Who Is #1? Britney Spears and The Prisoner

So I got to thinking: if you're super young and you have a #1 album, and then you have a bunch of #1 albums, if you then put out an album that does not make it to #1, then are you like, "What the fuck? Why didn't that one make it to #1?" Like, do you get blasé about it? I asked Joe (my husband) this, and he said it reminded him of an Adam Ant lyric that's something like "There's nowhere to fall at #1 except down." (Of course I can't remember the name of the song or the exact lyrics, even with some deductive Google-ing, so I guess you'll have to take my word for it.) So then what happens as you get older, if you peak really early on, do you have nothing to look forward to? That is, if your goal early on is to be a super famous pop star? Maybe the best scenario for someone who that is their main goal is to spend many years having #2 albums, and then sometime when they're much lode, maybe right before they retire, they have a #1 album...? And then they can go out on top.

Of course, not everybody who goes into music has their main goal as being a #1 album. Not all success is measured in sales and money and Billboard charts of course too.I guess I am specifically referring to your typical pop stars.

Joe reminded me that Pat Benatar was a good case and point (case in point? I don't think I have ever mastered the use of that expression or even the actual wording of the expression) of someone who has their priorities straight. (We both very much enjoyed her memoir, Between a Heart and A Rock Place.) She had some big hits years and years ago and then spends most of her time with her family throughout the year and then tours in the summer to support the family. She just has fun with it and is happy. Incidentally, she has a house in Hawaii! OK, OK, whatever whatever, my point it that she just does it to enjoy it. Well, and I guess to live and have money, but ANYWAY, she makes more money now with her indie label then she did when she was on corporate record labels.

I don't think me thinking about "Where do I go from here now that I'm #1" originated from my own sense of wonderment. I think probably it was planted by Britney: Inside the Dream by Steve Dennis. He theorized that maybe Britney felt pressure to always have a #1 album each time, and if she didn't get it to be #1 that she might be unhappy, or at the least, surprised. Or maybe at some point blasé.

Speaking of Britney, I just read the comic FAME - Britney Spears: One Life No Apologies (Bluewater Comics). Oh shit oh shit oh shit. So there's this one page where they draw her sitting alone in an arena hugging her shoulders, sitting on one of those circus stools that they put the dancing bears on or whatever (circus, arena, geddit?), and she's surround by 6 big faces, her face actually. And she's questioning all these things, feeling trapped. The speech bubbles are actually boxes, different ones on different faces (boxes, 'cause she's boxed in, geddit?). And they capture all the ways she's trapped, things that I've often speculated that she might feel. I scanned it so you could see, but the picture is kind of small.

I thought that was a nice move, referencing the British TV show The Prisoner with the quotes: "I'm not a prisoner. I'm a free (wo)man, who is number one?" In the dystopian British TV show with Patrick McGoohan, he's caught in The Village and he spends the whole time trying to escape and also find out who #1 is, and they try to get him to tell him why he resigned. For Britney this works on a variety of levels. First, if you google Britney Spears "the prisoner", you full on pull up links that say things like "Britney Spears says she feels like a prisoner." What with the conservatorship and all that, bla, bla, bla. And she's trapped by the record company, and trapped by the stylings of fame and can't leave the house without being hassled, etc.

And the whole thing about #1,  always wanting to figure out who #1 is -- and then the thing about Britney always wanting to be #1, #1 hits, #1 albums, #1 sales, #1 perfume sales...It really is an effective analogy.

So I got inspired and Photoshopped this, which is weird that nobody did this already (unless they did and I didn't Google far and wide enough):

Who Is #1?

There does seem to be a lot of discussion about Britney's blaséness lately, barely dancing in her performances, her soulless eyes, etc. etc. On freebritney.tumblr.com (devoted to articles about her father's conservatorship over her affairs) there's this quote that seems to sum up a lot of what I've been encountering about her lately:

Britney Spears used to be called Godney. Unfortunately the name Zombney would be more fitting if you see her nowadays.

