Burlesque To Make You Brave Enough To Proffer Your Country To Old Men.

When I signed up for Burlesque for Self-Esteem class I had a very specific conception of what it would entail. I figured we would maybe get topless, learn some titty-shaking moves and compliment each other profusely while basking in a joyous aura of girldom. The "self-esteem" aspect of the class title, I assumed, was merely a side effect of the main course, Burlesque. I was wrong.

It should have been called, "Hate UrSelf? Let's Talk About It, Get Naked, and Cry!"

The space was hot and smelled like the inspiration for that rap song "Get Low". At some point there had been a lot of sweat dripping down a lot of balls in there. I wanted to scream from the windows to the walls and then promptly crawl through them, but the teacher, World Famous Bob, made us take our shoes off so there was no escaping. It's a fact that if you're in extreme inhumane conditions like boiling hot, ball-sweaty rooms you'll become more introspective and willing to cooperate-- it's the same tactic they use at Guantanemo!

World Famous Bob is pretty greatsies, and she saw me nakesies.



When we entered the room there was funeral organ music playing and candles lit. Bob was weeping in mourning garb by the door hugging each of us as we passed through. It was, we soon discovered, a "funeral for our insecurities." I would have bolted at this point but my shoes had already been confiscated, and Marmsies was with me.


After the mock funeral, we sat in a circle and started introducing ourselves and explaining why we were here. I didn't want to be like, "Uh, I thought this was a DANCE class" after everyone had poured out their darkest insecurities, so I said that I was having a hard time adjusting to the attractiveness of New York peeps and I sometimes feel grossish compared to all the freakin size 0 models walking around the city. While this may be true, I'm usually too busy to dwell on my comparative fattitude, and I live in Brooklyn so most of the time I'm around baby mommas in hempseed jumpers, not models. Hemp clothing, I believe, was created solely to benefit the self-esteem of those not wearing it.

The thing I hate most about the activity of self-esteeming is that it necessitates one conjure up their insecurities that are otherwise quarantined off in an unconscious section of the brain not bothering anyone, and bring them to the forefront, like "What is it that I hate about myself again? Oh yeah!" and then you start to feel actively bad about it. I mean subconscious manifestation is a defensive mechanism for a reason. It works wonders.

The whole vibe of the session felt like couples counseling for a polygamous matriarchal hippie co-op. We got a handout with, like, 8 different definitions of the word "genius" and we read them aloud REALLY SLOWLY. Then we talked about our feelings and what we like about ourselves. The lesson of all this somehow was "there's a genius in every one of us." I was like, Duuuuuuuuuhz, I already think I'm an LOLgenius, can I leave now and go to the Burlesque Class For Vanity?

After the genius exercise came the humilation exercise, wherein we had to write what we hated about ourselves on little slips of paper and put them into a hat in the center of the room. Bob drew each slip of paper and read the body part listed, then we had to display said body part to the group. Seventy-five percent of the females wrote "stomach." So when stomach was called, we all lifted our shirts, with thighs we all pulled down our pants, with boobs we all lifted our shirts and pulled down our bras. People started crying, which made me, in contrast, feel relatively at ease displaying my goods.

By this point, I was already pretty sure that what came next was what was coming next. We picked a "prop" that called to us out of a pile of items that may or may not have had semen on them at one point. I picked a fur muff. Marmsies chose a classy gold clutch. Bob turned off the lights, lit candles, and told us to get fully undressed-- we were going to dance naked with our prop down the makeshift runway to a Lil' Kim song. Finally, sweet! In one of the only statements that made sense to me the entire evening, Bob told us that this experience would serve as a reference point that we could draw to mind later on a day we were feeling LOLbad. Like, "I have a job interview and I'm nervous, but remember that one time I danced totally naked with a fur muff in front of a bunch of strangers?"

I was a bit nervous, but I envisioned myself as a sexy LOLcat with a wig, and took off down the runway with my muff, and also my muff.

Oh haii, dis iz mai muff. U like mai muff?!



(I'm actually lying about picturing myself as an LOLcat with a wig, because I hadn't yet seen the website with cats in wigs. This is called fictionalized memory, and it happens a lot on this blogz!)

A few days later I found myself mingling with the commies at The Nation holiday party and on my way to the bathroom I spotted Calvin Trillin sitting in a chair eating a gross-looking appetizer. My heart stopped, and I almost passed by him without a word, but then I remembered my nuditude (reference point!) and summoned the bravery to say, "Omgz, I wuv woo!! Your New Yorker essays on your deceased wife are so sweet they make me wet my panties!"

Which, in actuality, came out of my mouth as: "What's that your eating? Looks great!" and then I ran away before he could answer.

But, as Bob said, baby steps. Every day. Baby steps.

Funny Girls Shall Inherit The Earth.

Miss Liz from MNzz and her new guest blogger are some kind of hilarious.

How to impress a funny girl.

From the Annals of Humorous Incidences Involving Children's Tears.....

If only I can just cry a river to ship all the gays away on!

...comes, funny pictures of children crying on Santa.

If you're like me and you check the Nation website approximately once every 6 months, today is the day to do it. Check out the beginning of this Barbara Ehrenreich piece:

Contrary to the rumors I have been trying to spread for some time, Disney Princess products are not contaminated with lead. More careful analysis shows that the entire product line--books, DVDs, ball gowns, necklaces, toy cell phones, toothbrush holders, T-shirts, lunch boxes, backpacks, wallpaper, sheets, stickers etc.--is saturated with a particularly potent time-release form of the date rape drug.

WHOOOOA, ballsy!

The Party I Never Had.

YA novels are totally enjoyable, but usually leave me feeling like my adolescence didn't have enough angst to make me a well-rounded person. Sure, Bono called me fat, but my parents didn't divorce, I was over God by the time I got my period so I couldn't ask him for advice, and no one really bullied me too much. However, if Rainbow Party, had been around when I was busy pube-ascending* it would have been a welcome education, and my Dad probably would have been negligent enough to buy it for me. For whatever small amount of angst I had at fourteen centered around sex, embarrassingly apparent in the quite succinct first entry of my 8th grade diary I rediscovered when I was home over Thanksgiving: "I want to be gagged with a hankerchief and lose my virginity to Mr. [redacted] on a piano bench with candles all over while I play Mood That Passes Through You. The candles will burn us" (there was an illustration with this too, I think I may have had a sense of humor, but I can't say for sure).

I was obsessed with the Holly Hunter movie The Piano, and my English teacher, and the Grass-scented candle from the GAP. This was back when sex fantasies were really more generic pleasure fantasies and just involved somehow combining all of your hobbies, plus sex. I made my piano instructor hold off on Bach, and teach me to play the entire movie soundtrack in hopes of fulfilling my deflowering fantasy. The ultimate benefit of this absurdity is that now I can play it better than the mute betch in the movie. I have years of pent-up sexual energy pushing my fingers to new levels of nimbleness.

