Monday, October 31, 2005

Halloween was spent as a member of the Incredibles. We had all four (Dash and Violet/ Invisigirl played by Silver and Lara; Mr Incredible by Gulshan; Elastigirl by Dora) and damn we looked good.





Little did Mr Incredible know that I didn't want to know about his woman's mild-mannered alter-ego... and that Frozone always gets the girl.



It's because chicks just love my draws.



post-script. I am now picodulce on Livejournal; I am going to use that site for the more personal posts, the whining and crying and such, because I can make those posts private/ or post to small close inner-sanctums-style groups of people. so, hethalouise, raycroft, silver, chaz, jo-go, greg, nicky brooklyn, everyone named matt, angie, alice, marge, new-top, pixel, eben, coast guard rob, schnapp, toby, assorted e-stalkers, et cetera, it'd be cool if you got Livejournal accounts and were able to read my oh-so-private posts. It's cool if you don't, I hate being a joiner; but the greatest hater of them all, neverecho, has joined, so why shouldn't you?

And when you join, go to /users/picodulce and add me as a friend. That is all.

I will still post to this blog, but it'll be focused on politics and New York living and parties, whereas the other blog will be all emo. Check it weekly at best. Make it an .rss feed.

P.S. - There is already an eben. and he goes to the wuniversity!! whaaa? eben, did you go back to school and get interested in anime?

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Festiva 10.27.05

I’m having a bit of a Molly-fest these days. Not that I know her so well, she’s more Alex’ friend than mine, even though I saw her at times before she moved to Oregon. So I am jacking ideas from her, like the list of books a few posts ago, and now, the idea of 100 things to do in the next calendar year. My list is not yet ready and may be read only by me… but it’s going to be done.

I am also having even more of a Dora fest but I won’t talk about it; I want this blog to be work safe and, like Norville Barnes creation in the Hudsucker Proxy, “for the kids.”

Monday, October 24, 2005

Fred, Please Talk To Your Woman. 10.24.05

Wilma. Oh Wilma. Thanks, Hurricane Wilma; you have ripped up the roof of my pappy’s barn and flattened his crops. But the house in FLA is OK and so is my dad, sans electricity, of course.

Ok! A Wilma fundraiser! Who wants to go volunteer their time and farming expertise and come see the house in Florida? How about you? And you? We’ll plant things and build mounds and dig in the dirt. It’ll be better than “Cats.”

Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Been busy with work! I’ll tell y’all about it very soon. But for now, here is a post, jacked from Molly. Apparently, Time magazine has listed their group of the best novels ever. So I adopted Molly’s post (and her notations- bold for read, italics as explained below, “I tried” for the ones I part-read) and I ask you the same question: what should I have read from this list that I have not?

[--Bold equals read. Italicized equals read something by the author, but not this particular title.--]

The Adventures of Augie March / Saul Bellow {I Tried.}
All the King's Men / Robert Penn Warren
American Pastoral / Philip Roth
An American Tragedy / Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm / George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra / John O'Hara
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret / Judy Blume
The Assistant / Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds / Flann O'Brien
Atonement / Ian McEwan
Beloved / Toni Morrison
The Berlin Stories / Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep / Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin / Margaret Atwood
Blood Meridian / Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited / Evelyn Waugh
The Bridge of San Luis Rey / Thornton Wilder {I Tried.}
Call It Sleep / Henry Roth
Catch-22 / Joseph Heller {I Tried.}
The Catcher in the Rye / J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange / Anthony Burgess
The Confessions of Nat Turner / William Styron
The Corrections / Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 / Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time / Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust / Nathanael West
Death Comes for the Archbishop / Willa Cather
A Death in the Family / James Agee
The Death of the Heart / Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance / James Dickey
Dog Soldiers / Robert Stone
Falconer / John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman / John Fowles
The Golden Notebook / Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain / James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind / Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck
Gravity's Rainbow / Thomas Pynchon {I Tried.}
The Great Gatsby / F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Handful of Dust / Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter / Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter / Graham Greene
Herzog / Saul Bellow
Housekeeping / Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas / V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius / Robert Graves
Infinite Jest / David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man / Ralph Ellison
Light in August / William Faulkner
The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe / C.S. Lewis
Lolita / Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies / William Golding
The Lord of the Rings / J.R.R. Tolkien
Loving / Henry Green
Lucky Jim / Kingsley Amis
The Man Who Loved Children / Christina Stead
Midnight's Children / Salman Rushdie {I Tried.}
Money / Martin Amis {I Tried.}
The Moviegoer / Walker Percy
Mrs. Dalloway / Virginia Woolf
Naked Lunch / William Burroughs
Native Son / Richard Wright
Neuromancer / William Gibson
Never Let Me Go / Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 / George Orwell
On the Road / Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest / Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird / Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire / Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India / E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays / Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint / Philip Roth {I Tried.}
Possession / A.S. Byatt
The Power and the Glory / Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie / Muriel Spark
Rabbit, Run / John Updike {I Tried.}
Ragtime / E.L. Doctorow
The Recognitions / William Gaddis
Red Harvest / Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road / Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky / Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five / Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash / Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor / John Barth
The Sound and the Fury / William Faulkner {I Tried.}
The Sportswriter / Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold / John LeCarre
The Sun Also Rises / Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God / Zora Neale Hurston
Things Fall Apart / Chinua Achebe
To Kill a Mockingbird / Harper Lee
To the Lighthouse / Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer / Henry Miller {I Tried.}
Ubik / Philip K. Dick
Under the Net / Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano / Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen / Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise / Don DeLillo {I Tried.}
White Teeth / Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea / Jean Rhys