Meow! Someone on that site also responded that maybe the conservatorship will end after her tour because it was legally requirted for her to tour, and that maybe Femme Fatale will be her last album on JIVE Records, who she has been with from the beginning. I think I even heard on a fairly recent episode of the podcast Gay Pimpin' with Jonny McGovern that her performance on Good Morning America I think they were talking about, that her eyes looked dead. I thought the whateverness of the performance had more to do with the fact that it was in the early stages of planning because she was still rehearsing for the Femme Fatale tour (in Chicago tonight! But so is the Slayer Mag book event at Quimby's  -- sorry Britney, maybe another time), and this was like a slimmed down version of that. But I'll tell you what, I recently Youtubed dance tutorials for her routines in songs like Slave 4 U, and compared to what she's doing in newer videos, it's true, the dance moves are a little easier in Till the World Ends. (I did also find a dance tutorial for that one and it involves boring things like marching. BORING. Although I liked the 16-18 chest pulses...You're welcome.) Just offering that for what it's worth.

Well, if you're at the United Center tonight at 7pm, tell Britney I'm sorry I couldn't make it because I was at an event about Norwegian death metal.

The True Story of the Storage Facility Full of Free Erotica from Mr. Anderson

So here's a true story that whenever I tell people this, they tell me it is very interesting. So now I will share it with you!

I work at this crazy bookstore that sells weirdo reading material, like books about wrapping Roy Orbison in clingfilm. We sell some kind of sexy stuff to, like arty erotica and sometimes vintage pin-up stuff, and then some stuff that's a little kinky (horse play!) or just like sex positive sex guides and culture books, etc. One day we get an e-mail from some guy who just went under the name John Anderson, which I am convinced is not his real name. He says that he has a storage facility full of sexy reading material that he would like to donate to the store. And he doesn't want money for it. But the catch is that we need to go pick it up,and we'll need a cargo van. So we get the cargo van and we show up and he's just this nice guy, maybe in his later 40's or so and this storage facility is out in the boonies, probably about an hour and half drive outside of Chicago.

We ride an elevator up to his second floor storage room and the place is practically lined with books and magazines and video tapes that we have no idea what's on them. He loads a rolling cart up with books, magazines and video tapes. My co-worker and I roll into the elevator while the guy stays in the storage locker, and the minute the elevator door closes we dig into the stuff, and we see that ther's varying levels of naughtiness. There's vintage cheesecake stuff, fetish magazines, She-Male books, envelopes with sexy trading cards, a bunch of old Eric Stanton-style Bizarre mags, XXX comics and graphic novels, pin-uppy Bunny Yeager-Bettie Page stuff, fetish-y hardcover photo books of latex bondage stuff -- just a whole bunch of stuff. I think some of the stuff he might even have bought from the store where I work. All in all, we pretty much filled up the cargo van. And it wasn't a small van. Just to give you an idea of the size, let it be known that my co-worker had traveled with his band in it on tour, and they had actually converted it for like 5 people to sleep while also housing all their gear.

John Anderson wouldn't tell us why he was getting rid of all this stuff but we had theories. Maybe he had this secret stash of stuff and he also had a wife who he was hiding it from, but she found out and is making him get rid of it. Or he's getting rid of it before she finds out. Another theory is that maybe he was being investigated for something, and he didn't want it known he had this stuff. Not that he had anything in the stash that was illegal. But there were a few books of photography featuring the work  of Jock Sturges. Some of the subjects in Jock Sturges' work are kind of young, if you know what I'm saying. (It's a controversial situation with his work.) Anyway, all we had were theories to work with why Mr. Anderson was just giving us this stuff for free. He wouldn't take any money either, as if he wanted it to be as clean of a break with the stuff as possible. But what's even crazier, and what makes me discount all of those theories is that there was stuff he wouldn't let us have, that he kept in the storage facility. I still wonder what THAT stuff was.

I remember getting all of the stuff back to the store and when I had more of a chance to look thourgh it all, I wrote him an e-mail to thank him, and I asked him if we could at least give him store credit. He never wrote back.

For what it's worth, it's not like a lot of the material was that shocking to me. (Just as an example, at the store when we received another photo book of women urinating in public, I said real blase-like, "Oh yeah, volume 2. Whatever.") But it was shocking to be given this material freely and in such bounty without any exchange of money. When we got it back to the store I found a number of things in it that made me exclaim every time, "Oh my god! This cover would be awesome in an ad!" It took me months to archive everything and do all the research finding how much everything was worth. Even to this day we still have some of the stuff. I think this all happened around 2004 or maybe 2005 or so.

