bad religion were fantastic. and I will never make fun of kerryn for bringing earplugs to a gig again. premature hearing loss is no laughing matter.

i should never enter a mosh pit. I am way too aggro as it is. i made a serious attempt to break this little snot-nosed 18 year old’s ribs with my elbow because she was being annoying.

i first wore red chuck taylors in 1986, with a safety pinned jean jacket, and bangs (which i cut myself) standing straight up in the air. nearly 20 years later, I still see them being worn by kids who think they invented punk.

bad religion released their first album in 1981. I’d estimate more than half the crowd last night was not even a twinkle in their pappy’s eye then. tracey (bless!) was one year old.

< *creak, shuffle, creak, shuffle, sigh...*>

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why is it when you’re hungover, the universe insists on torturing you with a flashback countdown of all the previous evening’s humiliating highlights *as* you are trying with every ounce of might *not* to lose your proverbial lunch?

Actually, I was not so much hungover, as in the throes of the worst migraine i’ve ever had in my life. I can make the distinction because it waited until *after* i’d had my restorative egg and bacon bagel sandwich miracle cure, and gone outside to catch a bit of sun, before it blindsided me. i went from feeling relatively okay, to violently wracked with pain in about 5 minutes flat. it was the strangest sensation – it hurt my head to have it lying still in any one position, but moving made my brain feel like one of those floating compasses with the spinning and bobbing bits inside. it felt like someone was overinflating my head, with this curious pressure radiating from the inside. i had goosebumps and sweats. my heart was palpitating and i was moaning out load. and of course, i was suddenly remembering every embarassing thing i’d done or said the night before. because thinking i was going to die just wasn’t bad enough.

as i spent an hour writhing around and clutching my skull, i started to get really scared, never having experienced such a strange kind of pain. when my hands started to tingle and my speech got fucked up, i started to think i was having a stroke.

and then, on the verge of asking jonno to take me to the hospital, it was suddenly gone. like a massive vise had just been taken off my head. i was finally able to take a long nap without worrying about never waking up.

it was so bizarre. i’ll take the worst hangover over that, any day…

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Hello faithful reader… Been a busy week, so sorry if I’ve been a bit quiet. Work has been hectic, which is good, in that the week passes quickly, but bad in that it makes it harder to drag myself out of bed in the morning, overcome the dread, and get my ace to the office.

Things are pretty good. Had dinner with some saffa friends on Tuesday… I made some strawberry shortcake to bring along for dessert, and I don’t think I’ll foist it upon non-americans again. I’ve made it twice now, and I really think people just don’t get the whole biscuit with strawberries and cream concept – it’s just a foreign tastebud sensation, and everyone eats the berries and cream, and leaves the biscuits. Ah well.

Had drinks with another american ex-pat last night, which was really good, but always a strange sensation, like coming across a distant family relation. I am always struck by how much easier I find it to talk to Americans, and I’m not sure why that is, because it’s not even about sharing a common background – it just a different sensibility that somehow makes all the difference. IN any case, had a few pints and lots of enjoyable conversation in a chilled atmosphere – always a good recipe for an evening.

Got a busy weekend lined up… If the sun holds, we’re off to listen to some outdoor jazz tonight. Sat morning is Tri-nations rugby at the pub at 8:00 am (go springboks!) and I quite enjoy rugby now, but the bloody time difference is a killer. Sat evening, andy and kim are hosting a barbeque extravaganza, and if i know anything at all, i know that kim will be the hostess with the mostess (she and i share the same “going completely overboard” affliction!). Sunday being the lord’s (hangover) day we will rest (and probably puke). Monday evening we will worship at the feet of those priests of punk, “bad religion” at the temple astoria.

All in all, a rockin’ weekend. Will catch up with y’all on the other side… peace out, homies

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Relaxing in the sun this morning with a bloody mary and a good book. Ahhhhh.

Bloody marys make me miss real brunches though. Brunches with quiche and bagels and salmon and fluffy scrambled eggs and asparagus and wine and croissants and fruit salad and waffles and savoury potatoes, and of course, bloody marys (the spicy kind, with plenty of worcestershire sauce and horseradish).

Back when I had a house, I used to love to do big sunday brunches for a few of my friends who’d stayed over (usually from a party the night before) and then eat in the garden…there’s nothing better.

if I had a garden, i would soooo love to have a brunch

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We may be five hours ahead, but we’re behind the times over here, which means jonno and i are just catching on to new hits like “arrested development” and catching up with old faves like “the sopranos”… so *no on tell me* what happens!

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okay, well I have a whole new appreciation for web developers.

in any case, finally sat down and made a few adjustments to this site in firefox. it’s still not pretty, but much better than it was. now *wordpress* doesn’t seem to want to deal with mozilla at all, and all i can get the site to look like is a gray page of blogs. sooo after all that work, I’m not sure if I’ll switch over to wordpress or not.

i am far too impatient for this shit!

