Headbangers Ball

A haircut rant:

My stylist that I liked so much left the salon I have been going to, so I had to make an appointment with another woman. I got there on time, and after waiting for 20 minutes, one of the haircut helpers told me she would take me back to wash my hair. She washed it and deposited me in the stylist's chair, and when the lady finally came by she didn't apologize or anything she just said "tell me about your hair" (which was all wet and twisted up under a towel). I told her I just wanted the same cut and that I really didn't want any bangs and I really didn't want anything that would be too short to pull into a ponytail.

And just look what I got: long bangs that won't even stay behind my ears.

Lame.

Plus the haircut cost ten bucks more than last time.

Maybe I will grow to like them, but right now they keep getting in my way. I'll have to invest in headbands for a month or so until everything grows out.

I think I should start going to the salon where werewolves smell your hair.

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: Crime Scene Edition

Can you resist a man in uniform? Not if it is CSI agent Nick Stokes (aka George Eads). It is hard to pick a number one SB from all the sexy investigators on CSI, but Nick is absolutely my number one.











He pulls off a buzz cut, which not everyone can do.










And check out this enthusiasm!





Welcome to the SB brigade, Nick/George. You've earned it.

Werewolf Man Meets Beauty Queen

This is potentially the best sign in our neighborhood. It simultaneously convinces me that I must get my hair done at "Annie's Hair Salon" and that I should avoid it like the plague. Not until I took this picture did I notice that the salon also offers therapeutic massage. I am unsure how I feel about that.

Restitution

After receiving two $200 vouchers from American Airlines this afternoon, I feel that I have attained satisfaction. Writing letters works!

Help! I'm a computer!

When I was seven or eight -- way before we got cute little Apple computers at school, my dad bought the family a Commodore VIC-20. This was the first relatively inexpensive color home computer, and my dad is a fiddler who likes new gadgets, so he jumped on it. We liked that it came with awesome games like pseudo-Pong, pseudo-Asteroids, and the very strange "Vic Biorhythms" program which would use your birthdate to analyze your biorhythms for the week. The games came on cassette tapes that hooked into the keyboard/processor which hooked into our TV. Perfect.

But the best part was the book of BASIC programs that came with the computer. My sisters and I would spend hours typing in lines and lines of code to come up with something like a white ball bouncing around a blue screen or the words "Hello Kristy, how are you?" scrolling endlessly across the TV. Totally worth it.

And of course, if William Shatner is advertising something, you know it is a high-quality educational product:


And watch the VIC-20 in action here!

[P.S. I am now excited about biorhythms! I just got my daily reading here and found out that I am 10861 days old and that my "emotional" rhythm is at -50%, but raising. That actually explains a lot.]

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: The Thursday Edition

Spacebeer and Secret Boyfriend Wednesday, Incorporated would like to apologize for the lack of a SB posting yesterday (which was known in official circles as "Wednesday"). We really don't have anything to say for ourselves except that we were at an all day training thing that went late and then rushed into dinner preparations, movie watching, and staying up too late drinking beers.

Sorry.

To make up for it, here is one of the top ten secret boyfriends: Mr. Dave Grohl.

He has it all:

He is a drummer (the sexiest instrument of all time).



And yet he is also a rockin' guitar player (second sexiest instrument of all time).











Finally: arm tattoos. Particularly on the biceps. These make me swoon.

Dudes with arm tatoos playing the drums? Even better.

If Dave Grohl also had red hair, we would be married.

[I would also like to note that Dave Grohl has the cutest smile, but do you really want to see five pictures of him? I had to draw the line somewhere. Do a google image search and scroll around till you find a smiling one. Pretty cute, huh?]

Glamazons

I wish I was at UT 60 years ago, as I could have been a member of this service organization made up of women over 5'7". In fact, I could have kicked all their asses with my giganto height. The best part:

"GLAMAZONS, founded in 1945, is composed of tall girls on campus. Glamazons promotes fellowship among tall girls and furthers the interest in modeling. The Glamazons motto is 'The type of girl a man looks up to.'"

