A review copy of Mine Your Own Business, which I've been dying to see.

I'll let you know if the finished work is as good as the trailer, and the excerpts most of us have come across here and there.

Special thanks to The Moving Picture Institute, for giving me the opportunity to review the film.

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Excellent; go read about the history of children's television programming:

Comrade Kangarooski

Sponsored by The Daily Worker and the Tuboretski Tractor Works, Comrade Kangarooski was famous for his lengthy monologues on the ultimate triumph of socialism, reading accounts of soviet party congresses and defending the Rosenbergs. He encouraged kids to facilitate the work of their collectives, report their parents for revisionist thinking, and shoot Kulaks.

He generated viewer participation by holding contests. One, in which he invited children to take a picture of themselves in front of experimental American aircraft, drew over thirty thousand responses. Others included:
• The best-drawn map of a defense installation,
• Denounce your favorite FBI Stool Pigeon, and
• A scavenger hunt for CIA one time cipher pads.

His success was also short-lived, however: At the height of his popularity, Stalin recalled him to Moscow and had him shot.

UPDATE: Once again, I've bowed to my readers' unreasonable requests for functioning links.

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"Whatup, mah shiksa homey?"

"Not much. How's it hangin', Heeb?"

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or maybe the record companies are run by idiots.

I love the approach of pulling Prince albums off the record-store shelves. That way, those of us whose interest is piqued by his newest album will have to buy the CD online.

And won't TAFKAP be sorry then? Un-freakin'-believable, the death wish the music business has.

Via Insty.

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Hm. From a reader:

Do you think Ann Coulter was talking about you on Good Morning America when she said the denouncement that "hurt me the most was on IAmaLittleGirlinaPinkPartyDress.com; very upsetting!" ???


http://www.breitbart.tv/html/2258.html

For the record, I don't think Coulter was singling me out—just using the name of my blog to make fun of the entire 'sphere. Kind of an interesting thing to do.

In a sense, she's saying "who are you, Little Miss Attila, to criticize me?" Well, I'm just part of a group—a cultural phenomenon—that got Dan Rather kicked off the air, defeated the amnesty bill and changed political discourse permanently. Part of an Army of Davids. We fight the Goliaths of Big Media, Big Goverment, and Big Firebrandresses (tall ones, anyway).

In a sense, Queen Ann is saying to bloggers—all bloggers—the question The Who put out there: "Who the fuck are you?" Well, who is she, for that matter? A woman who uses her legs to sell books. (Not that there's anything wrong with that. I should do the same, especially since my legs are a good deal nicer than hers are. If you like your girls curvy, that is. If willowy is your thing, stick with Queen Ann.)

I think comediennes who do actual comedy—e.g., Sarah Silverman (hotter than Coulter and I put together, BTW)—are cool. The ones like Coulter and Margaret Cho who try to combine standup with political analysis are simply lame. Politics plus humor can be a difficult balancing act, and only a handful of people of any sex really pull it off.

Ann Coulter isn't one of those who successfully combine comedy and political commentary. Had she only stuck with analysis, it would be a different matter, but implying that Edwards is a "faggot," and then parsing out the phrasing in a fashion that would make Bill Clinton blush? Very lawyerly. I of course mean "lawyerly" in the sense of "stupid." (Full disclaimer: some of my best friends, yadda yadda yadda.)

"It was clearly a schoolyard taunt," she said in the days following that incident. "No one seriously thought I meant to suggest Edwards was gay." Well, that's not how I heard it. And I never really thought—from the first moment I heard that lame stunt at CPAC 2007—that I would have taken it too kindly if I had been Elizabeth Edwards.

What if I'd implied that Halle Barry was a "nigger," and then defended myself by saying I hadn't stated it outright? And what if I'd then reminded people that everyone knows one of her parents is white, so there's no possible reason anyone could confuse her with an actual nigger?

Well, then I'd be a publicity whore. And I could go on Good Morning America and make fun of people whose websites sport really creative names. AnnCoulter.com: it must have taken her weeks to think of that one.

