wed / shut it down! / thank you to john findura for reviewing black-eyed heifer in h.o.w. journal

this is where you go to read this beautiful & thoughtful & superbly written, magnificent piece of writing by mr. john findura:

http://www.howjournal.com/reviews-books.html#taylor

thank you, john findura. thank you A.Z. mirth all your days & days & then some more days of mirth, etc.

yall should go to to the website & read the review cause there's a pic & stuff & then on down the list is margaret atwood & ann beattie & martin amis! heehee!

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[from H.O.W. Journal--Art & Literary Magazine]


Reviews - Books

Black-Eyed Heifer
by Shelly Taylor
A review by John Findura
Tarpaulin Sky Press. 88 pages. $12


I was on a train somewhere between Trenton and Baltimore when I reached this section of Shelly Taylor's Black-Eyed Heifer:

On the outskirts of the limit line's an old wooden covered bridge, creaks & echoes mack dab in the middle. I might load you up & take you there, were you of the things that stand freely & grope. Searchplane? Searchplane. Every which a way I know I want only from my own.

In some kind of déjà vu it brought me back years ago when I took a train from Newark to New Orleans. Because of the excessive July heat, the train managed to break down, lose its air-conditioning, and pull into New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal a mere 36 hours after leaving The Garden State. Along the way we picked up a rag-tag band of travelers—some on business, some on vacation, some just completely lost, and two girls in their early-20s with a two-month train pass who were traveling the country by rail.

One of them, with dreadlocks and a nose ring, was originally from Portland, Oregon. The other, the one with the bandanna and five-pounds of necklaces, grew up in Georgia. I know this because in the middle of the night I listened to them talking across the aisle. Their lilting, rambling murmur plucked me from my own whirling thoughts and into some strange, uncanny valley. The titillating thrill of eavesdropping balanced with my own self-awareness: there was something thrilling in sensing the shifts of culture and accents within one's own country—in lives too close to conveniently categorize as "other." It's that experience that mimics what it feels like to read Taylo's mixture of prose and poetry: a pageant of unclassifiable lines that seem as if they were just plucked from the humid ether.

Around 3am Bandanna-Girl starting telling Dreadlock-Girl about living on the family farm in Georgia. I'm sure she mentioned the town, and its name was probably something really pleasing to the ear, like Juniper Springs or Waterloo Hollow. She talked about how she had named all the cows and could describe each of their personalities. Then Bandanna-Girl started talking about the horses and how her mother would stand out on the porch and call to her and tell her to wipe down the horses, and she would carry buckets of water across the yard and pour it over their twitching muscles. Bandanna-Girl still had a thick Southern Peach accent and said things like "you know it's time when it's time," a phrase which could make its home on any page of Black-Eyed Heifer.

Somewhere in the south, the air-conditioning went and the train stopped. The car was only half filled, but had the strong smell of people—not in a negative way, but in the way a pair of work jeans can tell you its owner's occupation even after a thousand washes. Almost everyone was asleep. The couple in the two seats in front of me had passed out after trying to have covert sex under a blanket for an hour-and-a-half. But Bandanna-Girl was still talking about her cousin who used to build go-carts as a kid and when he was 16 he started racing stock cars, and she was mad because he made some money and his mother, her aunt, sold their two horses which Bandanna-girl had cared for. There was a single fly buzzing around us.

For 30 hours I was unable to sleep and listened to these two girls talk. In Mississippi we stopped for an hour at a small station and were allowed to walk around outside. It was morning—even so, the air was dusty and thick. When I re-boarded the train, two guys in their early-20s had taken the seats in front of Bandanna-Girl and Dreadlock-Girl. They both wore tee-shirts with no sleeves and green John Deere hats. They looked like they had been called in from the casting department.

