Forget the '80s, I Love Six Months Ago!...Dude, Friendster is sooo April 2003. (via Gawker).

ps...an early happy birthday to both Cory and his shoplifting, movie star girlfriend Winona Ryder....smooches to both of you...

I give up. There will be no in-depth rundown of the St. Louis trip. I just don't have the time or the energy so let's just agree upon the following:

• The Groovie Ghoulies rocked the stage when the opened for Chuck Berry.


• Chuck Berry was pretty damn good. At age 77 he can still do a mean duck walk.


• Chuck Berry was very nice to the Ghoulies and his son and daughter (who are in his band) were even nicer


• People in St. Louis are very nice in general


• Except for that one jerk at the club


• Cory and I enjoyed being tourists as we visited the Arch, the City Museum and the St. Louis Arts Museum.


• The City Museum, by the way, is amazing. If you ever go to St. Louis, do not miss it. It's in downtown St. Louis and, and in addition to some cool hands-on, kid-friendly stuff also features an incredible display of architectural relics saved from abandoned/torn-down buildings over the years.



• Cory and I took tons of pictures. These two here are among my favorites, one is an accidental shot we took of our feet while trying to figure out why the camera was making a funny clicking noise (too much sun, we needed to shut off the flash feature) and this shot that Cory took as we stood beneath the Arch right before leaving the park


• Our flights to and from St. Louis were generally OK except for the part where we flew home on the same day that authorities finally discovered a 20-year-old kid from North Carolina's attempt to point out just how hapless the U.S. government really is.


• By the way, after waiting in the security line for over an hour and being pulled aside for an extensive body search via the wand, it has finally been determined that I am not a terrorist.

A happy birthday shout-out to my cousin Serena - because she's an amazing post-Martha Stewart undomesticated diva and because she makes family gatherings that much more bearable...

I think I'm going to have a nervous breakdown. Too much school. Too much work. Too much heat. Too much of everything. I'm really happy that Daylight Savings Time finally high-tailed it outta here, but I could really use some seasonal weather. I think it might help my mood...might help me get through the days better.

I don't know why The Strokes feel like a guilty pleasure, but they do and I'm enjoying their new song 12:51. You can too.

Most of the general public knows Elliot Smith as that greasy-haired singer in the white suit who held hands with Celine Dion at the 1998 Academy Awards. Maybe they liked his music from the "Good Will Hunting" film. I had always hoped that would be recognized as the soundtrack successor to Simon & Garfunkel's work on "The Graduate".

I was so excited when I found out Elliot Smith had been nominated for an Oscar. I still remember where I was--in a crappy diner being waited on by a one-handed waitress (no, really) in Albuquerque, NM. Cory was with me...we were on the way to New York. It was February, cold and I was more than slightly freaked out about everything. But as I read the morning paper, that news made me very very happy. I don't know why exactly, but it felt like a personal victory of some sort. I remember Cory laughing and agreeing with me and, I think, mostly enjoying the fact something like that made me so excited.

As it would turn out, I was very depressed being in New York and I remember the night of the Oscars I was in bed watching them on my small, crappy reception TV and I was exhaused—both from working really long hours every day and from being depressed—and I fell asleep shortly before he performed with Celine and Trisha Yearwood. When I woke up and realized I missed it, I was really disappointed and although Celine had won, I remember thinking: I really hope all those Academy members realized what a mistake they made.

For me, Smith was a musical savior. His Either/Or record got me through many a night in 1997 on the heels of a break-up of a very bad relationship. These days I'm in a much, much better place. I wish there had been someone or something there for him to get him through the sad and horrible thoughts and feelings that made him commit suicide. I got to see Elliot twice, once in 1998 at the Fillmore and once in 1997 at the Press Club here in Sac. There were about 20 people there. I think it might have been a Sunday night. He bummed a cigarette off of me and was quiet and shy and nice and gentle. And I wanted to tell him then that his record was saving my life almost every night.

But that's a hard thing to tell someone. No, it's a strange thing to tell someone. It makes you sound like the stalker fan. So I didn't. Now, I wish that I had. Not that I think it would have made a difference, but at least then I could have thanked him. I'll be playing "Either/Or" tonight--both in memory of a talented singer-songwriter who will be missed and as a reminder to myself that this too shall pass.

Elliot Smith dead at 34 from an apparant suicide. I can't even begin to tell you how sad this makes me.

OK, a St. Louis update is forthcoming (although, I confess, it'll probably just be in list form).... but until then, last week's Friday five:

1. Name five things in your refrigerator.
Diet Coke. Mozarella cheese. Soy turkey. Spicy mustard. Nerdy (i.e. chockful of seeds and stuff) bread. Mmmm ... lunch.

2. Name five things in your freezer.
Tofutti Hip-Hoorays. Coffee. Ice. Boca burgers. Frozen vegetables.

3. Name five things under your kitchen sink.
Trash bags. Cleanser. Swiffer pads. Draino. Dishwashing liquid.

4. Name five things around your computer.
CD player. Stack of CDs. Letter organizer (filled with bills). Palm Pilot charger. Lamp.

5. Name five things in your medicine cabinet.
Toothpaste. Dental floss. Moisturizer. Contact lens solution. Tweezers.

I've only read 18 of The Guardian's Best 100 Novels of All Time...but I suppose that's a start. My favorite on the list is Marilynne Robinson's "Housekeeping" (No. 85). (via Rebecca's Pocket).