Marmsies proved the potency of her homosocial love by risking potential pervert status on her credit report when ordering Rainbow Party as a Hannuksies gift. It centers around a bunch of 14-year old girls who plan a Rainbow party. If you don't know, a RP is like spin the bottle, only instead of kissing there is dick-sucking. All the females wear different shades of lipstick in order to give the males dicks like Jackson Pollock masterpieces.

Incidentally, Marmsies also got me a vibrating toothbrush which plays The Black-Eyed Peas song "Let's Get It Started (Retarded) In Here" upon contact with one's teeth. There was an uncomfortable split-second where I had to decide whether I would employ this gem for my teeth or my vagina dentata. I choose teeth, mostly to spare my roommates musical knowledge of my wanking schedule. It's really impossible to describe-- I mean, you put it in your mouth and it feels and sounds like Fergie is stomping around in your fucking head. My writing is not good enough to capture the toothbrush's graces so I made a short movie on my Mac to send to my sister as a live demonstration of its awesomosity. I would share it here, but it features Marmsies and I in bath robes and we look like satisfied lovers who just finished gingerly bathing each other after an intense fisting session. Also as a rule all my videos with phallic-object-in-mouth go in my special secret folder entitled "Term Papers from Neuro112", which sounds so boring, no one ever opens it.

The first chapter of Rainbow Party begins with the numero uno slut buying different shades of lipstick for the six female participants. Her handling of the lipstick tube somewhat prepares us for the handling of tubular objects to come:
Gin took the slender shaft of the tube in her palm. She gave a gentle tug along the base and watched as the lipstick extended to its full length. Her eyes darted to the sides, making sure no one was watching as she tilted the ruby tip to her lips.

AWESOME.

By the third chapter, Hunter and Perry, two supposedly straight junior high boys, are sucking each other off in the boy's room. This turned me on. Are You There God? It's Me Lauren, I Am Sorry.

Ultimately though, the book is like one of those hand jobs you give your first boyfriend, the ones that never reach climax because high school boys acclimate their dicks to wanking with the intensity of frantically punching a shark in the eyes and you just don't have that kind of upper body strength or fight-to-live will. The Rainbow party never happens. The book kind of dissolves into commentary on the sexual morales of junior high, which is good, I suppose, because YA books shouldn't just be porn. There's enough of that. The two sluttiest kids in the school get gonorrhea, and I appreciated how the narrative points out the discrepancy in slut-labeling:

Gin had no proof that Hunter had been the one to start the spread of gonorrhea through the sophomore class, but she just had this feeling. Of course, he had been the one to sound the alarm, which made him some kind of hero, while Gin was relegated to town slut.

For sers, this book was amazing. I was forced to swallow my pride and whip it out on the subway. Really, this post should be titled: Marmsies Buys the Best Presents Ever and I Wuv Her.


*this is intended to be a pun on pubescent as a verb, while also detailing the growth of pubes-- it is in its trial phase, obvs: does it work or no?

The Savages

As a Jewess I offer very few concessions to Jebus Christ, though I do allow holiday movies to school me in the ways of seasonal morality. During my December 2006 theater rounds I learned the sad lessons that no matter how talented you are your boyf will still want to fuck your hawt friends, Will Smith is annoying, and movies about funny amoralistic Jews battling evolutionary beasts brought to life by some sort of godless trickery don't do well in the box office during the time of year when the entire Midwest is focused on Jebus-pleasing and knitting reindeer sweaters. My first sober (I was drunk during Juno) December movie-going experience was The Savages this evening. The Savages revolves around characters, namely Laura Linney and PSH (he can get his own universally understood acronym by now right?), playing a well-educated, strictly middle class pair of depressed writerish siblings. Linney gets a call from their elderly father's caretaker saying that their father has been writing insults on the bathroom wall with his feces. She immediately phones her brother screaming frantically, "We have to go down there! We have to go down there and do something--he's gone mad!" to which he replies, "Calm down Wendy, this isn't a Sam Shepard play." But then they do go down to Arizona, and the movie is essentially a Sam Shepard play.

Dealing with their father's feces problem ends up forcing them both to confront their own shit (Believe me when I say that part of me is shamed by this sentence). PSH has a Polish girlfriend who leaves because he can't commit, and then he cries way too much over it, even for a drama professor. Linney is dating a married man and struggling to be a playwright. She is also so jealous of her brother's success that she lies to him about winning a Guggenheim grant for playwriting. He calls her out on it later and it is maybe one of the most uncomfortable scenes in movie history. Every second Linney tries to extend her lie, even as PSH is shouting, "I called the Guggemheim. I called the fucking Guggenheim! You're not on the list!" is absolutely excruciating. The camera pans to the father during this scene and for a split-second you wonder who the senile one is after all. Seriously in the bathroom afterward I discovered I had pushed my tampon way up on in me just from grimacing my vag muscles so hard in discomfort.

Their father is diagnosed with Parkinsons and dementia. The movie is filled with scenes where his vulnerability is so intense, it becomes emotionally exhausting. It's kind of like the smart unromantic person's version of The Notebook.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey Dad. Do you remember us?


I know this does not need to be said, but Laura Linney is the greatest woman in the world. I think it demonstrates my great taste in men to divulge that all of the men I've dated seriously have put Linney at the top of their Celebrity Cheat Lists.

Of course being a "holiday" movie, the ending of The Savages is wrapped up pretty nicely. PSH goes to Poland to see his girlf, Linney gets one of her plays produced in New York. Dad dies. Life changes, lessons are learned. It was a bit too neat when you take into account how fucked up their lives were just months prior, but I suppose if the movie ended with them hopeless and depressed I would have entered a profound funk out of which not even Enchanted could pull me out. Happy endings are for the best this time of year.

(LAST concession to Christ fervor: Tis the season to have a foursome with Pete Wentz and film it.)

Today's Emails With Dadsies (Part of Meet The Fam Week)

PR: yo dadsies, what do you want for Hannuksies this year? How about a customized mug? I'll make it really funny and personal to you.

Dadsies: just for you to be happy my little pumkin! love dad

PR: That's nice! Did I tell you I was unhappy? I'm super happy. Also did I give you authorization to use the term "pumpkin"?


Dadsies: can i call you pumpkin as my hannuka present? love dad

PR: I'll think about it.

(Later)

PR: Update, I looked up the derivation of Pumpkin as an affectionate term, and it was launched into popular use by a 1980s British television program in which the person called "Pumpkin" was a bumbling idiot.

Not authorized!


Dadsies: your going to make me cry at work if i can't call you pumkin. love dad

PR: Not giving in on the P-word. you are getting a customized mug with a real estate attorney-themed LOLcatz. you're going to have to google "lolcats" today so you appreciate this gift.


(later)

Dadsies: I don't like those cats do somethin with dogs love dad

Sometimes getting high really helps me relax and concentrate when I have a second draft of something due in like two seconds, but on rare occasions it results in a genital-less Ren Barbarz flying around nude, breaking into Second Life private residences and screaming (well, typing) " LOL! Iz in ur house! LOL! Iz in ur house!"

