8/27/06

First Idiotic Thing Heard Today

"And it's a good, delicious dinner of breast...cause that's the healthiest part of the chicken right?"

- Rachel Ray, 30 Minute Meals (stuffing chicken breasts with some kinds of nuts and drizzling them with some space age compound called EVOO. Yes, I know what that is. I guess when you have 30 minutes, you can't say "oil" but you can say "screaming hot" in reference to pan temperature.)

Sigh.

A poll for the gentlemen and perhaps a portion of the ladies

Please to tell me, what is hot? (And then please to tell me why I am typing in a bad fakey-Slavo-American accent? Okay, that bit's over.)

a) Woman hitting a baseball
b) Woman playing a saxophone
c) Woman smoking a good cigar
d) Woman firing a gun (presumably not at you; let's presume a nonhuman target)

Curiousity abounds?! At one point, I'd post a poll on the jolly old improv boards, but I'm trying to diversify my internet options and sample population at the current time. I've also done three of the four things above as an adult.

8/25/06

Recipe!

In the spirit of two culinary gems of blogs, Put it In your Mouth (mysteriously un-updated lately, come back!) and Good American Wife, whose author I will be greenmarketing with this weekend, I am posting a simple yet tasty dinner recipe that cooks and kitchen amateurs alike will certainly enjoy!

Shredded "Barbecue" Chicken for the Apartment-Dweller


2 boneless skinless chicken breasts. (I'm sure thighs would work well too)
2 cups chicken broth (I used the Fancy Organic kind in a cardboard box. You can use whatever brand you'd like)
1 bottle (12 oz) barbecue sauce (I used a Fancy Organic maple-smoked Annie's brand. Again...use your favorite).

Whisk together the sauce and the broth in a saucepan or large deep skillet. This takes some doing, because they are texturally dissimilar; don't worry if they're not completely together! Heat to a boil, stirring (the sauce will melt a little, and they will mix).

When bubbly, slip in the chicken breasts. Cover the pan, turn down to simmer (gentle bubbles) and cook at least 1/2 hour; flip them over every 15 minutes or so. Check in 1/2 hour; chicken should be super-tender when pulled with a fork and not pink.

When done, turn off heat and let cool a little. Shred chicken in the sauce with 2 forks, pulling the meat apart. Toss in the sauce to coat. Pile up on some soft rolls, like hamburger or hotdog rolls (my personal choice). A side of coleslaw is nice.

HINT:
Coleslaw made with Dole bagged coleslaw mix and fatfree blue cheese dressing is great with this. Make it while the chicken is cooking, and it gets slightly squishy, slightly crunchy. If you are alone or in really close company, put some on top of the sandwich.

HINT: If they still have this, get the Calphalon 'starter' pan at the otherwise annoying Bed Bath & Beyond. Get the 10 or 12 inch. It comes with a lid and will cook nearly everything in the world you need to cook. Just don't scratch the bottom with your forks. It is incredible, and for Calphalon is pretty cheap (probably 39.99. It is completely worth it. It cleans up with a napkin. It is completely worth it. Don't buy any other Calphalon, if you love it go to the outlet, for cripes sake. No one needs a nonstick spaghetti pot, by the way.)

HINT: If you think it may look done earlier, check it. If it's slightly overdone, don't sweat it, that's what sauce is for. But underdone chicken breasts or thighs are just nasty, seriously.

Sure, one may say that Season 7 of Homicide may suck

But for my money you can't get a piece of dead-on amazing legal drama than the last five minutes of "The Twenty-Percent Solution."

Holy crap, that's well-written, dramatic, smart and just really neat.

Danvers smoking is also adorable. Hee hee.

8/22/06

Forgive me Lord...or ohmygawd

Help me.

First off, I actually used the words "cute outfit" tonight in a sentence.

Second of all, I actually crave a pair of shoes. Well, boots, actually, and they're still pretty bad-ass.

I blame the hormones. I do. But damn, those are some sweet boots.

(I could also be going through my 'it's fall, and I think I like tall boots, but I don't" phase. Perhaps, like men, I just haven't found the right pair. Did that sound wrong? Hmmm.)

8/20/06

More Balto-crime fiction trivia

Are the stock footage-shots of the housing projects being blown up in the first episode of the Wire Season 3* (being commented on by Bodie and Malik) the same ones being lamented by Det. Meldrick Lewis in Homicide**?

*HBO On Demand.
**Netflix.
***I continue to be ridiculous.

