Hoop-Dee-Do and My Son, Morrissey

The above is a picture Warren took of me on First Night, on the South First Street Bridge. My rockin' hoop teacher set up about 800,000 hoops for people to try out. The one I'm using is enormous and really heavy and moves pretty slow. If you use one and then stop and switch to a smaller, lighter hoop, it's sort of like that sensation you get at the roller rink right after you take your skates off after three hours of rolling around. Trippy.

I've been meaning to blog more often. I even wrote myself a note: Blog Everyday. But it's been a curious mix of very busy and very slow over here. Very busy days there's no time to write and very slow days I take the rare not-so-much-going-on moments as an opportunity to attempt relaxation. Warren is much better at relaxing than I am and, despite my holiday-depression-inspired moments of trying to drag him down over the past couple of weeks, he was mostly a chillin' machine. (Now he's back at work after a mandatory two week break and I feel like a little kid, stuck at home, while the big kids get to go off to school.)

Anyway, we had SO much fun at First Night. Walked around for six hours. The burners have taken over-- we saw tons of friends. The burning of the clock tower was awesome and-- when embers started raining down on us-- a bit daunting. Unbeknownst to me (at first) a bunch of embers landed in my knitting bag which began smoldering. All knit projects survived, fortunately. We also, absolutely unbelievably, ran into our friends who I usually stay with in Mexico at this time of year. I was SO bummed not to have made it down to Real de Catorce, so happening upon the folks I most love celebrating New Year's Eve with was most outstanding.

Last night, Henry-- who did go to Mexico and who just got back-- came by to do his laundry. Once again, he proves himself to be an over achiever. I associate coming-home-with-dirty-clothes with being in college. But look at him! Still in high school and already visiting his mom with dirty socks. For the record, he does his own wash because, like Warren, he doesn't trust me to get it right. Me? I'm a throw it all in together and who cares if it comes out pink kind of laundress. But those two are fussy, sorting darks from lights, totally dirty clothes segregationists.

Hen's friends came by, too, and it was sort of like the old days when the house was crawling with kids. Only now a lot of them are about three feet taller than I am. Hen got out a guitar and serenaded us, including writing a blues song on the spot to commemorate what happened last week when Warren opened the door as the mailman was putting mail in the box and the dogs charged him and we all almost had heart attacks and died. I asked Hen to do a Morrissey impression for me, which he kindly obliged-- see the series of photos below. He also turned me on to a song he put together using computer beats and sampling. He's very, very proud of this-- it features audio he captured of me immediately post surgery saying over and over and over, I am so high! I am SOOOOO High! So now it's official-- I can never run for president. Unfortunately, I can't upload audio here, so you'll just have to believe me. I can, however, provide some links. Hen is in several bands and one is called Horses with Horns and features a seven year old lead singer. Here are some links to YouTube performances:

Link One

Link Two

Link Three

Link Four

Once you've recovered from that audio-visual delight, there are still more pictures below for your enjoyment. Pretty much each of these photos prompted me to swear I would post it separately with its own explanation. But I'm not doing that. Basically, you'll see pictures from Christmas, the latkes I made, one of the dogs demanding to wear a party hat, the mushroom curry I made, Warren eating snacks from Israel, and a picture of Warren and his folks. (I got to meet his mom this past weekend-- she's been in Israel for years. Warren's dad made a moquace-- this Brazilian seafood dish- that was out of this world. And I managed to mostly not put my foot in my mouth since all present except me were speaking Hebrew and so, clueless as to topic, I couldn't chime in with a regrettable gaffe.)

A Happy New Year to All,
Spike

I Got Me A Big Sparkly Ring for Christmas!

Read all about it right here.

A Very Special Holiday Mix CD

[Photo by Steve Hopson]

For someone who can't stand the holidays, I sure can't seem to shut up about them, can I? Well, to me, that's part of the problem. You can't ignore it. I know this because I've tried. Yesterday, to distract myself, I came up with a Mix CD with lots of dark, depressing or just plain old loud or weird (or bad or all of the above) versions of Christmas songs. These I tempered by tossing some good, klezmer-y Hanukkah tunes into the mix. The new CD by Berran Aaron Cohen is most awesome (the songs I've heard, anyway). I love that Chaka Khan does Do You See What I See. And I've forever been a fan of Neil "Jewish Elvis" Diamond faux-sincerely belting out tunes in honor of the Baby Jesus. There's a bunch of other cool stuff I found-- all I had to do was google: "depressing christmas music" and much of my work was done for me. I was, I must say, psyched to find out that Conor Oberst has a Christmas CD. Check out his rendition of Blue Christmas here.

