Worst of Netflix: The Corndog Man

First of all: they did make a sequel to The Human Centipede, and it did get banned in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I’m going to go to Norway next month, stock up on copies, and try to smuggle them in on a fishing boat. Meg will stick some in her brassiere and take the Channel ferry from France, and the ever-loyal Kevin Yang is going to fly helicopter sorties from the Isle of Man. Don’t worry, British readers. We’ll make sure you get all the butchery and coprophagia you can handle.

I’ve missed doing Worst of Netflix, but I’ve had a bear of a time finding the right movies to use for it. It’s a delicate balance: you have to find movies that aren’t very good, but that tried to be good, and are also eventful enough that you can actually write about them. I had high hopes for the homoerotic Japanese samurai drama Taboo, but most of the movie was aching glances and bland intrigue, all with the grainy color of a 1970s BBC drawing-room sitcom with a title like “Her Majesty’s Loyal Breeches.” The Gingerdead Man 2: Passion of the Crust knew it was terrible and loved it. You can’t really make fun of a movie in which a haunted dildo fights a haunted gingerbread man. Horror of the Blood Monsters was actually too bad to review, although God willing they’ll bring back MST3K and do that old dog up right. With commentary, it would be funny, but written it would just be “And then for some reason we’re looking at stock footage of baboons through a red filter…” over and over again. Jefftowne, a Troma documentary (yes) about an alcoholic with Down syndrome who sexually harasses women, was too depressing to review; ditto I Think We’re Alone Now, a documentary about two dangerously obsessive Tiffany fans. (I do, however, totally recommend that you watch I Think We’re Alone Now, especially the special features.)

Thank God for The Corndog Man. 

I have a special history with this movie. My freshman year of college, I spent a lot of time with “Sue,” a girl who ultimately had a The Da Vinci Code­-themed nervous breakdown in which she realized that she was a direct blood descendent of Jesus, despite being almost as much of an overbred WASP as I am, and needed to have a baby with her friend’s boyfriend, also a descendent of Jesus, in order to… something. She had a conversation with the color green, according to the hospital orderly. Anyway, before all this happened, Sue was good friends with The Prisons, a trio of guys from Maryland who had gone to jail their first night at college. This group of people was a lot of fun, and actually came up with the best idea for liquor marketing I’ve ever heard: “Russe face.” Crown Russe is a brand of plastic-bottle, college-cheap booze that makes Scotch, gin, and vodka. They insisted everyone who came around them take a shot of the Scotch, because “everyone has a Russe face!” Madison Avenue couldn’t have done better.

Another of their obsessions was The Corndog Man.

Sue: “Oh, God. Chris. Oh, God. It was awful. Ugh. There’s all this… ugh.”

Me: “I WANT TO SEE IT.”

Sue: “I’ll watch it with you, just not… yet. I need to heal. It’s very… much.”

Prison Joe: “Hey, Sue! I’M THE CORNDOG MAN!”

Sue: “Oh God.” (vomits in trash can.)

I finally saw it, and it was. Very. And now I’ve watched it again for you. I feel compelled to say that The Corndog Man isn’t objectively bad, really. It very much is what it is, like mayonnaise-based fruit salad or Star Wars. You’re either into it or not.

The first line of the movie is “I’ll sell a colored man a boat faster than a cat can lick its ass,” and you better believe I’m embroidering that on a sampler. We then cut to a “new guy in town montage,” in which a man in dingo boots rents a room, hooks up his phone, and unpacks a couple of photographs. His car has Florida tags that read C DOG MAN. He then calls Buford, the boat salesman of colored man/cat ass fame, to ask about buying a boat. Gradually, we become aware that ninety percent of the movie will be increasingly ominous phone calls between these two men.

Summarizing a phone conversation is about as boring as retelling a dream, so I’ll give you the high points. C DOG MAN calls Buford over, and over, and over again, harassing him to the point of lunacy. Buford lives on a houseboat with a long-haired white guinea pig and drinks a lot. He also has a black transsexual girlfriend about twenty-five years his junior who calls him “Daddy” and has the best line in the movie: Buford gets falling-down drunk and tries to piss against a wall, causing the girlfriend to shout “You are in front of a lady!” Alcoholism, star-crossed romance, whatever: just don’t let women see you urinate. Later, Buford and the girlfriend pull over by the side of the road to dance in the light of the car headlights; Buford projectile vomits, causing the girlfriend to fling up her hands in an oh-it’s-one-of-those-nights-God-damn-I’m-wasting-my-life gesture and walk off.

