Day 14 And I Recap Kelly's Wedding

I was going to do another "Bizzybiz Wedding Awards" thingy, like I did for her sister's wedding, but really, a lot of the categories don't apply so much here outside of Best Kept Secret (Kelly, for successfully hiding a purple wedding dress), Best Use of the Union Jack at an American Wedding (which was the same as last time, except that we knew it was coming this time, so we prepared ahead of time and followed it with an Ohio Smackdown by O-H-I-Oing to the McCoy's "Hang On Sloopy" because my family are fucking rock stars) and Furthest Distance Traveled, which would have been the folks who came from Poland, but I don't know their names and really everyone traveled pretty far with the exception of Kelly and Michael. My point is I'm not doing that. I'm just going to chronologically hit the highlights.

I arrived later on Wednesday night than I should have because I was stupid enough to fly United and they broke our plane, as they do. The gorilla has promised to punch me in the face if I ever try to fly United again. Anywhore, Kelly and Michael picked me up and drove me to the hotel, where Kelly's family had arrived from England and were drinking in the hotel bar. By the time I'd set down my stuff and gone down to say hello, the bar had closed, which led to much complaining since hotel bars in the U.K. never close until the last person drinking gives up. We stayed for a little while while they finished beers and the discussion revolved around the couch from Friends and whether anyone had ever watched the show for reasons I will never be able to sufficiently explain.

Thursday night was girls night out, which was planned, and boys night out, which was apparently not planned, but went more along the lines of "The girls are going out? Oh, we should probably do that too." We went to a restaurant for a lovely meal, I drank a sangria because I had asked for the wine that tastes the most like candy, and then we all dressed up in Mardi Gras beads and went down to a bar in Venice that used to be Kelly's local. Immediately on walking in, we encountered two young gentlemen who showed us their muscles in exchange for beads. The both immediately started hitting on Kelly's grandmother. Come to think of it, all kinds of men were hitting Kelly's grandmother all weekend long. One of the guys also noticed that Kelly's friend Chuck was with us and observed "You must be gay." He is. There was much rejoicing.

By this time we were winding down because we are actually pretty old. Boys night had already been wrapped up, and Kelly's dad had come to pick a few of us up in the van. On arriving back at the hotel, I discovered the English boys and the very charming Franklin (a friend of Michael's who was a groomsman and also my aisle-walking partner because I win) had solved the bar closing problem of the night before by buying out the entire stock of beer from the sundry and drinking it sitting in the lobby. Obviously, I joined them. Everyone else went to bed. We did too, but not until 3 a.m. and certainly not before I'd had a chance to rant about how The History Channel is a complete failure at showing programs that involve any actual history, Ghosthunters is the stupidest show on television, Nostradamus accurately predicted precisely jack shit and the Mayans probably just ran out of paper, an observation that Franklin the history teacher found particularly amusing.

Friday night was the rehearsal dinner at a place called Vito's and if it is not a front for the Los Angeles mafia it fucking well should be. Eating at Vito's is not so much having a meal as it is having an experience. Courses get served one at a time with long breaks in between during which massive amounts of wine are consumed - we ate dinner for 3 1/2 hours. I sat with my aunt and uncle recapping the more hilarious parts of the actual rehearsal and drinking iced tea (the deleterious effects of drinking with Englishmen still fresh in my memory from my trip in September, I was wise enough to skip a day). I ate so much I was genuinely concerned about fitting into my dress the next day.

The actual wedding was quite possibly the most hilarious ceremony I've ever been to. Kelly and Michael both struggled to repeat their vows (the really were very long sentences) and Kelly actually interrupted hers because she was laughing so hard at the tiny bug that was crawling around on Michael's collar. I managed to keep my composure while Franklin read the poem he'd written for them, but only because I'd heard it the night before. I barely held my shit together when Kelly's uncle read an excerpt from The Velveteen Rabbit.