They told the girls they were headed to New Orleans for the weekend and that they should join them. The girls politely demurred. The boys took out chewing tobacco and the girls went to the snack car. I must have fallen asleep because I came to with a jolt, the collar of my shirt soaking with sweat. The conductor shook my shoulder. I grabbed my bag and got off the train.

I never saw those girls again, but the memory of them, of their endless conversation, their subtle dismissal of these two boys, their sweaty, bare shoulders disembarking a too hot and too broken-down train in Louisiana—it comes back to me now.

As Taylor writes it:

When you need to know what you need, look to your ladies. Each one goes in & comes out alone. A man could never tell you this in this way.

This book is Taylor's first full-length effort. And retelling my overlong, untidy vignette is the closest I can come to describing her work. The language, the imagery, the quiet suffocation of stagnant air and the smell of tired muscles: Black-Eyed Heifer is 88-pages of overheard conversations, snippets of thoughts, feet pounding on the wooden porch followed by the screams of horses.

Black-Eyed Heifer is also filled with a rural kind of dark wisdom—the kind of living some of us have forgotten, the kind with "Brown lawns, tumbleweed in the nosegay handle" where "the windows are boarded up" and a "Big truck hums the way a fine diesel should."

Pieces of some type of shattered Southern Gothic spring up continuously, such as in this section, where the speaker admits:

I have dreams I watch over the dead bodies of people I've never met, all stretched out & I'm bodiless myself but there. Whether or not I ever meet these people the scenario is of a third-eye layout. The corner spec becomes the horse, draws up to the man with a lasso who is tipping his hat, giddy-up, whipping off for morning a large-scale fire on the tin< roofs the moon just left again forever.

With little plot to sustain itself, what is to be gained from Black-Eyed Heifer? Maybe a language. A language laid down upon a forgotten geography. Maybe a view into a slower way of life. Maybe a voyeuristic listen into a secret conversation on a train, or next to a derelict payphone down the street from the local Publix. This is the new geography and language of Yoknapatawpha County; in Taylor's pages the words slowly grow over you like kudzu. Slowly, but inevitably, they overtake the soil, the roads, the train tracks, your whole country.

---

John Findura is a Pushcart Prize nominee and a guest blogger for The Best American Poetry blog; his poetry and criticism appear in journals such as Verse, Fugue, Fourteen Hills, Copper Nickel, No Tell Motel, H_NGM_N, Jacket, and Rain Taxi, among others. Born in Paterson, he lives in Northern New Jersey with his wife and daughter.

wed / staying up / ahead / 80 degrees! / country music

i love jennifer nettles from sugarland. she's from my hometown, douglas, ga. i remember her as a senior in high school (i was in 6th grade) skipping school to get a tattoo w/ my older live-in sister at the time, norwegian lyla, & then hanging out w/ my older sister borka in the front room--jennifer nettles had taught herself to play guitar & she was playin & singin "hotel california." she was/still is the coolest.

this is her new song--"lil miss." douglas, ga. gives grls deep southern accents, yes.

tues / pics from back a couple weeks ago / me mm becky & teddy

we went to teddy's ranch to gather eggs / had some southern talk / becky took these wonderful pics

ah! such great news for my friend DEANNE STILLMAN! / her book mustang is being made into a movie! whoop!

http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/Wendie_Malick_to_Star_in_and_Produce_Wild_Horse_Annie_On_Hallmark_20110328
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YAY DEANNE! So proud of you! So happy for you! So happy for the attention the remaining wild horses will receive so that maybe they wont be shot down in the desert any longer. Cant wait to toast you, Deanne!
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Hallmark Movie Channel announces "Wild Horse Annie," a Hallmark Movie Channel Original Premiere starring Emmy(R) and Golden Globe nominee Wendie Malick ("Hot in Cleveland," "Just Shoot Me"), is in development with an anticipated premiere date of Summer 2012. Ms. Malick will also serve as Executive Producer of the film which is adapted from a portion of DeAnne Stillman's grand epic Mustang: The Saga of the Wild Horse in the American West. Helen Bartlett ("North Country") is Executive Producer. The screenplay will be written by Jenny Wingfield ("Man in the Moon"). DeAnne Stillman will also produce.

