Baubo Sirens Need Groceries Too

The saga of the split-tailed mermaids continues — first with Starbucks' old logo and then with Starbucks' new logo, which happens to be the same as the old logo. Now the whorish fishwomen seem to have invaded the pseudo-old timey cartoons of the Trader Joe's Fearless Flyer.

Spencer gets credit for the flyer and the highlighting, but Dina gets credit for updating me as to the Starbuck's matter, which, as is to be expected, has drawn the ire of Christian conservatives in San Diego. Personally, I'm glad. Because if Christianity is clearly against anything, it's surely mermaid breasts.

Love Is Several Different Colors

Maybe it’s the U.S. Airways Bloody Mary talking, but all apprehensions I had hopping on a plane this morning have vanished as quickly as the refuse that I’m depositing on the tray of the unoccupied seat next to me. Sure, I’ve already consumed 83 percent of my daily recommended allotment of sodium — and that’s not counting the terrible egg scramble I choked down at the Santa Barbara airport this morning — but I’m nonetheless quite happy up in the sky. I’m flying to Philadelphia for work, but I can’t help feeling as though I’m playing hooky. Here I am, at 3 p.m., with no more pressing obligations than keeping my seatbelt buckled, enjoying the string of hits that my iPod is piping into my head, and slowly disconnecting the dots that bind me during the usual office hours. I enjoy this tomato-like product, which includes 71 percent juice. Why don’t I ever drink tomato juice separate from the ingredients that turn it into Bloody Mary?

Love is Tomato Red.

Adults may be right: My iPod may in fact be isolating me from the rest of society. On the flight from Santa Barbara to San Francisco, the lesser-known works of The Apples in Stereo somehow prevented me from seeing the medical emergency that I caught only as it was ending. The stewardess stood the aisle, holding the feet of a woman wearing salmon-colored platform sandals, not unlike how stirrups hold the legs of women becoming mamas or receiving pap smears. (Neither was the case with Salmon Sandals, I’m pretty sure.) Given what angle those tan feet were protruding, I have to assume that the head anatomically linked to them was cradled in the lap of the woman sitting in the window seat. I’m not sure if they knew each other. They didn’t look to be either sisters or lovers, and the age difference was such that they couldn’t possibly have been mother and daughter. (Then again, plastic surgery has made time travel possible.) I’d assume Window Seat’s generosity was motivated by friendship at best, but even then, when the paramedic came to take the apparently ailing woman off the plane when we landed, Window Seat stayed. Shouldn’t the loved ones and traveling companions of unwell air travelers reap the benefits of early aircraft exiting? Window Seat, you’re a kinder soul than most.

Love is Salmon Pink.

You have to wonder about male flight attendants, those waiters in the sky who so dutifully fill your styrofoam cups and accept your plastic meal packaging like you’re giving them a present. They shuffle endlessly up and down the aisle in their navy blue vests, providing you the means to make a mess and then cleaning up the mess, only to start the cycle over again. I’m not suggesting that the job weighs more heavily on men than it does women, but the male flight attendants must realize that even the most broad-minded passengers suppose they might be gay. Like jerks, those of a narrower train of thought just assume it, I assume. Maybe the male flight attendants don’t care, but I’d be willing to guess that some do, as many straight guys would rather not perceived as being gay. That simple fact makes their job unenviable to a lot of guys, who would much more willingly wait tables on the ground than perform what is essentially a similar but more difficult service up in the air. How is it, male flight attendants, that you’ve come to perform this job? Is it a means to an end? An opportunity to travel? Did you want to be a pilot but accidentally enroll in the wrong class? Do you laugh off the stereotypes? Embrace them? Embody them? Or are you banging your female coworkers in the galley at the back of the plane in an desperate attempt to prove something?

Love is Navy Blue.

I’m wearing by birthday sweater, which sports two colors of stripes: navy blue and a second kind of blue that can only accurately be described as “electric blue.” I love birthday sweater.

Love is Electric Blue.

