What is your current favorite song/album?
I'm predictably obsessed with that London Bridges song. I like to think of the chorus as a rhetorical question for the ages: how come indeed, Fergie. As for albums, right now I'm wearing out my copy of More Adventurous by Rilo Kiley.
What song do you currently hate?
Lips of an Angel by Hinder is the worst song I've heard in years. The first couple times that I heard it on the radio, I didn't realize it was new, I thought it was a crap 80s rock ballad by some Bon Jovi cover band.
What's the next album you're going to buy?
Pieces of the People We Love by the Rapture, Oh No by OK Go, Philadelphia Songs by Denison Witmer, Ta-Dah by the Scissors Sisters, and Sam's Town by the Killers. But I'm going to LimeWire them because I'm a bad person.
What's the best advice ever given to you?
Don't steal music. And anything Greg says is good advice.
What are your nicknames?
Bec. No one really calls me Red. Actually, Tim does.
If you were born a member of the opposite sex, what would your name be?
Apparently my name would've been David.
In the situation above, what would you want your name to be?
Hmm, let's see, I've always been a fan of Who Cares, I Ended Up Being a Girl.
If you had a choice, would you drop your last name?
Drop it like it's hot? Or like I'm Cher?
What heritage does your last name imply?
Utter genericness. Vacant smiles and government mind control.
What's your facial structure like?
Seriously?
What do you think of redheads?
Better red than dead, as Cartman said.
Can you touch your nose with your tongue?
No. Can you bite your elbow?
Toy you always wanted but never got as a child?
I wanted the Barbie pool, a sit and spin, and all the Little Golden Books.
Luke Skywalker or Han Solo?
I always liked Luke and hated Han. He was the original Mr. Big.
Top three celebrities you wanna do?
I suddenly have a sneaking suspicion that this survey was written by a 15-year-old. But okay. Jason Varitek, obviously, Indiana Jones, and the guy from Felicity with all the inventions. I stand by my choices.
Who is popular that you hate?
I love philosophical quandaries. What's the meaning of life, and who is popular that you hate? I'm sure the correct answer is some kid at the next lunch table, but I have to go with John Mayer.
What's the last movie you saw that scared you?
The Grudge 2 commercials are not making my life better.
You're sentenced to death and it's the morning of your lethal injection. What will your last meal be?
Really good pizza. Also, what did I do?
What's something that most people do that you've never done?
Drink an entire cup of coffee.
Before you die, where do you want to go?
All over Europe.
What's something you'd really like to do but probably won't ever do?
Land that guy on Felicity with all the inventions.
If you had to marry someone at the age of 12, who would it be?
I'm 12 years old and I have to get married? Fine, Joey McIntyre. I would've died of happiness and promptly dropped out of middle school to tour with him.
What's something most people don't know about you?
In person, I'm actually quite serious. Dead serious.
What's a weapon to suit your personality, habits, and abilities?
All I need is my blade.
What makes an awesome party?
Aaron Carter.
What's your favorite TV show?
I don't know if it's my favorite, but Lost is the one that I have to watch every week. It's becoming a parody of itself, but it's just so suspenseful and entertaining and ridiculous. JACK! WALT! KATE! NO! Oh, but I guess my favorite show is The Office. Will Pam and Big Tuna ever make it work?
What's your favorite quote?
I have a jillion, but my favorite quote lately came from my mom. She heard a story about a friend who is likely cheating on her husband, and she said, "How does she do it? I don't have the time or the underwear for an affair."
What's your material obsession?
My iBook and iPod.
What's the next holiday that you'll celebrate?
Columbus Day, or We're Sorry For Canonizing the Guy Who Killed All the Native Americans Day.
What's something most people would consider an insult but you don't mind having said about/to you?
"Is that your real hair color?" Although it does concern me a little that maybe my hair looks like a bad dye job. That would so be my luck.
What's your favorite thing about where you live?
The seasons (yes, even winter), the wicked nice people, the history, Fenway, the Cape, the endless things to do, and of course the fact that most of my family and friends are close by.
What's your least favorite thing about where you live?
I do mostly like the winter, but I could live without that gray, sludgy stretch of weather from January till April. I wish the streets were numbered and that the T (subway) was everywhere, like in New York. And of course, I'd like to never again have to hear anything about pahking ya cah in Hahvahd yahd.
You suddenly have to flee the country and adopt an alias. What is it?
For about ten years my alias has been Brittany Fairchild. It was established before we knew about Britney Spears, thankyouverymuch.
Pick one state in the U.S. to get rid of permanently.
Florida. But I wouldn't get rid of it permanently, maybe just make them start over and do a better job next time.
Where are you right now?
The Cape.
What did you do last night?
Had dinner at a neat restaurant that used to be a church. It's also a B&B, but I'd be too scared to stay there because I bet it's haunted by angry religious ghosts. I mean, there's a bar where the altar used to be, and the restrooms are marked Adam and Eve. The words "weakened" and "afflicted" were carved into the wall right above my head. Sounds about right. I had the lobster, pinot grigio, and repented for no sins. Oh yeah, and the other thing I did last night was delight in the Yankees blowing their postseason. Whee!
If you had to pick one of these three jobs, would you be a policeman, fireman, or serial killer?
How well does serial killing pay? Probably policewoman. But firemen, oh my. It's like they created this occupation specifically for my enjoyment. And also to put out fires and save families and kittens and whatnot.
Would you be a doctor, surgeon, or solider?
Doctor.
Would you be a banker, lawyer, or writer?
Writer.
Would you be a pilot, forensic scientist, or ninja?
Ninja! Actually, ninja is my answer to the previous three questions, too.
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Monday, October 02, 2006
29
On this day in 1535, Jacques Cartier discovered Montreal, Canada. In 1935, Italy invaded Ethiopia (here's hoping they left a meatball or two behind). In 1958, Guinea declared itself independent from France. Where's Guinea? Maybe you should've rode those coattails a little longer for PR purposes, my friends. Or maybe I should look at a map. Man, I love the random trivia that Wikipedia brings into our lives.
Anyway, my whole pointless point is that on this day in 1977, my always understated, extremely softspoken mother was experiencing the tail end of "NINE months with my head in a toilet, THIRTEEN hours in labor, for THIS." (But, of course, because of her slight Boston accent: "Fah THIS.") I heard these words approximately 15 jillion times growing up, my very own tailor-made Irish-Catholic guilt trip, usually accompanied by some sort of sweeping hand gesture to represent the unspeakable madness that I'd brought into her life by not cleaning my room/not studying for a math test/not calling and telling her where I was when I KNOW how she worries.
On kind of a whim, I sent her flowers, to be delivered today. I know it's my birthday and all, but I did break her coccyx bone with my giant head almost thirty years ago. And nothing says "hey, sorry for destroying your ass" like a lovely arrangement from Winston's.
Plus, you have to be The Nicest Person on the Freakin' Planet to send someone else flowers on your birthday, right? If I weren't already an only child, this would've just upped my inheritance big time. I would've scored the Cape house AND my dad's floating magnetic pen. That crazy thing is suspended in midair!
Anyway, the weekend was good (it feels weird to write that because I feel like I don't usually do weekend updates here, but it's my birthday so everything I say is interesting). Went to what was officially my last game of the season at Fenway on Friday night with not-a-midget Mark, who turned out to be a remarkably good date... great seats, bought me beer, and insisted on giving me his jacket when I was cold. I've decided to exclusively date family and friends from now on for these perks. Saturday afternoon, which was delicious in its autumnness, I met up with my friend Doug and his lovely new girlfriend Tina in Somerville for lunch, and afterwards we happened upon the fluff festival. It seems that fluff (yes, of the marshmallow variety) was invented right there in Union Square. Who knew? Spent Saturday night with four fantastical friends, best known to you as the first four links over there on the right. Sunday night, dinner at Sonsie with the people who created me. And tonight, dinner with the Jens, both Party and Elusive... which I guess means it'll be a great time that's hard to locate. I'm birthdayed out and loving it.
Also, I knew it was time to age a year because I like to be on the cutting edge of the blogosphere (i.e. the blutting bledge) and really, how trendy are birthdays getting? "Oh, it's kind of a blirthday thing. I guess you wouldn't understand." [fake smile]
Incidentally, here are some other people who got all borned today: Sting, Gandhi, Tiffany, and my beloved former roommate Ryan. I've only had the opportunity to sing "ber ner ner ner ner ner, you say it's your birthday, ber ner ner ner ner ner, it's my birthday too, yeah" to the last person on that list, but believe you me, if I ever cross paths with the Tiffster, she's getting an earful. Gandhi too, but first he's getting a sandwich.
Anyway, my whole pointless point is that on this day in 1977, my always understated, extremely softspoken mother was experiencing the tail end of "NINE months with my head in a toilet, THIRTEEN hours in labor, for THIS." (But, of course, because of her slight Boston accent: "Fah THIS.") I heard these words approximately 15 jillion times growing up, my very own tailor-made Irish-Catholic guilt trip, usually accompanied by some sort of sweeping hand gesture to represent the unspeakable madness that I'd brought into her life by not cleaning my room/not studying for a math test/not calling and telling her where I was when I KNOW how she worries.
On kind of a whim, I sent her flowers, to be delivered today. I know it's my birthday and all, but I did break her coccyx bone with my giant head almost thirty years ago. And nothing says "hey, sorry for destroying your ass" like a lovely arrangement from Winston's.
Plus, you have to be The Nicest Person on the Freakin' Planet to send someone else flowers on your birthday, right? If I weren't already an only child, this would've just upped my inheritance big time. I would've scored the Cape house AND my dad's floating magnetic pen. That crazy thing is suspended in midair!
Anyway, the weekend was good (it feels weird to write that because I feel like I don't usually do weekend updates here, but it's my birthday so everything I say is interesting). Went to what was officially my last game of the season at Fenway on Friday night with not-a-midget Mark, who turned out to be a remarkably good date... great seats, bought me beer, and insisted on giving me his jacket when I was cold. I've decided to exclusively date family and friends from now on for these perks. Saturday afternoon, which was delicious in its autumnness, I met up with my friend Doug and his lovely new girlfriend Tina in Somerville for lunch, and afterwards we happened upon the fluff festival. It seems that fluff (yes, of the marshmallow variety) was invented right there in Union Square. Who knew? Spent Saturday night with four fantastical friends, best known to you as the first four links over there on the right. Sunday night, dinner at Sonsie with the people who created me. And tonight, dinner with the Jens, both Party and Elusive... which I guess means it'll be a great time that's hard to locate. I'm birthdayed out and loving it.
Also, I knew it was time to age a year because I like to be on the cutting edge of the blogosphere (i.e. the blutting bledge) and really, how trendy are birthdays getting? "Oh, it's kind of a blirthday thing. I guess you wouldn't understand." [fake smile]
Incidentally, here are some other people who got all borned today: Sting, Gandhi, Tiffany, and my beloved former roommate Ryan. I've only had the opportunity to sing "ber ner ner ner ner ner, you say it's your birthday, ber ner ner ner ner ner, it's my birthday too, yeah" to the last person on that list, but believe you me, if I ever cross paths with the Tiffster, she's getting an earful. Gandhi too, but first he's getting a sandwich.
Friday, September 29, 2006
No Fanatic Like a Convert
Joe: I have to go on a business trip to New York next week, and I'll be away for Melissa's and my anniversary.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.
Dave: My friend Chris wants to go see that Bodies exhibit in the city this weekend, but eh, I don't know.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.
Boss: I'm going to need that report from you by Wednesday.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.
Dave: My friend Chris wants to go see that Bodies exhibit in the city this weekend, but eh, I don't know.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.
Boss: I'm going to need that report from you by Wednesday.
Me: Really? You should go to Chipotle.
Saturday, September 23, 2006
Because Now I'm So Lazy That I Just Blog Conversations
Mark: Do you ever think about going to medical school?
Me: What? No.
Mark: Oh, okay.
Me: Well. Maybe once or twice.
Mark: I knew it.
Me: I have to remember that it's not like Scrubs.
[I should mention that we're on my couch watching a Scrubs marathon.]
Mark: Or Grey's Anatomy.
Me: It's not like Grey's Anatomy? Forget it then.
Mark: Maybe it's a little like Grey's Anatomy.
Me: It's funny, actually, I was just talking to Melissa about wanting to be a doctor. Then two seconds later I missed my stop on the train.
Mark: Ha.
Me: But I was saying that I think I'm only interested because I could wear scrubs to work.
Mark: Yeah, really.
Me: No, really. That might be the deciding factor.
Mark: [looks at me]
Me: They're like pajamas! That you can wear all day!
Me: What? No.
Mark: Oh, okay.
Me: Well. Maybe once or twice.
Mark: I knew it.
Me: I have to remember that it's not like Scrubs.
[I should mention that we're on my couch watching a Scrubs marathon.]
Mark: Or Grey's Anatomy.
Me: It's not like Grey's Anatomy? Forget it then.
Mark: Maybe it's a little like Grey's Anatomy.
Me: It's funny, actually, I was just talking to Melissa about wanting to be a doctor. Then two seconds later I missed my stop on the train.
Mark: Ha.
Me: But I was saying that I think I'm only interested because I could wear scrubs to work.
Mark: Yeah, really.
Me: No, really. That might be the deciding factor.
Mark: [looks at me]
Me: They're like pajamas! That you can wear all day!
Friday, September 22, 2006
My Titanic Computer Game Was Called the Computer Game of Dreams. And It Was. It Really Was.
Me: Do you remember in college when Jared and I were obsessed with that Titanic game for an entire weekend?
Dave: Uh, yeah.
Me: That was the best weekend!
[pause]
Me: I'm pretty sad.
Dave: What was the deal with that game again?
Me: Oh, it was SO COOL. It was called Titanic: Adventure Out of Time.
Dave: Oh boy.
Me: So you're on the Titanic but you're an FBI agent, and you run around talking to people and finding stuff, and basically you have to save the world.
Dave: Okay.
Me: And if you do everything right, you can prevent World War II.
Dave: What happened to World War I?
Me: Oh. Okay, you could prevent World War I. And Hitler.
Dave: You stopped Hitler, too?
Me: Yup. And sometimes you could go to the restaurant and steal food off the bad guys' plates.
Dave: You're saving the world and they can't get you a free meal on the ship? You're a crimefighting hobo.
Me: I still have the game, you know.
Dave: Yeah, and it's, what, ten years old? I bet the technology is astounding.
Me: I think I'm going to call in sick to work tomorrow and play it all day.
Dave: You're going to call in sick two Fridays in a row?
Me: You just ruin everything.
Dave: Uh, yeah.
Me: That was the best weekend!
[pause]
Me: I'm pretty sad.
Dave: What was the deal with that game again?
Me: Oh, it was SO COOL. It was called Titanic: Adventure Out of Time.
Dave: Oh boy.
Me: So you're on the Titanic but you're an FBI agent, and you run around talking to people and finding stuff, and basically you have to save the world.
Dave: Okay.
Me: And if you do everything right, you can prevent World War II.
Dave: What happened to World War I?
Me: Oh. Okay, you could prevent World War I. And Hitler.
Dave: You stopped Hitler, too?
Me: Yup. And sometimes you could go to the restaurant and steal food off the bad guys' plates.
Dave: You're saving the world and they can't get you a free meal on the ship? You're a crimefighting hobo.
Me: I still have the game, you know.
Dave: Yeah, and it's, what, ten years old? I bet the technology is astounding.
Me: I think I'm going to call in sick to work tomorrow and play it all day.
Dave: You're going to call in sick two Fridays in a row?
Me: You just ruin everything.
Tuesday, September 19, 2006
And I Couldn't Help But Wonder: When It Comes to the Men in New York, Does the Big Apple Fall Far From the Tree?
Dave and I were watching the tourist channel in my room at the cleverly named New Yorker, which is basically a Holiday Inn on a prime piece of real estate. Whatever city you're in, the tourist channel turns it into Disney World: San Francisco is one endless cable car ride, Boston is a beeah at Cheeahs, and I'm sure that Seattle is "brewing up something special for your trip!" Regardless of where you are, all these channels agree on one thing: You, my friend, are on the epicenter of a bustling metropolis with SO MUCH to DO! Culture AND restaurants! No, really, you can learn AND eat!
In this case we were hearing about their Sex and the City tour, which New Yorkers like to go on at the end of a hard day on Wall Street, presumably before doing a choreographed street dance with Annie and Daddy Warbucks.
Me: I wish there was a real Sex and the City tour.
Dave: Oh, yeah. They take you around the city and then make you go down on a UPS guy.
Me: Then they have transvestite prostitues throw eggs at you in the middle of the night.
Dave: You'd have to work in a lot of puns.
Me: And you'd have to have screaming fights with each other in the middle of the street for no good reason.
Dave: Oh, right, what episode did that happen in, again?
Me: I'd go on that tour.
Dave: Who wouldn't?
In this case we were hearing about their Sex and the City tour, which New Yorkers like to go on at the end of a hard day on Wall Street, presumably before doing a choreographed street dance with Annie and Daddy Warbucks.
Me: I wish there was a real Sex and the City tour.
Dave: Oh, yeah. They take you around the city and then make you go down on a UPS guy.
Me: Then they have transvestite prostitues throw eggs at you in the middle of the night.
Dave: You'd have to work in a lot of puns.
Me: And you'd have to have screaming fights with each other in the middle of the street for no good reason.
Dave: Oh, right, what episode did that happen in, again?
Me: I'd go on that tour.
Dave: Who wouldn't?
Sunday, September 17, 2006
My Weekend in New York, or If I Remember Correctly, I Think I May Have Serenaded Darren with "Faithfully" by Journey Within An Hour of Meeting Him
Did I tell you guys that this trip that my dad and I took was actually a bus tour? Or, no, not a bus tour. I'm not the Grateful Dead. What's the word I'm looking for? It was one of those travel club trips on a chartered bus. Yeah. That sounds a little bit less like a roof seat on a red sightseeing bus, right?
Honestly, I didn't think it would be corny at all. I didn't even think about it. As far as I was concerned, it was a reasonably priced opportunity for my dad and I to have the baseball weekend in New York that we've wanted to have for years... just a four-hour ride to and from the hotel and tickets to the games. And that's what it was, but at the same time... ha, all of a sudden I'm realizing that I'm writing this much more dramatically than I intended to: "And it was... it really was... until everything went horribly wrong..."
It started when we met up to catch the bus on Friday morning. Instead of it just being a group of people taking a bus to the same destination, it became like summer camp. It didn't help that I was the only one under fifty years old. There was a guy from the company who organized the trip (let's call him John) who came with us. He was probably a couple years younger than me and just the quintessential Boston guy. There's a million others around here just like him who tell stories like how they were "out the othah night with my buddies Matty and Sully and we weh sayin' that yeah Willy Mo's a wicked powah hittah but at the same time it's like, you know..." (And yes I'm painfully aware that I rock "wicked" and "like" a bit excessively myself.) If he'd only had scraggly hair, he would've had to play for the Sox himself or be Jim's new pal on The Office. He was nice enough, but damn if I didn't want to kick him in the neck by the end of the weekend. By the end of the first day, actually.
