Slowave submission?

I was on a reality show that was being shot at a hotel in Century City. The production values of the show were not very good. The set was not lavishly decorated.It was sort of like MTV's the Real World,but people in their twenties and thirties would be voted off by judges each week. The challenge this week was dressing up for Christmas and I beat out four other people in order to go on with the show another week. I had sparkly make-up on my cheeks and the other people who had survived that week were in costumes. One hairy guy dressed as an elf was vaguely Armenian-looking. It turned out the whole theme of the show was about having Christmas spirit. I had little talent in any other respect, but I had a lot of Christmas spirit.

Dream 12/29/06

Mun Mun has the flu

Yes, Mun Mun has the flu and has not stepped out of the apartment for days. Mun Mun has, however, updated munmunhouse.com finally, just in time for winter solstice. Some of the drawings did not compress well, but have been thrown on the web anyway. Mun Mun stopped being a perfectionist a long time ago.

TK is also horribly sick. We were thinking about making a suicide pact on Sunday when it was really bad, but the worst seems to have past.

TK has a new great nickname for our evil cat, Inkblot...Inkula.

Mun Mun suffered explosive stomach flu last night. Cats were worried. TK super caring, above and beyond call of duty.

TK and I are trying to buy an elliptical trainer so we can be less fat.

Setback/Pitch

I did something very dumb. I downloaded a free trial of a Pitch game program for Macs aka Setback. Then, I proceeded to waste over an hour playing it after watching America's Next Top Model. I'm supposed to be working on my children's middle-grade novel!

Back from the Rockies

Mun Mun was in Colorado for a few days visiting the in-laws. They live on a beautiful ranch in the Rocky Mountains that borders a national forest. It snowed over two inches while we were there. Unfortunately there wasn't quite enough snow for my father-in-law to take us on a one-horse-open-sleigh ride. There are seven horses on the ranch and at the moment they are free to wander at will. They have winter coats and live outside. However, they tend to move as a herd and come back to the corral for feeding time. There were many unfamiliar birds to watch outside the cabin. I was surprised so many birds hang around despite the snow.

On the flight to Denver I enjoyed looking through the SkyMall catalog. There was a do-it-yourself backyard ice-rink for only $700. I mentioned it to SK and EBK, but alas they did not seem interested. I think they are more likely to install a predator proof hen house before they install an ice rink.

TK and I gave his dad and stepmom a run for their money in a Pitch tournament. It's a weird card game with trumping and something called "The Jick." Anybody wanna play?

Diabolical Plan

Sometimes I put out Word Searches in the liberry for the little keeds to look for words from a list in a block of letters. I was thinking it would be funny to create a Word Search where the words on the list were not actually anywhere in the block of letters. The children would lose their minds!

Frittering life away

I've been playing with generators found through The Generator Blog all morning. The picture below comes from atom.smasher.org

The boring librarian report

When I'm not keeping kids in the library from strangling each other (literally!), I am reading The Lighthouse Almanacat coffee shops with TK. I've also started listening to audio books in the car, catching up on children's classics I somehow missed growing up, such as Anne of Green Gables and Little Women. I avoided these two like the plague as a youngen, but how I love them now! Anne of Green Gables can actually be downloaded through the LAPL website as an e-Audiobook with your library card. I just checked out the audio book of The Lobster Chronicles by Linda Greenway. Remember in A Perfect Storm there was a female fishing boat captain? She quit fishing for swordfish after twenty years and became a lobster fisherwoman. This book is about living on Isle au Haut off the coast of Maine. I'm loving it so far. Lots of lingo about buoys, warps, traps, and such.

TK is reading a collection of gay themed mysteries set in Los Feliz. I've lived in Los Feliz for a year, but don't feel I know it too intimately. I'm trying to be more observant and notice more things like what kind of trees are here. Mostly they are the kind of trees that leave shit all over your car when you park under them. When we visited Claremont lately there was beautiful crepe myrtle all in bloom. I need to learn more trees.

Sa-weet!