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Plus a pre-meeting meeting, wherein he, Dr. Cult Figure, and the head of the production company agreed on a strategy for selling the project.

Personally, I suspect that they nailed it, and partly because the husbandly acting background lent him an edge: participating in a meeting of this complexity is playing a role. But I also pointed out that this would be a great time for the Hub to take other projects to the same studio: he'll still have that Dr. Cult aura.

"It was weird," he told me. "Even with Spielberg, it wasn't like this: people kept coming up with excuses just to pass by our table in the Starbucks."

Yeah, but with Spielberg, people got out-and-out rude. And the divine Mr. S never had the temerity to go to a Starbucks where the hoi polloi hang out. Kudos to Dr. Cult.

It's been a good week: the husband's productive, I'm productive. And, should we ever get on our feet financially again due to his creative projects—or even mine—I've got some furniture picked out from a prop/artifacts store downtown that could dispose of our disposable income in a hot Los Angeles minute.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 10:28 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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It's not true: they usually don't.

It takes class to cut your own hair before the cancer treatments take it away from you.

And it takes guts to create a blog like this. Love and Kisses, Peter and Rosina. Give 'em hell.

(And, to my readers: please send your prayers. I've already lost too many good people to cancer. It makes me angry, but I realize the anger does no good either. More on this later.)

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I found the courthouse today, and parked nearby, adjacent to the Queen of Angels Cathedral. I walked over, and was told that, no, it wasn't the correct place at all, but Hill Street was only a few blocks away.

Once I got onto Hill Street I realized that the security guard had spoken the truth, but failed to mention that Courthouse #2 was actually at the far end of downtown—beyond the jewelry district, beyond Staples Center. So I ended up walking miles to get where I needed to go; there was a point beyond which I figured it would take just as long to go retreive the car, and then I'd have to pay twice to park it.

Yeah. I was tempted to take a cab back the thirty blocks or whatever, but we don't really have cabs in L.A. So that saved me money, too. And I got a terrific workout, some fabulous pics of Los Angeles landmarks, a few story ideas, a large blister, and a slight sunburn.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:56 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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She once downed her multi-vitamin with a sip from her martini.

I was appalled, of course.

Mmmm. Nothing quite as dry as Wet. So far.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 09:46 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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But all I want to do this weekend is sleep. I'm not depressed; I'm just tired. Though I do intend to do a bit of laundry tonight, and we will be going to church.

One of my supervisors at work asked me specifically whether I'd be reading this weekend, to unwind, and I laughed and said "no." The truth, of course, is much sicker: of course I read myself to sleep last night.

Though I didn't analyze the grammar, or look for typos.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 01:33 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment
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. . . over at The Tygrr Express. Most of these queries are things I'd ask those people personally, and all of them would put 'em through a head trip I'd like to watch.

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Blog Nekkid Day notwithstanding.

However, I feel that a bra, panties, and a thin T-shirt is close enough. Oddly enough, I'm more comfortable this way.

But here's something strange about bloggers with sensitive skin: most upholstery fabrics are way too harsh, so in the summer when my bare legs will be in contact with the chair, I cover it with a terry towel so there's only cotton against my thighs as I key away.

Also, I once thought there was a pea between my mattress and the box springs, but it turned out to be a long-lost earring back. It was 18-karat gold, so I pawned it.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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"Cool," he responded. "Are they artistic? Are they gay? Are they high-tech?"

The questions came in a quick rapid-fire, and I answered, just as swiftly, "yes, yes, and no."

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:31 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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You'll never see this. But if I make a note of it now, I might remember it next year.

If I write it down on a piece of paper? Not a chance.

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It's after 9:00 p.m., and the garage has just cooled down to 80 degrees or so.

I'd sleep on the balcony tonight, but there are lots of bugs in the air out there. And some of them are very, very big. They're, like, the size of mice. They'd hurt me, for sure.

I seem to remember sleeping on the balcony at my grandparents' place in Whittier, California on hot summer nights when the air was still clean enough that one could see Catalina during the daytime.

