State of the Meg—April 2012

- A lot of truly God-awful things have happened over the last few months and I don’t want to talk about it. Which is obnoxious, I realize, because then why did I bring it up in the first place? I don’t know. I’m like that asshole who casually drops it into conversation that they were molested but that's where the story stops, so you spend the rest of your friendship not knowing which family member to resent on their behalf. Not that I’m saying people who have been molested are assholes. People who are withholding are assholes. It just so happens that some of them have been molested. Really, what I’m trying to say here is that I’m an asshole who—TO MY KNOWLEDGE—has never been sexually molested. Good. I’m glad we're off to a good start.

- In other good, non-molestery news, I got into grad schools! Yay for me. YAY FOR SCHOOL! I got a creative writing scholarship to The New School, so that’s where I’ll be going. For a while I was bummed out because this means I have to turn down my spot at Columbia. I couldn’t figure out why that prospect upset me so much until I realized that in my mind, I’ve always equated Columbia with Hogwarts. I don’t really know why, considering I’ve physically been to Columbia and seen firsthand that it is in no way a school of witchcraft and wizardry. Yet on some subconscious level, I think I’ve been imagining myself spending the next two years flying around the Upper West Side with Evie on my broomstick—just writin’, playin’ Quidditch, havin’ the occasional gab session with Professor McGonagall. That said, I did the math and worked out that a round trip ticket to Orlando, two nights at the Econo Lodge, and a day pass to the The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios is $100,583 less than getting a creative writing MFA from Columbia. Soooo, that is the route I will be taking.

- HA HA! I’m just kidding, I can’t afford a trip to Orlando. If I could, I’d already be knee-deep in Kevin Yang and Gatorland by now.

- So, yes, I’m moving back to New York in July, probably. I feel the following about it: excited, scared, nervous, anxious, hopeful, loose bowels, scared. If you live in New York and would like to be my friend, that would be awesome. I sleep a lot and have a generally poor outlook on life, but I also love road trips and give good hugs. I feel like it balances out in the end.

- What does this news mean for the blog? Nothing. If anything I hope it’s going to get the blog back on track because now I totally feel motivated to write more. Chris is actually here right now to help me pick the blog up off its face and make it a part of your life again. He’s currently lying on my couch, just a tippy-tappying away. He just looked off into the distance thoughtfully, ruffled his hair, looked like he got an idea, and went back to typing. You know what? Good for him. I’m glad he worked through that. Oh, nope, he’s back to looking in the air worriedly. Now he’s fixing his sleeves and staring at my bookshelf. Back to typing. He’s got it. What a pro. I mean, I could live-blog Chris writing a blog post indefinitely, so I’m going to stop myself now before this gets any worse. (Although it’s worth noting that the only thing I can make out on his word document is “A Very Special Episode of Roseanne”. I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve, but I am excited.)

- You know what’s a really big part of my life right now? Being livid that this exists/was recently featured on Gizmodo:

What you’re looking at is Grand Trunk’s hammock compatible sleeping bag, or as you may know it better, a SLAMMOCK, the invention I came up with in the summer of 2005 when I boldly asked myself, “Meg, what is the most comfortable sleeping scenario you can think of?” and stared back at my truth: a sleeping back in a hammock. You may also remember that everyone (including my parents) mocked me when I tried to make it a reality in my sophomore year dorm, and the inventor of The Tinge further mocked me via email because I made the extremely legitimate point that most ladies don't want to rub their junk on razor blades. And now my invention—NAY, dream!—is being sold for $180 by someone who is not me.  Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssucks.

- Yesterday was my birthday. I’m 27. Helena got me a bag of weed and Laura got me a subscription to the large-print version of Reader’s Digest, and every time I think about it I want to burst into tears because when you find two people who just get you like that, you probably shouldn’t move 230 miles away from them.

- I have two camping trips planned for the near future and I’m so excited. Slash I need to get new batteries for Hat.

- Speaking of Hat! I forgot to tell you about my new phone cover. Check it out:

I know what you’re thinking: “Is that a Real Tree phone cover?” No. It’s one step better: it’s a knock-off Real Tree phone cover. I got it for $6.99 on Amazon and it’s a major part of why I’m alive right now. I like it because it makes me feel American. I changed my ringtone to Toby Keith's “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue (Angry American)” and renamed my phone Rickywayne after my favorite contestant on Heavy. Every time I plug it into iTunes it says, “Rickywayne_LEAVE ME ALONE! is synching”, and I just laugh and laugh and laugh…

- Speaking of the depressing ways I choose to entertain myself, my newest hobby is teaching myself bass lines to 311 songs, playing them, and then laughing out loud. The end.

- Chris update: Now he’s sitting upright on the couch, slumped down slightly, playing with his facial, and looking concerned.