C DOG MAN continues. He tells everyone about the black girlfriend, sinks the houseboat, and one night when Buford is insensibly drunk paints him in blackface and sets his unconscious body in front of the store where he works. There’s also an odd little scene where C DOG MAN tricks Buford into smashing up a pink Cadillac with a hammer, and all the while calls Buford a dozen or more times a day.

I won’t go into details in case you want to watch it, but as you may have guessed, C DOG MAN is deliberately driving Buford mad in revenge for Something Terrible That Happened Long Ago. Ain’t that always the way in movies about the South? We don’t get good satellite reception, so we spend all our time doing Terrible Things so that we can entertain ourselves by waiting for them to come to light – and, of course, discovering Terrible Things other people did and bringing them to light.

Oh, and you never find out what the corndog thing is about. Either that or it’s too subtle for me.

On Today’s Episode, Tulane Chris Answers Recent Readers’ Questions, Then Goes on a Weird, Emotional Tirade about Breast Cancer in Advertising

“Will you make bad internet dates a regular feature on the blog?”

Not regular, although I might get drunk enough to do it occasionally. I don’t have a huge amount of free time, and I’m a little nervous of where the feature might lead. I’m afraid I’d develop a tolerance pretty quickly, and then it’s all “Is this guy posing with a power drill and a cow’s skull really weird enough? I don’t know. Maybe I should go with the leper.”

“What did Giant Camel say about the internet date post?”

He said, “That’s the funniest thing you’ve ever written. Are you going to marry him and triple-barrel your name? Blogger-Blog-VenomKitty? Wait, is this the fat guy who hangs out in front of the art supply store and hits on the road crew?”

“Doesn’t Tulane Chris live with Giant Camel?”

Not at the moment. Giant Camel allegedly went back to Texas to take a contract job, but I suspect something more sordid.

“Why don’t you make ‘sorr’ cards for special occasions?”

I have mixed feelings about this. One the one hand, part of the beauty of ‘sorr’ is its spontaneity: “Did you vomit in my purse?” “Sorr about the bag…” On the other hand, I would love to see nice ivory cardstock, deep-embossed with legends like “Sorr you’re such a bitch,” “Sorr your marriage has failed as disastrously as your business” and “Sorr your children were such bitter disappointments.” File this one under development. Someone did make a “sorr about the bag” e-card.

“Why don’t you create a nemesis for Kevin Yang called Kevin Yin?”

I don’t mind this idea. Kind of an eternal “Spy vs. Spy,” played out in every bakery, interracial gay bar and Vans outlet between Florida and Hong Kong. I’m hitting a wall imagining Kevin Yin, though. Would he just be barely skewed Kevin Yang? Different color sneakers, hair parted on the other side, goes on disastrous non-dates with Hispanics? Works in a diner instead of a bakery, smokes pot instead of drinks? If they ever meet, the universe will be instantly eradicated by the explosion into life of another, grander universe, full of powdered sugar, incoherent similes, and shitty makeouts on an air mattress? I bet we could sell this as a comic book if we worked on it.

“How about an ‘Around the World with Tulane Chris’ feature?”

I’d like to quote here a conversation I had the other night with a friend who’s teaching English in Vietnam (Vietnam. Imports: French, American, and Chinese soldiers. Exports: French, American, and Chinese soldiers with gonorrhea):

College Friend Nora “Apples” Podjeska: Oh, you should come visit me here.

TC: That’s not terribly realistic. I buy irregular underpants in bulk . I don’t think I could afford…

CFN“A”P: But you’d love it. There’s so much history, and there are all these beautiful gardens, and the food is so good and cheap. You like Asian guys, don’t you? I bet for five bucks you could go to town.

TC: As tempting as that sounds, I’m not entirely sure…

CFN“A”P: It would take a little getting used to. There are crowds everywhere – Chris, everywhere – and we live next door to a dump so there are minor odor and vermin problems. Just wear a lot of cologne and wash your hands a lot.

TC: I already do.

CFN“A”P: You might have a little problem… I mean, the thing about eating dogs is true. It’s fairly upsetting the first time you pass a butcher’s, and anyway, you’ve always been good in a crisis. You’d love it. Except for the crowds and the dog-eating. Oh, and leave your shirt on so they can’t see your “Better Dead than Red” backpiece. It’s not really funny here yet.