I split the rest of the evening fairly evenly between dancing and a series of conversations with Franklin, Simon, Jo and a girl called Jen who was actually working there in a fancy room that had an actual name, but that I kept calling "the hookah room" because it seemed like a room that should have one. At one point, Simmy ran up to me and yelled "Bridesmaid shot!", so the four bridesmaids linked arms and ran up to the bar where I screamed "WE NEED A SHOT FOR GIRLS!"

When the night had wound down, I said a tearful goodbye to Jen (I was convinced we were real friends at that point) and took one of the shuttles back to the hotel, a trip that consisted of my brother yelling a lot, Simon being embarrassed by his father, and someone stupidly handing me a camera to take photos for them, which obviously led to me convincing Simon to take a photo down my shirt so that someone I don't know could be surprised by a photo of my boobs the next day. Also, Simon kept repeating how he couldn't believe that Cap and I were brother and sister, being as we're so different and he is so loud, which was met with hysterical laughter when I told the family about it the next day. It's funny because it's true.

Congratulations Kelly and Michael!

Day 13 And AAAAAGGGHHHHHH!

Spiders. There were massive fuck off spiders the size of my fist in the garden at the wedding and apparently that is TOTALLY FUCKING NORMAL IN LOS ANGELES AND NOBODY WARNED ME. By the way, fuck all of you for not warning me.

I noticed this while standing outside waiting to have photos of the wedding party taken in this gazeboish thingy. I was standing with the boys because, hi, it's me, and we were all near some sort of fruit tree. When I gave it a closer look I realized the entire thing was covered in spider webs. "Um. You guys. There's, like, a million spider webs in that tree." They turned to look.

"HOLY SHIT look at that spider!" In the tree in a spot I mercifully couldn't see, the boys had found a spider so massive that even they were grossed out by it and everyone moved away from the tree. But for me it was too late. Because upon encountering a spider, my brain goes into overdrive and then I can't stop. I looked around and realized I was fucking surrounded - they were in the tree, the bushes, hanging from the power lines. Someone suggested I might calm down if I stopped looking for them, but that's not how it works. Once I know where they are I can't STOP looking at them, because if I look away and then they move, I'm then faced with knowing there IS a spider but NOT knowing how close it is to me which is completely unacceptable.

I maneuvered myself to be as close to the middle of the patio as possible and crouched down on the ground, mumbling insanely and trying desperately to convince everyone around me that my life was in great peril. Whenever this happens I get so hysterical and say such madly ridiculous things that unless they already know me very well, most people assume I'm just exaggerating for effect and/or trying to be funny. The only person around who knew otherwise was Simmy, who blessedly started waving people off when they came over trying to make jokes about about the possibility of spiders getting ON ME or tell me stories about the biggest spider they'd ever seen.

I held it together long enough to make it through the photos and then sprinted (in five inch heels) back into the house where I immediately encountered my father and burst into tears. I sobbed on his shoulder for a good 10 minutes while he led me to go sit with my family who obviously wanted to know what was wrong with me and needed no further explanation from my dad other than "There were spiders." It was my uncle who had the magic words which finally calmed me down enough to stop crying, shaking and eventually go enjoy the wedding. Which I did, and will tell you about tomorrow.

The good news is that I finally feel a feeling about Los Angeles, which is that it can take its fist sized spiders and shove them up its ass.

Day Twelve And I'm A Bit Busy For This Today

This afternoon my fake cousin Kelly will be married to Michael, and with any luck, I will be drunk before dark.

More importantly, today marks two months until my birthday.

Priorities.

Day Eleven And I Had Someone Else Write My Post For Me

Today is Veteran's Day. Go find some veterans and hug them, but try not to do it in a creepy way - you're supposed to be thanking them.

Normally I would write a post that just said thank you, or list out the people in my life who have served their country, or something along those lines. This year I've decide to give everyone a gift. Below is a true story as told by my amazing and beautiful friend Erin, who is a veteran of the U.S. Army and who is also super awesome. Thanks to all the veterans everywhere!