- Chris update II: Ah, it’s because he’s hungry and wants to know if I’m cooking dinner tonight. No. No, I’m not.

- Chris update III: Chris is making a frozen burrito.

- My allergies are killing me. WHICH REMINDS ME! The Blogologues are performing my blog post A Humble Apology in the run of their current show, Blogologues: Younger Than Springtime! I’m so honored, I can’t even tell you. The show runs Thursdays-Saturdays, April 13-May 5^th at The Players Theater in the West Village. Tickets are available for purchase here, so if you’re in New York, go see it! Becca and I are going this weekend and I can’t wait! Slash, I can wait because the reason I’m going to New York this weekend is to attend an accepted student’s reception at The New School, which sounds like a lot of forced mingling/networking. ‘Ehhhhhhhh… It’s on 4/20 (~!LOL!~), so I can’t decide if I should get high before to make said mingling easier, or wait and get high after as a reward for being able to interact with people like a normal fucking human being. Or both…? 

- I got an upper endoscopy done a few weeks ago (more on that in a later blog post), and one of the questions the nurse asked before the procedure was if there’s any possible chance that I could be pregnant. I answered no, because obviously the closest I’ve come to having sex recently was sleeping through a rerun of Silk Stalkings on the TV Guide Network last month, and I swear to God, the nurse stopped writing, looked up from her clipboard, raised a suspicious eyebrow and asked, “Are you sure?” I can’t tell if she asked that because I look fat and pregnant, or because I look so slutty that I obviously lost the Trapper Keeper detailing all the dicks I've fucked lately and a baby??!!—YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE!!!!!1! Either way, I’m offended. Just slightly less by the chorus of dicks/your guess, my guess option.

- Did you know you have to take a drug test to work at the Ford’s Theater gift shop? HA HA! Neither did I!

- I don’t understand the appeal of LMFAO. Their songs just sound like technology and foolishness

- Also, I don’t care for DayGlo.

- I have to pee, but I don’t want to get up.

- Here’s a picture of Evie disrespecting my dad’s dry cleaning:

- OK. I feel like I can’t think of anything else going on in my life right now that isn’t part of a future blog post and/or horribly depressing, so this is going to have to suffice for now.

State of the Meg: Like a polyamorous relationship or trying to go blond: it’s complicated.

Birthday Thoughts

I had a BIG OLD case of writer’s block trying to start this post. I was staring blankly at my iTunes wishing I could write when I thought, “OH, I should listen to some Squirrel Nut Zippers! That’ll help! So help me God, I don’t know what my logic was there.

My twenty-seventh birthday is November 25^th, 2011. I will officially be in my late twenties. This struck home the other day when I realized that early episodes of “Friends” were about people my age or marginally younger. This revelation was followed by “Oh, God. I hope I’m not Ross.” Advanced degree in something obscure? Check. “Not conventionally attractive,” in an ethnic way? Provided “cracker” counts as ethnic, check. Obsessed with a Jewish waitress? No, but it’s the kind of thing that WOULD happen to me. Let me warn you: figuring out that you’re a louder, bawdier, drunker, more Episcopalian David Schwimmer doesn’t make aging any easier.

It’s also going to be a sad birthday because Mom doesn’t have a phone. (“AT&T says I owe them three hundred dollars! We’ll see who gives in first.”) Mine was, apparently, a difficult birth, which my mother lovingly recounts every year like a war story. “Oh, around this time eight years ago, the midwife said she couldn’t do it, we’d have to go to the hospital.” “Twelve years ago, we were driving to the hospital in the sleet!” (This is a bigger deal in Texas than you might think.) “Sixteen years ago, the doctor told me he didn’t need to do an episiotomy, it was already torn.” I’ll spare you the details of “I had cold sores all over my face” and the destruction my skull allegedly wrought on her tailbone. Anyway, the story of The Birth is very much a part of my birthday, much like the recitations of the Ten Plagues are central to Passover. It’ll be sad not to hear it this year.

Being born on or near Thanksgiving, predictably, sucks. Not only does it mean I was conceived on Valentine’s Day, but no one ever is around or in the mood to do anything on my birthday. I used to sulk about this, but this year I’ve taken the opportunity to create Birthday Week:

Thursday November 24: Thanksgiving. I get a turkey leg because it’s “almost my birthday.”

Friday November 25: Actual Birthday. Giant Camel, Meg, Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie, “some of the West Philly hipster queers if they’re around,” and I are going to Ethiopian food, bowling, and the gay piano bar. Can you imagine? A gay piano bar AFTER a holiday and DURING a three day weekend? “Okay. Ooooookay. We’re going to have a drink, then we’re going to do ‘Thank You For Being a Friend’ again, then another drink, then ‘Those Were the Days,’ then drink, then ‘Moon River.’”

