Dead Computers, Greyhound Duchesses and a Fund for Destiny's Ed

What a weekend. While the grönt is pretty much gone from mitt hår, and the mold in the bathroom is as under control as it will get (I suppose), my computer died. I MIGHT be able to grab some of the files from it to restore, but I'm not at all hopeful. The lesson: NEVER ever ever ever ever buy a Dell. I reiterate: Never buy a Dell. I reiterate once again for the search engines: Dells are crap---NEVER buy one. I'll extend that to all PCs, as a matter of fact, since I'm sure that the computer died solely because it was perhaps 1 hour over warranty (which means it lasted probably 50 minutes longer than it usually would have). So now I'm planning to replace it with a Mac. (Did I mention never buy a Dell? Because if you're googling Dell and see this, take heed. DO. NOT. BUY.) Olyckligtvis, shelling out all the money for a Mac will obliterate any plans I had of visiting the land not of my ancestors: Scandinavia, specifically Stockholm or Copenhagen. Sigh. :( So I've created, "Save Karen"-style, a donation link where anyone can plop in donations for me to buy a plane ticket. If not in November, then in February, as a birthday present. If everyone just puts 10 cents into the fund, I'll have enough to buy half a donut. But if everyone puts in 20 dollars, or 100 dollars, or 800 dollars, then I'll have my flight. And if everyone puts in $60,000, I could actually fly first-class. Anyway, here's the button link. Go on, click it! Go on, click it! And if you donate a goodly amount, you can receive one of the following gifts: $50: a copy of my CD Five, since I have about a jillion left over, and a DVD with all the Ed Shepp mp3s I can scrounge up, including all the separate mixes from The Madonna Within EP and my cover of Umbrella. $100: The same discs, with a small home perfume oil sample with notes of caramel and spiced pear. $200: The CDs/DVDs, the home fragrance, and Ed Shepp T-shirt, and I'll hang out with you for 3 hours and inspire you with zillions of ideas and bombast you with personality. (This is really only available to people in the New York area, but it's transferable and won't expire for a long time. Of course, said hanging out must occur in a public place, and not one of those crowded bars that I hate. And you can video/audtiotape it, but you cannot use the footage commercially.) $600: Everything mentioned before, and I'll put you in an Ed Shepp Radio Experiment podcast. $900: Everything mentioned before, and I'll record a song about you. So there we have them. Donate now! Donate now!! Click the button below:

Ok, so that's the fund. Now back to just a mention of more things mundane. I saw that movie The Duchess last week. It stars Keira Knightley's face and a metric ton of $7000/yard fabric. I think I found it good. I say "I think" because it seemed like a good movie, but something about it left me a little empty; it felt a little incomplete. It may have been the pacing--at times I felt like I'd been watching it for 14 years, in some weird Groundhog Day-like accident of timespace. At other times I actually felt moved. And at other times, I actually felt like.... (wait for it...) ....I felt like I could believe in Love. Interestingly, one of the main things you take from the movie is that you can't believe in Love-with-a-capital-L. Love does not conquer all. Sorry, Virginia. The movie is a BBC production, by the way, so you don't see any gratuitous T&A, which I suppose is all well and good, because Keira Knightly doesn't seem to have much of either to offer. Someone i Sverige said that she needs to engage in a cake-eating marathon. and while I couldn't ever really not endorse such a thing, she just has such a pretty face.... Why ruin it so soon? Time will have its due soonly enough. And speaking of her face, one of the people I saw the movie with, who, it turned out, was fond of using archaic language and making arcane references that no one who was in our party got, kept marveling at it, saying that she looked "like a greyhound." Uhhhhh..... what exactly does that mean??? Greyhounds are beautiful, to be sure, but it's not exactly, er, "customary" to compare a beautiful woman's face to... a dog. I think he meant she looked beautiful; but it's just an odd reference. I wish I'd countered with something like, "Actually, I think she looked quite like the Weimeraners that one photographer does--you know, the ones posed like people.... with human hands." Oh yes, and another thing about the BBC-ness of it: one thing you can say about most Hollywood movies is that the post-production people know their way around color correction. Have you ever seen Elizabeth: The Golden Age, for instance? Those colors POP!! Like BLAO in your face!!!! I don't think I've ever seen orange so.... ORANGE. So Hollywood does a great job with bold, amazing color. This movie does not offer that. Yes, it's beautiful, and you can see the gorgeous colors in the expensive fabrics, but the color doesn't leap off the screen and whack you in the face with a metaphorical frying pan.

