Thursday, March 07, 2002
More fine programming from the folks at FOX television, slated to air tonight in place of the much-beloved Family Guy.
People who like musicals terrify me.
Peeps torture device
Back in the fifth grade, I spent my spring break
visiting my grandmother in her southern Texas retirement
community. Not an old-folks home--a plush, gated
community with a golf course, hot tubs, and fancy
restaurants. Big pimpin' for the Midwesterns who had
tired of snow tires and rock salt.
My spring break coincided with Easter, which was
celebrated with a parade. Think golf carts painted pink
and old men in bunny costumes. Think slowest parade on
earth set to Lawrence Welk. My grandmother took it upon
herself to fashion a rather elaborate hat, not too
different from the one above, dressing me up as Minnie
Pearl. Mind you, this was before the Dead Milkmen had
made her fashionable again. I was being dressed like the
cranky old lady from Hee-Haw solely for the
amusement of my grandmother's friends and made to do the
walk of shame behind a trumped-up golf cart driven by a
man in pink.
Those sorts of things build
character.....right?
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
®TMark, your gateway to
value!
File under "All things that
don't suck will eventually get cancelled from network
TV", yep...Fox canned Family
Guy, presumably to schedule more eating contests or
a second night of Titus.
I haven't updated in forever
and ever and ever. I was feeling a little too exposed
for awhile--like I needed to retreat for awhile and
hide. This involved lots of weekends in my bedroom with
the covers over my head listening to Kid A.
Thank god for Radiohead. And thank god I'm feeling
much better.
Things are actually pretty swell at the moment, but I
still have that uneasy feeling that the rug could be
pulled out from under me at any moment. I'm living life
a lot more cautiously now, but there are more and more
moments where I am so happy to be alive, and in total
awe of how great life can be.
Last weekend, Thor and I ventured to Veggie Castle in
Flatbush for a little Jamaican breakfast. On our way to
the train station, we passed a graveyard with a huge
rooster wandering among the headstones. A rooster? Loose
in Brooklyn? And no one had stolen it or fucked with it
or ate it? I went inside to examine things for myself,
and found that the rooster was quite at home--he had
bowls of food strewn about and a little nest. Perhaps
this was some crazy santeria-voodoo rooster that had
escaped from one of the local botanicas? While in the
graveyard, I browsed through the headstones, many of
which were so old or weathered that lettering no longer
remained. Those that did dated back to the 1600 and
1700's, and I recognized the names from streets and
neighborhoods of Brooklyn--names like Lefferts,
VanDerBilt, and Lotts (of New Lotts
Avenue, I presume), most headstones written in Dutch or
German. These were some of the first people that settled
Brooklyn--dutch farmers, mercenaries, and soldiers from
the Revoluntionary War, and they were buried in an
unkept graveyard full of branches and crumbing slate in
a neighborhood that was too poor to tend to the living,
nevermind the dead. How could this be? Why hasn't some
sort of preservation society stepped in and maintained
what little is left? I've been doing a little research
to see whom I would contact, but it looks like this
might be a DIY effort--I might just take a garbage bag
and rake down there one of these warm spring days, and
do some housecleaning for Mr. Rooster and his squirrel
friends.
