Meow House Theatre

Nine Inch Nails pre-sale tickets for Worcester start at 5:00 PM today so nobody bother me at that time! I can’t hear you I can’t see you I don’t want to talk to you, and I plan to be “on a conference call” for the duration of my login so that nobody even thinks of interrupting me. I’d actually prefer to go to Mohegan and will hopefully get tickets for that too.

Very useful, these “conference calls.” Another good trick is to be in a real crashing-bore of a meeting and arrange with someone else outside to page you “urgently” so that you have to leave. Barring that, bring a dull pin to stick in your leg to keep yourself awake during the endless droning. It works really well.

Edit: the “conference call” was a smashing success. Two GA floor. The “special entrance” information to follow. (”Special” to me and the eleventy-million other people on the mailing list.) Mohegan pre-sale in a week.

I can’t find a copy of it online anywhere but I’m pretty sure I just saw a McDonald’s commercial in which a black man repeatedly refers to his mother as his “mammy.”   I believe he and his female companion are dining–of all the things McDonald’s sells as food–on fried chicken strips during said commercial.

Is the whole thing inappropriate and vaguely racist or is it just me?

The Apple Store is opening in Boston on Thursday. I think it’s supposed to be the largest in the world so far. I will not go, I will not go, I will not go.

Well maybe I will go just to take some pictures of other people salivating. I will keep my own spit hidden away. And I will leave Amex at home.

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I finished up some nice pictures of a singer named Jacquelyn Wells this weekend. Man it was tough to get some good ones. With a band, or a regular singer or guitarist, they tend to move around a lot. Even a singer who doesn’t play anything and is just standing there moves around to a certain extent, in between verses or in between songs at the very least. But someone playing the piano has to stay put and that makes it really hard to get something other than 200 shots of her sitting at the piano! Thankfully she was very photogenic so at least that part was easy. These are a few that I liked; the whole set is here.

I heard a very funny story yesterday. I don’t really want to publish the names of the people involved so I’ll make this a blind item just like the tabloids do, or the ones who are afraid of being sued do anyway. If you can figure out, email me and maybe you’ll win a fabulous prize!

Anyhoo, I was talking to someone about a certain song sung by a very famous musician/singer (let’s call him “Gillette Nuevo”), and my friend told me that his ex-girlfriend is also the ex-girlfriend of this other famous rock star (let’s call him “Norman Dungarees”). And some years back when they were dating, Gillette used to be hanging around with Norman (and this ex-girlfriend) all the time, and apparently he was a real prick. (Which makes me a little sad because he doesn’t seem like he would be, not that I have any firsthand knowledge of this person. Maybe he’s changed since then.) Anyway, Gillette had a cell phone, which was slightly uncommon back all those years ago, and he used to leave it lying around all the time while hanging with Norman and engaging in his aforementioned prickedness, so people nearby & about would take it and post the number all over AOL–the big chatroom pre-widespread-Internet-access phenom of the day–and Gillette would get all these nutty calls 24/7 from frantic panting girls and I think the gist of it was that he would keep changing his number but he could never stop the annoyance of the calls and it was driving him crazy trying to figure out how they kept getting his new number.

I laughed and laughed at that. Sorry but that’s funny. Passive-aggressive payback, it’s cowardly but it feels so good. Maybe his frustration about this came out in one of his depressing songs. I’ll have to listen to some with an ear to discerning the hidden meaning. See if I can hear something underneath all the background noise.

I’d assume at some point he wised up and stopped leaving his phone around.

Okay I have a marvelous prize in mind for anyone who can guess! Well not really but it will give you a triumphant feeling of satisfaction knowing you figured it out.

Update: I have received three guesses so far. It’s not Shane (god no; only guessed because I’ve mentioned him recently); Billy Idol (sneering a lot doesn’t necessarily mean he’s a prick otherwise); and Gene Simmons. The last one is a good guess but wrong. Frankly I think I’ve practically given it away already but those are very wrong, so maybe I haven’t.

