Queen Mediocretia of Suburbia

It's the Bass, Baby

Baby.

It's me, baby.

I'm the Bass with No Name.

Yeah, Baby.

I kept that girl going all night long. Her husband went to bed and we kept at it. She three-fingered me until I could eventually recognize "Bird on a Wire."

You don't use your thumb in that song. It's a good song for beginners.

And that's a good thing, because I'm a beginner bass.

That's a photo of me on the left. Not a good photo, because I actually have another set of pickups. I can swing both ways: active and passive. She's not ready for that yet.

She's comfortable with me, because my family name is S_____, just like her husband. And I'm easy. Look at me with my four thick strings and giant frets.

She's thinking of moving her guitars into another room so they don't watch her accusingly when she puts me in her lap.

I Ache In The Places Where I Used To Play. Still.

I was self-diagnosing on the internet when I came across the graphic below.

Does this graphic look right to you?

 

Uh, it seems to me it is not drawn to scale. Or else it is accurate and Gary is really well endowed and has stretched me entirely out of shape. Because my parts are not in those proportions.

There more I look at this the worse I feel. I have an enormous vagina! I have a bad body image now. 

If that's to scale I've been getting it directly in the ovaries. Right up past the tubes, frankly. No wonder I have an ice pack in my lap right now.

Intimacy

I had planned to get my tags renewed today. I had planned to get my Celexa refilled today. I did not plan to have a McAngus Burger barrel through my lower GI tract as I drove home. Yet, that is what happened, and I am proud to say I made it. I planned well in advance and unzipped my pants as I entered the subdivision. I parked in the middle of the garage, shut the garage door while in the car so I wouldn't have to pause at the back door, and at the bathroom door in an Olympian gymnastics move pulled down my pants, entered the bathroom heading west, twisted my body while flying through the air to land on the commode pointing south.

The dog stuck his head in the door and warbled. The door, I confess, was ajar. So I let the dog in and pushed the door shut, but not till it latched. The dog loved it. He never goes in the bathroom with us.

"Yay Mac!" I cheered. "Party in the bathroom!"

"Rowwrrorowr!" Mac warbled.

The McAngus took the scenic route, but it couldn't have been more than ten minutes before the dog wanted out of the bathroom.

"Hey. You smell too," I grumbled. He started barking at the closed but unlatched door. "Well, you can nudge it open."

Gary, right outside the door, asked, "Ellen?"

"AUUUGHHH!" I roared and hurled myself at the door, while still keeping my rear on the commode, so essentially I just doubled over and flung my arms out to the side. Gary was home! Gary never comes home at 5:30! Ever! I WOULD HAVE LATCHED THE DOOOOOOOORR!

Gary promised to let the dog out without peeking in. I will never let my guard down again. (I will also never eat a McAngus again. If the cops pull me over tomorrow for having expired plates I'm writing a letter to McDonald's insisting they pay my fine.)

In Which I Am Trodden Down By The Man!

Today the Man is the Missouri Department of Motor Vehicles. I don't know the Man's scam in other states, but Missourians have to get plastic stamps to stick on our license plates every year.

Back in the day (1980) I would pull my Mustang with its gutted seatbelts into the gas station; the mechanics would glance at it; I'd take my inspection and 15 bucks to the DMV. Nowadays, the Man has more requirements for me: proof of insurance, proof I paid my property tax, a VALID safety inspection (bastards!), a personal check, and they keep threatening I'll need my passport soon.

A few years back they added the bullshit emissions test, available only at these special single-purpose emissions testing stations. Sometimes I'd luck out and they'd send my a form that said I'd driven past one of their magic vans and I'd been tested SURREPTITIOUSLY FROM THE BEHIND and I had passed. Passed emissions. Whatever.

The last day of last month I went, looked around, and announced to the line, "I believe I will gladly pay the $25 fine not to wait here." Then I realized I didn't have my emissions test anyway, so I went driving off to FIND one of THE SPECIAL emissions TESTING STATIONS since I hadn't been VISITED by the emissions fairy in the magic van. I went right to where it had been always and it was not there.

BECAUSE THE MAN got rid of the special station, and the magic van, for God knows why, and did not tell me. Perhaps the Fox 4 News Team told me, but I was not listening to them, and I suppose this is a situation beneath Wolf Biltzer's attention. Anyway, I am highly annoyed at the Man. He makes me submit to unreasonable requests and then he jacks with me.

I could have driven everywhere looking to cut in front of a magic fairy emissions van.

I know I should be happy, but I am annoyed. The Man is a turdbunny.

Sunday Miscellany

I. Both days this weekend met my yardwork criteria: they were overcast and approximately 80, so I allowed myself to go outside. I see now the criteria should be expanded to require the weather be overcast, 80 or less, AND have some actual oxygen molecules in the air that are not bound to hydrogen to make humidity. At any rate, both days I was out doing yardwork, and Mom-in-my-Head was pleased.

