The Royale

So I met Miss Lil for the first time last week. She's been working at The Royale for 3 decades, and still closes the bar 5 nights a week by herself. I wonder if she carries a gun. She watches over the place like a hawk and is obviously prepared to handle any bullshit at any time.

Surreptitious photo of Miss Lil. Check her out! Her hair was impeccable btw.

The amenities.

After trying to crash a birthday party there and finding the bar full of visibly trashed, sometimes aggressive patrons, we bailed for friendlier territories...

...Where Cindy made a lucrative discovery -

Only to give it back in a fit of good samaritanism when the guy who lost it returned and started inquiring about some lost money, talking of hard times and being a single dad. Well, sort of. Whatever makes Cindy feel better. HA

It's pouring outside. I can't go out there. I expressed this issue to a pal who is from a place where they do have weather. She asked me if I think I'm some kind of witch vampire who will melt in the rain or something. I said, yeah.

procrastinacion

instead of deconstructing abolitionist principles of the 1830s, i am going through my flickr account, updating tags. i thought i would share this hilarious photo of my dad in about '69. i keep meaning to print this out for him, for a couple of reasons. one, to ask him what in the god hell happened to that fruit basket lamp of my grandmother's. it is almost ugly enough to fit into my decor. and two, to ask him why he thought a blue sweater would ever go with those leather pants.

i can recognize just about every item in this picture from my grandmother's house, except that lamp of course. the mirror and end tables are in my house. that entire nativity set on the card table behind him was eventually destroyed by fighting cats, only to be replaced piece by piece, year after year. that's his senior portrait to the left, and his second wife to the right. two more would follow her (including my mother), and i think he's working on number 5 now. one more and he'll have caught up with this fool.

sex, fire, murder, & edgar allan poe

almost in that order!

ever heard of the witch of staten island? i hadn't, and i'm guessing a lot of other people haven't either owing to the fact that i found ONE relevant result for this on google. one! even i have more of an internet presence than that.

this case caught my interest partly because it was, at the time, the case of the century (i would say trial, but there were multiple, and all botched) excepting the whole lizzie borden fracas, and partly because my special man EAP opined on it on multiple occasions.

polly bodine is alleged to have brutally axe-murdered her sister-in-law and infant niece while her brother and their husband/father was off at sea in 1843, then burned their house down to cover her tracks. the description of the corpses is still pretty grisly considering the delicate and vague way these things were documented at the time. housefire-baked brains, dude. because polly was a fallen woman, she was demonized in the press as some sort of fang-toothed prostitute who randomly expels dead babies in jail (i think they just didn't know she was pregnant. she lost the baby after being arrested) among other creepy practices. a series of famous names weighed in on the scandal at the time - poe said he hoped they didn't try her in staten island, because the barney fifes out there would fuck it all up (they did) and pt barnum is the one who began calling her the witch of staten island. then, while she was on trial again in nyc, he had a wax statue fashioned in her image and put on display, except they used plenty of artistic license and the thing came out looking more like some halloween decor.

she was found innocent. the whole case was rather mysterious, from evidence to motivation (the house was lightly burglarized and polly was seen pawning some of the shit that had gone missing before her arrest - but she apparently had plenty of her own money. spite theft?) not included in the article i will link was some commentary on the part of her brother, the man whose wife and child had been hacked to pieces on christmas eve. he said, and i paraphrase, "ey! i can get another wife, and i can get another child, but can i get another sister? no." needless to say, modern cold-case types have decided that polly was the one who killed them and that the retarded 19th century court system is to blame for "vindicating" her. no one else was ever suspected, obviously. much of this i learned from a bowery boys podcast. the rest you can read here.

meanwhile i have not worked on this paper i'm supposed to write. thanks internet.

weekendery

my routine of late: downpours, cats, thrifting, sushi, bed.

knitting! gotta learn!

here. demasiado $$, however.

i am making progress with this thing. i need someone to do some hand-lettering for me for my next one. i keep trying - i suck. all i know is it's going to say LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT'S SHARK WEEK. i love 30 rock, i love shark week, i love embroidering. this, will be awesome.

i had an extended conversation last night about sharks and crocodiles and why they are scary. these supernaturally fucking evil badass creatures freak me the hell out. particulary the crocodile "death spin" - dude! you know what's a little scarier than that? the death spin executed by an albino crocodile.

NO

FUCKING

WAY

"Field guide to the loner," Hardly a field guide, but at least a sympathetic overview.

There's not much I'd disagree with in there. Luckily, I can't speak for the "enforced loner," but I have found that solitary time absolutely affects my levels of happiness and placidity. Constantly having to socialize and interact is so draining. I almost feel that I have to live alone just to balance out the unseemly amount of time that I spend at work, constantly surrounded by people, constantly having to behave with an air of diplomacy and discretion.

I am also interested by what the article really delicately describes as a heightened sense of empathy or attunement to the trials of others, but what I would more casually describe as hypersensitivity. Yes, it does have its graces, such AS the extreme empathy and frequent ability to identify when others are in silent crisis, but! It also carries with it anxiety, paranoia, and the assumption that every output from others towards oneself has some sort of pointed, deeper meaning. If those findings are correct and I can assume that more outgoing people are more or less dulled by their high ratio of interactions, ie things are not as big a deal as they seem, well...my life has just gotten easier. It's kind of a huge thing to consider, but again nothing that I can really take for granted or apply easily.