Update: Elvis??? How old do you think I am? NO neither one of these people are Elvis!

Update:  Nope, not Eric Clapton and George Harrison.   The actual people are rather a bit younger.  And not English (or British).  Well one of them isn’t anyway; not sure about the other.

Edited: now with picture!

While walking down past the bus station yesterday I once again was accosted by this guy I see all the time. Before I even get to the actual point of this story, I must ask: why do people walk up to people who are OBVIOUSLY wearing iPod headphones and start talking to them? I mean, just start talking away and not take any notice whatsoever of the fact that this person has effectively blocked their ears to normal conversation? Do they not understand what headphones are? Do they think those little white (or blue, in my case) wire things hanging out from someone’s head are part of their natural body? I can see someone saying, ‘Hey, sorry, can I ask you something?” and then going on, but not to just starting talking as if there is no impediment to an immediate two-way conversation right in front of their face. It’s like walking up to a blind person with a guide dog and asking if he can help you out with directions and here is the map, can you tell me how to get to this street right here?

Anyway, this guy walks up to me, me with my obvious “don’t talk to me unless it’s important” headphones on and asks for money. I know; you are wondering how I know he was asking for money when I just said I can’t hear people who walk up to me when I’m listening to music. Well I know he was asking for money because this same guy has asked me for money about 100 times in the past year. It’s always the same story: “I just need two dollars to get the bus back to Manchester and someone stole my wallet, can you help me out?”

So. One, I know he cannot have been robbed 99 times up to yesterday and yet still hasn’t figured out that he ought to solve this problem by keeping his money in his pants. And second, *I* easily recognize this guy by this point. We’re practically old friends with all the times he’s come up to me. So WHY DOESN’T HE RECOGNIZE ME??? I don’t get it. Does he not have any memory of our previous encounters? Or does he, and he thinks *I* don’t remember him and his previous dozens of attempts to scam-sob-story money out of me? Aside from the fact that he ought to know me upside down and backwards by this time, the fact is, I have more than two feet of very noticeable red hair hanging out of my head. Very long, very red, red hair. I can see forgetting what I look like but honestly it’s pretty hard to forget my hair. It’s really long and it’s really red, okay? It’s actually a detriment to remaining anonymous in a lot of situations. (Sometimes it definitely helps things out though, don’t get me wrong.) I mean I like it a lot and wouldn’t change it but it has its downsides if I want to just blend in. I don’t understand how this guy can either not remember it and me from the week before, or think I don’t remember him and so he can just try his same old tired line again. Maybe he thinks it’s going to work one day? Maybe I’ll suddenly realize this poor young man has been stranded in Boston for a year for want of two dollars to Manchester? And feel terrible about this and so give it to him?

I keep meaning to point out to him that he’s already asked me a hundred times and I’m not going to suddenly change my position on things, but I always forget until I’m already a few steps away. Maybe he also remembers right at that moment oh right it’s that redhead lady, I keep forgetting she always turns me down.

I had the yearly luncheon today with the managing directors where we go over what is going on with the philanthropic arm and while waiting for the elevator, we were discussing how there is yet another movie being filmed outside.  Someone wondered how they are getting all these permits to shut the street down and I said I didn’t think all of the films had permits; and I have talked to some of the business owners and they told me they have not been compensated at all even though their business for the day is being blocked by snot-nosed PAs who tell people they “can’t” walk down the street.  I said that for one movie some little child probably just out of nappies had tried to tell me–order me just about–not to pass down the street–they weren’t even filming at the time–and I asked if they had a permit to close it and when he hemmed and hawed, I said, “Well I sure as fuck am walking down the street then.”  Meaning, I said that to the PA some months back and I repeated it, complete with “fuck,” to the MDs.  Three sets of that taken-aback look that you get when someone does something they shouldn’t but you really don’t know how to address it.
Whoopsie!