Marmsies: "This is the only compelling argument I've ever heard for marriage."


I agree. I kind of wish I had gotten married and thought of this first.

wuv woo drew

"Eathy, breethy, beauthiful..."

How A Series of Horrible Essays Taught Me All I Need To Know About Modern Love And Made Me Crawl Into A Bucket of Fried Chicken Left On The Roadside

I have this fantasy where I get the Sunday Times. After sleeping in until 10 or so, I begin the last weekend day in my sun-filled living room curled up on the couch by the huge bay windows, cuddling close to my fiance who has just given me the greatest orgasm of my life. He used to be a sociopathic rapist with a trust fund and I, a staunch feminist who preferred to date non-rapists. But you know what? We learned to compromise. That is what love is all about. And now, cuddling close on the couch together, the clock shows it's nearly 11, and we're so intelligent we've almost completed the entire crossword. "12 letter name, philosopher, wrote On Women..." he reads aloud. We sit thinking, curling our fingers together.

"Schopenhauer!" I scream. He looks at me admiringly. "How did you ever get to be so beautiful but so brilliant too?" he gushes, "I didn't know they made women like you! I would never have been raping all those years if I knew someone like you was out there." My lower class roommate Marmsies walks in on our cuddling, and exclaims in her slightly Cuban accent, "My Momma always says when you got somethin' good, you gots to hold onto it!" My fiance turns to me, looking soulfully into my eyes, "That Cuban girl is right....Marry me now."

Does this sound like something you have or may want someday?

Then you probably love Modern Love, and maybe you should be a Modern Love writer!

I'd like to outline the fairly simple formula of a Modern Love column to make it easier for you to find this elusive brand of love and then write about it for a prestigious paper! First, it's very important to be an educated, upper middle class female. Actually don't bother trying to find modern love if you're not. You can leave subtle hints of your elitist qualifications by describing how you picked up your New Yorker copies scattered throughout his apartment after he broke your heart, or you can casually mention "pre-nups", "Ph.D's", "foie gras", "Park Slope", or "Schopenhauer" at any point during the course of your essay. All of these methods have worked beautifully in the past.

Sometimes a great twist on this element is how your educated position set you up to fail at love. For example in my FAVORITE column ever, "Changing My Feminist Mind, One Man at a Time" the author demonstrates how her superb intelligence and thorough understanding of feminism actually inhibited true love. Someone get this girl a book deal! She is a 19th wave feminist!

I read, re-read, and underlined "Backlash," "The Beauty Myth" and "The Feminine Mystique." I grew enraged by what I learned. Enraged, and utterly confused. Who was keeping women down? Men. But who were just so cute that I couldn't sleep at night for thinking and writing and obsessing about them? You guessed it, the self-same.

Then I went off to an all-women's college, Smith, where I didn't see a whole lot of men. I joined the campus women's group and studied up on gender issues. My rage toward men in general grew ever stronger, as did my desire to meet that one specific man who could make my dreams come true.

It also helps, once you've established your superb white upper class affiliations to dabble with some lower classes. You see they're not as smart as you, thus they are not constricted by their own intelligence. They can teach you how to love purely and intensely, to rid yourself of the shackles of the Ivy League pedigree. Find a poor musician, like this week's columnist did, one who will kind of embarrass you, but who will play Damaged by Primal Scream, and tell you “This song makes me love you so much I want to die." So romantsies! Also, if you can manage to date a rapist serving time in prison you get like, a billion trillion bonus points. That is way modern love.

Lower class people are also very important in the Modern Love story arc to help bring you to your senses. When you're sobbing on some bus, after collecting your smart person materials from your ex-boyfriend's house, make sure that some guy with a "West Indian accent" lightly jokes with you, "Aw, that fool must be crazy to give up a nice young thang like yourself!" Let these people be the voice of sensibility. Let them guide you to your ultimate catharsis. You can even dedicate your entire essay to these characters like in "How My Plumber Turned Water Into Wine" (but remember the focus should still be on you and the shackles of your upper class life). I mean, this week's author comes to her senses thanks to a tenant in a flophouse!

So there I was, a girl with a university education, a glowing résumé, a loving family, and all the other annoying characteristics of a charmed life, writhing on the urine-stained floor of a flophouse. And I was making such a scene that the tenant from the next room, a hulking man in torn boxers, emerged from his den, pointed a shaming finger at me and shouted, “Girl, you need to get your mind right."

Once a poor tenant in a urine-soaked flophouse admonishes you for being crazy you can finally say, "If this dirty dude thinks I'm being crazy, then I must be being too crazy!" and begin the process of love's recovery. Brush the urine right off you. Go to the 'Bucks, grab yourself your usual Grande Skim Latte. Sit and listen to Norah Jones while sipping your steamy drink and process what just happened, though don't come to any conclusions that could, you know, subvert the patriarchy. This experience you've just had-- this is modern love-- and you should write about it so that I can barf up my Sunday brunch and not put on any winter weight.

The Holiday Gift Guide!

The Bullshit Horn. We have a version of this in our home. It lightens the mood during times of tension. It gets Monsies all cute and annoyed which is a gift in and of itself. Sometimes when I'm alone I set it beside me on the couch to watch The Hills and it provides important commentary in the perfect pitch and tone that I myself am incapable of achieving. Really, the bullshit horn is like giving a friend to a friend.



The Snotty Egg Separator. As a Jewess I appreciate the subtle anti-semitism here. This man though dubbed a WASPy "Peter Petrie" looks exactly like my grandpa. And who likes eggs? Jewish people. More importantly, who separates eggs? Jewish people. I say take back the nose and use this whilst baking your fav holiday kugel.



Speaking of noses, the I AM ME album of 18th wave feminist Ashlee Simpson provides a great gift to those who adhere to the two major values of 18th wave feminism: nose jobs make a woman and "my boyfriend he don't answer on the telephone/ I don't even know where the hell he goes/ but all my girls are here in a circle and nobody is going to break through/ L.O.V.E./ Girls are for life!"



What do you get when you combine the sister of an 18th wave feminist with a 4th wave feminist like Dane Cook and an Angus Third Pounder? Employee of the Month and an Angus Third Pounder to eat while watching it. Package them together for the ultimate present. This movie tackles issues of class too!




Lastly, everyone loves when you get personal with bad grammar or inside jokes. My favorite holiday presents are the customizable magnets and mugs at Zazzle. Book Club is getting an LOLcatz-themed book present. These mugs were intended for my roommates but I'm running into copyright problems. Apparently Cisco Adler doesn't want his balls on your drinking apparatus. But I will think of something. Even if I have to do and extreme ball close-up shot.

Billy Blanks: Thighs of Modernism

"Melanctha, I certainly do think I could make you feel it right to tell me. I certainly do think all I did wrong was to let Jane Harden tell me. I certainly do know I never did wrong to learn what she told me. I certainly know very well, Melanctha, if I had come here to you, you would have told it all to me, Melanctha."-Gertrude Stein, Three Lives, pg 115.

