Read Meg's new piece for Refinery29!

It's just a slideshow of me being a lonely, snarky asshole, but I still call that journalism when I go home for the holidays.

A (Misanthropic) Look At The Top Dating Apps

xoxo

2 Birds Investigates: An Evening of the Occult

So, I’m looking for a job. We’ve had this conversation. It’s miserable, I’m miserable, we’re all miserable. I’ve tried being myself, a la ex-co-blogger Eddie (“I wore a see-through camisole and talked about Kreayshawn! They’re giving me a raise!”), I tried not being myself, I’ve tried long resumes, I’ve tried short resumes, I’ve tried bursting into tears in a temp agency – zip.

So, I tried magic.

I don’t not believe in voodoo. I have a little grisgris bag or mojo I always have with me that I got from an actual voodoo lady in Louisiana. I lost the first one, so I had to send a check with $35, a note of apology, and some hair and nails for a replacement – and THE DAY it got here Meg and I found out the sample for Misanthrope’s got accepted. Frankly, I’ve believed in weirder things with less reason (chupacabra, etc.), so I’m willing to throw in for voodoo. And if I’m going to ask the supernatural for help, it’s either voodoo or the Episcopal Church, and going to an ornate, mostly empty sanctuary and politely asking God for help if he’s not terribly busy makes a weak blog.

Originally, Meg and I had a bigger idea. We were going to try to break our bad luck with a self-designed voodoo ritual, but after a short heart-to-heart about Meg’s condo board (“I’m on thin ice after Evie as it is, and if they find all that blood in the drain…”) we decided to lowball it and order a prefab spell from the internet.

St. Expedite is the patron of doing things quickly, which explains why we’ve never met. He likes red things and, apparently, candles with herbs sprinkled in the wax.

Before performing a spell, it’s considered wise to “cast a circle” of protection around yourself. According to wiccanonline.com (or similar), this is done by:

-       Giving the room a good cleansing smudge with sage. We did this by lighting sage incense and walking around the room chanting “Smudging… smudging…smudging…”

-       Getting in the north corner of the room, facing north, bowing, and saying “I cast this circle in the name of love and light, and ask that it protect me from all malevolent and unwanted spirits.”

-       Repeating the bow and love-and-light bit while facing east, south, and west.

-       Pointing at the earth and turning around three times, counterclockwise (if you do it backward the dead will absolutely rise)

-       Adding any other words you feel appropriate. I elected to add the spell Angela Lansbury used in Bedknobs and Broomsticks to make suits of armor fight the Nazis: “Treguna mekoides tricorum satis dee!”

Either from Hocus Pocus or an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark? I have the idea that you’re also supposed to also make an actual circle of actual salt. Meg offered me my choice of garlic salt or sea salt in a grinder. I chose the grinder because I like the sound it makes.

Now that we were protected, we were ready to do the spell. It had an odd, Oprah vibe: we had to visualize what we wanted and then write it down in detail, including desired starting salary. Essentially, it was a cover letter to the beyond. I don’t actually know what rules govern this situation, so in case it falls under the birthday-wish rules, I won’t say exactly what I wrote. I bet you can guess – I relied heavily on the phrase “shit, anything at this point.”

Well, we visualized and we wrote, then lit the candle and put it on top of our papers. The spell goes like this:

"St. Expedite, I call upon you,

I ask for your powerful support.

You know what is necesary and what is urgently needed.

Please help me remedy economic problems.

That I may obtain ufficient money for necessities.

Please help me find gainful employment very soon,

so that this heavy burden of concern

will be lifted from my heart

and I will soon be able to provide

for those whom God has entrusted to my care.

By your grace, Blesed Saint"

(NOW STATE YOUR OWN PETITION)

When you're done Say:

"Expedite now what I ask of you.

Expedite now what I want of you.

Do this for me, Saint Expedite,

And when it is accomplished,

I will as rapidly reply for my part

With an offering to you.

So Mote It Be! Blesed Be!"

Afterward, I banged my fist on the table to make it official, then poured some of the melted wax on my paper. It seemed like the magic thing to do. The paper with the spell on it has a very strict warning at the bottom – apparently St. Expedite is touchy, and if he does you a favor and you don’t give a thanksgiving offering, he’ll pull the whole thing down around your ears. So be warned.

We already had candles lit and the circle laid, so we decided to have a séance. That previous sentence says more about my life than I wish it did.

