In Which I Whine About My Cola Problem, Which Is A Really Big Deal, Trust Me.

If it seems too good to be true, then it probably is.

Man, do I ever enjoy the taste of a crisp, fresh cola beverage. Whether straight from the can or over ice, I just cannot get enough of this effervescent bombardment of the senses. (Unless it is Coke, that is. Coke is gross. It is cloyingly sweet and leaves a nasty aftertaste so if you don't carry gum or toothpaste with you at all times, you are screwed.)

So what's the problem? Well I am 35 now and although I am by no means 'fat,' I am definitely not in any danger of fitting into those really cute pants I bought at H&M when I was 22 and living in Europe, pants that I still own now because they continue to be very cute and I cannot bear to let the dream die. In other words, all these empty, (delicious), empty calories are a big no-no.

So why not just have a diet Pepsi? Diet Pepsi, after all, tastes clean and crisp. (Obviously I won't be having a diet Coke.) What a great idea except that fake sugar still makes you fat and has been linked to seizures in individuals susceptible to them--yeah, okay, the cases in question were of people drinking 20-22 cans of diet soda a day, but you can never be too careful. Seizures, just in case you didn't know, can make you piss on your leg, or hit your head, or crash your car, or maybe just see King Canute, the Danish King of England, in your living room. But still. 'Nuff said.

Thus, Zevia, a calorie-free cola beverage sweetened with natural stevia extract (which the rest of the world has been using for decades) really leapt out at me from the grocery shelf at my local Henry's Farmers' Market.

I lugged a 6-pack home.

I carefully extracted one of the frosted beverage mugs from the freezer and filled it with ice. Cracked open the soda. The ice popped and fizzed.

Heady with anticipation, I took the first sip.

As it turns out, Zevia tastes like Coke. Who makes these decisions?

My Weekend At The Races: If I Ever Had A Daughter, She Is So Not Leaving The House Dressed Like That

Out of energy drink? Cat food has some of the same ingredients!

Does every short course off-road race car driver dream of standing on the podium in order to have his leg rubbed by one of the minimally-dressed "Rock Star Girls"--one of a squadron of size zero promotional workers for Rock Star Energy Drink, available in lemonade barf or cola barf flavors--or do some of them kind of see through the whole charade as the girls smile their makeup encrusted smiles and hold up shimmering cans of Rock Star Energy Drink, available in lemonade barf or cola barf flavors? Do you want to try some? They're giving cans away for free. In fact, small children are walking around drinking up this miasma of intoxicating energy serum. Take it from this former nanny, but that is insane. Children do not need more energy. They need sedatives, just like cats on road trips.

However, the real issue with the Rock Star Girls is their inappropriate for the situation footwear--high heeled black boots in an area where the ground is covered in a thick layer of gravel. Literally, they could not walk without aid and also had trouble climbing up the steep ramp to the awards platform in order to dole out phallic-shaped trophies in the form of spark plugs. Really, it's hard to do the job right of promoting Rock Star Energy Drink, available in blah blah blah (you already know the drill), when you cannot even propel yourself, able-bodied woman that you normally are, from location A to location B without some douchebag getting involved who really is just trying to peer into your decollatage.

All in all though, this weekend helped me to re-commit to a few fashion rules, as if my clothing and I were a married couple renewing our vows to each other in a heartfelt garden ceremony, but with the entire viewing public in attendance.

Actually, there are only two rules.

1.
If you look in the mirror and it looks like you are wearing a shirt with no pants, your dress is not long enough.

2.
Shoes are made for walking, not stumbling.

But really, none of this is the Rock Star Girls' fault. Instead, I think we can safely thank the Rock Star marketing team and even more importantly, all the skanky-ass men who think women made helpless by their wardrobe are attractive. Rant now over. Thank you.

One Analogy To Writing A Novel

The novel is the tiger.
You are Roy.

You try to tame its unruly themes and run-on sentences by tapping said 'novel' on the nose with a Pilot G-2 rollerball pen, but the the great beast of would-be fiction just leaps up and disfigures you for life.