"Wild Horse Annie' is the triumphant story of Velma Johnston's commitment to majestic wild horses; that they be preserved, enjoyed and celebrated by generations of Americans," said Michelle Vicary, Executive Vice President, Hallmark Channel and Hallmark Movie Channel. "It is an honor to memorialize Ms. Johnston's humanity in this film," Vicary concluded.

"Velma Johnston, also known as 'Wild Horse Annie,' grabbed hold of me from the moment I read about her in DeAnne Stillman's fascinating book," Ms. Malick said.

"Despite physical and emotional challenges, Johnston committed her life to getting federal protection for our wild horses and burros, saving them from cruel roundups and barbaric slaughter.

"Today there are 40,000 wild horses languishing in government holding facilities, and we are in danger of losing the wild mustangs forever. Helen Bartlett, Jenny Wingfield, DeAnne Stillman and I came together to tell this courageous woman's story, and hopefully shine a light on the plight of these remarkable creatures before it's too late," Malick concluded.

Velma Johnston became a leading animal rights activist in this country. Her dedicated quest to protect America's wild horses, a campaign she began with the nation's school children, culminated in the US Congress' passing of the Wild Free Roaming Horse and Burro Act of 1971. The bill became the law of the land, signed by then President Richard M. Nixon on December 15, 1971. Ms Johnston's legacy lives on.

Hallmark Movie Channel, the second linear channel from Crown Media Holdings, Inc., simulcast in SD (Standard Definition) and HD (High Definition), is a 24-hour cable network dedicated to bringing viewers family-friendly movies with a mix of classic theatrical films, presentations from the acclaimEd HallMark Hall of Fame library, original Hallmark Channel movies and special events. In today's crowded television landscape, the network is a unique and captivating entertainment experience, providing programming that families can watch together. It is now available in over 40 million homes. Crown Media also operates Hallmark Channel which provides a diverse slate of high-quality entertainment programming to a national audience of 87.5 million subscribers.

Read more: http://tv.broadwayworld.com/article/Wendie_Malick_to_Star_in_and_Produce_Wild_Horse_Annie_On_Hallmark_20110328#ixzz1HvmPrBxW

mon / fresh week! / what i got from granny taylor / french grls vs american grls

spring is here & tucson is in the 70s. i slept as hard as i have in a while, no dreaming, on old sheets ive been meaning to change for days now which i just made clean right this moment. if there is anything i got from granny taylor--i should be so lucky--it's the ability to live louder than most--though ive kept this facet mostly internal, esp in the years of my late twenties. granny had a roaring cackle laugh that made people raise eyebrows & think goodness gracious, though the place she laughed from, always to me, was pure & beautiful. hence, i decided along w/ clean sheets to live a loud year--to finish my twenties being particulary robust. why not? thurs afternoon comes: scream out the window. what a happy practice--my smile was from such a pure place afterwards, & i felt brilliant, truly, truly brilliant. go wake the neighbors w/ this animal delight. norma jean taylor seems to me now more like a french grl than american. in all her stories to me as a child she seemed indignant to the hilt, & i loved that. packing all her stuff in a wheelbarrow & hauling it up the hill to stay w/ her granny when she was a child. always acting out. loud. jitterbug in the kitchen. one of the first women in the south to see a therapist--she had to drive hundreds of miles--which surely meant she was crazy. she stuck out, especially coming out of a culture where women arent necessary supposed to be so 'independent spirited' & 'outspoken.' i like how in french movies the lamenting grl goes out into the yard & kicks the tree, full of grief or whatever it may be (it can be so little, sometimes) & rids herself of through spectacle. i like those movies. american grls dont typically kick trees & involve themselves in great spectacle/s. a nation of drama in fact--every player, plays--but the violent bear it away (all debt to ms o'connor, i love) & we grls tend to stay inside the house as is perhaps 'code.' perhaps it's that our american men are quick to call us women 'crazy' as is. this is true. american men might be more adolescent than most it seems to me--that is until they hit 40, as my mama's aunt jean tells her: men are just no good til they hit 40. perhaps that is a true statement. perhaps women should not care if their men call them crazy as they kick the yard tree. this, thank you, norma jean, is my 2011 stance. you think i was defensive (or whatever you thought), that id be always alone--what a joke--this is me kicking the tree, gleeful or lamenting or whatever i want--this is me waking the neighbors w/ such animal delight. i think mandy got a lot of this too--& it is just starting to come out of her now. she is strong; she is not going to sit quiet. i hope she is cussing & kicking a tree in LA right now; i hope she gets this senseless nastiness & cruelty out of her body brought on my a cruel man, & then moves on in a magical way. we women do not have to keep it/bear it away. im so sick to death of men acting out in their spectacles--drunk at bar, fighting at bar, headbutting cars, screwing young grls when they should not be--im so sick of it i could break a tree in half. get it out, get it out, so that i may move on in a magical way.