"When the identical fact recurs, we must think of it in a fresh manner, see it under a somewhat different angle, apprehend it in different relations from those in which it last appeared."--William James, The Stream of Thought.

"In both cases, modern art serves to remind its audience that what the eye or ear beholds as a natural and given reality is itself the product of much active construction on the part of the beholder."-Jonathan Levin, Introduction to Three Lives.

I've been doing my old Tae-Bo video workouts every day since I've come home. I still have the entire tape memorized, even Billy's instructional dialogue. Though what I hadn't realized during my after-school workouts in high school is that Billy Blanks is a brilliant deconstructivist:

During squat kicks: "Every one talking about how they want to work their butt, it's not firm enough or tight enough. You know that black bikini. If you do what I tell you right now you'll get into that black bikini. Push yourself! Think about that bikini. Think about that bikini! Think about you in that bikini! This isn't about a swimsuit! This isn't about a bikini. Reach inside and PUSH yourself. Do you want to fit in that swimsuit?"

During jab-cross sequence: "Michael back there is talking about how he's locked up. He's a top basketball player, but you know what he's doing today? Pushing himself. Reach up. Reach up and grab onto your higher power. Whatever it is-- God, that glass of water Reach up and ask your higher power to help. Ask your higher power to give you something. C'mon Michael. C'mon get through this set. No one can help you. No one can help you. You got to find it in yourself. This is about you. You got to reach inside and help yourself.

I swear these are verbatim.

Ode to Bunsies

This is bunny circa 2004. My bestie Dawn and I were high and set up a Bunny photo shoot. He gives good photo.




This is bunny and me circa 2002. I look retarded, but Bunny looks really hawt. Sometimes for internet pictures you have to take one for the team.


Some facts about Bunny:


My uncle gave him to me at Thanksgiving dinner when I was 2. I started crying immediately. Perhaps it was a symbolic reenactment of the Native Americans proffering dead rabbits to the Pilgrims, and the Pilgrims shooting them.

His name is simply Bunny. Shut up. Fuck you.

He is a boy. His fav food is Skittles. And though he's technically older I just say he's 4 in bunny years, thus he is eternally young.

For an entire year all Bunny said to anyone was "Ou est la baguette avec la beret?" after I watched some PBS kids show featuring a baguette wearing a beret who repeated that line incessantly.

I once made my little sister shoplift me a Snickers by threatening her with "Bunny won't be your friend if you don't!"

Bunny was on the cover of a Paul Golding book about homosexual relationships and existential malaise. This freaked me out to no end, because I had never seen another bunny like mine before and thought he was singular. And because then of course I read the book.



When I got scarlet fever in 5th grade bunny came to the hospital with me. My parents gingerly told me that we might have to give bunny back to his bunny family and I was like, "Don't patronize me. If you touch him I will hate you guys forever." He took a Lysol bath instead.

When boys stay over I hide bunny under the pillow. Once my gentleman friend is snoring I pull bunny out and spoon him as ush.

Bunny is not anorexic. He is just so thin because he wakes up either pressed between my thighs or smashed under my stomach.

In a writing class I took in college I wrote a story about a grown man who still slept with his female teddy bear, and the people in my workshop were like, "It's great how you use the stuffed animal as a foil to showcase his fear of human intimacy" and I was like, you're all such pretentious idiots, this is just a charming story about a man who loves his teddy, fuck you.

After 13 months with my last boyfriend I started making him have post-coital conversations with bunny about the sad trajectory of Chris Hitchen's career. Bunny would whisper his replies in my ear and I would be like, "Well Bunny disagrees with you about The Trial of Henry Kissinger." I think I was testing the boundaries of obnoxiousness here, but he thought it was adorable. He started to say "I love you" to Bunny. I knew then that I had to break up with him, because if I could make him have conversations with my stuffed animal then he loved me way more than I deserved and I was already abusing that power.

Every Thanksgiving my Grandma tries to throw Bunny away. I think the thought of me still sleeping with him keeps her up at night. She somehow believes Bunny is preventing me from having a husband. I fear her attempts will be more determined this year since my sister is getting married on Friday.

When I go home for Thanksgiving I put Bunny on the top shelf in my closet where both my dog and my 5'4 grandma can't reach him.

This is Bunny last May spooning with Dawn's dog Nikko. They immediately recognized a gentleness in each other.

Margot at the Wedding.

I wish I could just write a haiku about this. Or, like, not write about it at all, but I made this promise two months ago that I would write every day to try to take some of the paralyzing fear out of writing, or at least, you know, normalize the paralyzing fear into a daily ritual like my 10am Greek yogs with Splenda. And I don't really have anything else going on around here. Topical, almost, because in Margot at The Wedding Nicole Kidman plays an East Coast writer whose paralyzing fears turn her into a crazy betch who writes all her short stories about everyone else's dramas.

We have so much in common except she's prettier.


I saw the preview to Margot before Darjeeling, and was like "Great, another movie about white people problems" but as part of my religion I see everything with Jack Black in it (including The Holiday). What can I say? The Charming- Chubster -Finding -Love genre is my favorite film category. Right up there with New Wave.

i wuv woo Jack. let's abbrevs and baby talk togeths in bed, k?



Unfortunately, the movie isn't really about Jack. It's more about sisters. I almost always hate movies about sisters because they're so untrue. I love my sissies just as much as these damn characters do and we fight and shit, but no one ever throws a fucking plate across the room and erupts into hysterics when one of us disapproves of the other's boyfriend. I mean once when I was little my older sister threw a pool ball at my face and gave me a black eye, but she's since paid me $300 not to mention that story at family functions. When I strike it rich myself, I'll pay my little sister $150 to stop bringing up how I pretended not to know her at the bus stop when the mean older boys were making fun of her headgear (she had some bad teeth). Anyhow, that's about as dramatic as sister relationships get. We solve our problems with money like everyone else.

Nicole Kidman plays Margot, a successful fiction writer who hates all the men in her life, both her overly kind husband and her overly assholish lover, and takes it out on her precocious preteen son, Claude.

She's the type of mother who tells her son inappropriate things, like how she's stoned, how her sister is pregnant, and how her sister's betrothed is a big fat loser. When she gets disturbed by rifts in her romantic life she calls Claude ugly, or lazy, or stupid. She was so mean to her son it made me uncomfortable. Did I also mention I hate movies that are centered around bad moms? It's like, oh if she's a successful fiction writer, she's got to be a crazy horrible betch mother too.

To be fair, Joan really was a terrible betch, but her gracious living guide changed my entire party life.


This was one of those character-driven domestic dramas like The Squid and The Whale, or The Anniversary Party, or We Don't Live Here Anymore, all of which are excellently depressing because even though the characters may be doing bad things, you care about them. I didn't care about anyone in Margot. My vagina got kind of wet when Jack Black started crying, but that was about it, as far as emoting goes.

My favorite part of the evening is when Liz, Laurs, and I were picking up snacks at a nearby deli and after we were rung up I blurted out, "Oh I'll just stash these in my pursy!"

"Pursy", is not what the cashier thought I said. One day abbrevs are gonna get me shot!

