the king is dead, long live the king

Almost that time again, when most of us clink our champagne glasses (pass) to toast the passing of midnight. Can't say I'm sorry to turn the page on another calendar year. There are a lot of great things that happened over the past 366 days (hooray for leap years!), and I wouldn't trade any of it—particularly the new friends I've met and old friends I've reconnected with. All things to be thankful for.

But so's a fresh start.

Sayonara, 2008.

from dc to disney

I'm sure you're well aware, but Benjamin Franklin is the only non-U.S. President to grace our currency... and they decided to slap his face on the $100 bill. That makes my heart smile.

So does this:




Oh, Disney, how far you've fallen...

Ah well, at least we've got Pixar!

P.S. If you or someone else in your life happen to be a Benjamin Franklin fan, you must click here now. I mean it. That's an order, soldier.

obey omnipresence

I think one of my favorite things about living in DC is the fact that Shepard Fairey's stuff is everywhere, sometimes tucked away on the back of a street sign on a cheap black & white sticker a la Kinkos, sometimes plastered as an urban alley mural, but always there just waiting for someone to stop and take notice.

Don't ask me what's up with the "Art Rat" squirrel in Mickey Mouse ears... Gotta love a mixed metaphor.

And it's not as if I didn't notice his stuff in the other places I've lived—the East Bay is more than a little fond of its Obey Giant stickers—but the comparative volume here is somewhat overwhelming. Kind of like how Berkeley is the only place I've found Trystero muted post-horn tags. I'm sure you can find them in just about every city if you look hard enough, but strongly doubt the frequency is really comparable.



Just finished reading Born Standing Up by Steve Martin yesterday, so this one jumped out at me. It was interesting to hear about the transition from the Summer of Love to the 1970s. Given the atrocities and horror of our first national conflict for the television age, combined with the failure death of Flower Power, is it any wonder that hippies gave way to the "Me" Decade?

But it's nice to see the imagery being appropriated for today's "unwinnable war(s)."

Speaking of appropriate...


After being inundated with depressing headline after depressing headline for so long it feels like the sky was always falling, this got a good laugh out of me—albeit a bittersweet one, but hey, these days I'll take what I can get. And the irony is oh-so-delicious ("no cents," read "sense").

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I hope to one day meet Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson...

...so's I can kick him in the crotch.

seven-year sonuvabitch

If it wasn't for bad luck, I'd have no luck at all. Or so the saying goes...

Truth be told, 2008 has had some significant road bumps. Which isn't to say that 2007 was without its own snafus. 2006, definite ups and downs. 2005? Kind of a nightmare.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling sorry for myself, and I wouldn't expect anyone to feel sorry for me either. And for all the bad times, there have been plenty of good times to more than make up for it. But regardless, my bad times in recent years have been... um... beyond par, so to speak.

However! Upon discussing recent trends in current events with the lovely Miss Joanne, I remembered the fact that I broke a mirror at work, circa 2002. Which would mean my proverbial 7 years of bad luck should be just about up. However, this morning...


Here we go again...

Good thing I'm not superstitious?

'twas the night before xmas...

Looks like someone decided to spread some holiday cheer.

Can't exactly say much of it rubbed off on me, but it did put a smile on my face.

Some more seasonal merriment...

A window display at a greenhouse / shop about a block and a half from my place.


Ye Old Post Office.


Complete with some pre-inaugural preparations.




The view from Pennsylvania Avenue.


The National Menorah.


For the Pagans in the crowd.


And everyone's favorite reindeer with my favorite misfit toy.


Happy Christmakwanzikah, kids!

hep to the jive

If you have the chance to check out Eric Lewis, I strongly suggest that you do.

DCist tipped me off to the fact that he was playing at HR-57, so I talked to my fellow California transplant Sean, and we decided to check it out.

First things first, the joint takes its name from House Resolution 57, passed in 1987, which established jazz as a valuable American artform. Legislation worth remembering, who knew?

Second: Jazz Club + BYOB = Too Hip For Words.

And completing the trifecta, it's all about the atmosphere. Exposed brick, cozy candlelit tables tucked away in darkened corners, it's got a speakeasy vibe that's unlike any venue I've ever seen. Love it.

As if that weren't enough to make a night of it, the music... totally mind-blowing. The first set started with an improvisational interpretation of "Clocks" by Coldplay—a song I've never liked, and yet, by some auditory miracle, suddenly I found myself falling in love.