sat / is in the air / keep the overhead low / barrio viejo fest

yesterday, sleep late, laze, meet w/ a, tumamoc w/ a, dinner w/ the grls at crossroads, drinks w/ annie. sleep by 1. ah!

today, up & do class stuff & luxuriate, meet w/ a student at the tucson lit fest, meet up w/ dan h who gives me an artist wristband for the barrio viejo fest, meet up w/ danielle & med school grls, fun fun fun, free beer all nite, calexico, salvador duran, fun!, dinner at hub, it is in the air, hang out w/ me boss, fun!, in the air, im home! grading...:( but ive got to. beautiful day.

thurs / taco shop kind of day in celebration for finishing busy work week / weekend time thank god

[this sat. / 12-6]

mon / fresh week! / if you sent an email last week, chances are i didnt receive it

dont know what's going on exactly--my google is/was troubled.

resend your emails!

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one: my maintenance guy JORG just opened a record shop on Fourth Ave, across from Ches on 7th. it's called Ancient Radio. go support this man--he's been an angel--something goes wrong, he's on it a-sap. the best! yes! a good man is hard to find we must support them!

two: me & JH at the bar.

sun / happy.

[this is where im from...}

happy. happy. happy. which is to say well loved. which is to say im taking very good care of myself of body & spirit.

summer plans are coming together. key west for a couple months. also spain hopefully. i have four classes lined up for fall, so im getting the hell out of town.

im also almost done w/ my fifteenth read of dalva.

wed / heal takes an awful long time / pool day / i drag my self to the grocery store make a nice shrimp/mushroom/cream/caper sauce for some pasta

that is whole grain. whole. i am sitting here watching top chef i love it. they're at the judges table now, who's going home? who? tiffany is. sad face. my grl antonia is still in it, she's gonna win it! tonite i took one of those long baths that makes you pruny, water gone cold four times plus, hit the hot water fast. i was reading dalva in the tub, love this bit:

i had a dreamlike clarity and perhaps undeserved strength when i remembered something grandfather had said when he found me after my walk in the hills on the far side of the Niobrara: how each of us must live with a full measure of loneliness that is inescapable, and we must not destroy ourselves with our passion to escape this aloneness.
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I love Bo McGuire. He has an essay in Diagram 10.6 that I think is badass in its southern accuracy lovingness. it's great:


LITTLE DARLINGS: A DEFENSE OF THE CONFEDERATE FLAG AND AN APOLOGY TO AUNT SYBIL, IN HONOR OF MY DADDY, RUE MCCLANAHAN, AND DIXIE CARTER
Bo McGuire