John walked that fine line between trying to entertain senior citizens and being a little bit too condescending. He'd get on his bus microphone (that's right) and give us itinerary information (ugh, and it was always crap like, "Okay, gang! Bathroom break, let's all meet back here in twenty minutes!") and then ask if anyone had questions. If no one did, he'd say with unbelievably irritating exuberance, "Great, you're ALL my favorite!" I swear, he came thisclose to just looking around at everyone, smiling and saying, "Damn, old people can be CUTE!"
Since I was the only one close to him in age, he tried to take me under his wing and get me to go out with him and his friends in Times Square (where else, right?). Thank God I could honestly say, "Oh, thanks, but I have plans." (My favorite John moment was after the game on Saturday when he blatantly picked up two female Yankees fans and brought them back to the hotel. On the bus! I was trying to imagine his pick-up line: "Hey girls, I don't mean to brag, but see that bus full of the cast from Cocoon? Yeah, I'm kind of like their leader. And you're BOTH my favorite!")
Baseball, okay, let's talk baseball. Friday night's game was rained out, which was karma for having called in sick to work that day, I'm convinced. The weather might have had something to do with it, too. We spent more than an hour in stop-and-go traffic to the Bronx on Friday night during rush hour, just in time to hear that the game had been called and then have to schlep back to Manhattan. It ended up working out okay, though, because my dad and I had a chance to go out to dinner instead of eating ballpark food, and I was able to meet up with Darren earlier than planned. Oh, did you want to hear about that?
The verdict is in, at least on my end: I liked both Darren and Miss Peach even more than I thought I would, which really isn't how meeting people from the internet is supposed to go, right? You always sort of think that they're going to wind up having a snaggletooth or a staring problem. So lucky me! In all seriousness, there's really no false advertising with the two of them... they're both that rare blend of blogarific AND so very funny, warm, and likeable in person. For all Darren's bemoaning about how awkward he is, he really isn't at all, so don't listen to him. I had a great time and was just thrilled to meet both of them.
Oh, and you know how I told Darren that I was guaranteed to vomit spontaneously or fall into a pile of raw sewage? I didn't, BUT while in his and Peach's company I did have a woman spill tequila on my head (oh yes, on my HEAD) and guess what else? I dropped my purse in a toilet. So, yeah. No false advertising with me either, folks. What you see is what you get, and what you get is someone doused in Jose Cuervo and, well, other people's pee, I'm sorry to have to complete that sentence. What can I say? I always try to bring my A game.
Back to baseball, for those of you who care, which is probably none of you: Saturday was sunny and warm, thankfully. My dad got to go back to Yankee Stadium for the first time in twenty years, and me for the first time ever. It was a fantastic game, and not just because THE SOX WON (!!!). There were so many Boston fans that a few times there was actually a Sox cheer going for awhile, until a deafening roar of rebuttal came up from the New Yorkers. Talk about waking the beast.
After we won the Saturday afternoon game (before we went on to lose that night), we were walking back to The Lame Bus and passed by a bunch of cocky drunken frat boy Sox fans spilling out of bars right near the stadium. Dear God, I hope they're all still alive! Don't be stupid, boys, we need you around to keep selling out our bleacher seats. I mean, I hear you, yay Sox, but New Yorkers have guns and shit!
Man, I'm watching the last game of the series as I'm writing this. Lots of good stuff going on (it's like Crisp just grew a bionic arm!), but where the hell was it in August, when it could've meant something? This is exactly why the Sox are the ultimate mindfuck... the season's all but over and they're back to being rock stars. (And ha, I can hear "let's go Red Sox" coming from the stands.)
One funny thing is how articulate the New York t-shirts are compared to Boston's baseball attire. The New York shirts would have columns showing the number of their world series wins compared to Boston, with the slogan "Do the Math." Another one said, "It's Called the World Series But It's Usually Played Here." Contrast this to the fact that down the street from Fenway, there are vendors with shirts that say "Posada is a Little Bitch" and "Damon Throws Like a Girl." Why are we responding to things like "Well, Statistically Speaking, New York is Quite Simply Just a Better Team" with "Ha Ha All the Yankees Are Gay"? That's the best we've got? (Granted, I don't own any of those ghetto shirts myself, which I hope goes without saying.)
Okay, what else? I saw Dave on Saturday night after seven years of radio silence. Well, not total silence, but still. He was even more cool and funny than I remembered. It was so much fun to see him that I didn't let him go home until the next day.
And Kate! Man, I'm telling you, Kate was my rock. Not only did she come out on Friday night to hang with my blogfriends (and she enjoyed them as much as I did), but she also came out the next night to have dinner with my dad and I, and then came to a bar with us to watch that night's game. And when she saw me walking toward her on the street with a Sox hat on, she didn't shield her face and walk in the opposite direction; she calmly retrieved a Yankees hat from her bag. She shared in my horror slash fascination with the new Hilary Duff perfume. And when some woman asked me what the "B" on my hat stood for, Kate was quick to provide her with the information that I was too stunned to supply.
I'm not just complimenting these people because they read my blog, I swear! I just felt so fortunate to have been surrounded by awesomeness all weekend. I mean, really, what are the odds? And even the rained out game ended up having a silver lining: They postponed the game to Sunday and Kate graciously agreed to get rid of our tickets for us, since my dad and I had to be getting home (darn those jobs of ours). She ended up giving the tickets to a dad who had brought the wrong day's tickets for him and his little heartbroken, glove-toting son. Oh my, that just made my day (and made the endless ride to and from the Bronx on Friday seem a little more bearable in retrospect).
And rounding out the awesomeness? I went to Chipotle! I now officially pray at the altar of chips, guac, and green pepper Tabasco sauce. Nabbalicious, I got your exact order, and I feel like everything in the world makes so much more sense now.
At one point on Saturday night, I texted Carly and told her I was having so much fun but that I missed my BFCs (our nickname for her, Melissa, and myself). She texted me some love back. Who else but me would get a tiny bit homesick after a day and a half?
Anyway, I had an absolute blast this weekend. I can't believe that Darren and Miss Peach and Chipotle all lived up to the hype. I love Kate and Dave as much as ever. And, as always, I'm glad to be home, where the ballpark isn't quite as pretty, the t-shirts aren't nearly as articulate, and the burritos are woefully sub par.
Honestly, I didn't think it would be corny at all. I didn't even think about it. As far as I was concerned, it was a reasonably priced opportunity for my dad and I to have the baseball weekend in New York that we've wanted to have for years... just a four-hour ride to and from the hotel and tickets to the games. And that's what it was, but at the same time... ha, all of a sudden I'm realizing that I'm writing this much more dramatically than I intended to: "And it was... it really was... until everything went horribly wrong..."
It started when we met up to catch the bus on Friday morning. Instead of it just being a group of people taking a bus to the same destination, it became like summer camp. It didn't help that I was the only one under fifty years old. There was a guy from the company who organized the trip (let's call him John) who came with us. He was probably a couple years younger than me and just the quintessential Boston guy. There's a million others around here just like him who tell stories like how they were "out the othah night with my buddies Matty and Sully and we weh sayin' that yeah Willy Mo's a wicked powah hittah but at the same time it's like, you know..." (And yes I'm painfully aware that I rock "wicked" and "like" a bit excessively myself.) If he'd only had scraggly hair, he would've had to play for the Sox himself or be Jim's new pal on The Office. He was nice enough, but damn if I didn't want to kick him in the neck by the end of the weekend. By the end of the first day, actually.
John walked that fine line between trying to entertain senior citizens and being a little bit too condescending. He'd get on his bus microphone (that's right) and give us itinerary information (ugh, and it was always crap like, "Okay, gang! Bathroom break, let's all meet back here in twenty minutes!") and then ask if anyone had questions. If no one did, he'd say with unbelievably irritating exuberance, "Great, you're ALL my favorite!" I swear, he came thisclose to just looking around at everyone, smiling and saying, "Damn, old people can be CUTE!"
Since I was the only one close to him in age, he tried to take me under his wing and get me to go out with him and his friends in Times Square (where else, right?). Thank God I could honestly say, "Oh, thanks, but I have plans." (My favorite John moment was after the game on Saturday when he blatantly picked up two female Yankees fans and brought them back to the hotel. On the bus! I was trying to imagine his pick-up line: "Hey girls, I don't mean to brag, but see that bus full of the cast from Cocoon? Yeah, I'm kind of like their leader. And you're BOTH my favorite!")
Baseball, okay, let's talk baseball. Friday night's game was rained out, which was karma for having called in sick to work that day, I'm convinced. The weather might have had something to do with it, too. We spent more than an hour in stop-and-go traffic to the Bronx on Friday night during rush hour, just in time to hear that the game had been called and then have to schlep back to Manhattan. It ended up working out okay, though, because my dad and I had a chance to go out to dinner instead of eating ballpark food, and I was able to meet up with Darren earlier than planned. Oh, did you want to hear about that?
The verdict is in, at least on my end: I liked both Darren and Miss Peach even more than I thought I would, which really isn't how meeting people from the internet is supposed to go, right? You always sort of think that they're going to wind up having a snaggletooth or a staring problem. So lucky me! In all seriousness, there's really no false advertising with the two of them... they're both that rare blend of blogarific AND so very funny, warm, and likeable in person. For all Darren's bemoaning about how awkward he is, he really isn't at all, so don't listen to him. I had a great time and was just thrilled to meet both of them.
Oh, and you know how I told Darren that I was guaranteed to vomit spontaneously or fall into a pile of raw sewage? I didn't, BUT while in his and Peach's company I did have a woman spill tequila on my head (oh yes, on my HEAD) and guess what else? I dropped my purse in a toilet. So, yeah. No false advertising with me either, folks. What you see is what you get, and what you get is someone doused in Jose Cuervo and, well, other people's pee, I'm sorry to have to complete that sentence. What can I say? I always try to bring my A game.
Back to baseball, for those of you who care, which is probably none of you: Saturday was sunny and warm, thankfully. My dad got to go back to Yankee Stadium for the first time in twenty years, and me for the first time ever. It was a fantastic game, and not just because THE SOX WON (!!!). There were so many Boston fans that a few times there was actually a Sox cheer going for awhile, until a deafening roar of rebuttal came up from the New Yorkers. Talk about waking the beast.
After we won the Saturday afternoon game (before we went on to lose that night), we were walking back to The Lame Bus and passed by a bunch of cocky drunken frat boy Sox fans spilling out of bars right near the stadium. Dear God, I hope they're all still alive! Don't be stupid, boys, we need you around to keep selling out our bleacher seats. I mean, I hear you, yay Sox, but New Yorkers have guns and shit!
Man, I'm watching the last game of the series as I'm writing this. Lots of good stuff going on (it's like Crisp just grew a bionic arm!), but where the hell was it in August, when it could've meant something? This is exactly why the Sox are the ultimate mindfuck... the season's all but over and they're back to being rock stars. (And ha, I can hear "let's go Red Sox" coming from the stands.)
One funny thing is how articulate the New York t-shirts are compared to Boston's baseball attire. The New York shirts would have columns showing the number of their world series wins compared to Boston, with the slogan "Do the Math." Another one said, "It's Called the World Series But It's Usually Played Here." Contrast this to the fact that down the street from Fenway, there are vendors with shirts that say "Posada is a Little Bitch" and "Damon Throws Like a Girl." Why are we responding to things like "Well, Statistically Speaking, New York is Quite Simply Just a Better Team" with "Ha Ha All the Yankees Are Gay"? That's the best we've got? (Granted, I don't own any of those ghetto shirts myself, which I hope goes without saying.)
Okay, what else? I saw Dave on Saturday night after seven years of radio silence. Well, not total silence, but still. He was even more cool and funny than I remembered. It was so much fun to see him that I didn't let him go home until the next day.
And Kate! Man, I'm telling you, Kate was my rock. Not only did she come out on Friday night to hang with my blogfriends (and she enjoyed them as much as I did), but she also came out the next night to have dinner with my dad and I, and then came to a bar with us to watch that night's game. And when she saw me walking toward her on the street with a Sox hat on, she didn't shield her face and walk in the opposite direction; she calmly retrieved a Yankees hat from her bag. She shared in my horror slash fascination with the new Hilary Duff perfume. And when some woman asked me what the "B" on my hat stood for, Kate was quick to provide her with the information that I was too stunned to supply.
I'm not just complimenting these people because they read my blog, I swear! I just felt so fortunate to have been surrounded by awesomeness all weekend. I mean, really, what are the odds? And even the rained out game ended up having a silver lining: They postponed the game to Sunday and Kate graciously agreed to get rid of our tickets for us, since my dad and I had to be getting home (darn those jobs of ours). She ended up giving the tickets to a dad who had brought the wrong day's tickets for him and his little heartbroken, glove-toting son. Oh my, that just made my day (and made the endless ride to and from the Bronx on Friday seem a little more bearable in retrospect).
And rounding out the awesomeness? I went to Chipotle! I now officially pray at the altar of chips, guac, and green pepper Tabasco sauce. Nabbalicious, I got your exact order, and I feel like everything in the world makes so much more sense now.
At one point on Saturday night, I texted Carly and told her I was having so much fun but that I missed my BFCs (our nickname for her, Melissa, and myself). She texted me some love back. Who else but me would get a tiny bit homesick after a day and a half?
Anyway, I had an absolute blast this weekend. I can't believe that Darren and Miss Peach and Chipotle all lived up to the hype. I love Kate and Dave as much as ever. And, as always, I'm glad to be home, where the ballpark isn't quite as pretty, the t-shirts aren't nearly as articulate, and the burritos are woefully sub par.
Friday, September 15, 2006
If I Can Make it There, I'll Make it Because My Ghetto Bus Somehow Doesn't Break Down in Harlem
I'm going to New York today! Woo!
I sound like such a tourist. I guess I am a tourist. See you at the Olive Garden in Times Square! I'll be the one wearing the foam Statue of Liberty crown.
I'm going to the Friday night and Saturday afternoon Sox-Yankees games with my dad. I've never been to Yankee Stadium before... I'm hugely excited and a little intimidated. Everything about it will seem ass-backwards. Because, well, it is. Do they even play baseball there, or just dance around their piles of money?
Oh snap. I got plenty more junior high locker room trash talkin' where that came from.
I'm glad for my dad to get back to that ballpark. He hasn't been in years, and he's (as you may already know) a diehard Yankees fan. Thank God it's not something you can pass onto your children, because that would've been worse than fetal alcohol syndrome.
The other stuff that makes this trip resplendent with awesomeness is that I get to meet Darren, who made me feel like a rock star with his latest blog entry. I can't wait to hear the deafening collapse of your high expectations, my friend. And I also get to see Dave, Kate, and Jason! And maybe Miss Peach! And unfortunately not Nabbalicious this time, but she was kind enough to fix all my aforementioned blog issues, so yay for her, too!
Anyway, the one good thing about Boston's crappy standings is that I'm not too worried about this:
I sound like such a tourist. I guess I am a tourist. See you at the Olive Garden in Times Square! I'll be the one wearing the foam Statue of Liberty crown.
I'm going to the Friday night and Saturday afternoon Sox-Yankees games with my dad. I've never been to Yankee Stadium before... I'm hugely excited and a little intimidated. Everything about it will seem ass-backwards. Because, well, it is. Do they even play baseball there, or just dance around their piles of money?
Oh snap. I got plenty more junior high locker room trash talkin' where that came from.
I'm glad for my dad to get back to that ballpark. He hasn't been in years, and he's (as you may already know) a diehard Yankees fan. Thank God it's not something you can pass onto your children, because that would've been worse than fetal alcohol syndrome.
The other stuff that makes this trip resplendent with awesomeness is that I get to meet Darren, who made me feel like a rock star with his latest blog entry. I can't wait to hear the deafening collapse of your high expectations, my friend. And I also get to see Dave, Kate, and Jason! And maybe Miss Peach! And unfortunately not Nabbalicious this time, but she was kind enough to fix all my aforementioned blog issues, so yay for her, too!
Anyway, the one good thing about Boston's crappy standings is that I'm not too worried about this:
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
can you become, can you become a new version of you?
I'll spare you the entire Felicity song. No, I won't!
Look at me! I'm all decked out in a pretty, pretty party dress. (If Darren was an 8-year-old girl, I'd like to think that would be his, or her, blog title.)
Lily sent me the template! Is she the best? I don't have her blog link, though, somehow. So comment on this, Lily, and I'll include your link to give you the props you deserve.
I lost all my comments in the move but I think it's worth it. Right?
Sidenote: We moved when I was six years old and my mom threw out my Barbie Dream House (with the elevator) because she hated it. She told me for years that the movers lost it. I still haven't fully recovered. This time I can say with certainty that the movers lost my comments. And I still miss my Barbie Dream House (with the elevator).
Question: The comma after the number of comments I have is making me suicidal, but I can't find the right place in the html to fix it. Also, any idea how I can make the date a smaller font than the entry title? Actually, I wouldn't mind deleting it altogether, since there's already a datestamp on the bottom, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Also, I wonder how I could make the picture a little smaller.
Also, could you get me a Diet Pepsi?
I guess I'm supposed to figure all this out on my own so that the finished product is a perfect spectacle, but I'm no Oz over here.
Look at me! I'm all decked out in a pretty, pretty party dress. (If Darren was an 8-year-old girl, I'd like to think that would be his, or her, blog title.)
Lily sent me the template! Is she the best? I don't have her blog link, though, somehow. So comment on this, Lily, and I'll include your link to give you the props you deserve.
I lost all my comments in the move but I think it's worth it. Right?
Sidenote: We moved when I was six years old and my mom threw out my Barbie Dream House (with the elevator) because she hated it. She told me for years that the movers lost it. I still haven't fully recovered. This time I can say with certainty that the movers lost my comments. And I still miss my Barbie Dream House (with the elevator).
Question: The comma after the number of comments I have is making me suicidal, but I can't find the right place in the html to fix it. Also, any idea how I can make the date a smaller font than the entry title? Actually, I wouldn't mind deleting it altogether, since there's already a datestamp on the bottom, but I'm not sure how to do that either. Also, I wonder how I could make the picture a little smaller.
Also, could you get me a Diet Pepsi?
I guess I'm supposed to figure all this out on my own so that the finished product is a perfect spectacle, but I'm no Oz over here.
Sunday, September 10, 2006
if you like pina coladas
You can't tell anything about a person from an online dating profile, maybe aside from whether or not they can spell and their aptitude for using the correct there/their/they're. Everyone thinks they're funny and intelligent and down-to-earth and rational and no game playing, please. Everyone says they want to be with someone who likes to get dressed up and go out, but also likes to wear jeans and a t-shirt and be low-key at home, all of which loosely translates to someone who owns clothes and sometimes enjoys leaving the house.
Crazy people never tell you they're crazy. They don't know they're crazy. Most of them think everyone else is crazy. Personality disorders seem to be largely undiagnosed. Hell, I'm probably rocking a couple of them myself. You can't tell much about a person by how they talk about past relationships or current relationships or family or friendships, because there's two sides to every story, and we all spin things to our advantage, even if we don't mean to.
