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The Beatles Make�

Elle Molique — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:27:00 CDT

Elle Molique

�my stomach hurt. Always.

A friend of mine once said, �I�m glad I found out you were cool before I knew you hated the Beatles. Otherwise, I might not have become friends with you.� Hate is such a strong word�that fits like a non-kid glove. I can barely stand that guy because he LIKES the Beatles. I don�t have a lot of friends.

Why do I hate thee, oh Beatles sound? Let me count the ways:

1. No guitar playing that is worth a crap.
2. The lyrics are made of sap. �My guitar gently weeps�� Get a new one. The sap is draining out of the wood and that�s a problem.
3. The drumming is suspect, mostly because it barely exists.
4. The song writing defined a generation�of drug addicts.
5. They�re all so cute�not at all. Not one. Not that it matters because I�d pick Motorhead over them any day, and they ain�t Victoria�s Secret models. (Ace of spades! Does that come in a fuschia demi?)

Trying Mall Sushi

Elle Molique — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 21:06:00 CDT

Elle Molique

Some risks are worth taking�

I walk through the mall, glaring at its constituents. Consumers. What a bunch of atomatons, with their disposable income and leisure time. There are starving people in China, you know. Or there used to be. I wonder when itreally pushes to kick our asses economically if the Chinese government, with its cornered markets and pollution apathy and wanton ownership of US Treasury Bonds, will give a crap about the starving people in America. Screw that. I�m for continuing our world economic domination. Stop reading this and get back to work.

Return to mall maudlinium. A herd of high school kids rushes into Abercrombie and Bitch to look like everyone else as fast as they can before the holidays. I sneak myself past Sephora, hefty faceted zircon in the crown of the Overpriced Cosmetics Empire. Love it, love it, love it!!! My knees buckle. I put my left hand against my head to block the tentacle edge of the vortex that threatens to wipe color on my cheeks and lids and suck the ATM card right out of my pocket.

I�m Not Exactly a Christian, But�

Elle Molique — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:48:00 CDT

Elle Molique

�I love Creflo Dollar!

I just bought a house, so affording cable is low on my priority list. I am a television addict, so I am left with Hulu, which sucks because of the couchlessness of it, and USA Network that comes in snowy and garbled through my internet cable connection. As a result, I get to watch buttloads of NCIS, JAG, Walker Texas Ranger, and Monk in diffused black and white.

One Sunday morning, I decided to tune in to my crappy non-cable (the reception I get adds up to about ninety cents over a three-month period---feel free to prosecute for the full amount; here�s a half inch of my change jar) and to my surprise, I was blessed with the dulcet preachings of non other than Dr. (ahem�amen) Creflo Dollar.

The Anatomy of Jazz Today According to Me

Elle Molique — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 18:16:00 CDT

Elle Molique

First thing you say to yourself as you walk onstage: �Don�t s#&t your pants.�

People who play jazz know it is the most difficult art form ever invented. And jazz players are the most cruel, critical a-holes out there. You can�t help it. You pick apart someone else�s solo just like you know they are doing to you.

Jazz people idolize the �masters� like crazy, too. Nobody will ever touch Coltrane, Dizzy, Miles, or Bird. Maybe there was something to the fact that they were on the cutting edge of the most coveted jazz genres, but people like Donald Harrison, Danilo Perez, and Terence Blanchard have done what I would call exciting things with jazz in the last twenty years. So have a huge number of other�cats. (I said it.) With the advent of cheaper recording and expendable time and income, everyone can make a record, and does anymore. The cream can�t rise to the top in a centrifuge.

Facebook Follies

Elle Molique — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:16:00 CDT

.Elle Molique

�I love my women in 2-D.�

I see this guy on his laptop and I am thrust back into the 1980s. Obviously, there weren�t a preponderance of laptops at the time, but it looked as though this guy was hard at work, probably monitoring stocks during after-hours trading, and/or reading news stories on competitive companies to research his next big investment. Wrong. He was jacking around on Facebook.

Is this yet another reason the Euro is beating our asses right now? Is our productivity truncated by the allure of two-dimensional love or lust or �friends� keeping us from doing out jobs, or even aspiring to anything?

Addiction and the U.S. Economy

Elle Molique — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:02:00 CDT

Elle Molique

Let me see, where�s my credit card�?

