Dec. 31, 2005

Ringin' In the New Year

We all rang in 2006 (just like last year) at the casa de Tanya! It was mayhem I tell ya! Plenty of booze, and fancy tiaras, and bubbles, and horn blowin'. Lots of singing. But don't take my word for it. These photos should give you the full picture... as it were.

Take a sneek peek here:

Here's my Flickr set of photos of drunken bliss to ring in 2006!

Dec. 30, 2005

2005 Year-End Meme

Five things I did for the first time this year:
1. Spent Easter with a bunch of drag queens in the park!
2. Got my white belt in Tae Kwon Do.
3. Published a feature article in Star Wars Insider about street art.
4. Helped launch a major motion picture about Jedi, droids, Sith and stuff.
5. Gave a lot of money to Red Cross and ASPCA.

Five Surprises in '05:
1. Be smitten with someone new, then discovering he wasn't worth my time.
2. How much work marketing Revenge of the Sith would entail.
3. Being called a punk rock sellout by a bitchy fan mag.
4. How many new friends I've made online and off.
5. How much I got done on starwars.com including the Kids section and the new band interviews on Star Wars Rocks.

Five Things That Made Me Laugh in '05:
1. Chronic of Narnia rap!
2. Standing in line drunk at the Harry Potter midnight book line.
3. Amy Sedaris giving me dating advice in The Believer.
4. Seeing the Star Wars Holiday TV Special with my coworkers.
5. Being chased around the office by a coworker wearing a Wampa costume.

Five things that riled me up in '05:
1. Politicians trying to outlaw pitbulls from San Fran.
2. My VW Beetle constantly attempting suicide.
3. The mistreatment of Katrina victims.
4. Dubya and his dumbass mistakes that cost lives.
5. Sophie getting mysteriously sick. (She's fine now though -- whew!)

Best household additions in '05:
1. Gladis
2. Various taxidermied insects from Paxton Gate.
3. More carnivorus plants from Paxton Gate.
4. Oil painting portrait of Sophie by my pal Shardcore.
5. This beautiful print by Stella.

Five things I'm looking forward to in '06:
1. Publishing another book, and finish writing my novel.
2. Getting more magazine freelance work.
3. Going to more art shows.
4. Getting back into shape.
5. Making more friends.

Five things within my grasp right now that delight me:
1. Sophie snoring at my side.
2. Iced tea with freshly crushed ice and lemon!
3. Old worn-out jeans.
4. Comfy blanket fresh out of the dryer smelling of Downy.
5. My Powerbook laptop.

Five things I should be doing right now instead of writing this list:
1. Writing up the book proposals.
2. Catching up on current events.
3. Reading one of the many books I brought with me.
4. Making dinner.
5. Updating Grrl.com.

Dec. 24, 2005

What I Did on Xmas Eve...

This year I decided to stay put in San Francisco, and not brave the airports to head back to the Midwest to see my family. Last year was a bit of an emotional rollercoaster and I wanted to avoid that this year.

So I happily agreed to stay with Sophie the Dog over the holidays. We walk, we nap and we listen to old time radio mysteries on my laptop. So far we both adore "Candy Matson, Yukon28209", which takes place in San Francisco. I wish people still spoke like that. I hate modern dialog. I miss the class of the past.

I may open the box of goodies my dad sent me for the holidays tonight. But so far I'm content to listen to an old Sherlock Holmes mystery as I catch up on my writing and blog reading.

Grrl.com is updated, and I imagine I'll be working on it a bit more over the break. I have some artist interviews I want to post. Not to mention figuring out where I'll be permanently placing my "Ask Bonnie" video podcast show. (You all asked for it, you're all going to get them!)

I plan on working on a few book proposals, reading the rest of Harry Potter, reading some non-fiction books about criminal profiling (comes in handy when dating) and of course playing with the pup non-stop. I'll be TV-free for over 2 weeks, and I might actually get a lot done. (Fingers crossed.)

My writer pal Lisa and I have made a pact to check up on each other to get more freelance writing/pitching done. So I need to make good on my promise. I already have a couple of article ideas for BUST magazine, and I want to seriously woo both ReadyMade and The Believer, as well as ELLEgirl so I can get some better writing assignments. As vain as this sounds, bylines make me feel like a real writer instead of the hack I constantly think I am.

