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Hi! I’m a sucktastic blog updater. Happy summer!!

Possibly The Best Thing On TV Since Spring Break Shark Attack

People, have you been watching Harper’s Island? Because holycrapyoumust. When I saw the previews, I thought it actually seemed like it could be a cool show, and a neat concept…an eight week long (or whatever it is) murder mystery, very Agatha Christie. And for those of us with the attention span of a what was I talking about again?, I liked the fact that it’s pre-packaged with an end date, so you know ahead of time that you won’t watch for endless hours wondering where the hell it’s going (are you listening, LOST?).

Well, it’s not a cool show. I mean, it is, but only because it’s so fabulously, tackily, soapily terrible. On the first episode (spoilers! if you care!) the bridal party was about to leave for a week on the island where seven years ago a crazy person killed a bunch of people blah blah scary music. Before they set sail for The Island That In Reality Nobody Would Ever Go Back To, they’re casually wondering where cousin Eddie is. Anyone seen him? Hmm, oh well, more champagne? Must’ve been a second cousin, because they’re anchors away, and OH SNAP, Eddie is totally strapped to the propeller. Bye buddy. The least they could’ve done is text you before they took off.

Also, in the first episode, the drunk uncle (Harry Hamlin!) is staggering across a rickety bridge in the middle of the woods in the middle of the night. The bridge breaks, his legs fall through, and as he’s trying to pull himself up, his TORSO IS DEMOLISHED! Well, naturally. Because apparently the mystery killer is a T-Rex.

The bride, randomly played by David Cassidy’s daughter, is possibly the hottest woman on TV besides Cobie Smulders. Her family is awesome because they’re rich which means they’re cold, mean, plotting, and none of them have to work, ever. And their last name is, of course, Wellington. The dad is trying to get the bride’s ex, one smoldering piece of man meat named Hunter Jennings, to come back and rip his baby away from the grubby clutches of the middle-class groom, who is not an acceptable match because he is not cold, mean, plotting, and presumably does have to work.

We also need to discuss Hunter Jennings for a minute. HUNTER JENNINGS, y’all. Was there ever a better name for a chiseled, shadow-dwelling ex-boyfriend? With whom the bride used to make lots of bad naked decisions?

One of the main characters, a friend of the groom’s, is my pick for the killer. She’s mousy and paranoid and doesn’t have pupils. The groom has a creepy brother who could double for that Wedding Crashers guy, you know, “the painting was a gift, Todd, I’m taking it with me.” One of the characters has The Quintessential Creepy Ass Long Brown Haired Adolescent Daughter who whispers evil things but somehow no one around her loses their shit. It’s all “Oh, that Madison, what an imp,” as her head spins around and pea soup hits the walls.

I’m so excited to find out who gets their spinal column ripped out next. And if there ends up being a hatch and polar bears and time travel, then so help me, I will… well, I guess I’ll just blog about it. But angrily! And in ALL CAPS!

Color Me Indecisive

I’m painting my guest room, which has been decked out in swirly multicolored children’s wallpaper since I moved in. Did I mention it’s peeling? And beautifully accented by the water stains from a melting snow debacle that happened before they put on a new roof? Did I mention that water stains eventually turn brown, making the walls look like they’re bearing the brunt of the chimney’s leaky diaper? Yeah. I like my guests to feel fancy.

A friend of mine mentioned that she saw a room painted spa-like green. I latched onto that idea, because spas are lovely, calming, soothing. But is that Seafoam? Basil? Shimmering Lime? Spruce, Spring Meadow, Peppermint, Sweet Honeydew, Irish Moss, Creme de Mint, Serenity, Shore House, or Summer Basket? Is it possible that I’m less excited about the spa color and more about the association with Swedish massages and seaweed facials and aromatherapy? It’s not like I’ve ever been pampered by celery. And what the hell is a summer basket?

Speaking of spas, has anyone else found that mud baths sound much better than they are? I basically just sat in a tub. Filled with mud. That felt like mud. And smelled like mud. And made me think about how they can put “dead sea minerals” in front of any word and we’ll pay, and tip well, for it. I’d be more excited about work if I was invited to more dead sea minerals meetings. Or if I had to swing by the dead sea minerals supermarket on the way home.

