Rethink Possible

I'm having to rethink possible right now. Is it possible that AT&T actually has the gall to use this as their slogan? Is it possible that I'm paying premium rates for a phone that only allows me to actually place or receive phone calls and/or texts about 70% of the time? Is it possible for me to rip down every single poster I see with this ad campaign on it and never get caught?

Probably not on that last one, but seriously, I resisted getting a smart phone for years. First of all I didn't want to be THAT available. After all, years of cultivating a man of mystery persona would all go to waste if I suddenly could get three different forms of contact from a device that fits in my pocket. Outside of that, I'm also...oh, how to put this...cheap. Not only am I cheap, I'm poor and cheap. This is a toxic combination when it comes to buying things that aren't necessities. And by necessities, I of course refer to food, clothing and wine. As such, years passed before I got my first cell phone. When I got a cell phone, I needed to be shamed into using text messaging. And finally, once I was a rabid texter, it took years before I cracked and got an iPhone. And by "cracked and got an iPhone," I of course mean got someone to buy me one for my birthday.

In any case, I may have resisted at first, but now I have a freaking iPhone and the fucker doesn't work. Really Apple? Really AT&T? Suck it. Why does it take 5 minutes for my e-mail to "download from the server?" When playing Words with Friends, why does the internet connection constantly time out? When I sit at work in midtown, how is it possible that my phone shows five bars of service and yet does nothing that I pay for it to do? The entire company is in need of cock-punch.

I'm gonna Rethink Possible your ass. And I don't care that that doesn't make sense.

Midwest Peace Talks

I think my general distaste for the midwest at large is well-documented. I'm perfectly happy to live my life keeping the fly-over states just that: flown-over. However, this November, that was unfortunately not an option as my dear friend Dorene got married in her home town of Indianapolis. Dorene is one of those people that keep me from advocating for a mandatory mass-secession for all states that don't directly border an ocean; in fact, I would happily allow the ocean-bordering states to be the ones to secede. I don't care. After all, according to them, we aren't real Americans anyway. Dorene, however, having been born and bred in Indiana and currently living in Texas still manages to be a sane, fun person; she really throws a wrench in my easy stereotyping.

In any case, Dorene was getting married and I was going, so to the midwest I went. I'll just say in general that fun was had, though Vinay didn't enjoy it when I insisted on speaking in a Southern-fried accent as often as possible (despite his warnings, my homage to the locals never caused us to get our asses kicked). However, beyond that, I came back with some information that I think the coastal cities could use.

For one thing, don't emphasize form over function. Dorene had a simple, beautiful wedding cake...and it actually tasted good. I've been to many weddings, and by and large there appears to be a lack of caring about the actual flavor of the dessert. They've ranged from fairly decent to nearly inedible concoctions of dry cake, overly sugary icing and a healthy dose of fondant. Fondant, if you aren't aware, is the substance used to sculpt all of those grandiose elements that you often see on various desserts. It's disgusting. Dorene, however, was smart enough to make the cake look good and not sacrifice the taste. She had three different kinds of cake cooked into that bad boy...THREE! A yellow cake, a red velvet cake and a chocolate mint cake...I can't claim to have tried the first, because honestly who would waste calories eating yellow cake when you have red velvet and chocolate mint available? I'd never thought of a chocolate mint cake, and I hang my head in shame for the oversight...in fact, I'm now thinking about cakes in the flavor of each girl scout cookie. Well, Samoas and Tag-Alongs at least; a Trefoil cake is basically just a yellow cake redux.

Further, I constantly forget that the entire midwest has free refills on all drinks. Apparently, this is common practice all over the country except in New York, but it still shocks me every time I encounter it. In New York, in some restaurants, you can get free refills on coffee and tea, which is probably a result of people generally being afraid of confronting an under-caffeinated population. In Indy (and, rumour has it, everywhere else) you can get refills on anything. Well, anything except liquor; if they offered bottomless glasses of wine, Indianapolis would become a gay travel destination in about 25 seconds. But let me say, it feels positively sinful to have a waiter constantly refill your unsweetened ice tea. You feel like you're getting away with something. And it becomes even more fun when the waiter in question is clearly the only gay in the village and he's staring at your table and everyone sitting at it like they're made out of ham. It gets better, Zach!

However, the most fantastic thing that I found out in the midwest was the fact that grocery stores carry liquor. Not just a small selection of beer. Not a rack or two of local "wine." I'm talking about two complete aisles, fully stocked with enough booze to satisfy the biggest lush this side of the Mississippi. A wine selection from all over the world. Sweet tea flavored vodka. 24-hour service! Needless to say that by the time we were preparing to leave the fair city, the employees over at Kroger's knew us by sight. "Where's the party?" they would ask in wonderment, as we scanned our five bottles of wine through the self-check-out. "Wow, can I come?" one queried as we bought a bottle of vodka. "Again??" one let slip when Vinay returned five minutes later to buy another bottle of vodka after the first one fell out of the bag and broke on the floor of the hotel lobby.

In a side note, I think the few moments directly after breaking that bottle of sweet-tea vodka may be the closest I've ever seen my boyfriend to tears.

Of course, not everything about the midwest is perfect. For one thing, they may have a 24 hour liquor-I-mean-grocery store, but they don't sell ANY booze on Sundays! What!? I mean, I was shocked last week when I found out that I couldn't get a brunch cocktail before noon in New York City, but in Indy there's just a complete ban on it. That might be enough to ruin it's chances as a gay destination right there, even if it did offer bottomless glasses of wine...one doesn't get in between a gaggle of gays and their brunch drinks. But I think the whole trip was a nice step towards reconciliation; I'll no longer call for secession provided the entire section of the country keeps their noses out of my business. And who knows, if they lift that Sunday ban we might even become friends one day.

Divas

I've never thought of myself as a diva-gay, by which I mean a homosexual who is constantly clutching at a non-existent pearl necklace when anyone mentions the name Barbra. This may be because my mother, who has probably shaped my personality more than any other person on this earth, always had a strong distaste for La Streisand, finding her arrogant and unlikable. However, after a recent spate of non-Babs Diva news, I'll be damned if I didn't find myself searching for some pearls once or twice in the past month.

First up, Madonna is opening a line of gyms. Let me say, before I get into this, that Madonna's body is not something I think people should be striving for...frankly, it's a little freaky. It's also completely unattainable to those without enough disposable income to hire a personal chef, a personal trainer and a personal cosmetic surgeon. Further, apparently there are no plans to open one in the US and she's partnering with 24-Hour Fitness, which Derek Jeter has already done. Guess what? I don't care. This is awesome. I mean, let's just get started and say would you rather go to a gym sponsored by Derek Jeter or a gym sponsored by Madonna?

Hold on a minute, back up...are you a straight male? If you answered "yes," why are you reading this blog? Of course you're welcome and we love your beautiful soul, but seriously this is really probably not a place where you're going to get your opinions expressed all that often, and you'll probably be subjected to as many stereotypes as I can heap on you in the course of one post, just to even the score a little bit. That being said, if you're one of those who loves a good laugh and some snark, so be it...join us! But I digress.

