The backbone of colonial America and where-house sales

Chuck Palahniuk is of that rare strain of writer. 

He violates us with the most extreme characters, but they're so utterly believable, that we'd just lie down and gratefully push a few hundred in their pockets afterward.

5g33k and I watched Choke last night. 

A sex addict support group, a potential half-clone of Jesus Christ, an ingenious restaurant choking scam, a fucked-up childhood, a mad mother who meant well and a doctor willing to get herself impregnated in the hospital chapel in order to carry out a radical stem cell procedure. And there's more.

All of it plausible.

I haven't read the book this was based on, and therefore can't make any judgements on the medium migration, but I could see Palahniuk in almost all the pixels.

I may be writing out of my ass here, but what I got out of it was a portrait of damaged people, searching and failing. 

I like that about Palahniuk; that as much as the people he creates are so tremendous and weird, there are little filaments running through them that seal the connection with the reader/watcher.

You may not be a chronic masturbator, but when you see Denny draw the stripper as a perfect female form, you're taken right back to those moments where you felt total acceptance of a beloved.

The journey you take with the protagonist Victor Mancini, is one you may still be on, even though you might never find yourself naked in an unlocked airplane bathroom.

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Exclusive Books sent out a mass email informing Fanatics cardholders of their warehouse sale. They spelt 'members' as 'memebers' in their email subject line. I think that most of us bloggers are meme-bers.

Back to the ware/wherehouse sale. The dulcet tones of the GPS dominatrix lead me to Strijdom park where I expected to find a huge structure bursting its zinc with covetable titles.

I was disappointed to find a selection that took me all of 20 minutes to browse through.

I came home with two facepainting kits and fairy stories for the brats, three photobooks with accompanying soundtracks (the American Cars and Cuban beats for my uncle, the Sax! and Moods of La Habana for myself), Terry Pratchett's Thud!, Alduous Huxley's Those Barren Leaves, a Marie Claire Breakfast recipe book and The Bollywood Cookbook for my mum (ta for the heads up Kaye).

More to add to the pile of the unread. Whereas I used to eat up entire days reading, now I tend to digest books in spurts, little bites before bed or huge gastronomies on rare Sunday mornings. I'm currently gnawing on Lita Epstein's If you can't say anything nice, say it in Yiddish. To the recent vermin carrying the blogosphere plague, "Zolst es shtupin in toches arayn."

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NaNoWriMo 2008.  It's the first hour of Day 2 and my word count is bleak. Forget bleak, try non-existent. It's November's fault. Months that start on the weekend have no real ooomph about them. I'll start writing on Monday.

Did I convince you?

"You got an attitude of everything I ever wanted, I got an attitude of need..."

There's a man that stands in the middle of the road, at the robots at the corner of Jan Smuts avenue and St. Andrews in Johannesburg.
While waiting for the red to merge into green, you notice the way he's just there, an island unto himself.
He doesn't look up, so there's none of that awkward avoiding of eye-contact that usually goes on with the guy who hands out flyers or the woman with her blind companion and enamel cup.
He's so still.
And in a sort of delicate and ironic caricature, he stands there with his pockets turned out, fingers gripping the inner seams, holding the white cloth out like banners, while his eyes drill through the tarmac
Such a clever bugger.
See how he's reversed the roles!
He's ignoring you, but look how at you're seeking him out, wondering about him.
Don't you want to ask him things? Like where his favourite place is and if he eats the same thing every night.
When Adam Duritz bled his words on stage Friday night at the Dome, I wanted to ask him these questions too.
Duritz and the turned-out pocket man, grand canyons apart but their rocks grind down to the same dust for me.
Pocket-man is as much celebrity to me as Duritz is.
While I sing along to the Counting Crows slipping out of my radio, I scan the street for Pocket-man. I want to know about him, things I can't get on rss feed or google.
Like Duritz; who's lit up with more poetry than a cemetery at sunset, I'm sure Pocket-man has words in him too.

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Click here for a bootleg version of one of my favourite Counting Crows songs.

when good bloggers go Mac...

Your mother may have warned you about sudden blindness and hair-growth on your palms, but for the first time, I present you with the effects of excessive blogging:



When we're not winning Miss Congeniality contests, we also like to go a bit pop-art:



But we're really just a couple of normal freaks.



Thanks to Concerned MJ and the Ever-Great Waseem for a grand Saturday spent mall-ratting. Honourable mentions to Mak and Jauhara for dropping by. I hope to meet up with the rest of you KZN-lot the next time I'm tripping down.

I'd blog about the annual Autostyle Motorshow, but as was twittered, I'm all doof-doofed out. How some people can spend bazillions on car sound for three seconds of brain-liquidising bass-pumping is just beyond me.

However if y'all into the vroom-vroom, the husband did take lots of pretty pictures. He'll have them up on the site (www.autostyle.co.za) faster than you can say tyre-naaier.

Bunny suits and rocket rides!!!

Duritz and the boys will be hitting our atmosphere on June 06 in Jozi!!!
Yayness!!!
I heart the Counting Crows!!!
I'm so there!!!

I'm over-doing the exclamation marks.
Anyhoo, they're an awesome band and you should go see them if you can.

I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey.

5g33k did not pick me up on Saturday night wearing fishnet stockings.

This meant we would be of the more staid bunch at the theatre that evening.
However, the row behind us consisted mostly of Dr Frank-n-Furter tributes, each wielding a water pistol and legs from here to Transsexual Transylvania.

As per fan script, the Rocky-Horror-Showlings mad-libbed lines at the stage.
Frank (played by Brendan van Rhyn who pulled off a black corset and porngroove heels rather effectively) said, "So come up to the lab and see what's on the slab. I see you shiver with antici..."
"Pation!" was thrown from the fourth row.
Frank didn't miss a mascara-lashed blink, "Wait fucker. Pation."

The show had started and we were time-warped.

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Saving conversation:

Magenta: I ask for nothing!
Frank: And you shall receive it, IN ABUNDANCE!

Frank: Do you think I made a mistake splitting his brain between the two of them?

Frank: One from the vaults... Don't be upset. It was a mercy killing. He had a certain naive charm, but no muscle.

The Criminologist: And crawling, on the planet's face, some insects, called the human race. Lost in time, and lost in space... and meaning.

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I don't know who she is but damn she cut up that cello

J and Josie Field @ Catz in Melville - Just the right order of strings and words. That Josie; decent originals and the best cover I've heard of System Of A Down's Toxicity.
J kept flicking the fringe out of his right eye but Down Again and his interpretations of Wicked Game, Uninvited and Paint It Black were worthy.
But seriously, who was the girl on the cello? I've never seen that instrument TAKEN like that. Made me all flushed and breathy.

Fracture - Hopkins again. All mindfuck and watery-blue eyes. Despite the typecast, it made for acceptable viewing. Gosling is endearing in this one.

de-briefing

Friday: Lark (@88 Lounge, Norwood)- was just that.
Saturday: Sam's wedding - was all that.
Sunday: Spiderman 3 - was not that.

happy weekending

Al would ask the ladies, "Does the Inertia of a Body Depend Upon Its Energy Content?"
Sometimes he'd get lucky.

notes from the first 2K7 weekending

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