K I T S C H — Cate's Blog

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Supernatural

What have I been up to lately? Really not that much. I work a lot. I killed a couple of Armageddon-type shows over at TWoP back in the spring. I quit drinking. Well, mostly. These days I'm tipsy after one drink and totally trashed by three or four. That part's cool, but I'd kind of forgotten what hangovers are like, and Saturday morning I just wanted to die. Being a boozehound is hard work!

So, we were planning to check out a street sale in my friend Dan's neighborhood. Dan has impeccable taste in trash cult and owns more cool stuff than anyone else I know. He also feeds my addictions to '60s erotica with bad production values and ridiculous cookbooks in which the author wants you to cook with dealcoholized Merlot (ew!) or serve your friends a big helping of pan-fried brains and then smile and not say anything when they ask what they're eating. (Wait! Come back! What do you mean, never speak to you again? You haven't even tried the turducken or the Iceberg Ring yet!)

Well, now I know that Dan is also the best host ever. We got to his place, and he wasted no time ministering to my hangover with Mr. Mouth's Miracle Hangover Remedy. It worked remarkably well, and fortunately I made it down the wacky funhouse staircase without doing a face plant or stepping on Van Gogh, the one-eared cat.

We lucked out right away at the first sale, where I found this killer book on body language. Except mine is from 1971 so the cover's super-dated and awesome. Now I know that European men cross their legs differently than North American men. Thanks, book. And I do mean that with all sincerity. This is just the sort of utterly useless information I find most fascinating.

Because it was at least 120 degrees Celsius outside, I wasn't in a real buying mood so I mostly looked over Dan's shoulder while he went through all the record bins. I saw a lovely album called Valley of the Dolls "Featuring The Young Lovers." Evidently, they're some lounge act from the late '60s. I wanted it for the cheesy cover art of the trying-to-be-tasteful half-clad couple juxtaposed with a closeup of a big whack of pills, but I ended up enjoying the music anyway. I had to turn it off, though, when the bunny started becoming progressively more agitated. I don't know if this album has anything at all to do with the movie version of the finest book ever written, but I'm guessing no.

Next we took a trip to the best Goodwill in, well, anywhere. Peeter found a couple of disco Christmas albums; Dan found some more records, including a few with covers of semi-naked women for his bathroom wall collection; and I almost bought a bridesmaid's dress that Peeter found for me, but I changed my mind at the last minute, on account of the fact that this dress was held up by two teal bath sponges and ornamented with a nasty, glittery fake flower in the cleavage area. When I managed to hold it up in front of me with a straight face to ask Dan's opinion, I believe that for a split second I could actually see him thinking, Must humor the crazy girl. It would be mean to laugh at the crazy girl.

Dan invited us back for beers and some more of the Reverend Mouth's Hangover Miwacle. And we got to listen to a few of the records he bought, including songs from this puppet with a face sculpted by Satan. It was strangely compelling after a while, although it never really topped the 78 RPM canary-training record played at 45 RPM. Trust me on that.

Tomorrow: Houston. I can't even fucking wait.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Screw you, Planet Earth

Finally, finally, we have air conditioning.

And now that we have it, we're going to run it approximately 365 hours per day for the rest of the whole damn summer.

That is all, really.