I was perfectly respectable for the rest of the day.  Hopefully they have all thought maybe they misheard me.

I’m planning to save up all my spam for a week or so and then write a melodious and lyrical post using only phrases from it. I’ve recently deleted it all otherwise I could begin on this chef d’œuvre right now, but my gmail is currently holding some promising possibilities from the intriguingly named Catalina Feliciano, Replica Watches, Replica Pens, Polly Sumner, Maynard Miner, and Ahmad K. Poole. Oh and then there’s one where the name is all in Korean characters but when you float the cursor over it changes to “Barry Hang.” The message is all in Korean too, except for a list of mixed Asian-Western names such as Lucy Tsing or Sophia Peng, so I can only wonder what it is that Barry wishes to cure me of, whether penile disfunction or hopeless datelessness. I bet all those names are a list of beautiful girls in my ZIP code who want to meet me. Too bad I’m not really interested in meeting girls. My loss I guess.

I went up to get some rings resized (again) and then went to get a sandwich and after leaving the shop I was putting my earphones back in. I had one in and was pulling the other one from its storage place when a man dressed in a very nice suit was coming my way, and when he passed by me he said a little under his breath, “I’ll be that earphone.” He didn’t really look straight at me that I could tell and he just kept walking, and I did one of those “WTF” things you do when someone says something you don’t understand or aren’t sure you heard right and which makes no sense in any context that can possibly rush through your head right at that moment.

Then I continued putting my other earphone in–the one I had been about to pull out when he walked by–and it hit me: said earphones had been residing down my shirt sort of in my bra and I had grabbed the second one out right when he got close to me. (Down the shirt is a handy place to keep them when you have to get them out of your ears temporarily, like I did when I was talking to the sandwich lady.) This whole exchange only took about 2 seconds to transpire but by the time I got it and started laughing the man was long gone. Well he sure had a nice suit. Armani maybe. Definitely Italian.

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I took some new gig pictures of a Boston band called A Dark In The Light and they have used them for the front page of their myspace. Here are a couple that I really like:

The rest of the set is part of my flickr page so please go and look at some so that I don’t feel like a failure with no views. You can look at others too! There’s probably something in there that would interest you. All kinds of goodies. XD

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Nine Inch Nails has provided a download to an entire new album on their site, nin.com, for free. Trent Reznor said: “Thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years–this one’s on me.” Also the pre-sale dates for their upcoming tour are posted, so if you are a fan and want to go you should sign up so that you get in on that. They’re playing at Mohegan and Worcester and I hope to go to one of those.

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Re the rings being resized: one of them I had had made smaller before but it was still a little too big, or maybe my fingers got skinnier. The other one needed to be made bigger. So I went to that jewelry repairman I discovered recently and he did both of them and wouldn’t take any money. He’s a really nice guy and if you need some jewelry fixed up, go see him. His name is Visham and he’s at The Repair Shop, 339 Washington Street, Boston, MA 02108, 617-980-9486. Call first during the summer because he might have his Gone Fishin’ sign up. He’s located inside (in the basement) of a sort-of jewelry consolidation place: it’s a long narrow store with about 10 different jewelry places inside. It (the upstairs shop, not Visham’s place) has a little bit of a … how shall I put this … a gangsta vibe to it? Not the people working there, who seem to be an assortment of average-looking men and women of various nationalities, but the jewelry on display would make Puff Daddy (before he turned into Sean Coombs again) proud. You’ve never seen so much big gaudy gold and diamonds piled on top of each other as in that place. They’ve got rings that would make the Pope ashamed at the austereness of his own. Great giant necklaces of enormous shiny stones of indeterminate origin, embossed gold emblems on chains as big as those on your snow tires, huge initials on the end of golden ropes that would prevent you from ever forgetting your name or at least what letter it starts with. So when I was leaving the repair area, I went upstairs and there was some kind of “altercation” going on between a couple of customers. (I had nothing whatsoever to do with this; I don’t always be the one who causes trouble.) A great tall man with a partially shaved head and a spike through an area of his face you’d not think a spike would fit was yelling at some other guy to “not fucking do that in here or I’ll break your fucking face.” Joy, I had to walk through this disagreement in decorum in order to leave. Which I wanted to do in case there was a shootout, but which I also did not want to do in case there was a shootout. I suppose I could have gone back downstairs. But apparently the yellee left right then and the yeller took his posse out and I followed and got far far away as fast as I could.

