New Poll: In honor of our shopping excursion Saturday, a new poll topic is up. Please give me your opinion on the world of IKEA.
 
Results from the old poll: Out of 23 respondents, almost half of you (eleven, to be exact) bow down to the god that is hummus. As a fellow addict, I’m right there with you. A further five of you admit that you like hummus but, as Snookums put it, don’t feel the need to “eat it til it comes out your ears.” That’s cool. Four of you haven’t tried it, which is a real shame. (I know at least one of these people is my own mother, who would love the stuff if she gave it a chance.) Two of you seem to have some sort of tastebud-impairment, because you claim to dislike our favorite dip. I urge you to seek medical help right away. And lastly, one person admits that she doesn’t eat things with “tahini” in them. I’ll bet you $20 this was my sister. I totally set that up for her.

Salon has vindicated everything I predicted about the American reception of “The Weakest Link.” Could I be any more suited for a career in film/television criticism??

R.E.M. News: Wow. So Peter got busted for “air rage” and Michael’s at war with his neighbors. Way to go guys. You better be ready to play this weekend. (Please, God, let me get tickets!)

Have I mentioned lately that I suck at Fantasy Baseball? Apparently picking all your players by how cute they are and whether or not you like them isn’t a very good strategy. (Case in point: I waived Roger Clemens out of personal antipathy, and the person who picked him up has been doing really well.) I’m in fourth place. Out of four.

Artists are funny people. I was just chatting to my sister, who’s readying some sort of exhibit for an art show next week. It involves pigs and neon… and some sort of pitchfork. Here’s an excerpt from the conversation so you can see for yourself:

Amy: hmm. man, i forgot to tell you…my pig mold is destroyed. i can’t make anymore. (i tried to use polyester resin as a medium, and it was old and never hardened. it’s like, impossible to clean out.)
Me: too bad. so you didn’t even get one pig?
Amy: no, i got 2 and a portion of one out of wax. (it broke.) our stuff for the show is due next week, and i already ordered my neon sign. i’m screwed. 🙁
Me: why screwed?
Amy: i wanted 3 to sit below the sign, then another to go on top of this pitchfork i welded. i don’t have any time to re-sculpt the pig and make a new mold.
Me: hmmm… “pitchfork i welded”
Amy: yeah, if i really apply myself, i’m thinking i might have time to sculpt a PIG’S ASS and get a mold made this weekend. then i can pour a few wax ones in time for the show. they can go next to the pigs’ heads. 🙂
Me: what’s, like, the message of this piece?
Amy: i hate school. i hate st. francis. what better way to show it than pigs and asses and a neon sign that says “eat me” ?
Me: hahahaha
Amy: i’m hoping somebody asks me that same question at the show.

Last night I went to see “Rent” for the seventh time. Yes, the seventh time. I’m psychotic, I know. But lemme see if I can explain it. When I first got the soundtrack in ’96, it was solely because my roommate Liz and I had seen Adam Pascal performing on Rosie O’Donnell. He was brutally hot. We were smitten. Lizzie would come home from class and put “Glory” on repeat (to the point where she almost killed the song for me). By Spring Break ’97, all of our friends knew it by heart. We saw it that March in Boston from the nosebleed section of the balcony. Eight months later we saw it in Chicago from the front of the balcony. The absolute pinnacle, though, was seeing it in London on the very first day of previews in April ’98. We sat in the very first row and got to see four of the original Broadway performers (including Adam Pascal… *swoon*). It was so fantastic we went back to see it again a few days later. By that point I had seen it four times, and I didn’t think any production could possibly top that first night in London. A few months later, though, I found myself in New York and a friend won front row tickets in the standby drawing. Off I went again to see the show in the original theater. It was good, but by this point my interest was definitely on a decline. I didn’t give it a second thought, in fact, until I arrived back in London in October ’99 and discovered that the production was about to close. I snagged one of the few remaining seats for the last day and watched as the cast laughed and cried and said goodbye. It was amazing. You see, “Rent” isn’t about the production for me anymore. It’s about remembering my best friends and how it became something that we owned. So when I heard that a UK tour was starting up, I couldn’t resist. I dragged along my college friend Kel for an evening of nostalgia. We had the best time, clapping and laughing and mooing and screaming. The production itself was reasonably good, but it was more the invoking of the “Rent” ritual and all our memories that we enjoyed. Oh, and Adam Rickitt was pretty cute too. *grin*

I dreamt that it was night and I was down by the floating open-air harbor market in Hammersmith. (Note: in reality Hammersmith contains no such thing). I was pushing a shopping cart that contained a few items and a bunch of bananas when I was stopped by two men who demanded that I hand over my wallet. I opened it to show that it contained only Australian money – which was useless to them – but they wanted it anyway. Suddenly Mike Piazza appeared out of nowhere and whacked them both with a baseball bat, thus rescuing me and my bananas. Seriously.

Could this dream have something to do with my anxiety over securing Piazza for my Yahoo! Fantasy Baseball team? Perhaps, perhaps… although Freud would probably have a field day with all the phallic imagery.

Quote of the Day:   “Only one minute to caffeinated happiness, baby!”
– Snookums to me this morning, as I sat at the kitchen table in a still-asleep stupor while he gleefully fiddled with his espresso machine

Friday afternoon I got an Instant Message from one of the old-school A-list Dawson’s Creek posters at MightyBigTV. It turns out that a few DCers are putting together an official PaceyPorn page! As I am, of course, the second Google response for that search term, they found web-goddess and wanted to let me know what’s going on. Sweeeet.