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.

7 Things You Didn't Know About Me: 1-4

From an email I received last week:

Hi Meg! Longtime reader, first time emailer.

[…]

There’s this “7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” thing going around on some of my favorite tumblr accounts and although you don’t have a tumblr (to my knowledge), I totally think you should do one! Maybe as a blog post? It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like. I feel like yours would be especially interesting because of how incredibly open and candid you are with your readers. I can’t imagine what we don’t know!

[…]

- Sara

Well bless your heart for thinking seven random facts about me would be interesting. And no, I do not have a Tumblr account. I made one over the summer when I was bored, posted five pictures, and immediately deleted my account because I felt really self-conscious and wasn’t sure if I was doing it right. That being said, I will list seven facts that you may not know about me. I can’t promise they’ll be interesting, but here you go:

[OK, I’m going to stop myself right there. So, I wrote this post on Saturday night because I didn’t feel well enough to go out and wanted to get some work done. I took an Adderall and it…complicated things. Because apparently I either don’t take my Adderall and never finish a blog post because I write a little, get distracted by something shiny, write a little, PLASTIC BAG! PLASTIC BAG! PLASTIC BAG!, write a little, I NEED TO KNOW WHAT EVERY MEMBER OF THE WU TANG CLAN IS DOING RIGHT NOW! and end up with this huge archive of half-finished blog posts I hate, OR I take my Adderall and write a fucking college thesis about something inane like my favorite soup. This post ended up being the latter, so I’ve decided to break it up into three days. I’m going to post facts 1-4 today, 5 tomorrow, and 6-7 on Wednesday. The exciting thing is it’s already written (and 30 pages…What? I don’t know. I can’t stop grinding my teeth.), so you know I’m good for it.

The other thing I want to mention is that for this week and this week only, as part of an Adams Media holiday promotion, our first book, The Misanthrope’s Guide to Life, is available as a free Kindle download! Pretty sweet, right? If you lucked out because you already planned on buying it, you should totally use the money you would have spent on it to download our second book, Brainwashing for Beginners. Two books for the price of one! HO HO (w)HO (loves you? Adams Media. Not me. This makes me extremely nervous because I’m afraid we’re going to take massive royalty hits and even though our royalties are only like 85 cents between us, that’s almost an apple pie on the Dollar Menu. We’re losing pies upon pies upon pies here, people. But then again, as of Saturday night we were #25 in free downloads and A Tale of Two Cities was #26. I feel like it’s a genuine accomplishment to be able to say that you’ve fragged Charles Dickens' ass. Especially in December.)

7 Things You Didn’t Know About Me (1-4):

1.) Dan and I got tattoos together while he was here visiting last month! It was kind of crazy and spontaneous, as most things I end up doing with Dan are. (Getting tattoos, walking around New York Avenue at 2 o’clock in the morning asking hookers if they know where we can get ecstasy, LaTe NigHt PizZa PaRtieS!!1…) A few nights before Dan had to go back to Dubai, we were chitchatting and/or watching Sister Wives (obviously) before bed and out of nowhere he was like, “I want to get a tattoo.” I’d been trying to find someone to go get a tattoo with me for over a year so I was like, “YES. TOMORROW. LET’S DO IT.” and it was decided. The next morning, I completely expected him to be like, “Remember when we decided we were going to get tattoos last night? LOL!!!1!” because one night while he was living with me last Fall, we decided (under the influence of about a baker’s dozen La Playas) that we were going to wake up, rent a Zip Car, drive to a mall two hours away in eastern Maryland and buy a pug. Because LIKE, LET’S JUST DO IT, YOU KNOW?! LET’S JUST FUCKING DO IT. WHAT’S STOPPING US? YOU KNOW? NOTHING. OURSELVES! THAT’S WHAT’S STOPPING US. SO LET’S JUST FUCKING DO IT. LET’S JUST BUY A PUG. OMG—WE’RE TOTALLY GOING TO BUY A PUG TOMORROW!!! …….We didn’t. If I remember correctly, we woke up, ordered wings at 10 o’clock in the morning, watched a documentary on Mt. Everest, and catnapped.

This time, however, Dan and I were true to our word. We ended up going to Embassy Tattoo in Adams Morgan, which I cannot recommend highly enough. I’ve gotten other tattoos in DC at Jinx Proof and Fatty’s, and my best experience hands-down was at Embassy. Fairly priced, friendly, accommodating, and incredibly well done. I just sent College Roommate Rachel there last night. My artist’s name was Fernando Gonzalez and I can’t remember the name of Dan’s guy, but he was really hot, just moved here, and has shoulder length blonde hair. I kept trying to make small talk and flirt with him, but it was hard because I was also concentrating on keeping my leg muscles from involuntarily twitching and/or not vomiting everywhere. It was a delicate dance.Dan ended up getting a tattoo of a tree on his right shoulder blade because he’s a hip kid from Portland and I got this little ditty on my right foot in honor of the fightingest squad in the fightingest company in the third-fightingest battalion in the army—The Flying Hellfish.