Anyway, the greatest part to living alone is not the peace, or the quiet, but the free rein to indulge all of one's total fucking weirdness with complete abandon. I just did a quick scan of anything strange I may have done recently, and I guess it doesn't sound that weird. Dancing, turning the heat way up in order to be at least partially nude in comfort, ad libbing the cat's name into popular songs of the day (kittle wants to know love is! she wants you to showwww her!), all pretty standard fare.

In other news, I love this font.

o no wayyy

When I look west towards downtown (from the 6th floor) ... I don't see pollution. NO POLLUTION. Not even the faintest lingering haze, none! Crystal clear! Inconceivable!

Thanks, tornado! See very poor-quality phone pic through dirty window for evidence:


No way! Today we will breathe the air that people came to Phoenix for 100 years ago. And then get cancer because all of the pollution is now in the groundwater. wah wah wahhhhh

I enjoy that high winds and a full day of steady rain = STATE OF EMERGENCY!!!! in Arizona. Again, I am disappointed in how put out I am by weather, but I lost power at 8:30 which more or less ended my night, abbreviating the already extremely limited personal time I have in life!

I tried to imagine what it was like without electricity, when nightfall meant wrap it up and get to bed, not get dressed up and go carousing. It is interesting how bright the night is even with no electric lights burning for a mile. Even brighter with clouds, which seem to conduct the light of the moon all through them so they sort of glow. Was that a no-brainer? I'm sorry, I have been in the center of a 500 square mile megalometropolis for the last 20 years. I don't know what things actually look like! Losing power is kind of a peaceful, strange, fascinating experience, but I have to admit that I'd rather be showering when I want to and watching the Tudors.

Cindy McCain! Scary wife of John McCain comes out for the gays. Article. Unusual for a republican to give a shit about civil rights, but then I guess almost anyone can admit (when there's nothing to be gained by placating hysterical religious people) that taxpaying citizens should be able to submit to the same absurd rituals as everyone else if they want to. I wish I could remember Bill Maher's remark on gay marriage, which basically consisted of, "If they want to be miserable, let them!"

And that's how I feel about that.

It's fucking...

ALL RIGHT...AND WET

an eskimo would beat your ass to be here

- Phoenix's status after the storms today, according to the fucking weather.

Weather of any kind is usually a challenge for me, having grown up in a complete vacuum of weather experiences. It took me about 6 weeks of toughening up to be able to not have to "bundle up" for some high-50s temps this winter. Then I let it rain all over my bike last time, because rarely does it occur to me to have to shelter something. Worst of all, for as much as I enjoy rain (theoretically), it is so unfamiliar to me that I react to BEING rained on much like a cat does. Confusion, anger, dejection, flight.

This week I have almost eaten shit on the highly polished floor in the lobby at work about 3 times. And once outside. Dangerous out there.

Two Beheaded, One Died, Two Divorced, One Survived.

I have somehow become a devotee of The Tudors (via instant queue on Netflix), although at this point I think I just have to know how absurd it's going to get, and how many seasons it's going to go for. I don't watch television (I can't, my tv doesn't "get" tv), so when I do, it has to involve at least some of the following: amazing wardrobe, rich content of historical value, or Don Draper. The Tudors has two of these things. And lots of ermine.

Kind of different from their IRL portraits.

Not that you can learn any more of historical value from the Tudors than you can from Disney's Pocahontas, but at least it looks rad. It is a highly stylized survey of all of the excesses of Henry VIII, which seem way more excessive when portrayed by weird transvestite Jonathan Rhys Meyers. And probably for the purposes of non-horrifying sex scenes, and because no one wants to see JRM in a fat suit (his lips + obesity = remind you of anyone?), the show tries to imply that all of Henry's greatest shenanigans occurred over a period of a few years while he was young and marketable, not grotesque and wheezy.

Oh, and Showtime has plucked two of these names from the annals and MADE THEM GAY. I love that. I guess they can do that while they're remodeling the rest of the story. Thomas Tallis and one of the Henry's early BFFs, I can't remember his name. Totally homosexualized for this series, and completely without warrant or record of actual gayness or bisexuality on the part of these men. Yes, I checked.

Not sure how I feel about Anne Boleyn being portrayed as some sort of shrewd fox who falls into her own trap, though. Maybe she was. I haven't reprised my feelings on her since I read HOW DID THEY DIE as a child and was horrified that 1. he totally killed his wife for like no reason dudes!!! and 2. her incredibly self-contained and honorable demeanor at the scaffold. Again, only according to HDTD and currently unsubstantiated elsewhere as I have not looked, Anne not only did not cry and flail before her death but even reacted with composure when the executioner, no doubt rattled at having to murder the young queen, missed his target and instead cut off the uppermost part of her skullcap. Anne allegedly raises her head to face him at this point and says, "Please try again." Very heavy. Ever since reading this, I have imagined her as such, the unfortunate, stoic mother of Elizabeth.

Speaking of which, remember that spate of also highly stylized and sexualized Elizabethan b-list dramas from the '90s? God, what an awesome time that was to be a teenaged loser nerd. Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth came out within a year of each other, if even that long. I think I still own them both on vhs, as well as the novelization of Elizabeth. I forgot that I cared at all about this time, preferring to dwell closer to the Revolutionary period. And wasn't Cate Blanchett obviously born to play Elizabeth I?

Too uncanny.

However, Jezebel isn't fucking around either.