laugh when it's dispensing cash?  I swear, the little gears go "whirr....bzzt....ha ha ha HA ha" as it spits out the receipt saying there's eight dollars left in the account.

****

Saw the new "Star Trek" movie last week (Mr. DC's idea...I can't tell a phaser from a warp drive, and as far as I'm concerned, Klingons are what I find stuck to the cat's "starboard bow" after a careless litterbox session).  I didn't even recognize Eric Bana as the captain of the evil spaceship, he was so made-up and tattooed.  But Eomer made a pretty good Dr. McCoy.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 11:08 PM EDT

Updated: May 24, 2009 12:31 AM EDT

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Mood:  mischievious

Well, it's a bit of a relief to have Jerry Springer behind us.  Not that I worried anything would happen to David, but anytime you get a controversial piece that stirs up protesters, there's invariably a few unpredictable wackos.  Jerry Springer: The Opera was playing last week in Boston at the BCA.  The producers were inundated with emails from out-of-state Christian organizations, and a group called America Needs Fatima staged a public vigil to pray for the souls of the people attending the performance.  There were also the usual condemning letters to the editor, calling the show "vulgar", "filth", "obscene" and "trash".  I wanted to go, but it was a Friday night, which is an interstate travel night for me.  So I didn't get to see the tapdancing Ku Klux Klansmen and slightly gay Jesus.  Oh well.  Missing the show means my soul remains, for the moment, untarnished, lily-white, and suffused with April fresh scent.*

*The secret is fabric softener.

Of all the criticisms levelled at the show, "blasphemy" seems like the weirdest and most medieval.  Blasphemy implies that there are certain things that are beyond question.  God is great, you're a sinner, end of story.  Keep your mouth shut and don't rock the boat.  It's only a small step from there to placing the humans who interpret God beyond question, and from there an even smaller step to cults, simony, inquisitions, crusades, televangelists, pedophilia, and Dick Cheney.  This stuff needs to be questioned.  Is the framework of the church so fragile that it can't be rattled, shaken, tested?  Maybe we need fewer martyrs and more Laughing Buddhas.

I can sort of sympathize with Christian groups feeling insulted, outraged, and discriminated against.  But also sort of not.  There's a big difference between mocking the hegemony, and mocking powerless minority groups.  BIG difference.  It's not like Springer's goal is to make fun of bedrock Christian beliefs (don't kill, love your neighbor as yourself, etc.).  Rather, it makes fun of received dogma: the assumption that Jesus is white, heterosexual, and WASPy, that God is an angry, all-powerful, smiting man on a throne, and so forth.   That's the crusty stuff that needs to be cleared away in order to get at real religious truths.

If you look at the cast of characters Jesus hung out with, they look an awful lot like the type of guests Jerry Springer might have on his show.  There's Matthew the crooked tax collector, Simon the zealous hitman, the naked woman guilty of fornication, plus assorted lepers, madmen, thieves, and prostitutes.  All of society's outcasts flocked around Jesus, and he never shrank or flinched from them.  He taught that everyone is equal in the eyes of God, that all lives are holy.  Surface perfection doesn't matter when it comes to salvation (I suppose one could argue that Jerry Springer was offering a form of redemption to his guests, too).  But form is exactly what the religious protestors are getting hung up on.  The image of Jesus in a diaper bothers them, because they can't revere and worship a savior who isn't Perfect In Every Way.  But who's to say Jesus wasn't just as much of an outcast as the followers he attracted?

So like I said, it's a relief to move on to Pope Joan.  Which won't attract any religious protestors at all.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 3:10 PM EDT

Updated: May 10, 2009 4:57 PM EDT

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Mood:  smelly

I don't have any set topic for this post, so let's just amble off and see where we end up.

First of all, many apologies for the long gaps in updating DC and this blog.  I've been living away from home for the past 3 months.  My job contract got extended through October, so there's likely to be more nomadic living-out-of-a-suitcase and being-torn-in-two (a la Sam at the end of "Return of the King") until somebody, somewhere, decides to make a permanent decision.  In this economy, I'm so grateful to be employed, but the commuting and separation has been hard.

A friend of a friend has agreed to let me stay in their house while they're up at Squam Lake for the summer.  It's a fascinating house, Arts and Crafts style, built in the 1920s right on the edge of the Wellesley campus, and about a 30 minute commute from el workplace nuevo.  It was built by a college professor for his wife, who was into the theater.  The living room actually has a varnished wood stage, overhead spotlights, and a frame for a curtain, where they used to put on student Shakespeare performances.  To the left and right, stairs lead up to an open balcony all around.  You can see where this is going...I'm already fantasizing about getting a group of friends and fundamentalist protestors together and staging a mini version of Jerry Springer: The Opera.  This is my House...Sitting...Moment!!