II. Both days this weekend were capped off with delightful movies, both starring Frances MacDormand. First, she was in Burn After Reading, looking like this:

Then the next night she was in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, as a completely different human being.

 

(The very best part of Burn After Reading was the CIA superior: J.K. Simmons.

 )

III. Generalissimo Michael Jackson is still dead.

 

I cannot wait for Tuesday, when Michael Jackson is buried and the news channels are once again dedicated to covering the news.

A Time to Sow, a Time to Reap

I remember 20 years ago, planting the landscaping around the house, searching for ground covers that would fill in the blank spots, waiting through "the first year they sleep, the next year they creep, the third year they leap."

That rhyme doesn't continue on, but the verse 20 should be "the year they become invincible even though you spray them randomly with woody weed killer and mow them down with the hedge trimmer because they won't just stay in one spot already and stop trying to come into my house, you bastards."

I Hope I Get Three Secrets Too

This coming week it will have been one month since the last holy visitation by our Lady of the Labia and her miraculous stigmata of the Cooter. Will my crotch weep tears of blood every four weeks?

It is a little like Mary appearing every month to the children at Fatima. We shall see. Given the state of all my other symptoms I appear to be replaying history.

A Poem for the Last Late Six

natural causes /

trashed a closet -

strangled and dangled while masturbating /

found in bed not respirating /

crappy anus / heinous heart /

Died in penury of an old neck injury and the next set of three can start

I didn't even ask for the flower this time.

I glanced down and there was a flower! Woman said you come in with a design they do it automatically. It's a cycle. She would have gone multi colored but I stopped her.

Hung. A Review.

We were on the couch, elbows touching (touching touching as they now always always must be), watching the pilot of Hung.

Kenny Bania from Seinfeld.When you watch the pilot, and you sit around for five minutes with the TiVo paused trying to remember who is playing the guy giving the entrepreneurship seminar: it's Bania. (Ovaltene. Soup <> Dinner.) You are welcome. Oh, and she's Fraiser's brother's second wife, but that was easy.

I Learn About Coaching. In an early scene, the lead, who plays a high school coach, uses profanity in front of his team. "Oh, he's going to be fired," I second-guessed, always a good test of a new show.

"Are you serious?" Gary looked appalled. "He's a coach."

Come to find out, it's coaches, not artists, who live by different rules. Even back in the day ('70-74) Gary's high school coaches cursed routinely at the team. I never played a sport (or even finished the rope climb) so I didn't know. Does the free cursing pass apply to girl teams as well?

The Ick Factor. There were a few scenes with the lead determinedly hammering on the female lead and she screams "You are sooo big!" To be honest, my Kegels clenched right up. Not just because of their delicate state (what with the WEEPING OF THE BLOOD) but also because they got a scare Saturday. A friend's 19 year old daughter has a new job selling knives, and she came by and practiced her demonstration. At one point she was talking about the warranty and what it covers. She said, "Sometime we can abuse knives, use them as a lover, for example."

My head snapped right up. I began to say, "What?" just as Gary screamed:

"A LOVER? SOME PEOPLE USE THEIR KNIVES AS LOVERS? THAT'S DANGEROUS!"

The 19 year old said, horrified, "Lover? No, I said LOVER. Lover!"

Gary was on the verge of cautioning her to not use the pointy end, when she clarified:

"You know! A lover! You put one end under something you want to pry up!"

Ahhhhh. A Leeeeeeeeeeeever. We taught her how to pronounce lever and then we bought an arsenal of knives from her.

So. Hung. Yeah, I'll see it again.

Artist Rules

Once, an actress friend and I were chatting about some criminal thing one of her acting friends had done, she let me know that "artists live by different rules."

Another time I was on the train from Stratford-on-Avon to London and the theater critic for "What's On" explained to me the reason actors so often cheat on their spouses is because they have a greater need for attention and love than the average person.

In that same vein, I am reminded recently if society says, "Uh, what are you doing having those sleepovers with little boys?" or "Sure there's no law against sleeping in a hypobaric chamber," or "I'm sure if you hide your children behind veils no one will ever notice they aren't bi-racial" - if you are an artist it's kind of expected.

Sometimes it bothers me and sometimes it doesn't.

On the one hand, I agree there are no rules for art. I was in a closet alone with a nude man for the sake of art in figure drawing class. If you are composing a song about love and one line ends with "muck" then what else are you going to do? No restraints on art, no censorship, I'm all for that.

But artists? Somewhere the artist has to draw within the lines. I'm generous, I didn't mind when MJ dangled his baby off the balcony. (Don't babies die if they fall from your arms anyway?) Now, sleeping with boys, maybe not a crime but against the rules, surely. Borrowing 7 million from your friend the Prince of Bahrain? The rules say you have to pay it back.

