Evelyn Evelyn (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)

Jason Webley and Amanda Palmer performed as a pair of shy, conjoined twin sisters in Seattle Wednesday night. I STILL have not managed to scrape my jaw off of the floor. It's been two days now. Everything still feels magical.


The show was ethereal, surreal, funny, mournful, perfect. Evelyn Evelyn started with a song about uncertainty and social suffocation that created the same dark blue, sad, expansive sensation in my lungs and liver as Gary Jules's cover of Mad World. It is quite possibly what outer space feels like. But the show didn't stop with sadness. It also floated through horror, tragicomedy, Oingo Boingo-style circus chaos, American Gothic, ragtime vaudeville and lighthearted, deadpan word games a la a two-headed, effeminate Johnny Carson. There was a shadow puppet show about the girls' excessively tragic birth story. There was an upbeat song about a two-headed elephant. The girls played two popular cover songs, too. Essentially, it was a perfect show for someone with my taste in entertainment.

I want to see them again. Evelyn Evelyn feels Hedwig important.

Oh, right. And everybody was very good at singing and playing instruments and the songs were very good songs. Sharing an accordion in that "each person gets only one arm" fashion must be difficult, but they made it seem as natural as typing or driving.

Their opening act AND sideshow manager/handler Sxip Shirley was perfect too. His high-low tech hip hop approach to the one man band reminded my friends and I of Reggie Watts, who I am still infatuated with after seeing him open for Devo last year. Most satisfactory!

After the Evelyn Evelyn show, Jason Webley played a short--but AWESOME!!!--set, full of audience participation and pirate-like energy before performing a duet with Amanda Palmer (in fancy underwear) who took over the stage for the rest of the evening. I had a wicked, stabby-hot-throat head cold situation AND work in the morning, so I opted to leave after the third song into Amanda Palmer's set even though I very much wanted to stay and stay and stay.

The last song I saw was a mash-up of a cheeky song of hers about an abortion and Happy Birthday sung to a specific audience member. It was a good note to end a very good night upon.

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It's worth mentioning that my lifelong friends Erik and Brian saw Jason Webley as a humble, kinetic one man band on the sidewalk at Bumbershoot about ten years ago, when we were teenagers. They were so impressed that they bought CDs for everyone in our social group, even those of us who couldn't make it to Bumbershoot. I still have that CD. Jason Webley is an enthusiastically loved cult hero out here in Washington, in addition to being a new drag performer alongside the soon-to-be-Mrs.-Neil-Gaiman.

I need to see more of his local shows.

The B-52s

Songs almost as old as I am make me want to dance.

"I'll give you fish! I'll give you candy! I'll give you... Everything I have in my hand!"





I could keep reposting songs forever, but you get what I mean.

District 9, mostly for the same reason that I adore Burn After Reading

I originally wrote the following short review as a comment after an Onion article while on my lunch break today, but have decided to post it a second time as a blog entry. Those with sensitive eyes should be cautious, because I swear here about as much as a mid-1990s PG-rated movie. Yes, I really did just post that warning. I'm also going to include another warning: I hope I remembered the movie correctly, but I'm not sure that I did. It's been more than a few months. There. I admit it. It's done.
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Here are my two cents. To me, District 9 and Burn After Reading delivered the same punchline in two very different ways: Human nature just sucks, sometimes.

There were no angelic, doe-eyed, supernaturally sweet victims of injustice. No heart-of-gold chosen ones to avenge and protect them. Absolutely every character in the whole movie was an asshole. Like Burn After Reading before it, District 9 was like an open-faced sandwich of universal, human character flaws--the refreshing opposite of a James Cameron movie.

To include some spoilers:

The human protagonist in the "chosen one" role remained treacherous, prejudiced and jaw-droppingly selfish throughout the movie, even when he did morally OK things.

Most of the aliens stranded on Earth acted exactly as listless and bitchy as I would if I was in that malnourished, PTSD, captive sort of state.

Violence-based human power structures on either side of the South African racial divide (whether mafia or military) were equally willing to dissect a human being to gain better weapons. It was totally classic "I want a bigger gun" human nature, shown to be independent of race.

But my absolute favorite "human nature is only human" moment was at the very end of the film. The gifted, brave engineer from outer space and his plucky, genius child finally manage to get the spaceship working... And they abandon ALL of the remaining refugees and use it to run away as fast as they can!

Not so much as a message of hope, a familiar alien song or a promise of return is broadcast. No nearby friends or strangers are offered a lift. The father and son duo just steal the ship and run.

I love this movie.

When Rolling Stones Songs are Used Well in Movies

After all of that career introspection, I figure it's about time to post a blog entry that's mostly YouTube clips from popular culture.  