Much like Window Seat, I also have a window seat. I won’t, however, refer to myself as “Window Seat” because that would be confusing. Also, you should know my name by now. It’s a good view, as airplane seats go. I can see some wing and some of the Below — the best combination, in my opinion. I feel cheated if my view contains too much wing, but if I somehow get a seat that just sees Below, I get nervous, because I like to be reminded that I am, in fact, on a plane and not somehow just floating in the sky on my lonesome. Had I not received a seat with a partial wing view, I’d worry that I’ll fall asleep and then wake up and see tiny mountains and two-point line highways and have a panic attack from the shock of it all. At the moment, however, I feel the plane has ascended to the best possible position, as we’re cruising through the clods and all windows now show only pure white light. It streams in from every window, making the cabin seem impossibly bright, like the set of a 50s movie where happy households glow impossibly from the inside-out. If I can’t see the Below, I can forget how high up we really are.

Love is Pure White.

Soy Cansado, Pero No Estoy Cansado

“Today is my birthday.” Really, it is, but I’m putting the sentence in quotation marks in order to call attention to the magic powers this chunk on syntax endows the person who speaks it. On so many other people’s birthdays, I’ve heard this sentence excuse some otherwise unforgivable behavior. Insistence on spending time at a terrible bar, for example. Or the purchasing of extravagant self-gifts. Or not coming to work regardless of the onus it places on non-birthdaypeople coworkers. (Ha ha. “Onus.”)

Today, June 4, the day on which I and Horatio Sanz get to be special, however, I’m only asking for allowance to do one thing, which I imagine should not inconvenience the other 1/365th of the world too much: I’d like to respond to the people who feel the need to tell me I look tired.

As a rule, I look like I haven’t slept. Even when I have slept, I have eye bags — twin, crescent-shaped slight puffs of the skin that exhibit slightly more coloration than the rest of my face. They don’t go away. I credit my mother’s DNA. because she has had them as well. No amount of sun or sleep or mental peace seems to change that I just happen to naturally have a facial feature that most people associate with not having slept well. If I wear my glasses, I’m wearing my glasses atop eye bags. If I don my classiest duds, I’m sporting them and eye bags. They’re a fact of life for me, and, more or less, I’ve made my peace with them.

The rest of the world hasn’t.

Regularly, people I encounter — people I like, people I don’t, neighbors, friends, bosses, coworkers, interns, the cashier at the drug store, the guy I’m interviewing for a story, old roommates I haven’t seen in years, just to name a few — feel the need to tell me that they think I look tired. I do not consider such statements to be acts of benevolence. If I were tired, I would already know and therefore don’t appreciate being reminded that it’s obvious. (Sometimes, this is the case, as I do have trouble sleeping. I also spend most work days in front of a computer and beneath fluorescent lights, and that doesn’t exactly leave me looking especially enlivened, even though I like my job.) If I’m not tired, it’s all the worse. I tend to interpret “You look tired” as “You look like shit,” and that dampens my mood fairly quickly. It also puts me in the awkward situation of either lying (“Well, yes, I have in fact not slept in three days. Must be the meth.”) or correcting them and consequently seeming defensive about the matter. Except for two possible scenarios, no good can come from telling me I look tired. (Situation one: You happen to have a bed I can crawl into and it’s somehow socially acceptable for me to nod off for a few hours. Situation two: I’m about to do something for which alertness is a must, such as driving to Oregon or appearing on live television. If it’s the latter, fire that goddamned make-up girl.) No, I honestly believe that whether people do it consciously or not, the proclamation that another person appears tired constitutes a passive attempt for the proclaimer to seem somehow better able, better prepared or just generally better. (“You look tired. But I don’t. Isn’t that wild? Why do you suppose that is?”) In fact, there’s only one person in the world who I allow to tell me I look tired with impunity: my mother. She likes to keep tabs on my health. Her inquiries about my appearance — weight loss or gain, muscle tone or lack thereof, paleness, tanness, skin clarity, hair vigor, redness of the eyes — comes from a genuine place of concern.

The rest of you, however, are not my mother and I am suspicious of your motives.

I have, however, attempted to solve the matter. Long ago, I began a word file in which I list the responses to “You look tired” that I think but do not speak. Because I’m nice. I honestly don’t remember to whom most of these were originally directed, but I clearly meant what I wrote at the time.

Below, I have listed what I consider some of the pithier responses to “You look tired.” I am not identifying any potential targets. That would be rude. And I’m also not saying that everybody I know does this. Some of you are classy as all hell and either don’t make such judgments or have the sense to keep it to yourselves.