Dying at fifty from prescription drugs? I have to say I'm with Deepak Chopra on this. Don't ask Deepak Chopra for an Oxycontin script, Michael Jackson. That's right out. And I know somewhere in all this was a hanger-on cooing, "Oh, you're an artist, you don't live by the rules." Maybe the rules are there to protect dangled babies, trusting tweenboys, and Bahrainian princes who worked hard for that 7 million dollars.

And if those are society's rules, what happens in artist communities? Are there no rules? Taos and Sausalito are the only artist's communities I've heard of.  Is it all free love out there? Do people toss babies from rooftop to rooftop? What about money and parking and sleeping with children? I want to know Sausalito Dots, Taos Dots, people everywhere, do artists have to follow rules?

Tapas des Deux

I seem to be slowly piecing together my perfect weekend out of all the weekends this month. The Scooba cleaned the floors this morning, there will be a thunderstorm here in about ten minutes, and there was some Breaking News (even though someone did die). And and now I've had a ridiculously good dinner at an unusual place.

Anyway, Friday we were heading for Casa Gallardo at Westport when we saw a "Fusion Tapas / Vodka Bar" named IceKitchen (the K is backwards). We plunked our plump little selves down in a booth and begged the waitresses patience. I haven't had very much in the way of tapas, but I've had dim sum more than once.

More important, I haven't had fusion food ever, as far as I can tell, because even though the vodka ice bar was made for the rangy West County females, fusion tapas was made for me. ME the middle-aged woman who eats anything now as long as I haven't tasted it before.

A warning - damn - we have never spent that much money at a restaurant, ever. This might be because I had a Dreamsicle martini and Gary had so much Sangria I had to drive him home. (That would be 1.5 Sangrias.) In addition, we had a mad amount of tapas.

We started with three things from the light tapas menu.

 

First, a "flight" of soups. On the left: elephant garlic, on the right: corn chowder, in the middle: tortilla soup that Gary picked up and DOWNED LIKE A SHOT. To be fair, this was after I placed dibs on the corn chowder. The chowder had corn and leeks and sweet potatoes and was full of things I've never had with corn.

Then, since Gary had started the evening demanding asparagus, we had Asparagus Prosciutto salad:

 

Okay, these are the ingredients I'm sure of: asparagus and prosciutto and fried quail egg. Then there was some vegetation and other materials (yellow stuff, green stuff). I don't know, but it was great.

Then we added flatbread.

Okay, that's a very thin crusty / chewy flatbread, with broccoli and flank steak, carrots, and then - rice noodles on top! I am putting rice noodles on top of everything I make in the future. It'll be like the time Mom served chicken breast with Campbells Cream of Mushroom topped with Pepperidge Farm Herb Dressing paired with green beans topped with Pepperidge Farm Herb Dressing. I was ready for anything next.

I stopped taking photos and we just charged into all the rest of the food. (Speaking of charged - yes, I think we were only at 15 bucks apiece. Except for the drinks.)

The next plates we moved from the light tapas menu into the signature tapas menu. The portions were the size of entrees elsewhere. For example, next we had bison fillet with Guinness (?) and honey (?) and lobster and quinona. And maybe, I don't know, strawberries. Hell. Could have been.

Now, Gary ordered this one: Pig Belly with flash-fried cabbage and potato cakes annnnddddd ...... buttermilk tuna puree? Something weird. Gary nibbled a bit on the pig belly.

"Tastes kind of fatty."

He carved off a minuscule sliver of Edge du Pig Belly and claimed the edge was crispier. Then he ate the cabbage and I ate the potato cakes and we apologized to the waitress, because six perfectly good slices of pig fat went untouched.

We finished up with dessert, because Gary claimed he was drunk on pig belly. (There is an actual disorder called pig belly. I think it's a reaction starving people have to protein.) So we had the chocolate banana carmel strawberry crepes, and those were good but I'm sorry, I've tasted those flavors before. Now, a chocolate pig belly asparagus sorbet, that would have been tasty.

Finally, we had something Gary called "Bread pudding wrapped in Phyllo dough," and that's precisely what it was, and it was wonderful.

AND it's open for lunch. When I go back for lunch, I'm having the soup flight and the purple peruvian twice baked potatoes. The Signature Tapas menu is replaced by sandwiches for lunch, so I can't imagine if they are conventional sandwiches or leftover pig belly and peanut butter on challah bread.

I'm all over this fusion food movement now, which is appropriate because it hit the coasts ten years ago, and that's when coastal fashions get to the Midwest. (I understand you'll be sending us incest soon.)

Ridiculously good meal. It made up for us celebrating our 24th anniversary at Cracker Barrel. Then again, every plate was approx 15 dollars.

P.S. Incidentally, if you want another take on the same place look at .75's entry: http://michelleamarcus.blogspot.com/2009/05/icekitchen-at-westport.html