Cat, Out of Bag

Somehow the sky seems not to have fallen or my house hasn’t spontaneously imploded even though I told Long-Distance Guy two nights ago that I had a blog and had mentioned him in my last post. (Hang on; I'm cueing up the Hallelujah Chorus on my CD player....)

After he insisted on checking it out, I started to find airfares to Siberia, where I could drown myself in Lake Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world.

And once he did read it and was okay with it. Slowly--oh, so slowly--but surely, the surplus blood began to flow down from my face to the rest of my body. My breathing started to return to normal. Of course, this didn't automatically stop me from feeling as though I was walking into a local store and all of a sudden realizing that I'm not wearing any pants. But I'm okay with that. (Figuratively. I still plan on wearing pants while visiting the local store.) It's a start, at least.

Will this less-than- dramatic twist of events alter anything? No. I mean, I'm not planning on doing anything drastic like watching what I say here (no way, that's ridiculous). I can say with a certain amount of confidence that Long-Distance Guy knows who I am, and I'm not going to change what I do here anymore than I'm going to change the laws of thermodynamics. Though I'm working on those.

If anything, I guess I feel a little relieved. This doesn’t have to be all hushed. And maybe just maybe he’ll get a glimpse of my life, of my friends and things he might not otherwise have gotten.

I realize I don't need to remind you of this but its Friday. This means that the weekend is here. I had the usual work week stuff going on. Nothing bad, just stressful. Getting to Friday was going to be tricky but I’m finally here. Which signals my need to tell you all the crap that I’m going to do this weekend? Instead of rambling paragraphs of prose, I have organized key activities (or inactivities as the case may be) :

Things to do this weekend:

- Watch a couple of movies
- Do lots of reading
- Sleep all friggin’ day

Things to not do this weekend:

-To not get out of bed.

It’s almost a sure bet that when a jazz band covers one of my favorite songs it’ll be worth listening to. This easy-listening/jazz cover of "Smooth Criminal" comes from the wonderful year of 2008 by J.Viewz, stage name of Israeli musician Jonathan Dagan and his band and it’s still hot. Enjoy the music, enjoy your weekend.

I'm bushed! It was a busy weekend. Here's the 411.

Weekend Movie: We went to see ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, the new DreamWorks Animation movie, which I can't recommend highly enough.
At a particularly moving moment in the movie, I started crying. (Don't laugh. It was a terrific movie. I would quote some of it but I don't want to ruin it for those of you who haven't seen it.)

Weekend Food & Books: Luckily for me my friends love food as much as I do. So we got to head over to a restaurant called ‘Hong Kong Hustle’ on Church Street for greasy Chinese food and then to the bookstore where I got myself ‘The Encyclopedia of Mythology’ by Arthur Cotterell and… I also managed to score a nice version of ‘500 Comicbook Villains’ by Mike Conroy. And holy cats, is this thing beautiful. This paperback by genius annotator exhaustively details the villains who have prowled the pages of comic books from 1934 to the present day. Just to give you an idea of what I’m talking about, here’s a page–chosen at random:

Dancing: Was invited to go dancing by a couple of friends to a club called ‘Ice’. Results were mixed. I was thrilled to be there but I could have done without the crowded sweaty people who kept bumping into me every five seconds. For ninety-fucking minutes, I shit you not. It was mind-numbing.

My Online Date: Over the weekend I met an awfully fascinating person. But due to the issue of distance we had to settle for an online rendezvous. Yes, that’s taking dating to an all-time low. But I think I might like him. And I love it when people who are smart and funny and handsome online turn out to be smart and funny and handsome in person.

My good friend Abhi is an amazing artist. Whenever he shows me portions of his work, I can’t stop myself from saying things out loud, because I can’t help being like, “I think your stuff is the best” or “Look at the use of color here!" and then want to shoot myself because I remember that's exactly what Leonardo DiCaprio said in Titanic. I’m sorry, but his stuff really is the best. His graphic novel will be published very soon and I’d want to spend an eternity in that book and never come out until the pages begin to melt.

You, of course, might want to view his work here.

Ok, enough of my blathering on and on. Now that you’re home from college or work let’s think of something constructive we can do with our Tuesday evening.

Here’s ‘Ana’s Song’ by Silverchair because I feel like this could easily be the background music to an after work special. The type of work special that would feature copious amounts of high fives and thumbs ups. Hope this week is bearable on whatever location you’re currently residing. Cheers, and come back often.

After a long, work-filled week, it’s finally Saturday. Luckily for me, it’s going to be a weekend with a chock-full of things to do. And, really there's nothing better than getting out of the usual office wear and into weekend pj’s.
Stretching and curling my toes under my quilt, I realize - not for the first time - that I would just be really happy to sleep in a bed that feels and smells the most familiar. Perhaps it's the ideal weight of the quilt, the way the pillow embraces my head, the unmatched smell collected of sleep and hair and books and dreams; and the bed that waits for me like a timeworn ship ready to bear me to fairer lands.

