things realized while staring at the backs of my eyelids

1) yep, a large cup of coffee consumed more than 12 hours prior (& made me shaky all day) can keep me from falling asleep & yes, it takes more than 1 mg of melatonin to combat it,
2) the music from "West Side Story," which was on public radio when I finally decided to get back out of the bed, sounds magical in a dark room, but is not sleep-inducing,
3) men never stop farting. Ever.
4) And, there really is nothing on TV worth staying up for these days, especially with all the writers on strike -- "We want residuals that are fair & when we get 'em, we'll go back on the air!"

So I think what this means is I'm gonna have to start the incredibly painful process of weening myself off caffeine, which is just a gateway weening for carbonated drinks altogether -- just in time for holidays that I'll face sober for only the 2nd time in my post-pubescent years. Hopefully by doing so, though, I can avoid all kinds of delightful caffeine-induced-faux-and-not-so-faux-infarctions in the next couple of decades, unlike my people before me.

Congratulations, my friends, you're all in store for the best me ever. COMPLETELY drug-free, damn it.

cat-naming contest!

When my friend Stiffany texted me the other night to ask my opinion on names for her brand new rescues, I felt it was my duty to help. So I'm taking it upon myself to open up the floor & hold a naming contest, pitting you all head-to-head in the process. Keep in mind, there are 2 kittens, so we need 2 names -- preferably 2 that go together hilariously. Also, Stiffany's own nickname is "Hambone" or "Hammy," so if the kitten names go with that theme, even better.

Some of the names Stiffany & I've already tossed around are

lieutenant ham & his filipino lover raul
spspspsp & ttttttt
undercover lover & president pervert
sea bass
the professor
jamon

The floor is now open -- let the competition begin!

how dry i am

At the gym a little earlier, I experienced something that's never happened to me before. I'd spent 30 minutes on the arc trainer & decided to get a little treadmill action in as well. Around the 15th minute, I had a dryness epiphany. While I was still working my ass off, going 3.8 mph at a medium incline, I'd almost completely quit sweating.

Now, any of you who've seen me in the gym, walking outside on an NYC summer day or sleeping, for that matter, you know that sweating profusely is one of my great talents. So, what happened? Did I racewalk through some kind of tear in the perspiration-space continuum? Did I find my sweat nirvana?

All I know is, I was so incredulous about the lack of liquid pouring off my face, I started laughing out loud, which prompted every eye in the joint to turn on me. But what'd I care? I was barely glistening, for chrissake.


Sidebar: Last week at Punk Rope, I discovered that I put on my bra like a 6 year-old -- hooking it in front, then swinging the cups around & pulling up the shoulder straps. My other 2 test subjects both go shoulder straps first, then clasp in the back. What gives? Am I the only one who still uses the training bra method?

some local not really news: of course it happened on long island

There are so many reasons not to go to Long Island (sorry, Dewey Decimal Mistress, but we all know it's true). There's the long-ass commute from the city by car or train, the accents, the "Long Island-ness" &, of course, malls. But now, good people, the malls are getting worse, in a very laughable way.

According to NYC's ABC affiliate, "Police are issuing a warning to holiday shoppers after two women were nearly robbed and then were shot with a BB gun at a Long Island mall."

Seriously. Shot with a BB gun. At the mall. Green Acres, no less. Isn't that, according to Eddie Albert & the kind people of Hooterville, "the place to be"?

Now, if you go to the link above & check out the still of the video, you'll notice a few things.
1) the young ladies chose to hide their facial identities, but not their nail identities -- in this day & age, that's like posting a Google Earth closeup of you in your front window on your MySpace page. The danger is palpable. As we speak, Al Queda & Microsoft are developing technology to either bomb or market directly to you based on your nail salon choices.
2) the time stamp on the clip is 5:05, which means this was one of the top stories during last night's newscast. Now, I'm not a professional journalist, but I do question if this story is first-five-minute-newsworthy.
3) t-mobile finally got the free advertising it so deserved

It only gets better when you read the report.

"That's when he had pulled out a gun," she said. "He didn't point it at my face, around my waste (sic), my chest, and was like, 'Just give me your phone.' And I still put up a fight."

The most delightful cynical lady working next door to the mall said about the sound of gunfire, "God forbid it was the real thing."


But the saddest thing of all? It took 3 guys to not pull this off.