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welcome once again, gentle reader!

whew! been an uncharacteristically busy few days over here in “the big smoke” (a nickname which makes me think londoners are just jealous of nyc’s “the big apple”, but that’s the best they could come up with.)

Anyway, first off, big ups to my homie k-dawg, who managed to snag us tix to see the filthy and fabulous foo fighters! I have the undeniably disturbing hots for mr. dave grohl, and am already shopping for an appropriately naughty pair of underthings to fling at him as a token of my deep personal affection. plus, the foos just rock the house. and I will finally get to see my beloved boys when they come through earl’s court in december. I may even have to start one of those annoying and ubiquitous countdown tickers for my email sig. preferably one featuring a cute animal or flower.

like this:

now you can all countdown along with me!

friday night was yummy – j and i, k&t all went to a tex-mex restaurant for dinner, and I had dos equis cerveza and sizzling seafood fajitas, which were muy bueno. i have to admit, i was very pleasantly surprised, since i was a bit skeptical about finding decent mexican in london. particularly having experienced its track record with chinese food (a word to the wise: adding brown gravy and celery does not chinese food make), and the fact that it’s, ya know, like a loooong way from mexico. sometimes cuisine from the americas tends to get lost in translation somewhere over the atlantic. not to mention the “american” foods which i’ve never encountered in my 30 plus years in the states (hot dogs in a can!?!?). in any case, the fajitas were slammin’, so “cafe sol” has high marks in my book.

saturday, j and i had been planning a day trip to get bruce (the car) a little exercise and fresh air, and get us off our asses and out of london. k-dawg once again came through and recommended whitstable, a quaint little seaside village. we headed out in spite of the ominous weather, and spent a cute little half day eating fish and chips, and drinking at the local pub. a few scenic shots here. meanwhile, back in “the big smoke”, we headed down to earlsfield for the evening, to meet up with k&T and chris and tonia, mostly so i could spend some quality baby cuddling time with jude.

sunday , kerryn, trace, and myself headed off to portsmouth for some sailing! some of kerryn’s work friends had wrangled a lovely boat for sunday and monday, so we shivered our timbers and headed off for the isle of wight. being from boston, and growing up with a nautical dad, i realised just how much miss proximity to the ocean! The weather turned out much better than anticipated, and we had lots and lots of alcohol and food on board, so really it was like a mature version of a booze-cruise. We got in some real sailing, and though I was sure I’d forgotten everything since I haven’t been on a boat in 3 years, it turns out it’s just like riding a bike, if you’ll pardon the mixed metaphor. Tacking and jibing and trimming the sails all came flooding back to me, and you’ve gotta love the sailing lingo – the mainsail, the jenny, the painter,the halyard, the boom, the dinghy. even if you don’t know your bow from your stern, you sure can sound impressive! ahoy matey!

the less fun part is that 24 hours later, i still feel like I have a deck swaying and bobbing beneath my feet. i have absolutely no problems with sea sickness – it’s only since being back on land that i feel queasy! yet another symptom of aging – the inner ear balance disappears virtually overnight. who knew???

view the watery pics here

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it’s unbelievable how your sense of smell can just whip you right back to a particular time and place from out of the blue. this morning, i was walking down the street on my way to the tube, and suddenly got a whiff of perfume from the woman walking in front of me.

and suddenly I was 13 again. you see, for a while during puberty, i was obsessed with fashion magazines. i pored over them as if somehow i could become thinner, more beautiful through osomosis, just by reading them, or figuring out what the right outfit to wear was, or finding the perfect kind of makeup to hide my awkward ugly duckling stage. i thought there was some kind of magic in those pages, and i desperately wanted it to rub off on me, transform me into anyone but the gawky teen i was. and not just any regular teen fashion magazines. not “seventeen” or “ym” like my friends read. no, i read “vogue” and “glamour”, and particularly “elle” – which were largely just catalogue-sized advertisements for a lifestyle i couldn’t even begin to dream of affording. slick photos of the jewelry and tans and couture of the elite. yet i longed – not so much to look like the models, or wear the clothes… i probably couldn’t have put what i longed for into words, but it was undoubtably linked to a desire for comfort and confidence in my own skin. something which i wouldn’t find for many more years. something which, even now somedays, i have only a tenuous grip on.

and when i was 13, i still went to church every sunday with my parents. how very pedestrian, i know, but true. i was a regular churchgoer against my will. and after the service was over, my parents inevitably had some sort of coffee club or meeting to attend, or just wanted to hang around talking to their friends for hours about things i couldn’t have cared less about. as a 13 year old, i just wanted to get as far away from the scene of embarassment as quickly as possible. so i would ask my dad for the keys to the car, and i would go to the drugstore and spend $3 of my babysitting money on the glossy and seductive “elle” magazine, and go study it in the back of our family minivan, while waiting. waiting for my dorky parents to tear themselves away from the dorky church. waiting to escape my geeky suburban life. waiting to be free of the adolescent angst which i couldn’t even name but carried around with me in my spine everyday. waiting to be a swan.