Even now, whenever somebody buys something from this weirdo stash of erotica and porny stuff, we refer to it as the stash from Mr. Anderson, and we always say it like the guys in The Matrix, when they go "MIST-er An-der-son."

The Sound of No Hands Clapping

...Also! I hate it when I'm at any sort of live musical performance and they're like "Now audience participation! Clap your hands! Ladies in the house! Clap your hands! Now the men! Now clap your hands!" Clap your hands?! That's bullshit. I will decide when I clap my own fucking hands. In fact, unless I'm doing that sort of standard before and after audience thing you do before and after a performance, I DON'T DO HAND CLAPPING. That's lame. Hand clapping! Who do people think they are with preposterous imperative commands like that? Fucking motivational speakers?! BOOOOO.

Podcast Adventures and the Importance of Cultural Documentation

I just finished the second episode of the Quimby's podcast! I really enjoyed doing all the work on it, from the interviewing the guests, to the digital editing, as well as kinda monologe-y stuff in the introduction and conclusion that was silly and fun, then splicing everything together. I even enjoyed some of the problem solving about the uploading. For the stuff I need a little help with, I have a date with an Apple one-to-one support rep tomorrow to help me, specifically with some questions that have been popping up about configuring the data upload process, mostly in reference to getting the podcast on I-Tunes. (Apple One-to-One, the best $99 I've ever spent ever, ever, ever). I did get the first episode approved/uploaded successfully to I-Tunes already, but I'm intentionally not drawing as much attention to the podcast on I-Tunes until I get all the details the way I want them there. Right now you can listen to the podcast and subscribe to it at quimbys.podbean.com for streaming live or downloading individual episodes. You can play it on your I-pod or computer. (The first episode is there to, where I interviewed Margaret Hicks, who wrote a book called Chicago Comedy: A Fairly Serious History.)

So for this second episode, I interviewed the authors of The Beat Cop’s Guide to Chicago Eats (Lake Claremont Press), Sgt. David J. Haynes of the Chicago Police Department and his partner-in-crime, blogger Christopher Garlington. They were fabulously entertaining and did an event for their book at Quimby's about 2 weeks ago. The book has outrageous stories from working cops, Chicago cop lore, recipes and a bunch of other fun stuff. The idea is that all the meals have to be under like $10.00 (or was it 5? I don't remember.) The book talks about all the regions of Chicago and suggests where to go and even comes with coupons. It's a lot of fun.

I was just ruminating about how ever since I can remember, as a kid up through now, I have enjoyed documenting things in written, audio and/or visual form. It might be a transcript of things that happened, it might be a set of photos from an event, or it might be a recording of something. What immediately springs to mind is how when I was a kid, I used to love, love, love recording sill things with my friends on a tape recorder then loving the playback too, mesmorized (and also tickled) by how we could create entertainment just by hitting record; as an adult I would say that hasn't changed much, except that instead of calling it "entertainment," I would upgrade "entertainment" to "art." But for the most part, I feel the same way about recording now: Turn on the record button! The performance and the documentation of it has started! This recording is a document of the moment! Of the event! Of the culture! Of the society! Of a moment in history! A summarization of all of history! Of humanity! At a place in time! As a summization of ALL time until now! A document of what we have evolved to! And as something universal about the human spirit and predicament! And so on! ...I think of when they flash the title of the movie American Movie right after Mark Borchardt says that he funds his movie by maxed out credit cards. The way Americans fund art! Debt! Art! Poverty is the existence of the artist! And so on! The point being, perhaps that what documentation is, at its best, is in some way an encapsulation of something in cultural history. P.S. Am I remembering the opening sequence of American Movie correctly?