Saturday, October 15, 2005



Updating from Dora's. She is the best girlfriend ever. Unfortunately, I must leave her now for the Joshua Tree. This is what happens when I am away from email for 24 hours! Oh well, it was mighty worth it for a quiet night of snuggly wuggly. See, since Dora and I are the couple with the most friends ever it's quite rare for an evening of no interruptions. oh, again with the snuggly wuggly!

[--the above note was written entirely by dora. the genesis: i apparently have not been clear enough to some people that i have a stoooopid hot girlfriend and her name is dora. she, as an avid reader of my blog, attempted to hijack the blog to express my deep and heartfelt emotions. she also wanted to clown me by supposing that i use the words "snuggly" and "wuggly." together. in the same sentence. that is all. i may not be going to the joshua tree but i will be watching usc vs. notre dame. updates to come on this blog and the sports blog, http://sixstarcamp.blogspot.com.--]

Wednesday, October 12, 2005

He's Courthousin' 10.12.05

From the EUR:

DMX GETS HIS B-BOY STANCE ON
OUTSIDE COURT: Rapper does impromptu
Photo shoot for media following hearing.


*Rapper DMX hit media cameras with
the classic ghetto prom pose (knelt down,
fingers touching chin, looking off to the side)
following his appearance at a hearing
Tuesday at the Queens Criminal Court
building.
Cameras snapped away as DMX hit
poses in his cream-colored Phat Farm
sweatsuit, heavy silver chains and boots –
all this after he actually danced his way
down the courthouse steps.
Moments before the antics, the rapper,
whose real name is Earl Simmons, faced
a judge for allegedly violating the conditions
of his release following a car crash last
year at Kennedy Airport.
X pleaded guilty last December to
reckless endangerment and admitted he
was taking Valium when he smashed his
sport utility vehicle into a gate at the airport
on June 24, 2004, after telling a parking
lot attendant he was a federal agent. He
was sentenced to a conditional discharge,
meaning further violations within a year
could land him a jail sentence. Since then,
he has been cited twice for traffic violations,
one involving driving a car at 104 mph near
his Westchester County home. He has also
been fined and ordered to forfeit his 1998
Ford Expedition.
On Tuesday, DMX remained silent
as Judge Dorothy Chin-Brandt granted
a defense request to adjourn the case
to Oct. 25. He was apparently saving
his energy for the reporters outside.
Chewing gum and in a constant state
of movement, DMX told reporters "they
are all ludicrous," when asked about the
charges against him. "It's been very
stressful," added the artist, who was
accompanied by his wife, Tishera
Simmons. "Nobody likes to come
to court."
The rapper then proceeded to plug his
new album and movie. His film "Last Hours"
is in its final edit, he told reporters, and his
latest album, "Here We Go Again," is due
out in December.
[If A Title Was Encompassing You Would Not Require The Post] 10.11.05

The problem with Floridian fruit is that everything is different. The limes are orange on the inside, the pumpkins talk smack, the sweet potatoes laugh to see such sport and the papayas run away with the spoon. In all seriousness, I believe I am drinking hot limeade but I might be drinking hot water over a fruit only meant for desperate birds.

Skipped out on lunch with Misanthrope Anna, going to lunch with my bosses instead. They’re very chill. We talked about cats and therefore, when we laughed, I can’t refer to it being better than “Cats.” I brought up the well-worn joke phrase, “I laughed, I cried, it was better than Cats” to a pair of people who had never heard that before. Does anyone know where that phrase came from? Joel? Heather?