You can usually assess physical compatability or friendability right off the bat, but of course relationshipability is harder, because foibles come out after the fact, and it's all about your, well, mutual foiblability. Some of the best couples that I know are actually quite different from each other and not people that I necessarily would've thought to fix up if they'd both been single friends of mine. There's really just no way to know. And sites like Match.com do their best, I suppose, by offering up deep dark information like whether or not your date would be open to someday owning a fish, or what their astrological sign is. You don't find out how that person communicates when they're angry, or how they interact with someone who is unkind or intolerant or less intelligent than they are. Whether they listen to you or wait for their chance to talk. Whether they think some people just have different opinions or if that means they're wrong. How they deal with stress. Whether or not they interact with you differently depending on who else is there. What they think is funny and not funny. Whether they're quirky or literal or where they fall in between. Whether they're sexually adventurous or a little more conservative (which, of course, is pretty subjective), or into things you have to Google (with maybe a couple of exceptions, run, run like the wind). How their loved ones speak of them, and not in a tribute speech at a milestone event, but in the kitchen over dirty dishes after everyone's gone home. How they speak of their loved ones, and who they love in general. Not in theory, but who they spend their time with. Who they let in and for what purpose. Who they keep out and who they keep at arm's length. What they spend the bulk of their time doing, despite what they say their interests are. What frustrates them, excites them, unnerves them, turns them on, embarrasses them, makes them pull back, makes them feel understood.
Wait, can you imagine if I sat someone down and asked them all this? I'd be reading about myself in someone else's dating blog. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get all this detailed information about people I go out with. I'm just saying, there's no way to know right off the bat what you're dealing with or what the person's really like, which can be full of promise but also kind of sucks. They should force people to wear t-shirts that reveal their true selves, like "Will Appear Trustworthy for 3.2 Weeks But Am Actually Rotten to the Core." I'd buy them out of "Only Laughing On the Outside" and "Will Probably Write Crap About You on the Internet."
Contrary to how all this sounds, I'm actually pretty low-key (but sometimes I like to get dressed up and go out) about online dating, and dating in general. I'm just more open to random experiences right now, I guess. He's not potentially the right guy, he's my Tuesday night. Part of my Tuesday night, at that. It's the only way to date a lot without losing your mind, I think. Plus, I rarely have a bad time with someone (uh oh, now I've asked for it). I like some people more than others, obviously, but I find most people have at least a little something funny or interesting to offer.
It's been funny to be "back out there" and meeting and interacting with lots of new people, all of whom have opinions on me. You seem like the kind of person who, I get the sense that you're into, you didn't strike me as the type to. At this point it's all just theater, anecdotes, summaries. When we were kids we didn't analyze our playdates that much... I guess that's how I feel about dating. Fun and connection can exist on several levels, not just could-I-marry-him-and-when. We have plenty of emotional needs beyond that ultimate relationship. We may categorize them after the fact less crudely than "hurtin' for a squirtin,'" but no less honestly: potential, no potential, friend potential, emergency number potential. We all do/have done it, right?
And eventually I'll be interested in meeting someone outside of that last category. I swear!
Crazy people never tell you they're crazy. They don't know they're crazy. Most of them think everyone else is crazy. Personality disorders seem to be largely undiagnosed. Hell, I'm probably rocking a couple of them myself. You can't tell much about a person by how they talk about past relationships or current relationships or family or friendships, because there's two sides to every story, and we all spin things to our advantage, even if we don't mean to.
You can usually assess physical compatability or friendability right off the bat, but of course relationshipability is harder, because foibles come out after the fact, and it's all about your, well, mutual foiblability. Some of the best couples that I know are actually quite different from each other and not people that I necessarily would've thought to fix up if they'd both been single friends of mine. There's really just no way to know. And sites like Match.com do their best, I suppose, by offering up deep dark information like whether or not your date would be open to someday owning a fish, or what their astrological sign is. You don't find out how that person communicates when they're angry, or how they interact with someone who is unkind or intolerant or less intelligent than they are. Whether they listen to you or wait for their chance to talk. Whether they think some people just have different opinions or if that means they're wrong. How they deal with stress. Whether or not they interact with you differently depending on who else is there. What they think is funny and not funny. Whether they're quirky or literal or where they fall in between. Whether they're sexually adventurous or a little more conservative (which, of course, is pretty subjective), or into things you have to Google (with maybe a couple of exceptions, run, run like the wind). How their loved ones speak of them, and not in a tribute speech at a milestone event, but in the kitchen over dirty dishes after everyone's gone home. How they speak of their loved ones, and who they love in general. Not in theory, but who they spend their time with. Who they let in and for what purpose. Who they keep out and who they keep at arm's length. What they spend the bulk of their time doing, despite what they say their interests are. What frustrates them, excites them, unnerves them, turns them on, embarrasses them, makes them pull back, makes them feel understood.
Wait, can you imagine if I sat someone down and asked them all this? I'd be reading about myself in someone else's dating blog. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to get all this detailed information about people I go out with. I'm just saying, there's no way to know right off the bat what you're dealing with or what the person's really like, which can be full of promise but also kind of sucks. They should force people to wear t-shirts that reveal their true selves, like "Will Appear Trustworthy for 3.2 Weeks But Am Actually Rotten to the Core." I'd buy them out of "Only Laughing On the Outside" and "Will Probably Write Crap About You on the Internet."
Contrary to how all this sounds, I'm actually pretty low-key (but sometimes I like to get dressed up and go out) about online dating, and dating in general. I'm just more open to random experiences right now, I guess. He's not potentially the right guy, he's my Tuesday night. Part of my Tuesday night, at that. It's the only way to date a lot without losing your mind, I think. Plus, I rarely have a bad time with someone (uh oh, now I've asked for it). I like some people more than others, obviously, but I find most people have at least a little something funny or interesting to offer.
It's been funny to be "back out there" and meeting and interacting with lots of new people, all of whom have opinions on me. You seem like the kind of person who, I get the sense that you're into, you didn't strike me as the type to. At this point it's all just theater, anecdotes, summaries. When we were kids we didn't analyze our playdates that much... I guess that's how I feel about dating. Fun and connection can exist on several levels, not just could-I-marry-him-and-when. We have plenty of emotional needs beyond that ultimate relationship. We may categorize them after the fact less crudely than "hurtin' for a squirtin,'" but no less honestly: potential, no potential, friend potential, emergency number potential. We all do/have done it, right?
And eventually I'll be interested in meeting someone outside of that last category. I swear!
Thursday, September 07, 2006
livin' on the edge
Me: Do you want to see Little Miss Sunshine?
Mark: I was going to ask if you wanted to see How To Eat Fried Worms.
Me: That's cute. Why do you always want to see the dumbest movies?
Mark: Didn't you read that book when you were a kid?
Me: Yeah, I think so. Okay, let's pay to see Sunshine and then we'll sneak into yours.
Mark: I'm not sneaking into a movie, Red. I'm thirty years old.
Me: Well, it's not like you're crawling through an air duct. You just walk out of one movie and walk into the other.
Mark: What if I get caught? Caught sneaking into a movie when I'm thirty years old.
Me: Then, I don't know, fake senility.
Mark: Uh-huh.
Me: Early onset senility.
Mark: Right.
Me: Look confused and bump into something. And then just run out. I'll be right behind you. Don't worry.
Mark: I don't think I want to go to movies with you anymore.
Mark: I was going to ask if you wanted to see How To Eat Fried Worms.
Me: That's cute. Why do you always want to see the dumbest movies?
Mark: Didn't you read that book when you were a kid?
Me: Yeah, I think so. Okay, let's pay to see Sunshine and then we'll sneak into yours.
Mark: I'm not sneaking into a movie, Red. I'm thirty years old.
Me: Well, it's not like you're crawling through an air duct. You just walk out of one movie and walk into the other.
Mark: What if I get caught? Caught sneaking into a movie when I'm thirty years old.
Me: Then, I don't know, fake senility.
Mark: Uh-huh.
Me: Early onset senility.
Mark: Right.
Me: Look confused and bump into something. And then just run out. I'll be right behind you. Don't worry.
Mark: I don't think I want to go to movies with you anymore.
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
scatterbrain
Tonight at Fenway there were two drunk women sitting in front of me, maybe in their 40s. One of them knocked into the other one's beer and it spilled on me. Blech, but whatever, shit happens. At least I was wearing jeans. The one who was holding the beer immediately started rubbing the spill on my leg over and over. And over. All the while I was saying, "It's fine, I'm fine, don't worry." I didn't want to come out and say "stop rubbing me!" because, I don't know, I try not to ever yell that at anybody in public.
"I think she likes you," my dad finally said, as he and his friends just kind of stared at her. Then she tried to tell her friend that she had knocked her beer into me, and the friend just looked at me and said, very irritated, "What? How did THAT happen?" It seemed too complicated to get into the physics of how flailing elbows + double fisting expensive cheap beer = stranger behind you being pelted with Bud Light. But I did think it was funny that she was the one who seemed annoyed. I'm sorry, did my leg get in the way of your beer-flinging?
Anyway. I'm up too late, again, because I can't sleep. Damn my erratic summer sleeping schedule! My body is so confused now that I'm back to a normal work schedule. "It's 11 PM, Red, why aren't I on a bad date? What's this large, soft thing you've forced me into instead? I don't have to listen to questions like 'So what's something about you that I don't already know?' in here. Actually, it's kind of nice. Let's never get out."
All I can say about SuriGate is that I can't believe Vanity Fair punned so proudly on its cover ("Yes, Suri, She's Our Baby!" in case you live in a world where the procreation of Jerry Maguire and Joey Potter doesn't matter in the slightest). It struck me as funny that the first time you read the headline, it sounds like something a person would say if English wasn't their first language... you pretty much know what they're trying to convey, but it sounds a little off-kilter. Sort of like, "Suri Is Child That We Had, Yes?" Then a moment later you understand the clever, clever wordplay. It's a slippery slope, Vanity. First this, next thing you know it's Orlando Blooms Anew and Kate is Winsletting Us Go Where No Magazine Has Gone Before.
I had to spend all morning in a dumb workshop and I swear, I was practically at the head-jerking-forward-and-everyone-looking-at-me stage. I had to keep biting my tongue to stay awake. Dear God, I didn't realize how insane that sounded until I typed it. I should've gone with "had to keep pinching myself." I was doing that, too.
Best part, though? Beforehand I went to sign up for an afternoon workshop and realized that I was teaching one of them. Faaaantastic. Luckily I have the presentation down pat, but still, public schools are so organized. This isn't even the first time they've done this to me. It would've been funny if I'd been sitting in some workshop while people sat in another room, waiting for me at mine. I'm clearly a professional, through and through.
Not that there's any reason for you to do so, but in case you're wondering, the title of my workshop is Evaluation, Diagnosis and Treatment of Speech and Language Disorders in Elementary School Children. I did not come up with this title. Mine would've been Let's Shoot the Shit for an Hour and Then Go Get Some Quesadillas or Whatever. I wonder how many tongues were being bitten while I talked about assessment protocols.
So, to continue with the topic of not having a topic (I'm all over the place! I'm an animal!), I'm having very very very preliminary thoughts about getting my doctorate. I'd love to take more courses and enhance my dorkdom, but I sort of hate the idea of the dissertation. It would be interesting work, yeah, but it seems impractical... the whole point of my job right now is to get a lot of diverse experience, and a dissertation is basically a two year research project about something obscure that I'll never think about again, like the ramifications of some random neurological problem on cognitive-linguistic processing in 11-year-old females from Wisconsin with deviated septums and seasonal affective disorder.
I would maybe eventually like to have my own clinic (and not just because Crazy Neighbor tells me I should). I'd also like to teach grad school classes. I don't necessarily need a doctorate for either of those things, but, y'know... couldn't hurt. What a compelling argument. "Y'know, couldn't hurt" is going right at the top of the "pro" list. Maybe I'll just eliminate the middleman and try to get on the list for one of those honorary degrees that they hand out at graduations. Ooh, could I also give a speech? I'd love an opportunity to tell new grads to follow their hearts but don't go chasing waterfalls. Am I getting carried away?
Whatever, school is boring. You know who's cute and back from the dead, i.e. the DL? And like most of the other players he's utterly useless, which is evident based on our standings... at this point we'd have to lie, cheat, steal, sleep around, bark like a dog and wish on shooting stars to even have a shot in hell at the wild card. But still... it's Tek and he's back, woo!
I love whoever it was who said that most of the Sox players have a look about them that says if they weren't playing ball, they'd be working behind the counter at some crappy music store. So true.
"I think she likes you," my dad finally said, as he and his friends just kind of stared at her. Then she tried to tell her friend that she had knocked her beer into me, and the friend just looked at me and said, very irritated, "What? How did THAT happen?" It seemed too complicated to get into the physics of how flailing elbows + double fisting expensive cheap beer = stranger behind you being pelted with Bud Light. But I did think it was funny that she was the one who seemed annoyed. I'm sorry, did my leg get in the way of your beer-flinging?
Anyway. I'm up too late, again, because I can't sleep. Damn my erratic summer sleeping schedule! My body is so confused now that I'm back to a normal work schedule. "It's 11 PM, Red, why aren't I on a bad date? What's this large, soft thing you've forced me into instead? I don't have to listen to questions like 'So what's something about you that I don't already know?' in here. Actually, it's kind of nice. Let's never get out."
All I can say about SuriGate is that I can't believe Vanity Fair punned so proudly on its cover ("Yes, Suri, She's Our Baby!" in case you live in a world where the procreation of Jerry Maguire and Joey Potter doesn't matter in the slightest). It struck me as funny that the first time you read the headline, it sounds like something a person would say if English wasn't their first language... you pretty much know what they're trying to convey, but it sounds a little off-kilter. Sort of like, "Suri Is Child That We Had, Yes?" Then a moment later you understand the clever, clever wordplay. It's a slippery slope, Vanity. First this, next thing you know it's Orlando Blooms Anew and Kate is Winsletting Us Go Where No Magazine Has Gone Before.
I had to spend all morning in a dumb workshop and I swear, I was practically at the head-jerking-forward-and-everyone-looking-at-me stage. I had to keep biting my tongue to stay awake. Dear God, I didn't realize how insane that sounded until I typed it. I should've gone with "had to keep pinching myself." I was doing that, too.
Best part, though? Beforehand I went to sign up for an afternoon workshop and realized that I was teaching one of them. Faaaantastic. Luckily I have the presentation down pat, but still, public schools are so organized. This isn't even the first time they've done this to me. It would've been funny if I'd been sitting in some workshop while people sat in another room, waiting for me at mine. I'm clearly a professional, through and through.
Not that there's any reason for you to do so, but in case you're wondering, the title of my workshop is Evaluation, Diagnosis and Treatment of Speech and Language Disorders in Elementary School Children. I did not come up with this title. Mine would've been Let's Shoot the Shit for an Hour and Then Go Get Some Quesadillas or Whatever. I wonder how many tongues were being bitten while I talked about assessment protocols.
So, to continue with the topic of not having a topic (I'm all over the place! I'm an animal!), I'm having very very very preliminary thoughts about getting my doctorate. I'd love to take more courses and enhance my dorkdom, but I sort of hate the idea of the dissertation. It would be interesting work, yeah, but it seems impractical... the whole point of my job right now is to get a lot of diverse experience, and a dissertation is basically a two year research project about something obscure that I'll never think about again, like the ramifications of some random neurological problem on cognitive-linguistic processing in 11-year-old females from Wisconsin with deviated septums and seasonal affective disorder.
I would maybe eventually like to have my own clinic (and not just because Crazy Neighbor tells me I should). I'd also like to teach grad school classes. I don't necessarily need a doctorate for either of those things, but, y'know... couldn't hurt. What a compelling argument. "Y'know, couldn't hurt" is going right at the top of the "pro" list. Maybe I'll just eliminate the middleman and try to get on the list for one of those honorary degrees that they hand out at graduations. Ooh, could I also give a speech? I'd love an opportunity to tell new grads to follow their hearts but don't go chasing waterfalls. Am I getting carried away?
Whatever, school is boring. You know who's cute and back from the dead, i.e. the DL? And like most of the other players he's utterly useless, which is evident based on our standings... at this point we'd have to lie, cheat, steal, sleep around, bark like a dog and wish on shooting stars to even have a shot in hell at the wild card. But still... it's Tek and he's back, woo!
I love whoever it was who said that most of the Sox players have a look about them that says if they weren't playing ball, they'd be working behind the counter at some crappy music store. So true.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
20 Reasons Why You Probably Shouldn't Like Me
Another blogger (not a Neighborhooder) had a list of 20 things she doesn't like that everyone else does. I have a few of those myself, but let's cut right to the chase, shall we?
I present to you, in no particular order, twenty good reasons to delete me from your bookmarks immediately.
1. I don't like camping. As far as I'm concerned, Red Roof Inn is roughing it. No, I don't freakin' come out and say this if some nice person is excited about their upcoming camping trip. If that's your thing, then more power. But when a friend told me he slept on the beach when he went to Hawaii, believe you me I thought it sounded more homeless than romantic.
2. I don't like dogs. This is a big one. Who doesn't like dogs? Certainly not anyone worth knowing. Here's the thing... I like dogs in THEORY. I love the IDEA of having a dog. But in reality, they slobber and shed and kind of smell and I'm sorry, but their butts are just never that clean, and if there was one rolling around on my bed, that's all I'd be thinking about.
3. I don't like cats. I don't feel quite so bad about this one, because feline hatred is more socially acceptable. I hate how cats sit under a piece of furniture and stare at you. Seriously, why is that okay? If I sat in somebody's living room and stared at them, there'd be awkward conversations and restraining orders, not catnip and succulent chunks of Fancy Feast in a silver dish. And cats will just be hanging out, nice and mellow, and then suddenly they'll freakishly decide theyhavetobeintheotherroomRIGHTTHISSECOND!
4. I don't like football. I can't tolerate even one second of it. I can't even deal with the Superbowl, even though the Pats always seem to win it. My family and friends always have a Superbowl party and I just lie on the floor eating dip and missing baseball so very much. But I still go to the party, because, duh, there's dip.
5. When it gets dark early in the winter, I don't mind. I don't mind it at ALL. I actually think it's cozy. In New England, this is practically grounds for public lynching.
6. I like Oprah magazine, but I can't make it all the way through Anna Karenina.
7. For about ten years, my favorite song has been You Get What You Give by the New Radicals.
8. A lot of the time, I'm not even listening to you.
9. No, I'm kidding. What'd you say?
10. Things I will defend until I'm blue in the face: the movie Cruel Intentions, the show Felicity, and Frank's Red Hot Sauce.
11. Steve Irwin's death is definitely sad, but there hasn't been such a rampant misuse of the word "ironic" since Alanis released that stupid song in the late 90s.
12. I think I need to tone this down a little. Even I'm starting to not like me. Steve Irvin was a goddamn Australian hero, Red! Show some freakin' respect! Crikey.
