sarahlucillefisch

Motivate Me.

2008-08-28T15:50:00.000-07:00

Dudes.

I would really like to be blogging more. So why aren't I?

Some of it is that I've been writing many stories and reviews for the San Antonio Current (which can be found here!)
Also, I've been writing kids' stuff, including reading-comprehension test passages and a spec essay about Klimt for an art-history inspired craft book for 'tweens.

And yet I still can't afford an iPhone or a Wii, both of which I want.

I appeal to you, my readership. All, like, nine of y'all.
How do I get back into the blogging rhythm? I have maybe some things to say about the 'Lympics. IS IT TOO LATE??

It is, right?

Damn.

Leave me a comment and give me a topic.
ANYTHING.

Tranny rhythmic gymnasts?
Coyotes?
Harriet Tubman?

Behind-the-scenes anecdotes concerning that vibrator-store story I did? (You can link to that up there, it's called A Missionary's Position).

OR, leave me a comment with moneymaking schemes in it so I can get an iPhone and a Wii.

Leave it in the Jungle, Larry

2008-07-14T09:42:00.000-07:00

Oh holy sweet Mother of infinite and improbably-chic mercy,

Have you SEEN Ingrid Betancourt on Larry King?

I sort of have an inexplicable semi- fondness for Larry's wrankled old bat-crazy ass, what with his allowing Elizabeth Taylor her customary approaching- French-Impressionism-in-softness lens filter, his storied fondness for the Kathy Griffin, his floppy neck-flesh containing enough skin for a whole extra Larry King face, and his tragicomically doomed serial marriages.

But I ask you, Barbara. WHY oh WHY would you host Ingrid Betancourt on your live internationally-broadcast TV program and then pepper her with the most puerile, ham-fisted questions imaginable? This is a lady who has survived unimaginable fear and horrendous depredations wondering day after day for seven years whether she'd be brutally murdered, who after her rescue espouses not bitterness, but instead embodies the very notion of noble sangfroid and displays a Mandela-worthy aura of dignity and compassion.
She amazes me. 'Cause I know if I had finally gotten rescued last week after seven years of hell, I would've said to one of those Colombian special forces fellows, "um, can I see your AK for a quick second? 'Cause I got some motherfuckers to TAKE OUT right about now, honey. COME HERE, ENRIQUE*."

But Ingrid? No. Even when asked by Larry, "do you hate FARC?" Ingrid politely declined to engage in hatred, or flag-wavery, or in general make an ass of herself. Larry, though...oh, Larry.

A potpourri of Larry's lead-footed utterances:

1. "Did they tie you up? What did they do to you early on?"
2. (to camera) "Our guest is Ingrid Betancourt. Coming up, Ingrid's day to day existence in captivity.
What did she eat and where did she sleep? How did she live in chains?
And what everyone wants to know — was she tortured?"
3. (to Ingrid) "What was the worst thing you experienced?"
Perhaps most absurdly:
4. "Were you in the jungle the whole time?" (Now, if he'd asked me that and I'd been through what Mme Betancourt has been through, I probably woulda retorted, "Well, Larry, there was that one outing to Chick-fil-A...WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK?")

The most horrible moment, though, was when he asked her: "The obvious question, were you sexually mistreated?"

Please. Please, please, please.
Ingrid Betancourt does not owe us a litany of her horrors. She doesn't need to be publicly put through a recap of the monstrous events which has left her, no doubt, with a titanic case of PTSD. Larry, bless his heart, mishandled that interview grotequely.

Yuck.

* apparently the meanest of her tormentors was (is?) named Enrique.

Oh yeah. The point.

2008-07-11T00:57:00.000-07:00

I titled that last post "Mistaken Identity" because I was gonna share with y'all the following observation, about a crucial difference between NYC and San Anto:

In case you didn't already know this (and if you're not from San Antonio, you probably didn't), San Antonio is a heavily military town. We got an army base called Fort Sam Houston (pronounced like the city in TX, not the street in NYC), and three Air Force bases--Lackland, Brooks, and Randolph. This means we have lots of soldiers and airmen about the place. These gentlemen tend to be youthful, very buff, and sport very short hair-dos. They are also neatly dressed and groomed, though sometimes they have tattoos.

There is a similar-looking coterie of menfolk in New York City, specifically Chelsea. Usually these are not airmen or soldiers, but cute gay dudes.

This is confusing to me! Not in a deep existential way, you understand, but in a fast, first-glance-at-somebody-in-the-post-office kind of way. My brain undergoes a quick either-or.

Who'm I lookin' at here: Gym-Queen Top, or Staff Sergeant?

Mistaken Identity Department

2008-07-10T23:54:00.001-07:00

So I'm living in San Antonio with my folks, kinda...regrouping. For one thing, back this Fall, my landlord sold my apartment building in Williamsburg for (what I hope/suspect was) a TON of money, Williamsburg real estate being very hot these days, so I had to git, after six years living there. So I moved in with (in a platonic way, you understand--I mean, I rented a room from) a tiny German minimalist painter just a couple blocks away from my apartment building, who was subletting rooms (illegally, it turned out) in his giant art studio. Then he got evicted this Spring for illegally-subletting rooms, and coincidentally I graduated with my B.A. from the New School, so I decided that rather that trying to find another cheap W-burg room, I'd come home for a bit and stare at my diploma (which has yet to arrive) and weigh my options.

Grad school?

Move to a foreign land and teach English?

Write freelance, grouse, and listen to a lot of José González?

Well, for the time being, I've decided on plan C.

Barbara (which is what I call my readership, collectively), you can even read two of my efforts

here

and

here

I have more to say about all of this, and I will.

How're y'all?

Self-portraits, a la Photobooth

2008-07-05T23:09:00.000-07:00

I plan to post a very long item about what-all I've been up to for the past year or so, but it's awfully late in the evening for alla that, barbara. So instead, I present for your delectation a number of self-portraits, so that y'all can remember how charming I am.

Hello, again. Hello.

2008-07-05T22:51:00.001-07:00

I miss this thing. I wonder if I can't get it started again.

psssssst...

2007-08-23T14:25:00.000-07:00

Hey, Barbara.

LOOOOOOOONG-ass time, no blog, I know.

So, uhh, keep it under your hat, those of you who have hats, and know the real name of...the person...wearing my hat, but that person, um, in a different hat, is now perhaps blogging semi-professionally about dating, of all things.

So, you can check that out if you wanna. Lifetime TV.com, no less. Perhaps Meredith Baxter Birney will comment! Or Rue McClanahan! Or even...YOU!

2006-10-15T21:14:00.000-07:00

Freddy Fender - Before The Next Teardrop Falls

Rest In Peace, Freddie Fender! I drove through your birthplace of San Benito, Texas, this August, and was so happy to see a water tower devoted to you. I saw you live once, too, when I was a little kid, at the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo. You sang "I'll Be There" and "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights" and you were brilliant and glamorous. I'm sure many Lone Stars are mid-hoist for you tonight at Bar America in San Antonio, where one can still hear you on the jukebox about every 45 minutes, and everyone sings along. I just love the sound of your voice. Tell Governor Richards I said hey.
Love,
Sarah

Happy Friday the 13th

2006-10-13T22:27:00.000-07:00

New Yorker of the Day

OWWW

2006-10-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

I burnt my damn finger--right middle--on the oven rack earlier tonight while making Mushroom Bites. SON OF A BITCH!!! YYYAAAAARRRRRRGGGHHHOOOOWWEEEE!! I've got my digit immersed in a mug of ice water and am typing lefty. That's how much I love you. Plus here are some new fonefotos..OOOWWWWWWWW...from my new phone. Gimme slme COMMENTS, dudes. Glad to see 'em? Feelin' my burnZ/?>Z

toy cars! At a street fair earlier today

fake birds in cages, same street fair

subway station, Union Square, where I've never burnt myself

Joan Jett. I didn't take this, I just love her.

OW. CRAP.

Peace!

Home Invasion

2006-10-02T22:18:00.000-07:00

The flash on my phone-cam doesn't work all that well--but I swear that outside the windowscreen right now, there is a cat trying like hell to break in. A smallish, darkish, very determined little amber-eyed cat, clawing hell out of my windowscreen (my wndow's open) and meowing to be let in.
"No!" I keep telling her. "I don't know you."

But I feel awful! If she's still there tomorrow...then what? There are already two cats living here. Plus, I'm allergic. Thirdly, I don't want one! I don't even have a fish or a turtle or a houseplant!

WHAT IF THE CAT IS STILL AROUND TOMORROW, BARBARA?
I can't feed it, or it'll never leave. I've acquired cats that way before. GodDAMN. Winter's coming. I can't take this on.
Plus!
I am reading Poe for my Major American Writers of the 19th Century class, currently, and I think she might be like a reflection of my previous misdeeds, and wanna get in here and claw my throat out. Hell to the NO! NOT THIS GIRL!

SCAT!

WHAT TO DO?

Many Happy Returns, you bitches

2006-09-29T23:16:00.000-07:00

Happy September 30! Had Julie "Sugar Tits" Andrews and Deborah "Chugger" Kerr over for lunch this afternoon-- just like every year, y'all know how we do. I provided the frisee-and-hearts-of-palm salad and the back issues of Playgirl, Julie brought Quiche Lorraine and all her Wu-Tang CDs, and Deborah, of course, brought the traditional petits fours and six bottles of Goldschlager. Oh, the time we had! We discussed so many things pertinent to the cultured modern gal, such as how to pee while wearing a hoopskirt, prank-calling Joe Francis, and the surprising erotic frisson in portraying nannies.
"Does Mary Poppins have an orgasm? Does she go to the bathroom?" Jules asked Deb and me. We shrugged. "I assure you, she does," Julie trilled, then gaily polished off her Goldschlager shot.
"I'm relieved to hear it," I said.
"I don't want to be thought of as wholesome," Julie added, picking flecks of gold from between her teeth.
"Word," I said.
But Debbie K. shook her head, opining "all the most successful people seem to be neurotic. Perhaps we should stop being sorry for them and start being sorry for me - for being so confounded normal."
"I hear you, Miz Krrrrr," I murmured in solidarity, patting her hand. Deborah's crystal-blue eyes narrowed to slits and she slapped me across the face-- sharply, but with a palpable affection.
"Kerr rhymes with star," she admonished me.
"My bad," I admitted, holding a chilled heart of palm against my burning cheek. "But you seem to me to have a lot of repressed rage, Miz Thang."
Deb agreed, explaining, "I came over here to act, but it turned out all I had to do was to be high-minded, long suffering, white-gloved and decorative."
"I know what you mean, dude," I said. "Sometimes I feel like the only thing the culture wants from me is to be somebody's wife, and now I'm getting too old even for that."
"Personally, I think if a woman hasn't met the right man by the time she's 24, she may be lucky," Deborah insisted.
Ms. Andrews agreed. "I don't think we were put into this world to be unhappy. If you're happy with yourself, then you can be happy with others. I think that is probably the most important thing."
"That seems right," I admitted. "Who's for more Goldschlager?"
I don't have to tell you, they both were.

Then, as per usual, Julie took her top off.

*****************

(NOTE: This scenario is entirely fictional. But the ladies' quotes, themselves, are not. Also, Deborah Kerr's birthday is Sept. 30, today--she turns 85, Julie Andrews turns 71 tomorrow, October 1.)

Look, I'm Posting

2006-09-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

I was watching a Bill Maher rerun, and had the following pointless and shallow epiphany about P.J. O'Rourke:

Take Zbigniew Brezinski:

Add Stephen Malkmus's hair:

Et VOILA! The Peej.

Rest in Peace, Governor

2006-09-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Ann,

I'm so sad you're gone, Governor Richards. The first vote I ever cast was for you, and I would've gone on voting for you forever, were it possible. You made being a Texan more fun and helped us all seem temporarily smarter. I hope you get many public schools and theatres and libraries named after you. I myself plan to re-name something in your honor. I'll let you know what, when I figure it out. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Sincerely yours,
Sarah Fisch

edited to add: I found this in the Wikipedia article about Ann:
In 2006, the Austin Independent School District announced "The Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders," a college preparatory school for girls, with grades 6-12 which will open in the fall of 2007. The intellectual focus will be math, science and technology, while the physical focus is building strength through good nutrition, exercise and other wellness strategies.

Yay!

Some Recent Fone Fotos

2006-08-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

**Brooklyn**

A view of Manhattan from Williamsburg Bridge.

the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (I swear to God), McCarren Park Pool, Friday before last. Don't you like Karen O's dress???

Sonic Youth, same show, looking very youthful!

Pistolera and Roberto, who I went to the show with, appearing quite bad-ass.

**Texas**

Bunnyphonic, an amazing accordionist/performance artist from San Antonio

moon over South Padre Island

Lilly will eat your soul!

Evolution, or something

2006-08-16T16:47:00.000-07:00

Dudes.

I'm sorry for the extremely long hiatus over here. I regressed into childhood summer-vacation laziness. I'm sorry. Look how sad Darwin is, there, with his big ol' teeth. Darwin knows that evolution isn't a predicatable steady process, y'all. Call my near-three-months-off a sort of Galapagos finch extinction of the soul. While I was out, I developed a whole new bird, as a blogger. Much bigger beak! I can now eat insects AND seeds!!

As a token of my undying love for you, Barbara, please accept this baby hammerhead shark.

But it's almost BACK-TO-SCHOOL time, and I am re-revving up!! Whooooo-eee baby! Just lookit the kind of thang I'll be soon posting for your delectation:

1. CRITTERS I HAVE KNOWN, PART TWO!!!
2. A FIELD REPORT FROM THE BLEEDING HEART OF TEXAS LIBERALDOM!!!
3. CINDY SHERMANESQUE FONE-FOTO SELF-PORTRAIT EXTRAVAGANZA!
4. FALL SEMESTER RUNDOWN!!! (Will I still love Dostoevsky tomorrow?)
5. BRAND NEW MONEYMAKING IDEAS!!!!
PLus: Sleepwalking! Boobies! Death in South Padre!

Check back soon, Barbara, and check out our fall season!

xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxoxoxoxooxoxoxooxxooxoxoxoo,

Sarah

Celebrate Good Times (Come On!)

2006-06-23T21:55:00.000-07:00

Happy Pride Week, y'all!

Here's to you and I mean it, O mighty Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered Barbaras, all you blessed flamin' fancies, all you butch leather-daddies and dykes, all y'all tranny bois and grrlz, all you twinkies, wigmasters, artistes, all the divas and unsung heroes, ace queens, angels with dirty faces, ass pirates, fleet baggers, Sapphists, snake-handlers, cowgirls, swamp women, teddy bears, teddy girls, str8-acting Southerners, Christopher Street veterans, and to all your lovers, friends, and families, God Bless and Slainte, Mazel and Howdy!

Witness re-creation drawings

2006-05-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

Now that Finals are over with, I finally have a little downtime to indulge even my inanest curiosities. I've been Google Image Searching, see, and I've always had a soft spot for witness re-creation drawings. It seems a very passionate form of artwork. I'm almost always mysteriously touched by them, even if I'm rigidly skeptical of the phenomena depicted. I think this may be part of Nessie:

Here is a very nice rendering of UFOs above a stand of trees. The captions are a nice counterpoint to the minimalist drawing asthetic, I think.