In grade school I once recruited fellow classmates to read a transcript I made of a field trip we had taken. The teachers let me and my actors and actresses out of fourth period for a week! Then we performed it for all the other classes. In high school I remember forcing my friends to go out with me and pretend we were aliens documenting our findings (OK, that is pretty nerdy -- especially when I share this fact: I had just read all the Hitchhiker's Guide series). 20 years later, the third issue of my zine Caboose was mostly a transcription of a round table discussion with friends about the sociological intricacies of karaoke, our favorite pastime. And then a few years ago, I took photos of notable things my dad, a veterinarian, has had to surgically remove from animals. In Caboose #7: Britney Spears 101, I reproduced selections from my journal when I was sick. The idea wasto use it as a filter from which to view paralells in popular culture -- since when I was sick, Britney Spears was also making her way through a series of public meltdowns. In fact, just a few days ago I made a video specifically devoted to one evening's activity of Punk Rock Karaoke, which consisted of both video and photos, because I felt like somebody needed to do that before the awesomeness of the evening was swept away to the past. (A recording company that some of their karaoke versions they record and make them into actual karaoke files with graphics and they make their own videos?!! How much more awesome can that be?!!!)

I think it is both enjoyable and important to creatively process things I've watched, heard, read and otherwise consumed.

Isn't that what good journalists do? Just thinking aloud on that one.

Just recently, I had this idea for a recording series: So the Poet Laureat from 1997-2000 was Robert Pinsky. He founded The Favorite Poem Project, which recorded Americans reciting their favorite poems, but the catch was that it had to be a favorite poem you memorized. It couldn't just be someone reading it aloud -- you actually have to have it memorized. And it wasn't necessarily famous people doing it -- it was sort everyday people doing it, like insurance salesman who loves an Ashbery poem, to, among other things, show that Americans were fully capable of enjoying art. And they created this big database of it.

Well, I had an idea that's kind of a take on that. And it's this (stay with me here): I keep ending up in these social situations where I'm talking to someone about something and for whatever reason, they have some spiel that they've memorized from necessary repetitive recitation or just hearing something a  lot. Everybody I know has at least one of these types of things they've memorized, probably you too! Usually it's something you've memorized from some sort of blue collar job you've had -- for me, it's the consignment spiel I go into at work -- "So the 2 things I always tell people when they consign stuff is: 1.) Don't let more than 6 months go by without checking in on your zine or we may assume ownership and 2.) If any of your contact information changes, let us know so we can keep our records updated." I also have spiels I still remember from past jobs, like knife selling: "highly engineered thermo-resin material and made out of 4-40A grade steel!" You get the idea. For some people, whatever it is that they've memorized might not necessarily be work-related, it's just something they hear a lot, and they can deliver it in a super awesome impression which is always awesome. Last night, for example, we had a party and a guest did a hilarious (and spot on) impression of the voice on the intercom at the Village Thrift in her neighborhood. So my idea is to record people doing whatever their memorized spiel is. Everybody's got one. It's a cross between The Favorite Poem Project and Studs Terkel. What would I call it? Thoughts? Anyone? Anyone? Also, do you have something you've memorized and want to be included?

Or perhaps you want to take on this project? I'm pretty overcommitted as it is. I'd be happy record you recording someone else and present it back to you as some sort of statement about our humanity.

Delving Into the Space-Time Continuum Makes Everything Else Seem LAME LAME LAME

So I just finished watching "Altered States" and everything seems anti-climactic after that. Even writing feels anti-climactic (anti-climatc? That's anti-climate? Whatever). So it seems everybody has seen this movie except for me, But in case you haven't, this movie is about about a professor who uses things like sensory deprivation tanks and drugs to investigate the "primal self" and what happens when one regresses to that state. I can't remember why I put this one in the Netflix queue but I think it probably had to do with the fact that numerous people at numerous different times in my life have told me to watch this movie. William Hurt plays an eccentric dude who uses himself as a guinea pig in the experiments and he through the MAGIC of brainwavey-sciencey-electrodes-and-hallucinagenic-blady-bla triggers a method of regressive space-time continuum travel and so on. A little pseudo-science-y but hey, that's why it's science FICTION. If a movie is entertaining enough it will butter up my critical abilities and more than willing to suspend my disbelief. The minute I hear terms like "space-time continuum" or "primordial self" and "hallucinogenic" my outer-limits radar goes up and I'm pulled in.

But then, the movie ended. And it seemed awfully quiet in here.

What it makes me think of is how some type of movie or book or art or piece of music will inspire me while I'm enjoying it but then when it's over, after the credits roll, after the song is over, when there's quiet, everything seems dismal and well, less inspiring.