Mun Mun's "friend," Stella updated her MySpace page with some Gilbert Williams art. Now it's all stylin'. http://myspace.com/evilkins

Ghetto Slang/Ghetto Style

After accepting a job in South Central Los Angeles a few months ago, I expected to be learning cool, new, inner-city slang all the time. I've been rather disappointed, however. The only new slang term I've heard was from a library clerk who used the term "booty" to describe a bully or bullying.

My best source of African-American slang remains my friend, Rene LaMour, and her son, Sampson. Here are a couple of my favorite Rene phrases:

I was to' up or
I was to' up from the flo' up (That's Tore up from the floor up to all you caucasians)

I was too through

Sampson of course introduced me to the adjective tight to describe something "cool" a few years ago. Tight still seems to be in use because a teen at the library described my glittery, Chinese shoes as tight the other day.


One day a few weeks ago, a teenager came into the library who had a different style than the rest of the kids. He had a super-sized skateboard and a light-colored Afro with three hair picks stuck into it. A little girl said to her friends, "Ooh look. Three hair picks. That's the new style."

I wonder if the three-hair-picks-in-a-fro style will overtake the Allen Iverson-style braids that are popular among some of the boys. Let me know if you spot anyone with this look.

Aardvark? Bullshit!

There is a series of children's books (and apparently a PBS show) about a character named Arthur by Marc Brown that I believed was supposed to be a mouse. However, yesterday my co-workers who have children informed me that Arthur is an aardvark. (I wondered why those kids in the library looked at me funny when I asked them if they wanted the Arthur books about the chimpanzee or the Arthur books about the mouse)

I cannot accept that Arthur is an aardvark since he has no nose. About the most distinguishing feature of an aardvark I can think of is its nose. It has a long nose it uses to catch termites or ants in their holes or whatever.

My co-worker says Arthur used to look more like an aardvark. Here are two versions of Arthur I found online. One has a longer face which looks a little more like an aardvark.

Why is everyone buying into this CHARADE???






Below is a real aardvark.

Oldlyweds

TK and I had our first wedding anniversary yesterday, so we can't call ourselves newlyweds anymore.

If you ever want to get in good with Mun Mun, be like TK and give me a customized box of See's candy with half Maple Pecan Bon Bons and half Molasses Chips (Dark Chocolate). The benefit to you will be significant.

Hey Ya

TK discovered the website MetaFilter. Check it daily to fulfill your daily fun quota. Here's an acoustic version of the Outkast song "Hey Ya," I found out about on MetaFilter.

Spelling Songs We Forgot

TK and I have been compiling a list of spellings songs which I posted a ways back.

We forgot to list L-O-V-E (sung by Nat King Cole).

While watching the stupid-and-offensive-but-quite-amusing film The Ringer, we discovered a musical group of disabled young folks, The Kids of Widney High, who perform in the film. They have a song called E-L-V-I-S!

Anybody know of more spelling songs?

MungBeing Again

Mun Mun has some art published in this month's issue of the online magazine, MungBeing. The issue's theme is "The Mind." Check it out. I'm on page 49.

Rest In Peace, Bret Falk

I got an email today saying that Bret Falk, one of the founders of my TightCircle, Horns, died. Here's a link to my favorite cartoon by Bret that appeared in The Pelican, UC Berkeley's humor magazine.

Oh,what the hell. I'll post the cartoon without permission.

Library Haikus

Margaret had a haiku contest at Carnivorous Nights' Haiku Zoo on the theme of cryptozoology the other month. It gave me the idea to run a little haiku contest at the liberry where I work for the chill'un. I put out the entry forms and a sign out yesterday. I hope the kids write some good haiku.

These were the examples I put out:

Have you been waiting
For Harry Potter Seven?
Prepare to wait more

It's too hot to play
Why not open a good book
about Elephants?

Monsy's Zen Garden

My high school English/Journalism teacher, Montserrat Fontes, used to keep a zen garden on her desk in her classroom where she kept a rolled up dollar, out in the open. I guess it was one way she showed her students that she trusted them. I was playing with the idea of doing something similar in the public library where I work to build a feeling of trust with the kids. Then, I remembered, all the kids know where are cars are parked. Good enough.

