Where’s Cherry?

I can’t wait; tonight is the final round of the 2008 Scripps National Spelling Bee. I’m a big fan of spelling bees and of spelling in general, so tonight is really kind of like the Miss America pageant or the Indy 500 for me. The finals are going to be broadcast live on ABC from 8-10 pm Eastern time, which means I’m going to miss most of it because I’ll be at work. Hopefully there will be a rebroadcast.

I’m not being facetious; this thing is actually really exciting. For instance, there are a ton of kids from our 51st state making a good showing here, and I am pretty sure that Changlin Ke will never misspell “galligaskins” again in his life. If you don’t believe me about the dramatic tension in this contest, just ask Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes, who has been liveblogging the whole damn thing.

I think it’s too late to enter her betting pool on the winner, but you can still choose a favorite to root for. I myself am really liking Akshat Shekhar, mainly because I think all the kids probably call him “Asshat” and yet he manages to keep a big smile on his face. Shonda seemed to like a girl named Cheyenne Plaster, so you see it’s not just me with the names.

But. ! .. ? !! . , ? … !!!* WHAT HAPPENED TO CHERRY MATHIS? I was looking out for her, but I don’t see her listed in Round 6. I checked the Round 5 results, and she spelled “ullage” correctly, so where is she? What’s going on? Cherry, are you okay? Oh wait, there she is, spelling “floraison.” She was just last in that round. Phew. Go Cherry! Go Akshat!

photo by foreversouls on flickr

*apologies to Tom Wolfe

Fork queue

“Hon, have you seen the paper fork? I can’t find it. Yes, I’m looking in the fork drawer. The giant fork is here, with the raver fork, and the ratchet fork, and the pizza fork, and the bacon fork, and the art forks, and the invisible fork, the pen fork, finger fork…. Argh! Where’s the damn paper fork? Why do I need it? What do you mean why do I need it?

“How else am I going to eat my paper steak?”

Holy guacamole

It’s no secret that Homer Simpson is a big fan of Mexican TV, so it’s nice to see that the feeling is reciprocal:

Thanks for finding this, Kim. THANKS FOR THE NIGHTMARES.

Hollywood bird sanctuary

Every time I go by that pet store on Beverly Blvd. with the lovely peacock painting criminally hidden by a cheap yellow awning, I should remember to take a side trip by the Fountain Market in Hollywood. I don’t know if a neighborhood market can cure depression or stop wars or ease lower back pain, but for my money the Fountain Market sure comes close. Here’s a place that has taken a nothing store front:

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And turned it into a spectacular mural depicting the birds that can be found in the neighborhood:

There is even information about the birds in both English and Spanish:

I wish the peacock on the pet store could find a way to fly over here and hang out at the Fountain Market, because clearly this place knows how to treat birds right.

Fly, peacock! Fly!

Cute in context

Context is a curious thing. I tend to have a pretty broad idea of “what is art” that is not based so much on the setting or the creator, but I’m finding that my idea of “cute” is very much dependent on context. For example, if this is just a kid begging for a pet, it’s pretty cute:

But I keep thinking it’s not a kid. I just keep imagining Lennie Small from Of Mice and Men making that video, which is… not so cute.

Etiquette & superstition: shoes

Memorial Day is upon us once again. While this day is typically spent painting the house or barbecuing or packing away our winter clothes, I ask that you all take a moment to remember the true meaning of the day and pay tribute to those fallen cobblers and shoe elves who have given their lives so that we may have nice shoes.

ETIQUETTE: One of the hoariest and well-known rule of etiquette is the idea that it is only proper to wear white shoes between Memorial Day and Labor Day. This is an outmoded rule, however, and only refers to the basic idea that one should wear seasonally-appropriate attire. Even the most respected etiquette authorities disagree about the “no white shoes before Memorial Day” rule, so you should just use your best judgment. Beware, however, that in San Francisco if you wear white shoes you will be assumed to be either a tourist or a hooker.

SUPERSTITION: Shoes do much more than just protect your feet, if you know how to use them. You can stop a dog from howling by taking off your left shoe and turning it upside down. You can cure a cramp and prevent nightmares by leaving your shoes outside your bedroom door with one toe pointing toward the door and one toe pointing away from the door. You can counter-act any evil spells put on you by spitting in your right shoe before putting it on. You can cure toothache by putting your left shoe and sock on before your right shoe and sock. And a girl can learn the identity of her future husband by following these simple steps: 1) Place your shoes in the form of a letter T when you go to bed, saying “I place my shoes like a letter T, in hopes my true love I shall see, in his apparel and his array, as he is now and every day;” 2) have the shoes trade places in the T formation, and repeat the chant; 3) trade the shoes’ places again and repeat the chant once more; 4) write each letter of the alphabet on a separate scrap of paper; 5) then put the pieces of paper in a bowl under your bed. We’re almost there; 6) go to bed, and don’t speak; 7) in the morning, examine the bowl; 8) if any of the letters are now facing upward, they will give you a clue about the name of your future husband. Wait; just a clue after all that? What a rip-off.

