Communism is Just a Red Herring

One time, Boyfriend and I were playing Clue and I said, "It was Sergeant Pepper in the Yellow Submarine with the Revolver." His response was to tell the 3rd player in the game that that was why he loves me. Swoon.

I love the game Clue and I love the 1985 movie staring Tim Curry, Christopher Lloyd, Madeline Kahan, Eline Brennan, and many other talented people. And I have always, always wanted to have a Clue party...

Oh my god, you guys. I have wanted to have one of these for a long time. No, we didn't play Clue and, no, it wasn't a murder mystery party (tho I still want to have one of those at some point complete with costumes and plot and everything). But I did send out invitations and gave everyone a character and we all dressed up.

My team at work over the past year has reduced down to 7 amazing people who accept my craziness and agreed to all show up in costumes to a team dinner – It was probably easier to convince them since I was moving on to a new job 2 weeks later. We mostly based the costumes on the movie and everyone spent a good deal of time trying to line-drop quotes into random conversation. Also, instead of murder weapons I made everyone character cupcakes and then distributed them in these cute gift boxes.

I apologize for the bad pic but there is NO lighting in my dining room :(

Some day, I'll have a much larger scale party of this type with everyone assigned to teams. Or maybe I'll run Bay to Breakers carrying giant Styrofoam weapons? Or maybe I'll rent out an old building and just have flat out murder mystery party. I love all sorts of themed and costume parties, and thought this was a small one, it's defiantly been one of my favourites!

left to right: Prof. Plum, Ms. Scarlett, Wodsworth/Mr. Body, Mrs. Whie, Mr. Green, Mrs. Peacock, Col. Mustard. My friends are the best!

That's a Boy's Movie.

I have theories about things.

Sometimes these theories make other people confused or angry. Example: mango flavoring is "white trash".

Sometimes these theories threaten my "indie" credibility. Example: the guitar riff in the bridge of "Here Comes Your Man" by Pixies is inspired by the guitar bridge from "Maggie May" by Rod Stewart.

Certain movies, no matter how widely loved, are, at their essence, boy's movies.

Let's break these down, shall we?

I know that my feeling about mango flavoring comes from my time as a server at Chili's in a small town serving mango iced tea and mango margaritas. I also know that I would never have even thought about "Here Comes Your Man" and "Maggie May" at the same time except that I heard both songs back to back on the radio (on different stations, of course). And probably, my love of Mash-Ups helped that a little bit. Also, I'm pretty sure that I don't have "indie" cred to lose...

But the things about movies being BOY's movies... well, that seems to make people react in all sorts of ways. I suspect the reason for such varied reactions is because I never proclaim that movies like "Rambo" or "Heat" or "Terminator" or, especially, "Porky's" are boy's movies, the same way "Sixteen Candles" or "Dirty Dancing" or "She's All That" are girl's movies. I feel like that's kind of implied and isn't the point I'm trying to make. Obviously these a movies are created fora specific demographic.

My theory is this: "Toy Story" is a boy's movie.

"Toy Story 3" came out this year, and I don't know about your friends, but basically every guy that I know when bananas over this release. Boyfriend was surprised when I confessed that I didn't remember a thing about "Toy Story 2" and promptly sat me down to watch the first two films. (I think that I had created some imaginary plot that had never happened and THAT was my vague memory of "Toy Story 2").

I'm not saying that no girls liked these films. I'm sure they did. But whenever I talk to a guy about these movies, you can see what a profound mark these movies left on their childhood. That's just not something that you hear from girls typically. Sure, they like the movie, but it wasn't life altering.

People get outraged when they hear this for some reason. I'm not sure why. It's a buddy movie that happen to feature toys. Toys that are not only boys, but boy's toys: a cowboy and a spaceman. These toys that are also owned by a boy. To me, it's obvious why this speaks to boys more than girls.

Discuss.

Meet Me in the Basement

Oh my god, you guys. I've figured it out.

I'm gonna walk down the aisle to this song some day.

Meet Me in the Basement - Broken Social Scene

Oh! Probably, you should ignore the images and just focus on the music.

I require pearls

I made my first from scratch Red Velvet cake with cream cheese frosting this weekend. It caused in to realize that I need a string of pearls. Yes, you read that right. Pearls.

Let me start over...

Last week they painted the inside of my flat. Without warning. It was kind of a disaster. And, gasp!, I had to bake for a dinner party I was going to. But, silver lining: I was able to use my Mom's newly remodeled kitchen to bake. It's like 5x as big as my kitchen and, right now, like a billion x less filled with paint dust

So, my mom comes home to find me mixing the last of the cake batter together - part dry, mix; part wet, mix; repeat. I'm pretty sure that she has no idea who I inherited my culinary skills from because all she can do is make scrambled eggs (but for the record, they are the best scrambled eggs ever. We call them "rubber eggs" because that's what her dad called them. I judge all other eggs by this standard... ) She seemed impressed by my use of the electric mixer that she got as a wedding present when she married my dad in the '70s. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who has ever really put it to much use.

ANYWAY, I baked the cakes and then made my first attempt at cream cheese frosting all while watching Julie & Julia. I think they provided moral support of some kind because my frosting came out surprisingly well. I did a victory dance. Seriously. Then I licked the beaters.

This all has a point, though, I swear.