Of course you would rather go to a gym sponsored by Madonna! Me too! And this is outside of the fact that I hate the Yankees with a passion that can probably be qualified as genetic. Madonna's gyms will be called Hard Candy Fitness, and it is being claimed that "Madonna's touch will be everywhere." I'm guessing that any gym that is sponsored by Madonna is going to have a lot of touching in a lot of places, particularly in the steam rooms (see, I'll stereotype my own people for a laugh too). How amazing would the greeting be at Hard Candy Fitness? The front desk staff could speak in affected British accents, and dismiss clients as not worth their time. Most gyms strive to be welcoming...HCF could strive to be intimidating. I can picture the ad campaign now...a close-up of Madge's freakishly developed bicep with the tag-line "Sweat, bitches." A picture of her sinewy leg in a leather boot with the tag-line "This boot was made for kicking your ass." A picture of her abs with the tag-line "I've made up my mind. You're losing that food-baby." The possibilities are endless.

Then of course, there's always the upcoming Hollywood blockbuster Burlesque starring...Cher. Omigod, every time I see a preview for this, it's all I can do not to pee a little bit. I was slow in gaining appreciation for Cher; during my childhood gymnastics classes (I was killer on the floor exercise), "If I Could Turn Back Time" would come on and I freely admit that I thought it was sung by a man. Probably until I was in high school. That being said, with the onset of Will & Grace into my consciousness, my Cher-respect grew. Then I saw Moonstruck. And The Witches of Eastwick. And Silkwood. And Mask. You know, I think Cher is a better actress than she is a singer, but above all she is a fantastic entertainer. I cannot wait for this film; whether it's an epic train-wreck or just an epic, it's been announced that Cher will be performing a Dianne Warren-penned ballad "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me," and that's really all I need. There's already been talk of coordinating a bi-coastal viewing party, so I can bask in the glorious camp on display at the same time as my people out in LA. Every time Cher delivers a smack-down to Christina Aguilera, everybody drinks!

In a side-note, all of this Cher love is in no way to imply that I enjoy the song "Believe." Oh, you know it. Don't pretend. It makes my ears bleed.

Finally, I just found out how I will be spending my New Year's Eve: HBO will be premiering Bette Midler's Las Vegas concert "The Showgirl Must Go On" at 9 pm, which means I should be able to curl up with a glass of red wine at 8:55 and be asleep by 11:30, which is my preferred bedtime on December 31st. I find New Year's Eve to be one of the more pointless holidays on the calendar, right up there with Arbor Day, Flag Day and St. Patrick's Day (sorry Erin, love you!). All I can really see it as is an excuse for people to act like drunken idiots and scream a lot, while pretending that this night is some kind of major turning point in their lives. My guess is that if you didn't lose weight/stop smoking/get a job in the previous 364 days of the year, you're probably not going to do suddenly wake up on the 1st filled with unshakable resolve, simply because it's a new year.

Anyway, to avoid such tomfoolery I try to stay away from things like New Year's parties, and instead have a nice quiet evening at home. Last year, I had a glass of red wine and watched Jersey Shore. As enjoyable as I find mocking the dregs of humanity, I am far more excited about having a glass of red wine (hmmm, I spy with my little eye a common denominator) and spending the evening with Bette Midler. I love me some Bette Midler because she has one of the dirtiest senses of humor out there (ever hear her routine with the Sophie Tucker jokes?), she was in Beaches, The First Wives Club, and Hocus Pocus and at one point in her early career she offered to take off her top for a $5,000 pledge during a telethon she was hosting. And she did. Hear that, Janet? That wasn't even a malfunction. That was a full-on wardrobe function. It's Ms. Midler if you're nasty!

It's probably amazing to some people that I'm wrapping up a post entitled "Divas" without mentioning Tina Turner. That's because Tina falls under the term "goddess." Maybe someday I'll write a post called "Goddesses" and talk about Tina, Stevie Nicks and my mother. Who knows, it could happen.

Jin-coming

I assume that I'm not alone in proclaiming that I've never been involved in an international adoption before. In fact, I'm probably not alone in proclaiming that I've never been involved in a domestic adoption before; let's face it, adoption doesn't happen so often that we're all experts. However, on September 29th, my new nephew arrived from Korea and I experienced first hand the lunacy that comes with the arrival of a 13-month old child.

First of all, why the hell would the agency only give the expectant parents notice 48 hours before the baby arrives? I don't know if this is actually the norm for all cases, but giving parents a picture of their child in February, telling them you don't know when their child will be coming home and then giving them two-days notice 9 months later is akin to Wil E. Coyote lighting the fuse on a crate of TNT. You light the fuse. You run behind a rock, plug your ears and think of how delicious flame-broiled Road Runner is going to be. Nothing happens. You sit up inquisitively. You think "How much longer?" You get frustrated. You walk out and stare at the TNT, arms akimbo while impatiently tapping your foot and scowling. And then it explodes in your face.

After the explosion, the immediate aftermath becomes a flurry of activity ranging from baby-proofing, to crib-building, to clothes-buying, the whole time staving off a deadly combination of blind panic and crippling nausea. Family and friends arrive in droves to help, and they are approximately 75% successful, the other 25% of the time offering well-meaning but ill-timed advice on your upcoming blessing.

Once the parents have successfully completed almost a quarter of what they wanted to get done, the day arrives. The agency has said that the baby might need time to adjust, so no one is allowed to visit the new family for a few weeks; instead everyone can go meet him at the airport, since he'll be so overwhelmed by the 15 hour flight that a few dozen more strangers cooing over him won't really cause any more of a meltdown than the one that is already going on. This means that the number of people to greet the baby balloons from two to the low twenties very quickly.

I've only been in a hospital for one birth, and while it wasn't the Waldorf Astoria, there was at least an attempt to make the room comfortable for the family. When greeting an international adoptee, one goes to baggage claim. An anxious group of caucasians eagerly staring at every person exiting customs into the baggage claim area is enough to draw a few odd looks from passengers. Even more scary is what happens when a person exits the plane with a baby that is actually their own; the baby is stared at, measured and dismissed while the mother nervously pushes her child through a group of people that are looking at him like he's made out of ham.

Meanwhile, as more and more people exit the plane, everyone becomes more and more tense (granted, it makes sense that getting a baby through international customs would take a while; it took me an hour to get through customs with a case of wine when I was coming back from Rome). The parents are afraid to go to the bathroom for fear of missing the baby's entrance through the gate. People who have nothing to do with the adoption push through the crowd and try to see gate information. Video cameras run out of batteries after 45 minutes of taping strangers appearing from Korean Air's pseudo-birth canal. Told to expect the appearance of the kid at 3 pm, when 4 pm rolls around everyone's anticipation is at fever pitch.

Finally, at 4:15, a Korean couple appears holding a baby. Who is this Korean couple you wonder? Why, they're a pair of enterprising people who have agreed to ferry the child across the world in exchange for a half-price ticket to New York City. They aren't employees of the agency, they might have no experience with children what-so-ever, but for that 15 hours they're solely responsible for keeping the kid alive so he can get home. They walk up to the parents (clearly having seen a picture of them) and happily hand off their son to them; since they don't speak a word of English, they smile awkwardly and are gone so fast it makes one wonder if they ever really existed at all.

So, standing in the luggage claim at JFK Airport, handicapped passengers shoving their way through the crowd, your family expands by one member, who can't be bothered to wake up from his trans-continental nap. And when he does wake up, he looks around and seems to say "Hey, white people," completely unworried about the fact that he's in a new country. His parents, meanwhile, are so keyed up that his mother decides in the first 13 seconds that he's not breathing (he was) and his father has been suffering a brutal attack of the gout in all four extremities for the past 72 hours. And they're worried about the kid.