So who's up for a little shopping trip?

it's official

This morning, I had an interview at a tiny little agency where I quickly realized I wouldn't want to work. It was a short meeting. He looked at my book, we asked each other several questions, then we shook hands & I headed to the elevator.

It's one of those buildings where the elevator opens right into the office, so I stood directly in front of the receptionist, trying to fight the urge to whip out my phone & call the recruiter who sent me there & ask her to let the guy I'd just met with down gently.

When the elevator doors opened, a guy got off & I got on. I guess he realized that wasn't the floor he wanted, so he hopped back on. I'd already pressed the 1st floor button & looked at him to press or request. That was when I saw the look -- the one that tells me he'd like me to hit the stop button so we can have some quality time to get to know each other -- so I turned back to look at the door.


Of course, he took that as his cue to strike up the conversation, "Wow. Well, it is official." Which, damn my neck, elicited a turn of my head. So he continued. "Your hair color is o-ficial!" Now it was time to respond defensively, "Excuse me?" "It's official! Your hair color is official -- that's a good thing, believe me!" "Oh, great, well as long as you approve." ('Cause that's my new response to that line of back-handed compliment.)

Then just before the doors opened, in what I can only imagine is his "bedroom voice," he said, "I bet Monday, it'll be back to all blonde, right." So I gave him a look of disgust & said, "Yeah, this is not a Halloween costume. It's always like this." and walked out of the elevator.

And the father of 5 of my future babies was gone -- just like that.

winning the passive-aggressive battle with our neighbors

Who would think that an empty bottle of Guinness could start a small war? Until last week, I didn't think it was possible, but now I've seen the light -- and it comes on every time I step out of my front door.

When I walked out last Friday morning, I was met on the stairs by this very same empty beer bottle. It sat on one of the stairs, halfway between our floor & the one below us, with a dollar slipped beneath it. I left it there, thinking, "Well, surely our neighbors will pick it up this afternoon or evening and that'll be that." They'd had people over the night before, and, I guess, didn't have time to clean up yet. So I walked past it all day & didn't think twice about it. That evening, when the man came home, I mentioned it to him. He said, "Oh yeah, that dollar was crumpled on the landing, as if someone had reached in his pocket for his keys & dropped the dollar in the process, so I picked it up, straightened it out and put it under the bottle as an incentive for them to pick up the bottle." "Good thinkin', baby. Surely, they'll want that buck, at least for a snort-tunnel," I responded.

And the bottle sat there.

And sat there.

Finally, on Monday, sick of seeing it on the stairs, I decided to take the dollar as an "asshole tax" and leave the bottle squarely in front of their door. I was making a statement, damn it -- loud and clear.

That night, they came home & moved the bottle in front of our door. The man kept me from exploding and just moved it back in front of their door.

The next day, they moved it directly between our doors, as in the accompanying picture, taken Wednesday. I left it there, refusing to touch it again, and deciding that we'd leave it there until our landlord came for the rent and let him hash it out with them. I washed my hands of it.

Friday evening, I headed to Union Square to hand off the RightRides dispatch bag to this weekend's dispatcher, and met the man near his office to ride the subway home with him.

As we reached the top of the stairs, the motion light flicked on, and we were met with an empty hallway. To both our shock, they'd actually picked the damn thing up. A full week and several moves later, the battle of the bottle was over. And we had won.

live-blogging the oprah show

(to find out why the hell i would do such a thing, see the previous post.)

4:00: the opening music is angelic, almost a hymn
4:02: photographic slideshow summarizing the book ends, oprah tells gilbert "this is bigger than when bono visited"
4:04: oprah, "who has not met the tiles (on her bathroom floor)?!"
4:08: is it just me, or does the luggage under oprah's eyeballs actually say louis vuitton?
p.s. i love that the op keeps repeating everything liz gilbert says & then turns & yells it at the audience
4:09 oprah interrupts her mid-sentence to send us to break

{fantastic commercial break, by the way; apparently viewers are teen smokers who watch the news}

4:12: oprah proclaims, "eating!! yes!" then mentions the fact that she, "oh, has a tv show"
4:13: liz gilbert imitates charlton heston as god & i cried a little bit
4:14: oprah goes to quote the book & we see there are post-its flagging pages with highlighted paragraghs & notes in the margins -- blech
4:16: oprah coins the term "snot-sobbing" & gilbert calls it, "double-dipping" then says, "word salad," which i loved
4:18: oprah, "i love you 'cause you wanted to EAT!"
4:19: oprah can't fathom "the freedom to gain 24 pounds"
4:21: oprah declares she wants to go to naples & eat the pizza (or the pizza guy, if she's that hungry, i guess)