The Bird Story

 I joined the Army on September 10, 2001 because I have magnificent timing. "What could go wrong?" Yep. Anyway, I became an Engineer in the Army and ended up getting stationed in Germany. Incidentally, I was the only female engineer in my company for nine months straight. Please remind me in the future to tell you about the initial hilarity/eventual nightmare that this entailed.

Anyway.

I got to Germany right about the time when George W. was busy pissing off all of Europe with his stupid WMD bullshit about Iraq-- he *especially* had pissed off the French and the German people. Fantastic. We were not very welcome in Germany. I remember being on Guard Duty (standing at the entrance of the base, fully armed and prepared to blow away anybody who posed a threat) and an elderly German man rode past on his bicycle, giving me the finger and yelling, "Go back to your own country!" I completely agreed with him. Anyway, bad things started to happen-- people yelling at us on the street, bar fights and eventually a stabbing at the local pub. We were put on Base Restriction for our own protection.

There were exactly four things to do on base: go to the movies, rent movies, bowl and get drunk. Usually, the first three activities involved the fourth.

One night, after going bowling (while drinking), coming back to the barracks and watching a movie with some friends (while drinking) and then finally settling in alone in my room (while drinking), I decided that I was not quite drunk enough. Mind you, in the course of four hours, I had consumed three giant German beers and one... it's not a pint, and it's not a fifth-- it's the one in between-- let's call it a fish bowl-- so, I had consumed three giant German beers and one fishbowl of tequila. But I wasn't drunk enough, so I went to the base liquor store and bought another fish bowl of tequila, went back to my room and popped in another movie. I got about halfway through my second fish bowl and... I started to not feel so good.

Are you familiar with the stage of inebriation when you know you're going to be sick but you *really* think that you can prevent it from happening? This stage usually involves food.

It was around one in the morning at this point and everything on base was closed. The only food I had in my room: bread and peanut butter. Score. Peanut butter sandwiches. I made myself a stack of peanut butter sandwiches, maybe 5 or 6 of them, and started happily munching away at them. Halfway into the second sandwich, I realized that I did indeed feel better...but I was so thirsty from the peanut butter. I didn't feel like going *all the way* down the hall to get some water, and after all, I had that half-bottle of tequila sitting right there next to me, and I *was* feeling better, soooo... I washed all 5 or 6 sandwiches down with the rest of that bottle of tequila.

Strangely enough, shortly after, I started to feel not so good again. And again, I thought I could fix the problem. "I'm just hot. I should take my clothes off." So I did, and that helped a little, but I was still not feeling so good. "The window," I thought, "I need to open the window." And I did. These were old Nazi barracks (I'm not kidding, seriously, they used to be Nazi barracks), and they had the giant windows that went all the way to the ceiling. So, three in the morning, wintertime in Germany, I am naked, relishing the cold winter air on my naked body. After a minute, I felt okay and I left the window open and slipped into bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow, the room started spinning out of control and I shot right back up, stumbled over to the open window and proceeded to vomit for what seemed like an eternity. Remember, I'm 5'7" and weigh all of 120 pounds and I've consumed three giant beers, two fish bowls of tequila and 5 or 6 peanut butter sandwiches, all of which were brewing in my stomach the whole night. Drunk as I was, I can still remember thinking-- as I was puking-- "Jesus, this is taking FOREVER." At some point, I stopped and made it back to bed.

I woke up the next morning cold and confused. "It's freezing in here! Why is the window open? Why am I naked? What did I DO last night?" It all came back to me when I went to close the window and saw that I had not *quite* cleared the ledge all the way while I was puking my guts out the night before, as there was a huge, frozen mound of tequila/peanut butter sandwich vomit right outside my window. Fuck. Me.

One of the many things that blow about the military is something called Base Inspection, and this usually involves the Commander of the base strolling around and seeing what's fucked up. It can happen at any time. Knowing this, I went outside to see what the damage looked like from the ground. This is when I discovered the 15-foot long puke-cicle stretching from my window to the ground along the side of the building, with another little frozen mound of puke at the bottom. "I'm too hung-over for this. I'll deal with this tomorrow and hope for the best."

There was no inspection that day, thank goodness.