13. For awhile I was having a bunch of fiestas, so much so that it was looking like I was vying for the title of hostess with the mostest... but these days I just have friends over to drink wine and watch TV. It's an exciting life, people, but someone has to lead it. (But maybe I'll entertain the idea of getting back on the party train. When you're the hostess, you can wear things like glittery false eyelashes because everyone coming already knows you're a big freak... and if they're a friend of a friend, they've probably been sufficiently warned.)
14. I like terrible music. Does it get any better than iTunes' Party Hip-Hop collection? Go look it up. I'll wait here.
15. While on iTunes admiring their aforementioned Party Hip-Hop collection, I found that I liked Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon's sex song mix. Oh, also, why did Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon publish a sex song mix on iTunes?
16. I'm probably more like Sally (the one Harry met) than I'd like to admit, in that I'm the worst kind: high-maintenance but think I'm low-maintenance. This reality comes crashing down on me when I find myself around someone who actually IS low-maintenance. This person is usually camping, petting a dog, and enthusiastically reading Tolstoy.
17. I don't like violent TV shows... CSI, Law and Order, Dissecting the Corpse, Let's Watch a 7-Year-Old Get Stabbed in Slow Motion shows. I don't like even like 24, and nobody doesn't like 24. Jack Bauer can practically turn straight men gay, for cryin' out loud.
18. I have a touch of road rage. But only because the guy in the white Honda TOTALLY STARTED IT!
19. One time my old roommate and I were watching an episode of Jackass where two of the guys tried to race each other to drink a gallon of milk. They drank a whole bunch really fast and then both started throwing up milk everywhere. My roommate started gagging and ran to the bathroom and started throwing up herself. It suddenly seemed like the entire world was puking. I could not stop laughing. Eventually I helped peel her off the bathroom floor, but in the meantime, oh my, that was comedy at its most basic level.
20. For Halloween, I'm considering going as JonBenet If She'd Lived: too much mascara, at least one black eye, a track mark or two, and, of course, the cowgirl outfit. Yee-ha! May she rest in peace.
Thanks for your time. I'll show myself out.
I present to you, in no particular order, twenty good reasons to delete me from your bookmarks immediately.
1. I don't like camping. As far as I'm concerned, Red Roof Inn is roughing it. No, I don't freakin' come out and say this if some nice person is excited about their upcoming camping trip. If that's your thing, then more power. But when a friend told me he slept on the beach when he went to Hawaii, believe you me I thought it sounded more homeless than romantic.
2. I don't like dogs. This is a big one. Who doesn't like dogs? Certainly not anyone worth knowing. Here's the thing... I like dogs in THEORY. I love the IDEA of having a dog. But in reality, they slobber and shed and kind of smell and I'm sorry, but their butts are just never that clean, and if there was one rolling around on my bed, that's all I'd be thinking about.
3. I don't like cats. I don't feel quite so bad about this one, because feline hatred is more socially acceptable. I hate how cats sit under a piece of furniture and stare at you. Seriously, why is that okay? If I sat in somebody's living room and stared at them, there'd be awkward conversations and restraining orders, not catnip and succulent chunks of Fancy Feast in a silver dish. And cats will just be hanging out, nice and mellow, and then suddenly they'll freakishly decide theyhavetobeintheotherroomRIGHTTHISSECOND!
4. I don't like football. I can't tolerate even one second of it. I can't even deal with the Superbowl, even though the Pats always seem to win it. My family and friends always have a Superbowl party and I just lie on the floor eating dip and missing baseball so very much. But I still go to the party, because, duh, there's dip.
5. When it gets dark early in the winter, I don't mind. I don't mind it at ALL. I actually think it's cozy. In New England, this is practically grounds for public lynching.
6. I like Oprah magazine, but I can't make it all the way through Anna Karenina.
7. For about ten years, my favorite song has been You Get What You Give by the New Radicals.
8. A lot of the time, I'm not even listening to you.
9. No, I'm kidding. What'd you say?
10. Things I will defend until I'm blue in the face: the movie Cruel Intentions, the show Felicity, and Frank's Red Hot Sauce.
11. Steve Irwin's death is definitely sad, but there hasn't been such a rampant misuse of the word "ironic" since Alanis released that stupid song in the late 90s.
12. I think I need to tone this down a little. Even I'm starting to not like me. Steve Irvin was a goddamn Australian hero, Red! Show some freakin' respect! Crikey.
13. For awhile I was having a bunch of fiestas, so much so that it was looking like I was vying for the title of hostess with the mostest... but these days I just have friends over to drink wine and watch TV. It's an exciting life, people, but someone has to lead it. (But maybe I'll entertain the idea of getting back on the party train. When you're the hostess, you can wear things like glittery false eyelashes because everyone coming already knows you're a big freak... and if they're a friend of a friend, they've probably been sufficiently warned.)
14. I like terrible music. Does it get any better than iTunes' Party Hip-Hop collection? Go look it up. I'll wait here.
15. While on iTunes admiring their aforementioned Party Hip-Hop collection, I found that I liked Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon's sex song mix. Oh, also, why did Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon publish a sex song mix on iTunes?
16. I'm probably more like Sally (the one Harry met) than I'd like to admit, in that I'm the worst kind: high-maintenance but think I'm low-maintenance. This reality comes crashing down on me when I find myself around someone who actually IS low-maintenance. This person is usually camping, petting a dog, and enthusiastically reading Tolstoy.
17. I don't like violent TV shows... CSI, Law and Order, Dissecting the Corpse, Let's Watch a 7-Year-Old Get Stabbed in Slow Motion shows. I don't like even like 24, and nobody doesn't like 24. Jack Bauer can practically turn straight men gay, for cryin' out loud.
18. I have a touch of road rage. But only because the guy in the white Honda TOTALLY STARTED IT!
19. One time my old roommate and I were watching an episode of Jackass where two of the guys tried to race each other to drink a gallon of milk. They drank a whole bunch really fast and then both started throwing up milk everywhere. My roommate started gagging and ran to the bathroom and started throwing up herself. It suddenly seemed like the entire world was puking. I could not stop laughing. Eventually I helped peel her off the bathroom floor, but in the meantime, oh my, that was comedy at its most basic level.
20. For Halloween, I'm considering going as JonBenet If She'd Lived: too much mascara, at least one black eye, a track mark or two, and, of course, the cowgirl outfit. Yee-ha! May she rest in peace.
Thanks for your time. I'll show myself out.
Sunday, September 03, 2006
it's a dirty job, but someone has to be home watching TV on a Saturday night
My youngest cousin couldn't come to the Cape for the weekend because he just started college. He called me Saturday night around ten.
Me: Hi!
Youngest Cousin: Hey! What are you doing?
Me: We miss you.
YC: I miss you guys, too... what's up?
Me: We're watching Dirty Jobs.
YC: Who is?
Me: Me and Andrew [his brother].
YC: It's Saturday night.
Me: It's such a good episode. Mike is visiting this woman in South Africa who takes care of these monkeys, right?
Andrew: It's a monkey sanctuary!
Me: Yeah, so she and her husband live in a house in the middle of this field and the monkeys run around all wild and bite people.
Andrew: And they claw at the windows and try to get into the house.
Me: It's like the people are living in a cage!
Andrew: And there's the weird thing with the fruit.
Me: Yeah, this woman spends HOURS cutting up fruit just right to feed to the monkeys, even though it's like, who cares if it's perfect, they're monkeys, they're gonna eat it. And she has this totally great, bizarre dynamic with Mike. I wish he'd bring her everywhere he goes.
Andrew: She needs her own show.
YC: What are you watching again?
Me: Dirty Jobs.
Andrew: We can't stop watching. It's a marathon.
Me: Do you get the Discovery Channel at school?
YC: So I'm gonna let you go.
Me: Hi!
Youngest Cousin: Hey! What are you doing?
Me: We miss you.
YC: I miss you guys, too... what's up?
Me: We're watching Dirty Jobs.
YC: Who is?
Me: Me and Andrew [his brother].
YC: It's Saturday night.
Me: It's such a good episode. Mike is visiting this woman in South Africa who takes care of these monkeys, right?
Andrew: It's a monkey sanctuary!
Me: Yeah, so she and her husband live in a house in the middle of this field and the monkeys run around all wild and bite people.
Andrew: And they claw at the windows and try to get into the house.
Me: It's like the people are living in a cage!
Andrew: And there's the weird thing with the fruit.
Me: Yeah, this woman spends HOURS cutting up fruit just right to feed to the monkeys, even though it's like, who cares if it's perfect, they're monkeys, they're gonna eat it. And she has this totally great, bizarre dynamic with Mike. I wish he'd bring her everywhere he goes.
Andrew: She needs her own show.
YC: What are you watching again?
Me: Dirty Jobs.
Andrew: We can't stop watching. It's a marathon.
Me: Do you get the Discovery Channel at school?
YC: So I'm gonna let you go.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
finishing and beginning
Melissa, Carly and I went to Joe's graduation tonight. That smart boy done got his GED! Fine, MBA, whatever. The university president spoke about how it was just the beginning of the graduates' lifelong relationship with the school. I went to that same school myself and now my primary relationship with them consists of screening when I see their number come up on caller ID. I got no money for you, bitches, I went into education.
Then the commencement speaker talked about how inspiring it was for him to see "two obese women" make it to the top of a wall during an outward bound weekend. Yeah, I'm not sure what his point was, either.
Joe did it the hard way... worked during the day, went to school nights. I give him a lot of credit. I can pontificate about how education enhances your soul and blah blah, but I probably wouldn't have gone to grad school if it hadn't been required for my job. He complained in his blog (blogplained) a lot while going through the whole thing, so we made sure to taunt him endlessly: "Joe, I forget, was this entire process a pleasure for you?"
So, go Joe! Real American hero! Now go make money so Olivia can buy lots of crap at the mall someday.
Got home and went to Fugakyu with Katie. It was a perfect night, with just the beginning of fall in the air. Tomorrow is September first, of course, and Beacon Street is already lined with U-Haul trucks. Don't even want to think about what Comm Ave looks like. Mattresses and bureaus and fresh starts everywhere you look. Welcome to Boston... now stop double-parking or we'll stab you in the throat.
Tomorrow I'm headed to Cape for the long weekend with family, including cousins, and a few friends. Next week I'm back to the three-foot-tall loves of my life. Working in a school keeps you on that academic schedule, so September is still about sharpened pencils and shiny notebooks.
I love fall, more than I can put into words. Pumpkins, leaves, all the oranges and browns and burgundys, like perpetual sunset everywhere you look. That perfect crispness in the air that makes everything feel clean and recharged. Hot chocolate, cider, apples. Needing a blanket on your bed but still sleeping with the windows open.
That's right, windows open. Deal with it, crazy.
Then the commencement speaker talked about how inspiring it was for him to see "two obese women" make it to the top of a wall during an outward bound weekend. Yeah, I'm not sure what his point was, either.
Joe did it the hard way... worked during the day, went to school nights. I give him a lot of credit. I can pontificate about how education enhances your soul and blah blah, but I probably wouldn't have gone to grad school if it hadn't been required for my job. He complained in his blog (blogplained) a lot while going through the whole thing, so we made sure to taunt him endlessly: "Joe, I forget, was this entire process a pleasure for you?"
So, go Joe! Real American hero! Now go make money so Olivia can buy lots of crap at the mall someday.
Got home and went to Fugakyu with Katie. It was a perfect night, with just the beginning of fall in the air. Tomorrow is September first, of course, and Beacon Street is already lined with U-Haul trucks. Don't even want to think about what Comm Ave looks like. Mattresses and bureaus and fresh starts everywhere you look. Welcome to Boston... now stop double-parking or we'll stab you in the throat.
Tomorrow I'm headed to Cape for the long weekend with family, including cousins, and a few friends. Next week I'm back to the three-foot-tall loves of my life. Working in a school keeps you on that academic schedule, so September is still about sharpened pencils and shiny notebooks.
I love fall, more than I can put into words. Pumpkins, leaves, all the oranges and browns and burgundys, like perpetual sunset everywhere you look. That perfect crispness in the air that makes everything feel clean and recharged. Hot chocolate, cider, apples. Needing a blanket on your bed but still sleeping with the windows open.
That's right, windows open. Deal with it, crazy.
no dip idioms are coming to mind
Me: Oh, fun dip! Sweet.
Dave: I used to eat the white thing and use my fingers.
Me: What white thing?
Dave: The stick that comes with it.
Me: Oh. Maybe I don't actually know what fun dip is.
Dave: Really?
Me: I was thinking it was the hard shell they put on ice cream for you sometimes at the parlor.
Dave: That's magic shell.
Me: The parlor? Where am I eating ice cream, 1812?
Dave: The country was at war when you were enjoying your ice cream.
Me: I was in a petticoat partaking in a frozen treat.
Dave: Trying to keep cool.
Me: I mean, I don't want to pick sides. Let's all get along.
Dave: Don't catch a case of the vapors.
Me: The vapors?
Dave: I think people were afraid to catch the vapors in 1812.
Me: Well, aren't you packed with knowledge. You're a treat for my eyes AND my brain.
Dave: I used to eat the white thing and use my fingers.
Me: What white thing?
Dave: The stick that comes with it.
Me: Oh. Maybe I don't actually know what fun dip is.
Dave: Really?
Me: I was thinking it was the hard shell they put on ice cream for you sometimes at the parlor.
Dave: That's magic shell.
Me: The parlor? Where am I eating ice cream, 1812?
Dave: The country was at war when you were enjoying your ice cream.
Me: I was in a petticoat partaking in a frozen treat.
Dave: Trying to keep cool.
Me: I mean, I don't want to pick sides. Let's all get along.
Dave: Don't catch a case of the vapors.
Me: The vapors?
Dave: I think people were afraid to catch the vapors in 1812.
Me: Well, aren't you packed with knowledge. You're a treat for my eyes AND my brain.
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
children are the future, or whatever
So I'm on the T reading this. Okay fine, it's closed and sitting in my lap, because I'm distracted by my own reflection, if you must know. When we're underground the Red in the window looks pensive. Above ground, whimsical. Pensive. Whimsical!
The guy next to me says, "Is that good?"
My reflection? Hello, it's versatile and awesome. Oh, the book.
"Yeah, it's pretty good. It's for work, so, you know…"
"What's it about?"
Uh, well, Harry and his friends get into a whole bunch of trouble, you see, and... "Well, I'm a—" (sometimes I think better of it and don’t bother giving my fairly weird, million question-inducing job title, short of wearing this incredibly random t-shirt) "—teacher. So it's about working with kids."
Why do people always try to compliment you when you tell them you work with kids? I suppose it's just to have something to say, but it's always stuff like, "Wow, that's really admirable," or, "You must be an extremely giving person." The word "noble" comes up, which is a word that never comes up, unless you're discussing a monarch or something. And the right person, some kindhearted soul who imparts her wisdom to the young, wears a vest covered with holiday-appropriate images, and has never spoken a swear word or a grammatically incorrect sentence, would have the right kind of response, something like, "Well, just seeing their little faces every morning makes it all worthwhile..."
This guy said, "You must really love your job."
And I said, "Well, considering I haven't had to go to it since June, yeah, I really do."
Yes folks, I truly am black on the inside. But you already knew that.
The guy next to me says, "Is that good?"
My reflection? Hello, it's versatile and awesome. Oh, the book.
"Yeah, it's pretty good. It's for work, so, you know…"
"What's it about?"
Uh, well, Harry and his friends get into a whole bunch of trouble, you see, and... "Well, I'm a—" (sometimes I think better of it and don’t bother giving my fairly weird, million question-inducing job title, short of wearing this incredibly random t-shirt) "—teacher. So it's about working with kids."
Why do people always try to compliment you when you tell them you work with kids? I suppose it's just to have something to say, but it's always stuff like, "Wow, that's really admirable," or, "You must be an extremely giving person." The word "noble" comes up, which is a word that never comes up, unless you're discussing a monarch or something. And the right person, some kindhearted soul who imparts her wisdom to the young, wears a vest covered with holiday-appropriate images, and has never spoken a swear word or a grammatically incorrect sentence, would have the right kind of response, something like, "Well, just seeing their little faces every morning makes it all worthwhile..."
This guy said, "You must really love your job."
And I said, "Well, considering I haven't had to go to it since June, yeah, I really do."
Yes folks, I truly am black on the inside. But you already knew that.
Monday, August 28, 2006
for better or worse
You know how sometimes you just can't predict ahead of time whether or not a wedding is going to suck?
I mean whether or not it's going to suck for me, the selfish guest. It's pretty likely that the wedding will not suck for the people getting married (although I've been to a couple of those, come to think of it).
When college or high school friends or family members get married, you know at least half the people there. I've gone to a jillion of these weddings, as we all have. When it's the wedding of someone that you didn't get all edumacated or share DNA with, it's harder to know what's in store for you at the blessed event.
My friend Jeff is two years younger than me and we've known each other since we were kids. Actually, his parents used to work with my parents (yes, back in the day, my parents met at work) and they've all been friends since their 20s. Jeff's parents were thinking about having a baby (read: him) and they came over one day when I was hanging out and drinking some orange juice and thought I didn't seem so bad, so as they tell the story, his dad agreed to knock up his mom. So when I say that Jeff is my friend, what I really mean is that the man quite literally owes me his life. But we won't dwell on that.
So, yeah. Jeff met A Girl, who is lovely and smart and once dressed up as Ms. Pac Man for Halloween, and over the weekend she became his New Wife. Of course, my parents were at the wedding. Don't get me wrong, I adore my parents. Big fan. Love their work. But the only wedding that I ever want to attend with them is my own, and that's simply because it's the only event that won't lead my mom to ask questions like, "So! Who was that young man you were dancing with? He seems nice! Is he single? What, I'm just wondering!"
Even better is the fact that my parents and I were seated at separate tables (God love you, New Wife) but my mom was really concerned about this. "How are the people at your table? Are they nice? Are they easy to talk to?" I tried to tell her that I actually function in the world and converse with people on a daily basis, but she wasn't buying it.
Predictably, I love dancing at weddings, or anywhere, for that matter (would you judge me if I told you that I did Dance Dance Revolution for like two hours today?). Places where you can dance are getting fewer and further between, because clubs are for drunk 24-year-olds and sometimes your friends don't like it when you get freaky in their kitchen, for whatever reason. Weddings can be funny because they loosen people up, sometimes in a bad way. It's so great how some relatives (and we all have them in our families, let's face it) are either totally buttoned-up or they're grinding with bridesmaids on the dance floor with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a piece of cake in the other. I love people who have no reasonable middle ground. I want more of them in my life immediately.
I also love the high drama factor of the songs that you end up dancing to with random men. "Oh wow, hi! Of course I remember you! So-and-so's bonfire, I know, a million years ago! How have things been? Where are you living now?" and then suddenly you're dancing with him to Unchained Melody or How Do I Live Without You. Nice to see you again, and incidentally, were we ever drowning in the Atlantic, would you let me float on the door while you froze to death in the water?