And then when I force myself to sit down and write about something or work on something, it reminds me how much of a non-flowy style of writing I do -- that is, since I bleed through the things I write (as opposed to sprinting through), editing while I do it and well, not letting it really flow out -- that I am reminded of how much work goes into something that an audience sees, unaware (at least on an immediately conscious level) of all the work that went into the final product.

When I hear that piece of music that inspires me, when I see a comedian that gets me jazzed, I'm not usually thinking about how much work they put into it at the time, but I do think about it later, after the fact, especially when I'm feeling guilty for not making time to work on my own creative projects. I remember hearing some comedian talk about his process of writing and he said something to the effect that the process of sitting down to do the writing is sort of tedious. Who said this? Was it Paul F. Tompkins? It might have been. I have been enjoying his podcast and material and his many appearances on other peoples podcasts and shows.

When we're inspired by some type of performance or recording or art thingy, what we're really seeing is the final product all packaged up. It might look sort of effortless, but we all know somewhere in the back of our heads that it's all practiced and timed and all that, but the best performances LOOK effortless. Or is effortless really the right word? Maybe not -- when you see some people sing they look so impassioned with their heart into it, emoting, that it certainly does not look effortLESS. Perhaps "effortless" is the wrong word. Perhaps "skilled" is a better word? Instead of a performance looking effortless, perhaps it looks "skilled." Whatever.

Different trades and types of performances have different versions of what skilled looks like. It's like how I make no bones about the fact that my typical MO for performing and writing is pretty much that I try really hard to make it seem "nonchalant" (which I suppose is a version of "effortless"). I was talking to someone who wrote a book about Chicago comedy and we agreed that one of the hardest things that standup comedians have to do is make their performance sound nonchalant, which I personally think is a lot harder than someone acting abut something passionately.

The idea of that final presented last draft being the initial thing that an audience encounters reminds me of how when you meet someone, you're encountering that person at that moment in their life, after they've gone through their whole life up to that point, growing, maturing, learning, developing as a person. You don't see all their fuckupness up until that point. I love this idea. I also love the idea that you can meet someone at a particular time in your life and you really get along well, but if you met them earlier than you might not have gotten along as well. I like to think of it as a sorted fated ripeness type of thing, as if to say "I wasn't ready for you yet." That's such a delicious concept to me.

Anyway, people only see the part of you that's matured over many years to that point. So when we read the book, enjoy the movie, meet the person, drink the aging wine, we haven't seen the mistakes, first drafts, bitter youth, hard work that went into the maturation.

Another problem I'm having, and this is a problem that this experience with  "Altered States" seems like a good example of, and that is that I enjoy watching movies, reading literature about, and having discussions that lean towards things that are philosophical and meaning of life-y. That makes the things that are not related to lofty and spacey topics such as that totally dismal. It makes me not want to do things like run errands and work out and do laundry and interact with people who are not into those things. I can see why science-fiction geeky types are totally uninterested in personal hygiene or getting a job. I mean, I'm pretty good about both personal hygiene and having a job, but my point is that once you get your head into the stars it's hard to want to come down into reality about the non-numinous things like flossing and paying bills.

I remember in college I took a class about jewish mysticism. (Sidetone: the class was taught at the campus hillel. The teacher wanted everybody to call him Mickey.) One of the things the professor kept stressing was that one of the things that Jewish mysticism embraces is this notion that the everyday activities like cooking could be mystical. I never understood this. How? If someone could explain to me how to make paying bills and cleaning the kitty litter and configuring the monthly budget mystical I would do a lot more of that. That's the thing: reading spiritually and philosophically engaging material and seeing movies about that kind of stuff makes the rest of life sort of suck. Because everything else seems unimportant. It's like coming in from 40 days of talking to god in the desert and having to go be an office administrative assistant; everything else seems pointless.

The minute a movie I've enjoyed ends and I've exhausted the bonus features on the disc, the house is quiet. It's like I had a big fun party and now all the guests went home, and I have to clean up the mess and it's all quiet. I tend to stay up until the late hours watching all the bonus features because I don't want the movie to end, and watching bonus features is the closest thing to the movie not being over.

Want to come over? Maybe if you're here talking to me about Terrence McKenna and the formation of human consciousness it would make cleaning out the bottom of the toaster a lot more tolerable. 10am? See you then.

