Y.Be.Merry: Generationally Speaking

Cautionary Tales

2008-05-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

I read an interesting article in the Washington Post the other day. It was about how to raise kids--specifically, should you or should you not tell your kids about your past indiscretions? There’s no scientific evidence saying that it helps or hurts your chances of having an idiot teenager. Sometimes it works to use your past as a cautionary tale, but then there are apparently instances of teenagers yelling retorts of “Oh you’re one to talk smokedog!” This reminded me of that HILARIOUS (unintentionally, of course) public service announcement from the 80s where the kid yells, “I learned it from yooouuuu!” Found it!

Wow. I totally forgot they say “Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs.” Well that’s ominous.

Anyhoo, this got me thinking. If I knew more about my parents, would it have made me behave better as a teenager? Then I remembered that this is a pointless question, because my mother was a perfect angel growing up. She didn’t drink till she was 21, she “puffed on a cigarette once but didn’t inhale,” and she also...wait for it....never smoked a “marijuana cigarette.” She actually called it that.

Of course then there’s my dad, but good luck getting any info from him. Although my siblings and I joke that he was born wearing a suit and tie, I still suspect he did some crazy stuff as a kid. I had to get it from somewhere, right? So if he had opened up, would it have stopped me from getting drunk at 13? I sort of doubt it.

Then again, if my sister had told me not to drink, I probably would have listened. She is responsible for my clean lungs after all. After she started smoking in high school and quickly became addicted (she's since quit! Holla!), she begged me not to try it until I was older. Apparently if you smoke for the first time after age 18, you're less likely to become addicted. So I listened. I didn’t smoke my first cigarette until I was living in Spain at age 20, and thank goodness I listened to my sister because MAN did I like it. Of course when you wake up the next day with no voice and a pounding headache, you can thank your pack of ciggies. Someone should have told my sister the old Spiderman line though--with great power comes great responsibility--because she also wielded her power over me for entertainment purposes. She was, after all, responsible for that drink at 13. Little did she know that I'd been sampling from the liquor cabinet since 12.

Luckily for my kids, I have a real cautionary tale, and it has nothing to do with how early I started hitting the bottle. It’s a little lesson called Why Drinking Games Are Bad. It is similar to another lesson, How Binge Drinking Can Kick Your Ass. Starting at age 21, when I was a senior in college, I started getting these wicked hangovers. They are the stuff of legends really. I can never tell when it will happen, because I can drink a lot and feel fine, or I can have a few drinks and end up hating life. I can drink only wine and feel horrible, or I can savor the holy trinity (which, children, means wine, beer AND liquor) and get up at 6 the next morning to go for a jog.

This past weekend I think (hope and pray) I may have experienced my last illustrious hangover. It all started with a game of beer pong with Scooby and some friends. I played a couple of games and actually did quite well, but stumbling home, I worried I might have overdone it. I even got the hiccups, which is a sure sign of trouble.

The next morning I woke up at 7 a.m. And that’s when the puking started, which didn’t end until 6 p.m. I literally couldn’t hold down a sip of water or a single chewable Pepto Bismol tablet. I couldn’t roll over in bed, I couldn’t turn my head, I couldn’t stand up or sit down without needing to run to the bathroom to throw up. As if that wasn’t torture enough, there also wasn’t much on television, so I was subjected to a day of She’s All That, Because I Said So and Ocean’s Eleven, which I have seen 500 times.

I was luckily able to eat dinner (and breakfast and lunch) finally at 11 p.m. but I was thrown off for two days, feeling sort of lethargic, ill and depressed. I have decided to take an extended hiatus from alcohol. Clearly my body doesn't like it, so I feel like I should listed for once. The plus side is that I now have my cautionary tale. But is it wise to admit to your children that you played drinking games? What if they wonder what beer pong is, and you suddenly find yourself teaching them the rules along with all the important strategies to ensure victory?

It's a scary thought. I could end up on my very own PSA, walking in on a game of quarters to: “I learned it from YOUUUUUUU!”

Fear of Flying

2008-04-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

For reasons I may never understand, I am completely terrified of flying. I do it a lot, out of necessity, but every time I reach my cramped little seat and click shut my seat belt, the hyper-ventilating begins. I'm usually fine after the takeoff, but the moments between entering the plane and having the seat belt sign switch off are excruciating.

This last time I flew home, it was especially difficult. It all started at the gate. As soon as the gate agent said that we would be boarding in about 10 minutes, I had a strange sensation--it was as if a herd of buffalo had just sprinted past me. I put down my New Yorker and glanced around me to find that all of the people who had been sitting and waiting had suddenly opted to stand in a clump encircling the path to the gate.

"Sucks to be a Type A," I thought to myself and got back to my magazine. I was in boarding group 2, yet when I got on the plane I noticed that there was hardly any overhead bin space left. I managed to finagle a little area where I could stow my suitcase (which is long, so I had to put it sideways--oops!) and then sat down.

Now I know a lot of people like to stare at the oncoming passengers to do a bit of racial profiling and play Spot the Terrorist, but I'm less interested in race than other potentially dangerous traits. I prefer, instead, to do personality profiling. If the people who board the plane seem nice, friendly and orderly, I feel safer somehow. "God's not going to strike us down with all these pleasant people," I think to myself. Extra points if I end up on a flight with a nun or two.

But if the passengers seem easily riled and irritable, then my palms start to sweat. "We're goners," I'll say between desperate prayers. In this case, the lack of overhead bin space didn't bode well for my personality profiling.

One man took it upon himself to unload the entire bin above my head so that he could rearrange the items and potentially create more space. Unfortunately he was being a little rough with the bags. He started throwing them down violently on the seat beside me. Then the man sitting in front of me came running.

"Hey! Hey! Give me that! What are you doing?" the man in front of me yelled. "That has my computer in it."

"I'm sorry," the well-intentioned do-gooder replied (somewhat sarcastically). "If you don't mind, I was just trying to..."

"I do mind!" The man replied turning redder and redder. And then he needlessly repeated himself. "I DO mind!"

"Okay, well I was thinking if you could fit it under the seat in front..."

"Well I can't, and you can't just throw bags around like that."

This went on for quite some time, and even though it was somewhat train-wreckish, I couldn't watch. It was too embarrassing. I turned red in honor of all those involved.

The irked passenger sat back down, while the man next to me continued to (more delicately) rearrange bags. A couple minutes later, as the man was still at it, the angry passenger stood back up, went up to the man and said, "well maybe I can fit the bag under the seat in front of me." It was his way of saying I'm sorry without having to apologize. Or maybe it was his way of telling all the people around him who had seen the chaos: "I'm not usually an asshole but flying brings out the worst in me!"

Maybe this simple non-apology afforded us safe passage, because we didn't crash.

On the way back to California, I had another interesting experience. When I got to my window seat, there were two men who were flying together sitting in the middle and aisle seats. As soon as I sat down and clicked the seatbelt shut, ready to do a little personality profiling, the man in the aisle (who didn't speak much English) gestured to a man sitting in front of us. He indicated that the man was his friend, and would I mind switching with him? The problem, of course, was that the man was in the middle seat.

Would I be willing to switch my window for a middle? You know, a couple of years ago I probably would have said yes. But I'm less of a pushover these days.

"Sorry," I said shaking my head. "I got a window seat so I could sleep," I said gesturing with my hands next to my head to indicate nap time. The man in the middle and the man in front of us clearly didn't catch what I had said so the man in the aisle loudly translated in Mandarin how the bitch in the window seat wasn't willing to swap seats because she's a lazy nap-taker.

I imagined that the man in the middle responded: "Oh great. We're sharing a row with an evil, slovenly lint-licker. Now we're going to crash for sure!"

#1 reason to not start a blog

2008-04-27T22:47:00.000-07:00

The guilt factor of not updating your blog is only compounded by the reminder from friends and family that you're a lazy sack of schmoopaloop (which is a bad thing). There is really only one person who notices when I fall behind on blog postings, and that's my brother. His name is Ruben--you know, like the sandwich. Actually it's not, but that's what I call him when he annoys me.

This is an IM message Ruben left me:
throw me a bone, I mean even a 1 paragraph blog to tide me over would be better than seeing the best infomercial ever blog!!! Help a brother out

The brother double-meaning almost made it endearing. Almost.

Jump on it

2008-04-22T20:07:00.000-07:00

So back when I worked for the Corporation That Shall Not Be Named, I had to find entertainment in the most mundane events in order to keep my sanity. That included, but was not limited to, my Mormon cube neighbor singing "talk to me boy" from Justin Timberlake's Rock Your Body in a perfect falsetto, free fruit snacks at 3 p.m. every day and flirtatious emails with a strangely attractive yet still undeniably ugly coworker. Without these little funsies, I would have time to realize that I worked 12 hour days for $27,000 a year, and then I would sink into a deep depression.

During this dark period, I received a forward from my hilarious Icelandic coworker Eva. I'm sure the email said something like, "if this doesn't get you through the day, I don't know what will." And when I clicked on the attachment, a video popped up showing what you would see on the jumbotron during the halftime show of a basketball game. There's music playing (Jump On It) and random people shaking their groove thangs. Little kids bashing together thunder sticks. And then the camera pans to a gray-haired guy who looks perfectly normal....but wait....what's he doing? He's dancing LIKE A MANIAC.

I can't put it into words. You really just have to watch it. And the other day, I really HAD to watch it because I was feeling a little down and a little under the weather. Yet after searching high and low I couldn't find the email that contained the URL. So I emailed Johanna, because I knew she had it saved somewhere in case of emergency. I think my desperation is palpable in the email I sent her:

Do you still have the URL for that video of the guy dancing to "jump on it" during the halftime show...?
I took dayquil and I feel really funny right now. That has nothing to do with wanting to see the video though.