After touring the house, I had a dream later that night that I was in a modern production of Macbeth, where the rival gang leaders spoke in hip-hop slang: 

"Yo, is this a Glock I see before me?"

and

"Bring it, MacDuff!"

There was also something about low-slung tartan, and the Three Ho's stirring Vial of Crack and Forty of Malt into their cauldron.  I don't really remember, because I woke myself up laughing.

The subconscious is really a fascinating place, isn't it?  There's an illuminating article in this week's New Yorker about various neurological syndromes.  It touches briefly on synesthesia, a cross-wiring of the senses, which is a condition I've had all my life.  I always thought it was perfectly normal to see numbers, letters, and days of the week in color.  (But dag, those people who can smell symphonies and taste velvet are weird).  For example, Sunday is yellow.  I don't mean that when I visualize the word "Sunday", the letters look yellow; I mean the whole concept of Sunday literally is yellow for me.  Whatever area of the brain gets lit up by looking at yellow, also gets lit up by thinking about Sunday.  Similarly, Monday is blue. Tuesday is red. Wednesday is dark brown.  Thursday is a sort of milky light brown.  Friday is green.  Saturday is black.

It's noteworthy that these sensory associations are all with primitive earthy colors; I never see letters or numbers as purple, pink, or teal, for example.  I suppose if I had learned my ABC's later in life, letters would be linked to fancier Land's End catalogue colors, like "Navajo Pony" and "Carolina Plum".  As it is, my mental map of the alphabet takes its palette from the Partridge Family bus.

The theory behind synesthesia is that it's genetic, a failure to prune the neurons connecting the corpus callosum with the something-something hyumpty-tump lobe (help me out here, psych majors).  So that connections that fade away in most babies by the time they're 2, remain active in synesthetes.  It runs strongly in families, and it also correlates strongly with poets and artists, and with a tendency for metaphor (since the unpruned neurons allow the brain to make more facile connections between disparate objects. Thus, Gangsta Macbeth).  I know many of you fellow David fans love to write, either as a vocation or hobby, and I'd love to hear if any of you have the same condition.

Australia, by the way, is red.  Married Life is blue.  They just are.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 11:48 PM EDT

Updated: May 10, 2009 4:48 PM EDT

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Mood:  accident prone

It's springtime at last.  The sun is shining, birds are tweeting, flowers are blooming, and George F. Will is angry at pants.

In particular, he takes issue with the wearing of blue jeans by adults.  To George Will, for whom everything started going to hell around 1920, it's a symptom of the decline of Western civilization.

Here's the gist of his complaint:

Denim is the infantile uniform of a nation in which entertainment frequently features childlike adults ("Seinfeld," "Two and a Half Men") and cartoons for adults ("King of the Hill"). Seventy-five percent of American "gamers" -- people who play video games -- are older than 18 and nevertheless are allowed to vote. In their undifferentiated dress, children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies (the six -- so far -- "Batman" adventures and "Indiana Jones and the Credit-Default Swaps," coming soon to a cineplex near you).

He goes on to proclaim:

For men, sartorial good taste can be reduced to one rule: If Fred Astaire would not have worn it, don't wear it. For women, substitute Grace Kelly.

Why, my dear chap, if you're going to motor down to Hyde Park in the Dusenberg to hiss at Roosevelt, nothing less than a top hat and spats will do.

Now, blue jeans strike me as a petty thing to be kvetching about, given the horrendous state of the economy, the war, the environment, global warming, etc.  (I suppose if you have a stick up your you-know-what, denim does tend to chafe a little.)   Fashions change continually to reflect society's needs, so Will's diatribe is nothing new.  I'd be willing to bet that back in the '40s, old-timers were scoffing at fedoras and lamenting the decline of the stovepipe hat and whalebone corset.  And before that, people were bemoaning the disappearance of powdered wigs and knee breeches.  These kids today...going out in public with NO BEAUTY MARKS! 

I'm willing to concede that men and women look far more dashing in evening dress, and that fashion was a tad more elegant back in the day.  But it certainly wasn't practical.  You see old photos of men in woolen suits, ties and hats at baseball games and movies and on airplanes.  They look sweaty and miserable.  Women had to squeeze themselves into girdles and corsets and stockings and slips, enduring the poking of multiple struts, stays, and hooks.  Physically and socially, it was a much more repressed, button-down world.

