Dooood, Keith Richards is so hot.

Y'all can have Mick.

Nothing beats those dirty, dirty riffs and that nasty, achey voice.

Wontcha keep me happy?

Ah, bella Italia. How I love you so. Your crazy traffic, your men in tight jeans, your coffee and wine and beer, your formaggi e funghi e dulci. E modo!

Yes, Fashion Week in Milan is wrapping up. The big news here is that I didn't like the Prada collection, and I'm usually a big fan. A couple of the skirts were fine, but I'm still in love with that beautiful pleated dress from a couple of collections ago. (I can't find a picture now, but you know the one I mean, the ivory one with a million pleats and the crisscross ribbon across the torso.) Cavalli was Cavalli, gag. Dolce and Gabbana was trashy, Fendi was hypersexy in an okay way. I really liked (in a guilty-pleasure way) Gucci's goth collection for Fall 2002, and their Spring collection was adequate. I'm just never going to like spring collections as much as fall. All that color, yecch.

We got digital cable this weekend and so I was hooked on the Style network for hours. It was nice to see how all those designs move on the runway. They were recapping all the New York shows; I hope they do the same for the Milan and Paris shows. So, a few last notes on New York: Oscar de la Renta was really classy, Carmen Marc Valvo had some really nice pieces (in particular a long black skirt with a million ribbon ruffles), and oh my god, Narciso Rodriguez. Hard to improve on his last collection, but he did it. Nothing beats good tailoring. The photos really don't do it justice because you have to see the dresses move.

I'm getting a little tired with the CIA and the administration mucking about trying to find connections between Osama and Saddam. So I've taken it upon myself to investigate. As you can see, nothing. However, Saddam Hussein has a Bacon number of 3.

Tee hee. I've had a whole bunch of people coming here looking for the lyrics to Missy's "Work It". I'm so glad everyone's enjoying it as much as me. Tell me what else you like! (Oh, and the lyrics are down there, under the entry for the 23rd.)

Oh man. Other than that I have nothing to say. Crap. The well has run dry. This doesn't bode well for tomorrow's radio show.

So I had this awful dream last night about the boyfriend's best friend, this guy I absolutely love who recently left us to move to New Orleans. I dreamed that he had died and the boyfriend was breaking the news to me but I didn't get it, so he had to say it over and over again and it was really traumatic. Then I realized it was a dream and woke up and told the boyfriend and he said no honey, it's true, you keep dreaming that it's not, but he's really gone. Then I woke up for real.

Yeah, it sucked.

So I woke up the boyfriend and made him tell me that our friend was alive. He knew I was worried because of the hurricane, so he told me that our friend wasn't in New Orleans, he was with his dad in Mississippi.

I'm not sure he knows that Mississippi is right next to Louisiana.

So I had to write a big email to our friend this morning telling him all this and that under no circumstances should he die.

It was weird, though...I haven't had a nightmare in a long time, let alone one that made me cry. I'm not ascribing any deep meaning to it or anything, though, seeing as how it was most likely provoked by my extra-garlicky dinner and extra glass of crap table wine I had with it. Oh, and the half-bag of chocolate chips I accidentally ate after that. Oops.

Reason I like working at a radio station #19: Instead of waiting impatiently for the new Missy to come on the radio, I can yell down the hall, and say, "hey, when're you playing the Missy next? 'Cause I gotta get my babompbabompbomp!" And they tell me.

Quick update: Beck is on KCRW today at 11:15 Pacific time. Listen live. Have you heard the new album? Boy, it's sad. In a good way.

Very excited because I think it's officially official that I booked a big concert. That's what I was afraid of jinxing down there in the September 16 entry. So I probably won't get to see the wreath of roses, but that's okay. Kinda.

I was hung over yesterday (thus the lyric blog, which I know is lame). It was sort of fun to do my radio show hung over...I had plenty of material so I wasn't panicked about that. (Panic. Heh. Hang the DJ. Heh.) It was just giddy good fun, for me at least. Plus then I took the afternoon off and had a guilt-free nap. (You see, it was business-related drinking, so that makes it okay to take the afternoon off.) Hey, yeah, I have a fun job.

And in the middle of my nap, I had one of those sorta sleepy epiphanies that maybe I should start looking for another job. Strike me down for even thinking it (let alone blogging it on my work computer during a break), because I love my job, but it might be necessary to move soon. Never thought this would happen when I was a young girl, but yep, I'd do it for a man. He's gonna be on the job market soon, and why not start looking sooner than later? He's thinking of going to a real city, the one where my best girl lives. That sounds pretty nice. Too bad radio sucks there. Too bad I can't take my excellent boss and excellent staff who make my job even more enjoyable with me. Too bad all over. I have a month or so before we start having any idea what his job future might look like, so I get to sit on my ass a while, but life demands change, and I think I'm up for rolling with it if need be.