And her response:
if you go to youtube, type in gay halftime basketball (i kid you not) and you can find it.

Of course when I went to YouTube and typed in those words, I was confronted with a bunch of videos, but none of them were The video. The search continued. But after a well-spent 30 minutes of googling, I found him.

And here he is! Love of my life! A couple things to note: is he wearing a t-shirt with the silhouette of a naked women? Like you might see on the mud flap of an 18-wheeler? Also look out for the funky moves in which he uses the bottom of his shirt as a prop.

Best. Infomercial. Ever.

2008-03-31T16:21:00.000-07:00

Now I'm not proud to admit the fact that I was watching the Oxygen network over the weekend, but I have an explanation! I needed a break from cleaning and Pride and Prejudice was on, which totally sucked me in, because, well who can say no to Mr. Darcy? Am I right?

Anyway, it turned out to be far more entertaining than I could have imagined, due to the fact that the commercials on Oxygen are a hilarious mess of low-budget film making. Among the (expected) slew of Massengil, FDS and tampon advertisements, there was an endless string of ridiculous infomercials. One had a particularly special effect on me, so much so, that I had to rewind my DVR and actually watch the ad for a second time. For your viewing pleasure:

First of all, I think one reason I fell in love with the Listen Up commercial was that my dad listens to the television so loudly, that the entire house shakes whenever the Law & Order dum-dum sounds, so it kind of gave me the warm and fuzzies.

But I also love the fact that the wife in the commercial is such a nagging bitch. She seems so disgusted with her husband's hearing problem; and the hokey look he shoots her as he shakes his head and turns down the volume on his stereo merits extra points for its high Unintentional Funny Factor.

The best part of the ad however comes in when the sinister applications of the product come to light. BUT WAIT! THERE'S MORE! You can spy on your neighbors, and they will assume you're merely listening to your iPod. But I fear the Listen Up's cleverness is also its undoing. After all, how many elderly people do you know walking around listening to mp3 players?

And more importantly, doesn't the Listen Up actually represent a technological retrogression? Why would you get a little box (the size of a credit card!) in order to hear, when you could just put in a far more inconspicuous hearing aid? But perhaps there's something extra special about the Listen Up that has the capability to save the marriage of an exasperated old lady and her increasingly deaf husband. We can only hope...

Strabismus and Me

2008-03-31T15:51:00.000-07:00

So I had a follow-up appointment to look into my eye issues. I decided to stay far, far away from the University Eye Center after my dreadful experience there and instead went to Kaiser, which seemed like a bit of a risk as well actually...

But in the end, I sort of lucked out. I had an appointment with a general ophthalmologist and about 2 minutes into our appointment, this little man in a white lab coat came in and said, "ummm....can you help me? I can't log into my computer."

"You need a passcode?" my doctor asked him and he responded with a sheepish nod. "I'm so sorry," she said to me, "you'll have to excuse me for a moment."

I tried to play nice. "Oh sure! Take your time," I assured her, when I was really thinking "OK lady, but make it quick. I already sat for 30 minutes in the waiting room."

When she came back though, I was glad I had been so gracious. "Great news," she told me. "That is our strabismus specialist (which is what you have). He doesn't usually come to the Richmond branch on Tuesdays, but he just happens to be here and said he could squeeze you in." Apparently, if I had left and called to schedule an appointment with him, his next opening would have been at the end of May.

Of course my initial glee to meet with the wee man was soon overshadowed with the diagnosis: if I wanted my eye to stop marching to the beat of its own damn drummer, then I was going to have to tighten up a nerve ending to fix a muscle. And that, my friend, requires surgery.

"EYE surgery?" I croaked, picturing my eyeball out of its socket, resting in the palm of a be-gloved hand.

As it turns out, they don't have to actually remove my eyeball (thank the lord). I know this, because I googled strabismus surgery and found a Wikipedia entry about it.

Did you look at the link? I'm so sorry to do that, but I just HAD to. It is so sickening, that I couldn't possibly look at that image and not share it with someone. I still feel queasy about the whole thing, because I have a bit of a gag reflex when it comes to eyes and sharp instruments (and nail-biters, but that's a whole different blog entry). Whenever I think about it, a strange sensation comes over me that reminds me of my parents' neighbors--when the man of the house had back surgery, his squeamish wife couldn't bare to change the bandages, so she asked her son to do it. But as soon as he saw the incision, he began running around the room in circles screaming, "I've got butterflies in my butt! I've got butterflies in my butt!"

If you are afflicted with a weak stomach, then you know exactly what he means. Of course, it's somewhat related to, but not quite as fun as having "tickles in my belly," which I get when I see pictures of my niece wearing her new Adidas. As you can see, she takes after her aunt's sense of colorful style. Let's just hope she doesn't also inherit my penchant for random maladies:

Cesar Chavez, Patron Saint of Vacation Days

2008-03-31T15:26:00.000-07:00

When Scooby decided that he wanted to go on a little ski vacation to Colorado, I was definitely excited by the idea, but given that I need to conserve vacation for the endless string of weddings, reunions and bachelorette parties this summer, I wasn't sure I could swing it. But then I remembered Cesar Chavez. Chavez was a migrant worker turned labor leader who improved conditions for farm workers. More importantly, his very existence warrants a vacation day in California. I had never heard of the man before moving here, but he is all over the place. It seems like every third street is named after him, and last Friday was Cesar Chavez Day.

So, since I had never taken Cesar Chavez Day off before, I figured I wouldn't miss it if I decided to work that day and instead take the previous Friday off for Colorado ski fun.

The trip promised to be stellar on multiple levels: we would stay with Scooby's parents, so there would be no lodging expenses; the snow in Colorado is amazing this year; one of my best friends from college was going to be there at the same time. There was just one thing I forgot to account for: I am, apparently, a delicate flower. It's funny, because I don't usually think of myself as a weakling. In fact, I often make fun of other delicate flowers, namely my sister's dog Dexter, because he is so sensitive and easily injured. I mean look at him:

But I'm slowly starting to realize that I may not be able to live up to my sturdy Germanic heritage. Even high altitude makes me sick.

Of course I've been skiing in Colorado before, and I've been to a number high-altitude locales, but for some reason this time around my body refused to tolerate it. As soon as we were driving from Denver up into the mountains, I could feel my head start to pound. I decided to start guzzling water, since I knew that being at 9,000 feet can cause dehydration and then headaches, but the pain persisted. I was so exhausted by the time we arrived, I decided to go straight to bed, but I slept restlessly and was awake for two hours in the middle of the night. By the time the alarm rang in the morning, my head hurt so badly, I could barely open my eyes. I reached for more water thinking it would alleviate some of the pressure in my head, but it only seemed to exacerbate some rumblings in my stomach.

And that's when the puking started.

After an hour and a half of running between the bed and the bathroom, I finally decided to follow my mother's advice and head to the hospital. So I hopped in the car with Scooby, his friend (both dressed and ready for the slopes), his mother and stepdad. And wouldn't you know it? I had to request that Scooby's stepdad pull over the car so I could hop out and vomit on the side of the road. In a word: humiliating.

Scooby's mom stayed with me at the hospital, where I sat in the waiting room with a tiny blue cone that was supposed to be my vomit receptacle, should I get sick again. I couldn't help but think of Garth in Wayne's World saying, "if you're gonna spew, spew into this," and holding up a little Dixie cup. Luckily, I didn't need to use the cone, but I did have to run to the hospital bathroom--again--to dry heave.

Once the doctors saw me, they immediately put me on oxygen and pumped me full of drugs and fluids. The medicine made me feel strange and jerky though, and I was preoccupied with the fact that I was acting strange and erratic in front of my boyfriend's mother. I felt miraculously better in the next couple of hours, but they made me take the oxygen tank with me, which made me look uncannily like my grandmother at 70. On my way out, as I was waiting to pay for my medications, I sneaked a glimpse at a little boy who was in a wheelchair with a broken leg, broken arm, fat lip and a black eye. His mother walked over to him and said, "you okay?" and he just looked up at her without saying a word, his chin starting to quiver. It broke my heart and simultaneously made me miss my mother.

The little boy looked over and caught me staring, so I looked away, but when I looked back he was staring at me, which reminded me that he wasn't the only spectacle in the hospital. I did, after all, have a oxygen tank slung over my shoulder and plastic tubes descending from my nose. How quickly we forget...

In the end, lots o' drugs and pure oxygen perked me right up and I was able to go skiing the following two days and even eat chili on the slopes, but being in the hospital is not exactly the ideal way to spend Cesar Chavez Day (observed).

Plus, I had to come to an empty (except for one person) office building on the real Cesar Chavez Day. I decided to use the luxury of an empty office to call my brother. "It's a holiday, but I'm working," I told him. "Cesar Chavez Day."

"You gotta be kidding me," he practically yelled into the phone. "You get a day off to celebrate that guy?" I wondered for a second (a) how Rob knew who Cesar Chavez was and (b) why he would dislike the migrant worker turned hero.

And then it dawned on me.

"Not Hugo Chavez! CESAR Chavez." I mean Berkeley may have protesters living in trees and people picketing the Marine's office, but we do have some standards.

Ouch

2008-03-11T20:27:00.000-07:00

I was going through my most recent Domino magazine last night and there was an article glorifying the improvements Silda Spitzer made to the governor's mansion to make it more eco-friendly.

Well, you win some, you lose some I guess....

PS is it REQUIRED for wives of politicians/celebrities to stand by their men? You know, the Hillarys and Vanessa Bryants and Silda Spitzers of the world? Even if I knew my husband was soliciting prostitutes (which, by the way, takes a pretty large suspension of disbelief), if he got caught, I think I would say, "well buddy, it's been nice knowin' ya. I don't think I can live with myself if I stick around." And I think he would know better than to ask me to accompany him to a press conference where he planned on discussing his indiscretions.

