I don't know whether to laugh or vomit,

but either way, this is tripping me the fuck out. And is hilarious. And creepy. And hysterically funny. And six, or possibly eight, kinds of wrong.

A Few Things I Am Really, Super Good At

--Knowing what a baked good’s icing will taste like, just by looking at it.

--Figuring out where I’ve seen an actor or actress before, sans IMDB (NB: Sometimes this will take me all night, or wake me at 4:00 a.m., and it’s capable of taking me completely out of whatever I’m currently watching, no matter how interesting; I imagine that it is quite annoying to Mr. Gleemonex, but I can no more stop it than I can stop the tide of suck pouring from Gwyneth Paltrow’s mouth.)

--Croutons.

--Calling people by anything but their real names. Sometimes for fun, sometimes to deliberately fuck with them (there was a kid in college I called “Billy” all four years, knowing it wasn’t his name, not caring, and being HIGHLY AMUSED by the fact that he seemed to hate and fear me for it). I give myself bonus points for convincing other people to use whatever name I've assigned a person, too. I'm pretty much totally winning this one.

--Finding stuff in the jumbled-ass, overfull, crazy-annoying kitchen drawer that holds all our mixing/stirring/measuring/serving/misc. implements.

--Roulette.

--Coming up with plans for what I would say to famous people if I ever met them. For instance, you can’t tell Paul Rudd “I loved you in Knocked Up!” because duh, everybody’s seen that. You have to holler “No fatties!” like right in his face, because he told an extended anecdote involving that phrase on the Daily Show once like eight years ago and it was fucking AWESOME. On the other hand, you can’t allow a douchebag like Scarlett Johanssen to sashay past you in her hi-waist jeans unmolested, so you’d have to come up with a plan for that -- I'll let you know when I have finalized mine, but fyi, it involves pretending not to know who she is, and then maybe some sort of crack about Woody Allen's dick.

I am not going to put $280 worth of clothes on a 14-month-old and nothing you can say will change that.

Internets, this week I received via the USPS the first issue of a free subscription to Cookie, a magazine targeted with laserlike precision directly at persons of my age, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, education level, household income, and marital and procreative status.

So I read it, because hey, free magazine! And with a toddler around, I can always use some reading material that I can pick up and put down whenever -- the meaty stuff has to wait for my bus commute or after she goes to bed.

But you guys, this magazine? It's obnoxious. For reals.

They don't just do the "veggies" and "let's face it" cutesiness that riddles my other free-subscription magazine nemesis, Parents. They compound that kind of verbal ass-chappery with editorial gushing over $120 skinny jeans for 8-year-olds (who are almost always named Ava or Tallulah) and $725 blazers for mom -- actual blurb: "The slinky double-breaster* gets a modern makeover (read: no shoulder pads) from a designer known for clean but edgy lines" -- and relentless, relentless use of certain phrasings and constructions** that I know are meant to convey a breezy, confident, harmlessly wry girlfriend-to-girlfriend air of intimacy and zazz. I can just hear the editors talking about wanting a punchier feel, making this or that sentence "pop," adding in stuff that's "young" and "fun." Hooorrraaaaaaaaaaaaauuugh.

It kills me because it's so cheap and facile and lazy, this way of writing -- it's like how, at my previous employer, we bought a few stock images to accompany stories, and used and reused and re-re-re-reused them year after year ... *** And these fucking tics are just annoying, repeated so often -- why "get" when you can "grab," or "put" when you can "toss"? Ha ha, isn't motherhood chaotic! But fun! O yes. Especially when you are in your mid-thirties and sassy and have money and are white and probably have heard most of these expressions and phrasings before but have no idea what their root meaning is! Attitude! Style! Channel your inner _____! Hang stuff on your four-year-old's wall with Blu-Tack, you awesome quirky design-maven motherfuckers, "until the next bout of artistic inspiration strikes!"

Ugh, seriously. Makes me want to BURN BUILDINGS DOWN.

---------------------------------
*Heh.
**e.g.: "read: xxxxxx," which maybe once was smartassery but is now beyond boring cliche.
***I was there five years, and they're still using some of the same goddamned thumbnails on the website TODAY, five years after I left.

