Happy Birthday, Beth!

Happy birthday to my lovely sister Beth who is not pictured above (that is the troll doll Marci I recently purchased which Beth put nail polish on and cut its hair as a child -- the original Marci doesn't look quite so chilled out). Hope you're all having a great Sunday!

Are You Going To Go My Way?

Hi everyone -- hope the start to the weekend is a good one. Thanks so very much about your kind comments about the pictures -- all were taken in Detroit!


Saw two signs this week from people trying to get a ride somewhere -- Travelin, Broke and Sexy was the first one from a cute couple both wearing matching knee high striped socks and the other said, Stranded Due To Poor Decisions and Bad Men. Both made me smile and made me think what I would put on a sign to explain my life. I couldn't think of anything near as snappy as the first two so I put the challenge to you guys -- If you had a sign, what would it say and where are you trying to go?

Street Photography

Hey guys -- hope everyone is having a great week. Happy Tuesday to all!

Enjoy Your Troll

The strangeness of watching Hoarders on A&E and then going to an antique mini-mall the very next day cannot be overestimated. So much of what we have has significance far beyond its actual worth. I recently bought a friend a birthday card with a cartoon depicting the Dali Lama's birthday where he's opening a box and says, Nothing -- just what I wanted! My friend is a minimalist in all things and will appreciate the sentiment. But most people I know tend to go the opposite direction and love the physical world for its meaning -- I wore this when I got my first job, I had this since I was five, etc. Things represent possibility and hope, I thought as I trudged down the aisles of of the mall that contained stores with names such as Treasures Remembered, Time Doesn't Forget (that sounds like a noir novel title), and so on. I wanted to have my own Faulkneresque store called "The Past Isn't Really The Past" but alas I am also a minimalist and tend toward purging rather than keeping. Even so, I find myself overcome with the same urge that drives this business -- wouldn't that pink Depression tea set be cool for a party? Wouldn't that light be awesome in a house where it was the center? Lives I will never lead run through my mind. At those moments, I want to lead them, no matter how impractical. I want to be a certain kind of person. I remember the first ad that worked on me in this way, an ad for some sort of lingerie which depicted a beautiful old house on a rainy day with a record player in the background, playing sad jazz songs. I could be that kind of person! I could have rain, jazzy, clothes drying on an inside line, swaying in a breeze.

Sufficed to say, I have not become that kind of person. I am a person who has seen the insides of laundromats, who has waited months to stuff everything in her own washer/dryer combo and hoped it didn't come out the size of a shrinky dink. While I enjoy jazz, I never put it on a record player while it's raining. Usually I'm doing unglamorous errands in the rain, cursing at CVS and whatnot. But the magic of the mini mall did do its trick and I did not leave empty-handed. I saw Marcy! Marcy, my plastic girl mouse doll with overalls in amongst a bevy of trolls. Marcy, an Easter present in 1976. Marcy returned to me with her Proustian rush of longing. Under twenty dollars, she was a steal for such sweet gladness to return me to the past. I bought her and the cashier said, Enjoy your troll! Which I've been doing in some ways my entire life.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"I've got to run to keep from hiding." Greg Allman

Cocktail Hour
Season Five of Dexter is out on dvd -- weekend planned!

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

Happy Birthday Ang!

Happy birthday to my dear friend Angela! This picture was taken many years ago and things have been rocking and rolling ever since. Many happy wishes to you, dearest Ang and lots of love!

To Whom Shall I Tell My Grief

I've been thinking about the term overshare lately, what it means in a confessional time. Post Secret, a website run by Frank Warren, caters to the impulse of relative strangers to share secrets with one another, postcards that range from the banal and innocent (ie, secrets about urinating in the shower) to the truly horror-inducing (rape, death, loss, spiritual emptiness). The website doesn't have the traditional comment section to discourage the rubbernecking tendency of some who tend toward a clinical level of sensitivity, but has a community which can "chat" about these confessions. I've noticed a lot of people run the gamut of infatuation with both the website and Frank who seems like a really ordinary, nice guy who can hold many projections (Frank as evil Svengali making money for secrets, Frank as Savior who has come to unite and heal), emotions that tend to go from This has saved my life to utter despair over quality, tone, and the ability of confession to save anyone.

The truth has a tendency to feel like a bracing drink on a blistering day --heady and refreshing. Of course, there's the inevitable hangover that comes with this new high, the horrible What have I done? I have never sent a secret because frankly I can't think of one. I suppose it falls in the category of embarrassing stories -- everything is a secret and yet nothing really is. I don't mind the overshare in real life -- I know the consequences of telling someone something and weight them before speaking. Not always the case, not by a long shot. There's something that comes with age that doesn't suck! What about you guys? Tend to regret hearing or saying something? Ever been on the receiving end of someone telling you something and then regretting their confession? Overshare with me!

Detroit Pigeon

In Memoriam

Endless Summer

I've had and talked to people in various writing workshops where stories about the most .... experience are often fodder for icebreakers and other exercises. I have a tremendously difficult time with this concept. The worst for me is most embarrassing. I think both all my life is somewhat embarrassing and when I think about it, none of it really is. Picking out the worst incident in this sea of failure would require some doing. Interestingly, I talked with my dear friend Shawn the other day who had such a workshop. He said that most people talked about things that had been done to them. I tend to go the other way as humiliation isn't really embarrassing. My worst moments come in the things that I do. I can't control when other people act like asshats, but when I do, there's a sense of shame that's far worse than anything that has been done or said to me. I think I've been immunized against taking insult too seriously -- yes, words hurt, but not as much as they used to hurt. The internet age brings both kindness and insult in equal measure. So again, when I think of my answer to this question, I come up blank. To go into my deepest failings is not the ideal icebreaker. That said, I'd try it just to see what happened. What about you -- most embarrassing moments? Were you younger or older when they happened? Do they involve other people or only things you know about?

