Don't Make Me Sing!

Hey you!

drunkinarowboat — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 17:38:08 +0000

Wazzup.

So I have a new blog. I know, I know. Pick something and STICK WITH IT. It’s 2011; I’m trying people.

My new blog is about Boston. This includes thoughts on food/sports/life and….FASHION! Even if you’re not from Boston, or could care less about ‘ol New England, I bet you’ll find it as juicy as Jil Sander’s Spring Collection! Yay!

Please check it out. : )

Don’t make me sing….

Two things of beauty.

drunkinarowboat — Mon, 15 Nov 2010 04:04:30 +0000

Bikini waxing, why? WHY?????

drunkinarowboat — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 18:41:41 +0000

TMI? Sorry. Deal with it.

I mean, holy KEL-LY CLARK-SON. That shit is no picnic. Nor is it cheap. I plan to write in more detail about events like this later for you all, in my forthcoming book titled “Why I Totally HATE Being A Woman.”

So darling, DARRRRLIIIIING….

drunkinarowboat — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 22:47:04 +0000

Today, on my day off, I was wandering around my favorite bookstore in Boston, fondling postcards and listening to the loveliest fifties music that the store was playing. It was putting me in the greatest mood, hearing stuff like this as I sipped my coffee:

(Is there a better song in the world EVER, especially on a spectacularly beautiful late October day? NOPE.)

I was in such a good mood already, and then I came across a daily planner from GRANTA magazine on sale for only nine dollars and my heart just started blossoming unicorns. My head went: a beautiful yearly planner for nine dollars! NINE DOLLARS! With big pretty pictures inside and stories about writers! SOLD! This will make me write a book, I know it! I can PLAN on it now! Hooray!

Twenty minutes later, I’m showing the planner to my friend Brittany, and gushing about what a great find it is, and she’s like, “ummmm, it’s on clearance, Caroline, because 201o is almost over.”

Cue my stunned silence.

WHAT THE…..2010 is almost over?????

Who knew, people.

Who knew.

Clearly, the store doesn’t do refunds on sale items, but I batted my eyelashes for a bit and did the whole “look at me I’m a big crazy idiot” bit, and at least got some store credit. And then this song came on, and I felt even better:

Oh, James Cameron….

drunkinarowboat — Tue, 26 Oct 2010 00:48:26 +0000

I’ve had one of those weeks that can only be summed up by the fact that I spent the past fews hours at work today channelling the mother in steerage at the end of Titanic; you know, the one who is talking to her children as they fall asleep and sea water pours into the room, about to kill them all, whispering sweetly in her lilting Irish-accented voice, “It’ll all be ovvveeer soooon; it’ll all be ovvvver soooan” ? (My brain being the woman, my feet and back and mental capabilities the children who just want to go to beeed in Ameeerica. Also, thoughts of Jack Dawson giving me a massage helped me not to hug the old woman next to me on the subway who said she liked my five-year-old Frye boots, and where could she get some.)

Also Gregory Alan is helpful right now. He is da best when you want to chill out but not feel totally horrible. He’s emo without being too emo. Listening to this song below also makes me think I’m in a Dawson’s Creek episode, which is something I am always striving for. I miss the days I taped that shit on VHS tapes and wrote on the side with permanent marker the episode’s name.

This was totally my jam back in the day.

drunkinarowboat — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 20:59:37 +0000

So nineties. Can’t get enough.

I like this poem.

drunkinarowboat — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 15:21:06 +0000

I read this poem a few months ago. (Don’t stop reading this post now because you’ve seen the word “poem” twice. Thanks!) I think it’s quite special. It’s stayed with me, and soooo I re-post for you! I like poems that are also stories, as this one is. My teacher talked to us yesterday about how poetry has the ability to pack so much emotion and feeling into a small space and that is what makes it different than prose, and magical; how sometimes one can read a poem and at the end feel like they’ve just finished a novel, or like, the experience of reading the poem can seem to have been much longer than it actually was; like an actual physical distance was even travelled from reading, or time travel even…like that movie with Eric Bana. Am I getting to hoo-hee-ha for you? Whatevs. I think this Bob Hicok is on to something. It’s a beautiful piece. Enjoy. xoxo

O my pa-pa

BY BOB HICOK

Our fathers have formed a poetry workshop.