the point of all this, is that “elle” always had a certain perfume sample in it with a very distinctive smell. i wish i could remember the name of it now, and i was more than half tempted to stop the woman this morning and ask her what scent she was wearing. but that smell this morning transported me from a 32 year old woman in London to a 13 year old girl in the back of a minivan in Boston, in the blink of an eye.

and it kind of blindsides you to know that you can suddenly feel that way again without any kind of considerate warning, with no control over when or where it happens. and it’s unnerving to know that our emotions only remain hidden at the whim of our senses and memories, that they can surface so suddenly and acutely, and that they’re only a whiff away.

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… for my husband!

man dies after playing computer games for 50 hours straight

need I say more?

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Welcome Rachel! With lots of love from your Auntie Jen.

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random links from the edge:

overheard in the office

“Employee #1: Someone stunk up the downstairs bathroom again.
Employee #2: Did you spray the spray?
Employee #1: Yes, and now it smells like someone shit next to a pine tree.”

secrets as art: postsecret

“I trashed my parents house to look like I had a party while they were out of town… so my mom would think i had friends.”

hate brit pop? love popjustice. as the morning news says:

“Haven’t heard any of the artists they talk about? Doesn’t matter: The
language of skewering insipid pop stars is universal.”

money back guarantee. this really is the world’s ugliest dog.

and finally the christian paradox in the u.s.

“America is simultaneously the most professedly Christian of the developed nations and the least Christian in its behavior.”

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so i’ve spent most of today nursing a serious hangover – the kind of vivid pain which is meant to teach you a lesson about treating your body nicely, and not poisoning it with insane amounts of fruity alcohol. haven’t been truly drunk in a while, and now i remember why. fell (quite literally) into bed at 3am, and woke up in seriously sad shape about 6 hours later.

in any case, i have spent what little energy i have noodling around on the net listening to music and find fun playlist stuff (check it out at the sidebar) and through following a long winding series of links, ran across this artist named matisyahu, who does what he calls “Hasidic reggae”. i’m not making that up. he’s a lubavitcher jew from crown heights, brooklyn, and lists amongst his influences Bob Marley and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach.

All of which would just be anecdotally funny, except that the man has some serious skills. have a listen here and you’ll see what I mean. he could be straight out of Kingston, Jamaica. he’s starting to attract attention, and for good reason.

And in the “it’s a small world” category, as i was reading about this guy, i notice the photos are by my photog friend seth kushner, who i knew back in nyc, and who used to use me and my ex for models, when he had particular stuff he needed for his porfolio. (i was a little more arsty-looking back then.) i’ve checked in on his work from time to time to see what stuff he’s doing, but this is the first time I’ve accidentally stumbled across it out in the public domain.

i think back to the kinds of things i used to do, and the person i was back then. it makes me sad – i’ve faded at the edges where caution and convention have crept in. i’ve lost my edge. and it’s happened to everyone i know, not just me. it’s the erosion that inevitably occurs with time and hurt and the weight of responsibility – erosion of that layer of fearlessness and bravado you used to wear as protective armor, and enabled you to be a wild and crazy as you wanted. and the thing is, you don’t even appreciate it while you have it. no one even tells you that it dissolves with tears.

i want her back. that girl was fun, she did wacky-and-sometimes-stupid things, but never stopped *doing*. i want to tell the people i meet now that i didn’t always used to be this boring, i used to have lots of interesting friends and we did interesting stuff, we did, really we did. i want to hold on to that girl that didn’t give a shit about houses or babies or fiscal responsibility. the one that danced and drank and did drugs and took dares and moved 3000 miles across the ocean just to see what was on the other side. she was *here* not so long ago. i know she was.

shout out if you see her. meanwhile, i’ll just be over here detoxing my liver.

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all my tender loving care pays off…

i grew a tomato!

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any of you who know me, know that I can’t even begin to tell you how irate this makes me. foaming at the mouth *mad*.

what I don’t understand is why there is not more *fucking outrage* over here!?

i think the brits lay down for far too much intrusion and invasion by their government, and i really can’t understand it.

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freecycle!!

for stuff you’re too lazy to take to the charity shop, or sell on ebay.

for stuff you want to get rid of, that someone else might need/use.

for finding free stuff, without dumpster diving or trawling the pavement.

it’s amazing the stuff people want to get rid of – furniture, applicances, digital cameras, bicycles, construction supplies… some of it perfectly new.

and it’s all free.

save the landfill space for people who really need it.

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in celebration, a haiku:

happy and shiny
sweet delectable apple
red delicious love

finally found, of all places, at the shop across the street from our house.

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