Did you catch that she described my theoretical vacation as a “crisis?” I would like to visit her and see Vietnam, but somehow setting it up as “spend a lot of money to interact with your three least favorite things: people who hurt dogs, large crowds, and totalitarian government” didn’t… sell it. I do love to travel and I do regret not having the money to do it. When I was younger (last week) I used to fantasize about becoming a travel writer. So, if you send me somewhere, within reason, I will write about it. However, until then, we’ll have to settle with tucking a little imports/exports behind every country I mention. (India. Imports: tech support calls. Exports: the phrase “Have you tried turning it off and then on again, sir” in perfectly grammatical, heavily accented English)

………………………………INTERMISSION………………………………

"If a tree falls in the woods and no ones around, does it raise awareness of breast cancer?"

I’ve waffled on writing about this because I was worried it would be misinterpreted, but after seeing someone else with similar opinions, I decided to wade in. I’m tired of breast cancer branding. It upsets me and I don’t think I’m alone.

Point the first: ubiquity. I have seen breast cancer-branded: wine, eggs, yogurt, snuggies, football games, Waxahachie Fire and Rescue, water, meat, tennis balls, scrubs, soybeans… Overexposure makes anything stale. Notice how even Leno gave up Paris Hilton jokes? When something’s completely expected, it’s simply not a grabber anymore. The newspaper seldom reads “Sun Rises in East; Proceeds Westward Across Sky.” It’s just another bland truism: congress is bickering instead of running the country, today’s teenagers are shocking, and there are little pink ribbons on every available surface.

Point the second: What do they mean by “awareness?” These labels all seem to read that they’re trying to raise “awareness.” Well, of what? The overwhelming majority of people know that there’s a disease called breast cancer. Just saying “breast cancer breast cancer breast cancer” over and over doesn’t do anything. The snuggie isn’t embroidered with the phrase “Women over 50 should have regular mammograms.” One egg in every dozen doesn’t crack open to reveal a little folded sheet explaining how to do self-exams. At halftime, Garrett “Sugar Balls” Hartley didn’t show a PSA about how some high-risk women may need to be screened for the BRIC gene. Just because someone’s talking doesn’t mean they’re saying anything. Is it too idealistic to just want a poster that says, “Get a damn mammogram?” Ellen and Designing Women both did Very Special Episodes about breast cancer, in which characters went to the doctor and learned about it. It wasn’t just Jean Smart and Delta Burke sitting around saying:

“Did you know that breasts can develop cancerous tumors?”

“Yes.”

“Me too. Do you think I should tell Julia? JULIA! DID YOU KNOW….”

Point the third: How much money is actually going to breast cancer research? I can’t say for sure, but I’m inclined to agree with the author of the post I linked to above that changing the packaging probably costs more than the donation, at least in some cases. This makes it, essentially, an advertising expense, on par with adding the word “X-TREME.” A lot of products say “a portion” of the proceeds go to breast cancer research. That could mean any damn thing. 0.001% is technically a portion. Yes, it’s still better to have the money for research than not, and it’s naïve to expect businesses to do anything for the common good, but still. It’s slimy.

Point the fourth: It is ghoulish. When I was a child, my mother had a breast cancer scare. Everything turned out to be fine, but it was very tense for a while. It offends me that these companies are essentially profiteering off this. “Don’t you wish there was a cure? Buy these green beans. If you care about the women in your life, you’ll buy this battery!” I get enough nagging about whether or not I love my mother from my actual mother – I don’t need Piggly Damn Wiggly weighing in. And besides, don’t you think women who have breast cancer deserve a break? They can’t leave the house – hell, they can’t open the cupboard – without being reminded that they’re sick. But they’re not struggling in vain! Their illness helped sell some peas. If this blog folds, I’m going to start making candy and selling it under the name “Chris’s Costochondritis Snaps.”

This wasn’t as funny as I thought it would be, and I realize it’s because I’m genuinely angry. I’m willing to concede that a lot of individuals involved in these marketing decisions may have been very well-meaning, but I also don’t think that’s really the point. Good intentions are useless without common sense. A small check to a reputable charity does more than a cartful of pink-ribboned groceries, and it’s more civilized. If the breast cancer branding is as successful as it seems to be, we may be perilously close to seeing Uncle Ben’s colonoscopy.

Also about women: My school’s sororities recently did their community service push. One of them chose violence against women, so they covered the lamps on the main campus thoroughfare with sheets of awareness-purple acetate… which made the whole area much darker… and significantly more dangerous…

Welcome back, Tulane Chris!

