Sentimental Letter From the Home Game.

The first game of the season had everything necessary to be a crowd pleaser-- a new hometown hero recovered from last season's injuries, a beloved, familiar face from the past now swinging for the opposing Los Angeles Angels (a dose of hygge for the Scandavanian-rooted crowd), and a positively odd blizzard on the last day of March making everyone inside the Metrodome feel welcomely trapped and cacooned, reluctant to leave, and like proud state patriots--better than the average fickle-hearted ball fan-- for driving through the yet unplowed streets of downtown Minneapolis at 5 MPH just to be at the sold-out opener. 50,000 of us in all.

Earlier today I was at the doctor's office and there were three people (in a waiting room of six) in Joe Mauer shirts. Even better, Momsies and I were at brunch yesterday and the little boy at the next table was under some sort of What Would Joe Mauer Do? compulsory trance. His mother would ask him to finish his pancake, and the boy, adorable in an oversize Twins hat, would ignore her instruction, kind of play with his food tearing the pancake apart with his fork, until she said "Joe Mauer would eat his pancakes!" Then he put fork to cake, and promptly to mouth. This parenting strategy also worked when his Mom wanted him to use a wet nap at the end of breakfast. I imagine it will work for all sorts of chores until Joe Mauer, during some press conference, lets it accidentally slip that he hates finishing his pancakes and using wet naps.

A catcher seems an odd pick for team hero to me. There's not too many chances for a catcher to be heroic. But Mauer is young, born and raised in St. Paul, and Minnesotans would probably hail Carrot Top if he were a hometown boy. It doesn't hurt that Mauer's in possession of a ridiculous contract, and cute. Cute in a sort of fratty way, like the kind of dude who would have called me a fattie dyke in junior high and looked over my shoulder during Algebra quizzes. Still, I find myself ridiculously attracted to him. It's hard to go against mainstream taste.

One rim job for every double, okay?


Then there was the ghost of seasons past: When Torii Hunter came out to bat for the Angels, his first time on Twins ground not as a Twin, fans stood up holding signs like "We Still Love You Torii!" and the entire stadium rose to give him a ear-pounding standing ovation. Hunter got a little teary-eyed and saluted the crowd. My Dad shook his head to connote his upset at the following equation which has plagued the Twins for the past couple years:

Great, loving fans + little money for talent = tragedy.

The crowd's goodwill towards Hunter didn't last too long however. By the ninth inning, when the Twins were barely ahead 3-2, and Hunter stepped up to bat, there were a few hisses, and loud cheering when Nathan struck Hunter out to seal the win.

It was a good game. A nice way to start off the season. But how strange it was to exit the Dome in a summer peanuts-and-Cracker Jacks kind of euphoria only to be greeted with a blanket of white coating the trees, and slushy, slippery roads. On our way out, Dad and I bought tickets for Wednesday's game too. Yay.

I'm not sure how much I'll be blogging over the coming weeks, but the light in my Cranial Section For Highly Enjoyable Music Videos is always on:

The Wave Pictures-- I Love You Like A Madman




The Wrens-- Everyone Choose Sides

Blatant Self Promotsies and Naked Avatar Pics!

Grandma's Review: Well I had to turn off the TV to really concentrate...So let me make sure I understand so I can explain to my Bridge Club friends tonight-- on the INTERNET you can pretend you're someone else???...BUT WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT?"

(click to enlarge pages)

I was at a movie a few weeks ago in a giant, but not very well populated theater in Battery Park, and after the Sex & The City preview finished, there was a second of silence, then some dude in the front row just shouted, "BOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Everyone started clapping. It was a moment of patriotism for me. Like, God Bless America.

Anyhow, this speaks for itself:

Perhaps the one thing that has proliferated more than viruses in the 21st century is dating service websites. That is, if you don't count dating service websites as viruses. Deep thought!

There's Nerve.com for people who like going to free screenings of chick flicks and/or have incurable STDs. There's Potpartners.com for those who live a couch-sunken existence. And there's today's find-- Ashleymadison.com, for those who are married but want to conduct extramarital affairs. The tagline: When Monogamy Becomes Monotony. And that's TRADEMARKED. Classy! I was under the impression that when monogamy became monotony one either got a divorce or a bedroom swing and handcuffs. Not so!

Anyhow, the site begs more than a few questions, like,

Does one have to be married to join or can one just be into married people?

Where did that married harlot on the front page get her lipstick because I've been looking for that shade?

And who exactly is "Ashley Madison"? Is she a famous homewrecker known widely in homewrecking circles? A code word to connote one is married, but GGG? The unfortunate name of the out-of-wedlock child produced by such dalliances outside the marital bond?


