March | 2008 | CareyGLY's Random Musings

Month: March 2008

Stuff Old White People Like or White People Like Old Stuff
One of my favorite satirical blogs of late is www.stuffwhitepeoplelike.com. It’s a delicious send-up on racism and remarkably spot on! It “gently makes fun of the many progressive, educated, upper-middle-class
whites who think they are beyond ethnicity or collectively shared
tastes, styles or outlook. It’s essentially reminding them that they too are part of a group.” Not everyone loves it, but I guess I’m its target audience. For example, here’s a list of stuff white people like:
#49 caught my eye as I made dinner the other night:

The love affair between white people and old stuff literally goes back
for hundreds of years. In the older days, it was almost exclusively
contained within the realm of furniture. While white people still love
antiques, they don’t always fit so well with a modern lifestyle and
kitchen. Read more…

I’m not a cook by any stretch of the imagination, but I can at least make macaroni & cheese from a box. As I perused my cupboard I found the box to your left. Note the expiration date.

How BAD could mac & cheese get though? As long as there were no bugs in it, I’d be OK, right?

Well, even though it looked like this:

It tasted like this:

Now I know why I’m such a packrat. It’s because I’m white! Whether it’s this old poem I wrote in 1972 that I recently found:

Or emails that I’ve had for over 12 years!

When I set up my new computer last week, I found that Outlook 2006 has a feature that sends all of your calendar entries to your cell phone as text messages. Sounds great, right?

I thought so too until Verizon called me to tell me I had overload my account with over 2000 text messages. They graciously offered to delete them for me, but I still got almost 200 on my phone! Apparently the feature does not yet allow you to filter by date, and since I have my Outlook .pst file from 1994…well, note the date:

So I guess I’m just your average white guy…who likes old stuff. I’m going out now with my gay friends to have coffee and talk about Barack Obama. We may even bitch about high school and plan a dinner party before heading out for some Asian Fusion food. Good times!

On a related note, Wes alerted me to this this:

http://www.asian-central.com/stuffasianpeoplelike

Not being Asian I don’t feel qualified to comment, though I think Wes’ points are well taken. He writes “SWPL is generally aimed at holding up the privilege
of a subset of folks to critical examination. It does this in two ways.
It holds up a stereotype that can only exist because of privilege.” I do believe that satire effects minorities differently than majorities. Sharon Lee, of Model Minority wrote about this recently. I’ll let you decide for yourselves what to think about all this. I’ll be interested to hear!

Satire as Racial Backlash Against Asian Americans

Date: Friday, March 28 @ 11:23:59 EDT
Topic: Academia

By Sharon S. Lee
© 2008 Inside Higher Ed
February 28, 2008
Imagine for a minute if student leaders at elite
college campuses devoted themselves to mocking black people or Jewish
people or gay people. I’m not talking about drunk students posting
pictures of their offensive parties on Facebook, but student newspaper
editors – thought of as being both smart and progressive – giving space
over for the sole purpose of making fun of people because of their
background. It’s hard to imagine. And yet recently this phenomenon of
racial caricatures as “satire” has emerged with Asian Americans as the
object of the jokes.

Why Asian Americans? After all, Asian American
college students tend to make headlines as super students, attending
prestigious private and public colleges at rates way above their state
demographics (hence they are “over-represented”) and as excelling
academically above and beyond any other racial group, whites included.
This “model minority” image is not new and has been around since at
least the late 1960s, with Asian Americans often embraced as symbols of
the merits of hard work and individual effort, all undertaken without
complaint or political agitation. So … shouldn’t that mean that Asian
Americans would be seen as well integrated — academic and otherwise —
with white students? Read more…
Cute Overload

The cousins went to LegoLand this week and Andy had a Spring costume parade at his school. I’ll let the pictures and video speak for themselves. I’m outta here for a few days. Have a great weekend everyone! –Carey
American Pouter