It's striking. I cry about some things. Not a lot of things, but some things. I don't like to see my mama suffer, not one bit. Now I love(d) Tammy Faye Baker, but I didn't cry when my best friend and roommate Trey came banging on my door in the middle of the Alabama night to tell me she had inoperable brain cancer. In fact, I'm sure I was pretty bitchy when it happened, but God love him, you've got to admire his nerve and his insistence that Tammy Faye's imminent demise was something serious, so serious that you go and wake someone up to tell them about it, like if you had run over their dog or spilled their Mama's ashes or what have you. This kind of thing always happened with Trey. He is the messenger I shoot on repeat. I still have saved, and listen to it regularly, a four-word voicemail from Trey, in his harshest Tennessee damsel accent: Ertha Kitt is Dead. Thank you, my brother, my sister.
When oil spilled into the Gulf of Mexico this summer, Trey said his boyfriend grieved something terrible about it. Trey's boyfriend grew up on the Gulf, around Mobile, and that Gulf and the way of life that grew from it, I'm sure, became a part of him. And even though I'll be the first to tell you I'm not necessarily the biggest fan of Trey's boyfriend, I do bear witness to his grief. He grew from the Gulf, so for certain the suffer was a hard hit home for him. Still, while I realize there has been life lost because of the disaster, I couldn't imagine shedding tears over it. Hell, I didn't even cry about Katrina, when the life lost was a city where I grew drunkenly gaily, that is, the life lost was rich, human, and Southern. It's clear that somewhere there, humanity got lost, and I feel strange for the not-grieving. Maybe my ego hasn't fully transitioned from self to world, from small to grand, and maybe, since my parents raised me an only child, it never will, but here it is—my truth. I was aware that what had happened, in both cases, was tragic, was terrible, but I still didn't feel personally terrible. Overwhelmed perhaps, but not terrible. At a loss perhaps, but not terrible. It wasn't as if somebody had taken a hatchet to Mama.
Some people see the Confederate Flag as a hatchet, and that is true too. But one thing I have surely learned in life so far is you can't ever keep a hatchet buried. You've got to look that sonofabitch square in its jaw and love it just as much as you hate it. Every time I want to roll my eyes at the little-boy-Bo who cried his eyes out at the two-hour music video that is Evita starring Madonna, instead I lick his face, tell him how much I love him, and tell him it's OK to cry when a diva dies, actual or dramatized. I tell the man who sits beside him, doing his best to comfort the queer acts of an even queerer youth that he should be made something like a saint, but not exactly a saint, something like a saint of Hell, but not exactly a saint of Hell. He looks a little bit like Ernest Hemingway, and does more and more the older he gets. In fact, maybe here, as we're watching Evita, he doesn't look like Hemingway at all; I am just casting him across time to play his younger self. Anyway, that man is my father, the man who bought me first Judy Garland biography—Gerald Clarke's Get Happy. It was breathtaking. And he would take me to the Salvation Army, and that was breathtaking too. He called me his little darling, this man who read my first poems and short stories, this man who told me I'd never be anything but a mediocre poet in the woods. Good God, I hope so. This man carries his body the way I carry mine, but that don't mean he dreams like I do. Still, he pushed me to be an artist—to be rich, no matter what I had in my pockets, no matter what kind of pockets I had. While Mama sharpened my eye, Daddy pushed my spirit to manifestation. That is, he gave the fire its shape. This, after all, is the man who made me choose between his belt and losing my Reba McEntire concert tickets the one and only time I ever called Mama a bitch (I chose the belt, there was no choice really). He's also the man who told me The Golden Girls was such a good show because of its writing. Of course he was right.
Of course he was wrong. With the recent passing of such great iconic Southern female characters, Blanche Deveraux and Julia Sugarbaker, played by The Golden Girls' Rue McClanahan and Designing Women's Dixie Carter, it's hard to believe Dad completely. I reckon that's hard for any son to do. Yes, the writing on these shows remains tremendous, but these actresses embodied the dialogue, so much so that they became greater than just the character, just the script, just their separate parts. They became Blanche, they became Julia, (and still do). For me, they became the Confederacy, albeit a different kind of confederacy, one more akin to the origins, that is, a friend. And yes, I cried when these actresses passed. I am a man who cried because I am a man who was intimate with these women. We was good as good friends. I knew them as myself. When I was I blowing my trumpet in the marching band, my nickname was Blanche, and whenever I need to get fired up, I still Youtube Julia Sugarbaker's now-famous monologue in which she defends her sister, Suzanne Sugarbaker's, status as a former Miss Georgia World: "She was not any Miss Georgia, she was the Miss Georgia! She didn't twirl just a baton, that baton was on fire!" Look that shit up while it's still free, write to me and tell me you don't get chills.
I knew these women outside of the television. I even felt like I might meet these two women in particular inside the fellowship hall of Hokes Bluff First Baptist Church and/or the Fuzzy Duck lounge on East Broad where my mother (sober so she says) danced on the tables. And now that I think about it, I reckon it's because I carried these women, and the language/dialogue they used to maneuver throughout their Southern existences and experiences in me, in my mouth, in my swagger, in my heart. Losing them was not like losing power, but it was like some of the well-spring that begot the power drying up. And so I wept because loss is part of a whole. This is what my daddy taught me when our house burned, that is what the Civil War taught Scarlett O'Hara as Atlanta burned. In the end, we've always got to lose a little bit of our little darlings, and that is a grief something terrible.
Onced I swam in the same lake as Talullah Bankhead, onced I was a rebel, onced I was a Scarlett. And so was my great-aunt Sybil. Nanny says Sybil was always the one who resented having to do the labor of living country: the picking, the chopping, the hollering. She was the jealous one is what Nanny says. Well, I saw Aunt Sybil last night in Wal-Mart. She wasn't real sure who I was at first, but when she turned all that hair to the side, snapped her fingers, and asked me "What's your name, boy," and I told her, she said "Well you look real good, baby." And I didn't. And I should've told her she looked real good too. My Daddy would have. I'm sorry for the forgetting, Aunt Sybil. I grieved something terrible about it.
By the time I went to sleep, I had made peace with it though—Nanny wouldn't want me to fawn over her sister anyway. The way people don't want me to fawn over my flag, and God forbid, fly it anywhere near anything. But that's always all right on account I already made a peace of my own with that flag—with losing it too. Here I stand in paradise. Here I stand in paradox. This is my story, my little darling, this is my song—a beautiful thing.
__