Saturday November 26: GWAAAAAAR! I love Gwar, and if you don’t, fuck you.

Sunday November 27: Rest; cake.

Monday November 28: “Alternate” birthday for people who were out of town for Actual Birthday. Saints play Giants. A shot for every touchdown, field goal, or safety. Will there be black and gold temporary hair color? Is the Pope a shithead?

Tuesday November 29: Write obscene fan mail to Zachary Quinto. LIBERAL use of construction paper.

Wednesday November 30: Rest; eat entire Whitman’s sampler in bed.

Thursday December 1: Philadelphia’s premier lesbian bar, Sisters, has a Thursday special: for ten bucks you get eight drink tickets and access to the buffet.

So, that’s my plan. 27. Halfway to 54, which is halfway to having been dead for twenty years.

I've reached An Age...

So… I’m gonna be twenty-seven in two months. This leads me to two points: I’m going to a Gwar concert the day after my birthday and I’m incredibly excited, and I’ve reached An Age. Let me explain An Age. One of my favorite lines I ever wrote was in a blog entry about how my mother is gloomy, and I “quoted” her as saying of the aging process, “you’re lucky to have a week between acne and gout.” I was absurdly pleased with myself for this phrase, so it sucks to be An Age now and realize it’s not true. I’m clearly Getting Older, but my acne is still hanging around, like the last party guest who’s still on the couch at three AM, opening the last bottle of wine and telling you about how the price of gold “is only going to up from here.” I actually bought a blackhead extractor today, you know, so I can dig oxidized oil out of my face. 

Aside from my face, which still has the fresh inflamed bloom of a sixteen-year-old’s, I’m getting older. I’ve been logging these “I Feel Old Moments” and putting them in a Word document titled “Blog About This if the New Goddamn Book Ever Gets Done,” so – now that the new Goddamn book is done – here’s a chronicle of my increasingly headlong dash to the grave. I can only hope that there’s some kind of obscure relationship between my career getting better and my turning into a decrepit old man: I’m perfectly content to be a head in a jar with Danielle Steel-level sales figures. 

- I wrenched my shoulder the other week while scratching my back. The implication is that there are parts of my body that I simply can’t pay attention to anymore because they’re now “too distant,” despite being part of my body. The historian in me thinks about how this is like the Roman Empire abandoning Britain in 410 because it was too expensive to defend. The paranoid in me imagines being attacked at ankle level by a Yorkshire terrier and being unable to do anything about it because it’s too short to reach. 

- I was walking to work the other day and passed a sex store. I thought, “Oh, wouldn’t it be funny to skip work and go in there and poke around?” Then I thought, “That sounds infinitely, infinitely more stressful than just going and teaching kids about the SAT. I don’t want to pretend not to be shocked so the cashier won’t come over and try to guide me gently through the process of selecting a toy that really works the clitoris.” Three years ago I would have gone in and giggled at all the things people put in their butts. (Butts! Tee hee!) Now even thinking about other people’s sex lives makes me very, very tired. 

- A corollary to this: some people are apparently trying to force watersports into the porn mainstream. Not only does this annoy me because “back in my day” that was a fringe behavior, it annoys me that I’ve told at least three people, at length, about how annoyed I am about this. I’m turning into one of those people who rants about declining standards. 

- I’m paying attention to the presidential primaries, which arguably many of the candidates aren’t doing. 

- I can clearly remember staying up late to watch “Aeon Flux” the cartoon on MTV because I was about to be a teenager, and teenagers did cool things like watch weird cartoons with titties on MTV. Now people outgrow MTV by about eight years old and try to lose their virginities by twelve because teenagers aren’t virgins, how lame. 

- I look at the teenagers I teach SAT to and think about how they have their whole lives in front of them. I look at teenagers on the street and wonder why they have to be so fucking loud and weird. 

- Did I buy women’s laxative because it was half the price of gender-neutral laxative, and because I didn’t have anything to prove to the check-out guy at K-Mart? Did I take them one day when I was in a bad mood because I thought maybe “a good clean-out” would cheer me up? Did it work? Yes, yes, YES. 

- When Meg and I were getting cabin fever and frustrated with the new book, I didn’t fantasize about going out and getting wasted and making out with a dumb guy in a bar bathroom.* I fantasized about getting wasted and watching a BBC Mystery! special. 

- I can’t spell a fucking thing anymore, which I’m going to go ahead and chalk up to senility. I used to be a champion speller in elementary school; yesterday I wrote “bicycle” as “bicicycle” because I couldn’t remember if it was an I or a Y and then I just got carried away in the moment… 

*Are you with me on this? If you’re going to make out with a stranger it’s somehow more fun if they’re dumb as a post. I guess it’s because you know you have their full attention. 