Blue jeans remain popular because they've gone through the Darwinian fashion selection process: Survival of What Fits.  They're comfortable, they're flattering to the derriere, they're easy to wash, and fuss-free. They're more versatile for a 21st century population whose lifestyle includes baby spit-up, jumping dogs with muddy paws, leaf raking, dusting, gardening, vacuuming, pumping gas, hauling groceries, internet surfing, fetching Frisbees off the roof, and playing Pirate Ship with the kids in the backyard. (Try doing all that in pearls and a poodle skirt.) Bowties and tweeds may work well for light newspaper punditry, but what does George Will wear when it's time to paint bookcases and clean the gutters?  Or is that for the servants to worry about?

Not only that, I must disagree that jeans can't be elegant or fashionable.  Is there anyone who doubts that if Grace Kelly were alive today, she'd be rocking a pair of skinny dark $600 jeans, a silk top, and a pair of sky-high heels?  (And didn't Fred Astaire wear jeans during the "Texas Millionaire" number of Daddy Long Legs?)

And what about this dude?  Is he not the epitome of modern urban hipster wenham-denim cool?

And don't tell me that men don't wear hats anymore...

And look! THIS pair of jeans just oozes refinement and taste.

Yesterday morning in the shower, which is where my stupidest ideas take wing, I thought: wouldn't it be great to have a delicatessen with sandwiches named after David characters?  Like those lunch places in New York and L.A. where you can order an "Al Pacino" or a "Steve McQueen", and there's signed photos all over the wall.  Usually the sandwich has some vague symbolic connection to its namesake.

Sample sandwich menu:

"The Dilios" - 5 pounds of meat on a white bulky roll (fiber is for wusses), slathered with horseradish sauce, jalapenos, and Scotch Bonnet peppers, and sprayed with Mace.  Think you can stand the heat, ya noodle-necked Athenian girly-man?

"The Ethan" - Pastrami on marble rye.  You're not hungry?  Take.  Eat.

No?  Then I'll eat it for you.

Oh, you want it after all?  Here.  It was never mine in the first place.

"The John O'Brien" - Philander-adelphia steak 'n' cheese sub.

"The Faramir" - Lightly grilled hero.

"The Neil Fletcher" - We go into the restaurant next door and steal beef out of other customer's sandwiches.  Then we top it with a little ham and plenty of cheese, and serve with Moxie.

"The Carl" - A side dish of curly fries, cooked in our deep friar, then garnished with garlic and holy water.

"The Eden Fletcher" - Jerk chicken, flogged with barbecue sauce.

"The Luke" - Free range bison peppered with buckshot, Swiss cheese, and 1/4 pound of oozing ketchup.  Served with a side of hot tomato.

"The Josh" - Root vegetables mounted suggestively atop a rumpled bed of lettuce.  Served with tea brewed in our coffee maker.

"The Brand New Day Guy"  We toss your sandwich out the window.  Because we quit!  Screw this job.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 6:05 PM EDT

Updated: April 18, 2009 9:07 PM EDT

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Mood:  lazy

"Australia is yours until Saturday," the Blockbuster cashier told me as she rang up my rental.

Whee doggies!!!  You hear that, Australia??? You're MINE now.  For one week.  All twenty million of you.

Oh, what to do with my newfound powers?  I've never owned a whole country for a week before.

Let's start with a few cosmetic changes.  First of all, David Wenham's face will be going on all your coinage, with the motto RES CALIDA! ("Hot Stuff").  The stars on your flag will be replaced by small mullets.

Secondly, it is hereby decreed that "Waltzing Matilda" shall be translated into proper English.  All those verses about boiling billies and tucker bags?  Think of the young, impressionable minds you've warped over the years.  For example, at our school we learned this song in first grade, when the music teacher went on a brief Australian kick.  After we sang it, one kid raised her hand and asked what a "billabong" was.  The teacher said it was a kind of coffee can, and that a "coolibah tree" was, obviously, some type of tree, probably made out of cork, and please not to ask any more questions about the "swagman" or the "jumbuck".  I'd be willing to bet no one ever explained this song to you either.

Thirdly, in order to bring your nation into conformity with the Kookaburra song and stop confusing six-year-olds who interpret the lyrics literally and grow up thinking Australia is a magical land where the trees blossom with candy and sticks of Juicy Fruit...