OOF. “SORR” about my absence, kids. It’s good to be back. Below follows a post I wrote before leaving but didn’t get a chance to send Meg before I left. (Spell-check informs me that “Meg” is a misspelling of “me.”) (Ed. Note: That's because I'll always be a part of you, Chris. Always.) (Ed. Note: Wait, I fucked that up. Technically, according to your spell-check, you'll always be a part of me. And if you managed to knock me up from Texas—I'm not even mad. That's just good work. SLASH, can you imagine the frighteningly pale, anti-social, half-ginger, quarter Jewish, alcoholic Aspie's baby we'd create? I just spent five minutes trying to write a joke about how he'd be born with a wedgie, but the punch line was always that his underwear snags on my vaginal wall and now I want to die. So, please, proceed with your blog post.)

Well, my years of wickedness and spite have come back to plague me, as they do every year. My college is hosting some Special Olympics events, one of which is a rally to “Remove the R-Word.” I will probably be burned in effigy, if not actually at the stake. (Although in five years, when people decide that “developmentally disabled” is hurtful, they’ll come for you, so live it up while you can.)

I’m bad at holidays. I always intend to do something, but then I don’t pay enough attention and they sneak up on me, and I wind up having to put birthday candles in a Wendy’s burger. I’m going to do Halloween right this year, though. I’m deciding on a costume now so I have a whole month to change my mind twice and then put it together. I believe Meg is going as Evie, which involves putting on a pair of cat ears and then sitting at home eating tuna and being a bitch. (Evie is recycling last year’s slutty nurse.) Here’s what I’m considering so far:

Quicksilver:

If physical limitations and public decency prevent you from dressing as your favorite comic book character, go as her twin brother. The silver hair and lightning-bolt shirt are probably doable with spray dye and fabric paint, although I’m not sure how I feel about the tights. Also, Quicksilver’s superpower is moving quickly, and I have the metabolism/energy level of a sloth. With chronic fatigue syndrome. And jetlag. Who’s getting over the flu. PS, I love that Wikipedia specifies that the Scarlet Witch is fictional. Really? Superpowers aside,

What people will say: “If you run so much, Speedy, why do you still have a beer gut?”

Bobby Budnick from Nickelodeon’s Salute Your Shorts:

I’ve got the coloring down, and I could get a bandanna and a beat-up guitar for about six bucks. Do you think anyone would get it, or would I have to have cards printed that read “You remember, ‘Salute Your Shorts?’ The Nickelodeon show about a summer camp run by the poor man’s Ernest P. Vorrell? It came on before ‘Hey, Dude?’”

Wow, looking for pictures of this actor has been… illuminating. Here he is sexying it up:

What People Would Say: “Are you, like… a young Willie Nelson?”

Amy Winehouse’s Guardian Angel: I thought of this just now and I’m sitting here giggling my ears off. The standard angel garb, but smeared with ash and stained with red wine, a halo askew on my bouffant? A tattoo that says “Katy Perry Eats Shit” across one wing? (Yeah, I know it was Lily Allen she had the feud with, but I hate Katy Perry more.) A heroin-craving Pete Doherty angel at my feet, weeping, twitching, and vomiting?

What People Will Say: “2008 called. They want their ironic pop-culture-reference costume back.”

A Baseball Fury from The Warriors:

Remember how wonderful the movie The Warriors is? A relic from a more naïve America, where eight men wearing jeans and leather vests with no shirts made viewers think of anything other than bad gay porn? It features Lynne (Motherfucking) Thigpen, later to become “The Chief” in “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego,” as the relentlessly ominous deejay. What other actress can create a memorable role with eight lines and only a third of her face? Anyway, the Baseball Furies are one of the first gangs Da Wahriuhs encounter during the movie. They have face paint and little baseball uniforms that say “Furies” across the back!

What People Will Say: “I didn’t know Peter Criss coached Little League.”

Meg McBlogger:

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. I know Meg wears other things – I’ve seen her do it – but my mental image of her will always be sunglasses, wedges, stretch pants, a long cardigan, and an ironic tank top. It suits her perfectly, sort of Tiffani-Amber Thiessen with an edge.

What People Will Say: “That’s the worst Tiffani-Amber Thiessen costume I’ve ever seen. Is this some kind of shitty blog thing? Is Meg going as Mario Lopez?”

Kevin Yang:

I obviously love this idea most of all. I think I could pull this off with Vans, long cut-offs, an “Orlando Sound Machine” T-shirt and a little creatively applied eyeliner. I could carry a box of cupcakes and try to make out with a black guy, although that’s less “Halloween” than “Thursday” around here.