The best part about all this Feeling Old business is that it’s freeing. I don’t care about being cool anymore, and increasingly I don’t even care if I look presentable when I leave the house. I used to wonder how 60-year-old men could walk around in jean shorts, black socks, and psedo-Birkenstocks. Now I realize it’s because it’s hot, they don’t want to get little chafe injuries on their feet from the straps, and because they’re sixty, dammit. Anyone who cares how you look while getting a half-price senior breakfast at Denny’s is not your friend.

I wanna FAQ you like an animal

Q: WELL, WELL, WELL...

A: I know.

Q: WELLITY, WELLITY, WELLITY...

A: I know.

Q: SIR WELLINGSTEIN, WELLINGSTEIN, WELLINGSTEIN...

A: That's bold of you to give a Jew a courtesy title.

Q: Oh-ho no you don't. You're not getting out of this one with a little lighthearted anti-Semitism. Where the hell have you been?

A: I've—

Q: NOPE. Don't care. Bigger fish to fry. First things first: is Larry Hagman alive?

A:

As of 3:45am on April 15, 2011, Larry Hagman is...alive!

Q: Good, because if he was dead, you'd have a ten-gallon hat full of eco-friendly blood on your hands, madam.

A: I know.

Q: Now you you may explain yourself. Where have you been?

A: On hiatus.

Q: Well, thanks so much for letting us know!

A: I know. It's complicated. I was nervous to—

Q: Don't care. So why the hiatus? Abortion? Alien abduction? Mental breakdown? Each explanation is slightly more likely than the last.

A: No, Adams Media hired us to write another book.

Q: Wait, really?

A: Yeah!

Q: When's it due?

A: May 3rd.

Q: But aren't you still working on the first book?

A: Oooof, yes. Hence the hiatus.

Q: Well, again, you could have told us.

A: Yeah, but again, I was worried that—

Q: And again, I don't really care. So how's the second book coming?

A: ..................................................................................

Q: Oh, you simple country ham.

A: I have nothing but faith that it's going to be great when we're done, but getting there has been exponentially harder than last time. Like, if writing a book is like giving birth to a baby, we delivered the first one when we bent over to pick up a dinner mint and sneezed at the same time and it slid right out of us. This second book, however, has been hard labor and delivery. And we keep getting our room changed, and it's been 14 hours and we're only dilated to three, and the doctor wants to do a C-section but that wasn't part of our birth plan and we're really adamant about delivering it naturally and our husband is in the hall fighting with the doctor and we can hear everything and it's like, this isn't the environment we wanted to welcome our baby into the world in, you know? But I mean, either way we get a healthy baby in the end, so it's not a big deal.

Q: Bent over...and sneezed.

A: Right.

Q: And it "slid" right out of you.

A: Accurate.

Q: Well, I'm very sorry you have to work hard.

A: I'm not complaining, I'm just explaining.

Q: Oh yeah? Are you also straining? While doing some weight training? Careful, it looks like you're waning!

A: So you saw Happy Gilmore on ABC Family the other night too?

Q: ...Yes. Alright, so you're writing a second book and you'll be done in a few weeks, good for you.

A: Thank you.

Q: I still think you're just horrible.

A: Well, I thought you might.

Q: Just to keep you in your place, here's an alphabetized list of reasons why you and your blog suck:

A: Alienates readers

B: Blogs are lame

C: Complains too much

D: Depression isn't interesting

E: Embarrassing to our country when abroad

F: Font is irritatingly small

G: Grammatically retarded

H: Hard to get through

I: Inconvenient to my schedule

J: Just get a fucking job already

K: Keep trying to get sponsors, it looks like that's really working for you

L: Links don't open in a new window

M: Misuses idioms

N: Never posts anymore

O: Over (as in, this blog is)

P: PayPal button? Really?

Q: Queer Abby was good/horrible, why did you get rid of it?/I don't read humor blogs for advice

R: "Retarded" offends me

S: Self-involved

T: Trust Fund Kid

U: Ungrateful

V: Vocally supports CJ Fam

W: Wordy

X: XXX posts without the NSFW warning; thanks

Y: Because I hate you

Z: ZOOTECHNICS!

A: You kind of lost it at the end there, huh?

Q: Well, I couldn't think of anything else that started with a Z.

A: What about, "Zero talent"?

Q: 'Eh. It doesn't really pack the same punch as "Zootechnics", does it?

A: Yeah, but at least it's relevant.

Q: Look, are you aware that you suck?

A: Yes.

Q: Than my job is done here.

A: What does "Zootechnics" even mean?

Q: It's the art of managing domestic or captive animals.

A: Is it really?

Q: Swear to God.

