Orange Crush

Fall in Redmond

Wardrobe Consultancy

I’d love to go to a Halloween party next Saturday, I answer to D’s email, but I don’t want to be the only one in costume. Last year, D dressed up as Mark Knopfler, and even people who didn’t recognize him as the lead singer of Dire Straits, appreciated his blast-from-the-past inspired shoulder pads and white headband and wrist bands. What could be scarier than that?

Inspired by D’s killer getup last year I decided to go as a victim of bad taste. I’d get to resurrect some fashion mistakes while looking scary at the same time. But what was truly frightening was the wide array of garments – synthetic fabrics, a hairy jacket, red Capri pants with subliminal triangles – I have to choose from. Roughly half my hanger space is occupied clothes stuck in wardrobe limbo: they’ll never be worn again but won’t be donated or otherwise recycled.

I make my most egregious mistakes when I venture outside my staple stores, which include Banana Republic, Gap and J Crew, or when I’m feeling nostalgic. Then I end up holding on to most of these items at least until I have worn them enough to get my money’s worth.

My friend Gabby has always had the quick-wittedness to know the exact moment to ditch a fleeting fashion trend, so she has never been caught wearing high-waist pants or skinny jeans at the wrong time. Now she’s putting that savvy to good use, offering style and wardrobe therapy to New Yorkers who need help organizing their closits and breaking the wardrobe packrat habit.

Anatomy of Hell

I just watched one of the weirdest, most incomprehensible films I can remember. Anatomy of Hell is, as I saw it, about misogyny, fear and sexual politics. A woman tries to slit her wrist in a nightclub restroom but is rescued by a club patron, who takes her to a pharmacy to get patched up. She offers in-kind payment for the inconvenience and propositions him to come watch her in the nude, where she is most "unwatchable."

The film is not titillating – nor is it supposed to be – and is at times repulsive: during the couple’s four nights together, he brings a pitch fork into the bedroom and she imbibes a bloody medly of water and freshly-extracted tampon. The two main characters exchange artsy, philosophical dialogue that seems stilted and unnatural, as if they were quoting cryptic poems on stage (the power of a woman’s fertile blood forces men to face their fears; in contrast to menstrual blood, fecal matter has already terminated its life cycle, etc.). Even more confusing is the voice over narration of what the characters are supposed to be feeling. And it wasn’t just bad subtitles, the French dialogue was just as cryptic. I had to force D to sit through it with me until the end.

Do men hate women because of their bodily functions and because of the enigmatic nature of female sexuality? Don’t expect this film to provide answers. I couldn’t make heads or tails of what the two characters were going on about but I watched until the end because I wanted to see if one final scene would tie everything together. But there wasn’t. I read a bunch of old film reviews on Rotten tomatoes. A lot of critics brought up the opening text on the screen explaining that a body double was used for the extreme close-ups of the actress’ body while the actor shows his own private parts on screen. But this wasn’t supposed to show a double standard. Amira Casar is a well-known actress in France while the man is an adult-film star. Had the man been the well-known mainstream actor and the woman the porn star, then the opening text would refer to a body double for the man’s nether parts.  I guess I should have read the book.

 

Pumpkin Season

This weekend, we went to a Woodinville farm to pick the perfect pumpkin. We discovered the South 47 farm last fall, a week or two before Halloween. It’s close to our home and easy to get to: I think three left turns is all it took to get to the pumpkin patch and farm stand. The farm also offers lots of attractions, including hayrides ($1 per person) and a 5.5-acre corn maze ($6 per person). All that orange is truly delightful.

 

 

 

Fall in Redmond

Eastside Straphanger’s Notebook

When to Hold, When to Fold

Waiting outside for the bus gives me license stare unabashed into passing vehicles, trying to spot some egregious behavior behind the wheel: a motorist changing a diaper at a red light; a traveler reading a newspaper while sipping coffee. I always spot at least one driver inhaling breakfast or manipulating a cell phone before I hear the 230 bus turning onto NE 85^th Street. Last week, I watched a driver struggling to detangle one of the now ubiquitous white ear buds. What, on his playlist, was so urgent he felt entitled to put public safety on pause?