And that was just the beginning.

From there, things got progressively more intense, from the violinist soloing so furiously he snapped the catgut of his bow to Lewis banging out notes on the piano's strings. You couldn't ask for a more electric, high-energy performance. I easily call it one of my favorite East Coast moments.

Definitely worth more than the price of admission.

rearview mirrors

Steven asked for an example of how to handle flashbacks in a story, and since the Word doc I had in mind is saved on my dinosaur of a Dell that no longer boots up and I had to retype the thing anyway, I figured I might as well post it here.

So here goes:

Gray eyes slit through aviator glasses, staring down the sun. Top gun, fucking Maverick. Feeling the need, the need for speed. More so now than ever.

There had been a car, hadn't there? Twenty-five-hundred RPMs, downshifting to fourth to pass on the left of a two-lane highway, manicured nails tuning the radio dial, mariachis drifting through static

french-tip manicure. her favorite

Needle slanting, laying left. Coasting to the dusty shoulder, a chugging halt. Blood red bullseye as the needle buries itself below the E. Seems familiar, somehow... busted radiator hose

red. blood red lips or lipstick?

Could've been. Running on empty, moving, movies, the needle, volcanic steam, falling needles, the E, must be...

Reeling left, scanning the horizon for the cherry red Mustang he knows he'll find shimmering in the heat baking off the asphalt in the distance, not so distant, he can't have walked too far...

Nothing there but sand and a misfired synapse, blurred and fogged memory of a Sean Penn film.

He's been walking the desert so long he's forgotten anything else. He has his suspicions that there was something more once, the pins and needles of recollection, smell of rust and salt that's not quite carried by the breeze but is present nonetheless. A faint echo on the edges of perception, like the skipping track of an album whose notes and words you can't recall.

Fuck it. He's here now, has always been here. At least there's quiet. At least he's alone...

red rusted. iron.

Only he's not alone, not really. Like the eye of some prehistoric omen, the sun blazes overhead, an unceasing beacon. Muting the world, tinting reality, the aviator glasses aren't enough to block out his shadow. Its held his trail doggedly from the beginning...

Whenever the fuck that was.

rat in a cheeseless maze

Turning his back to his tracks and the shadow, he scans the horizon, searching for... what? Pavement, tire tread, signs of civilization, gas pump

mariachi music, tin warbling voice of the stereo

billboard, fucking something. There should be some goddamned thing, a sign...

Not that he honestly believes that. Small doses of comfort through larger tales of fiction, and the doses are getting smaller all the time. Not that that's any different from the way things were before.

Is it?

Distracted hand loosens the knot in his necktie as the eyes behind the shades drink in the expanse of sand, panoramic thirst.

A shadow passes over his face; he looks up to watch a bird circle past the sun. Hawk, maybe? Too soon to tell. Darkened wingspan flapping dustward...

Touchdown.

Not a hawk then. Not even a falcon

french manicure finger tips trailing down his thigh

Blood faced buzzard. No, something not quite right about that either. Frames from a Disney movie or National Geographic. Something about a prison

topped-off gas tank, flamenco guitar as petroleum splatters.
metronomic dripping keeping time

and keys... jangling keys on a metal ring. Doors slamming shut—

Turkey vulture.

well-thumbed pages of a Norton Anthology,
perfumed pout and Maybelline stains.
"quoth the raven"

Aww, fuck it.

The sun passes behind a pack of cumulo nimbi

they used to laugh together when she mispronounced "meteorology,"
but when had that been? and where (who?) the fuck is she now?

as he meets the stare of the vulture. His gray eyes burn inside its hollow black ones, staring at his own mirrored stare. Looking down, he notes that the vulture casts no shadow.

Neither does he.

Numbed fingers rub the crusted sand from swollen eyelids. Whether from sleep or the ground, he's unable to tell anymore. Not that it matters now.

Props himself up on an uncertain elbow, shifting his freight to rest on his ass he feels

her hand on his skin. groping, a caress, lingering...
skin meeting skin, his skin, not mine

a lump under the right cheek. Pulls from his pocket a weather-beaten wallet, the cracked brown of aging black leather. Windburn eyes watch as his fingers flip open the wrinkled flap, pull out a California driver's license, so there must have been a car. Or a road.

Or, at the very least, there must have been California.

Unless...

unbuttoned fly. 501s draped over the chair back.

male. 5'10". Hair: Brown. Eyes: Blue.