Customer Service Admissions

So I just had the best experience with Netflix, which I was not expecting. I had returned The Butterfly Effect probably like a month ago and it never showed up as being returned in our queue, so we didn't get the next movie we were supposed to be getting. And I keep putting off contacting them because I was second guessing myself, thinking that maybe I really didn't return it, and that it was in some DVD case somewhere. I thought maybe it was in the DVD case for The Rockafire Explosion Documentary DVD about the animoanatronic (what the fuck? what is the word I'm looking for here? animatronic?) band that was at Showbiz Pizza -- and well, OK, we actually have 2 DVD copies of that movie because one is scratched and then the other one is the replacement but that one was supposed to be a gift, and then -- oh, just forget it. I know I sent the disc. I remember walking to the mailbox and dropping it in.

The point is I decided to contact Netflix and tell them the disc was mailed. I did this thing where I call customer service on my phone and then put it on the speaker function, so I don't have to cradle my phone on my shoulder (which is impossible to do with a cell phone pretty much -- although I suppose I could put on the hands free device but that means I have to go find that somewhere). So anyway, I put the phone down and let it run with me on speakerphone while on hold and meanwhile, I navigated around on the website trying to find what I'm supposed to find to report the problem. I figure, if I can figure out how to report the problem before they answer than I can just hang up. This seems very smart to me. I am patting myself on my back AS WE SPEAK.

Just as I was getting to the page where you go to report a problem like this, a customer service person came on. I talked to him about the problem and he said he would mark the movie as being lost in the mail. He said that he'll send me the next thing in the mail and that the movie is "Perfume." He asked me if I've ever read  the book of it and I said, "No. Why have you? Is it awesome?"

And he said, "Yeah, it's really good. Both the book and the movie."

"Really? I'm super excited about it. But the other ones I have at home I haven't watched yet, and I've had them for a while. They're sort of holding up the queue. I just need to get over it and send them back."

Then he said, "I know what you mean. I actually have the type of account that you can have 8 at once. So does everybody else here. None of us get all the way through all the movies we have."

I thought this was interesting. First of all, you would think people who work for Netflix would get it free. Secondly, you would think that they just get to bring the DVDs home and not have to have them sent through the mail. Well, maybe they're outsourced at a location that doesn't have the discs on hand. Or something. I guess I just imagined it's like if you work at a library and can hack into your own account and make it so that you don't own any overdue book fines, and you get first dibs on books when they come in and so on.

I love the idea of having somewhat personal conversations in a somewhat impersonal setting, like having an intimate conversation with a customer service representative. I always find that amusing when they do that in movies.

Sometimes I have weird interactions with customer service representatives, like this guy at a magazine distributor that I used to have to call to deal with account stuff regarding the bookstore where I work. The guy would ask me how I was and then I'd reciprocate the question out of typical good manners. But the weird thing was that each time, he's be super earnest and be like, "Thank you so much. Nobody ever asks me how I am." I found this weird. Nobody ever asks him back how he is? I find this hard to believe. I mean, I pretty much work a customer service job and people ask me how I am all the time. Even to the detriment of he conversation. I'll answer the phone at work and the first thing a lot of people say when they call the bookstore is "How are you?" Or sometimes they're strangely casual, and they'll say, "How's it goin'?" This annoys the fuck out of me. I'm not answering the phone for idle chit chat. I have shit to do. So I cut to the chase by not even reciprocating. I just say, "Fine. How can I help you?" Want to know where I learned to do that? Please don't shoot me when I tell you this. For a brief while in my twenties I listened to Dr. Laura. I know, I know, she's crazy. Kind of Republican-y but then also someone who converted into Judaism so she has that sort of devotion that only people who convert INTO something get, all crazy. Is there even a file card in the space-time continuum card catalog for someone with both of those characteristics? I guess I just think "Republican" when really she's conservative, and that doesn't necessarily mean you're necessarily both. But in my world, they're kind of the same.

OK, I have to go check her out on the internet now, because I have no idea what has become of her in the intervening years of me listening to her and now. BRB.

I'm back. Looks like she's on Sirius radio. Isn't that the same network or whatever that Howard Stern is on? Also, it says her show is uncensored. Is she into swearing now? Like maybe she gets mad at people for shacking up and having kids out of wedlock and then swears loudly at them? I did notice she posted a picture of herself on a motorcycle. So maybe there's some swearing. Maybe some spitting too.