{commercial break: damn hasbro for their incessant media buys}

4:23: oprah's friends sound boring as hell -- they go to her house to all read a book out loud? my god, ladies, do something, rather than read about it
4:24: oprah doesn't seem to get the actual reason to go to an ashram, or, for that matter, the point of gilbert's journey
4:26: oprah's already making me sick

{commercial break: the chico's woman has really shitty taste, also, there's no "at chico's" -- i hate that copywriter's crutch}

4:31: one of the characters from the book, richard from texas, comes up on stage
4:33: oprah asks richard a string of stupid questions -- too many to count
4:34: oprah obviously don't get transcendental meditation
4:36: i hate oprah's laugh, but then again, she'd probably hate mine

promo interstitial for monday's show: "i talk to someone whose wealth approaches mine" -- jerry seinfeld's wife apparently holds the secret to life

{commercial break: dumb crap, like empire today}

4:39: oprah quotes "wizard of oz"
4:40: (when the medicine man didn't recognize gilbert) oprah, "why didn't you just go home?"
4:42: oprah, "and then you found love!" 'cause, really, that's what a spiritual journey's about....
4:42: oprah should NEVER read books out loud, especially when it's erotic or romantic, 'cause she puts on a really weird voice & sounds like a constipated ostrich
4:43: oprah puts up a picture of gilbert & her lover & then swoons when gilbert says, "that's my new husband on our wedding day"

{commercial break: tyler perry meets "today's soft music"}

4:47: oprah, "god bless the men in here who've read it"
4:47: oprah seems shocked that you just need to shift your view of life to do kinda what she did
4:48: the liz gilbert "do it yourself" steps to enlightenment
1) ask yourself in your morning journal, "what do i really, really, really want?"
2) write down your happiest moment of the day in a journal [oprah inserts her own gratitude journal here]
3) change your mantra -- quit beating yourself up or dragging yourself down
4:51: OMG ponies! oprah's gonna announce her next book club book after the break

{commercial break: do they really think oprah viewers are so fat they need the lap-band system? also, raymour & flanigan's furniture looks so much better on tv than it does in real life, but it's on sale right now!!}

4:53: it's announcement time (while she continues to lick gilbert's ass)
4:54: oprah, "if you love love, it's 'love in the time of cholera'" as she shits herself over the 50-year love story: 50 YEARS! now she's ruined gabriel garcia marquez for me

"brought to you by" interstitial for dove, which is a great partnership

{commercial break: ok, here's why her viewers' need the lap-band system, a commercial for friendship sour cream endorses eating it straight out of the container -- i can;t think of much grosser}

4:57: go to oprah.com, bitches & tell me all about your love story, 'cause it's time for "love in the time of cholera"

thank god it's over!


number of times oprah licked liz gilbert's asshole in one hour: 43

number of retarded questions lobbed gilbert's way: 38


Now, I ask you, people, why -- WHY?? -- is Oprah so goddamn popular??

america's favorite nihilistic crushing opinionator throws it in our faces again

It seems she's unavoidable, that evil, "this is your year," "Secret"-spewing, soul-eating, yo-yo-dieting, celebrity cuddling monolith. For years, I thought I'd done it -- kept my nose out of the Oprium, but today, I'll be forced to watch her damn show for the 2nd time in 2 weeks. And it's not because she sent me this email. That was just sad, forced marketing.

Last week, I was forced to watch when Michael Moore faced off against a PR lady from some health care lobby. Thank all the deities for Michael Moore's ability to read & retain statistics, joined with his giant cajones. If not for him, all our uninsured infants would be toting automatic weapons, funded by the Saudis.

Anyways, today, I'm forced to eyeball the Op again as she sits down with Elizabeth Gilbert, the "rock star" author of "Eat, Pray, Love".

I read it this year, despite Oprah's backing, in fact, defiantly against Oprah's backing. Nothing makes me run from a book more than the Opinion, but I'd already fallen in love with "Eat, Pray, Love" when a woman on the subway said, "Oh, did you read 'Middlesex' too?" Apparently, that was the book Oprah put on her summer pedestal. I shook with horror & possibly spat on the woman in those moments of shock & anger over her thought that I might be a brainless Optomaton. After that, though, I made sure to hide the cover when I was reading it in public, especially in the presence of WASP-y, middle aged, judgmental Connecticut-types.