But his eyes are gray behind his Maverick shades. Mom and dad, their eyes were blue, but not mine. Some people called it hazel, but that's not right. It was the color of lack, it was no pigment, it was

she liked the fact that they changed to match her outfits

gray.

How much longer are you gonna leave me here? I've been out in the desert for... days? years? It's fucking hot, throw me a bone, man. Give me a gun, a knife, fucking something. A tool.

Help me end it.

god helps those who

Fuck you.

He's on his own.

Probably not exactly what he has in mind, but it's the best I could do on short notice.

musical chairs

I love this song, but I love it ever so much more now...



Seriously, though. What's with this David the Gnome shit?!?? Enough already, it's creeping me out...

But I'd take evil lawn dwellers and zombies any day over this:



Bear candles engulfed in flames, creepy animatronic puppies, teeth and matches? And don't get me started on the chicken.

So very much is wrong with that. And yet it's so very, very right.

shopping is a feeling

Ask David Bryne if you don't get it.

Meanwhile, I'm still trying to process Obama's inaugural opening prayer pick. And I'm failing to do so. Which is fine by me, because it's not something I want to move past.

Because it's wrong.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, go google it and educate yourself.

So much for a "brand new bright Obama day," ugh, so disappointing...



Here's some of what I plan to have blaring at full volume in my headphones to drown out the opening prayer on inauguration day:







"You don't have the balls to be a queer."

Amen, Ben Weasel. Amen.

this is not a house

Nor is it what Lichtenstein means to me. But that's neither here nor there.

It's strange how we can carry around mental postcards of people we've never known, stranger still how it's impossible to envision them in any other scene. Or fashion. Or skin.

I'm physically incapable of picturing William S. Burroughs as anything other than a withered old raisin of a brilliant junkie who shot his woman dead. Just can't buy the young man pre-William Tell version. Allen Ginsberg exists only as words on a page and a disembodied voice as Jack Kerouac howls drunkenly in the background.

Samuel Beckett is a portrait hung above my favorite table in a pseudo-Irish pub in Berkeley. And the sound of isolating laughter in a darkened London theatre off Picadilly Circus.

David Foster Wallace is his black & white author's photo at the back of Infinite Jest... which I guess is better than the memory of a man whose light was extinguished at the end of a rope.

And Sylvia Plath? Not the broken woman with her head in the oven, not to me. Just quick, clean, cold:

Dirty girl. Thumb stump.

Anyway. Watch "Beat." Good movie.

if i wanted to write about myself in the third person, i would have developed a god complex.

So, I'm incredibly fortunate that my friend Melinda is the editor of an awesome luxury lifestyle/dwelling consumer magazine, Las Vegas Home + Design, and wonder of wonders, she actually lets me freelance for her.

However! The caveat is that sometimes she wants to also run my "quirky bio" on her contributors page.

Which means I have to write about myself.

Which = Not So Awesome.

And the upcoming issue is one of those times. So I took a stab at it...

As often as she daydreams about a return to the West Coast, Lisa Brown has recently determined that she made her way to the nation's capital for a reason: Namely, to be present for the inauguration of Barack Obama. It's the first moment of history in her lifetime of which she's found herself genuinely ecstatic to be a part. And if you happen to find yourself in the District Jan. 19, keep an eye out for her celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in style, sipping a beverage of the alcoholic variety on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

The verdict?

Rejected. Color me surprised.*

Take 2:

When she's not juggling editorial deadlines, which is next-door to never, Lisa Brown spends her time capturing random snapshots with her trusty camera and explaining obscure novels to strangers. Her steadfast companion and partner in crime is a chocolate lab / border collie mix named Lindy (tip o' the hat to Charles Lindbergh and his eponymous variation of swing dance). Unfortunately, the canine in question is somewhat agoraphobic,** which makes morning and evening walks something of a production.

Still waiting to see if that one cuts the mustard...


*If you do not immediately notice the sarcasm that is literally dripping off that sentence, you do not know me. At all.

**No lie. True story.

"kill your darlings"

Humidity meets humility...


East Coast weather is not my friend.

In other news, something random I started working on. Not sure if I'll add to it or leave well enough alone, but Faulkner would probably have a field day...

