Tuesday, October 26, 2004

 

glam hippies

i saw a friend from high school yesterday who started insisting that burners are primarily hippies. i looked at him incredulously and reminded him that he'd never been to a burner event.

i did the davis version of the full-on hippie thing for a few years. my move this summer cemented a change that had been coming on for a few months, and i've been feeling a bit between-stereotypes for a while now.

(i will spare you all my rants on the definition of hippy and the problems with that category...for now. the only really interesting part of the rants is this: a friend last year, in a remarkable moment of open-minded clarity, called my friends and i 'sustain-a-billies'. good new name. but it didn't take.)

so amazing hooper stefan just posted a link to a great tribute that his hoop troupe got in new york's village voice, and the author of the tribute used the term glam hippies. i love it. i absolutely love it.

i just googled around a bit trying to see if the phrase has been used much. looks like not. well then, consider it hereby appropriated, though i don't think we need to get into definitions just yet.

please use this label whenever possible, and tell others to use it too.

 

sunshine day

sunday morning startled me by being beautiful. the bay area hoopers had a big hooping gathering planned for the afternoon, and i woke up at a friend's apartment in the mission expecting to have to deal with a bunch of rain-related logistical nightmares. BUT-- it was SUNNY and we got a FREE sound system (thanks hernan!!) and we found a CHEAP generator that worked GREAT and let us DANCE for hoooours in dolores park with dozens and dozens of friends.

i will post pictures for this event following the achievement of two things:
1. getting my film developed.
2. figuring out how to post pictures to this site.

 

CHECK - one life goal down

okey-dokey. i have now seen a beatle in concert. i won't go so far as to say i will now die happy, but i am pretty pleased.

paul mccartney performed at the eighteenth bridge school benefit this weekend. he was fantastic. i was expecting a mix of his solo/wings hits and maybe one or two beatles songs, but instead i was treated to a setlist that mostly consisted of beatles songs, including blackbird and yesterday. i would have enjoyed hearing his solo stuff, but i definitely won't object to what i got! i would like to confess that during blackbird i finally experienced my first real incident of crying-at-a-concert, with crying-at-a-concert being defined (unofficially) as 'shedding tears at a show due solely to the beauty and/or emotion evoked by hearing a particular song or artist in a live setting'. note: crying during live performances of ridiculously sad songs such as 'last kiss' or 'brick' does not count.

other highlights: tony bennett singing 'maybe this time' from one of the greatest films ever made. red hot chili peppers covering 'brandy', then shooting me back to junior high so fast that i checked to see if i had braces again with 'under the bridge'.

ever been to shoreline on a rainy night? it wasn't half as bad as i thought it was going to be.

one last note... this year, my 7th trip to the benefit, i was reminded yet again that i will never regret spending the money and time to go this concert. it's always wonderful. no matter who's on the line-up, it's guaranteed that you will enjoy yourself. telling example: all-time favorite bridge set was billy idol's unexpected headline set on saturday of 2001.

so next year...i'll see you there :)

Friday, October 22, 2004

 

quivery sighing deep breath sort of morning

i have that feeling in my chest and heart where you feel like you need to be crying and screaming and releasing. i hate having that feeling. especially when i'm at work. does this happen to you?

i had a weird dream last night about having a bike that i love being trapped under a bus and lost and presumably destroyed. i was having this feeling during the dream, but i'm not sure about the chain of causality--was i heading towards this emotional state already, or was it just provoked by the dream?

i'm listening to morcheeba in an attempt to calm myself down. hope it works.

Monday, October 18, 2004

 

proud and prejudiced

while wandering through a big nasty corporate video store last night with some friends, i came upon a 2003 remake of pride and prejudice that i had never heard of. being a proper austenphile i insisted that we watch it immediately. due to the awful acting and cringingly bad dialogue, my friends got bored within about 10 minutes and went to bed, but i love that book like i love life itself, so i persevered. about a quarter of the way through i noticed little hints that this movie wasn't quite the normal innuendo-filled austen film of the 21st century. it was all very clean and cute and good. and there was a scene set in a church. i smelled something fishy.