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree
Eating all the gumdrops he can see 

...it is hereby decreed that throughout Australia, from this moment forward, gumdrops will actually grow on trees.  (If they don't grow there naturally, it is OK to wire them onto branches individually.).

Okay, okay, enough clowning around.  Yes, I was renting Australia the movie, not Australia the country.  (But you have to admit that would be a cool idea, for a shop to rent out countries for people to do with as they like for one week.  I'd like to rent Norway and transform it into an emirate.  And make it into the rollercoaster capital of the world.  And invite everyone over for lutefisk kabobs.)

So here are some random thoughts upon a second viewing of Australia....

* David's performance was really stubble.  Neil Fletcher is so cowboy hat.  Every time he's on screen, you can't help but blue eyes.  Tuxedo.  I just...tuxedo.  Nose.

* Funny, when I saw Australia in the theater I didn't notice the crocodile-skin boot splashing into the water next to Maitland Ashley's speared body.  Perhaps that was because the film hadn't yet formally introduced us to Neil Fletcher's footwear.  (Audience, we'd like you to meet tacky reptile clodhopper.  Tacky reptile clodhopper....Audience.)  The film does have quite a fetish for those boots.  Neil's presence is often signalled by a closeup of one boot descending with a chill authoritarian stomp.  What a nassssty dude.  You just know he wishes Lady Ashley's prim English neck was underneath.

* Things I got a chuckle out of:  The Expository Artwork hanging on the wall of King Carney's office, in the form of a map of Australia with CARNEY CATTLE possessively stencilled across the entire Northern Territory.  (Sorry, King Carney, you can't have Australia till I return it.)  I bet if you looked, the outer door would have a nameplate reading VILLAIN'S LAIR.

*Things I got a chuckle out of, part 2: The newsreel breathlessly updating Darwin filmgoers on the status of the crucial Australian Military Beef Contract.  You'd think the outcome of the entire war depended on whose cheeky bulls got loaded into the bloody big ship first.  Of course, if I were a soldier I think I'd prefer flank steak from Faraway Downs.  Lord only knows what King Carney feeds his cattle.

*If you are patient enough to sit through the credits, you'll hear the Drover's Song, a twangy number about freedom and outcasts and making the southern skies your blanket.  Why no Fletcher song?

You're missing your best calves
Your floor's full of fly halves
Your bum he'll be grabbin',
'fore he burns your cabin...
It's Fletcher, it's Fletcher,
Is he bad? You betcher!

* The DVD includes a wonderful deleted scene between the Drover, Fletcher, and Lady Ashley.  Fletcher is keen to get Lady Ashley on the road back to Darwin so he can continue stealing cattle.  He's bustling around, getting her suitcases in the car, acting all fake-solicitous.  The Drover is trying to convince Sarah to stay, because otherwise he's out of a job.  Guess who wins?  (Well, duh...if Lady Sarah had listened to Neil and gone back to Darwin, there would be no movie.)

* If I understand this correctly, Neil deliberately contrived to have Lord Ashley send the Drover to pick up Lady Sarah, knowing that the Drover would get drunk and fight and be all flyblown and sweaty and rough-mannered on the drive home, thereby shocking the prim Lady Sarah into wilting like an English rose and going home.  Fletcher was apparently not acquainted with the Law of Unintended Consequences.  That's what you get for outsourcing your dirty work, Neil.  You should have driven her yourself and...I don't know, belched or told rude jokes or something.  She would have been on the next airboat to Singapore.

* I was afraid my Hugh Jackman Persistent Afterimage Disorder might flare up again, but the campfire scene passed without incident.  It helps that my TV screen is the size of a washcloth. 

* Brandon Walters does a knockout job as Nullah.  What an outstanding performance.  I must admit, his narration reminded me a little of the kid from "Pass the Dutchie" ("Dis generation!  Rules de nation!"). Which in turn reminded me of Doug's rant from Cosi ("Too long have white motherfuckers ruled this nation!").  Sometimes my mind wanders a little.  I need to get it one of those invisible electronic dog fences.

* Why do Hollywood sex-scene bedrooms ALWAYS have billowing white sheets tacked to the wall?  Who decorates their bedroom like that?  And then leaves the windows open for all the mosquitoes to come in?  During the wet season?