I am often the first passenger to board the bus in the morning – I think I get on at the first stop – so I take my time hoisting my bike onto the bike rack. I sit in the same place each time – on the right, close to the front door – so I can see the road and keep an eye on my bike. The bus climbs a hill in Bellevue and stops for passengers. A man boarding the bus with tinted glasses whacks me below the knee with a cane. The sharp pain startles me. Then I realize that the man is blind and my anger vanishes faster than an empty seat on a crowed bus. I prepare to utter something gracious like, "no worries." But instead of apologizing, the visually-impaired passenger yells out: "Well, you should have said something!" Great. I am at fault for letting myself whacked on the shin.

A week earlier, a guy tried to board the bus after swiping an invalid metro card. He begged the bus driver to let him stay on, explaining that he grabbed the wrong card that morning (what are the odds?), that the same card just worked on another bus just minutes ago and must have somehow been deactivated, that he couldn’t afford to be late for work that day. But she wasn’t buying any of his excuses and ordered him off the bus. Something about the pathetic excuses touched me. If he were that desperate to get out of paying $1.25, I figured he was truly in a bind. He needed a break. I offered to pay his fare, feeding $2.00 through bill reader. The machine doesn’t return change so I lost an additional .75 cents. Instead of acknowledging my forays into altruism, the pleading passenger morphed into an arrogant bamboozler, smirked at the bus driver and swaggered to the back of the bus to sit down and prop his feet up on the seat in front of him. He didn’t even glance in my direction. Then the bus driver started scolding me for encouraging this behavior. They’re all charlatans and everybody has a sob story she explained. And the reader doesn’t give change, she informe me.

There must be some overlap. Some of the goofballs are the same crazy drivers multitasking in their cars. They get on the bus to act out their frustration at being denied the eating, cell-phoning, diaper-changing privileges that their vehicles afford them.

Heroes

We just finished watching the first season of Heroes. The NBC series is just what we were looking for: a show that delivers cliff-hanger excitement rivaling the best episodes of 24, Lost and Alias. Naturally, it has its quirks, including some crazy plot twists and an annoying child actor who needs protecting (luckily, she appears in only a few episodes), but it delivers the thrilling, yell-at-the-TV-screen, good fun that we crave. And and the characters seem to like Nissans.

One guy shows a bleak, bombed-out future through his paintings. One man can teleport himself while another character can fly. Together, they must save the cheerleader. The plot only thickens.

Donning My New Mask

They don’t work well in cars, the optometrist warns of transitions lenses. That’s because windshield glass blocks much of the ultraviolet radiation that makes the lenses darken from exposure to sunlight. An "inconvenient truth," yes, but not enough to sway me. Isn’t eyewear annoying enough? Glasses fog up and get smudged. They can get scratched, bent and lose screws. What’s more, you have to switch between sunglasses and regular specs with varying light conditions. I found an option that would partly eliminate the latter hassle.

Now I see the world through color-changing glasses. The photochromic (light-sensitive, color-changing) lenses change tint with varying luminosity: the sunnier it is, the darker the lenses. The level of tint changes gradually. So if you walk into a dark room after walking in bright sunlight, you have to put up with wearing sunglasses indoors until the tint fades. But that’s hardly an inconvenience for not having to carry around a second pair of glasses.

My transitions lenses don’t get as dark as my regular sunglasses. I’m not sure whether this is because they’re not supposed to, or whether it’s because the sun hasn’t been that bright. I’ll have time to find out.

Two Years in Redmond

We have been living in the Pacific Northwest for two years now. Signs I’m officially a Redmonder:

• This year, I spent more money at REI than I spent at Banana Republic and Gap combined.
• The names Coho, Chinook, Sockeye and Stealhead now mean something to me. Other than delicious.
• I have taken my bike on the Burke-Gilman Trail.
• I own a bike.
• I’m getting to know my evergreens and I can tell the difference between a Douglas fir and a Western Hemlock.

   

Best Place to Meet Single Guys

Whole Foods is the place to meet single guys. At least, according to a friend it is. As she explained, men who are unhitched – men who have discriminating palates and decent jobs to support those tastes – go to the natural foods store to choose dinner for one. What’s more, these guys are probably health and environmentally conscious.

Whole Foods is probably also a great place to bump into guys having dates over and trying to pass off the prepared dinners and culinary items as home-made gourmet cuisine. And, of course, serial samplers – shoppers who roam from stand to stand hoarding the freebies and going back for seconds. The ones who hog all the good handouts leaving none for you. Could those be the guys my friend was talking about?