8/19/06

insomnia time theater

In this world there's a kind of painful progress, longing for what's left behind and dreaming ahead.

- Angels in America

Headache Dreams

1. In a dreamy battered new-old apartment. It had levels (Levels, jerry!), white plaster walls and wonderful architectural details, beat up wood floors, a dreamy-dusty quality to it as light streamed in the painted-white-wood frame windows. The rooms had high ceilings. The kitchen had tin cabinets, some with glass panels, and was spacious, with a great big wooden table like Mark's in Brooklyn or ours in Baltimore, with an abundance of groceries. There was a side door leading outside into a nebulous neighborhood that was so lovely. One of my roommates was ethereal, and resembled vaguely someone I know named Becky or someone I went to college with named Patty, I don't recall exactly. My room was in disarray but I had a feather bed and an iron bedframe.

2. I was at a job in a courthouse, the lighting was dim and the elevators terrible; I was heading to or from a large auditorium, running into colleagues, and I was so confused. Did I have theater tickets or not? Was I due at a lecture? The elevators were small and shaky and the stairwells barely lit, with heavy doors behind them.

3. I was with friends, new and strange girls younger than me. I had a broken large handbag with a too-short strap that kept slipping off my shoulder; we were in a McDonald's and were running to a house party in a strange city; I was juggling my bag, work clothes because I had partially changed, and a soda. I spilled the soda, and they laughed; I got another one as they headed to the car. The counter girl, their friend, gave me another. I dropped that one too, and was embarrassed to ask for another; I was a mess, covered in spilled drink, but I needed to get another; I was frozen. I couldn't put my stuff down because there was soda everywhere.

8/13/06

One giant post instead of three stupid little ones

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8/12/06

Fontana, Simon, and the Venn Diagram of crime shows

NOT SAFE FOR COP-SHOW HATERS

If I haven't mentioned it before, I'm obsessively plowing through all seven seasons of Homicide: Life on the Streets. And lucky for me, On Demand has re-upped The Wire and Oz. There are a ridiculous number of connections between these three shows, as well as Fontana-generated (cameos as far back as St. Elsewhere and a short-lived show called "The Beat" which, having just discovered it, I must locate.. Mark Ruffalo and Lea DeLaria? Jeez), Dick Wolf (L&O and its incarnations) and David Simon (The Corner) connections. You see the cast of one, you've got a third of the cast of the other. Even a pre-Carmela Edie Falco appears on two Fontana shows (Oz and Homicide). Dean Winters is pervasive, Lee Tergesen has a self-effacing cameo flair to him, and the Belz is everywhere.

The record-holders are, of course the Belz - appearing in the SAME character in seven or eight shows (You can look it up in Wikipedia!) - two different L&O (regular & SVU), Homicide, the aforementioned The Beat, X-Files and Arrested Development. I can't locate the others, but damn.

Who appears to beat all in different incarnations is the omnipresent and odd-looking Reg E. Cathey. He's been on Oz (Don't Fuck with Querns), Homicide (drug dealer Bernard Weeks), L&O (hell, who hasn't?) and the Corner (fuck, no one watched that except me).

I need to get back to work. Or hop down to Bawlmer for a weekend. Or stalk Tom Fontana just so I can check out his Oz tattoo.

Kidding.

Who amongst you doesn't think that Gov. James Devlin isn't an embittered ASA Ed Danvers (Homicide)? (Ahh, Zeljko Ivanek!)

And who doesn't believe that the creepiest crossover wasn't Christopher Meloni - while he was Christopher Keller (Oz) he was Det. Elliot Stabler on SVU. Couldn't watch SVU without thinking of Keller's murderous, rapin' but hot arse.

What's on now? From "The Wire: Season 2":

ASA Rhonda Perlman: I'm not your girlfriend, I'm not your wife, I'm not your soulmate....what the fuck am I?
Det. Jimmy McNulty: We're good together.
RP: Answer the question.
JM: No.

I'm a fucking lunatic. Any way to profit from this?

What a character! Or, guess who bought a new scanner.

I'm adorable! (age 3?) and I do look like my dad. Awwww!


































I caught this! (Age 7) Unafraid of the slimy (I'd already dissected my first fetal pig, thank you) and displaying my characteristing and amazing joint flexibility (Look at that wrist! weird!)






















I hit this! (Age 21) Check out the killer form on that swing. Nobody flings a bat better on the "jenkins jets" Biophysics department softball team! (catcher, warm-up pitcher, occasional third baseman if I recall). I miss my glove.

