A Coffee Can for You (2 of 63): Via Roma Espresso.

This is a unique can in my collection (though they're all unique!):



The coffee isn't Italian -- the label just makes it seem that way, I think this shit was actually packed in Chicago or New York -- but it has a picture of the Colosseum on it, which isn't modern design-y enough like the best Italian coffee cans are, like Guglielmo.

Also, the shade of green has that bright, eye-catching nature like the oranges and reds and yellows of Latino coffee cans, only it's not quite part of the warm palette. Very unusual, I would say.

A Coffee Can for You (1 of 63): Beech-Nut Coffee.

This isn't the coffee can that started my collection -- that would be Alto Grande premium coffee, which comes in a lovely navy blue can with gold lettering -- but, for whatever reason, it's the can on the upper-left of my lefthand dining room shelf when you walk in:

Oddly, I don't get what beech-nuts has to do with coffee.

Also, the red-and-yellow coloring is typical of Latino coffee cans, which this can is anything but; the label is too crispy and shiny for a Latino can, since Latino cans tend to have a grainy quality about them, and more energetic fonts.

So many stories to share...

I have so many stories to share, I feel like that I never get around to them all. Just off the top of my mind, I still haven't gotten around to writing about:

1) Cheese-man the gardener.

2) My godmother's little run-in and to-do with the lady who cleans her house ("I always knew something was wrong with her," my godmother was like, "and then I found out that her husband is an Arab").

3) How I angered a roomful of pretentious artistic lesbians by asking pointed questions in the Q&A session after a queer burlesque event thing a girl I know dragged me to (i.e., I was 'that guy who asks a question').

Sometimes it's good to take a moment and take stock of things like this. Hopefully I'll get around to this shit, as well as my Iowa spring break, which already happened months ago.

Addendum -- Boom Boom Room etc.

I forgot --

I was super-embarrassed the first time I went to take a piss at the Boom Boom Room on Monday. No one was in the restroom except this old short shrivelled black guy who was the restroom attendant, and since I hate how they just hand you a fucking paper towel and you have to give them a dollar, I was hoping he wouldn't do that, only he did, so when I went to go throw him a dollar since he didn't look that well off anyways and it's a shitty job, two dollar bills stuck together since they were new, which I only realized when they landed in the basket, but my hand involuntarily went out to take back the other dollar bill, only I caught myself mid-doing that and retracted my hand. I really hope he didn't see that. The guy was really cool, too; we started talking and he was saying how a lot of the people who come are professional and he doesn't know how they stay up till all hours and then go to work the next morning, and I was like, "I imagine they do a lot of cocaine," and he was like, "I don't knwo what they do, but they must be doing something that works, since they come and do it every week."

On another note, the black homeless dude outside my house who knows I campaigned for Obama has started giving me the fist-bump every time I walk by.

On yet another note, I was sitting in my living room around midnight yesterday and saw something skitter out of the corner of my eye over by the couch, and when I leaned down to look under, I didn't see anything, and so I picked up my sandals which were by the couch to see if a silverfish was underneath, and it wasn't, so I squatted down and looked some more, only suddenly I realized that sitting by the couch leg like half a foot away from my eyes was a three-inch long silverfish, so I took my sandal and smacked it, only I missed its back legs, which twitched rapidly as the rest of it was just stuck to the floor, so I had to smash it again to make it stop moving.

But, I wasn't hammered yesterday night, so now I know that this shit does exist and is brazen, since it skittered across my floor while the lamp had been on for a while and everything.

My favorite parts of "Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann".

My favorite parts from "Lovely Me: The Life of Jacqueline Susann":

1) From pp. 54-55, about her early life:

"After [walking in on her father doing his mistress in her art studio], four-year-old Jackie developed an almost obsessive curiosity about the mechanics of sex. She experimented with her dolls and stuffed animals, modeling penises from clay and attaching them to her Hans Brinker doll and her teddy bear...