I ended up knowing a few people there after all, one of whom I met years ago and really liked but had forgotten all about. She lives in DC and, well, she liked to get funky, I'm not going to lie to you. Honestly, I'm a fan of any event that goes right from hava nagila to SexyBack.
By the way, we're so hava nagilaing at my wedding. I don't care if I marry anyone Jewish, or actually, I don't care if I even get married. We're doing it at my 30th birthday party next year (next year, dear God! I'll be the one sobbing in the corner about how I should have made different choices).
I mean whether or not it's going to suck for me, the selfish guest. It's pretty likely that the wedding will not suck for the people getting married (although I've been to a couple of those, come to think of it).
When college or high school friends or family members get married, you know at least half the people there. I've gone to a jillion of these weddings, as we all have. When it's the wedding of someone that you didn't get all edumacated or share DNA with, it's harder to know what's in store for you at the blessed event.
My friend Jeff is two years younger than me and we've known each other since we were kids. Actually, his parents used to work with my parents (yes, back in the day, my parents met at work) and they've all been friends since their 20s. Jeff's parents were thinking about having a baby (read: him) and they came over one day when I was hanging out and drinking some orange juice and thought I didn't seem so bad, so as they tell the story, his dad agreed to knock up his mom. So when I say that Jeff is my friend, what I really mean is that the man quite literally owes me his life. But we won't dwell on that.
So, yeah. Jeff met A Girl, who is lovely and smart and once dressed up as Ms. Pac Man for Halloween, and over the weekend she became his New Wife. Of course, my parents were at the wedding. Don't get me wrong, I adore my parents. Big fan. Love their work. But the only wedding that I ever want to attend with them is my own, and that's simply because it's the only event that won't lead my mom to ask questions like, "So! Who was that young man you were dancing with? He seems nice! Is he single? What, I'm just wondering!"
Even better is the fact that my parents and I were seated at separate tables (God love you, New Wife) but my mom was really concerned about this. "How are the people at your table? Are they nice? Are they easy to talk to?" I tried to tell her that I actually function in the world and converse with people on a daily basis, but she wasn't buying it.
Predictably, I love dancing at weddings, or anywhere, for that matter (would you judge me if I told you that I did Dance Dance Revolution for like two hours today?). Places where you can dance are getting fewer and further between, because clubs are for drunk 24-year-olds and sometimes your friends don't like it when you get freaky in their kitchen, for whatever reason. Weddings can be funny because they loosen people up, sometimes in a bad way. It's so great how some relatives (and we all have them in our families, let's face it) are either totally buttoned-up or they're grinding with bridesmaids on the dance floor with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a piece of cake in the other. I love people who have no reasonable middle ground. I want more of them in my life immediately.
I also love the high drama factor of the songs that you end up dancing to with random men. "Oh wow, hi! Of course I remember you! So-and-so's bonfire, I know, a million years ago! How have things been? Where are you living now?" and then suddenly you're dancing with him to Unchained Melody or How Do I Live Without You. Nice to see you again, and incidentally, were we ever drowning in the Atlantic, would you let me float on the door while you froze to death in the water?
I ended up knowing a few people there after all, one of whom I met years ago and really liked but had forgotten all about. She lives in DC and, well, she liked to get funky, I'm not going to lie to you. Honestly, I'm a fan of any event that goes right from hava nagila to SexyBack.
By the way, we're so hava nagilaing at my wedding. I don't care if I marry anyone Jewish, or actually, I don't care if I even get married. We're doing it at my 30th birthday party next year (next year, dear God! I'll be the one sobbing in the corner about how I should have made different choices).
Saturday, August 26, 2006
windowpain
In the grand tradition of next door neighbors, one of mine and I are presently engaged in entirely pointless yet unrelenting psychological warfare.
Am I referring to Crazy Neighbor, the middle-aged guy who smokes in the dark and wanders over to my apartment with wine whenever he sees I have friends over? No, not even. This is an entirely different neighbor. The one with all the freakin' kids. The one with Tatertot.
I actually do have another neighbor who is quite lovely. She's never home, though, because she always travels. Good thing, because she's about Crazy's age and would inevitably fall prey to his dizzying intellect and highly evolved seduction techniques. So that leaves me to contend with this motley crew (I accidentally spelled it like the band name the first time around, because I'm just that metal).
On weekend mornings, the Tatertot clan enjoys having breakfast together on their patio together at about 6:30 AM. This breakfast presumably involves food, but mostly yelling. Not angry yelling, but the inexplicable need to screech in whatever language they all prefer to English when they're together.
So I usually wake up, curse them, then close my window and go back to sleep. But one afternoon Mama Tatertot said to me (and keep in mind she calls me by The Nickname I Detest More Than Life Itself), "Reddy, I heard you close your window this morning. Did we wake you up?"
Were I truly balls out, I would've said, "Yes, you inconsiderate, highly fertile monster, and next time I'll be hanging out the window like a sniper with a rifle, waiting to pick off whichever of your loud-ass offspring has slower reflexes."
Instead I said, "Oh, it's okay. I just closed my window and went back to sleep."
She looked at me like I had no idea how the world works. "Well, when the weather is so nice, we don't like to be stuck in the house all day. The kids like to be outside, and Husband works all week..."
I'm not sure what to do with all this irrelevant information. "Right, no big deal. I just close my window."
"It's just that when you close your window, the kids hear it, and they feel bad. They feel like they've disturbed you, and then they want to go inside."
Is she trying to make me feel bad for closing my window after they wake me up in the morning, as though I should lie there gleefully basking in their noise? The nerve of me! "Well, they shouldn't feel bad. Once I close my window I can't hear you anymore."
"It's just that when they hear your window slam, they feel bad, like they've made you mad. They really like you."
"Slam" feels like the word she's trying to work in here. What kind of Jedi mind tricks are these? Am I closing my window too hard, and thus disrespectfully? "Honestly, this all happens when I'm half-asleep. I don't even pay that much attention."
"Well, we'll try to keep it down."
"Don't worry about it. I'll try to close my window... um, quieter."
We both laughed a little. Then, this morning: The Louds were louder than ever; must've had a lot to say about those Grape Nuts. I closed the window. And later on today I was sitting on my patio, on the phone, and she walked over. Of course she'd be the kind of person who sees that I'm on the phone but just starts right in talking to me like I'm not.
"It happened again," she said.
"Um, hold on a sec..." I covered the mouthpiece and looked up at her. "I'm sorry?"
"The kids just feel so bad when they wake you up."
I used to have a roommate who was comprised entirely of muscles, nerves, and passive-aggression, and several times I found that, if she was annoyed by something I had done, she'd dance around the issue to such an extent that I would finally have to say to her, "Tell me exactly what the problem is," and then somewhere in the flood of words that would follow were the few that answered my question... It's your turn to clean the kitchen. Your boyfriend sleeps over too much. I don't like when you leave twelve towels in the bathroom. Okay then. I just hate the dance. Use your words and let's move on.
Anyway, I wanted to say something along those lines to Mama Tatertot, but at the same time, not really. I don't play my music too loud. I never have more than a few friends over at a time. So if the problem is my window-shutting, which is in direct response to her family's loudness, then, by God, there is simply no issue here. And besides that, I'm on the phone.
So I just shrugged. "They shouldn't feel bad. It's really not a big deal at all."
She smiled, clearly wanting to say something else, I can't fathom what. I smiled back and returned to my conversation. And on some level I think we both know: this is on now, bitch.
Am I referring to Crazy Neighbor, the middle-aged guy who smokes in the dark and wanders over to my apartment with wine whenever he sees I have friends over? No, not even. This is an entirely different neighbor. The one with all the freakin' kids. The one with Tatertot.
I actually do have another neighbor who is quite lovely. She's never home, though, because she always travels. Good thing, because she's about Crazy's age and would inevitably fall prey to his dizzying intellect and highly evolved seduction techniques. So that leaves me to contend with this motley crew (I accidentally spelled it like the band name the first time around, because I'm just that metal).
On weekend mornings, the Tatertot clan enjoys having breakfast together on their patio together at about 6:30 AM. This breakfast presumably involves food, but mostly yelling. Not angry yelling, but the inexplicable need to screech in whatever language they all prefer to English when they're together.
So I usually wake up, curse them, then close my window and go back to sleep. But one afternoon Mama Tatertot said to me (and keep in mind she calls me by The Nickname I Detest More Than Life Itself), "Reddy, I heard you close your window this morning. Did we wake you up?"
Were I truly balls out, I would've said, "Yes, you inconsiderate, highly fertile monster, and next time I'll be hanging out the window like a sniper with a rifle, waiting to pick off whichever of your loud-ass offspring has slower reflexes."
Instead I said, "Oh, it's okay. I just closed my window and went back to sleep."
She looked at me like I had no idea how the world works. "Well, when the weather is so nice, we don't like to be stuck in the house all day. The kids like to be outside, and Husband works all week..."
I'm not sure what to do with all this irrelevant information. "Right, no big deal. I just close my window."
"It's just that when you close your window, the kids hear it, and they feel bad. They feel like they've disturbed you, and then they want to go inside."
Is she trying to make me feel bad for closing my window after they wake me up in the morning, as though I should lie there gleefully basking in their noise? The nerve of me! "Well, they shouldn't feel bad. Once I close my window I can't hear you anymore."
"It's just that when they hear your window slam, they feel bad, like they've made you mad. They really like you."
"Slam" feels like the word she's trying to work in here. What kind of Jedi mind tricks are these? Am I closing my window too hard, and thus disrespectfully? "Honestly, this all happens when I'm half-asleep. I don't even pay that much attention."
"Well, we'll try to keep it down."
"Don't worry about it. I'll try to close my window... um, quieter."
We both laughed a little. Then, this morning: The Louds were louder than ever; must've had a lot to say about those Grape Nuts. I closed the window. And later on today I was sitting on my patio, on the phone, and she walked over. Of course she'd be the kind of person who sees that I'm on the phone but just starts right in talking to me like I'm not.
"It happened again," she said.
"Um, hold on a sec..." I covered the mouthpiece and looked up at her. "I'm sorry?"
"The kids just feel so bad when they wake you up."
I used to have a roommate who was comprised entirely of muscles, nerves, and passive-aggression, and several times I found that, if she was annoyed by something I had done, she'd dance around the issue to such an extent that I would finally have to say to her, "Tell me exactly what the problem is," and then somewhere in the flood of words that would follow were the few that answered my question... It's your turn to clean the kitchen. Your boyfriend sleeps over too much. I don't like when you leave twelve towels in the bathroom. Okay then. I just hate the dance. Use your words and let's move on.
Anyway, I wanted to say something along those lines to Mama Tatertot, but at the same time, not really. I don't play my music too loud. I never have more than a few friends over at a time. So if the problem is my window-shutting, which is in direct response to her family's loudness, then, by God, there is simply no issue here. And besides that, I'm on the phone.
So I just shrugged. "They shouldn't feel bad. It's really not a big deal at all."
She smiled, clearly wanting to say something else, I can't fathom what. I smiled back and returned to my conversation. And on some level I think we both know: this is on now, bitch.
Friday, August 25, 2006
high five
Top Five Dream Jobs
1. Woman of leisure
2. Opinionated socialite
3. Heavily medicated socialite
4. My current job, only more money
5. The most popular girl on Laguna Beach. How badly do I want to remake the opening credits with my own friends in it?
Top Five Places I'd Like To Visit
1. Spain
2. Italy
3. Ireland
4. Iceland
5. Greece
Secret answer: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
Top Five Crushes
1. Jason Varitek
2. Vince Vaughn
3. Ben Affleck, circa Armageddon
4. John Cusack, Paul Rudd, same difference
5. Ron King, this guy I used to work with a hundred years ago (oh whatever, if he ever were to find this he should only be flattered)
Secret answer: That guy from the movie Step Up
Top Five Movies I Want to See
1. The Puffy Chair
2. The Last Kiss
3. Sherrybaby
4. The Oh in Ohio
5. The Pursuit of Happiness
Secret answer: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Top Five Underrated Movies
1. Kissing Jessica Stein
2. Vanilla Sky
3. Leo and Clarie's Romeo & Juliet
4. Contact
5. Bruce Almighty
Top Five Movies That I Wanted to Die During
1. Meet Joe Black
2. Bounce
3. Sleepless in Seattle
4. The English Patient
5. Ghost
Top Five Movies That I Know Every Word To
1. Labyrinth
2. Heathers
3. Clerks
4. Reality Bites
5. Speed
Top Five Beverages
1. Diet Pepsi
2. Water
3. Orange juice
4. Chardonnay (red stains my teeth. yesitdoes.)
5. Wachusett blueberry beer
Secret answer: I put flavored sparkling water in wine. Only at home, of course. It's still tacky. I basically create my own wine coolers. Why does anyone still talk to me?
Top Five Opportunities For Awkward Conversations
1. When you apologize to the person coming out of the public bathroom for shaking the door while they were in there, because you didn't know if it was a one-person stall or if the door was just sticking. And you're also sorry for trying it a second time about thirty seconds after you first tried it because you weren't completely convinced that it wasn't just sticking.
2. You're in an elevator and someone gets on and says "nice day" and you say "isn't it?" and then you ride up 3,000 floors together agonizingly slowly in total silence because weather small talk can only get you so far on a beautiful day.
3. On hold with a customer service rep who says, "It'll just be a moment, our computers are slow today" and you both just sit there breathing.
4. When someone's telling a joke, and you smile halfway through, and they say, "Oh, you know this one?" and you feel kind of bad for letting on but then they stop telling it and look kind of defeated and then you feel really bad.
5. At the Cherry Tree, when a guy that Party Jen hooked up with a few weeks ago walks by and says hello and suddenly three grown people realize that they have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
Top Five Famous People That I'd Like to be Swallowed Into the Fiery Depths of Hell
1. Carson Daly
2. James Blunt
3. John Mayer
4. Jewel
5. Carson Daly, again, just to make sure he's good and dead
Top Five Respones to "Is It True What They Say About Redheads?"
1. Uh-huh.
2. Mmm-hmm.
3. Yeah.
4. Sure.
5. No hablo ingles.
Top Five Song Titles That Are Popular According to iTunes But Also Sound Like Text Messages I've Sent Recently
Call Me When You're Sober
SOS
Crazy Bitch
Where's Your Head At?
What Was I Thinkin'?
Top Five (Well, Four) Songs That I Sang To Mark Yesterday in the Car While We Were Stuck in Traffic Even Though He Didn't Really Like It Because He Wanted Me To Stop and Focus on Helping Him Think About Where to Get Food But I Mean When These Songs Come on the Radio You Can't Not Rock Out a Little Bit
Let's Stay Together by Al Green
This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan (see the world's been good to me, ever since I was a lowercase g, but now I'm a big G, the girls see I got the money, got the dollar billz, y'all)
I Could Not Ask For More by Edwin McCain (smilin' just to see the smile upon your fay-a-yace)
As I Lay Me Down by Sophie B. Hawkins (this would have been my song if I had been a dead serious, unsmiling a capella girl in college... best part is the background singers continuously and inexplicably belting out "uno gato"... one cat!)
1. Woman of leisure
2. Opinionated socialite
3. Heavily medicated socialite
4. My current job, only more money
5. The most popular girl on Laguna Beach. How badly do I want to remake the opening credits with my own friends in it?
Top Five Places I'd Like To Visit
1. Spain
2. Italy
3. Ireland
4. Iceland
5. Greece
Secret answer: Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
Top Five Crushes
1. Jason Varitek
2. Vince Vaughn
3. Ben Affleck, circa Armageddon
4. John Cusack, Paul Rudd, same difference
5. Ron King, this guy I used to work with a hundred years ago (oh whatever, if he ever were to find this he should only be flattered)
Secret answer: That guy from the movie Step Up
Top Five Movies I Want to See
1. The Puffy Chair
2. The Last Kiss
3. Sherrybaby
4. The Oh in Ohio
5. The Pursuit of Happiness
Secret answer: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Top Five Underrated Movies
1. Kissing Jessica Stein
2. Vanilla Sky
3. Leo and Clarie's Romeo & Juliet
4. Contact
5. Bruce Almighty
Top Five Movies That I Wanted to Die During
1. Meet Joe Black
2. Bounce
3. Sleepless in Seattle
4. The English Patient
5. Ghost
Top Five Movies That I Know Every Word To
1. Labyrinth
2. Heathers
3. Clerks
4. Reality Bites
5. Speed
Top Five Beverages
1. Diet Pepsi
2. Water
3. Orange juice
4. Chardonnay (red stains my teeth. yesitdoes.)
5. Wachusett blueberry beer
Secret answer: I put flavored sparkling water in wine. Only at home, of course. It's still tacky. I basically create my own wine coolers. Why does anyone still talk to me?
Top Five Opportunities For Awkward Conversations
1. When you apologize to the person coming out of the public bathroom for shaking the door while they were in there, because you didn't know if it was a one-person stall or if the door was just sticking. And you're also sorry for trying it a second time about thirty seconds after you first tried it because you weren't completely convinced that it wasn't just sticking.
2. You're in an elevator and someone gets on and says "nice day" and you say "isn't it?" and then you ride up 3,000 floors together agonizingly slowly in total silence because weather small talk can only get you so far on a beautiful day.
3. On hold with a customer service rep who says, "It'll just be a moment, our computers are slow today" and you both just sit there breathing.
4. When someone's telling a joke, and you smile halfway through, and they say, "Oh, you know this one?" and you feel kind of bad for letting on but then they stop telling it and look kind of defeated and then you feel really bad.
5. At the Cherry Tree, when a guy that Party Jen hooked up with a few weeks ago walks by and says hello and suddenly three grown people realize that they have absolutely nothing to say to each other.
Top Five Famous People That I'd Like to be Swallowed Into the Fiery Depths of Hell
1. Carson Daly
2. James Blunt
3. John Mayer
4. Jewel
5. Carson Daly, again, just to make sure he's good and dead
Top Five Respones to "Is It True What They Say About Redheads?"
1. Uh-huh.
2. Mmm-hmm.
3. Yeah.
4. Sure.
5. No hablo ingles.
Top Five Song Titles That Are Popular According to iTunes But Also Sound Like Text Messages I've Sent Recently
Call Me When You're Sober
SOS
Crazy Bitch
Where's Your Head At?
What Was I Thinkin'?
Top Five (Well, Four) Songs That I Sang To Mark Yesterday in the Car While We Were Stuck in Traffic Even Though He Didn't Really Like It Because He Wanted Me To Stop and Focus on Helping Him Think About Where to Get Food But I Mean When These Songs Come on the Radio You Can't Not Rock Out a Little Bit
Let's Stay Together by Al Green
This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan (see the world's been good to me, ever since I was a lowercase g, but now I'm a big G, the girls see I got the money, got the dollar billz, y'all)
I Could Not Ask For More by Edwin McCain (smilin' just to see the smile upon your fay-a-yace)
As I Lay Me Down by Sophie B. Hawkins (this would have been my song if I had been a dead serious, unsmiling a capella girl in college... best part is the background singers continuously and inexplicably belting out "uno gato"... one cat!)