This artist invites you to sneak up behind Bigfoot...

This one warns, DON'T LET HIM CATCH YOU!

Not supernatural at all: handmade monument to air tragedy, November 2001:

This one's really mysterious, as it appears in some foreign alphabet--an account of an alien spacecraft? A rendering of a WWI-era helmet? A haunted soup bowl? Tell me if you can read it.

I'm not sure what's going on here, either--an army of beaver-mounted robots versus the Brontosaurus Brigade and the Deadly Upside-Down Squad? In any case, it's beautiful.

End of S'mester!

2006-05-19T00:47:00.000-07:00

I just got my final Southern Modernists paper back (title: A Divine Comedy: Satire and Salvation in Flannery O’Connor’s A Good Man Is Hard to Find)and I got an A! Whoo! I'm such a grade-grubber now.

Flannery O'Connor (see illustration)is a favorite writer of mine. She accomplished SO MUCH in such a small amount of time, despite being quite ill most of her adult life. She died of lupus at age 39, in 1964, after writing two novels, thirty-one short stories, and many essays and letters. We read a lot of her in this Southern Modernists class. My godsister-in-law Angie gave me her collected works a couple years ago, and it came in way handy. I recommend O'Connor, especially if you dig moments of transcendent grace occasioned by horrific violence. Plus, she's funny (I swear). Her letters are terrific, too. In one from the early fifties, she mentions to a friend that the local TV station wanted to interview her for some local TV show, but that she wasn't in favor of it. She said something along the lines of, "I'd hate some little boy to turn on the television set, hoping to find The Bat Man, and come across me."

Ha!

The Bat Man!

In other Southern-Modernist news, my sister Annie and brother-in-law Matt are at a Lance Armstrong Foundation dinner tonight in Austin, which Bill Clinton is attending also. I hope they get to meet him. I am hella envious. I've always been a sucker for Bill, pardon the pun.

Finally, y'all all pray for the Spurs tonight. They gotta win in Dallas to stay in the playoffs.

edited Saturday morning to add:
Like my newly-regional Southern spelling of "semester!?" Earlier it was a typo. Just added that apostrophe. Nice, right?
Um.
MORE IMPORTANTLY: the Spurs pulled it off! WOOOO! I like to think Flannery O'Connor maybe had something to do with it. Maybe she interceded. She's always gonna go for the Catholic town, surely. Especially in last-minute, do-or-die situations. GO SPURS GO!

GO SPURS GO!

2006-05-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

WHAT A GAME TONIGHT! Spurs still in the playoffs!
Woooooooo!
Man, I'd hate to see these fine athletes and worthy gentlemen lose to Dallas. Fuckin' Dallas, I've always resented you, with your self-important big-city right-wing JR Ewing Kennedy-shooting ways. Often, when people find I am from Texas, they automatically ask if I am from Dallas.
HELL to the NO.
SAN ANTO POR VIDA!
San Antonio recently superseded Dallas in population,* by the way.
SAN ANTONIO WILL TAKE OVER.
Look how awesome Manu and Timmy are:

I BELIEVE!

*just Dallas proper I think, not the "metroplex."

Photo Round-Up

2006-05-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

I think I want this job.
Whatever it is, I bet I can handle doing it part-time.

I made up a new character, by the way. My name is Mrs. Knapp and I am a poor widow. I found that scarf in the garbage can in the laundromat!If you see me around the neighborhood, say hi!

Here are people playing night softball in McCarren Park. This makes me wish I had a slightly better camera. Night softball is very beautiful, I think.

This next thing is kind of scary, so watch out.
This lawn decoration was in place on Conselyea Street last month.
Whooo is it...? WHO'S IN THERE??

(whirring noise)

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGHHHH!

Inflatable bunny robot, extending from a ...pumpkin?
Perhaps. PERHAPS.

GUITAR HOSTAGE!!!

2006-05-04T18:21:00.000-07:00

Right now, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, I want you to pump your fist in the air and shout GUITAR HOSTAGE! That is the name of my newest band. It's a metal band.

GUITAR HOSTAGE!

WOOO!

Other imaginary bands I am in:
Shades of Eddie Money (Eddie Money cover band)
FBI Lady Friend (ragga)
Pieces of Sweet Kitty (punk)

What fictional bands are y'all in??

Espagnole!

2006-05-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

I spelled the post title that-a-way because I never can figure out how to get a tilde going. A tilde is that squiggly line over an n. I should sprobably eventually figure out how to type one, seeing as how I do plan to be functional in Spanish one day.

My final exam is tomorrow. Luckily it will be hand-written.

Things I have learned en mi clase de Espagnole:
1. Mi compagnera de clase, Akiko, NUNCA le regala NADA a su papa. (Pero no se porque.)
2. El Lago de Titicaca no es chistoso.
3. A la profesora favorita de Nadine en Alemania del Este le gustaba cantar marchas comunistas.
4. John Leguizamo es Colombiano, no es Puertoriquegno! COLOMBIANO, ENTIENDES?
5. Los Tamil Tigers son muy seriosos.
6. Chris, un padre nuevo, teme mucho la organizacion se llama La Leche League.

Schooled!

2006-04-28T00:19:00.000-07:00

(During a class discussion of Raymond Carver's short story Cathedral, in which a wise blind man appears):

Sarah: Wasn't Virgil blind?
smartypants: No, you're thinking of Homer.
Sarah: I knew it was some Greek, anyhow.
smartypants: Um, Virgil was Roman.
Sarah: Well, I knew it was some... Greco-Roman.

(Note: I knew Homer was blind, I just thought... maybe...Virgil was too?)

Critters I Have Known, Part One

2006-04-24T04:43:00.000-07:00

PREFATORY REMARKS: As a sort of memory/writing exercise, Barbara, here are some kinds of animals I have lived with. I omit the dogs and cats in my life, of which there've been many, because dog and cat writing can get sentimental, or something. Maybe I haven't had enough life experience to talk about dogs and cats. I'm still in school. At any rate, come on a safari through my mind! Sit back, relax, and thrill to...

THE ORNERY DOUBLE YELLOW HEADED AMAZONIAN PARROT

My father used to tell us in wistful tones about how as a little boy he always wanted a parrot. He evinced a similar yen for a llama, a donkey, peacocks, and other things. Right now, as it happens, he's on a dachshund campaign. But for some reason, my mother took him up on the parrot, surprising him with Chico on his forty-somethingth birthday, when I was about twelve. Dad was initially delighted, until it became obvious that Chico despised my father, and, indeed, all men. If a man approaches Chico's cage, Chico gets the crazy eye and screeches with rage. Though to be fair, Chico often enjoys screaming, for various reasons. One of his favorite utterances is high-pitched screaming interrupted by a raspy, disapproving "Chico, stop it! Chico, hush!"

About ten years ago, Chico bit the crap out of my sister Annie as she rescued him from a tree branch. He damn near took her finger off! And the thing is, he didn't even wanna be in that tree. He'd flown up there on a whim, but then spent several hours calling for help.

Chico is now over twenty years old. He may live another fifty years, for all we know. During a particularly trying and confrontational period of Alex and Annie's adolescence, my father liked to threaten that unless they'd stop bickering, upon his and my mother's deaths, Chico would be willed to Alex. This was a dual punishment, see, Alex not wanting the bird, and Annie being very fond of him. But that was before he bit her.
It should be noted that we have no idea what sex Chico is.

THE TRAGIC CHINCHILLA
Annie talked my parents into getting her a chinchilla when she was about ten. We already had two dogs and a cat-and-a-half, but clearly, we needed more animals. Chilly the Chinchilla did not bite, that I recall, or smell bad. He was spectacularly soft. But he was quite sensitive. So sensitive, in fact, that our standard poodle Pippin killed him accidentally by gently carrying him around in his mouth. A very sad day for all of us, including Pippin, who never meant any harm to man or beast. I still feel sad when I see one of those coats.

VARIOUS HAMSTERS

Not surprisingly, the Fisch children had hamsters at some point. Frankly, it hardly seems worth mentioning, except that one was named Nicholas, named thusly by me because of Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran. He was fairly short-lived. Also bitey. Once I dropped him in the pool and then resucitated him with a hair dryer.

THE WILY FERRET

Annie got a ferret called Ellie during college. Ellie wasn't very fond of any of us, except possibly Annie. It was hard to tell, actually, what Ellie felt about anything, but at any rate I don't think she bit Annie. Ellie liked to burrow into the couch cushions, lie in wait, and then bite anybody's ass who sat down. An undiscerning biter, Ellie once underwent emergency surgery to have a fragment of beach towel removed from her colon. When Annie went to study abroad, she boarded Ellie with a professional ferret activist lady. My sister's friends who accompanied her describe this lady's house as being phantasmagorically overrun with dozens of ferrets--ferrets jumping out of the drapes, ferrets slinking around your feet, stinking to high heaven, haunting the shower, biting each other and people and things. This ferret house appears in some of my dreams.

VAGUELY DISTURBING SUGAR GLIDERS

I lived with two sugar gliders soon after moving to New York, in '00. A sugar glider is a tiny flying squirrel marsupial type critter. They were the property of my roommates M. and J., two exceptionally cute first cousins from Queens, only sons of two sisters from Sicily. M. and J. worked out a lot, and were very clothes-conscious, dated models, and went clubbing a lot and had great hair. M. was a chef, J. a model/musican/bartender/photographer. M. and J. and the sugar gliders and I all lived together in a tiny, tiny apartment on 3rd street, right across from the Hell's Angels HQ in the East Village, if y'all know where that is. TINY apartment. M., the chef, slept in a converted closet.

Anyway, these sugar glider things were apparently all the rage in the fashion industry for about five seconds in '00, and cost an ungodly amount of money. The female was called J.R. and the male was called...something. J.R. and what's-his-name were nocturnal, and had noisy, rapid sex all night long. Come to think of it, so did my roommates and their dates. I would often wake on a Saturday morning to find various lissome, barely-clothed, extremely tall young women who'd just arrived recently from Croatia or Jamaica or Maine and hoped J. (the model/photographer etc) could help them with their portfolio. J., meanwhile, was hoping that all the sugar-glider sex would yield more sugar gliders, which he could then sell to other fashion-animal-victims in order to keep his lifestyle as a cocaine glider going.

Do sugar gliders bite? You bet your ass. Also, they fly, sort of. It was always difficult to get them back in the cage once they got out, leading to lots of heated arguments between M. and J. and me and, sometimes, models, on how to best accomplish this.

**COMING ATTRACTIONS FOR PART 2!!!**

ADMIRAL BIRD I AND ADMIRAL BIRD II

BUD

CINNAMON

BIGFOOT

HARRY

BLUE TAIL

Product placement

2006-03-20T13:15:00.000-08:00

How are y'all?
I am fine.

We managed to clean up after the pandas and now we are busting ass trying to find a new roommate. One who isn't 78 baby panda bears, or, very sadly, Alice, who is going off to sail the seven seas with at-risk youth in an Outward Bound program this summer. We are ostensibly seeking a thirtyish woman, but I am secretly hoping for a strapping Italian lad of about twenty-five who likes to go shirtless and cook for me.

In other news, it's spring break time, here at the ranch. Last week was midterms--I got an A on my Spanish test and handed in my Southern Modernists term paper. Here's what my paper was called: Animal Husbandry and Doomed Mythic Marriage in William Faulkner’s The Hamlet . Fancy, no? I wrote about bestiality, sort of. In The Hamlet, a deeply retarded boy falls in love with a cow. Also another, non-retarded guy marries a human lady, but is himself continually described as horselike. Both romances, cow/man and horse/lady, end in tragedy. Why? CORROSIVE COMMERCIALISM AS EMBODIED BY THE SNOPESES! or something like that. So there you go. There's more to it, but I'm not gonna go into it here in public because it's FILTHY! (Not really. But it's ten pages long.)

So here's what I really wanna talk about:
The night before last I dreamt longingly about a can of Dr. Pepper. Yessir, I got me a can of Dr. Pepper outen th' icebox (sorry, Faulkner flashback)... and I couldn't've been happier. Then I woke up mad. Because: what the hell? Product placement in my effin' SUBCONSCIOUS?? You'd think after all this reading and writing I've been doing, I'd be dreaming more highbrow. Now, here's what I think: I think the Dr. pepper people owe me some money. I plan to e-mail them asking for fifteen dollars for having dreamt of their product. Perhaps I should offer the same service to other potential sponsors.

I told a friend of mine this, and she said "fifteen dollars, is that all? Do you hold your subconscious so cheap?"

Yes.

Dang Pandas

2006-03-10T12:24:00.000-08:00

Barbara, honey, I've been meaning to post but I have a severe panda infestation here in my apartment.
Look at 'em crowding up my living room:

I don't know who that gentleman is, but he's not much help.

They've taken over my kitchen, too:

They're even in the bathroom!

Do you have any suggestions? What repels pandas? They're cute and all, but enough is enough.

Happy Birthday, Hamlinitos

2006-02-27T21:38:00.000-08:00

This is Lilly. Today is her fourth birthday. Lilly lives in San Antonio, Texas with her Mom and Dad, her little brother, and two dogs. As you can see, she is very funny. Her favorite color is yellow, and she loves to swim and dance. Lilly is a keen observer. Once I told her, "You have a good eye." She answered, "I have two good eyes." She is also a talented storyteller. Some of the people in her stories include the charming Mia, the irrepressible green troublemaker Doko, the versatile Tyrone, and his enigmatic sidekick Pablo, about whom little is known.

This is Wil, who turned one year old on Monday. Wil is an excellent applauder who offers ovations of encouragement to all. Wil is not a loner--he is with the people and for the people, and is known to get up in somebody's grill. Wil admires bling and loves the ladies.

Happy birthday!

fotos by Heef

BUFFALO TIME

2006-02-17T17:49:00.000-08:00

This happened like three weeks ago, but I just uploaded the photos. Now, Barbara, you may have wondered, what makes Fisch laugh? Furthermore, what makes Fisch laugh while drunk on a cold Sattidy night?

I'll tell you what. So, my friend the artist known as Chartreuse Velour threw a terrific small all-girl clothing swap and dinner party. We ate two kinds of casserole, and salad, and ran around half-naked tryin' on blouses and whatnot, talked a lot, danced some, drank beer and wine. Here's the CV, writer, crafter, commandant, playing some rockin' mood music:
So then her Fiance (pronounced fye-ants, always, in my mind)came home with a bottle of bourbon.
Wooo! When he showed it to me though, his manly hand was obscuring part of the "Buffalo Trace" label, and I asked aloud if it was "Buffalo Time" bourbon.
Oh, how we laughed, when it was revealed how the bourbon was called "Buffalo Trace" . I laughed, anyhow. Buffalo Trace = evocative, semi-Yoknapatawphian (I am reading Faulkner now)fancy-likker place name, kinda. Buffalo Time = what is it?? When is Buffalo Time? How does one keep Buffalo Time? Eastern, Central, Mountain, Pacific... and BUFFALO TIME. All right, if I have to explain it this hard, it's probably not that funny. But the girls (and Warren) obliged me. Mainly by passing the bourbon bottle around, taking swigs, and bellowing BUFFALO TIME! at the top of our voices. OK, mostly me.