What People Will Say: “Good Lord, Chris, Vans? Are you going as high school? Couldn’t find any Doc Martens?”

So that’s what I’m thinking so far. I may save the Kevin Yang costume for the next reader gathering so more people will get it, and also so that if (GOD WILLING) the actual, factual Kevin Yang puts in an appearance we can do a double act called Yang As I Wanna Be. As a parting shot, here are my thoughts on two movies I watched this weekend:

Worst of Netflix Mini-Reviews

Martin: It’s a good thing George Romero started making zombie movies, because he can’t direct the living worth a damn. The only thing that moves in this 1974 snoozefest is the plaid wallpaper.

Dead-End Drive-In: What an odd choice to make a dystopian movie set in Australia, which is already a desert full of poisonous animals and televised cricket.

Stand and Deliver

I know that today should technically be a Queer Abby post, but I can't physically force myself to write about something that's not about one of my three newest (and some might say most questionable) obsessions:

1.) Hat

2.) Towel

and 3.) Real Housewives of Atlanta NeNe Leake's unconfirmed biological father and confirmed chronic leg pain sufferer, Allen Pope.

My friend Dan is crashing with me for a while and while I think we were both originally looking forward to this little set up, I'm now pretty sure he's going to check into the local Y tomorrow and never come back because all I talk about is the Holy Trinity that is Hat, Towel, and Allen Pope. Although, that being said, Dan did just tell me that he thinks I should, "maximize [my] potential as a blogger and an artist, follow [my] dreams and write about NeNe Leake's father, Allen Pope." So I will! And I'll also write about Hat and Towel, both of whom have filled the anthropomorphic hole in my heart left by Weekend Hair and Aspie's Clip's absence, god rest their souls.

[TIME OUT: OK, so speaking of Weekend Hair, I wrote the majority of this post Monday night until I hit a brick wall from around 3am-5am because I couldn't articulate my emotions re: Allen Pope (there were a lot of them), fell asleep, woke up, brick wall continued, blah blah blah I've worked it out, it's not important. What is important is that apparently Dan couldn't find his dress socks this morning while he was getting ready for work, so he looked in my underwear drawer to see if there was something he could borrow from me. Instead, he ran into the decomposing remains of Weekend Hair 2.0 and ended up wearing one gray ankle sock and one black knit thigh high sock to work under his dress pants. I have thoughts on this:

A.) It takes balls of steel to root around in a single twenty-something lady's underwear drawer without her permission. You, sir, better thank your lucky stars that the people at Tinge were too bitter to send me a free "razor" and I keep my porn some place way more accessible from my bed than in my closet.

B.) You're welcome for how comfortable that knit thigh high was. Next time try it with its brother, booty shorts and a wife beater and tell me you didn't just see god.

and C.) I just appreciate that in my apartment you're more likely to find fake hair and gold lame gloves in my underwear drawer than socks. If I didn't interact with my vagina on a semi-daily basis, I'd think I was a drag queen.

OK, time back in.]

Hat

I first met Hat when I was in K-Mart last weekend to get some last minute camping supplies. I was on the phone with my sister in the hunting aisle trying to convince her that I didn't need to spend $25 on a camping chair when they have a perfectly good compact hunting stool on sale for $8.99, when I noticed a knit camo hat dangling a few rows above. "HA HA. Irony," I thought to myself, in typical obnoxious fashion, as I reached out and grabbed it to try it on. (In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to try on headwear in the hunting aisle of a K-Mart on Georgia Avenue all willy-nilly, but meh. That's why god invented RID and trash bags.) Now as I reached out for that hat, I knew I was going to buy it no matter what because I'm the kind of asshole who values ironic fashion choices over things like oh say, bills, any day of the week, but what I didn't know was that it was what was behind it that would change my life forever. It was Hat—a camo baseball hat with two levels of built-in LED lighting.

We locked eyes across the ethnically crowded aisle and it felt like someone had knocked the wind right out of me. (And I'm not just saying that for comedic effect. I legitimately gasped when I saw it. Which means the idea of a camo baseball cap/flashlight excites me so much that it has the power to disturb my breathing pattern.) My eyes widened, my heart skipped a beat and I almost dropped my phone.

"Oh I'M sorry," I said, blatantly interrupting my sister, "but I just found a camo baseball cap with a built-in LED flashlight in the visor, it's on sale for $7.99 and yes I am going to buy it."

"WHAT?? Jealous..."