Just a quick note to say Lora came over to watch the Idol results show tonight. Needless to say we had fun. LOL. I’m off to Laguna. Driving carefully! Cheers.
Dr. Backwardavitz & Electronic Spring Cleaning
I still don’t have my car back and they’re telling me the repairs will take another month and $10,000. Luckily, the girl who hit me’s insurance company is paying for everything. I’m feeling much better from the accident, but my left hand and my right wrist are still bothering me, so I went to the doctor this afternoon. Last year if you’ll recall, I fired my doctor for caving in to big money conglomerate medicine. Luckily, I rarely get sick, so besides the occasional asthma problem or psoriasis flare-up, I’m pretty lucky. When my insurance changed in January, I got a new primary care physician in the Cedars-Sinai group. The doctor I ended up getting was this CRAZY old Jew, who is the most antagonistic person I’ve ever met. When he walked in the room I was pretending to text, but had my camera phone ready and snapped this picture of him:
Then I shot this video with my phone of him explaining why he doesn’t use computers and only uses an old typewriter. He had no idea I was taking video…he probably doesn’t even know phones can do that. LOL. The video cuts off, but basically he’s trying to explain that he would always have to change the paper in a printer for each prescription he writes. (??) It’s not on video, but I then asked him if he’d ever heard of a laser printer, and he looked at me like I was from another planet.

Other highlights of my 15 minute visit (that probably cost $150) were:

Dr: “Are you going to sue?” (From the accident). Me: “I don’t think so.” Dr: “Because if you’re going to sue, you can’t see me, I don’t testify.”

Me: “Do I need X-rays?” Dr: “What for?” Me: “I don’t know, you’re the doctor!”

Me: “This cut on my wrist is very painful.” Dr: “That’s NOT a cut, it’s an abrasion.”

Me: “Is it infected?” Dr: “Does it look infected?” Me: “I DON’T KNOW!! YOU’RE THE DOCTOR!”

I could go on, but suffice it to say I NEED A NEW DOCTOR! I absolutely HATE health care and insurance companies in this country. I only have to wait 2 more months until I can change providers. Here’s hoping I don’t have to go back to this joker.

I wonder what Dr. Backwards would think of my home office:
My boss surprised me with a new laptop the other day. The one you see on the left is my old laptop and it’s about to die. The one on the right is my personal laptop that I got for free from Dell last summer. The one in the middle is my new one! It’s got an 18 inch high gloss monitor and an integrated webcam.

And the desktop on the other side of the room is my old personal desktop which I mainly let guests use now, and use as a file server.

I’ve been up until 4 AM the past two nights transferring files (email, documents, photos and music, from the old laptop to the new laptop AND to an external hard drive.

I’m also trying to clean all the crap off the old laptop in case they want to try to fix it (and add some memory) and give it to someone else. It’s absolutley amazing what I’m finding. Suffice it to say NOTHING is ever deleted. The Window registry is a very scary place. Remember that if you ever use your work computer for personal use. I don’t anymore!

While installing all of my Firefox add-ons to the new laptop, I found this gem:

Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on your favorite websites that
often take longer to download than everything else on the page? Install Adblock Plus
now and get rid of them. Right-click on a banner and choose “Adblock”
from the context menu — the banner won’t be downloaded again. You can even replace parts of the banner address with star symbols to block
similar banners as well. Or choose a filter subscription,
then even this simple task will usually be unnecessary: the filter
subscription will block most advertisements fully automatically.

This is the coolest Firefox add-on I’ve ever used. It makes Xanga, Facebook and MySpace SO much faster! I also like PicLens. Check it out!
GLY Easter on 3 Continents & Welcome Geneva Elena

What’s invisible and smells like carrots?

Bunny farts!!

Happy Easter from Munich
3 messages

From: The GLY Gang
To: Carey Anthony

Hi, from sunny “Monaco”.
As long as it’s not raining or snowing it’s beergarden time here.
We had fun, strolling through the city, having Weißwurst for breakfast and
watching the Eisbach surfers in almost freezing water.

Not to mention the very expensive but delicious chocolate we had while going
for a walk in the English Garden. But the most valuable times we have when
sitting around the dining table at the “Casa Kuhn” eating delicious food
cooked and served by our fantastic hosts Beate and Matthias, eating,
drinking and talking until the early morning hours.
In between trying to call the West coast-Crew, which apart from Carey, never
answers. Therefore Youenn has to leave very philosophical messages on their
answering machines. So it seems that we won’t be able to find out if there
is one more Ph.D. hanging around in the Disneyland for adults called Santa
Barbara.