And perhaps not surprisingly, it got funnier and funnier to me as the night wore on.
Here we are, then, engaging in Buffalo Time.
What time is it, y'all?
BUFFALO TIME.

To wit, dig artstar celebutante Anne Sussman here:

And how about la Kat Fasano? She's in Brain School, so you know she knew what time it was.

And Lori Mocha celebrates Buffalo Time just like a normal person. But go look at her blog, yo.

And here's Emilie Blythe McDonald. Don't let the fact that she's bottle-free fool you. Total Buffalo Gal! Behind Em, Warren is visible.

I hope he ain't mad we drank up alla his Buffalo Time.

Happy Vagina Day

2006-02-14T23:08:00.000-08:00

In my Valentine's day e-mail from my mother:

I drug your father, the Woods, the Schwartzmen and the Hamlins with me last
night to see "Vagina Monologues." I figured it was a good Vday
acknowledgement. They all actually enjoyed it, I think, but it did make us
all uncomfortable, of couse.
Sam Gilliam was in it.

Sam Gilliam was my high school drama teacher.
Happy Vagina Day, y'all!

(Note: Photo taken in 8th Avenue stop of the L train--found artwork commentary by anonymous New Yorker.)

Still in the Ramping-Up Process, Clearly

2006-02-13T01:09:00.000-08:00

Why, hello!

How are you?

School is proving to be quite a challenge, in an excellent way. I have to read the first 6 chapters of Faulkner's Light in August before Thursday. I've never read any of Faulkner's novels, just "A Rose for Emily." In that story, (spoilers! Look out!) a lady secretly keeps her dead boyfriend in her house. Awright! So I have great hopes for Light in August. We just finished Look Homeward, Angel. If you're looking for a densely imagistic bildungsroman, I recommend it. Thomas Wolfe does terrific descriptions of food, ghosts, drunks, and melancholia. He refers to Greek mythology quite a bit, too. My Southern Modernists professor, Dr. Bernardete, recommends Googling classical references, and said on Thursday: "O lucky moderns! In my day you had to get up and go to the library."

My favorite new word from Spanish class: mediocalvo. It means "going bald." The other students in my Spanish class are fun. One guy and his pregnant wife are taking tango lessons in order to improve the baby's rhythm. Another guy, somewhat older, plans to retire to Chile in three years, and among his favorite topics of Spanish conversation are fishing, fistfights, and taking people hostage.

We had a huge snowstorm in New York last night/this morning. I went out and took a good long walk in it today, but I forgot to take my phone-camera with me. So here are some fotos of random recent subjects.

Bar on LES is possibly named for unknown distant relative.

Graveyard, Queens. I held my breath while taking the photo, just in case.

I don't know what this great big vulture on a hydraulic lift thinger was for, but I was very impressed. It was on Union Avenue in Williamsburg near McCarren Park.

Apparently it's for sale. I don't know whether that means the lift thinger, the bird, or the whole shebang. Anyhow, I doubt I can afford it.

Easing Out of the Batcave

2006-02-01T00:45:00.000-08:00

Dearest Barbara*,

Hey y'all! Homes! Dudeleh! Remember me? Well, I've had about enough of my sad sack bullshit, so I'm here to lighten the mood. Many thanks to all of y'all who left such nice comments here, I really appreciate it.

The quick news update is that I managed to get started at the New School despite the job loss. This is my second week of classes and I am completely nerdily ecstatically loving the whole damn thing. You never saw somebody so delighted to buy a 5-subject spiral notebook. Pile on the coursework, bitches! I'm taking intensive Spanish, two fiction-writing classes, and a Lit course, "Southern Modernists." Am currently geeking out on Wolfe's Look Homeward, Angel for that class. I've had to read a 70-page chunk of it, plus read two Flannery O'Connor essays, do a crapload of Spanish grammar exercises, and write nine pages of fiction, all since last week. DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE A LOT? It seems like it to me.

Anyhow, I'll have far more to say about all that later on. Meanwhile, I KNOW you're dying for some fone fotos.

Photo restoration display in Greenpoint shop window.

Cops navigating large puddle, McCarren park.

The explain-o-monster from my dreams.

Can you spot the Empire state Building in this foto?

Future ex-husband Heath watching A&E documentary about the Gucci murder.

*Barbara, in case you've forgotten, is what I call all y'all, collectively. It amuses me, and nobody seems to mind.

2006=2005, redux? (Don't think that).

2006-01-05T10:16:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the very long lag in posting, Barbara, but Happy New Year!

How were your holidays?
Did you get an XBox?
I hope you had a good one.

My holidays were like something out of Kafka!
A very Kafka Khristmas, that's what I had.

It all started on Tuesday December 20th, when, after walking to work from Brooklyn during the first day of the transit strike (about an hour and a half), I was called into HR and summarily FIRED! For what? Absences. I had 5, 3 for my brother's wedding, and 2 from a respiratory infection. One one of those sick days, my boss even sent me home from work. And I'd notified her about Alex's wedding during my interview. But HR didn't wanna hear that. The smiling HR lady just kept repeating that I was on a 90 day at-will probation pending full-time employment, and they have the right to fire me for any reason. Or none. It was a heavy scene, man. I did not make a scene, but there were tears. It actually came down to this kind of dialogue:

Me: But those absences were authorized! And had I known this would be the result, I wouldn't've taken any at all--
HR lady: It doesn't matter now.
Me: But it doesn't say anythign about no absences allowed in my orientation packet!
HR lady: Well, technically we don't need a reason.
Me: What about if I get a doctor's note?
HR lady: No.
Me: But what about--
HR lady: Nuh-uh.

So I left my boss a message when I got back from my firing imbroglio, and hoped against hope that I would hear something from her along the lines of "WHAT!? HR can't just fire my assistant out from under me! I authorized those absences! I'm calling University Fucking President Bob Fucking Kerrey!" I also called the admissions office, having just gotten into the BA program, and was panicked because no job equals no free tuition and hence no BA program, and they told me to sit tight, maybe it was a screwup and to wait to hear from my boss after the University re-opened after the New Year, and also I called my Teamster rep, who told me sadly that the 90-day at-will clause means AT WILL, and that until my Teamster status was cemented after that 90 day period I'm at HR's mercy.

The walk home to Brooklyn on the 20th was pretty bad. As were the next few days, hoping I'd hear that it was all a mistake. And being back in Texas for Christmas was both awesome and, you know, FRAUGHT WITH TERROR. I've been going over it and over it in my mind, the whole dilemma, since 4 pm on the 20th. Like this: ...why, but my boss gave me a TOTE BAG on the 19th when she left, and said "see you on the 5th!" Surely she wouldn't've given permission for me to go to Texas for the wedding if she'd known it would impinge on my employment! I wonder why she hasn't gotten in touch. Probably she's engaged in PASSIONATE ARGUMENT IN MY DEFENSE RIGHT THIS MINUTE! Please, God, let me the enter the writing program like surely You intended. I can't even collect UI. I have seventeen dollars in my bank account. Am I gonna end up homeless?

And I didn't hear anything further official til today, just a few hours ago, when I called my boss on her first day back from the holidays. And it would seem it's out of her hands. HR rules the world. I guess at least I'm not in limbo about that anymore.

School has yet to be resolved, I'm gonna meet with admissions, and with financial aid, and my parents have offered to help. I so badly want to go to school. I guess we'll see what happens.

Anyhow, happy new year, Barbara.
Wish me luck.

Whew

2005-12-05T11:27:00.000-08:00

I got into the New School B.A. program, I found out Saturday. So now it's official, I'm going back to school. I hope Young Goth Robert Downey, Jr. is there, just like in the Rodney Dangerfield movie!

I Apologize.

2005-11-30T16:29:00.000-08:00

Listen, baby, I'm sorry I've been so high-maintenance. I know I can be distracted and cranky. I know I can be all self-pitiful and complainy and it puts a lot of pressure on our relationship. Oh, Barbara. You know I love you. Things will look up, soon as I get some sleep, and some money.

Will you still come to this show I'm in?

HAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAAAAAAA!!!

It's The Small Press Book Fair, a two day long event happening on Saturday December 3rd and Sunday December 4th. On the 4th at 3, I'll be reading along with Reverend Jen, Master Lee, the O'Debs, and Moonshine Shorey. I'll be reading this one essay-type thing what's been published in Art Star Scene, Reverend Jen Miller's magazine.

There's more info. on this site, though my name isn't there. I'm billed as "other downtown compatriots."
It's all happening at The Small Press Center, The General Society of Mechanics and Tradesmen, 20 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036

PEACE!

RAAAARR!

2005-11-30T15:23:00.000-08:00

I had trouble sleeping again last night. Son of beetch! Sheet!!
Quick anecdote regarding perhaps-insensitive quasi-phonetic foreign accent lapse there: When I was in college the first time in Austin, I lived in the 21st Street Co-Op, an artsy nonprofit alternative communey un-dorm founded in part by Lady Bird Johnson. A crazy, crazy place. But shit, I digress, already, again. Anyhoo, one night, me and some other kids, including, if memory serves, Andrew Jenkins and Anjali Gupta, we went over to a nearby 7-11 to skulk around. A man of possibly Middle Eastern or Pakistani origin worked at this 7-11. A nice, friendly, non-creepy man who we all knew to be calm and sane and sound. But this one night we went in there, we found him arguing with a big dumb drunk frat boy who was wanting very badly to buy beer with no ID. The sane hardworking immigrant 7-11 guy started off polite, but firm. The frat guy didn't give up, however, quickly becoming whinier and surlier and more insistent, his fratty whiney beer-entitlement finally reaching such an annoying, nay, Presidential fever piitch that the clerk erupted thusly:

SON OF BEETCH, SHEET!!
HOW MANY TIMES I HAVE TO TELL YOU??
FIFTEEN???
...FIVE, MAYBE!?!?!?
YOU EAT OUT OF MY BUTT!!
FUCK ME, FUCK ME, FUCK ME!!!!

Which is about the best cuss-out I have ever heard. I mean: !
Okay, it's a little gross, but still...for one thing, I think it's genius to reverse the numerical value in the "how many times I have to tell you" sequence. Fifteen? No? Well how about FIVE?
Not only did this cussout send the frat guy right back to his Broncoful of lame-os, but I swore then and there I would immortalize this poet's incandescent righteousness to all the world. And it only took me fifteen years. You're welcome, sir, wherever you are!

So that's one accomplishment accomplished today.

Stuff I thought or hoped would happen today, but didn't, plus mitigating and aggravating factors:

1. I was supposed to go to yoga class tonight. However, due to my continuing dysphoric PMS insomnia deal, I didn't fall asleep til close to 3 this morning, and so had some trouble getting myself together for work four-and-a-half hours later. I was on time to work, but neglected to haul my yoga togs with me. Which I realized while I was on the train. So, to remedy this, I RACED home after work at 5 to pick my yoga bag up from my Brooklyn bitch pad and then make it to my yoga instructor Amy's place in Harlem before 6 pm class, only to find:

2. That the envelope of signed freelancer contracts for the Holly Hobbie project that I sent to Simon & Schuster on Monday was returned to me today for a dearth of required postage equalling (somebody helpfully hand-wrote in, on the return-to-sender stamp): NINE CENTS.

3. This wouldn't've been such a biggie except that S&S gotta get my contract before they can PAY me, and the notion of even a 2-3 day delay in me getting paid is very deleterious for my broke, overemotional ass at this juncture. So I had a complete wailing meltdown in the foyer (read: radiator cover where the mail piles up)of my apartment building.

4. Because of the PMS and not sleeping.

5. Also because I am BROKE, y'all! I have this new job, which is great, but I am still in a hole, due in part to Teamster dues being sucked from my paycheck til my probation's over (luckily this month), a 3-week-lag in getting paid, and having to pay New York state five hundred dollars from when they gave me some Unemployment Insurance money this summer that my former employer/eternal nemesis, St. Martin's Press, then decided to not grant me. (A whole 'nother story entirely.)

5. But about all that, my parents have been incredibly generous in preventing homelessness and healthcarelessness and worse poverty for the past far-too-long. To wit: they sent a relief check at the beginning of the week to help me over this hump, but it has yet to arrive. This was another thing I was hoping would happen today.

So: supposed to go to yoga and then one of my writer's groups and then possibly a party/film shoot tonight
But instead: I've decided to stay in and weep.

But I feel good about sharing the 7-11 story with you, Barbara.

Why Am I Awake?

2005-11-28T02:28:00.000-08:00

It is now 5:29 in the morning on a Monday, and I can't sleep. I have to be at work in three and a half hours. Any sleep I would achieve between now and then would rate only as a nap, and would, I fear, jeopardize my chances of waking up in time.

Oh, it's not a tragedy. I slept til 11 am this morning, and got a lot of sleep this past holiday weekend. I'll go to bed early tonight, hopefully. But when you're lying awake at (now) 5:32 after four hours of thwarted effort, your internal monologue tends towards either the fruitlessly existential or the maddeningly specific.

Crap I've been thinking about since roughly 1 am:
1. What am I doing with my life? Specifically, where did it all go wrong for me to such a degree that I own such a decrepit, uncomfortable, spring-sprung bed?
2. Why should I complain about my bed? People sleep in worse beds. Many people have no beds at all. Eric, the homeless guy who looks like Jamiroquai with facial lesions who hangs out in front of Kellogg's diner, sleeps in a stairwell, and that's when he's lucky. I should be grateful for any bed at all and go the hell to sleep on the power of that gratitude alone.
3. Ruminating upon the sleeping places of the homeless is not, in and of itself, soporific. I should think about something peaceful, like snow gently falling...onto the sleeping homeless people. I should turn on the TV.
4. Everything on television is enervating, noisy, and wants to sell me something. Fucking Christmas season, with the endless commercials urgently exhorting me to buy as much stuff as possible in the next three-and-a-half weeks. I'm worried about basic necessities. Fuck you, Circuit City.
5. Well, at least I FINALLY got finished with my incredibly frustrating 96-page Holly Hobbie color and activity book freelance project! I closed up freelance-writer-shop at 11:30 tonight, but I can't seem to let go of it. My mind keeps coming up with goddamned coloring book page scenarios, and then resenting the hell out of them.
6. I had my interview for the New School B.A. program on Wednesday and I think it went pretty well, but I mentally re-write my application essays and obsess over the possible reasons I won't get in.
7. I think this bout of insomnia may be PMS. I often get insomnia and meaningless anxiety around this time. Too much information? Well, I can't say this information thrills me either, bucko. So it might be PMS. So what? Knowing it doesn't make me any sleepier.
8. Luckily, work is kind of slow at the library lately, so I can be a little zombified tomorrow without it mattering much. I just gotta get through an eight-hour workday, then buy some Tylenol PM on my way home from work and collapse. My New School application process is done, Holly Hobbie's done, there's nothing too specific hanging over my head right this second, really. Eventually, I will have a good night's sleep. really, everything's cool. Except for the fact that I'm thirty+thousand years old and I don't even own a bed without ginormous craters in it. Also, my government is operating secret torture prisons all over the world, it would seem. Shit.
9. I know. Let's daydream about having enough of something. Like money, or time, or sleep. I'll daydream about...awww, man. I blew my imagination wad on Holly Hobbie coloring book ideas. Whatever, I should stop trying to control my thoughts this much. Just drift. Breathe in and out, in and out. In and out.
10. Holly Hobbie. Holly Hobbie. Holly Hobbie.

