Brilliant in the morning

Erik bought some Folgers coffee. Normally I turn my nose up at canned grocery store coffee but today it works. I wish I had a styrofoam cup to drink it out of. This is the kind of coffee someone brings you in a crisis: taking someone to the hospital during a nervous breakdown or drug overdose, your first AA meeting, a car mechanic shop after an accident. It’s coffee that begins a healing process. Coffee that “hits the spot.” Starbucks coffee can’t do that. Starbucks or Caribou is coffee that gets you through another hum drum day. A special treat that breaks up your eight hours.

I’ve been temperamental and angry, hypomanic and grandiose. I’ve been to the Valley of the Dolls and back this week. Post holiday, post birthday carnage. Time to pick up the pieces. I’m reminded of a passage in Lauren Slater’s book “Lying” – Learning to Fall. I have to keep learning how to fall just right so I don’t break any bones. And pick myself up again. Fall and get back up. Fall and get back up. It never gets easier. The only difference is now I know I will get back up. When I was younger I didn’t know that. It helps, knowing that. No matter how terrifying it is to fall – sometimes farther and harder than before.

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TJS Movie Club- Winnebago Man

All of The Jeremy Show Movie Club picks are available for streaming through Netflix. There is a lot of crap to sift through on that site- I am picking the crap I like and think  you would too.

So “Winnebago Man,” available here, is about the star of a viral video that I really liked so I was excited they made a documentary about it. You should start at the original viral video then watch the movie.

The movie shows how viral videos infect those starring in them. It has a few small twists and turns like any good documentary should (see Capturing The Friedmans, Exit Through the Gift Shop). We all have a little Winnebago Man inside of us screaming at the top of his lungs all through out the day.

Lucien Freud

Vintage Hot Guys: Lucian Freud

I have to admit I didn’t know who this guy was. A new favorite artist. I had seen his paitings but didn’t know who he was or how startilingly real and surreal his portraits are. Also rumoured to have fathered as many as forty children. I don’t know much about him – hope he wasn’t a Nazi sympathizer or something. That’s my anxiety talking. I just at least like to know a little about what I am talking about before I talk about it.

I wish I could wear horizontal stripes.We actually have a neighbor who ONLY wears horizontal stripes. He sort of pulls it off.

Here are some of his portraits-

 

 

Santa ornament

Christmas Hangover

We (Erik) finally put away all of Christmas except a Pointsetta plant which I am convinced the cats will eat and both die. I thought I was done with Christmas but last night found myself looking on eBay at vintage Christmas ornaments. Like these enchanting Japanese made house ornaments. Wouldn’t it be cool to make a whole kooky house village- with tiny lights inside!!

This year I was very very fixated on Christmas. I literally watched “A Christmas Carol” with Jim Carrey every night to fall asleep. I think I really identify with Scrooge for some reason. I tried to find ornaments or even action figures from this movie – the only thing I could find from this movies was a Slurpee cup. I love Slurpees but…

I started to become obsessed with candy canes. I wanted to taste, smell, see Christmas at all times. Obviously, this is some sort of desire to connect with my inner child. Whatever. I was telling my therapist that it feels like the whole country loses it’s mind for a month- literally becomes psychotic. Shrines to a a creepy old man dressed in red all over the place, going to stores in the middle of the night, buying random crap and having clinical anxiety over whether Mom will like the butter dish you got for her. I love that everyone is focused on some unattainable perfect gift- perfect day that will never be as perfect as we have in our head. Christmas will never live up to the Norman Rockwell fantasy that we want and we are all ultimately dissapointed no matter how wonderful the real day is. A peppermint melancholy hangover that starts the day after Christmas.

I found this site Diamonds of the Sea that has really fun gay Merman ornaments. I would like every single one of them and I would like to put them on a pink Christmas tree.

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The Jeremy Show Movie Club: Shadows and Fog

 

- The strangler!
- What strangler?

-The maniac who killed Eisler’s son and choked Jensen with the piano wire.
-Jensen? The… the…the big night watchman?
-That’s right. Took him from behind.Crept up, got him by the throat. He was blue when we found him. Saliva frozen down the corner of his mouth.
-Well, look, l’ve gotta be up early tomorrow for work, so…
-Don’t play dumb. Tonight’s a foggy night.He always strikes in the fog.
-Yeah, but, you see, this is a very busy time for me in my firm. l’m in competition for a promotion with Simon Carr.
-Don’t you know no one can walk the streets at night? And the Quilty sisters were killed in their own home…..because they didn’t lock the door,
throats cut from ear to ear.
- You said he was a strangler.
- Does it matter how he kills?!

Tonights pick for my movie club is Shadows and Fog. I am a big Woody Allen fan and this is one of my favorites. And it’s not because Madonna has a 2 minute scene in it. I love it more because it completely immerses me in this thick foggy middle of the night world. Like when you stay up all night with a friend and everything starts to get a little hysterical. It’s one that I like to fall asleep to.

It’s available on Netflix Streaming here. 

Champagne and headaches

New Years Eve at Rob and Andy’s – overindulged in some delicious punch. Spent the night and woke up to Rob and Andy making some Intelligentsia coffee. I walked into the kitchen and the smell of the coffee was the most vile disgusting thing I had ever smelled. I know it was because I was hungover and not the coffee because it was Intelligentsia coffee for god’s sake. Threw up.

Banging pots and pans in California on the porch. Must have been very young because I remember feeling like this was very strange.

Went to a friend’s fancy party and walked up white carpeted stairs in socks with a glass of red wine. Slipped and fell all the way back down the stairs.

Naked party.

Party at Kara’s on Hermitage in Chicago. I think Heather brought a baby! Was on a lot of medication and ate a whole thing of Reese’s Ice Cream in my sleep. Woke up and it was all over the couch. (I might be confusing three different parties here but I think the brevity works)

I think that’s all I can remember. Happy New Year.