Sunday, October 13, 2013
"I love that littlun."
-Robert Patrick, Striptease
The other morning I was granted the great privilege (truly) of babysitting my niece. She’s about a year and a half old and, as the first of the next generation of Altschulers, she is highly revered and intensely loved by short, hairy people on both coasts. Many people of normal height and hair concentration adore her as well. Please witness the adorableness:
It is an unfortunate truth that I am not good at people, and I am worse at children. My brother is, in this capacity, the opposite of me. He’s really good at people and even better at children; all children love him. He has some magical quality and an ability to communicate with them, verbally and otherwise, that I just cannot manage. Surely part of the reason I’m not good with children is because I haven’t really had any practice. No one ever seemed to want to leave me alone with their kids. I don’t think I’m the worst option in the world, I mean they’ll survive, and they might even learn some colorful new words, but there was just always a better option available.
The other morning there was not a better option available. My endlessly lovely boyfriend, Danny, volunteered to help me try to figure out how to take care of my little peanut. We headed over to my brother’s house at about 8 am (this is extremely early for people who work in a tattoo shop) after very little sleep the night before. Who could blame my niece for putting the death grip on my brother when he tried to leave her with us?
As he walked out the front door, she fought her way out of my arms and ran after him. I picked her up and tried to soothe her but to no avail. She screamed until I couldn’t tell if her voice were quivering or if I were losing the ability to hear that specific pitch. I can only imagine what she was thinking while she stared at me in horror.
What if she drops me? What if I shit myself and she just panics and then I’m stuck stewing in my own shit until Dad gets home? What if I vomit in her hair and she starts crying and then we just cry together?
We may have even had some of the same concerns.
After the initial panicked screaming, she pointed at and reached out for every photo of my brother in the house. She’d maintain a steady scream and point at the photo and then look at us as if to ask, “What did you do to make him leave?!” It was fucking heartbreaking.
She exhausted herself into a catnap, and when she woke up she was a new child. She stretched awake and looked up at me like, “Oh shit! Auntie Allie’s here! And that silly guy! Hey guys!” And then she handed me a little plastic teacup and a necklace. We played a tea party/book club type game for some time until I yawned and she took the opportunity to place a plastic cupcake in the back of my mouth. She giggled hysterically and made up a new game where Auntie Allie just sits there with her trap hanging open and she stores little toys in my cheeks like a koala. In hindsight this may have been a poor example.
After a few rounds of Auntie Koala and a lap or two around the living room in her toy car, my brother returned and my niece’s jubilant nature was completely restored.
As we got in the car to leave, she stood in the doorway and waved furiously while screeching, “Bye Aaa! Bye Daaa!” which I like to think means, “Bye Allie! Bye Danny!” And then she ran out to the car and tried to climb into the window and onto Danny’s lap. My brother lifted her into the car and sat her on Danny’s lap and asked, “Oh? You wanna go with them now?” Her smile turned into a look of horror again, and that’s how I know my little peanut understood.
Wednesday, September 18, 2013
Why That HuffPo Article About Whole Foods You're Sharing is So Awful
Yesterday I noticed several people on my Facebook feed sharing a Huffington Post article called “Surviving Whole Foods.” I didn’t feel the slightest bit compelled to read it. And then three people sent the article directly to me—two of them thought I’d like it and the third one knew it would bother me intensely.
I’m bothered by poor writing, bad grammar, lack of editing, clichés, people attacking things they don’t understand and haven’t researched, and people who aren’t funny but are somehow convinced otherwise. Are we starting to understand why this article irks me so?
Aside from the very basic problems of mediocre writing, grammar issues, and the fact that this is yet another trite OMG-Whole-Foods-costs-so-much-money article, I have a number of specific problems with the piece. If you haven’t read it yet, don’t trouble yourself. I’ll copy and paste the relevant silly bits here.
The author begins her story of a trip to the strange, foreign land of the extremely popular retailer by describing a bad driver in the parking lot:
This driver swerves around her and honks. As he
speeds off I catch his bumper sticker, which says
'NAMASTE'. Poor lady didn't even hear him
approaching because he was driving a Prius. He
crept up on her like a panther.
A Prius joke? GO ON, YOU TOPICAL MINX! I know, I miss 2003, too. Electric cars are such silly hippy mobiles!
After navigating the parking lot, she enters the store and is confronted with a “great wall of kombucha,” or as she calls it, “rotten tea.” Now, besides the fact that kombucha is fermented (as are a whole hell of a lot of the things even “normal” people enjoy on a daily basis) my problem here isn’t exactly with the semantics. It’s with the author underestimating her audience. Kombucha isn’t a rare freak tonic anymore, it’s pretty goddamn commonplace. I’m told by a reliable source that kombucha is sold in several Wal-Mart stores. If it’s available at Wal-Mart then it is no longer an exclusive, foreign beverage. Your readers are probably aware that that little globby bit of SCOBY, or kombucha mother, in their bottle of fermented tea isn’t actually a result of someone having, “gizzed in your tea.” But semen jokes in a grocery store article are well-placed and clever, right? Right? ….Right.