The internet was less helpful than usual on séances. It seems like the kind of thing that would have a specific, involved ritual around it, but no: you just light a candle, hold hands, and wait for the ghosts. You’re supposed to give them an easy way to contact you: set out a glass of water to jiggle a la Jurassic Park, or just ask them to tap. (With what?) We had a hard time choosing someone to contact. I wanted to try to contact my recently deceased grandfather, but somehow waking him up so I could blog about it seemed disrespectful, so we settled on Nancy Mitford, the not-incredibly-famous British humorist I wrote my graduate thesis on. She wasn’t home, or whatever, so we moved on to Gerald Ford – I thought it might help to try someone with a tie to the Washington area. Well, Gerald apparently only contacts registered Republicans, despite our argument that after the Reagan realignment it’s really a different party than he remembers, and Betty wasn’t communicative either. So we did what you’d expect us to do and went after Bea Arthur. So much for not being predictable.

Meg: Bea? Calling Bea Arthur. Paging Beatrice Arthur.

Me: Bernice? Bernice Frankel? We know your birth name! We’re true fans!

Meg: Bea, if you’re listening, we want to thank you for being a friend.

Me: “Lady Godiva was a freedom rider, she didn’t care if…”

Meg: Shut up, or we won’t hear if she taps.

Me: Bernice?

Meg: We’d appreciate a quick hello, we know you’re probably busy with Estelle and Rue…

Tap.

Me: RUE?!

Meg: Did you see that we dedicated our third book to you?

Rue: Tap.

Me: Were you pleased:

[Long pause]

Rue (playfully): Tap.

Meg: We weren’t kidding! We cherished you!

Me: We still do!

Meg: Feel free to drop back in anytime.

Me: We’ll make cheesecake! Presumably you can enjoy the smell, or something!

This is a dramatization, but I. Swear. To. God. We heard three distinct taps in answer to our questions. Either we contacted Rue McClanahan from beyond the grave or the air conditioner was on. I know what I’ve chosen to believe.

Also: Rue McClanahan can back from the grave to acknowledge that we dedicated a book to her before the book was released. Garry Shandling has had since November to acknowledge that Brainwashing was dedicated to him, and I mailed him a free copy. AND HE’S ALIVE.

All this happened Friday night. Today, Monday:

-       Got an ACTUAL JOB INTERVIEW for an ACTUAL JOB in ACTUAL NEW ORLEANS. 99% sure it’s not a prank.

-       Got called about working a polling station during the primaries, which will allow me to fulfill my lifelong dream of looking a first-time voter dead in the eye and saying “there is a wrong answer – you know that, right?” AND is a day’s work

-       Got the author copies of It Seemed Like A Good Idea…, which means Amazon will be shipping soon. It has an attractive cover and is filled to the BRIM with laughs. You should buy two copies and keep one in your panic room, just in case.

-       Got a free banana from the corner bodega, just because it was going bad!

St. Expedite and Rue McClanahan – fixing my terrible life for over three days.

Mallgasm, Etc.

I have a real post about an uncomfortable trip to the mall below, but first I need to talk about magic and John Edwards.

So… Meg’s and my writing career is cursed. Not just in the obvious “only sold 14 copies of Brainwashing so far” sense, but in an eerier, more metaphysical sense. In The Misanthrope’s Guide to Life, we refer to vomiting to get out of an ill-advised threesome as “the Amy Winehouse defense.” Now, she’s doing lines off angel’s wings. In Brainwashing for Beginners, we made any number of jokes about Kim Jong-Il, and there’s a really solid North Korea joke in It Seemed Like a Good Idea…, and now Kim Jong-Il is behind Q/G/Kadd(h)afi/y in line to be reincarnated as a mealworm with a spastic colon. The centerpiece of It Seemed Like a Good Idea…, literally the funniest thing ever written, is about a lesbian ghost who uses a neti pot – and lo and behold! Several neti pot users have dropped dead this winter in Louisiana because they got brain amoebas.

So, this brings us the matter of funding. For five dollars, we will mention one of your enemies in the next book, tentatively titled The Big Book of Strangers Who Might Die from a Curse. Ten dollars gets the name in bold.

