In the summer of 2001, I was lucky enough to be standing with a small group of people who were meeting the Ravens football team. They had just won Super Bowl XXXV a few months before and everyone was excited.
All of our favorites were signing that day and I recall vividly my brother Matt and his cute friend getting super worked up because Ray Lewis was coming.
Matt’s friend: HE’S COMING.
Me: I know! So exciting!
Matt’s friend: WHAT SHOULD I DO?!
Me: Get him to sign your football and say hi?
Matt’s friend: WHAT SHOULD I SAY?
Me: I don’t know. Play it cool. He doesn’t really have time to talk to us, anyway.
Matt’s friend: WE’RE NEXT. I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY.
Me: Oh my god, just chill out, you’re making me nervous.
::Ray Lewis appears before us, I see a light glimmering in Matt’s friend’s eyes::
Me: Hi Ray!
Matt’s friend (SO loudly): I’M WEARING MY RAY LEWIS UNDERPANTS.
Ray Lewis: Hah, that’s cool…I guess.
Me: That just happened.
::Ray Lewis moves on to much cooler people than us::
And that sums up the time I met #52, Ray Lewis. I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend. Go Ravens! And yay Puppy Bowl!
Becca and I were sitting around last night, trying to decide to what to do on New Year’s Eve:
Guess what? You’re invited!
Join Becca and La La for a New Year’s Eve Celebration!
When: New Year’s Eve, duh! Come anytime you want, we will be there and already drunk, probably.
Where: La La’s house!
Bring: A snack of your choice, wine or beer and a change of underwear….what? You never know what could happen and no, you can’t borrow Becca’s underwear (and I don’t wear any because of a dress tucking incident) so it’s best to just come prepared.
RSVP in the comments and we will include you in a follow-up post about how much fun we all had!
Directions:
1. Drive to the airport
2. Fly to BWI, get in a cab and take I-95 N
3. Take the creepy exit (lock your doors, please)
4. Drive 2 miles and turn left at the homeless man with peg legs (don’t ask him if he was a pirate because 1. it’s rude and 2. he gets really angry)
5. Go to the house with the front porch and black roof
I have to be honest with you guys, I am bitter about Christmas. The actual day is always nice, but everything surrounding it gives me a case of the mean reds. It probably has something to do with the fact that I’m getting older, I live alone, I only get one channel, my house is freezing cold and so on…
Look, this is my tree:
One thing I do love about Christmastime? Stop-motion animation. You know, Rankin Bass style. My favorite is Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.Surely you’ve seen it:
Rudolph and Hermey have a jam sesh
If you haven’t, basically what happens is that Rudolph’s parents hate his nose so they try to cover it up and during training his fake nose pops off and his girlfriend Clarice’s dad is all “heeell no” and Rudolph is sad so he runs away from home and goes on an adventure where he meets Hermey (aspiring elf dentist who also ran away) and a dude named Yukon Cornelius…the greatest prospector in the north. I am disgusted by the way he licks his ice pick. They join together and eventually the traveling trio come across The Island of Misfit Toys where everyone, of course, sings a song:
There was a question that plagued me each year as I watched this part. What’s wrong with the Dolly for Sue? She looks just fine to me (yes I have too much time on my hands).
This year, I finally looked it up to see if there is an explanation. Sure enough, I am not the only curious one. In his book “The Enchanted World of Rankin Bass,” Rick Goldschmidt explains, “In the original broadcast the Dolly’s screen time is mere seconds. I don’t believe Romeo Muller really gave the character much thought. She was granted more screen time in the 1965 and 1997 broadcasts which ultimately led many a fan to wonder what was wrong with her. Arthur Rankin says that Dolly’s problem is more psychological.”
While the rest of the toys were made incorrectly, the girly toy’s problem is psychological. Interesting.
So, what do you think?
My explanation is that her rag doll boyfriend dumped her because things just weren’t working out, so she got depressed and instead of coming back a stronger doll, she just cries, feels bad for herself and eats french fries all the time and the other misfit toys gossip and say things like “Greeeaat, here comes Dolly for Sue again, what a downer.”
Good god, Dolly, you’re embarrassing yourself. Get off your ass already and have some self-respect.
I love reading creative posts and catching a glimpse of what’s inside the imaginations of other bloggers. My imagination gets wild and crazy and I can think of a few childhood experiences that certainly played a major role in that development.
One example is my love for the 1984 film The NeverEnding Story.