They sit in a circle of disappointment over our fastballs

and wives. We thought they didn’t read our stuff,

whole anthologies of poems that begin, My father never,

or those that end, and he was silent as a carp,

or those with middles which, if you think

of the right side as a sketch, look like a paunch

of beer and worry, but secretly, with flashlights

in the woods, they’ve read every word and noticed

that our nine happy poems have balloons and sex

and giraffes inside, but not one dad waving hello

from the top of a hill at dusk. Theirs

is the revenge school of poetry, with titles like

“My Yellow Sheet Lad” and “Given Your Mother’s Taste

for Vodka, I’m Pretty Sure You’re Not Mine.”

They’re not trying to make the poems better

so much as sharper or louder, more like a fishhook

or electrocution, as a group

they overcome their individual senilities,

their complete distaste for language, how cloying

it is, how like tears it can be, and remember

every mention of their long hours at the office

or how tired they were when they came home,

when they were dragged through the door

by their shadows. I don’t know why it’s so hard

to write a simple and kind poem to my father, who worked,

not like a dog, dogs sleep most of the day in a ball

of wanting to chase something, but like a man, a man

with seven kids and a house to feed, whose absence

was his presence, his present, the Cheerios,

the PF Flyers, who taught me things about trees,

that they’re the most intricate version of standing up,

who built a grandfather clock with me so I would know

that time is a constructed thing, a passing, ticking fancy.

A bomb. A bomb that’ll go off soon for him, for me,

and I notice in our fathers’ poems a reciprocal dwelling

on absence, that they wonder why we disappeared

as soon as we got our licenses, why we wanted

the rocket cars, as if running away from them

to kiss girls who looked like mirrors of our mothers

wasn’t fast enough, and it turns out they did

start to say something, to form the words hey

or stay, but we’d turned into a door full of sun,

into the burning leave, and were gone

before it came to them that it was all right

to shout, that they should have knocked us down

with a hand on our shoulders, that they too are mystified

by the distance men need in their love.

(Taken from the poetryfoundation.org)

Breaking news in the fashion world!

drunkinarowboat — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 02:22:19 +0000

Had a lovely, strange day today. Mari slept over last night (we both had the day off), and we woke up, froze our asses off walking to get some bad coffee, then did work at my place (she just found out she’ll be curating a show at her gallery HIP HIP HOORAY FO MARI!), and then we headed into Boston to go our separate ways.

Well, I actually headed to Harvard Square, because I am taking two classes in Cambridge on Tuesdays these days, one of which is this really thought-provoking and controversial class called “Grammar for Writers.” (Isn’t this post soooo grammatically correct?!?!?) The other class is a poetry workshop, and let me tell you, it’s FULL O CRAZIES JUST LIKE ME. And I absolutely love it. It’s better if I do vocal and physical impersonations of the people I’m in class with then tell stories, but my instructor is Russian, and a total bad-ass, and I think I’ve learned so much from her/need to go to Russia NOW. She is so blunt my teacher; it’s amazing. She’s like “diiiis is naht a poEEEM. It’s juuuust fiiiive lines, and no one caaares vwhat you think of death. I’m booored. You bore me with you flowers, oh my soul, my soul. More next tiiime please. Who neeeeds a ciiiigarette?” But for real. I also like that I spend two hours every week with people my grandparents age.