PPS if men are cuckolds, what are women?

PPPS I love wikipedia: cucquean!

Get out of there Silda! You deserve better!

The beauty of shorts

2008-03-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not thinking wistfully of what I will wear once the weather heats up; in fact I pretty much refuse to wear shorts unless I'm at the gym. When it comes to movies however, I think shorts are amazing, no matter the season.

I'm not sure what it is about them that appeals to me so much. An acute case of ADD? It's possible. But more than anything, I think shorts are to feature-length films what poetry is to the novel. And everyone knows how much I love poetry (though admittedly, it's not for everyone, and arguably, it's for very few). When poetry works, it's because it manages to accomplish a lot with so little. Every word must be carefully chosen, every syllable must pack a punch. Poetry and shorts are for masters of economy.

So of course, I happily anticipate when the Oscars roll around, because it's the perfect opportunity to watch "good" shorts. A number of theaters in Berkeley showed the nominees, back to back.

It's been a while since Scooby, Marcus and I saw the nominees, but I feel like some of them have stuck with me much more than a lot of feature films I've seen recently. While none of the movies are on YouTube, all of them are available on iTunes, so anyone can see them for $1.99 a pop.

And now, in order from least enjoyable to most....the 2008 Oscar-nominated shorts:

At Night

At Night is a Danish film about three young women in a cancer ward just before New Year's Eve. The movie employs what my father calls "the old cancer trick" in order to squeeze a few tears out of the audience. It didn't really work for me though, primarily because the movie didn't effectively develop its characters. With such a limited amount of time, a short must rely on telling scenes to show character motives or flaws or desires. Instead we get hit over the head with what the characters represent, which is essentially stereotypes: the hardened (and somewhat unlikable) one; the strong silent type; the girl with a heart of gold. I didn't buy a minute of it. And I think the fact that I didn't get choked up at all (and I cry at EVERYthing) speaks volumes.

The Substitute

This Italian film revolves around an oddball substitute teacher and the bizarre things he requests that the teen-aged students in his class do for good grades (impersonate an ass-kisser or various animals, read a diary). Things get particularly interesting about halfway through when the principal arrives to see what all the commotion is about.

This film had me alternating between laughter and incredulity as the sub appeared to be completely off his rocker, but overall it was wholly enjoyable. The fact that this falls so close to the bottom of the list is a testament to the high caliber of the shorts.

Mozart of Pickpockets

This little ditty tells the story of two idiotic ne'er-do-well thieves who can't seem to do anything (read: steal) right. Their luck changes however when a mute boy, apparently an orphan, appears with no intention of leaving their sides. The comedy in this short, unlike the Substitute, had a very light touch. Although the film verges on preciousness, the comical stupidity of the pickpockets rescues it. I was a bit surprised that this won the Oscar, but I can say that it is easily worth the $1.99 to view it.

Tonto Woman

This film employs one of Tarantino's favorite techniques of starting at the end, where we see a wounded man confessing his sins to a priest. We are then whisked back in time to see how exactly this man reached his current state. The story revolves around the character's relationship with a woman whose face is tattooed, the result of being held captive by Indians for 11 years. After her wealthy husband rescues her, he keeps her secluded at a small house in the desert to live out her years alone. When the husband finds out someone has been visiting his wife, things get a bit complicated.

From what I've read, most people find the premise too weird to be enjoyable. But in addition to being a sucker for westerns, I found the story enthralling. The way the story unfolds, the landscape and the amazing cinematography (reminiscent of another Oscar favorite, No Country for Old Men) make this strange tale truly beautiful.

Tanghi Argentini

Man falls in love with woman in internet chat room and lies about being a tango expert; man sets date to meet said woman in two weeks time; man must convince coworker to give him a crash course in tango.

The opportunities for comedy are somewhat predictable: the two middle-aged men dancing together, funny tango-related exchanges at the office, one man telling the other to "move like a panther." But the timing of the comedy, as well as the (seeming) earnestness of the student make the movie completely beguiling, especially after the ending, which moves from comedic to heart-warming.

"Chin up! Move like a panther!"

Random Thoughts

2008-02-27T19:24:00.000-08:00

Despite what Susan Jacoby thinks, I don't believe that we are a society that is hostile toward knowledge. Why just today, while I was supposed to be learning all about the union I apparently joined upon taking my current job, my curiosity about the intricate workings of the world got the best of me.

What took my attention away from the compelling topic of union activities? Well, I suppose it's not the most high-brow curiosity, but I couldn't help wondering: what causes Old Man Smell? And why does that smell resemble the odor of the breath of someone who hasn't flossed in about a year? Maybe it's just a coincidence, you know, like Fritos and puppy paws.

I had to find out. Luckily, the internet is full of interesting (and factual!) information about such topics. A search--old man smell flossing--yields over 18,000 results. Unfortunately there didn't seem to be any agreement on the topic. Some people were convinced that it was Ben Gay, while others thought it might be Grecian-Formula. And those were the least offensive of the speculations. Hey, even I have to draw the line somewhere.

The funniest thing I found (other than this explanation: "They are forgetful, and leave bits of food in their pockets") was an Onion article from a few years ago entitled "Doctors No Closer to Cure for Old-Person Smell."

So I never actually found out what causes old man smell. Sorry Susan. But at least I know when Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World. It was around 1750, right?

The Do Not Call List

2008-02-06T19:33:00.000-08:00

I have a problem with doctors, but it's not what you think. It's not some unwarranted phobia of the blue paper gowns or the stomach prodding or having to talk about my bowel functions with a complete stranger. It's really more of an attitude thing--doctors and I just don't get along. I guess I should blame it on bad luck, because I don't know many people who have encountered the strange, haughty or generally off-putting physicians that I have.

It all started at Kaiser when I was about 7 and having a hard time catching my breath. I don't really remember what the doctor said at the end of the exam, because it was some kind of euphemism--well over my head--but I remember how my father responded. He looked at Dr. G incredulously and said, "so you're saying it's all in her head?" She nodded, but I knew then what I know now: she was wrong. Of course this pales in comparison to, say, the gynecologist who told me I had herpes and prescribed me Valtrex even though I KNEW there was no way I could. She called a few days later to tell me that I was all clear and didn't so much as apologize. And then there was the ophthalmologist who looked at my eyelid that was swollen shut and told me it was just a clogged oil gland that would go away if I applied a hot compress. It didn't go away, but the antibiotics that my general practice doctor prescribed did eventually clear up what turned out to be an infection.

So it would make sense that I've compiled a fairly long rap sheet of doctors who aren't worthy of my $5 copay. And it would also make sense that every time I walk into a waiting room, my palms start to sweat; I feel some mix of sickness and vulnerability.

But today I was just paying a visit to the optometrist to get my wandering eye checked out, so how bad could it be?

The answer is bad. Very, very bad.

When I was about 10, I looked at my sister out of the corner of my eye and she shrieked. "Your eye!" She screamed. "One is looking at me and one is looking at the wall!" My response was, "so THAT'S why I've been seeing double."

At first it only happened when I glanced to the left. My left eye would look left, while my right eye would lazily drift upward like it was saying, "I just don't know if I'm up to it right now. Yawn." And then sometimes if I was tired and reading, I would see double and I'd know that old rightie wasn't performing her required duties.

But in the last six months it's started to happen more and more. I'll notice it while at work, staring at the computer. Every time I read, I have to move the book around until I find a place that makes rightie willing to work. My right eye also feels a lot weaker, vision-wise. So I thought it was time to check things out.

I met with an intern who was going to conduct a full exam before a doctor would come in and finish up--sort of hygienist/dentist style, which was fine with me. At one point the intern stated that he believed this was a problem I had always had and that maybe I was noticing it more because of...."stress?" How random.

"I don't think so," I told him. He did a full exam, told me he thought it had something to do with the muscles around the eye, but assured me, "this is nothing crazy. We've seen this type of thing before."

While we waited for the doc to come, intern man glanced over the forms I had filled out. Something caught his eye.

"Oh," he said gravely. "Your grandfather has macular degeneration." Then he took a sharp inhale as if to cue some bad news and said, "you know that's hereditary." The way he said it seemed like a certain diagnosis.

I knew it was coming though and before he got through the full five syllables of the final word, I responded quickly, "yeah. I know." And then he started to grill me about my grandfather:

"Does he use a magnifying glass?"

"No, he only has peripheral vision." I could feel my face starting to turn red. That vulnerable feeling was returning. "But my dad is over 60 and hasn't experience any symptoms."

"Well that's usually when it starts," he shot back. "You should probably start getting yearly check-ups around age 40." Keep in mind, I'm 26. This man was inching slowly toward the Do Not Call List. "Also, make sure you ALWAYS wear sunglasses and eat your leafy greens." When I told Scooby about this, he said, "he had probably just read about that in a textbook."

He left to retrieve the doctor after it became clear that I wasn't going to speak to him any longer. I could hear them chatting about me as they walked down the hall. "She's experiencing double vision and it seems to be worsening," and now they were in the room, but it was like I wasn't. "Well how bad is it?" The doctor asked. "500," the intern said.

"NO WAY!" The doctor said. "ARE YOU SURE?" The doctor almost looked amused. I looked up at the intern, startled, and he smiled sheepishly back at me. "I've got to see this!" the doctor said and waddled over to me. What was happening? Did he just find out that my eyes were capable of producing beluga whales?

He then introduced himself, but would say very little to me for the remainder of the appointment. "There they go," doc said to intern. "It's NC!"

"Natural compensation," the intern said to me. "Your eyes have compensated and found a way to work even though they aren't teaming properly."

I didn't know two could make a team. Couples tennis, sure, but a whole team? Of course a tennis analogy would be more appropriate, considering that I could watch both sides of the court without moving my head.