Back back to Xmas Eve...
As I sit in the living room typing away to the sounds of a radio mystery and my pup snoring away at my side, I have to admit I'm not feeling the usual holiday blues. I'm not chasing after a boy who doesn't want me -- or more importantly I'm not in love with some cad. My wounds from General Jackass are almost fully healed, and I'm still scratching my head over why I bothered with him in the first place. I have friends that I'm looking forward to hanging with. And to tell ya the truth, I'm having a swell time all by myself with the dog on Xmas Eve.

So Happy Holidays to you all...
I hope 2006 turns out to be creative, productive, interesting and not without a bit of fun for all of you reaidng this.

Cheers!

Dec. 19, 2005

Chronic of Narnia Rap!

Prepare to laugh you ass off. Finally, something on SNL is funny. You'll giggle aloud at Andy Samburg and Chris Parnell rapping about Narnia, lame movie trivia screens, tasty Magnolia cupcakes, GoogleMaps, Mr. Pibb, and Patrick Swayze.

Watch it here: SNL - The Chronic of Narnia Rap -- "Lazy Sunday"

Oh and buy the Mr. Pibb + Red Vines = Crazy Delicious - T-Shirt here!

You can read more about the comedic geniuses behind this ditty here: Live, from New York!

Also be sure to watch the entire pilot episode of the fellas' skit show "Awesometown" here. (Hilarious intro by Jack Black playing George Washington.)

Dec. 16, 2005

Droidel, Droidel, Droidel!

In this Star Wars variation, the dreidel and the droid R2-D2 combine to make Droidel! Print out the PDF and follow the instructions to construct your very own paper Droidel, then play!

Droidel, Droidel, Droidel!

Gaming tip: Let the Wookiee win.

(Special shoutout goes to artist goddess Cat Staggs -- who illustrated the piece so it would actually look like R2!)

And for those of you who want to dress up your action figures in little Santa hats, I made a tutorial on that as well here:

Deck Your Toys With Holiday Headwear

Dec. 15, 2005

Going Postal: Call For Mail Art Exhibit

I'm a huge addict for mail art. Heck, I even recently did a kids project on mail art for starwars.com here.

So when I saw this I jumped:
Open Call for Submissions for The Envelope Collective

Send us anything you want. Tell us a story. Tell us a secret. Don't tell us anything. Draw a picture, paint a letter. Send us a blank piece of paper. What is your dream? What is your fear? Send a postcard. What is your most favorite thing in the entire world? Who was your first crush? Who do you love? Don't be constrained by the proportions of an envelope. Send a box. Send a box with something in it. Decorate this box, make it into a piece of art.

We only ask that you send us your name and email address (this is optional, but it would be really super) so that we can give you credit for your work on the site. Oh, and no anthrax. The Collective does not endorse terrorism, especially when it's directed at us.

Dec. 12, 2005

Viva Voce Chats about Star Wars

Next up in my ongoing series on starwars.com of interviews with bands and celebs who dig Star Wars, Viva Voce's drummer/singer Kevin Robinson talks about mastering the Chewie growl for Halloween, he gives his review of Revenge of the Sith and chats about why the themes of original trilogy struck such a nerve with world.

Sample quote from the interview about when he first saw A New Hope as a kid:
"We didn't sleep for days and I can remember my brother and I making lightsabers out of tree branches as soon as we got home," Robinson says. "It was less than a week until my mom got a call that we were using the 'Force' on the neighbor's cat."

Check out the full interview here:
Viva Voce Mind Tricks

Dec. 6, 2005

Meat Beat Manifesto at G.A.M.E.

This weekend I attended G.A.M.E. -- Games and Music Experience convention at the Moscone Center, here in San Francisco. I went initially to hang out with my coworkers who were there to show off LucasArts games like Galaxies and Empire At War... but what I stayed for was a rare opportunity to see one of my favorite bands of all time play on the music stage.

Industrial/Techno legends Meat Beat Manifesto showed up in full force playing oldies like "Helter Skelter" and "Mindstream", as well as some new tunes. As usually, they spliced audio and video footage on their army of Macs at the live show and got the diverse crowd of gamers and older raver/goth kids jumping up and down. They added in recent footage of everything from Bush speeches (spliced with scenes from Deliverance) to Janet Jackson's nipple exposure. They truly are geniuses at mixed media performances, and in some sense the Godfathers of Video and Audio Mash-Ups.