The next morning, I woke up unpleasantly early to sound of 10,000 birds chirping right outside my window. "What the fuck!" I opened my curtains to find that the puke mound was gone, and all sorts of birds were hanging out on my ledge, pecking away at what was left of it. "That's disgusting." I immediately went outside to see what was still left on the side of the building, and holy shit, it was ALL gone. All of it, the mound on my ledge, the puke-cicle, the mound on the ground, all of it. "Oh my god, thank goodness, I really didn't want to clean that up. But that's fucking disgusting." Relieved, I went back inside and didn't think much of it again.

Yes, at least not for a day or two when I started seeing dead birds around base. And not just one or two, but a whole mess of them. The first dead bird: "Aww, a dead bird." The second: "Huh, that's weird, I just saw a dead bird." The third: "What's with all the dead birds?" The fourth, fifth and so on and so on... "Wait a minute. Oh, fuck." I finally realized that all the dead birds on base were right next to buildings. I looked up at some point and that's when I discovered what clearly appeared to be a bird splat mark on one of the building windows. The birds, who were completely shitfaced on my tequila vomit, were drunkenly flying into windows and accidentally killing themselves.

I never harmed a single human being when I served. But I think I killed a shit-ton of birds.

In conclusion, birds are gross.

Day Ten And...

I'm in Los Angeles.

I've never been here before because I had always assumed that I would hate it. Kelly has been trying to get me to come out here for years, insisting that I would love it. I resisted as long as I could, because I was certain of the opposite. Then she decided to get married and forced my hand. I haven't been here a whole day yet, but the preliminary verdict is already in: I don't hate it.

I nothing it. I have never in my life been in a place I felt more indifferent about. Everywhere else I've had some sort of feeling about either way: 

Chicago - Immediately felt like home, so I made it my home

Baltimore - Hilariously scary

St. Louis - Fun except for their bullshit cheese

Cleveland - Please fucking kill me

Los Angeles - 

My theory is that this is because everything about Los Angeles seems to be things that I simply don't care about. We've discussed recently how much of a fuck I don't give about celebrities. Similarly, I don't understand fashion, never have, never will, and will wear jeans and a t-shirt every single day if left to my own devices. I have zero interest in going to the beach. The only time I see movies is when my roommate comes into the living room and puts them on for me - if you leave the DVD sitting right next to the DVD player, I still can't be arsed to walk over and put it in. It's not that I hate any of these things, I just have so much better shit I could be doing. And Los Angeles is the embodiment of all these things I'm incapable of caring about.

Who knows, I'm here another couple of days and I suppose it's possible I'll develop some sort of opinion other than "meh". For now I'm just happy to report that I was wrong, but so was Kelly.

Day Nine And I Am Saved By An Anonymous Reader

An anonymous reader commented on this post this morning to the effect of "Okay, if you know so much about Christmas music, maybe you should suggest some for the rest of us." Your timing is perfect, anonymous, as I had no idea what to write today, having cheated already by writing yesterday's post today and backdating it (which was just a link to someone else's videos anyway). So below are a small handful of suggestions of Christmas albums you might want to pick up in the event that Bing and Frank just aren't doing it for you. In no particular order:

The Vandals - Oi To The World! - This absolute fucking gem of an album was released in 1996 and then re-released in 2000 and is among my favorite Christmas albums of all time. Songs such as "My First Christmas (As A Woman)", "Thanks For Nothing" and "Oi To The World" (which was also excellently covered by No Doubt) stand on their own as punk songs regardless of the season.

The Yobs - The Worst of The Yobs - This band is actually The Boys, but recorded all their Christmas music under the name The Yobs. It contains the single most inappropriate/offensive Christmas song I have ever heard, "C.H.R.I.S.T.M.A.S./Gloria" (which is also covered on the aforementioned Vandals album), as well as "Oy Santa" in which they ask Santa "What do you call this fucking pile of shit, you cunt?" and "There's No Santa Claus" about a father's lame attempt at pretending to be Santa.

