The international adventures of a singing, dancing zombie queen.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005


This is a picture of me in front of New York, New York that John took on the Sunday that we took forever to leave Vegas.
Not that I was complaining; I was quite happy to hang out, although rather tired. There's a suggestive picture of him with the Luxor obelisque, too.. I hope he posts it... heh heh heh.. Posted by Picasa

On the way to Vegas.... I can't believe it's been a month!

Strange to think it was a month ago that John and I were in Vegas. I guess that's what happens when I wait for him to post the pics for bloggy motivation. Anyway, as I was saying in the caption to the pic above...

We'd gotten to Vegas the evening before, after a morning of getting vaguely lost in MacArthur Park in Los Angeles as we were trying to get away from the traffic laden highways. The morning in LA was actually a success in the end; despite our detour, we found a Walgreens and I pumped myself full of Airborne for the rest of the day, saving myself from the horrifying cold that my housemate's ladyfriend had been willing to share with us.
John and I finally got out of town and headed off through the desert. The plants were green and covered most of the sand, so that only small patches of the Mojave's signature aridity seemed visible. We stopped in Calico to visit the ghost town; it seemed like the right thing to do, despite having started later than expected. The wind was warm and dry, and it was lovely to stretch our legs. The entire town of Calico had been bought and was being run by Knotts Berry Farm... every building was either empty or a concession stand, and nearly all of the buildings had been rebuilt with fresh, smooth wood. John and I were rather disappointed in this, both of us having memories of visiting Bowie when we were younger. We both remembered the cemetery, and so we wandered over to the Calico cemetery. Unfortunately, it was locked, but John took some pictures from the gates before we headed back to the car. And I had an amusing time crawling up a dirt cliff in my heels; of course, there had been a road we could've driven up, had we realized. But in all truth, despite the thorns and the dirt sliding out from under my feet and into the insoles of my shoes, I really did appreciate those few moments of differing physical activity.
The best part about visiting Calico was that we saw real tumbleweeds. The kind you see in Western movies. They are super fast, and they are yellow like cornsilk, and super bouncy. Rather than just rolling along, they bounce at every touch to the compacted sand, twisting slightly as they rise into the air, and whirling the other way as they rise, like a backtwisted ball ricochets off of a young tennis star's racket. Except, of course, that he tumbleweeds don't rise very far from the ground; they seem stuck to it; tripping over their own shoes. We stopped in the sandy parking lot before packing back into the car, cheering on the tumbleweeds as they rolled towards the hills and the abandoned silver mine, where tourists leaned over a shute, trying to pan for gold that the Knott's Berry Farm may or may not have deemed necessary to include in the attraction's water.
We drove out of Calico listening to Nirvana's Nevermind, which John was correct in suggesting was good music for the desert. Who would've guessed that grunge works with or without the rain?
At the border of California and Nevada, we ran into the first casinos; a large cluster of oversized buildings poking out of the flat desert like a wart. We drove to the minimart to make a pit stop, but the only thing they were selling was soda and lottery tickets.
And it was packed. People were standing in three lines, each 10 people long, to play the California lottery. John noticed while I was in the loo that all of the employees were Eastern European because of their thick accents, which only added to the surreality of the experience. A near empty minimart, packed with serious-faced couples, singles and people with children under ten (most of whom were screaming), had driven out into the middle of nowhere to give their money away to another state.... and they didn't have any salsa.

Friday, July 22, 2005

links of joy

For all of you who are bored:

Check out my friend Siobhan's birthday cake, the lucky girl!!!

http://phoom.blogspot.com/2005/07/corpse-cake.html

And also some lovely anatomy art:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/dreamanatomy/da_gallery.html

Saturday, July 16, 2005


Here is the photo that Katerina was going for, in exchange for my headshots. I love it. Go buy some of her prints, 'cause she's friggin' awesome!!!!!!!!

http://katerina423.deviantart.com/
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Here is one of the headshots that my lovely, wonderful new photographer took of me during our photoshoot just before I left town. You can see more of her work at:

http://katerina423.deviantart.com/
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This picture is for Shannon, who insisted that while in New Mexico we stop at her favorite fast food place and get not only some cheddar jalepeno poppers, but also that concoction in front of me. I don't remember what it's called, but I do remember that it was so huge that the styrefoam cup slipped out of my hand just afterwards and spilled all over the floor, and that I still had 30 oz of it, even with 14 of those ounces splattered all over the restauraunt. It's a Dr. Pepper, with added vanilla syrup, cherry syrup and half and half. They were supposed to go easy on the ice, but didn't (this wasn't so bad, since it was crushed ice,) as well as marachino cherries and whipped cream. It was pretty good anyways, and since we'd gotten to Roswell too late to see the alien museum, this extraterrestrial drink was a welcome jolt of sugar to push us the last hour to her mom's house... I must admit that I was both disappointed and releived that they didn't have any hedgehog burgers. Posted by Picasa


