breaking news
May 10th, 2008
Turns out I have curly hair in real life. Who knew??
myspace gets it right
May 9th, 2008
Log on to MySpace right now and check out their music load page–
Bottom row, second from left: Peej’s band! Top right corner: Neil Diamond! Together at last!!
I am willing to miss kickball for this. That makes it huge.
May 8th, 2008
Thank God jesse and marisa are on top of their game and can keep me posted as to what my family members are doing– remember a few weeks ago when my brother’s band got all famous and stuff? They’re opening for Los Campesinos on monday, 5/19 at the Bowery Ballroom– I am scheduled to play in a Very Important Corporate Kickball game that evening on my office team, which recently lost its first game 40-2 (not. exaggerating), but I am willing to give that up to see the peej play if I have company. Doors at 7:30, tickets are $15. Thoughts?
I don’t think my t9 function will auto-complete my thoughts on this one
May 7th, 2008
Toy Story
May 5th, 2008
File this under Wow, Didn’t See That One Coming: I am now obsessed with Mr Potato Head.
I have a couple of theories about why this is happening. My General Toy Infatuation has been going on for awhile, but it managed to largely contain itself to windup toys and, you know, things related to pirates. One time in my high school creative writing class we had to fill out these surveys about each other (eg. “if she were an animal, what would she be?” –kind of like inside the actors studio, only with more potential to make people hate one another) and the poor unfortunate soul tasked with reducing me to one-word answers said that if I were a toy, I’d be a windup toy, and I felt like she could see directly into my soul. Of course I’m a windup toy. GoGoGoGoSleeeeep. GoGoGoGoSleeeeep. Story of my life. So I’ve been collecting windup toys at home but have managed to keep them contained to my bedroom, which means if you ever get to see them I’ve already put you through a fairly intense vetting system and have determined that you can handle them. (Among other things. Heyo! Sorry, dad).
Awhile back I saw the Star Wars potato heads and decided that they were awesome. But, outside of a cursory knowledge of the millenium falcon and temptation to reply “I know” to anyone who tells me they love me, I don’t know if I qualify as a fan of the holy trilogy. I battled with this for some time but there was really only one answer. How can you not own this?
I find your lack of faith disturbing. ~Darth Tater
After that, let me tell you, it’s a slippery effing slope. I bought over $70 of potato heads inside an hour. The majority of which were paid for with a gft card, but still. That’s a lot of potatoes, even for an irish chick.
And now I own a Spud trooper, Artoo-Potato, Spider spud, and Optimash Prime. And my favorite snake-fearing, whip-cracking, Nazi-beating toy of all time, my Taters of the Lost Ark potato head:
It’s not the years, its the mileage.
As I’ve mentioned, and as I won’t be able to stop talking about for the next, let’s say, 26 days until my lease is up, I am moving. I have a lot of mixed emotions about this that I’m about to express in a month long Upper East Side farewell photo tour so you can see pictures of all the places that have been getting me liquored up and selling me children’s books and bringing me Indian food for the last 4 years, so look forward to that. In the meantime, I’m trying not to physically bring anything into my apartment. Roommate Amy and I are already going to literally have our hands full playing “Is this your whisk, or mine?” and “Do you think we can drink all of this booze in 3 weeks?” and I don’t want to complicate that with any additional possessions. Conveniently, I’ve just been given a work station at the office that is exponentially bigger (and more beautiful!) than my last one, and has things like walls, and shelving. Shelving with which to display potato heads.
I thought I could be subtle about this–that I could just quietly acrue toys and not have anyone notice until whenever I have to move out of this office and start labeling boxes “Potatoes–Movie Themed” and leaving them in the hallway for people to trip over. (This has already started to happen at home, where I find myself labeling boxes “Books–> Children’s–> autographed” and “Books–>nonfiction—>baseball” and “Books–>paperback—>80s mass market”). But within a day of the spuds coming home to roost my boss stopped by and asked “Did you have those in your cube before? Do you have some weird potato head fetish?” So the cat’s out of the bag.
Part of me really thinks that this potato head is part of a larger umbrella– namely, Toys Dressed Up As Other Toys– that I like, which also explains why I find such glee in Pez dispensers dressed up as movie characters, and this action figure of Kermit dressed up as Indiana Jones. I know that if I’m going to become a serious collector of Stuff Of No Value That No One Really Cares About, I’m going to have to drill down and focus. But right now I have no parameters whatsoever and it’s starting to show.
