Gold in Your Eye

"Somebody at one of these places ... asked me: 'What do you do? How do you write, create?' You don't, I told them. You don't try. That's very important: not to try, either for Cadillacs, creation or immortality. You wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more. It's like a bug high on the wall. You wait for it to come to you. When it gets close enough you reach out, slap out and kill it. Or if you like its looks you make a pet out of it." -Charles Bukowski, in a letter to John William Corrington, 1963.


Mike Morgan made me this cool little book for my birthday. There was some info about writer Charles Bukowski in there, since we were both born on August 16th. Mike told me I'd really dig his stuff. He just emailed me some of his work. I really like it. Can't wait to read more. Thanks, Morgan!

i'm pretty certain...

i can be kinda stupid, sometimes.
if given the opportunity.


on another note: why haven't i been capitalizing any of my "i"s today?!

July?

Where did July come from? June went so fast. So did this whole year. It's been a good one though..had its highs and lows, but '09 has definitely been one of my favorite years out of the 24 I've experienced so far.

Had more to say..
but I got a paper cut just now and I lost my train of thought.
The only thing going on in my head now is "AAAAAHHHHH AAAAAHHH! AAAHH!!G!U#^&352rt7fuasdg8*(&*%^("

I hate paper cuts.

I read the news today, ohh boy...

Can't believe it. Such a sad time for music :(
Everyone's blogging about it though, so I'll keep it to a minimum.
I will however say that the next person to send me a text about MJ being melted into legos is gonna get a shmack to the face. Come on now. I've gotten six today so far. Gettin' a little cranky here.

I dove right back into my old habit of consuming 2 tablespoons of organic honey per day. I forgot how fantastic it is. Makes my throat feel great, gives me a good natural little energy boost, I love it. Every morning- a cup of green tea with a little bit of honey and some St. john's wort and I'm good to go.

No Doubt show is tomorrow at Jones Beach. Super excited. I can't believe LJ was nice enough to get me VIP Suite Box seats! I don't deserve this. So shocked/stoked. This is too awesome. :)

I feel confident today.

Tears For Fears

I think I like that band more than I should.

Hm..

never thought I'd live to see the day that I prefer white over red & tea over coffee.


Also-

I always thought I was a good tambourine shaker. Turns out I thought wrong. That's what I get for being so cocky!
But it was fun.

Lots of things. I will list them. I am a fan of lists.

To sum it all up
[since I last updated]...

The dinner party was legit:
[Stayed up til 5am watching the History Channel with my buddy Magic.
Had a belly-full of great food.
Crista baked a fantastic cake.
Ariel made no-nonsense nachos.
Cass proved he was born to make guacamole...and saved Mike Del Rio's life. True story.
Fun for all]
David Carradine...how sad :(
[Weird, because Cass and I spent Sunday morning watching Kill Bill..I think that was only a day or two before he passed..spooky]
Made music [so excited]
S'mores in Dave's backyard. Mmm.
"Up!" is one of the best movies ever made.
"Terminator" was good, but I like the first two better.
[Was really happy when I found out Helena Bonham Carter was part of the cast. I'll probably like anything if she's in it.]
SMA Fundraiser Walk @ Long Beach was a total success.
[Great turnout, perfect weather, and FYI- Ralph's rainbow cookie italian ice: heaven-in-mouth.]
Had scrambled eggs WITH the yolks in them.
Experienced my first outdoor dance party in Philly.
[Questlove was the DJ. Lots of people with intimidating hula-hoop skills. Men on roller skates. Children breakdancing. Mango licorice. Lots of kooky little art galleries. Never saw anything like it.]

Had my first raw oyster, btw.
Gross.

I'm not good with titles

Nothing exciting, just wanted to update.
Watched a special on the Discovery Channel the other night about cows giving birth. It was pretty insane. Took a strong tummy to watch.
I actually saw that happen in real life, liiike...2 years ago (wow, that was TWO YEARS ago??!) while recording upstate. Thinking about it made me miss waking up every morning, far away from my hometown, just to play music (and eat granola) all day & night. I want to do that again. It's about time.
Fortunately, some things are in the works..I hope this means I get to return to it all very, very soon. :) Fingers crossed.