Courtesy of I Love Music: the lyrics to Missy's brilliant new single "Work It":
(btw, the backwards bit is the previous line run backwards, naturally)


Is it worth it, let me work it
I put my thang down flip it and reverse it
(Backwards bit)
if you got a big (elephant noise) let me search ya
to find out how hard I gotta work ya
(Backwards bit)

I'd like to get to know ya
So I can show ya
Put the pussy on ya
Like I told ya
Gimme all yo numbers
So I can phone ya
Your girl acting skank then call me over
Not on the bed, lay me on your sofa
Call before you come
I need to shave my cho-cha
You do or you don't or
you will or won't ya
Go downtown and eat ya like a vulture
See my hips and tips so cha
See my ass and my lips don't ya
Lost a few pounds in my wiffs for ya
This the kind that go
Ra-ta-ta
Ra-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta-ta
Sex me so good
I say blah blah blah
Work it
I need a glass of water
Boy, oh, boy it's good to know ya

Is it worth it, let me work it
I put my thang down flip it and reverse it
(Backwards bit)
if you got a big (elephant noise) let me search ya
to find out how hard I gotta work ya
(Backwards bit)

If you're a fly gal get your nails done,
Get a pedicure, get your hair did

Boy, lift it up, let's make a toaster
Let's get drunk, it's gonna bring us closer
Don't I look like a Halle berry poster?
See the belvedere playin tricks on ya
Girlfriend wanna be like me never
Ya won't find a bitch that's even better
I make you hot as Las Vegas weather
Listen up close while I take it backwards
(Backwards bit)
I'm not a prostitute but I can give you what you want
I love your grace and your mouth full of fronts
I love the way my ass go babompbabompbomp
Keep your eyes on my babompbabompbomp
Ya think you can handle this badompbabompbomp
Take my thong off and my ass go boom
Cut the lights on so you see what I can do

Is it worth it, let me work it
I put my thang down flip it and reverse it
(Backwards bit)
if you got a big (elephant noise) let me search ya
to find out how hard I gotta work ya
(Backwards bit)

Boys, boys, all types of boys
Black, white, Puerto Rican, Chinese boys
(Funny noises)
Girls, girls get that cash
If he's not a fly boy. shakin' ya ass
Ain't no shame, ladies do your thang
Just make sure you ahead of the game
Just 'cause I got a lot of things supa
Prince couldn't get me to change my name, papa
Kunta Kinte a slaver game no, sir
Picture black sayin' 'Oh, yesa massa'
Picture L'il Kim dating the pastor
Minute man big ring can outlast ya
What was the best I dont have to ask ya
When I come out you wont even matter
Why you act dumb like uuuuuugh duh
Say you act dumb like uuuuuugh duh
As the drummer boy go badumppadumpdump
Gimme some some some of this cinnabun

Is it worth it, let me work it
I put my thang down flip it and reverse it
(Backwards bit)
if you got a big (elephant noise) let me search ya
to find out how hard I gotta work ya
(Backwards bit)

To my fellas, I like the way you work that
To the ladies... woo...
you sure know how to work that.

I was looking through some old pictures yesterday and saw a picture of me and Ryan Adams from the first time I met him.

(I feel very horrible and name-droppery for telling these kinds of stories, but today it's either that or bitch about cramps.)

The first time I didn't meet him was at a Whiskeytown show where he had food poisoning (or whatever) and had to cancel the show. I did get to sneak in for soundcheck, though, so I saw Caitlin Cary sing lead on "Sixteen Days" while everyone was getting their levels. I got the two 7" set and a Whiskeytown shirt which I lost and recently found again. You should get Caitlin's recent solo album, by the way.

Actually, the first time I didn't meet him was when I was fifteen and didn't write to him to trade him my zine for his punk band's split 7" that I saw advertised in the back of Maximum RockNRoll. Had I done this, it would have led to one of the great artistic and romantic collaborations of the millennium. That's okay, though.

But the first time I actually met him was in Mexico. It was after Heartbreaker but before Gold. I interviewed him and his handlers said he thought I was cute but they could have been kissing my ass. He invited me to have drinks with him later but he ignored me when I got there. I decided not to care and spent the night talking with his guitarist at the time, John Paul Keith, who has a cool band called Stateside.

