Holiday Humbuggery Gets an Early Start

I don't want to be the one who says she hates Halloween, because she doesn't. But the thing is, I hate Halloween... these days. My primary concern is with parents who drive their kids around to trick-or-treat. These are lazy bastard parents who do not deserve kids or the candy they will pilfer from their kids. Furthermore, it puts their children at greater risk of being hit by a car (i.e. mine). If you're driving down a residential street in the dark and there are seven cars facing you, stopped along the side of the narrow road, with headlights glaring, it is ten times more difficult to notice a small child running out into the street. And on Halloween, there are an abundance of children running into streets. And also, if you're a kid and you're trick-or-treating in a neighborhood where there are sidewalks, please utilize the sidewalks and do not walk in the street with your all-black costume. It makes me nervous, and not because you're dressed up as the killer from Scream.

Why did I decide socks would be a bad idea today?

Friday night, October 28 - Lansing, MI for The Flouride Program /Starling Electric / Oh My God show. Just a note, Oh My God totally blew chunks. Nothing like a bunch of hipsters listening to Creed-style serious rawk to really put a damper on the mood. Otherwise, the show was fantastic. The Flouride Program are sounding tighter than ever, and Justin's facial hair is driving the ladies mad. Starling Electric are still as psycho-poppy as ever, making rock-harmony love. I saw a lot of friends I haven't seen in a long time, met a few great people, and just generally enjoyed myself (which is rare in my pre-GRE / unemployed craze).

Saturday night saw me back in the RO, making my first visit to the Main art theatre to see Capote. See this movie. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is phee-nominal. It will also make you want to read "In Cold Blood" which you should also do because it's an amazing book. I have it if you want to borrow it, though Dan Brooks gets first dibs.

Speaking of Dan Brooks, he called me last night to ask me to go star-gazing with him as Mars is out in full force these days. So we packed up his telescope and drove to Hartland, actually Parshalville, but none of this matters because neither of them would even show up on a map, I think. But in Hartland we stopped at a gas station and in the store on the wall there was a big map of Michigan and underneath it said "Hartland, MI INC. EST. 2000." I took a picture of it because it said incest, and that's funny. Mars was big and red and we could make out a black band in the middle, which was apparently a giant canyon, the deepest canyon in the galaxy or something. I won't make any remarks about how staring at the heavens really makes you think about the significance (or lack thereof) of your every day actions. I'll just tell you that should Dan Brooks ever call you up one night to ask you to go star-gazing with him, you should.

Depressing news - the free wireless internet connection Drew and I were hoarding in on totally left us (did they find out?), so now we've got to make special trips to coffee shops in order to check email. Bummer. Those carefree days are over, now starts the winter of my discontent.

For Alan Greenspan, whose sexy specs make economics about more than supply and demand

From Andy Nicholson

He was a fast machine,
he kept inflatin lean,
he was the best damn chairman I had ever seen.
Thick glasses for eyes,
telling me no lies,
knocking me out with those American thighs.
Taking more than his share,
had me fighting for air,
told me to invest but I was already there.

'Cause Wall Street start shaking,
the earth was quaking,
Nasdaq was aching,
and we were making it:

Yeah, Al shook me all night long.

(ACDC loves you, Al.)

Results of Rocket Fever's first ever Story of the Week contest

I win!

Foods for your Hole

I've more or less given up any hope on finding a real job, so I started looking at grocery store jobs and saw that Whole Foods in Troy was hiring cashiers. I could have filled out the application online and sent it, faceless and personality-less, to some corporate office, but I thought it better to show up at the store in person: "see here? I've made this effort to come all the way out to show you how enthusiastic I am about your grocery store chain and being a part of it!" The lady at the customer service desk told me (in a I've-been-smoking-for-the-past-forty-years voice) "you can fill out an application online." Then a younger girl told me there was a kiosk in produce where I could fill out an application. It was just a computer with the online application. Damnit, I said to myself. I'm going home to fill this out.