...And all it took was a televised cow caesarean section to get my butt in gear! Well, whatever it takes, I guess...

Phil Collins Pumps Me UP

Genesis' "Invisible Touch" plays on the radio in my office at least 3 times a day.
Every time it comes on, I feel like I should be doing aerobics.

New iPhone App Scheme

This idea was inspired by my lovely friend, Amy.
You see, Amy had a late night Thursday evening. Sangrias were poured, cocktails were shaken, & eyelashes were batted in the general direction of young, handsome doormen. On a night like this, many things are possible, but only one thing is inevitable: the Drunken Text.
I'm sure 9 out of 10 of you have been there. Whether you are male or female, young or old, buzzed or completely obliterated..at some point in your life you have probably found yourself cringing over the contents of your cell phone's "Sent" folder, the day after a late-night inebriated escapade.

Now, I don't want you all to feel dispirited!
Just because you want to paint the town red doesn't mean you should have to suffer the Morning-After blues. I have a simple solution for the lot of you:

The Apple iBreathe

This new application for the iPhone is easy to install, and will be extremely user-friendly (it's got to be, considering those putting it to use will probably be a couple of drinks in). It is a breathalyzer for your phone, to prevent any form of drunken texting or calling. A tiny sensor will be installed into the mouthpiece of your phone, directly below the surface of the outside shell. This sensor will be undetectable--no one has to know you have it.
Once installation is complete, you are ready to go!
Simply enter the phone numbers of anyone in your address book who you fear you may call or text under the influence. Your iBreathe will remember these names, so whenever you attempt to call or text any of them, you will have to breathe into the mouthpiece of your phone in order to do so. If the iBreathe detects you have had one too many, you will be blocked from placing the call/text until your blood alcohol level is back to normal.

So drink up! In the meantime, I will be on the hunt for some investors so I can soon make lots of money off all of you.
:)
Cheers!

Yum(&)m....

Went to the M&M store in NYC yesterday.

It was fantastic.
Touristy, yes.
But it didn't matter, because there were M&Ms. EVERYWHERE.
I was slightly disappointed though, because I would imagine the three-level M&Mpire to have Crispy M&Ms. There were none to be found.

I have a weird penchant for blue crispy m&ms. Really thought I'd have some smothering my taste buds that day. But it didn't happen.

At least they had dark chocolate peanut, and peanut butter, and almond...all brilliant.

But Crispies...wherever you may be...you can't hide forever.

I'll getcha.

Thursday, Rainy Thursday...

After a glass of chardonnay and two (and a half) bowls of Jenna's extraordinary nacho cheese dip, I've decided (and I'm pretty sure Jeane and Andrew agree) that Long Island getting sucked into a Ghostbusters ghost trap is a pretty great idea for a tattoo.

I don't have much to say, but...

I have "Therapy" from "tick, tick...boom!" in my head.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRZqFAqF7Ls

It's been there all afternoon. And all morning. And I think last night as I was trying to fall asleep, too (I could barely fall asleep, because as tired as I was, I couldn't pry my brain away from thoughts about my insanely messy room, and how badly it needs to be cleaned, and how many THINGS I need to just THROW OUT) ...I am such a packrat. My packratism has become a fairly large problem, considering how off-balance my "bedroom floor surface area : amount of crap I have" ratio is. I'm not going to need this stuff in a year. Or two years. Or ten years. I don't even need it yesterday. It's all gotta go.