"And she tilts her head to the left! Do you see that?" The doctor said. I felt tears well up in my eyes. Why was he talking about me like I wasn't there? It was like we were inside of a tv show on the nature channel and he was the host saying, "look at the way she hunts for her prey. Isn't it strange?"

"So I'm a freak?" I asked, but no one responded.

"Do you see that?" The doctor wondered.

"Weird. I hadn't noticed it."

"What IS it?"

"No idea."

"Probably a nevus," the doctor said.

"A nevus is..."

"A mole," I interrupted. "I have lots of them from the sun, but one on my eye? That's kind of odd."

The intern shrugged his shoulders. "You could think of it as a freckle."

"We should photograph the nevus."

"And then...?" The intern wondered. "I said we should send her to get a binocular evaluation."

"Why bother? They'll just say something different. Just get her some glasses with a prism between 1.5 and 2.5. But she shouldn't wear glasses all the time, only when she starts seeing double, because then she'll become dependent on them. And besides, the eye will just keep slipping. It's not going to stop slipping. It's slipping already," he shrugged.

Slipping? Like...into a coma? Into the back of my head? And then the doctor finally noticed that I was a person--a person who could speak, and actually understand what the hell he was saying if he bothered to put any of it in layman's terms:

"We're going to get you glasses. There is a type of training you can do, but it's very difficult. I don't think you want to go through that." In my head I was thinking, "If I can train for a damn triathlon, I think I can train my eyes," but I didn't think to say any of it.

"Oh, and her grandfather has macular degeneration," the intern mentioned shaking his smug, bald head. "But I told her to wear sunglasses."

And then, with their names and numbers firmly affixed atop the Do Not Call List, I took my lazy fuck-up of an eye and walked home, resolutely deciding that I wouldn't cry, even though I did--a little. Luckily, since the intern had put the fear of god in me, I was wearing sunglasses so no one knew.

When I got home, I called the binocular clinic, because I thought they might be a good second opinion. They were willing to see me....on April 23. For $200. I think I'll go to Kaiser instead for a second (worthless) opinion.

"I'm going to be blind and cross-eyed," I told my sister when I called her to vent. But being a good sister, she assured me that things could be worse. It turns out my niece found some dog "elimination" in the yard and mistook it for chocolate. I'm just hoping it doesn't make her sick, because if she has to go to the doctor, who KNOWS what could happen?

Dearest Volkswagen,

2008-01-30T21:00:00.000-08:00

I am a glutton for punishment. We have determined this through my inexplicable allegiance to Sprint and their shitty service, but never NEVER did I expect this kind of behavior from you. I mean, how long have I loved you? It's been just about as long as I can remember. When Dad brought home a tape of Herbie the Love Bug from Erol's video store, I was sold. And then, every summer when my parents shipped me off to Seattle, I got three whole months of playing punch buggy with my sister, and Uncle Jack would drive us around in his cute yellow beetle that smelled vaguely of trash.

In high school, I was convinced that I was from another era, yet misplaced in the 90s, so I vowed to one day own a VW Bus. I sang along to your little Fahrvergnügen theme song, then the cute Da Da Da commercials, and when you said Drivers Wanted, I said, "hey! Here I am!" And then I made the biggest mistake of my life...

Meet the PaddyWagon, or just Paddy for short. Much like every other Volkswagen, I fell in love with Paddy at first sight. I mean, she was just so GREEN and CUTE, and she looked like an igloo on wheels, or an electric shamrock, and every time I saw myself drive by a mirrored window, I would look at Paddy and me and we'd both kind of smile. Just me and my wee beetle bopper.

And you know what Volkswagen? I'm not going to blame Paddy for all the shit I've been through, because she's really just a pawn in your sick, twisted game of doling out adorable cars with faulty parts.

You are One. Sick. Puppy. You know that?

It started almost immediately. I got Paddy in 2002, the summer before my last year of college, and I was beyond stoked. For one thing, she had air conditioning, which is pretty necessary in D.C. in the summer time, but I wouldn't have known that since my previous car (Oh Joanie, you reliable little blueberry....) did not. Over the summer, a mere month after I got the car, my neighbor mentioned that the taillight was out. Weird. So I took it to the dealership and they gave me a new one. Not two days later, a cop pulled me over on my way home from a movie.

"Ma'am, did you know your taillight was out?" Right. So I took it back, but they told me that the taillight was working. Then the next night it wasn't working again, so I took it back, but it was. You can imagine, that this elaborate dance became a little frustrating. Finally, there was a recall. There was something wrong with a piece that connected some wires to the bulb, so sometimes the taillight would work and sometimes it wouldn't.

During fall break that same year, I was tooling around town when Paddy started to convulse. I shrieked and gave her a little pat on the dash, thinking that would calm her down, but instead a big red light in the shape of an engine lit up next to my speedometer. I had to leave Paddy at home because the dealer couldn't check her out for a week, so I took the 16-year-old Honda Accord with the pop-up lights back down to school with me.

After the engine coil was fixed, I was able to swap out Joanie for Paddy around Thanksgiving time. A month later, during WINTER, I rolled down my window to check the mailbox when I noticed a strange noise. Rather than a silent retreat into my car door, my window seemed to fall with a thud and a crunch. I gasped and tried to put the window back up, but there was no window to be seen. Instead, when I pushed the button to put my window up, a noise came from my door that sounded like someone had just dropped a handful of glass shards into a blender. It was sickening. The dealer fixed my window the next weekend. A month later, the other window did the same thing, of course. The dealer fixed that one too.

Then other, small things started to fall apart. The dial that controls the height of the seat kept popping off. The piece that holds the floor mat in place disappeared. The car key began falling apart. In early 2004, I managed to experience a little deja vu when my car began to tremble and the engine light came on again. The dealer hadn't fixed ALL of the coils apparently. A few months later, when I was driving around in a torrential downpour, I noticed that water began to sporadically gush out from the ceiling onto my head. That one turned out to be related to the drains from the sunroof.

After I moved to California a few months ago, the engine light came on again. Another $700 down the drain. And just after I spent $600 to put new tires on my car, another old friend came back to visit: the faulty sunroof. I first noticed this when I got into my car to find condensation on the inside of the windshield accompanied by the unmistakable smell of mildew. I looked up to see that my ceiling was drenched above the back seat on the driver's side. I took it to the shop today and it will cost $800 to fix it.

"It's a stupid design," they told me. "Volkswagen fits a tube into a sleeve along the drain, so water leaks out. If they glued it, this wouldn't happen." So I have to pay someone else to glue it. For $800. I couldn't do it though. All this money that I've put into my adorable, sporty little car started to make me feel ill. Instead, I'm going to pay extra to park my car underground until I can afford to fix it.

And the saddest part is that I was blaming poor Paddy. But then I went online, and let me tell you Volkswagen: People online really hate you. I was horrified to see how many people on "myvwlemon.com" had my EXACT experience. There was no variation. Literally, every problem I had, every other person had as well. First the one window, then the other. First one engine coil, then the next. The sunroof, the taillights. Every single person.

This of course begs a question: why, if you know you've screwed up by using parts that don't work, do you continue to use those same parts? And if you know that the windows don't work, why don't you fix BOTH of my windows when I bring my car in? Why do you only fix one, and then wait for the other one to fall into the door with a nauseating thud?

So that's it. I've had it with you. I'm keeping Paddy for now, but as much as I love her, I may have to let her go soon. I guess I was a bit blinded by aesthetics, and the feel of the turbo boost kicking in as I revved the engine and shifted gears. But as soon as I can, I'm going back to the plain jane, old reliable, Japanese engineering. I know I won't be smiling at myself in mirrored windows anymore, but I also won't be sitting in the waiting room of dealerships reading three-month old People magazines.

MFEO

2008-01-30T20:24:00.000-08:00

Moving in with someone is interesting if only because no matter how much time you have spent with that person, there are still going to be small secrets to uncover. These things can sometimes be funny and/or cute. For example, some mornings, I walk into the bathroom to find Scooby with shaving cream between his eyebrows. Before living together, I had NO idea he shaved his uni, and although I'm proud of his grooming habits, I feel compelled to give him a hard time when I find him in such a position; he always responds the same way: "I don't know how the shaving cream got up there!?!" and then he pushes me out of the bathroom so that I can't watch him do the deed.

I suspect he would say that he had never known about my spontaneous decorating skills. The other night he left the house and when he returned three hours later, he noticed that I had gone to Ikea to buy frames for the vintage maps I had bought, and I had cut the pictures down to size, placed them in the frames and hung them all in a neat little cluster about the television.

Of course, you will inevitably discover annoying habits as well. I am fairly neat, but I am physically incapable of putting my shoes away. The other day when Scooby came home, he looked around our living room and said, "you've got to be kidding me," because there were literally 4 pairs of shoes strewn around the floor. He has his quirks too though. When I cook dinner, he always insists on doing the dishes, but he will then assert that half the dishes "need to be soaked!" which of course means that after the dishes have soaked overnight, I will end up doing said dishes in the morning.

But every once in a while, we will stumble upon some untapped secret that just confirms how perfect we are for each other. In our case, that secret is our joint childhood obsession with American Gladiators. Every Saturday morning, I would lie on the floor in front of my television set in McLean, Virginia and Scooby would do the same thing in Milwaukee and we would cheer for Nitro (in my case...he was the best!) and Storm (because Scooby thought "she was so hot!) instead of watching cartoons like every normal kid.

In fact, I recently learned that Scooby Snacks was so enthralled with the show, that he set up his very own version of ASSAULT in his basement, which, if you recall, entails Gladiators shooting balls at the contestants, while the players sprint from station to station and try to hit the Gladiators with various projectiles. And my boyfriend re-enacted this with Nerf guns.