You named your kid after the fuckin Titanic?

You guys. Internets. People.

At the risk of seeming like ALL I DO ALL DAY AND ALL NIGHT is watch the Teevee, I have to ask:

Is East Bound & Down the greatest show ever, or what?

It’s about a washed-up ex-MLB pitcher, Kenny Powers (played by Danny McBride, lately of Pineapple Express), who shuffles back to his hometown to teach phys ed at his old middle school when the good times run out (and bonus points for casting the guy who played Sol, the Jew, on Deadwood, as Kenny’s suburban-dad bro).

I wasn’t even aware of its existence till somehow the magickal Teevee fairies or Mr. Gleemonex caused it to be upon the screen, and y’all! It is fucking HYSTERICAL. I mean, the guy curses more than I do (really. I know, right?), and everything about it is SOFA KING WRONG, from the way he drives down the highway, Jet-Ski in tow, tossing empty beer cans out his truck window (each toss has a slightly different flair to it), to his thoughtless cursing in front of middle-schoolers, to his attitude toward the doofus principal his high-school girlfriend is now engaged to – it just slays me. Y’all, he listens to his own audio-book biography on cassette tape (You’re Fucking Out, I’m Fucking In!) with rapt pleasure and a couple of brews, as he steels himself for a day amongst the youngsters he’s supposed to be teaching. I … can’t explain, but I laughed like a maniac about ten hundred times in the half hour. This is crazy shit and y’all all ought to be watching.

--------------------------
PS: I should clarify: What makes it awesome instead of just mean-spirited is that Kenny is not, at heart, an evil person -- just a crude, self-important egomaniac with delusions of grandeur. There's a real person under the thick buttery crust of total asshole. He's not a douche, in other words -- he's a bastard. Which equals AWESOME.

Round the world with Ned Schneebly

Are you guys aware that Mike White is running The Amazing Race?

I love this show, but given how discombobulated I am lately, the premiere kind of snuck up on me last night. So as they’re introducing the teams, I’m all, dysfunctional couple, nutty but somehow likeable hicks, “older couple” determined to prove how with-it they are, six or eight obligatory pairs of big-fake-boobied girlies who wonder aloud why a “strong woman” is considered a bitch (note: it’s because you. are. a. bitch.), interesting-looking sibling teams … hey – doesn’t that guy look like Mike White? Oh my god, it IS Mike White! How fucking random and awesome! And there he is, doing yoga with his dad/race partner, VO-ing that “if you’re gay, and you have gay parents, it’s great because it’s no big deal – you can’t disappoint them, cause they beat you to the punch!” Heh.

So anyway – [SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t seen the ep] the team that went out first was a HUGE relief to me (I HATE those kinds of teams, those He-Man and Perpetually-Close-to-Tears Little Girl couples, they stress me out and drive me bugfuck, Jonathan and Victoria!, ugh), and I just hope one of my two faves wins it – Mike White & Pop, or Mom & Super-Cute (Incidentally, Deaf) Son.


Smells like shit on the carpet, spill it
Unrelated, but you all are MISSING OUT if you do not read this post by the Hip Hop Lawyer in re: the ballz-crazy Phelps debacle. Check out the photos of the delusional Fantasy-Island sheriff who has, in the HHL’s words, “issued a fatwa” against Mikey The Bong-Hitting Olympic Gold Medalist … truly astonishing stuff, and the kind of hilarious that makes you want to burn some buildings down.

Is Dave Something?

Holy freebasing Shatner, do I love David Letterman!

Case in point: This edited-down-to-five-minutes interview with the bearded mumbling horse douche formerly known as Joaquin Phoenix. And people, you know I don't link video unless it fucking RULES, so you can trust me on this.

Meanwhile, please take note of this quote from the site, which made me laugh myself into a horrific coughing fit: "Crispin Glover is watching the whole Joaquin Phoenix saga from his velvet-lined houseboat made of human bones, saying 'n00b.'"

Like in Office Space, only not funny

So I was going to talk about that silly, silly bitch A-Rod, but I realized my post would boil down to two things: one, like doy; and two, as much as I hate that unclefucker, I gotta wonder why him – just him – and not the other 103 guys. Although I did want to share this hilarious nugget from sfgate’s Scott Ostler: “Right now, Alex Rodriguez is munching contemplatively on nougat from a thank-you Candygram from Michael Phelps and trying to figure out what to do next.”

But then yesterday, thanks to some foolishly opened-to-the-sunlight blinds in my big living room window, I was forced to respond to the doorbell rung by some door-to-door salesguys. It’s this outfit that hits our neighborhood every couple of months, where the yutes generally work in teams, and try to engage you in this longwinded conversation about [you] helping people [i.e. them] get their lives back on track and whatnot, and they ask you all this personal shit, and cast their sales effort as some kind of “competition” for “points,” and but what they’re doing is selling magazines at like quadruple the normal subscription rate (seriously, three years of Shape for $60?) via a serious guilt strongarm technique. Usually I just say no thanks, don’t need no magazines, buh bye, right when I see them, but these two yesterday were a real prize – Talky McChatterson fired up his patter immediately, then opened my screen door to shake my hand, in such a way that I’d’ve had to respond really roughly in order to refuse, and then he and Silent O’Testifyin’ had me in their grip for like twenty goddamn minutes. And this was bad enough, but they just would not take no for an answer, and because I’d glanced at the list of mags, they had the order written up already – just waiting for my signature. I felt completely railroaded, but also vulnerable – I’m standing at the door, sick, in my lounging PJs, with my baby on my hip, the door open, hoping they can’t see the flat-screen TV … I mean, it felt like the joint was getting cased, and the fact that this team of fine upstanding citizens had already TOLD ME they were ex-gang-members (maybe they were, maybe they weren’t, but is someone coaching these kids to go door-to-door SAYING that??? WTF?) and Talky'd SHOWED ME the scar behind his ear from an alleged bullet, did not increase my desire to hand them cash or a check with my account number on it, you know? So … um. Yeah. My blinds are closed today. Kinda dark in here, but, well.

Two things that are ridiculous, and one that is awesome

RIDICULOUS:

1) The Michael Phelps bong brouhaha. Internets, what is the matter with people? Is there really anyone on planet earth who is shocked and offended by a 23-year-old guy firing up a bong? It’s not like he did it on national TV – he THOUGHT he was among friends, in PRIVATE, but some fucking douchetard numbnuts asswipe decides to go global with his/her idiotic bullshit, and now he’s suspended from competition – without pay – and loses sponsorships from Wholesome Family Companies, and for what? Something that 98 percent of Americans have done with no repercussions but the munchies. This makes me insane. Insane in the membrane. Got no brain, goin insane. These pigs wanna blow my house down, but I’m underground to the next town.

2) The so-called Octuplet Mom. My GOD. She’s catching up to those nutjob Duggar morons – it might only take her one more pregnancy to draw ahead. Where is CPS when you need em? What kind of twisted medical ethics allows a doctor to perform the procedures she’s had? Obviously this deranged person only likes HAVING the babies, not raising children, so can we have some adoptive parents over there to pick from the litter? Jesus H. Shatner.

AWESOME:
My friend Theresa Andersson on Conan! It’s sofa king weird to see someone you know on national TV – and she nailed it. Enjoy, Internets!

This is why I can never leave Northern California.

A letter to the editor in my Hometown Newsrag Of Record:

The American flag flying upside down is a sign of distress. I fly the American flag and the Texas flag on a regular basis.

As long as B. Hussein Obama occupies the White House, I will fly my American flag upside down as this man is dangerous, and our country is in great distress.

Now, I know there are plenty who would agree with him even where I live. But seriously -- where this is the majority view, there is no place for me.

Hey kids, don't smoke.

Internets, sorry to just disappear like that -- I've had to travel to the Olde Hometowne because of a death in the family, and although not entirely unexpected due to the advanced age and the long-declining health of the beloved in question, it's been teh major suck, and very sad, and just craptacular and has ripped a big old weepy goddamned hole in our lives, so no bloggages. I'll be back, maybe not tomorrow, but soon. In the meantime, be well, and DON'T FUCKING SMOKE. That road doesn't go anywhere good, kids. I mean, we all end up at the same door, but you can make your journey there a lot easier, you know? Live, love, be happy.