And now, the set list for the CD mix known as BAH!

1. Christmas The Who
2. Father Christmas The Kinks
3. Dreidel Erran Baron Cohen
4. Blue Christmas Bright Eyes
5. Please Daddy (Don't Get Drunk This Christmas) The Decemberists
6. Xmas in Jail Asleep at the Wheel
7. Little Drummer Boy Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
8. Driedel, Driedel Meshugga Beach Party
9. Feliz Navidad El Vez
10. Happy Christmas (War Is Over) Neil Diamond
11. Hanukkah Oh Hanukkah Erran Baron Cohen
12. Do You Hear What I Hear Chaka Khan
13. The Chanukah Song Adam Sandler
14. Fairytale of New York Kirsty MacColl & The Pogues
15. Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem Bright Eyes
16. Dreidel Jingle Punx
17. What a Friend We Have In Jesus Tiny Tim
18. Baby, It's Cold Outside Tom Jones
19. Christmas Time for My Penis The Vandals
20. Heat Miser Lushy
21. Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah (Hora) Brave Combo
22. Don't Shoot Me Santa The Killers
23. Chanuka Jingle Punx
24. White Christmas Stiff Little Fingers
25. You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch Thurl Ravenscroft
26. Silent Night Jingle Punx
27. Christmas (Baby Please Come Home) Joey Ramone

Spike "Scrooge" Gillespie Mistaken for Santa's Helper!

Okay, this is too rich. So, thanks to the generosity of too many people to name here, I was able to round up a good bit of support for the family that recently lost their young husband/father. The young widow now has four kids to care for on her own and her mortgage is in arrears and she owes the funeral home a small fortune. But members of the Office of Good Deeds, and my neighbors, and some others kicked in cash and HEB gift cards and gifts and toiletries and... it was all overwhelming in a great way.

Then I got an email from Toy Joy-- I'd asked if they might help a bit despite the nightmarish retail scene right now and the fact that they no doubt get hit up regularly for donations. A manager reviewed my request and they donated an awesome fake tree (much like the one I bought at their Fake Tree Lot only mine is smaller than the donated tree and also mine is black-- of course it is.) They also donated a bunch of toys for the kids. I headed over to TJ and loaded up the car. I'd been driving around for a couple of days, unable to reach my friend who is a direct friend of the family in need so she could get the goods from me and deliver them.

Unsure what to do, I decided I would just have to drive over there and drop the stuff off myself. I had the family's address but not their phone number. Now, I am a complete stranger to these folks. And they are dealing with the aftershock of a very intense trauma. I'm not fond of knocking-without-advance-warning even under good circumstances. So my trip over there, the closer I got, the more I worried. What if they freak out? What if they think I pity them? (I don't pity them-- I just want to help because lots of people helped me so often over the years.) What if, what if, what if?

Then I think, Screw it, just quit worrying and knock. So I knock. Someone asks who's there. I say it's me, friend of their friend. A tiny woman opens the door and I sputter out who I am and why I'm there and that I have a tree and some toys and an envelope with some checks written to the mortgage company and an HEB card. And-- oh thank you thank you-- the woman lights up and thanks me and is receptive to all this.

She sends a young man out to carry the tree in and I follow him with the bag of toys. He gestures me inside, which I'm tentative about. It's not my intent to invade their private space, just drop and run. But I do as I'm told and step inside and there are several little kids and they're just looking at me like Who the heck is that?

Then one of them moves closer and says, Are you Santa's helper?

To which I respond with a laugh-- more like a shocked choking noise disguised as a laugh. Me? Santa's helper? Did y'all not get the memo on Spike's Feelings About Christmas?

Apparently not. My choke-laugh instantly melts into a desire to burst out crying. I'm as hyper sensitive and wired and anxiety prone this time of the year as a long tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, as the saying goes. So I beat a hasty retreat. But not before the mom gives me a hug and one of the little kids shouts out, Bye Elf!!

After that, it was all a blur but I think I might have accidentally let slip a Merry Christmas!

Chappy Chanukah!

Because challenging me to make him a roasted chicken hat wasn't nearly hilarious enough for Warren, he announced a few weeks ago that I just had to knit him a menorah hat for Hanukkah. Being OCD and challenge-challenged (by which I mean it's really impossible for me to refuse a challenge), I set aside my more important knitting projects (like the groovy leg warmers I'm making for me, me, me!) and got down to it.

