Look ma! I'm on TV! On the Internet! In a Newspaper!

So, a very enterprising young student writer for the Arizona Daily Star, Samantha Munsey, interviewed me about thrifting after reading my Hello Giggles stuff, Adventures in Thrifting. 

She does a near-magical job making me appear coherent, seeing as how I had driven back to Tucson from Illinois two days before and was literally leaving for Russia an hour after the interview. I'm hot, disheveled, wearing crooked glasses and say "Um," and "Like," many, many times (Toast Masters would not be proud).

I also hunch my shoulders like WHOA! though I comfort myself with the notion that I was very tired and stressed and the slouching (BECAUSE OF A MEDICAL CONDITION) gets worse when I'm tired and stressed. 

Anyway, fabulous editing job Samantha! Seriously, I'm impressed, because I know how much I rambled and wandered around and how loud and crowded it was in there. There's also this really magical moment where I say, "I'm wearing a pink fluffy dress!" and the sleeve of said dress falls off my sloop-y shoulders. 

But I was prepared, because after the interview I was so worried I looked deranged during the interview that I practiced talking into my iPhone camera in weird and embarrassing ways (lots of British and Southern accents and weird faces) and forced myself to watch them, to prepare for the worst.

But honestly, it was really fun to do the interview, Samantha Munsey was a peach, a professional peach, and I think she did an amazing job putting the video together. 

Call for Thrift Store Finds!

I'm putting out a call for weird and funny things that you've found at thrift stores! 

This one couldn't go on Hello Giggles, but I present it as an outtake for you all: 

The Blanket With The Inappropriate Towers on It That Do Not Make Me Think of Towers:

Reasons I Love This Blog Very Much

• The ads google is currently displaying by my blog are for Wayne's World merchandise. HOW DID THEY KNOW????
• I finally made $100 dollars from ads on this blog (after several years of blogging), which I reinvested in another writing project (details to come!). So thank you, anyone who has read this blog and/or clicked on the ads. You are awesome; you enable my babbling here, and support my babbling elsewhere.
• Someone apparently found my blog by googling "I spilled buck urine on my phone." I love knowing that I'm the go-to place for urine plus electronic equipment queries!
• Also, someone found my blog by googling "accidentally." Just "accidentally." 

Here's a picture of me making a kissy-face while trying to raise one eyebrow: 

Here's a picture of me making a kissy-face but LOOKING ANGRY ABOUT IT:

Hello, Hello Giggles

Hello and welcome there, anyone reading this who came over from Hello Giggles. I have Julia Gazdag to thank for hooking me up there (the beautiful story of our meeting is documented here). Anyway, I'm writing a column there called "Adventures in Thrifting," in which I document (mis)adventures in the glorious seedy underbelly of secondhand shopping. My last column was about winter coats; I caused some very minor controversy by suggesting that warmth shouldn't be your #1 concern while picking out winter coats. As an "outtake," here's a picture of me in one of my winter coats that didn't make it into the post:

More self-promotional tooling around....

My review of Charles Frazier's new book, Nightwoods, up at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.


Over on The Review Review I reviewed the literary journal Hayden's Ferry Review (Arizona pride, what what! Even though they are based out of....Phoenix. Sorry, superiority of Tucson to Phoenix in all things, blah blah blah Arizona in-joke etc. etc. etc. shut up you're stupid). And Hayden's Ferry Review was pleased!


Also, today I made banana bread muffins. 

I know, my darlings, sometimes I find myself very impressive as well. 

Gonzo Non-Journalism

As I stated below, last weekend I flew to Minneapolis/St. Paul (mostly St. Paul, lowertown St. Paul to be precise) where the lovely Gonzo Group Theater kicked off their workshop series by doing a staged reading of my play about fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen. The play is called The Most Incredible Thing (it's the title of one of his fairy tales, okay? I'm not that conceited. Although the play is rather incredible...as, come to think of it, am I...huh. Interesting.) 