I feel like I should feel bad about this, but how in keeping with his whole life and career is the fact that John Edwards has a heart problem and can’t go on trial? Of course. When the going gets tough, the corrupt get the vapors. He probably does have some problem, but if anyone can find a doctor to diagnose him with whatever’s convenient, John “Follow That Ambulance” Edwards is that man. Keep in mind, this is the man John Kerry chose as his running mate so the ticket would feature someone likeable – and over whom voters chose Dick Cheney.

I haven’t been blogging lately because I have a new job with terrible hours, which I’ll tell you about in a subsequent post. Right now, I want to tell you about the circumstances of the interview.

I actually had two job interviews that week, by far a personal best. The first did not go well – my interviewer was rocking the unusual combo of “plunging neckline and obvious cardiac surgery scar,” which was distracting. We did that awkward little eye-contact dance where a woman catches a man looking at her chest and gets that “well I’m offended but didn’t expect better” facial expression and I wanted to holler “I COULD CARE LESS ABOUT YOUR TITS!” This is, PS, on a day when I thought my grandmother was having heart surgery (it was later postponed) so of course I had cracked sternums on the brain. The situation went further downhill when she used “air quotes” when referencing my teaching experience. I have teaching experience. I have taught. I have not “taught,” it’s not a lie, an exaggeration, or a week-long community service project I did in high school to appear well-rounded when I applied to college. 

I have teaching experience, “bitch.”

I then had to take a writing test. Now, I understand that haters gonna hate, but I can write. My job was to take some notes and write content for a simple website for a pool maintenance company. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have written “Try Capital Pool Services and see just how swimmingly pool maintenance can go!” but - shit. It was literally like a back-to-school nightmare. The assignment was full of abbreviations and acronyms I didn’t understand, which… isn’t it easier to tell people what to do and see if they can do it than to make them figure it out and see then if they can do it? Like, how often on the job will I have to decipher something impenetrable? Is my cubicle between a Navajo codetalker with a lisp and a signalman who stutters in Morse code?

I then had to go into another room, bare except for a table, filing cabinet, and shelf holding three VHS tapes: Managing Diversity, Sexual Harassment: IT’S NOT FUNNY, and Office Space. It’s always a bad sign when people try to self-parody and miss. Can’t you hear that conversation? “Haha, let’s be light-hearted about the cubicle situation! After you watch the mandatory videos about sexual harassment and diversity.” I was then re-interviewed by “Elaine from HR,” who asked me all the same questions but was more polite. I was not called back.

The next day, I went to be interviewed at the other place. It took five minutes:

“MY job is really just to weed out the crazies. You don’t look like an axe murderer. Yeah, here on your resume. No axe murderer could write three humor books.”

I shit you not.

So, on the way home, the main bus stop is at a large suburban mall. I decided to have Mall Time. I never go to malls except The Gallery – for those of you who don’t live in Philadelphia, The Gallery is like… it’s a Burlington Coat Factory, a Kmart, and a train station welded together with a food court and some nail salons, and teenagers go there to cruise. This would be my first time in A Real Mall in several months at least.

I got the very last Chick-fil-A breakfast biscuit, so I was riding high. I ate it leisurely strolling around, and once I was done I decided to take a spin in the hurricane simulator. Have you seen these? It’s a little booth and you get in and get blown – not in the fun way, with fams, and it’s supposed to be “like a category two hurricane.” Having largely been spared THE WRATH OF IRENE earlier in the fall, I put in my two dollars (I could afford it! I was employed!) and went for it.

Now, you’d think a pair of seventy-year-old mall walkers would have better things to do than stop and stare at a man in a hurricane simulator. You’d be so terribly, desperately wrong. They just stopped and looked, with the same flat intensity of gaze and inscrutable reason as a Byzantine icon. Sts. Herman and Bertha of Ardmore, patrons of uncomfortable encounters with strangers. I folded my hands and faced the wall, so they wouldn’t have anything to watch, and so they got to watch a very calm, composed man in 50 mph winds. I guess their expectations were low.

I checked the video store for a copy of Pink Flamingos (nope) and the bookstore for our books (nope), and then… well, there’s no dignified way to say this.

I let the little Israeli cosmetics demonstration guy give me a cosmetics demonstration because he was handsome.