Beware, the clips include some creative foul language and a TINY bit of gore, so they're not for kids or for people who dislike that sort of thing.

There are also some spoilers because I'm showing scenes taken from around the end of two of my favorite movies. If you haven't seen The Royal Tenenbaums or Full Metal Jacket and you loathe spoilers, please skip to something else.

OK. With that business out of the way, it's time for some YouTube videos.

For some reason, the way the end credits kick in at the end of Full Metal Jacket is one of my favorite things, ever:



Along similar lines, I like how the Rolling Stones' She Smiled Sweetly helps bouy this tragicomic love scene between adopted siblings:




If I'm ever on trial for a terrible crime that I am actually guilty of, I would like to have a good, older Rolling Stones song played subliminally during the closing statement. I think it might do the trick. Nothing says "please forgive these horrible people, for they are no less human than you" quite like a Rolling Stones song playing in the background.

These two scenes legitimately popped into my head on the commute home and I decided to blog the thought before I forgot about it. Although Goodfellas is my favorite mafia movie, I forgot that the song Gimme Shelter was in it. I had to look that up on Google. When I think about the music in that movie, all I remember is the end of Clapton's Layla wrapping the story up. That long sequence is to chilling for me to link to, even though I love it, because I am a sentimental person who gets easily attached to movie characters.

But you should watch that whole movie if you are so inclined.

An Afterthought About Math! (Jurassic Park)

I can't believe I forgot to mention this in my last blog post!!!

I actually tried to read Michio Kaku's Hyperspace in 7th grade. I didn't get as far as I would have liked, mostly because I had a 7th grade education at the time and the patience of a lazy 12-year-old.

Still, my 7th grade year was spent dreaming of a career as an experimental mathematician of some kind ...And not just because it guarantees a future spent being attacked by dinosaurs and getting shipped to posh, tropical vacation spots. Although I did think about that quite a lot. Like, a LOT. I'd read Jurassic Park something like five times by the end of 6th grade, which helped me learn how to use swear words like Michael Crichton. (Which is to say, awkwardly.)

If I actually become an experimental mathematician of some kind later on, my inner child is going to do a happy dance.

(Bonus points for dressing like Jemaine from Flight of the Conchords, which I will probably still not do.)

<---------- Totally going to do this in real life.

<---------- Just going to watch this one on TV, thanks. It looks like they've got it under control already.

Math! And Writing, to a Lesser Extent. (Exploring Flow, Part 1)

I adore math!!! For the last few months I had pondered one possible future as an event planner. This week I'm giving serious rumination to the idea of going back to school to become a statistician.

I am a nerd. I have nerdy appetites. Two nights ago I got to take a little taste of my husband's physics homework. It was delicious. I did well.

When I focus on moving numbers around on a piece of paper the world simplifies, my little inner demons shut up and the scattered gears floating around in my brain suddenly click into place. There is minimal rote memorization (!!!) but I still get to chew my way through ideas as large as my mind can handle. It's satisfying.

I love writing for most of the same reasons, but math trumps writing by a tiny little bit because all numbers are fit for public consumption.

Writing well for a public audience requires cultural savvy and delicate self-censorship. I can enjoy this process too, but it's stressful. My country is at war. American culture is full of cruelty. The internet is a strange place. American newspapers are falling apart. What's left of the publishing industry is fickle. My political opinions are quite political, occasionally experimental and often controversial. I do plan to churn out a few novels eventually and I am writing right now, but unless Marvel scoops me up Prince Charming-style and pays me to breathe new life into sagging franchises (a girl can dream...) I think writing is more likely to be a side dish than a main course.

I do believe that the Master of Science in Experimental Psychology that I'd been groomed for as an undergrad student would qualify me for work as a statistician. It would also provide me with the increasingly rare opportunity to perform at least two more years of experimental human-subject behavioral research, which is about as fun as eating candy.

I think I'd want to take additional, elective math courses if I enrolled in that program. Maybe minor in math or complete a statistics-related post-graduate certificate.

I wonder what companies would hire me with a stats-heavy MS in Experimental Psychology? I would love to work in the video game industry or for the right market research firm or quite possibly in public health research. I need to think about this some more.

Dating Different Career Concepts After-Hours

I am a receptionist right now. It's a nice job because it pays the rent and bills AND I'm actually permitted to mess about on the internet a little (like this), as long as my work gets done. I intend to be a receptionist for the next two years, if not slightly longer. I am extremely grateful to have this job.

However, being a receptionist is not a good long-term career for me. It's a bit lonely, it doesn't pay enough to support my filmmaking, reproductive or travel ambitions and, internet messing-about aside, it can get pretty boring. Therefore, I'm spending these "working a day job to put my husband through school" years trying to figure out what actual career would suit me best.