An interview with my rock star boyfriend Paul Westerberg at The Onion.

The Friday Five on Monday:

1. Do you watch sports? If so, which ones?
I don't watch a lot of sports. In general I'm more of a championship type of girl—I like watching the World Series, Wimbledon and sometimes even the Super Bowl. But I do love basketball at any time.

2. What/who are your favorite sports teams and/or favorite athletes?
Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs

3. Are there any sports you hate?
Golf. I despise golf. I'm sorry, any activity where you walk around dressed up in ugly polyester is not a sport.

4. Have you ever been to a sports event?
Just a few (other than in high school), a baseball game, a basketball game. I've never been to a football game. I don't think I'm missing anything.

5. Do/did you play any sports (in school or other)? How long did you play?
Let's just say I was always a bit more bookish than athletic. Yes, it's true, I was often the last girl picked for kickball.

When will it start to feel like fall around here? everytime the temperature starts to dip down to autumn-like proportions then whoosh ... back up into the '80s.
I am so hoping it will feel like fall in St. Louis.
St. Louis!
St. Louis is Wed-Friday and seeing the Groovie Ghoulies open for Chuck Berry at Blueberry Hill. I'm excited about the trip, about getting out of town, even if it means that my work and school schedule are being thrown for a loop and my brain is starting to sizzle once again from the mental overload.
I really shouldn't feel this stressed and tired....I had a fairly relaxing weekend...
Friday night was Alkalai
Flats at Luna's....which was good to check out even though I suffered an allergy attack in the middle of their set which meant we high-tailed it outta there as soon as the band was done playing.
Saturday--I finally cashed in my gift certificate for Hoshall's Salon where Serena works. Had the Most. Amazing. Facial. Ever. Mmmm, I could so get used to being rich and pampered.

Saturday night--we checked out Lost in Translation. I liked the movie. Which I think puts me in the minority--meaning that I didn't find it amazing, just merely pretty good. Cory wanted to know what I didn't like about it and it's not so much that I didn't like things, it's only that as a whole it didn't leave me with that feeling that some of my favorite films have (Ghost World, Sweet Hereafter, Dancer in the Dark, Adaptation, etc)...something about it just left me slightly cold.Of course, it probably didn't help that I started to feel sick (achy) turning the film. That said, I did think Bill Murray was great, I loved Scarlett Johannson as usual and I thought the film's ending was spot-on.


Sunday--Breakfast with Laura and a short thrift store trip, then studying, then dinner with Kim. Even managed to fit in a nap between those two things. Naps rule.
Speaking of naps....I could really use one right now. I'm in a vicious sleep cycle right now. I can't sleep at night so I'm tired during the day so I take a nap late in the afternoon so I can't sleep at night again... a vicious, vicious cycle.

The California recall circus reaches fever pitch today. Find your polling place and rock the motherf#!*ng vote already....

Via Bookslut: Simon LeBon (my early-teen boyfriend) has a book club...and yeah, it is better than Oprah's.

You should be reading Xeney If I had enough guts I would write the same way here....perhaps someday....

Arnold behaving badly via the LA Times (requires free registration). Now, if you'll excuse me, I think I need to vomit.

Hanne Blank's excellent article in the Baltimore City Paper about just why 98 percent of most "chick lit" is so distressingly bad:

This is, I think, what genuinely should be criticized about these silly novels by lady novelists: not their humor, not their tone, not their tissue-paper plots or their tiresome fixation on looks, but their obliviousness to their own words and what their words indicate. They are, to put it bluntly, not self-aware enough to realize that the constant low-grade misery they depict has larger causes and both larger and smaller cures. Insofar as these novels and their anti-role-model protagonists are nonetheless role models for their readers to some degree, that's a crying shame.

As someone who's read a few of the novels that Blanke mentions (usually for work...but I'm not just saying that as an excuse as to why I read them), I'll say that most of the titles in question are usually disappointing not for what they include (hey, I love shoes, frou-frou drinks and thinking about boys too) but for what they don't include: true philosophical angst, domestic dilemmas, sexuality that reaches beyond the hetero boundaries, thoughts about 401Ks and struggles with self-identity, depression and self-worth. Every time one of these books picks up an interesting thread it quickly drops it again (for example: the incredible sadness that surrounds the abandonment issues concerning the young child in The Nanny Diaries) as if the author's ashamed that she touched upon a painful bruise and almost had us smarting.

Now that Arianna's out of the race and I'm sure Peter Camejo doesn't stand much of a chance, I'm definitely voting no on the recall.

It just amazes me that anyone in his or her right mind actually thinks that a movie action hero with absolutely no political experience (sleeping with a Kennedy cousin does not count) is the person who's going to turn this state around. It just seems like a big farce. Then again, they're not even trying to hide the fact that Schwarzenegger is just going to be a Republican figurehead.

And no, I'm not a big fan of Gray Davis. But has he been any more corrupt than anyone else at the Capitol? No, this is just an exercise in political charades.

In any case, Arianna's joined the anti-recall effort. You can too.

Wow, according to Internet myth-busters at Snopes, (via 601AM), the story about a man who's been stranded at a French airport for the last decade is true. This brings whole new meaning to the term "jet lag".