Cue majestic music, bitches:
When I was a kid, I made my parents rent that movie every weekend for approximately two years. Something about it truly grabbed my imagination and expanded La La Land into a vast empire where I am still a beautiful empress with a British accent. I also blame it for giving me imaginary friends (a mermaid and a turtle) that lived in the sewer.*
At night I made up related stories while curled up on the floor in my Care Bears sleeping bag. In my head, I WAS The Childlike Empress and I lived in an ivory tower made of glorious light. I imagined (still imagine, just kidding, kind of) someday walking down the aisle wearing her headpiece:
But with real pearls. Image from Etsy.
Except back then I was jonesin’ for some Atreyu:
Atreyu sporting the Auryn. Image from Google.
Is there something from your childhood that you associate with the development of your imagination? Do you still make up stories in your head as you fall asleep? Have you ever put someone’s baby on a dog and pretended he was riding Falcor? No? Oh. I guess I haven’t either, then. That would be a weird thing to do.
Also, this is the song from the movie. Look at this guy. Just look at him…and there upon a rainbow is the answer to a never-ending story.
______________
* My imaginary friends and I are no longer in contact.
This will make no sense without reading part uno here.*
La La grabs my hand and we enter the big orange ball. With my other hand I shield my eyes against the bright orange light that flashes at us as we walk through the door.
Before us is a long hallway with magnets covering the walls from floor to ceiling.
“I need an Orlando magnet,” La La says to me and smiles.
“Ok,” I reply. “But what about the meeting?”
“We are in it,” La La responds as she leads me down the hallway.
We look at the miles and miles of magnets. They have every city, every country, every state, except Orlando.
“What the hell?!” I ask stunned.
“Maybe through this door,” La La says. A million different types of citrus fruits come tumbling out. I grab La La and press her against the wall, shielding her with my body.
We look at each other and kiss.***
“That was nice,” La La says, smiling.
“Yes…” I start to say, but suddenly we are interrupted by a voice calling through the door.
“Bruschetta! Bruschetta!” Free Bruschetta!”
I steal another quick kiss and we both turn to look through the open door. Inside we see what looks like a grocery store, except all the produce twinkles with a golden hue. There are tables after tables of vendor type looking people with food samples in front of them. The closest table has piles and piles of the best looking Bruschetta that I have ever seen.
I link La La’s arm with mine,
“Let’s go. Free Bruschetta, baby!”
As we enter through the door, a man stops us on the other side.
‘Hello,” the man says. “My name is Justin. I make the most beautiful, delicious wine ever. You may not enter without a coupon.’
‘Is it better than a Malbec? I seriously doubt it is. Nothing is,” La La says, challenges Justin.
Justin looks like he suddenly smelled a dinosaur fart.
“Don’t. You. Ever. Say. That. Again!” he says. “Follow me, I will give you a taste!”
“So much for the coupon,” I whisper in La La’s ear. She smiles.
We follow Justin through the winding rows of vendors and their free samples. I see ice cream, crab salad, stuffed fig leaves, gnocchi…and I grab them all. La La gives me a funny look.
“Dinner later,” I say and shrug as much as I can with an arm full of free samples.
Justin stops at the longest table I have ever seen. Black wine bottles are stacked on the table and on each bottle is a handwritten label that says “Justin. The Best Wine. Ever. Bitches.”
Justin pours two tiny thimble samples of wine and hands them to us. I drink mine.
“Really good!” I say.
La La grabs the bottle from Justin and starts to chug.
“Hey!” Justin cries.
“It’s ok, ” I say. “Just better let her do what she wants.”
“Buy my wine,” Justin says. “Justify me!”
“Ok, dude,” I say, grabbing a bottle. “You’re justified!”
The Market starts to shake like there’s an earthquake. The vendor tables overturn, otters and cats run for cover in the bushes, and a lady with a laptop screams, “My Farmville! My Farmville! Someone save my Farmville!”
“What does that mean?” I ask La La.
“Come on!” La La screams and leads us through an open door to the side of the market.
We run through the door and La La shuts it. Suddenly we are in the middle of an airport. No one else is in the airport except one older Homeland Security Guard. He points to a table set up in the middle of the waiting area. I look down in my arms. All I have left from the market is a wedge of brie, a loaf of french bread, a smoked Gouda pasta salad, and the bottle of Justin. La La sits down at the table which now has wine glasses and plates. I sit down too. The band Crystal Fighters appear and start playing some songs.
The Homeland Security Guard says, “It’s time.”
“Time for what?” I ask.
“Time to go,” he says and points to an airplane.