I threw Hat in the styrofoam cooler, picked up a Redskins camping chair (if I was going to spend $10 on a ironic clothing, I guess I was obligated to splurge on silly things like "comfort"), paid with two food stamps and a diarrhea joke and was on my way.

Now, I originally thought Hat was just going to give us all an ironic little chuckle around the campfire and that would be that. But as it turned out, Hat was incredibly useful and kind of saved the day? Thank to a series of unfortunate events (including, but not limited to, inadvertently driving through a marsh in the middle of a soon-to-be housing development in Reston in my Chrysler Sebring convertible at 9 o'clock at night because Google Maps is an asshole) by the time we got to our camping site, it was pitch black out. Which was not the most "helpful" environment for setting up a tent and building a fire. We kind of stood there in the dark being like "sh..shiiiit..." until I realized, "OOO! WAIT! I IRONICALLY BOUGHT A HAT WITH WHAT'S APPARENTLY A STRONG FLASHLIGHT BUILT IN AT K-MART TODAY!" I fished Hat out of the trunk, put it on, turned him on and I. said. god. DAMN. That son of a bitch lit up our entire camping area. It was absurd. And really helpful until Helena pointed out that I could simply reposition my car so the headlights were pointed directly at our tent and it would be a non-issue. And...yeah. Good point. But still! Hat continued to be helpful throughout the entire weekend, what with the hands-free ghost story telling and 1 Night in Paris style lighting effect it had on everyone.

Needless to say, Hat and I really bonded camping that weekend and now that we're back in real world, I don't know how I ever lived without him. We're inseparable. I took him home last Sunday night to meet the family. Yeah. It's that serious. Alex tried him on yesterday and took him for a test drive in the bathroom. (That sounded slightly more homoerotic than it was.) (SLASH hats don't have gender and this needs to stop because I'm starting to freak myself out. I just had a giant gchat conversation with my mom about whether or not he'd embarrass my dad in front of his work associates if I brought him to the Navy football game this weekend.) (Although let it be known my mom responded, "Of course not. We're just happy you two found each other. He lights up our life." ENABLER.)

...That being said, here are some pictures of Hat:

I call that, Hat In Profile

That's Hat keeping me company in traffic en route to my parent's house for dinner.

That's Evie laying like a lamb on an oriental rug looking at hat with a dubious look on her face. Typical.

Towel

Ughh...OK, Towel is a bit of a bittersweet story. So I went over to Alex's place the other night and ended up sleeping over because by the time I was ready to go, the metro was closed and, you know, I had spent all of my emergency cab money on a flashlight hat. When it was time to go to sleep, I crawled into bed with Alex, started to spoon him and went into a giant coughing fit. When it had passed, I spooned Alex again and whispered softly into his ear:

M: Alex?

A: Yeah Meg?

M: Can I ask you something?

A: Yeah Meg?

M: ........Have you ever coughed out a fart?

A: Jesus Christ.

And then he separated us with a chastity towel. But honestly? I wasn't even mad. Because that towel was absurdly fluffy and smelled ridiculously good. I slept curled up with my little face burrowed in it all night. It was amazing.

The next morning, I had one of the most painful red wine hangovers to date. Which sucked for me because we had to drive to Pentagon City Mall to get Laura's birthday present in heinous bumper-to-bumper traffic on what had to be the brightest day on god's green earth. As of right before we left, I was in that hangover limbo where I knew if I put an outstretched finger within six inches of my open mouth, I would absolutely vomit everywhere, but I could probably power through it if I really tried, but it was my funeral. I eventually got up to vomit, but Alex looked at me with eyes that said, "I waited until noon to get you up, please don't delay this process further with your red wine vomits." I decided to man up and go, but in order to not throw up in his car, I needed a few things: a bottle of Gatorade, a trash bag and Towel, for emotional support. Towel was probably the only smell circulating around the city that day that didn't make me want to vomit, so I rode the entire way to Pentagon City doing lamaze breathing directly into into him.

When Alex dropped me off at my apartment later that afternoon (when I was feeling significantly better), I took one final deep whiff of Towel and said,

M: God, I love this towel. I couldn't have gotten through today with out him. Would you be mad if I stole him and kept him forever?

A: Yes. Yes, I would. Slash, you know what's funny?

M: What?

A: [with a hesitant look in his eyes] I don't think I've actually washed that towel since using it like three times. At bikram yoga.

M: WAIT...WHAT?

A: Yyyyyeah...that's my hot yoga towel.