(Think I’m the only nutcase out there? Yeah. I’m so not).
Now, is there a tactful way for me to say “here are the potato heads I’m missing, you should go buy me some for my birthday?” No? Well then, here are your opportunities to help erase my personal potato famine:
Yam Solo(hah!)
Luke Frywalker(HAH hah!)
Send help.
april’s photo essay
April 28th, 2008
So, I’m moving in a month. A lot of my stuff is going to be living in NJ with my parents (I’m trying to get them used to me just abandoning them with stuff I don’t want to deal with for when I have children) so I’ve started packing it up and taking it home in waves. Wave one was supposed to be devoted to things I wouldn’t be needing in the next few months.
Such as, for example, my autographed book collection. But first I had to record all of the titles and ISBNs in excel for insurance purposes and then wrap everything in plastic JUST IN CASE something floods. I hear you laughing and I know you think I’m kidding.
I’m not kidding. This was the first 2 boxes.
Peej helped me move this one back into my childhood bedroom. “Shouldn’t we poke airholes in it or something?”
But it’s just my {inanimate} turtle collection, the live ones will come home to roost some time in may.
While I was at home at my mom’s house, I started paging through some of the scrapbooks she keeps in her office, because I like nothing more than reading my old english essays from 7th grade or admiring my work on the middle school newspaper. She has one scrapbook where she’s only used two of the 50 available pages. Page one is a program from one of the many, many honor societies my little brother has been inducted into over the last four years. Page two is a phone message that my Aunt Roe took down for my mom when I called home at one point three years ago.
Squinting a little, are you? Let me narrate. It says: “Cristin called Dan broke up w/ her” in my aunt roe’s handwriting. Immediately under that, it says “Nov ‘05″ in my mother’s handwriting. So not only did my aunt take down the most unfeeling transcription of what I’m sure was a very emotionally wrought message in real life, my mother time stamped it and put it in a scrapbook. My mom laughed so hard when I showed her this I thought she was going to faint. She only stopped long enough to gasp out “Who’s Dan?” which I think makes it even better. (For those of you playing along at home, dan was this guy, aka the only boy who’s ever dumped me, aka the only boy who’s ever dumped me and had it memorialized IN A SCRAPBOOK by my mother). I mean, really. Do I not already have the worst middle child syndrome possible? Let’s go over what happened among the stickles children in April 2008: Bud flew a jet plane over Shea Stadium while thousands and thousands of people applauded, and peej is now an indie music god. The only scrapbook fodder that Cristin provides, though, comes in the form of post-its regarding her failed relationships. Look, I’m sorry, Mom. Maybe May will be the month I give you some real material to work with– maybe a write up in our hometown newspaper’s police blotter if we’re really lucky. Perhaps then we can stop recording my emotional lows for all of posterity, hmm?
Let the record state that as soon as my mom asked who this guy was, her next sentence was “You are not allowed to write about this on the internet.” To which I said “Okay. I just want to take a few pictures so I can always remember this moment.”
Because one move is never enough, I also had to pack up all of my stuff at work and move three feet across the hall. This move you will never in a million years hear me complain about, though, since I now have things like WALLS and a DOOR and it makes me dizzy with happiness just thinking about it. First thing Friday I applied myself to the really important matters at hand.
Like moving all of my stuffed animals before I worried about things like my files and my calculator and other tools with which I conduct business and make my company money.
Much better. (Top shelf library, for you book nerds: Olivia in Latin, the New Yorker Collection of Literary Cartoons, I Like You{the best picture book ever written}, a mini book of Where the While Things Are in either Dutch or German, a book on bling and a book on bracketology both courtesy of The Fee, and Parts, which I’ve talked about before, as it is awesome).
And lastly, what will be my dad’s favorite picture of my office moves, as he thinks my entire life is constructed around the pursuit of books and shoes.
Save that one for your scrapbook, dad.
Don’t call it a comeback
April 28th, 2008
InSound’s top selling albums as of tonight:
HOW’S THAT TASTE, WEEZER??
