CREEM LETTER TO THE EDITOR #1

CREEM is the only magazine to ever print letters to the editor worth reading. They were hilarious and came in two categories. Irate letters from people who didn't get the magazine (more on this in a future post) and loopy letters from crazy people. I had two published.

The first one was published in the February '87 issue with David Byrne on the cover.

Mantle of Shame Descendeth Again!

What's the problem? One issue he is worthy of your most generous accolades, the next month, Alpo. I'm talking about a veritable icon of metal music and rock hero of our time, David Lee Roth. OK, so Christgau gave him a B+. Altman's impertinent commentary on the "Yankee Rose" video--wardrobe stolen from Stryper? Please! Gene Simmons might note the influence, but I say it's just coincidence. C'mon Billy, the guy has 400 pairs of tights. Quit nit-picking.

And what is Rick Johnson's problem? I'm all for employing the brain-damaged, but let them do something harmless--like host Wheel of Fortune. And the lousiest album he's heard in years? And he backs up this grandiose allegation by grumbling about lawn chairs and commemorative spoons. Just who pays this guy anyway? The album is great and the musicians are the best and Rick-John sucks! And not to change the subject, but what happened to Def Leppard? I don't want to be unsympathetic, but I think they've gotten enough mileage out of the ol' Rick Allen's arm excuse. They should call their next album Who? or, better yet, Who Cares? I'm sick of waiting for this mythical album. Entire civilizations have been known to rise, fall and disintegrate into dozens of solo projects in the time it's taken those bozos with their crummy record.
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I wrote "veritable rock icon" -- can you believe it? I loathe the word "vertiable" - it stinks of "too lazy to find a good word."

They supplied the title. The letter is in response to Roth's Eat 'Em and Smile that I did buy but never listened to a whole lot. It wasn't such a great album. I was going to include a link to his official website but it's lame so don't bother. You can see I'm not so loyal to Dave anymore. But I was fanatical on everything Van Halen and DLR back in the day.

A lot of this letter is in-jokes that only a person who read and re-read the magazine (or edited it) would get. I'd explain them to you but I can't remember.

The Def Leppard thing has to do with the endless wait after Pyromania, which came out in 1983 and I kid you not, I probably heard that record 2000 times. I listened to it once a day for over a year. Hysteria came out in August of 1987 and promted another letter to CREEM which I will find and post later but now I'm hideously late and must get my overfed Thanksgiving ass on the move.

I jumped on the computer about an hour ago to write you all a nice story about my Thanksgiving but first I decided to take care of a gift I needed to order and the farking corksmucker paypal order system wouldn't work and kept telling me to try entering my information again. After the 4th time I felt like braining myself. I still feel like braining myself. Do computers really make our lives easier? By the way, I still haven't straightened out my automatic billpay with verizon -- another feature intended to make my life easier and it works if easier means spending 45 minutes on the computer trying to pay my bill, then calling to tell them I'm having a problem only to learn that if I have online billing, they can't help me on the phone so I log back in and the computer tells me if I'm having problem with my online billing to please call. You can see why I'm a little agitated.

Enough about that.

Thanksgiving turned out excellent. We had the family here and had numerous fantastic meals, including the traditional Turkey Day chow. We did some Black Friday shopping -- something I haven't done in 100 years and it wasn't as hideous as I'd imagined although we were already on our way back home by Noon. We had dinner and jazz at Salty's, we went to the Portland Art Museum and we saw Sideways. Excellent time.

CREEM MAGAZINE Part 1

I loved CREEM and subscribed up until the bitter end which I think was late '80. To give you an idea: I STILL have my back issues and I don't save things. The end was long and drawn out and bitter. A late issue here. A skipped issue there. An extended hiatus only to reappear, swearing stability and coaxing another check out of me for another year, (sucka!) before finally disappearing seemingly for good. Later I remember it being remade into something resembling Interview and a neon fuzzed-up photo of Billy Idol on the cover. I ran screaming from the newsstand but still felt the burning sense of rip off as the magazine owed me numerous issues.

I don't understand why the whole world didn't love this magazine. It was endlessly scathing and hilarious. They published two of my letters to the editor and between this fine publishing coup and the reviews (described below) I thought I was well on my way to fulfilling my dreams as a rock n'roll writer. I could have been Almost Famous.

I subscribed to CREEM Metal (remember this was the '80's, Poison was on top) which no doubt would have been Alterna-Creem in the 90's and CREEM Word Up today. Metal must have been a last ditch attempt to get a cash infusion because they folded shortly thereafter. Folded owing me many, many magazines which I mention again, even though of course I'm totally over it.