Kandi Winters: Bachelorette

If you're anything like me, you might every once in a while wonder about the casting process for reality shows. How do they find these people? Can you imagine what the casting notice for Jersey Shore looked like? Anyway, this niggling question came to a head this past month when my friend Lisa's family made the command decision that she should be the next Bachelorette on ABC's reality hit. Mind you, since the Bachelorette is almost always a popular contestant from The Bachelor, what is really needed is to get Lisa on as a contestant, have America fall in love with her, and then have ABC decide to have her as their next lead. Since Lisa is commonly known as not just a hoot-and-a-half but in fact two full hoots, the family figured once she got on the screen America and ABC would fall in line.

I found out about this little plot a bit later on in the process, but must say that I think it's a genius plan. For one thing, having a friend who's a huge reality star would be fun. Also, while I have never watched a single episode of the show, I'm fairly certain that the leading lady's snarky gay friend would probably get some screen time and I need to beef up my resume.

Lisa was willing to go along with the idea, but (fairly) refused to do all of the work. I volunteered to write her application for her, and hurried over to the ABC website. As I wrote her application, it occurred to me how incredibly generic the questions were...it was like writing a college essay. It also occurred to me how misleading the blandness was; these people didn't want a nice contestant! They wanted someone who would make headlines! Well, I filled out Lisa's application, and I must say that I would cast her on the show (remember: two full hoots!). Then, for fun, I decided to fill out an application for a villain on the show. Someone who could become America's crazy while Lisa became their sweetheart...the Alexis to her Krystle. The Veronica Lodge to her Betty Cooper. The Angelina Jolie to her Jennifer Aniston.

Below, please find the application for Lisa's nemesis on The Bachelor:

Name: Kandi Winters
Do you have a valid passport?: I have 3. Do I need one where I'm pictured?
How did you hear about our search?: Miss Cleo pointed the way. And it only took a minor charge of $226.73 on my last phone bill for her to tell me about it!
You currently work: Hard for the money.
Annual salary: Depends on tips.
What is your highest level of education?: My high school had four floors. I had numerous classes on the top level!
Degree(s)?: Way over 98.6, cause this bitch is hot!!
School(s) attended?: For learning? Lots of teachers are clients!
Are you a legal resident of the United States?: Yes. With dual citizenship in Thailand (CRAZY bachelorette party).
Where did you grow up?: I became a woman in the backseat of my high school boyfriend's car. With my high school boyfriend's best friend.
Have you ever been arrested, charged or convicted of a crime?: Yes, yes and no. Never convicted.
If so, please give details and dates: Let's just say I think the police arrest me just so they have a story to tell at the dinner table.
Have you ever had a temporary restraining order issued against you?: Not temporary.
If so, please give details and dates: Kid Rock's a pussy.
Have you ever filed for bankruptcy or Chapter 11?: No, but my ex did after I was done.
If yes, please explain: I took that bug-fucker for every cent he had and left him with the clap.
Have you ever been a performer, participant or contestant on television, radio or film?: Just direct-to-DVD softcore. And my boobs have radically changed since then.
If yes, please explain: ...I took the low-lights to some high-beams. Duh.
Do you drink alcoholic beverages?: Is a clam's ass water-tight?
Have you ever been married?: See above.
If yes, how many times?: Three times. One man.
If you have been married, why are you no longer together?: First time, domestic abuse (female on male). Second time, adultery (couldn't prove it). Third time, gave him the clap (see above).
How long have such marriage(s) been legally dissolved?: Depends on which state you ask. And I'm not entirely clear on the laws in Thailand.
Are you genuinely looking to get married?: Of course, getting married is great! It's marriage that sucks.
Why would you want to find your spouse on our TV show?: Well, I gave Jake Pavelka a spin a few months ago, and the guy's a total butt-pirate. I figure you owe me one.
How many serious relationships have you been in?: 3 marriages, 2 sponsors and a partridge in a pear tree.
What happened to end those relationships?: See above for the marriages. I realized 12-Step Programs are for people who couldn't hold their liquor or are afraid of a mild STD. And I still have my partridge.
What is the unique talent of which you are most proud?: I'm naturally immune to Rohypnol.
Do you have any tattoos? If yes, what and where?: 4. Lower back, arm, back of the neck and left boob. I used to have 5, but I lost one while I was in Thailand (you seriously would not believe this bachelorette party).
What accomplishment are you most proud of?: The most popular drink in Thailand is named after me: the Twisted Winter. It's like a Long Island Iced Tea, but not so watered down.
Why haven't you found the man of your dreams?: I have. As stated above, Kid Rock's a pussy.
Anything else you would like to say?: I feel like this goes without saying, but I have quite a fan-base in Thailand. Is The Bachelor(ette) shown there? Because I feel like I'm capable of giving you a ratings bump in central Asia.

Obviously, if Kandi actually existed she would have been the subject of a reality show already. Most likely on E!, and scheduled as the follow-up to some train wreck reality show like Denise Richards: It's Complicated, or some Kardashian nonsense. That being said, I would really love for Lisa to have a nemesis like Kandi when she becomes a reality star. No one makes America love someone like uniting in hatred. That, after all, is how Dubya got re-elected.

My Boyfriend, His Ambien and Me

"If you close your eyes, it feels like you're in a room of small little porcelain tigers."

"It's like a candy story in here. Right now you're like chocolate pie."

"Let me cuddle with you...are those your balls?"

It's statements like these, proclaimed with the assurance of Dubya with a "Mission Accomplished" sign behind him, that let me know when my boyfriend has popped an Ambien. Vinay warned me early on that sometimes, when he has sampled his favorite sleep-aid, he does things like write an e-mail which tailed off into nonsense, or decide to reorganize his ramekin collection (yes, he has enough ramekins to qualify as a "collection"). However, I wasn't prepared for the speechifying at 1 AM.

I would like to take this opportunity to make it perfectly clear that I'm not complaining. In fact, I find it so amusing that if I'm feeling blue, I might take to crushing up a pill and sprinkling it over Vinay's ice cream before we go to bed just to give myself a good chuckle. I hate going to bed depressed.

In any case, not only do I find it amusing, Vinay only makes it worse when he acts insulted in the face of my glee. As I frantically type direct quotes into my phone, he calls me out for being mean, or tries to tackle me back into the bed. He's usually coherent enough to realize that I'm laughing at him, but not enough to stop the deliciously hazy bon mots from tumbling out of his mouth.

"They're trying to keep me off the team!" he once spouted.

"Who is?" I asked innocently.

"Those BITCHES!" he snarled.

Cue the boneless collapse, face-down into one pillow, while I attempt to smother my hysterics with the other. Please insert the "pillow-biting" joke of your choice here.

My relationship with other people on substances that I'm haven't partaken of is something I first encountered in college. I can remember when people would walk into acting class clutching their morning coffee to them like a frightened mother, and thinking "Man I wish I didn't hate coffee so much. They look so happy together!" I would periodically try coffee, and could never wrap my head around people's love of it. In fact, I've never really understood the idea of an "acquired taste" on a basic level. How does one acquire a taste? I personally think that salmon tastes like unwashed gym socks with a piscine twist...I don't foresee a time in the future where I will magically become enamored of the vile stuff.

