Kelly Joyner’s Final Days

I noticed The Onion has started showing up for free around downtown, next to the Chronicle. I’ve seen it at Halcyon, Royal Blue Grocery, Antone’s, and at the restaurant called The Onion on fifth street. While looking up these links I found an article from the Statesman about it.

I’ve been a huge fan of The Onion ever since Herbert Kornfeld first told me that West Wing Tech-Support Crew Be a Buncha Wack Bitches, and have thought they were comedy gods since they took over The Daily Show. It’s good to see they’ve finally got smart and come out with a local Austin edition, complete with local advertising and stories.

There was an article in there about Fun Fun Fun Fest, in which I learned that it is, for some completely mysterious reason, tomorrow, rather than Saturday, and starts at 2. This sucks for me, because I wanted to go, and sucks for them, because unless it warms up, the kind of people that go to Fun Fun Fun Fest are not usually the kind to brave the cold so much.

There was also this column in there, Savage Love, that I’d heard about before, but never read. It’s fucking hilarious sex advice. You should go read it and all the archives.

Oh, and one other thing: I found out in this issue that Fox News is planning a conservative rip-off of The Daily Show, to which I can only say: Hahahahahaahahahahahahhahaahahhaaaahahahahahaha. Everybody knows conservatives don’t get satire. It’s because you have to turn in your sarcasm gland before they give you your Mark Foley campaign button.

Christ. I’ve got to get up in five hours to go talk to a pissed-off guy on the phone. That should be fun. Peace out.

I wonder where all these page views are coming from?

My boss took me to Carmelo’s to do my bi-annual review today, so I figured I should spend my lunch money on dinner, and went to Cuba Libre, a place north of the Alamo Drafthouse on Colorado that I’d been eyeing for a while.

The main area at the front of the joint has a bar on one side, and a series of couchy seat bench things built into the opposite wall that have little tables in front of them. These are open seating, and although all the hostessed tables were taken when I came in at 7, I immediately found a seat along the wall, which has a much better view anyway.

There’s an area in between that a woman said you could usually dance in, but tonight it was filled with jewelry vendors for the third annual holiday trunk show.

The place was packed with fine women. I don’t know whether this was because it was Thursday, or because of the trunk show, or if I just stumbled on the communal hiding place of fine-looking grown-up women with style and a vaguely hipster aspect, so I’m going to have to go back many times to check.

I had the pork empanadas, which were only pretty good. They were a little dry, and I ran out of mole before I ran out of pastry, but they were served with some damn good saffron rice and black beans, with a ball of some of the best pico de gallo I’ve ever had. For seven bucks, I wasn’t complaining. If the description above doesn’t make it clear enough, a glance at the menu should clarify that this place isn’t so much a Cuban restaurant as a Cuban-American fusion cuisine kind of place. To settle on those pork empanadas, I had to turn down the “Cuba Libre-style” baby-back ribs, marinated in rum and Coke and served on a bed of mashed potatoes ($11) as well as the “media noche sandwich”, with roast beef, ham, tostones        and a pineapple mint mojo sauce ($9).

The desserts were equally ingenious and tempting, but I’d only brought enough money for dinner, a beer, and either dessert or a drink, and I had to have the drink, because, apparently (nobody tells me these things), “Cuba libre” is another name for a rum and coke, and they’ve got sixty different kinds of rum, which you can get in a shot glass, along with an 8-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola and a glass full of ice with a wedge of lime on top.

These rums, they are not so much the cheap. A rum and Coke can run you anywhere from $6 to $25 (or more, I think) from this menu, although many of the rums are reasonably priced. I had El Dorado 15-year, and it was certainly rum.

I didn’t get to the lounge in the back, but the front was packed with people, the music was good, and the vibes were good. The waiter asked me my name and remembered it, although that may have only been because he wanted to borrow my sports section. Or because it’s good for tips. Either way, doesn’t happen often.

I’m going back to try all the stuff I didn’t this night. Who’s coming with me?

[Ed. Note--This post has been edited to make me seem less egregiously asinine than I really am.]

Tonight I went to Antone’s for a Freddie Fender tribute night.

I caught the 484 home at 12:40a. The rain poured down the whole way and I shivered in anticipation. When the bus stopped I got off with J5 assaulting my ears as I made my way home in the downpour.

[...]

Or maybe I’m just drunk and should stop typing now.

Fuck. Evil bitches. Who needs ‘em?

I do. Because who else is left to understand me, and who wants to die alone?

etc.: broke 3100 page views today.

I’m some kind of freak now and
You’ll never see me the same
What’s all the fuss about?
Are you sure you wanna find out?
Cause once you know the truth
You might wish you’d walked away

Wanna take a look, take a look
Wanna take a look, take a look
Wanna take a look, take a look
Wanna take a look, take a look

What if I’m not able
To put my cards on the table?
And would it liberate you
If you knew what I knew?

It’s been over a year now and
I never saw him again
The facts and the fiction
Collide as the bodies untangle
And the traffic moves on like it did

–Liz Phair, Take a Look

I’ll likely make enough money when I sell the house to pay off my student loans, and my car. Then I’ll be completely and utterly out of debt.

Check out these pictures this guy took in Harajuku. I know I told everybody about them already.

Zhang Yimou, who’s been one of my favorite directors since the first time I saw Red Sorghum, has a new movie coming out called Curse of the Golden Flower, starring Chow Yun-Fat, who’s been the bizomb since Hard Boiled, and Gong Li, who I’ve lusted after since, well, the first time I saw Red Sorghum. I am so seeing that movie on opening night.