I've become a bit too apprehensive for my own good when it comes to going back to school this year. I don't want to take night courses, I want to go back full-time. But I have a full-time job that pays alright...just barely pays the bills with some extra spending/saving cash for whatever...I worry, because I cannot do both at the same time, which means I need an evening/night job that pays just as much as my 40-hour-a-week job. Besides prostitution and shoplifting, I believe my primary options are bartending and waitressing. And bartending. Aaand bartending. I'm sure it's tough to even get a gig like that, seems like everyone's flocking toward that option for themselves. And I'm not exactly a liquor connoisseur. AND the fact that I'm starting the majority of these overwrought sentences with "AND" is a sign that I need to go in the back, make some tea, and put on some Jamiroquai before I lose my miiiind!

Someone please tap me on the shoulder and tell me to chilllll out.

@allofyou.

Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Blogspot...I do all of this. Construct a networking website, I will hop right on. There is probably a very basic, elementary reason why this is so, but I've still yet to figure it out for myself. Is it because I'm simply just trying to keep up with the social networking au courant? Or am I just focusing my time and energy on small, seemingly useless tasks (i.e.- accepting friend requests, posting comments to blogs, posting my OWN blogs, and - cripes - constructing a meticulously fashioned list of my Top 5 favorite toys between elementary school and junior high) to distract myself from other things?

[FYI:
1. Pogs
2. Colorforms
3. Creepy Crawlers
4. Ghostbusters Ghost Trap
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles for NES]

Anyway...
So am I just keeping up with the masses, or am I focusing on the aforementioned mini-cybertasks as a distraction from actual IMPORTANT responsibilities?

I'm not really sure.

I HAVE NAILS!!

I have gone -- giiit ready for this -- TWO WEEKS without nibbling my nails! Fingertips INCLUDED! I can't believe it. I really can't.

Ms. Katz is going on a junk food fast. She's been doing well so far. I will use this as an inspiration to keep my appendages out of my mouth.

...alright I'll admit it. I nibbled a TINY bit yesterday.
I was fortunate enough to land a spot on the list for a show I've been looking forward to for soo long last night...but then I got a phone call, and it turns out some rascals from Christmas past were getting together for some good old-fashioned Wednesday night roguery...and I didn't know what to do, so I nibbled. Luckily, I'm seeing the band I missed like, three more times this year. So I quit the nibbling, and had a loverly evening with the old coterie, catching up over pizza and cheeseballs. (Jess...thanks for saving my life with that list though, IIII love you.)

I found out last night that my fear of sea creatures/the ocean can be summed up in one word:
Excoscelatalincetaphoba.

The fear of creatures with an exoskeleton. (2nd to that would be my Automatonophobia, which is the fear of ventriloquist's dummies, animatronic creatures or wax statues) Yikes!!

Elton John's "Someone Saved My Life Tonight" keeps playing in regular rotation on the XM station in my office, and every time I hear it, I want to cry because it's just that good.

These were the days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_hY80oaQWE

Why can I never think of titles? Ever?

I wish I could sing and play guitar, because if I could, then I would cover "Maybe It's Just Me", and do a damn good job.

So, basically...

First of all, I miss my cds. Since I've decided to treat my car like a tinker toy once again, it's been in the shop for about two weeks. My music is in there (well, not mine per se, other artists'...well, you get the idea), and I'm itching like a junkie.

Dad's been driving me to work in the meantime. It's not so bad -- we crank up Bobby Darin, talk about the difference between music now, and music "then"...where the industry is headed (or sadly NOT headed)...there's a lot of stuff I never knew about Darin, that I'm glad I know now. I knew he almost had a steady relationship with Connie Francis (they should have gotten together. I'm upset about this. Francis was incredible--Sandra Dee can't hold a candle to her)...but I didn't know that Connie had said that not marrying Darin was the biggest mistake of her life (her father didn't approve of him), and that made me kind of sad. Part of me wishes they would have eloped anyway, but then Darin would have probably been murdered instead of passing from blood poisoning later on in life (considering Francis' father once chased Bobby Darin away from her with a gun). Yeesh. I also never knew he had a genius-level I.Q., and that when he died there was no funeral - his body was donated to UCLA for medical research.

Anyway...