And the fact that American Gladiators has been resurrected because of the writer's strike makes it so much easier to live without new episodes of Chuck and The Office. Admittedly, I have a keener sense of cheesiness at my current age than I did at eight, and I do miss the mullets, but it's still so much fun to watch--I mean, the hand bike! The cargo net! Scooby and I alternate between saying, "This is SO bad" and "This is AMAZING!" And I do have some issues with the Gladiator named Wolf who unleashes a testosterone-fueled howl every time the camera cuts to him, but I don't really have time to talk about that right now. You see, Scooby is setting up an Assault simulation, and then I have to take care of the dishes that are soaking in the sink.

Check it!

Movie Review: Juno

2008-01-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Movies and concerts are the perfect places to go alone. The lights are out, no one is supposed to talk anyway, and all attention in the room is directed toward one far-off point. And so I saw Juno. After Scooby Snacks left town, I made plans to hang out with a friend, but when he had to work late, I decided to hop on BART and head into San Francisco for the movie that was getting some of the best reviews I had seen all year.

Speaking of which, I made the mistake of reading an article in Slate before leaving work. Thanks for the damn spoiler alert Ann Hulbert. I've decided that writers who divulge the end of the movie are tantamount to that friend that DEMANDS you watch her favorite movie with her (you know, the movie you've never seen, and she just CANNOT believe you've never seen it! "We're going to Blockbuster NOW!" she tells you) and then she says every line a millisecond before the characters on the screen do. "I can't help myself!" She confesses, and because she's your friend, you love her anyway.

But Ann, we're not friends, and I'm still kind of mad at you.

But back to the movie. It was the perfect diversion for a night alone. The movie revolves around Juno (Ellen Page), a spitfire of a 16-year-old, who gets pregnant after an awkward romp with the goofy Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera). Stripper-turned-screenwriter Diablo Cody handled the topic of teen pregnancy with just the right balance of gravity and absurdity. Most importantly though, she did a wonderful job of portraying the complexities of people and their relationships.

As Juno decides to give her baby up for adoption to a well-to-do couple, even the new parents, who at first seem like stereotypical yuppies, turn into rich characters with palpable emotions. Incidentally, Jennifer Garner (who plays the yuppie wife) just melted my heart in this movie mere seconds after I had written her off as a stock character. The relationship between Juno and her father (played by J.K. Simmons) was also especially touching as he struggled with the balance of showing his disappointment, yet also demonstrating his love. I always suspected that the man who played Dr. Emil Skoda had skills, but when he sweetly referred to himself as "your old D-A-D," I wanted to reach through the screen and give him a bear hug.

Still, there was something that nagged me about Juno. What was it? I wasn't gushing about the movie the way everyone else was, and it took me a while to figure out why. Of course, in the week in which I saw Atonement AND No Country for Old Men, it would be hard for another movie to compare.

But there were two things that I normally love, but found somewhat bothersome in this movie: Music and Quirkiness.

I love some good quirk as much as the next person, but when it's self-conscious, I find it distracting. For example, Juno has a hamburger phone. "How funny," I thought to myself. "I haven't seen one of those since the '80s." But when Juno later refers to the fact that she is talking on a hamburger phone, what was once a cute little touch, now feels forced somehow.

I felt that the music followed the same path. Not all movies can, or should, carry without a score like No Country for Old Men. But the music should be seamlessly integrated into the film and it should add to the general feel without calling attention to itself; never should the music be used as a crutch. The dialogue and the scenes should evoke the laughter and the tears, not the music (except with that hilarious singing duo in There's Something About Mary).

And I am a fan of Indie rock, but the variety in Juno had such precious lyrics that it started to feel like a cheap trick, a la Garden State. You know what I'm talking about; you saw the movie and wondered, "why am I feeling so emotional as I stare at three people standing on top of a van and yelling?" And then you realized that it was because you were listening to a most powerful beautiful crescendo in one of the best Simon & Garfunkel songs.

So that made me wonder if the lyrics were making up for something. As I heard The Velvet Underground sing "I'm sticking with you," I began to question why I had to hear that sentiment from Lou Reed and not from one of the characters in the movie.

TGI(WT)F

2008-01-11T19:51:00.000-08:00

It has been a long week--the type of week in which you begin to wonder if the universe is trying to tell you something. For me that something was: you think it can't get any worse? Well just wait a second. Work was beyond hectic, crazy woman from work made me feel like crap, my insurance called to tell me that I got the license plate number wrong from the car I hit (who happened to be driving the wrong way down a one-way street) and two out of the five mornings, I had no hot water.

And I thought 2008 sounded so promising.

Luckily I made plans to meet up with some friends for dinner at one of my favorite Thai restaurants. I was looking forward to some good conversation all day, and I had a bit of a spring in my step as I walked the couple blocks from my apartment to Cha Am.

I happened to be walking a few paces behind an older woman with a small wheelie cart--the type of cart my roommate used to take grocery shopping. Now, Berkeley is filled with homeless people and generally when I see people with any type of wheeled apparatus, whether it's a suitcase or a shopping cart, I steer clear, because some of these people can get a teeny bit ornery. But this woman seemed normal enough. Well, except for the fact that she was talking to herself.

Maybe she had a bluetooth ear piece in? She must be talking on the phone!

Oh no. She was talking to me. I realized this as she wheeled around, stood right in the middle of the sidewalk and screamed, "I SAID STOP FOLLOWING ME!!!"

I quickly dashed around the woman and then she started following me!

"You look anorexic," she said, which was hilarious to me because I'm a pretty average-sized girl. Yet my potential anorexia seemed to really irk the crazed witch. "Everyone in Berkeley is anorexic now," she shouted after me as I ran up the stairs toward the safety of the restaurant, and as the door shut behind me I could still hear her screaming.

But that's it, I've decided. Weird, annoying things happened this week, but it's not the end of the world. After all, after I ditched the anorexia-hater, I had a great dinner; I received my new pink phone this week; I got a lot done at work and I exercised all but one of the last seven days.

Plus, how could I possibly stay sad when I have Jemaine around to cheer me up?

Crawling back for more

2008-01-08T22:35:00.000-08:00

I'm in an abusive relationship....with my cell phone company. I came to this realization today as I was unwrapping a large cardboard box that I found outside of my front door.

Like a typical loser boyfriend, I have spent hours waiting for Sprint to help me, but instead I've gotten yelled at, stood up and they've made me feel like crap. And then when I finally decided it was time to cut my losses, they were all, "no baby, we can work this out. How about a present?"

And it worked. I'm SO WEAK!

It all started when I was home for Christmas and my cell phone (which I unaffectionately nicknamed Darth Vader, because it's all black and it's a little bastard) wouldn't charge. So I went to the Sprint store, which coincidentally is next to Tysons Corner mall and a Circuit City two days before Christmas. After I searched for parking for 35 minutes, I waited for a Sprint technician to help me.

Two hours later I was slowly driving back out of a parking garage filled with last-minute shoppers with a new Darth. Unfortunately I lost all of the numbers from my old phone, because the only way they can transfer data is by using the charge plug, which happened to be the broken piece of my phone. It only cost me $35 for the replacement, but since I had to go the day after a red eye, the lost vacation time slightly irked me. But that's not enough to dump over, is it?

But it quickly became clear that there was something wrong with my new phone. It wouldn't hold any charge and sometimes, halfway through a conversation, I would hear faint static on my end, but the person on the other end of the line wouldn't be able to hear me at all.

Maybe it was just bad reception? I made a million excuses, but after it happened again and again, I realized that my Darth was a lemon. So the day I was flying back to California, I went back to the Tysons Sprint Store. They actually had the gall to try to charge me an additional $35 to replace the phone "because you didn't buy insurance." But after I gave them a little sass, they changed their tune.

So they told me it was just the battery. "Bad batteries can cause static," the technician assured me, which sort of sounded reasonable at the time.

But after getting back to California, I had to go back to the Sprint store in Oakland of all places. I ran home from work on a Thursday night and drove in the rain to the store (which closes at 8) only to be told that the technicians only work from 11 until 4 everyday. The other nearby Sprint stores were only open 9-5 Monday through Friday so I had no option but to leave my phone at the Sprint store overnight so that the technician could look at it at 11 when he got in.

The host at the Sprint store just told me to wait for a salesperson who could take my phone and get my information. But after I waited 45 minutes, the sales rep told me he couldn't take my phone overnight. His excuse was: "we've lost too many. People get mad."

So I switched to Verizon. Then I called Sprint to cancel. To make a very long Friday night on the phone short, I ended up in a screaming match with a CRAZY woman who should not work in customer service, and then when I called back to complain about her attitude, this very nice man convinced me to stay with Sprint. He even sent me a brand new phone in the mail. And it's pink!

But I'm worried that every time my new pink gadget rings, I'm going to be reminded that I'm a pathetic weakling. I will at least find solace in that fact that my contract with Sprint ends in August. I guess I could switch to Verizon then. Right?

Om

2008-01-08T21:46:00.000-08:00

After the worst kind of day at work, which ended with a rainy night, the only thing I wanted to do was walk home and crawl into bed without changing, never to emerge again.

BUT, against my will I dragged myself to the gym with all the other new years resolutioners to take a yoga class. And I was glad I did as soon as the instructor, an older woman with a soothing voice and long silver hair, said "your perfect pose is just as much as you can do at any given moment." Has there ever been a more easygoing attitude?

Of course, it doesn't really translate well in other realms. I wouldn't tell a Starbucks barista, "just do what you can. If you can only make one latte every 15 minutes, don't beat yourself up over it." But at that moment, it was exactly what I needed to hear, and it was ALMOST enough to take my mind off of annoyances at work.

But the calming yoga instructor wasn't responsible for ultimately getting me to put things in perspective. That honor was actually bestowed upon the elderly, if flatulent, woman behind me sporting bright orange hair and a Christmas tree turtleneck. What can I say? Sometimes the perfect antidote to a long day is a little laugh.