Saturday, August 19, 2006
have you never been mellow
Usually when I'm on the Cape it's a full house, especially in season, but right now it's quiet, for the most part and until tomorrow, when things pick up around here and at night we all head to Chillingsworth, the most sublime food experience you could ever hope to have, around these parts anyway. Is it wrong to look forward to a meal all weekend? If you knew this place, you'd feel the same way, I swear. Anyway, this is pretty much what I've been up to in the meantime...
Wake up around 9, think about how much I love outdoor showers, but there isn't one here so take an indoor shower (products? I'm so glad you asked... Clinique sparkle skin body exfoliating cream, NARS body serum)
Wet hair, flip flops, shorts, bottle of water, sunblock to prevent me from certain death, book, deck
Lunch at the Dolphin with mom and her friend... oysters, Portuguese sweet bread, and continue to allow the Sox to rip my still-beating heart out of my chest
Shopping and art galleries in Barnstable... buy earrings with "moonstones" in them at a "magical" shop and am handed a pamphlet telling me about their healing powers (I just say thanks because "thanks, crazy" seems like an insensitive response)
No one wants to go to the whaling museum in Nantucket with me unless it involves drinking at the Club Car; I dismiss everyone I know as ignorant and alcoholic
Turn on cell to see what's going on with my peoples at home (I know, the point is to have it on all the time. I'm getting there...)
Bring iPod to New Seabury beach (Zero 7, thank you Greg)
Stop at grocery store for lemons, peaches and corn on the cob; raw bar at Popponesset for lobster; make dinner at home
Sunset boat ride on Waquoit Bay with dad; lovely but not as romantic as it sounds. He tells me he'll go to the whaling museum with me... whee!
A couple neighbors are over, a glass of wine or three, everyone's barefoot
Stop at the Roo Bar with neighbor from back home who's working on Cape for the summer... I used to babysit him and now he's applying to law school, which is disturbing on many levels... also, the Sox are ruining my life and I cannot discuss them any further without swearing and flailing
Peppermint tea with raw honey, several rounds of dirty texting
Jacuzzi with Philosophy's Falling in Love bubble bath, Creme de La Mer, read my book in bed
Wake up around 9, think about how much I love outdoor showers, but there isn't one here so take an indoor shower (products? I'm so glad you asked... Clinique sparkle skin body exfoliating cream, NARS body serum)
Wet hair, flip flops, shorts, bottle of water, sunblock to prevent me from certain death, book, deck
Lunch at the Dolphin with mom and her friend... oysters, Portuguese sweet bread, and continue to allow the Sox to rip my still-beating heart out of my chest
Shopping and art galleries in Barnstable... buy earrings with "moonstones" in them at a "magical" shop and am handed a pamphlet telling me about their healing powers (I just say thanks because "thanks, crazy" seems like an insensitive response)
No one wants to go to the whaling museum in Nantucket with me unless it involves drinking at the Club Car; I dismiss everyone I know as ignorant and alcoholic
Turn on cell to see what's going on with my peoples at home (I know, the point is to have it on all the time. I'm getting there...)
Bring iPod to New Seabury beach (Zero 7, thank you Greg)
Stop at grocery store for lemons, peaches and corn on the cob; raw bar at Popponesset for lobster; make dinner at home
Sunset boat ride on Waquoit Bay with dad; lovely but not as romantic as it sounds. He tells me he'll go to the whaling museum with me... whee!
A couple neighbors are over, a glass of wine or three, everyone's barefoot
Stop at the Roo Bar with neighbor from back home who's working on Cape for the summer... I used to babysit him and now he's applying to law school, which is disturbing on many levels... also, the Sox are ruining my life and I cannot discuss them any further without swearing and flailing
Peppermint tea with raw honey, several rounds of dirty texting
Jacuzzi with Philosophy's Falling in Love bubble bath, Creme de La Mer, read my book in bed
Tuesday, August 15, 2006
why online dating is not for the faint of heart
I was going to meet this guy for a drink, and then he called to confirm the when/where. This is what I heard coming out of my phone:
"So you seem really nice and cute and you live in [same city as him] and you're a redhead and the way I see it is just let's get together and see if we have a connection physical or otherwise and if so then great! What I'm saying is yay!"
Yay?
"I have three dealbreakers. Do you want to hear my dealbreakers? Wait hold on that's my call waiting. Red? Red? That's my son calling. I told you I have a son, right? Can you hold on?"
Uh-huh.
"Red? Red? Hey, I'm back. Yeah, that was my son. He's only three and a half, so obviously SHE put him on the phone. That's fine though. I pre-pay the minutes and I prefer to use them to talk to the girls I'm courting. You know?"
I suddenly became very, very busy. Packed schedule. Booked for infinity.
I told some friends, naturally, and one said, "He's a loser. Who pre-pays for minutes?" I guess everyone has their own dealbreakers.
"So you seem really nice and cute and you live in [same city as him] and you're a redhead and the way I see it is just let's get together and see if we have a connection physical or otherwise and if so then great! What I'm saying is yay!"
Yay?
"I have three dealbreakers. Do you want to hear my dealbreakers? Wait hold on that's my call waiting. Red? Red? That's my son calling. I told you I have a son, right? Can you hold on?"
Uh-huh.
"Red? Red? Hey, I'm back. Yeah, that was my son. He's only three and a half, so obviously SHE put him on the phone. That's fine though. I pre-pay the minutes and I prefer to use them to talk to the girls I'm courting. You know?"
I suddenly became very, very busy. Packed schedule. Booked for infinity.
I told some friends, naturally, and one said, "He's a loser. Who pre-pays for minutes?" I guess everyone has their own dealbreakers.
Sunday, August 13, 2006
have fun, stay single
So my mom calls me this morning and happens to mention that she heard that Jeff (my friend who is getting married later this month; she's friends with his mom) is having a pre-wedding party.
"Oh yeah, I got the Evite but I didn't look at it yet. What kind of party?"
"I think it's sort of a singles thing."
Oh, so this is what an ice water IV drip would feel like. "A singles thing?"
"Yeah, I think that because they didn't invite people with dates, they're trying to give all the single people a chance to meet each other before the actual wedding. You know, so it's more fun for you guys."
"What?"
"I think it's a nice idea."
"Mom, it's a wedding, not summer camp! I don't need to have friends there!"
"Well, it couldn't hurt you to meet some new people!"
"I have plenty of friends!"
"I know, but I think some of his single guy friends might be there, too."
Deep breath, Red. She means well. Shemeanswellshemeanswellshemeanswell.
"This can't be his intention," I told her. "I'm calling him right now."
"Sure, call him. But I still think it's a nice idea."
He laughed so hard that his fiancee finally picked up the phone. "Red, what did you say to him?"
"I told him that my mom told me that you guys are hosting a singles mixer before your wedding. I was just wondering if he has any input as to my suicide method."
Turns out it's more like a gathering of all their friends, local and out-of-town, so that they have a chance to spend time with people since they won't get much of a chance for QT with anyone at the actual wedding.
Still, though. I wonder what I should wear to this rose ceremony.
"Oh yeah, I got the Evite but I didn't look at it yet. What kind of party?"
"I think it's sort of a singles thing."
Oh, so this is what an ice water IV drip would feel like. "A singles thing?"
"Yeah, I think that because they didn't invite people with dates, they're trying to give all the single people a chance to meet each other before the actual wedding. You know, so it's more fun for you guys."
"What?"
"I think it's a nice idea."
"Mom, it's a wedding, not summer camp! I don't need to have friends there!"
"Well, it couldn't hurt you to meet some new people!"
"I have plenty of friends!"
"I know, but I think some of his single guy friends might be there, too."
Deep breath, Red. She means well. Shemeanswellshemeanswellshemeanswell.
"This can't be his intention," I told her. "I'm calling him right now."
"Sure, call him. But I still think it's a nice idea."
He laughed so hard that his fiancee finally picked up the phone. "Red, what did you say to him?"
"I told him that my mom told me that you guys are hosting a singles mixer before your wedding. I was just wondering if he has any input as to my suicide method."
Turns out it's more like a gathering of all their friends, local and out-of-town, so that they have a chance to spend time with people since they won't get much of a chance for QT with anyone at the actual wedding.
Still, though. I wonder what I should wear to this rose ceremony.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Adulthood at its Finest
Joe: hey b!
Me: what's up, baby daddy?
Joe: you accept my dance off challenge?
Me: you've just stepped into the lion's den, my friend
Joe: well, when BBD is playing, all hell will break loose
Joe: and remember, never trust a big butt and a smile.
Me: this girl is POISON
Joe: you can do me in the morning you can do me in the night, you can do me when you wanna do me
Me: backstage, underage!
Joe: words of wisdom
Me: ew, remember the gross part in that song?
Joe: which part?
Me: smack it up, flip it, rub it down... oh no!
Me: and don't forget, the song title wasn't Do Me, it was Do Me!
Joe: oh yeah, with the exclamation point!
Joe: like a desperate plea
Me: anyway, i kinda want to settle this to the tune of cry me a river, by the illustrious timberlake
Joe: not sexy back?
Me: oh, maybe sexy back
Me: so what are the ground rules for a dance off?
Joe: well, rule #1, it has to be a reality tv show
Me: wait, now we're on a reality TV show?
Joe: how about a show called red's dance party
Me: that would be awesome!
Me: just like me dancing to things that make you go hmmm
Joe: things that make you go hmm, hmm, hmmm
Me: wait, and then every week i challenge someone who has angered me to a dance off
Joe: and they have to pick a bad 80's dance song
Me: this week, That Lady In Front of Me at Bed Bath and Beyond Who Had 600 Coupons
Joe: next week, the bastard who stopped short on haverhill street
Me: yeah, i could have friends do guest dance offs
Joe: it would go something like this:
Joe: Eric nies, host: mr. x, red has challenged you to this dance off for being a turd. now pick your song of choice. mr. x: i choose linear's sending all my love, eric!
Me: what if they pick love of a lifetime by firehouse
Joe: you have the right to block one song per episode
Me: this has suddenly become the grind. get eric nies outta here! i prefer judd the maladjusted cartoonist
Joe: you can always change it up and give the contestant a choice of 3 songs
Me: and how is the winner determined
Joe: the winner is obviously chosen based on the guest judges
Me: i call steve perry to the floor
Joe: steve perry, come on down!
Me: i think my go-to song should be easy lover
Me: when my opponent is almost down for the count, it's like my closer
Joe: and every episode is new guest judges
Me: ok, here's a guest panel: the Edge, garfunkel, and jewel, but only if she's bound and gagged
Joe: leif garrett, meat loaf, and elvira
Me: scott weiland, kevin federline, and brand from the goonies
Me: who would be all, i'm josh brolin! whatever, brand
Joe: slash, danny wood and punky brewster
Me: no i was JUST THINKING DANNY WOOD!
Me: that's awesome
Joe: and punky would be like, my name isnt punky! and you'd be like, whatever, punky
Me: kenny loggins, dane cook's unfunny friend, and goose from top gun
Me: i could do this until we're both ill
Joe: me too!
Joe: robert smith, erik estrada and KITT from knight rider
Joe: "now david"
Me: geraldo, dr. phil, and mama fratelli
Joe: michael j. fox, mr. feeny from boy meets world, and betty white
Me: david caruso, burt bacharach, and a moth
Joe: stevie wonder (judging a dance off), dolly parton, and rusty from national lampoon's vacation
Me: the girl in the KY commercial with the spray who says "that'll work," your first grade teacher, and felicity
Joe: lisa kudrow, lisa lisa, and lisa turtle. a theme episode
Me: barry manilow, barry white, and barry this weird kid who lived down the street from me who used to lick his face
Joe: vanilla ice, iceman and ice cube
Me: stephanie tanner, mallory keaton, gertie
Joe: fred savage, ben seaver, and mike seaver's friend boner
Me: BONER!
Me: mistah seavah!
Joe: mrs. garrett, theo huxtable, and the ropers
Me: the guy from the greatest american hero, she-ra, and vanna white
Joe: brian boitano, the girl from small wonder, and optimus prime
Me: gary coleman, jem's nemesis pizzazz, tooty from facts of life
Joe: bronson pinchot, urkel and mr. kotter
Joe: mr. drummond, snake eyes from GI joe, and papa smurf
Me: inspector gadget, strawberry shortcake's cat custard, and a glow worm
Joe: JJ walker, shneider, and weezie jefferson
Me: the kool aid bottle, mr. T, bea arthur
Joe: re-run, george jetson, and a cabbage patch kid
Me: uncle jesse, luke duke, and mallory's boyfriend nick
Joe: nick!
Me: cagney, lacey, and the jetsons robot maid
Joe: barney rubble, magnum PI and chuck norris
Me: alf, kimberly drummond, and joey lawrence
Joe: but kimberly would never show up!
Me: right, because that's what's keeping all this from happening
Me: kimberly was on my favorite "very special episode of" ever
Me: remember that? when she was bulimic and ate a sheet cake?
Joe: yes!
Joe: although my fave episode of diffrent strokes is obviously the one at the bike shop
Me: what was that one?
Joe: arnold and his friend were tied up by some guy who was probably gonna molest them
Me: right!
Joe: it was a 2 parter
Me: the best ones were
Joe: i remember at the end of part 1, the guy put duct tape over arnold's mouth
Me: i liked the special blossom episodes
Joe: of course!
Me: i just blogged about the one where her boyfriend wouldn't have sex with her
Me: saved by the bell had specials too
Joe: the one with smoking weed
Joe: say nope to dope!
[I discover this gold mine.]
Me: ohhh! dabney coleman doesn't want his daughter to share a hospital room with arnold because he's black!
Joe: haha very special alf
Me: no way i missed that
Me: look at the description: "Kate's alcoholic friend stays with the family for the night and when she meets Alf at 2 a.m. while she is on her binge, she thinks he is her imaginary drinking buddy she sees when she is drunk. Alf convinces her to go to a clinic."
Joe: holy shit do you remember that show california dreams?
Me: yes! OH MY GOD. look at all this wonderfulness from facts of life: "Tootie is lured into child pornography by a sneaky photographer. Natalie is almost raped by a clown on Halloween. A pimp almost strong-arms Tootie into prostitution. Natalie loses her virginity to her boyfriend Snake."
Joe: "Arnold and Kimberly are picked up while hitchhiking. While the driver tries to seduce Kimberly, Arnold is given a sedative and, after managing to escape, has a difficult time trying to tell authorities where Kimberly is being held captive."
Me: "Gang members take over a neighborhood playground and injure Urkel and 3J in the process."
Joe: 3J?
Me: oh my god, fraggle rock is on here: "In an attempt to make the Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs put aside their differences and live together in peace, The Trash Heap makes all the radishes in the Gorgs garden disappear, hoping to make them realize how much they have in common."
Joe: "After the house is broken into, Rose buys a gun for protection and almost shoots Blanche's date when he enters the house late at night."
Me: "Michelle enters a horse riding contest with permission from her father (Bob Saget) and fell off when her horse painics during an event, temporarily losing her memory. This was the final episode."
Joe: "Carol's boyfriend Sandy (Matthew Perry) dies after a drunk driving accident."
Me: that was matthew perry? i totally remember that
Joe: "Mike receives preferential treatment from his boss (Dick Van Patten) because he (unlike his coworkers) is white."
Joe: tons of racial problems in the 80s!
Joe: Mr. Belvedere: "While at camp, Wesley is given an inappropriate massage by a male counselor. The counselor encourages him to keep the incident a secret, but Wesley reveals the truth when the counselor offers another camper a ride home."
Me: inappropriate massage!
Me: "Richie tries to convince Chachi not to join a gang."
Me: "MacGyver catches some poachers who are killing rhinos for their horns. At the end of the episode Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) gives a special message about the problem of poaching and gives a phone number and address for more information about it."
Joe: Saved by the Bell: "Jessie takes caffeine pills in order to keep up with school and her social life. Zack drives drunk and wrecks Lisa's mother's car, which results in Slater being injured. A teen star arrives at Bayside to shoot an anti-drug commercial, but it is later discovered that he smokes pot himself. Oil is struck, and while everyone is initially excited about the money this could bring the school, Mr. Belding and the kids decide to shun the developers when the oil kills the wildlife in a local pond that Zack and the gang had been caring for." all of those i totally remember
Me: all the 80s tv kids took pills to help with school
Me: man, it was all racism, inappropriate massaging, and homework pills
Joe: yup
Me: just a regular thursday around these parts
Joe: indeed!
Me: what's up, baby daddy?
Joe: you accept my dance off challenge?
Me: you've just stepped into the lion's den, my friend
Joe: well, when BBD is playing, all hell will break loose
Joe: and remember, never trust a big butt and a smile.
Me: this girl is POISON
Joe: you can do me in the morning you can do me in the night, you can do me when you wanna do me
Me: backstage, underage!
Joe: words of wisdom
Me: ew, remember the gross part in that song?
Joe: which part?
Me: smack it up, flip it, rub it down... oh no!
Me: and don't forget, the song title wasn't Do Me, it was Do Me!
Joe: oh yeah, with the exclamation point!
Joe: like a desperate plea
Me: anyway, i kinda want to settle this to the tune of cry me a river, by the illustrious timberlake
Joe: not sexy back?
Me: oh, maybe sexy back
Me: so what are the ground rules for a dance off?
Joe: well, rule #1, it has to be a reality tv show
Me: wait, now we're on a reality TV show?
Joe: how about a show called red's dance party
Me: that would be awesome!
Me: just like me dancing to things that make you go hmmm
Joe: things that make you go hmm, hmm, hmmm
Me: wait, and then every week i challenge someone who has angered me to a dance off
Joe: and they have to pick a bad 80's dance song
Me: this week, That Lady In Front of Me at Bed Bath and Beyond Who Had 600 Coupons
Joe: next week, the bastard who stopped short on haverhill street
Me: yeah, i could have friends do guest dance offs
Joe: it would go something like this:
Joe: Eric nies, host: mr. x, red has challenged you to this dance off for being a turd. now pick your song of choice. mr. x: i choose linear's sending all my love, eric!
Me: what if they pick love of a lifetime by firehouse
Joe: you have the right to block one song per episode
Me: this has suddenly become the grind. get eric nies outta here! i prefer judd the maladjusted cartoonist
Joe: you can always change it up and give the contestant a choice of 3 songs
Me: and how is the winner determined
Joe: the winner is obviously chosen based on the guest judges
Me: i call steve perry to the floor
Joe: steve perry, come on down!
Me: i think my go-to song should be easy lover
Me: when my opponent is almost down for the count, it's like my closer
Joe: and every episode is new guest judges
Me: ok, here's a guest panel: the Edge, garfunkel, and jewel, but only if she's bound and gagged
Joe: leif garrett, meat loaf, and elvira
Me: scott weiland, kevin federline, and brand from the goonies
Me: who would be all, i'm josh brolin! whatever, brand
Joe: slash, danny wood and punky brewster
Me: no i was JUST THINKING DANNY WOOD!