Felicidades, Pescados

2005-11-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Sorry for not blogging here lately--I've been messing with drafts of this post for over two weeks, but I've gotten sidelined by a freelance project. DAMN YOU, HOLLY HOBBIE!!!

Sometimes I feel a little self-conscious about this blog when I look at blogs that are all coolly ironical in tone...like sometimes I try for high-concept and relatively impersonal, and sometimes...anyhow. My brother's wedding… WAS VERY FUN!
Here are some fonefotos from it.
(Nice windup, Fisch.)

My brother David Alexander Fisch as "the groom." Very debonair, no? He was a beautiful groom. His beautiful bride:

Celeste Fisch (nee Trevino) pictured above debriefing the bridesmaids during rehearsal. I should have a photo of her there all bridey, but she was pretty much in constant motion and I didn’t wanna stalk her. It’ll suffice til I get a better one.

Alex and Celeste pictured above with the miniature whatchamacallits, you know, the... ritual wedding children. (DAMN YOU, ALZHEIMER'S!)The boy is their friend's son Wyatt and the girl is my sister Anna's 3-year-old, Lilly. Lilly was a rocking ritual wedding child, in that she had zero regard for the conventions of the genre; she kinda skulked down the aisle looking like she was up to something, then spent the actual wedding ceremony strewing her basketful of flower petals all over our family pew, and shoes, and laps, so that she had nothing to scatter on the way back down the aisle. This alarmed Wyatt a little (Wyatt was extremely cognizant of his duties), but did Lilly give a shit?
HELL to tha NO!

Look at her!

And look at her NOW! Punk as heck! Raaaaarr!

So that was at the church. Now here are some fonefotos of the reception.
First up: ***Night of a thousand aunties!***

Aunt Susan Rogers and Tante Beverly Schwartzman! Both are retired schoolteachers. They were in the union and everything. Susan was careful to point out that according to Dick Cheney, that makes them terrorists.

My Aunt Susan Greco! Like me, she works in a school library! She lies to the kids there and tells them I wrote Shrek. Sneaky! She also enjoys ballroom dancing.

My Aunt Margaret Tiffin hit me during Mass when she thought I was making the sign of the Devil at my brother. I wasn't, though, I was doing "hook 'em horns." Margaret is a schoolteacher, too. She's blowing bubbles here. TERRORIST bubbles.

And here I am in my weddin' get-up. OK, that’s Annie Oakley. She wasn’t at the wedding or anything, Barbara. I just put her in there as a palate cleanser.

Here’s my brother Alex and my sister Anna. Cute, right? They’re twins, for real. Fraternal. My mom didn’t know she was having twins until she was in labor, by the way. Surprise! They didn’t do a lot of sonograms in 1973. Annie was standing on Alex’s head, more or less, according to family anecdote. Alex, understandably, greets this anecdote with a bit of annoyance. Here, though, they seem to have settled their intra-uterine differences.

Here’s Annie again, I like how this photo turned out kinda John Singer Sargent-y. The shadowy figure kissing her shoulder is her husband Matt Hamlin.

Here's my brother-in-law Matt again and my godbrother Adam Schwartzman. Barbara, can you guess which celebrity everybody tells Matt (on left) he looks like?*

Now look at Dad:

Dad hates wearing a tuxedo. On the way to the reception from the church, he asked me, "why is it that in our supposedly modern age, I gotta dress up for special occasions like a goddamn upperclass English person in the goddamn Victorian era??"
I answered that I thought it had to do with the spread of portrait photography as part of an expanding mass culture during the late 19th century, and an eagerness on the part of new American immigrants to assimilate. Somehow we all got stuck there, sartorially. To wit, here's a wedding photo of my great-grandparents:

Then I mused that it woulda been nicer had we adopted, say, Japanese ceremonial clothing, which seems more comfortable. "But the crazy thing is, they wear tuxedos in Japan now too!" Dad harumphed. "If they're gonna assimilate anything Western, why not forks?"

Later I asked my cousin Margaret Greco, who's an anthropologist, about the persistence of the tuxedo as formalwear. She said, rather wearily, that "it's because COLONIALISM NEVER ENDS."

Anyhow, here's Mom and Dad, Mom enjoying her weddingwear, I think:

And finally, and most importantly, Alex and Celeste, dancing. It's really them. I know, the picture is pretty impressionistic.

Awww. Very sweet. Congratulations, Fisches.

THE END

*(an Osmond. Not Marie.)

Life changes-a-go-go!

2005-11-01T16:10:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not going through menopause. My girl parts, damn their pink hides, are all still charging full steam ahead.

What I did do today, though, was turn in my completed application for the B.A. program in creative writing at the New School. I'm a little freaked out with impressitude at my derring-do, here, y'all. I filled out all kinds of tricky forms, and got my transcript from my long-ago University of Texas career (kind of an ordeal, by the way-not the acquiring of the transcript, which was a piece of cake, but the attendant emotional bushwa. I considered sending it to the New School admissions office without even looking at it. I was NOT a stellar student those last...several...semesters. One of the courses I got an F in, incidentally, was The Artist and American Culture. Another one I flunked was Spanish, which, as my then-professor remarked, is ridiculous because I speak Spanish! En realidad, hablaba mucho mas mejor en 1995 que hoy dia, pues, en 1995 yo hablaba hasta por los codos--seee???)

I also wrote three essays. Do you guys remember college application essays? I swear to God, they about killed me. I think I'm slightly mentally afflicted from the effort, which is why my verbiage and bad grammar on this particular blog post is so out of hand. One was basically about who I am, what I want from my edumacation, and what I'm gonna do with my edumacation from now until I die. Another one was about a book that changed my life, explaining how, and why, and blah blah, and the third asked me to design my own degree program and justify every detail. I'm paraphrasing. Anyhow, they were hard, and were made much harder by the fact that I was convinced that if I messed them up AT ALL, I would end up a sad, unaccomplished little nobody living under a bridge.

But so anyway, my application is finished, and I even walked it over to the admissions office myself. LIFE CHANGE #1!

Cambio de la vida numero dos (see? more Spanish!) is that I got fake nails yesterday. Not super-long ones, they're quite short. I am pretty enthralled. I got some kind that don't have the crazy chemicals--they're like slightly glorified Lee press-ons. They were pretty cheap. We'll see how they last. If they do pretty well, I may consider upgrading to longer ones with stencils.

Fake nails have been on my mind a while. Right before I interviewed for this job at the New School I got a vey conservative manicure on my very short ugly never-grow-long nails. Shell pink. Very corporate. I sat in a row of white girls receiving pretty-much-identical manicures, and I suddenly wanted more out of life. Tropical scenes! Holiday themes! I wanted URBAN HANDZ. And I may yet have them. What I have right now, really, is suburban Texas wedding handz.

And WHY do I have suburban Texas wedding handz, Barbara??
It's because of LIFE CHANGE NUMBER THREE! My brother Alex is getting married on Saturday! I'm hading down to San Antonio for the shindig, and I'm pretty pleased about it.

Here's Alex is at age two. Excuse the lousy photo quality, it's a cel phone photo of a framed photo on the wall at my parents' house.

Wasn't he cute? He liked to chew on the picnic table and cry. He also loved to wear a big red vinyl hat everywhere and make up rock and roll songs about his fictional girlfriend leaving him. Here are the lyrics to his big hit:

OH MY GIRLFRIEND
SHE LEFT ME
AND I MISS HER
SO MUCH
COME BACK, BAYBEH!
COME BACK, BAYBEH!
COME BAAAAAACK..
OH BAYBEH!!
DA NUUUH NUHH NUHHH!!!

He was a very sweet little guy who grew up into a very sweet big guy. He rarely makes up rock and roll songs anymore, but he does a fantastic original dance to the Sabbath classic Iron Man. My brother is all that is good about Texas, to me. Here he is as a grown-up:

He looks cranky there, but he wasn't. We were at the beach, which he loves. I think he was maybe philosophizing, or thinking up new dance moves.

He's marrying an awesome girl he's been with for over five years. Meet Celeste Trevino Fisch-to-be:

Celeste is smart, funny, compassionate, good at sports and cards, has the most infectious laugh ever, and fabulous hair, none of which you can discern from my bad cel phone photo of her. We all love her like crazy and she loves my brother like crazy. She even took up golf. I have great faith that she'll never occasion my baby brother to sing sad rock and roll songs about her.

Obligatory Post About What People Have Googled to Get Here

2005-10-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Margaret Dodge
chain mail
Shark punching
shark vs. zombie
Moneymaking Ideas
Dog frottage
paparazzo

Hello, friends!

Ms Parks

2005-10-25T08:57:00.000-07:00

Rosa Parks's funeral should be grander and more important than Ronald Reagan's. And the new middle school in the school district in Texas I came up in should definitely be named after Rosa Parks over Barbara Bush. Rosa Parks would probably make a better Supreme Court Justice dead than Harriet Miers alive. She was more audacious than any Girl Gone Wild. I hope she amuses herself in the afterlife by haunting the wicked enemies of the people, but she's probably way too dignified for that.

Fisch's New Yorkers of the Day

2005-10-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

That's me dear owd pal Jeff Mac: congratulations on winning Mr. Lower East Side, dude!* The women and gay men of below-14th like the cut of your jib, sir. You are my New Yorker of the Day. Although you are from Connecticut. Connecticut-HAHA! That's not a real place. Anyhow, Jeff, you did some mighty fancy "80's martial arts dancing," is what I would call it.
That's Jeff in his crown in that photo.**

Dang y'all, I wish this photo had turned out better. I was a little ambivalent about photographing somebody without his knowledge, here, but I did it anyway. Se the gentleman with the waist-length hair, ornate jacket, and black and white cotton leggings with the oversized houndstooth print? I love him, you see.

Here he is again. Can you tell which gentleman I mean?

No?
Well, anyhow, everybody loved him. People on the train other than I were loving him also, I'm pretty sure. He was totally rocking the Chuck Taylor hightops too. I felt it was important for y'all to see and appreciate him, Barbara, becuase he is my New Yorker of the Day Numero Dos.

*A satirical drunken all-dude non-beauty pageant conceived by Reverend Jen.Former Mr. Lower East Sides have been Jonny McGovern, Mike Amato, John Ennis, Neal Medlyn, Eric Kirchberger, and Moonshine Shorey.

**Photo by Tom Tenney

How Do Y'all Do That Thing, Y'all? How?

2005-10-17T07:39:00.000-07:00

A question for the bloggers; I keep reading peeps' blog entries in which they mention the crazy Google searches that have landed readers at their site. My site meter dealie doesn't tell me this stuff, I don't think. How do I find out? I wanna know! Do I have to shell out money or something?

Advice appreciated.

Furthermore, in the interest of the information being interesting to me eventually, here are some potential reader-attracting, misleading catchphrases:

SAUCY TALES OF OKTOBERFEST
I GET ALL SCHADENFREUDE ABOUT MYSELF
BUSH DOESN'T CARE ABOUT THE HUNGRY HUNGRY HIPPOS
YOU ARE VERY, VERY SUPERCALLIFRAGILISTICEXPYALIDOCIOUS
I SAID BIGFOOT!

Edited to add: So I learned how to look it up. It doesn't appear as though I am attracting much of ANYONE, really. DANG.

Overheard On America's Next Top Model

2005-10-11T17:37:00.000-07:00

"I'm gonna go home to Texas, get some hair extensions, and hopefully you'll see me next as Miss USA."

Yes, I feel that way too, sometimes. Only, I'd go for Miss America. Fuck that low-rent Miss USA pageant track.
(Happy now, Nubree?)

Jay Oh Be

2005-10-10T12:24:00.000-07:00

I'M BUSY! SOOOO BUSY! Readjusting to a 9 to 5 schedule has preoccupied me mightily here lately. And in addition to the new job, I also have two writing groups going (one a writerly writer's group, the other one involving writing, subterfuge and dioramas, to be described more later), plus I majorly hurt my ass bone (no kidding)recently which is oppressing me motivation-wise.

Furthermore, I just had a baby.

Just kidding!
I didn't just have a baby. I just stole a baby. It was sitting unattended in a stroller on the L train on Friday morning. I don't know what kind of baby it is. Kind of pinkish, very loud, somewhat moist. And ticking. Is that normal?

Anyhow, Happy Late New Year everybody!

What Are Y'all Doing Friday Night?

2005-09-27T16:40:00.000-07:00

My supertalented pal Alice Lee has a gig at the Knitting Factory this Friday. You would like her music, I bet. Melodic, soulful, dreamy, smart. Like Edith Piaf crossed with Beck, or Nina Simone plus Jamiroquai divided by Brazil 66. PLUS, SHE PLAYS AN ACCORDION WHICH IS ALMOST LARGER THAN SHE IS. IT IS GODDAMN INSPIRING, IS WHAT IT IS.
1,9 to Franklin St.
N,R,A,C,E to Canal St.
$10

Alice Lee - throat, guitar, etc.
Cat Oberg - violin, drums
Alan Hampton - bass
Scott McCampbell - guitar

This is Alice:

She's donating current CD sales to Red Cross fund, you can listen to it and buy it here. Her blog is funny, too.

(Cel phone photo of the Star Wars diorama by Clara Lee, incidentally.)

Five years of kicking my ass, one week of making up for it.

2005-09-23T02:55:00.000-07:00

Just so's you know upfront, y'all: this post is hideously self-absorbed.

Anybody who's lived in New York can tell you the same old chestnut. "New York is expensive. Hot in the summer, cold in the winter. I'm ignored by the powerful and harangued by the crazy. Many are prettier, famouser, talenteder, richer, or saner than I, while others frottage me on the L train. I am always running out of socks, hope, and money! What's more, daily, whether I mean to or not, I see at least one dog taking a shit. Never the same dog twice. Never the same dog twice!"

...Actually, I don't know why that should bother me, the never-the-same-dog-twice thing. Why should I want to watch the same dog shitting repeatedly? Because it would mean that I would have an ongoing relationship with one dog, rather than brief, nasty street encounters with anonymous dogs?

Anyhoo, New York, New York, big city of dreams, after five years of beating me senseless, just gave me a hot, lickery kiss. I've landed a job at the New School, as Assistant to the University Librarian. I found out Tuesday. Y'all, I've been trying to get a job at the New School for TWO YEARS. My first interview for a position was in August of '03. I've applied for 48 different jobs since, and have interviewed for four. My friend Noel says at this point they would've had to either hire me or get a restraining order. Decent pay, excellent healthcare and vacation benefits, and FREE TUITION. I'm about two semesters shy of a B.A. So I start my job on Wednesday, then will fuckin' MATRICULATE! (oh my God, is that the right word?) in January. I'm scared, but it's a new, fun brand of scared; opportunity is knocking, and it's startling me somewhat.

Some other cool shit happened to me in the last week, too, stay tuned for CELEBRITY DIRT! (Preview blind item: what dirty-toofed former Austinite was seen coked up and wearing a ginormous shearling coat in ninety degree weather recently? Hint: it wasn't me.)