I am absolutely not a Cosmetics-and-Grooming Gay. I don’t want to spend the money, I don’t want to invest the time, and somewhere over my shoulder a Protestant ancestor (hell, maybe Pocahontas herself) is whispering “You know what they call a hyper-well-groomed person of average attractiveness? A fussy queen. You’d be better off learning how to make jam. That’s a skill. Famine comes, you’re going to eat your blemish concealer? NO. Jam, you’ll eat.” There’s something comforting about being average-looking: I don’t have to worry about losing looks I don’t have, yet people at the bank will still make eye contact with me. So if I can look about the same without being a person who shapes his eyebrows, I’d rather stick with that. (That used to be my test if a man was too effeminate for me to be interested in – not if he groomed his eyebrows but if they looked like they had been groomed.)

So, why sit through a cosmetics demonstration? Because someone attractive wanted me to. Because the real title of our first book is The Misanthrope’s Guide to Maybe If You Let Him Show You a Moisturizer, You Can Have Sex in a Mall Bathroom. Because I’m an absolute dillhole. And then – because it would be rude not to, after he spent so much time! – I bought some exfoliant. It’s made with salt from the Dead Sea, because nothing says “beauty” like minerals from a shrinking, oft-contested lake that fish can’t like in because of the chemistry.

So, fine. But Hot Cosmetics Demonstration Guy had also demonstrated nail care products, which I refused to buy. (I have a limit, apparently.) So I had one perfect, pink, smooth, buffed, shiny, elegant thumbnail and nine matte, unglamorous, respectable nails. I was so reluctant to explain this that I hid my thumb for the next several days by keeping that hand in my pocket and trying to do everything left-handed so people wouldn’t think I’d applied glossy nail polish to one nail, over and over, excluding all other. I rubbed my other fingers over the nail constantly, like a worry stone – it was pretty fucking smooth.

You know – unlike me.

IVY HIJINX!

As Meg and I mentioned during our Elephant in the Room fit of honesty last month, we’ve been invited to speak at Yale. Let me set the scene: we were working on the most recent book, which was, hands down, the most difficult thing I’ve ever done. I can’t speak for Meg, but for her sake I hope it was the most difficult thing she’s ever done. As of Friday, I’m too old to be drafted unless the homeland is invaded, and barring unwelcome advances in technology I’m unlikely to give birth, so I think writing It Seemed Like A Good Idea… will stand for a while as the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

You know how when you have something unpleasant or draining ahead of you, you start doing everything in your power to avoid it? Well, unfortunately, I’d already done all the niggling little tasks I had to do while postponing writing my graduate thesis “Laughing at Hitler: Nancy Mitford in an Age of Extremism.” Actual title, and I got a good grade on it. Not only did I get a good grade, I’d been so reluctant to sit my ass down and finish it that I also had a clean refrigerator, resumes uploaded to multiple job websites, an organized recipe file, and my Christmas card list made. So with all that done, all I had to do to distract myself during the tearful orgy of obscure pop culture references that was the writing of It Seemed Like a Good Idea… was obsessively check my email and the Amazon sales rank of The Misanthrope’s Guide to Life, back and forth, over and over, like an epileptic terrier. I’d gotten no email in six hours and Misanthrope’s was persistently hanging out at a “respectable” level and so I was more or less doomed to start working when we got an email with the subject line “Possible Reading/Book Signing at Yale?” If you can imagine, this managed to distract us for a solid hour, for which I’m almost as grateful as I am for the invitation itself.

This started me thinking. Before I was officially the Other Bird and was just an occasionally recurring character, Meg, Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie, and I got together in Philadelphia and I may or may not have (but definitely did) streak a dorm at Penn. It was empty for the summer, so I’m fairly sure the only people who saw me were Meg and Ex-Co-Blogger Eddie, both out of the corners of their eyes, but still. With this head start, what if I just did a hijink, one single hijink, at each Ivy? I liked this idea so much I made myself a scorecard, with the seal of each Ivy, a check box, and a blank spot to write in a summary of the hijink. I couldn’t figure out how to do it in Paint or Photoshop, so presented here is your VERY OWN WORD DOCUMENT Ivy League Hijinx Checklist, so you can play along at home.

OFFICIAL IVY LEAGUE HIJINX SCORECARD -

On the off chance I run through all the Ivies before I outgrow this idea, there’s always the Seven Sisters. If, in six years or so, you pass a hitchhiker in Massachusetts carrying a crate of whoopee cushions and a cardboard sign reading “Mount Holyoke or Bust,” pick me up. We’ll have some fun.

OH! ALSO!