Anyway, for a while I got really into listening to her, because she was so aggressive and mean, and I was fascinated with how she would just make fools of people on the phone. It's kind of like eating food that you know is really bad for you but you can't stop, even though you also know it's also sort of disgusting. Like Funyons with Cheese Wiz or peanut butter on a spoon right of the jar or eating 17 Kit Kat bars at once or something. I just had to listen. It's like listening to people argue when when they're in public. I'm all ears. Pretty much anybody emoting or being super mean in public, it's like I have dog ears for that.  Anyway, Dr. Laura would interrupt someone who she felt wasn't getting to the point fast enough and just go, "What would you like to talk to me about today?" Or maybe sometimes she might say, "What did you want to ask me today?" It's kind of condescending and not particularly nurturing but that's the way she is. So that's pretty much what I learned in my twenties: how to use Microsoft Excel and how to cut an otherwise friendly conversation short.

Not the best way to make friends.

The truth is that I actually hate talking on the phone.

But the Netflix guy was nice, and for once I felt quite magnanimous. I was so ecstatic that I actually got what I wanted. And endorphin levels were running high. I was all ready to express my gratitude with joking around with the Netflix guy. Lucky him.

But this nice customer service interaction is not bound to happen with any amount of frequency any time soon. After all, by the time whatever my situation is that results in me calling customer service, there's probably a reason why I didn't call them until now -- now I have something I need to talk to somebody about, so of course I tend to go into stuff all annoyed and confrontational. Just thinking about having to call any customer service for anything is making me all fidgety right at this moment.

So "Perfume" will be here any day. Now I better finish watching the other movies that have been here for 27,000 years: "Word Wars" and "Little Miss Sunshine." Joe even already watched "Little Miss Sunshine" and said I would probably like it, so maybe I really will get around to watching it, now that it has the Mason stamp of approval.

And oh! We saw the "X-Men: First Class" movie. It was good. Oh, origin stories! You rock my world!

But the popcorn at the other theater is better.

Me Doing Monologue Stuff

I'm performing a monologue and improv players are using it to inspire sketches.

A friend of mine, the amazingly talented and hilarious Chrysteena Lairamore is in an improv troop is in an improv troop that's doing a show thats' style is similar to the Armando. And she asked me to participate.

Armadillo, what? Huh? What? So Armando is long form improv format that starts with a storytelling-style monologue. After the monologue, players play improvised scenes inspired by it. And I've been asked to do the monologue.

Well, in Chicago, Armadillo -- I mean Armando -- has mostly been done either co-ed or just by guys. And you know what? It's time for some ladies to take the reins. And have you looked at the Just For Laughs Fest here in Chicago June 14th-19th? Out of 100 comedians on the bill, I can count the amount of females particiapting on MAYBE one hand. So if you're going to any of the events during the fest, balance it out with this alternative, with some talented female players plus me doing monologue.

Here's the info:

What: All-female spin-off of the Reader Recommended 'Tibia Ballerina' Show"

When: Wed, June 15th, show starts at 8pm

Where: Chemically Imbalanced Theater, 1422 W. Irving Park Road, Chicago, IL 60613

The closest public transportation is the Sheridan stop on the CTA Red Line and Irving Park stop on the CTA Brown Line. www.cicomedy.com/

Ticket info, I will have Chrysteena jump in here: "People trying to buy tickets in advance should just call and ask about the 8pm Wed Show. Since it's a sort of unofficial show, it's probably not going to be put up on the website." The box office number is 800-838-3006.

Other Helpful details: All shows are BYOB. Also, all shows are BYOLOFCATWPBFL. That's Bring Your Own Lots of Flowers, Candy and Things With Pretty Bows For Liz. Oh, did I say that out loud?

Who else is involved?: Chrysteena Lairamore, Angela McMahon, Leslie Nesbit and Natalie Kossar

Need to see it on Facebook? Click THIS VERY SENTENCE.

Incidentally, if you go to Chemically Imbalanced Theater website, you will see that there's a show called The Book of Liz. That's not me. That's a totally un-related play by David and Amy Sedaris. How nice of them to name their play after me!

See you then!