(TECHNICAL INTERRUPTION: OK, so, I tried to link to the theme song from Mary Tyler Moore, up there. I couldn't find a page that just played it when you linked to it, though, so I audioblogged it by downloading it to iTunes it then played it from my computer speaker into my cel phone. If you, Barbara, can find me a link to that song, let me know in the comments. I know it sounds like shit in the audioblog. I know, I know.)

Punk-Cashin'-it Conservative

2005-09-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina
President signs executive order allowing contractors to pay below prevailing wage in affected areas.

Bush allies getting Katrina work Companies with ties to the White House among the first awarded reconstruction deals.

(Thanks Ruth Goldsmith for fwd-ing me the wage rules article, Dad for photo)

Deamonte Love of New Orleans

2005-09-09T00:13:00.000-07:00

This story
made me feel temporarily better. The kids in the article are in my hometown of San Antonio, now, too, which gives me a small-comfort warm feeling. San Antonio and New Orleans have some similarities I've been ruminating on this past week. Both are old cities, pre-American Revolution, pre-United States, having been French and Spanish and Mexican colonial-power outposts, both cities historically Catholic, both historically bilingual. San Antonio and New Orleans are also cities of poor people of color whose underpaid labor has made white people wealthier and who've benefitted very little from social programs, but whose music and food and art make their cities world-famous tourist attractions. Both are party cities, restaurant cities, bar cities, convention cities. Both are charming, lovely, friendly, violent, and poor. San Antonio, thank God, is not levee-dependent, but a large majority of its population would be similarly fucked if a natural disaster struck.

I pray that there comes out of the NOLA tragedy a new national focus on America's poor; my hometown needs it, and so does yours.

FEMA? I hardly knew her!

2005-09-07T05:39:00.000-07:00

(Psst...Say that jokey post title aloud with a Louisiana accent and... it still sucks! Shoot, y'all, sorry. Let's move on.)

First off, FEMA, in case you're not so well-versed in government bodies (rowr!), is the Federal Emergency Management Agency. FEMA is charged to protect us in case of hurricanes, volcanoes, tornadoes, witches (I think?), and, apparently, uppity poor people. FEMA partially constitutes the The Government, which, in case you're in need of further elucidation, is dictated by the Constitution. My favorite bit of the Constitution? The Preamble! It's right there at the beginning of the document, it's short, and you can dance to it. Sing it for the Durty South, y'all, like they used to do on Jimmy-Carter-era Saturday morning television:

We the People
in Order to form a more Perfect Union,
establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquilityy-yy-yy,
proviiide for the Common Defence,
promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Lib-er-tyyy
to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain!
and establish!
this Constitution!
for the:
United States o-o-of
A-
me-ri
caaaa.

As of blog time (nearly five a.m. on Wednesday morning, 9/7/05, with CNN on), Justice remains flamboyantly un-Established in South Louisiana. Domestic Tranquility in the Southern Parishes is Very Fucking Much Not. The Common Defence seems to have been ignored in the Ninth Ward, and as for the Promotion of Louisianians' General Welfare...it's so funny, I forgot to laugh.

But here, lemme try a giggle, with a KRUNK NOLA-STYLE FEMA BIT.
Oh, FEMA, you triflin' bitch. Where were you last week? Don't tell me you thought that the Weather-Related Mass Drowning, Starvation, and Chaos Administration had a handle on it. Because that's supposed to be you, lazy-ass. Don't you try to implicate Santa! Don't front, son! Santa don't make it rain. Hurricane evacuation ain't Batman's job, neither, it's YOURS. What's that you say, FEMA? What-whaaaat? Budget cuts?? WHO CUT YOU? Was it ReeRee? Did ReeRee and LaKwan cut you, baby??
...No? They drowned, you say? Damn. Well, who cut your funding then? WHO WAS IT?

Anyhow.
I realize my interpretation of the duties of our government strikes some as quixotic. Those in and out of the current Presidential Administration favoring a strict interpretation of the Constitution may argue that nowhere do the Framers propose massive hurricane-refugee airlifting. And they would have a point, as would those favoring the smallest taxes and smallest federal government in protesting that they don't control the weather.

Clearly, I just need to accept that some things went wrong, but some things went right (!), and trust that the president is gonna investigate. Yay! A sleuthin' POTUS!Who needs regulatory agencies or independent nonpartisan investigations when we have the fuckin' Hardy Boys!?

And while some among us may point out that the 18,000 yearly US deaths resulting from a lack of affordable healthcare seems also kinda...well, crisis-ish (can you imagine if there were 18,000 Americans killed each year by al-Qaeda?? Or 18,000 shark attacks? ), the poor and healthcare-free in non-New Orleans America can console themselves that at least they're not dying because all their local hospitals are underwater. Yet.

I've probably mentioned this before, but my cel phone has a camera in it.

2005-08-17T18:29:00.000-07:00

This is my bathroom. Yep.

This lady is my New Yorker Of The Week, y'all. I took this a few days ago, when the heat index here was 110 degrees. Pretty much every person I set eyes on was half-naked and sweaty in a bad, cranky, unflattering way, not a hott TV So You Think You Can Dance kinda way. Then I noticed this lady. She was wearing a dark-blue gabardine suit comprised of a short-sleeved jacket and nifty culottes, with a flame-red blouse underneath and a white straw hat. I wasn't ballsy enough to approach her or anything. So here's a back view. She was awesome, I swear. Also, she might've been a dude.

This is Chuck Ramirez in his back yard in San Antonio, Texas. The pint glasses of colored water speak to me. I dig how this photo turned out, overall. Chuck's a great artist who lives next door to another great artist, my pal Kimberly Aubuchon.
Here's Kimberly:
Kimberly and I have a metal band called Shades of Eddie Money. Our first single gonna drop someday, bitches.

My friend Anne and I were hanging out in the East Village the other night and came across this thing just sitting in a puddle. It's the top of a stool, a plastic flamingo, and some greenery. It was really deliberate-seeming. Right on, I say! Thank you, Public Sculptor, whoever you are.

Gene made this balloon hat he's wearing. Soon after I took this photo, it popped. Gene exclaimed, "Well! Apropos of nothing, my hat explodes!" Anyone who can quip thusly after suffering a hat explosion is aces in my book.

HAHAHAAHAHAHAA!!! I'm just so glad this kid had the guts to 'fess up. I don't know which organization is responsible for this bus-kiosk PSA but I love them. DON'T LET YOUR KIDS EAT HOUSEPLANTS. THAT SHIT IS POISONOUS, PROBABLY! FURTHERMORE, PLANT-EATING CHILDREN MAY MOVE ON TO EATING PHONES.
THANK YOU AND GOODNIGHT.

Indignant Mom's Korner

2005-08-08T20:42:00.000-07:00

The lady in the red dress in front of the Satan diorama is my mother. I took this photo because it looks like Mom's recruiting future Satanists, but she's not, she's a docent at the Marion Koogler McNay Art Museum in San Antonio, Texas. She's giving a kid's tour, here. She's pretty much anti-Satan, for the record. She's more of a Robert Rauschenberg fan. Did y'all know Rauschenberg's from Texas? Port Arthur. Same place as Janis Joplin.
But I digress. So, so much.

Anyhow, my mom's been sick with a cold since Friday. She's not a good patient. The woman likes to keep busy. The title of the following e-mail is "sir crazy" and I thought I'd share it with y'all.

Yup, an email from my mom.
Grossed out yet?
Does it help if I mention my mom cusses in this e-mail?
Read on.

Okay...so I'm feeling lousy and sorry for myself and decide to hook up my
new phones. But I couldn't get one of them to work, so I call the Panansonic help line and get a helper who couldn't understand me. So she gets her supervisor whom I couldn't understand. (India calling?)
She keeps saying, "Get to your base and press your bottom and it will
register."
I say, "I don't think I understand you. Would you repeat that?"
"Please press your bottom."
"I don't think I know what that means. Press my bottom?"
"Yes. You should be all better now. Have a nice day."
Click. SHE HUNG UP ON ME.
Can customer service do that? What about monitored calls and all that shit?
In retrospect, I suspect she was offended by my misunderstanding of "button."
I've been busy all day pressing my bottom. Still no dial.
What do you think?

I don't know what to think, frankly. I'm as flummoxed as Mom is.
What do you think, Barbara?

The Wit and Wisdom of Tammy Faye

2005-07-22T18:44:00.000-07:00

I'm taking a break from Shark Week and watching Tammy Faye Messner on Larry King.

Here are some highlights.
And there's my whole set-up, y'all.

Larry mentions how he'd interviewed Billy Graham recently, and Billy Graham had told Larry that he was at peace, looking forward to paradise, and that he'd be happy if he died that night. So Larry asks Tammy Faye, whose lung cancer has just recurred, if she, too, felt ready to...well, die. Like NOW.

Gah, Larry! Harsh!

So TF gazed at him kind of blankly at first, as if he'd lost his mind, then composed herself and outright giggled. And she chirped, "well, I'd rather not be in the first busload. I mean, how old is Billy...eightysomething, almost ninety?" No shit! Tammy faye Messner has THINGS TO DO!

A woman called in, commending TF on her role in VH1 program The Surreal Life, and admiring her tolerance of those whom other evangelical Christians routinely condemn. And TF nods seriously, and talks really earnestly and well about a minister friend of hers who was excluded from a religious conference due to his, well, "love of the gays," TF says. When the next caller asked if TF keeps in touch with her former housemates, TF said she's still good friends with Ron Jeremy, adding "hi, Ron!" Aww. What do they talk about, do you think? Cancer? Jews? Jesus? Porno? What?

A British woman called in, and reflected that American Christian women wear a lot more make-up and more elaborate hairdos than Christian women in Britain, and why did TF think that is? TF laughingly said "I gotta get over there and do some makeovers--I've never noticed English women wearing makeup whether they were going to church or not!" Take that, you plain-ass Jesus limeys!

PIECE DE RESISTANCE: She wants to be cremated, and for her ashes to be placed in maracas.

Happy Shark Week, Y'all!

2005-07-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

SHARK WEEK is in effect.

Right now I'm watching some sharkologist types diving with reef sharks off the coast of Bimini and trying to incite them to attack barracuda-filet-wrapped "bite meters." One of these fools got bit really bad a few years ago doing this. Now he wears chain mail.*

He's German.

Happy Shark Week!

Edited to add:

OK, so now, I'm lookin' at "Mythbusters" and they're debunking "Jaws myths." One of the things they're doing is they're building a shark-punching robot. They wanna see whether punching a shark in the face will dissuade him or her from attacking...robots.

I don't approve of this!

I don't think it's nice to build robots to punch sharks. Sharks aren't asking for that shit. You wanna take on a shark, Mythbusters? Have the decency to punch the shark your damn self, and then let the shark have a turn. Sending a tuna-scented crash-test dummy with hydraulic fists down there is a dick move.

Edited again to add:

Later in the Mythbusters show they sent one of the Mythbusters down into reef shark territory wearing chain mail.* He had a wire box of cut-up fish with him. And he had to punch the sharks hisself. It seemed nicer than the shark-punching robot, in that one of the punched-in-person sharks coulda bit back, and in doing so would bite a real guy, but I still didn't care for it.

*Nice to see chain mail out and about again.
No, wait, no it isn't.

Moneymaking Ideas!

2005-07-16T14:17:00.000-07:00

I'm gonna take out ads in evangelical Christian church bulletins, saying I'm a nice, responsible girl, but unSaved, and that for a onetime nonrefundable fee of $500 I'll take care of Left Behind pets after the Rapture. I'll get my clients' contact info and addresses and all, keep an e-mail list. Periodically I'll send an e-mail out saying "please respond to this email, Christians, otherwise I'll assume Jesus already sucked y'all up and I'll come get your dogs."

New Medicine Monster

2005-07-10T12:40:00.000-07:00

That Lunesta butterfly FREAKS. ME. OUT.
Sleep aid, my ass!
"And then after you take this medication, a glow-in-the-dark, vampire-bat-sized green moth will find an open window to your bedroom, and float in and reassure you."

Sometimes the Sharks Make it Hard to Be On Their Side

2005-07-02T12:58:00.000-07:00

Not impossible, but definitely challenging. Whereas it's totally easy to root for dolphins all the time. Sea mammal aficionados are such lightweights. You got to really be loyal to the sharks, really feel a commitment, to stay in their corner, what with all the negative media attention they're racking up lately. Probably it also helps to stay out of Florida. They seem to have a lot of those bull sharks there. Those bull sharks are behaving like bitey, teen-chawing redneck jerks! Bull sharks of Florida, y'all need to cut that shit out!

Except even with the recent acting-out, it's really not like the sharks are so much of a threat. I did a little google research, and way more people are killed annually by vending machines, donkeys, and bees. And lightning. And hippos. And bathtubs.

So, to sum up, my advice to the bull sharks is to mind their p's and q's, and my advice to the news media is to cover something else.

Eric

2005-06-21T00:48:00.000-07:00

I CAN'T SLEEP.

This is what's keeping me awake:

I am thinking how Eric, the homeless guy in front of Kellogg's Diner, looks a lot like Jamiroquai, but with more lesions. I don't feel I'm outing Eric by describing him in this manner. He knows he has lesions. It's a big topic of conversation with him.

I don't know what the lesions are, exactly, but sometimes he's on antibiotics for them.

Eric's also a strict vegetarian (his opener, almost always: "Ma, can you spare a miracle for a veggie burger?") and a seriously devout Buddhist. He once stayed at an ashram in India for months studying Sanskrit texts. I think this is actually not bullshit. He has a great story about that ashram--how one morning he was outside the barracks thingy where the yogis slept, leaning against a wall taking a shit, miserable with dysentery. His friend crouched likewise pooping, and comiserating. As they squatted there, a monkey strode out of the woods into the ashram's courtyard. Paying them no mind, the monkey deftly turned on the courtyard's water faucet and drank from it, like any five-year-old kid in the suburbs. Cute, right? So Eric and his friend laughed.

The laughter insulted the monkey, though. He quit drinking, stared them down for a horrible second, turned off the faucet, and charged at them. All screechy and arm-waving and what-have-you.

The moral of this post?
You tell me.
Go on, tell me.
Because I've got no idea.

Poetry SPOILERS

2005-06-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

I went to an open mic tonight at Pete's Candy Store, the Pete's Big Salmon Reading Series annual one. Three minute sets! An ingenious timeframe allowing little time to get seriously sick of anybody. It was excellent, thirteen performers and everybody was good. Like 90% poetry...or like 87%. This was the third event put on by Pete's Big Salmon that I've gone to, and they've all been terrific. Unfortunately, they're on hiatus now but will return in the fall.

One woman read an essay about Mayor Bloomberg, and a performer named Sean McNally did a sort of phantasmagorical work of humor erotica involving Gary Burghoff and Ronald McDonald. One of the poets, Jason Schneiderman, whose name I was briefly convinced was Paul, did a fantastic poem about Carmen Miranda. A woman called Maureen Thorson read an improbably beautiful piece about going to the movies with a ghostly drunken sailor. She invoked zombies. Susanne Lustig had one about American Idol that made me feel briefly better about my compulsion to watch it. I wish I could remember the other performers' names.

you can get on the series' e-mail list:
Pete's Big Salmon Reading Series

Here's a magazine with some great poetry in it:
Painted Bride Quarterly

Pete's Candy Store is a great venue over here in Williamsburg, it's a fun, comfy bar and their performance space feels like a vaudeville club car, or something.
Pete's Candy Store

A Practical Question

2005-06-17T18:47:00.000-07:00

How do you mend a hole in polyester?
It's a little hole.
Like, end-of-pinky-sized.
The fabric where the little hole is, is black.
Should I just forget about it and count my blessings, or what?

