Go Home, Amazon Targeting Algorithm, You're Drunk

#MaybeI'mTheOneWho'sDrunk #WhatDidIDoLastNight

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Cheap Chic: Neither/Nor

Yelp Review: Cheap Chic (Allston, MA)

This is Why I Hate The  #@$%#*@  Phone
______________

So tell me if you think this is weird.

On Tuesday (4/18/2017) I called Cheap Chic. "Hello!" I said to the woman who picked up. "My name is Michelle, I'm a local, I come to Cheap Chic all the time. The reason I'm calling is to ask if you guys could maybe bring your box of vinyl out from behind those shelves? Since Saturday is Record Store Day, I'm planning to walk around and shop for records. Yours used to be on a shelf at waist-level and people could just thumb through them. Now they're on the floor, behind those racks of old office equipment, and it's dusty and cramped back there. The records are hard to get to, so I thought if I called you could pull them out for Record Store Day...?" [Note: Yes, I burbled all that. This is why I hate the fuckin' phone.-md]

She said, "Well I would argue that they're NOT hard to get to. They're behind the shelves at floor level." Uh...yes, well. You could "argue" that, I suppose. But I just told you that "behind the shelves at floor level" is, in fact, hard to get to.  You just said the same thing back to me, only your thing makes no sense.

Here is the back story: Since Store 54 closed last May, Allston Rock City does not have a record store anymore. Yeah, that's fairly astonishing, I know.  But we DO have four thrift shops in close proximity that have a fair-to-middling vinyl collection. So take a nice walk, come home with some cool records, it's nice. But the last few times I went to Cheap Chic, I was puzzled that there were no more records. The box of records was gone from where it had always been. They sell junk at dumb prices, so I poked around and left each time.

Last time, about a month ago I guess, I decided to just ask. "So hey, you guys don't have records anymore?"

"Oh, we do," said probably-the-same-person-who-answered-my-phone-call last Tuesday. She pointed to the dusty rack of old office equipment (is there really a market for 90s-era fax machines?) and told me the records are "on the floor behind that shelf."

Oh...huh...well, that explains why I didn't see the records. I went over to look, walked past the rack ("...where?...") then I peered behind the shelf...I saw the records. It doesn't even look like you're supposed to go back there.

I left.

mdipoala/yelp.com

My phone call was supposed to help both of us -- Cheap Chic and me. I hate the #@$%#*@  phone, that's how much I love shopping for old vinyl at my local thrift stores  -- that I actually took time out of my day to look up the number and call with this request, hoping someone could maybe put out the records. For Record Store Day.

Here is what I say directly to you, Cheap Chic.

1. You no honor the Record Store Day, you off my list every other day.
2. Normally a store does not "argue" when a customer tells of a problem and makes a simple request. Nobody knows you even have records, ya knuckleheads.

In sum:

1. Cheap Chic is neither cheap nor chic
2. Whoever works there likes being "right" more than making any sense whatsoever.
3. None of us need to go to Cheap Chic anymore.

- Yelp, 4/23/17

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#Isn'tSpringFreshAlreadyADouche

These kicks look like they'll summon the ghost of Mel Torme to sing to me on a dais.
 #HeLikesWhatIDo #TheseAreJimmysTrainingShoes #1990sTVReferences #JimmyCouldntJumpAtAllBefore #TheyrePlyometric 

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47 Trips Around the Sun: Five Things I'm Sure About

1.Guitar Comedy

Hey Demitri, Birbigs, that guy, and that other guy. You know who you are. So, I've given it literally dozens of chances, but I'm afraid it's a no from me, dawg. I love you, but when you reach for that guitar, my brain goes, "Noooooooo!" You're bringing us along on your narrative, we're digging your stories, you're nailing it. Cadence, timing, you got us! Why bring a guitar into it. Everything grinds to a halt, it's all just smoking skidmarks. You're just telling micro-stories in a distractingly stilted manner, strumming that same little run, over and over again, and then sometimes, for no discernible artistic reason, you just carol out a random word. It makes me want to punch all the arpeggiated chords in the world. I feel sure it's not just me. I really really do.