Come see Chris and me this Thursday, February 17th, 8:30pm, at The Looking Glass Lounge in Petworth for a live recording of the internet talk show You, Me, Them, Everybody! The Looking Glass Lounge is located a block south of the Petworth metro stop (seriously, AN fiscal metro stop) and you can learn more about YMTE here. 21+, no cover. Watch as we awkwardly try to promote ourselves and stay to have a few drinks with us and the rest of the 2b1b gang! Hope to see you then!

xo

A Seven Locks kind of Valentine's Day

Three things that seemingly have nothing to do with each other:

1.) I keep having nightmares about snakes and lizards, which according to five minutes of intense Internet research means that something "senseless" and horrible is about to happen, AND/or someone in my inner circle will betray me.

2.) As devoted readers know, I love Dr. Dre and The Chronic 2001 more than anything or anybody in this entire world. I listen to that album with the regularity of a bible thumper reading scripture—shit just never gets old. One of my favorite tracks is the emotional roller coaster ride that is "What's the Difference", featuring Eminen and Xzibit.

I love everything about this song, but specifically, I've always had a soft spot in my heart for the exchange between Dre and Eminem at about 2:35, which, in case you work somewhere that doesn't support blasting gangster rap in your cubicle at 10 o'clock in the morning (sell out...), is the following:

Eminem: STOP THE BEAT A MINUTE! I got something to say. Dre, I want to tell you this shit right now while this fucking weed is in me.

Dre: The fuck?

Eminmen: I don't know if I ever told you this, but I love you dawg. I got your motherfuckin back, just know this shit.

Dre: Riiight? Slim, I don't know if you noticed it, but I've had your back since day one, ni*ger. Let's blow this bitch.

Eminem: I mean it dawg, you ever need somebody offed—whose throat is it?

Dre: Well if you ever kill that Kim bitch, I'll show you where the ocean is.

And then Eminmen goes on about how if he were to kill his ex-wife, he'd want to drive around for a while with her dead body in the front seat honking and waving to people, which sounds suspiciously like the plot to Weekend at Bernie's to me, but my point here is this: I love it. I love it because whereas we live in an era when Cam'ron can't even ask someone to pass him the nut bowl without adding a paranoid PAUSE or NO HOMO, ten years ago Dr. Dre could stick Eminem saying "I don't know if I ever told you this, but I love you" to him in the middle of one of the most aggressive tracks on his album without anyone even batting an eyelash. Why? Because they're friends! And friends love each other. Sure the entire thing is padded with some good old-fashioned hypothetical wife-killing, but the sentiment remains the same: it's OK to tell your friends that you love them. To quote Bun B after the untimely passing of Pimp C: "[...] [I]f you really love your homie, don't feel like you can't tell him you love him. Because when things happen, you're going to wish you had said it. You're going to wish you said it louder." PREACH.

3.) Being obnoxiously broke has seriously adverse affects on my friendships: I can rarely afford to go out; I never have people over for dinner because I never eat dinner; I bring cheap booze to parties; and I can't afford to give birthday, wedding, shower, housewarming gifts. Not to mention I keep weird sleeping hours and don't answer texts or emails until 3 o'clock in the morning, so it always seems like I'm blowing you off. What I'm trying to say is: I'm fully aware that it can be a giant pain in the ass to be friends with me. With that in mind, I decided to make my friends Valentine's this year as a small token of gratitude for putting up with me. It took me all of 36 seconds in front of a blank Illustrator file to think of the perfect way to say "I love you": via Dre and Em in "What's the Difference". With that in mind, I designed a 5 x 7 card with their conversation from "Stop the beat a minute..." to "...Let's blow this bitch" on the front, and "You ever need somebody offed—whose throat is it? HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!" on the back:

Then I tied the card up with red and white baker's string and popped it in a red A7 envelope:


Now, it was right around the time when I let go of said envelopes and they started tumbling into the mailbox when I realized that not everybody has been listening to The Chronic 2001 once a day for the past ten years, and not everybody has an oddly specific interest in, and knowledge of platonic signs of affection in hip-hop music and culture. Both of those things might just be a "me thing". And it was around when I started walking back to my apartment when I calculated that only three out of the 25 people I had just sent that Valentine to are going to recognize its contents as lyrics from "What's the Difference" and not as Dr. Dre/Eminem slash fiction that I had just cooked up myself and felt the need to physically mail to them. And finally, it was when the apartment door closed behind me that it finally sunk in that in a matter of days, 91.7% of my closest friends and family might think I'm a wee bit of a flagrantly racist, misogynistic, would-be murderer.