Yaz-owza

If Yaz was the only available birth control option on earth, I think I would rather have 20 children than have to ask my doctor about it or pick it up from a pharmacy. Just saying its name out loud makes me feel like an idiot. And somehow, the feeling of "late 1980s teen-oriented perfume," "slim menthol cigarettes," and "cheap hair gel" that I get from the logo design just doesn't make me think: "serious and trustworthy birth control option."

I guess I'm outside their demographic?

[Finally, just watch the irritating flash animated ladies on their website for a minute. Once they all finish their initial talk bubble conversation, they continue talking amongst themselves. The blonde lady blinks a lot. A. Lot. But the lady with the red hair doesn't blink at all! Fascinating...]

I've got a new attitude

I'm no longer tired -- I'm just very relaxed. So much better.

Sisterly Promotion

Not only can she hula hoop, but she can also wield a camera!

Everyone take a minute to go look at my sister's new photography site -- you won't be disappointed. You can either view slide shows of the different albums, or click on the picture for each album to browse through the photos that way. And when you are done, buy yourself some Sorensen-photographed prints or photo-gift-memorabilia. I think my sister is an awesome photographer, and after looking through this site I'm sure you will agree.

So do it!

Seriously.

My work is right across the street from the UT football practice field and ungodly bubble thing. They have some kind of speaker system that lets them play the radio REALLY LOUD while they practice. This is kind of irritating when you are trying to work. And it is seven in the morning. And I can hear their radio over my own radio that is in my office. I'm sure that they are waking plenty of people up with this. Stupid football.

Secret Boyfriend Wednesday: The Director's Cut

MilkandCake's List totally reminded me of one of the proud few of my super secret boyfriends that I have actually seen live and in person: Jim Jarmusch. Josh and I stood in line for hours to see him speak and curate an evening of short films at CinemaTexas a few years ago, [Note: I just checked on the Internet and this was actually in 2000. Yet somehow it seems like I only moved to Texas a couple of years ago...] and he was one of the best speakers I have ever seen.



This dude is way smart. Way tall. And way sexy.



The other thing about him is that he has very sexy friends.








And possibly his number one sexiest feature (besides those lips. God, those lips.): The hair. The only thing better than red hair on a man is white hair. I'm melting.

Secret radio

You probably don't see anything unusual about this radio. Why, you may ask, did I ask to have it when I saw it in the bottom of Joel's car trunk even though it doesn't work and is kind of sandy?

Why indeed. I am so easily amused.

The Witness for the Prosecution

It seems like I finished this book a long time ago since I read about three-fourths of it on the flight to DC and the rest in the airport waiting for our flight to Dallas on the way home. The book in question is Agatha Christie's The Witness for the Prosecution, and Other Stories (1932 - my copy, pictured here, is a 1948 Dell printing).

This is the first Agatha Christie book I've ever read -- I like mysteries, but generally ones that are more of the shady pulp variety than the upstanding British variety. I'd always sort of associated Christie with old people, Masterpiece Theatre, and Angela Lansbury. Part of the reason I picked this book up at a booksale was (obviously) the cover. I was also interested in it because the title story was made into a movie by Billy Wilder in 1957, and I read a bunch about it and Charles Laughton's performance in the book about Wilder that I read recently. I really like Wilder's movies, and I want to see this one, not only because I've now read the book, but also because both Marlene Dietrich and Elsa "Bride of Frankenstein" Lanchester are in it. Yes.

As for this collection, I enjoyed it a lot -- it was perfect for reading in an airport as all the stories were engaging, filled with twists, and relatively short. The title story in particular was very satisfying. I have a full-length mystery novel of Christie's in my pile, and I'm excited to give it a chance. If I like her, I can keep myself busy with her ninety-gazillion other books.

Down with DC

I have officially written and mailed my letter of complaint to American Airlines (two pages, with bullet points! Very professional. I was going to e-mail it, but you could only have 1500 characters in an email and I had more than 1500 characters worth of complaining to do), and now I am ready to forget that bad part of the trip and concentrate on the awesome week of archives and fun that came before it. (Plus, as everyone keeps telling me, wouldn't it have been extra sucky if our trip back was this weekend instead? No chapstick on the plane? I would die.)