Photo by SewPixie on flickr

Storefront art – endangered by stupidity edition

Let’s pretend for a moment that I’m the stupidest commercial landlord in all of Los Angeles, shall we? And I have a tenant in one of my buildings who runs your standard type of pet store, one that stocks puppies:

and frogs, and bunnies:

and iguanas, and turtles, and fish:

and there happened to be a really nice arcade over the door of this building, and the tenant decided to use that arcade to jazz up his already great pet mural out front:

and paint a beautiful peacock with its tail spread out protectively over all of the other animals, spread out across the entire arcade, his feet perched on the security gate rail:

Let’s see; if I were the stupidest commercial landlord in all of Los Angeles, what would I do when I saw my tenant’s beautiful mural? Oh, that’s right; I’d cover it with a crappy yellow awning:

Hooray! I’m the stupidest commercial landlord in all of Los Angeles!

My bike does not control the weather

I’ve been trying to take my bike in to work at least a couple of days a week, but lately the weather has been thwarting my attempts. Last week, I managed to get one ride in before the temperature got into the surface of the Sun range, and while I work in a fairly casual work atmosphere, I really can’t come in to the office plastered in sweat. It might be different if I worked somewhere else.

So I tried again this week, and on my pedal home mid-week I found myself fighting Beaufort Scale 5 winds. Yesterday and today we’ve been encountering thunder showers. I talked to my brother this morning and he said there has been hail and a tornado where he lives, not 100 miles away from me. He suggested I stop trying to ride my bike to work, because obviously whenever I ride my bike, the weather gets crazy. He said that my bike was controlling the weather.

This is absurd. While it’s true that my bike does look a lot like Miss Gulch‘s in The Wizard of Oz, and she turns into the Wicked Witch of the West, my bike has no supernatural powers whatsoever. It is not a vampire bike. It is not a ghost bike (knock wood). It is an ordinary girl’s bike. The only supernatural bike I know of for sure is the chupacabra bike, which belongs to Jason Broemmel up in San Francisco:

As you can see, it breathes fire and follows you with its eyes and its arms go chopchopchop when you pedal. He also happens to have a dragon bike and a witch bike. I say if anybody’s bikes are controlling the weather, it’s his.

Winking wieners

Now that America’s Next Top Model has wrapped up its latest cycle, I no longer have an excuse to eat 5000 calories and drink a box of wine every Wednesday night. Unfortunately, the urge is still there to eat deep-fried ampersands and pickle-flavored potato chips and candy bars dipped in chocolate fondue. This has to stop. I need reprogramming. Last night Benny offered to make dinner, and when he asked what I wanted, I said I wanted a wiener wink. With tater tots.

Thankfully, Benny did not make wiener winks and tater tots. We had a very sensible chicken and salad sort of dinner. But here I am today, looking for wiener winks online. I am finding a lot of things, and surprisingly, nothing dirty. There’s a newsletter from the Preston Schools, which includes a lunch menu and a photo of a chubby grimacing first grader. There’s an argument on a Rutgers cancer patient forum. There’s a guy really desperate to find some exercises for his friend’s fat neck. And there is a lot of confusion, apparently, about what a wiener wink is.

It’s not just a hot dog with cheese. It is not a hot dog wrapped in a tortilla (low carb or otherwise). It is not cocktail franks and crescent rolls, Grandpa Jim. And apparently it is not something that Mrs. Williams, SHELDAWG, or Jill C. on allrecipes.com have mastered yet.

It’s not some exotic and difficult recipe, people. It’s a damn hot dog placed diagonally on a piece of cheap white bread that has a slice of American cheese on it, and you fold up the corners of the bread that the hot dog is not on, and you secure the corners with a toothpick, and you cook it in an oven until it’s crispy and those toasted bread corners scrape the hell out of your mouth if you’re stupid enough to eat them and no I didn’t eat the stupid toothpick it’s the toast and the terrible rubber cheese never actually melts and you pull that off the hot dog too so actually all that’s good to eat in a wiener wink is the hot dog.

So. I don’t want that, actually. I may want to make it and take photos of it, but I don’t want to eat it. I may be cured. I feel like some broiled salmon with nice steamed vegetables now. Behold the power of the wiener wink.

Photo by ahhyeah on flickr

Fancy notions #5

Today’s set of fancy notions is very special:

It’s a girl doll, and a moray eel, and a yellow pompon. This grouping of random objects may look somewhat uninteresting at first (and sorry I don’t even have a dime in there for perspective; the perspective dime has now gone missing, so Minister of Fancy Notions Weights & Measures Joaquin is definitely fired), but if you just look at it from a different angle:

It somehow becomes very dramatic, doesn’t it? I bet you could make a very scary children’s story just by taking photos of these three things. You could focus on the doll’s legs and shoes for part of the story, or for a different scary story if you wanted to use the pompon and moray eel for something else, because her legs and shoes are very odd. She’s wearing white orthopedic shoes, and her legs are made of some flesh-colored spongy material wrapped around wires so it looks like she’s wearing support hose, but her face:

is very young and sweet looking. She’s a witch! She’s The Thousand-Year-Old Witch Who Steals Little Girls’ Faces With The Help Of Her Moray Eel Named Chet! It’s a great story, I’m telling you. If you want to write it and make a million dollars, you’re going to need these fancy notions. Just write to me at herndonofsunnyvale(at)gmail.com and I’ll send them to you.