On Top Of The World Looking Down At Creation

Happy Birthday To Mark!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MARK! I would sing, but none of us need that horror show. Mark is an incredible person and the most wonderful friend a girl could ask for! Buy his books -- they've sold out of their printings, but there's more to come. The Line Between is a fantastic poetry collection. Love you much, Mark!

Five Things I Dig About Right Now

In the spirit of five things about pop culture we're torn about -- I give you a few things which I'm relieved to see go the way of all flesh and things I hope are here to stay.

1 -- Conversations about how comfortable thongs are. There was a period of five years where a group of very vocal women kept telling everyone how much they preferred thongs to actual underwear and how you didn't even feel them. News flash -- not comfortable at all. For some great reason, this line of reasoning seems to have died. I don't know what this means, but in the words of Nicolas Cage in Bad Lieutenant -- I love it, I love it.

2 -- Getting movies in the mail. Netflix hiked their prices. So what? I will pay what it takes to sit on my tail. Although in my weaker moments, I miss those hour-long debates in video stores. Seriously, I kind of do.

3 -- Ads about back to school are uniformly met with curses by everyone I know. Sometimes people flip the television off, say, when Old Navy starts in on the polo for school bit.

4 -- Self-serve yogurt places. Eating an entire candy bar without realizing is so sweet. It's just sprinkles, right?

5 -- Cornell West in the New York Times. He's got his cemetery clothes on and he's ready to tell the truth. His be a thermostat (something that changes the temperature) rather than a thermometer (something that merely reads it) is priceless.

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Be careful what you set your heart upon - for it will surely be yours." James Baldwin

Cocktail Hour
Documentary suggestion: The Pat Tillman Story
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Tuesday!

Happy Birthday, Detroit!

Amy Winehouse 'Back To Black'

I first heard about Amy Winehouse from my ex-husband who sent me her first cd for my birthday some years ago with a note that said she reminded him of me. I've always liked Amy -- in a world of stars that get by on media persona and fancy voice manipulation, Amy seemed like the real deal. Fantastic voice, check. No competent publicist, check. Out of control drug habit, check. Excellent make-up plus beehive, check. She reminds me of another fantastic soul who died at 27, the great Janis Joplin. Numerolgists put a lot of stock into the age of 27, nine being the highest culmination of the soul. I know she's been dragged through a lot of mud, by herself and others, but I always adored her music. With beehive a little worse for the wear, perhaps I can see the resemblance my ex did. Sadly, I don't have the voice. And the voice is what counts. Rest in peace, dear Amy.

Freaks and Geeks

I have loved James Franco since the days he played Daniel on the short-lived, genius beyond belief show Freaks and Geeks. He was fantastic as Harvey Milk's love interest in Milk, made Howl watchable. So what if he sucked ass at the Academy Awards? And has the audacity to enroll in (gasp) an MFA/Ph.D/ blah blah blah prgram? Why does Salon hate him so? I read his Playboy interview (he didn't create near the snafu/fubar of John Meyer's which is nice) and then I saw an article about him on Salon, asking if he is gay and calling him a douchebag with an uneven book of short stories. Okay, Steve Earle's book of short fiction is uneven, but I don't hear people carrying on the way they do about James Franco. What is it about Mr. Franco? Is it the fact that he's my secret boyfriend (when James Gandolfini is busy, because let's face it, he's my real secret boyfriend)? Is this why all the hate?

But in all seriousness, why are some people lightning rods? I've always been curious as to why say, Miranda July, a writer and director, has an entire blog dedicated to hating her, titled creatively, I Hate Miranda July. I like some of her stories, find some of them a little precious, but who cares? Why would anyone expend so much energy on what looks like sour grapes? So readers, do you have any theories about why some people elicit so much negative emotion?

Michelle's Spell of the Day
Dialogue from Big Love -- "Margene: Why did Wanda poison your brother? Nicki: You've met him."
Cocktail Hour

Dvd suggestion: The Lincoln Lawyer

Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Friday!

The Legend of Detroit's Nain Rouge

The Fairer Sex

The U.S. women's soccer team is in the finals as I type. My memory of the last time they won comes from an old ex of mine, a sweet-hearted Marine who dated a lot, but found women mystifying. When Brandy Chastain took off her shirt and whirled it around her head in celebration of their win, my ex told Hank that he wished women would always do that when something made them happy. They'd be a lot easier to read and not so difficult to discern, like a tea leaf reading. Get a present you like -- whip a shirt around your head! Enjoy a compliment -- same deal.

So to my male readers, I offer this question. Do you find it difficult to know when women are happy? I know from my male friends that it's relatively easy to tell when a woman is unhappy, but what about the reverse? How do you know when things are good?

Michelle's Spell of the Day
"Winning isn't getting ahead of others. It's getting ahead of yourself." Roger Staubach

Cocktail Hour
Movie suggestion: Beginners
Benedictions and Maledictions
Happy Sunday!

Custom Vanities

Always Here. Faygo