To shoplift a term from psychological theory, I want to figure out what career path will provide me with the most flow. To figure this out, I will need to seek out new life experiences and engage in honest self-reflection. I have decided to use this blog to express adoration for things that appeal to me while I undergo this process.

Coming soon... A blog about math. Do I want to be a mathematician now? A statistician, perhaps? Maybe I do. Maybe I really, really do.

Jawesome! A New Shark Shirt is Serious Business

Yes, I know the pictures are backwards. I used a mirror to photograph myself. But who cares! That shark is JUMPING!!!

I also know that gingers lack proper eyebrows, but there's not much that I can do about it right now. Trust me, if I tried to draw them on it would look atrocious. (I lack steady hands.)

Positive Review for Neptune Music Co.

I originally posted this in Google Maps. I know it's a little lazy to put the same piece of writing up in two different spots on the internet, but I'm doing it anyway. So there.

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I had a magical, weird little experience shopping there this weekend. I likely didn't see the same clerk that the negative review below was stuck with, and I'm grateful for this.

 

The shop was informally stacked to the ceiling with CDs, records and movies. I had to tiptoe my way through the paths to search the inventory properly. This layout certainly isn't for everyone, but I felt like I'd stepped into an attic in a Michel Gondry video. It could easily have been a scene out of "Science of Sleep."

 

I told the clerk initially that I wanted to see if they had any music recorded by Robert Crumb. Although they did have something(!), what they had my husband already owns. This started a conversation about ragtime and more generally of quirky jazz overall which led me to a listening session that triggered an impulse purchase of a Slim Gaillard album, because the song "Serenade to a Poodle" made me giggle.

 

I will DEFINITELY return and I hope I'm able to work with the same clerk again!

books. Like, a little TOO much.

This was (yes, I know) originally written as a quick response to... the Sears (yes, really) Facebook group asking readers what books they recommend, in order to draw attention to a sale on books that's going on.

It's worth saying that I have kind of a "writing problem," the way other folks might have a "gambling problem." It's gotten especially out of hand now that I'm out of school and don't have any proper homework to keep my typing hands occupied.

Therefore, instead of making the socially appropriate response of listing one book and a quick, one-to-two sentence endorsement of it, I wrote and posted the following.

(Yes, I really, really did. I'm even fidgeting right now, at this exact moment in order to quell the urge to edit and re-edit and edit this some more. I used the word "stun" twice, and want to remove the first one and I want to replace the word "writer" with "author" in some spots. It's worse than cigarettes. I need to just get out of here before I waste the rest of my free time tonight.)

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I just finished "The Book Thief" by Markus Zusak this weekend. It should be required reading for everyone over the age of 15. (Younger tweens too at their parents' discretion? My sister-in-law read it at about age 13, I think, before insisting I read it too.)

I can read and re-read Sarah Vowell's "Assassination Vacation" forever. Everyone I've loaned or given a copy to so far has loved it just as much as I do, and tend to just accumulate Sarah Vowell books once they've been introduced to her. This one's my favorite.

For the college-age audience and above, "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides is AMAZING. One friend and my husband both insisted I read it after it was assigned to them in college English classes, and they were totally right to do so.

Neil Gaiman's "American Gods" was really good and its sequel "Anansi Boys" was maybe even better. My husband and I listened to "Anansi Boys" as a book on tape for our road trip honeymoon last year and even the acting was stunning. Gaiman's "Graveyard Book" is sort of like "The Jungle Book" and is a very good all-ages novel. Someday I will read it to my kids, once I have kids.

For people who are old enough for rated R movies and who happen to like this sort of thing, Max Brooks's "World War Z: The Oral History of the Zombie War" is the best, best, best zombie book ever written. Skip all the others and just get this one.

I think it's worth noting that the author is the son of Mel Brooks, who must be a good father because I love how his kid turned out. Being raised by a witty writer seems like a good way to develop a gift for language, too.

Max Brooks is a celebrity writer in his own right, and was able to draw a HUGE crowd at my university for his zombie survival lecture/book talk, after the campus zombie survival club begged him to come and speak. We were early in the autograph line, waited for about an hour, and he was still completely gracious, friendly and made small talk like he was one of us. He made time for every single fan in that line. I'm still impressed.

Also, anything by Sherman Alexie is good, although some of his stuff is... sophisticated. Like, complicated. Adult themes and the like. Often writes about clever, dorky underdogs and nerds, usually those living in poverty on reservations like where he grew up. He can pull any reaction out of the reader, but tends to either stun me stupid or make me laugh like he's a best friend. Sometimes he's the special guest writer for the local hip weekly paper out here in Seattle, too. He deserves every award he's won.