Seattle When it Sizzles

So it was hot this weekend. Around here, this is an event on the level of a Pope visit. The nightly news leads off with Record Heat and ends with chuckled about kids and labs in wading pools, sprinkled with the sort of banal advice ("Get out of the sun if you're feeling faint") that must be truly revolutionary to anyone that hasn't exited the bomb shelter in the last thirty years. I went to Golden Gardens with R, who is still making half-hearted seduction attempts involving bottles of very good rose and lines I haven't heard since my last visit to a San Francisco fern bar. On the other hand, it's fun to tool around on Vespie, his Vespa. This is Golden Gardens. You can mentally add hundreds of people: R. is a character, with dozens of stories of women that throw themselves at him weekly. How does this happen exactly? Is there some sort of Desperation Flu out there on the order of that Will Smith zombie movie? I mean, he's a guy in his 40's who is a little pudgy with a nipple ring. (Yes, I know what you're thinking. Simmer down. He took off his shirt.) I'd say that R. meant well, but if any of you have been reading my previous posts, I know you'll agree when I say, no, not so much. He told me this evening that he was waiting for a weak moment when I would agree to have sex for him. Quite frankly, Dear Readers, I can't imagine that weak moment. It would have to come after a nuclear attack, the end of the planet as we know it, and the last shred of hope to repopulate the Earth and...nope. Not even then.

Bad Habits

Yesterday I went to the Fremont Solstice Parade with about 100 million other people. Yeah, it was roughly that, because moving around would probably be easier in a crowd where someone had dropped $1000 bills from a plane. It was about that crowded. There were many naked people painted blue and green and yellow. I have no idea why they ride bikes naked and paint themselves. It kind of made me itch looking at them though. Later, I went out with my lovely friend in Queen Anne. Here's the bar: So Solstice is here, and I've been thinking about how to change my bad habits and embrace the idea of a *gasp* life partner. Yes, dear friends and readers, it has not escaped me that I'm the one who tends to screw things up. Blame, she is a fickle friend. I thought of this the other day when I was out with my friend I., who said - with some satisfaction - that his ex had finally admitted that (let me paraphrase this) she was wrong about everything. Can this be, I pondered? Aren't there always two people mucking up the works? Although I have nothing but disdain for S., I'm forced to admit that I was in there too. Certainly if mistakes were made, I made 50% of them. In the interest of not making more mistakes, I've decided not speak with anyone I've ever had sex with for the duration - and not to have any more sex until I sort We'll call it a Sexual Solstice. Happily, at the moment, I'm only speaking with one man-boy in that category, and he is easily crossed off the contact list. It's a new (longer) day.

The Runner Stumbles

My indescribably talented friend D. once wrote a story called, "I Run Every Day." It was the very disturbing tale of a poorly socialized rapist (although to call D. the sweetest man on the planet would be a vast understatement) and it eventually got published in Harpers because when it comes to writing, D. is a bad a**. I bring it up because when your friend shows you his new first-person story about a date rapist who thinks he's misunderstood, your reaction is usually not a shocked and disgusted: "Wait - do you RUN?" Yes. It was worse contemplating him as a runner than a date rapist.

I'd hoped to keep at least a couple of my friends as couch potatoes with me, but no - they keep getting picked off, one by one, as if physical fitness was a newly devised form of Body Snatching (and it might well be.) And now as I've pointed out, I live across from the epicenter of running in Seattle: Green Lake.

I decided one day, watching as the f**king runners made yet another show-offy loop dragging their labs/retrievers/labadoodles/boston terriers/shepards behind them in big bursts of canine eagerness, that I could not be the last able-bodied woman in Seattle to at least try running. So I signed up for Boot Camp, where the receptionist (who even sounded super-fit) told me that we would run 3 to 5 miles every class in sprints and laps. Soon I would be able to take my fearless terrier mutt to join the pedigree darlings. Or so I thought.

But here's the thing. I hate running. Also, I'm very bad at running. I'm low to the ground. I have short legs. I am voluptuous to the tune of D cups. I pronate. It would not surprise you, Dear Readers, to learn that I'm the slowest runner in the group. I'm so slow that tonight the only fat woman in the class (and perhaps in Seattle) managed to smoke me by half a lap. That's how slow I am. I can't propell 110 pounds past 210.