* I think I mentioned this before, but one of the fundamental problems with the film is that Australia isn't made exotic enough, except briefly when we enter Nullah's dream-song sequences (which are totally cool and they should have done the whole movie from that viewpoint).  The narrative structure is taken straight out of old Westerns and epic romances of the '30s, plus it borrows from "The Wizard of Oz", one of the most well-known films of all time.  There isn't a lot of strangeness, or a feeling that we've strayed far from generic Hollywood back lots.  Bill Bryson remarks in "In A Sunburned Country" that Australia feels very culturally familiar to Americans, which is an unsettling feeling when you have to travel such a very long way to get there.  After that fifteen-hour plane ride, at the very least, you should step out and see dromedaries, or the surface of Venus.  Instead you see the same busy streets, glass office buildings, and Starbucks that you just left back home.  It's Canada in a thong.  Same with this film: Baz is too busy replicating the movies he loved as a kid to transport us to undiscovered realms of the imagination.  Nothing wrong with paying homage, but it keeps the movie from ever really lifting off and achieving flight.  Still, it's very well-crafted.

* At one point during the movie, I scribbled down a note on a receipt: "Whyn crack.  Be sure to mention in Grove."  Your guess is as good as mine.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 9:51 PM EDT

Updated: April 5, 2009 1:37 AM EDT

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Mood:  chatty

Like the header?  I spotted it on the Huffington Post, denouncing some minor heresy or other, and immediately fell in love.  It followed me home, so I decided to keep it and reincarnate it as a blog post topic. 

A few evenings ago, at the violet hour of the pernod, I betook me to my divan with a borrowed Kittredge edition of Shakespeare, flipped on the TV, and settled in for a quality tete a tete with the Bard.  And so it came to pass that I found myself simultaneously reading Twelfth Night and watching American Idol.  (If music be the food of love, American Idol is a bag of Cheetos glowing lightly atop a pile of spent uranium fuel rods.)  There's something a little surreal about savoring the melancholy iambs of Come and kiss me, sweet and twenty/For youth's a stuff will not endure while Kelly Clarkson belts out "My Life Will Suck Without You".  Highbrow meets lowbrow.

Then it struck me: this must be what it's like to experience Jerry Springer: The Opera.

If you won't be able to attend the performances in Sydney, but would like to simulate the experience of improving your mind while killing off brain cells, there are all sorts of creative ways you could vicariously participate.  For example, you could tune the TV to NASCAR and play Faure's Requiem.  Eat a Twinkie while gazing at Desmoiselles d'Avignon.  Open a bottle of Baccarat's "Les Larmes Sacrees des Thebes" perfume and inhale gently, while rubbing your meathooks across one of those acrylic mesh baseball hats with the twin beer holders.  I'm sure you can think of many, many others.  Just remember: some are born tacky, some achieve tackiness, and some have tackiness thrust upon 'em.

So, Twelfth Night turned out to be a pretty ideal accompaniment to American Idol, because it too is chock full of characters randomly bursting into song: "When that I was and a tiny little boy/With a hey, ho, the wind and the rain...."   If Feste the Clown were to sing this on American Idol, it would sound like this:  "Wheee-eee-nnn that I-ee-I-ee-I wahass *gasp!* and a tiheeneee little bo--ee--ii--aaeeiioouuandsometimesy---yy...with a OO! OO! AH!  Heyyyyy!..."

(By the way, the technical term for stretching a single syllable up and down across different notes is "melisma".  Or as we record industry insiders pronounce it: "mee-aaa-ooo-liii-eee--iiiYEOW BABY!!sma".)

Feste's kind of an interesting character.  He's like the Johnny Spit of Twelfth Night, sailing through the maelstrom unscathed and making more respectable people look like total fools.  Like Spit, Feste's a lot cleverer than people give him credit for.  "I wear not motley in my brain," he says to Lady Olivia, meaning he might look the fool on the outside, but he isn't a natural-born fool.  "Cucullus non facit monarchum," he adds: "the cowl does not make the monk" (sometimes translated as "Simon Cowell thinks that stunk.")

I've decided that the pitch meeting for each American Idol episode goes approximately like this:

1. "Hey, we need a theme.  How about Whitney Houston week?"

2. "Didn't we do that last week?"

3. "No, that was Whitney Houston Covers Of Dolly Parton Songs week.  This will be totally different."

4. "Fine by me."

5. [sound of golf bags being hoisted on shoulders]

Um, not that I watch AI regularly.  Or at all!  Nothing to see here!  Move along!

(By the way, I really liked Adam Lambert's Middle East-meets-Led Zeppelin rendition of "Ring of Fire".  Sort of a Johnny Kashmir vibe.  Bonus points: it confused the hell out of Randy Travis.)