Shortly thereafter is when I ran into Italian Suit Man who wished to reside in dark cozy confines of my low-cut shirt.

I’m going to have to leave work early because of my knee.  The sensation of my jeans rubbing on the hideous grayish-reddish-black oozing scrape is making me ill in the stomach.  I couldn’t even get to sleep last night because of the weight of the covers on it.  And I can’t really bend the knee either so I couldn’t turn and sleep on my side and keep the covers away.  All this has left me very sleepy today.

My Internet modem chose this morning to seek the next level of nirvana, and thus I will have no Internet at home all weekend.  I’ll have to go to Starbucks and pay their thievery wireless charges unless I can find a free hotspot somewhere.  Verizon wanted to send a tech out and asked, “So they can show up sometime on Monday between 8 AM and 5 PM.  Will you be home?”  Um no I have to go to work like normal people do–and you need a 9 hour window??  So after proposing several other days, and my repeating that I generally am expected at work every day, the representative said she would just send me a new modem.  To arrive on Monday.  No I cannot pick it up somewhere so that I have it tonight.  It would make too much sense to allow that.

So I’ll be pretty much disconnected for the next three days.  Well I suppose I have a lot of work I could get done.  I still have a ton of photographs to process from some gigs I shot.  Or I could watch television.  I have a heap of magazines to get through and I have a couple of movies from Netflix that are waiting for me too.  But it’s going to be really strange living like people did, like *I* did, for the majority of my life, without a computer connection to the outside.

If my microwave and CD changer break down at the same time as this Internet thing, I may have to be briefly hospitalized from the stress.

While I was walking back from my guitar lesson today I took a header over a curb into a gravel patch. I have a new lovely hole in my soon-to-be-rubbish pants. At least they hid the blood running down my leg from the big gash on my knee. My knuckles are nice and cut up too. I didn’t get a mark on my face somehow. I must have hard skin.

Let’s see, what else happened today. Oh right, I told some harpy counter-clerk bitch in the post office who had been a snotty cunt for the whole time I was at the window (and not even at HER window but she’s mouthing off to me for god knows what reason) to fuck off and so she called the “police” and they threatened to arrest me for disturbing the peace. Apparently in the post office they’re so scared of former co-workers and assorted loonies from taking out their aggressions on them that they are allowed to treat the customers like shit but the customers sure as hell better not say a word. I think she thought I was going to run crying when she said she’d call the “police” but I told her to right ahead. So then two “police” officers showed up and acted like they were doing me a big fucking favor to not arrest me. Yeah I was really scared.

The whole thing started because when I got up to the head of the line for my turn I said it would be helpful if the post office put out in the lobby–in one of the six or seven supply areas–those little plastic windows that you put the paperwork in when you stick it on an Express envelope. Then people like me wouldn’t have to wait in line for 15 minutes (and that was SHORT) just to drop off a prepaid no-postmark-necessary letter. This suggestion (and I swear I started out this conversation in a pleasant manner) was met with a vapid dull-eyed expression that would make a cow look intelligent and the response, after the cogs in her brain turned a little through their layers of rust, “There’s no room out there for them.”

Me: “In this entire post office you can’t fit a stack of plastic envelopes?” [You could fit at least a hundred people in there, which they often do, with the way the line goes, and there are four free-standing supply counters, one wall of supplies, and another supply counter in the lobby.]

Turtle IQ: “No. There’s no place to put them. Everything has their place and there’s no room for them.”

