Yogadventures: It's Your First Time!

A friend from work was asking me about trying out yoga, and my first thought after "Yes! Definitely do that!" was, "you should read my blog, I write about yoga all the time!" And then I remembered that most of my posts about yoga involve failure and existential woe. Not a great way to convince someone how awesome it can be, is it? You know me, though, always looking on the bright side and all that. So, for her, for anyone thinking of trying yoga on for size who hasn't been sacred away by all my talk of handstands and circus freaks, behold: Your Yoga Virgin Pep Talk.


My first yoga experience was a "Yoga for Dummies" DVD the summer after my freshman year of college (I know, I KNOW but it helped me lose my freshman 15...and also the other 15). You can definitely pregame with the Exercise OnDemand videos your cable offers; there's bound to be a beginner yoga video in there somewhere. You'll get to know what the poses are called, but no one is there to check your form, so really the best way is to go to a class. Classes can be intimidating! There might be chanting that you may or may not know how to feel about! But there are four things you can keep in mind to help you feel more at ease your first time.

The Goody Bun Screw: A Triumphant Advancement in Hair-Putting-Up Technology

I was wandering around CVS a few weeks ago waiting for a prescription to be refilled, so on impulse I bought a Goody Bun Screw. Because, haha, I'm a twelve year old boy and, bun screw. And because my hair looks decent up in a bun, but of course I'm remedial at making my hair be in one. My hair has what we'll call a very well-defined sense of self--you can ask it nicely, but you can't order it around.

This thing is amazing! All you have to do is kind of get your hair into the idea of a bun, and then you put it over your sort-of-bun and twist. And it looks DONE. No more playing roulette with an elastic band hoping for the one-in-a-thousand moment when it actually looks good and you can barely see the band...but then everything flops out to the side. How many times do YOU try and retry until you just decide "whatever it's fine who cares?" I think I've topped out at three.

The 5 Most Awesome Things About Working In a Soundproof Room

I work in a production studio all day. It has a heavy door with the kind of slit window you see in the scary mental asylums in the movies. Because it needs to be soundproofed, the walls are padded, too. This hilarity was never lost on any Production person ever, and we make the most of the metaphors. Mine doesn't have a window, which deprives everyone else an excuse to "see what the weather's doing" i.e., "check in on her to make sure she hasn't gone crazy all alone in there." They worry about me.

They shouldn't! It's awesome. Here are five awesome things about being alone in a soundproof room all day, that have ruined me for cubicles and normal office people forever:

SPOILER ALERT: Men Don't Actually Want Funny Ladies After All

Or at least a great deal of men who talked to The Gloss don't. I love The Gloss, and Jennifer Wright was right, her Real Talk slideshow was definitely the most depressing thing I read all day. Not that I wasn't already pretty certain what the answers would be, just from personal experience.

The worst guys in the slideshow are the ones who think they really do like funny women--or try really hard to sound like they do because they feel like they should, but then their words betray them:

I'd definitely prefer to date a woman with a good sense of humor. The only reason I date anymore is to have stories to entertain my friends with, so even better if she can laugh at them, too.

Carl! You're sneaky! You make it sound like you would love to be with a lady who is funny but it turns out you define female humor as laughing at YOUR jokes! I see what you did there. Extra points for the "whatever I don't want girls anyway" fakeout. Actually, the idea that "I'd love a funny woman who will laugh at my jokes AND THEN if she makes me laugh too, that's a bonus" crops up a lot. I do not think this word means what you think it means, boys; even Siri will laugh at your jokes.

Yogadventures: The Sick Girl and the Sadist

So, this one time I was sick and I went to hot yoga just for the humidifier. And it went exactly as well as you would expect.

Now, I usually don't work out when I'm sick. Because seriously when you've got a built-in excuse, you use it. And also, your white blood cells are working overtime to fight off the germs and that has to be calories, right? I can't even remember the saying--I feed a fever and a cold, and I don't work out.

But I had to go to LA in a week and a half for a press junket. And I really didn't want to sit in a room full of movie stars not having invested every possible second in Looking As Good As Possible. I know one day or another of working out or not working out isn't going to make a 10-pound difference, but welcome to modern-lady insecurity central. I wasn't about to pound out a kickboxing class, but maybe I should go to yoga?

One Thing the New Footloose Gets Very, Very Right

Trigger warning for discussions of physical assault and domestic violence.

Having been raised very sheltered from the pop culture of my childhood, I have lots of blank spaces where certain touchstones go: I didn't see Dirty Dancing until late in college. Or Karate Kid until a boyfriend made me watch it many years later. And I didn't see the original Footloose until two days before they sent me to LA for a press junket for the remake. 

Seeing it with my grown-up, lived in eyes for the first time, I didn't really like it all that much. It bothered me that Ariel came off as a psychotic whose only motivation was the craziness in her head. And then when she gets in that knock-down, drag-out fight with Chuck that ends in him holding her down and punching her until she stops struggling? Boy did that hit a trigger.

And it had me really, really upset. 

As in, how-am-I-supposed-to-watch-this-again-in-two-days-in-a-room-full-of-strangers-and-maintain-some-sort-of-professional-demeanor upset.  How am I supposed to talk about this movie when my only thought right now is pleasestoppleasestoppleasestop?

I was worried. And, thankfully, I needn't have been.