Months and months later, I met Rose Polenzani, who told me that Ryan had said that he had written "Gonna Make You Love Me" in Mexico. Oh, now I remember, Ryan wouldn't talk to me because he only had eyes for Jess Klein, who was performing there as well. I guess they wrote a few songs together, but I don't think that was one of them. I don't think he credited her on it, anyway. I can't find my copy of Gold now. So Rose was in Voices On The Verge with Jess, and that's how she knew. Anyway, I'm just gonna say that song was about me.

Friday and as usual I don't have any time to write.

Dance dance dance dance dance to the radio.

I've been listening to the college station all day and boy are they cool.

Part of the weird thing about my job is I get to meet famous people all the time, but in a quasi-business sort of environment. It's not like I'm their manicurist and I have to pretend they're not famous, but there's a definite on-mic/off-mic dichotomy for most people who've been in the biz a while.

I don't have any good stories about celebrities being jerks or even weird. A lot are pretty nice, actually. So maybe I'll try to remember some cases where people were really awesome, because it's not the end of the world to celebrate niceness. Nastiness probably gets more press, though. If you want celebrity stories in the meantime you can try Adam Curry's.

So last night the boyfriend and I were watching Entertainment Tonight and they mentioned that Jimmy Fallon attended the Imitation Of Christ show, and I said, well, duh, he's dating one of their designers. (They didn't mention that for some reason.) The boyfriend grunted or something in response. I said the Imitation of Christ show was great, they put topless models in an empty building and had them vacuuming while the press had to press themselves against the windows of the building to see.

He looks at me. "What?"

Yeah, isn't that funny, they pull that kind of stuff all the time.

He said, fashion is the thing that convinces me that we've just got too much money and we'd rather just smear it all over our faces than let anyone else have it.

I said, well, duh.

Yeah, talking about fashion makes me feel pretty shallow. Maybe I'm making up for twenty years of thrift-store shopping. Maybe I like looking at pretty things. Maybe I'm shallow. Oh well. I'm not saving any lives by being a DJ either. I happen to like nice tailoring, and a lot of other people don't care much as long as they're decent. I play the Ramones, and Creed sells a bunch more albums. Not better, not worse, just the way things are. We all find our magic in different places.

Oh, you're wanting to see the topless women, though. Forgive me. Here's the album from Style, and here's a list of shows from the Post. Not Safe For Work.

How about some rash fashion predictions? Well, this is what I'd like to see, anyway:

An END to all this new bohemian hippie prairie crap, and the stupid slouch boots that go along with it. It is so ovah. No more ragged hems of any sort, and if it's an uneven hem, you'd better have a damn good reason. I saw a disturbing amount of neon in the London collections. Stop that now.

I'm seeing a lot of collections that draw attention to the sternum...either with necklines that plunge to the belly or with interesting piping or cutouts. I'm okay with that, but it's so hard for most women to get away with.

Hair should be up if not covered. I want a big teens-40s revival. I want to see a collection with an aviation/Amelia Earhart theme. Look for any excuse to wear a little leather skullcap with goggles. Buy a scooter if you can. If that's not possible, get a wool hat for winter that looks like an aviator's cap. Knit one yourself. I want wonderful tailoring. I liked Warren Noronha's collection in London.

Skirts should be either pencil or near-circle with tulle underneath if you're feeling saucy. Knee-length either way, although a tea-length pencil skirt could look lovely with the right top. Mandarin/Nehru collars. Creamy blouses. Collarbones and necks.

The New York collections are starting to come in and they look great. I like the rearranged Fashion Weeks. It's a natural build this year...London, New York, Milan, Paris. I'm sure it's part of the reason London was kind of lame this year, too, but any brilliance we see from London will always happen on its own schedule and there's nothing you can do about it.

So London Fashion Week's wrapping up and I haven't seen anything I like much. The British are still on this silly sportwear kick. I haven't bought a pair of athletic shoes since...well, shoot. I guess since my last phys-ed class, so 13 or so. So I'm a little biased. My favorite collection was from Russell Sage, who got a mediocre review from Style. Yeah, the collection was unfocused, but there were some good pieces. I don't know if I would hire the guy for a major collection or anything, but I'd buy that little outfit to the left there. Michiko Koshino and Jasper Conran also had a moment or two (here's a bunch of runway shots), but the whole week felt terribly recycled. The New York Times, as always, has a sober analysis of the week. (Registration required, natch.)

Sigur Rós just announced a bunch of dates and the times they're near me are incredibly inconvenient. Incredibly inconvenient. But the reason they're inconvenient is a very good reason that I wouldn't trade to have a hassle-free Sigur Rós show experience. I'm not going to say any more or I'm going to jinx it.