Anyhow, Marmsies deconstructed the problems of this site quite nicely via email today. In general Marmsies is an excellent problem deconstructress and has an entire blog showcasing her talent, which you should read (Duh).

Marmsies: I can’t stop looking at this Ashley website thing!

PR: It's terrible. What if both partners signed up secretly and ended up going on a cheater affair date with each other? Comedy of Errors! What also sucks is you have to be married...what if you're just a single gal who wants to be with a married dude because it's less pressure?? Like that Guardian article!

Marmsies: Gross! That article was gross, is what I mean. Where is this alleged ‘pressure’ I keep hearing so much about???
But anyway, the website offended me b/c it used all this evolutionary theory about monogamy that I do pretty much believe, but then exploited it in the service of grossness. Like, ugh, why don’t you try not being married if you hate it so much, jerkface? People do it every day!

PR: I hate when people use evolutionary biology for dumb reasons. I mean I kind of just hate evolutionary biology. Like women like pink because they picked berries or whatever. Fuck you, EVO BIO.

Marmsies: I hate evolutionary biology 99% of the time, though I guess it’s not evolutionary biology to be against the monogs, it’s just biology biology. But anyway, you can’t use science to prove that affairs are okay, duh. That’s like using theater to prove that car crashes are okay or something. Maybe my project while I am single will be to get a profile on this site, and then when we go meet up for dates, I will be standing there with a poster board that says GET A DIVORCE IF YOU HATE HER SO MUCH, DICKHEAD and balloons and the bullshit horn.

PR: LOLBrilliant.

OMGz, Watch This.

Paola, Come With Me And We Shall Crawl Inside An Abandoned Fried Chicken Bucket Left By The Side of The Road And Pray For Lesbianism.

Dudes, System Overload. I've already documented my intense hattitude towards Modern Love and its trademark brand of crusty upper-classers fulfilling patriarchal, Bradshaw-esque notions of love. I haven't spoken quite as much about my eyeball-barfing feelings towards Ben Karlin, the douche-baggy author of Things I Learned From Women Who Dumped Me (a.k.a. I Obviously Have Learned Nothing From Women Who Dumped Me, Evidence Being This Book, As I Am Still Treating Females I Have Dated As Archetypes To Try To Prove My Own Profundity On Life And Love In An Essay) Then on Sunday, right when I was gently coming down from a nice two-day high, the Times' decided to merge my two great hates-- Modern Love and self-centered men who don't give women the benefit of humanity-- into one shiny on the outside, vomitous on the inside, throw-up bucket.* It's enough to make a normally nice girl like me grow teeth on her vagina.

Ben starts us off with the perfect Modern Love setting right from the get-go: mild exoticism! The classic I-am-a-stuffy-white-person-who-needs-to-learn-about-love-from- other-cultures-syndrome. Always a solid base on which to build a relationship:

I met her at an Italian restaurant in my neighborhood in Brooklyn, where she was a devastatingly cute waitress and I a frequent customer — and not just because of the devastatingly cute waitress. The food was good, too.

The restaurant was owned and operated and even staffed by actual Italians. [ed note: OMGZ!!! Actual Italians!] One time, Paola let on that she gave Italian lessons on the side. I had studied in Florence in college and nurtured an abiding interest in Italian language, food and culture. So, not wanting to be the creepy guy who asks the waitress out, I signed up for Italian lessons. That way, I would just be the creepy guy who asks the tutor out. That was way better.

It's actually gross to think of Karlin here, already the executive producer of The Daily Show, quasi-stalking an "unbearably cute" waitress. It's even grosser that he acknowledges his creepy behavior. Note to men: admitting you're creepy does not humanize you, it just makes you an asshole. Also, doesn't he kind of imply it's less creepy to ask her out when she's not a blue-collar worker? Classy.

Of course Ben and his Italian waitress go on to have charming little "misunderstandings involving language, food and culture" eventually moving in together and cohabitating for two years. I've got to ask, SERIOUSLY, there had to be more to your relationship than her unbearable cuteness, and superficially endearing cultural clashes right? You were together for TWO YEARS. Why do you only describe her appearance and exoticism? I mean, did you guys talk about stuff? I honestly do not understand why men like you never care about finding an equal. Or if Paola was challenging and funny, why is that not what you choose to appreciate about her? JESUS. Smart men are the worst. I blame you for the LexaPro epidemic currently afflicting the intelligent and together female population of New York.

Obviously Ben leaves Paola midway through the essay. Because that's what men like Ben do. And because he didn't have a nice enough pen or something...?

A few years into the relationship, I jotted down these thoughts: “I need a better quality pen to write about Paola. What kind of person is she?"

Ahahahahhahaha. Dude actually jotted that down: "I need a better quality pen."