There are the colors that sound more like places I want to be more than colors that I actually want in my home: Galapagos Turquoise, Acapulco Sand, Bermuda Teal, Caribbean Azure. They may actually all be the same color, but regardless, they are seductive, warm, and must be kept away from me, or those walls will be Cayman Blue before you know it. With a Cancun Sand trim. And Provence Creme polka dots.

Some colors keep it real, like Grape Gum, which looks exactly like it sounds. But the Scandinavian Blue that is maybe a fraction of a shade different from it somehow has a name that betrays its blatant purpleness. There are lots of identity issues happening on that color wheel.

There are colors that just feel good, actual color aside: Sun Porch, Yellow Rain Coat, Bunny Nose Pink, Pancake Syrup. There are those that make no sense: Cool Lava, Elephant Pink, Nacho Cheese. Who wants their walls to look like cheap apps at happy hour? Maybe me, actually. Yum.

Turns out that First Light, Icy Moon Drops, Early Sunset, Melted Ice Cream, Venetian Marble, Full Moon, Creme Brulee, Icing on the Cake, and Pale Straw are all delicious-sounding synonyms for WHITE. Tuscany sounds wonderful, but it’s really the name that’s enticing, since it’s just a shade away from Fatigues and Artichoke. And where else but in a bucket of Benjamin Moore would Stormy Monday sound appealing?

Counterterrorism

I have a suggestion for department store cosmetic counters: Get rid of your employees. I’d go there so much more often, and I think most other women would too. There’s no one standing in the produce section of the grocery store saying, “Oh, you’re buying a peach? Then you need peach yogurt, peach jam, and peach pie too. Otherwise there’s no point. Do you exfoliate?” In the cracker aisle, there’s no one holding a clipboard and frowning, “Oh, you’re buying Wheat Thins? Did you know we have Triscuits? And Ritz? You seem like more of a Wheatables type. And with your complexion…”

But at a department store, you can’t walk by a toxic wasteland of perfume on your way to look at shoes without being accosted by someone asking if you’d like to smell like buttercups in the breeze or lilacs in the spring or Jessica Simpson, post-divorce. You can’t let your eyes rest for even a nanosecond on any products by Prescriptives or Lancome without the woman behind the counter all but demanding to know what you’ve been using on your skin thus far and why it’s taken you so long to arrive at your senses and come to her for help. Sshh, don’t worry, it’ll be okay now. You’re safe.

I wanted to buy something at Clinique today only slightly more than I didn’t want to deal with the people at the Clinique counter. They may be the worst ones of all. What number skin products do you use? You don’t know? You don’t use clarifying toner? When did you stop caring?

First of all, the labcoats. The coat doesn’t make you seem like a doctor or scientist. Come to think of it, when I was in grad school I worked at a local hospital a couple mornings a week checking the hearing of newborn babies, and they used to make me throw a labcoat over my jeans. You’d be amazed at how many freshly minted parents are more than happy to let you wheel their new baby away and poke them for a few minutes when you look like…well, a Clinique salesperson.

Second of all, the withering size-up. “Hi,” I said. Cheerfully enough, I think. “I’d like such-and-such.”

“Such-and-such. Certainly.” Pause. “Have you considered any of our redness-correcting products?”

“No thank you. Just the such-and-such.”

“Certainly. If you’re interested in a sample of this redness-correcting product…” And suddenly there’s a Q-tip being offered up in front of me with a dab of, presumably, redness-correcting product on the end of it.

“No thank you.”

She wasn’t the first non-doctor to diagnose me with rosacea, which cosmetics counterpeople talk about like it’s AIDS. “Oh. You must have ROSACEA. I know of some lovely hospices, dear.” Never mind the fact that my dermatologist has reacted to my wondering whether or not I show signs of it with, “Eh, probably not.” (Ahem, rosacea, that is.) These are the same non-doctors who also try to frantically ply me with self-tanner so that no one else has to be subjected to the glowing orb of whiteness that is my skin. So do I have damaged skin that requires your product so that I look healthier or do I require the appearance of damaged skin so as to look healthier? Make-up your mind, ladies.