Flying high?

2008-01-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

Reading the New York Times online this week when I should have really been working, I stumbled upon a most hilarious blog posting. It reminded me of the hell I have endured since moving to California. I've become an expert at making a weekend trip to D.C. while avoiding jetlag and any of the many diseases that lurk within the dreaded airplane. Yet I can never avoid being entirely uncomfortable for the duration of my flight.

On one red eye, I was sitting by the window, and because the two people next to me were both sound asleep and I had to pee, I didn't get a wink of sleep. Another trip I spilled half of a grande latte on my crotch at the beginning of my 5.5 hour flight. And most painful yet, there was the time that I was grabbing my bag from the overhead bin at the end of my flight, and a tampon managed to wriggle free from an unzipped compartment and MIRACULOUSLY (or embarrassingly) land in the hand of the man who had been sitting next to me.

I just looked at him, snatched the OB out of his hand and said, "WOW! Thanks."

This past flight went off without a hitch (with the exception of my takeoff anxiety which is inescapable), yet I couldn't help but find things that annoyed me.

1. Why do people gather by the ticket taker even though their zone hasn't been called? Do they not realize that the seats are assigned? If they're worried about overhead bin space, then they can have mine. Ever since the tampon incident, I just shove everything under the seat in front of me.

2. The Jane Austen Book Club was the chosen movie.

3. Ugly Betty was shown after Jane Austen. This would have normally been a good thing except that every 5 seconds a line of static would shoot across the screen, which would also cancel out whatever dialogue had been uttered at that moment.

4. There was something wrong with my audio and every other second there would be a faint, yet obnoxious BEEP! This in conjunction with the static issue made Ugly Betty pretty much unwatchable.

5. After I had settled into my seat, a man with a state trooper-style mustache came to my row, said "21 E," and then proceeded to sit in the aisle seat. This seemed odd to me, since generally the aisle is D, but whatever--this man was clearly delusional so I didn't want to sit next to him anyway. It seemed like the plane was finished boarding and Officer Crazy was in the clear, when a young woman came onto the plane, stopped at our row and said, "I'm 21D."

And he looked at her and earnestly asked, "would you prefer the middle?"

Oh no he DID NOT! I had to contain my laughter. She shot him a fake smile and just said, "Um. No." You could tell she was really thinking, "bitch please!"

But I made it back to Berkeley safely, and that's all that matters, right? I guess after you've been stuck in the Denver airport for 4 days due to inclement weather, being teased by an episode of Ugly Betty doesn't seem so bad.

Movie Review: No Country for Old Men

2008-01-06T19:13:00.000-08:00

The only things I knew about No Country for Old Men going into it were:
• The Coen Brothers directed it
• Javier Bardem plays a terrifying killer with a bowl cut
• The movie is chock-full of violence

Those last two bullet points were enough to make me want to skip this movie. I bitched and moaned when my boyfriend planned our Saturday night, but he assured me that we could play our usual game of me covering my eyes and him telling me when the gore had subsided.

I am happy to announce though that the violence, while unrelenting, should not be a deterrent for seeing the movie, even for the pansies like me. There aren’t any David Cronenberg style close-ups of dismembered bodies; in fact the whole thing made me less queasy than one 60-minute episode of CSI. And if you wimp out because of the violence, you’ll miss one of the best movies of the year.

It pains me to admit that, because now Scooby gets to pull the old “told you so” on me, so clearly I really mean it.

The plot is fairly straightforward: Josh Brolin’s character stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong in the middle of a Texas desert. He steals a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills and consequently incurs the wrath of hitman Anton Chigurh, played by Javier Bardem.

Then again, it would be hard to say that Chigurh shows any anger exactly. He’s more of an even-keeled kind of killer, who, at most, shows minor annoyance. Nevertheless, he has a job to do, which is kill the thief and retrieve the cash. If there are bystanders in his way—say, a random person driving down a highway—he will do what he has to. Coincidentally, what he has to is almost always murder said character. He appears to be more machine than human, and the audience begins to wonder if he’s simply the personification of violence, rather than truly a man.

Meanwhile, Tommy Lee Jones plays the sheriff who takes his time piecing together the crime and then half-heartedly ambles after both the thief and the killer. Jones plays one of the old men to which the title refers, and it’s painful (yet almost comical) to watch him sort of give up before he’s even begun. The audience watches as his thought process moves in the right direction and then, from either fear or ignorance, any clue he was about to uncover vanishes.

What’s so refreshing about No Country is that it isn’t dumbed down for the sake of the audience. It operates on a higher plane than most movies because it works both as a straightforward story and as a metaphor for an unfortunate truth: violence existed before we were around and it will certainly outlive us all.

The Coen brothers also take a real risk with the score: there is none. The movie unfolds with the same sounds we would hear if we were living through the whole ordeal. They don’t use the trick of eerie music to sufficiently terrify the audience. And it turns out they don’t have to. If I ever see a bowl cut again, I may very well run screaming in the opposite direction.

Eek!

Klassy

2007-12-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

The New York Times generally does a good job with their slideshows, so when I saw one under the heading "Tasteful Giving," I decided to take a look. Sure enough, I was confronted with beautifully shot images of high-end muddlers and funky cocktail napkins, and then when I clicked on image 16 of 28, I got...um....well, THIS:

My first thought was: what's so tasteful about an ornament in the shape of Mr. Hankey? And then, after I read the accompanying blurb, I wondered: what's so tasteful about an ornament in the shape of a tater? Granted, Samwise and Frodo would love it, and if you were the senator of Idaho, this gift would be perfectly appropriate. But I can only imagine what my brother would say if I wrapped up this bad boy and handed it to him on Christmas morning. It would probably go something like this:

"Ummmmm. Thanks?"

Christmas Decorations!

2007-12-11T20:26:00.001-08:00

I LIVE for this time of year. There is nothing more fun then coming home from work in December, putting down my purse and plugging in the lights on my Christmas tree while the Carpenters Christmas album plays softly in the background.

Sadly, this year the Scooby and I were planning on being away for so long (as in, he's LEAVING ME on Sunday and won't be back until the 12th of January), that it didn't really make sense to get a real, live tree. It's too bad too because I'm an expert at picking out Christmas trees. I've been accompanying my father on this particular errand since I was about 6 years old, and I've been breaking the hearts (and busting the balls) of Christmas tree vendors ever since.

The process generally goes something like this:
My father and I arrive at the tree lot and enlist the help of said vendor. We get him to pick up a series of about 15 trees off the ground, each time finding a portion of tree that just IRKS one of us somehow.
"I don't know," Dad would say. "Doesn't it seem to be missing a few pine needles?"
"It just feels empty," I'd reply. "It just doesn't FEEL right to me."
And then Dad would come back with: "But the height is good."
And I'd say: "Well yeah the height is good. It's perfect!.....BUT....can we look at another one?"

The best part is that we would often end up settling on the first tree. Then we'd take it home, realize it was too tall, and Dad would lop off the top yielding less of a cone-shaped effect and more of a Christmas tree box.

But like I said, this year the Scooby and I couldn't buy a real tree. So we did this instead:

So rather than pine needles on the ground, we're going to end up with 28 holes in our wall, but I convinced Scooby that it was worth losing our security deposit, because, hello?? It's CHRISTMAS.

Of course, what's Christmas without stockings (even if we don't have a mantle)? And more importantly, what's Christmas without an ostentatious blue and silver Christmas tree-shaped centerpiece?

Hmmm. I may have gone a leetle overboard...

But then I got an email today that made me miss being home for the holidays. My dad is going to pick out a tree this weekend, and he needs his sidekick. He suggested that I take a redeye home on Friday night and then get an evening flight back to San Fran. "I think you need to do it for the good of the family," he wrote.

I thought maybe he would appreciate that I was carrying on the tradition in my own offbeat, little way, so i sent him a picture of my Christmas tree.

Being such a connoisseur of good trees, his response was understandable:

"That's sick."

Alright Already

2007-12-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

So after a month-long hiatus, I'm back to blogging. I know all four of you out there have been really missing me, but I have an exceptional excuse: in the month of November, I wrote a book. That's right, I signed up for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo to us insiders, and in 30 days I was tasked with writing 50,000 words.

I can't tell you how many people asked me what I would win if I completed the book in the allotted time. I've received more blank looks than I can count when I attempted to explain that writing a book is the prize. Well, that....AND this:

Yup, it's an icon. It's alright to be jealous.

There is one problem with writing a book in a month though, which is that for 30 days, you've been valuing quantity over quality. So now I have 50,000 words, 30,000 of which probably need to be rethought. But at the advice of other, more experienced NaNoWriMoers, I'm taking a breather from the process. Maybe in January I can take another look at what I've written and, with fresh eyes, start the onerous editing process.

In the meantime, I'm just going to be blogging. And I have to admit--it's good to be back.

Nothing says Christmas like a little A.C. Slater

2007-12-11T20:06:00.000-08:00

I was just flipping through the channels, looking for a little background noise while I update my resume, when behold! I stumbled upon a movie entitled "Holiday in Handcuffs."

And here--honest to god--is the synopsis:
(2007) A struggling artist-cum-waitress (Melissa Joan Hart) kidnaps a customer (Mario Lopez) to take home for Christmas, in hopes of impressing her perpetually disappointed parents.

These are desperate times for TV watchers considering the writers' strike, and there was a moment when I thought to myself, "don't Sabrina the Teenage Witch's parents notice that her alleged boyfriend is in handcuffs throughout Christmas dinner?"

But (and this is a very bad sign for A.C. Slater) I decided to watch a rerun of CSI: Miami instead.