"She then turned to her girl dolls, using scissors to make slits between their legs from which the sawdust filling oozed out...

"Flossie [the maid] began to patrol the doll collection with a needle and thread, sewing up the latest slits before [Jackie's mother] discovered them. She also collected all the household's hand mirrors, which Jackie was using in an attempt to examine her own pubic area, and returned them to their proper bureaus."

2)From pp. 246-247, about the consequences of her giving Ethel Merman a private striptease to teach her how to dance for Gypsy:

"It was a highly erotic performance, and whether it taught Ethel how to strip or not, it certainly turned Jackie on... They attended a party together at Lynn Loesser's in the Beresford on Central Park West, and both had quite a lot to drink. As Benay Venuta recalls the evening, 'Everybody was very drunk. Jackie and Ethel were very drunk, and they lay down on a couch and they just made out in front of everyone.'"

3)From p. 296, an excerpt from an interview with her editor on "Valley of the Dolls":

"[Jackie] had the most trouble with her so-called sex scenes... I don't think Jackie understood sex, even if she slept with a hundred men, and I don't think she knew how to write about it. I mean, she knew the facts, she knew all the four-letter words. She just didn't understand what the hell people were doing and why they were doing it...

"She couldn't write a romantic sex scene between a woman and a man... Her lesbian scenes were more tender. She was more free then to romanticize and idealize...

"Her references to sex were always very graphic. 'He was humping her,' things like that, always in animal, phyiscal term. She always used words like 'fucking' and 'humping'..."

4) From pp. 427-428, about the editing of a scene "The Love Machine", her second novel:

"In an earlier version [of the novel the fictional character] Linda had described this tender scene to January, assuring her that the man had filled a milk carton [with semen so she could use it for facials]. [Editor] Landis had questioned it, and a rather delicate discussion ensued. At last Jackie impatiently asked what he was getting at. 'Jackie, men don't produce so much ejaculate,' Landis said..."

5) Even though this is not a quote -- p. 436 --

She became a judge for the Miss Universe pageant in Puerto Rico so she could understand virgins better for the psychology of a character who was a virgin in her novel "Once is Not Enough".

A Video: Hot Chip.

Hot Chip's "Ready for the Floor" has been gaining ground this summer, though I have very mixed feelings about it. I dislike most of the video, except for the painted chicks dancing, and I like the New Wave feel of the chorus, but I'm disappointed that the lyrics aren't

i am ready i am ready
for the fall

like I originally thought they were - the song would have been much more interestingly melancholy that way.

The other song that seems to be around a lot right now is Estelle (with Jay-Z)'s "American Boy". It's light and fluffy, and the summer-y feel to it is aided by the smoothness of her voice, which is high but not shrill. I think it's pleasant enough, and once again it seems like Jay-Z is everywhere.

Oh wait, that's Kanye West.

Went to "Boom Boom Room" last night.

So, last night I went to "Boom Boom Room", the Monday night party that's 10pm-4am, but doesn't really get started till like 11:30pm, and then on top of that, no one really comes to hear the featured deejay till like 12:30am or 1:00am or so, so overall it's pretty crazy. I've heard of this shit for like a year now, but Mondays are a killer, but at the same time they're the new frontier, though when every Monday rolls around, my friends puss out on me, and I look at the clock and it's 10:30pm and I'm tired, and I keep thinking to myself, "Who are these people who go out on Mondays?" But, yesterday me and my Dutch friend went, so I finally found out.

It was insane, since it was like 8pm on a Monday and I was just dressing up to go out, and then downtown when I was looking to get a shot of espresso, most of the coffee shops were closed, and this was still like three-and-a-half hours before the shit really got started. But, I found one, then I met my friend at a nearby winebar with an outdoor patio, and we had a few glasses of wine while I watched rats chase each other across the sidewalk like six feet away from us, which pleased me to no end since the neighborhood was really, really nice and I liked the idea of rats cavorting in these way too expensive outdoor plantings. Finally, though, it was like 10:30pm, so we decided to head over a few blocks to the more industrial area where the club was.