After my poetry class I get a thirty minute break before la grammar, and I was starving like crazy today. Usually I am a responsible frugalitsta and pack a sandwich from home, but with Mari distracting me this morning with her fabulousness, I didn’t have time. Thus I wandered into some joint called “Flat Patties” (gross, right?) and bought the least expensivo thing on the menu: a grilled cheese. (It was $3.50! Ha-mazing! Plus, the dude who worked there let me add tomato for free, so now he’s my other boyfriend.) I ate my delish sammie outside, in the glorious mid-day October sun, dunking the cheese in ketchup and getting grease all over my face, while my eyes scanned the passing Haaavad crowd for the next Mark Zuckerburg. (I will catch you in my net future M. Zuck, and ENSNARE YOU FOR LIFE.) It vwwwas lovely, that fifteen minutes. Then I headed to class. On my way to the building, I spotted a chick noshing on a cupcake. Mmmmm, my brain went. CUUUP CAAAAAAKES. Yep, I was a goner. I looked at my watch. (Well, okay, my phone.) I had seven minutes until class started. SEVEN MINUTES. I NEEDED A CUPCAKE OR A MILKSHAKE OR A CHOCOLATE BAR OR TO HOLD UP A BEN AND JERRY’S The Town style BAD. BAD BAD BAD. Like, I was a crazy person for sugar all of a sudden. All it took was seeing a petite asian woman eating a vanilla cupcake on a park bench in slow-mo to make me literally run to this store that sells candy by the pound and careen up and down the aisles while sweating and muttering to the saleslady about how hard it is to choose with so many options! I spent my whole grammar class eating chocolate covered pretzels and cookie dough encrusted nuts or something, loudly cracking on my tootsie pops and grinning wildly. I suppose this is only a story some females will relate to, but when ya gotta go, ya gotta go, you know?

But really, the whole point of me writing this post was because I love my mother. Tonight we went to Shaw’s, so I could buy salad greens and red pepper and be all diet-ey (Mom, I feel like such a heifer. I had two bowls of Special K, 3 pieces of turkey bacon, a handful of popcorn, 5 peanut butter M&M’s and like 3 pieces of licorice!), and it was there I saw that glowing redbox video box thing and was a moth to the flame. Who needs to work on my writing tonight! Those things are so cool! I mean, welcome to the 90s, I know, but really! I rented “Please Give” because I really wanted to see it, and also it reminded me of Williamstown (shout out to my WTF home slices), and also because Harry Rex is my best friend, and I’d do anything for him.

So we get home, and I put the movie in, make my salad, dig around the freezer until I find a dark chocolate bar given out at my great aunt’s 50th wedding anniversary party that I didn’t even go to (I’m up addicted-to-sugar’s shit creek without a paddle right now), and my Mom is sitting there “watching” the movie with me (aka saying she’s not going to watch, but sit and read her Franzen, but of course she ends up watching anyway. Kim. So predictable.) So, thirty minutes into the movie, and she’s been totally silent, and then my Mom goes, “Hey, that actress really reminds me of Amanda Peet!”

Uh, Ma, that IS Amanda Peet. Silly LADY!

Speaking of which, I LURVE Amanda. She kills it in that movie. KILLS IT. Also, she makes cute babies.

The movie is really awesome. Nicole Holofcener is now being added to my list of “women I want to be.” Her movies are so funny and sad and lovely; they make me want to make movies. (If you’re dying to know the list of woman I want to be: Nora Ephron/Rita Wilson/Taylor Swift/Lucille Bluth/Sasha Obama.)

Welp. Hope everyone eats a really good grilled cheese soon. I’m telling you, those things are game changers.

Uh, Matt Damon, why.

drunkinarowboat — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 01:12:26 +0000

Most people probably won’t go see Hereafter because it’s supposed to be a horrible movie. I refuse to go see it due to the offensive nature of the sweater M.D. is sporting in the trailer. YUCK.

I don’t know why, but I can’t handle these kinds of clothes on men. Call me an old-fashioned American gal, but uh, it’s so….euro, that thing. It’s like, stop looking at yourself in the mirror and trying to be pretty, and go be Will Hunting again. Cowl necks=no.

What I’ll be wearing on Halloween.

drunkinarowboat — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 02:46:11 +0000

YSL Spring 2010. Woot. Woot.