Bread and Bread

Conversation after seeing Stop-Loss , an intense if not-so-well-written movie about soldiers on leave from Iraq : AK: Do you want to stop at The York on the way home? Me: It’s kind of late— AK: It’s just that that scene where they were doing tequila shots made it look so appealing. Me: I know. It was one of the best scenes. AK: Oh well, there’s vodka in the freezer, right? Me: Right.

I’m listening to The Lovely Bones on CD right now (I know, sooo 2003, but whatever—books are timeless). Of the handful of books I’ve listened to during my purgatorious commute, this is the first that’s been read by the author rather than an actor. I liked Judy Kaye’s interpretation of Sue Grafton (her voice was somehow both hardboiled and melodic), but I found Suzanne Toren’s reading of Jane Smiley’s Ten Days in the Hills far too actress-y. Maybe that quality was appropriate to the work, which was all about movie industry types lounging about in the Palisades , but it was way too easy to picture Toren backstage in furs, chanting, “Red leather, yellow leather.” Alice Sebold is a bit of an anti-actress. As the author, she knows exactly how each word is supposed to be pronounced and which part of each sentence should be emphasized. This is appealing to my own inner control-freak author (although it can also be fun to hear how actors envision your characters). But she has a ca...

I love Jackie Harvey’s “The Outside Scoop” column in The Onion . It reminds me so much of working at Zap2it.com , where we never met a Variety story we didn’t want to inaccurately repost, or a Sabrina, the Teenage Witch cast member we didn’t want to fawn over. And I, like Jackie, have woken up with this thought: Why do I know the name Kim Kardashian ? I woke up in the middle of the night and it took me a few minutes before I realized that she was in a sex tape and is now on a reality show. But really, so what? She is just taking up the space in my brain that good, honest celebrities like Gabreille Carteris should hold.

It was a busy weekend. The only logical way to break it down is by carb: Saturday Lime rickies (or “slutty ricks,” as Tania called them), jalapeño muffins, chocolate-covered cherries, various things made with a pastry tube: all handmade by domestic goddess Amy at her birthday/pool party, all eaten by me. Red velvet cupcakes, chocolate cupcakes, frosting in a big gay rainbow of colors, chocolate chips, sprinkles, peanut M&Ms, lemonheads, orangeheads, cherryheads: assembled by craft goddess Jennifer at her birthday/cupcake-decorating party, all eaten by me. Sunday Cheese enchiladas, rice and beans, chips, watermelon, deliciously butter-centric dump cake: made by AK’s incredibly sweet mom as proof that my birthday is not just a day but a season, all eaten by me. Veggie meatballs, the fluffiest mashed potatoes in the world, charoset (kind of like sangria after you’ve drunk all the wine out of it), Manishewitz ...

I missed my chance to participate in a very cool blog fundraiser for RAINN last week, but luckily it’s not too late to raise a dollar for Tracy of Kaply, Inc . All I have to do is fill out this meme by Grant of Discombobulatingrant . 1. Describe yourself without the use of any vowels (treat “y” as a vowel). __l_p_ -rsstnt. 2. Write a short paragraph about a truly horrifying encounter you once had using the word “sippy-cup.” When I was a very small child, I was not known for being generous or having a good understanding of pronouns (not that I’m known for these things as an adult either). When my parents handed me a toy or a piece of food, they would say, “Here, Cheryl, this is yours.” I would take it and repeat, “Yours.” So when it came time to fight for what was mine in various playgroups, I would grab stuff out of other kids’ hands and yell, “Yours! Yours!” They were confused. But not as confused as I was when my parents decided to show slides of their charming todd...

Nicole has a new 23-year-old French roommate named Boris, who wears blazers and jeans and likes meeting L.A. “hotties.” The first and only time I hung out with him, the three of us went to see Penelope , which I found to be a lovely, Tim Burton-esque feminist fairy tale, and which Boris gave a D-. Nevertheless, Boris was kind enough to hook us up with passes to City of Lights , City of Angels , the Franco-American film festival running at the DGA this week. Last night Nicole, Jamie and I saw Female Agents , a World War II drama about four, well, female agents recruited for a secret mission in occupied France . The plot is standard fare (evil Nazis and reluctant heroines who must occasionally go undercover as strippers), but, sacrebleu, what an intense movie! I haven’t seen enough French films to attribute its attributes to Frenchy-ness, but I nevertheless suspect that an American version of the same story would have had a few more explosions and chase scenes, and a few less dea...