8/8/06

What am I doing RIGHT NOW?

1. Listening to Prince: The Hits 1.
2. Drowning out my colleagues banter about rent stabilization.
3. Working.
4. Having anxiety.
5. Turning up Prince louder.
6. Drinking my second cup of coffee.
7. Watching a colleague toss my bag of pretzels across the room. The bag is open.
8. Inhaling "Chipotle" fumes at 11:49 AM.
9. Preparing to go to pharmacy to fill anxiety meds prescription.
10. Turning up Prince.

8/6/06

Shameless plug.

Miss me?

Check out www.superegocomedy.com - Shameless Plug of Epic Beauty!

More later. I'm beyond literate.

7/22/06

Still want that eggplant parm hero

I'm working overtime, my legs are killing me, got shows and classes, gotta clean the house....and so much more exhausting bullshit I don't need.

The delivery guy is often the pizza chef. Tall, grizzled blondish guy, fortysomething.

Maybe I need a HERO.

Nah. Just a hero.

7/19/06

add message, then mix

1207 AM:

Me: "I got the (divorce) papers in the mail today."
He: "Can I come over and meet the new kitty?"
Me: "Now?"
He: "Yeah...I'm in the subway."
Me: "You'd have to sleep over, that's crazy (etc)"
He: "I'll sleep in the bathtub. I want to meet the kitty. (muttering, repeating, etc.)"

Although the offer of a eggplant parm hero was tempting, I remain solo this evening, albeit a bit hungry.

"Wow..it's got seats!"



I love love love Pimp my Ride! Out of my demographic again, and even more so since I Don't DRIVE. (I also love "Car Talk" - go figure.)

First off, it's the anti-"Sweet Sixteen" - These are people who, dammit, clearly need a damn ride, or a break. I can't imagine being in California, carless. No rich bitches here!

Second, Xzibit is mad adorable. He's got this way of telling you what the sh*t is - how much of a piece of shit your car is, even how over-the-top the millions of video screens or crazy paint jobs are - with an amazing, subtle, near-wink. He's hilarious. I've never heard his music, but he's a hell of a host.

Third, the new garage - GAS - and the garage in general, is a happy fucking place. Like a tricked out Santa's Workshop where ANYTHING can happen. These dudes are hot, quirky, mechanical - and they can do weird shit like sew, paint, install a pottery wheel, for fuck's sake.

Fourth, people are genuinely happy at the end. The mechanical hotties take huge pride in their work; the pimp-ees get a load of free crap in addition to their astounding over the top vehicle. Did you ses the ice-cream truck one? It had a DVR and a robot arm for handing out ice cream. 'Nuff said.

I'm in love. And wonder when the NY edition happens so I can get my brother's disgusting limping Toyota pickup pimped out. I'm thinking lots of monitors, a sweet tape/CD deck (he's scared of the iPod), and a nice cow pattern painted on.

Get Pimp'd!

7/16/06

Rock on.



Meet Goldie.

3 years old, abandoned, adopted from those kitty-rescue people at Petco.

She is currently doing laps around my apartment. I think she hates expensive pet food (thrust into my bewildered hands by Jodie, Kitty godmother). I almost escaped the adoption area, but this girl kitty (no name known) looked so sad and longing in the last cage on the way out. Seriously.

I think she likes me. I've got to go locate her now.

Fear is the mind-killer

WARNING: Upsetting rant ahead.

Yesterday I yelled at a guy for slapping me on the shoulder. Granted, he didn't mean it as an act of aggression, but it was the second time, he was a jerkwad, and my blood is thinner, as my friend DJ Southern Belltower notes, than 'onion juice.' Besides you shouldn't touch anyone, at anytime, really.

The fact is, I am terrified. Terrified.

I went to the hospital last week, because I had a blood clot in my leg. I knew as soon as I felt the pain in my calf, that I was doomed; anxiety set in, fear and anger. Lots and lots of anger.

I was in the hospital five or six days, depending on how you count them, getting my blood thinned, as well as removed from my body in great bruising quantity.

This sucker is still in my body, it is potentially mobile and can yet kill me. At least that is my reasonable belief.

When my lungs got clotted, at least I knew they were already there, safely and surely keeping me from breathing.

Now, I don't know if the shortness of breath and tiredness and achiness are clot-related, hospital-inactivity related, or depression and anxiety-related.

