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Sunday Reading
Traditionally, I spend a good deal of Sunday in bed if I don't have my kids in the morning, and today was little different, though I went to bed a little earlier than usual last night. Got up around 9:00, then read a couple books in bed which I'll review in separate posts. Being after 11:00 at this point, it was a little late to go to Starbucks for breakfast, so I straightened up a little, started some laundry, and went for lunch to Panera, a bakery restaurant chain I like. I brought two more books, Borrowed Time #1 by Neal Shaffer and Joe Infurnari, and Joann Safar's Vampire Loves, and I read both over four or five iced teas and a grilled chicken/gorgonzola/pecan/tomato/greens salad and half a baguette. I didn't plan to people-watch, but you know, that just happens. A few observations, while they're still pretty fresh in my mind:
1) This restaurant, and particularly this part of town, is just chock-full of attractive-to-stunning upper middle class blonde women, which if I have a "type", that's it. Professional-looking or at least like they like to read books for pleasure, on the treadmill or whatever. Anyway, this couple next to me had a lengthy discussion of some book they were reading, and I glanced underlined passages and notes, so I became curious what it was. One of the women (she was brunette, actually) talked about lots of places she'd traveled to and what Paris was like and how 9/11 changed everything, blah blah blah, but I was at least convinced she was pretty cosmopolitan and worldly, so what a shock it was to find they were both Jehovah's Witnesses! She had The Watchtower right with her. It's been over 20 years since I met one--there was a girl in junior high I knew named Toni Alpizar who was one. I alternated between trying to be friendly with her and tormenting her--she was even more of an outcast than me back then, and I had braces and glasses and was very scrawny. I remember being pretty embarrassed for eighth grade graduation when she wouldn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, as she sat next to me, alphabetically.
2) There was another young woman (I must admit, most of my observations are going to be of women--I really don't care to learn anything about men) who walked through the place barefoot, which you can get away with easily here in SoCal, and her legs were very tan, with a pearly white polish on her toes so that it really stood out--even glowed--against those brownish toes.
3) I don't think I saw any black people all day. Yesterday at the pool with the kids there was a mixed-race high school-age girl, pretty cute, who wouldn't get in the pool with her also-cute friend, because she just got expensive hair extensions. She also was worried that her friend would splash in the area of her cellphone, which cost "347 dollars! And they don't even make it anymore!"
4) Going back to the pool observations, my son's school friend Nathan was there, as he lives in the complex, and his 14 year old cousin was there as well, and so we were coerced into a dumb game of dodgeball, which is hazardous and pointless when only your head is out of the water. The cousin was too into the game (also, what fun is dodgeball with four people??), probably because he was a nerd and there were pretty girls around. Twice his ball missed me and ended up near the girl above, causing her to swear a blue streak at me, but we patched it up. I understand how the cousin felt at that age, how you sublimate this explosion of sexual desire into dumb sports and such, but that doesn't mean I didn't find him irritating. I also don't really like the kid my son's age, 6, who I believe said, "fuck!" once, getting an angry reaction from his haglike mom, but not angry enough, in my opinion. By haglike, she really does have a witchy face. I feel bad for her, but that's the way it is. She also looks much older than she probably is, or there's no way she could conceive this kid seven years ago.
5) The only women at this bakery who checked me out at all were unattractive to me, and too young, though I could just tell from their faces they were cool, interesting girls. Isn't that always the way?
6) When you drink a lot of iced tea, you can actually get kind of high. I gravitated outside to read so that I would free up a table for others inside, and when I went in to pee it was like I was watching a movie where the director had pulled frames out, just this sort of stuttery vision. I wasn't hyper or angry or anything, though.
7) I then went to Tilly's to possibly buy some clothes, but passed on a nice black Quiksilver shirt because it had a couple spots of what I wasn't sure was dust on it. For $42, you should be sure. I also have to be careful what I buy in these places because with surfwear clothing manufacturers an XL is usually smaller and tighter.