One of the only cds I still have on me that isn't in my car is Bjork's "Post", and I was listening to All The Modern things the other day, and it reminded me of one of the conversations Dad and I had on the way to work last week. I looked up one of her past interviews from Review back in 1994, and I loved how she expressed her inspiration for that song. She said:

"It's about how the modern things like cars and such, or computers and all that, have always existed. They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment, and have been listening to the irritating noises - dinosaurs and people outside - and now it's their turn to come out and multiply. I thought it was really funny. I don't know - I might be the only one laughing."

And then I read another excerpt from an interview back in 2002, and one of my favorite parts is when she says:
"I do believe in the power of music to change things. I do sometimes feel like I'm the only one left who believes that."

It makes me sad to think that those sentiments are now endangered in our creative society.
No one's pushing the envelope anymore. Whatever happened to that?

...and then I listened to Joga off of "Homogenic".
And when it ended, I hit "repeat".

It happened!!

So finally, after a while of whining and lamenting about my brain being completely destitute of thoughts or ideas...today I cracked open my little notebook of lines upon lines upon lines of NOTHING...and words just started pouring out!

This happened today. This morning.

At approx. 10:12am.

Just an estimated time, but one can assume it was around then.

How about that???

I'm pretty pleased right now.

In other news,

My cousin Jen (May) is now displaying her art (the image above is hers) at the Brooklyn Arts Council gallery from now through June. You can find out more about it here:

http://www.brooklynartscouncil.org/documents/1103

The exhibition is called Clamoring to Become Visible

It displays different takes on human emotion and everyday issues expressed through text-based art. If you're in the area, go go go.

[Sidenote:

I'm getting a bit musically restless these days.

I want to collaborate.

And I want to drive for days across state borders,

and document it.]

I only caught 4 hours of Zz's last night,

but I feel fine today!

Actually, I feel better than fine.

That's weird.

But nice.

inapt subject title deleted.

This is the first time in a very long time that I
wished I had
M O R E
things on my mind.

Lady Stanton and the Haunted Cookies, Pt. 2

Okay. This is it. I mean business now.
I NEED TO STOP BITING MY NAILS, MY CUTICLES, MY FINGERS...pretty soon I will HAVE NO HANDS!
Who has quit that stuff cold turkey? Boldly step forward, please...I beg of you, I need some advice. I can't stop. This is - no, I am - a catastrophe.

So, in other Lauren News, I've been turning to those in my circle of confidantes for some help with this whole Haunted Cookie situation. The response has been pretty much unanimous:
It's okay, I can eat the cookies.

For those of you who may not be up to speed, it's sort of a tricky little sitch and somewhat of a lengthy story...but basically I believe a package of Oreos in my pantry to be haunted, and I've been wanting to eat them for so long, but I've been too creeped out to do so. But I had half of one this morning...and so far, so good. No flickering lights, no eerie sounds, no Japanese girl that only I can see with long black hair covering her face crawling out of my fridge in the middle of the night...I think I'll be okay.

Oh no!!

So I've always had this weird fear of opening doors in my office building, because theyre huge and heavy and opaque with no windows or anything to see through to the other side, so I always feel like I'm going to smash someone on the other side in the face when I open one. I've gotten made fun of for this fear.

Well, flash forward to TODAY:
I open a door,
RIGHT INTO A WOMAN'S FACE!
Hopefully she's a terrible lady who deserved what she got, who I will never see again in my life.

Sidenote: I want Oreo cookies, SO badly right now.

oh, and...

my cousin has a website for her art.
I forget how I came across it,
but I'm a cybercreep so I'm not shocked that I did.

checkit.

http://www.jenjmay.com/index.php?link=drawing

Grammy post, sort of

I wasn't able to tune in.

But!...

Grammy for Engineered Album, Non-Classical: "Consolers of the Lonely," Joe Chiccarelli, Vance Powell and Jack White III, engineers (The Raconteurs) (Third Man/Warner Bros.)

Thank goodness.
And Daft Punk walked away with two, which I'm happy about.
Adele got hers, too.