I had some other point I was going to make here, before getting sidetracked by shiny obj......by reality TV.  Something about Malvolio the steward getting a bad rap.  Generally he's portrayed as a pompous, Puritan stick-in-the-mud who gets what he deserves, even though the practical joke gets carried way too far.  But ya know, he's a steward, and that's what stewards do: they guard the household goods and chattel and make sure nobody makes off with all the booze.  It's their job to be the Fun Police.  I'm sure Denethor, too, would have been peeved if he'd caught a group of Rangers singing "99 Bottles of Beer On The Wall" in the basement of the White Tower at 2 a.m., and drinking all of his best Tokay.  On the other hand, Denethor probably wouldn't have fallen for a fake letter.

But that's all one.  Our post is done.  And we'll strive to please you every day.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 7:32 PM EDT

Updated: March 21, 2009 10:55 PM EDT

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Mood:  accident prone

Ready?  Here we go.  58 steps to David Wenham.

1.  I have a brother.

2. My brother once got into a fistfight with John F. Kennedy Jr. when they were kids.

3.  JFK Jr. dated Daryl Hannah.

4. Daryl Hannah was in Splash with Tom Hanks.

5. Tom Hanks was in A League of Their Own with baseball.

6. At baseball games, people eat peanuts.

7. Peanuts recently underwent a mass recall in the US due to reports of salmonella.

8. Salmon are tasty poached in a white wine sauce.

9. Mermaids are also tasty poached in a white wine sauce.

10.  Daryl Hannah played a mermaid in Splash.

11. Did we already mention Tom Hanks was in Splash?  We did? Oh, crap.

12. Tom Hanks was also in Forrest Gump with Richard Nixon.

13. Richard Nixon had a cocker spaniel named Checkers.

14. Checkers is a game played on a board with 64 squares.

15. Chess is also a game played on a board with 64 squares.

16. Chess has these sort of horsey-looking pieces called knights.

17. Christopher Knight played Peter on "The Brady Bunch".

18. Henry V attacked France in 1415 with a bunch of knights.

19. Kenneth Branagh appeared in Henry V, alongside a crate of tennis balls.

20. Roger Federer plays tennis.

21. You know who else plays tennis?  Venus Williams.

22. So does Andre Agassi.

23. Andre Agassi was in those Gillette razor commercials about 94,000 years ago.  The ones where he shaved his head? Remember?

24. Razors are close personal friends with beards.

25. Father Damien had a beard.

26. Father Damien lived in Hawaii.

27. Remember when the Brady Bunch went to Hawaii?  That was cool.

28. Pineapple comes from Hawaii.

29. Pineapple guest-stars in pina coladas along with coconut.

30. Desiccated coconut makes a good dessert topping and mental distraction device.

31. Euw! I hate coconut.

32. I also hate brussels sprouts.

33. Brussels is the capital of Belgium.

34. Father Damien was from Belgium.

35. Father Damien was Catholic.

36. So was Pope Joan (more or less)

37. In Pope Joan, Vikings attack.

38. The Vikings played the Chicago Bears last year.

39. Chicago was overrun by gangsters in the 1930s.

40. Johnny Depp is playing a gangster in the upcoming film Public Enemies.

41. Johnny Depp was in Pirates of the Caribbean with Orlando Bloom.

42. Orlando Bloom was in Lord of the Rings with Liv Tyler.

43. I once got into a fight with Liv Tyler's mother on an Amazon.com comment thread.

44. Amazon.com has many fine movies for sale, including 300.

45. Gerard Butler was in 300.

46. Gerard Butler was in Phantom of the Opera.

47. Also an opera: Jerry Springer: The Opera.

48. Jerry Springer once wheeled a teenaged vampire in a coffin onto the set of his show.

49. Richard Roxborough played a vampire in Van Helsing.

50. Hugh Jackman was in Van Helsing.

51. Hugh Jackman was also in Australia with Nicole Kidman.

52. Nicole Kidman was in Far and Away with Rance Howard.

53. Rance Howard was in Frost/Nixon with Kevin Bacon.

54. Bacon comes from pigs.

55. There was a pig in Cosi.

56. Pigs like to eat food no longer fit for human consumption, such as moldy garlic bread.

57. Moldy garlic bread featured prominently in Three Dollars.

58.  Bread, bread, bread....that reminds me of something...

Oh yes:

There!  I knew eventually somehow, some way, we could work David in there.