Why do these women have the ability to make any of us feel even the tiniest iota of insecurity? I’ve rarely seen one who didn’t make me think, “So THAT’S what frosted blue eyeliner/incorrect tanning lotion application/roots on top of roots look like.”

The woman next to me said she was interested in a particular foundation. A doctor slash scientist said to her, “You’re not wearing any makeup now, right?” The woman was clearly in work clothes, probably in her 40s, and responded with an obviously deflated, “Uh…no…not really that much.”

Back to my own personal beauty technician. “Come back if you ever want to check out our redness-correcting products.”

I checked to make sure I had everything I needed before I walked away. There’s nothing like tossing some retail bitch a stony glare as you retreat and then having to shuffle back and say, “Yeah, hi. I think I was supposed to get a gift with purchase?”

It just kept coming. This faucet could not be shut off. “We really have some fabulous options. I swear by them.”

People, she had a lazy eye. Do you think that I ever, in a million years, would’ve suggested to her that she try glasses? Because I swear by them.

Please Take A Moment To Look Around The Theater

I don’t watch that many movies. I mean, I enjoy movies (I also enjoy food, sports, and vagueness) but I just don’t sit down and watch them very often, even the ones I love. It’s funny how we tend to accumulate our favorite movies and display them but hardly ever throw them into the DVD player. Here’s a movie that cracked me up/moved me to tears/taught me invaluable life lessons and as its reward it gets to live out the rest of its plastic-encased years on a Bed Bath and Beyond stand in my den.

I especially don’t watch many Good Movies. You can argue that that label is subjective, but let’s put it like this: In 2007 I opted for I Know Who Killed Me over An Inconvenient Truth, and in 2005 paid money to see House of Wax but not Million Dollar Baby. No regrets, people.

My love for crap movies is something that was born in me and that I’ve painstakingly nurtured over the years. If you’re not a crap movie aficionado, you may not realize that they actually have their own set of parameters that must be adhered to. For example, none of those painful scary movie spoofs count. There’s a special place in hell reserved for humorless parodies.

The main requirement is that a crap movie has to think it’s a real movie. Case in point: There’s a movie coming out that stars Audrina Partridge (the brunette from the Hills with the heavy eyelids and no top lip) as a sorority girl ghost on a murderous rampage. Jujubes for everyone!

I enjoy the whole movie theater experience, but now that tickets cost $10 and the movie will probably be on On Demand in about two months, I find myself thinking twice about whether or not it’s worth it. My one caveat is that I will happily pay full price to spend a couple hours in the dark with Jason Segel, Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, or any combination thereof, which is another way of saying that yes, yes I do kiss my pillow and pretend it’s Judd Apatow, thanks for asking.

I love that Dane Cook bit about how couples have that whispered fight when the one who went to buy candy comes back to the theater and it’s dark and he wanders the aisles, blind and lost and receiving no assistance from his partner, who doesn’t notice him. One time I was watching a movie with my boyfriend, who spent about ten hours trying to open a bag of Reeses Pieces quietly, all the while making those tiny but somehow tortuous crinkling sounds. I finally suggested that he just bite the bullet and rip the bag open, and when he did, the bag basically exploded and candy went everywhere. I think that was probably one of the best laughs I’ve ever had at a movie, particularly when he indignantly clutched the last few pieces of candy to his chest, unsure of how to rescue them but unwilling to fully accept defeat. I’ve learned not to judge anyone’s candy-opening techniques, because now I understand that if I mock your technique, and you then alter said technique, resulting in the untimely demise of your candy, you get to take my candy. That’s just how the universe works.

Keeping up with movies, particularly Good Movies, is like keeping up with filing bank statements or other tediousness that we’re raised to think is requisite for maintaining our adult passport. If you don’t do it at least once a week or so, the pile grows, and then finally you just end up shredding all of them. Or suddenly it’s Oscar night and you don’t recognize anyone on the red carpet unless they were in The Wedding Date or How To Lose A Guy in 10 Days. Damn you TBS and your perfectly timed rainy Sunday afternoon moviefests!

