Thank God For the Internet, and For Twitter

Because if it weren’t for Twitter, I would not be online friends with Will Radik and if I weren’t online friends with Will, then I would die. A lot. Die a million times.

For the record, we’ve not met in person, because if we did, I might break down in tears. This video makes me feel a little bit like that time I saw Madonna in concert in Las Vegas and I wept because she’d been my hero for most of my life. Yes, good, maybe I’m oversharing.

Watch.

And the sequel.

I Never Blogged Back Fence PDX!

What was I thinking after the event? I’ll tell you what I was thinking after the event: I am so tired. It was a party for sure. We had 200+ people in there and every single person said it was the best event so far. The tellers totally killed and the audience was in great spirits. It was just a great night.

Before the show and during the intermission, Frayn and I wander around the crowd handing out buttons, chatting with people. People give us business cards and flyers and we have pens in our hands and by the time we’ve finished a rotation around the room, our hands are full and we shove all this stuff into our already-full purses. And we can’t shake another person’s hand. Which is good for me because my palms are pretty sweaty by that point. It’s an odd thing because I feel totally at ease on stage, and I know the event is one of the finest, well-produced, satisfying events in Portland, but I still get clammy palms.

During intermission this last time, I had some scraps of paper in one hand, and a pen in the other and someone asked me if I was taking drink orders. Ummm…no. But I would have because that’s how Miss Frayn and I roll with this Back Fence thing. It’s all about making people happy, and entertained, comfortable and happy.

So we’re there chatting with 200+ people and making sure the tellers are ready to go, we’re ready to go. And we forget stuff, like thanking Urban Forest for taking pictures, and thanking Intern Nathalie (hello, we’re assholes) and thanking The Mission for being totally awesome.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from the event! More pictures here!

Back Fence PDX, Mortified, Live Wire, True Stories All Together!

Yep, it’s true! Back Fence PDX is teaming up with the Portland heavy hitters for a night of stories told and read. We’re so honored to be on the bill. When we started Back Fence PDX one of the ways we’d know if we made it was to share a stage with Mortified. And here we are!

It’s at the Bagdad Theater where I gave my speech in front of 700 people. It’s on May 7th. It’s to celebrate Mother’s Day.

Back Fence PDX has two awesome tellers telling stories based on the theme Word to Your Mother, Portland fashion designer Adam Arnold, and Portland Metro Council President, David Bragdon.

All the info is at www.wordtoyoumotherpdx.com.

And, most importantly, get your tickets here!

Warning: A Knitting Post

I bought yarn.

That’s socks that rock and the color (get this) is freckle. Freckle!!! I love it.

Remember these socks that I knit and then gave to Steve? They were only the single greatest pair of socks I’ve ever worn.

I loved those socks even though they were not mine and one day someone who was not me was doing his own laundry and now those socks are kids’ socks and it breaks my heart a little bit. But I have to remember that when you knit for others, it can only be an expression of love. Nothing more. No expectations. There’s nothing knitters can do to preserve their knits once those knits are in someone else’s hands.

I haven’t knit in months. Here’s the last thing I finished.

Isn’t it pretty? That’s the striped Noro scarf that was making the rounds on the internets for a while.  That’s it. That’s all I’ve knit. And I finished it back in February.

So I will knit freckles into a girl version of those socks above. And they will be the greatest socks ever. And they will be mine. ALL MINE.

Will Radik’s Ass!!!

And now, by popular demand, here are some pictures of Portland KJ and Guru In Social Media author of the blog, I’m In Your Water, Will Radik! He took these pictures using the Melissa Lion method of ass photography — posing alone and using the camera in his wee mac.

H.O.T

I’m Not Meant for High Fashion

Stever and I tried to make a high fashion photo shoot in honor of my new dress, which might just be the most perfectest dress ever sewn by 12 year old Sri Lankan child labor. But I…just…I’m not high fashion.

So I made cat sounds.

The point of these pictures is twofold:

1) This dress is a miracle worker because it makes me look all of three pounds. I am not three pounds, I weigh 150 pounds, and I’m about 5′7″, which, I think, sets me a few pounds in the overweight range. Eh, fuck it.