A: Huh. Well. That's good to know.

Q: So will you go back to blogging regularly after you turn in the manuscript?

A: Of course.

Q: What about between now and then?

A: I'll try to be better about getting some stuff up, but you have to understand that Adams's got our balls in a vice (God bless them). (Adams Media, that is. Not our balls.) (Although bless them too.)

Q: Speaking of us, where's Tulane Chris in all of this?

A: He's finishing his last few weeks of grad school and has a part-time job and is writing the book with me.

Q: Is he going to come back after the manuscript is done?

A: Yes. After May 3rd, everything goes back to normal.

Q: I miss him. What's new with him?

A: WELL, he's really excited about writing the second book and texts me a lot to say as much. Which is awkward because my texts to him are primarily about how I keep waking up having panic attacks.

Q: God, you must be fun to work with.

A: Well, I also text him about my bowel movements.

Q: Speaking of working with you, I applied to be your intern and haven't heard back. What gives?

A: Yeah, we're getting back to people this weekend. I'm sorry about that.

Q: SPEAKING OF THIS WEEKEND, what's tomorrow little missy?!?!!??!!

A: Sigh. My birthday.

Q: And how old are you turning?

A: Sigh. 26.

Q: Why can't that be a good thing? Why does everything have to be so sad and hard and horrible for you, Meghan?

A: I don't know. 26 sounds so old. And not like "ahhh, my eggs have been in the back of the refrigerator for two months and now we can't make french toast!" old, but like, mature old. Like I should have my shit together by now but I don't. I mean, don't you think it's kind of pathetic that I'm a 26-year-old single blogger who sucks dick to pay her cable bill?

Q: Of course I think that's pathetic. That is pathetic. Everything you do is pathetic. That's why I read this blog.

A: Well, at least I have that. I guess.

Q: So what are you doing for your birthday?

A: Hopefully my granddaughter will take me to Stein Mart and I can get a new pair of slacks.

Q: Is she driving already??

A: Can you believe it? She also just got the lead in her school play.

Q: You don't say! What production is it?

A: Damn Yankees!

Q: Ohhhhh, so she's Lola? How fun!

A: No, actually she's The Devil.

Q: Isn't that a boy's part?

A: Well she's aggressive for her age.

Q: Do you think people will know that that last joke was a page from your real life?

A: Uh, I hope so. I was proud of that performance. Besides, Lola's overrated and if The Devil was good enough for Jerry Lewis, it's good enough for me.

Q: Yes, who needs the role of a sexy temptress when you can be Jerry Lewis for a night in a tweed suit and a pair of children's Spanx.

A: Look, I could have done Lola. I could done the hell out of Lola. But Monica Stein was a year older than me and had drama camp seniority, so she got to be Lola and I got the next lead which was The Devil. Besides, The Devil is a heavily nuanced character and requires the comedic timing and improv skills of someone like myself.

Q: Oh, really?? Well tell you what, why don't I just get on the horn with SNL and let them know that there's a soon-to-be published comedy writer who did a mean nuanced gender-neutral Devil at drama camp when she was 13, so they should probably get on that before "The Daily Show" snags her first.

A: I don't think that's the worst idea you've ever had.

Q: Oh, didn't you have some hippie announcement to make?

A: Yes! Freshman Roommate Rachel, who is one of my favorite human beings on the planet (and gave me a mood ring last night, so you know she's legit), needs your help. Rachel volunteers as a volunteer coordinator (META!) for Hands on DC. Hands on DC is an all volunteer non-profit that beautifies shitty, run-down DC schools so kids are motivated to actually go to school and get an education. (My words, not theirs.) HODC is holding their 17th annual Work-a-Thon Sunday Saturday April 30th, and they're in desperate need of volunteers and general donations. If you're looking for some good karma this Spring, you can join an existing team, register your own team, or make a general contribution on their website. For more information you can go to Hands on DC's website, Facebook page, or email me and I'll get you in touch with Rachel. I wish I could make a 2b1b team, but Chris and I will be hopped up on Adderall and meth at my parent's house trying to finish the manuscript on April 30th, and there's just no two ways about it. But just because I'm a horrible human being doesn't mean you have to be! Empower DC's youth! Make love not war! Kumbaya and such and such!

Q: Rachel is such a good person.

A: Oh my God, I know.

Q: It seems kind of odd that she likes you so much...

A: Alright, alright. Any more questions?

Q: Uh....none that I can think of. Oh! What do you want for your birthday?

A: Electrolysis.

Q: Electrolysis? That's...oddly specific. And...odd. Didn't your mom get you that Bliss at-home strip-free waxing kit from The Q a couple weeks ago?

A: Yes.

Q: Did you try it?

A: Yes.

Q: How'd it go?