This would have been back in the 1960s, before they got air-conditioning at the family homestead on that hill. (Yes. It's still in the family; it's the only structure left from my early childhood, ever since my aunt-on-my-mother's-side burned her house down. The Whittier place has been in the family since the 1930s, and my other grandparents' house is still intact, and down the hill from it. Though now strangers own it, and someone chopped down one of the lemon trees in the front yard. Fascists.)

Hey, bro—are you reading this today? Didn't they have us crash on the balcony sometimes in the summer, on those outdoor chaises? Or am I making that part up?

Now someone is going to ask me why I don't just turn on the AC. Because I don't do that until it hits 100 around here: I may be a hedonist, but I'm not wasteful.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:25 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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But happy. You know me: I seem to do a bit better when there's slightly too much to do, versus too little.

I'm so behind on housework that my husband folded laundry today, which is this sort of cute/sweet thing he does when he sees that I'm under stress.

It's actually rather brave of him: would you want to fold the laundry of an obsessive-compulsive proofreader? I mean, everything's fine and wonderful until she discovers that you put a dish towel that had a bleach stain on it back into the dishtowel drawer instead of one of those strategic "rag stashes" that lurk in the kitchen and bathrooms for quick clean-up jobs.

Then her perfectionism comes out, and all hell breaks loose.

I'm so glad I don't have to live with me. Oh, wait . . .

Posted by: Attila Girl at 07:31 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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What's a girl to do?—must I threaten to publish a bust shot to get my readers back?

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The client who's signed me up for three weeks in the fall wants eight hours of proofreading a day. As in, that number that's about equidistant between seven and nine. Yipes.

At about Hour Seven today my eyeballs threatened to secede from the rest of my body (actually, it was those little muscles that control pupil size that hurt the most). But the fall gig will make me solvent, at least for a time, and that's a pretty sexy idea.

As I walked out the door of the pub house the fact-checker was still there, and I found myself very thankful I'm no longer trying to do that job and be a backup copyeditor: one cannot handle research and proofreading at the same time. Someone has to concentrate on dates, prices, and proper nouns, and someone else has to look for grammatical errors, typos, unintended double entendres, graphics that don't line up, and excessive word repetition.

So I finally understood today that my getting laid off from the fact-checking end of things was a blessing in disguise. It's better for the organization this way, and a lot better for me. Presumably, I bill at a higher rate than the woman who was looking up arcane facts about refrigerators at 7:00 p.m. tonight. And that's fine, too: after all, I'm older.

And more evil, I suspect.

Darrell, thanks for the care package. I might not be able to pick it up until tomorrow, or perhaps even Friday. But knowiing that it's there makes me feel all warm and gooey inside.

Posted by: Attila Girl at 08:06 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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1 :-) I get the paper version of Gmail delivered anyway. Thanks for the advance copy!

Posted by: Darrell at June 20, 2007 08:50 PM (o7kvN)

2 Was anyone ever so gullible?

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 20, 2007 10:12 PM (VgDLl)

3 And I still haven't opened that email yet--but I've been tempted. Especially since I know I won't be at the mail drop until tomorrow.

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 21, 2007 07:25 PM (VgDLl)

4 No one can accuse you of requiring instant gratification. Good girl! But it does force the same on me. . .sigh. I'll live. Barely.

Posted by: Darrell at June 21, 2007 10:14 PM (vkYzb)

5 You might as well know that email is just a bust shot of me. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Posted by: Darrell at June 22, 2007 11:12 AM (rr8YX)

6

Posted by: Attila Girl at June 22, 2007 08:13 PM (VgDLl)

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It was not a happy discovery.

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Hackbarth has a bite-size snippet from Kyle Smith's brutal review of the Michael Moore fantasy Sicko. Can't wait to read the whole thing.

Is it me, or is Moore becoming slightly more insane with each book he writes, and with each faux-documentary he makes? Or was his mind always this much of a mess?

Posted by: Attila Girl at 12:33 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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