Evilkins

One nickname for my cat, Inkblot, is Miss Evilkins because she likes to attack my other peace-loving cat, Milo. TK tells me that Inkblot only does this when I'm in the apartment, so I think the fighting must be associated with territoriality over me. (Inkblot is extremely attached to me.) I woke up this morning with an aphorism in my head -

The love of Mun Mun is the root of all evilkins.

Jack T. Chick

My huzzband has a film in the LA Film Festival. He and his chums adapted nine comic book-style religious tracts by Jack T. Chick and put 'em together to make "Hot Chicks." Read all about it at www.316now.com

Scary Monsters

Yesterday I helped my Kindergartener nephew write a book he called "Vampires and other Scary Monsters." One of the monsters he came up with was called Haunted Balloon.

My nephew posed an interesting question: What if a boy gets bitten by both a werewolf AND a vampire? I proposed that the vampire curse would trump the werewolf curse most of the time, but on full moons, the vampire would become a werewolf. TK suggested the boy would turn into a bat with a wolf head. Margaret believes that the vampire and werewolf are immune to each other (see Dracula Meets the Wolfman), so whoever bit the boy first would trump the other. Or since becoming a vampire is a process, whichever curse took first, would win out.

I don't believe I've seen this problem addressed on Buffy.

Weighty decision

Hmmm. Should I wear my Chicken hat or my Dr. Seuss hat for the class visit today?

"Seeing machine" helps the blind surf the web

There was a pretty amazing post in Science Blog the other day stating, "An MIT poet has developed a small, relatively inexpensive 'seeing machine' that can allow people who are blind, or visually challenged like her, to access the Internet, view the face of a friend, 'previsit' unfamiliar buildings and more." For those with healthy retinas, but other eye problems, the device projects an image directly onto the retina of the eye "past the hemorrhages within the eye." The device is based on the technology of a "scanning laser opthalmoscope, or SLO." It costs $4000 bucks.

Mun Mun digs assistive technology.

Bad Omen

The other day TK and I wished on a wishbone. Neither of us won because each of our ends broke off before the middle. I guess my wish for a successful summer reading program won't come true.

Growing up, my sister and I would wish on a wishbone soon after it had been cooked. However, TK alerted me to the practice of drying the wishbone out before wishing on it. It makes it so the person with the fatter end doesn't always win.

My Famous Last Words Will Be:

"I dunno, press the button and find out."

What Will Your Famous Last Words Be?

Arboreteum, damnit!

I was sure that the L.A. County Arboretum in Arcadia was spelled a-r-b-o-r-e-t-e-u-m. I consulted several dictionaries and could not find arboretum with that other spelling. Yet if one Googles "arboreteum," one can find many examples of places that use the extra "E" in the spelling. I have a feeling that the L.A. Arboretum used that other spelling when I was growing up and that's why it's imprinted on me. However, I can't find evidence that this is the case. How very vexing.

Herc! Herc!

Speaking of schoolyard songs, in second grade, a boy named Balty taught me a spoof song that he sang to the tune of the theme song to the animated show from the 1960's or 1970's about Hercules.

Hercules, you're a real big phony,
Hercules, eating cheese and baloney,
Fighting for his life, with a rubber knife
With the strength of ten (?)
'Fraid of army men
That's the pride of Hercules!

I don't quite remember how it goes unfortunately. The real theme song had the line "With the strength of ten ordinary men."

Amusingly, years later in an animation class at UCLA, our professor, Dan McLaughlin held the Hercules cartoon up as one of the worst of examples of cheap animation. For instance, it's challenging to animate the act of walking, so in Hercules, all the characters would always walk behind bushes or low walls.(You can also see this shortcut technique used sometimes in the Peanuts specials; Think of Charlie Brown and Linus walking across a bridge) Also, the animators would animate a movement and simply repeat the movement, using the same cells, over and over to fill time. It truly was a terrible cartoon. Of course I watched it in repeats every day before school in 6th grade.