Given the choice between staying where I am another moment longer, dealing with the unfathomably uncomfortable departure that no doubt awaits my attempt to escape, or suicide, I've gotta say that shuffling off this mortal coil seems by far the most palatable option at this particular juncture. Unfortunately, I've yet to get my bearings in this godforsaken shrine to Pottery Barn and have had absolutely zero luck in locating any potentially lethal means of dispatching myself—blunt objects, sharp edges, poisonous substances, bathtubs in close proximity to a precariously balanced electrical appliance, all suspiciously MIA—so lingering seems to be the simplest option at this stage of the game.

Path of least resistance...

"Hiya, toots!"

Even if I didn't recognize her voice sight unseen, I'd still know her without looking by the telltale Donald Duck line. I turn to face her, and without missing a beat, she leans in for a kiss. I'm not sure whether to be angry with her for crossing the proverbial line in the sand that is our strictly platonic code of conduct, or pissed at myself for going weak in the knees and closing my eyes.

Fucking schmuck...

I'm at a total loss as she pulls away, breaking out in a beaming smile, but I scramble to salvage the situation. "Eh, having a good time, Dolores?"

She punches me in the shoulder, which doesn't exactly catch me off guard—although I wasn't expecting to get hit quite that hard. "I hate it when you call me that!"

I shrug and resist the urge to rub the spot on my arm that's starting to throb a bit. "Don't see why. If it's good enough for Eddie Valiant—"

"—it should be good enough for me," she finishes my line while rolling her eyes and biting her lower lip. It's a verbal routine we both know forwards and backwards, a move out of our own personal playbook.

But I've never really been a fan of non-contact sports, if you catch my drift.

"Look, Dee—"

"—Thank you!" she cuts in with over-exaggerated relief that I've used her self-appointed nickname.

"Think I might split," I continue. "This just... It isn't my scene, you know?"

"Aww," she pouts. She knows I'm a sucker for that. "But you just got here..."

"Um, I've been here a few hours, actually."

She does a double-take so comical, Chuck Jones would be proud. "Have you??"

I nod in the affirmative.

"Why am I just seeing you now, then?" she demands, to which I choose to reply only with what I hope is a suitably non-committal shrug.

Cool as a cucumber...

Or so I thought. She's standing with her hands on her hips, giving me that look. You know the one. Right eyebrow raised just so above the left, mouth poised somewhere between a smirk and a frown, forehead wrinkled in what could be concentration or consternation?

That look.

I swear, she practices in the mirror when she's home alone. No one should be this good at a look, particularly when the look in question is systematically engineered to give the unshakable suspicion that the person giving it is staring into depths of your soul you hadn't even suspected might exist before.

We both know I'll cave eventually—she always gets the best of me in situations like this, and she bloody well knows it, too—so I decide to cut my losses and just throw in the towel without a struggle. Gotta pick your battles, am I right? "Just kinda been laying low, I guess," I admit. "Playing the proverbial wallflower and all that."

"You're such a goober, man," she snorts, killing her beer.

So much for an easy, relatively painless escape. I glance at my wrist, "Wow, would you look at the time," hoping she's tipsy enough not to notice—

"Dude, you don't wear a watch."

Once again, I've underestimated her day-to-day obsessive-compulsive attention to detail. "Touche," I acknowledge. "But I still really ought to go."

By now, she's made her way to the refrigerator. "Geez, you're such a killjoy," she manages to mutter over the clinking of bottles.

"I just don't fit in with this crowd," I try to explain.

But she's not buying it. Looking me dead in the eye, she cracks open a can of PBR and says, "You fit in with me."

She's got me there.

But it's a matter of principle. Or pride. Or bullshit pseudo-machismo. Who knows?

It's a moot point, anyhow. The fact of the matter is, I made a decision, and I'm sticking to my guns. "I'll see you when I see you," I say, trying to sound as upbeat as I can muster.

I linger with my hand on the doorknob, waiting for Dolores' trademark, "Not if I see you first."

But no such luck. She's already left to rejoin the party.

And I head home, alone.

Meh. I dunno.

As a bonus, some holiday spirit:



Because I can.

big up, lil' buddha

Yeah, I don't know either.

'tis the season

It's 10 days 'til X-Mas Eve, and DC's decked the proverbial halls in twinkling lights and pine trees. Blissfully, I think I've only heard holiday music a grand total of 3 times thus far... which is pretty remarkable, considering the onslaught typically begins about the day after Halloween.

However, this...



Not ok.

He scares me...

my iPod's trying to tell me something...

This is what I get for leaving the damn thing on random.

First, "Another Saturday Night" by Sam Cooke, followed by this:



Sweet Jeebus... what a way to start the weekend.