The mythical quest for adulthood

2007-10-31T17:48:00.000-07:00

I'm trying. I really am. As I'm making new friends in this strange new place, in the hopes that they don't find me odd, I've been confining conversation topics to job talk, relationship banter and pop culture references. Of course when my friends from college came to visit two weeks ago, all of those pent-up fart jokes came pouring out, but after they left I quickly hopped back on the adulthood wagon.

When my sister and brother-in-law (the Jojies and John) came to visit last weekend, I took great strides to appear as grown-up as possible. And even though I wasn't fooling them, it made me feel better to partake in some adult activities. When they picked me up at the office on Friday, I introduced them to my boss (1 point for adult behavior), then we came back home and I cooked a very grown up dinner of pork tenderloin with a pomegranate sauce, a green salad and pasta with butternut squash and zucchini. That's another point right there. I did however make some suggestive gestures with the tenderloin before cooking it. That's minus one point, I suppose, and John please delete that picture from your camera; I think I was a bit drunk. Oops, do I have to deduct another point? Is drunkenness juvenile? This is so complicated.

We went to a wine bar after dinner, which strikes me as incredibly grown up. And then we came home and got into a bed at a reasonable hour. Point! Point! And then at midnight I got a call from the Scooby snacks, and my adult facade disintegrated.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered when I answered the phone. He had been at a party/beer pong tournament. The last thing I said to him before he left was, "be careful" and "don't get sick."

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"I'm sick...oh wait, I have to go." And then he was gone. I got three more calls from him following a similar pattern, the last one culminating in him begging and pleading for me to come pick him up in Oakland. Quite unadult behavior on the part of Scooby Snacks, wouldn't you say? But I had more than a few moments in the car to contemplate this situation. I was somewhat irked as I dragged my ass out of bed and into a pair of sweatpants. By the time I tracked down my keys and walked downstairs to my car I was nearly irate. But as I was driving, I thought about all of the times I had been drunk along with the countless times I had made myself sick from beer, or wine or bourbon. You name it, and it's induced vomming. One particularly bad morning, the Scooby drove me from his place to mine, while I sat in the passenger seat and puked into a black plastic garbage bag. Another time, as I was mid-recovery on a late Saturday afternoon, Scooby ran to McDonalds to pick up a cheeseburger, which I was convinced was the only thing that could save me. He brought me an oreo McFlurry for good measure. Needless to say, it worked.

When I stumbled upon Scoobs standing next to a closed gas station on College Avenue, and he told me all about how he'd thrown up the entire three-block walk from the party he had attended, I did the most grown up thing yet. I took care of him--without even one "I told you so"--and I didn't even hold a grudge.

Movie Review:The Darjeeling Limited

2007-10-31T15:32:00.001-07:00

As a former student of poetry and, more tragically, as a person who insists on sharing poems with poetry-haters, I'm used to hearing four little words: I don't get it. Upon this common refrain, I immediately jump into action--I try to explain the brilliance of some tiny (possibly unintentional) symbol, the serenity of the cadence, clues in the word choice. And it is for this reason that I appreciated The Darjeeling Limited. It's more a puzzle than a movie, but I suppose that makes sense because Wes Anderson is beginning to seem more like a lyric poet than a director.

As the movie unfolds, we meet three brothers played by Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman (both Anderson fixtures) and Adrien Brody. They have met on a train in India, with matching leather monogrammed luggage, at Wilson's urging to try to reconnect. You see, the three haven't spoken in the year since their father's funeral. And thus the story unfolds in, with one exception, the present tense. The audience is privy to cryptic discussions of what happened in the past and, aided by one flashback, is tasked with piecing it all together. Of course, symbols abound, and I constantly found myself asking questions like: what does the peacock feather mean? The pile of rocks? The sunglasses?

And without asking myself these questions, I have to say that the movie would have felt a bit empty. Atypically, Anderson threw in a pivotal and tragic event. Yet, I felt less saddened by this one tragedy than by the constant sorrow in Brody's eyes. So although more actually happened in this movie than Anderson's others, I felt less affected by any of the action, which I doubt was his intention. Then again, when you know so little of a character's past, it's hard to identify with their hardships.

Of course, as with Rushmore, Bottle Rocket, The Royal Tenenbaums and The Life Aquatic, the screen was mesmerizing--I keep picturing the light blue train against the stark desert. But are beautiful images enough? I think it would take me at least a couple more viewings to feel like I understood the actions and words of each character. And even then, I might just give up and say those words I dread so much: I don't get it.

What does it all mean??

Movie Review: Jane Austen Book Club

2007-10-23T15:57:00.000-07:00

When I heard about the premise of this movie, I thought it had major potential. After all, what wouldn't I like? I've read every book by Jane Austen, some twice; I own most of the cinematic reproductions of said books; I am a connoisseur of romantic comedies. In fact, if I come across a romantic comedy I especially like, it's filed away into an elite category known as the R.C. Deluxe.

But I'm sorry to say that the Jane Austen Book Club has no place among the likes of Love Actually, Bridget Jones Diary and You've Got Mail. And why? Because I was never emotionally invested in any of it. While I adore Elizabeth Bennet's fierce attitude in Pride and Prejudice and I empathize with Elinor Dashwood's selflessness in Sense and Sensibility, the members of the Jane Austen Book Club couldn't give me a reason to care about them. Because they weren't nuanced, and they stuck so closely to their shticks, they weren't worthy of my emotions.

As the movie unfolds, the book club forms, including Prudie (Emily Blunt), the prudish (yes, it's that prosaic) French teacher who is married to a meathead and is falling in love with one of her students; Jocelyn (Maria Bello) who breeds dogs and vows to never fall in love; her love interest Grigg (the dashing Hugh Dancy); the earth mother Bernadette (Kathy Baker); Sylvia (Amy Brenneman), who has just been dumped by her husband; and her daughter Allegra (Maggie Grace), the daredevil teenaged lesbian.

Each of these characters fits easily into his or her mold. Prudie wears turtlenecks, Bernadette makes flighty, flaky comments, and Allegra skydives out of airplanes. And in case the audience couldn't figure out just how stubborn Jocelyn is, or how smitten Grigg is, we are hit over the head with their feelings during the monthly book clubs. For example, as one might suspect, Sylvia identifies with Fanny Price from Mansfield Park because Price is such a loyal, caring individual. Could it be because her husband of 20 years just left her? This question is too easy for a high school freshman's English exam.

But the biggest downfall of the movie comes in the first 15 minutes when Sylvia's husband admits that he's seeing another woman and leaving her. As I watched Sylvia's stunned reaction, her contorted face, I wanted to feel for her. I kept thinking about Love Actually when Emma Thompson finds out that her husband may have cheated on her. Joni Mitchell starts to play in the background as the audience is treated to an intimate moment in which Thompson convinces herself, for the sake of her children, that she can't cry, that she has to suffer in silence. During that movie, there wasn't a dry eye in the house.

But I guess that's what makes Love Actually an R.C. Deluxe and what makes The Jane Austen Book Club just a waste of eight dollars.

Grigg tries to work his magic on the stubborn dog trainer

Fun with pumpkins

2007-10-15T13:15:00.002-07:00

I don't know what it is, but whenever a holiday rolls around, I feel the need to cover my apartment in holiday-specific decorations.

Oh wait. In fact I do know why I have this unfortunate compulsion--it's called nature AND nurture. That is, assuming my mother's affinity for decorating is a result of genetics. You see, every Friday after Thanksgiving, my family used to march upstairs and start an assembly line. One person would stand up in the terrifying, freezing-cold attic and start handing boxes to the person standing on the ladder steps, who would hand that box off to the person standing on the second floor, who would hand that to another person, who would go through the boxes to figure out where everything goes.

On average, there are probably about 15 boxes, each filled to the brim with decorative orbs for the window panes, Christmas CDs (including the Carpenters--hollah!), advent calendars, stockings, garland for the banisters and three separate nativity scenes to (I kid you not) name a few.

I always thought this was normal.

You know what else I thought was normal? Bringing out the life-sized rabbit, complete with a hat and bright blue trousers, for Easter, dressing our street lamp up like a cornstalk for Thanksgiving and placing a moving, eerie-sound-producing, fluorescently lit spider on the front lawn for the 3 weeks preceding Halloween.

In short, we know how to celebrate. So this year, since I'm far from home for at least a few holidays, I've started to get the itch to decorate. Of course, I don't know how well the Scooby would take to my decor-antics, so I'm trying to tone it down--there will be no moving spiders. But then, the other day I was in Target and I wanted to buy EVERYthing. There were Halloween dish towels and wash cloths, Halloween mixing bowls and paper lanterns. It was all so adorable that suddenly I could understand why my mother has filled our attic in Virginia so that there are more holiday decorations than dust bunnies.

I decided that I should go on a hunt for tasteful holiday decorations. What I really wanted were some things from Gump's, because, despite the name, they have the most beautiful decorative items. But, per usual, I couldn't afford any of it. See exhibit A, the beautiful glass pumpkins for $180 a pop.

Even the evil green men below, although much more reasonable at $45, were a tad more than I wanted to spend for something I would display for a mere 3 weeks.

So I finally settled on this. It's from Target and at $9.99, plus the price of tea light candles to light the sucker up, I was able to get my Halloween decorating fix.

Of course, you never know if I'm done. One day this week, Scooby might come home to find one of these hanging from the living room ceiling...

Courage under fire

2007-10-12T15:31:00.000-07:00

The other night I was hiking in the woods with a new friend, when a thought occurred to us: we need apple crisp. There's just something about the fall (as muted as it is in California) that screams for some kind of dalliance of the apple variety, so we hit up the grocery store, bought apples and oats (and wasabi peas, but that's neither here nor there) and then she dropped me off at home to make my apple crisp, while she sped away to craft her own creation.