I returned to work, argued for a while about the Yank-these, and spent a few hours writing with Raycroft.

Raycroft wants you to donate to our ownership group. We’re going to buy the Nationals.

My mother returned from Florida with a possible leave NYC day – end of the year – and the strange fruit that started this post. (Thankfully none of the fruit was Billie Holiday’s strange fruit) That strange fruit, sweetened with honey, powers this post. This post is both mood and filler, and writing calisthenics before I sleep.

Tuesday, October 11, 2005

[Titles are Restrictive/ Bougeois/ Pre-Modern Writing Conventions] 10.11.05

This weekend I got to see the morning show,
Dora and Dylan on…
After seeing the spec show, I can tell you that this is going to be the best AM talk show since Katie Couric purchased her cute + youthful smile. It was chill, Nikki G turned 30 and Debs made an awesomely designed scrapbook—3 of them in fact. And on Sunday Dora/ Lara/ Quiggles and I took in some of Open House New York, seeing Grand Army Plaza from the inside and a live/ work space on Duane Street. Pictures this afternoon.

Today, lunch with Misanthrope Anna.

Friday, October 07, 2005

Nine Days In Cali By Pico


the photo set, enjoy!!


Ok. So, I should post something, blog a little, tell y’all about last week's trip to San Diego and California. I have to write a post that inspires vicious envy, the kind of post where you just kick yourself for not being there, filled with jokes, deadpan filth, and a moral code you just can’t quite put your finger on.

Basically, I want it to be the European Vacation monologue from Rules of Attraction – lovingly sent to me by Gully. Dora, baby, don’t worry, that’s the only part of that movie that I really love. The rest of it is background television.

Here goes. If you’d like more unvarnished truth, email me.

FRIDAY.

Took a flight on the aforementioned small plane. Fell asleep and woke up in Atlanta. Ate from a choice of 5 grease-pits serving breakfast, where Popeye’s wasn’t the greeziest one. I chose Checkers. Arrived in San Diego and eventually Heather and I figured out where we were. It was ridiculously warm. Ate a Mission CafĂ© burrito and went to a happy hour for Heather’s classmates who are nice kids. I forgot many names. Coast Guard Rob rolled in, we communed. We went to Pacific Beach, in local parlance “PB” and got our one-drink on.

SATURDAY.

Naked brand orange juice is great and now I am dedicated to spending too much money on it. Also, NYC bagels are also good. Two days before, Alana and I took a hella-long lunch and strolled (after a beer) to Ess-A-Bagel. I swear by H and H but that was too far and far. The bagels then went into my suitcase, left garlic-scented magic on my clothes, and into Heather’s refrigerator. Plus, college football at 9 am is the greatest thing ever. If I moved west it would be a definite reason.

We bike the Coronado and it's beautiful.

Gas lamp district. A bar in the Marriott over Drinks. Yankee fans/ NY Giants fans are everywhere for the Sunday game. We’re all confident that the Giants will slap around the inept Chargers.

Later, Morgan came and drove me to some back end of California. Scripps Ranch, maybe? Where we drank in the backyard, drank “around the world,” and I found myself talking to a young lady named Amanda. She is 20 and wanted to talk about music. Knowing how Silver needs some pictures for the lonely nights, I managed to snap one of her. There was a fire pit and pizza and it was kind of like a really good high school party—that’s a compliment. There is a really yappy guy who keeps talking about how he can walk into all black clubs—he produces music—and like DMX, be really good. I added the DMX part myself.

SUNDAY.

Owww. Andy (the guy whose parents own the Scripps Ranch house) wakes me up to give me his parents’ bed. I almost cuss him out until I realize he’s helping me. That’s a nice bed and I’ve been drinking water. I feel aces when I wake. Garrett and Bernard are awake. We talk sports, try not to wake that really yappy guy. Because 10 AM NFL is incredible… even if you can’t see your favorite local squadron.

I end up not going to the game but ending up in a hot tub with Heather’s friend and Heather. We eat, we watch the Giants get demolished, it was worse than “Cats.”

MONDAY.

From the Amtrak train I can see the ocean stretched out before me; the hills are alive with subdevelopments. And the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in Orange County of the State of California in the United States of America of the Northern Section of the American Continents on the 3 Planet Sol stadium is a few hundred yards from the Anaheim station.

The graffiti along the Los Angeles “River” leaves a little to be desired; haphazard and limp works next to respectable tags. I think there should be a City Commissioner of Tags who has authority to erase wack tags and arrest wack taggers. That of course would just end in a gang war… but it’s an idea, right? Right?