At the door, there was this short Spanish dude in his mid-40s, with a white shirt on and big hairy chest, and he seemed to run the place. He reminded us that it was a big place but would fill up in an hour, and that tonight they were having a free barbecue out back, but that that shit was just getting set up, but if we waited around we could get some. So, me and my friend got some Bud Lights ($3 each, very reasonable, and this was in addition to no cover before 12pm) and just waited around and talked, and looked at all the people come in. There was a good mix of people - it wasn't clique-y at all - and many men had gold chains on, and the women were really slutted up, though it was very natural and not at all forced, which was nice. There were also many black transvestites, who tended to be overdressed, and later too then there was this crazy Latina woman with a giant pink paper flower in her hair, only the giant pink paper flower was as big as her head.

When the barbecue was finally ready, though, we headed over and stood in line for the hotdogs, and this one late 30s woman in black with black hair who had been eyeing my friend was standing near us, so I decided to be nice and ask her if she was in line for a hotdog, and of course when she said no, I offered to get her one.

"Oh no thank you," she was like, "I ate before I came."

"Come on," I was like, "It's like one of my friends says, 'If you can still bend over, you can still eat more,'" which she laughed at, but then she took the elastic waist of her pants and stretched it out and held it for a second so we could see her cooter and her slightly flabby belly and was like, "Oh no, this is getting too tight," and then like two seconds later she was like, "And plus my three year-old always eats hotdogs, so if I got one, I would be forced to hold out my plate and ask for macaroni and cheese with it."

"Wow," I was like, "You must feel guilty for stuffing her full of preservatives," which she didn't think was funny, though she gave me the benefit of the doubt and started saying how the other week her three year-old was like, "Mommy, isn't it so cool that the chicken on the farm and the chicken we eat are two different things, but the same word?", after which we started talking about how easy it is to eat animals when they come in trays in supermarkets.

(Now that I write that last sentence, I wonder if she was just nuts - whose three year-old talks like that?)

Soon the conversation segued into whether you could eat animals if you had to kill them, so I started telling the story of how my dad mercy-killed a goose with his bare hands, and even though she was upset by my description of the goose who wandered around on the ice-covered lake dragging its broken wing in February (you could see it in her face), she made me stop the story when I said my dad stepped up to the goose to wring its neck, so I left her and my Dutch friend together and went off to wander and get some more beers.

When I returned, they were still talking, which made me nervous, so I sat down next to this black transvestite who was at least 6'3" and named Nicole and who didn't even try to talk like a woman even though she was wearing a tight navy blue pantssuit with large golden suns with faces on them all over it, and after we introduced ourselves, I pointed out my one Dutch friend and mentioned that I was keeping my eye on him.

"You should," she was like, "You have no idea what's out there," and with that she gave me a serous look.

She added, too, that she had just rolled out of bed because her brother and his girlfriend had been wanting her to take them to Boom Boom Room for months, and for whatever reason they had been calling all night because tonight was the night.

The rest of the night the club filled up, and we kept drinking, and at some point the club owner, the hairy-chested Spanish guy, was leading his wife or his girlfriend or whoever around by the hand, and not only was she this short kind of pouty hispanic woman in capri-lenght jeans and a tight white t-shit and decently high heels, but she was also massively pregnant and sipping a Corona.

Anyhow, me and my one Dutch friend agreed that we're definitely going back to this shit sometime. "The best Monday ever."

Chili / Soccer and Pride.

Forgot --

On Saturday I had like two small glasses of wine, a beer, and a big bowl of chili. The four shits I took Sunday morning all smelled like chili, then, and they were kind of squirty. Once when I took a piss, even, I farted a little accidentally, and a little shit came out, it was that bad.