SYNTHESIS OF #1-3: To all of the people who received a Valentine's Day card from me this year: I am not a flagrantly racist, misogynistic, would-be murderer. It's from the Dr. Dre song "What's the Difference" featuring Eminem and Xhibit. I did not fabricate that conversation, I do not normally drop hard N's in my holiday cards, and I don't actually fantasize about "blowing this bitch"—please do not betray me by reporting me to the local authorities. I was just trying to say I love you. No homo.

What a Shitshow

Before we get to Chris' post—T.G.I. HAGMAN!!!1

As of 12:13am on June 25, 2010, Larry Hagman is...alive! Just let it all wash over you.

----------------------------

To Torrey, the Tulane grad who commented on my post the other day: I have a frighteningly blurry memory of hitting on someone named Torrey/Tori/Tor-E at the 2004 Beaux Arts Ball. If that was you, I AM SO SORRY, it was an open bar and I was 19. Hopefully it wasn’t you and we can still be friends. If it was you… I was real drunk, so you didn’t miss much.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome my dad to our readership! He started reading a couple of weeks ago and proceeded to send me an email with the subject line “Meg” about how funny he thinks Meg is. What he doesn’t know is that I tell Meg funny things Dad says and she thinks he’s funny. It’s all very Parent Trap. I talked to Dad recently and he said something about how “it’s all funny, but as a parent occasionally it’s more information than I particularly…” so I’ve devised a code for everyone’s comfort: if the first few sentences contain any of the phrases “rim job,” “tampon cannon,” “fecal vomit,” or “scrotal catastrophe,” the rest of the post will be vulgar. I will also announce at the beginning of each post referencing any drug or alcohol experiences I may or may not have had (totally did have) that it’s a Drama in Real Life! Post.

I resent Meg’s trying to fob off the weird onto me during the ash discussion. I fully intended to blog about that same conversation but Meg, having the blog password and all, was faster. If she wants to risk grandparental scolding from beyond the grave, so be it, but I’m not trusting her with my ashes. At this point, I don’t even trust her to have me cremated. She’d probably just drag me into the yard and throw a tarp over me, or surreptitiously put me in Evie’s litterbox and hope I went out with the next scoop. So, for my loyal fans, both of you, here is what you must do with my ashes: If Adrien Brody is still alive and reasonably pleasant to look at, rub my ashes onto his nude body. If not, sneak my ashes into Snake and Jake’s in New Orleans on Dollar Schlitz Night and divide them equally between the ashtrays and the sofa cushions. This will be easy, because every night is dollar beer night.

So… diarrhea. I think it’s hilarious. Here’s my algebra:

(Feces x Desperation) + Embarrassment = LOL!!!1

I told Meg I planned to try to write a diarrhea post and she said, “Oh, I had diarrhea yesterday!” It’s the great equalizer! Not everyone gets drunk and goes home with someone who turns out to have one ball (TAMPON CANNON, DAD!) or drinks so much they vomit twin streams of pre-bottled rum and coke out their nose their first day in New Zealand (scrotal catastrophe!), but everyone has diarrhea. Screw hearing a child’s laughter or falling in love for the first time; the true universal human experience is taking the stairs at a gallop and throwing an elderly man to the floor in a race to get to the toilet in time. Fistfuls of Immodium at the bus station.

So, in the interests of opening up and building a closer relationship with my readers, here is my best personal diarrhea story. Picture it. New Orleans, February 2010. A young graduate student travels to his favorite city to watch their team play in the Super Bowl. A kindly stewardess offers him a chicken roll on the plane. He eats it, not knowing it is RIFE with contagion.

So, I get to New Orleans and all is great. Celebrations, whatever. The game isn’t for a couple of days. The next day, we all go out to get Po-Boys, when the Feeling strikes me. The Po-Boy place does not have a toilet, forcing me to caaaaaaarefully jog two blocks to a coffeeshop, buy some juice, and proceed to… you know. I assume it’s just travel disarray and go on about my day.

So we went to the movie theater, and I shat myself. We were casually walking along, excited about seeing the movie, and THERE IT WAS. No warning or anything, just straight-up shat myself.

If the Super Bowl had not been the next day, I would have just killed myself. I would have died at home and my friends there, unlike MEG, might at least have rolled my corpse into the lake. However, I had a game to watch.