Me: that's awesome
Joe: and punky would be like, my name isnt punky! and you'd be like, whatever, punky
Me: kenny loggins, dane cook's unfunny friend, and goose from top gun
Me: i could do this until we're both ill
Joe: me too!
Joe: robert smith, erik estrada and KITT from knight rider
Joe: "now david"
Me: geraldo, dr. phil, and mama fratelli
Joe: michael j. fox, mr. feeny from boy meets world, and betty white
Me: david caruso, burt bacharach, and a moth
Joe: stevie wonder (judging a dance off), dolly parton, and rusty from national lampoon's vacation
Me: the girl in the KY commercial with the spray who says "that'll work," your first grade teacher, and felicity
Joe: lisa kudrow, lisa lisa, and lisa turtle. a theme episode
Me: barry manilow, barry white, and barry this weird kid who lived down the street from me who used to lick his face
Joe: vanilla ice, iceman and ice cube
Me: stephanie tanner, mallory keaton, gertie
Joe: fred savage, ben seaver, and mike seaver's friend boner
Me: BONER!
Me: mistah seavah!
Joe: mrs. garrett, theo huxtable, and the ropers
Me: the guy from the greatest american hero, she-ra, and vanna white
Joe: brian boitano, the girl from small wonder, and optimus prime
Me: gary coleman, jem's nemesis pizzazz, tooty from facts of life
Joe: bronson pinchot, urkel and mr. kotter
Joe: mr. drummond, snake eyes from GI joe, and papa smurf
Me: inspector gadget, strawberry shortcake's cat custard, and a glow worm
Joe: JJ walker, shneider, and weezie jefferson
Me: the kool aid bottle, mr. T, bea arthur
Joe: re-run, george jetson, and a cabbage patch kid
Me: uncle jesse, luke duke, and mallory's boyfriend nick
Joe: nick!
Me: cagney, lacey, and the jetsons robot maid
Joe: barney rubble, magnum PI and chuck norris
Me: alf, kimberly drummond, and joey lawrence
Joe: but kimberly would never show up!
Me: right, because that's what's keeping all this from happening
Me: kimberly was on my favorite "very special episode of" ever
Me: remember that? when she was bulimic and ate a sheet cake?
Joe: yes!
Joe: although my fave episode of diffrent strokes is obviously the one at the bike shop
Me: what was that one?
Joe: arnold and his friend were tied up by some guy who was probably gonna molest them
Me: right!
Joe: it was a 2 parter
Me: the best ones were
Joe: i remember at the end of part 1, the guy put duct tape over arnold's mouth
Me: i liked the special blossom episodes
Joe: of course!
Me: i just blogged about the one where her boyfriend wouldn't have sex with her
Me: saved by the bell had specials too
Joe: the one with smoking weed
Joe: say nope to dope!
[I discover this gold mine.]
Me: ohhh! dabney coleman doesn't want his daughter to share a hospital room with arnold because he's black!
Joe: haha very special alf
Me: no way i missed that
Me: look at the description: "Kate's alcoholic friend stays with the family for the night and when she meets Alf at 2 a.m. while she is on her binge, she thinks he is her imaginary drinking buddy she sees when she is drunk. Alf convinces her to go to a clinic."
Joe: holy shit do you remember that show california dreams?
Me: yes! OH MY GOD. look at all this wonderfulness from facts of life: "Tootie is lured into child pornography by a sneaky photographer. Natalie is almost raped by a clown on Halloween. A pimp almost strong-arms Tootie into prostitution. Natalie loses her virginity to her boyfriend Snake."
Joe: "Arnold and Kimberly are picked up while hitchhiking. While the driver tries to seduce Kimberly, Arnold is given a sedative and, after managing to escape, has a difficult time trying to tell authorities where Kimberly is being held captive."
Me: "Gang members take over a neighborhood playground and injure Urkel and 3J in the process."
Joe: 3J?
Me: oh my god, fraggle rock is on here: "In an attempt to make the Fraggles, Doozers and Gorgs put aside their differences and live together in peace, The Trash Heap makes all the radishes in the Gorgs garden disappear, hoping to make them realize how much they have in common."
Joe: "After the house is broken into, Rose buys a gun for protection and almost shoots Blanche's date when he enters the house late at night."
Me: "Michelle enters a horse riding contest with permission from her father (Bob Saget) and fell off when her horse painics during an event, temporarily losing her memory. This was the final episode."
Joe: "Carol's boyfriend Sandy (Matthew Perry) dies after a drunk driving accident."
Me: that was matthew perry? i totally remember that
Joe: "Mike receives preferential treatment from his boss (Dick Van Patten) because he (unlike his coworkers) is white."
Joe: tons of racial problems in the 80s!
Joe: Mr. Belvedere: "While at camp, Wesley is given an inappropriate massage by a male counselor. The counselor encourages him to keep the incident a secret, but Wesley reveals the truth when the counselor offers another camper a ride home."
Me: inappropriate massage!
Me: "Richie tries to convince Chachi not to join a gang."
Me: "MacGyver catches some poachers who are killing rhinos for their horns. At the end of the episode Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) gives a special message about the problem of poaching and gives a phone number and address for more information about it."
Joe: Saved by the Bell: "Jessie takes caffeine pills in order to keep up with school and her social life. Zack drives drunk and wrecks Lisa's mother's car, which results in Slater being injured. A teen star arrives at Bayside to shoot an anti-drug commercial, but it is later discovered that he smokes pot himself. Oil is struck, and while everyone is initially excited about the money this could bring the school, Mr. Belding and the kids decide to shun the developers when the oil kills the wildlife in a local pond that Zack and the gang had been caring for." all of those i totally remember
Me: all the 80s tv kids took pills to help with school
Me: man, it was all racism, inappropriate massaging, and homework pills
Joe: yup
Me: just a regular thursday around these parts
Joe: indeed!
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
A Few Reasons Why I'm Glad That Al Gore Didn't Single-Handedly Invent the Internet Until I Was Already Grown Up
My non-hipster cousin Andrew and I were talking about... well, okay, I'll talk about Andrew first. I love this boy. He's about to be a senior in college, and right now he's living in New Jersey and commuting to Manhattan for his internship every day. And he's not even living in that part of Jersey that's within spitting distance of the city. I mean, are you kidding me? After a foreverlong commute like that, I'd just find some bar and lament about public transportation all day while drinking fuzzy navels and playing with my split ends. But no, he does the commute and THEN he goes to work. He's my hero. In time, he may even restore our family's good name. It will be tough, as I've had almost a decade headstart of corrupting it, but I have faith in him.
He's just about eight years younger than me, newly 21, and it's starting to feel like there isn't a huge, gaping amount of years between us anymore. I've been waiting for this because he's always been such a blast to hang out with that I just knew he was going to be the coolest adult (read: drinking buddy). When he was 12, I'd take him to see Adam Sandler movies and to chain restaurants and let him have like seven Shirley Temples, but I was 20 and we just didn't have a whole lot in common at those ages, as I was dealing with much more adult issues like whether or not my floormates and I should smoke before or after the Stanton basement party tomorrow night and where my light blue/dark blue Grumpy Bear ringer t-shirt was.
I always used to wish he was my brother, but it's probably a good thing that he wasn't. Despite the age gap, I just know that the "why can't you be more like your brother?"s would've started before he was even able to sit upright. He's inherited my father's exact brain, which seems unfair because he's yet another person in my family who possesses that infuriatingly effortless brilliance that eludes me, and you know what else? He's athletic. And tan. Are we even related? Anyway, I should enjoy him now, before he graduates and he's making five times what I make while simultaneously being drafted for the NFL or something.
Anyway. The thing we were talking about is how wired his childhood was, compared to mine. Wired, not weird; that's a whole different topic. When I was in high school, as is also the case for most of you, we didn't have the internet, cell phones, or reality TV, not that the latter can be counted as progress. Seriously, how ancient will that lack of technology make us seem to our kids? "You mean when you stood in line at CVS you just STOOD there without having anyone to talk to on the phone?"
I was just watching, ahem, Indecent Proposal, and remember the part where Woody Harrelson goes barreling through the hotel because he's decided that he doesn't want to go through with the, well, indecent proposal, and he ends up running out onto the roof just as the helicopter containing his wife is taking off and whisking her away to the sex boat? Nowadays he could've just called her, cancelled the, uh, transaction, and saved himself the trouble of having to buy a million dollar hippo to get her back in the end.
What, you didn't see it? Oh, you should. It's terrible. And I know technology is mostly good, if only for having a handy way of keeping your wife from getting on Robert Redford, but there are some reasons that make me glad that all of it didn't exist when I was younger.
1. I would've been all about the internet porn. Not so much because I'm a sexual deviant, although sure, that would've come into play at some point. But mostly because it'd be easily accessible and oh my GOD what IS that?!?! I mean, my friends and I used to pore over the phone sex ads in the Boston Phoenix, thinking it was the raciest stuff EVER. And if Al Gore had come through earlier, I'm sure I would've been grounded twice as much as I already was for all the crazy stuff that my dad would be able to tell I was looking at online (you can always tell when you share a computer, right?).
2. Email/instant messenger/MySpace politics. Do you know that on MySpace, you can organize your friends in order of how much you like them? Imagine the logistics of this in high school, when everyone simultaneously loves and hates and dates each other. I can just hear my girlfriends' voices: "And then I looked at his MySpace and he already put that slut Christina from my trig class into his number one friend slot!" Or, "So I checked and his away message said that he was out for the night. Who the hell do you think he's with? I'm so not speaking to him tomorrow in Western Civ." Voice mail and text message analysis nowadays is bad enough, but at least it doesn't include psychological profiling via MySpace and instant messenger. Not that I've completely avoided this debacle. I have friends who perform entire seduction rituals via text message. Meanwhile, this is a typical text message from me:
hi, where (from Red, Tues 6:14 PM)
sorry. # whe8re ar we havng dinner/// (from Red, Tues 6:15 PM)
3. Like most other teenage girls, I used to be on the phone constantly, because you had to spend all night discussing everything that happened that day (which we don't do now, at all, whatsoever). And you know that if they'd had cell phones back then, I would've been on mine for hours upon hours, and I have to say that I like living in a world where I don't have to give any thought to going over my minutes or roaming charges or anything like that, because that wouldn't have been the case if I had had a cell phone when I was 15. And I'm sure that my ringtone would've been Freak Me by Silk or I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me or some such shit. Actually, I still feel like I'm on the phone all night long, so I suppose there hasn't been much progress in this area. But at least I don't rock out to Freak Me anymore. Not every day, anyway. Fine, it's on my iPod.
4. Of course I would've had a blog back then, because I was made for this kind of stuff. I actually kept a journal on the computer when I was in high school, and it would've been a very small leap from saving it to a disk to hitting "publish post" and immortalizing myself in all my agonizing teenybopper glory. As it is, my journal entries from that time were all very specific about things that happened and conversations that were had, and it would've been hard to live down several years of "and then she was totally like well I don't know and I was like what and he was like yeah." I've pretty much gone from transcribing every conversation to hardly even listening to my friends when they talk. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.
He's just about eight years younger than me, newly 21, and it's starting to feel like there isn't a huge, gaping amount of years between us anymore. I've been waiting for this because he's always been such a blast to hang out with that I just knew he was going to be the coolest adult (read: drinking buddy). When he was 12, I'd take him to see Adam Sandler movies and to chain restaurants and let him have like seven Shirley Temples, but I was 20 and we just didn't have a whole lot in common at those ages, as I was dealing with much more adult issues like whether or not my floormates and I should smoke before or after the Stanton basement party tomorrow night and where my light blue/dark blue Grumpy Bear ringer t-shirt was.
I always used to wish he was my brother, but it's probably a good thing that he wasn't. Despite the age gap, I just know that the "why can't you be more like your brother?"s would've started before he was even able to sit upright. He's inherited my father's exact brain, which seems unfair because he's yet another person in my family who possesses that infuriatingly effortless brilliance that eludes me, and you know what else? He's athletic. And tan. Are we even related? Anyway, I should enjoy him now, before he graduates and he's making five times what I make while simultaneously being drafted for the NFL or something.
Anyway. The thing we were talking about is how wired his childhood was, compared to mine. Wired, not weird; that's a whole different topic. When I was in high school, as is also the case for most of you, we didn't have the internet, cell phones, or reality TV, not that the latter can be counted as progress. Seriously, how ancient will that lack of technology make us seem to our kids? "You mean when you stood in line at CVS you just STOOD there without having anyone to talk to on the phone?"
I was just watching, ahem, Indecent Proposal, and remember the part where Woody Harrelson goes barreling through the hotel because he's decided that he doesn't want to go through with the, well, indecent proposal, and he ends up running out onto the roof just as the helicopter containing his wife is taking off and whisking her away to the sex boat? Nowadays he could've just called her, cancelled the, uh, transaction, and saved himself the trouble of having to buy a million dollar hippo to get her back in the end.
What, you didn't see it? Oh, you should. It's terrible. And I know technology is mostly good, if only for having a handy way of keeping your wife from getting on Robert Redford, but there are some reasons that make me glad that all of it didn't exist when I was younger.
1. I would've been all about the internet porn. Not so much because I'm a sexual deviant, although sure, that would've come into play at some point. But mostly because it'd be easily accessible and oh my GOD what IS that?!?! I mean, my friends and I used to pore over the phone sex ads in the Boston Phoenix, thinking it was the raciest stuff EVER. And if Al Gore had come through earlier, I'm sure I would've been grounded twice as much as I already was for all the crazy stuff that my dad would be able to tell I was looking at online (you can always tell when you share a computer, right?).
2. Email/instant messenger/MySpace politics. Do you know that on MySpace, you can organize your friends in order of how much you like them? Imagine the logistics of this in high school, when everyone simultaneously loves and hates and dates each other. I can just hear my girlfriends' voices: "And then I looked at his MySpace and he already put that slut Christina from my trig class into his number one friend slot!" Or, "So I checked and his away message said that he was out for the night. Who the hell do you think he's with? I'm so not speaking to him tomorrow in Western Civ." Voice mail and text message analysis nowadays is bad enough, but at least it doesn't include psychological profiling via MySpace and instant messenger. Not that I've completely avoided this debacle. I have friends who perform entire seduction rituals via text message. Meanwhile, this is a typical text message from me:
hi, where (from Red, Tues 6:14 PM)
sorry. # whe8re ar we havng dinner/// (from Red, Tues 6:15 PM)
3. Like most other teenage girls, I used to be on the phone constantly, because you had to spend all night discussing everything that happened that day (which we don't do now, at all, whatsoever). And you know that if they'd had cell phones back then, I would've been on mine for hours upon hours, and I have to say that I like living in a world where I don't have to give any thought to going over my minutes or roaming charges or anything like that, because that wouldn't have been the case if I had had a cell phone when I was 15. And I'm sure that my ringtone would've been Freak Me by Silk or I'll Never Get Over You Getting Over Me or some such shit. Actually, I still feel like I'm on the phone all night long, so I suppose there hasn't been much progress in this area. But at least I don't rock out to Freak Me anymore. Not every day, anyway. Fine, it's on my iPod.
4. Of course I would've had a blog back then, because I was made for this kind of stuff. I actually kept a journal on the computer when I was in high school, and it would've been a very small leap from saving it to a disk to hitting "publish post" and immortalizing myself in all my agonizing teenybopper glory. As it is, my journal entries from that time were all very specific about things that happened and conversations that were had, and it would've been hard to live down several years of "and then she was totally like well I don't know and I was like what and he was like yeah." I've pretty much gone from transcribing every conversation to hardly even listening to my friends when they talk. If that's not progress, I don't know what is.
Friday, August 04, 2006
quizalicious
Well, if you people are going to keep sending me surveys, I'm going to keep taking them. Especially when they're so delightfully inane, not unlike yours truly.
Happy weekend, all!
Do you sleep with your closet door open or closed?
Closed. I wouldn't be able to sleep if it was open. (I know... trust me, I know.)
Do you take the shampoos and conditioner bottles from hotels?
Only if they're high-end. I hear the W hotels have Aveda products. Whee!
Have you ever stolen a street sign before?
No, I wouldn't even know how to go about doing this. But if I ever saw a Red Street, you know I’d be showing up at 3 AM with a stick of dynamite and a disapproving lookout buddy.
Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of bees?
Uh. Great. I'm going to go with bees, because it would probably be slightly less terrifying than a giant bear coming at me. I'm probably dying either way though, huh?
What is your biggest pet peeve?
Toppers. "You think THAT'S bad? Listen to what happened to ME." "I know you're not done with your story yet but it sounds JUST LIKE the time that I..." It's one thing to exchange stories, quite another to have no concept of anyone on the planet other than yourself.
Do you ever dance if there's no music playing?
Is it wrong if my answer to this is "yes, constantly"? And does singing to myself count? Lately I've been obsessed with Walk Away by Kelly Clarkson. I know, but what can I say? I find that the feisty beginning ("You got your mother and your brother every other undercover telling you what to say...SAY!") is way more interesting than just picking up your phone and saying "hello?" I want people to think I have one of those ringback phones but then realize it's actually me singing to greet them.
What's your favorite scary movie?
I have no favorites! Scary movies have ruined my life.
Where would you bury hidden treasure?
Why am I burying it? I'm out drinking it, hello.
What is your "song of the week"?
You got your mother and your brother every other undercover telling you what to say...SAY! See, wasn't that fun? Maybe it's better in person.
Is it OK for guys to wear pink?
I once watched a train wreck occur between two of my friends over this very "issue."
What movies could you watch over and over and still love?
Kissing Jessica Stein. Dazed and Confused. Reality Bites. Back to the Future. Armageddon, for Ben Affleck's slo-mo walk in that orange spacesuit. Oh my.
Were you ever a boy/girl scout?
I was a girl scout until like fourth grade, but I hated it. I told my mom how I felt, and she told me she'd always thought it was kinda lame too and it was OK if I wanted to quit.
What is your usual bedtime?
I try to be asleep by 11. 3 at the latest.
When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween?
Oh God, everything. An M&M, a bunny, a clown, a tiger... one time I was Pebbles Flinstone, and a woman opened her door and looked at my friends and then at me and said, "Oh, look, a, uh... cavewoman!"
How many languages can you speak?
One, barely.
Who is better... Leno or Letterman?
Conan. Keep cool, my babies.
Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?
Writer, crimefighter, fort builder, popsicle eater, Ewok.
Cheetos or Fritos?
I haven't seen either of those products since like 1986.
Astronomy or astrology?
Uh, seriously? Astronomy.
Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing?
Why yes, actually, he's a catcher for the Red Sox who's on the DL right now. Is that too specific a request? I do NOT want Mirabelli as a consolation prize.
How well would you adapt to living in an Amish community?
Uh, considering that my friends call my apartment Red's House of Booty, I'm thinking I wouldn't fit in so well. (And that name is not because of my shenanigans, it's because of THEIRS!)
Put your iPod on random. What song comes up?
Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson. I love this song!
Do you burn incense?
Not since like freshman year of college. It was too hippie for me even then.