A: HORRIBLY. It was so horribly horrible. I wrote an entire post about it but realized as I re-read it at 4 o'clock in the morning that people probably don't give a shit about my personal waxing debacle.

Q: What went so wrong?

A: Oh, God. It's such a long story.

Q: Well, give us the long and short of it.

A: I tried to multi-task and read the waxing directions, eat a club sandwich, and watch a documentary about the Mothman that Netflix keeps recommending to me at the same time, and ended up missing the directions stressing the importance of using the Pre-Waxing Oil. It was a show. I couldn't get any of the wax off and it was all over my face and left arm pit, so I tried taking a gently-used Chipotle napkin, sticking it on the wax and ripping it off, but that obviously didn't work, so I still had hunks of blue wax stuck on me everywhere, just with bits of guac-soaked napkin in it and finally I had to take a bath and soak it off in hot water and scrub my face but I was too scared to close my eyes from watching the fucking Mothman documentary, so I got acne scrub in my eyes and that made me have to close my eyes even more and I almost had a panic attack and there's still blue wax all over my person and my bathroom.

Q: ..............I mean, what am I supposed to say to that?

A: I don't know.

Q: I think we should end this here.

A: Are you sure? I have some thoughts on Eminem/Dr. Dre's 1999 hit "Guilty Conscious" that I'd like to explore, if I could.

Q: Have a great weekend, everyone.

Happy Thanksgiving!

And Merry Tulane CHRIStmas! We love you guys and are incredibly thankful that you continue to read our blog and support us in everything that we do. [Or most of what we do, at least. Lord knows the beginning of this week was a little rough. And The Human Centipede review was troubling, at best. Ohhhhhhhh, us!] xo

11.24.09

- And speaking of Thanksgiving and rap music! I have an embarrassing story for you. You know how I feel about Dre? Well, that's how my sister feels about Ludacris. The very first time I ever heard the Ludacris song, "MoneyMaker," the line, "Just be thankful that Pharrell gave you something to bump to," got my gears a-turnin'. I decided that that year at Thanksgiving dinner, when my family was going around the table saying what we were all thankful for, I was going to say that I was "thankful that Pharrell gave me something to bump to!" and it would be the funniest thing anyone had ever heard in their entire lives and my sister would have a newfound respect for me and I'd be the hero of Thanksgiving from thereon after.

Now, I hatched this plan in July of 2006 which means that by the time Thanksgiving actually rolled around, I had been sitting on it for an embarrassing four months. But finally those excruciating four months passed, Thanksgiving was upon us, and I was anxiously seated at the dinner table ready to grace my family with the Greatest Joke Ever Told. Unfortunately, what I didn't factor in is that my family doesn't actually have a tradition where we go around the table and say what we're thankful for. But you bet your sweet ass that was about to change.

"Hey! I got an idea!" I said. "Let's go around the table and say what we're thankful for!!!!" I was met with a few raised eyebrows. My family isn't really the touchy-feely kind. We spend most of Thanksgiving drinking, watching Mystery Science Theater 3000 and napping. (Christ I love Thanksgiving.) But that year, I insisted we go around the table, open our sardonic little hearts and say what we were thankful for. Eventually, my family agreed. I was so excited. My turn couldn't come fast enough.

Mom: "Well I'm thankful for having such a wonderful fam—" YEAH, YEAH, YEAH, NEXT!

Aunt: "I guess I'm thankful for having people in my life who—" OK GREAT, WONDERFUL, BECCA GO!

"Uhhh...I'm thankful for—" GREAT, TOUCHING, LOVED IT. MY TURN!!!!

My heart was racing and I could barely contain my own excitement. I took a breath and composed myself.

"Well everyone," I said, barely able to keep a straight face, "This year—I am thankful that Pharrell gave me something to bump to!"

Nothing. Nobody spoke.

"O...k...," my dad said, finally breaking the uncomfortable silence, "I guess it's my turn. I'm thankfu—"

"NO, NO, NO!" I interrupted, "Maybe you didn't hear me. I said, I'm thankful that Pharrell gave me something to bump to!" [Crickets and blank stares] "Like...like in the 'MoneyMaker' song? Ludacris, Becca? Ludacris?" I searched my sister's stony face for a sign that she not only knew what I was talking about, but thought it was the greatest thing since sliced Jesus.

"Yeah. I got it," she said instead, "It's just trying a little too hard. Gotta ask though, how long were you sitting on that one for, buddy?"

".....................................Four months."

"Nice. Dad, you're next."

And now this is what I'm reminded of every Thanksgiving. Personal failure. Sounds about right.