Almost Famous, Part II
April 28th, 2008
Following the pitchfork review, fifteen THOUSAND people went to peej’s band’s myspace page. And today:
On insound, where the cd is for sale:
And on Amazon, where you can download it:
Almost Famous
April 25th, 2008
Jordan called me at 8:30 this morning, something he has never done in our 13? 14? years of being friends. “What happened?” I asked immediately, convinced it was his parents or my parents or his sister. It wasn’t, though– it was my brother.
“Peej’s band just got Best New Music on pitchfork!”
Okay, I listen to Kelly Clarkson, and even I know what a big deal this is. My musical tastes right now could be described as ranging from George Michael to the Guys & Dolls soundtrack, but I still know enough to get excited when pitchfork compares my brother to the Boss. I called our other brother even though it was before 9 am.
“Did I wake you up?”
“No, I’m at the onion festival in Georgia,” he said sleepily.
“Like, the newspaper? or like, the food?” I asked. “The food,” he confirmed. He’s doing an airshow today for all you lucky georgia onion enthusiasts.
And then I read him the entire review, pausing every few sentences so that we could laugh maniacally or yell “OH, MY GOD!” This was after I’d gotten peej’s voicemail and left him a “patrickitscristin– go check pitchfork!” voicemail. “Peej is still sleeping, he didn’t answer,” I told Jordan sadly afterwards. “Maybe he just went to bed,” Jordan guessed. Rock. Star.
From Pitchfork: So far Titus’s rowdy live shows have generated the most buzz around the group; check your local listings, they’re probably playing in a friend’s tool shed near you. Those small venue acoustics translate wonderfully on the band’s debut, its muffled mixing reminiscent of listening to a bar band from the men’s room. Yet this inebriated aesthetic only intensifies the literary streak running through Stickles’ easily excitable veins. A brusque “fuck you!” cues the band on Pogues-like opener “Fear & Loathing in Mahwah, NJ”, but once the rubble clears it’s a villainous quote from Titus Andronicus’s Aaron the Moor that most elegantly expresses Stickles’ bile: “I have done a thousand dreadful things/ …And nothing grieves me heartily indeed/ But that I cannot do ten thousand more.” As if the dreary title and playful, mock-optimistic guitar riffs of “No Future Part II: The Day After No Future” aren’t enough to wrench your soul, the song ends with the closing passage from Albert Camus’ The Stranger, in which the narrator wishes to be jeered by a large crowd on the day of his execution.
From Insound: The blogs are talking, and the comparisons to The Kinks, The Pogues, Bruce Springsteen, and even Arcade Fire are all getting thrown around. What you hear is three years in the making through over 18 different band members and touring by playing basements in North Carolina or a guy’s living room in suburban Illinois or a college in New Jersey. They will play anywhere and they will blow you away no matter where it is, or whether its 12 or 1200 people. That’s a good sign of character in my book, and a sign that this band may be the one!
Another opening of another show
April 23rd, 2008
One of my friends recently commented to me via email that she didn’t have a very exciting day job. I told her that even if I were to accidentally save someone’s life by administering the Heimlich in our cafeteria while Dan Brown’s editor looked on, I still wouldn’t have anything on my brother’s work day, and I sent her this video of one of his job assignments for April. “Is he the one singing the national anthem?” she asked.
Um, no. He’s the one flying the plane over Shea Stadium for the last home opener that the Mets will ever play there.
I took a personal day after getting the news that my dad had arm-twisted Opening Day tickets out of one of his Glen Rock Inn drinking buddies (the InnMates) and that my stepmom had declined accompanying him upon learning that A-Rod doesn’t play for the Mets. Even if I didn’t like baseball, I would have been all over this for largely spiteful reasons. On my last layover in GRock, I logged some Inn time with my dad and two different people double-taked at me and then went “You have a DAUGHTER?” to my father, who has apparently failed to mention the fact that I exist during the last 800 or so hours he’s put in at that fine institution. “Oh, you mean Megan’s mom,” one of them answered herself. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but no. You’re just going to have to come around to the fact that he has children that aren’t producing babies, flying jet planes, or going to Harvard. Oh, but I did get dressed all by myself this morning, and my group leader says I can move out of the locked unit and into the halfway house as soon as I learn to go to the bathroom alone. Jesus. Apparently being the only girl is no longer enough to warrant me a cursory mention between Guinnesses, so I’m going to have to apply myself to making sure I show up in the background of pictures where Bud or Peej is doing something awesome. Luckily, I am fantastic at being spiteful. No, really. Just today I caught myself thinking that it might be fun to vote for John McCain to spite someone. THAT’s how serious I am about this genre of motivators. Additionally luckily, Bud and Peej both had moments of greatness in the pipeline, starting with the opening day fly over and winding up with Peej’s graduation in May, which I will distinguish from my own college graduation by not playing Tetris on my Game Boy through most of it. And by graduating with half of Peej’s GPA, but whatever.
