Great Hera!

Minute Minutiae

Why the lack of updates, Sarah? Are you committing more petty theft? Making social blunders too embarrassing to share, even on the internet? Twittering your life away? Whywhywhy?!?

Because my brain is slowly melting out of my ears, that's why!

I just...have no life right now. I am working on Stuff. Time evaporates before I can utilize it well. It's a boring excuse, but I'm too zonked to make up a better one.

In order to make sure I still have some semblance of a social life, I've been trying to set aside the time for Taco Tuesday. Taco Tuesday flows organically from the workday and therefore seems do-able. Taco Tuesday means $1 tacos, half-price margaritas and long, careening conversations with friends. I finally met one of my favorite Twitterpersons at Taco Tuesday. I got some hot blogger gossip at Taco Tuesday. I ate my weight in cheese at Taco Tuesday. Taco Tuesday!

But here's another thing that happens, thanks to Taco Tuesday: the two margarita minimum makes me a little tipsy, necessitating a few final minutes spent at the office before I drive home. To fill those minutes, I go bother Charley, who works the night shift. And I often talk quite a bit. And sometimes I talk about things that I forgot I knew about in the first place.

This, I think, is sort of an essential piece of the DNA that makes a nerd. Sure, you know all your genre-related trivia. Sure, you can make this reference and that reference with ease and banter with your comic shop buddies and occasionally horrify your Mundane friends and so on and so forth. But that weird skill that helps you remember genre-related trivia? Sometimes it helps you remember other, less cool stuff, too.

For example: did you know that I apparently have a shitload of Silk Stalkings factoids saved up in this brain of mine? Neither did I. Until I started tipsy-talking to Charley.

Silk Stalkings was a murder-of-the-week cop show on USA Network (and sort of on CBS) before it was all "characters welcome." I don't remember why, but for a brief period, I was completely fascinated with this show. I think it's because it tried to flirt with a bit of a sexy Cinemax-y edge, but really couldn't go that far, not being on a pay channel and all. Also, at the heart of the pseudo-smuttiness, there was this extremely earnest "will they or won't they" love story between the two main characters, played by Rob Estes and Mitzi Kapture.

Anyway, this is sort of how the convo went...

Charley: "Well, really, [SHOW REDACTED] is just Silk Stalkings, with all the gratuitous shots of girls and...

Me: "YES. OMG, do you remember how, on Silk Stalkings, they would always have that '80s sexy saxophone in the background? I fucking love the '80s sexy saxophone."

Charley: "Yeah. Haha!"

Me: "OMG, do you remember how they ended the Mitzi Kapture/Rob Estes run on that show?"

Charley: "Uh, well, I didn't really watch it regul--"

Me: "Yeah, so Mitzi Kapture and Rob Estes are totally in love, right? Only they can't admit it, because they WORK TOGETHER. But it's like this sweet storyline on this totally trashy show. So then one of them almost dies and they finally admit they're in love and they have sexy '80s saxophone sex and Mitzi gets pregnant. Like, the first time they have sex, she gets pregnant. Oh, but then guess what happens?"

Charley: "I don't--"

Me: "Rob Estes gets SHOT and DIES. On this show where the whole point is basically these characters getting together. They're BOTH leaving the show, right? But instead of letting them ride off into the sunset and satisfying all the dedicated fanfic-ers and shippers, they fucking KILL Rob Estes and then Mitzi is heartbroken and resigns from the force. And remember, she's pregnant. It's so heartbreaking and WEIRD. It's like they chose this one moment to get all artsy."

Charley: (nervous) "Haha."

Me: "What the fuck was that? Why do I know this? Why am I still talking?"

Charley: "I have work to do."

Me: "I'm gonna go home and think about Silk Stalkings."

And that's what I did. I leave you with the fantastically sexy saxophoned (OK, OK, not much saxophone here -- they saved that for the actual scenes) intro to Silk Stalkings, which will have you singing "Oh YEEEEEEAAAAAH" for hours on end.

Shenanigans!

.....or Why I Am the Greatest Internet/Long Distance Friend of Our Time, Or Any Other Time, For That Matter.

I was in my Spaz Mode today. I attribute this partly to the wild round of texting/phoning/IMing I engaged in for a good few hours in a (probably pointless) attempt to shape my weekend plans into a form of insanity that at least makes a little bit of sense and partly to the two lemon squares I inhaled around 3:02. Oh, oh, and a little bit to finishing Grok, which was a huge undertaking for all involved and is, in my opinion, quite cool and you should all check it out if you haven’t already.

So here I am at 4:10, sugar-hyped beyond belief, hair falling out of its sad ponytail, eyes bloodshot and popping open to their maximum state of, er, openness, when I get an email from Matt with the following subject line:

"can someone steal one of these for me & mail it to Jamlando? kthxbye"

The text of the email is a simple link to this.

If you don't want to click on that, it's a photo of an LA Weekly sign posted on the front of an LA Weekly bin that says:

"If you can read this, PRINT AIN'T DEAD."

Thirty seconds later, I am running, like I'm on fucking Alias, to the elevator, then out the door and down the block to our trusty mid-Wilshire LA Weekly bin.

The sign, she is there!

I am exultant…then I start to get paranoid. There's a security guard who presides over the mini-mall behind the bin. What if one of his main duties -- along with making sure no one parks there for over 30 minutes or pulls a salsa bar heist at El Pollo Loco -- is busting the hardened criminals who try to gank the LA Weekly sign?!

So I'm sly about it. Sneaky. I oh-so-casually lean over the bin, blocking the sign, and take a copy of the paper. Then I artfully slip the sign out from the bin and hide it under said paper.

Then I run. Like I'm on fucking Alias!

I zip back up to my office, plunk myself in a quiet corner, and snap the following photo on iPhone:

See? My eyes really are bloodshot. I look demonic.

I upload the photo with FlickUp, then send the link to Matt and commence in feeling overly satisfied with myself.

He writes back:

"NICE. Can I have one?"

OK, apparently, my speediness on this matter was SO AMAZING that Matt did not realize I had just pilfered said sign in direct response to his email. Maybe he thought I had a whole stash of 'em just lying around.

So I write back:

"I stole that one for you. I'm awesome."

(Because…right?!)

He then expresses rightful astonishment at THE POWER OF THE INTERNET.

So apparently, if you email me some sort of request that involves me engaging in some wacky (not too time-consuming) shenanigans, I will be totally happy to oblige. Think about it.