Also, I went up to the city's Pride parade yesterday with some friends from my program, and a couple of them (my one Dutch friend and my one Arab friend) were insistent on finding a bar where they could watch the Germany-Spain soccer match in between going out for cigarettes and checking out the parade. When me and my one Arab friend's sister went back in to get another beer, my one Arab friend was in the bathroom, and my one Dutch friend was watching the game really intensely with an open stool next to him, so I went up there and decided to be a dick and was like, "I feel like I should sidle up and cup your ass right now."

"Do whatever you want," he was like, "so long as I can keep watching the game."

A story (III of III): Bus.

On the way back home that night the bus was crowded, and I was up towards the front with this young black dude and a black couple, and we were standing practically right next to the driver, and after like thirty seconds of us getting on the bus and standing like this, the young black dude looked over to the couple and was like, "If you guys didn't know each other before, you're going to now," and then he introduced himself to everyone, and somehow him (=Jerome) and me and the couple (=forget their names) and the busdriver, who was a younger-side of middle-aged black woman ("Bonnie"), got to all joking about being crowded at the front of the bus and how it was a party up there, which was a hoot.

One of us, I remember, was saying that we weren't going to get off because we were going to the end of the line with Bonnie, since that's where the party was at, and when I did finally get off the bus, I waved bye to Bonnie and was like, "Now you keep it sane," and she was like, "Oh, I will," and I got mock-serious and was like, "No, I'm serious, I worry about you," which got her laughing, and I left. It was a very fun time, and I'm glad that young black dude started off the random joking. Usually there's something I don't like about the humor of black men (prob. the expectation you can see in their faces where they want you to be their audience), but this guy didn't have it, and was quite funny.

A story (II of III): Coffee.

Later in the evening I went to run a couple errands before meeting friends at another free concert, but I was a bit tired, so I stopped by a Starbucks to get a quick shot of espresso. Like I always do, I asked for no plastic cup, but to make me seem more normal than my actual reasons would make me seem (I hate the waste), I said like I've been tending to say lately, "No reason to put that on there, I'm going to chug that espresso down so fast."

When I said that, though, the young black girl behind the counter was like, "No sir, we're required to put that on in case you spill it on yourself and burn you."

"Yeah?", I was like, "But what's going to happen when I cut the tips of my fingers going to take the lid off?", and I said that back so quick, her younger black male coworker kind of smiled, and she looked kind of surprised and was like, "I don't know."

"Well," I said -- and I did say this in a theatrical tone of voice, so it's not as harsh as it sounds -- "you better think about it, because you're going to turn around and I'm going to be suing your ass," and she had this wide-eyed look for a second, and then she started laughing really heartily and was like, "Hey, give me a cut in, and I'll be your first witness!"

On another note, later that night I bought a Good Humor bar from an ice-cream truck, and the long-haired kind of crazy white dude in the truck explained to me that the truck has special lights on the sides that he turns on when it's dusk out in the summer, and that he does that every evening when it's time for night sales. He was very nice, and the ice cream bar wasn't hard-frozen or too soft, but right the right texture.

A story (I of III): Butt.

On Saturday I went to a free Stevie Wonder concert downtown, though I left after an hour, I was getting so claustrophobic, with all the people pushing in everywhere. These two black women sitting in lawnchairs right in front of me were getting really pissed off at people trying to cut across areas where people were sitting and force their way between their lawnchairs, so every time someone was coming their way and looking to do that, they'd both get up, throw their asses together to block the way of the person, and then they'd both get in their face and be like, "There ain't no way you're getting through here!" Then, after the person would turn back, they'd turn back around and high five each other and be like, "Teamwork!", and then they'd sit back down, except for when they'd get up on their chairs to hold out one or both of their hands and sway and dance and sing along to Stevie.

They did this to non-black people without children, mostly, and especially Asians.

Also, at one point someone got back in their face and was yelling at them and a Security guy came over, and the one black woman with the huge apple-bottom ass and ponytail and big dangly gold earrings was like, "Security security, you better put a gate right here," and she pointed to the space between her and her friend's lawnchairs, and she said this shit in a tone of voice mocking the person who was yelling for Security.