All things considered, it was a good movie. I don't know if I'd see it again, though. Mark Baratelli thought it stunk, but I never felt like I got out of him his reasoning for why he hated it.

Anyway, that's the gzoomce for now. More beeping coming at ya laters. And don't forget to donate, you cheap pigeonhead!! (LOVE ME!!!!!!)

Beep!
Ed Shepp

The Bitching Hour

It's no secret. I hate New York City. I've been here too damn long, and I've grown to loathe the place. And it seems to give me a new reason to hate it every day. And yes, I would move ---but for the forseeable future, barring some miracle, I'm trapped. So to everyone who says, "If you hate it so much, why don't you just leave?" I say, "Go fuck yourself with a hot poker, then jump off a building and die alongside your tired cliches."

Reason of the week: The F train. What's the point of the F train? Lately they've been suspending service and deciding to skip stops willy-nilly. Why have the train at all?!? I've walked 20 blocks at least 3 times in the past week. So in case you were wondering, Brooklyn is every bit as infuriating as Manhattan, just for different reasons. (Naturligtvis, this got me wondering what the subways were like i Sverige. So I asked people for their opinions and pictures, figuring that I'd hear the usual refrain: "The trains are horrible; they're never on time......" I heard the opposite from EVERY PERSON: "The trains are extremely efficient, always on time, clean...." and the pictures of the stations were DAZZLING. You have no idea. And looking at them, I can be nearly 100000000000000% sure that they don't stink of urine and godknowswhatelse the NYC ones stink of. But that's for another entry.)

Reason of the day: I thought, "Well, the world is going down in flames, so I might as well indulge that long-held fantasy and become ...blond. Or at least a lighter brunet." So I went to a salon. A SALON. And I pointed to the shade I wanted, which was actually DARKER than the maximum lightness I could achieve with a single process (because a double process was ludicrously priced, considering my hair length). I pointed to an ASH shade. ASH means the hair has a color like ASH. ASH is what's left over when you burn something. It's GREY. It's not colorful. So ASH in hair terms means a very subdued hair color. Basically the POLAR OPPOSITE of gold. I pointed to ash and had confidence that the person knew what she was doing, since she's a fucking hairstylist and her own hair was colored. Moreover, she was Japanese, so I figured she had experience with high-lift bleaching. And I told her, "I have a lot of red in my hair, so I want an ash shade." But I was confident it would come out nice; and all the books say that if you want to lift 3 shades or more, you should go to a professional, which is what I thought I did. So it gets all finished, and voila! My hair is a reddish golden brown*. WHAT! THE! FUCK! In fact, it was only a litte MORE gold than when I used a fucking bottle of L'Oreal True Brunettes, at $9 for the box. So I got BETTER results at home than from a salon?!?!?!?? I'd expect to come out with Puerto Rican orange in Tallahassee, but not in New York. Now I have to either apply shitloads of blue-green temporary color in the hopes of creating grey or verdigris or doo-doo brown; dye it darker; shave it off; or bleach it again (paying even MORE money for a salon is out of the question). All because I had confidence in a frickin' salon.

The first thing to take from this story: Don't go to Hisako Salon on 7th avenue. The second thing: Don't ever bother with a salon. Have a friend bleach your hair and figure out how to tone it on your own. You'll get better results for cheaper. I've had my hair dyed professionally twice now, and both times were total disasters. The first was when I had it done plum in college. Well, the person never got the black off the ends, so I went back twice to have them correct it and ended up with a pile of fried straw on my head. The second was today.

So thanks, New York, for giving me enough reasons for 40 lifetimes to despise you. I always thought jokingly that the best thing about living in New York would be leaving it, but now I think it's actually the truest sentiment I've ever had.

(Of course, I'll probably think completely differently tomorrow. Probably because I'll be high off toxic bleach fumes from trying to kill the mold in the bathroom. YAY, New York!!!! You're SO Sex and the City!!!)

And that's today's bitching hour. For more bitching hour, just talk to me any day of the week.

Beep
E

*Duh, the picture is a rough approximation. No, there's NOT a button in Photoshop that magically changes your haircolor to exactly what you pictured in your mind. Life is not that Barbie video game, Sherella.