Another spelling chant, sort of

My niece and her friend, Perry. reminded me that another old schoolyard rhyme has spelling in it. However, they had learned some additional lines I've never heard. Here is the rhyme as told by Molly. The names have been changed to protect the innocent.

Bonnie and Michael sittin' in a tree,
K-I-S-S-I-N-G
First comes love,
Then comes marriage,
Then comes the baby in the baby carriage,
That's not all
That's not all
The baby's throwing poo against the wall,
That's not all
That's not all
The baby's drinking alcohol

Good for you, girls, for continuing this folkloric tradition.

The Mystery of the Valentine

I know all four of you who read this blog were waiting with bated breath to find out where Todd Hughes found the heart-shaped road for the valentine in the previous post. It is of course Forest Lawn cemetery's "Babyland"!

Todd Hughes Is a Genius

He created this valentine. See if you can guess where this heart-shaped road is. Heh heh.

MUN MUN QUIZ 2006

(See the answers at the bottom of this post)

1. TK met Mun ______

a) On a tour of the Sony archive
b) On the Internet
c) On the Arpanet
d) At a Christian puppeteers convention

2. What part of Los Angeles did Mun grow up in?

a) The Palisades
b) West L.A.
c) The Valley
d) Oak Knoll

3. In kindergarten, Mun decided to vandalize her classroom’s bathroom by writing the only “bad” word she knew how to spell which was,

a) Pee
b) Fuck
c) Poop
d) Butt

4. Mun’s favorite fingerplay begins,

a) The Eensy Weensy Spider…
b) These are mother’s knives and forks…
c) Here’s the church, here’s the steeple…
d) There was a little turtle…

5. Mun has never

a) Licked the sidewalk on a dare
b) Laid down in the middle of the street on a dare
c) Caught a fish
d) Seen the Rocky Horror Picture Show in a theater
e) Been to a performance by Frank Sinatra

6. Mun prefers

a) pulpy orange juice
b) low pulp orange juice
c) Sunny Delight

7. Mun and TK spend a lot of their free time

a) Cleaning their apartment
b) Exercising
c) Learning the art of feng shui
d) Volunteering at a homeless shelter
e) Watching Werner Herzog’s oeuvre

8. The following are punch-lines to oft-told stories by Mun except:

a) I sought you war having a nervous breakdown or somesing.
b) …And so I kissed her on her black lips.
c) …And around the cat’s neck was a little swastika.
d) …And then P.David went ape-shit.
e) You mean you bought him a Happy Meal?

9. Mun has had ____ dental cavities filled in her lifetime.

a) 0
b) 2
c) 4
d) 12

10. Mun’s favorite new gadget is

a) Salad Shooter
b) Hairdini
c) Clack Egg Cracker
d) Cork Genie

11. The official brand name for the large piece of cat furniture in Mun and TK’s living room is

a) Puddy-tat Penthouse
b) Purrfect Pagoda
c) Kitty Cabana
d) Meow Manor

12. Mun has never

a) Been in a limousine
b) Played at Dodger Stadium
c) Eaten cat food
d) Seen a glacier in person

13. Mun has on at least one occasion

a) Been to a Grateful Dead concert
b) Fainted
c) Dropped a baby
d) All of the above
e) None of the above

14. The other week while working at the library, a teenage girl called Mun a ______

a) “bitch”
b) “white bitch”
c) “old, white bitch”
d) “fat, old, white bitch”


15. What don’t TK and Mun have in common

a) a hatred of Bono
b) disturbing childhood memories of the movie, Digby
c) friendships brought nearly to the breaking point after playing Diplomacy
d) a fascination with Jesus Christ
e) a fondness for Rowdy Roddy Piper


16. TK and Mun missed the first 20 minutes of a Neil Diamond concert last year because

a) TK insisted on going to the emergency room
b) Mun’s toenails weren’t yet dry
c) Mun’s massage went overtime
d) Mun was shopping for bon bons
e) The switch to Mun’s heart-light was broken


Answers: 1b, 2b, 3d, 4b, 5d, 6b, 7e, 8d, 9a, 10c, 11b, 12a, 13e, 14a, 15d, 16a

Worth mentioning

I don't know if anyone has commented on this, but I feel I must bring to your attention that the popular children's book The Day My Butt Went Psycho is a modern update of the Nikolai Gogol story "The Nose."