Tulane Chris' "Home for Thanksgiving" Drinking Game

[Editor's Note: I'd just like it to be known that I briefly considered posting the last scene of American History X today before Chris' drinking game to, you know, keep Monday and Tuesday's spice going. And to be an asshole. Mostly to be an asshole. But I decided not to! So I guess what I'm trying to say is, I'm thankful for me, too. Proceed, Chris.]

Drink: 

- for every fifteen pounds your high school friends gained, on the aggregate 

- every time the conversation between relatives lags, and is then punctuated by a loud upbeat sigh: “Yeah, the… Chargers… playoff. AAAAaaaah.”

- every time someone ritually pretends to consider refusing more food

- when something’s Not Right, as in “Did you put rosemary in the dressing? I know this is hard for you to understand, because of your learning disability – what’s it called again? Alcoholism? – but in this country…”

- something is Not Right to the max, as in last Thanksgiving when Giant Camel and Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie put the whole berry and the jellied cranberry sauce together in the saucepan and melted it, then looked at me like I was from space when I told them they were a bunch of drugged out Communists and ran to the store so I could have cold tubular jellied cranberry sauce like a human being from America

- something fails disastrously, as in three Thanksgivings ago when my mother and I tried to make organic zesty cranberry-sage weight-smart relish that we found in Prevention magazine (yes) and ultimately had to order pizza

- if there’s a festive centerpiece. Drink twice if it incorporates a cornucopia. Drink thrice if someone puts it on his head in an attempt to be wacky.

- at that awkward moment when half the family starts to tuck in and someone has to start the blessing at a shout to be heard over the crunch of gristle and the sloonk of cranberry sauce

- if you have to set aside a “special” dish for someone with a dietary restriction

- if they bitch anyway

- when your teenage cousin in his idealistic phase tries to get a discussion going about actual native-colonist relations

- for every muffled “Oh, God,” the above provokes

- if the Thanksgiving Piñata makes an appearance

- when you have to go around the table and say what you’re thankful for

- when someone says something WILDLY inappropriate during the previous, as when we did it in my freshman Intro to Theatre Arts class in high school and one kid was “thankful for his multiple personalities.” (He was totally my lab partner in chemistry and we got In Trouble because he lost our strip of magnesium we needed for an experiment.)

- if someone at work asks you “if Jews celebrate Thanksgiving.” Twice if you’re not Jewish. Three times if you have the presence of mind to pretend to be Jewish, make up a holiday, and take the rest of the day off.

- While making a hand turkey

- BECAUSE IT’S TULANE CHRIS’S 23RD BIRTHDAY AGAIN

- Because the Saints will have an easy win over the Cowboys, which they badly need, and I have $25 on them

- When you have this conversation:

“How’s work?”

“Well, I got fired from the ____ and now I sell ____ at intersections.”

“Oh. I guess you meet a lot of interesting people?”

“No, mostly teenagers throwing Mountain Dew cans at my head and people trying to pay me in Chick tracts.”

“Well, are you seeing anybody?”

“Sigurd went back to Iceland. He said he’d rather die of sealpox than spend another fifteen minutes watching my central nervous system lose the fight against a diet of Pop-tarts and Taaka. I think he stole my iPod.”

“…pets?”

“Ate each other.” 

This year, I’m thankful for our readers, especially those of you email me greyhound racing tips and graphic pornography. And as for the man who sends me graphic racing tips and greyhound pornography – I’m grateful for you too, but in a different way. 

Does someone have a birthday coming up?

Why, yes! On Thanksgiving, I will turn 23 for the fourth consecutive year. I’m excited because it’s my last good birthday for a while: 27 is “your late twenties,” 28 is “about thirty,” and then decay, senility, death, and reincarnation as a porcupine. So I have one more year of “mid-twenties” to be young and festive and free before Death starts winding me up in my shroud. Mom, never one to be left behind, is already on the case. I hurt my knee a couple of weeks ago. Nothing major, but getting out of the chair was a one-dammit job and getting out of bed usually got a “damn it to hell.”

Mom: Is your knee better?

TC: It’s still a little stiff, but it’s better.

Mom: Well, you’re aging.

TC: I’m 23 for the third time. That’s not ancient.

Mom: No, but it’s starting. You peak in your early twenties and then things just start blowing out, like a Dodge Dart. You’re lucky to get a week between acne and gout. I only really felt healthy for one day in 1976, but then your father…

TC: Did you want something, or is this your usual “remember, man, that thou art dust” Sunday call?

Mom: Yes, I called to ask what you wanted for your birthday! Are you excited?

(Spoiler alert: She called me back to tell me to “just pick out a nice wallet and she’ll send me the cash.” I do love her.)