As jealous as I was of coffee-lovers, I've still not really developed a relationship with it. Sure, when Starbucks started putting out those delicious blended frappuccinos I acted like a tween at a Justin Bieber concert, but we all know that those things are way more milk shake than coffee. And who doesn't love a milk shake? Particularly when they come with the extra on the side, and just send the calorie count beyond anything even remotely justifiable, becoming a delicious way to completely destroy the benefits of any gym visits you may or may not have made in the preceding days. With a dollop of whip cream on top. But I digress.

Coffee isn't the only substance I see people enjoying that I've never grown to love. In fact, I've never even tried a cigarette. I've never smoked up, or out, or whatever the hell the proper terminology is. In fact, looking back, I've missed a lot of opportunities to make bad decisions with mind-altering substances. I blame the movie Straight Up, which is completely unrelated to the Paula Abdul hit, I was forced to watch in middle-school health class. Starring future homo Chad Allen, the movie depicted a young lad who travels to magical land via something called The Fate Elevator, where he encounters anthropomorphized versions of different drugs like marijuana and cocaine. The Fate Elevator is manned by Louis Gossett Jr., who sings a song whose lyrics I remember to this day ("Take the elevator up...and close the gate! This is the ride that will decide your fate!") while wearing what appears to be a a cast-off costume from a high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. He gives Chad a magical headband to protect him from all the different drugs, and it's usually at this point when I tell people about this that they start to really think I'm making it up. While I'm flattered that my imagination is given such respect, I promise you that I'm not. If right-wingers ever got a hold of this film, they could mount a credible case that you can actually identify the moment that turns Chad Allen gay: I, personally, think it's when Booze and Miss Pot perform a screeching duet entitled "Give Me That Headband," though I suppose the a case could be made for it being right as Louis Gossett Jr. starts to get him dancing in the elevator. This classic VHS is available for buy at Amazon.com. I just checked.

Anyway, the upshot of this is that after all these years of clean living, I'm truly tempted to take an Ambien and see what hallucinating is like. After all the amusement I've gotten from him, Vinay probably deserves getting to listen to me ramble on for a few minutes about things that make no sense.

"I see a village of houses. They have green roofs, and the normal ones are moving like they're on a train."

"What do you mean 'the normal ones'?"

"We're in a bird apiary!"

"Isn't an apiary for bees?"

"That's why I said it was for BIRDS."

"Ah. Of course."

"PARROTS."

I mean, you can't write this shit.

Zen and the Art of (Not) Getting Fired

So I turned 30 this month. That probably means that this post should be all about how my youth is slipping through my fingers, and that I can feel the cold touch of death causing the hairs on my neck stand on end, but frankly, I kind of enjoyed turning the big 3-0. There was a fantastic party, and Adam and Josh flew a total of 6,000 miles between them to be there, which is approximately (on a scale of 1 to 10) how happy I was to see those two California defectors. However, if you weren't there I don't want to make you jealous by describing it in detail; suffice it to say that if I can ever successfully upload it to Facebook, there is a three-and-a-half minute performance of "Proud Mary" that I think would do Tina...well, proud.

Moving on, far more delicious is my continued quest to get canned from the hotel. This is not only my fondest wish, but has now spread to my entire department; we're currently working at approximately 30% efficiency, and regularly leaving our shifts one to two hours early. We're on the carousel of life, and we keep trying to grab that big brass ring called unemployment and missing it by inches. As I'm sure everyone knows, you can't just quit to get unemployment, you need to be fired. And you need to be fired in such a way that your employer can't claim just cause. This leads to a lot of passive resistance when one is looking to get the axe; you can't do something that you would really want to do, like urinate on the germophobic GM's desk after-hours or hauling off and kicking the slutty HR director square in the baby-maker. As satisfying as these things may be, they won't result in a weekly check from the government. Instead, you have to walk the tightrope of irritating everybody to the point of blind fury, but never, ever do anything that could actually be considered a fire-able offense. It reminds me of the way that my father can walk into the kitchen and get my mother to throw him out in about 15 seconds flat by doing almost nothing. The man is an artist.

Luckily, when trying to find an angle to do something like this, we felt we had an advantage: the rampant stupidity of the people we were trying to hose. They provided us with what we felt was a perfect opportunity, the details of which I won't get into here. Let me just say they wanted us to sign something that basically had us relinquish our right to be paid out our vacation time if we resign or were fired with cause. We felt that we shouldn't have to sign it, as our vacation time is earned; they bullied the rest of their employees into signing and we prepared to make a stand. The air in the department was thick with the stench of opportunity; the promise of a summer spent unemployed lounging on the beach was dangling in front of our collective faces like the proverbial carrot, and we were all showing just a touch of drool at the side of our mouths. We could taste victory...and we liked the flavor.

Once, they asked us to sign. We quietly ignored them. Again, they asked. Again, we ignored. They threatened our boss, and told him that he had to get us to sign it. We responded with a letter saying that we wouldn't be signing, and that they should leave our boss out of it. They called a meeting with all of us together. We calmly said that they could do whatever they wanted to us, but we weren't signing the policy. At this point, the executive office was abuzz with frustration. The useless HR Director called us up to her office to plead with us to sign it, frantic that she was going to catch hell for allowing it to get as far as it did. The gnome-like General Manager stalked around the hotel spouted off ridiculous statements like "There's an INSURRECTION in Reservations!!" Gleefully, we celebrated in our department, sure in our knowledge that we had them cornered. They couldn't NOT fire us after forcing the hands of every other employee in the hotel, and we were certain we had poked the sleeping lion enough that the GM wouldn't care if firing us would probably bring the whole operation crashing down; his pride and temper would take care of that. And when our unemployment claims went through, he could spend his time in his office chewing on his own liver.

Alas, we celebrated too soon. Somehow, someway, someone on the executive committee realized that they couldn't make us sign anything...I suspect one of those gibbering idiots finally called an attorney, who said something along the lines of "What are you, a complete fucking moron!?" Ultimately, we received a letter from the HR Director stating that even though we refused to sign the memo, we were still subject to the policy. That was that. There was no going down in a blaze of glory. No final middle finger to throw as we were escorted out of the hotel. The fact that, ultimately, we had won the argument was cold comfort indeed.

As Icarus taught us, when one flies too close to the sun, the fall from grace is tragic. In fact, if given the opportunity, there probably would have been a mass flinging of ourselves into the sea if we could have mustered the strength to get ourselves to the pier. The failure of our grand scheme to elicit a department-wide cleanse has sent us into a downward spiral of ennui, which has (if possible) decreased our production even further. And in the midst of this fog of boredom and soulless monotony, I received the following news:

I'm Employee of the Month.

I'm now going to sign off and repeatedly bang my head on a desk. Scratch that, can't hurt the money-maker. I'm going to sign off and drink heavily. Yes, that sounds better.

Bediquette

There are a lot of rules of behavior floating around that completely baffle me. For instance, I don't understand why an invitation to a wedding obligates me to get a gift for someone if I choose not to go. Isn't the rule that you should buy a wedding gift to make up for the exorbitant amount of money that they've spent on your dinner? Well, they aren't buying me dinner, so I don't see why I should buy them a present. This goes double for any kind of baby or wedding shower, which are (in my somewhat limited experience) black holes for people to just throw money into. However, for all of the rules of etiquette that are useless, there appear to be large areas where there is no established guidelines.