These days, Twilight seems to be the new Titanic, Brad Pitt continues to be King Midas, Dakota Fanning is all growed up, and they’re making movies out of Where The Wild Things Are and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. What’s next, Goodnight Moon starring Sean Penn? And say what you will about Miley Cyrus, but I think the premise of her movie is genius. It seems like the perfect way to transition (read: keep) her fans from Hannah to Miley, and also a nice way to throw in a little “just be your own bad self” message to her adolescent fans. And, you know, it’s not about vampire sex.

Yesterday I saw that Nicolas Cage movie Knowing, which involved defying a few of my own tenets of film logic: 1. Paying the aforementioned $10 for a movie that’s received the proverbial shrug from critics, 2. willingly watching something slightly scary when I have the most intolerant palate for goosebumps ever, and 3. spending two hours of a beautiful day in a theater. I also think it’s worth mentioning that the family in line ahead of us spent $34 on snacks, but that’s a whole other issue. Despite the fact that Knowing is about (spoiler alert! which you know from the previews!) the end of the world, it was actually pretty entertaining.

When the world really ends it’s going to be a little off-putting to find that we can’t be saved by Bruce Willis and a drill or Jeff Goldblum and a haltingly delivered speech about science. Apparently we’re going to be done in by ice, fire, aliens, or childhood obesity, but without Will Smith, I don’t know how we’re supposed to get out of it. I haven’t even seen that guy in years. Hollywood has so not prepared us.

10 Things, For No Particular Reason

1. Driving makes us bipolar. If there’s a roadblock coming up in my lane so I try to move into your lane and you block me out, you’re an asshole. If you’re in my old lane and try to inch into my new lane, but in that douchey way where you drive right up to the roadblock and then need to get over RIGHTTHISMINUTE, you’re an asshole. If you’re taking too long at a light or intersection, you’re an asshole. If you beep at me under the same circumstance, um, hang ON, give me two seconds, you are such an asshole. If I know you and you relate any of the above situations as having happened to you, the other person is automatically an asshole. Somehow we’re never the assholes.

2. There are certain lines from movies, especially 80s movies, that can instabond otherwise strangers, like “Ray, when someone asks if you’re a god, you say YES,” “I have fought my way here to the castle beyond the Goblin City,” and “STRIKE FIRST STRIKE HARD NO MERCY SIR.” There are many of these that you could bust out with that would make me suddenly love you, but none moreso than, “Sesame Plexor? Oooh, she’s such a sleaze!” Anyone…anyone?

3. My eighth grade English teacher was probably my favorite teacher ever. He dressed like a crazy person and straight up looked like a monkey. He had us read The Most Dangerous Game and The Cask of Amontillado, both of which he infused with such goosebumpy drama that I’ve never forgotten them. He could read your cell phone contract to you and you’d be riveted. He hated redundancy and used to throw a book across the room whenever he heard the words “old adage,” because an adage already means old. I think of him whenever I hear someone say that.

4. I’m reading a book by a woman named Donna Tartt. I randomly grabbed something to use for a bookmark and realized later that it was a picture of a lemon.

5. When your dad’s friend’s wife is obnoxious and everyone knows it (she corrects people’s mispronunciations, works in some random HR job but acts like it’s the Oval Office, and has no children but will tell you how you’re raising yours wrong), you still can’t really express that to your dad in the way that you really want to, because, well, it’s your dad. You have to say something like, “Dad, I just don’t like her. She’s mean. You know? Remember the fourth of July?” It’s frustrating because nothing but saying out loud that she’s A TOTAL CUNT will ever feel satisfying.

6. It’s weird to think about the services that have become passe. Like video stores. I never saw that coming. When you see one now, it’s actually worth pointing out, like it’s an endangered species (”If you’re very, very quiet, and you look out the jeep window to your right, you’ll see the elusive Hollywood Video, a formerly docile creature, now in a violent struggle for survival…”) I just wonder what industry will be totally shut down next by some technology that never occurred to anyone and in the next breath no one could live without. Isn’t it bizarre to think that you’ll be in the middle of some random anecdote years from now, and one of your kids will pipe in with, “Wait, what’s a VIDEO STORE?”