I grab La La’s hand and we get on the airplane. The Crystal Fighters fight over our left over Gouda pasta salad and an old cleaning woman sweeps up the crumbs from the French Bread with a vacuum.
*However it is a dream**, so it may not make any sense any way
**Or is it?
***It’s my dream, dammit! I’ll kiss her if I want!
Hey! You know me, I hope. It’s Chris. Sorry I haven’t been here in a while. La La has kept my side of the blog tidy and free of cobwebs, though. Thanks, baby! Anyway, I just wanted to share this dream I had the other night:
So it starts with me picking up La La for a “meeting.” I didn’t know what the meeting was about or where, but I knew I was supposed to pick her up and the universe demanded us to be there.
We can’t argue with the universe, right?
So I hop in my dad van and drive to her house…only it’s not her normal house, it looks like an Aztec pyramid! It’s yellow and big, and along the front are stairs so you can climb to the top.*
I sit and stare at it for a minute. Is this the right address?
It has to be, all the other houses look like what I remember, just now La La lives in a big, yellow Aztec pyramid. She comes out and gets in the van.
“Um, where did the pyramid come from?” I ask.
“I’ve always lived in it, silly!” she replies.
“No, no you haven’t….” I start to say, but suddenly her neighbors spill out of the house next door. They are screaming things like:
“I don’t care if you gang banged everybody on the block, you’re not gang banging tonight!”
“I’ll gang bang tonight if I want! You don’t own me! I’ll gang bang you!”
“You are not gang banging me! I’ll gang bang you and your sister!”
“My sister ain’t no gang banger! Do you want me to gang bang you?”
And it went on like that for a while. Also, the entire time they were arguing**, they were laying out cardboard boxes on their sides with blankets inside of them.
“What are those for?” I asked La La.
“I don’t know,” she replied and smiled. “They do that every Wednesday. It’s sweet!”
“What?” I ask, but then the next thing I know I was driving down the road***.
“Hey!” La La suddenly says alarmed. “There is someone following the car! On foot!”
Sure enough, in my rear view mirror is a man running after us wearing a ball cap and an apron. He is holding a plastic bag with one hand and waving at us frantically with the other. I also notice three other men dressed like him, frantically wiping the road down where he had been. They all looked extremely worried and determined.
“Should I stop?” I ask La La.
“Yes! Always stop for someone wearing an apron!” La La says, grabbing the wheel.
“What?” I ask again.
We stop and the man catches up to us. He is out of breath. He hands La La the bag and leaves.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Two Jimmy Johns subs. A veggie for me and a roast beef for you, two bags of skinny chips, and two root beers!”
Up ahead a big orange ball appears.
La La puts down her sandwich and says,
“That’s it. I think that’s where we are supposed to go.”
I pull into the parking lot of the orange ball and both La La and I sit for a minute and stare at it. It’s mesmerizing! On the front are some blurry words.
“I think that one word says ‘Gifts’,” I whisper to her.
She whispers back, ” I think the other one says ‘Fruit.’”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know!”
At the doors of the orange ball is a long thin something, painted white, and wearing a rainbow-colored wig. We get out of the van and approach. It looks like one of those inflatable things that wave in the breeze outside of a car dealership, except this one has a white face. La La reaches up and pulls off the wig. Underneath the wig is a penis, and then suddenly, out of the blue, the whole thing catches on fire!
La La grabs my hand and says,
“Quick! I need a magnet!”
To Be Continued…
* And a fountain!
**I’m not really sure if they were truly mad at each other or it was some pre-sex ritual thing that gang bangers do….
***It is a dream, after all. Dreams are full of random cut scenes.
If you’re like me and ready (absolutely unprepared) to hunker down because of the hurricane, you might enjoy a little music while braving the storm before your batteries die…and you’re left all alone…just you and your thoughts by candlelight. Awesome. And hey, if anything happens to your windows and you need replacements, here’s some advice.
Good luck out there. Be safe.
1. Jimmy Buffett – Tryin’ to Reason With Hurricane Season
2. Eurythmics – Here Comes The Rain Again
3. CCR – Who’ll Stop The Rain
4. Edie Brickell – A Hard Rain’s A Gonna Fall (love this version a lot)
5. The Doors – Riders on the storm
6. Bruce Springsteen – Sandy
7. Scorpions – Rock You Like A Hurricane (duh)
8. The Who – Love Reign O’er Me (see what I did there?)
While Nikki Finke, Editor in Chief of Deadline Hollywood, was watching the Emmys’, she wrote:
“Beautiful actresses are not funny. They don’t know how to do comedy…Only women who grew up ugly and stayed ugly, or through plastic surgery became beautiful, can pull off sitcoms or standups. Bowen isn’t a comedienne just like Brooke Shields wasn’t and a zillion more. Because it’s all about emotional pain and humiliation and rising above both by making people laugh with you instead of at you. So stop casting beautiful actresses when you should be giving ugly women a chance.”