Related: Music Makers and Dreamers of Dreams

2. Smucker's Goober Grape

Look, it was never going to work. Smucker's Goober Grape is an idea like something two co-dependent stoners would come up with, and if you've never had Smucker's Goober Grape, what I know about you is that you don't do enough 3am bodega runs. Smucker's Goober Grape is not a food. It's a food group created in a lab as a solution to a very specific problem: you are hungry, broke, and out of options. Smucker's Goober Grape has the mouth feel of staring into the abyss. It's a bland, pasty concoction that serves well neither the peanut butter nor the jelly. It doesn't even "spread." It clumps between two pieces of off-brand bread for a gag-inducingly loathsome bite. If you've never had it, imagine something in your mouth that tastes like diaper contents, and it's both slimy and gritty. It's so awful it's like personally offensive.

3. High Heels

I tried for decades. I wanted it so hard. I recently gave away a super cute pair of red Fluevogs that I still think about. I will never not think about those shoes and wonder how they're doing, like they took my virginity or something. Perfect red, perfect heel. You know I'm a simple gal, but I look at Fluevies the way your dog looks at bacon. I should've passed them along when I realized I was never going to Cinderella Stepsister my way into those gorgeous shoes. Every few months I'd take them out of the box, put them on, grimace my way through one teetering mince around the apartment. Once time I had a glass of wine and wore them for ten whole minutes, laying on the couch and weeping. So I set them free. It was time. Go with God, my darlings. They have a good home now. As they walked off down Mass Ave on the dainty feet of a stunning Bulgarian marimba player, so departed any delusions I may still hold deep down in my jaded Sicilian heart. In the end, I'm just a Doc Martens gal making her way in a Fluevog world.

4. Candy

It was hot in those masks.

Of all the holidays in the kid year, Halloween was Top of Candy Mountain. Everyone had their own personal system when you get back home with the pillow case full of loot. I made three piles. "Thanks for coming" was waaaay over here with the worst shit ‒ Lifesavers, Smarties, Good N Plenty. The dreaded Necco Wafters which no one has ever convinced me aren't made from crushed Tums. Then I had my "Any Sugar In A Storm" pile over there with Laffy Taffy, Starburst Fruit Chews, jelly beans left over from Easter. Right in front of me: Chocolate. Hershey, Reese's, Chunky, Reggie Bars. It all felt so serious. They say our tastes evolve, and boy how that happened! I'll have a few Hershey's Kisses at Christmas and marvel over how much of that stuff we consumed before age 30.

5. Beer

Nah.

Related: 47 Trips Around the Sun: An Observed Life

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47 Trips Around the Sun: An Observed Life

Two Aprils ago, on my 45th birthday, I penned a semi-serious list of 45 Things I Know as a way to commemorate the occasion. People seemed to like it. I suspect the reason why that particular essay was met with such unilateral applause is that most of my friends assumed I'd be dead by now.* The thing about writers is that we live an observed life. I have whole scenes in my head, as do most writers I presume, that vividly recall events both major and insanely minor. In these scenes, I often see myself, and hear my own voice supporting these visuals with mental notes. It's about the way a writer's mind experiences everything ‒ noticing, probing, capturing textural details, mentally applying a narrative moment-to-moment and making sensory connections from this moment to others, in the past, placing a tab to come back to later when another, related experience happens. Novelist Anne Tyler worked this phenomenon into her book, Saint Maybe, one of my favorites of hers. When we meet Ian Bedloe for the first time, he's in high school. 

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My birthday is Friday.
I thought I'd be dead by now.
 

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Meme What You Say

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If You're Not Following Cher, You're Twittering Wrong

I love Cher. I love that sonorous voice. I love her brass balls attitude. I love her in every movie she's ever been in, especially The Witches of Eastwick. I love Cher so much that I even love total strangers who also love Cher. Whether or not you're a fan of this perpetually raven-haired Gen X icon, you're missing out if you're not following Cher on Twitter. The key to Cher's Twitter brilliance? Chick's got some serious emoji kung fu. It's only like the best thing ever done with 140 characters.

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I Don't Get It...

What...is this?

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SuperLowBudge Radio - The Boot Hog Pefferly One

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Words

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