I'm not good at the other parts of the class either. I can't do push-ups, I can't do sit-ups, and there's something called a "power hop" that had to be designed by Satan himself. There are people who aren't athletic. I'm in another category: I'm sub-athletic. I seem to repel all forms of exercise. About the only thing I can do is hold the water bottle.

It's an interesting twist that I've always been drawn to sporty men. Now I don't mean the kind of guys like my friend N. from Outside who always seems to be riding his bike 200 miles and then taking a 30 mile hike to cool down. Bicycles and roller blades are kind of a deal breaker for me - I don't need to see a guy in his bike shorts EVER. I mean men who like to play and talk boy sports. Baseball, soccer, basketball - with the kind of lean torso you get from having played team sports all through school. That kind of guy.

There's a lot of them in Seattle, and hopefully I'll meet one someday that won't say: "Baby, it's a gorgeous day. Let's go for a run."

Seattle: A Love Song

After my fit of the mean reds on Friday, I'm happy to say that the weekend improved. I worked all day on Saturday, true, but I did it at Cafe Zoka, where I watched the world go by and said hello to some lovely dogs. It was warm enough for Iced Cappucino, and Brutto and I went around the Lake (where I learned that he has a lot of schnauzer in him - so said a breeder walking with HER brood, and it was true they did "Arooooo" from happiness like him.)

Today though was the kind of day that makes residents of this murky city look a coming winter in the eye with a brave smile. It was sunny and 70 perfect degrees, and I decided to take the lovely B. - recently arrived from Paris, where she is the bestest friend of one of my bestest friends C - downtown to Le Pichet for brunch. It is the most Parisian spot in Seattle, serving a brunch that doesn't include weighty eggs or heavy pancakes. Ah! Mon Dieu! C'est formidable!


I love Le Pichet and I rediscovered my love for B, my favorite person from C's list of friends in Paris. We sipped Evian, but admired those sipping wine in the afternoon. Dear readers, I wish I was the sort of person who could sip wine in the afternoon without tumbling down a flight of stairs as a result of two sips. Alas, you all know I am not.

We took our sober selves to the Market where we were trampled by what appeared to a group of unleashed Real Housewives of Dallas or some such. (Ladies, when you apply your make-up, consider putting down the trowel and backing away. And if you gasp when you walk, your clothes are too tight or your shoes are pinching. Neither is attractive.) Finally we walked to the Olympic Sculpture Park, one of Seattle's loveliest vistas.



And now...guess what? I'm working again. Still - it was an awfully nice day.

Table for One

If you consider that I'm the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and an Asberger's depressive, I'm actually a pretty happy person. But after returning from my trip to St. Louis a couple of days ago, I was hit by what Breakfast at Tiffany's Holly Golightly memorably referred to as the "mean reds": The blues are because you're getting fat and maybe it's been raining too long, you're just sad that's all. The mean reds are horrible. Suddenly you're afraid and you don't know what you're afraid of.
You know, I could have the blues, after all. The only things I'm currently afraid of is driving down I-5 in rush hour and paying my quarterly taxes.

But I digress.

I was in a funk that I'm sure being Audrey Hepburn would have taken care of, but I couldn't turn into Audrey Hepburn because I don't have the step up that say, Natalie Portman does. Why the funk? Well, I've been deluged by work on a grand scale so taking a quick vacation isn't an option, and oh yeah, I'm about to be broke. (See: Quarterly taxes). So tonight I decided to cancel my plans to go downtown to a couple of art openings, mostly because the effort to meet my friend A. and talk pretty with the art mongers seemed a task so Herculean I might well have morphed into Holly Golightly whose evenings involved conning gentlemen out of $50 bills for the powder room. (By the way, my young friend T. was throughly perplexed by what Holly needed with money in the bathroom. She wondered if perhaps Holly was buying drugs. Fifty dollars would be roughly $200 today.  That would buy a lot of 1950's crack, now wouldn't it?  T. was rather fascinated to hear that once upon a time, women actually worked as attendants in the ladies room and expected tips - although they would have been more in the range of 50 cents. Ah those bygone pre-fast food days!)