Broke

2005-06-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

I edge closer and closer to a life of crime. I am tired of having no money. And by "no money" I do not mean I can't buy a car at this time, or can't invest in the stock market, or no vacation this year-type "no money."

Now, I do get paid on Friday, which means I'm better off than many Americans, but in the meanwhile I have $2.76 to my name. Or, rather, I had $2.76. Margaret Dodge lent me ten bucks at Rev. Jen's AntiSlam earlier (unbidden, mind you, simply as a result of listening to my constant broke-ass bitching. Unpleasant as it is to bitch, it must be more painful to listen to).**

Anyhow so Margaret raised my total net worth to $12.76. This was pretty neat. I have a Metrocard, plus some saltines at home, so really, $12.76 was gravy.

Then, as it happens, the L train was out. Train trouble is rough on us poor people, y'all. I'd taken the C train from Tribeca to the L at 8th Avenue, and found there that the L was just cancelled for the rest of the evening. (Editorial note: MTA employees really don't wanna hear people whine. Or talk.)

So I walk over to the JMZ atation down at Delancey, blocks and blocks further than if I'd walked there from the Antislam itself, and wait a half-hour. Then some drunk thug teen gang starts hassling so I have to murder them and flee the scene***, and then had to take a cab home, which, because of the fucking traffic on the Williamsburg Bridge (traffic consisting mainly of cabs, seeing as how there was no L train) cost $7.50. And I didn't even take the cab all the way home! I had them drop me on the corner after my exit off the bridge and walked from there!

So, I have been on my way home, from two miles away, for two and a half hours. Had I just gotten a cab home from the open mic, it'd've taken fourteen minutes. But it woulda cost like three more dollars too.

But I guess this story is pretty uplifting, in that after all these transportational shenanigans, my current net worth is $5.26, which is still $2.50 more than I had before I was lent ten bucks. Plus, actually, come to think of it, Tom Nevin gave me a DVD of the first episode of Deadwood tonight also.

I'M LIVIN' THE DREAM, Y'ALL!

**Margaret: thanks, dude. Had you not insisted I maybe wouldn't'a gotten home at all.

***Okay, um, the teen harassers are true, and I did flee. But no, I didn't really kill anybody. I just wanted to sound like a badass for a second, because the rest of this post made me sound so so so so so so so so so so so so sad.

Apparently I Got Nothing to Say in Print

2005-06-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

What the hell is wrong with me?
Suddenly I feel all blog-stymied and whatnot. I don't know how good of an idea it is to try to rectify this by writing a post about not having posted, but it's better than nothing.

That's my new motto about everything: BETTER THAN NOTHING.

I have been going to an assload of open mics, again. So if you wanted to, you could come see me in person, if you, Barbara, are of the New York persuasion.

So, um.

Okay, here's something. A little earlier this evening, after I got home from work, I had CNN on. It was the Anderson Cooper show. Today is his birthday, apparently. And a cutesily annoying news chick announces she's got "a special treat for [him]," and I'm thinking "I hope she knows he's gay." Then I wonder if Gloria Vanderbilt knows he's gay. So anyhow, CNN proceeds to air this, like, four-minutes' long gag reel of special-treat-for-Anderson "wacky footage," like a bear falling out of a tree onto a trampoline, and a rear shot of some frat-looking dude dancing, and people hit with pies, and that sort of thing. There's nasty carnivalesque music in the bkground, and intermittent "HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANDERSON" titles, also.

One of the clips is an enraged Indian elephant busting through a plate glass storefront window into what looks like an ATM vestibule. And I feel horrible for the elephant, and hope it didn't cut itself breaking through the glass. Then I note, with relief, that the elephant has a...some kind of a performance get-up on. Like an enormous satin shirt, it looks like. And I think, well, maybe that satin shirt protected the elephant from the broken glass somewhat.

Then my adult brain kicks in and intones SARAH LUCILLE FISCH, YOU ARE WATCHING CNN. THIS THOUGHT YOU JUST HAD, ABOUT THE RAMPAGING ELEPHANT SHIELDED FROM FALLING SHARDS OF GLASS BY A GIGANTIC SATIN BLOUSE, WAS OCCASIONED BY "AMERICA'S MOST TRUSTED NEWS SOURCE."

I wish the next thing I'd seen on CNN was Walter Cronkite busting into the studio and punching Anderson Cooper in the nose. But it wasn't. It was Anderson Cooper fucking BEAMING.

Happy birthday, Anderson Cooper. My birthday wish for you is that the Gravitas Fairy comes and gives you a magical birthday talking-to. Or that Gloria Vanderbilt does. She seems pretty hardcore, in her way.

Texas: Hitting the High Points, Take One

2005-05-30T15:53:00.000-07:00

OK, so, Barbara, I apologize in advance for the spottily written and photo-dependent nature of this post. I been all out and about and whatnot, and, so, yeah. Anyhoo, I thought I'd better get back in blog business before i got spooked, or something.

MY TRIP TO TEXAS, FROM WHENCE I CAME

So here's what I stared at for a while on the way there. I hate flying so much.

Here is Arkansas, which is on the way.

Here is the bedroom I sleep in at my folks' house.

Here is Wilfrid, my wise old nephew. The boy stares right into your soul, don't he?

Here is a bocce ball court at my folks' house. I don't know why, exactly, but it cracks me up that they put in a bocce ball court. My dad hauled roughly fifty wheelbarrowloads of sand.

Here is my sister Annie sitting in it. This is mostly what it's used for. I mean, how much bocce ball can one play?

END PART ONE

More verbal shit to come--I'm mostly performing it onstage, though.

Photo Prodigy

2005-05-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

Hi Barbara--

I am in Texas, where they are running me ragged from morning til night. But quick, look at this photo taken of my aunt Beverly Schwartzman.

The thing is, Lilly took it. As in Lilly, my three-year-old niece.

This is Lilly:

Pretty good. Sadly it was extremely bright outside so they look sort of bleached out.

Fodder for PARADE Magazine, If I Had a Better Camera

2005-05-11T22:29:00.000-07:00

Look, it's a canine comedy duo.

blog criticism

2005-05-07T15:07:00.000-07:00

This is one of those drafts I saved for later elaboration, but now that I look at it again, I'm not sure it's worth developing. So I'll just combine it with this photo, which is a hack photo. It's like the photo version of hackery, maybe. To tell you the truth, there are a lot of aspects of stand-up comedy I don't understand all that well.

********************************************
MEAN COMMENTS LEFT ON BLOGS BY OTHER BLOGGERS??
gauguin criticizing van gogh's blog
mary mc carthy --flannery o'connor?
an inanimate object critiquing an animal's blog
historical figures
"this is a generation that doesn't remember life before Dickens."

yuck

The Tiniest Goddamned Snowman

2005-05-06T18:41:00.000-07:00

I have to hand in an outline to my editor by May 16 for my forthcoming Clifford the Big Red Dog spin-off opus, Clifford's Puppy Days: The Littlest Snowman. The outline is basically a story idea and art suggestions. Now, what I gotta figure out is, why on earth does there need to be a "littlest" snowman?

Last time, for Clifford's Puppy Days: Backpack Puppy I was told "Clifford stows away in Emily Elizabeth's backpack on her first day in school." But for this one, everything's up to me! I'd like to take this time to let y'all know that I have never in my life built a snowman. I only threw my very first snowball in February of '01, and that was outside a bar.

Any feedback on the ideas below would be appreciated. Not just smartass feedback, neeva--knock yourself out, though--but real kid-book feedback. You moms & dads out there, or if there are any preschoolers in the crowd--why a tiny snowman? Wherefore diminuitive snowman? WHY?

IDEAS
1. Everybody's expecting the first snowfall of the season to be a blizzard, but the accumulated precipitation turns out to be minimal. Clifford is bummed, because he was looking forward to building a big-ass snowman. But instead, they build a tiny-ass snowman with the tiny-ass amount of snow they got, and make the best of it.

2. Little Sidarsky (the Sidarskys are mice who live in the laundry room of C's bldg) is afraid of large snowmen (?), so C and cronies build a little one his size. And he, um, likes it, and hence, snowmen are okay.

3. C, little S, Flo and Zo (these kittens who are C's friends), Daffodil (a rabbit) feel underrepresented by the big honking human-sized snowmen they are subjected to all over the playground and demand that the City build them some smaller animal-sized ones, or something like that. Or that somebody does, maybe not the City. Maybe Emily Elizabeth. Maybe Clifford. Maybe they all build it. Or maybe they each build one. Oh my God.

4. Or maybe there's a snowman contest, and Clifford builds a tiny snowman and feels kinda self conscious about it but then unexpectedly wins a prize. Except Clifford isn't really much of a builder. So Emily-Elizabeth wins it, maybe, but then Clifford destroys the tiny snowman in a fit of jealous rage.

5. Okay, this one is definitely the worst one. It's mid-July, and one of Emily-Elizabeth's little friends is dying of leukemia. But he really wants to see a tiny snowman. But so...Clifford and his friend the rabbit get some ice cubes...you can see where I'm going with this. NOWHERE.

And no, I'm guessing Scholastic does not want a 24-page picture book PBS-tie-in for the preschool market about a midget cocaine dealer.

Anybody got any other ideas?

(Photo is of Conselyea Street, Wmsburg, in March, taken w/ beloved phone camera--note snow, note complete lack of snowmen made by me, and how this seemed not to bother me then.)

Yeah, I Watched Riding The Bus With My Sister

2005-05-04T01:38:00.000-07:00

Firstly, I'd like to say that blogging about this movie in no way lessens my guilt and shame at having watched it, okay? First-and-a-half-ly, I would like to reaffirm my stated and deeply-felt opinion that those with developmental disabilities and those who work with them are deserving of the utmost respect.

Secondly, I know full well that it's wrong to refer to persons with developmental disabilties as retarded. However, I think it not only acceptable but mandatory to apply this term to every character, fictional and non-, involved with this particular production.

SOME BITTER IRONIES ASSOCIATED WITH THIS TV MOVIE

1. Anjelica Huston directed this piece of crap! Oh, Anjelica. I can only hope they paid you in gold bars and precious rubies and a Himalayan baby dolphin preserve of your very own to helm this ridiculous...or, no, wait. I hope, instead, that you now have a persistent rash. Not for the rest of your life, but for up to six weeks. A rash on you, Anjelica Huston!

2. For all her presumed good intentions, Ms O'Donnell portrays the retarded lady in the style of a vicious junior-high bully taunting the special ed kids, with Pee-Wee Herman laugh and Punky Brewster shoes added for extra dimension. Except when she's a-cryin,' and then all hell breaks loose. Total Methody apeshit histrionics! Except even her retardo-tantrums have a kind of retro-80's flava to them. To wit: she blatantly steals a physical bit from a 1984 Tarzan movie, wiping her whimpering face with her dead father's hand, a la Christopher Lambert in Greystoke: the Legend of Tarzan. And speaking of the cast of Greystoke...

3. Andie MacDowell, oh my God, you are really not a good actress at all. Please, please, Andie MacDowell, do not do a New York accent, or a movie, ever again. Don't they feed you at the haircolor-commercial place they keep you at?

4. But back to Rosie O'Donnell as the empowered retard with the fetching underbite. Why couldn't the retard have been a lesbian? But oh, no. She had to be a str8 retard. They had to go and give her a retarded boyfriend named Jesse, who in addition to being male is also black...and hot...and, incidentally, um, an expert martial artist who beats up criminals. Okay, so this movie is slightly awesome. *

5. Except that, no, it isn't awesome at all. Because for one thing, the title is hideously insensitive. I cannot have been the only viewer who mentally amended the title to Riding the Short Bus With My Sister.

*My roommates and I tried to think of which actress we would cast in the role of Rosie's character's retarded girlfriend, and decided Mary Stuart Masterson might be able to pull it off.

Warning

2005-05-01T23:45:00.000-07:00

I left this note on the TV earlier tonight so my roommates would know not to turn the television off.

Bad Paparrazzo Game

2005-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Maybe I don't so much suck as this phone camera does.
See if you can identify these comedy performers!
I'll post their identities later.

Lawn Statuary of East Williamsburg

2005-04-27T20:24:00.000-07:00

LION

This is a lion.

GUYS BEARING STUFF

These two dudes are somewhat similar.

STILL LIFE

This cement basket of fruit kind of freaks me out.

OWL

I wish this photo had turned out better--this owl looked pretty realistic and spooky with the cloudy sky whooshing by behind it. I think these faux owls are meant to deter pigeons. Near this fake owl gate, there is an apartment building upon whose roof there is a giant pigeon coop. I wonder if the pigeon coop guy ever passes by and notices this anti-pigeon owl and gets his feelings hurt.

THANKS DAD

This is a plaque set into the brick facade of a newly refurbished building on Conselyea Street.

103, 000 Women Locked Up

2005-04-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

There are 103,000 women currently locked up in prison in the USA.
2.1 million people are locked up in prison, total.
Using the most recent Justice Department data, the Justice Policy Institute found that last year two-thirds of those 2.1 million were incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, representing the first time in American history that more than one million (1,185,458) people were confined for crimes involving no violence.
It costs 2x the amount to incarcerate women than men, mostly due to the cost of caring for incarcerated women's children.
It costs 22k a year to imprison a person in America (but I didn't catch whether that means a man or a woman).
American taxpayers pay 2 billion dollars a year to keep people in prison.
These statistics come from CNN.
Which I watch to reaffirm my belief that America is a very troubled place.
Now look at this photo I took of that statue in Union Square of the lady with the kids.
Who the hell is this lady?
Do any of y'all know?
Tell me.
What is she meant to represent?

Help me with my mental burdens, o Barbara.

(Note: I edited this post from earlier and added the Justice Dept study statistic)

Don't Look at These Hideous Freaks

2005-04-24T15:36:00.000-07:00

Listen, my babies, my comrades, my Bleu State Pervo Godless Commie Ahtist Pornographer friends, the only reason I'm posting these grisly photos is to placate the special interests.
But still, don't...don't look. DON'T. Go peruse schlongmonster.com or assbiters.org. Go have sex with a man. Especially if you ARE a man.
I BEG OF YOU.
Okay, SO. You know my policy with photos of the shameful variety, Barbara: make 'em small.

RUTHLESS BITCHES

This is an FBI surveillance photo of Carol Fisch, a.k.a. "Screaming Mimi," her daughter Annie "Pedal to the Metal" Hamlin, and Annie's daughter Lilly, known in Montessori circles as "the Nakes."

All three are serial killers.

DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS

Cute, aren't they? But what you can't see is that just out of frame, a small, frail, elderly woman is imprisoned in a wire mesh cage. She is Lucretia "the Taxidermist" MacFahrquahr, Carol's old nemesis from back in the St. Louis days. It took nearly forty years, but Carol finally got 'er. Lilly is poking The Taxidermist with a stick.