Paola, you know it's time to get out when your value to someone is predicated on them obtaining a high-quality commercial product. That means you're worth about $1,769 at most, and while that doesn't seem that bad at first take, remember he's a rich fuck! You should be worth at least ten designer pens on his TV writer salary! (Calculations based on price of Aurora's Europa LE pen--the finest in Italian writing utensils)

Of course the main reason Ben leaves Paola (in addition to the pen problem) is because he's all too aware of the flightly male stereotype and thus thinks it's okay to fuck people over as long as he comes to his senses by the end of the essay.

Was I hung up on Paola? Had I lost sight of what I really wanted out of a partner? Had I fallen into that New York City long con, the one where you think there is an infinite supply of potential mates, and the perfect one is forever around the corner?


(Please Paola, dump him. Divorce him. Dudes like this don't appreciate anyone but themselves. You are just an exotic waitress that he'll either choose to assign meaning to or not, but it has nothing to do with you, or who you are. For sers, get out now.)

Ben goes on an Outward Bound trip, spends like two seconds alone in the wilderness and writes about it like it's the stuff Into The Wild is made of. Then there is the sign, the sign telling him that Paola is the one. Only it doesn't actually really make sense at all, nor does he offer any reason why all of a sudden he realizes Paola is his soul mate, proving, once again, this has nothing to do with her, it's just a dude deciding that he's 33 and alone, and that he's going to throw all his romantic notions back on the ex-girlfriend whom he probably treated like crap:

There was a moment, a little before the sun rose, when a patch of clouds turned the most unusual, intense orange I had ever seen. I said, “Wow,” and then tears came to my eyes. It faded more quickly than it came, giving way to the duller colors of day. New Year’s Day. But my heart was stirred: I had come here for a moment like this.

I stood up and instantly knew I had to marry Paola.

They were married of course, this is an effing Modern Love column after all.

But Paola please: Let us go to some tropical destination, maybe where Lost is filmed or something, and you can go through deprogramming while we take turns boning Matthew Fox. It will be great! Then you can write a Modern Love column entitled "How My Husband's Portrayal of Me In A Modern Love Essay Prompted Me To Realize He Was An Emotional Fucktard, And Led Me To Bone Matthew Fox in Hawaii (As Well As Find Happiness)."


*The Throw-Up Bucket: A big shiny metal pot, used by the Perfect Ratio parents to catch the vomit of flu-ridden Ratio offspring, lending the bucket an enticing, clean outside appearance, and an atrophying, puke-stained interior. Will sell on Ebay for $50 bucks if you describe the vomit stains as bearing a resemblance to Jesus.

It's heartening to see the Church is chilling a bit on the whole NO SEX before marriage thing. If the goal is to not leave your future husband with a bare stem, then let's see: there are probably twenty petals on each rose, and it looks like eight roses all together in the bouquet, so according to my calculations you can have premarital sex 160 times and still get a passing grade in the Lord's Book of Documented Human Sexual Acts. It's probably too late for me, but for those of you who have been more choosy, start tallying.

Also, a sidenote for the Abstinence movement: can you please stop symbolizing my genitals with flowers? I just don't get it. No one can buy my vag a dozen times for $12.99. It doesn't need to be submerged in water. It doesn't have thorns....if you're good (TEETH reference!) And it doesn't shrivel and die in a week. A much more apt metaphor would be Chili's Awesome Blossom, a delicious meal that blooms all year at reasonable prices in most American suburbs!

Study Finds That Talking About Going To Therapy Not As Effective As Going To Therapy.

People who talk about going to therapy are not as well off as people who actually go to therapy, a recent multi-university study reported on Tuesday. The report, based on five years of researching misaligned 20 to 30 year olds in 12 different states, is the first to indicate that just expressing interest in therapy may not be enough to solve minor emotional problems.
Dr. Gertrude Murphy, the lead researcher of the study, says that "young women and men will sit around and complain about their boyfriends or girlfriends treating them badly or their bosses not giving them responsibility, often concluding the conversation with 'Yeah, I know. I really should talk to a therapist. I don't know why I'm putting up with this crap.' Our research reveals that expressing that sentiment is simply not as effective as the act of going to see a therapist."

The findings came as a shock to many of the subjects who thought that they were improving each time they voiced the desire to see a therapist. "It's just hard for me to believe that I'm not getting any better," says Tricia, 28, "Seriously, every time the guy I'm dating starts irrationally yelling at me, I come home and call my best friend who insists that I'm smarter, prettier and funnier than him anyway, and tells me to go see a therapist. I really thought I was getting somewhere. Once, after he called me an 'idiot' I didn't return his call for three hours. It's disappointing to realize I really haven't been making any progress."