This said, we all wish you a Happy Easter, lots of fun and hope to see you
very soon!

Enjoy!

From: Carey Anthony
To: “Matthias”, “Beate”, “Bine”, “Youenn”, “Alan”

Friends!

Speaking of Monaco, you all do indeed look like part of the GLY Royal Family.
Bine, gives Princess Caroline a run for her money with her gorgeous dark locks and dazzling smile.
Beate is clearly channeling Grace Kelly in her olive coat fresh off the runway.
Matthias has all the royal je ne sais quoi of Prince Albert with a full head of hair!
Alan looks like the cherubic love child of Princess Stephanie and some dashing race car driver.
And King Youenn makes Ranier look like an impostor. His royal command over his subjects oozes through every pixel of the photographs. He clearly rules with an iron fist and a warm heart.
All hail King Youenn. Long live the King!

Love,

A loyal subject in a the far away outpost of West Hollywood
Carey

On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 3:51 AM, youenn@xxxxx.edu> wrote:

Carey,
I love your writing. Maybe some day we should work together on a book…
I had a wonderful time in Munchen, as you could see, and I need to rest at work now…
I
do not know if I told you, but I have a sabbatical next year (Spring
semester 2009), which means that I will finally finish my second book
and visit friends. No winter for Youenn…
Take care,
Youenn

From: Carey
To: Youenn

My Fabulous French Friend,

Working with you on a book would be like Dr. Seuss working with Victor
Hugo! Suffice it to say though, I’m flattered, and you are ALWAYS
welcome at the Hotel Careyfornia/Writers Sanctuary!

BTW, is this book going to be in English?

GLY!
Carey
xo

Happy Easter from Rio de Janeiro

2 messages

From: Joelle & Adriana
To: Carey, Beate, Matthias, Bine, Youenn

Oi, queridos!

Our weather was a little different than Munich’s today, but Dri, Caique, their mothers, and I did our share of beer, caipirinha, and coffee drinking as well. We went for a lovely walk on the beach in Barra da Tijuca, enjoyed an incredible and enormous meal of squid, crab, and shrimp, and finished the evening with drinks on Copacabana as the nearly-full moon rose out of the Atlantic.

Naturally, you came up in conversations many times. Hope everyone had a fabulous Easter.

Beijos,
Joelle

From: Carey Anthony
To: “Joelle”, “Adriana”

Saudades, Girls From Ipanema!

Seeing Mom Diversi on the beach in Rio was better than any Easter basket! Muito obrigado. Please send abracos fortes to Silvia and grande beijos to all of you.

Easter in L.A. was spectacular and hot. I just posted a bunch of pictures on my blog, so you can see just how hot it was.

I miss you all, and wish I could be there with you and all the morsels. I know Bine will be there soon, so keep the pictures coming!

GLY,

Carey
xoxo

My new cousin Geneva Elena with big sister Athena.
She was 9 lbs. 5 oz. and 22 inches long.
Welcome to the world cuz!
Hot Chicks and Melted Rabbits

While the rest of our family back in the Midwest hunted for frozen Easter eggs in the snow, Southern California basked in 100 degree plus temperatures! It was so hot, my bunny melted!

The kids had fun though and Jennifer cooked an amazing meal. Thanks Jenn!

Easter 2008, Cole, Tressa, Andy & Tommy….compared to:

Easter 2005, Tressa, Cole Tommy and…

Andy (with Great Grandma in 2005)

Hey kids, I was just in a car accident! Some things never change

Tommy & his favorite cousin

Yes, it was over 100 in the sun!

And here are the best of the rest:

Andy stole the show all day as this video will attest:
Superbad Needles & Pins

Lisa was nice enough to drive me around yesterday morning to get my rental car and get all of my things out of the Honda. Not sure if they will total it yet or not, I’ll find out next week. I would like to get a new car, but since my 2002 Accord is still worth nearly $15,000 they may just elect to fix it. Also, I wanted an Accord hybrid, but I just found out they don’t make them anymore. I don’t really want a Civic, but I want to stick with Honda. May be a moot point anyway.