(Such a shitty picture. And yes, this is my second Simpsons tattoo. And no, despite Chris’ constant mocking, I am not embarrassed.)
If you’re reading this and are my mom’s friend, hair colorist, or a neighbor (and I know you all are), please don’t tell her. If you’re reading this and are my aunt’s assistant (Kaitlin…), please don’t tell my aunt, who will obviously tell my mom. And if you’re reading this and are my sister, please don’t tell your husband who will yell at me and/or make fun of me (probably and) in front of mom at Hanukkah dinner, thereby ruining this year’s Festival of Lights. Because do you really want that on your shoulders? It burned for eight days and eight nights, Rebecca. It was a miracle.

2.) I’m applying to grad school. But I’m only applying to three. And all three are in the top 10 non-fiction writing MFA programs in the country. So I’m applying to grad school, but will probably not be going to grad school.

3.) I want red hair again so badly, but I can’t afford the upkeep. (Pot, yogurt, eyebrow threading. Tattoos. Replacement phones. Diamonds are a Meg’s best friend.)

Sidenote: While searching through my Facebook photos for pictures of me with red hair, I stumbled upon this vintage ’06 picture of Talia and me at a party at Anna’s house over summer break. We both had (and very much have) a crush on Anna’s dad, so we snuck up to her parent’s bedroom and…well, I’ll let it to you:

I’m still not sorry.

I also found a picture from that party where I’m rapping and using a box of Franzia as my beatbox. I’d like to say I’ve moved on from that phase of my life, but then I remember that less than two months ago, I pulled a stomach muscle vomiting old school Four Loko and broke my hand drunkenly stumbling around Ren Fest within a week of each other. I haven’t really “grown as a person” in the past five years, per se.

4.) In 2003, I accidentally and successfully rushed a sorority at a school I didn’t go to.  Even though I went to college essentially five feet away from my hometown, it was still a really hard transition for me. Being the wacky MiSaNtHrOpE!~ that I am, I was really anxious about having to make all new friends, and I chose to deal with that anxiety by driving up to Frostburg (a small state school in Western Maryland where Talia and Teresa went) every weekend instead of staying and trying to make it work at AU. As an older and wiser Meggles with slightly more social skills, I acknowledge what a poor decision that was. Thankfully I had friends at AU like Helena, Ex-Co Blogger Eddie and Ashleigh who sat me down one night in November and were like, “HEY ASPIES—MAYBE STAY A WEEKEND?” and I was like, “Ooo. Yes. Good call.” My college experience obviously improved significantly after I started staying there on weekends, but I still wouldn’t trade my honorary semester (or other weekend visits) at Frostburg for anything in the world. Because that shit was fun. Frostburg State knows how to party in a way that makes me wonder how anyone graduates from there at all. I’d arrive on Friday nights and leave Sunday morning with a hoarse voice, sore throat, bloodshot eyes, and a new absurd story. My favorite being when I rushed a sorority.

I got into Frostburg pretty late on the Friday night in question and went straight to Talia’s dorm to pregame. She gave me the rundown for the night’s plans and said that at some point, she had promised that we’d make a courtesy stop at a friend’s sorority’s rush party. “Uh, can I get in even though I don’t go here?” I asked. “Meh. Just put down my dorm number when you sign it. It won’t matter.” (I also said my major was mathematics with a minor in geography, because if you’re going to go for a lie, I say go hard.) We got to the party an hour later and as I started to pour myself a tall glass of trashcan jungle juice (because that’s how a Frostburg rush party rolls. As the owner of Hat, does it really surprise that I felt at home there?), Talia had to run out and tend to some drama that I can’t remember the details of, perhaps because I was drinking alcohol out of a trash receptacle by the ladleful at the time.

“Are you going to be OK here alone?” she asked. Knowing me well.

“PSH. I’ll be fine. You do what you have to do,” I responded, Zelko, Sunny Delight, and Rubbermaid particles filling my veins with the kind of courage you only wished you had in the light of day.

Now, truth be told, I’m actually pretty OK at parties where I don’t know anybody. I’m pretty OK at parties in general. Breaking the ice and being charming in a large crowd scenario isn’t my problem; it’s one-on-one conversations that get me. I have absolutely no problem going up to a huge group of people I don’t know and being like, “Hey, I’m Meg! What’s up?”, but put me on a first date in an intimate setting and suddenly I’m talking too much about my uncomfortably thought out “Theory on Ex-Fatties” or how I’m starting a letter writing campaign to have sex with Steve Buscemi and two weeks later I wonder why nobody ever fucking calls me back. But…yes. I’m normally pretty good at parties where I don’t know anybody, but on this particular night? I was on fucking fire.