I met my dad at Penn Station, as he decided that this would be his introduction to the subway system so that he can get on with his plan of coming into the city and wandering around now that he’s approaching “the autumn of his career.” “I got you a metrocard,” I told him, and watched as he got way, way more excited over that than any present I’ve handed him in my adult life. Had I known it would be that easy, I would have just wrapped up a NJ Transit train schedule every time his birthday rolled around instead of hunting down obscure books on the gardening habits of presidents or comparison treatments of the Gospel according to Mark and the music of Blood, Sweat & Tears or whatever the heck he’s into these days. “So it goes like this? Right like this? This is how I do it?” he said, miming my actions of getting through the barrier but never actually applying the card to the swiping mechanism and making people veer around him as he stood there. “Like this? And then I can just walk right through?” YES, dad. For the love of GOD, please join me on the other side of the turnstile. “Isn’t this fun? This is a nice preview of my old age for you, when you’re going to have to drag me around on a leash because I’ll be all DURRRRRR,” my dad cheerfully told me once he had used one of his many graduate degrees to enter the subway station, immediately launching into his impression of Lenny from Of Mice and Men. We made it to Shea without killing any rabbits.
I’m a little upset that this is the last season at Shea, for obvious reasons, but I’m also secretly thrilled that by the time I’m mature enough to have children and/ or dogs, I’ll be able to name one of them after the stadium without the connection being as obvious as if, say, I named him/ her Citi Field.
Plus, there won’t be much of a shocking transition to the new field, as the boys are going to play all of this season literally in the shadow of it.
Hit the new stadium, get a free steak!
We were about an hour early getting to our seats, so we had plenty of time to take care of the hot dog eating portion of the day, and my dad’s Things That Make Me Happy stream of consciousness monologue. “Man, I love baseball. I don’t understand people that like football. Baseball is so much better. I love baseball. Know what else I love? YouTube,” he declared. This wasn’t as huge a shock as if he had said, say, Facebook, or music recorded in the last decade, or pants that aren’t sweatpants– I’ve heard about my dad’s love affair with YouTube before. “I don’t have to watch anything anymore. I missed the last NCAA game and-boom!- it’s up on YouTube. Or the Obama race speech. And you can fast forward through anything that’s boring,” he went on cheerfully before his tone became serious. “But they just blocked YouTube at the office.” “No! That’s awful! How are you going to watch the trunk monkey ads?” I asked, remembering when my dad was fond of acting out the commercials that showed monkeys coming to the aid of stranded motorists. “No more trunk monkey, no more darth vader goes grocery shopping,” he said sadly. I didn’t ask for clarification on the second one, but it sounds exactly like something senior partners should be devoting themselves to during billable hours.
I thought Bud had the coolest job of the day, but we later found out that one of his, uh, coworkers? pilot-mates? flew up to NY ahead of the boys who were doing the fly over so that he could stand behind home plate from batting practice through the national anthem and radio to the pilots. So while I was having a hot dog, he had a bunch of the Phillies come up to him and go “Hey man… were you in Iraq?” and then have their eyes get really wide when he said yes. I look forward to the day when professional athletes are envious of and impressed by what I do for a living, and I am happy to have David Wright over to the office to watch me do V-lookup in Excel (which is an actual thing, not a dirty metaphor, get your mind out of the gutter) any time he wants to make that happen. It was also, as I understand it, this guy’s job to sing along to the national anthem into his headset so that Bud could time the fly over for the ending. If you’ve already watched the YouTube video then you know that this didn’t work out perfectly– due to some issues with the opera singer, Bud was 12 miles away when the anthem started. But I also look forward to the day when I can cover 12 miles in under 2 minutes.
