Recluse gone wild ...

Well the past two weeks have been pure chaos. Non-stop go-go-go. I've had to reintroduce the couch to the size and sphere of my kiester, in addition to whispering sweet nothings about how I'll never let anything come between us again. I've barely read a lick. I've written only unintelligible nothings.

But my list of things I've done is pretty impressive considering my natural lean toward recluse.

So, in answer to Q's email, here is the haps:

From the files of things I wish 19-year-old me knew: I saw G. Love & Special Sauce play at Clyde Iron Works. My god G. Love is an amazing performer.

I also was a dealer for the casino portion of a local organization's fundraiser, saw a band that had it's own arts and crafter on stage, watched a bunch of homemade music videos starring songs by local bands and ate an amazing flour-less chocolate cake.

I caught a trippy 1970s band that featured a trumpetier, a sassy songstress and a barefoot tambourine player and I saw Trampled By Turtles, chilling with my homey Cork1 who claimed to only be there to watch the college girls freak to Wait So Long. "Know who else is gonna freak out to that song?" I said to him. "This girl." Pointed at myself.

"It is unreasonably good," he agreed.

Saw belly dancers, sang karaoke, watched a gorilla dance in a cage during a metal set at a bar in Superior. I hit about 80 minutes of the Elton John concert, and got wrecked while a guy mauled a deer heart on stage. Then my friend Hotrod's band played last night and I got a free kazoo.

Today I probably won't see another living soul, beyond the people with whom I shared public transportation with so I could retrieve my car from the place where I ditched it for the weekend.

I'm not sure how people with active lives do it all. I'm going to sink my face into my boyfriend's hair and not come up for air for about a month.

And so: Here is what else I found time to make, watch and read in the past two weeks.

FOODS

Thai Curried Noodles with Broccoli and Tofu: Honestly, this wasn't a memorable meal although I think I liked it and Chuck told me I made the noodles perfectly. Shallots, cilantro, curry paste, coconut milk, broth, tofu, broccoli. He also said it tasted better as a leftover.

For some reason Vegetarian Times hasn't posted this on the website. So I've linked to a kind citizen foodie.

Stovetop Fideos: This was one of those things were I blindly jump into making something with no idea if I should rely on science to do what it is supposed to do to the noodles. But it was a total victory: Toast noodles, cook up onions, garlic, beans, tomatoes and corn, add the toasted noodles and broth and it becomes this warm, mushy, Mexican-flavored dish. And yes. I did OD on Asiago Cheese.

MOVIE
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans This is what we call around here "A movie your dad would hate." The old man's not a fan of bad cop fiction. Luckily I am. And this one is fantastic. Weird, complete with a whacked out Nic Cage shaking down club goers for their stash, pocketing powder, screwing their ladies and sending them back into the night. It all starts when he gets a back injury being a hero, then moves into decidedly not heroic behavior to keep himself in non-OTC meds. Totally, totally dug it.

Alfred Hitchcock's 39 Steps We tried to watch this Alfred Hitchcock movie from the 1930s and it was so boring and everyone talked weird.

BOOKS
Bossypantsby Tina Fey:
Obviously I wasn’t expecting the Dalai Lama or Haruki Murakami with this book. What I expected is exactly what I got. But it kind of feels like someone just told Tina Fey to find a way to fill 250 pages, make it funny, and then had a good chuckle about how people just want to read something by her, a little something-something. So she stitched together some stories, some satire, some alternative formats for storytelling and added some of her kickiest punchlines.
That is to say it is a little hollow with hilarious frosting.

Full review here.

The Broom of the System: A Novelby David Foster Wallace: What if David Foster Wallace wrote a super accessible novel without end notes, but still filled with his signature loony characters, absurd situations and hilarious dialogue. Dum-dum-dum. He did! Before his brain got too so super big, while he was still honing voice and construction, DF-Dubs wrote a pleasant little novel that doesn't require holing up like an agoraphobic and conceding defeat to muscle atrophy.

Full review here. 

Right now I'm reading Say Her Name: A Novel by Francisco Goldman and so far it is tops.