(My lame boyfriend says Siegfried and Roy jokes are in poor taste, but clearly tigers are our superiors and should not be trifled with. R.I.P. Tatiana! Also, tigers were my dearly departed grandfather's favorite animal. To the point that he had a Schillcraft latch hook rug with the face of a tiger emblazoned across its fibery surface. Also also, I am leaving for Vegas in about an hour so perhaps you can understand the tie-in.)

I swear I am mostly a nice person.
Poor Roy. He loved those tigers.

Yours in exceedingly poor taste. Thank you.

A Little Message To The Unknown Asian Language Living On The Comments Page Of The Last Post On My Blog

My cat, Gerard Butler, prepares to cast a spell on you.

Okay, bitches. I just write this review for a reading series where the establishment that is Sara Mumolo makes sure that everyone can have access to both great cheese and spectacular poetry and you repay my efforts with this effusion of nonsensical writing!?

I'd also like to point out that the muse of this blog is Beowulf, not your weird Chinese poetry, and although there may be dragons in both, Beowulf does not speak Chinese. He is very upset with you. Not upset enough to bother deleting all of the comments, but that is mostly because Beowulf is (probably) from the fifth century and thereby does not know how to use a computer. Which leaves this important task to My Cat, Gerard Butler, who is ultimately dim-witted and lacks opposable thumbs, which leaves me. Which leaves no one. Thank you.

Wait. I think I found the on button.

STUDIO ONE: Not Just For The Cheese Plate.

An interesting and eye-opening thing happened to me last Friday night at the monthly Studio One poetry reading. And it's all because I stopped eating cheese. You see, I'm thirty-four now, and my metabolism can no longer handle eating just anything. So I thought I'd simply cut out a few foods, such as ultra-fattening "cheese" and try to shed a few pounds. What in the world, Jenny Drai, you might wonder, does cheese have to do with poetry? Well, gentle Reader (I would reply), it has everything to do with my first Friday routine. Get home from work. Light snack. Work out. Shower and change. Show up at Studio One with a few bucks in my pocket for the donations cup and nibble on the excellent smorgasbord of tasty snacks. But what about last Friday? I felt some trepidation. Would I be able to withstand those tempting morsels of milk, cultures, and rennet? The creamy brie? The smoky gouda? Sharp chedder? And that's not even mentioning the outstanding selection of whole-grain crackers. How would I cope? As stressed out as I usually am by Friday evening, I doubted my resolve. But I found sustenance through another medium: the poetry of Gillian Hamel and Truong Tran and the performance piece by Scott V.

At my job as the office assistant in a furniture store, I don't get to use my brain very much, and for some reason I find this exhausting. Because I have to work every weekend, I rarely show up at a poetry reading when I'm not feeling tired and cranky. Often, I don't even want to go. I'd much rather curl up in bed, covers over my head, and reread Harry Potter for the umpteenth time with the help of a flashlight. In fact, a half hour before the Studio One reading was sheduled to begin, I was in just such a position bemoaning my fate as a cog in the wheels of corporate America. But I went anyways, non-poet boyfriend in tow. We both had a great time, and I (the ultimate believer in the supremacy of the written text) learned something valuable about poetry's orality and the collective nature of event.

I came. I listened. I relaxed. That's how it happened. Never a good auditory learner, I nonethless caught beautiful snippets and sometimes even whole parcels of thought. "There should be space around her, breathing and collapsing," Gillian Hamel read as part of a set that combined the journey of a speaker full, at times, of particularity and preference ("I don't like anything that combines with 'post.' my greatest moments occur when I am wearing the exact right amount of layers, my hands are full, and I cannot hear anything else.") with the sometimes outrightly haunting, and/or what I would call questions or statements of boundary, and/or sheer and utter viscerality. Also, since this after all was a reading, I would add that she read well.