7. I have no idea why some pop songs seem infused with the kind of mind-bending absurdity that somehow illuminates exactly what’s wrong with the world today, and others are like, yay, I love this one, turn it up.

8. I am fustrated by people who pronounce it fustrated. All of these people can say frugal, fruitcake, fraction, fragile, and fraternizing. There is no logical explanation for this.

9. I like to think that on an everyday basis, Obama speaks in the endlessly vague proclamations that he rocks in every speech, and how nightmarish it must be for his staff to try to decipher him long enough to actually make a to-do list. “Okay, sir, on Monday you have an 11:00 about demanding results from the government at every level, and then a lunch meeting about how we have to roll up our sleeves and bring change to America…”

10. My mom’s birthday is coming up and she told me that she wants night vision goggles. This probably tells you everything about my family that you need to know.

Your Name Here!

I received this email the other day:

Hello Webmaster,
I am [Just Trying To Pay The Bills], Marketing Representative and interested in sponsoring your blog and I am contacting you to ask if you are interested in blog post sponsorship. Please let me know if you have any further questions regarding pricing, guidelines and processes and kindly add my email address to your email address book to make sure your spam filter does not discard any important messages.
Yours truly,
[Don't Judge Me, I Have Kids To Feed]

Oh cool! Blog sponsor! Isn’t that the kind of thing that enables you to quit your job and let your online ramblings pay your mortgage? Or something? Sign this Webmaster up, bitches.

As a general rule, I should probably know better than to respond to someone who has to assure me that she’s not spam (man, it’d be nice if more people came with that warning, though, huh?). But I responded to her to find out the situation. She wrote me back to tell me that my mission, should I choose to accept it, is to write a 150 word blog post about the company that she works for, or is being held against her will by, it wasn’t clear. I have two days to write said blog post after I receive the assignment (which I assume from the tone of her email must self-destruct after those 48 hours), I’m not to write anything hateful or rude, and whatever you do, sucka, do NOT mention that your opinions are now bankrolled.

Yeah. Because anyone who knows me will think it’s perfectly natural that I’m suddenly writing a 150 word blog post extolling the virtues of an online casino website given the fact that I only ever went to Mohegan Sun to see Earth Wind and Fire. Moreover, I can’t believe a company like that actually has staff working for it, real live people who have names and write emails. I mean, is there a storefront? I thought websites like that were just vaporous entities with pop up windows with those fake Xs that make you accidentally open more pop up windows which is really just the ultimate internet black hole mindfuck. I would’ve just deleted the emails and moved on had I not seen the best part: For the pleasure of doing business with me, they’re happy to pay me…oh the suspense…five dollars. Five AMERICAN dollars. Now that’s what I call putting five on Red.

I wrote her back and told her that the economy isn’t quite that bad yet. But if I ever start spouting off about how act now sign up for your free trial to win big retire young and rich you may already be a winner just sign here and THREE CHERRIES YOU WIN, you’ll understand, right?

Postmortem on The Awkwardest Roll-Buttering Experience Of My Life

Do you want to hear how it went?

I pretty much decided how it would go before it happened. I wrote the blog entry predicting disaster, so of course it would be fine. She would be perfectly lovely, we’d have plenty to catch up on, and anyway I could probably have a conversation with a cactus. And I think have, on some occasions.

She didn’t smile when she opened the door, and then I remembered: OH YEAH…the girl who doesn’t smile! Sounds like the sad sequel to The Boy Who Could Fly. She was very nice, but no smile. Damn it. It could be a long evening ahead with Chuckles here. And good luck to me getting this bag o’ laughs to put out.

As we checked out the menu, snippets of her attitude problem (psychotic personality disorder?) started coming back to me. There was some vague incident in the fifth grade when we were all working on a project, and she got upset about something and started banging her head on the floor (the FLOOR!) and yelling, “WHY?” like she had just been taken down by Jeff Gillooly.

She asked about the classmates she remembered, and then about one in particular. “I hear he’s fine,” I said. “He actually married a girl that we graduated with, and they have a son.”

“Is he balding?”

“Ha. I don’t really think so. Maybe a little receding hairline situation.”

“Well, good. He used to be so mean to me.”