2) As much as I want to wear the four-inch heels tomorrow to Back Fence, I cannot. Becuase I need to get on and off the stage without breaking my neck. That is not possible in these shoes. I could barely make it out of my bedroom. Which is flat.

Also, why is aligning photos so fucking hard in a self-hosted wordpress blog?

See you tomorrow?

Help Us Sell Out Back Fence PDX on Wednesday

Okay, so Back Fence is on Wednesday. And this is our third show at our big girl space. That’s what we call the Mission because it has a bar and chairs that don’t need setting up. It’s all professional, instead of our building the stage like we did for our first show. Yes, we had out the Dewalt and were actually assembling the stage. What? No one fell through the floor!

So the big girl space. It also holds a lot more people. 250 total.

For our first two shows at the Mission, it was comfortably crowded. It’s a great space (with a balcony) and our crowd mingled and had comfortable chairs and no one was sitting on the counter like people were at our second space where I was actually worried that someone would pass out of heat exhaustion or lack of oxygen.

But in the smaller space, it was sort of cool to see people crushed against the walls and not able to move more than three inches in any direction. And I want that again. Sure, no one else really wants that, but I do. I DO!

We’re rolling out all the publicity in these next two day. So far, we had that awesome article in the Oregonian, and we’re in the Merc’s My What a Busy Week. We’ll be in the Willamette Week somewhere. And the bloggers, the tweeters, the Facebookers, will get the word out too.

What can you do to help us sell it out?

I have no idea. But I’d like you to help.

So…think of one thing you can do to sell tickets to the event. And do it. Do it. For me.

If you haven’t gotten your tickets, you might want to do that here. You can see that the Fan Club has been mobilized…god help us all.

Kiala wishes she’d never invited me to stay

As if I haven’t morphed into Kiala Kazebee enough…

This is what I had for breakfast.

San Francisco: A Tourist’s View

Hi Portland!

I am in San Francisco with Kiala. We have eaten Burmese food and it was delicious and then we came home and looked at the television, while surfing the web, sitting under blankets and eating magick brownies. Basically reveling in what it means to be Kiala. I like this and I may never come home.

Also, I have seen some things in San Francisco that I want to share.

1) People here have bikes with more than one gear.

2) There are people of other nationalities. Like Russians!

3) There are black people here and some of them are up to no good.

4) So much hustle and bustle.

5) There are whole cities full of people where eye contact and small talk with strangers is totally discouraged.

This one I remembered when I stepped off the plane and had my Portland face on, which is a small smile and witty, kind, response for when Portlanders ask me how I’m doing and expect an actual answer. But when I was at the airport and no one would look at me and smile back with a similar smile, for one small moment, I felt joyful. I didn’t have to be nice to anyone!

And that is the end of the blogging train.

I’m making breakfast for Dane and then Kiala and I are going to H&M.

And this is my muse today.

San Francisco Open Your Golden Gates!

Yay! Congrats to M for noticing my new tagline. And I guess it’s not as funny as it was to me two days ago when I thought of it. My thought went like this: “I am so fucking sick of ‘Social Media Experts’ following me on Twitter, but I can’t exactly write that on the internets so I must make fun of it in some way…how to do that…OH I know, I’ll declare myself The Empress of Social Mediocrity and that will be funny. And I will post that on Twitter, but not all of my admirers will see that because there are people who are crazy don’t belong to twitter and so how will they see my sheer brilliance??? I must add it to my blog! But how? I know! My tagline! I’ll change my tagline to ‘I am the Empress of Social Mediocrity’…but wait…what’s funnier than that…I know! Someone else saying it! That’s hysterical! But who should say it? I KNOW — THE CREATOR OF TWITTER!!!”

And that, my friends, is the birth of humor.

Also, I will be in San Francisco starting this afternoon and lasting two food-filled days. I will be with Kiala. We will either be live-tweeting the whole thing or not posting at all. It really depends on how clever we feel we’re being.

Here are two San Francisco pictures for you –

The view from our apartment on 43rd and Clement

And my author picture from Upstream. Who can tell me what structure that is in the background?