At home I started the painstakingly long process of filling out the application. Near the end of the application process, there were 99 questions regarding my personality (i.e. "when you finish a task you look for more work to do - strongly disagree, disagree, agree, stronly agree.") There was a question that asked, "You hate it when the court lets a guilty criminal go free." WHY WOULD YOU ASK ME THAT AND WHY WOULD A COURT LET A GUILTY CRIMINAL GO FREE? What court says, "this person is clearly guilty and a criminal, but we're going to let him go free anyway because the American justice system clearly does not work" ? I wonder if I'll get the job.

What is this peanut butter of which you speak so fondly?

I'm a resident of Royal Oak now. Just like that - we rented the apartment and moved right on in. How weird. I live within walking distance of the Detroit Zoo, which means, however, that it's not really in Detroit. And the landlord, Monica, who lives upstairs, has birds, so it sounds like we're living in the birdhouse of the zoo, though not in a bad way. My only complaint about the apartment is that the water pressure in the shower leaves something to be desired. It takes me a while to wash my thick hair when the water pressure is low, but it's not so horrible that I can't live with it.

Detroit water has a subtle scent and flavor that I've always noticed. Oddly enough, I almost always smell it on my grandmother's breath when she leans in to kiss me whenever I visit. The scent wafts up from the tap when the water is turned on, and it lingers in the glass. It's not a bad scent or taste, nor is it particularly good, for that matter. It's, simply, Detroit. I wonder if my breath will start to smell like Detroit water. Of course, maybe it means living in the area for sixty or so years. I don't know that I could spend that long here. Mom says I'll never really be a Detroiter anyway. Maybe that's for the best.

I wish I had more excitement to report about the weekend. Not being a working girl, though, means there's never much difference between weekends and weekdays for me. I went to Nana and Poppy's for the Planned Parenthood holiday mart. It was lame, though I hear-tell it's not usually so bad. There were approximately three Catholics outside the Grosse Pointe War Memorial protesting the holiday mart. Their signs claimed that Planned Parenthood was the nation's largest abortion provider (provider? is that right?). Nana and I remarked that this was sort of the point, and all the better for our going.

Movie report: Good Night and Good Luck. This was a fantastic movie, with a fine, fine performance by David Strathairn as Edward R. Murrow. George Clooney's performance as Fred Friendly was good in that it wasn't necessarily the same role he always seems to be playing. The story was concise and stuck to the broadcasts Murrow made on CBS which challenged McCarthy's witch trials. Frank Langella looks a lot like Christopher Lee. And Clooney directed, wrote, produced, catered, starred in, edited, choreographed, and pantomimed the whole thing. I always said to wait and see what would come out of that George Clooney. From the earliest ER days I said we had ourselves a modern walking genius on our hands. It's good to be right.

Freedom Fries? More like Freedom Mind

I was doing just fine until I watched this doozy of a flick. Now I feel as though I can't trust the space/time continuum, not to mention the French.
Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, by the way, was a let-down. I had so looked forward to it, too.

One Week Down

One whole week back in Michigan finds me with an apartment and a possible job. At least I had two months in a cool city. Now it's on to Royal Oak, birth place of Veronica Mars.

Why Michigan is so glad to have me back

Michigan loves a Hayley Gaines. And it's a good thing I am one such Hayley. It's nice to be back. I have friends again and I'm not drinking by myself anymore! I never appreciated Michigan for what it offered.

A recent exchange of emails regarding the best of our Great Country:
Tim McCarty: Okay, fuck all of y'all. Forget anything I, Christine, or anyone has ever said about Boston before. It is the greatest city in the whole damned world. How is that, you ask? Check this shit out:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4930465
Yes, you read correctly. Every game at Fenway park, in the midst of the 8th inning, the crowd stands to sing along to "Sweet Caroline" by Neil Diamond.
EVERY FUCKING GAME!!!!
Fuck it. I love this incredibly stupid city.
This is amazing.

Josh Landon: Tim, I love the preface of this email, which implies that you have done anything but sing, quite effusively, Boston's praises in almost every email you have sent. Still, I am sure that Boston is indeed spectacular. It's not New York, but...

Christine McCarty: No argument here. New York has it.

Tim: Fuck New York.
Beantown! Ya'll can suck it.
Especially Christine. Traitor.

Kris Phillips: Boston?
New York?
FUCK ALL Y'ALL! MIDWEST REPRESENT!!!!