I wrote this piece on account of I'm sick to death of the South and its images being portrayed as hateful things, closed to difference, when, in actuality, the complexity of the landscape allows it to hold magic and beauty like you would not believe. I know, I seen it myself.

tues / full on day

here are some pics from sunday via aunt lisa:



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i went to chantilly for high tea w/ mm & becky for becky's birthday. it was lovely lovely lovely. afterwards we went out to teddy's ranch for more tea. we participated in the filming of a documentary being made of her life called 'the last american cowgirl.' we fed the chickens too. a nice dinner of puttanesca & albarino. home now. my grl annie is on her way over. such a nice day.

mon / fresh week / such a lovely weekend

My family was in town for the Tucson Festival of Books. On friday we had cocktail hour at MMS w/ Bruce, Danielle, Joyce, Jim Harrison, & my family--mama, daddy, Mandy, & Aunt Lisa. We dined at Casa Vincente. Danielle was an angel coming over after dinner helping me get my head right. On Sat, I headed over to the Arizona Inn to rally the troops & head over to the reading. It went brilliantly. Amazingly. Then I had a lovely dinner at the Inn w/ friends & family galore. Today we had lunch at lil Poca Cosa as a family & then everyone had to leave. Sad face. Im relaxing now--feel so fulfilled & blessed.

fri / you go cd wright!