One of the participants in the workshop, Tyler Olsen, blogged about it here. As he writes, the experience went like this: I met with the actors that Jen Harrington and Luke Weber, my friends -- er, professional acquaintances -- who run Gonzo, had selected and cast. The actors were all pretty amazing -- some were newer to the scene and some were kinda crazy qualified and experienced (in a "oh, I run my own theater group" kinda of a way) but they all did an excellent job and had been cast very well for their roles. The actors and Gonzo folk gave me lots of feedback, which is like manna to my raging ego, and I went home and made revisions. Tyler gives me a lot of credit in the blog entry above for being open to suggestions, but I'm basically just happy when people are paying attention to me and the initial draft was criminally long -- cutting it was easy as cutting a really easy pie. 

We did another reading/suggestion session and I made some MORE changes, and then angelic Jen Harrington printed out the changed pages and brought them to the space and then the angelic actors did not punch me in the face when I gave them new pages twenty minutes before the reading and was like "Okay, so pages 1-9 and are now new. Begin on old page 10 and continue halfway till old page number 34, which will then repeat to new pages 34-36 and being again halfway through old page 38..." They went with it and barely missed a beat in performance. 

The evening reading was the in Gonzo's new space, The Baroque Room, which is a beautiful room full of harpsichords (hence the name, I s'pose). I got to see some old friends at the reading, including this Food Junta lady, Claire, which was lovely. Then there was a reading the next morning at Golden's Deli (downstairs from the Baroque room), where I took some pictures! 

It's a very particular kind of thrilling to hear your work read out loud by well-suited actors. Especially so when you get to hear the changes you've made take effect so soon (in my fiction writing and most of the process of writing the play, I've been left to the echo chamber of my own mind, which is not nearly as fun).

That's so...Theatrical

Got various news in theater end of things. I'm very lucky to have become one of the theater reviewers for the Tucson Weekly. 

And...this weekend The Gonzo Group Theater is doing a reading of my play, "The Most Incredible Thing" about fairy tale writer Hans Christian Andersen.

There's a reading Saturday, October 15th at 7:30 pm at the Baroque Room in lowertown St. Paul. And a reading Sunday, October 16th at 11:00 am at Golden's Deli (also in lowertown St. Paul). 

For your entertainment, here's Danny Kaye as Hans Christian Andersen: 

Things!!

So forever ago, I was like "Here are all the things my next blog post will include!" And since then I've been blocked, because I realized I wanted to write about a bunch of things that...didn't really relate together so well. So I thought I'd talk you through my thought process. 

Reader Request Winner: The Time That the Apple Company Accused Me of Peeing on My Computer

Okay, so I nagged y'all via poll and you voted. The winner was probably predetermined because "The Time That the Apple Company Accused Me of Peeing on my Computer" has the phrases "pee" and "Apple company" and "accused" in it.

Let's begin.

Part I: In Which We Introduce the $1200 bottle of Three-Buck Chuck.

For the record

So, I've solicited YOUSE GUYS opinions on what my next blog post should be. Here's what I can gather about what folks seems interested in, so far:

Here are the most popular posts, in order of popularity. Unsurprisingly, the post Pamela Ribon tweeted comes in at a clear number one. The others are a little more puzzling.

Ha ha! Bonus Post! Signs of Life, Part III

In town:

We could all use more of this:

Want to wear a bear?
Yeah, I wear a bear:
That's a bear-skin rug, my friends. And relax: that bear has been dead for a very, very long time. And you know what? I'm with Stephen Colbert on this one: bears are vicious killers and it's us or them. I don't invite bears to THE COTTAGE.

And thanks to Jason, here are some search keywords that lead to my blog:

New Celebrity Endorses Leek-y Cauldron Diet

My heart can't take this, you guys.

Pamie (Pamela Ribon) commented on my blog. She tweeted the fug girls about me, who tweeted her back. She's following Yogurt on Tumblr (I said I'd get that link in every time).

Because everyone knows that the best way to express love is through money, I'm buying this right away. And then this.