I realize I just might be able to class this one through. I ran to the bathroom and… you can imagine what I had to do. The only really awkward part was throwing my underpants away in the big trash can, but her I had an ace in the hole: I was in New Orleans. In any other city in the world, throwing your underwear away in a Megaplex bathroom is cause for alarm, even hostility from passersby. In New Orleans – hell, everyone’s had those days. You’re more likely to get a sadly sympathetic smile and a murmured, “Lord, I had a day like that last week…” It takes more than feces-streaked boxer-briefs to stand out in New Orleans.

So THANK GOD, the movie was sold out and we left. I peeled off the two closest friends of mine in the group and told them I had something important and private to tell them. They are a pair of Cajun siblings whom I’ll call Butter Legs and Smashbone and two of my favorite people in the world. Since they already knew I was gay they must have thought I had cancer. They very kindly took me home with only minor giggling, although I had to make them postpone a trip to the liquor store until they dropped me off. My exact words were “Guys, I don’t want to be all ‘I have diarrhea’ about this, but…”

So, I spent a night shivering and feverish on the couch watching “Mad Men” with our host’s belligerent girlfriend. I was sick enough that I couldn’t completely tell her apart from the show, so I’m not completely sure if there’s a really critical pre-school teacher on the show or not. I do feel sorry for a pre-school teacher who doesn’t pity people who have Had Accidents because she has a short career in front of her.

I got up in the morning to giggles. “Chris. Chris, do you feel better? Chris. We bought you Chinese food.” Specifically, they had brought me a Pu Pu platter.

“Chris?”

“Butter Legs?”

“Remember during the playoffs when you said that if the Saints went to the Super Bowl you’d shit yourself?”

“Yes.”

“And they’re at the Super Bowl?”

“Yes.”

“And you shat yourself!”

“Yes.”

Premonitions do run in my mother’s family, and somehow it seems oddly appropriate that mine should specifically be attuned to bowel movements. So, the rest is history and the Saints won. Now, every time Butter Legs has diarrhea, she texts me because “it reminds her of me.” This is funnier if you realize that Butter Legs is small, very pretty, and generally a fairly demure Southern lady. She makes pepper jelly with her aunt, always writes thank-you notes, and uses diarrhea as a reminder to stay close to friends.

So, if any of you still had me on a pedestal and thought I was glamorous, rest assured: I put my pants on one leg at a time, and then I shit them.

Fat Kids

First: I’m so thrilled to be contributing to this blog. Meg is the funniest person I know, and I’m excited to get to work with her. I’ve also had really positive experiences with the few readers I’ve interacted with, which is a step up from the blog I used to co-write, which got death threats. (From one French-Canadian Orthodox Jew, so not like ACTUAL KILLING but still.) Co-Blogger Chris will be a hard act to follow, so if I fuck up I’ll start blogging in green and we can alllll pretend…

Second: Meg and I totally hooked up once. On Oscar nominee Abigail Breslin’s brother’s sofa. She’s good.

Third: I’m so pleased that my “sorr about the bag” thing worked. I think about “sorr about the bag” most days. My faves:

Meg pity-fucks a butter-face guy, but takes the usual butter-face precaution. She is sorr about the bag.

Meg gets a job tending a mountain hotel for the winter. As madness sets in, Co-Blogger Chris inspects her manuscript, only to find that it reads:

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

SORR ABOUT THE BAG

Meg vomits in a friend’s purse. “Uh… sorr about the bag?”

It even got the point where when I’d play video games and the characters would say their little pre-recorded taunts, I would respond “sorr about the bag” – aloud, to myself.

“If you seek to destroy the power of Apocalypse, X-Men, you must first defeat the Scarlet Witch!”

“SORR ABOUT THE BAG, WANDA”

The telegram was surprisingly expensive but totally worth it. Let’s make “sorr about the bag” the new “SIKE!” (“Psych?” I’ve never been sure…)

Fourth: Fat kids. I wanted to have this big amazing well-done “Ready or not… here comes Tulane Chris” post, so I half-wrote one about my funeral and one about what I would do if I were a TV executive. Neither of them quite worked, and I was worried I’d lost my touch, when I realized something,

I never told you about the fat kids.