I haven't been this excited since the Ryan Reynolds/Jessica Alba remake of Epic Of Gilgamesh (translated from old English to "Good Luck Chuck").

I was born to see Beowulf this weekend.

A Gift From The Unemployed: I Read Play It As It Lays And Summed It Up In The Following Haiku So You Don't Have To! (but you probably should)

Hollywood life blows


Don't even ask of evil


You don't want to know


Now to get yourself in the right Didionian mood go get a messy abortion and eat scrambled eggs as you speed along the freeway. Oh, the symbolism!


Love Always,

Your beloved unemployed (only until Dec 3.!!) reader.


P.S. This was my first venture into Didion fiction--and it was amaze. Any suggestions for my next Didion novel? Please tell!

From the Mouth of a Marmot.

Look i wrote a post for your blog!

"THINGS LAUREN DOES THAT I LOVE: a semi-regular series by Marmsies, Lauren's roommate

This new blog column is inspired by Mindy Kaling's blog "Things I've Bought that I Love", only instead of things I bought, it is about pleasant things my roommate Lauren has done.

Today's thing: Lauren's Drew Barrymore impression

I have a lot of love for Drew Barrymore. I think it might be biological, even--like, maybe if you got your period the week 'Mad Love' came out, she is like imprinted on you forever. In fact, that must be it, because she hasn't been in a movie I have enjoyed since Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. Anyway, I really love Drew most of the time and am often really defensive when people criticize her. Like, when people talk trash on all her retarded and inarticulate political opinions, I'm like, It's not like it was her choice to only have an eighth grade education, okay? She was owned by the studio! (Ed note: and she was fed coke when she was like a toddler! Both the soda and the drug!) And also, when people made fun of her for not wearing a bra to the MTV Movie Awards a few years ago, I was like, If you're Drew Barrymore and you've been going to the MTV Movie Awards for like 15 years, I'm sure it's basically just another annoying thing you have to do on a Tuesday that you don't even care about enough to put a bra on for. I understand.

(Ed. Note: I think both the author and I would agree that her tatas look tatatacular here.)


(If I were around Drew I'd tell incessant Tom Green penis jokes, because all I want is to see her smile ALL THE TIME, she is so adorbs.)



But Lauren does this amazing impression of Drew endorsing Cover Girl products and just kind of says the Cover Girl motto out of the side of her mouth, with Drew's kind of weird, soft, delicate lisp? I feel like Drew's lisp is very pleasant and almost cashmere-like. Anyway, I love this impression, and actually, now that I think about it, I love this impression because it is not making fun, it is a loving homage. Also, Cover Girl makes a great oil-free pressed powder that will cake really badly on your acne and make you look like your babysitter from 1991 if you use it on your face, but it is great for setting lipstick.

Love, Marmsies"

"How Do We Beat the Bitch?"

Nothing like answering a totally Hilsogynist remark with laughter and "That's an excellent question" to win over the hearts and minds of the ladies. I don't like Hillary, but if it comes down to it, I hope she bakes your potato face and eats it for her inauguration dinner.



Also, I kind of love the old grandpa character in the background who clutches the backdrop like he's going to fall over when the questionably-colored woman utters the "Bitch" line. I mean clearly I've watched this video too many times. It's just so satisfying glimpsing the horrible old-timey misogyny that proves everything I ever thought about behind-the-scenes Republicanism. I mean I'm sure a video of my apartment on any given night with the three of us watching The Hills in skivvies, using "fucking" as an adjective in front of every noun ("Give me a bite of your fucking Milky Way") , and making casual abortion jokes would be a Republican wet dream, but we're NOT STUPID ENOUGH TO LET IT BE CAUGHT ON CAMERA, only stupid enough to post it on a not very well-read blog.

A Gift From The Unemployed: I Read War & Peace And Summed It Up In The Following Haiku So You Don't Have To!

Aristocracy

Not as great as it seems, huh?

Don't marry the wrong girl!

Now stare into Owen Wilson's eyes to get yourself into the right Tolstoyian mood.....




And voila....Congratulations for surviving War & Peace!

Until next time,

Your beloved unemployed reader.

Choice Advice from the Lady Mags: Mama's Got to Get Her Drink On!

Where: December 2007 issue of Marie Claire

Article: Navigate the Bar Like a Pro (i.e. an "etiquette" guide to bars)

Choice Advice: If you can't taste any rum in your Bacardi and coke, it's OK to ask the bartender, nicely, to add a little more liquor to your drink. "Be playful. Say you had a bad day or 'Mama's got to get her drink on!'" advises Kosmas.

Really, I'd like to do an article where I actually followed every piece of advice in these mags just for one day. I have a feeling I'd probably wake up drunk in a barn in Kentucky, putting lip liner on my nipples, cow poop on my fine lines, and offering a farmhand a reduced fat cottage cheese blow job or something.

I'm Not There: There, in Concert!

Meredith is the greatest! She scored free tickets to go see the I'm Not There concert at the Beacon theater tonight, so I canceled my plans to stay home and be sick to go see old people cover Bob Dylan songs.



The Beacon is an institution of class. Bright, blinky spotlights out front, gilded gold lions decorating the interior theater-- it's totally gorgeous and screams "This is NY baby!" which is a good atmosphere to be in on those days you've been in Brooklyn too long.

The only thing that brought the experience down a notch in decorum was Heath Ledger snapping his gum into the mike. Spit out ur gum before u announce boy.

The best thing about being surrounded by 60 year old men who resemble your father had he undergone a hippie-themed midlife crisis wherein he quit his job, practiced sick licks along with a "Teach Yourself the Sick Licks of the '60s" VHS tape, and roasted 8-flavor chicken for dinner every night, is that it makes you appreciate the beauty of your youth. No I do not know the name of this obscure Dylan song that someone in a badly tailored suit is covering. You know why? Because I'm 25! Boooo-yah!

Not that I don't like Bob Dylan. I do. He's from Minnsies. Apparently the lyrics for All Along the Watchtower are scratched into a wall on the top of some U of M campus tower. The combined name-dropping power of Dylan and Berryman is a great asset to our fine state school looking to recruit angsty males from the East Coast.

No one covered my favorite Bob Dylan song "Tangled Up in Blue". Tragic, as the lyric "We always did feel the same, we just saw it from a different point of view" is so true it's like LOLWHOOOOOOA.




I had heard of but never actually heard My Morning Jacket before this concert. Their performance of "Goin' to Acapulco" tonight was AMAZE though so I made a mental note to check into that emo motel when I got home. Verdict: they're pretty awesome. However, my first fan letter is going to include some alternate band name suggestions. My Morning Boner would even be better.

Mason Jennings is Bob Dylan reincarnated.

I was SUPER DISAPPOINTED that my favorite statutory duo who make me feel all romantic in the vagina did not show up! I guess when sex becomes legal it is so exciting it consumes all other social comittments.


Meredith, I hope, will tell you more about the crazy stoned hippies, and the man in black leggings and ballet slippers like a flat-chested Amy Winehouse.