Whereas Gillian Hamel's poetry started off the event with a tonally serious exploration of the self in tandem to and in opposition to various degrees of daily violences, Scott V.'s faux sales presentation on his self-styled program to teach his audience the value of incorporating hiding into one's daily life (not to mention his hilarious slideshow on how to determine a good hiding spot) was a virtual laugh-fest. But that's not to say Scott V. didn't make a more serious point. How many of us, after all, hide in order to be found? Regardless, hide-and-seek is quite a lot of fun. Take it from one who knows. Since the presentation last Friday, my boyfriend and I have played the game at least twice. I, however, have an unfair advantage because Steven is 6'6" and just doesn't fit in the better spots like in the closet under the pile of dirty laundry. I mean, does he seriously think I won't see him lurking under the dining room table? At any rate, the presentation very much reminded me of a sales meeting I was forced to attend on my day off even though I am not in sales, except that this time I was happily engaged with the process instead of staring glassy-eyed in the general direction of whoever was currently trying to indoctrinate me with the value of a having a more *positive* attitude in order to SELL! SELL! SELL! even though (I repeat) it was supposed to be my day off and I am not even in sales. I just type up the invoices. With a smile on my face, even when it hurts. Thank you Scott V. for making the smile feel good.

It was during the Truong Tran reading that I really finally realized what was happening to me. As I slid in and out of his language (without eating any of that scintillattingly delicious cheese), as I laughed with the other members of the audience at something random or touching or comic, I experienced the comfort of the collective experience of shared vibe in shared setting. I have to say that I was really tired. I have to say I engage much easier (in the critical sense) with the written text. I have to say that last Friday night, at about two-thirds of the way through the reading, I stopped taking notes for my review and instead got wonderfully lost, and in doing so, suddenly found. In cadence with Truong Tran and the rest of the audience. Very far away from a long day or the promise of an even longer day tomorrow. Just there. Listening to shifting tones. The contemplation in the work. Wanting to read the work. Tugging the covers over my head and pulling out the flashlight. Pushing Harry Potter to one side. Or just extinguishing the flashlight and using a lamp and the full weight of the mind on some random week night. When the sky is black and the sleep is in front of you and what you need is at your fingertips and you can have it if you open the book, turning back the cover.

So it's not just about the cheese anymore. Or the crackers. Or have I mentioned the always tasty Orangina if you don't drink wine? Because it is tasty. Orangina is simply the best. And they have it at Studio One, where emerging poets converge with the time-tested and well-published, where poetry combines with film, music, and performance for a great time to be had by all, including this somewhat over-tired and worn-out blogger who is just writing her review now because she, ironically, had to work all week without a day off because lots of people like to celebrate Labor Day by shopping for recliners.

So that's that. Great poets and performances. So you should go next time. There's something for everyone. And now that I've forsworn cheese, there is more for you. Because I used to eat a lot of it. Thank you.

In Which I Anxiously Await The Release Of Outlander On May 19.

Note to self: this one probably isn't going to make it to the Criterion Collection, which might be a good thing, because I won't have to pay forty dollars for the pleasure of endlessly rewatching this Beowulf-themed Iron age/Space age science fiction/Viking saga. Instead, I'm sure, the movie will be so bad it's good, which would be a lot better than the last film I saw starring Jim Caviezel which was an anti-Semitic snuff film about someone named Jesus, a movie which was so gruesome in its scenes of spurting blood and rampant gore that at one point tears of ???????? came to my eyes just as I felt my senses were being completely violated for the thirty billionth time. Of course, there is also the possibility that Outlander will just be good, but I will have to wait until the nineteenth of May to find out, and besides, according to some unnamed persons who will continue to be granted their anonymity, or rather I should say according to my roommate Dana, I have "disappointing" taste in movies. See! I am such a bad person. I let people down. On that note, have I ever mentioned that I really like that movie Timeline, based on a Michael Crichton novel, about archaeologists who travel back in time to medieval France? Do you, you ask. In fact I do. Thank you.

When I Get Bored With Myself, I Dye My Hair.

Duh! I'm so bored.