CD WRIGHT WINS THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD. gets it done for backwoods grls w/ a lil quirk & a lot of outside the box...yeah CD WRIGHT!



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My family comes tomorrow! Im excited!

thurs / busy busy crazy / ah!

IM READING W/ JIM HARRISON AT THE TUCSON FESTIVAL OF BOOKS!

WHEN? SUNDAY, THE 13TH
WHAT TIME? 4PM
WHERE? THE KIVA ROOM IN THE MODERN LANGUAGES BLDG



whoop!

tues / today i went to popeyes yes! / among other things

just got back home / yes i went to popeye's fried chicken

had a grrreat class today / also went to see dani & baby e /

took her a salad & played w/ e so she could eat / i felt

like a spicy chicken breast myself / i had a good day / one

thing i miss about my friend mara v is how we used to sing

old country songs together rolling down the road / one day

mara v says remember that pam tillis song / she got a divorce

& a chestnut horse / a barn w/ an old hayloft / i said yes /

so we sang it together going down the road / i miss that /

chorus:

Sometimes she rides down by the river,
said it makes her feel reckless and young.
She just closes her eyes, and she holds on tight,
and she lets that pony run.

tonite i think im going to chill. chillin feels good.

tim barry 'wait at milano' & 'cardinal in red bed' / whew

my fav:


my fav:

mon / fresh week / work! / she was more like a beauty queen from a movie scene / never a victim / silkworms & the loveliness w/in

me & my grl ellie. w/ powerful guns. one desert afternoon.

one covet. cynthia vincent is doing a ballet flat in prints that rival tom's shoes for folks that dont like the look of tom's shoes--the ever so classic flat. :)

sun / the way music is supposed to be

sun / life's awesome yes

just got back from riding horses w/ ralph. he's gotta nice potter ranch roping horse named max that i rode today--he said i can train him on the barrels...yeah! max is as big around as a barrel & has one of those lil short quarter horse necks you see commonly on roping horses...he's beautiful, very smart. i'll get a pic of him next week. we trail rode 3 hours (nap time...tired, then some grading!).

i had the BEST day EVER yesterday. fun fun fun fun. stuff for myself, stuff for myself, then hanging w/ annie & drew. i talked to Rouch & texted w/ Cheenie. had good wine, poetry talk. bought a navajo skirt. was up to no good.

---dawes is coming to tucson soon...yeah!---

sat / if you wanna be happy for the rest of your life

I so love this movie. somewhere was good, but i needed some cher afterwards. Of course.

im loving this song - la roux / car song

fri / ahhhh weekend

just got home from mms house. had a random cltrati meeting: my first. it's like a secret society. very healthy to talk w/ smart women yes.

im watching sofia coppola's somewhere. deanne gets all these academy award nominee films b/c she's a screenwriter & gets to vote, so all of these wonderful films that are not even out yet are available for home viewing. yeah!

thurs / almost the weekend / dreams are so freakin weird

is this dwight yoakam? yes. i slept so snug in my new bed last nite, but i had the oddest dreams all nite long. me & mama & grita (one la/grlbear/cat) were at some seedy motel & i was hanging out w/ dwight yoakam; he was searching for mouthwash, & i was feeling ousted b/c i was waiting on some kind of job that i felt i was being denied for. it was all unclear, the waiting/job/ousted stuff, but the dwight yoakam was crystal--him rummaging around motel rooms singing this song. i woke up singing it today. & it's gorgeous out.

wed / up! / bed arrived on a semi that couldnt make it down rubio / bravo!

mm came to help me assemble tonite, but mama & the boys made it super-easy. my new bed is lovely, eh? yeeeeeeee!

Paula Deen Riding Things

yes i just saw on my grl LL's tumblr that somebody super-genius invented a blog called 'paula deen riding things.' sister paula: this one's for you!

march / hallo march / m-a-r-c-h

my new bed arrives tomorrow. :)