You know how you kind of feel like your intelligence has been raped when you watch shows like "The Bachelor"? Like you know you shouldn't like it, but somehow all those crying women are emotionally satisfying on a very primal "Well at least I'm not THAT crazy" level, so you bind your better brain into submission? Good news! Someday soon you may no longer have to worry about being forcibly mind-fucked, you can just watch contestants get forcibly fucked! Nice vetting process, ABC!

Prosecutor: 'Bachelor' Candidate Is Serial Rapist

Apparently you have to buy a vag?: "I'd like to buy a vag, Pat"

PR:Um so, after some very sexualized conversation, I just let some SL dude on the SL beach start to undress me and let me tell you we were both pretty dismayed to discover I didn't have a "working" vagina. Also I am having blatant online sex at Gorilla Coffee (in the name of research!)

Mere:OMG the VAGINA COMES SEPARATELY? What. The. Fuck.

Liz: that is incredibly amazing/disturbing.

PR: I mean there's a shadow, but you have to buy like a designer vag. I just found one that advertised "tightness". You HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME. Six bucks on a tight vagina that no one will actually physically feel?! This world is Andrea Dworkin's nightmare!!

Mere: So are you going to do it? At least you're getting a lot of material for your piece?

PR: I think I kind of have to refuse spending money on a vagina online. I think the material is going to be the fact that this is basically a crazy hegemonic male porn dream. It's so hard to find a vagina with more pubic hair than a tween vag. Sadly, after being on it all morning I was like, "I need to take a break--oh, maybe I'll go get a bikini wax" then realized that I was unconsciously internalizing SL pornographic standards!

Liz: also i'd like to see the subject line rewritten as a wheel of fortune reference.

PR: ahahahhaha like "I'd like to buy a vag, Pat"

Liz: precisely. and then maybe vanna comes out with the vag puppet from tyra?!

Diablo Cody constantly amazes me.

"There comes a time when the financial burden is just too great for a small company to bear."- "Chuck", the absolutely charming head of the behometh Conde Nast company as he informed us House & Garden was no longer profitable and is shutting down....today.


Excuse me while I crawl into an abandoned fried chicken bucket left on the roadside. Please email if you have jobs/want to see a cheap matinee movie. I have a hankering to see Bella: An Urban Fairy Tale.

Terror Treat: It's 2007 And There Are Still Assholes Who Will Derisively Call You "Baby!"

We all have our Terror Dreams. Al Gore's involves an oil company executive playing Grand Theft Auto with Tipper, while spooning her on a freshly skinned polar bear fur. Judd Apatow's has something to do with losing a rap battle to Tina Fey. My recurring night terror is going to an abortion clinic where my uncle is the doctor, and having him nonchalantly exclaim "Oh Laurlies, it looks like you have the one kind of uterus that abortions don't work on...guess you'll have to stick with it!" as his secretary sends me off with an inspirational office placard depicting an idyllic mountain range overprinted with a bold Reagan quote about Fortitude.


Susan Faludi's nightmare--the scariest of the bunch-- is the idea that an attack like 9-11 would revert our country back to the comfort food that American patriotism has traditionally subsisted on: Doris Day femininity and John Wayne machismo.


Faludi saw the potential for this coming. In her 1991 feminist manifesto, Backlash, she documents how the mass media began to make large, celebratory declarations in the late '80s that women's equality had arrived and the feminist movement was (or would soon be) over, while also simultaneously puking forth a barrage of "findings" on how women are unhappier, and more stressed and sick than ever before. There was tons of press dedicated to women's lib/ television hero Murphy Brown's single mom victory over the patriarchy and the potatoe, but at the same time media outlets graciously pointed out that unwed women much like Murphy were, according to Newsweek, "hysterical" and victims of a "profound crisis of confidence." In other words, the media was giving women a big, fat, patronizing "You brought this on yourself, baby!" pat on the back.


Murphy Brown, from the Season 10 episode "Murphy gets impregnated by ghost sperm and starts drinking again." What? No, shut up! It is her.



What's worse, this wasn't just coming from a concentrated politically conservative sector-- hyperbolic accusations about the terrible effects of the second-wave feminist movement were continually lobbed by the right, the left, and even inane media outlets that smart and dumb people alike watch. My favorite anecdote in Backlash is when Faludi mentions a guest on The Today Show who correlates the popularity of slasher movies with social acceptance of abortion because, get this: abortion makes violence "more acceptable".

An Extra Special Halloween Abortion Horror Movie! "Unborn Sins"-- the spirit of an aborted "child" comes to life to kill everyone with the fury that only a bag of cells ejected from the womb can possess!



Of course most accusing women's newfound equality of reaping disastrous effects were ignoring a simple fact that highlights the illogicality the argument: Women simply had not achieved equality. As Faludi notes, at the time women represented "two-thirds of all poor adults". The average female high school graduate earned less than a male high school drop-out. There were two female executives among the Fortune 500. As it turned out these fear-mongering reports on how women couldn't possibly be happy in an equal world weren't so much social science, but rather a manifestation of the male-dominated culture's fear of such a world really coming to fruition.

In The Terror Dream, Faludi puts together a scathing analysis of post-9-11 gender relations and works it into a larger, mythological narrative on the history of American gender roles. She saves the myth examination for the end, thankfully, because her arguments on the current state of gender affairs are much more pressing, evidenced, and interesting. Backlash works well with The Terror Dream, some might say it does what milk does for Oreos, or what lube does for a tired cooter: the situation that Backlash draws out greases the pan that The Terror Dream cooks in (I promise that is the last analogy). There was no perfect feminist America on September 10th, 2001--women still faced challenges and had less opportunities solely because of their gender, reproductive rights were constantly being challenged as was the concept of the working woman. Faludi is not arguing, as some reviews have accused her of doing, that 9-11 took us from a great place back to the proverbial stone-age. The setting for this kind of regression was there, detailed in Backlash, and Faludi argues that the feelings of insecurity and fear that 9-11 conjured just made it easier to openly respond with a regressive cultural reaction. That reaction was 1.) Feminists need to shut up 2.) We can't be perceived as weak and 3.) We will hail the type of brawny man who acts before he thinks and eats an Angus Third Pounder every day for Fourth Meal.

OMG, num.


