So am I the only one who finds it really amusing that the director of "Y Tu Mama Tambien" has been chosen to direct the third installment of the Harry Potter movies? How great is that? From Chris "Mrs. Doubtfire" Columbus to explicit Mexican threeway artiste? Could anything be more brilliant? Can we look for Harry/Ron/Hermione action? Perhaps the older and wiser Professor McGonagall imparts more to the young scholars than just how to turn their schoolbooks into toads? I'm sorry, I mean, I know this could veer right off into slash (if you don't know what this is, so much the better) but come on, that's pretty damn funny.

Winner, most inventive (and successful) pickup line in recent memory: "I'm obsessed with your teeth."

OK, I'll admit it: I have become a little consumed with this electroclash stuff. Can't stop listening to all that robotic dance music. To the point where I felt a pang of withdrawal upon lending out the Fischerspooner CD. At the same time, not sure how I feel about the fan base... especially the girls, with their angular blue eye shadow, Flashdance shirts and ripped fishnets... it's like, get your own decade, please. Walked into the bathroom at a club last night to the following conversation between three of said girls:
"So they inject all this demerol, like, right into your uterus and you can't even feel it."
"Plus, you know, you've got like twenty eggs, right?"
"Yeah, I thought about doing that in college."
"It's SO easy."
"Like, that's just so 'Brave New World.'"

Finding myself in the odd position of having lots of actual work to do. To the extent that I can no longer maintain the rigorous emailing and site-checking schedule that has occupied so much of my time for the past six months or so. Mediabistro? Salon? Romanesko? They've all become distant memories. Of course this is a fantastic development. And yet, the funny thing is I feel like I am dropping the ball... friends send me emails and there they lie, all day, unresponded to. Meanwhile I have a job where nobody uses email ever, and when you want to talk to someone you actually get up and go over to their desk. Almost every day at some point one corner of the office erupts into applause, and I have yet to figure out why. The whole transition into actual life from online life is unsettling. Like in The Matrix when Keanu woke up naked and bald and shriveled and gasping in that pod after the wires got pulled out of him. That's me. Shriveled and gasping.

Nothing makes me feel quite so degenerate as when I'm on my way home with takeout and I stop in a convenience store and buy a single beer. I always feel like the cashier is judging me for buying just the one, as if I am going to hurry around the corner and swill it out of the paper bag, and that I might as well just buy a forty and have done with it.

Crowning achievement of the day: at the beach, was dubbed "the girl Spicoli" by a fellow bodysurfer. Finally, to have my life goals so clearly stated...

Hmm, that time I thought it would be a really swell idea to go out on the town with three gay boys, and that surely if I accompanied them to their disco inferno bar full of overly muscular yet effeminate martini-swillers, that they would equally enthusiastically accompany me to my basement full of mohawked, mulleted and - gasp!- straight boys dancing to weird retro tunes... yeah, that was pretty much totally wrong. If you think you're going to convince gay boys to go anywhere at midnight that isn't rife with the possibilities of casual sex with other men, you've got another think coming.

Replacing that little soft spot I had for Buckcherry is this cute new band. I am prepared to be alone in my liking of this one, too....

Went to the movies last night - a silent film, actually, Metropolis, which was quite good, and contained the seedlings for every movie cliche in the book (not to mention the character sketch for Christopher "one-point-twenty-one-jigowatts!" Lloyd in Back to the Future) but did tend to run on a bit.... at two hours, you really do start to miss the talking part. So anyway as I'm in my apartment getting ready to go, it's about ninety-five degrees and I'm trying to decide what to wear and what I end up wearing is this rather skimpy tank top with nothing under it because, hey, that's one of the advantages of being rather diminutively built in that area, and out I go and I swear to god, everyone I had any sort of interaction with looked at my chest instead of my face, and I felt a moment of true sympathy for the girls out there who get that sort of thing every day; for me, see, it's a novelty, and hence kind of enjoyably sleazy almost, but I think that if I was getting looks like that on a regular basis I would probably quickly become the kind of person who snaps, "my face is up here."

I am off to a weekend in the Hamptons (or thereabouts) with a Hamptons-esque crowd... will I be able to behave myself and blend in? Have animated conversations about the social lives of socialites? I doubt it, but at least there will be sun and beach.

So one of the big things in New York in the summer is that a bunch of places offer partner-dancing nights of all sorts, with free lessons and whatnot, and last night I went to a swing dancing affair on some pier in Tribeca. And here's the thing: I think I like my brand of pretend-swing dancing better. All that fancy footwork is just far too complicated and forces you to be looking at your feet and counting off and trying to figure out when is the rock-step and when is the shuffle-step and when is the kick-step. Whatever. Just swing me around a bunch of times. All those people who show up in their bobby socks and saddle shoes, and dance with these kind of maniacal, Annette Funicello beach party-esque grins on their faces, scare me a little, if you want to know the truth. I'll take the sweaty nightclub full of people who have no idea what a lindy hop is, thank you very much.

Was quite surprised to find myself dancing, all alone, in my living room to this record. Just put it on and try not to.

I have nothing to say that could possibly be as interesting as this article, written by one of my favorite people.

It's a slippery slope, going out there multiple times... my latest midwest visit has cultivated a fervent interest in cowboy boots and old farming equipment signs. Also, I'd like to recount an actual joke told by a great-uncle: Why have farmers stopped putting round bales of hay out in the fields? Because they want the cows to get a square meal.

Obviously, my days as anything remotely approaching hip are nearly over.... well, it's been a good run.

Also: while standing at the ticket counter at the Kansas City airport, spotted a boy in line ahead of me sporting a near-mullet cut streaked with blonde, Salvation Army-esque T-shirt, and Vans. Soon realized there were three more just like him up ahead- with lots of equipment! And a couple of fat guys with bad shorts! Yes, it was a band. Some band. It's nice to find that some things don't change: in this case, my interest being sparked by any boy with a guitar case and a tour itinerary. I was good, though, and read my book quietly while only ogling them out of the corner of my eye. Then they got off in Milwaukee, never to be seen again.