Now, for me, fat kid is a state of mind. It is possible – just – to be fat, and a child, without being a fat kid. It is also possible – easily – to be an adult fat kid. (Full disclosure: in high school, I had junior year third period “Theatrical Design,” also called “dick around on the stage and paint AN prop.” We started bringing food to class – not like “oh here are some Ritz” but like RIBS – and I started calling it “fat class” and it became a tradition. I will, however, point out that I was the slenderest person in the class at the time.) Wherever broken dreams and empty Sno-Ball wrappers lay thick on the ground… there are fat kids. Wherever the smell of desperate sweat mixes with the heady tang of Cheez Curls, there are fat kids. Wherever a homosexual vegetarian in the tenth grade wearing short-shorts leaves a pint of ice cream on the counter for an hours and then drinks it before putting together THE most elaborate Christmas decorations in our entire town… there they are. (I absolutely went to high school with this kid.)

Anyway. Last summer, my boyfriend, hereafter known as Giant Camel, and I drove from central Texas to Philadelphia. It was a wonderful trip, blah blah, I love New Orleans and my boyfriend and seeing new places, whatever. The funny parts happened in Tennessee. Memphis was a nightmare, so we r-r-r-raced across long lean Tennessee to get to the highlight of the trip.

Dollywood.

Dollywood is wonderful. You don’t have to love Dolly to enjoy it, but if you love Dolly it’s the best thing in the world. It was the Tennessee sales-tax holiday so everyone else was at the outlet mall, so the park was thinly populated. Blah blah, one of the most nearly perfect days of my life, happiness isn’t funny.

So.

We get to the head of the rollercoaster line, and we see that the park people are having trouble closing the safety bar on this woman. At one point they actually – yes – lift her fat to try to get the bar to close under it. I could never do something like that. I would honestly rather die than say, “Ma’am? Let me just pick up your fat here, and we’ll try to get this bar down to your pubic bone.” I could lift the fat, but I could never say that. Anyway, she had to get off and wait for her friends to ride.

They made her wait in a little corral.

She couldn’t go back through the line and apparently didn’t want to leave without her party, so they shooed her back to a little area to the side with a chain across it, put her in, and rechained it so she wouldn’t get run over by the rollercoaster. This corral is in FULL VIEW OF ALL RIDERS, and when we finished our ride and got off there were three people in it. Three.

So, more Dollywood, and then we leave. As we go across the parking lot, a car passes in front of us, and in the back seat is literally the largest child I’ve ever seen. He’s slumped in the seat, bulging over the seatbelt, breathing shallowly. It was like watching a python digest a sumo wrestler.I have no idea what they did at the park, because I’m not sure this kid could walk, and I’m absolutely sure he was too big for the rollercoaster. Maybe that was why? A good dose of Corral Time and he’ll stop putting chocolate syrup in his Yoo-Hoo?

It was too hot to eat all day so we stop at the Ryan’s on our way back. Those of you who missed the greasy joys of a Southern upbringing may not know about Ryan’s. It’s basically Golden Corral, but not as fancy. If you’re too tired to dress up enough for Golden Corral, you go to Ryan’s.

Now, I am an eater from way back. I was dipping popcorn shrimp in honey mustard when I saw this, and I was still shocked. A family at a table near us had gotten up to leave, but one little girl was still at the table. I heard a shriek, and I turned to see this girl, red-faced, tears leaking out of her little screwed-up eyes, holding onto the table with both hands for dear life and hissing “I’m. Not. READY! I’m. Still. HUNGRY!” Everyone was staring. Everyone at the all-you-can-eat buffet in the Deep South was staring at this little girl’s gluttony tantrum. We had our choice of three kinds of pork, three gravies, and full access to a dessert bar, there was a bucket of ranch dressing in the room, and this eight-year-old girl was putting all us button-straining Confederate eaters to shame.

Ending posts is clearly my weak spot, as attested by the Terry Cooper “and then he bought a motorcycle” ending, which is true but lacks any and all dramatic tension. If this were a short story, I could make up a future for this girl, full of curly fries and boyfriends with beautiful brown eyes who say things like “I like a soft woman” and get employee discounts at Sonic. If this were CNN, I could end this post with some vague, not particularly helpful “tips” for making children marginally less overweight, i.e. “Take the refrigerator out of your child’s bedroom, or stock it with healthy snacks like chicken stock and raw yams.” And if I were giving a report to Ryan’s stockholders, I could just draw little pigs at a trough throwing cash in the air. As it is, I’ll just ask that, next time you enjoy a delicious meal, take a bite for the little girl at Ryan’s. She’ll thank you for it.