8) Then went to Borders to read a stack of magazines. Interesting how file sharing is a crime but reading magazines for free is perfectly acceptable and almost social. I mean, I know you're not keeping the articles in your head for free, exactly, but they're not even meant to be permanent, anyway, and a lot of songs aren't, either. Read Uncut, Uncut DVD, The Believer, Mean, Details (mainly just a short list of great beers for different occasions and food. Apparently Porter is the most underrated beer these days, and witbier (white ale) is the best beer for summer. I agree), NME and Harp, which is a new(?) music magazine that had a great cover of people like Conor Oberst, Michael Stipe, Steve Earle, Thurston Moore and Emmylou Harris all together. I always like that kind of thing. Inside the various musicians reflected on each other, like Oberst on Stipe and vice-versa, and it was cool. Mean had a decent Mickey Rourke interview--he's apparently in Tarantino's half of the upcoming Grind House, and dogs and boxing and Hollywood phoniness were covered, as usual. I've always liked Rourke, and it would be nice if some interviews got into his acting process more, as I think in his day he stood with the best of 'em. I notice in most of the music magazines they'll have these one-page interviews with somebody--really like five questions and a big picture--and they often focus on just nonsensical, goofy questions, which is okay if you really like the artist in question or have read a real, in-depth interview with them before, but frustrating otherwise. Uncut had a great piece on The Stone Roses that found the lead singer, Ian Brown, to actually be the nicest bloke in the band and the one who tried to hold it together, which is unusual for lead singers. NME had a tantalizing series of little bits about Radiohead's new songs, tour, and Thom Yorke's solo record. I like all things McSweeney's, but I'd actually never read The Believer before. I was prepared to just buy it and not read in-store, but I gave it a glance and found the design really dull, so I figured I'd better give it a skim. Props to Crisis/Boring Change's Chris Tamarri for a review of 676 Apparitions of Killoffer. Elsewhere, Nick Hornby discusses books he's reading, including Persepolis 1 & 2, though I didn't think he had much to say about them. There's also a pretty good look at '80s teen sex comedies that's kind of funny for how scholarly it is--the humor is because the writer is obviously too smart for the subject, and yet I couldn't quite make it to the end.
9) A mid-40s to early 50s guy was talking with his friend there in the cafe/reading area when his son presented a bunch of stuff--cds or dvds and books he wanted--and the dad said he hoped the son had money, because HE wasn't buying them. The boy, probably 14 or 15 and overweight, wearing a plain tan t-shirt and tan camouflage shorts, protested that it was the #1 Broadway musical or something, but he soon went away to somewhere else in the store, as the dad told his friend he and a buddy were recording a song this month and they hope to continue with it, writing songs for others to perform and record.
10) There was a cute young girl, a waifish type, in glasses, plaid lowcut skirt and green sleeveless top, her ginger hair falling into her eyes, and the skirt was so low you wondered if she even had underwear on. Here friend wasn't so waifish but kind of cute, too, except for this gray cab driver hat that turned me off--it seemed like coded lesbian attire.
11) Across from me was one of the blonde, my type women, reading a book she'd already stuck those sticky, multicolored pointer things into to mark certain pages. We shared eye contact and a smile when we heard the overweight kid from #9 whining in a high-pitched, prepubescent voice because dad really wasn't going to pay for his discs. I felt for the kid, but it really was funny, because it brings you right back to that age, how every disappointment was the end of the world. Actually, I still feel that way, I just have a deep voice now, and I can blog about it rather than throwing a hissy in a store. I saw him walk by the window, tears in his eyes.
12) We shared another smile a little later, with no reason for it other than that I had looked over at her another dozen times and eventually she looked at the same time. I ran through scenarios in my head but I didn't say anything to her and she left. It wasn't a long enough look to make me confident to approach her.
13) When I got home, the boyfriend of one of the girls upstairs knocked to borrow an egg, as they're baking an apple pie. The egg I gave him said to enjoy by April 13, but I'm hoping for the best.
1) This restaurant, and particularly this part of town, is just chock-full of attractive-to-stunning upper middle class blonde women, which if I have a "type", that's it. Professional-looking or at least like they like to read books for pleasure, on the treadmill or whatever. Anyway, this couple next to me had a lengthy discussion of some book they were reading, and I glanced underlined passages and notes, so I became curious what it was. One of the women (she was brunette, actually) talked about lots of places she'd traveled to and what Paris was like and how 9/11 changed everything, blah blah blah, but I was at least convinced she was pretty cosmopolitan and worldly, so what a shock it was to find they were both Jehovah's Witnesses! She had The Watchtower right with her. It's been over 20 years since I met one--there was a girl in junior high I knew named Toni Alpizar who was one. I alternated between trying to be friendly with her and tormenting her--she was even more of an outcast than me back then, and I had braces and glasses and was very scrawny. I remember being pretty embarrassed for eighth grade graduation when she wouldn't stand for the Pledge of Allegiance, as she sat next to me, alphabetically.
2) There was another young woman (I must admit, most of my observations are going to be of women--I really don't care to learn anything about men) who walked through the place barefoot, which you can get away with easily here in SoCal, and her legs were very tan, with a pearly white polish on her toes so that it really stood out--even glowed--against those brownish toes.
3) I don't think I saw any black people all day. Yesterday at the pool with the kids there was a mixed-race high school-age girl, pretty cute, who wouldn't get in the pool with her also-cute friend, because she just got expensive hair extensions. She also was worried that her friend would splash in the area of her cellphone, which cost "347 dollars! And they don't even make it anymore!"
4) Going back to the pool observations, my son's school friend Nathan was there, as he lives in the complex, and his 14 year old cousin was there as well, and so we were coerced into a dumb game of dodgeball, which is hazardous and pointless when only your head is out of the water. The cousin was too into the game (also, what fun is dodgeball with four people??), probably because he was a nerd and there were pretty girls around. Twice his ball missed me and ended up near the girl above, causing her to swear a blue streak at me, but we patched it up. I understand how the cousin felt at that age, how you sublimate this explosion of sexual desire into dumb sports and such, but that doesn't mean I didn't find him irritating. I also don't really like the kid my son's age, 6, who I believe said, "fuck!" once, getting an angry reaction from his haglike mom, but not angry enough, in my opinion. By haglike, she really does have a witchy face. I feel bad for her, but that's the way it is. She also looks much older than she probably is, or there's no way she could conceive this kid seven years ago.