Hot tea or cold tea?
Hot.
Tea or coffee?
Peppermint tea.
Can you swim well?
Define well.
Can you hold your breath without manually holding your nose?
Um, yes. And so can you. Oh, do you mean while swimming? Yeah, I thought only little kids held their noses.
Which are better, black or green olives?
I'd love to ask this of the guy who pioneered the concept of the endlessly complicated olive bar and just watch his head explode from the enormity of the question.
Do you have any godchildren?
Yes, one... my cousin. His name is Chris and he looks just like me, just like what my brother would've looked like if I'd had one. Huh. Maybe he IS my brother.
Red Roof or Econolodge?
Don't even talk to me. I stayed at a Red Roof on the way to Canada and I didn't want to touch anything there. I'm sorry, I know it probably makes me a horrific snob, but I don't understand paying money to stay at a hotel that's significantly crappier than my own home.
Do you like to go camping?
I like everything about it except sleeping in the tent and peeing in the woods. So, in other words: NO. What am I, a goddamn pioneer?
Are you suddenly realizing that maybe you're more high-maintenance than you're willing to admit?
So much so that I just wrote that question for myself. Also, Material Girl just came on my iPod. No, I'm just kidding. It's Papa Don't Preach. I'm keeping my baby. Don't be upset.
If your parents are still married, do they have a good marriage?
When they're not sending my newborn brother off to be raised by other family members, you mean? Well... yes, they seem to have a good marriage, but it always sort of amuses me. My parents are literally polar opposites. My dad is brilliant but can be very emotionally detached, while my mom is flighty but very nurturing. My dad is very shy and my mom befriends everyone she meets. My mom is overdramatic to an alarming degree and my dad is underdramatic to about the same degree. I have absolutely no idea how they've made it work, except that they just laugh at each other's quirks, they're always having fun, and they freakin' adore each other. Who knows? Compatability is an interesting thing.
What is your favorite episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air?
I don't know, but my favorite episode of Blossom was one of the "very special" ones where she wanted to sleep with her boyfriend and he wasn't ready yet. It's such a common problem among teenage boys, I'm glad that someone finally addressed it.
Happy weekend, all!
Do you sleep with your closet door open or closed?
Closed. I wouldn't be able to sleep if it was open. (I know... trust me, I know.)
Do you take the shampoos and conditioner bottles from hotels?
Only if they're high-end. I hear the W hotels have Aveda products. Whee!
Have you ever stolen a street sign before?
No, I wouldn't even know how to go about doing this. But if I ever saw a Red Street, you know I’d be showing up at 3 AM with a stick of dynamite and a disapproving lookout buddy.
Would you rather be attacked by a big bear or a swarm of bees?
Uh. Great. I'm going to go with bees, because it would probably be slightly less terrifying than a giant bear coming at me. I'm probably dying either way though, huh?
What is your biggest pet peeve?
Toppers. "You think THAT'S bad? Listen to what happened to ME." "I know you're not done with your story yet but it sounds JUST LIKE the time that I..." It's one thing to exchange stories, quite another to have no concept of anyone on the planet other than yourself.
Do you ever dance if there's no music playing?
Is it wrong if my answer to this is "yes, constantly"? And does singing to myself count? Lately I've been obsessed with Walk Away by Kelly Clarkson. I know, but what can I say? I find that the feisty beginning ("You got your mother and your brother every other undercover telling you what to say...SAY!") is way more interesting than just picking up your phone and saying "hello?" I want people to think I have one of those ringback phones but then realize it's actually me singing to greet them.
What's your favorite scary movie?
I have no favorites! Scary movies have ruined my life.
Where would you bury hidden treasure?
Why am I burying it? I'm out drinking it, hello.
What is your "song of the week"?
You got your mother and your brother every other undercover telling you what to say...SAY! See, wasn't that fun? Maybe it's better in person.
Is it OK for guys to wear pink?
I once watched a train wreck occur between two of my friends over this very "issue."
What movies could you watch over and over and still love?
Kissing Jessica Stein. Dazed and Confused. Reality Bites. Back to the Future. Armageddon, for Ben Affleck's slo-mo walk in that orange spacesuit. Oh my.
Were you ever a boy/girl scout?
I was a girl scout until like fourth grade, but I hated it. I told my mom how I felt, and she told me she'd always thought it was kinda lame too and it was OK if I wanted to quit.
What is your usual bedtime?
I try to be asleep by 11. 3 at the latest.
When you were a kid, what did you dress up as for Halloween?
Oh God, everything. An M&M, a bunny, a clown, a tiger... one time I was Pebbles Flinstone, and a woman opened her door and looked at my friends and then at me and said, "Oh, look, a, uh... cavewoman!"
How many languages can you speak?
One, barely.
Who is better... Leno or Letterman?
Conan. Keep cool, my babies.
Occupations you wanted to be when you were a kid?
Writer, crimefighter, fort builder, popsicle eater, Ewok.
Cheetos or Fritos?
I haven't seen either of those products since like 1986.
Astronomy or astrology?
Uh, seriously? Astronomy.
Is there a profession you picture your future spouse doing?
Why yes, actually, he's a catcher for the Red Sox who's on the DL right now. Is that too specific a request? I do NOT want Mirabelli as a consolation prize.
How well would you adapt to living in an Amish community?
Uh, considering that my friends call my apartment Red's House of Booty, I'm thinking I wouldn't fit in so well. (And that name is not because of my shenanigans, it's because of THEIRS!)
Put your iPod on random. What song comes up?
Steppin' Out by Joe Jackson. I love this song!
Do you burn incense?
Not since like freshman year of college. It was too hippie for me even then.
Hot tea or cold tea?
Hot.
Tea or coffee?
Peppermint tea.
Can you swim well?
Define well.
Can you hold your breath without manually holding your nose?
Um, yes. And so can you. Oh, do you mean while swimming? Yeah, I thought only little kids held their noses.
Which are better, black or green olives?
I'd love to ask this of the guy who pioneered the concept of the endlessly complicated olive bar and just watch his head explode from the enormity of the question.
Do you have any godchildren?
Yes, one... my cousin. His name is Chris and he looks just like me, just like what my brother would've looked like if I'd had one. Huh. Maybe he IS my brother.
Red Roof or Econolodge?
Don't even talk to me. I stayed at a Red Roof on the way to Canada and I didn't want to touch anything there. I'm sorry, I know it probably makes me a horrific snob, but I don't understand paying money to stay at a hotel that's significantly crappier than my own home.
Do you like to go camping?
I like everything about it except sleeping in the tent and peeing in the woods. So, in other words: NO. What am I, a goddamn pioneer?
Are you suddenly realizing that maybe you're more high-maintenance than you're willing to admit?
So much so that I just wrote that question for myself. Also, Material Girl just came on my iPod. No, I'm just kidding. It's Papa Don't Preach. I'm keeping my baby. Don't be upset.
If your parents are still married, do they have a good marriage?
When they're not sending my newborn brother off to be raised by other family members, you mean? Well... yes, they seem to have a good marriage, but it always sort of amuses me. My parents are literally polar opposites. My dad is brilliant but can be very emotionally detached, while my mom is flighty but very nurturing. My dad is very shy and my mom befriends everyone she meets. My mom is overdramatic to an alarming degree and my dad is underdramatic to about the same degree. I have absolutely no idea how they've made it work, except that they just laugh at each other's quirks, they're always having fun, and they freakin' adore each other. Who knows? Compatability is an interesting thing.
What is your favorite episode of Fresh Prince of Bel Air?
I don't know, but my favorite episode of Blossom was one of the "very special" ones where she wanted to sleep with her boyfriend and he wasn't ready yet. It's such a common problem among teenage boys, I'm glad that someone finally addressed it.
Wednesday, August 02, 2006
hot and bothered
I wish I were an anchorwoman.
"Good evening. Well, we've had another day of the mercury inching upwards. Let's go live now to a Hotness Expert to tell us how warm it actually is, in case the fact that large patches of your skin are boiling and sliding off isn't already enough of an indication. Dr. Swelter is the author of the provocative bestsellers Hot Enough For Ya? and If You Can't Stand the Heat, Do Something About Global Warming Already. Dr. Swelter?"
"Thank you, Red. Indeed, it's sizzling out there."
"Dr. Swelter, what do you recommend that people do during this kind of extreme weather?"
"Well, for starters, we are urging people to be sure to consume plenty of liquids."
"Interesting. Tell me more about these liquids of which you speak."
"Drinking water keeps you hydrated, and hydration is very important during this kind of heat."
"Undoubtedly. And actually, Dr. Swelter, one might argue that, as the human body is composed primarily of water, hydration is always important, even in, say, February. However, we don't talk about hydration in February because that's when we like to talk about frostbitten extremities and snowfall records. Honestly, we really couldn't care less if our viewers spend the entire winter sitting in a sauna eating salt and drinking Guinness, so long as you don't do that shit in the summertime when hydration is at its trendiest. Any other tips?"
"You want to make sure to stay in air-conditioning whenever possible. For people who need it, there are cooling centers throughout the city."
"Ah yes, those cooling centers, or as I call them, Giant Dirty Puddles Set Up on the Street With a Sprinkler Thrown in for Good Measure, can be quite refreshing for poor people."
"And speaking of, Red, we are mostly concerned about the elderly, particularly shut-ins, who may need help in understanding the threat that this kind of heat can pose to their health."
"Good point, Dr. Swelter. Although by definition, I'm sure shut-ins are going to be a little hard to get to, as when their neighbors knock on the door, they often pretend that they're not home, even though they haven't stepped foot outside since FDR was in office. What do you suggest in those circumstances?"
"That can certainly be a problem, Red. We urge neighbors to check in on and take care of each other at times like this."
"Right, maybe they could just try knocking really, really hard, and then draw straws to figure out which one of them has to peer in through the lace curtains and hope they don't find the old lady in rigamortis. And perhaps we should give these elders in our community a moment's consideration around the holidays as well, since their children probably never call, never write, and never give them a goddamn moment's worth of their time, you ungrateful, selfish little bastards."
"Absolutely, Red. We also want runners to take heed of the heat warnings."
"Ahh, yes, I was wondering when you were going to mention something about the emaciated crackpots sprinting down our city streets. While it's endlessly entertaining for my friends and I to sit in a pub and play Count the Eating Disorders as they run by, I must admit that I'm a tad concerned for their safety. Plus, you can practically see their tendons. Would it kill them to eat a steak?"
"Indeed, Red, this is certainly not optimal weather for vigorous outdoor activity. We are urging all your viewers to exercise indoors for the next several days."
"Duly noted. Another problem that we're running into here at the station is coming up with synonyms for hot. Scorching, blistering... there are only so many of them. We're also running short on heat-related idioms. Turn up the heat, the heat is on... they're not as abundant as you might think, and we very much don't want to risk becoming repetitive. Repetition is certainly a concern when you're a network broadcaster. We simply don't have enough air time to sit around saying the same thing over and over again different ways."
"Good luck with that, Red, and all my best to your viewers in staying out of the hot seat during these next few days."
"Oh, thanks, we haven't used that one yet! Well, you heard him, folks... grab your maracas because it's hot-hot-hot! Next up, we'll check in with a condensation expert who can tell us what to expect for our coffee tables if this balmy weather pattern continues."
"Good evening. Well, we've had another day of the mercury inching upwards. Let's go live now to a Hotness Expert to tell us how warm it actually is, in case the fact that large patches of your skin are boiling and sliding off isn't already enough of an indication. Dr. Swelter is the author of the provocative bestsellers Hot Enough For Ya? and If You Can't Stand the Heat, Do Something About Global Warming Already. Dr. Swelter?"
"Thank you, Red. Indeed, it's sizzling out there."
"Dr. Swelter, what do you recommend that people do during this kind of extreme weather?"
"Well, for starters, we are urging people to be sure to consume plenty of liquids."
"Interesting. Tell me more about these liquids of which you speak."
"Drinking water keeps you hydrated, and hydration is very important during this kind of heat."
"Undoubtedly. And actually, Dr. Swelter, one might argue that, as the human body is composed primarily of water, hydration is always important, even in, say, February. However, we don't talk about hydration in February because that's when we like to talk about frostbitten extremities and snowfall records. Honestly, we really couldn't care less if our viewers spend the entire winter sitting in a sauna eating salt and drinking Guinness, so long as you don't do that shit in the summertime when hydration is at its trendiest. Any other tips?"
"You want to make sure to stay in air-conditioning whenever possible. For people who need it, there are cooling centers throughout the city."
"Ah yes, those cooling centers, or as I call them, Giant Dirty Puddles Set Up on the Street With a Sprinkler Thrown in for Good Measure, can be quite refreshing for poor people."
"And speaking of, Red, we are mostly concerned about the elderly, particularly shut-ins, who may need help in understanding the threat that this kind of heat can pose to their health."
"Good point, Dr. Swelter. Although by definition, I'm sure shut-ins are going to be a little hard to get to, as when their neighbors knock on the door, they often pretend that they're not home, even though they haven't stepped foot outside since FDR was in office. What do you suggest in those circumstances?"
"That can certainly be a problem, Red. We urge neighbors to check in on and take care of each other at times like this."
"Right, maybe they could just try knocking really, really hard, and then draw straws to figure out which one of them has to peer in through the lace curtains and hope they don't find the old lady in rigamortis. And perhaps we should give these elders in our community a moment's consideration around the holidays as well, since their children probably never call, never write, and never give them a goddamn moment's worth of their time, you ungrateful, selfish little bastards."
"Absolutely, Red. We also want runners to take heed of the heat warnings."
"Ahh, yes, I was wondering when you were going to mention something about the emaciated crackpots sprinting down our city streets. While it's endlessly entertaining for my friends and I to sit in a pub and play Count the Eating Disorders as they run by, I must admit that I'm a tad concerned for their safety. Plus, you can practically see their tendons. Would it kill them to eat a steak?"
"Indeed, Red, this is certainly not optimal weather for vigorous outdoor activity. We are urging all your viewers to exercise indoors for the next several days."
"Duly noted. Another problem that we're running into here at the station is coming up with synonyms for hot. Scorching, blistering... there are only so many of them. We're also running short on heat-related idioms. Turn up the heat, the heat is on... they're not as abundant as you might think, and we very much don't want to risk becoming repetitive. Repetition is certainly a concern when you're a network broadcaster. We simply don't have enough air time to sit around saying the same thing over and over again different ways."
"Good luck with that, Red, and all my best to your viewers in staying out of the hot seat during these next few days."
"Oh, thanks, we haven't used that one yet! Well, you heard him, folks... grab your maracas because it's hot-hot-hot! Next up, we'll check in with a condensation expert who can tell us what to expect for our coffee tables if this balmy weather pattern continues."
Tuesday, August 01, 2006
visiting hours
At about quarter of one this afternoon, I was bringing raw fish and coffee into a psychiatric hospital. Let me back up.
One of my friends has bipolar disorder. Usually this condition is managed quite well by medication, but every now and then the veneer cracks and he ends up in the hospital, which is where he's been for the past few weeks. His mom called over the weekend to tell me that he could finally have visitors.
One of his friends brought framed group pictures for his bedside table. Another brought magazines for him to read. I brought his favorite sushi for lunch. The staff member who unlocked the door sheepishly informed me that she couldn't allow me to bring in any plastic bags or glass bottles. I unwrapped the miso soup from its carryout bag and poured the green tea into a styrofoam cup. I know she's just doing her job, but how can this be my friend who has to have his plastic and glass confiscated? This is better than yesterday, though, when he told me that he thought he might be dead. I just laid down next to him and rubbed his back and told him everything was going to be okay, that if you can see trees outside and pillows on your bed and people that you love, then you're alive. I know that all he wants is to be back to normal, working, emailing, playing his guitar. I'll write him a note telling him I was there and that I'll be back tomorrow, because sometimes he forgets. I won't cry until I'm back in my car.
The coffee was for a guy staying down the hall whom my friend has gotten to know during his time there. This guy is very nice and had put in an order with me the day before, only if it wasn't too much trouble. Hot coffee, despite it being about 135 degrees outside. I guess it doesn't matter what the weather is like outside when the air conditioner is cranked inside and all the windows are closed. Locked, but let's not dwell on that. Cream, six sugars.
Later on in the day, after leaving the hospital, I was getting coffee again, this time for another friend and her mom, on my way to spend time with my friend's new baby. Medium iced decaf, cream, splenda, something about coconut. No sugar. Six sugars? I don't drink coffee, so anytime that I pick it up for someone, it always seems infinitely complicated.
These two friends were only about half an hour away from each other, one getting used to being a new mom, the other thinking about getting better and going home. I stopped in to visit and be thrilled or devastated, as appropriate. And either way, bring coffee. I may get the order wrong, but at least I'm there, I guess.
One of my friends has bipolar disorder. Usually this condition is managed quite well by medication, but every now and then the veneer cracks and he ends up in the hospital, which is where he's been for the past few weeks. His mom called over the weekend to tell me that he could finally have visitors.
One of his friends brought framed group pictures for his bedside table. Another brought magazines for him to read. I brought his favorite sushi for lunch. The staff member who unlocked the door sheepishly informed me that she couldn't allow me to bring in any plastic bags or glass bottles. I unwrapped the miso soup from its carryout bag and poured the green tea into a styrofoam cup. I know she's just doing her job, but how can this be my friend who has to have his plastic and glass confiscated? This is better than yesterday, though, when he told me that he thought he might be dead. I just laid down next to him and rubbed his back and told him everything was going to be okay, that if you can see trees outside and pillows on your bed and people that you love, then you're alive. I know that all he wants is to be back to normal, working, emailing, playing his guitar. I'll write him a note telling him I was there and that I'll be back tomorrow, because sometimes he forgets. I won't cry until I'm back in my car.
The coffee was for a guy staying down the hall whom my friend has gotten to know during his time there. This guy is very nice and had put in an order with me the day before, only if it wasn't too much trouble. Hot coffee, despite it being about 135 degrees outside. I guess it doesn't matter what the weather is like outside when the air conditioner is cranked inside and all the windows are closed. Locked, but let's not dwell on that. Cream, six sugars.
Later on in the day, after leaving the hospital, I was getting coffee again, this time for another friend and her mom, on my way to spend time with my friend's new baby. Medium iced decaf, cream, splenda, something about coconut. No sugar. Six sugars? I don't drink coffee, so anytime that I pick it up for someone, it always seems infinitely complicated.
These two friends were only about half an hour away from each other, one getting used to being a new mom, the other thinking about getting better and going home. I stopped in to visit and be thrilled or devastated, as appropriate. And either way, bring coffee. I may get the order wrong, but at least I'm there, I guess.
Happy Birthday, MTV! or, I Stopped Caring About You After the Early 90s But Enjoy Your Cake
In honor of MTV's 25th birthday, let's recall the only moment really worth remembering in the station's past quarter century, shall we? Otherwise known as the moment, 14 years ago, that I knew I was straight.
Okay, and one other moment. As if I could forget The State.
Okay, and one other moment. As if I could forget The State.
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