Lindsayism.com

Stephen Colbert is a Huge Neutral Milk Hotel Fan!

What are three of our favorite things?

Stephen Colbert
Neutral Milk Hotel
My Friend Stephanie aka "Stiff" (if you know her)

Last week, Stephanie went to see The Colbert Report live. What follows is an instant-message re-enactment of our real-life conversation after the show:

Me: How was Colbert?
Stephanie: AMAZING!!! OH MY GOD STEPHEN SANG NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL TO ME!
Me: What?? (Beatlemania screaming face, actual screaming, etc)

Here are the facts as we know them. Between segments, the Neutral Milk Hotel song "Holland 1945" came on (as, apparently, it often does) and Stephanie began absentmindedly lip-synching along to it. A few seconds into the song, she realized Stephen was pointing at her and singing along. According to witnesses, Stephen and Stephanie continued to sing along to the song while making eye contact for over a minute until their reverie was interrupted by the end of the commercial break. During this time, Stephen:

- Appeared to know all of the words to the song.
- Moved his head to look around a producer when his eye contact with Stephanie was briefly blocked.
- Acknowledged his and Stephanie's mutual understanding of the sad nature of the song, which is about Anne Frank, by making a "sad face" and tracing the motion of an invisible tear down his cheek. Stephanie, in kind, mimicked this motion back to Stephen.

In Stephanie's words: "I can die now."

Geoff, a sketch comedian who attended the show with Stephanie and witnessed the event, had this to say:

"It was magical. Neutral Milk Hotel was playing, Stephanie was singing, I was singing. Then I looked up and noticed Stephen was singing. Then I saw that he was singing in my general direction, so I looked to my right and realized that he and Stephanie were singing to each other. So I told Stephanie, "Hey, Stephen Colbert is singing to you!" and she did her best job of shushing me while continuing to sing Neutral Milk Hotel with Stephen. I was about 15 seconds behind on all fronts. But still, pretty awesome."

Here is our very most favorite picture of Stephen:

And here is the song: Download 06_holland_1945.m4a by Neutral Milk Hotel.

The world just screams and falls apart!!

This Post Intentionally Left Self-Absorbed: Hannah Takes the Stairs

So last night me and my friend Stephanie watched Hannah Takes the Stairs on Movies OnDemand (did you know that it's on MOD for $5.95 and has been since the day it came out in theaters?) It's impossible to say whether I would have enjoyed the movie as much if I'd paid $11 for it and had to watch it in a theater without the luxuries of wine and a pause button (ETC), but we were both thoroughly entertained and talked about the movie for a while after it was over. OBSERVATIONS:

girls gone wild williamsburg

I have nothing today. So: me and Stiff at Union Pool, summer of 2002 (one of these frames is not like the others!)

Two Buck Suck

When we go to Trader Joe's for wine (and I won't go anywhere else anymore), my friend Stiff always insists on getting the two buck chuck (in NYC, $2.99). For months I've been suggesting she splurge and spend the extra dollar on a $3.99 bottle, like Purple Moon or the oddly-waxy-tasting-but-I-like-it Zarutha (it might be spelled differently -- it's the one with the tan giraffe). I say the same thing every time: "There's a disproportionate increase in quality between the $2.99 and the $3.99. It's like the opposite of diminishing returns. Really!" So the last time we were in there and she grabbed the Charles Shaw and I made a face, she goes "I KNOW, THERE'S A DISPROPORTIONATE In INCREASE IN QUALITY OR WHATEVER...I don't care, I like this stuff!"

And then I realized...I am the world's cheapest wine snob.

Anyway, added value: this kind of reminds me of Zach Galifianakis's impression of a pretentious illiterate person (Video. Hilarious.)

"you could put a long blonde wig on a ferret and it would look like Jessica Simpson"

* Over the holiday, Stephanie ("Stiff") and I are going to make elaborate scrapbooks of our trip to the scrapbooking-supply store. It will be the only scrapbooks we ever make (probably.) We have a lot of ideas mapped out and they're so awesome we're making two so we don't fight over custody (and also we might go the Rashomon route in the storytelling.)

* Speaking of Rashomon, after over ten years of using it as a conversational reference, I finally saw the actual movie last weekend, though I fast forwarded through the non-talking parts. (I know.) It was very...Rashomonesque. (I know.)

* Highdea: OCD: The Video Game. You have to navigate the world and accomplish tasks while having OCD. I have OCD, so I'm totally allowed to invent this cool game idea.

* Did you see the first few episodes of 30 Rock? Were you like "Eh, I'll leave it on my DVR schedule but nobody can make me watch it!?" I was, and so were a lot of people I know, but in fact the show has gotten better and better every week, and was so funny last week I've already shown it to three people. I just gave up on finding video from last week's show, but I did send a personalized holiday greeting to a few friends from Alec Baldwin. (If I can still get a moderate amount of glee out knowing Alec is calling my friend Emily and calling her a homemaker from Iowa who enjoys collecting sports memorabilia, irony is not dead (to me.)

"Sometimes there's so much beauty...in the world...I feel like I can't take it...like my heart's going to cave in..."

Today is my favorite day because two equally awesome things happen today. In alphabetical order:

1. Mark Graham aka Whatevs aka Uncle Grambo and Kerry McGovern aka sosaysi aka The Senator MOVE TO NEW YORK! It's been the #1 thing I've been looking forward to in my life for the past two months. And now it's here. The presence of these two in my city will increase my personal happiness by a good 40%.

2. My beloved Stephanie Tillman aka Stiff aka Drinking Stiff finally returns from the "one month" trip to Europe she embarked upon last May 1st. I can now stop crying every time I walk by San Loco on Stanton, the last place I saw her face.

Yay.

It can't be all that pretty/when all of New York City misses you

MISSING

NAME: Stephanie Brooke Tillman

KNOWN ALIASES: "Stiff", "Tillface"

D.O.B.: August 14, 1977

HEIGHT: 5'7"

WEIGHT: Really f**king thin

DISTINGUISHING MARKS: Tattoo of 3 blue stars in "bullseye" area

LAST SEEN: Late April 2006, drinking strawberry margaritas with friends at San Loco on Stanton Street the night before going to Europe for "one month."

SUSPECT:

  NAME: London, England

KNOWN ALIASES: "The Square Mile", "LDN", "Jolly Old England's Capital"

D.O.B.: 1066 or something

DISTINGUISHING CHARACTERISTICS: A clock, a queen, a bridge, Topshop, bad food, a shit-ton of terrorists, hooligans, Lily Allen

REWARD: One Drink for anyone who convinces Stephanie to come home.

(HAPPY BIRTHDAY, STIFF!)

bunnicula

Me and Stephanie had an art day on Saturday. Stephanie and her boyfriend David have art day every weekend and are both really great artists, so at first I was intimidated, but after a few false starts I finally got the idea to celebrate the short life of my former bunny, JonBenet, with a commemorative painting. David took a picture:

(It's retarded, but I'm so proud of it.)

(JonBenet is not for-sure dead, actually.)

Drinking Stiff's iPOD Covers at the Cake Shop

One of my best buds, Stephanie (aka Drinking Stiff) made iPOD covers for fun and had a picture of them on her site (not for sale), and The Cake Shop contacted her and commissioned a bunch of them, which is so awesome. They're now on sale at The Cake Shop, 152 Ludlow Street, and here's an example of one: