Archive for January, 2007

Epic pimpage

January 30, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

“The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do.” ~Thomas Jefferson

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to stop writing just for the sake of doing so; which has manifested into epic posts that probably require chapters and sections and an intermission. For my next post I strongly suggest having a beverage and a snack nearby because hoo boy, it’s poised to be a long one. In fact may I suggest a Patron Margarita, chips and guacamole? Hearty and guaranteed to fuck you up enough to ignore my 179th post about Trader Joe’s. Let’s just say that I don’t think I could ever write a novel because it’s too many words and pages and thoughts but I’m one prolific motherfucker and my fingers hurt. The end.

Other things that can easily keep me from writing in the paragraph form – though hot damn I’m doing a lot of that right now – is the constant feeling of knowing that I’m about to fail at something miserably. It’s like falling and falling and falling into a deep abyss and I knew this would happen and I could have stopped it sooner, but I am brilliant and stubborn. “Keep on keeping on” is a phrase now permanently removed from my repertoire of clichés.

So two things:

1) On Friday, yours truly will be playing carnival master to the Carnival of the Mundane. Which you can read about at the previous link. I hope for more contributions between now and tomorrow and welcome anyone who can write something more mundane than my startling expose on making your own granola. Because if you can do that, my hat goes off to you. Email all contributions to: nopasanadablog@gmail.com

2) IndieBloggers, Indie Bloggers, Indie Bloggers. I feel like I need to speak about the idea behind this site very, very slowly. One need not write something new to submit to IB, in fact I’ve submitted approximately one recent post to the site. And then realized that the posts I adored and wanted to share with the internetwebosphere the most were posts of yore. Like remember that time I jumped out of the window while babysitting? Or that time I suffered the ennuiparapsychosis? If you’re wondering why I’d ever think to share my absolute lameness with more people than I already do? Because I can. And you should too. It requires the simple act of signing up and then you can post to your heart’s content and everybody’s a winner.

Now go forth and write, I say! Write!

Getting real

January 29, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

“Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home.” ~David Frost

The time that I got a tattoo was because I couldn’t get my tongue pierced. I wanted my tongue pierced because someone on the Real World had their tongue pierced and since the Real World was the epitome of cool, then I had to have my tongue pierced as well. It all makes perfect sense and so why I receive looks of absolute bewilderment when retelling this story is beyond me. The same goes for the looks of absurdity and questions of how hard I far I fell when I was a mere babe, when I mention that I’ve been watching the same show for 15 years. For I am 23 so I have been watching seven people get real for almost my entire life. Which is really, really sad if you think about it and no, I do not have parents, the television and my booze drinking nannies did all the hard work.

(Hi Madre! Thanks for paying for those piano lessons!)

It was more that I snuck in my Bunim-Murray fix on random afternoons while hiding in the den. I still get my Bunim-Murray fix that way because seeing two drunken girls kiss in a hot tub causes my mother to break out in nasty open sores and convulse. Sometimes I make her watch on purpose because it’s some sort of medical mystery and when the doctors ask me about the rash that developed on her arms and the current catatonic state, I can say “It’s because Brooke and Jen were nude and kissing in front of Tyrie.” Most people just embrace the trainwrecky goodness dipped in ranch dressing, but my mother goes into a coma.

She hates MTV. She hates it with the white hot fire of a thousand suns on a July afternoon in Barstow. She also has taste and intelligence. Her daughter has intelligence but also enjoys watching people behave like imbeciles in public. Because then she can relish in the fact that for once it’s not her becoming so inebriated that she falls out of a shower. It’s someone else’s child. This addiction to MTV has outlasted years and years of schooling and I’ve been known to enjoy countless hours of Laguna Beach when down the street from the Atlantic because looking away would mean missing LC’s slippery slope to missing out on Paris. There may or may not be shouts of “you stupid whore” at the television.

I received an email the other day from Isabel who knows of my well documented dependency of MTV reality television and asked my thoughts on the new show “Engaged and Underage.” Though I’d heard of it, I had no intention of watching it because for now I’m busy worrying about Marcel vs. Ilan: Battle of Foam and Flambé to think about such drivel. Though I can be judgmental if there is one thing that I can see past and defer to someone else on how they truly feel is when it comes to their relationships. The show follows around couples 21 and under as they enter into marriage. Of course it seems crazy to me and of course I am incredulous to it all because I am not in such a relationship that marriage is in the foreseeable future. Nor do I plan on entering into such a relationship anytime soon. And my maturity level is very, very low and I refuse to share my bed with anyone and I’m 23. I am a 23 year old who only says ‘Til death do us part’ to her macbook.

Poor choices are made everyday at every age. So yes these are 21 year olds who are getting married and yes they might be making a huge mistake and their parents find them in dire need of a lobotomy for entering into the sanctity of marriage at such a young age because they could get a divorce. But then again 30 year olds make mistakes in their choosing of a partner as well as 40, 50 and 60 year olds. No one is immune to such a thing. And people of all ages are allowed to divorce. But for some reason watching 21 year olds enter into marriage and possibly fail, makes for some excellent entertainment. Do I agree with broadcasting it on television? Not necessarily. Do I watch eagerly awaiting for the first fight over dishtowels? Hell yeah. I’m human. I also am intelligent enough and have learned enough from those Reunion specials that sometimes things are skewed during production to make a perfectly lovely woman look like a raging hormonal bitch who gets her period 365 days a year. What might be perfectly innocuous argument looks like the beginnings of World War III over the difference between ‘eggshell’ and ‘beige’ for the living room wall. And damn it’s hard to look away.

*Quick example: My parents were 28 and 38 when they were married and got divorced when they were 32 and 42. The people I babysit for got married at like 12 and 14 and are still happily married seven or eight years later. See my point?

Shifting ways

January 28, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

“Probably no man ever had a friend that he did not dislike a little.” ~E.W. Howe

I used to be friends with a girl named Megan and with her and two others, we became as cliquey as possible and given that we all lived within .03 miles of each other, it was a certain that we would spend hours and hours together. We were practically inseparable and weekends involved sleepovers and Seagram’s wine coolers and my phone had to be surgically removed from my face every evening after two hours of discussing Megan’s recent sexploits with her lanky, clod of a boyfriend, Chuck. Let’s just say we had countless conversations about the art of fellatio. They were even doing it behind the bowling alley at midnight bowling, which reminds me that I should thank my mother for denying me the God given right to bowl after 12 AM.

One weekend, a few weeks before my 16th birthday, we had a falling out over something innocuous that ended up with her yelling at me outside of the Macy’s in Colonie Center. This after I spent $3.84 on a nail polish from the GAP to give to her so that she would take me back as a friend. Because to me, giving people things was the only way I knew how to make them like me. If I keep reading over that last sentence, my head aches with knowing the way I wanted, nay, needed to please people to make them want me as a friend because I had apparently fallen. Hard. And hit my head on the corner of some table and punctured my skull, and that is how I ended up brainless and an idiot.

The fight, at the time, left me bitter and resentful. Which manifested itself into a behavior, wherein I went out of my way to get Sarah and Lauren, the other two in our little gaggle, to see my ‘side’ and they did. We had established that Megan was an evil whore with 666 tattooed on her left butt cheek, which is why she was so damn difficult and prone to throwing things (in public) and punching walls.

In the next week the fellatio giving Megan, ended up with mono and was guaranteed to be out for weeks. One would think that a debilitating illness would keep that whore at bay, but alas not and in her infinite wisdom and realization that I had gotten her friends against her, she called and cursed me out and politely requested that I drop dead and get herpes. I thanked her and told her that I hoped her Chlamydia cleared up soon as well as those carpet burns on her knees from being on them so much giving head and then hung up and went to pack.

I was packing for my 16th birthday trip to Chicago. It was fate that my aunt had been trying for years to get tickets to Oprah and when she finally got through to the operators they offered her three dates, one of which was my 16th birthday, the magic age at which one is allowed to be in the studio audience. So off we were going to see Oprah and so that my already fat ass could enjoy such luxuries as Cheesecake Factory and Giordano’s deep-dish meat filled, artery-clogging pizza. I’d point out the wonder that was being at Oprah, but alas we did not get a free car and I didn’t get free hair care products or a sample from Emeril’s new cookbook or even a chance to lick her and ask what it’s really like to be a multi-millionaire, as she wasn’t yet a billionaire. Though I did get to shake her hand and I haven’t washed my right hand since October 26, 1999.

The show topic was about “Friendshifts”: The inevitable loss and addition of friends as we get older and come into our own. It’s just something that happens that isn’t necessarily out of malice and is due to more than a nail polish being thrown and shattered on the sidewalk. As it happens, over the years, I’ve tried my damndest to maintain most friendships. I’m still friends with my best friend from Kindergarten as well as my best friend from Girl Scout Camp. Though over the years I’ve gained and lost many friends but never because I didn’t try or so I don’t think Those fostered are important to me, though I’m nowhere near a fantastic friend and infallible. Trust me, I’m actually prone to passive aggressive behavior and I yell and sometimes I’ll eat your pizza when your back is turned. But if anything I try to be loyal. I don’t want people remembering my awful behavior seven years earlier, with hurt and disdain. I wouldn’t want people that I’m no longer friends with to thank God that I’m no longer in their lives as I do with Megan. I don’t want anyone wishing that I forget to get a tetanus shot and then drunkenly puncture my arm on a rusty nail.

In the end I haven’t a clue as to what happened to Megan, except that she returned to school and wanted to be friends again and then started taking Metabolife at the suggestion of her mother. She sent me a message via Facebook, which I promptly deleted and though I should be over her discretions, I obviously am not. And thinking of it now, that probably makes me as person, even worse. For if I can’t get over shit from seven years prior than I couldn’t possibly expect for my friends to get over my eternally pissy and bitchy ways. But thankfully, they are far better than I and considerably more forgiving. They also don’t require trinkets and gifts as a sign of my undying devotion. And as far as I know, none of them have punched a wall or thrown a glass at my head during a fight. And let’s pray that they don’t think Seagram’s winterberry wine coolers are a ‘classy’ drink.

Do not be friends with this girl

January 24, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

“I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.” ~Franklin P. Adams

Because I believe that movies should be watched and pondered alone, I don’t tend to attend movies with friends just for the hell of it. The movie has to be one that I know will captivate me or I have to be threatened by said friend and/or promised pitchers of sangria immediately after the viewing. Those stipulations are carefully articulated and highlighted in my friend contract. Right under the section that provides instruction on how to react when I’m about to flip my shit. I’m complicated.

My presence was requested at a viewing of Pan’s Labyrinth. When Kimber suggested it, I said, how about we just head straight to the drinking part of the evening and do not pass go, do not collect $200 anywhere near a movie that involves a talking tree. Though at the time, I didn’t know that there was an actual talking tree, I just guessed. In fact the only way she got me to go see the movie was by mentioning the word “Franco”. Because up there with the fervor that I exhibit when speaking of Trader Joe’s and wine, is my interest in European dictators. Which isn’t to say that I agree with totalitarian regimes or facism, or propaganda against an entire group of people based on their religion, creed, or where they purchase their shoes; but for some reason it all fascinates me.

To pinpoint the exact moment that I decided to read up on Mussolini, is something that I’m unaware of. Though I think it was about the same time that I had my mother read Poe to me before bed. I’m assuming 8 or 9 years old. Calling me an odd child, would be putting it mildly. There’s also no reason for it nor did it come from any source. Kind of like the way that I’m obsessed with Congress and can tell the difference between 250 white men over 50. Thinking about it now, it’s the entire history of Europe that I find ridiculously intriguing, especially dictatorships (how it’s possible) and…uh…the House of Bourbon.

In sum: I am weird. So very, weird. And mentioning a dictator will get me to see a movie. A movie, which was a spectacularly weird feat of vivid imagery and violence rolled up into two hours of a talking tree, a puking frog, and a girl who doesn’t know how to fucking listen. Oh and another guy who was the spitting image of Voldemort.

Next up on my tour of oddities: I woke up crying after a ‘nightmare’ that ended with the death of Hugh Laurie.

Crush, redux

January 22, 2007 | Filed under: La Madre

“Gravitation is not responsible for people falling in love.” ~Albert Einstein

My love life is useless for fodder because it is seriously lacking. Something that I won’t even pretend to mind, because being free to sit in my pajamas and eat all the damn granola I please, is something that I appreciate and possibly need. Lest you want to see me involuntarily call someone a dumb fuck, solely out of annoyance. I’m so good at being single that I think I might do so permanently. She says at the tender age of 23 far away from the ticking of a biological clock.

That being said, the crush that I once mentioned has turned into a confusing sordid affair that I am unsure of. For it was completely unexpected but something that I knew was coming for a long time. How am I to resist the charms of a nice adorable southern boy? That is the question I’ve been asking myself for some time now and the answer is that I cannot. I’ve tried and tried again, but I am unable to.

The unfortunate part is that there have been rumors abound about him and more than enough people hate him. But I don’t know I just can’t help myself. Even when he fucks up at the most crucial moments, I still adore him.

So far, so boring and very ‘yadda, yadda, who gives a shit?’ To wit of course, the sordidness stems not only because of his lack of success (Which doesn’t mean that he didn’t want it enough, but shit happens, but still…), but because his brother has been so very successful. Though equally as disliked by many people, including my closest family and friends, he still has that same southern charm and modesty. And now I’m just so…I don’t know. I don’t know which I like better and which I want more, though for now it seems like his brother might be getting the better of me.

Here’s the kicker, the other week I mentioned my longtime love to my father. He told me that not only does he hate the object of my affection, but he also hates his considerably more successful brother. In fact, el padre, hates the entire family, including the mother.

So, what is a girl to do?