And you, dear reader, perusing this post?  At most, 59 degrees of separation!  Whoa...you and David are practically BFFs!

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 12:04 AM EST

Updated: September 14, 2009 11:38 PM EDT

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Mood:  caffeinated

I picked up a copy of Guardians of Ga'Hoole last week, thinking I'd riffle through it, absorb its cuteness, and write a brief Grove entry.  And...it's quite a riveting tale.  This is going to be an excellent movie.  I was up until the wee hours, turning page after page, anxious to learn the fate of Soren and Gylfie.  Soren is a young Barn Owl who lives contentedly with his family in the peaceful forest of Tyto, until he's captured one day and taken off to the evil St. Aegolius Academy for Orphaned Owls (in reality, a horrible Orwellian factory where young owl fledglings are brainwashed into slavery via a nasty process called "moon-blinking").  There, he meets Gylfie, a spunky fellow inmate who helps him survive the moon-blinking and plot their escape.  It's sort of Harry Potter meets Ayn Rand, with a dash of Tolkien.  The narrative is wildly inventive, a mixture of owl jargon ("dwenking", "yarping", "yoicks", "glaucidium"), authentic owl biology, mythology, and ceremony.  Young owls mark their progress with a series of milestones, including First Insect, First Meat, First Bones, and branching (a prelude to flying), but poor Soren misses out on most of these Firsts after he's kidnapped.  He's the classic orphaned hero, robbed of his childhood prematurely, and forced to rely on his wits and resourcefulness to stay alive.

You have to love a children's book that names its main character after a gloomy Danish philosopher (Kierkegaard...who, despite his bleak anti-Hegelian subjectivist outlook, had the best hair of any of the Existentialists).  As I read, I was trying to figure out which character David will be voicing, but it's hard to speculate at this point.  The first book's main characters are a group of four owls (Soren, Gylfie, Twilight, and Digger).  Soren, Twilight, and Digger are boys, and Gylfie's a girl, which maps neatly onto the David - Rachael Taylor - Geoffrey Rush - Jim Sturgess casting cohort.  However, Ryan Kwanten seems to have already been cast as Soren.  Hugh Jackman and Hugo Weaving are also rumored (but not officially confirmed) to be leads on the project.  So we might be looking at a supporting role.

There's a large array of evillll characters to choose from - Soren's power-hungry brother Kludd, as well as the Ablah General, lieutenants, sublieutenants, monitors, pit guardians, and busybodies who run St. Aggie's.  One or two of the St. Aggie's apparatchiks prove to be more sympathetic than sadistic; these characters are crucial to helping out Soren and Gylfie.  There are also some eagles who periodically show up to save the day (they're temporarily on loan from Lord of the Rings).  Visually, this could be a stunning film.  It's set among forests, canyons, and desert, with moonlight and flight playing a huge role.  If the animators and voice actors can successfully capture the eerie world of the owls, this could really be something special.

My dear friend the Elrond Swooner (who worships Hugo Weaving, with Hugh Jackman and David a close second thanks to my ceaseless propagandizing) reacted thusly when I told her there was a movie that might be starring all three: "Wow.  That's like mixing together hot fudge, caviar, diamonds, and a big pile of 100 dollar bills."

******

A former co-worker and I have been talking about starting up our own e-commerce website, in the aftermath of getting laid off.  The idea of working for ourselves is pretty appealing.  Social networking seems to be the hot area right now, so I've been trying to come up with new variations on the theme.  For some reason, my co-worker didn't like these ideas:

* Armbook.  Like Facebook, except people upload pictures of their arms.  This one was nixed on the grounds that copycat sites would rapidly spring up dedicated to other parts of the anatomy.

*Rate My Parking Job.  People send in photos of their cars, parallel-parked, and other users rate how well they did.  I got this idea because Mr. DC always brags about his parallel-parking prowess ("Whoa, look at that! Half an inch from the curb!"), even though it usually means you can't open the door because it's wedged into a snowbank.  It could also serve as a valuable social deterrent. Wouldn't you love to post for public opprobrium a picture of that Hummer H3 parked diagonally across the last three parking spots at the emergency room, or the guy in the Ford F-350 who parked off-center in the spot next to you, thus forcing you to crawl into your car through the sunroof?

* Hermitster, an antisocial networking site for introverts.  Many people who hang out on the internet find themselves being bombarded with twitters, pokes, winks, diggs, PMs, email, Skypes, IM's, and linkspam.  This is a site for people who just want to be left the hell alone.  "You have 5 new enemies and 8 new block requests!"   Status: "Get off my lawn, you damn kids."