But before I set out to discover lounge-land, there are two people that I would like to mention in this post. This weekend is going to be a special one, mainly because it’s their birthday. I won't tell you which one, not that I think they care.

Happy Birthday Pete. I can't offer you much advice except to keep on truckin'... Remember that you're pretty good at what you do. Or you wouldn't still be doing it. And for the love of Phil Collins have a little faith in yourself.

Happy Birthday Runa. And what a sweeping difference a year makes. Last year I was throwing you a terrible surprise party. This year, well, um, we'll eat popcorn and celebrate your last year as a single lady. I'll be right here for the next 27 years. And hopefully many more. Happy birthday, my love.

Because I don't listen only to sad music and because it's a Saturday here’s a track that hails from Paul Dateh’s ‘The Good Life’ and it’s titled ‘Hope that you’, which quite possibly could be the perfect tune for a Saturday. It’s up-tempo enough to keep you awake and happy enough to get through another week.

Enjoy your weekend world.

When I left you on Friday, I did nothing. Except veg out and plow into the home-stretch of book reading. And some time during Friday night, while still reading the book, I ended up face down in my pillow, sobbing my eyes out.

It's been a long time since I’ve read anything quite as disturbing as Elie Wiesel’s ‘Night’. If you haven't discovered this guy, ‘Night’ is the perfect place to start. Books just don't get any disturbing than this.

If I could go back and right any wrong in history - historic or personal - without having to worry about any of that ‘Heroes-Hiro-Nakamura’ past changing the future paradox shit, I believe that the holocaust would be one of the things that I would have liked to never have existed... and any other hate crimes motivated by race.
I was bummed out when I finished this book, not because it wasn’t good but because it make me feel sickened, bewildered, troubled and vaguely pissed off. But that’s what Wiesel intends to do the reader, fight against Holocaust denial and encourage more awareness-raising both on the level of political elites, on the level of history teaching and the media, to restore collective memory and make known the difficult truth about the Holocaust so that something like that won’t ever happen again.
Moving onto Saturday. I had the good fortune of being invited for a small show at Herbs & Spices featuring Naina Kundu and Floyd Fernandes, a fine blues and soul duo from Mumbai. The location was cozy. Not big, on the side of small but we got ourselves a table at the back with a good view. The show started at 9 when Naina Kundu got up on stage with a guitar that looked bigger than her, to perform “These Days” (by Jamie Cullum). Her voice was very warm, smooth and deep and her songs have an unusual blaze to them which is very appealing. Add in good looks and her set was great. Usually I'm wary of covers but she didn't let anyone down, doing a slow, easy on the ear job on ‘Another Day’ (Jamie Lidell) with her own particular unhurried jazz style. Unfortunately it was raining quite terribly all day so I didn't get to take out my camera.
What else can I tell you other than that from the opening track to the end of the concert every second was worth listening to. Here’s Naina Kundu and Floyd Fernandes with ‘The Truth’. It’s a live track, not a studio recording, so be prepared for a little crowd action and clapping.

Until the next time around keep reading and, as always, enjoy the music.

Resurface

Please forgive my recent silence. I haven't had internet access at home in almost a whole week and I think I almost lost my mind. My laptop hasn't been very cooperative. I've somehow managed to infuriate the internet gods, snubbed them in some way. It started when a bug was pushed to my machine late last week...which put Google out of action (Gmail, Gtalk and BlogSpot) because, yeah, I only use that every day. So I was left convulsing without my fix of chatting and blogging goodness. All my browsers refused to load. No scowling face, no question mark. Just a little message saying I should restart my computer. It would have been very, very easy to get caught in an infinite loop, especially as I enjoy following orders. I kept on doing as I was told, rebooting time and time again, but eventually I had to stop for sleep. It's really enough to make one want to gulp down a cake made of nothing but chili paste.

My computer finally got fixed yesterday. Apparently they were able to save most of my data. And, in the end, the price was slightly less astronomically high than I expected it would be. Not much, mind you--I still have to scrap my plan to do some month-end shopping and drinking. But now that my computer is back, of course I'm going to have to catch up on all the blog reading and I shall also see if I can arrange a human sacrifice to pacify the internet gods.

Since I got a job that keeps me sitting down for the better part of the day; parked behind a computer screen. Music is a lifesaver after lunch and it’s been quite a treat to get to listen to loads of the music I had stored in my computer at work. One of them being Incubus’ ‘Aqueous Transmission’, which is a beautiful and relaxing trip through ‘a land of rivers, kung fu and unicorns, eventually making the listener pee in her/his pants’ – Brandon Boyd, Lead vocalist of Incubus. And just a fun fact, the band uses a traditional Japanese string instrument called 'Ko-kyu’ in this track. If you really dig their music you should check out their album ‘Morning View’. Trust me, it’s a good enough album to impulsively get and enjoy it over this weekend. And if you’re not from this side of the world then you might as well enjoy it while you’re at work tomorrow.

Happy Friday y’all!