Me: “Um … okay.”

And it went downhill from there when Brain Stem Only said I had to stand in line anyway because there was no date on the Web-produced paperwork. (Yes there was a date. I guess she needs glasses too.)

Me: “Well it’s the post office software on line that’s broken then; I’ve done a thousand the same way and they always are accepted and always are delivered.”

Lobotomy Test Case: “Well then you’ve been very lucky; you’ve been doing them wrong.”

No idiot you’ve been doing them wrong, you and the stupid fucking post office that has accepted literally hundreds of these same packages from me for years and delivered them all when they have been all “done wrong.”

Then as I was leaving, her cunt of a colleague who had been at the next window offering her own “helpful” commentary throughout my conversation with someone else made a final snotty bitch remark and that’s when I turned around (I was almost out the door) and said fuck off. Then the real fun began.

After the “police” left I told the supervisor that all I wanted to do was to suggest that they keep those plastic envelopes out and she, another candidate for a MacArthur Grant (NOT) repeated practically word for word the absurdity of there not being any room in the entire office for a stack of 5×7 envelopes (it must be written in block letters on a poster in the toilets), and further, “They’ve never been put out.”

Me: Oh, why is that?

Supervising Moron: “They just haven’t.”

Me: Um … is there a procedure required in order to just put them out then … you can’t just do it on your own?”

Apparent Concussion Victim: “I can look into it. We just never have.”

Me: ?????

I console myself by paraphrasing a great man: “they’re nowhere now and they’ll be nowhere when they die.”

Nothing generally against postal workers (and I was a civil servant myself a long time ago) although they do seem to have made that one branch the depository for the special-needs staff.

Anyway, I have the most fun, don’t I?

I seem to have lost about 10 pounds somehow and now all those jeans I bought a week or two ago don’t really fit. Le sigh.

Horrible nightmare last night. I dreamed I heard a loud noise and went out to investigate and my guitar was on the floor completely demolished. The neck and front were sort-of together and the back was off and in many pieces. And it was done by CATS. All I could do was think “How the fuck did a cat do this???” This was far beyond unrepairable. I could only stare at it, stunned and unbelieving. It was like something Pete Townshend would look at proudly after a concert and say, “Damn that was a good one tonight!” Although I’ve never liked this thing he does with guitars. I don’t care how much money one has, that’s just stupid. And a waste of landfill space.

I know why I had the dream: because yesterday when I had the guitar out of the case the cat, as is usual with cats, found a way to sneak his wormy little body inside. And I had been glad at the time that the guitar was out and not in, just in case he might want to try the same thing if I should ever leave it unlocked. Funny how the mind takes your worries and doesn’t let you escape them even when you’re supposed to be having that most pleasant of all escapes, sleep.

I also dreamed that a certain famous person (whom I have never met) and his wife came over. Which normally would be great, except that in the dream he was not the famous person but rather an insurance agent and his wife was a plump German hausfrau straight out of 1955, wearing a ruffly flowered over-the-head apron and carrying a casserole dish of schnitzel. I don’t actually know what his wife looks really looks like but I am absolutely positive she’s nothing like that. I don’t need to see a picture to know that as a certainty.

I really have no idea what brought that one about. I don’t think I even like schnitzel.

I’ve got a South African football team (that’s soccer in case it’s not clear) here in the office and they are certainly a loud bunch.

I went outside for lunch–it’s beyond gorgeous out today–and I got a sandwich and went to sit in this faux park (there’s curlicued benches and a few flowers and trees, to make you feel pastoral … sitting in the middle of a quarter acre of pavement) that was built up to make people feel better about having to fund cost overruns of $10 billion on the Big Dig (a hideous construction project here in Boston that doesn’t seem to me to have made much difference in anything). So I was sitting there on a bench and there were some little birds right next to me. Maybe two or three feet away. I spent a few minutes watching them flitting around, hopping to and fro, making their little chirpy bird noises to each other. And I suddenly had a Moment of Clarity, the kind that in other people might lead to the formulation of the theory of gravity or the realization of the mathematical value in understanding water displacement. Only, the thought that consumed my head was: “these birds live outside all the time. Every single day, all year long. In a tree.”