It was like I had just realized that my lover was my sibling or something. Like, all of our intimate moments flashed before my eyes and I felt dirty and ashamed and confused by how something so wrong could have felt so right at the time.

M: WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING THE FIRST TIME YOU SAW ME RUB IT ALL OVER MY FACE?!?!!?

A: You looked so happy!

M: THEN WHY ARE YOU TELLING ME NOW?! WHY COULDN'T YOU HAVE JUST LET ME LIVE A LIE???

A: Because I didn't think you'd give it back!

M: So, wait, did you just say that because you want me to give the towel back?

A: [laughing] No, that really is my yoga towel. But if it makes you feel any better, it's just the towel I drape over my car seat so I don't get the leather all sweaty.

M: THAT MAKES IT WORSE!!! BECAUSE NOW I KNOW I SPECIFICALLY HAVE YOUR ASS AND BALL SWEAT ALL OVER MY FACE!!!

A: It's all the same sweat!

Now, this was obviously unbelievably fucked up on Alex's part, but you know what the most fucked up part was? Just between me and you, I kind of didn't care. Like, 40% of me wanted to toss Towel out the window and bathe in battery acid, but the remaining 60% really didn't give a shit and just wanted another whiff. But then the 40% would be like, "Yes, take another 'whiff', of Alex's ball sweat towel." So I'd raise Towel to throw him in the back seat and the 60% would kick in all, "I mean, we're all just ball sweat when you break us down molecularly and you were primarily just snuggling with the ends and his ass and balls would have technically been in the middle, so..." and it was just a horribly confusing time of my life.

I ultimately got my revenge though. Right before I got out of Alex's car, I secretly shoved Towel in my bag while we made plans for him to come back later so we could go to Laura's party together. When he indeed came back later that night, I told him I was just going to take a quick shower and to hang tight. About 10 minutes later, I leisurely strolled out of the bathroom and into the living room naked, wrapped tightly in (a freshly laundered) Towel. "Don't mind me!" I said, as I stood directly in front of Alex, tucked Towel into various interesting places and proceeded to do a few deep squats and lunges.

The look on his face was pretty much worth everything I had been through that day. But then he retaliated by shoving Jason's front paw down his pants. So I shoved his iPhone down my pants. And then we both got that crazy look in our eye so we called a truce before someone shoved Dan down their pants and he called the cops on us. So, I don't really know who won and who lost in the end. I think the towel really came out on top, however.

Allen Pope

Ooof. Allen Pope. Allen Pope is a lot of things: man; player; Athens, Georgia resident; the reason there wasn't a blog post yesterday; an enigma wrapped in a track suit, topped with a newsboy hat, wrapped in Aleve. I think the reason I'm at such a loss about Allen Pope is because he's an actual living, breathing human being who I could conceivably meet and talk to and it wouldn't be cause for a cutting-edge documentary about people who fall in love with bridges and shit. I'm out of my element.

Dan and I spent the majority of Columbus Day parked on my couch eating Baja Fresh and watching a Real Housewives of Atlanta marathon (as all Federal holidays should be spent, really.) Around the fifth hour of the marathon, we were Cracked Out, with a capital C, capital O. Luckily, that's when Bravo aired Season 2, Episode 12: Baby Momma & Daddy Drama. In this episode, cast member NeNe Leake's goes to Athens, Georgia and meets the man suspected to be her biological father—Allen Pope.

Now, here's what you need to know about the state of affairs I was in while I watched this episode: they were sad. I was in a sad, sad state of affairs. I was tired and hot and cracked out and wearing a wife beater and dangling off my bed and drinking La Playa brand beer and laughing at everything and anything. It was unique. The second I saw Allen Pope on the television screen, I instantly fell in love. But like, deep love. Deeper than anything I felt with Hat and Towel combined. (BOLD WORDS. Bold words, from a bold woman.) I've been trying to articulate what it is about Allen Pope that's turned him the new Kevin Yang in my life all day, and here's what it boils down to: that little old man is fucking adorable. There it is. It's simple. It's jazzy. It's elegant. It's the truth.

BOOM. That's Allen Pope. Just sittin' on a little brick wall in front of his apartment complex, meeting what might be his long-lost daughter. I mean, I don't want to call him a "turtle" because we're starting to dance into some racial territory that I'd rather not, but the feeling I get in my stomach when I look at pictures of turtles (akin to what "normal" people feel when they look at pictures of kittens or babies,) is exactly what I experience every time I look at Allen Pope. He's just so fucking adorable. Like, I just want my physical person to be on his. And that's sexual or non-sexual! I'd take either! I'd take anything. I just want to be in his presence.