Faludi dedicates an entire chapter to how prominent feminists like Sontang, Klein, and Kingsolver were all vilified for making what amount to rather intelligent statements about re-examining our foreign policy, while the men who made similar statements (or worse: Bill Maher said that the 9-11 attacks were brilliant. I mean, yes, duh, but c'mon) were let off the hook, or promoted...(Maher got an HBO show). The women were called "bitches", "witches", "idiots", and "delusional". Feminism as a whole was also outrightly attacked. Paglia made the nonsensical argument that workplace equality made men more girly, thus making our country weak. Martin van Creveld wrote in Newsday that " one of the principal losers [of 9-11] is likely to be feminism, which is partly based on the fake assumption that the average woman is able to defend herself as well as the average man." John Tierney (falsely) accused the feminist movement of putting boys more in touch with their feelings than their guns. The media insisted that what we needed in this terrible post-911 world were cowboys with guns and for their semi-intelligent wives who may have had a vocal pro-choice past to stand silent and supportive behind their husbands:



The evidence Faludi presents is so literal and so plentiful (I don't think I'm consumed another non-fiction book with as much documentation), it's hard for me to fathom how reviewers can get away with dismissing it as "anecdotal" stuff that already in the "blogosphere" as Michiko Kakutani does in the New York Times review. (I don't understand the logic behind the blogosphere comment either-- is that supposed to somehow make it less true?) Kakutani also makes the drop-in-the-ocean counter-example argument: But what about Hillary Clinton? What about Katie Couric? Feminist values can't be under attack because those two exist!

Well, what Kakutani ignores, and Faludi points out in the book is that despite Couric's much-touted promotion to CBS evening news anchor, the number of women's voices in media as a whole dropped significantly and rapidly post-911. Faludi writes that in comparison to the previous month, the month after September 11th saw the percentage of female bylines in the New York Times alone plummet from 22 percent to 9 percent. The Washington Post published 107 editorials in the three weeks following 9-11; seven were by women. "For the first six months of 2002, more than 75 percent of the Sunday talk shows in CBS, Fox, and NBC featured no female guests (Fox was free 83 percent of the time)" she writes.

It's also ridiculous to pretend that Couric's promotion wasn't littered with gender issues-- a simple Google search of her name brings up hundreds of op-eds first questioning her ability to host a serious, evening show after being such a "lovable" and "adorable" morning hostess (like this Wa-Po one), and then once her evening anchor position was solidified she was praised for her "reassuring presence" (um, can you say Mommy figure?) and of course they had to photoshop pounds off of her. Clinton has suffered much of the same "Damned if she does, damned if she don't" criticism, recently being attacked for being too man-ish, all while facing a continual press campaign of "But can a woman really be president?"

My only thought when reading the negative reviews of The Terror Dream was, "Did these dudes really read this? Or are they just bullshitting a bad review because they had like 10 other things due the next day?" Seriously, Faludi's logic is impeccable. And I am the arbitrator of the logically sound because 1.) this is my blog, and 2.) I was the captain of my high school debate team.

I also was tempted to leave the MC Paul Barman lyric "Going to Backlash your booty, like Susan Faludi" in the comment section of every neg review. And if second round fact-checking work doesn't come in soon, I think I will.

But some of us do vibrate for 15 minutes a day and are still pleasantly plump, but can maybe open bottles with our lady parts?

Marmsies: Low Buzz Might Give Mice Better Bones and Less Fat. (vibrating mouse platform)

PR: I think you can get diseases from putting vibrating mouse platforms in ur vajajajajajajay. just noting. I also wonder if I used said platform as a vibrating device would my vajajajajajajay get weirdly skinny?

Marmsies: No, just bony? I was just trying to increase my bone density! It’s always an s-e-x joke with you!

PR: Did you spell wex like s-e-x so your work doesn't pick up on it or are you trying to admonish me? But on the wex topic, what is the general opinion on bony vajajajajays because I vibrate things on mine a lot and now I'm LOLscared my sweet vajajajajay will become like a velociraptor exhibit at the Natural History Museum.

Marmsies: Both! But now I like wex better. Hmmmm…I don’t know. On one hand, it might be scary at first, but on the other, you could use it to open old time soda bottles. So I’m not sure if one should really stop…

PR:I dunno, the new kind of men in this Terror Dream world might not appreciate a lovely lady who can open a post-coital bottle of beer with her wex tool.

Amaze.

/>

But I loved Rushmore...

I went to see Darjeeling Ltd. this afternoon by myselfsies because Simone was rightfully doubtful and apparently less tempted by misogynistic messes than I am. Like most reviewers have said already, it's beautiful to watch, a bit overly precious, and totes racist.

Of course, as ush, Wes Anderson develops his precocious, heart-broken white male protagonists by simplifying everyone else--the Indians, the women, the Indian woman. Apparently in Wes's world, possessing some sort of lonely white male sorrow gives one license to be an incorrigible asshole to everyone and still somehow likable. I don't really have time to go into all the contextual details of his racism and misogyny tonight so you can just read about it here and here. I would, however, like to bring up Wes Anderson's little meta-apology, which only serves to make the racism and misogyny all the more irritating.

First, some brief background: Like any young emotard in a Wes movie would do, Jason Schwartzman's character has a quickie with the gorgeous Indian stewardess on the Darjeeling Limited train to get over his ex-girlfriend played by Natalie Portman. True to form, this isn't just a quick meaningless sex thing (believe me, it would have been less offensive if it was)-- no, Schwartzman has to set "Sweet Lime" up as some sort of exotic savior telling her "I need to talk to someone" and "I know you can help me" like her ethnic vag holds the secret to his stiff white universe. I mean of course it is, in the end, just meaningless sex dressed up in some male existential bullshit. Thanks Sweet Lime, you seemed superficially interesting for a moment, and you looked totally hot in that bathroom scene, but now we must be on our way on this long train ride into profundity. How do you say goodbye in Indian? (Is that the name of your language, btw?) Namaste!

At this point, we've already seen a snippet of Schwartzman's torturous past relationship with Portman in the opening short. Portman shows up at his hotel room in Paris. She says, "I love you, I never meant to hurt you" as well as "If we fuck, I'll feel like shit tomorrow." Schwartzman replies, "I don't care" and "That's okay with me." But hey, listen, those lines just sound so callous because they're removed from the context-- seriously, he's not being an asshole, he's just really really angsty and sad! This isn't some patriarchal set-up where men vilify women to deal with their own inadequacies, or to demonstrate the greater emotional depth and existential awareness that men possess. He is just terribly sad and deep, okay? And this is all her fault, obvs.

Portman, let me get this straight: you protested the smoking in the script and insisted on toothpicks? Should I have started a MISOGYNY CAUSES CANCER campaign for you to say no to the rest of it?

Look at you, you're already wasting away. Read this, it's like chemo.




The worst part of all of these various bad "isms", is the fact that Anderson is obviously hyper-conscious of them and even snidely tongue-in-cheek about it. As the brothers are leaving the Darjeeling train, Schwartzman goes over to the window to say goodbye to Sweet Lime. She is crying. Clearly those ridiculous emo-potent lines worked on her.

Schwartzman looks up at her, smiles, and says, "Thanks for using me."

I'm pretty sure this is a meta-joke said to the one character that embodies both of the "others" (Indian, female), a kind of self-satisfied "I know who I'm using and how in this script, but I don't care." I wanted to throttle Jason Schwartzman at this moment. The movie just isn't good enough to get away with self-aware, offense white male centrism-- like c'mon, a movie about character journey demonstrated literally via a train journey in an exotic country? Seriously, no one has ever done that before!

Sweet Lime, of course, unironically whispers, "You're welcome."

