Oy Ai Oy Ai O

I am forcing myself to blog a bit before returning to my Weeds addiction. It's pretty bad. I don't blog, I don't do my writing group assignments (and I started the writing group!), I don't bake, I don't read. I just watch Weeds. I'm looking forward to running out of episodes.

This Weeds addiction has even stopped me from observing Naples, the whole point of this farshtunkeneh blog.

If anyone in my family is reading this right now, go Google Justin Kirk (he plays a character on Weeds) and tell me he doesn't look like cousin Erik. I know it's not like eerie twinship, but when he smiles, he reminds me so much of my LA cuz. There he is on the left.

I have been meaning to write a letter, an email actually since I still don't trust the Italian postal system, to all my maternal first cousins. I am the youngest of ten first cousins and an only child, so my cousins have been surrogate siblings. Not all of them, not always, not in the same ways, not at the same time, but enough to make me miss them and think about them, even the ones I have had very little contact with over the years since my grandparents died. I will write that email. I want to tell them that I think of them and love them and miss them and hope we can use the internet to keep us connected, send photos of our kids, write about our lives, gossip about the rest of the brood. I think it would feel good. Maybe I'll start by devoted a blog entry to each cousin...after an episode or two of Weeds, of course.

Cousin. Cugino in Italian. Brooklynites call Italian guys cugines (pronouned KOO-ZHEENZ) and now we know where that comes from. Cugette, unfortunately, is just a bastardized French feminization of cugine and aurally resembles courgettes, which is the Englishman's, via the French, again, it seems, word for zucchini, so it still counts as Italian. If you are reading this, R., linguistic anthropologist diva rock star, is an honorary PhD in my future?

I am not actually smoking the pot, just watching Kevin Nealon smoke it, but note my swiss cheesy brain. I have no desire to smoke a joint though I do have a lot of fond stoner memories. A lot of them take place in a car, but let's not go there since my parents read this blog and I wouldn't want to give them retroactive agita (from the Italian, agitare; I'm getting that PhD in Linguistics for Dummies, baby!).

Could be an interesting writing assignment: Write everything that comes to mind from when you were on drugs. Just keywords, not full stories, and then see where you go from there... dude. Here's an example:

Hopelessly Devoted to You. Break night. The Delta. Round robin candy bars. Someone stole the hood off my parka and it's 40 degrees below zero outside. Stoner hostess. I'll hold the joint up to your mouth; just breathe normally. Gilbert Gottfried: I crashed in the Andes mountains once, but I never ate a soccer player.

I think I'll go make some popcorn, scramble the words in the above paragraph, and see where I go...after an episode or two, that is...