I've been dating Vinay for about three months now. Things are going well, but there is one area where we just can't seem to see eye-to-eye: going to sleep. I first realized that we might be heading for a rocky future when, on one of the first nights we spent together, there was a rainstorm. My reaction was "Hooray!" His reaction was "Ah, crap!" I curled up, happily listening to the rain hit the air conditioner outside...Vinay put in his ear plugs in a vain attempt to drown out same. I routinely hope for rain while I'm trying to sleep...I practically have a Pavlovian response when a thunderstorm hits. "Crack!" goes the thunder, "snore!" goes Paul. Vinay, on the other hand, lives in fear. A drizzle will make him tense. A steady rain is worth a night's sleep. Give him a thunderstorm, and he's speed-dialing the pharmacy in hopes of some Ambien. We've managed to work through this little disparity...though the constant use of noise-deadening ear stoppers has caused some conversations to end with the statement "Take out your ear plugs. TAKEOUTYOUREARPLUGS!!!"

However, while we prefer different levels of white noise while trying to sleep, there are deeper issues that I think Miss Manners might want to weigh in on. For instance, I'm a warm person. I don't mean that I'm friendly to strangers (we all know that's a laugh), I mean that on any given day my body radiates heat at the approximate level of a white dwarf star. This means that a) I have EXTREMELY low tolerance for any kind of added heat around my person, and b) should I be over-heated, it's in all people's best interest to clear the area until I cool off. Hose me down if necessary...get out the hose like I'm going into County, I don't care, just bring an end to the droplets of sweat sliding down my back as fast as possible. Vinay, unfortunately, has a much lower natural temperature. Some people claim that his temperature is more "normal" than mine, but those are probably the people who say inane things like "cold hands, warm heart." More like "cold hands, sub-par circulation, why don't you get some gloves?" But I digress.

Since our internal temperatures don't match we have quite the problem when trying to sleep, which can be boiled down to a simple statement. My boyfriend likes to cuddle and I don't. Vinay would cuddle all night if he could; he's Snuggleupagus. Unfortunately, he had he bad judgment to enter into a relationship with me, and I'm perfectly happy to pretend the person physically closest to me when I'm sleeping is on a separate bed. In Siberia. What are the rules for this dilemma? Surely if someone will tell me that I have a year to send out thank-you notes after a wedding (and, honestly, who came up with that? I call bullshit), someone has thought to address this issue. And yet, I can find no assistance. As for now, Vinay has yielded the fight. Perhaps mainly because he doesn't enjoy going to sleep next to his boyfriend, and waking up next to someone that would probably most closely be described as a nasty, vicious bastard who would shank Mother Teresa for one good blast of air conditioning.

We went to Chicago for a weekend, and our sleeping issues came to a head in the Windy City. Friday night came around, and Vinay had indulged in a bit more wine than I had that night. Hence, when the time came to fall asleep, I was prepared to gently drift off in a red wine-induced haze; Vinay was prepared to pass out in a red wine-induced coma. Cut to about 4 am, when I awoke and needed to use the restroom. However, I had more pressing matters, as I found myself with the top 25% of my body completely off the bed, and my 6-inches-taller-than-me boyfriend sprawled on top of me. I really can't be sure if this was a case of snuggling gone wrong or pure, unadulterated ignorance of my presence, but regardless, it woke me up. When you open your eyes and see nothing but floor in front of your face it's a bit jarring.

I quickly took stock of the situation and realized two things. One, I was completely pinned, and could see no way to free my hands to gain any kind of leverage. And two, when I politely told him to move so I could get back on the bed, he didn't hear me because HE WAS WEARING EAR PLUGS. After letting out a string of curses that probably should have scorched the carpet, I resorted to trying to inch my way back on the bed enough that I could get my hands free and heave my still-dead-asleep beau off of me. I can only imagine that I looked like a turtle flipped onto it's back. A few squirms later, I managed to clear enough mattress to give a good heave, and the sleeping angel flopped over onto his back, giving me enough space to get my full body back on to solid bed. Relieved, I slid backwards and prepared to get up to use the bathroom.

Unfortunately, my slide back was enough to cause a Snuggleupagus attack. Upon contact, his subconscious mind reacted and decided to spoon. One moment I was relieved not be teetering on the edge of a face-plant, the next I was right back where I started, flattened in a precarious position. And I still had to pee. I adjusted my strategy and tried to wiggle forward, out from underneath, and this time had a hand free to keep me from eating floor. Once I got loose, I hoped that Vinay would readjust while I relieved myself. Luckily, when I got back to bed a patch of pillow had opened up and I quickly claimed it, firmly ensconcing myself onto the bed again.

Now, I realize that Vinay is not to blame in this scenario. He was, after all, unconscious. That being said, as anyone who has ever lived with me will tell you, screwing around with my sleep is not the best way to put me into a friendly mood. The following morning, he awoke a bit before I did, and tentatively reached across the de-militarized zone that I requested be kept between us at all costs while asleep. He touched my shoulder and I jerked away from him so violently he probably thought he had electrocuted me. He scooted closer in an attempt to get in a morning snuggle, and I whipped around and faced him in the fetal position. "That's not a good cuddling position..." he offered. "I know!" I snarled back, with all the charm of a rabid wolverine. Understandably a bit bewildered at his reception, he retreated and allowed me to exhaust my morning venom before attempting to speak again.

After I was awake, I explained to him what had happened the night before, all of which was complete news to him. My two valiant struggles for freedom, the cursing, the yelling about earplugs...nothing had registered. Luckily, he has a sense of humor and didn't take my morning impression of a vengeance demon personally. We have a few temporary solutions for our temperature differential, including me sleeping atop the covers while he's underneath, but the basic problem continues. And the question remains...when and where will Snuggleupagus strike again?

Sharing is Scaring

Many people like to say "sharing is caring." I would like to qualify that statement, because as anyone who's been caught in the middle of a nasty couples' spat can tell you, there is most definitely something as too much sharing. Sharing some things, such as chocolate, wine or money is certainly very caring, while sharing other things such as unsolicited opinions, herpes or religion...not so much. Not every situation is as clear-cut at brownies and STDs, but I for one would really appreciate it if everyone at the work place took a "less is more" stance.

A few weeks ago, it came to my attention that a co-worker had lost her husband. Let's just surge past that uncomfortable moment and get down to specifics: while I have worked in the same hotel as this woman for over three years now, we are in separate departments. Contact is minimal, and the odd conversation usually has a forced congeniality to it, largely because the woman in question is the kind of person who will corner you somewhere to tell you the story of her latest pap smear. So when I heard of her loss, I calmly waited until our path crossed, and expressed my sympathy and hoped against hope that that would be the end of it. Well. It wasn't.

It seems like this poor woman had simply been bursting with the need to unload some gory details about her late spouse on someone, and my innocent offer of condolences was all the permission she needed. A few minutes after we first spoke, I received a phone call, asking if I could help fax some papers for her. I agreed and she appeared in the office in a trice, complaining that the fax machine in her department was malfunctioning. One look at those papers explained the technological issue: they looked like they had been crumpled into a tiny ball and sat on for the last decade. My colleague Melissa helpfully grabbed the papers, and started the extremely long process of trying to make them fax machine workable, which left me to converse with the bereaved.

It took only a moment for the widow to launch into her story. First up was the explanation of what we were faxing: turns out that her stepdaughters had filed an injunction against her two hours after the passing of their father, attempting to keep her from receiving any money. Usually the start of a story like this would be like cat-nip to me, but sitting at work trying to do some very important loafing, it just wasn't striking my fancy. I mumbled some half-interested platitudes, trying to send the loudest "I'm REALLY busy" vibes I could. She was having none of it, and plunged forward. I glanced at Melissa and saw that, at this point, she had only managed to force through the first page of the fax, and was attempting to smooth out another for feeding.