As part of this project, I'm trying to teach myself PHP and MySQL, so that I can speak the same language if and when we hire developers.  The first thing I did was create a mock database of local users and profiles.  The users all had fake names ("Bob", "Alice", "Fred"), with random photos pulled off the web.  On a mischievous whim, I added a user named "Dave" and added a nice picture of David to the profile.  (You know, the one in the striped shirt from the L.A. premiere of ROTK, where his hair is all cute and mussed and spiky?  Yeah, that one).  Then I needed a tagline.  Doppelganger American Dave seemed like he'd be a football fan, so I had his tagline say "Go Vikings!"  When it was finished, I asked my co-worker to vet the site and get back to me with comments.

Her comment: "Cool site!  I'd like to meet Dave, even though I don't care about the Vikings."

Now keep in mind, all the photos were of reasonably attractive people with fascinating fake descriptions, and she could have easily picked any of them as her favorite.  Smugly, I thought: this proves it.  In a controlled, double-blind study, 100% of subjects chose a disguised David Wenham over the available alternatives.  Therefore, David = The Shizzle.  QED.

A few days later, my co-worker brought her laptop over so we could do some more work on this project.  When she turned on her computer, up came Orlando Bloom on her desktop.  Turns out she's a big LOTR fan.  So much for an unbiased control group.

My desktop image, by the way, is not David.  It's a tropical island with white beaches and turquoise seas, where night breezes languidly waft the scent of ylang ylang, coconut, and jasmine through plantation shutters, and there is no snow shovelling.  I'm told these places exist.

*****

The other week I got to try out a popular brand of video game (we'll call it the Whee! Playstation, to avoid lawsuits and Google searches).  It comes with a remote control that you move around in imitation of a tennis racket, pool cue, bowling ball, etc.  The movements are mimicked precisely, or not so precisely, on the TV screen by a little character, representing the Virtual You.

I turned out to be stupendously bad at it.  "Whee! Baseball" has an animated pitcher that throws fastballs and curves at you, and you-as-the-batter swing the remote control and try to hit them.  My six-year-old opponent, whapping the remote downward with a brisk fly-swatting motion, kept hitting them out of the park.  I opted for a compact Mark McGwire rotational home-run swing, honed by years of watching Red Sox baseball and bouncing grounders to first at company picnics (batting left-handed is a distinct disadvantage, the way bases are laid out...oftentimes you don't even get to run, because you're out before you can even drop the bat).  Yet despite simulating a real swing and making solid contact with the ball, I was hitting nothing but anemic dribblers and foul balls into the right-field stands.  "Boy, you're bad," said my opponent with relish.  Had the point system been based on conking peanut vendors in the head, I do believe I might have acquitted myself more nobly.

Then it was on to "Whee! Skiing", which uses a balance board.  You stand on the balance board and lean left or right to control a skiier slaloming through gates on the TV screen.  The disconcerting part is that in real life, you lean on the downhill ski (opposite ski) to turn, but in Whee! World, you lean on the uphill ski.  I couldn't get my brain to reverse its instincts.  Result: sizable monetary damage to the Whee! Ski Resort gates, fences, and moguls.  My six-year-old opponent trounced me handily.

Then "Whee! Bowling".  The less said about this one, the better.  It was amusing to watch neighboring Whee! characters scatter when the ball went into their lanes, though.  I suspect David would be good at virtual bowling, being a veteran of the lawn bowling circuit.

The only Whee! activity I had any luck with was the Tree Pose.  Whee! Fit comes with a yoga section, which rates you on how well you hold balancing poses.  In Tree, you tuck one foot into the opposite thigh, extend your arms over your head with index fingers pointed more-or-less gracefully at the sky, and balance on one leg.  The Whee! balance board measures how steady your balance is (you can see it on the TV screen, as a red dot wavering in the middle of the board) and then rates your performance.  I was stunned to be awarded the top score in Tree, especially considering the friend who owns the Whee! is a yoga instructor and has spent a lot of time building up a library of humongous scores.  It's a lovely posture, though.  It's soothing, and you can almost go to sleep while you're in it.

So there you have it: my natural calling is to stand around being motionless.  If Hermitster doesn't pan out, I'm thinking about signing up as a department store mannekin.

Posted by dessicatedcoconut at 11:14 AM EST

Updated: February 22, 2009 2:43 PM EST

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