Zhang Yimou made Hero and House of Flying Daggers, and that’s what most people remember him for, at least in America, but this guy, along with Chen Kaige, pretty much revitalized Chinese cinema in the late eighties, producing some of the best movies ever made, and certainly some of the prettiest. The first movie he directed was the first leading role for Gong Li, his muse, an actress he discovered and had a scandalous affair with for years. She was in all of his movies up until 1995, and now she’s back in his latest one^*. I wished for years that she’d get some roles in American movies, but it never happened. She was supposed to play De Niro’s girlfriend in Heat, but backed out because there were too many big names already in the film, and she didn’t want to be overshadowed in her first Hollywood appearance.

Recently, she was in Memoirs of a Geisha, playing Hatsumomo, which was a very serviceable flick, and in Miami Vice, which is probably the best action flick this year, and in which Michael Mann’s camera lingers on her at every opportunity.

I’m glad these people are all blowed up in the states now, because they’ve always deserved it. Their older flicks are fucking bad ass, and if you get a chance, you should check them out. Especially Shanghai Triad and Raise the Red Lantern.

I’m lonely.

I’m angry.

I’m going to sleep.

And when the day is done, and I look back
And the fact is I had fun, fumbling around
All the advice I shunned, and I ran
Where they told me not to run, but I sure
Had fun, so
I’m gonna fuck it up again
I’m gonna do another detour
Unpave my path
And if you wanna make sense
Whatcha looking at me for
I’m no good at math
And when I find my way back,
The fact is I just may stay, or I may not
I’ve acquired quite a taste
For a well-made mistake
I wanna mistake, why cant I make a mistake?

^*–Zhang Yimou also discovered Zhang Ziyi, so I owe him thanks for a lot of wank fantasies.

I saw Casino Royale last night. It had a few problems, I suppose, but it was without doubt the pimpest Bond flick in years. I recommend.

My bathroom looks like it belongs to a pseudo-civilized human again.

epiphany

If you would be worthy of a person or a thing, you should strive to be worthy at all times, when it is easy and when hard, in victory and in defeat.

Who’d want the love of a girl that wasn’t worth fighting over?

I was just over there at YouTube, and was trying to set up an account, and every-fucking-thing was taken. Delusionary was taken! Delusionary! Who the hell? Miscellanea? Taken. SloppySeconds? Taken. Miscellaneous? Didn’t even try. Subscript? Taken. Substandardization? Not taken.

I needed to sign up because you have to to look at “mature” videos, and somebody (Paul) sent me a link in the mail that turned out to be of this Japanese idol dancing around in her underwear listening to an iPod for four minutes. But here’s the crazy part: she wasn’t dancing to the music that was playing. At all. It kind of ruined the whole thing. It destroyed a little more of my faith in the human race. I mean, you kind of figure that if there’s a girl, see, and her whole job is to shake her ass for a living, see, you assume that she would at least be able to shake it to a beat.

Hopefully, somebody remixed the audio.

Got a spare hour or two tomorrow?

Drop by and eat and chill with us.

I just got back from the store. We got a big-ass turkey, a ham, lots of stuffing, lots of macaroni and cheese, fresh mashed potatoes made with cream cheese, which I’m assured is good and had better be or else, pumpkin pie, brown-n-serve rolls, potato rolls, Hawaiian sweet rolls (I love rolls), cranberry sauce, and some stuff…to make a green bean casserole kind of substance.

I plan to use:
1 lb. some kinda frenchy green beans. has an H in it.
some paprika
a can of condensed cream of mushroom soup.
some horseradish sauce

That’s gonna be the casserole. For the Au gratin on top, I’m going to use some pre-mixed herb-seasoned stuffing mix and a hearty helpin’ of butter with a shredded mix of Parmesan, Romano, and some other kind of cheese.

It’s either going to kick ass or suck ass.

Check out my Flickr page, it’s got a few more pictures of that sexy cat Robosapien shlanging down some St. Peters Old-Style Porter (not a half-bad beer).

epiphany

Left-over pot sticker dipping sauce goes REALLY good with left-over cheese tortellini. (You may think this isn’t a life-changing epiphany, but that’s only because you haven’t tried it.)

I got my camera out of hock today, so you get to be subjected to things I’d never have thought worth taking a picture of had I not missed my cutie little baby doll camera. Who wuvs you? Daddy wuvs you! Ju ju want to take shum pictures? Yes you ju! I know you ju! Let’s take some pictures!

I got a belt sander today. Oh, damn. Had I only known! The belt sander is KING! I shoulda gotten one of these months ago! Note the pimp dust bag.

There was an, err, incident with the, err, dust bag when I first used it. It turns out that there are some things you can’t use duct tape for. All my stuff is covered with a coat of fine white gypsum. My bathroom, which has taken a turn for the truly bizarre lately anyway, fared worse than anything.

I think I’m going to post that to some Flickr group about beautiful bathrooms.

My project for tonight is to make this go away:

Most people would not admit to owning a pair of 19″ rack-mount power strips that you can turn off over The Internets:

..I stood by myself and drank my beer alone, an unsmiling downer in a crowd of people there to have a good time, whereas I was only there because I didn’t know where else I wanted to be.

I made my way out, past the smiling, empty suits and their accompanying smiling, empty dresses, and my way north to the Brown Bar, a yuppie hangout whose only redeeming features are a bar that lights up and a half-breed barmaid that combines the prettiest of whatever two races she might be. I had a Mango Martini (half price Friday Nights! Only four dollars!) that made my stomach hurt….

I go to sleep dreaming of breasts soft like clouds and warm like life, bellies firm under my lips and asses like cotton candy. I wanna put a girl over my knee and spank her ’til her ass is as red as her cheeks. Hunger hurts, and I want him so bad, oh it kills ‘Cause I know I’m a mess he don’t wanna clean up I got to fold ’cause these hands are too shaky to hold Hunger hurts, but starving works, when it costs too much to love –Fiona Apple, Paper Bag