That's Puppetainment

TK and I are hooked on the short film series Puppet Rapist viewable on the web. Tres amusing. We cannot wait for the next installment.

Here is a Meme about Moi-Moi

Daily Soy tagged me.

Four jobs I've had:
1.Yogurt wench
2. Babysitter
3.TV studio receptionist (meanest celebrity: Pete Rose, nicest: Clint Black)
4. Researcher for book about Mia Farrow

Four films I can watch repeatedly:
1. Godfather Saga
2. Little Darlings
3. The Four Seasons
4. My Dinner with Andre

Four places I've lived:
1. Los Angeles

Four TV programs I like to watch:

1. All reality shows except Fear Factor

Four places I've been on vacation:

1.New Zealand
2. Australia
3. Germany
4. Netherlands

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Chow Mein
2. Belgian waffles
3. Crepes
4. Muligatawny soup

Four websites I visit daily:
1. See my blog links.

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Anywhere with TK

Four bloggers I am annoying:
1.Oge
2.RedFive
3. Iriel
4.Jon Carlo

Four places I've never been but would like to visit:

1. Italy
2. Argentina
3.China
4. Canada

Four differences in my alternate universe:

1. Stuffed animals come alive if you love them enough.
2. Bono not famous.
3. Soy burgers as tasty as beef burgers.
4. Humans all evolved and shit.

I put a spell on you

After hearing the song,(I've Got A Gal In)Kalamazoo, on the radio the other day, I was reminded of a list TK and I had been putting together of spelling songs. These are songs in which a word is spelled at least once. I've decided to leave out songs spelling out acronyms (YMCA, TKO)and songs about the alphabet (AEIOU and Sometimes Y,
ABC-DEF-GHI sung by Big Bird of Sesame Street.)

Aside from spelling songs, I also like spelling chants that help you remember how to spell a word using rhythm. Other than M-I-S-S-I-S-S-I-P-P-I, I heard one in what I think was the 1930 film version of Tom Sawyer in which someone spells P-E-double N-S-Y-L-V-A-N-I-A tauntingly at Huck Finn when he misspells it in school.


Spelling Songs!

C-h-i-c-k-e-n Spells Chicken (McGee Bros.)
Respect (by Otis Redding, popularized by Aretha Franklin)
Divorce (Tammy Wynette)
(I’ve Got A Gal In) Kalamazoo (Mack Gordon/Harry Warren)
Mannish Boy/I’m a Man (Muddy Waters? Bo Diddley?)
I'm A Woman(Peggy Lee)
Gloria (Van Morrison)
Washington D.C. (Magnetic Fields)
Velouria (Pixies)
I Stand Accused (Elvis Costello)
R-O-C-K in the USA (John Cougar Mellencamp)
Cheese and Onions (Rutles)
Mother (Howard Johnson)
“G” for Generosity (Girl Scout Pep Song)
Bingo (Traditional)
The Love You Save (Jackson Five)
C.R.E.E.P. (the Fall)
Martina (?)
I Wish I Were an Oscar Mayer Wiener
Safety Dance (Men Without Hats)
Supersonic (JJ Fad)
Fire in Cairo (The Cure)
Method of Modern Love (Hall and Oates)
Lola (Kinks)
Yoda(Weird Al Yankovic)
Saturday Night (Bay City Rollers)
Mickey Mouse Club March
Oklahoma(Rodgers & Hammerstein)
Uncle Fucka(South Park)
I am a C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N(Unknown)
Faith (Violent Femmes)
Miss Lucy Had A Tugboat(Unknown)

Tell me if you can think of any more! [Added three more to the list 3/2/2006]

Accents

The Speech Accent Archive is pretty neato. You can hear samples of people from all over the world reading the same paragraph in English. This will help you when you fake your own death and assume your new identity as a banker from New Zealand.