Read at your own risk.

• You look like some kind of weasel.
• You look tired of life.
• You look like you just ate something that’s not sitting well.
• You look like you’re hiding a secret, and, based on what you freely tell people who don’t even know you that well, I shudder to think at what you keep to yourself.
• You look like you used to play rugby, with guys bigger than you, and also you weren’t very good.
• You look like you just got bad news that wasn’t exactly unexpected.
• You look racially ambiguous, and I was secretly disappointed when I found out you were just white.
• You look like a photo in your own parent’s yearbook.
• You look like you want attention.
• You look like you want attention and you don’t care what kind of attention it is.
• You look like you couldn’t possibly be the offspring of your parents, which is pretty puzzling because you said you didn’t know anybody who was adopted the one time I tried to bring it up.
• You look like you’re made of butterscotch pudding.
• You look worried. Should you be?
• You look like Bert from Sesame Street.
• You look like you’re going to punch someone in the back of the head today.
• You look like your own purse, weirdly.
• You look like a weird male version of your sister, and that makes me feel weird every time I think about it.
• You look like you started to swallow something, got bored, and then let it sit in your throat for the rest of your life.
• You look slightly irritated every time I ask you to do something, and that’s why I never ask you to do anything that I think you’d be interested in.
• You look like your wife dresses you, and also your wife wants to you to be gay.
• You look like you sweat when you eat.
• You look like a pile of leaves.
• You look like an extra from a movie that takes place in the 70s.
• You look like you don’t take vitamins.
• You look like you’re secretly trying to stay a teenager.
• You look like you didn’t get your money’s worth with that nose job.
• You look like you had a drink before you came into work this morning.
• You look like you didn’t evenly distribute the gel you used in your hair, and, consequently, your hair looks to be bi-colored.
• You look like you have extra skin.
• You look like those breakfast plates that have fried eggs as eyes and bacon as a smile.
• You look triangular, in so many different ways.
• You look like you don’t like your job very much.
• You look like a potato.

Don’t worry. The 26-year-old me has no plans to start responding to “You look tired” with anything like the above statements. (And yes, the opportunity will surely arise.) So this year is safe. But who’s to say what 27-year-old Drew will be capable of?

Sorry if this seems like an excessively mean-spirited post to slap online on my birthday, but please understand that I’ve needed to get this off my chest for some time now, and the first day of a new year of existence on this planet seemed as good a time as any. By the time you read this, I’ll likely be on a plane to Philadelphia, where I’m spending my birthday this year because I’m attending a conference there. If the plane crashes, let me apologize up front that this will be your lingering memory of me. Sorry. At the same time, I want to encourage you to enjoy the 26th year of my life as much as I plan to. Perhaps a good way of beginning this celebration would be to avoid telling me that I look tired the next time you see me. After all, at the soonest, that would be immediately after I get off the plane back to Santa Barbara. What the hell am I supposed to do about jetlag?

And if you see Horatio Sanz today, be sure to wish him a happy birthday as well.

Policia Montada

A postcard that Spencer found in the UCSB library, in a copy of Jane Jacobs’s The Death and Life of Great American Cities. I'm guessing it's from a Portuguese-speaking country somewhere south, where police don't actually ride anything that looks like gnus but will fake it for the purposes of self-mocking postcards that white people buy.

click for readable version

Curiously, whoever filled this postcard out doesn't seem to have ever attached a stamp, which raises questions about how it ended up in Santa Barbara. Either way, the date would suggest that no one may have seen this thing since 2002.

Mouth Whoopie

Stayed in last night, did work and watched the beginning of Saturday Night Live, even though it’s the Shia LeBeouf-hosted one that just aired a few weeks ago. One of the first sketches was the one below, in which the host of a 70s game show called It’s a Match is found murdered and the C-list celebrity panelists respond to the detective’s question like they’re still on the show. It’s funny.

I liked this the first time I saw it, enough that I actually found it on Hulu and rewatched it, mostly to see Kristen Wiig’s facial expressions and try and figure out who Amy Poehler is supposed to be making fun of. But having watched it online so many times made me notice something about last night’s rebroadcast of it: It was different in at least two places. For one, Casey Wilson’s character’s response to the detective’s question about what she was doing last night at 2 p.m. has completely changed. In the online version (and possibly the version I first saw on TV), she says “I was eating pound cake, and crying on my waterbed.” In last night’s, she responds “Mouth whoopie.” In last night’s version, the sketch ends with the entire cast responding in unison “How dead is he?” to Shia LeBeouf’s character. Online, only Fred Armisen’s character gets that line.