We hang out, walk around, have a bit too much sake and then eat at Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles. The biscuits were bangin’ and when we go back in May it’s all about a bake and a trip back to Roscoe’s. After dinner drinks at the Cat and the Fiddle to get the blood back in our limbs.

TUESDAY.

That was the biggest pastrami sandwich I’ve had since Katz’s. My grease/ cholesterol level is doubling as we speak. I take pictures of architecture for Niffer. I just found out that if I accidentally shift my finger one over in the middle of Niffer I come up with a word I don’t use much. Yes, it’s nidder. I think we sleep a lot. Order in dinner. Watch episodes of Firefly. Read. Watched Law and Order.

WEDNESDAY.

Big Wednesday… until I call my aunt when she’s 20 minutes late for breakfast and she tells me she’s looking around for my number to say she can’t come.

So we go to Santa Monica, the farmer’s market. Ate peaches. Walked to the long sand of Santa Monica’s beaches. Met his fellow grad Andy, a very smart guy who also loves his sports. Just like the rest of the week, we talk about the Red Sox’ prospects. Andy’s got a Silver-weak tummy so Joel and I go to Fatburger by ourselves. Mmm, fatburger.



And Wednesday is the big day I wasn’t telling Dora about… b/c Joel called his boy Josh and hooked us up with a tour of the OC Set. Top that, y’all. Henceforth—and he’d already held down this title—Joel is known as World’s Best Host. WBH Joel? He’s Seth Cohen’s alterego. My cell phone rings during the taping of a Sandy + Kiri scene. I feel like a tool but I have a mocking picture, suggested by Mitchell, our gracious tour guide.

And karaoke… Uh, picture explains it all. That’s me singing Bon Jovi’s Born to Be My Baby.




THURSDAY.

Irvine. It’s a long way down, baby. A long way. We rest at Joel’s pad, there are blueberries and raspberries and Special K and laziness and then… we drive and drive. Apparently Ross Perot bought a road and put a toll entrance on it. Does this officially make him a troll? Atusa’s house is beautiful and automated and our time there is chill. Her mother tries to make us fat. Joel and I are still svelte so it’s all good.

FRIDAY.

We eat breakfast by Wilshire, I think. The food was good but I was like… wait. We’re eating by a road that’s like Queens Blvd. LA ambiance, I guess. I should have taken a pic.

See Aunt Ivel, who is weak and arthritic and it hurts to see her like that. Almost makes me cry. Definitely makes me frustrated… at what? I don’t know.

I go to see Erin who I used to date in college. She’s still a funny kid, strong willed and with much longer hair, living with her boyfriend and his son. We go up Redondo Beach, we go up Hermosa Beach, we have the best damn mushroom burger I’ve had in my life.

I meet Dani later that evening and we see some solid ass rock bands, meet with Pavel and friends, go to a grimy dive bar that beats NYC bars hands down in street cred. People, we have GOT to filth our spots up if we’re gonna be the nation’s coolest city.

SATURDAY.

Sleeping at Dani’s, wake up for college football! We have yet another good ass breakfast and I go and meet my Aunt Faye. Her friend Thomas is great, we talk football and keep my Aunt mellow. We end up in the valley, conveniently near Pavel.

Pavel’s roommate is a cool kid. Ladies, you want him. Trust me. I’ll being him back east. Pavel and I roll towards Playa Del Rey and stop at Venice Beach for a couple of drinks and by far the worst pool game I have played in a lifetime of bad pool games.

We relocate and I egg him on about calling his ex, Michelle. Here are some things about Michelle: I met her 8 years ago, senior year spring break in LA. She was great, even if her fat friend tried to open-mouth kiss me after I helped her puke. Lovely. I can still smell it. God, I need a moment.


Michelle actually… comes down! Holy spitcan! And that honestly is the perfect cherry on top of the trip. She’s still a sweetheart and gives Pavel shit. It’s misty and we’re on our way to the airport, trying to take pictures through the dark and the fog, and this is what vacations should be. Old friends getting together and notwanting to say goodbye.


the photo set, enjoy!!
But... Is Lauryn Hill Still Crazy? 10.7.05

A couple of days ago those hip kids in the know, Rinda and Lana-P aka Lanky P, forwarded me info for an event called “TakebackTV,” held by Current TV. We had no idea what this was about but De La Soul, Slum Village, and Fishbone were playing, with a Lauryn Hill appearance.

Now, all the cool kids will say the same things—De La is awesome! Slum Village is cool! Say, I like Fishbone!

Is Lauryn Hill still *-cue Chris Rock voice-* crrrrrazy?

Well.