Okay it was an azalea bush but still. They live in a tree! No house! Just a nest or hole in a branch or whatever it is that that type of bird does. No job, no car, no tax returns, no divorce when the wife runs off with the UPS man, no children sneaking down the trellis at 1:00 AM, no crashing realization when they finally retire and get the gold watch and finally get to spend all day at home and on the first day sit there and think “is that all there is?” None of that for these birds. No worries, no pain, no anything. They just live in a tree. FOREVER.

Well this started me laughing at the absurdity of 1) thinking of it at all; and 2) the overwhelming extent to which this thought–IN A TREE!!!–had burned itself into my brain. I’d eat a few bites and then start laughing, get ahold of myself, eat a bite, look at the birds, and start laughing again. I could not stop. It was like having a flashback. The man in the next bench kept giving me looks. There were some girls across the way and I am pretty damn sure they were talking about me. I think I saw a soccer mom with her kid in a fancy stroller turn toward me, tilt her head, and push that thing away just a little faster. I finally had to leave. I laughed on and off all the way back to work.

No drink or drugs were involved in this experience. Swear to god.

I’ve just decided that, for today anyway, there really is a god, because I went to the shop next door to see about getting my hair cut and they had an appointment for tonight. That never happens. It’s always “um how’s a week from Tuesday?” But I want to get my hair cut NOW not in the next century, practically. So you can see why having a booking open today, in a few hours, at the exact perfect time for me, is major cause for religious enlightenment.

Tomorrow my theological doctrines might change, depending on how things go for me.

I will probably never be rolling in piles of money but if I had enough to take taxis everywhere and never have to take this goddamn clusterfuck of a subway system again, that would make me pretty happy.

I bought an iPod iTouch last night. It’s really lovely so far. I have put several CDs and other music I have on it and one video. I debated between getting the iTouch (that’s a bit of a clunky name, innit? It doesn’t flow like “iPod” does) and the 80 gig “Classic” (what’s “classic” about it? It used to be the newest model but now it’s the “classic” one?) but I wanted the larger video screen and the wifi, so I got this one. Less gigs than my last 30 gig model but I just won’t keep loads of video on it like I did with the other. If I don’t like it I have 90 days to bring it back. But that probably will not be necessary.

Maybe if I didn’t buy expensive Apple products I could take taxis everywhere. Hmmm.

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I am shooting a singer tonight. Photographing, that is. I did another band last week and the pictures came out great although I haven’t finished processing them yet. I’m still working on the previous band that I did the week before. I see a lot that have potential and I’m finding it difficult to pick out the 10-20 out of approximately 300 shots (for each session) that are the absolute best. It’s different when they’re just my own pictures but these are going to be used for someone else’s publicity, so I really need to make sure they’re as good as possible.

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I was supposed to record a couple of demo tracks last night but my car was in the shop and I had a few other problems to take care of so I had to postpone it. This will give me time to practice anyway; the guitar track was recorded separately so although I know the song I haven’t really done it to that exact backing instrumental. Many thanks to Tony Savarino for playing it for me. It sounds really good. I have to step down the pitch probably, which I can do in Adobe Audition. That’s a spectacular program and well worth whatever money it costs. I think it’s in C and it would be better for me in B flat or A. I may also try to record a whistle track for it but I’m not sure about that yet.

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Oh I bought a bottle of wine last night, chosen only because I liked the label. It was called “Tin Roof.” I have to take a picture of it before I open it.

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And because I’m a crazy cat lady, I will announce that it was this one’s birthday on Monday and we had our own little kitty party. She’s 7 years old–pretty good for a cat who had a few days to live when I found her.