Weekend was pleasant. Caught up on some movies I've been meaning to see, lost two pounds, saw my love Ali Amato, an awesome Rilo Kiley cover happened right before my eyes (ears?), and I actually got some LAUNDRY done. Woohoo!

And a sale on pomegranates made my day.

Thanks, Ellen

http://www.friendsorenemies.com/web/foe/videos/butchwalker/67271941/butch-walker-p-nk-ellen/

Watch it.

See what all the fuss is about.

rufus wainwright and choc-o-late miiilk...

Dive bars have completely ruined Journey for me.


Com-PLETE-ly.

i need food, water, air, and a macbook...

...I can only afford two of those things. And they're both always polluted. Stop tossing your cigs out of your car windows!!

In other news, I'm tempted to buy this compilation cd from Starbucks. The only cd I ever bought from Starbucks was Duffy's album, and it was a waste of money because there's only one good song on it, and it just sounds like tracks of Amy Winehouse after sucking down a tank of helium.

(Those hypothetical tracks probably actually exist somewhere.)

You blow blow blow blow blow your fuse....

I've got to empty these ideas out of my head. They're just kinda hanging around up there, taking up space, dancing around to Eurocentric synthesizer-based music.
(Maybe THAT'S where my headaches are coming from.)
That's it. No more dance parties in my brain. I'm tired, and I'm running out of Rapid Release Tylenol caplets.


I kind of get these daily weird panicky bursts throughout the day.
(I just spent a good two minutes trying to decide between "bursts" and "spurts". I think I made the wrong choice, but I'm not sure, so I'm not going to change it, because I'll probably just change my mind again.) I'm not sure what this is attributed to. It probably has something to do with the fact that I once liked to think of myself as an aspiring virtuoso, and now I work in a laser hair removal office at the front desk (nothing wrong with that, I adore my co-workers and everyone I've met through here), having not completed one single piece of art in aeons (second time I used that word today, after not using it in about four or five years), not spending enough time with the people I'd like to and spending too much time wondering why I'm having weird panicky bursts and cerebral dance party migranes.


I need to drink more water.
That's not the answer to my dilemma, it's a topic change.
I had one cup of coffee today and my caffeine tolerance seems to have gone from indestructible to non-existant. I'm super jittery from it, which is weird because I used to work at Starbucks and I'd have god knows how many shots of espresso each day. So I'm going to try to get back into the water thing. I hear it's pretty good for you.

By the way, has any one else completely forgotten that the Grammy Awards are coming up? It's becoming more and more insignificant each year, and every year I just want to throw more and more of my shoes at the television. Maybe I'll just skip it this year and read Jess Katz's boldly accurate synopsis the following day. I kind of want to tune in for some of it though, because I'm rooting for My Morning Jacket's "Evil Urges" to come out on top for Best Alternative Album (probably not happening, but it should). I won't even waste my energy crossing my fingers for the Raconteurs to win Best Rock Album, because even though they deserve SOMEthing, it's just not gonna happen, especially when their contenders are Kings of Leon and Coldplay. They didn't even announce their album release though. They just kind of put the record in stores one day. So I won't really be that mad if (when) they don't win, I don't really think they care. But maybe they do. I don't know.
I kind of hope Adele wins something. If Coldplay wins more than once, I'm turning off the tele and going to bed.

Models, Mannequins, & $10 Fountain Beverages

The World/Inferno Friendship Society's Addicted To Bad Ideas show at Webster Hall was without a doubt the most entertaining, uninhibited spectacle I've ever seen.

Both the album & live performance were inspired by the biography "The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre" (Stephen D. Youngkin), which I definitely have to check out.

Dear Jack Terricloth,

If you ever need a bass player, or a tambourine shaker, or a güiro enthusiast, I'm your lady.

Gimme a ring.

oh my, oh nine

One of our patients today brought me pumpkin-chocolate mousse cake. she is graduating from the french culinary institute.
it's people like this who make me seriously consider polygamy.