 Knowing that I didn’t actually go to school there, would never see any of these people again, and in no way cared about getting into their sorority gave me a freedom to be myself that I have yet to experience again, frankly. After Talia left, I walked up to a blond “sister” standing nearby and struck up a conversation.

“I gotta say,” I said as I held up and tapped my solo cup, “good call going with the Sunny D. I feel like most sororities would put on airs and go with something like a Fruitopia or frozen Minute Maid, but not you. And you know what? I like it.”

“Thanks!” she said. “What’s your name?”

“My name is Meghan, nice to meet you.”

 “I’m Brittney. So, what dorm do you live in, Meghan?”

“Ugh, Frost.” [Frost was the community service dorm that both Talia and Teresa were placed in, I’m fairly sure because they turned their housing forms in late.]

 “Oh my gawd, seriously?? How can you stand it?”

“Dude, you’re telling me. Everyone pretty much just stays in on the weekend to play with their Bunsen burners and beakers, but then again it’s also close to the dining hall and I’m borderline sexually attracted to waffles, so I can’t complain.” [I don't even know if that's true.] [The dorm's proximity to the dining hall, that is. I am absolutely borderline sexually attracted to waffles.]“Have you met anyone in your dorm you like?”

“Oh, totally. I feel really lucky that I found a small group of girls on my floor that I instantly clicked with. But I guess that’s why I also want to join a sorority—I want to to make that small group grow, you know?” [I may have been, and frankly might be, a sociopath.]

“Absolutely! That’s what being in a sorority is all about! Kristen!” she shouted at another sister, “Come over here, I want you to meet someone!” Kristen came over and we were introduced.

“Oh my gawd, I love your jacket,” she said to me. “Where did you get it?”

“Thanks! It’s from North Face,” I responded.

“Oh my gawd, I’m obsessed with my North Face!” she said. “My boyfriend got it for me as an early Christmas present, but we just broke up.”

“Yeah…BUT YOU GOTTA KEEP THAT JACKET, GURL—Y’ALL KNOW WHAT I’M SAYIN’?!?!”

High fives. High fives all around. And it went on like that for quite some time. It was startling. Finally, Talia came back to retrieve me, I said goodbye to my new friends, and we went on our way.

 Later that night as Talia, Teresa and I hunt out in Talia’s room recapping the night, her friend from the sorority walked in looking extremely tired and pointed at me.

“Well done, Meg,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, I just came back from a two-hour long post-rush party meeting, and at least a half an hour of that was spent with girls arguing over who would get to be your Big.”

“WOW! Seriously??” I asked, genuinely flattered.

“Yes. Seriously. It seriously took a half an hour of arguing over ‘Meg with the black hair from Frost Hall’ before I realized that that was you and had to tell them you don’t go to school here.”

“Aw, man. Brittney’s gonna be so disappointed in me…” And I meant it.

So, while I felt kind of shitty because I blatantly wasted those peoples’ time, the experience also ended up being a really good life lesson for me about what happens you stop giving a shit about what other people think of you. I wish I were joking when I say that one of my social mantras is still: “Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and rush like you don’t go to school there.”

You’re welcome.

Putting the "HA" in "hard sell". (Or not, as the case may be.)

I just got a box of our new book, Brainwashing for Beginners, and I only have one thing to say about it: poor, poor Brainwashing. It never stood a chance. It's the Jan Brady to The Misanthrope's Guide to Life's Marsha. Which isn't to say it's bad. It's actually really, really funny. I know this because I just read it for the first time. I don't know why, but I was completely prepared to crack it open and be like, "Oh God, this is B-level material...This is so embarrassing." But it's not at all. I might even like it better than Misanthrope's. YEAH, I SAID IT. And I'm 98% sure I meant it. I think I expected it to suck because the actual process of writing it sucked. When I think back to writing it, all I can think of is computers breaking and strep throat and needing extensions on deadlines and feeling like failures for needing said extensions and that sty I randomly developed halfway through the project (?) and the earthquake in Japan I'm sure our writing somehow caused and the 5,500 words it ended up being over and bleh, whereas writing Misanthrope's was like a great big pizza party. If I could summarize writing each book in a single youtube clip, they would be the following:

Writing Misanthrope's Guide to Life:


Writing Brainwashing for Beginners:


But now that we're five months removed from the entire situation, I feel like I can finally appreciate the finished product. And I do. And I feel badly that I didn't before. And I want to take its little hand in mine and tell it, "I'm sorry I didn't say 'I love you' enough when you were growing up. Because I did. I was just too busy fighting my own demons to tell you and it was my fault. MY FAULT. So please accept this gift Mr. VanVonderen is offering you today because there's a room here full of people who love you like crazy, but we feel like we're losin' ya here and I just want my little girl back." I don't know. I've been watching a fair amount of Intervention on Netflix recently and I'm not offering any apologies for it. When Candy Finnigan cries......weoifjwf. I have no words. It hits me in the gut. Knocks the wind right out of me. And she always does! Especially when children are involved because you know she was adopted and probably relates to their feeling of abandonment. How did we get here? What was I talking about? RIGHT, the book is actually good and you should buy it.