In short, I wanted to be alone, but alone in a crowd. I was in a funky mood and being a superior human being I didn't want to bring anyone down with me. So I decided to put into practice a certain bold evening plan that my friend N and I had been discussing recently - how hard should it be to dine out/have a drink alone in a bar on a weekend "date" night? I chose my neighborhood pub - the Latona.  I chose it because I was in such a bad mood the very idea of getting on a bus or in a car made me feel vaguely postal.  Also - I like the Latona.
 They play jazz on the weekend, which was rather nice, and the wait staff is understated and adorable if you like them shaggy.

I tried to go all the way and sit at the bar surrounded by men of various stages of Green Lake grubby. No seats available. So I managed to snag the tiny, last corner table where I had my glass and a half of wine, before ordering this for dinner:

Mmm. Chicken sandwich.  One of the best things about the Latona is that they don't even serve french fries. Just salad.  So it means I don't have to make that Sophie's Choice every time I go in.

 

Don't Meet Me in St. Louis

I'm already home, you see. By way (in that routing weirdness that Southwest specializes in) of Las Vegas, NV. This gave me a couple of hours to gawk at the fake breasts, the hanks of hair weaves and the pointy heels that seem so incredibly uncomfortable that the thought of wearing them as far as Tukwila, Washington makes my feet ache in sympathy. Also I won $3.50 in the airport slot machines. My luck is clearly changing. ;)

If you've never been to Vegas, there's no way to describe the bizarre sight of slot machines everywhere. Grocery stores. Laundromats (that one makes sense, it's a good way to rid yourself of extra quarters.) I've often wondered if they rig the parking machines to mimic Wheel of Fortune. But when one has a long layover, it's the absolute perfect timewaster. Thank you, Las Vegas! I hope to be sent through your pearly gates again one day soon.

The fact that I wound up winning nearly four dollars and was absolutely gleeful about it says something depressing about me - I don't dream big. Also, it never occurred to me to keep FEEDING the beast. Next to me, another woman won big on the nickel slots. I believe it was up to $35. She was rather blase about it, all in all.

Now there's been some groundswell about my last post on Sex and the City. While I'm not ashamed to relinquish my keys to the City of Women because I didn't care much for the movie I should point out that I suffer from a faulty memory on some of the finer points of the television show. That is to say, my good friends, the Ms, seem to feel I have misrepresented Carrie and company. Fair enough. I stand corrected, Lady M! (One should never argue with a sexy mouthed woman.) However, my point is the same: there is something astringent about the way they approached relationships and I felt sad after seeing it. After all the many episodes of love and dating and wonder and fabulous sex and penis sizings and untold breakfast meetings which seemed - for reasons that defy understanding - to have taken place in the shoddiest diner in Manhattan, only Charlotte (who always seemed slightly addled) ended happy and grounded. (Mind you, with the typical "babies make you self-actualized!" tagline that is beginning to irk the hell out of me.) The others felt as scattered as at the beginning. (Yes, yes - I know the movie gives us happy endings. I just didn't feel them.) Maybe it's hard for movies to dramatize steady contentment. Interestingly, the Ms are both in happy contented relationships. I think either of them would make a good movie.

However, I have not checked their closets for Manolos. So there's that.

Weighing in on Sex

What have I been doing more important than updating this blog? I've been going to Boot Camp, a hellish hour and a half of sprints and push ups and every other demonic physical exercise I verily hate hate hate. For the next eight weeks. Pray for me, friends. I've gone to the SIFF Film Festival (where I saw Cecil B. Demented and the almost unbearably funny John Waters), I've been exploring my new Target (which seems to be modeled on selling clothes in the Moscow train station), I've been eating sushi from the International District to Ballard. I've been volunteering for Seattle Works Day - which netted me a t-shirt and an afternoon of clearing blackberry bushes from Judkins Park. Blackberry bushes do not enjoy being cleared. Trust me on this.