So, to recap, not only has all this happened, but: Jennifer Egan is friends with me on facebook. I also know someone who knows someone who is her cousin.

I know someone who knows someone in The Decemberists.

I know someone who knows someone who knows Richard Siken.

Please don't act like you're not impressed. You're just embarrassing yourself.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, you know that roller derby I went to? I went with her and him. Yeah, that's right. ROLLER DERBY.

So now that I'm a celebrity, you're going to have start treating me accordingly.

But being a celebrity comes with certain responsibilities, such as looking your best. So I thought I'd share some tips.

First of all, no one goes on diets anymore. Diets are bad; we're supposed to enjoy and savor food. Like the Europeans do. I'm technically half-European, but I'm half-British and, for complicated historical reasons, people don't treat you as a gastronomical expert if you're British. When you try to serve them delicious things like marmite on toast, they get all squirrel-ly with you. (Sigh -- you Yanks. Marmite is delicious, y'all).

But if you're French, people listen to what you have to say about food, which is where this comes in. It's not a "diet" you see -- it's a commitment to wellness and savoring food and making things that taste good and are good for you. I made this in the past from her website, and I liked it. And in the process, I discovered this: the leek soup kick-off weekend.

So, you make this soup out of leeks (called "the magical leek soup") and you live on it for a weekend:

Leeks are a mild diuretic, and 48 hours or so of leek soup would provide immediate results to jump-start the recasting. For me, it was the start of a lifelong commitment to wellness as well as the beginning of my appreciation, my love, of leeks, about which there is much more to say. It is a trick I still use from time to time; do try it the first weekend.

But it's not a diet, y'all! Because it tastes delicious:

Both versions are so good, and an adventure for most palates, that you will have a very hard time seeing them as prison rations. Especially if these tastes are new to you, jot your impressions of flavor and fragrance in your journal. In time, this exercise will intensify your pleasures, and you may want to keep a regular diary of your experiences gastronomiques

Whoa, it's a not post

I won't say "Hey, I'm posting again!" because obviously I said that below and obviously it was A LIE.

I have no particular reason to post again, other than that I'm always writing blog posts in my head, so why not write them -- not in my head?

Oh, and occasional vague feelings of guilt for not using the blog as a Self Promotional Tool (though writing that makes me feel like a Self Promotional Tool*)

*I stole that from someone else. Which is even worse.

Here goes:

My old story has been archived online here, on the Whistling Shade Press website.

I'm having a story come out here in the summer (Annalemma magazine). I submitted to them partly because I really like their mission statement. Read it! Also look at the pretty pictures and read the stories, if you like.

I have a book review here. This kinda makes me feel like a rock star. Or the Minnesota book reviewing equivalent of a rock star. Which I guess is like Ethan or Jake?

Oh, my inspiration to post this was to say: why is it that when I choose "shuffle" on my IPod, I just skip every song that isn't already a favorite song I always listen to? This keeps me in the same pattern of just listening to the same songs over and over, which is why I picked shuffle in the first place. But then posting distracted me enough to stop doing that. So I actually discovered some songs on my IPod I'd never listened to before. Um...well done me, I guess?

Although it's funny that I feel that I don't listen to enough songs in my collection, because this is pretty much the reaction of my Music Loving Friends when they see my itunes collection:

Me: (secretly hoping Music Loving Friend will approve of my music collection) Here's my itunes collection!

Friend: This is...all the music you have?

Me: Yeah.

Friend: Oh.

This is because I always whittle my collection down: I never back it up, and so when my computer dies*, I tend to let the songs I don't actively want to replace go by the wayside. I also don't put embarrassing old CDs onto my computer. As a result, it's a slimdowned collection, meant to impress my Music Loving friends (look! only...sort of acceptable music here! No embarrassing 90s bands!). And then they...aren't impressed, because my collection is so small. Because if I really Loved Music, I'd never let attrition whittle my collection down.

*This tends to happen to me a lot, which is matter for another day.

Sigh.

Peace, y'all.