“Really?” I don’t remember him having any Biff Tannen tendencies.

“Yeah. One time in sixth grade, I asked him out, and he laughed at me.” From the look on her face, I expected her to conclude with, “And then he bludgeoned my family.” To be fair, having a boy laugh at you when you ask him out must be a traumatic memory. But in retrospect, you can surely see that a nervous 12-year-old is bound to not know how to handle that situation, right? Uh, right? (Also, I think she’s kind of a pimp for asking a boy out, let alone at that age. I still can’t do it. But anyway.)

She went on to tell me how hellish school had been for her here, before moving to Florida. How kids had made fun of her incessantly for being fat. How she was still in therapy for it. That, combined with the blizzard we’d had about five seconds after her plane landed, gave me the sudden urge to spread my arms wide and say, “Well, welcome back!”

She continued. “When I heard about what happened at Columbine–”

Oh, shit.

“–honestly, I understood some of what those kids must have been feeling. We didn’t have access to guns and stuff like that growing up, but if we had…”

If we had, then WHAT?!

“Well. Yeah, I hear you, kids can be pretty mean. I didn’t realize it was that bad for you. Was it better once you moved?”

“In fact, remember that going away party that you guys threw for me at the end of eighth grade?” (I guess she moved away after eighth grade; I think I got my years wrong in the last entry.)

“I’m not sure.”

“It was a pool party. At So-and-So’s house.”

“Oh, yeah!” I didn’t actually remember it being her going away party, I thought this girl just had a bunch of people over to celebrate the end of middle school. But for the love of God, I’m not splitting hairs about it now.

“Well, it was the only party I’d ever been to. You guys were the only ones who were ever nice to me.”

DId you ever hear Dane Cook’s bit about being the necessity of being nice to the weird guy in the office? I think that may have been my “thanks for the candy” moment.

Afterwards I stopped by my parents’, who live down the street from the place her parents just moved into. My dad looked surprised when he heard who I’d just had dinner with. “Does she still bang her head on the floor?”

2008

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Went to Chicago, an indoor water park, enjoyed a big gratis pitcher of yah-HUMMY blue curacao margaritas at a Mexican place in the Village thanks to a hair in my friend’s dinner, handled being almost abandoned at a Burger King in Connecticut by the Chinatown bus by decisively yelling “WHAT? NO!” which, shockingly, did not resolve the situation, had a blissful meal in Little Italy with childhood and newer friends, and saw Neil Diamond play at Fenway. Hee.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don’t think I had any. This time last year I was a weeping crazypants.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
If you have to think about this for more than a few seconds, the answer has to be no, right?

5. What countries did you visit?
The US of A, bitches. These colors don’t run.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
The usual, I guess. More motivation, decisiveness, dancing monkeys.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don’t remember the date, but being asked to become the official godmother to my godsiblings was pretty freakin’ great.

8. What was your biggest failure of the year?
Being the aforementioned weepy crazypants.

9. What was your biggest achievement?
Just getting back to being me and feeling whole. Corny but true. Oh, and giving up diet soda!

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I fell down at iParty and dropped a rubber duck that I was holding. That was more emfuckingbarassing than injurious, though.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Probably my Blackberry.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
Kate’s old roommate, who really summed up the plight of civilization when she said, “I feel? That, like, Chanel? Never goes on sale?”

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
A few people disappointed me, but no one worth mentioning now.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Condo fee, groceries, Filipino hookers.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Ulta!

16. What song will always remind you of 2008?
BOW-BOW-BEE-DOW-BOW-BOW-BEE-DOW-BOW. That was my attempt to transcribe the catchy mind fuck that is Disturbia.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier.
b) thinner or fatter? Thinner. Almost 20 pounds and counting…
c) richer or poorer? Richer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Rocking out.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Not rocking out.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
With my family. It was lovely.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
I continue to be all about the love, people.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Dexter, The Biggest Loser, How I Met Your Mother, and No Reservations.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
Nah. Didn’t I tell you I’m all about the love?

24. What was the best book you read?
Water For Elephants by Sara Gruen. So, so good.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
I don’t know. I learned that Pink is really, really bitter at her ex-husband.