Destructors 666 - Bah Humbug - Rounding out a trilogy of punk rock albums, Bah Humbug tells you where you can "stick that fucking mistletoe" in "Merry Christmas and Fuck Off" and lists all the reasons to hate the season in "Xmas Xmas (Bah Humbug)".

Lest you start to think I may not love Christmas as much as I claim, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy's Everything You Want For Christmas is always at the top of my Christmas album list, not the least of which because of their cover of "Mr. Heatmiser" from the 1974 claymation classic The Year Without Santa Claus (do the bartender and I have matching Heatmiser and Snowmiser bobbleheads on display in our living room all year round? Yes. Yes we do). There is also the fantastic "Last Night (I Went Out with Santa Claus)" which I triple dog dare you to try not to dance to, and "A Party For Santa" in which we are reminded we should all make sure Santa comes more than once a year.

While the cheese factor might be a bit high for some, I absolutely love A Twisted Christmas by Twisted Sister. It's mostly covers of classic Christmas songs done over in Twisted style, but they also sneak in a few tributes to other bands (i.e. The Ramones (Ho, ho ho! Let's go!)) and even their own song "We're Not Gonna Take It" which it turns out is basically the same riff as "O Come All Ye Faithful".

The Fleshtones - Stocking Stuffer - If you like surf rock bands from Queens, and I assure you that you do, then this is the Christmas album for you. Songs such as "Christmas With Bazooka Joe" and "Super Rock Santa" are virtually impossible not to love. Better still is their amazing cover of "Hooray For Santa Claus", which for the uninitiated is the theme song of what is widely regarded as one of the worst movies of all time, Santa Claus Conquers the Martians (yes, of course I own it, what a ridiculous question) - it's bad enough that it appeared on an episode of MST3K.

There are also a number of individual songs that deserve recognition as "must have" songs on any Christmas playlist I'm likely to come up with, but I think I'll save those and post one a day through the 40 Days of Christmas (some of which may or may not count as NaBloPoMo posts, depending on how lazy I get).

So there you have it, six Christmas albums that you can rock out to whether you love Christmas or hate it. By no means, mind you, is this even CLOSE to a comprehensive list of my Christmas collection. If I tried that we'd be here for years discussing it and trust me, you don't want that. It should be enough to get you started, though, and there will definitely be more suggestions coming in about a week(!).

Thanks, anonymous, and also my apologies as I suspect you probably had no idea what you were getting yourself into.

Day Eight And I'm Now Just Posting Links To Other Things

The one drawback to living in Chicago is that it's rare to be able to watch an entire Browns game. However, after Sunday's abysmal performance, this may actually be a blessing.

Witness here Cleveland area comedian Mike Polk Jr. (the same guy who did the Cleveland tourism videos) speaking out on behalf of Browns fans everywhere.

I'll see you Sunday.

Day Seven And I've Started Complaining About Commercials Again

As I started writing this post, I had to look up what company this was actually a commercial for - I dislike it so much I forgot to make note of who was even doing the advertising, thus negating the point of spending money to advertise at all.

AT&T is introducing its new 4G LTE service and I honestly want to throw my television out the window every time this commercial comes on. It consists of two guys sitting in a parking lot, ostensibly tailgating, while barely looking up from their smart phones other than to tell tell their friends how far behind the curve they are by not being glued to phones themselves. They are the embodiment of all those things that I hate - the people who ruin every single damn conversation by whipping out their iPhone to get the information that will give them the last word, the hipsters that constantly tell you how much better they are than you because they've heard of something first, the fucking morons who are so afraid of being offline that they don't bother to interact with real people anymore at all. "That's so 12 seconds ago" is an actual line in this commercial, and it is repeated twice more with varying times of how late everyone else is on some trivial piece of information, none of which are over a minute. I want to take both of their phones and throw them on the ground, smash them to pieces with a bat and use the shards to stab these guys in the throat. SHUT THE FUCK UP. YOU ARE AN ASSHOLE AND I AM NEVER INVITING YOU TO TAILGATE AGAIN.