I feel like a fucking ticking time bomb. And I am afraid. And I am furious.

I cannot manifest vulnerability without becoming defensive and angry. And I am very much both right now. I don't know what to eat, drink, whether to stand up or sit down. I don't want companionship but I am terrified to be alone. I don't know who to unload all this to; people get bits and pieces, if they don't get torn to bits and pieces.

Ticking. Time. Bomb.

But I will not stop going to my Delaney class. Because if I dropped dead in the middle of a fantastic, truthful scene, played to the top of my intelligence, I'd consider it a life well spent.

Somebody please read the notes at the funeral.

************************

Did you ever have 'die happy' moments? Moments that you realized, if I died now, got hit by lightening, whatever, I would be content and complete just because of where I am, what I'm doing, who I'm with, or some combination thereof?

I had one with my husband once, listening to a chamber music concert at Temple Emanu-El a few years ago. The music, the setting, the feeling of warmth and happiness, perhaps the notion of being in a spiritual (Reform, sure, but whatever) place made me think that particular thought.

I've had a few more since then; I don't care to share them all.

But I equate being supremely happy with being ready to die. What's wrong with me?

******************
My doctor had me call him today for test results. He hasn't called me back. Fucking compliance.

I am scared to inform my temp agency that working in Newark would be a physical hardship right now. Because, quite frankly, it would be. Usually, I'd play through. I play through pain.

Am I taking care of myself? Or am I just an incredible pussy?

********************

More than anything else, I want to lift weights. I want power.

*******************

Apologies once again for you three people who read this thing. It was not a plea for sympathy. Maybe just a little understanding. I don't know. My family doesn't really get it; I don't know what friends to tell. Do you call everyone, say hey I'm not quite dead yet? Email? Is there a card for this? Still haven't figured this out.

Certain People are on my case for not being quick enough to acknowledge sympathy; for crying; for expressing fear; for venting anger. I don't know what to do with them. A fair amount of them are related to me.

But honestly, I don't think anyone can understand, aside from a couple of people who I am eternally grateful for.

I will not cry in public, I am going to drink my coffee and use all the expensive Internet access I just got.

In conclusion, Starbucks can blow me.

7/13/06

stolen from someone who stole it from myspace who probably doesn't even read my blog anymore.

Get more meta (or techno-dull) then that, then call me.

SILLY MYSPACE/BLOGPOLLS FOR THE TRULY BORED OF MIND

#1
1. My ex is... working right now, one would think.

2. I am listening to... the annoying strains of "Family Guy" from another room.

3. Maybe I should .. go to bed.

4. I love ... my nephew.

5. My bestfriends ...are few and precious.

6. I don't understand ... why I do the things I do.

7. I lost ...several Palm Pilots this year.

8. People say ... Do I care what they say? Oh probably.

10. Love is ... scarey

11. Somewhere, someone is ... jerking off.

12. I will always ... be a little hopelessly in love with a few people.

13. Forever seems ...unlikely

14. I never want ... to say never.

15. My cell phone ... is serviceable and overused.

16. When I wake up in the morning ...I am a grumpy bitch

17. I get annoyed... too much.

18. Parties ... aren't my strong suit unless I am throwing it.

19. My pet is... recently deceased.

20. Kisses are the best when ... I am getting them

21. Today I ...shopped and hosted a fairly succesful show.

22. Tomorrow I will ... catch up on things, if possible, and deal with my blood.

23. I really want ... to go on a long trip.



#2

Subject: 4 things for FUN!!

A) Four jobs I have had in my life:

Lawyer
Social Worker
Lab technician
Card/gift shop assistant

B) Four movies I would watch over and over:
All that Jazz
A Mighty Wind
The Blues Brothers
Bull Durham

C) Four places you have lived:
Bethpage, LI, NY
Baltimore, MD
New York, New York
Bronx, NY

D) Four TV shows you love to watch:
The Wire
Pee-Wee's Playhouse
Project Runway
Real World/Road Rules Challenges (shut up)

E) Four Places I have traveled to:
1. London
2. Toronto
3. Chicago
4. Miami

F) Websites you visit daily: (or semi-weekly):
The IRC
Fox Sports Net
Literotica
Gawker


G) Four of my favorite foods:

Mac & Cheese
Sashimi
Bibimbop
an amazing steak

H) Four places I would rather be right now:
In bed with a reasonably but not ridiculously cuddly person
Jersey Shore
Las Vegas
Ireland