When they announced that the fly over would be happening, my dad immediately tapped the person sitting in front of us on the shoulder and said “That’s my son!” then he remembered he had an offspring with him already and, in some attempt to include me in our family awesomeness, slung his arm around my shoulder and pointed at me saying “and her brother!” Phew, I feel much better now. Not about having my association with Brendan clearly spelled out for complete strangers who don’t care, but that I didn’t have to worry that that guy thought I was there as my dad’s date and not child. This is a fear I have with all of my male relatives, regardless of age and the fact that we all have the same face, and one of the biggest indicators that living in new york has messed me up. Why, of course I’d love to pay $1100 to live in a box! And it’s not unreasonable at all for men in their 50s to date women my age! Seriously! During college, someone once mistook my little brother for my boyfriend, and ever since then I’ve been really into loudly and publicly declaring my relations in situations that don’t warrant that kind of attention, at all. “Well, DAD, mass sure was great today, I’ll meet you at the car!” “Hey Patrick, what are you getting mom for mothers’ day? Since we have THE SAME MOTHER, and all.”
I took a video of the fly over on my camera and intended to post it but the YouTube ones are, remarkably, much better quality. I have a bit of a shaky hand for a videographer, something I’ll have to figure out before my mom and I head out on Road Trip USA 2008, since I recently decided that I’m going to buy one of those flash memory video camera things so I can record footage of my mom and I at Graceland, oohing and aaahing over Elvis’ toilet. (Webmaster Kyle, I have many questions for you about equipment of this nature and if it’s ridiculous to try to sloppily edit things on my 3 year old Dell laptop that has never done anything other than maintain my increasingly ridiculous iTunes catalog and save my Christmas Card list. {just as a sidenote, my iTunes are Out Of Control. The last time I was Breakup Cristin, it manifested itself in that month where I didn’t consume anything but skim milk and freaked out every time I thought someone moved my calculator at work but this time, evil alter-ego Breakup Cristin has a whole new and exciting bag of tricks for me. Specifically, I can’t get enough of George Michael. All I want to do all day is listen to George Michael songs. Oh, and Mariah Carey. Seriously, this has to stop. The stuff that iTunes is recommending for me is horrifyingly embarrassing. I would rather have someone root through my underwear drawer than look at my Purchased playlist. Though this has lead to some of the best punning I’ve done in awhile. Like when Jordan tells me he’s sure I’ll grow out of the George Michael thing and it’s probably just a phase related to my recent love of Arrested Development, I get to respond “You’re right. I’ve just got to have faith, a-faith, a-faith.”}). So I chucked the video of the fly over due to the issues I had with its quality, and also because as soon as they got to “and the hoooooome of thhhheeeeee…” you can hear my dad and I both shouting “BRENDAN! Come on, Brendan!” as if we could summon his multi, multi million dollar jet plane with just the dulcet tones of our voices.
And the planes came, and it was awesome, and people in Shea Stadium high fived each other and my brother flew over their heads, which is not something a lot of people can say that they’ve seen. Bud landed at LaGuardia and then had seats on the other side of the stadium, but he came over to visit during the 7th inning stretch.
Uploading this picture is the greatest sign of love for Bud I’ve ever displayed considering it’s not arrogant of me to say that I am at least 50% better looking than this in real life. I mean, come on. This is like my drivers license picture, that has never not made people break into hysterical laughter and say things like “this is so much worse than I thought it was going to be!” Also, I am wearing my super cute new Mets jacket that Dad’s InnMate Clete, our inside man at the stadium, got for me, and that my father has alluded to stealing at least 8 times. No dice, bob.
Seriously. Who told me that parting my hair in the middle was a good idea that day? Is this what I get for actually achieving a new years resolution for once (2007 resolution: handle stress better. 2008 resolution: grow out bangs)?
My dad didn’t wear anything Mets related to the game, because he thinks wearing baseball jerseys to a baseball game makes you look “silly.” (Spoken to the girl who was, at the time, wearing 4 different pieces of Mets apparel, including a Reyes jersey). Falling down in public for the sole purpose of embarrassing your preteen daughter is apparently fine, but showing support for your lifelong favorite team by wearing the appropriate apparel comes in at “silly.” Fine.
(I am fighting hard the urge to photoshop in, say, this picture of me in order to eliminate the amount of fug here, but what can you do. Besides, if I leave it like this, you get the whole creepy face-replica effect that happens when I stand near one of my brothers, and it’s like seeing those weird twins in the Shining or whatever).
True to form, my Mets lost, but I (almost) didn’t care.
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