Day Six And I Don't Even Know Who I Am Anymore

As it turns out, I'm taking this burlesque thing pretty seriously: I have a stage name picked out, I'm hoping to do my first show in December, I'm obsessing over choreography, and I practice my shimmy when I walk down the street (this is easier when you assume everyone is already looking at you like you're a crazy person anyway). Which is why I spent two hours at the studio today learning how to put pin up make up on my own face.

I say "pin up make up" but I actually mean "any kind of make up at all". The whole exercise was a reminder of just how not girly I typically am - there is so much about make up that I don't even know. For example, did you know that applying foundation is not the first step in putting make up on? I had no idea. The very name of it, "foundation", suggests that this is the step upon which the rest of your make up application should be, you know, founded. But it isn't, this is actually step three and comes after moisturizer and a product I had never even fucking heard of, called "foundation primer". I couldn't even grasp the concept at first. The only primer that exists in amberanceland is the stuff that goes on walls before you paint them, and is also a step you can skip if you're working over a wall that has been painted before and you are covering it in a color that is close in both hue and shade to what's already there. You can't, apparently, skip foundation primer, unless you want your make up to slide right off your face.

Similarly, it turns out you're a fool if you try to put on eyeshadow right on top of your foundation. Yes, that's right, there is a primer for that too. Eyeshadow primer, it turns out, comes in many shades, but it is best to use one that is close to what will eventually be the lightest eyeshadow you'll be using that day. You'll be using more than one, FYI, you never use just one shade of eyeshadow at a time. Your eyes will have no depth if you do that. Duh.

I left the studio with a face full of make up, false eyelashes and a list of things I would need to pick up if I wanted to take on this  whole "wearing make up" thing. I'm not entirely sure that I do, but it might be too late to turn back now: I have signed up for a class in pin up hair that will be taught by the amazing Sara Jean, and I recently bought a pair of turquoise shoes that I can wear with exactly one outfit in my closet (FYI, I have never, ever, bought a pair of shoes that I couldn't wear with the majority of clothes that I owned before this pair. It felt dirty in a not good way.) (Also, by closet I mean lingerie drawer. Those shoes don't go with anything I own that can be worn in public in a non-performance setting). If I start to become one of those women who shops, please do us all a favor and tie me to the couch in front of a hockey game until I snap out of it.

Day Five And The "Roll Tide" Promo Is Stuck In My Head

I'm sitting in my living room facing my television watching the highly touted LSU versus Alabama football game on CBS, for free, and laughing out loud at the people who spent in excess of $20,000 on a ticket to see this (regular season, mind you) game live as the Alabama kicker misses his second field goal of the game in a scoreless first quarter.

Who knows, maybe by the end of this game that will turn out to be money well spent.

Update: As I hit the "publish" button, Alabama had their third field goal attempt blocked. Roll Tide.

Day Four And I'm Talking About Christmas Already, Natch

"Did you see the window at Bath & Body Works downstairs?" asked BrownsFan in an incredulous tone earlier this week.

This is one of my favorite times of year - when I am completely ready for Christmas, right on schedule with retail, and everyone else is appalled. H-town was complaining the other day about Sears being the first retailer to air a Christmas commercial on television. This was fully a week after I had been to Sears and purchased several new pairs of Christmas socks (I almost bought a "sexy Santa" apron too, until I remembered I already have, like, five of those).

Truth be told, I've been slowly adding Christmas music to the playlist on my iPod since August. For some reason I had pointed this out to the stranger when I met him in September (I'm not sure what possessed me, especially given that I hadn't told him about this blog until after we'd met in an attempt to keep him from finding out that I'm crazy). Apparently it made an impression, because a week ago he e-mailed me asking for a list of non-traditional, non-cheesy Christmas songs that rock for purposes that were not specified. I was happy to oblige - "Hey, can you help me with some Christmas music?" being up near "Would you like some chocolate?" and "Hey, wanna fuck?" at the top of the list of questions I like to be asked. I'm not sure he was expecting The Vandals to have a Christmas song, let alone a full length album.