I know enough about SNL to understand that each episode gets filmed twice: once for the version we see on TV and once for a longer rehearsal version that’s also performed for a studio audience. And I know that occasionally, sketches from the dress rehearsal version replace those from the original live broadcast or even subsequent reruns. That’s no mystery. What makes me feel weird about this difference is how it makes the live broadcast a little less special. It’s something that’s always appealed to me about SNL — the notion that everybody in at least one time zone all seeing the same live performance at the same time. But once little bits and pieces of that original broadcast get trimmed down or replaced altogether from with bits from another taping, it loses a bit of its pop. (The previous time I noticed something like this, it regarding the two different versions of the Drew Barrymore “Body Fusion” sketch — one with the end referencing The Ring, one not, but both seeming to be official NBC-sanctioned versions. But being a digital short, it didn’t bother me as much.)

Of course, the discrepancies in the “It’s a Match” sketch also leave me wondering whether it’s funnier to have a washed up actress eating pound cake and crying on a waterbed or referring to oral sex as “mouth whoopie.” Even though “pound cake” got less of a response from the studio audience, I think I’m more inclined to pick it. You know, because we’ve all been there.

EDIT: Okay, Correspondent Prancer informs me of who the It's a Match characters are parodying. Pam Sumpter is Brett Somers (who looked like this and who died in 2007). Steven Nielsen Perry seems like a Paul Lynde/Charles Nelson Reilly composite. (Lynde looked like this and died in 1982; Reilly looked like this and died in 2007.) Sarah Annette Boob is most likely Debralee Scott (who looked like this and died in 2005). Nancy Nan George is fairly obviously Marcia Wallace (who looks like this and who voices Mrs. Krabappel on The Simpsons.) Chipsey Boday is Nipsey Russel (who looked like this and died in 2005.) And Dirk Densten is Doug Henning (who looked like this and died in 2000.) Keep on keepin' on, Marcia Wallace!

This Sounds Like Ted Max Amateur Hour

I realize now that calling the day on which I offer my word-of-the-week "Dia de las Palabras Nuevas" was a mistake. It just doesn't roll off the tongue. (Though, now that I think about that expression, it occurs to me that a great many unpleasant things can roll of tongues. Vomit, for example. Or phlegm.) In any case, I think I'll stick with The Saturday Wordiness from here on out.

jehu (JAY-hoo) — noun: a cabbie, or a reckless driver

Yes, I realize those two definitions could be considered synonymous. I think that's the point. Almost doubtlessly a term that's been around a while, judging from the fact that it comes to us from the Bible. Jehu, for you Old Testament illiterate, was one of the kings of Israel, and a military leader known for his chariot attacks, hence his transformation into a common noun. Notably, Jehu's backstory seems to be populated by other people with "J" names that have made their way into common parlance. For starters, he's the son of Jehosaphat — who, to my knowledge, wasn't known for jumping — and he's also the one responsible for ordering that slutty, smutty Jezebel to be thrown out the window, whereupon dogs ate her. (A favorite childhood story, that one.) And if "jezebel" isn't a familiar modern term for you, then you must keep especially good company.

A random note on Jezebel, while I'm on the subject: Wikipedia claims that Jezebel was the aunt of Dido, who, in my opinion, is one of the more interesting mythological ladies and another member of ancient royalty who met a fairly bad end.

Throwing Troubles to the Dying Embers

Today's inspiration: Samurai Jack, a show that consists of one drop-dead gorgeous images after another. If you've never watched an episode or actually paid attention to the plot and never noticed the backgrounds, picture them like this: vintage storybook illustrations by some artist who's watched too much Blade Runner.

Here, for example, is a shot from the opening credits that sums up Jack's universe quite well.

Conversely, other art succeeds in its simplicity. Take this image, for example: a baby, hung by its feet and none too happy about it. Jack saves him from a trio of hungry ogres in the series' last episode.

This has been today's inspiration.