I'm very pleased with my accented o's, by the way.

Fashion Week! Fashion Week! It's Fashion Week! Hurrah! It started over the weekend in London and is coming to fabulous New York City this week. O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay! The blog should be extra fashiony for the next month or so, sorry.

What are you looking for?

Heck, what am I looking for? I talk to thousands of people on the radio every day, yet I maintain a blog? What the hell is that? Maybe Wil can help me out there.

I almost did the "100 things about yourself" memeythingy, but wow, I can't imagine coming up with a hundred things about myself, let alone things that might possibly interest anyone, including myself. This is strictly a comment on my own boringness and not on anyone else's motivations on spreading such meme. I actually think it's kinda cool and wouldn't mind starting a meme.

But first I've got to get more people over here. (Again, why? Even Wil wants to be a DJ. I've got the gig. Forget it. I'm going to get into an Eggers-like level of self-consciousness here if I keep this up.)

So, what are you looking for? Here are search terms that somehow led to my doorstep (in reverse chronological order):
teeny jeans
my big fat greek wedding september first
twilight zone rabbit
seven jeans
shopping for japanese loose socks
neko case blacklisted
seven jeans
emo patches
PDA porn
tattooed japanese girls
teeny jeans

There were also a bunch of searches that are too old for me to dig up now that were mostly from Germany looking for teen girl porn. Apparently 'teeny' is slang for lolita girls, especially in German.

So, welcome, Germans who like underage girls. Welcome.

For the record, I chose teeny as my handle because I'm skinny. Still not getting anything worth posting on Disturbing Search Requests though.

Ah yes, much better. Now I've just got to figure out why my font sizes are changing in my posts.

Well, hey, look. The long-threatened redesign finally happened. There's so much white space...I feel like I'm floating around. But I taught myself a little CSS, and that makes me happy. It's kinda boring, but I'm okay with boring. I really need to rethink how I'm dealing with pictures, though. I think I know how to fix it. Be right back.

I met a llama yesterday. He said to tell you to have a nice weekend.

I gotta throw some special love to Kate Sullivan and her rockblog, which is always delightful reading. Also look at her column in the L.A. New Times. Long ago and far away, I wanted to be a rock and roll writer, and I hope that had I continued down that path, I would have ended up a little like Kate. I love the way she plays with words, how she's sly and feminine in a blood-and-guts way, not with ribbons and such. I like how she knows how deadly fucking serious music is, how it can save your life.

I'm listening to the tape I ran last year on my morning show. Man, does this suck. Why did I want to start my day like this?

I just wanted to try to get some perspective.

I can hear the adrenalin in my voice, the blood thrumming near my lungs. I'm stammering a little as I try to put it all together.

It was really only an hour and a half that I was collecting those AP stories and giving out updates; we then began simulcasting a national network feed.

I'm going to say something now that we media people aren't supposed to acknowledge: It's really exciting to cover breaking news. It's also terrifying, heartbreaking, gutwrenching; you feel like your brain's revving into the red, like you barely have control in a sharp turn. You must make connections in the information and weave a narrative, without letting your voice betray you. But there is a part of you that's thrilled to be doing your job under difficult circumstances. Of course you don't want bad things to happen, but when they do, it's the little tiny way that you can help.

I've read reports on a few big stories, and a few put me on that hairpin curve, but I always made it.

I didn't make it that day. Of course. The times I spun out were off the air, thankfully, but it just underlined the gravity of the day.

On the tape, I just heard one of my colleagues--a veteran announcer--break up when he talked about the Kennedy assassination (the last 'where were you' moment) and how school was dismissed and the football games were cancelled. You could feel the weight of the events and memories on him.

I was out-of-body, in denial, moving mechanically for the first hour. It was the Pentagon crash, for some reason, that got me. We were off the air--oh, I just remembered how it happened. My promotions director called in, wanting to test some equipment for some reason, and I answered the phone at the moment the Pentagon crash came across the wire. I told him and he thought I got my information wrong; 'No, it's the World Trade Center, not the Pentagon.' 'No, the Pentagon too.' I hung up on him. I think I might have actually dropped to a crouch as I thought, the nukes are next, I just want to see my boyfriend, I just want to sleep in the same bed with him tonight. I don't remember much after that, although I'm on the tape reading bulletins for a while longer.

I feel overdramatic, but that's the way it happened. As far as I can tell, the boyfriend just let it roll off his back. He was just getting to class, and the professor continued as normal, told them they'd just have to focus. Everyone had laptops with air ports, though, so they just got their information there.