An aside before the show. When Andy and I decided to leave work we also decided to take the bus. Dora, being much smarter than us, just took the train. We, having heard the terror alert and having dismissed said terror alert, didn’t think that many New Yorkers would panic and ride the bus.

Uptown.

Jam-packed and slow. One older woman asked Andy what it was like to be six foot three, relating a tale about her relative who had it hard because he was so big.

The show itself, held at Summerstage under ominous clouds and occasional mist was an advertisement for Current TV, which is supposedly on our cable channels. One of its founders, Al Gore, came out and he didn’t even claim he invented television. Scarlett Johanssen introduced him. Or so they say. I saw a bony blonde and I didn’t know it was her. Their official black man emceed the show, giving it immediate street cred. Lots of videos, lots of encouragement to send in content.

We were on the bleachers, myself, Andy, Dora, Rinda. I took bad pictures, we listened to some guy in a painfully high and nasal voice. And De La was tight, playing a version of Buddy and ending with Stakes is High and Ring Ring Ring. Fishbone was fun, there were some godawful acts. Shevi was enjoying VIP treatment and finally got to meet Dora.

And Lauryn, you ask? Well, Ms. Rohan Marley- who I thought was a minor Marley but was apparently a football star the University of Miami, at the time Dwayne Johnson aka the Rock was there- She was motivated to play a song for us. And did two or three! A version of Lost One (is that the name of the song?) over the riddim used for “What a Bam Bam” (which I will ask Sharma about in the AM).

But now we can’t talk about how crazy her ass is. Instead we will focus on the mushroom that her ‘fro has become. Yes. It's a blurry photo but that’s her HAIR.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Some Presidentinal Words on the Racial Divide

This is a copy of the article taken from the EURWeb
.

BUSH ADDRESSES COUNTRY’S RACIAL DIVIDE: During Tuesday press conference, President asked how he would bridge gap post Katrina and Bill Bennett.

*Yesterday, President Bush held a press conference in the Rose Garden of the White House to underscore his support for new Supreme Court Justice nominee Harriet Miers and to ask Congress to please have her confirmed by Thanksgiving.

But midway through the following Q&A session – which covered everything from the budget, to Hurricane Katrina, to the war in Iraq – American Urban Radio Networks White House correspondent April Ryan stood up and said this:

“Mr. President, the Bible speaks of ‘good will toward the least of these.’ With that, how are you going to bridge the divide of poverty and race in this country, beyond economics and home ownership; that, after Hurricane Katrina and also the Bill Bennett statements? And also, how can the Republican Party gain the black vote in 2008 after these public relations fiascos?”

Bush uttered an overwhelmed “mmmph” before taking a long breath to explain the virtues of economics and home ownership in bridging the racial gap – either ignoring or forgetting Ryan’s request that he come up with solutions beyond those two areas.

He began by stressing the encouragement of “economic growth, vitality, jobs that pay well and small business” in conquering the divide. He said: “It’s a part of how we enable people to realize dreams, by having a growing economy.”

In his praise of ownership, he said: “I think it’s essential that people own something if they’re going to have a stake in the future of our country. I think part of the divide occurs because some people own a home and others don’t.”

He then tossed in education as a means to narrow the gap, using the opportunity to plug his No Child Left Behind Act, “which challenges what I’ve called the soft bigotry of low expectations” and is “beginning to make good results,” he said.

He next touted the importance of faith-based programs “to interface with people” and “help them to have hope.”

“And obviously the tone matters from leadership,” he summed up. “It matters what leaders say. It matters that somebody, first of all, understands there’s a problem and is willing to talk about it. And I will continue to do so as the President.”

He was about to take another question when Ryan reminded him to answer the question of earning black votes in 2008.

“My head’s not there yet. I’m right here in 2005,” he said, cracking a wide grin. When Ryan pressed further to get an answer, Bush said: “You just gotta keep asking for the vote.”

“First of all, the Republican Party should never take a vote for granted, and neither should the Democrat party,” he said. “Therefore, that means you gotta go out and work hard for the vote, and talk about what you believe. I try to do so, with not a lot of success. I’ve improved, but I was disappointed, frankly, in the vote I got in the African American community. I was. I’ve done my best to elevate people into positions of authority and responsibility; and not just positions, but positions in which they can actually make a difference in the lives of people. I put people in my cabinet. I put people in my sub-cabinet, I’ve elevated people from all walks of life, because I believe there’s a responsibility for the President to reach out. So it’s not a matter of tone, it’s also a matter of action.”

His grin came back as he shrugged, tapped the podium and said: “I just gotta keep workin’ at it, April.”