Dance Party USA

Fun news: I have referred to my iPhone as a Walkman four times in the past two weeks. If that isn't bad enough, I called our central speaker system, which was playing music from Spotify, a "radio." As in: "I hope the radio didn't wake you up."

There is some kind of technological Dorian Gray craziness going on in my head.

Also: Could someone call my mom and explain to her that I don't want to be the next Erma Bombeck?

NEW FOODS TRIED!

Butternut Squash and Edamame Zosui with Ginger-Green Onion Relish: So this soup included kombu which was completely off my radar, but does exist in the city limits -- which is more than I can say for finding two full sized leeks. Kombu is a dried seaweed-y sort of thing that I just used in the broth, but omitted the step where it is chopped and re-introduced to the soup because I could tell the texture was going to skeeve me pretty hard. This is really not-adventurous of me. But consider this: I dumped something that looked like jerky into the soup and in the course of heating it unfurled to a de-jerkified sheet of something slippery. Chop it and eat that? No can do, friend. I can't even eat a Gummy Worm, and that's supposed to be delicious candy. 

Anyway, brown rice, squash, broth, edamame, miso ... then with the ginger-onion relish. This is pretty good, easy, different from the standard bean-veggie fare we're usually going apeshit on.  

Also, this calls for a pressure cooker, but I just eyeballed it and it seemed to turn out the way it was supposed to, maybe a little less watery. 

MOVIES
Girls Just Want to Have Fun Of all the movies from the 1980s, this one was embarrassingly influential on a young Catholic school girl with strict parents who wanted to be a wild-child adventurer with a secret exit out her bedroom window. "Which character were you?" CHRISSIE! asks me via text message. She watched it earlier in the day, inspiring my watch later that night. I was Janie with dreams of being Lynn.

Age: Pre-teen. On the school bus, ripping off my plaid skirt to reveal a pair of colorful jams. Unbuttoning my collared shirt to what would be a sexier view if not for pancake chest. Tying my hair into a high ponytail. Slathering my face in tinted chapstick. I love movies like this that are such a time capsule for what movies looked like in the 80s. It's hard to remember if it was funny then, or if it is just funny now, or funnier now, in the way that it is just so so true to the period. Anyway, this one is about Sarah Jessica Parker as a Catholic school girl who just wants to DANCE! She starts up at a new school, makes friends with the outrageous Helen Hunt and they audition for a spot on Dance TV, a close relative to "Dance Party USA."

Vernon, Florida This documentary from the early 1980s is about the quirky residents of a small town in Florida: A worm farmer, a guy who keeps a zoo of animals in a makeshift cage, a turkey hunter, a bored cop. It's pretty agonizing to watch and if it was longer than an hour I'd probably have thrown the TV out the window. It's a little bit assholey, I think, to interview a half-dozen old men and be all like "Look how weird this town is!" Although I understand that allegedly the movie was meant to be about a rumor that its residents were purposely self-amputating to collect insurance. That would make a great documentary.

Comic Book Confidential: The history of comic books, starting in the 1930s through about the early 1980s. It's decent, but really only starts to get super interesting when R Crumb is introduced in the mid-1960s. I'd like to see a documentary starting where this one left off to now. More women and some creative takes on the old genre.

BOOKS
Underworld by Don Delillo: This is the best book I've ever read. Full review will be here.

Growgirl: How My Life After The Blair Witch Project Went to Pot: by Heather Donahue: The girl from "The Blair Witch Project" spends a year in northern California growing medicinal marijuana. Heather Donahue is totally a riot. Full review will be here.