The blogs saved me, and not watching television saved me again. Metafilter and 3WA were really invaluable, and the NYC blogs were just remarkable.

On the tape, people are calling in and crying.

I emailed my friends and family, revised all the music for the day, put in a lot of Bob Marley and Bruce Springsteen, and then went back on the air to anchor afternoon drive news, which we normally don't do. When I got home, late late late, I watched the television and cried. And I slept in the same bed with him that night.

Holy crapola. They just told me it's my seventh anniversary with the company.

My radio is playing the Replacements' "When It Began."

I'm gonna go have a midlife crisis now.

I spent a couple of hours last night doing a big post on the teenage punk bands in the cornfield and it's not here today. Too bad. I'm not doing it again.

I upgraded to Blog*Spot Plus25. Like I have the time for this. At least I'm getting it to work.

Okay, fine, the Seven jeans. I got them at Neiman-Marcus. They don't take credit cards except AmEx, fair warning. I'd been trying on jeans all weekend to try to find a good pair, and I knew Neiman's had the Sevens so I figured what the hey. I tried on a bunch of pairs but I really don't like that faux weathering they're doing. Fake fading just looks fake. So I ended up liking a superdark pair of the Classic Flare style. My style number matches up with that style number, but I think my pair actually looks more like this, because they're dark. The cut numbers are all different, though. Mine is 98678. What the hell does it all mean?

They look pretty damn good. Probably not $60 more good than a pair of Levi's, but close. The rise is low without totally gapping in the back when I sit down, the back pockets aren't too high or too low (or too big or too small), and they're slim through the thighs. This pair flares a little more than is my style, and they are long (even for tall me), so I have to cuff them two or three inches, but that's the style these days. Neiman said they would hem them for free, but nah.

Shopping disclaimer: It must be reiterated at this point that yes, they were a hundred dollars, but that brings my total blue jean expenditures over the past fifteen years to a hundred dollars. Beat that, suckahs.

Man, I made myself such a long list of things to write about. Okay:

Crazy Radio: There's this great country station that I can get for about an hour on my way to my parents'. In the space of half an hour, I heard (among other things): "Jolene," "I Don't Wanna Play House," and a Willie Nelson twofer, "Blue Eyes Cryin' In The Rain" and "City Of New Orleans." I looooove this station.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding: I was going to actually review this movie, but the boyfriend had a more succinct take when I told him it was good, but a chick flick. "Duh. It's got the word 'wedding' in the title. And it's not followed by 'singer.'

Q: How much does the first day back at work after just a couple of days off suck?

A: A lot.

(although as I now see yesterday's post about the immolating boy, I must hasten to add that it really isn't all that bad. Really.)

Oh, and the other thing I wanted to mention is the kid who set himself on fire.

My mom and I were driving back and forth between a couple of towns in the middle of the corn, and we saw a really big yard sale right off of the state road. It had a lot of furniture (which my parents need because they just moved into a new house), so we stopped.

As my mom turns off the car, she stops, looks at the big barn where all the furniture is, and says, "Oh."

"This is where this kid I knew poured gas on himself and set himself on fire."

Pause.

"Right there on the driveway." She nods toward a five-piece dinette set.

I don't really know what to say to this. "He just committed suicide, like a Buddhist monk?"

"Yeah," she says brightly. "He was kind of troubled." She shrugs and gets out of the car.

I block it all out of my head, especially while looking at the dinette set. My mom points out a couple of people that she knows who are at the yard sale. We don't find anything there we want.

After we get back in the car, she elaborates. The kid was twenty, pretty close to her in age at the time, maybe a couple of years younger. He was always sensitive, high-strung. She said he was very thoughtful, and drove to see her in college after she left her hometown. She thought it was odd at the time, since they weren't terribly close, but whatever. (My mom is and was quite pretty, so that might have had something to do with it, but I didn't mention that to her.) She didn't talk about anything that might have triggered it, or his family's reaction, or anything like that.

Then that night I read the part in A Staggering Work Of Heartbreaking Genius where somebody's friend's dad torches himself on the front lawn. Very weird.

Well, obviously I took a couple of days off. Visited my folks in the middle of the corn, far away from computers. I have a few things I'm going to note briefly so I remember to write about them later:

All my weird family.

Seeing a bunch of teenage bands in the middle of a cornfield.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding.

I bought the stupid Seven Jeans.

Crazy radio.

A Staggering Work Of Heartbreaking Genius.

Lots of stupid shopping.

Thanks to Just Joshin for the link, it will be reciprocated shortly.

My great family.