SHOCKING ALTERNATIVE LIFESTYLES

The taller fellow pictured here is Matt "Chopper" Hamlin, my brother-in-law and owner of San Antonio, Texas bicycle shop/ acoustic biker crime den Bicycle Heaven. The guy menacing the photographer is Wil "The Baby" Hamlin. Wil enjoys breastfeeding, clean diapers, and getting lots of sleep. Wil is forty-seven years old.

JUST PLAIN GROSS

Wil again. His grandfather, John "Poppy the Napper" Fisch, is also pictured. That is his thumb. The rest of him is preoccupied with plotting more murders and is too dangerous to photograph.

If you see any of these people, watch the fuck out.

Photo Credit: Ruthie "G-Person" Goldsmith, cleverly disguised as a mariachi. Damned fine work, G.

Better? Worse?

2005-04-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

So I messed with my blog some. What do y'all think? I'm likin' the polka-dots.

Well?

It was time for a change. I'm also fi'n'a change my hair. I am considering a little bit of layering, and perhaps what they call a "false bang."

Or I could wimp out and buy me a wig (see below).

FISCH OUT

Seasonal Affective Dumbassery: A How-To

2005-04-18T22:59:00.000-07:00

Take a leisurely stroll in a nearby park on a gorgeous, sunny spring afternoon. Revel in your jacketlessness. Feel the sunshine on your happy face. Observe the picnicking families, the old Polish guys sunning themselves on their benches, the bustling handball courts, the shouting children at their soccer game.

Ahh, spring.

Next, rapidly conclude, based on some wildly inaccurate data provided you by your peripheral vision, that a softball is rocketing towards your head. Duck reflexively and cover your head with your arms. Just as quickly, correctly determine that the threat was imagined, and straighten back up and continue walking as though nothing had happened. Accept that you now look like a crazy person. But whatever, you know, that's cool.

The Golden Age of Cruddy Phone Photography

2005-04-17T23:02:00.000-07:00

(Note: I have "improved" the aesthetics and quips of the post. I hope that does not make me a phony. )

I got a new phone a couple months ago, Barbara.*
It has a camera in it!

I can't tell you how much I am enjoying this little camera. But I will try. I am really, really, really, really, really, really, really enjoying this little camera in my phone.

Here are some photos of springtime in New York.

That's a dogwood tree near my shrink's office, which is on Central Park East. Her office had a great view of the Gates, back in the day. I encouraged peeps to go get a look from her window but to watch out, because her methods are very confrontational and directive.

Here are some daffodils in Central Park. I'm right up on 'em in this photo. They look fake, but they weren't. They look better smaller. If I make this image larger, they totally look plastic.

Also Central Park. I took these like ten days ago. Things were just then in full bud-and-bloom, but by today the dogwoods are already going leafy.

Here are some photos of people.

That's Bruce Ronn on his 40th birthday, wearing an anti-stress eye mask, and lookin' good. Don't'cha think!? He had a karaoke party. Village Karaoke, which is BYOB. I recommend it. It's on Cooper Square. It used to be a massage parlor.

Here's Moonshine on Bruce Ronn's birthday, likewise lookin' good. Check out his "Midnight with Moonshine" show at Bowery Poetry Club midninghts on Wednesdays, um, at Bowery Poetry Club, on Wednesdays. Is that all the info you'll need? I think so.

I met these boys in church. They just want to touch him, as you can see.

You cannot for love nor money convince me that this is not a small girl gang. Do you hear me? GIRL GANG. GIRL GANG!! They'll bang you right here at the Central Park duck pond, near the toy-sailboat-rental-pagoda, under the azalea bushes, as the Maclaren strollers go a-rollin' by.

Now, here is a small fraction of the photos I have taken of myself, but because this is shameful, I have made them small.

Now then, check out this arty photo I took of a bas-relief I done seen at the park!

Thank you for viewing my first online photo exhibit.
I would also like to take this opportunity to send a shout-out to my parents:

Sigh. Dad lives in that tree.

*In case you don't remember, my readers, "Barbara" is what I call y'all collectively.

Meet Joyce.

2005-04-15T17:47:00.000-07:00

Gay Porn--So Much Cuter

2005-04-13T19:47:00.000-07:00

So I'm watching a documentary about a now-defunct publication called Physique Pictorial, and that was one endearing beefcake mag, y'all! It was particularly adorable in 1958-1965. Cute smiling boys, often nude but sometimes with fun accessories like a giant sombrero, or an Indian chief headdress. It was quite DIY-looking--the art direction was human-scale, un-slick. Black and white, too! Samizdat-o-rama.

And because this documentary is on TRIO, they've pixillated the genitals. Pixillating genitals is very flattering, I must say. It "rounds up," if you catch my drift--I kept thinking "Lawsy, that boy must be enormous--look at the size of that pixillated area!"

Oh, and guess who has a show tomorrow night?
See two posts down.

So, HA!

2005-04-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

mocha: All my lols will be truthful from now on.
sarah: Now there's a vow for the ages.
sarah: Post that on your blog and smoke it!
mocha: Yes, stick this up your blog!
sarah: And smoke it!
mocha: lol
sarah: You'd better use that, or I will.
sarah: I give you THREE DAYS.
mocha: Wait--
mocha: which one?
sarah: All of it!
mocha: You're giving me "put that in your blog and smoke it?"
mocha: But I'm using it right now!
sarah: No, i want it AND I want all "my lols will be truthful"
sarah: Or we can swap.
sarah: Or i'll just post this IM.

*note: please look at the post just under this one, about my show.

Come See Me on Thursday

2005-04-11T16:34:00.000-07:00

I'm in a really good show on Thursday night, friends.

No Hitting!
With Becky Donohue and Jeff Mac
Mickey's Blue Room
171 Ave C (bet. 10th & 11th)
Subways: F to 2nd Ave, L to 1st Ave
$3 cover, cheap drinks

The blog for the show is very funny, and links to the hosts' very-funny blogs:
http://nohittingcomedy.blogspot.com/

If y'all go, I bet you will all enjoy yourselves, because I plan to
look pretty and speak in a clear and well-modulated voice. Plus, they
sell alcohol there!

In addition to me, there will be:

1. Todd Levin, a standup/writer who's written for Salon, Glamour, The
Modern Humorist, McSweeney's, and The Onion!
2. Katie McCabe, founder of The Hester Prynz improv group, Gayety and Ladyfest featured performer, and host of a weekly comedy series at Punch!
3. Damien Sammarco, of the Chicago-based improv juggernaut "Sickest
Fucking Stories" and the dreaded Trainwreck at the Parkside Lounge!
4. Josh Comers, frequent and funny stand-up on the NYC scene, and
writer for The (late) Late Show With Craig Kilborn!

You may have already gotten the e-mail saying all this, if you're on my list. And that e-mail had this blog URL on it, and if you came to look at my blog based on the e-mail, this was all redundant for you.

I'm sorry.
Let me add something new.
...So, um, how are you guys, good?
Anybody seen the Basquiat show?
Deededeeededeeeeeeee.
*cymbal crash*

This Post Will Damn Well Be Light and Breezy

2005-04-07T17:00:00.000-07:00

(Sound of Fisch screaming hysterically, if she had audio-post savvy).

HAPPY THOUGHTS, HAPPY THOUGHTS

*90% of the time, if you say, "hi, dog!" to a passing dog on the street, he'll make eye contact and wag a tiny bit, saying "hi!" back. Try it, you'll like it!

*No matter how bad things get, my name is not Lucretia McFarhrquahr.

*Clean sheets

* http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050401/ap_on_sc/captive_shark

this shark story above is pretty cool. Thanks, Alice!
I'm glad they let that shark out. She was not gonna be a good fit for an aquarium environment, and they woulda always been mad. I think keeping a Great White Shark in your aquarium is just asking for trouble. Don't get another one, Monterey Aquarium. Although if you do, I will definitely do everything in my power to come look at it.

Find the Old New Mystery Post! Also: Help

2005-04-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

1. Hi.

if y'all like me, then y'all are in for a treat if you scroll down to March 14. I finally posted a thing I'd saved as a draft, so it comes out down there.

If you don't like me, then definitely don't read this bonus post.
Or any of the rest of this stuff.
It's just more of me to hate!
I could see that being fun though.

2. Help.

I used to have a counter on here, but it disappeared. Barbara, do you know why it would disappear, and how I can get it back?

I Hear Good Things About You, Jesus

2005-04-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

Dear Jesus,

Do you have a minute?

I figured you might, now that the Terry Schiavo and Pope John Paul 2 situations are not so time-sensitive.

So, Jesus, listen, I'd appreciate some help, here. Anything You could do with regard to my overall wellbeing, like granting me peace and hope and remote absorption of any sins I've racked up, would be really nice of You. But more specifically, if You could see Your way to getting hold of a new albuterol inhaler, an Advair diskus, and a few months' supply of .75 mcg levothyroxine, 300 mg lamotrygine, and 300 mg Wellbutrin XL tabs for me, oh my G*d, I'd be hella grateful.

I don't wanna tell You Your business, but maybe You could, like, send Your Mom? She seems to appear in corporeal form somewhat oftener than You. She could materialize in the kitchen with my meds, and then I could go to the Brooklyn archdiocese and witness to Her divine presence and have them build Her a little something-something. A public pool would be nice, I think.

I wouldn't even ask, but all my secular options have been really fucked up lately. My ex-employer cancelled my medical insurance, funnily enough, without having got me my COBRA information in time for me to pay it and thereby maintain coverage--and though I sent them a check immediately upon finding out I'd been cancelled, it still took two weeks to reinstate me. I guess they're not miracle workers, huh? HAHA! (Sorry.)

And my out-of-pocket for my meds this month would’ve been about three hundred and fifty dollars. And though I could get my hands on the dough, I kind of had it earmarked for rent.

And although I asked, my doctor doesn't really like to give out free medicine. Presumably it irks the pharmaceutical sales reps. And hell, my doc isn't Mother Teresa. She gotta do for her and hers, a'ight?

Now, if there were some kind of national healthcare program, then I wouldn't have to bother You, Jesus. It would be far easier for me and others to obtain our prescribed medications without interruptions due to huge expense and/or reliance on corporate employment status. Why, if there was national healthcare for everybody, it'd probably even be easier to obtain asthma medications than street drugs! Because, Jesus, I know a guy who hangs out in front of the diner who tells me if I give him ten dollars, he'll give me several doses of diacetyl morphine right there on the spot, without phoning the HR lady at Holtzbrinck Publishing or the United Healthcare coverage department. Not that I've taken him up on it, just saying.

Now, I realize it's gonna be a great inconvenience for You and all the angels and saints to look after the health care needs of all Americans. I don't envy You the paperwork. But the President speaks so highly of You, and despite my semi-Jew status I did go to Your schools, as a kid.

Help a sister out.

Funny to Me

2005-03-29T21:09:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to remind y'all about Bill O'Reilly's sexual harrassment problem, in case anyone has forgotten, plus, I didn't have this blog back then. Also Lori Mocha and I were just talking about it and I told her I was gonna blog about it, so here I go. A girl of my word.

So, remember when Bill O'Reilly said he wanted to touch that girl with a felafel?
He was regaling his then-assistant with a fantasy shower scene when he said it. He proposed to wash her in an outdoor shower in the Carribbean with one.

He may have meant loofah, since which he'd made reference to one earlier in the conversation.
(http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1013043mackris16.html)

But what if he did want to touch her with a felafel? I like to think he did. He has secret yearnings to fondle women with Middle Eastern foods, I know it. Foods he thinks of as sinister and semitic. Soo taboo-breaky!

Even if this is only funny to me, it's still...funny to me.

Also this:
it occurred to me in recent conversation that I would like to have five boyfriends. I think five is a good number. I could handle it. I want one of them to be Ludacris, and another one to be a cowboy astronaut from Cuba. The other three are MY BUSINESS.

What would you like to touch Bill O'Reilly with, Barbara?
And how many boyfriends do you want?

New Studies Show Increase in Monsters Hurts Feet, Head

2005-03-25T18:29:00.000-08:00

I am unheased by the proliferation of small monsters on television advertising for prescription medications.
Unheased, you ask?
It's a verb I got from that Kim Carnes' song, Bette Davis Eyes. I think it means, well, something like "to make uneasy."

She'll unhease you!
Something something!
All the better just to please you!
She's precocious!
And she knows just
what it takes to...something gross-us!

Unhease. You've heard it. But I digress.

The growing prevalence of smallish, often horned, gaudily-colored monsters to denote various health problems unheases me. Remember when we were kids, and television commecials for medications actually indicated those medications' effect on the body? Why is this less in evidence now? It seems like the logical way to go. The glowing red discomfort of a TRON-like blueprint of tortured feet would go cool and blue with the application of a little graphic of a swirling foot-cream tube. Some visual metaphors were less literal. Remember Contac? From what I remember, the tiny multicolored beads of medication would escape the large capsule and fill one's nasal passages, thereby allowing for the passage of arrows. Contac was beautiful.

Not so the Lamisil feet monsters or the migraine-ad migraine monsters. They're gross, and of course are meant to be. We're meant to want to take anything that will vanquish or repel bodily monsters. Americans are a race of primitives, they seem to believe. It's advertising hoo-doo! The complexities of cartoon pharmacology elude us, I guess. The ad hacks of my imagination explain it thusly:

"Listen here, Snively, America doesn't understand your fancy-pants, college boy anatomical science. They don't know what a bronchial dilator does. They can't identify an ear. What we need to focus on in these network spots is our lozenges' abillity to repel fictional creatures. What we gotta show 'em is CRITTERS!Podiatric trolls, demons of the lung, gremlins swarming the colon. All computer-generated, too. Trendy monsters. That's our angle! 'Cause God knows the side-effect profile of this crap isn't helping us."

Maybe it's the flu!

2005-03-19T14:04:00.000-08:00

I'm sick. I know this isn't just a figment of my imagination. It started with a stuffy nose and a tickly-scratchy throat yesterday afternoon, and has progressed to mysterious body pains and vertigo hallucinations every time I move, and more mucus in my head than is attractive or called for. It's also brought on some moaning. I've been drinking fluids and sucking on C-and-zinc lozenges and watching Coal Miner's Daughter but nothing can stop the flu.

If I've got to feel this way, I'd better have contracted something famous. The flu is the A-list celebrity of late-winter, shitty-feeling viruses. I'd feel like an ass if this turned out to be whatever isn't the flu.

The summer before last, I didn't get West Nile. I was so disappointed. I did have something, but it was some lame-ass guest-star "Eastern viral encephalitis" crap. That just sounds disgusting, as though I'd been up to something gross. West Nile Virus was clearly the superior, zeitgeisty pathogen.

So, in closing, this had better be the flu. Or I'm going to be really put out. Oh, not at you, Barbara. Not at anyone in particular. Just at God.

I Have Been So Damn Busy

2005-03-14T16:58:00.000-08:00

Please pardon my lack of posting these last three weeks...I was going great guns there for a while, too. It's just that I've been SO BUSY since the baby was born. Whew! I mean, I've never seen the baby--he lives in San Antonio with my sister, who is his mom. But newborns are so exhausting! All staying up all night screaming and whatnot, with their creepy little soft heads. Imagining this makes it hard to write.