(next clue: the full name of the movie is 'pride and prejudice: a latter day comedy'.)

turns out, the film is one in a genre known as mollywood, aka mormon chick flicks. yup. mormon movies. there's a review of this crazy movie here. the film was pretty much crap (other than the lovely non-mormon british man who played darcy), but i am totally intrigued and feel like i had this great open-minded cultural experience.

i think tomorrow i'm going to go buy one of the 'left behind' books and delve a bit farther into my patronizing interest in religious lifestyle. (it's ok, i'm allowed. 13 years of catholic schools = i'm allowed to talk knowingly about religion and nod sagely whenever christianity comes up in conversation.)

did you know...some times op/ed column last year said that something like 46% of americans consider themselves born-again christians?
46%
that is a very large number of born-again christians.

Saturday, October 16, 2004

 

what it would take to get me to do an infomercial

i found out today about someone else who has chronic daily headaches. she started getting them at a much younger age than me though, and for that reason and others hasn't ever done the full crazy door-to-door-style doctor circuit. as we talked, i had to restrain myself from turning into headache-motivational-speaker-woman. so i know what my infomercial would be-- i would be selling some sort of headache journal/checklist thingy. and if you ordered now, you would receive a jumbo-sized bottle of excedrin. (if they asked me to, i'd do an enthusiastic endorcement for excedrin. it's true.)

the conversation got me thinking about what i need to do next in my quest to get my head under control. someone suggested a naturopath. i think i'll add a food sensitivity analyst and an ENT specialist to the shopping list. let me know if you know of any good ones in the bay.

here's a quick recall of the doctors and practicioners i've consulted regarding my little condition:
neurologists (5)
allergists (2)
ENT
oral surgeon
dentists (2)
optomotrists (3)
gyn
general practitioners (6-8)
physical therapist
biofeedback practitioner
accupuncturist
accupressurist
dietician
chiropractor
massage therapists (4-6)
craniosacral practitioner
time to get back into the ring and start swinging again, i think...

 

oregonians recently spotted a ufo...

i'm in portland, oregon this weekend. i'm here to celebrate the expected birth of a high school friend's first child. this will be my first friend to have a baby. (she was also the first to get married.) i was apprehensive all week thinking about coming up here-- spend lots of money to fly somewhere grey and cold where i will spend three solid days trying to communicate with old friends who think my life is strange and who laugh nervously when i talk about hooping... sounds fun, huh?

- B U T -

after my first evening, i think that i have--yet again--underestimated the strength of real friendships. jessamyn and i could not have picked more dissimilar paths to wander down if we'd tried, but when we get settled onto the couches in her house (house!) in the suburbs (suburbs!), waiting for her husband (husband!) to get home from his golfing (golfing?!) outing, we curl right back into our comfort with each other. i love listening to the tiny minute details of how she's dealing with her pregnancy and how she's deciding what to do for her birthing process, and she asks a crazy array of real questions about what i'm doing with my new time and space.

ponderable: what are the secret ingredients of a truly unconditional friendship?


Tuesday, October 12, 2004

 

in up to my waist

right then. i now have a blog. one that i might actually surreptitiously post the address of somewhere. i have moved over the postings from an old site, which puts a lot less pressure on this post to be notable or at all worth reading.

so i've delved another foot or two into full integration with the world wide web. i just hope it doesn't make me feel too much like a pretentious, self-absorbed bastard. two problems with that hope:
problem #1. i want to post as a diary, not as a meshing-of-websites-and-clever-articles.
problem #2. i have few web design skills, so i'm posting to a ready-made site and will not be overly creative in my presentation.

BUT, i have solutions.
solution #1. i will figure out how to add pictures and post links, and do this at least occasionally.
solution #2. i will never, ever, ever expect that anyone actually read this page, and if someone *does* read it, i will never, ever, ever expect them to return.

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