You know what I am thankful for? I am thankful that I didn�t get the substance addiction gene that plagues so many Americans. I know people who have died from it (my little brother) and I know people who struggle with it today (pretty much everyone else I know). My best friends are often stoners, though I can�t be around them when they are high, hence I don�t see my friends too often. I�m pretty sure the Russians out-drink us, but we�ve got �em on the ganja.

Food, however, is what makes us look bad to the world. Countries that don�t have an abundance of food must see pictures of Americans and want to stuff us and cook us on the fire because we are so well-marbled. It is hard to turn down abundance, as we all know, especially when it tastes so damn good.

Do You Believe?

Elle Molique — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 20:44:00 CDT

Elle Molique

If you hate my column, here�s some more ammo.

I have been psychic for as long as I can remember. One day, when I was three years old, I was riding in the car with my dad on the way back from the market along the coast of Aruba.

�Ship!� I said, pointing at the harbor.

The ocean liner, Queen Elizabeth, was burning in the harbor. I looked down at the fish in a paper bag in the front floorboard.

�Teeth,� I said to myself, moving my feet back a little.

�What ship, honey?�

Going Coastal

Elle Molique — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 22:02:00 CDT

Elle Molique

Two slices of bread that meat in the middle�

I have lived on both coasts, basking in the self-righteous, vegetarian glory of overpopulated non-existence. The feature that the east and west coasts have most in common is that it costs an arm and a leg to live on either arm of The Big Chair. So why do it?

Exceptional food. When you can pluck your oysters right from the water, why eat anything else? A person can maintain a horny aphrodisiacal binge for weeks and not experience the whiney aftertaste of in-flight decay that must inevitably occur when you import something that smelly from 1,500 miles away.

Art is revered to some degree, though even some really well-known artists I have liked, people who will paint you naked in high heels even though you weren�t wearing any, live in friends� garages and are thankful for it.

I Am Protesting�

Elle Molique — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:27:00 CDT

Elle Molique

�protesting.

It�s a lost art, really. The colonists who steeped their British-taxed tea into the Boston Harbor had style. And balls. And good reason. And they were ready to fight for their right to party.

Protesting today is a bunch of junk. I went to a high-dollar liberal arts college in the 1980�s. I wanted to study, above all things. I didn�t even drink. Many of the other students wanted attention, and they got it. It seemed that sit-ins were a normal activity, therefore an ineffective form of protest because the same people were clogging the halls in their ombré skirts and Birkenstocks with knitted socks each week. One merely had to ask, �What are you protesting this time?� Same question, different cause�still no deodorant.

Kittens Don�t Say the F-Word

Elle Molique — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:40:00 CDT

Elle Molique

�but I do.

I slammed my middle finger in the car door in third grade. I started screaming because the door was fully closed and I was sincerely afraid my mom would drive off with me still attached to the car. It hurt, but the bigger fear was the thought of me flailing in the wind like a stream of toilet paper as my mom sped off to go shopping.

So we get to the doctor�s office and they rip the nail off after sticking a needle in the middle of the wound to dull the pain. Effective? Not so much. Believe it or not, pain was not the biggest issue for me at that moment. I was mortally afraid that I would be flipping people off all day because a giant, throbbing white mummy had sprouted from the middle of my hand. My mom reassured me that God made little fingers before people made up that sign and that I would be okay.

Uniformity

Elle Molique — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 22:36:00 CDT

Elle Molique

�No, don�t take �em off, leave �em on�leave �em on.�

He came out the side door of the veterinary clinic, chucking a pile of dog food bags into the dumpster. He was wearing French blue scrubs with the name �Drew� embroidered on the patch on the top right of his shirt. The top grazed his pecs, creating a detached triangle that carried the rest of the fabric down past his tight abdominals. He wouldn�t look at me, intent on getting back to work.

Charlie Sheen�

Elle Molique — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:00:00 CDT

Jesus, people! What the HELL?!!!

Do you realize how difficult it is going to be for me to retain any sort of objectivity on this one? Maybe it�s all the hormones in the meat we eat and the mind-controlling fluoride in the water, but the people who are willing to entertain Charlie Sheen�s opinion on ANYTHING are missing a lobe and a half of gelatinous mind milk.

This is MY opinion, as are all of these crazy columns I write. Like I have said before, I sometimes even make up my opinion, change it (I like short chicks today. I met a cool one that was nice to me this very weekend.), and mush it around to try and make it entertaining. I am trying to keep my composure, I really am. 1...2�3�4�5�6� Serenity Prayer� Lord�s Prayer... Lorazepam�

Short Chicks

Elle Molique — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:15:00 CDT

Elle Molique

If the tiny shoe fits�

Napoleon?Napoleonette! If I�m not tired of being bossed around by little ladies with big attitudes, then I�m Queen Elle-izabeth. How many of these precious little pearls am I going to have to encounter before the stereotype is broken?