Another reason is that I have been proccupied with my beauty routines.
I do this scam where I go to Kiehl's and buy like a $7 bar of soap and then ask for sample sizes of more expensive Kiehl's products, plus everything I know the actual name of, plus "something to detangle hair." Trying out all this stuff is a not inconsiderable challenge! Speaking of which, the Abyssine Eye Creme is EXCELLENT. It's made me realize that what I really need is an eye job. I RENOUNCE MY ANTI-COSMETIC SURGERY THING! I WANT AN EYE JOB!! And a bigger penis.

Lent, also, has distracted me. I have been fasting and atoning for my sins, except when I go out. I haven't been going out all that much, though. Some people go out all the time, and never atone or write.
They are called artstars.
KIDDING!!

Reality shows starring English nannies have also diverted my attention from my blog, which is weird. What's with me? I'm not a nanny. Nor do I have children. Who am I identifying with in these nanny shows? I think it must be the children. I must harbor a secret desire for a strict but benevolent British woman to arrive seemingly out of nowhere, get down to my level, look me in the eye, and tell me to USE MY WUUUUHDS.

By the way, Barbara (that's what I call you, my readers, collectively: "Barbara.") are those English nanny shows broadcast in the UK too? Like the same exact shows? And if they are, I bet they just call it "Americans Are 'Orrible."

At the Doctor's Office

2005-03-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

There were some senior citizens in the waiting room of my doctor's office this morning.

Edited to add: OK, so, I saved the above sentence back in early March.I noticed it again today, and read it, and thought, one sentence? Why on earth did I save this sentence as a draft?

I mean, what did I have to say about these senior citizens?
I feel bad just leaving it at "there were some." It's true that there were a shitload in the office that day, as I remember. And by "shitload," I mean four. The official mount of old people that it takes to constitude a shitload, Barbara: Four.

So the shitload in this case: a ninety-something Jamaican lady in a wheelchair, the wheelchair lady's sixty-fivish-year-old nurse, the wheelchair lady's seventyish daughter, and a seventysomething Jewish dude who was trying hard to get with the wheelchair lady's daughter. He was persistent as hell, kept chatting her up way past the point where I was trying to ESP him thusly: stop, dude, just stop. Please stop before the inevitable point where she has to get hostile, 'cause man, that point is gonna be sad. And surely it's coming, because I'm already past it.

**But!**

He not only did he not alienate his chosen lady, he got her to sing a chorus of "When You're Smiling" with him. Holy shit, success---for old people, that's like making out in front of a bar!

See, this is why I don't score more elderly black chicks.

Elderly black chicks whose moms keep rapping on the armrests of their wheelchairs and saying "I WANT TO GO HOME" thereby incurring being placated with those Danish butter cookies.

I'm just not persistent enough.

Welcome, Wilfrid!

2005-02-22T13:46:00.000-08:00

My sister Annie and her husband Matt had a baby today at 12:34. My father described Wilfrid as "round and red with a hooked nose and light hair." His name is Wilfrid Auer Hamlin.

"His name is Wilfrid?" you ask. "Are you fucking serious?"

I am. He's named for our grandfather, WIlfrid Fisch, who, incidentally, was so embarrassed by his first name that he went by W.L. his whole life. Baby Wilfrid's parents plan to call him "Wil," but he'll always be Wilfrid to me.

Shout-out to his big sister Alexandra Elizabeth "Lilly" Hamlin. It's gonna be rough, princesa.

Fear and Loathing Earlier Today

2005-02-22T01:02:00.000-08:00

Oh, Hunter S.
Surely it couldn't'a gotten any worse.
Couldn't you have stuck it out a while?

Nascent yoga material

2005-02-14T17:25:00.000-08:00

Bad mantra: bovine spongiform encaphalopathy

Another Deleted Post About That Kid From New Jersey

2005-02-14T17:08:00.000-08:00

So I'll replace this post with some song lyrics that are stuck in my head:

We don't need another heeeee-roo
We don't need to know the waaaayy hooome
All we want is life be-yooo-ond
the Thunderdome.

Poor Kid.

2005-02-13T13:00:00.000-08:00

That kid from New Jersey with the Romanian-pop-song dancing clip is apparently very sad about his fame. So I took this post down. It wasn't a particularly interesting post anyway.

Yipe, Toe Socks

2005-02-12T23:41:00.000-08:00

Y'all, look at these toe socks I spotted on eBay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=11526&item=5361564057&rd=1

Aaaagh! For some reason, It makes me feel just terrible to look at these toe socks. These raw silk toe socks fill me with dread.
I couldn't tell you why. But let me try.

The toe socks violate some boundary--it's perverse to see all the toes individually delineated. Who would wear these toe socks? I can't even fathom it. They don't show the rest of the person in the terrifying photos, but if they did, I bet he'd also be wearing a mankilt and a sequinned beanie. Maybe he plays the dreaded didgeridoo! And what if he tried to walk up and touch you with his horrible gloved toes?

These toe socked feet want me to do something and I don't want to do it, whatever it is. In my opinion the scariest picture is on the bottom right, with two toe-socked pairs of feet like some members of an obscure but dangerous tribe.

Doity Boids.

2005-02-12T00:38:00.000-08:00

Fisch: T lives alone, unless you count the finches in his freezer.
Lori Mocha: Um, they are dead?
Fisch: Yes.
Lori Mocha: That is weird.
Fisch: And the murderer finch promptly died, maybe of loneliness.
Lori Mocha: T found them outside or what?
Fisch: Oh, no. They were his pets, in life.
Lori Mocha: Oh, but now they died and he keeps them...in his freezer. Okay.
Fisch: He liked them before they were dead, and he still likes them.
Lori Mocha: He could have them taxidermied.
Lori Mocha: About the same, 'cept less noise and poop.
Fisch: True!
Fisch: Originally he was given a cockatiel.
Lori Mocha: Oh, God.
Lori Mocha: Those would bug me.
Fisch: The cockatiel was too much bird for him, so he traded it in for five finches.
Lori Mocha: Yeah, that's A LOTTA bird... a bird worth five finches, wow.
Fisch: So the finches--Peewee, Fire Duck...um, and the other three…
Lori Mocha: LOL
Fisch: He had them a while, then one of them--Fire Duck, I think--went crazy and killed everybody.
Fisch: T was very sad, and he couldn't bear to bury them, so they're all carefully wrapped and frozen solid.
Fisch: Perhaps T thinks cryogenics can bring his birds back in the future.
Lori Mocha: Omigod.
Fisch: Like Walt Disney.
Lori Mocha: So, wait, one bird went crazy and killed them all?
Lori Mocha: That is so weird.
Fisch: Yeah.
Lori Mocha: What the fuck happened with those birds?
Fisch: Who knows? Birds are crazy!
Lori Mocha: Something went down.
Fisch: LOL
Fisch: Musta been a drug thing.
Lori Mocha: A deal gone bad.
Lori Mocha: Now, I want you to investigate those birds.
Lori Mocha: Find out if anybody knew them, if anybody heard anything…
Lori Mocha: You know, maybe there's a chickadee with some info.
Fisch: "Here's my number in case you remember anything, Polly"
Lori Mocha: I mean, I guess it doesn't really matter. Fire Duck is dead, with the rest of them.
Lori Mocha: Probably a Reservoir Dogs kinda incident.
Fisch: These were straight up thug birds.
Fisch: With pseudonyms and everything!
Fisch: Who knows what their real names were?
Lori Mocha: Yeah! No shit? Pee wee? What kinda name for a bird is that?
Lori Mocha: LOL
Fisch: His real name among the birds was Rrreeeeereeeetweetbrrt 37.
Lori Mocha: Steve Alfonso, aka Peewee.
Fisch: …and Lamont Livingston Copley Jr, aka Fire Duck, aka Burd Killah.
Lori Mocha: Lots of birds spent their last moments wit Burd Killah.
Fisch: Listening for that ominous whistle.
Lori Mocha: Oh no, it said, Burd Killah is a comin fer me!
Fisch: The Man tried to catch him, but Burd Killah wasn't goin' down like that, see.
Fisch: Burd Killah capped his own bird ass.
Lori Mocha: He was getting out, one way or another, and everyone was coming with him.
Fisch: Burd Killah was hard.
Fisch: I'LL MOURN YA TILL I JOIN YA, BURD KILLAH!
Lori Mocha: He said he would never go back to the pen, and he never will!
Lori Mocha: So, will you go in the freezer then?
Fisch: Perhaps. If I’m lucky.
Lori Mocha: Maybe just your head.

Kmonday Kmusings Korner

2005-02-07T17:01:00.000-08:00

1. S. Epatha Merkerson was pretty brave to keep that name. I wonder what the "S" stands for. Maybe it's "Smokin'"!

2. Is there a place for manicurists in a workers' state?
Why the hell wouldn't there be?

3. I think there should be a superhero-type comic book about people who work for OSHA.

Thank you for your time.

Newman / Parton '08

2005-02-06T19:07:00.000-08:00

Now that George Bush has lowered the bar for presidential qualifications, and Arnold Schwarzenegger has continued the popular trend of movie stars governing the populace, I think Paul Newman and Dolly Parton would be an exceptionally good Democratic ticket for 2008.

Paul Newman still looks great, has raised a shitload of money for charity, drives racecars and overall seems like an intelligent, capable celebrity. Plus with Paul you get Joanne Woodward, and Joanne can tear it up.

Dolly Parton wrote 9 to 5! She is familiar with poverty and the travails of the working people. She's knowledgeable about Jesus, she's hot, and she's Southern. She will be a hoot at foreign-dignitary funerals. I hear she might be a lesbian, but the fundamentalists probably don't know that.

I would've recommended a Parton/Newman ticket, but I'm trying to be pragmatic.

The Joke About the Chihuahua

2005-02-02T19:25:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, somebody told me the following joke:

So these two men walk their dogs together every day. Javier Villareal-Villalobos walks his labrador, Zapata, and Herman "Bitsy" Skulwinski walks his chihuahua, Dr. Herring. And one summer day it's hella hot. Crazy, horribly hot. Beaming! Very hard work to go for a walk in such miserable heat. But walk they do. Until they pass by a bar called Nocturne, at which point Javier stops.

"Herman," Javier says. "Let's go into the Nocturne and have a daiquiri."
Herman sighs. "Well, we can't take the dogs into a bar. And I'd feel terribly guilty leaving them outside."
"Watch this!" Javier says.

And Javier puts on some sunglasses, walks Zapata inside and right up to the bar.
The bartender frowns at him. "Listen, Mary," he says. "we can't have that dog here in the Nocturne. Vamoose!"

Javier squares his shoulders. "This is a seeing-eye dog, actually."
"Oh no!" the bartender yelps. "I am so sorry! How insensitive of me! Here, let me get you a cocktail. On the house, of course." And with that, the bartender fires up the blender and presents Javier with a delicious beverage.

Herman watches from outside. Herman is impressed. Herman puts on his shades and walks tiny li'l Dr. Herring into the bar. "Barkeep!" he cries.

"Oh, no," the bartender groans. "Listen, I will NOT have that dog up in here."
"I will have you know, this is a specially-trained, highly skilled and absolutely necessary helper seeing-eye dog upon whom I depend for my very safety."
"Suuuuuuuuure," the bartender drawls. "and they gave you a chihuahua?"
Herman gasps theatrically and draws a fluttering hand to his chest. He shrieks, "They...they...they gave me a CHIHUAHUA??!!"

I enjoyed this joke, and I told it to my sister. She enjoyed it also.

Several weeks later, she complained to me that she'd tried telling the joke several times, but nobody got it. And that what kind of sister was I to tell her crummy jokes for her to pass on to her friends and look like an ass. So I asked her to tell me the joke just exactly how she was telling other people. So she did. She went into great detail about the heat, the dogs, the men, the bar, the bartender, etc. Then, when she got to the punchline, she screamed, "I HAVE A DOG!?!?!?!"

I really think it's a better punchline. More challenging somehow. More Zen.

State of the Minion

2005-02-02T18:33:00.000-08:00

I know I haven't updated this in a while--I got something big brewing about jury duty. As in, I am writing something about jury duty, to post here. It's long-ish. I hope this will be better than it sounds.

So, in the meantime, I'm watching the State of the Union Address, thought I'd vent about that. Apparently I am not updating my blog often enough for a Miss Margaret Dodge.

So, Margaret, I'm pissed right now. Got home from yoga class, and I was feeling all relaxed and peaceful and shit, and I flick on the teevee and THERE HE IS. The flightsuit monkey. The political bugaboo of the last THIRTEEN YEARS OF MY LIFE. Perhaps if I move to Greenland he will follow me there and take it over, and I can leave him there. Overenunciating. Shifty-eyed. Smirkadocious. "Freedom" this and "freedom" that. It's a good thing I'm all yoga-ed out right now, or my head would blast right off my body with a shower of sparks and a FFFFFFTT sound.

I do not like you, sir. And Cheney! I see you there behind the dimwit, you bastard. I don't like you either. And you, third guy. I...don't know who you are. So we'll leave you out of it for now.

Dude, speaking of tension, Laura's had some face-work done--the woman's looking tight, and not the way they say it on The Wire. She's a cipher to me. She really does have an apparently deserved rep, back in TX, of being an intelligent, kind-hearted, reader-of-serious-fiction type lady. I mean, is she living in daily agony, then? How could she not be? But look at her grinning. Did somebody do something bad to her mind? It's like there's something decent there, but it was surgically removed. What goes on in her head, for real? Somebody please comment on this.

Woohoo! Some Democrats are actually groaning audibly as the Pres. talks about Social Security "reform." Take that, Mr. President! The democrats are GROANING. Ain't you escared? They'll GROAN til they can't GROAN NO MORE, and THEN you'll be sorry.

Oh great flaming Christ's ass, he said it. He's gonna protect marriage and promote a culture of life. Okay, I just actually, physically, literally screamed. I did. I screamed.

He just mentioned Pflugerville, Texas; I used to think Ann Enzminger was from there, but she isn't. She's from Austin. So don't y'all go around calling her "Pflugey" or any such thing. Not only will she not know what you're talking about, you'll be wrong.

He really does say "nucular," and every goddamned time he says it, it re-surprises me.

Aw shit, I keep missing who the guests stars are, he's now called 2 separate cute plus-sized ladies out while I've been typing. One was Middle-eastern and young, making a victory sign. The other one was older and resembled a honey bear with orange hair, and cried. What were they about?

I can't wait to read how many times this man used the word "freedom" and its variants. I swear to God that at one point he said something like "the attacks on freedom has strengthened our resolve that freedom is the answer to the fight for freedom."

Yeah!! That's...meaningless.
What about MY liberty of human freedom liberty freedom freedoms, Sir?
You hate them, don't you?
DON'T HATE ME FOR MY FREEDOM!

Now I'm gonna change over to VH1 and see if there's anybody I know on television.
Amen.

Axiom

2005-01-28T19:56:00.000-08:00

"You make me feel guilty."

How do I make you feel guilty? I can't make you feel anything. If you feel guilty, maybe that's your CONSCIENCE telling you you're being a DICK.