Check out my Flickr photo set of the show here:
Meat Beat Manifesto at G.A.M.E.

Dec. 4, 2005

ctrl-alt-delete

I have an annoying habit of writing, deleting, and rewriting certain entries in this online diary of mine. I suppose I keep thinking that I can reshape the past or control my future simply by the power of editing. But that, of course, is never the case. What happens in life happens. We try to make the right choices, not just the easy ones. We attempt to not allow our hearts to rule any more than our brain dominates our destiny. But I keep forgetting one essential matter -- we're human, all of us. Mistakes are part of the deal. And some things are simply not meant to be -- no matter how many good intentions make their way to the dinner table. I get that now. Took awhile. Hell, it took a really long while. But I think I figured out one of the puzzle pieces I kept smashing into the wrong place. It's not me. It's not him. It just is.

Love is a funny thing. But this time around I don't think it was part of the equation. More than anything I think my ego was bruised...badly. But luckily my heart is still intact. I didn't fully give it to begin with. I don't do that anymore without a hell of a lot more thought. And for that, I can't be too harsh...on myself for trying to get back into dating. I could have been a lot more foolish by talking myself into loving someone whose broken pieces can never be pasted back together to make a full man. But this time around I stopped myself. Which is good. I put my toe in the water, the jumped in the icy cold water and got right back out again before I froze to death. Just to see...if I could do it without drowning. And I did. I caught a cold, but nothing that requires a hospital visit.

Yeah, yeah I know. Enough with the metaphors already. At any rate, I was tempted to delete all these previous entries -- to tell you the truth, the entry for Dec. 1 was written at the tailend of Nov., but I deleted it, added it again, deleted once again, and there it is at the beginning of this month rewritten yet another time to protect the not-so-innocent. I wanted to delete it again, but I figured it was a waste of time to keep hitting the delete key in hopes of erasing a memory as well. What's done is done. No amount of editing can reverse a moment.

But I did want to say that I'm not giving up on the idea of love, romance and all those things that keep making us do those careless things that cause our friends to shake their heads in disbelief. Some of the worst moments happen because we love perhaps those who don't deserve it. But then again, it's love that makes us remember better times and endure all that's about to smack us upside the head. I imagine that this won't be the last time I get sideblinded by a boy who has other things on his mind than love, but I'd like to think that as long as I don't completely give up on the male population, one of them will have the courage and the craziness to see me and fall head over heels. And if the cards are right for once, I might just feel the same way back.

Dec. 2, 2005

There's always a moment...

There's a moment, there's always a moment,
"I can do this, I can give into this, or I can resist it,"
and I don't know when your moment was, but I bet there was one.
- Alice, Closer

Dec. 1, 2005

Nevermind

Okay. You all win. I give up. No more dating for me.

Why? Because for whatever weird genetics I have running through my veins, it seems that I cannot seem to land myself a normal, happy relationship. Not a one. For those of you just tuning in, here's the play by play action. I have a cycle of dating that's so predictable there should be a betting board in Vegas called "Bonnie's Relationship Lifespan." There's only two types of guys I end up with. There's the rare normal guy I go out with who finds me interesting and fun enough to date for a few months -- or perhaps even a year, and then he runs away when he realizes that it's not an act. Or I do something dumb to screw it up like move in with him, make pals with his mom, or *gasp* become "Stepford Girlfriend."

The other type of guy is the one I usually end up with -- the wishy-washy boy who has no idea what he wants or who he is, but he has no problem dragging me along for the ride until I don't know what I want or who I am either. The worst part is that I keep thinking if I do the right things, or be the coolest, most understanding girlfriend, then one magical day he'll look at me as someone he couldn't live without. But as we all as know, that never happens. Usually I'm the perpetual rebound girl. That girl you date to get over your last horrific relationship to build yourself back up again until someone better comes along -- and she's never that far away.

After the last normal guy I dated upgraded to a cuter, less complicated girl, I was crushed. I suppose I thought that he was the one I'd end up with, grow old with, take a seniors cruise with. Blah Blah Blah. But life has a funny way of paving a different path for you whether you want to walk down it or not.