26. What did you want and get?
I can’t decide if I should give some bullshitty existential answer like “everything I needed” or totally literal like “light vanilla soymilk, on sale!”

27. What did you want and not get?
Another World Series victory. So close.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I spent it with friends and Mexican food and turned 31.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Calorie-free Chipotle.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Innovative as ever: ponytails and jeans.

32. What kept you sane?
Friends.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
As always, Jason Varitek. I’ve been stepping up my game, too. This year we had (wait for it) eye contact. A few months later, he was single. Coincidence?

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The election…this whole idea of it being the revolutionary vs. the old guy when it was really just marketed as the revolutionary vs. the old guy. It was kind of a bummer to see people being so easily swayed by PR. But if it wasn’t the election, it was the girl who had her ass fused to her boyfriend’s toilet for two years. I know it wasn’t technically a political issue but HER ASS WAS FUSED TO HIS TOILET.

35. Who did you miss?
No one, really. Nobody went anywhere. That made sense in my head.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
I met some lovely blogfriends…Lara and Stefanie and NPW and Noelle, oh my!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008.
Be kind, be smart, let it go, move on, life is short, have fun.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Mmm, I don’t know. The collected works of T.I. really speak the language of my soul, though.

I Guess I Could Talk About Things Other Than Facebook. But, Um, Why The Crap Would I Want To?

When the social networking shebang started happening (which was probably long before I finally got on the bandwagon, raging hipster that I am), I remember saying to a friend of a friend that however mindless it may be, there’s no going back. Once you start getting random messages from the randomest of random people who you knew lives ago, it somehow becomes endlessly entertaining. He said something along the lines of, “Yeah, but what happens is that you get a message from someone you knew in fourth grade and you both say, ‘I can’t believe it! How are you?’ and then you just fester on each other’s friend lists and never talk again. It’s not a real life thing.” So true.

Now that we’re all so well-versed in the aforementioned randomest of random people finding us, it’s become sort of routine. I forget that there was ever a time when I didn’t know that my former camp counselor is on his way to the gym, my childhood friend just went to the bank, and the wife of a guy that I knew in college and never really liked has a headache. And then, of course, there’s the mind-numbing realization that you’ve been tagged in your seventh grade class picture (THERE ARE PICTURES OF YOU FROM MIDDLE SCHOOL ON THE INTERNET! AND EVERYONE WHO KNOWS YOU CAN SEE THEM!) but other than that, I think it’s kind of nice to make those little connections here and there.

Still, I’ve always remembered what that guy said to me a few years ago, so I’m not sure what I was thinking when this next situation happened. Let’s start by blaming my mom, who randomly googled the girl who used to live in our old house before us, who I wasn’t even really friends with, and then sent me the link to her Facebook page asking if it could be her. Now that we live in a world where shit like this is somehow normal, I of course friended her and she wrote back right away, the usual “I can’t believe it! How are you?” She moved to Florida after the fifth grade and it’s safe to say that I haven’t seen, talked to, or thought of her for even the most fleeting of moments since, except maybe when I found a dirty love letter to her mom written by some guy that had fallen behind a bureau in our house. So anyway, when she mentioned that she’d be visiting family in our old hometown this week, I made the next logical comment and said that we should get together for lunch.

What? I mean, WHAT? As soon as I hit send, I looked down at the keyboard, at my own fingers, as though they’d betrayed me. Now, there’s not a thing wrong with this girl (uh, woman, grown woman), and I’m sure it’ll be perfectly lovely to catch up with her…but it’s not like I’ve seen her after our ages were in the double digits. It’s not even like we were friends. It’s not even like I’D RECOGNIZE HER ON THE STREET. What will our catch up conversation sound like? “So, how was middle school? Did you totally get your period and stuff? Yeah, I was really into New Kids On The Block too. Did you have the big button with Joey’s face on it? No? Oh, I did. Yeah, really. I would’ve let you touch it.”

Naturally, she wrote back saying lunch would be great, probably wary that I’m about to recruit her into a cult or ask her to mother a child with me. Too bad I’m not doing that new-thing-every-day resolution anymore, because lunch with a freakin’ stranger could definitely count.