There were other signs that they were cutting corners. They started something called the Reader Review. They encouraged readers to send in reviews for possible publication and $25. They published 2 of mine which apparently I don't have in electronic format so I'll have to show them to you later. It goes without saying that they still owe me $50. I say cutting corners, they might have argued that this was the ultimate in reader interactivity -- but I don't think so.

More later. The family is here for Thanksgiving and we're off to do some museum-y type things.

Bob was due home late tonight so we made our own dinners. I thought I'd kick back with some leftovers and cheap wine and watch the Desperate Housewives I taped last night. Then I remembered that I promised myself I would get in gear for our lodging needs for the big Germany trip coming up.

O.MI.GOD.

You think filling out online forms is tough? Try it in German. I had my massive German Dictionary in my lap laboriously translating word by word until I remembered there are websites that translate paragraphs. Hallelujah! Except it comes out sounding like crazy people. I had one reservation service. The other ones I had to wing on my own. One hotel had a form but apparently I wasn't doing it right because I kept getting a page that I understood just enough of to get that I was doing it wrong. What knummer did they want? I used the info email with my crazy people translation from babelfish. We'll see how I do.

I considered clarifying that we're from a blue state but not sure how much they care. An Euro is an Euro.

Rocker

When I was in college I was a huge heavy metal freak. I use "heavy metal" here to refer to just about anything hard rock. Def Leppard is the band I was insane about. This was before I had ever been to the Strip or any of the Hollywood rock clubs. I guess I was in training and there was no less heavy metal place on the planet than UCSB.

I used to go to this record store in Goleta on Hollister and buy all kinds of crazy records I had read about. One time the guy at the store asked me if I was friends with the band ("Savage Thrust") and friends was a stretch but I did exchange a snail mail with someone in the band named Eddie who responded to my fan letter with a postcard of a butcher surounded by floating steaks and holding a huge string of sausages. It said "You Just Can't Beat My Meat." He signed it, "Kill the wusses."

I read CREEM and CREEM Metal and [holy crap! I just did an online search to see if there was anything about the magazine and guess what? They're back. Wow, here's a link to the best Replacements Interview ever.] This development has me totally off topic on this post. I'll save the CREEM stuff for another time.

Back to the heavy metal fixation. I used every excuse for dressing up to dress like a rocker chick. At UCSB. I hope you can grasp just how bizarre this was. When I was president of the sorority (you know, the heavy metal sorority - ha ha!) I made up a theme dinner -- instead of "everybody wear white" or "toga" I had a "ten year reunion" dinner and you were supposed to dress as what you thought you'd be in ten years. I dressed as a rocker chick. MJ and Rowland dressed up as dead people.

I know. I have about a million updates for you. I have photos, too. I just don't feel like sitting here for more than 10 minutes at the moment.

I had my big night out last night. We went to see Particle. I stayed up until 12:30am. I didn't get drunk or stay until the end, because I'm not that zany, but still, WAY past my bedtime and I stood at the front and shook my bootie with all the youngster hippies and loaded people and a wannabe Timberlake. It rocked.

I got to bed after 1am and then we were up and out the door before 9am to do our Thanksgiving food shopping. We went to Freddies, Costco AND Albertsons. (It wasn't the plan to go three places, it just worked out that way.) Then we went to a greasy spoon and got breakfast and I drank real coffee. I've come completely unhinged.

In the midst of all this I've done about 5 loads of laundry and yardwork and food preparation and cleanup and, um, watched 4 episodes of Buffy.

Oh, I'm also watching season 2 of 24 and Jack Bauer's daughter is a big fat idiot. Because, you know, if I was lost in the wilds and some strange forest dwelling man offered to let me stay in his cabin, I would surely emerge after my shower in a skimpy, tight white tank top with the world's sheerest excuse for a bra.

Cat Poop Update
They're just mocking me now. I think a few ringleaders have spread the word and now animals from all over are drawn to our yard. And to add insult to injury, I found a big pile of cat puke in the driveway.

Man, I didn't get to a lot of odds and ends I needed to get done today. I did get to the candle party.

My email comes to two main accounts and I have spam filters on both of them. One of the spam filters changes the subject line so that I can filter the messages directly to the trash. The other spam filter, at the address that gets more spam, changes the body of the message but that doesn't help me filter it when I get my mail. I figured out I could filter the spam using this other method that I don't completely understand and won't even try to explain but I have to go log into this webpage to see it. I haven't checked it for about 2 weeks and this morning I logged in and there were 82 spams. It took forever to figure out how to delete them, too. I wasn't about to do it message by message.

I know, a thrilling entry.