The next little tidbit to be revealed involved the gentleman's ex-wife, who it turns out was a racist who routinely referred to his Jewish second wife as a "k*ke." She decided that after his untimely demise, she wanted his ashes. Racist First Wife offered to take Jewish Second Wife over to the Diamond District and buy her any necklace she wanted with a locket at the end. Then she could put a few of her husband's ashes in that receptacle and Racist First Wife would take the rest. This would be the time for a joke about dangling the Diamond District as the carrot for a Jew, but I think it actually just writes itself. At this point, I could no longer maintain my facade of ennui, and Melissa could no longer act as if nothing of note was going on while she struggled with our ancient fax machine. Hence, we were both fully tuned in for the final act.

It seems that the Evil Stepdaughters swooped in and took over the funeral planning, despite the widow's protestations. Made to feel like a guest at her own husband's funeral, not given the chance to eulogize him, she went home to discover that her stepdaughters had actually claimed that their father wasn't even married to the banks in order to freeze his accounts. This was the straw that broke the proverbial camel's back...despite being the height of awkwardness, I couldn't look away. I fervently wished for a popcorn and a fountain soda (can we all just agree that fountain soda is AWESOME??), because as far as I was concerned this was better than a movie.

Fed up with the treatment she was receiving, our widow decided to play the trump card. Having sat on some information for the past 15 years of marriage, she decided that turnabout was fair play, called up Racist First Wife and calmly informed her that while in his first marriage their mutual husband had maintained a relationship with a black woman, with whom he had produced two sons. A few moments of silence passed. Then pandemonium.

This is the kind of shit that networks save for May sweeps. It's the kind of plot twist that intelligent viewers roll their eyes at, and say "No one actually HAS a second family! That is RIDICULOUS! Jump the shark much?" Only in this case, it's real, and it was happening in front of my face at work. I couldn't even enjoy it anymore, it was just too weird and awkward that I was finding out about it at all. Luckily, Melissa managed to wrestle the final page through the fax machine at that moment, and hurriedly handed over the confirmation. One quick showing of the death certificate later (yes, I've officially seen my first death certificate), and our storyteller was gone as quickly as she arrived, with this final bon mot:

"I've started a Facebook group with his other family, so people can hear! Check it out!"

This is most definitely in the category of sharing too much. It's just a little example, but I think it's safe to say that if your story involves the distribution of a spouse's ashes, the freezing of bank accounts or the revelation of a second family you should probably just keep that to your A-list friends. That way your family secrets won't be splattered all over the internet on a co-worker's blog...unless, of course, you choose to start a Facebook group detailing them.

La-La Land

There are times where I struggle with what to write about. Then there are the times when the entry for the month really just writes itself...let me begin by saying in March I went to LA.

Now, almost every New York resident has an opinion about LA. The fact that the vast majority of us have never even been there really doesn't concern us; we know in our bones that it's an inferior urban sprawl good for Mexican food, bottle-blondes and little else. My personal opinion has been softened by both the large number of friends I have living there, and the knowledge that, should my "acting career" ever take-off, I would be required to spend a significant amount of time there. So I went to visit Brooke, Adam and company on the west coast and let me tell you, New Yorkers: we can be as arrogant as we like, but you cannot beat the weather. Also, if you fly out on Jet Blue, you might be treated to the amazing flight attendant that I had who sniped at someone in the bitchiest way possible to "Speak up! I can't hear you!" which had me giggling like a Catholic schoolgirl not wearing panties on a windy day. If I could have tipped him for it, I would have.

While in LA, I did many things. Most revolved around a strict schedule of get drunk, sleep, repeat, which is similar to lather, rinse, repeat but is much more expensive and somewhat less hygienic. However, without a doubt the most ridiculous thing I did was go for an overnight stay in a little town called Solvang about two hours north of the city. Thursday we piled into Brooke's car and the two of us set out for our destination, which it just so happens is situated directly in the heart of wine country. Brooke suggested it because a) she understands my sense of humor, b) she shares my sense of humor and c) we both REALLY like wine.

Solvang, as it turns out, is a town that sprang up from a Dutch settlement. Now when I say the term Dutch settlement, please don't confuse this town with, say, New York which sprang up from a Dutch settlement in the 1600's. Solvang was founded in 1911 which means that the Dutch "settled" a piece of land that had been part of the United States for more than 50 years. And let me tell you, I will go to my grave believing that Susan Harris, the creator of The Golden Girls visited Solvang while she was writing the pilot script and that the town inspired Rose Nylund's hometown of St. Olaf, Minnesota. I was half-expecting to be offered Eggs Gerfloofen for breakfast and invited to The Festival of the Dancing Sturgeons. Basically, Solvang looks like a Hans Christian Anderson storybook exploded all over it and no one bothered to clean up. There are windmills. Almost every store has a reference to Copenhagen, vikings or both. I was actually surprised I saw no one in a pair of wooden clogs.

One of the places that Brooke and I visited was a small shop called the Jule Hus (pronounced, if I'm not mistaken, as Yule House). The Jule Hus is a delightful corner store devoted entirely to the sale of Christmas paraphernalia. When we walked in we were greeted by the dulcet sound of Christmas carols...in March. Now, you might be thinking "A whole SHOP dedicated to Christmas ornaments and the like? That's crazy! There aren't enough things to make ornaments out of to make a whole store's inventory for the actual holiday season, let alone year-round!" Which is exactly what I was thinking...and let me tell you, we're all wrong. As it turns out, the owners of the Jule Hus are not fettered by such considerations as having their decorations actually have anything to do with Christmas. Instead, it looks like they basically walked into an episode of Hoarders, picked up as much crap as they could, threw on some glitter and a tree hook and slapped a price tag on it. Among some of the ornaments that we discovered: a zebra dressed as a referee (complete with whistle), a mechanic holding a tire (with extremely red lips, which led us to believe that the mechanic both female and a lesbian), a 3-D rendering of a Norman Rockwell painting with a child preparing to receive an injection (in the butt, which it's worth noting was rendered anatomically correct with a small crack peeking out of the top of his jeans) and a miniature Coke can (just for the taste of it). Needless to say, the adventure was crowned the moment when, while handling a 12-inch tall model of Santa, I caught my first glimpse of an employee: an elderly woman, dressed in traditional Dutch garb. Picture an over-sized, poofy white blouse under a bright blue dress, with colorful stitching to bring some excitement. I dropped Santa, and needed to give myself a time-out.

After our holiday adventures, Brooke and I got dinner; since Solvang is a small town, everything closes at approximately sunset, which left us with nothing to do but retire to our room at The Royal Copenhagen Inn and start into the various and sundry bottles we had purchased. It's important to note that, because of our early dinner we didn't real feel much of the first bottle. However, neither Brooke or I are particularly known for our high alcohol tolerance...once we got through about half of the second, things were looking considerably more hazy. We ended up watching The Marriage Ref on NBC...take it from us, host Tom Papa's laugh is so irritating you can't even pay attention to the completely unqualified celebrities offering questionable advice. We decided to practice a few songs for karaoke the following evening, offering our renditions such classics as "Does He Love You" and "Bad Romance," and yet somehow managed to not garner a noise complaint. We dove into a third bottle with gusto and somewhere around 3/4 of the way through with that drunkenly passed out in our beds at 1 o'clock in the morning.

