Jimmy Kimmel Turned My Parents Into Hipsters

So uploading videos of you giving your kids crap gifts is a thing now? Please. PLEASE. People, my parents are the hipsters of crap gifts: they were doing it WAY before it was cool. And man were they good at it--your half-eaten baloney sandwich is great and all, but, grasshopper, you have much to learn.

Not to say every gift was horrible--the stunningly out-of-left-field bagpipe chanter remains the Greatest Unasked-For Gift in history. But in our house Christmas was always a time of year for brilliant psychological warfare.

The Boots of The Round Table

If there is ever a magical future version of Camelot, where brave knights achieve great feats and go on heroic quests to earn their place at the renowned Round Table and sit beside their sovereign as equals, they will not get in by slaying dragons or finding swords in lakes. NO, all the knights will be ladies, and those ladies will have successfully bought a pair of boots.

Women's boot shopping is the modern-day equivalent of the Hero's Quest: you will face great odds, there will be many trials, you will doubt yourself and your god--it is the most frustrating and often demoralizing experience on Earth.

This is because boots are not created to be worn by any living woman, ever. They are made for martians with very large, very flat feet and teeny-tiny, reed-thin calves! Calves that are so thin (I imagine) they would snap if forced to bear any weight. At any given moment of the day, there are no less than three women sitting in shoe stores with puzzled looks on their faces and boots zipped only as far as their ankles. Seriously WHO are these women zipping up some of these boots? Anyone who has ever worn a heel before has a calf muscle.

I Want An IKEA Boyfriend

Dear Santa, for Christmas this year will you bring me an Ikea Boyfriend?

I'm starting to realize that my job/schedule/lifestyle/selfishness/compulsion to eat peanut butter straight from the jar precludes my having the full on boyfriend-boyfriend experience. Yes, this is largely the same logic I use, re: a dog. Which is fine, I like my unwavering devotion to working out every day and the fact that there are no Doritos in my house. Besides, holiday parties, cold winter nights, shoveling out from under two feet of snow? All things that would be made unbearably worse if there was a significant other tagging along, no?

What I want is a man-person whose sole responsibility is to come with me when I go to Ikea: an Ikea Boyfriend. Because Ikea is a place you really shouldn't go to without a partner.

Okay, sometimes being the only single person in Ikea is fun. You can give smug looks to the young couple arguing over "but WHICH throw pillow covers!" Smug looks that say, "well, I guess there are three of us who definitely aren't getting laid tonight! But at least I can buy whichever throw pillow cover I darn well please."

The Muppets' Happy Song

"I feel like we should do a musical number right now."

"We haven't seen a happy movie in a looong time."

That was what you would have heard if you had heard us talking outside the theater after the screening of The Muppets, all of us mid-to late twenties or early thirties. We had been Muppet fans as kids of course, but none of us had the perfect-excuse-to-be-at-a-PG movie (a child). We did have the second best, though: "I got these tickets from work and this is a station screening so I am at work right now." While we were waiting for it to start, we chatted about the movies we'd recently seen. This involved a stilted discussion of Shame that had to be conducted completely in euphemisms, because we were surrounded by 8-year-olds. Although I suspect they know what johnson means. So basically, we had our world-weary cynicism jackets on, and zipped up to our necks. One of us even had a moment of: merciful god, this is a musical wtf. Brr.

We were worried for a second there: when the trailer came out with its jokes about fart shoes, we started to get worried.

But it's okay! The Muppets is great!

If You Liked Immortals, You Owe It To Yourself to Watch The Fall

Between Immortals winning the box office and the trailer for Mirror Mirror, that other Snow White movie, hitting the internet today, director Tarsem Singh is having a moment. I love this man, he makes absolutely gorgeous movies.

I knew I was going to see Immortals as soon as it opened, even if the reviews weren't great, because I knew it would look phenomenal, and I wanted it to be ten feet tall in front of me--and in 3D! Whatever else is ever said about Tarsem Singh, the man knows how to take a freakin' picture. Every shot of Immortals was intricate and beautiful. Even the gore was exquisite (And the 3D is great for a change).

Yes, Roger Ebert was right, Immortals is "the best looking awful movie you will ever see." For the record I didn't think it was awful, but it isn't great.  What IS great, and also exquisite, and also phenomenal, is another Tarsem Singh movie, The Fall.

Amusingly Horrible Things That Have Been Said During Pick Up Attempts, In No Particular Order

...By Him

"We could go see Harry Potter. And if there was, like, kissing and stuff, that would be nice. I mean if you want." [Officer, I did not know he was 12. He was in a bar!]