All 165 of our photos are now up on my Flickr site in all their glory. Behold the wonder that is our nation's capital. Some highlights of the trip included: the Washington Monument (really very tall, and generally further away than it looks); the Lincoln Memorial (one of my favorite things about the trip); riding the Metro (which we did a lot, but which I neglected to really photograph); Josh paying tribute to Texas, Nebraska, the weird blue chair in our hotel room, and a strange decorative pillow on our bed; the view from our hotel window; tons of taxidermied mammals at the National Museum of Natural History (sooooo awesome); lots of real animals at the National Zoo (which Josh got to see while I was doing work stuff, boo); hanging out with A. at the National Archives (and lots of other places including restaurants, bars, trains, busses, and conference sessions); an olive pit shaped like a penis (no kidding); muppets, dark crystal creatures, red slippers, howdy doody, and other neat stuff at the National Museum of American History (where we also got to drink as much beer as we could hold for the price of a $10 wristband -- drinking beer in museums is really fun, and should be part of every tour); and a lovely walk on our last day there when the heat wave finally broke and we looked at all the cool embassies in the Dupont Circle neighborhood.

Plus other stuff. Do yourself a favor and flip through all 165 photos. Pretend you are us! Pretend you went to DC! All the tools are at your disposal, folks, so take advantage of this opportunity.

Guidance

Because I am a completist and I decided long ago to write a little post about every book I've read; and because I did actually read almost every word of this book (even the section on shopping, which I dislike! I did skip part of the restaurant section, though, for restaurants in the suburbs); and because I really do think this is a good line of travel guides: I'm going to write about this book, The Unofficial Guide to Washington DC.

If I am going to do something or go somewhere, I almost always want to have a book about it. Of course, the Internets have a lot of information (and god knows I love the Internets), but nothing beats having an actual, physical book in your hands. That kind of information is solid, and a lot easier to browse through.

I bought an "Unofficial Guide" before our whirlwind wedding trip to Las Vegas a couple years ago, and I really liked it. They cover things I'm interested in (hotels, restaurants, bars, transportation, travel tips), in a way that doesn't get bogged down and doesn't come off sounding like they just copied the hotel's press kit word-for-word into the book. Josh and I ate at several restaurants that the book recommended and every one of them was awesome (although one was way more expensive than the book led us to believe -- still, I'm a believer in embracing the unexpected fancy dinner, even if you are accidentally wearing jeans and a t-shirt to it, and the food was awesome). In fact, finding Pizzeria Paradiso was worth the price of the book alone. Just look at this pizza (photo courtesy of A.) -- it was so good that we ate there twice just so we could sample more of the pizzas.

So, in conclusion: printed travel guides are good and relevant. This series of them is particularly great. And finally: I want to travel more, please. And eat more pizza.

Secret Boyfriend: Air Edition

In honor of our overly interesting flight experience this week, I present everyone's favorite pilot: Harrison Ford!

Han Solo was my first secret boyfriend of all time. Wee Kristy wanted to marry him. My second SB was Michael J. Fox when he was on Family Ties, but then I figured out that I was already taller than him and I was like eight. MJF is no longer an SB, but Harrison (especially Han Solo) still hits the list.





Of course, Indiana Jones is not too shabby.






In fact, Harry is pretty good in all his incarnations.




In addition, he is actually a real pilot who flies his own plane around. One time he had to make an emergency landing in my hometown. It isn't mentioned in this article, but he apparently visited a strip club while in town and the media went wild. I think a story about it was on the front page of the local paper. Strip club visits when stranded in unknown towns really only make me like him better.





And finally, lets see a little more of that Solo action. Woo!