At approximately 3 AM in the morning, I woke up having to use the bathroom. I can't say exactly what my decision making process was at that point, but suffice it to say that the idea that there was a bathroom in our hotel room did not cross my mind. Wearing pair of gym shorts and nothing else, I blithely walked out of our room into the 45 degree night, onto the second floor balcony. I wandered around for a moment or two, quite frustrated that the inconsiderate architect of the building had not made the public bathroom obvious. I couldn't say how quickly I realized that there was an easier way for me to take care of business...I'm going to be generous and say it took about 15 seconds. Deep down, I'm pretty sure it was closer to a minute. However, even this realization didn't faze me...rather than having a moment of "Oh, hell, what am I doing," I calmly returned to the room and found that by some miracle the door was open. I walked back in, did my business and passed out. The whole event was so common to me that when I woke up I wasn't even 100% sure it had actually happened which led me to a realization: while I enjoy being jaded about most things, I'm not certain that stumbling around drunk and mostly naked is something I would like to be blasé about. I feel like it leads to headlines and sex tapes.

After we returned from Solvang, our adventures continued. I sang karaoke, which is something I only do under the influence of a great deal of liquid courage. I ended up doing "Midnight Train to Georgia," though I sometimes forgot that I was supposed to be Gladys Knight and would slide into the role of a Pip. Brooke and I went to go see Cats, which had been the first musical for both of us many years ago. Turns out that Cats is not only a bad musical (which we knew), but is also chock-full of sexual imagery, including a feline orgy to round out the first act (which we did not). And ultimately, I landed in NYC out $600 as a charge for my own rampant stupidity, since I apparently can't tell the difference between March 21st and April 18th when booking a return flight. And making that reservation is pretty much the only thing in this whole post that I did stone-cold sober. You can draw your own conclusions from that...I'm going to choose to believe that I'm meant to have a delicious bottle of wine with me at all times. Even when not on vacation.

I Heart NY

February, the month of the dreaded Valentine's Day. I know what you're all thinking: this is going to be an onslaught of bitchery at the level of Alexis Carrington on two hours of sleep and a heavy-flow day. Well, here's a surprising little piece of trivia for you...Valentine's Day doesn't bother me all that much. I know, it's supposed to be the day that all of us single people cry into our wine/ice cream/pornography, wondering where our love might be hiding. However, thanks to my time in the service industry, I've become completely jaded to the entire event. Ask almost any waiter and they'll tell you: Valentine's Day is depressing because it's the day that couples who should no longer be together celebrate their love. It's the event in which people who haven't said "I love you" for the past 364 days realize they've been lax, and decide to say "I LOVE YOU!!!" so loudly and often that they can get away with not saying it for another year. As far as I'm concerned, there are a million wonderful ways to tell someone you love them...these ways do not include dinner reservations, a brownie in the shape of a heart or a pre-fixe menu.

So this Valentine's Day was okay for me; I made cookies and danced to Tina Turner, which is pretty much guaranteed to put me in a good mood. And I started thinking about my life, and I decided that I'm actually pretty happy with it (don't worry, this short foray into rainbows, flowers and lollipops will be short-lived). And I thought about why I'm happy, and one of the reasons I came up with was "I live in New York!" Which is kind of awesome. I mean, not only because it means that I don't live in a fly-over state, or the suburbs, or the tenth circle of hell, but because I feel like after 11 and a half years here I can finally claim to be a New Yorker.

What makes one a New Yorker? I believe it's said that you have to live here for 10 years before you can call yourself a true New Yorker. However, I think there's something a little more difficult about being a true denizen of this city than simply managing to survive a decade living here. So I present to you, in no particular order, some of the reasons that I think that I'm a New Yorker.

I think that I'm a New Yorker because I was walking down the street yesterday, and I saw a man standing by a building, slightly hunched over, and I immediately assumed that he was urinating. There really are a million reasons that someone would have pulled over on the sidewalk...he could be texting, or reading a map (though we all know that people who need maps in New York generally aren't intelligent enough to get the hell out of the way while they use them), or trying to find his Metrocard. But do I think that's what he was doing? No, I think he's taking a moment out of his busy day to take a public leak on a freezing February morning in broad daylight. This is not normal. This implies that not only have I seen men pissing publicly, but that I've seen so many that I've actually become jaded to it and now treat it as, if not really a classy thing to do, at least something that doesn't give me much pause on Tuesday at 7 am. By the way, as I walked past, I noticed that he wasn't actually draining the main vein, he was walking one of those white, poofy, drop-kick dogs. It was so small I didn't see it until I actually passed him. How someone can feel even remotely masculine when walking a dog that could pull off the name "Fifi McFabulous" is completely beyond me.

I think that I'm a New Yorker because I know that in the Times Square subway station, right by the Grand Central Shuttle platform, there's a cell phone hot-spot where you can get reception to shoot off a quick "I'm late!" text message. Not in the "I'm late...and pregnant!" way...the other way. Look, I have no desire for cell phones to get reception on trains. Can you imagine the inane, shouted conversations that you would be subjected to if the general populace had the ability to get on the phone while on a noisy subway?

Representative of the General Populace: "Oh my God, I was like, I don't know, but I tried to call him and his phone went to voice mail, and I didn't know what to say, so I was like I'll just text him, but then I went to text him and realized that I didn't know his name, because I just put him in my phone as "Hot Guy," and I wasn't paying attention to his voice mail message, so I didn't get his name from that, so I was going to call him back so I could hear his name, but I don't know, what if he sees that I called him, like, twice in 30 seconds, and then he'll think I'm like a stalker or something, and I don't want that because I really like him, so like don't be mad, but would you call him for me and listen to his voice mail message and let me know what his name is, so I can text him, because I think he would make a really good boyfriend!"
Me: {takes out gun, shoots RotGP, looks around expectantly for a thank you}

Suffice it to say, I don't think anyone wants that. However, despite my happiness with the lack of cell phone reception underground, there are times when the ability to contact the outside world is more than appreciated. Granted, it's usually appreciated "because of an earlier incident," or "due to train traffic ahead" but nevertheless...appreciated. Just last week I was running to a table read, and "due to a sick passenger" (GROAN! SERIOUSLY!?) my train was delayed. I aimed for Times Square, shot off a quick text message and hopped on the shuttle. I was still 15 minutes late, but at least no one was surprised.

I think I'm a New Yorker because I appreciate intelligent graffiti, and conversely am disgusted by the moronic. I wonder if any taste for graffiti comes from having a freshman roommate who was a graffiti "artist"...but then I think about the fact that I didn't much like him and I doubt it. In fact, one day I will write a post about my freshman year roommates called 'The Witch, The Communist and Me" and I can get deeper into this whole tangent, but as a short appetite-whetter, let me say that one of them was a graffiti-artist and the other one admitted to watching me while I slept. Worst. Year. Sleeping. Ever. In any case, as I wander through New York, I find myself really enjoying clever graffiti. Obviously, this whole month was rife with promotions for the movie Valentine's Day, which, if you don't know, featured just about actor in Hollywood this side of Dakota Fanning. At the bottom of a poster, which listed something around 15 movie stars, someone scrawled "And a partridge in a pear tree!" I found this amusing. On a poster for It's Complicated someone wrote "Sophie's Next Choice!" Again, amusing with a nice pop culture reference. On the other hand, drawing male genitalia on the little girl who's on the poster for Jackie Chan's The Spy Next Door...that's just sophomoric.