But something unexpected happened that interrupted my apple-euphoria. I was just about to pour the crumble topping on a pan of skinned apple slices when the Scooby Snacks did a bit of skinning of his own: cutting into a peach, the knife slipped and sliced his thumb. The cut bloomed and blood began to immediately pour out.

He grabbed his hand, began to pace back and forth across the room and kept repeating,, "this is going to be bad. Oh yes. This is a bad one." I grabbed some paper towels and told him to clamp down on his thumb while lifting his hand above his heart.

After a couple of minutes, I told him I needed to see it so that I could determine whether or not we should go to the emergency room. He looked at me, terror in his eyes, and then began to whimper. "No, no. Don't make me. I don't want to see it."

"You don't have to see it. You can close your eyes."

"No. I don't want to see it."

"I don't really want to see it either," I assured him. "But if I don't, how will I know if we should go to the hospital?"

After a few back and forths, I finally lost it.

"Pull yourself together!" I yelled. And, although he still looked terrified, he held out his hand. As soon as he lifted the paper towel from his finger, blood began to run down his hand like lava out of Mordor. We decided to wait a couple more minutes. If the bleeding stopped, we'd put a band-aid on and call it a night. If not, to the emergency room we would go.

After a little while longer our valiant Scooby began to complain that his good hand was cramping up from putting pressure on his bloody thumb.

"It hurts!" he whined. "I can't do it." It was around this time that I realized. I can never have kids. In fact, I shouldn't even own a hamster. It's bad enough that I don't know what to do in these situations, but I also lose my cool fairly easily.

"Well why don't you let me put pressure on it instead?" I pleaded. But he wouldn't stop pacing around the room like some possessed Energizer bunny, except (at that moment) a lot less adorable. I could feel the urge to yell again, so instead, at 9 p.m., I grabbed my shoes and his jacket and ushered him into the car for a ride to the hospital. On the drive there, Scoobs alternated between apologizing and saying, "I'm such an idiot. You think I'm a klutz don't you?"

I would never tell klutzy mcklutzerton the truth: if there is a glass of red wine within a 1 mile radius, he will spill it. If he CAN lock his keys in his car, he WILL. When I looked over at him slicing into his thumb, I thought to myself, "business as usual."

"No, sweetheart. You aren't a klutz!"

It took a little over an hour for the doctors to call Scooby back. I had toyed with the idea of going with him, but it was late and my patience was waning so I opted to sit in the waiting room and read my book.

About an hour later, there was still no sign of Scooby. There was however a sign of some crazy people, most notably, a woman who had crawled on hands and knees out of the ER and into the waiting room. She was screaming expletives at the top of her lungs as the door to the ER closed and locked behind her. She also appeared to be on her cell phone.

"Fuck you motherfuckers. Y'all are ugly," She yelled. A moment later a single file of doctors and nurses from the ER and stood in front of her as she hissed and screamed. She yelled up to them as she sat defiantly on the ground. "What are you all going to do? Fuck you. I don't give a shit."

Where the hell am I? I wondered.

Most of the doctors rolled their eyes and proceeded back into the ER, but one man knelt on the floor and offered to help. "Just tell me what's wrong and I can help you," he pleaded. But she wasn't having it.

"Oh hail no. I'm not your daughter. Get the fuck away from me." Then she started talking into the phone. "Yes, police department? I am at Alta Bates Hospital and they won't help me. Yes. I had a seizure and they won't help me."

"I take it that you're leaving then?" The kind man said to her, but she just looked right through him.

The woman stayed there. Occasionally she would bang on the door to the ER screaming, "Y'all are motherfuckers." Sometimes she would even heckle people coming out of the ER, including a young couple with a toddler.

Suddenly Craig's histrionics didn't seem so bad. I got the security guard to unlock the door to the ER, and then I tiptoed around Crazy Yelling Lady so I could see my sweetie. He was at the end of a corridor, lying on a bed, napping. I woke him up to tell him about the crazy woman, which we both agreed was a hilarious addition to our traumatizing night. Shortly after, a doctor stopped by to check out the wound.

"Oh we can just glue that shut," he said.

Ummm. What? I came to the hospital to have his wound glued?

"Yes, it's essentially sterile super glue," the doc told us. Well next time I'm just going to glue it myself, I thought.

We finally arrived home around 12:45. My apples were still sitting sliced and naked in a pan on the counter. I quickly threw the topping on and threw the pan into an un-preheated oven (Martha Stewart would be ashamed, but it was late), then I sat on the couch next to Scooby who was in remarkably good spirits.

"I wasn't very good at that--at being a nurse," I admitted. And then I thought about how easy it is to just live alone without having to take care of anyone. It was so simple when I only had to worry about myself; and if I did a sloppy job, no one else would have to suffer. He assured me that I had done a stellar job--that we had both been exceptionally courageous and cool-headed that night.

Plus, if I didn't have Scooby around, who would eat my apple crisp with me? And who would drive me to the hospital if I needed stitches? And most importantly, who would laugh with me about the crazy "fuck you motherfucker" ladies of the world?

New Find: Patina

2007-10-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

So I made a somewhat amazing find today as I was blog-surfing. As I've mentioned, I'm faced with the dilemma of decorating an apartment on a very tight budget, so I'm always on the lookout for stores that have interesting housewares and miniature price tags. On Apartment Therapy, they showed some autumn leaf colored mixing bowls with a link to the online store: Patina. With a mix of home goods, jewelry and stationery, the store reminded me a little bit of Fred Flare, but a lot less like a garage sale.

Speaking of garage sales, in a fit of desperation (specifically, the desperation for a coffee table and/or tv stand), I decided to spend a Saturday visiting garage sales in my neighborhood. And all I can say is: Wow. I've never seen so much junk in a 4-hour period. At one house I visited, the family was actually selling their condiments. They put a bottle of gravy on display with packaging that looked like it was from 1976 and they were selling it for 50 cents. After such a frustrating and fruitless morning, I wanted to walk up to them and scream, "nobody wants your fucking gravy! Just give it away or throw it in the trash."

I couldn't do it though; I couldn't summon the energy after realizing that I'd wasted a perfectly good Saturday.

It's so much easier to just order online, and skip rummaging through your neighbor's garbage, or garage. So here are some funsies from Patina:

Sukie Stationery, $14.95

Swallow Compact, $9.95

Dot Over Dot Tray, $15.95

Kitsch can be so cute! (in moderation) Sweet Pea Plate, $8.95

Reasons to Love Tuesdays

2007-09-26T11:05:00.000-07:00

Although it's Wednesday, I have been contemplating the exceptional wonder of Tuesdays. I used to hate them. They are so close to the beginning of the week, that the anticipation for the weekends just isn't there yet. Plus anything that sits so close to Monday starts to smell like Monday, and everyone knows Monday smells like poosies.

BUT, a few people out there answered my call to perk up Tuesdays. Besides the stellar yoga class at my gym, there is also some nationally observed loveliness to be found each and every Tuesday.

1. Slate publishes a poem every Tuesday. I know, I know. A lot of people aren't completely smitten with poetry like I am, but the one from yesterday really rocked my world. It's about the south and all it's backwardness and, for some reason, it spoke to me. Since I moved to California, I have become intensely aware of people's views of the south. I grew up in Virginia, right outside of Washington, DC. But if I say I'm from Virginia, people don't think of suburban D.C., they see confederate flags plastered across the battered bumper of a rusty pickup. Or Dixieland Delight blasting from an old boom box (which, of course, has bunny ears) on a gravel driveway next to a dilapidated refrigerator.

What's funny is that since I noticed how people view Virginia, I'm more apt to say I'm from good ole V-A than D.C. I guess I like messing with people, plus it's funny to be underestimated. Unless you're in a job interview, then it sort of sucks. But I love getting The Look from people, as if they want to ask, "so does that mean you're, like, part of the confederacy or something?" Well the answer is "no." Plus, haven't you heard? Virginia is for Lovers.

Tangent accomplished. It's time for another reason that Tuesdays are climbing the rankings in the Best Day of the Week race:

2. Tuesday is Apple Free Download Day. The same day that new albums are released, iTunes gives away one free download for a band that they view is up and coming. There are certainly weeks when the download turns out to be musical drivel (Guggenheim Grotto? Seriously? And now they're on my iPod for eternity between two awesome songs because I'm too lazy to remove their musical stylings), but other weeks, Apple exposes me to something I might never have downloaded, but fall in love with.

Case in point: The Editors, Justice's D.A.N.C.E. (it's more uplifting than an iced Americano), and my new fave R&B ditty Ledisi's Alright. She's sort of a mix between Erykah Badu and Jill Scott and she makes me want to shake my booty, which I never ever do.

And the best news of all: from October 2 until November 7, every day is Tuesday. Word on the street is Starbucks is giving away a different free song every day to customers. So you can get your iced Americano AND your D.A.N.C.E. fix all at one time, which may be more excitement than one person can handle.

New Trends in Etiquette

2007-09-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

At my old job, my sister and I used to joke about the people who brought newspapers into the bathroom with them. One repeat offender even had the gall to borrow one of OUR (she was a reporter, we were on the sales staff) newspapers, take it into the stall with her for a good 15 minutes and then bring it BACK to us. Has the girl never seen Seinfeld? That is such a breach of both newspaper borrowing and bathroom etiquette.

But then again, I am pretty sensitive to these things. When I go into a friend's bathroom and they have books, magazines or, heaven forbid, "Passing Time at the Loo" (or whatever it's called) I do tend to blush a little. My thinking is: get in, do your business and get out of there. I don't want to sit there any longer than I absolutely have to.

But the real reason for this post is that I just witnessed something far worse than any of the said transgressions. I just watched a man bring his open laptop into the bathroom with him. It wasn't in a bag. It wasn't even closed and inconspicuously tucked under his arm. No. It was open, as if he was going to read the newspaper ONLINE while in the bathroom.

Please tell me this is not a new trend.