The land of 1000 beers

I'm about halfway through uploading my DC pictures, but let me give you a little taste of the excitement. One night, after eating the best pizza on earth, we found our way to The Brickskeller, the home of the world's largest beer list - over 1000 kinds of beer. You get a big ole menu that has the beers listed by country -- to help organize our drinking, we decided to drink our heritage. I had a Czech beer that I can no longer remember, and a Danish Carlsberg (with an elephant on the bottle!), and then moved on to their exciting on tap collection. I can't even remember what Josh had. Something Irish for sure. A sip of my Czech thing. A big German something. And then a Sapporo, although he is not actually Japanese.

The whole bar was really pretty fabulous, but my favorite feature was the shelves of discontinued beer cans along the wall. If you look closely at the picture above, you will see a blurry Party King. From now on, that is the only beer for me. Remember: Party King. It comes in a big oversized tin. If you'd like, you can buy me one here.

I later heard that they store all the beers in the basement and use a dumbwaiter system to send the order down to the stockroom guy and deliver the beer up to the bar. Anything that involves a dumbwaiter is okay by me.

More beer pictures here.

Lived to tell about it

Dr. Mystery and I have returned from our sordid week of overeating, under-sleeping, super-conferencing, and excessive sweating in our nation's capital. I'm working on slowly uploading the 178 pictures that we collectively took to my Flickr page, and once they are all up there I'll give you the fully illustrated run down.

But before I get to the good stuff, let me vent my frustrations about our return flight which is aptly summed up in the photo above:

First our DC to Dallas flight makes an emergency landing in Memphis. We later find out that all of the engines had failed except one. After waiting an hour and a half for a new plane, we reboard in Memphis and then inexplicably sit on the runway for 35 minutes. Finally we take off and make it to Dallas five minutes after the last flight leaves for Austin. Bleh.

We get shuttled off to a "nearby" hotel with hotel vouchers from American to pay for our rooms. They don't give us any food vouchers (and also didn't give us anything to eat on the plane -- not even some pretzels), so we are all really hungry. At 11:30, after a 25 minute ride to the hotel on a shaky and overcrowded airport bus we proceed to stand in line for 20 minutes while they check everyone in. When we get to the front of the line, they tell us that the 4:40 am shuttle to the airport is full, even though that is the one we need to catch to make our 6:15 flight to Austin. They say we can pay for our own taxi to the airport if we want. We write our names down anyway and decide to just get to the lobby super early and squeeze our way onto the shuttle.

Our hotel is this wildly over-rated Holiday Inn in Bedford, Texas. When we get up to our room we find a ton of ants in the bathroom, a toilet that won't flush, a rattley air conditioner that won't turn off, patched and peeling wallpaper, only five channels out of the promised 15 on the TV work, and we got put into a room with two uncomfortable twin beds instead of a coupley king. And the coffee-maker was in the bathroom. Gross. Particularly since this was a not-very-clean ant-infested bathroom with a broken toilet. Of course, we were only in the room for about four hours before we had to pack up and head back downstairs.

Then, when we finally get back to DFW, I get a really rude ticket agent who tells me that her computer says my ticket has already been used and I went back to Austin the night before. That totally makes sense because I really love sneaking back to the Dallas airport the next morning and trying to take another flight to Austin just to really screw with the airlines. Then she accuses me of losing or hiding some kind of paperwork that she says I must have but that no one ever gave me. I dig out everything in my purse, explain that I only had three hours of sleep and that the whole reason I'm here at 5:00 in the morning is because of her airline, and she just keeps asking me for some mysterious papers and telling me there is nothing she can do. Dr. Mystery and I totally lose our cool (this is exhibited when Dr. M starts banging on the counter and cussing and I start crying). The tears seemed to work and she gave me my boarding pass and then patronizingly pointed me to the cafe "in case I was hungry" and called me honey which really made me mad.

Finally we got on the plane and got back to our apartment around 7:30 on Sunday morning.

I'm glad that they made an emergency landing if the equipment was failing. Honestly, all that trouble was better than being in a plane crash. But I'm mad that they didn't do anything for all the passengers to make up for their problem besides put us up in a shitty hotel and yell at us at the ticketing desk. I'm not really a complainer, but I think I'm going to write a letter about this.

And stay the hell out of Bedford, if you know what's good for you.