See, the dinner party was on Saturday night and I was putting all this together on Friday night because I had to work on Saturday during the day. So, I bring my cakes back to my newly painted flat with the plan of frosting and assembling the layers after work before the party.

The next day I get off work, take a quick shower, and change for the party. I decided to wear a vintage style dress. I throw an apron over the dress and assemble and frost the cake. It actually looked pretty good, too!

My first Red Velvet Cake with cream cheese frosting. Note the skull and cross bones plate.

Then I realized that my friends were coming over to carpool to the party and that my house was still covered in paint dust. Which is why I was holding a broom and sweeping the house in a vintage dress, heals, and an apron when they all arrived.

All I was missing was the pearls.

My Favourite Band: The Hold Steady

Live at the Catalyst Club, Santa Cruz, Ca 9.24.10

This is The Hold Steady. They are my desert-island favourite band. It's stupid how much I love them. I don't expect you to love them, too. I just expect you to indulge my worship.

The Hold Steady was introduced to me about four years ago, when I picked up my sister's then-boyfriend at the San Jose airport and had to dive him the hour back to Monterey with me. He put in a CD.

"I just saw this band live in Chicago, you'll love them," he said. The first track was amazing. I listened intently. Track two was called 'Chips Ahoy': "This song is about a race-horse, not cookies." It turns out it didn't matter what the song was about, really. I was already in love.

I immediately went and bought the album, Boys and Girls in America, and listened to it non-stop. Then I bought their first two albums: Separation Sunday and Almost Killed Me. They sang about sex, drugs, rock-n-roll, and religion. They had reoccurring characters. It was like a Bret Easton Ellis novel come to life in songs. The band itself was like a drug and I couldn't stop listening.

In the past 4 years they've released 2 more studio albums and a live album. I've seen them live 5 times (it would have been 6 but a venue change caused a show to be 21+ much to the dismay of the aforementioned then-boyfiend of my sister) and 3 of those times in the past year and half. I even took my first trip to Vegas to see them play for $15 in a bar.

They are a modern band who sound like a bar band from the '70s. The first time I heard their song "South Town Girls," I immediately thought of The Band (thus it was kinda cool to see them play at The Fillmore - the famous venue featured in The Last Waltz). They are one of the best bands I've ever seen live (up there with Sleater-Kinney and Broken Social Scene) and definitely one of the bands that seems to have the most fun playing. When you watch Craig, their vocalist, you know that there is no where in the world he would rather be than playing this show, right now.

When I saw them this past week in Santa Cruz, it was very surreal. In spring, I saw them for the second time at the Fillmore and it was a packed house. Each time I've seen them, recently, the audience seemed to get larger and larger. But not the other night. It was both awesome and sad.

We wondered into The Catalyst Club around 9:00pm, right before they went on, and the club had about 40 people wandering around inside! By the time The Hold Steady came on, the crowd was maybe 5 deep, but with a ton of space around everyone. I wandered up to the front row.

If you think that a small crowd would lead to a mediocre show, you are much mistaken. They played a full 90-min set and it was just as good as any of their other live appearances (and better for me since last time I was so sick, I had to be propped up just to watch them - now that's commitment!). I bounced and sang until my throat made no more sounds.

Also, I bought this shirt:

The merch guy looked at me like I was mad when I said, "It's like The Hold Steady meets Harry Potter! I have to have one!" I mean, clearly that's what this shirt is, right?!

Check them out. You can thank me later. The Hold Steady

Certain songs they get so scratched into our souls.

Hi. Nice to meet you. Insert random fact.

I've thought long and hard about what my first blog post here should be about.

Sure, I could spend time writing an introduction to this blog, explaining my mission or reasoning behind the creation. Or I could introduce myself in a boring matter, telling you all sorts of unnecessary information.

Instead, I've decided to share an ambition of mine. And it's kind of a weird one: I want arbitrary facts to be used when referencing me. I don't want to be referred to as someone's sister, or girlfriend, or by my profession. I mean, it doesn't bother me, I just think that this plan is much cooler. At lets face it - pretty much half the reason people do anything is because it's cool.

Let me give you some examples:

• When someone can't remember exactly who I am (perhaps an old classmate), you can say, "Oh, you know Meg - she totally hates when people paint things on their cars like 'Go Tigers!' or 'Happy Sweet Sixteen!'"

• When Boyfriend is telling someone I haven't met yet about me, he can say, "Well, she's awesome and she's super nice, oh, and she totally doesn't think that Paul McCartney knew he was in The Beatles." (more on this topic later...)

• When a new employee starts at The Job and someone needs to direct them to me, they can say, "You haven't met Meg yet? She's the one who thinks Muse's 'Supermassive Black Hole' is about a haunted space carnival."

I can see where this might get confusing for people, but I love it. In fact, I love this idea so much that I tried to start a trending topic on twitter #megrumors of these facts for easy reference. So, if you'd like to refer to me, here a few facts that you can use:

• Meg can't pronounce the word "pistachio"
• Meg's favourite Futurama character is That Guy
• Meg wants to mash-up the "Doug" theme with every song - ever (even ones that aren't in 4/4)
• Meg believes there is a fifty-fifty chance of everything (ie. either she will get hit by a bus or she won't)

I'm sure at some point I will even expound upon each of these facts, but for now, I'll leave you with a picture of me and a giraffe. For the record, I find them majestic.

aren't we both majestic?