5) The only women at this bakery who checked me out at all were unattractive to me, and too young, though I could just tell from their faces they were cool, interesting girls. Isn't that always the way?
6) When you drink a lot of iced tea, you can actually get kind of high. I gravitated outside to read so that I would free up a table for others inside, and when I went in to pee it was like I was watching a movie where the director had pulled frames out, just this sort of stuttery vision. I wasn't hyper or angry or anything, though.
7) I then went to Tilly's to possibly buy some clothes, but passed on a nice black Quiksilver shirt because it had a couple spots of what I wasn't sure was dust on it. For $42, you should be sure. I also have to be careful what I buy in these places because with surfwear clothing manufacturers an XL is usually smaller and tighter.
8) Then went to Borders to read a stack of magazines. Interesting how file sharing is a crime but reading magazines for free is perfectly acceptable and almost social. I mean, I know you're not keeping the articles in your head for free, exactly, but they're not even meant to be permanent, anyway, and a lot of songs aren't, either. Read Uncut, Uncut DVD, The Believer, Mean, Details (mainly just a short list of great beers for different occasions and food. Apparently Porter is the most underrated beer these days, and witbier (white ale) is the best beer for summer. I agree), NME and Harp, which is a new(?) music magazine that had a great cover of people like Conor Oberst, Michael Stipe, Steve Earle, Thurston Moore and Emmylou Harris all together. I always like that kind of thing. Inside the various musicians reflected on each other, like Oberst on Stipe and vice-versa, and it was cool. Mean had a decent Mickey Rourke interview--he's apparently in Tarantino's half of the upcoming Grind House, and dogs and boxing and Hollywood phoniness were covered, as usual. I've always liked Rourke, and it would be nice if some interviews got into his acting process more, as I think in his day he stood with the best of 'em. I notice in most of the music magazines they'll have these one-page interviews with somebody--really like five questions and a big picture--and they often focus on just nonsensical, goofy questions, which is okay if you really like the artist in question or have read a real, in-depth interview with them before, but frustrating otherwise. Uncut had a great piece on The Stone Roses that found the lead singer, Ian Brown, to actually be the nicest bloke in the band and the one who tried to hold it together, which is unusual for lead singers. NME had a tantalizing series of little bits about Radiohead's new songs, tour, and Thom Yorke's solo record. I like all things McSweeney's, but I'd actually never read The Believer before. I was prepared to just buy it and not read in-store, but I gave it a glance and found the design really dull, so I figured I'd better give it a skim. Props to Crisis/Boring Change's Chris Tamarri for a review of 676 Apparitions of Killoffer. Elsewhere, Nick Hornby discusses books he's reading, including Persepolis 1 & 2, though I didn't think he had much to say about them. There's also a pretty good look at '80s teen sex comedies that's kind of funny for how scholarly it is--the humor is because the writer is obviously too smart for the subject, and yet I couldn't quite make it to the end.
9) A mid-40s to early 50s guy was talking with his friend there in the cafe/reading area when his son presented a bunch of stuff--cds or dvds and books he wanted--and the dad said he hoped the son had money, because HE wasn't buying them. The boy, probably 14 or 15 and overweight, wearing a plain tan t-shirt and tan camouflage shorts, protested that it was the #1 Broadway musical or something, but he soon went away to somewhere else in the store, as the dad told his friend he and a buddy were recording a song this month and they hope to continue with it, writing songs for others to perform and record.
10) There was a cute young girl, a waifish type, in glasses, plaid lowcut skirt and green sleeveless top, her ginger hair falling into her eyes, and the skirt was so low you wondered if she even had underwear on. Here friend wasn't so waifish but kind of cute, too, except for this gray cab driver hat that turned me off--it seemed like coded lesbian attire.
11) Across from me was one of the blonde, my type women, reading a book she'd already stuck those sticky, multicolored pointer things into to mark certain pages. We shared eye contact and a smile when we heard the overweight kid from #9 whining in a high-pitched, prepubescent voice because dad really wasn't going to pay for his discs. I felt for the kid, but it really was funny, because it brings you right back to that age, how every disappointment was the end of the world. Actually, I still feel that way, I just have a deep voice now, and I can blog about it rather than throwing a hissy in a store. I saw him walk by the window, tears in his eyes.
12) We shared another smile a little later, with no reason for it other than that I had looked over at her another dozen times and eventually she looked at the same time. I ran through scenarios in my head but I didn't say anything to her and she left. It wasn't a long enough look to make me confident to approach her.
13) When I got home, the boyfriend of one of the girls upstairs knocked to borrow an egg, as they're baking an apple pie. The egg I gave him said to enjoy by April 13, but I'm hoping for the best.
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