Truth be told, I feel really uncomfortable trying to sell this book to you because we're still so blatantly trying to sell the first, but at the same time, I do think it's a worthy purchase. Like our first book, it's an excellent bathroom read. I got an email from a reader the other day saying just that and hoping it didn't offend me, and honestly? I 100% get it and I'm right there with you. Although I kind of feel like an asshole keeping a copy of my own book in my bathroom because I'm worried people will interpret it as me being all, "What? OH, THAT? Mmmmyes, I wrote a book. Two in fact! Well actually three, but who's counting? Bwahaha. Mmmmyes. Tea?" (I don't know why I'm trying to serve people tea in the bathroom...) But it's not the case. Both books are just really easy to jump into and no matter where you land, you're guaranteed a laugh. I keep finding myself in the bathroom flipping through Misanthrope's to pass the time and like, 25 minutes later I'll still be sitting on the John reading it. Which is absurd because a.) I co-wrote it, so I've obviously read it before, b.) that's a genuinely long time to be in the bathroom, and c.) there's just something so shameful about laughing at your own material with your pants down around your ankles. You just feel so exposed.

To give you a little more information on the book, Brainwashing is essentially our guide to manipulating people into doing what you want in everyday situations. It's the next level in Meg and Chris' School of Sociopathy and Witchcraft. Minus the Witchcraft. The book is comprised of 101 objectives (ranging from Get Upgraded to First Class to Convince Your New Husband You're a Virgin), which are broken down into ten chapters: Making Work Work For You (Manipulation Around the Office); Be The Mary, Not the Rhoda (Toward More Obedient Friends); Pavlov's Girlfriend (Sex and Relationships in a Brave New World); How to Get a 4.0 at Symbionese State University (Mind Control at School); George Orwell, Obstetrician (Making a Mark on Your Child's Tabula Rasa); Free Drumsticks and Cheap Gas (Everyday Hypnosis); 72 Virgins, 99 Luftballoons, and Access to the Buffet (Brainwashing During Wartime); I'm Not Not God (Cults for Dummies); Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another? (Stockholm Syndrome and You); and 10.) Bluejeans and Coca-Cola (Deprogramming). Each objective then has 2-3 brainwashing techniques for how to accomplish it.

Like I said, I was all nervous when I started to read it, but then I saw that we refer to Nick Nolte as "Father Time's readheaded stepchild" within the first three sentences of the book and immediately felt better. I also forgot how incredibly Garry Shandling heavy it is and I am not mad about it. Not only is he the object of our dedication, we also have an entire objective based on the idea of trying to get the fictional murder-mystery series The Garry Shandling Mysteries back on the air. (Jeremy Piven is obviously his Watson-like sidekick.) I remember when we got the first round of edits back on the manuscript, there were two notes next to this objective. The first was from the copy editor saying, "I checked—this is not a real show," and the second was our editor's response: "Not yet." Matthew Glazer. You get us. You get us so well and I love you for it.

I'm also still shocked that they let us keep objective #23 in: Get Your Friend to Experiment with You Sexually. I wrote this, without exaggeration, an hour before our second extension was up, and I did it as like a, "Well, they're obviously going to make us take this out, but fuck it—it's something", and I can't tell you how much I respect Adams Media for letting it stay in. Especially since the third brainwashing technique is to "Tape Scissors All Over Your Walls and Hope She Gets the Hint". I mean...to you, sir. To Adams Media. I feel like the book actually benefits from the fact that we wrote the majority of it in an incredibly cracked-out, Hail Mary, what the fuck are we doing? state of mind. It gets weird. It feels like us.

So, if you have the money, I suggest you buy Brainwashing for Beginners. And if you already did, I hope you enjoy it. And if you're Garry Shandling, I hope you really, really enjoy it. And if you're Jeremy Piven, I hope you know how much I really, really, really enjoy you. Every night. To this picture:

And sometimes, when I want to feel like we're actively conversing, to this picture:

But mostly, when I want to laugh and imagine what it's like having you on top of me in sweatpants and a backwards cap, to this clip:


...This entire blog post has been a fucking disaster and I don't know how to end it in a way that isn't "Welp! I'm gonna go masturbate to Jeremy Piven now!", so I say we just embrace it. One more for the road:

God yes.