Maybe you'd be more interested to hear that the bean store has expanded into a bigger store that also serves food. We got up early Saturday, drove across town, and had breakfast before we stocked up on beans and grains. Bob got an omelette with pancakes *and* biscuits. It's a good place.

My mouse is possessed. It opens things that I don't want to open when I click once and it makes me click a whole bunch of times to bring things to the front or to open things I want to open. I'm not sure what this means but I'm going to drop kick it into the catbox if I can't get it to work properly.

Speaking of the catbox, the war is on with the cats. Yesterday I scooped another 5 pounds of cat shit out of the front -- where I'd sprinkled the pepper flakes. So I figured I was too timid and applied a super-duper layer of pepper flakes and this morning the whole area is scratched up again and filled up with cat shit. Not like one corner -- like the whole area. What is up with these stupid cats? My next humane approach is I'm going to turn it into mud. The spot is under the eaves and the only dry dirt around. Other ideas include ordering some of those prong things that you put in the dirt that they don't like stepping on. I bet these cats would just move them out of the way.

On Thursday Bob and I both had the day off and I said we should make sure to take time out to do something fun and not just get involved with our usual projects. We slept in and read our books and then we went to lunch and took Bob's car in for an oil change while we went to the Grocery Outlet (Bob calls it "weird foods"). I documented this all with my camera but I don't feel like frickin with Photoshop with my mouse on the fritz.

We went to Frenchman's Bar trail and walked to Vancouver Lake. The weather was perfect and the scenery gorgeous. The cows were getting fed and some of them were galloping from one field to where the feeding was going on. I've never seen a cow gallop before. Also a ton of birds, I think mostly Canadian geese, were hanging around one field making bird racket. We saw some people picking some sort of small red fruit in the park -- crab apples?

We did our grocery shopping and then I invented a great dinner. There was a recipe in the paper I wanted to try but I didn't have half the stuff and I had other stuff in the fridge I wanted to use. I sliced a half tube of polenta into 9x11 dish and spread it with ricotta cheese. Meanwhile, I sauteed an onion and garlic with a can of tomatoes and scraped that on top of the ricotta, added the rest of the polenta loaf and then covered it with fresh mozzarella and then a sprinkle of Parmesan and baked until bubbly. It came out excellent. The only similarities between this and the recipe from the paper are the 9x11 dish, the mozzarella, onion and tomatoes. Bob said it was one of the best dinners I ever made.

Fall Colors with Photoshop

I had a link to additional fall colors but I took those photos down. I'm not going to archive every photo. I can't think of a reason why I should.

Here is a really great map that shows election results by county -- shaded proportionally. Very interesting. Not all blue and red - a lot of blending going on.

Meanwhile, I picked up some documents across the river yesterday and decided to walk back since it was such a great day and damn! I didn't have my camera. At one of the lightrail stops there are a bunch of trees with bright orangey-pink leaves next to a bunch of trees with bright yellow leaves - beautiful contrast. Later, as I walked down the stairs by the eastbank esplanade downtown sparkled under the sun with a light haze. A kayaker in a beautiful wooden kayak passed underneath the esplanade headed into the main part of the river. Missed opportunities.

Last week I was reading some cultural stuff about the Karuk tribe and I commented to Bob how interesting it is that the culture was primitive but very complex. He said, "Yeah, didn't they take the acorn about as far as it could go?"

I fixed the stuff on Billy's page today. I had gotten duplicate photos in there somehow and it took forever to figure out the correct dates where I screwed up. I asked him if he could possibly wear red pants or shave his head on photo days to help make a more dramatic difference. You have to spot the changing foilage out his window or his moving furniture to note the changes. Bob saw what I was doing and said he had no idea I had such "conceptual" projects going on.

Other things I did today:

I got up early and went to Fred Meyer and bought a few more bags of bark dust. I have put tons of bark dust on my major backyard plant bed in the hopes of making my life easier come spring. For some reason the grass loves to grow in the plant beds but only weeds grow in the actual lawn area. Also some sort of "fairie" (Bob's word) weeds have taken over most of the rest of the backyard. I don't know. If I spent another half day per week on the yard I bet I could make it look a lot better ... there just seem to always be more interesting things to do.

In addition to yardwork I cleaned about 20 lbs of cat shit out of the front yard. Since the two cute cats across the street moved in the shit has multiplied dramatically. I sprinkled the area with a generous layer of pepper flakes which actually works although you have to re-apply often. Too bad cute little kitties. Shit elsewhere!

I also did a D- (D minus) job of cleaning out the shop. I broke down some boxes for recycling and re-stacked various boxes of crap so that we have lots of space for more junk. (Bring it on, Priscilla!) And I swept.