After spending the night in Flagstaff, AZ, we were back on the road again. We'd worked up quite a habit of drinking way too much Rockstar (depending on one's opinion of too much), and I had already discovered that finding Diet Rockstar was not always as easy as I'd hoped. So we stopped at a large supermarket to stock up and get some more ice. Even with the A/C on constantly, your drinks don't stay cold in 100 degree heat. The night before we'd stopped for junk food, where the clerk had taken me perhaps a little bit over-seriously about my request for tons of katsup. So when I opened the cooler the next day, I discovered that we had our own little pond of cooler tadpoles. Aren't they just adorable, swimming around the yogurt and Hershey's bars? Posted by Picasa


Ah, the Journey Mural. We stopped rather often after our night in Vegas. Probably had something to do with the fact that we stayed up 'till dawn in our hotel room after seeing Zumanity and walking up and down the strip a few times, checking out the different casinos and playing lots of video poker.... but more on Vegas at a later time. In any case, we were in Arizona, and we saw the signs for Chloride, which was in my book of Eccentric America. The mural itself is entitled, "The Journey, Images From an Inward Search for Self". I suppose this should have given us a clue of what to expect.... The book told us that Roy Purcell painted this mural, "using automotive paint bought for him by a freindly miner," and that "some of the images tower 75 feet above you," and that despite the fact that you have to drive 1.3 miles down a bumpy dirt road, "it's worth it." Getting into the town was sort of a journey itself. From the highway, it looks as though Chloride is only a mile away, but as you drive along the road to town, someone has set up little signs every tenth of a mile that say things like, "don't worry"..."you have reached a town." Not surprisingly, the town itself is a small artsy community; every yard has found art sculptures and twinkly lights. There are tiny little adorable bunnies everywhere with little fluffy white tails; I'm not sure if it was just young bunnie season or if Chloride is infested with dwarf bunnies. I wouldn't mind living in a town infested with dwarf bunnies; except when they dash across the road and fill your mind with flashes of burning in hell for running their tiny little fluffy tails over. We got to the bottom of the road and, after a mere 50 feet, figured out that it was no longer suitable for anything to drive on besides ATV's. So we got out to walk, figuring we could use a touch of excersize. Of course, it wasn't 1.3 miles, and the sun got to setting, which was gorgeous, but since John and I had gotten nowhere near the distance we'd intended to that day, it was a little nerve wracking. But the cute little bunnies guided our way up the hill through the rocks, and after the fourth time we were sure we'd gone the wrong way, we came upon the murals, which were most certainly not 75 feet tall. And we both looked at each other and said, "what the fuck is this hippie shit??!!" Apparenlty whoever was so obsessed with this guy's work had never lived in Berkeley, where there are hippy murals on the back of every third mini-market. The desert walk and sunset were quite lovely, in any case. More pictures of that to come when John posts them.... including the picture of the tadpoles we saw in the creek on the walk back, which inspired the next picture.... Posted by Picasa


This is the Hoover Dam itself. You can just barely see the blue of the water on the far side of it, dark blue and oddly cold looking in the red desert. We could tell immediately a difference in the landscape here at the Arizona border. All through the Mojave, the desert ground had been yellow-brown sand and low, green brush. But just as we entered into these mountains, the soil became drenched in rust. Even the cement changed, as you can see from the parking lot I'm in.... The reason I like this picture so much is because Jesse left me a voice message today, knowing that I was leaving Vegas. He quoted Hunter S. Thompson: "So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high water mark -- that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back." And you can see it here in the picture; where the water has bleached the sides of the mountains that have beaten it back. Posted by Picasa


This is a pic I took of myself at the Hoover Dam. The dam itself was closed, so we just paid $5 to drive up to the top of the parking lot, where we could take some pictures and stretch our legs and smoke. Posted by Picasa

Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Industrial Ibiza!

Hooray for pool parties!
Full of rivetheads!
In black
without tans
IN A POOL
IN THE SUNSHINE!
Whoot!

http://photobucket.com/albums/b277/nurseglitch/Summer%20at%20Resort%20de%20Bockstiegel/?

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Dance & Fitness Faculty member at San Francisco Peninsula Community Colleges, Director, Choreographer & Featured Dancer, Founder of the Living Dead Girlz, and Owner of the Steele Dance Company, which provides entertainment for festivals, corporate events, conventions and private events. Teaching private dance lessons and creating choreography since 1997, Steele graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Double Major in Dance and Comparative Literature and completed her Master of Fine Arts in Dance and Choreography at Mills College. She has toured all the major cities in Germany and performed at the Cannes Film Festival as the featured dancer in TRIP -- Remix Your Experience, a multimedia exhibition of film, live music and art. Steele has also performed as a featured dancer for RJ Reynolds (CAMEL) promotional events. Steele currently manages the go-go dancers of "Poor Impulse Control," who perform frequently in San Francisco's industrial, alternative, and rock venues.

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