I think I can say that we all watch Gossip Girl because it's downright exhilarating in its obviousness and caricatures. Maybe also because we're tired of watching Jane Alexander suck a dick, frankly. Never surprise me, GG, it would crush the powerful sense of intelligence I get from watching you. The Gossip Girl coverage from New York mag is gold, mainly because they write up everything we were thinking when watching the show, in a hilarious fashion. I especially enjoyed the following passage for its prescient truthiness, because yes, while Serena gets courted by the perfect man spouting the perfect lines, we had to suffer through high school boyfriends who thought renting Jenna Jameson porn along with Chinese takeout was a romantic date. I mean, maybe it would be now that I have a more developed sense of irony, but there is no irony to be found in high school until you're out of high school.

A word about Dan. We've said this before, and we're going to elaborate now: No teenage boys are like Dan. Teenage boys are not quick-witted enough to make the right joke at the right time. They are not sensitive or unself-conscious enough to sit in the hallway with your bitch best friend and console her when she's having a hard time. They do not have values, or make "bold gestures." Nor are their jaws chiseled, their clothes artfully, sexily ruffled, their brown eyes deep and searching as they lock onto yours and tell you, "Just for the record, I like you." The generation of tweens watching Gossip Girl, take note: Dan is your Jake Ryan, and believing that guys like this exist can ruin your life.

Apparently in order to attend a Morrissey concert you should be smugly married or smugly gay and committed. However they don't ask you if you're either when you purchase tickets online from Ticketmaster, so that's how we managed to sneak by last night. I agreed to go to Morrissey before I had the chance to realize at some point during my adult life, I had gotten over The Smiths. I wonder when it was. And why I didn't notice. I have a suspicion it must have been this one time when I was smoking hella weed and watching Adult Swim on my couch in Providence and my roommate Will turned on Hateful of Hollow for the third time in a row, and I was like "If I have to listen to this one more time, I am going to have an EMOaneurysm which will shut off the blood supply to the rational part of my brain and I'll only be able to converse in sing-song Dashboard Confessional lyrics. Do not make me suffer that fate!!!"

Werthsies and I were in the nosebleed seats, and Gaby and Kat were on the floor. Before the show Friend and I grabbed a drink(s) at a nearby bar known on Yelp for it's "hot Dominican bartenders in dresses". We stayed too long at the bar but apparently not long enough to miss the opening act, which bleeeeew. Usually when I'm wasted I can get behind even the Toy Story Soundtrack, but this act was not passing. I texted Gaby.

"This peson sucks!"

"What is a peson?"

"You know. I luv you more than Jesus luved his puppy."

"This is terrible music."


The woman on stage, who by the way was Kristen Young, announced what I thought was "And this next song is called Nazi Cunninglingus"

I immediately texted, "Wait, I love her."

Gaby wrote back a while later: "I am overheating and everyone is old and yelling."

Today I've been searching these internets high and low and I can't find any song by Young entitled "Nazi Cunninglingus". So the jury, or my jury at least, is still out on that one. You wanna good blog review Kristen? Send me an mp3 of "Nazi Cunninglingus".


Morrissey is nearly 50. He walked a bit on stage. Sometimes he twirled his microphone cord. Often during the instrumentals he just bent over like the music was too much for him, or he had an ulcer, or he was preparing for anal. But it couldn't have been the latter; Morrissey is celibate!


Werthsies and I tried dancing but I kept slipping on our spilled Long Island Iced Tea (not my choice!). Then we started passing out Werther's to our surrounding emotards but we only managed to endear ourselves to one chubby gay couple, and a lonely hearted man with a New Jersey accent. That was fine though. It started to feel like we were part of a small nosebleed community. It was warm, and it was really hot temperature-wise.

My favorite part of the night was when Werthsies was telling me about her relatively new 4-month boyf, and how every time she takes an Ambien before bed she starts grilling him on his past relationships. So now at Ambien time, he's like, "omg, here comes the Spanish Inquisition", then they have sex, and he still falls asleep before her. I couldn't tell if this was supposed to be a funny relationship woe story or not, but it sounded kind of great to me. I was like, "Then do you Ambien binge eat at his apartment?!" and she was like, "Yeah, we wake up in the morning and the Ben & Jerry's is gone!" and I was like, "I want that! Love is binge-eating on Ambien at your new boyfriend's apartment!"

How many posts can Ryan Gosling appear in during the course of a week?

Marmsies: They fired Ryan Gosling for getting fat.

PR: Just the neg he needed to go out with me!

Marmsies: It’s just like that old Minneapolis folk saying, “Tell Ryan Gosling he’s fat if you want him to go out with you.”

PR: Yes yes, I love that one. My grandpa also used to sing us this age-old Yiddish nursery rhyme right after we recited the Shma' before bed:

"To get Ryan Gosling to go out with you (with you! with you!)/
This is what you must do (must do! must do!)
Roll yourself in latex wax/ Clean your hole with AJAX/
Pretend you are a Real doll (a doll! a doll!)/
and he will be at your beck and call."

Marmsies: Oh my god I am DYING over here!!!!!!
You should probs blog that.

PR: I promised myself I would stop blogging emails, but what's one more time?



And as long as I broke my new rule, I need to post Liz's no-explanation-needed hilarious commentary on Tell Jew You Love Pee: "I'm kind of over watching jane alexander suck a dick, frankly."

Self-destruction has begun.

PR: Yo-- I am having a huge problem joining Second Life. Not technically, just mentally-- I've been staring at the entry screen for 8 minutes. i have the worst feeling I'm going to become addicted and, like, fucking marry an avatar in second life paris or something.

Marmsies: Ah. So you’re afraid you’re going to like it and then not be cool any more? I think I would be worried about that, too. Do you need moral support?

PR: would marrying an 85 yr old pervy grandpa in Milwaukee whose avatar looks like Ryan Gosling be "not being cool anymore"? and by moral support do you mean having avatar sex with me so I don't have to do it with LOLstrangers?!


Marmsies: No, that is not what I meant at all. I meant like sit in the same room while you register. I think if you looked in the dictionary under “not cool anymore”, there would be a pain-stakingly-etched, multi-panel drawing of that exact event occurring.

PR: Yeah, will you sit in the room with me?
Also my avatar self is HOT. Ren Barbasz is the LOLessence of sophistication and confident beauty. see attached!




Marmsies: Nice sandals, nerd.

PR: Ha. Dude I'm going to Second Life Urban Outfitters in like a nanosecond to buy myself a tunic dress and flashy tights a la my real world style. I ain't interviewing/boning no avatars in a tee-shirt and Birkenstocks. I have standards, even online.

Marmsies:I hope you are serious.

PR: After Urban I'm going to go to SL Chili's and getting some Southwestern Vegetable Soup and an Awesome Blossom. Then if it's delish, I'll go give the teenage line cook a great blow job.


Marmsies:Is there a Second Life Chilis?!

PR: If there's not, I'm outtie.

Marmsies: What will you tell your editor??!!!

PR: Simply: "How could you send me on assignment to a world in which Chili's does not exist?!"