I think I'm a New Yorker because I now prefer barren trees covered in LED lights to a good old-fashioned Christmas tree to get me in the holiday spirit. In fact, most of the time, I simply find the suddenly numerous displays of evergreens to be a real imposition upon a sidewalk that is already crowded with tourists, Greenpeace representatives seeing if you have a moment for them to guilt you into pledging $20 a month and the homeless. The sudden abundance of coniferous trees everywhere, while it does do something to mask the natural urban musk of the big city, is really simply too much for New York's spatial limitations. Not to mention the fact that it's impossible to actually remove all the stray needles from your house before the vernal equinox. I'm convinced that pine needles are the at the root of the "spring cleaning" craze. I vastly prefer my simple, bare trees, so drowned in lights that they look like holiday glow sticks speckling the avenues of New York. Even better if there's a fresh snow, which makes every corner look like an entrance into Narnia...I half expect a timid faun to greet me as I pass underneath, or an albino woman to ride by on a sledge tempting schoolchildren with Turkish delight.

I think I'm a New Yorker because I have way more use for a ""Bullshit-o-meter" and a "You'reAFuckingMoron-o-meter" than an odometer. I think I'm a New Yorker because I get irritated when TV and movies try to make other cities look like New York. And, most of all, I think I'm a New Yorker because I believe that thinking I'm a New Yorker warrants an entire posting on my blog.

Karma Chameleon

I don't do much charity work. In an effort to get me to meet more people, my mother suggested a few years ago that maybe I should volunteer; I considered it, but then remembered that I find the majority of people to be as irritating as raspy toilet paper, and rejected the idea out of hand. However, a few months ago, my friend Lisa came to me with another idea: the Cycle for Survival. Basically, she wanted to participate in a charity cycling event to raise money for cancer. I agreed to join the team, thinking that this would be a nice thing to do and a good way to earn some karma points for the next time I tell someone that they are a pointless waste of time and oxygen, and should do everyone a favor and have themselves gelded to be certain they produce no progeny. I sent out my fund-raising letter (by the way, thanks to everyone who contributed! And for those of you that didn't, don't worry, I'm sure they don't really mean it when they say every little bit helps; cancer's barely a problem anymore), I cleared my schedule and when the day arrived, I got up at the butt-crack of dawn and rode an indoor bicycle for two hours. The experience itself was fun, but the expected karmic reward has been wanting.

First of all, ABC went ahead and canceled Ugly Betty. I wasn't surprised...after basically holding the series' head underwater for the better part of a year, I couldn't really be shocked when the suits finally put a bullet right between the eyes. However, while I understand the business reasons for the move, I can't emotionally accept it. Ugly Betty is (was! sob!) one of the most consistently solid dramedies on the air, good for a few laughs and tears every Thursday. However, America decided they would rather watch CSI: Tulsa or NCIS: Helena than support an awesome, ground-breaking show. And this, after I went ahead and donated my time to find a cure for cancer. Here's a cure for a lot of cancer: stop smoking, you fucking morons. You know what might help you get through that tough time? A great, feel-good show that revels in it's own sunny outlook, and where the heroine always comes out on top. Too bad that all shows with a modicum of heart and originality will be canceled by the time America at large realizes what they're missing. I tell you, between Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, Eli Stone, Samantha Who and the more-than-probable fate of Better Off Ted, ABC can claim responsibility for the dwindling ember of my optimism being snuffed out like the token black guy in a horror movie. Oh, in case anyone's wondering what ABC has in development...they're producing a sit-com starring Nicole Richie. A sit-com. Starring. Nicole. Richie. The only thing funny about Nicole Richie is how skull-crushingly unattractive she is, and let's face it, that's only going to get you so far. Having a mirror spontaneously shatter when your star looks into it, or having characters turn to stone when they make eye contact with her is only funny maybe two or three times. Otherwise, Comedy Central would have produced Medusa! years ago.

Amidst the news about Ugly Betty, I also went on a few dates with a cop. "Oooooh, hot!" you might be thinking. Unfortunately, as it turns out, this particular cop was about as hot as a luge track with the dating skills of a head of iceberg lettuce. First of all, I absolutely despise it when people make assumptions about you after having had half a conversation.

Me: Well, my friends and I all have fairly bitchy senses of humor.
Cop: I don't think you're bitchy.
Me: No, I am. You just haven't seen me on a tear.
Cop: You're not bitchy. You're sweet. You're a real sweetheart.
Me: (silence)

Seriously? I think the last person that called me sweet and meant it was my second grade teacher. I don't have a self-confidence problem...I can see many wonderful qualities in myself; sweetness is not one of them. And, if you don't mind officer, I think I might have a better handle on myself than you do, since I've known me for 29 years and you've known me for two hours.

Secondly, there is nothing romantic about complimenting someone as if you're composing a sonnet. A simple, easy "Oh, you look nice" goes significantly farther than something that requires four minutes for you to work your way through.

Cop: You know how you go to the country and you can see, like, a million stars? Then you go to the city and you can see, like, ten? You're one of the stars I see.

Holy choking back projectile vomiting, Batman. This is not a Nicholas Sparks book, I am not a slutty cheerleader, and you sir, are not William Shakespeare. This kind of thing went on for the majority of the time we were together, and I really tried to appreciate it. After all, it isn't every day that someone is going to heap compliments on you...however, when they're that over-the-top it really just starts to read as the desperate over-compensation of a person who knows that they are dating way out of their league. And here's a hint: if you've managed to bag someone who's dating down to you, the LAST thing you want to do is call attention to it. Act as if you always date people like them, and it's the most natural thing in the world for them to be with you. If you're good enough at it, you might fool them into believing it too.

Finally, when I do call you up to cut things off, and we've only been on two dates, I am not the person to pour your heart out to about your disillusionment with relationships. No, I didn't mean to dump you while you were in the grocery store, but you know what? These things happen. Sack up. You're in the grocery store, go to the ice cream aisle, buy a tub, go home and phone a friend. Do not, under any circumstances, operate under the assumption that I owe you a shoulder to cry on because you've convinced yourself that the two abysmal dates we went on were the stuff legends are made of. I've already done my charity biking for the year...you're not getting a ride as well.

After the cancellation of Ugly Betty and yet another date-for-the-record-books, I was fast losing hope in the promise of some kind of karmic reward for my good deeds. Then a real cascade of shots to the nuts occurred. I was up for a production of "Kimberly Akimbo," and lost out in the final call-back. Smack! The "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" hearings started and I was again forced to listen to politicians. Thunk! I perused a rash of online dating profiles in which hot guys claimed to be into "camping and the outdoors" (maybe you shouldn't live in New York CITY then, you stinking, indoor-plumbing-hating hippie). Whack! I've never in my life been so tempted to go into a sporting goods store and buy a cup.

Here's the thing, folks. I realize that in life, sometimes you take the elevator and sometimes you take the shaft. But I thought I might have been entitled to a little bit of good luck after swallowing my pride and trying to do something to help the world. But fine, universe. I get it. Good deeds are their own goddamn reward and that entire crock of shit. Now, since we've already beaten that dead horse into a bloody, unrecognizable mass, do you think maybe you could throw me a bone?