It reminded me of an article I read in Vanity Fair by the late Christopher Hitchens. He explained that attractive women don’t need to be funny to get attention from men, that women in general aren’t childish (crude) enough to be funny and that the rare female comedians who are funny are normally “hefty or dykey or jewish” (oh my).
So, can attractive women be funny? Can women in general be funny people?
Nope. You’re right, Nikki Finke and ghost of Christopher Hitchens (who quoted the 1911 poem “The Female of the Species” by Rudyard Kipling, which says women deal with the seriousness of motherhood and have no time for jest). I guess we can all agree because we all have the same views on what it means to be “beautiful” and/or “funny,” despite the variety of both female characteristics and types of humor that exist.
I really just can’t think of any funny, pretty women on TV and my lovely lady friends/the beautiful female bloggers are certainly all dull.
And yikes, Kristin Wiig, Maya Rudolph and Tina Fey never get me to even crack a smile:
Photo by Annie Leibowitz, Vanity Fair
Anyway, I’m off to make some sort of stew and have a baby or something. If readers have any examples of funny, attractive women, please share.
Today I would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to my best friend, Christopher De Voss. What makes our relationship unique is that we “met” on WordPress about seven months ago and immediately clicked (pun not intended, but appreciated while proofreading). One might say our silly senses of humor had something to do with it.
Chris doesn’t know how grateful I was for his posts back in May when I lost Dane and needed a laugh. He took the edge off of a rough couple of months. We got closer after that and now the man makes me guffaw every day. Sometimes during our conversations, my laughter actually echoes throughout my house and my abs ache. He gives me a good workout!
He is a great, fun, thoughtful man and he deserves a party. I can’t throw him a party (900 miles will do that), but I did make him a birthday celebration (everything in the picture except the table and plate)*. Obviously, I had to eat the whole cake by myself except for this piece (and then I ate it anyway). Gosh, how unfortunate.
Eat your heart out, people who like crafts and/or cake
Oh, and I got him this:
You’ll never guess what’s inside
If I could actually present these things to him in person today, I would wear this Chewbacca costume:
Because Star Wars
Anyway, as my last birthday surprise, I wanted my whole lab to sing “Happy Birthday” to him, but it turns out that scientists are awkward and quite camera-shy*, so this is all you get, buddy*. I’m sorry…and I’m sorry I ate your cake and made your wish for you. However, the wine is still here, perhaps we can drink that together someday*.
Anyway, here is the video I chose instead:
haha…kidding:
__________________
*I hate crafts, but I spent Saturday night learning to bake a cake, make balloon animals, make homemade candles and draw R2-D2. ::curtsies::
*Unable to do anything that doesn’t involve sciencey things, really.
*I know you hate when I call you “buddy” and that every time I say it, Pauly Shore gets his wings.
As you are aware, my 28th birthday is Monday. I’ve been thinking about life and all the people I should thank for helping to shape me as a human being. As it turns out, there are only about four people to thank, so why not do so in a post.
1 and 2. Patricia and Dennis. They made a mistake in their late 30s and I was the result. You’re welcome, world.
3. Alison. The friend I’ve had since I was 11 who never judges anything I do, and I don’t judge anything she does. When we were kids, while all the other 11 year old girls were doing normal things, Alison and I were in the back of my mom’s blue station wagon shouting the lyrics to Rod Stewart songs while eating chicken nuggets and not giving even a single fuck. It was weird. We’re still pretty weird.
4. Rod Stewart. He taught me that young hearts gotta run free, be free, live free and that time is on, time is on my side. He also taught me that I have a thing for older men. You’re welcome, older men.
I am going to shout the song below in the car on the way home from work today. I bestow upon thine ears, the gift of Rod Stewart (and please check out the drummer):
Dog owner and lover. Urbanite-Suburbanite. Music addict. Editor. Explorer. Wine enthusiast (Malbec, please). Orange Crush abuser. Anglophile. People watcher. My dream job? Writer, or a Tom Jones back up singer. Well, not Tom Jones now, but Tom Jones in the early '70s...so let's go with the writing thing.