So, in no particular order, here’s what I want for my birthday (although cash is lovingly accepted):

A tape recording of my mother telling the story of my birth: My mother was in labor for about 62 hours. I have heard about it for 23 and three years. If you want a gay son, start with a “sensitive” child and then tell him about the awful things that can happen to female genitals. My whole childhood, every birthday, she would tell the story ritually like the Seder:

“About now, eight years ago, I was trying to enjoy some pumpkin pie when I noticed a twinge. And then a tearing pain.”

“Yes, about now, ten years ago, the midwife said ‘This child’s head is the size of a cantaloupe. I’ll deny it if you tell anyone I said this, but moonbeams and patience aren’t going to work this time. We’d better go to the hospital.’”

“Twelve years ago tonight, the man you think is your father was feeding me ice chips as you rent my loins asunder.”

Sunrise, sunset. My grandmother thinks this is the funniest thing she’s ever seen and jokes about it every time I speak to her:

“Have you talked to your mother?”

“Yes, she’s fine.”

“Did she talk about childbirth? Did you tell her that if it lasted as long as she said it did, she’d have had to give birth on the steps of the high school and send you directly to class?”

So, for my birthday, I’d like this to be immortalized. I plan to hijack those radio towers and shoot it into space and see what it does to the aliens.

A cardboard stand-up Garrett Hartley: I always wanted a cardboard stand-up and I never knew how to get them. People I knew had them, but they were never of people I liked (how does an eight-year-old even know who Tallulah Bankhead is?) and they were always vague about how they got them:

“Oh, you know, my cousin’s boyfriend’s sister’s… Siamese twin’s… boss’s… birth mother… works at an f.y.e….”

I don’t even know if you can buy them or if they just work through the cycle of store -> kid’s room -> garage -> dorm room once the celebrity in question becomes “ironic” -> bonfire topper.

An engraved flask: I read a comic once in which a character owned a flask that read “The People vs. Character’s Name, Exhibit A” and I thought it was the funniest thing I ever saw. I always half-meant to get my flask engraved with something similar – Delaware vs. Tulane Chris, Exhibit A or similar.  It has to be a weird jurisdiction, I think. Some “why were you there?” kind of place.

An exotic pet: When Giant Camel and I were first dating, he took me on a terrible date. (I may have mentioned this.) Not the “I’m lost in the woods and the only prescription is more Entourage” date, but down there. We went to the “Austin” “Zoo.” “Austin” is in quotes because it’s several miles out of down some “Your Mom Kills and Eats Passersby” dirt roads, and “Zoo” because zoos are fun, and this place is anything but. All of the animals are rescues, which is noble, but they all have hardcore shell shock. They don’t scamper or scurry or eat little things with their paws or make sounds. They sit in their enclosures and try to heal, and it is grim, grim, grim. Fully half of the animals were rescued from “a traveling religious circus,” which fascinates me completely. Their two “features” animals – their pandas and elephants – were a binturong and a New Guinea Singing Dog. The only notable fact about the binturong they’d put on his label was “many people think binturongs smell like Fritos.” They do, so now of course I think Fritos smell like sad, abused tree mammals and can’t eat them anymore.

I’ll believe that the binturong was real, although it may have been a wet carpet sample, but I call applesauce on the New Guinea Singing Dog. A-pple-sauce. It was clearly a dog, but… no. I don’t buy it. It wasn’t singing or violently masturbating, which is what Wikipedia would have me believe is what they do. So, for my birthday, I want an actual, factual, screaming, masturbating, New Guinea Singing Dog. Failing that, I want any creature whose name fits the pattern

[exotic island] [activity] [general animal]

Madagascar Hissing Cockroach

Tonga Worrying Thrush

Greenland Vomiting Sloth

Sri Lanka Critical Hen (“You call this a coop? This is a shithole. Bok.”)

These are starting points, obviously.

Tickets to the Traveling Religious Circus: Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I have to know. Is it one religion or kind of a smorgasbord? How closely do they hew to the circus theme? The bearded nun! Shooting a rabbi out of a cannon! Orange-robed Buddhist monks on the flying trapeze! A human pyramid of whirling dervishes! (Yeah, I know it’s probably just a buzzkill about hell, but a man can dream.)

A layered meat: Would you believe I’ve never had a turducken, let alone one of those old-woman-who-swallowed-the-fly Bedouin stuffed camels? Granted, I probably couldn’t ever eat an actual camel – I’d imagine my own camel’s sweet scowling little face – but I’m in love with the idea and imagine myself burrowing in until only my fat little feet stick out cartoonishly from the side of a buffalo. “2Birds1blog Investigates: the Interior of a Meat.”

A big Cadillac with longhorn horns on the hood and a horn that plays “The Yellow Rose of Texas”: Because I’m an asshole. I want it to be a garish color and for the stereo to only play Hank Williams and Patsy Cline.

But as I said, cash is lovingly accepted.