At first I was just going to knit a hat and then sew on some candles which I planned to knit also, though I wasn't sure how. Then, as the hat was progressing, I had this damn vision pop into my head. When I went to knitting camp in September I learned how to do Fair Isle knitting, which is complicated, tedious, and an all around pain in the tookhes, but it does allow one to knit pictures into one's work. So it occurred to me I could knit a menorah into the hat itself and then top it with candles. I set my mind-- I would write my very own pattern for this. Which I did.

A few problems-- first of all, as I moved along, I decided a Star of David was in order. I'm trying to buy less yarn right now, given the economy. So I decided I'd use one skein of yarn for both the star and the candle flames. As I got into it, I realized that a yellow star is very evocative of Nazi Germany. This brings me to an aside...

Sometimes, when I am teaching high school writing workshops, I have the kids write incredibly ridiculous "letters to the editor." I tell them I'll give them bonus points if they can include the phrases: I shudder to think! and Not since Nazi Germany!

So I shuddered to think about the implications of a yellow star, but I proceeded with it anyway. One thing I didn't figure in was that Fair Isle knitting makes for a far less stretchy garment. As I moved toward the finish, I tried the hat on. Okay, I tried to try it on. But I couldn't pull it down all the way. Too tight. Not one who enjoys unraveling, I thought screw it, I'm just going to make it whatever it is and we'll find a small person to model it.

When it came time to knit the candles, I cracked myself up by coming up with an ingenious scheme to use little i-cords. The end result, as you can see above (modeled by Warren using his Manly Model Face) was a very erect "hat," which Warren has no intention of sharing with aforementioned small person.

Here's a crappy close up I took with my computer:



Happy Hanukkah!

I've Been Zero Balanced!

And by Zero Balanced, I am not referring to my bank account (though I could be). No, what ZB is is this sort of massage related mind body healing modality that a friend of mine is working to get certified in. She's already a licensed massage therapist and recently offered me a chance to hop up on the table and experience ZB.

I won't go so far as to say I was skeptical. But I will say that in 2006 I had an enthusiasm for body work that was possibly a bit over the top. I attended a Barbara Brennan hand's-on-healing workshop to learn how to adjust chakras. Really, I did this. And you know what? I make no excuses. It was an amazing weekend and I swear I benefitted greatly from it. In fact, for a fleeting moment, I fantasized about attending the BB college and getting a degree in what is basically a laying-of-the-hands method of treating people. This all stems back to being told, twenty years ago by an intuitive in Tennessee, that I could do healing with my hands. There's no use trying to convince disbelievers that such a thing is possible. But let me reframe my argument in favor of hands-on healing to make it maybe a bit more accessible or at least a little less kooky seeming.

We all love and, I would argue, need touch. A terribly sad example of what happens when humans are deprived of touch can be found in the tale of the Romanian orphans, many of whom were trapped in cribs with no human contact for months and even years on end. This led to a lot of attachment disorder in those kids. It's a long, totally depressing story so I'll leave you to decide if you want to Google for more information. Anyway, that's an extreme example.

On a lighter note, just think about it-- you get a back rub or a hug or you hold hands and you feel better, right? You get a massage and you can't believe you haven't signed up for weekly appointments. Touch is good.

That said, after being so into trying out various touch stuff beyond basic massage, I backed off a little from all that. Mostly this was part of my plan to spend 2008 just being and hanging out with Warren and laying off the conscious, carefully calculated attempts to "get healed." I spent 2007 in deep talk therapy, and learning stuff like EFT (a tapping exercise to help those of us with PTSD), and holographic repatterning. And all of it helped so much. But then I just took a break. Well, except from massages, which I continued to get from Kim Kunkel whom I highly recommend y'all try out.

And then my friend Victoria mentioned the Zero Balancing stuff and gently nudged me to try it. So, what the heck, I went and hopped up on her massage table, a total blank slate, and gave it a shot. By which I mean I stayed very still and drifted in and out of sleep while she applied pressure and made adjustments to various points of my being. I have no idea how it works, but I can say that afterwards I felt much better. And here I am the next day, and I still feel much better.

According to the reading material V gave me, the official description of ZB is that it's "a hands-on body-mind system of therapy that balances the relationship of energy and structure within the bones and tissues of the body. ZB uses energy movement to integrate Western medial science with Easter energy healing traditions..." and it goes on from there.

V is happy to talk to you about ZB and show you how it works. And she's also available for massage. If you want to get in touch with her (haha, in touch, get it?) email me and I'll hook you up: spike@spikeg.com.

We Wish You a Merry Porn Dog

My latest bit of extremely popular genius is now posted over at the Austinist. You can read it here.

If you like it, please recommend it.

Thanks,
Bah.
spike