Now that we have a Prius joke and a kombucha joke I’ll give you three guesses what’s up next. Did you say gluten intolerance? Fuck, only needed one guess? Me too. She writes, “Ever notice that you don’t meet poor people with special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver with Candida?” My thigh aches from the slapping! How long has HuffPo had a two-drink minimum? You’re lucky, HuffPo, that I don’t do just the minimum, and I was able to get through this article because I was four drinks deep.
“Next,” she writes, “I approach the beauty aisle.” Then she garbles something about being a 3 on a “1-10 hotness scale.” I, apparently as the author did, drifted off during this part because it’s supposed to be an article about a health food store. But when in doubt, pad a piece with bro-speak and self-deprecation. She then decides to buy a “$108” face cream and blames the sales person for her inability to form an opinion/make a decision/say, “Oh, I’m just looking, thanks.” Have you never been in any store before? Do you not understand how they work? They put items out with prices on them and then you choose what you’d like to purchase. No one forces you into anything, and it’s awesome.
Because she’s in a bad mood about her own frivolous decision, the author decides to steal a handful peanut butter pretzels. She says she doesn’t feel bad about the petty theft because, “of the umpteen times that I’ve overpaid at the salad bar and been tricked into buying $108 beauty creams.” Hey, sillypants, maybe the prices aren’t to your liking because people like you are constantly stealing just a little bit? Surely it isn’t the only reason the prices are high but you’re not helping your own cliché cause.
The soundtrack in Whole Foods also offends the author: “…Yanni has been playing literally this entire time.” Literally, eh? As in literally literally or figuratively literally? English is super confusing.
Her journey to Whole Foods, and this article, finally approach an end as she gets in line for the register. But the line is so long! She gets to the cashier “[a] thousand minutes later.” LITERALLY a THOUSAND minutes later. When the cashier rings her up for $313 the author is surprised and angry. Did you not look at any of the prices of any of the things you, of your own free will, decided to purchase? Who doesn’t factor in the price before they decide to buy something? Is this a white girl thing? Just grab a bunch of stuff and hope for the best? Run a tally in your head as you go, honey, and then maybe you won’t be so mad at a cashier for doing her fucking job.
When the author encounters the word “namaste” on the bumper of the bad driver in the parking lot and then on the visor of another employee she finds rude, she decides “namaste” must mean, “go fuck yourself.” So on her way out of the store, she smiles at the cashier and says, “Namaste.” You see? You see what she did there? Really brought it all full circle, told the cashier to go fuck herself, but in code! Clap clap clap!
NEEEXXXT.
Sunday, September 15, 2013
Hangover Haikus
I used to drink a lot more than I currently do. The cutback was mostly a health/fitness related decision, but it also started to become less fun. I'm not a bad drunk, but I'm not an awesome drunk either, and I got a little tired of hating myself the next day and wasting the entire next day because I felt like shit. I'm not knocking alcohol; I'm actually extremely passionate about alcohol. I love booze the way people love food-- for all its flavors and complexities and miraculous potential and alchemy and art and history and the way it unites people and tells the stories of cultures. Booze to me is like a great old friend that I don't have to hang out with all the time just to be able to fall back in with them right where we left off.
A while ago, after a night of drinking, my friend Kelli sent me a pained text message that surpassed incoherent and went straight to artistic. The text sparked a conversation that became a little book called Hangover Haikus. The book is still in progress because I usually have no fewer than fifteen projects going at once because I'm scatter brained...probably from all the drinking. Anywho, here are some excerpts:
From the introduction:
Often times when we wake gooey-eyed and dangerously dehydrated, our words and thoughts do not emerge in coherent sentences. Sometimes all we can manage are disjointed phrases, sometimes all we can release are sad little groans. I’ve been through every phase of hungover, from barely-a-sore-throat to discharge papers and internal apocalypse. I’ve tried to express their unique pain in stories, paintings, blackmail, all sorts of ways. But nothing seems to capture the fragmented realizations a hangover brings quite like haiku.
From the body:
The blades of the fan
lay still against the ceiling—
it’s the room that spins
Caffeine, Excedrin
something to stop the pounding
even light is painful
Can’t afford the cab
not quick enough to escape—
he will see one breast
The panic rises
when I interrupt myself—
that burp wasn’t dry
Empty handed now
in front of the drive through girl—
never closed my tab
Missed my flight again
my hands are shaking badly—
blessed airport bar!
Eight shots of whiskey
could handle it at nineteen
please euthanize me
Missing my left shoe
threw it at the cabbie’s head
just one bloody foot
Sailor Jerry rum
this is mama’s blackout juice—
to the impound lot!
for Kobe
Tacos al pastor
laying on the bathroom floor
they come right back up
So many phone calls
the regret is palpable
I have no text trail
I wake up slipping
mattress seems to stand on end
I grip like the dead
Only my eyes move
my body and bed are one
no strength is enough
Late night to daylight
I have lost the transition
Time shifts abruptly
for Maxie
Bourbon Street mornings
my little J.A.P. needs hash browns—
there are only grits