Last night I wanted to keep my dinner date, so I met everyone around the corner at Hugo’s.

Even Ramiele from American Idol was there (sorry Lora)

Tom was excited when Jonah Hill (star of Superbad, and many other recent coming of age comedies) came in with his posse. I pretended to snap a picture of our table while Jonah walked by, but judging from the photo I’m busted, because he’s looking right at me. LOL. Oh well, the price of fame. (I saw him host Saturday Night Live last weekend, and actually thought he did an OK job.)

Sal was there and he’s an acupuncturist. So after dinner we all went to Mika’s place to play Taboo and he examined a few of my “pressure points” to find out where most of my pain from the accident was coming from. He really made some of the pain go away with just pressure. Don’t ask me how, but I consented to try the needles, and here are the overly dramatic results.

Getting prepped and cool as a cucumber

The first needle. Honestly, I barely felt a thing. I’m just a drama queen.

The “adjustment” was scarier than it looked or felt.

Look at me in the background of this picture. After a while I relaxed and it was fine. LOL

As relaxed as I can be with needles stuck in my body

A memorable first…It could have been worse!
Crash

It’s the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We’re always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

I had to work in Irvine today and afterwards I met Lisa at Costco because I was going to buy a temporary camera until mine gets fixed next week (pathetic huh? I feel naked without it though. Plus, I may want a small pocket camera for times I don’t want to carry the G9. So I settled on a cheap SD1000. If I don’t like it, Costco has a 90 day return policy.)

After that, we headed to Pick Up Stix to get dinner and head to her place to feed the kids. As I was driving north on Technology Dr. a woman in a white Volkswagen (with Hawaii plates) who was heading in the opposite direction, suddenly decided to turn left, but didn’t see me coming.

I remember thinking to myself, there’s no way she could possibly turn, but as she did, I slammed on my brakes and braced myself for impact (not a smart thing to do apparently, and I’m paying for it now). I’ve never been in a car where the air bags deployed. It’s like a small explosion in the car. There’s smoke and the smell of gunpowder. After the crash, I was disoriented. I smelled smoke though and knew I had to get out.

Luckily, the other woman was unhurt. I was banged up, but alive and not much worse for wear. When the police came, the first thing the other driver said to the cop was, “It was all my fault, I’m so sorry”. Lisa and I looked at each other and both thought the same thing. Long story short, my car was towed away, and my wonderful cousins took very good care of me tonight. I’ll rent a car tomorrow and go home. Weekend plans might be shot though. It’s 2 AM and I best get some rest. My neck and my knee is really hurting.

I have my bell and my cousins are at my beck and call. LOL. Ice packs are for the swelling!
Brazilian Lesbian Ninjas & Colin Powell the Pussy

Mika’s Dad is in town and tonight he took us to dinner and to go see The Groundlings:

The Groundlings is an improvisational comedy troupe based in Los Angeles, California, USA. The troupe was formed by Gary Austin in 1974 and uses an improv format influenced by Viola Spolin to produce sketches and improvised scenes. The troupe moved into their current location on Melrose Avenue in 1979. Many Groundlings performers have found success in movies and television, including several who have become cast members and writers on Saturday Night Live, MAD TV, and Reno 911!.The Groundlings School sees over 1,000 students per year go through their program. The competitive program consists of 4 levels (Basic,Intermediate, Writing Lab and Advanced). Participants must be successfully advanced from each level by the instructor. After completing the Advanced level, one may be voted into the Sunday Company, which performs on Sunday. Members of the Main Company are selected from members of the Sunday Company. The current ExecutiveDirector of The Groundlings is Dan Fishbach who has led the company since December, 2006. Source: Wikipedia

The name Groundlings dates back to Shakespeare’s time, when it referred to poorer theater-goers who sat on the ground between the stage and the costly seats. Mika’s friend Jovanna (watch for her on Saturday Night Live some day) went with us. She’s actually a student at The Groundlings, so it was fascinating to hear her insight into the entire improv process. The show was really funny. Unfortunately, since my camera is broken, I had to use Mika’s which, well, let’s just say it wasn’t my G9. I took a couple of videos, and since I wasn’t familiar with her camera and it was dark, I held my finger over the microphone on the best video (they were pretending to be Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama with lots of genitalia jokes.) The one video I did get, was a bit about Brazilian Lesbian Ninjas. You kind of had to be there though, but this will give you a little taste of it. If you’re into improv comedy, you can watch more Groundlings videos here.