And then Allen Pope spoke.

And it was like a deep, smooth, mellifluous, soul-filled back rub for the ears. Just with those three words: how are you? I'm aroused, sir. That is how I am.

And then things took a turn for the LOLZ:

So this is moment is like the zenith of NeNe's trip back to Athens to find her real father, right? Like, she was just having a panic attack 20 seconds ago at the thought of interacting with this man, and the second thing he says to her is, "If I don't stand up [...] if I don't stand, it's because my legs are hurtin'," which is just an incredibly ass-backwards and confusing way of saying, "I can't get up to shake your hand because my legs hurt," and NeNe's like, "Wha—O...K...?" and it's really tense and awkward and oh my fucking god. I was in tears just rolling around on my floor laughing and melting and falling in love and being incredibly jealous of the knee braces he was obviously wearing AND THEN! NeNe tells him that she has a lot of questions she wants to ask him, and he says he'll answer her questions in private when "Bird" isn't around.

I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Because in my mind that was just his adorable Allen Pope way of saying he wants to do it off-camera and he was referring to the camera or boom mic as a "bird". But it turns out that "Bird" is a nickname for NeNe's uncle Mel and he just didn't want to talk about banging his brother's wife in front of him, but still! ADORABLE. So then he kind of blows them off and tells NeNe to call him and says she looks like her mother and it's an emotional moment and all I can say is it was over way too soon.

Right after the scene ended, I picked myself up off the floor, went over to my computer and immediately purchased the episode for $1.99 from iTunes. Much to Dan's dismay, as he was working on some big important thing for work the next day and my downloading a file that large was slowing down the rickitey stolen internet.

Dan: Guhh. Edgar Allen Poe is slowing down the Internet tubes with his broken legs.

M: Uh, well maybe you should learn to respect your elders and get off the Internet so Allen Pope can walk down those tubes freely.

D: Yeah, well if his leg aren't workin', you know that he's not going anywhere, so there's that.

A few minutes later I told Dan that "Edgar Allen Poe is slowing down the Internet tubes with his broken legs" is probably be one of my favorite sentences in the English language, to which he laughed a bit and then said with some melancholy,

D: Yeah. There's an aspect of humor to it and there's also an aspect of "we're going to need to address this when a certain amount of time goes by and I need to do my job." HA HA. Ohhhhh, forced into living with me. BLESS. YOUR. HEART.

But that's not where Dan's troubles for the night ended. No, sir. Because I then spent the next four hours non-stop reciting Allen Pope quotes, specifically If I don't stand, it's because my legs hurt, in a voice I concocted by mixing a bit of Desmond Tutu, Morgan Freeman, stereotypical righteous Baptist preacher, with a dash of Sidney Poitier. And then it got to the point where I'd only talk in the "Allen Pope" voice, which quickly morphed into only responding to Dan's questions with If I don't stand... statements, my favorite being, "If I don't stand, it's because I'm maximizing my potential as a blogger." And then Dan took a shower because it's the only place in my studio where you can be alone and by the time he came back, I had transcribed the entire scene into a Word document and asked him to run lines with me.

And to my surprise, he agreed because he was finally on board with the Allen Pope joke. I think mostly because I didn't really give him an option not to be...? I don't know. I just know one minute there was a kibosh on the Allen Pope voice in the apartment and the next Dan was helping me e-stalk him, cross referencing various White Pages entries on Google street view, emailing me If I don't stand... one-liners from work and proposing we create an Allen Pope Twitter account. Which I was completley on board with, by the way, but can't happen because @AllenPope is taken by CSNwashington.com contributer Allen Popel. Damn him. I suppose we could do @AllenPope_GA or @THEREALallenpope or something but I don't know...it's just not the same. It's not as pure.

So what I'm saying is, Allen Popels: we're both Washingtonians, we're both bloggers, it looks like we have a few friends in common; let's be reasonable. I will give you—nay, trade you, as you say in your industry—@2birds1blog, what's left of Weekend Hair 2.0, Hat, and Towel for ownership of @AllenPope. Except my Twitter account feels like something I should probably hang on to, Hat and I have more camping to do in a few weeks and I'm convinced I can brush WH2.0 out and she'll live to bang another day, but I'll gladly give you Towel? Please ignore his..."colorful" past. You know where to reach me.

XOXO,

Meg & Towel