But if you haven't read it, seriously, I'll loan it to you. It's that fuckin' good.

Now for a word from Noprah, the anti-Oprah.

If you haven't yet, pick up Amy Sedaris' new tome, "I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence". It's full of crazy recipes, craft projects & funny stories about a gal & her bunny -- and no, that's not a euphemism. One of these nights, I'm gonna hostess a little Sedaris-fest, cook something from the book & make my bitches get all kindsa crafty.

Prepare yourselves.

weirdest wedding ever

Since we're kinda on the topic of weddings, & it seems to be the recurring theme of my life these days, let's discuss last weekend's fiasco in navy and silk flowers. It contained, by far, the most bizarre ceremony I have ever seen in a wedding, but we'll get to that in a few.

First, the timing. The ceremony was scheduled to begin at 2 and the reception at 6. All of our fear going in was that we were going to be trapped in the church for almost four hours, trying to stay awake, avoiding direct eye-contact with the man on the cross, and restraining my man from any outbursts. (Sidebar: his family stopped going to church when, at around age 5, in the middle of a mass, my boy gasped loudly & cried out, "This is so boring!" I bet him a nickel if he'd do it again. That nickel's, sadly, still in my purse.) So, with fear & trepidation in our hearts, the man, his parents & I decided we needed to broach the subject at the rehearsal dinner. The bride & groom assured us that, no, we wouldn't be stuck in mass all day, but not with much assurance, "Well, it is a high mass, so it'll be an hour or an hour & 1/2."

It ended up being closer to an hour & 1/2, but there was too much standing up & sitting down for me to actually fall asleep. I kept joking that with all the standing up & sitting down, I couldn't wait for the fight, fight, fight. One of his cousins said, "Oh, just wait for the reception. There's bound to be some fighting there." No one but the man got the joke. My god, people! Don't you know a basic cheer?

The biggest topic of the 2 & 1/2 hour break between the wedding & reception had to be the Nazi salute the priest asked the group to give the happy couple.

I shit you not.

Near the end of the wedding, after the typically snoozetastic Bible readings, songs, candle-lightings & communion, the priest asked us all to stand again. But this time, he threw us a play-along curveball. "Everyone please raise one hand in the direction of the happy couple, to symbolize laying on hands while we bless them in prayer." Needless to say, everyone followed the priest's lead & raised his or her right hand to the right side of the stage, where the doomed duo were seated. Everyone but me & the man. Hell, I even saw his parents doing it.

Now, does everyone have that mental image? Right hands raised up in the air, slightly to the right? The look on the groom's face, as we would all hope, was pure terror. I mean, the man was extremely uncomfortable seeing all his & his new wife's friends & family giving them "the ol' Sieg Heil." Afterward, he tried to describe it from his perspective, but felt he couldn't do the creepiness justice. Heil to that, bro.

Now I ask you, friends, have you ever seen such a display at a wedding, Catholic or otherwise? 'Cause one of the other guests said at the reception that he'd seen that at several weddings. Is it an upstate thing? Is it a Super-Sized Eastern European thing? Also, do the bride & groom usually sit through Catholic weddings, or are upstaters just extra lazy, 'cause I buy the latter reason completely.

(Sidebar: We had to come home when we did before I caught the fat & bitters. You couldn't swing a roasted turkey leg in Rochester without hitting a 300+ lb. woman in her gaping mouth. Seriously, they were all enormous & unhappy & kinda terrifying, looking at me like I was crazy 'cause I didn't have any Xs on my clothing labels. Of course, every story we heard involved several pitchers of beer & hours of angry drunk driving -- not a damn thing about sobriety, happiness or particularly hard workouts.)

for the record

We aren't taking any more suggestions on wedding locations. That goes for all of you -- friends, family & foes. No more mentions of Niagara Falls, Graceland, Disney cruises, Panama, random Rochester religious establishments, Vegas, your house, our house, Central Park, City Hall, the moon, or wherever else the hell you think is romantic/convenient/hilarious.



Last time I checked, you weren't the one gettin' hitched or ponying up the cash for it. Hell, even K-at wanted to weigh in on this one.

Please, resume your regularly scheduled lives & be happy when you get an invite to the reception. Oh, did I mention, our wedding may just be the 2 of us? Yeah. Well. Just kinda fits us.

Thank you anyway for your concern. In this case, it truly is the thought that counts.