This guy was the funniest. His name is Jordan Black

Notice who’s picture is behind my right shoulder. It’s Julia Sweeney (It’s Pat), who has since gone on to such amazing things, including her “Letting Go of God” monologue and her recent TED talk with Jill Sobule, The Jill & Julia Show, which I LOVE, and highly recommend:
Why are all our heroes SO imperfect??

Stripped Strippers, Retraction, Dumb Dogs & The Audacity of Hope

I think it’s hilarious that they’re just painting over the cast offs! Poor David Hernandez. He’s the former gay male stripper who’s now a future gay male stripper.

Guess who we saw at lunch today? It’s KKKristi Lee Cook. She’s really the one who should have gotten the axe last week.

We also saw James Cromwell, but he was inside.

I just found out that the American Idol finale won’t be at the Kodak Theater this year, which sucks. The past two years, I’ve been able to walk to the Kodak and sneak onto the press line with a fake press pass and take photos. I won’t be able to do that at the Nokia Theater. Damn. (P.S. If anyone wants to go to a taping of “Idol Extra” next Wednesday, I have tickets.)

I’m having the worst luck with cameras this year/decade/life


	Track your repair Online: www.usa.canon.com/repair

Carey Anthony
xxxxxx Olive Dr
West Hollywood, CA 90069

			Equipments:		POWER SHOT G9
			Repair #:		WB828864
			Received:		Not Yet Received
			Repair Cost:		$0.00/WARRANTY
			Status: Description of Problem:		Not Yet Received Lens won’t retract

Dear Carey,

Thank you for initiating your repair request with Canon through our online repair system. We’re sorry to
hear that you’re experiencing problems with your G9′s lens retraction. From what I understand the lens
only comes out half way, is that correct? Hopefully our engineers can find out the problem and fix it for
you quickly, as I know you don’t want to be without your camera for long.

Sincerely,

James

Canon Customer Service

Available Service Centers

Service Name	Address	Phone	Distance
Canon Factory Service Center	15955 Alton Parkway Irvine, CA 92618	949-753-4200	56 miles

In the unlikely event that any additional damage is found during therepair process due to liquid/water,
sand, corrosion, battery leakage o rimpact (such as dropping the unit), a revised estimate will be sent
to you for your review and authorization.

Feel free to return to our on-line tracking site to check the repair or shipping status of your equipment.

*Actual times may vary. Seasonal volume or repairs requiring special parts may add more time.

If your dog’s not smart, don’t keep the car window open!

When I saw this on Chris’ site the other day, I was reminded of this product:

PoochIQ.com of Beverly Hills, California, is marketing a product it says can assess the mental prowess of dogs. The company said the PoochIQ Kit includes 15 “mentally stimulating” tasks designed to determine whether a dog’s intelligence is above, below or at the average, the New York Post reported Monday. “We developed it in-house and we did a ton of research on both human and dog intelligence,” said PoochIQ.com spokeswoman Stacy Stubblefield.

What’s in the IQ Kit? The Pooch IQ Kit includes all the toys and props you’ll need to test your pooch’s intelligence! Your Pooch IQ Kit will arrive with thefollowing fun items:

1 Pooch IQ Testing Booklet with 15 Exercises, Scoring Key, and Detailed IQ Explanations
1 ExtraTuff Rubber Cone Toy
1 5-Piece Plush Dog Puzzle
1 Big & Furry Squeaky Bone
1 Super-Bouncy Ball
1 Hide-a-Treat Testing Toy
1 Midnight Black Face Mask
3 Colorful Plastic Pup-Cups

Get the entire kit now for:
$79.99
On Sale Now!
Just $49.99

“It works like this. If you buy it, your dog is smarter than you.” – Seth Meyers – Saturday Night Live

LOL, if anyone’s thinking of buying one of these, let me know. I’ll sell you my old dog toys for half the price!

Finally…I wonder if he just won or lost the election with this??