"How old are you? Oh good you're in my range. It's 25- to 39-ish. [For what?] For dinner"

"My goal is to talk to you for a while and then another goal is to maybe have your phone number eventually."--Goals!

"So? I hate the radio."--In response to me finally telling him what I do for a living, after avoiding the questions and changing the subject a hundred times.

The 3,000 Mile Bath

People go on vacations to do things they don't get to do in their everyday life. Climb mountains. Snorkel the reefs. Run with the Bulls. Finally have good diction when they're slowly shouting English phrases at people in foreign countries.

What do you go on vacation to do? I take baths.

I live in a studio apartment which has a walk-in closet and as a trade off, a tiny bathroom. It's practically a ship's head. Every year I work at Campout for Hunger and I'm always amazed that the RV's bathroom is bigger than mine. Actually, last year the RV had more square feet than my apartment and I thought about just living in Wal Mart parking lots because at least the RV had a washer-dryer. But my tiny bathroom has a very small shower that some gentlemen callers have not been able to shower properly in, and no tub. So no baths.

But but but where do you go to cry with wine, you're asking? I know, I KNOW. I have to have my good cries on the sofa like a ridiculous person.

Just As You (Horrifyingly) Are

Let's all hang out with Mindy Kaling and cry about stuff! That's what girl friends do when they hang out, right? I'm a little out of practice. How glad are you that Glamour.com and  Crown, the publisher and now NPR have excerpts of Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me posted? Now you can have all the fun for free that everyone else who has hard-cover-book-amounts-of-money gets to have! (Obviously you'll buy the book eventually, but you just can't right now and why do things have to cost money and not charm?)

So, in the NPR excerpt, "Non-Traumatic Things That Have Made Me Cry," Mindy confirms two things that I have always believed to be true: it is impossible not to have a huge crush on Colin Firth, and everyone gets misty at the part in Bridget Jones' Diary when Mark Darcy says, "I like you. Very much. Just as you are." But, um, the second thing maybe not for the same reason?

Sensible Things to Do With Your Leftover Halloween Candy (and Perfectly Reasonable Excuses for Not Doing Them)

1. Bring it in to work--If you do this you'll still eat most of it yourself since you will spontaneously have ninety reasons to walk right by the lunchroom. And also, won't your coworkers be thinking, "these 50,000 calories aren't good enough for her but she's fine with all of us putting on ten pounds?" Faux pas.

2. Throw it out--Waste! Your mother never took your advice to just mail your leftover peas to Those Poor Starving Girls In China, so they're probably still starving. And we just hit 7 billion people, so we should probably start hoarding resources, even if those resources are Reese's Cups.

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. 

Should We Have a Conversation About Yogasms?

...because I feel like it would go something like, "what?! girl, gross. really?!? ugh, ew. what?" And then I would have to feel bad that my Catholic upbringing makes me prudish about doing sex things in public places and won't let me be happy for people who spell yOga with a Capital "O" [PS yes this will be full of euphemisms, in case the Baby Jesus is reading].

A Daily Beast article is currently going viral wherein ladies are orgasming all over the place at yoga classes. There's even a word for it--yogasm--so it has to be thing, right? It's "on the rise!" Like cancer! Be afraid: orgasms! Who can tell when one will strike next! Well, I kind of think I can. I definitely believe that these women are telling the truth, but then again there's this:

“I was in lotus pose, focusing on breathing and lifting the muscles of my pelvic floor,” she said. She wasn’t prepared for what happened after her instructor pressed his body against her back and synchronized his breath with hers, lifting her ribs as she inhaled, and pushing down on her thighs as she exhaled. “I was tingling all over!” she gushed...The teacher is a famous name in New York City’s yoga circuit. Toned and tattooed, Rojas gives classes that are often packed with women hoping to get some hands-on instruction."

My Strange Love OR: How I Learned to Stop Sniffling and Love the Neti Pot

I am the worst sick person in the world. I have stood in the middle of our work cafeteria and cried because the only thing I wanted was chicken soup and it was not chicken soup day. I have protested loudly that "no one can keep me from going home early I am SICK!" to coworkers whose only thought was that the crazy lady should crawl into her bed as quickly as possible and stop infecting everyone. I have driven myself--sick--miles out of my way in search of the only place to get takeout matzo ball soup (I'm Irish). I have insisted on watching The English Patient over and over again, because in my delirium I forget why I hate it and besides it won all those awards and now I really do have five hours to sit and watch it...