Pete Mortensen: First of all, I thought everybody knew about the Sweet Caroline thing.
Second of all, I went to a giant, free music festival in Golden Gate Park yesterday, where Gillian Welch and David Rawlings covered "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" on mandolin and acoustic guitar. And then I went to Frjtz and got Belgian Fries with Wasabi Mayo and yogurt peanut sauce, plus a rosemary-chicken crepe with goat cheese, roasted red pepper, pesto mayo and red onion. Plus a party at Andy Nicholson's where I was introduced as a first-year grad student at CCA in the magazine writing program.
And we don't have to pay to heat our homes here.
Game, San and Francisco.

Kris: okay pete.
I went to a party where one of the finest football rivalries took place and the game went into overtime and much ado was to be had (Sam, where is your precious MSU football now?). also i am a cook at an italian restaurant which is featuring pesto month, and i create pine-nut ricotta cheese-pesto stuffed chicken breast served with sauted garlic-tarragon vegetables and home-made (every day) spinach fettuccine with your choice of eight (8) homemade sauces, that i make everyday also. Oh, and i have the Bells brewery across the street from me.
oh yeah, also i am a grad student taking classes from Quentin Smith, who if you do not know invented A/B Time theory, and is the entire reason that my school is rated on the philosopher's gourmet.
i repeat...
midwest represent muthaphuka.

Jason Bales: I have two words for you west coast/east coast bitches...
BOB SEGER.
Midwest, bitches!

Kris: Jason,
i see your bob seger, and raise you a TED NUGENT/WHIPLASH BASH.
Midwest, Bitches!!!

David P. Brumbaugh: Kris—you forget that Ted Nugent is now a proud resident of the great and sovereign state of Texas. That and we kicked Rita’s ass. Why? Because we’ve got rockin’ energy! (Not to be confused with synergy)
YEE HAW.

Hayley: The midwest may now also boast the arrival of Hayley Gaines, the fact of which should trump all. Oh, and as we say in Lansing, "pesto? more like homo-eroticsto."

Maureen Fandale: Could it be true??? Do we get the H-Gizzle back?? YYYYYEESSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!

Kris: ah, david,
You forget that despite the current whereabouts of the Nuge, he is now and alway will be "The Motorcity Madman." Where is the motorcity????
MIDWEST REPRESENT MUTHAFUCKA!!!
Besides that, we have muthaphukin hayley!!!

Pete: Shit, there are 24 sauces for fries alone at Frjtz.

Maureen: Yeah, well Hayley Gaines is good with sauce, too.

Jason: Is mayo one of them? I've always heard that San Francisco is the most European city in America.
Detroit, however, is the most American city in America. Birthplace of cars? Check. One of the top 5 richest counties in the United States (Oakland) right next to the poorest inner city in America (Detroit)? Check!
Again, Midwest represent, bitches. Representin' America, that is.

Pete: Several of them are mayo-based, but that includes balsamic mayo and others, so it's really okay. Mmm...Frjtz. Some of San Francisco is European-ish. A bunch of it is really sketchy, though. Mainly, the food is just awesome and affordable. That's the main thing. And you work it off walking.

Jason: Affordable? Huh -- I thought San Fransisco was supposed to be super expensive.

Sara Gold: I'm hungry...

Pete: Well, rent is (good lord, is it expensive), but there are plenty of really great restaurants that are cheaper than, say, the Sweet Onion.

Hayley: I hear Hayley Gaines is cheaper than the Sweet Onion also.

Tim: I hear Hayley Gaines is the Sweet Onion. Or is that the Great Pumpkin?

Daniel Brooks: Gayley Haines !
Ha! Get a load of that!

Kris: do you make them though? i think not.

Josh: Two unrelated notes:

1. Did y'all see the Onion from the week before this one (Oprah,
Sheehan son, monopoly rules, etc) ? I meant to mention this before,
but I think that it is the single funniest issue that the Onion has
ever put out. Across the board, every single piece is laugh out loud
funny
2. Anyone else, especially those from single parent homes, get a
little choked up every time they hear "hey mama" from the new Kanye
album? Mothafucker's a genius!