MungBeing

Mun Mun has a drawing in the online magazine MungBeing.com this month (page 30). Check it out, man!

New Orleans Pre-Katrina

I have nothing to say today, so I'm putting up some pictures I took in New Orleans in 1993. The first is a store window in the French Quarter. I love the "Yes, we do remove hexes" sign. Next is the house Maggie Sullivan and I stayed in in the Garden District. The creator of the Tarot Deck, New Orleans Voodoo Tarot, lived there. The third photo is a cemetery with crypts near Louis Armstrong Park.

When I returned from New Orleans I told my friend Tim M., "It looks just like New Orleans Square in Disneyland!"
"No," he told me, "New Orleans Square in Disneyland looks just like New Orleans."

I Will Love You Forever, Z Channel

After seeing the movie "Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession," a few months ago, I was thrilled this week to spot the film critic F.X. Feeney dining at House of Pies on Vermont. My family subscribed to the Z Channel starting in 1981 and it was one of the few bright spots of my angst-ridden teenage years. Each month the Z Channel Magazine would arrive and I'd end up reading it cover to cover. The reviews were primarily written by F.X. Feeney and someone who signed their reviews J.L. The reviews were super informative and interesting.

The Z Channel turned me on to the movies of John Cassavetes, Buster Keaton, Monty Python, and Henry Jaglom. I saw mind-blowing movies I never would have heard of, such as The Wicker Man, Witchcraft Through the Ages, Head, A Safe Place, The Boyfriend (director's cut), The Tin Drum, and Wild Strawberries. We didn't know how good we had it. There was never such a great television station before or since.

The documentary about the Z Channel and its main programmer Jerry Harvey brought back such bittersweet memories of the 80's for me. Of course the story is extremely sad in that Harvey's psychiatric problems led him to murder his girlfriend (or was she his wife?) and commit suicide. F.X. Feeney is endearing and melancholy in the film. There is a quote he says by Goethe that was very moving.

I accosted him at House of Pies to tell him I was a fan of his Z Channel reviews. I'm happy to report he was very gracious and nice. He washed his hands before shaking my hand so he wouldn't give me his cold.

Pretty much all my time as an adolescent was spent doing schoolwork and sponging up movies on the Z Channel. It was not a very healthy existence, but at least the movies were alive.

Even Ann Taylor is a hootchie mama

Will this horrible fashion trend of low rise jeans never end? I just want to buy a normal pair of pants!

How would Jesus boogie?

Watch Jesus at the disco courtesy of Puppet Resources.

Ni Hao, punks

Mun Mun is taking a Mandarin class and going on zillions of job interviews. She must also spend hours a day cuddling her feline babies. Sorry blog is so lame lately.

Memory Lane - Ships Restaurant

I took this photo of the Ships Restaurant on Overland Blvd. in Los Angeles the week it closed. Don't be fooled by the vintage car, I took this picture sometime in the mid-1990's.

Ships was an example of Googie architecture, an ultra-futuristic style common in California in the 1950's and 1960's.

Marriage: What a Racket

I heard a story on NPR that mentioned how marital status can effect your auto insurance rates. I just called Allstate to see if getting married would change my rates and the agent said my insurance will go down $40. The agent seemed to indicate that maybe the change in marital status only effects a female driver's rates though.

Fun Facts: Neuroscience for Kids

You might find this Neuroscience for Kids brain trivia page entertaining.

A couple of the fun facts they list:
"A giraffe sleeps only two hours a day."
"The folds and ridges of the outer ear are called the pinna."

Analytical Thinking and Generation Next

One of the great things in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is a subplot involving a smear campaign against Harry Potter by the Daily Prophet and misinformation put out by the Ministry of Magic. I would never have conceived that a children's book could, in an entertaining way, illustrate how a propaganda machine works. My hope is that children who absorb that story will later make the connection to being skeptical of party-line information fed to them in their own lives.