Sure it would be nice to have someone be thrilled that I have a mind of my own; that my quirks set me apart from the rest of the XX pack in a good way, and that I have something more to me than just being raw girlfriend material that can be molded or manipulated into what they want. Meh.

A few months ago I tried to date someone new. I was in a self-induced dating coma for three years in order to break a predictible cycle, only to fall for another boy who seemed by all accounts to be into me, until he had the opportunity to treat me more than just a post-breakup fling. Then I got the usual excuses like "I don't think I'm capable of having a serious relationship at this time" and "I don't know what I want right now" and so on. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. And it appears that while he was with me he may have been with another girl I didn't know about until recently. Had I known I wasn't any more special to him than then the girl at the next port, I wouldn't have bothered at all.

His excuse for not being able to commit to just one person at a time was that his therapist told him he shouldn't be dating right now because he recently got out of a bad breakup. Whatever. The lamest excuse I ever got was from an ex who said: "I don't think it'll be possible for me to keep you as girlfriend and record my next album at the same time." That one was a doozy. I mean, how hard is it to go to dinner with me and record a bunch of emo songs about how your car broke down just like your heart, and no one understands your pain and suffering and *INSERT CLICHE HERE* It always amazes me how some musicians can spill their guts out in their music, but when you ask a simple question like "Were you ever serious about me?" all you get is static on the phone. *sigh*

Cripes, even my muse Amy Sedaris couldn't help me. I asked her for some advice a few issues back in column "Sedaratives" in The Believer magazine where I revealed that I mostly date musicians and even a hippie once and all she could tell me was:

Dear Bonnie,
Sounds to me like you're leaving a big chunk of the puzzle out. I talked to the musician you dated, and the hippie. They both seem to remember you having a lot of emotional problems, as well as Herpes Simplex V. The hippie told me that you rolled him, and the musician caught you making out with his guitar, stroking it and muttering things like, "Hey, no strings attached." I can't blame them for being scared away. Seriously, you're a freak. Write to me when you're ready to be honest.

- Amy

P.S. The hippie and the musician are now dating each other, so it wasn't a total loss.

Sheesh. I mean I don't have any STDs, and I never made out with a guitar, but I wouldn't be so surprised that I scared those boys off because they thought strings were attached. Then again, Amy is dating an imaginary boyfriend named Rickie who lives in Cuba or something. Maybe she has the right idea. I could make up some guy who's tall, dark and quirky. He could bring me paper-flaked magical KFC mashed potatoes when I'm sick. He'd never say I looked trashy in one of my vintage bowling shirts. And he wouldn't cringe when he spotted my mounted jackalope on my bedroom wall. He'd think it was cool I still read comics and collected tacky snowglobes from places I've never visited. And he'd find my addiction to crap TV amusing, not sad and pathetic. He'd make me waffles and read aloud funny stories from Fark.com as we both giggle under the covers on a rainy Sunday morning. Yup. Mr. Invisibility may be the ticket.

But in truth I think I'm done...at least with real guys. I'm tired of chasing boys who don't want me in their lives for more than a few months. I'm 33 and this dating thing isn't getting any easier. Yeah, yeah I know -- it's not easy for anyone, plenty of fish in the sea...Yada, yada, yada. But ya know what, I'm gettin' too old for this crap. I thought guys in their 30s would have figured out what they want and who they are by now. I figured that I might just be attracted to someone other than the Boy Who Needs a Fixer, or the Boy Who Always Needs to Be Adored by the Masses, or the Boy Who's Still Hung Up on His Psycho Ex, or the Boy Who's Scared to Make Any Commitment. But I'm not.

The ironic thing is once I'm dumped by said fella, he tends to snap out of whatever weirdness he had going on with me, and marries the next girl he dates. No joke. (Amy wasn't too far off base with her musician dating the hippie comment). It's happened every single time -- aside from a few lads who may never commit to anything or anyone for too long. But as much as I believe in helping out the sistas, or bruthas in some cases, I don't think I'll keep dating just to play matchmaker for my exes.

So I'm taking myself out of the game. Good luck ladies, this girl has had enough.