In the absence of a thermometer, the severity of my fever can be accurately measured by determining the likelihood of me watching The English Patient. From, "well I've always had a thing for Naveen Andrews" (mild) to "maybe I haven't really given it a proper chance" (hospital).

But there's one thing I do when I'm sick that is absolutely the best: I reach for my neti pot.

WHY does this one look like a wang.

At this point you're having one of two reactions: ugh you put water up your nose on purpose that is revolting! Or: yeah, neti pot, high five! It's definitely one of those things where you just completely do not understand why anyone would ever do such a thing, until you do. I was certain I'd be in the former camp forever--I still hold my nose in the pool because, ew water up your nose. It took me many years, many MANY sinus infections, AND a job that requires me to consistently sound like a person who Is Not Dying to finally become desperate enough to try anything to breathe again.

There's a reason why every time someone mentions a neti pot, people come out of the wood work going, "oh my god I love mine! Use it every day! Makes everything smell like Jesus and peace!" and you sit there going, "you people sound like you're in a cult:" because it gets you exactly like a cult.

DVR Thunderdome: Buffy Summers VS Summer

It's Fall Premiere time! Have you gone through Entertainment Weekly's grids as if they were puppy adoption pages, wondering which new shows looked cute enough to bring home? Have you sat with HuffPo's "shows to watch" slide show and a glass of wine and agreed and/or disagreed? No? But it's commitment time! Who will you love? Who will you finally break up with because you've finally realized that loving them isn't enough and they'll never again be what you fell in love with (sorry, Desperate Housewives, it's not me it's you)? There's only so much space in your heart and on your DVR. Choose now!

Today in the DVR Thunderdome we have Ringer, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar as Bridget, who pretends to be her twin sister Siobhan (also SMG), who just commited suicide, versus New Girl, starring Zooey Deschanel and attempting to answer the age old question: what if a girl moves in with three dudes, and also she's exactly like every character Zooey Deschanel has ever played? Ladies, and your shows, prepare to battle to the death over the Tuesday 9PM DVR Slot 2. Slot 1 is already permanently reserved for the Dancing With the Stars Results Show. Don't you judge me.

Battle on!

I Own A Record!

Yeah, I know, but I didn't before...but the label sent over lots of Queen records for Freddie's birthday and the music director made sure I got one. Yay! So now I can be one of those people who walk around and say things like, "well obviously if you want to experience the classic albums as they were meant to be you can only do that on vinyl," or "really, if you know how to listen to it, new vinyl does actually sound better than a digital recrding," or hahahahahahaaaaaaaa no. Those things are best said from behind ironic facial hair, and anyway I actually avoid those people (because you kids don't advocate for antennas over HDTV, so really? Who are we trying to fool here, eh?). And while I have nothing against the records themselves (I actually love the smell, is that weird?), well, I just plum don't know how to work 'em.

And I work at a radio station! Actually, I worked for a station that still has a Vinyl Cut feature. Yes with real records. Some of which happen to be stored in the studio where we have our writing meetings for my current station, so the one thing I do know how to do with a record is to make a Pope hat out of the white liner jacket. Because when everyone runs out of punchlines, it's time for props, obviously. If I had known about this as a teenager I would have been soooo into the vinyl resurgence. Pope hats! I have photographic evidence of this that I am banned from posting because one of the other prods is a sourpants. And my new record is too new to have the liner so there will be none forthcoming. But trust me, Pope hats--who else has done this? I mean, not necessarily at your jobs, but I don't know what you guys do all day, so maybe? If not, totally do this at your jobs.

Day 25: For Once. For Ever.

Be only here and only now. Let your mind be completely present in this moment and only this moment. This moment is both passing and infinite. You are here forever. You were never here.

That's what they start saying when you've been stuck in Warrior 2 for what's probably been 10 whole minutes--has it only been 10 seconds? it feels like 10 years--and that's the point you start to want to kill them. Your thighs are burning! Your knee is shaking! Your toes are staging a mutiny! Surely you can NOT stand here all day to indulge their masochism.

But you do, because secretly, you can. It's a secret even to your own mind. Why do our bodies default to can't? Is it really survival? What kind of survival instinct says, "I'll bet we can't run anymore. Oh well, here comes that saber-toothed tiger"? In yoga, you use your conscious mind to argue with itself. And focusing on only the infinitesimal present keeps you from giving in to, "okay, it's been too long, if it's going to go on for much longer we're taking a break." There is no time. And there is no The Time Before. You have never chickened out. You have never fallen down. You have always existed here, just like this.