Then I watched the very last special feature on my last Angel disk (the best show ever!) which was the director's commentary on the season 4 finale. It was completely awesome. Good thing I only have one more season to re-watch and then I can get on with my life b/c my obsession with this show is unhealthy. I think season 5 will be out in February. You can bet I'll let you know when that happens.

This afternoon I went to the Clark College library and finished some research I'm working on and read a bunch of stuff. Now I'm roasting an "Amber Cup" squash and reheating leftover pizza for dinner. Yum.

Cold
There are only two seasons up here: hot and cold. The in-between parts are hardly worth mentioning except that they are generally less cold. Now that it's cold again there's a whole bunch of stuff I need to keep handy: umbrella, coat, lip stuff is critical. As soon as the air cooled my lips started chapping. I just bought a whole bunch of new lip supplies and Agatha Ruiz De La Prada is godhead. Also tissues, especially in the purse or on walks. I don't like a runny nose with no tissues. I also always have a hat on outside. Head warmth means more to me than how my hair looks. Finally, hand salve. My hands get so dry and my skin so rough -- I have some primo salve that Mom got me in Orleans and I slather that on before bed, put on some cotton gloves and voila! Soft hands in the morning. I take the gloves off in my sleep. In the morning I find them on the floor or under the pillow or kicked to the bottom of the bed. My sleeping self doesn't like them.

Wine Pairing
I thought I once wrote a post about pairing wine with cookie dough. You know when you're depressed and feeling sorry for yourself, you curl up in front of the TV with a bucket of cookie dough and a bottle of wine? I had suggested chocolate chip and Chardonney or snickerdoodles with a nice Merlot ... or something like that. I just tried the search thing that was added to my blog and it came up with nothing. I don't think it works.

The reason I bring this up is because there was a hilarious article by Frank Bruni, the NY Times restaurant critic, about going to Alaska and being game to try the local cuisine. It was published Nov 3, 04 and titled Chewing the Fat While Its Still Fresh. I'd give you a link but the NYT is notoriously stingy with its articles. I think you can get it free the first week if you register for their site, otherwise they'll probably ask you for $3 (as if). If you have a library card your library might have access.

While preparing for his Alaska feast Bruni realizes "the difficulty of matching wine to whale." He and his friend go to the local general store and ask "What goes best with sea mammal?" The cashier shrugs and suggests white wine. Then they ask about bear and he says: beer!

The highlight of the article is Bruni's heroic sampling of blubber: "I did as told: grabbed the hide and bit into the blubber. It tasted like a wedge of solid rubber that had spent several months marinating in rancid fish oil." His host takes away his wine and says, "You'll be needing Jack Daniels."

I paid $6.50 so I could see the trailer for Revenge of the Sith. It was TOTALLY WORTH IT.

While I was at the theater, I watched the movie: The Incredibles. It's very good. I liked it way more than I expected to. It's hilarious. Sorry I can't write a better review at the moment but I don't want to sit here any more.

Tonight I got home late and as I was pulling the garbage can into the garage, I vaguely heard a pitiful mewl but I didn't pay too much attention to it until the garage door was closing and I could still hear it. I realized I should make sure that some poor kitty wasn't hurt or something so I turned on the porchlight and opened the front door and sure enough a cute little grey kitty ran up on the porch and began frantically brushing against me and reached for my front door. It had no collar and it's chilly and windy outside. What to do?

I knew my husband would flay me alive if he found a cat in the house so I told the kitty to go home (hopefully) and barely kept it out as I closed the door. If you're thinking me heartless, believe me: I felt HORRIBLE. About 15 minutes later I looked out the window and it was still sitting on the porch and it saw me and started meowing again. aiee. I don't want a pet and we have no pet supplies here and even if I brought it in the house temporarily ... where is it going to do its thing and how bad will my house smell?

Half hour later I check the porch again and the cat is still there! It spots me and meows again. This is terrible. I'm now majorly anxious about my cruelty to poor little friendly cats and imagining finding its poor frozen body in the gutter tomorrow and crying over it.

Finally, Bob came home and I ran out to see if the kitty was there and what do you know? It comes over from across the street. I start telling Bob about it with moist eyes and he reminds me that our new across the street neighbors warned us about this cat and how it would have no problem trying to sneak into a perfect strangers house. I avoided looking at the cat as I went back in the house, but he is right.

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In other news, I have finally (now, at 11pm) gone though my voters pamphlet and made my best decisions, then did online research on the issues I wasn't sure about then read the endorsements in the Seattle Times, the Columbian and I tried the Olympian but WTF -- I couldn't figure out where it was so I read the endorsements in the Seattle Weekly. I am now ready for tomorrow. Wish them all (meaning the people I want to win) luck.