Also, like all the other people with ovaries - I went to see Sex and the City this week. Unsurprisingly, the theater was jam-packed with females. The one guy who walked in looked as guilty and out of place as a lone man at a matinee of the Care Bears movie. My friend A and I were wearing well, jeans and not Manolos. I would guess that A. does not own Manolos. (It should not surprise you, Dear Readers, that I do own Manolos - compliments of my fashionista sister.) A few of the women around us were dressed in their Carrie digs, as if this was an estrogen-driven form of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This proved a particularly bad choice I fear, as the day's sole spot of sunshine had given way into damp cold by the time the movie was over and the over-dressed observers wandered forth in their T-bags summer minis. But I digress.

I had to go see SATC - it's like the siren call that diverted Odysseus. I just couldn't help it, although I knew perfectly well I was going to hate it. And I kind of did. In all honesty, the show has always sort of depressed me. Now certainly I watched it (they may be aging, but I have those ovaries). Yes, yes, the clothes on tiny Carrie's tiny tiny body, the shoes, oh god, the shoes - yes, she cries like Molly Bloom, yes yes yes - me lovesssss the shoeses. But the women always seemed to mirror a kind of deep contemporary unhappiness, endlessly denying that the only thing that made them happy was the love of a man - or rather, the admiration of a man. Really, think back. What else was there beyond swinging Gucci bags and finding the right guy? Miranda's work stressed her out, Charlotte never evidenced any understanding or passion for the art world, Carrie wasn't a very good writer at all, and Samantha - well. I really think the less said about Samantha the better.

So fine, they wanted to be in love. But once they were, they were bitchy and demanding and whiny and needy and manipulative and aggressive and nasty and demeaning. Remember that memorable moment when Carrie threw a bag of McD's french fries at Big because he didn't invite her to Paris? When she nearly cold-cocked Alexsander Petrovsky for daring to care more about his opening than her? When Miranda threw Steve out of the house because he got a puppy? When Carrie demanded Aiden get back together with her, remodel her apartment, find her a second engagement ring after the first wasn't "Carrie" enough, and then proceeded to stomp on his heart for the second time in two years? Is it my imagination or are these women beyond the Diva zone?

The movie: two hours and 25 minutes of the same thing in endless loop. The most depressing thing about SATC is the way it seems to make sex nothing more than a sporting event - the one having the most fun wins. Not only is it reductive, it makes every sexual experience a virtual contest of virility which, in my opinion, is sure to take the fun right out of it. (And I actually had a talk with P. tonight that made me consider yet again how much this stupid show really has influenced the way I look at sex - and maybe not in a good way.) When at one point Miranda dares to suggest that she wants it quick because she's a law firm partner and a mom and she's tired, the movie acts as if she asked Steve to slice off his penis and saute it for her. That bitch!

Also, everyone looks kind of rode hard and put up wet. And the actor who plays Smith Jerrod, once the sexiest man ever born if you remove Johnny Depp from the running, has aged in the most pinched and red-faced way.

Here's when he was on the show:



And here he is recently (since I couldn't find a clip from the movie):




I strongly suspect that Kim Cattrall did not drop the demanded ten pounds needed to be all pilate'd for the movie, and the film treats her and her teensy little stomach as if she'd succumbed to obesity. My god! She'd gained (gasp) 15 pounds! Get the mumu, stat! She was clearly eating for two - she and Sarah Jessica Parker who doesn't seem to have eaten a full meal since Footloose. Sweetie, when you start telling magazines about your high metabolism and how you have to eat and eat and eat to keep weight on your skinny ass, please keep in mind: there are pictures of you before and after. What, did someone do a metabolism transplant on you at 25? There used to be meat on your bones. Ah well. Let's all take heart that we are unlikely to be stranded with her in the Andes. Because she wouldn't even make a decent sandwich.


In other news, I also went to see Billy Bragg at the old and lovely Moore Theater in downtown Seattle. Here's Billy:



Dang he's a fantastic musician. Dare I add, smoking hot at 50? (and there, I've found my theme).

He looks like he's gained 15 pounds too, but happily it didn't seem to bug him at all.