Okay, you are short. I wanted to be short, too, to get attention, but I am exactly medium-everything. You have been told all your life how wonderful your dainty little hands are and how cute your squeaky voice is. This is akin to putting you in a shoebox with a bunch of mice and playing Cinderella with your ego, I know, but why do you have to take it out on me?

Dark Romance One

Elle Molique — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:33:00 CDT

By Elle Molique

A lost Mystery is in the bowels of the following house:

She pulls her mouth off his neck and inhales what oxygen is left in the crawlspace. He loves tight spaces. She lives for them.

�Give me your hand!�

He unhinges his wrist from the anaconda grip he has on her naked upper thigh and gives it to her without reserve. She puts his ring finger in her mouth, lolling her tongue around it so the spit drains efficiently down her throat. Breathing hard, she drives further into what she hopes is ahearty soul.

Cooking with Elle

Elle Molique — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 21:56:00 CDT

Elle Molique

Olive oil is�HOT!!!

I�m wearing nothing but an apron. I have to shield my vitals from the popping butter and oil combination I have heating on 6 in my best skillet. From the front, you wouldn�t know me from someone in a swimsuit on the beach. From the back, you get crack.

I crack the pepper in my favorite grinder over red potatoes sliced lengthwise. I have sucked the oil off a couple of slices already. Kosher salt and a last turn of the spatula, one layer done.

Inkwell

Elle Molique — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 21:14:00 CDT

Elle Molique

Keep your pen in your pants.

A 22-year-old male friend of mine has a job where he works primarily with women. He hangs out with my friends and me and spends most of the night describing all the chicks at work that he has bagged. Being older and more experienced, my friends and I try to discourage dipping his pen in the company ink, but he doesn�t listen.

Obviously, one runs the risk of a sexual harassment lawsuit in such a situation. You could be having a hot make-out session next to the water cooler on your breaks one day, then sitting in a cold steel chair in front of hot lights answering questions from the company attorneys the next.

Caverns

Elle Molique — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 20:30:00 CDT

Elle Molique

It�s dark in here�but not scary.

Rooted in darkness, the sugar beet grows. It reaches for the sun in the throes of sun-seeking single-mindedness. Adding to itself, cell by cell, its root tendrils reach for other beets like external veins and arteries connected to a wine-colored heart. Pulse, expand.

Pulled from its comfortable pad, it travels in a wheelbarrow, exposed. The sun it so singly sought fries the sensitive ends of its love-seeking tendrils. The farmer can�t care. It�s a vegetable

Don�t Read This�

Elle Molique — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 20:12:00 CDT

Elle Molique

�unless you want to be offended.

Very rarely does Elle become unshelled, but some reader comments have spurred this particular column.

For the most part, I ignore all comments on my column unless my editor sends them to me. I mean, I really don�t care what people have to say about what I have to say. Really, really don�t care. But a few comments of late have attracted my attention and I would like to clear some things up.

Victory, Victoria!

Elle Molique — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 21:09:00 CDT

.Elle Molique

What the hell is Victoria�s damned secret, anyway?

I�ve had discussions with men concerning the underclothes of women. Mostly, they just want to see women in a cigarette-paper thin T-shirt with no bra at an icicle convention. Women spend a brick ton of money on bras that lift, separate, and hoist our orbs into brassy gravity-defiance�it seems, for only ourselves.

Burn the Sofa

Elle Molique — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 23:00:00 CDT

Elle Molique

Be careful�you don�t know where that�s been.

I don�t have a lot of guests at my apartment. Partially because it�s an apartment, and partially because sex is had all over the place and I haven�t come to terms with how to sanitize fabric yet.

What is the proper etiquette for random acts of monkey sex? I know, as I sit watching television on my sofa, that I have had some gnarly nights on that thing. I can live with it because it�s my sweat and the sweat of the hottie that joined me, but I�m not so sure that my grandparents would want to sit there knowing that. I�m fairly sure they haven�t done any business on their sofa in fifty years or so, and it�s a ten-year-old sofa, so I feel relatively safe, other than their inherent creepy vibe that�s been there since the Depression. (The one from the last century, not this one.)