It’s no fun to jog to a slow song at the gym. But you know what’s less fun? Slamming into the moving treadmill after you try to twist around and mess with your iPod. My knees haven’t looked this Kerrigantastic since my one and only foray into skateboarding at age nine.

Things I could have done in the four-and-a-half hours it took me to take the train and bus to and from work yesterday: driven to Vegas flown to Chicago put in a week’s worth of work on the novel taken three yoga classes watched two movies ea rn ed enough money to pay for at least a small item of Ikea fu rn iture written to several representatives advocating for better environmental policies, which probably would have had more impact than the soupcon of greenhouse gases I avoided emitting read 92 pages of Richard Powers’ The Echo Maker Actually, I did do the last one while en route. Not everything about public transportation sucks.

It was a good birthday. Seeing (almost) all my friends in one place always reminds me how much I like them. Like superheroes, they're even more impressive as a team. Not to underestimate family. Cathy was there to remind me that the Kleins have lazy eyes in photos. Then, of course, she proceeded to look great, while I turned out like the Joker with Bell's palsy. I took lazy eye picture after lazy eye picture. I was not even drunk when this photo was taken. Amy tried to show me how to stare down the flash. The martini shot: all hair, no eyes (plus a little Steven and Pedro in the background). Me, myself and Meehan. Jamie and Lee-Roy, looking sly. Kimberly, Christine, Jody and one very funny joke that I didn't catch. Afterward, we caught a ride home in JP's new-old truck. By now, the lazy eye could possibly have been blamed on alcohol. Because it's from the '70s, the doors are heavy. Before slamming the passenger side door, JP commanded, "Hands on noses!...

The more drinks I had on Saturday night (thank you to all y’all who helped me celebrate—pictures coming soon!), the more I found myself talking about Freak Dance: The Forbidden Dirty Boogaloo . If I were not so mature, maybe I would have been doing the forbidden dirty boogaloo on my birthday, but at the ripe old age of 31, I was happy to simply proselytize Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre ’s brilliant and hilarious spoof of dance movies, which I shall now proceed to do on my blog as well: Riffing on everything from Footloose to Save the Last Dance (with a little HMS Pinafore, Gypsy and West Side Story thrown in for old times’ sake), Boogaloo is populated with such archetypal favorites as The Rich Ballerina Who Wants To Dance Street and The Guy From The Barrio Who’s Dancing For His Dead Brother (which he reminds us of every five minutes before tu rn ing his head and saying he doesn’t like to talk about his dead brother). The plot begins as pure parody: The good-but-poor ki...

Today is my birthday (31 is the new 28, you know). Today is also the birthday of: Alec Baldwin Marlon Brando Doris Day Jennie Garth Eddie Murphy Wayne Newton David Hyde Pierce The Pony Express I like to think that birthday is not destiny, because when I looked up April 3 in The Secret Language of Birthdays years ago, I remember being told I was more or less a selfish bitch. Still, maybe the list above holds some kind of clue to my personality and/or future. In order to ensure the most fruitful 31 st year possible, I took some notes on what I have in common with each of them: Alec Baldwin: Remember that message he left on his daughter’s voicemail, calling her a little pig because she was never there when he called? I know I’m not supposed to feel sorry for people who verbally abuse their children, but I couldn’t help sympathizing with Alec and thinking his daughter might have been a giant brat. Most 11-year-olds are. And selfish April 3 bitches frequently...

Overheard just now at Antigua , which is the new Starbucks (but with free internet and discount lattes on certain days of the week...but don't come here and take up all the seating, okay?): Girl with stickers on her laptop to dykey poet girl in newsboy cap: "We're starting a collective about really awesome things that are happening. So if you're doing anything really awesome, here's my card, okay?"

When I heard Terry Gross interview David Cronenberg a few months ago, I couldn’t wait to see Easte rn Promises . I loved the idea of Russian prison tattoos as a secret language—I imagined sort of a cinematic, Russian version of Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon , in which a key to the main character’s self-identity lies in a slave story passed down as a children’s playground rhyme. In other words, I like a little mystery and subculture in my art-and-culture. AK and I finally rented Easte rn Promises Sunday night, but I fell asleep for a good hunk of the middle. This happens almost every time I start watching a movie after 10 p.m., so it doesn’t necessarily mean a movie is bad. But AK assured me, “You didn’t miss much.” I went back and watched the middle last night, thinking the super fascinating stuff about tattoos and human trafficking would be in there, but it wasn’t. The movie was well written and acted—it just always seemed on the verge of becoming more interesting but nev...