The 40 Days of Christmas is less than two weeks away, FYI.

Day Three And I Have Lost All Sense Of Propriety

(not that I had any to begin with)

me: i saw a headline yesterday that Kim K apologized to her fans for her failed marriage
no word on whether she apologized to, you know, HER HUSBAND

H-town: you're expecting normalcy
that does not exist in her world

me: I'm not sure she actually grasps the concept of marriage

H-town: also, isn't she only famous 'cause she has a sex tape?
and then the reality show offer happened?

me: oh also cuz her dad was OJ's attorney and her stepdad is bruce jenner. that's what my brother told me anyway
whatever, i've made a sex tape and i'm not famous. wtf?
that was probably an overshare, my bad :)

H-town: uh oh

me: i need to do a better job of making sex tapes with people who lack discretion, this whole " i respect your privacy" thing is holding me back from fame and fortune
behold, today's nablopomo post

Day Two And I'm Already Resorting To Chat Convos

Cap: Hold the effing phone...you're going to england in march?
Give me dates

me: oh, yeah. want to come?

Cap: YES
MAN U!!!! Giggs is retiring this year.

me: giggs is retiring every year

Cap: No, this is the first time he's said it
It's always media speculation

me: maybe he'll pull a favre

Cap: I don't want a picture of his dick

me: LOL awesome. you win

Day One And There Is Already Nothing To Talk About

Attention internets/celebrity gawkers: There is no amount of headlines, hashtags, facebook updates, E! News segments or US Weekly exclusives that will increase the size of the fuck I don't give over the demise of Kim Kardashian's marriage. For the love of Mike, shut the hell up. Now, normally I don't ever post commentary about what celebrities (or in this case "celebrities") are doing. This is because I usually don't know what they are doing because I do not care. In fact, it was just under a year ago on the way to a New Year's Eve party with my brother* that I even found out what the shit a Kardashian was. But this time, there are two things that have caused me to make note of it: I'm being clobbered over the head with stories about it, and it's NaBloPoMo.

I don't know why I do this to myself. I tell myself that if I do it, it will remind me to get back in the habit of writing every day. It never does. Even if that did work, I rarely find things I put up during NaBloPoMo to be "quality" blog posts. They tend to be more like "OMG, Happy Thanksgiving lolz" or "My cat is butthurt because I won't give her any string. Cats - such a mystery." or "MOTHERFUCK! CHRISTMAS IS, LIKE, REALLY SOON" (to be fair, posts on that subject could happen at any time) or, you know, some bullshit about a specific Kardashian that I probably couldn't pick out of a Kardashian line up or roomful of regular large-assed women (she is the one with the badonkadonk, right?). But it does give me a chance to pretend like I'm part of some sort of blogger community for a month, which is nice since I'm usually too anti-social to count as an effective member of any community. Also, right now it is giving me an excuse to tell everyone to shut up about someone else's very short marriage, which I assume ended right about the time the Vegas line on it said it would. So there's that.

*In this same conversation, Cap looked over my fairly conservative outfit and announced, "You look normal. Maybe you won't embarrass me tonight." I obviously took that as a challenge and when we arrived at the party, got the face painter that had been hired to draw a giant blue penis on my face. Amberance for the win.

BRAAAIIIIINNSSSSS!

The zombie 5K was this weekend in Baltimore, and I am proud to announce that I survived. Well, actually I didn't, I died. But I lived through it. I'll explain in a minute.

My training can best be described as "half-assed". Actually, half-assed may be a slight exaggeration. Quarter-assed is a bit more like it. As you may remember from previous posts, I HATE running. And while I started out with the best of intentions, no amount of progress in my abilities was enough to convince me that I liked it. In fact, I think it made me hate running even more. I started to rationalize reasons why I didn't really have to train. "I had dance class on Tuesday, that should count." "I totally did cardio-kickboxing for 10 whole minutes, that's exactly the same as running for 20 minutes." The last couple weeks I didn't bother to train at all, telling myself even more lies: "The adrenaline of being chased will carry me through it." "I should just sit on the couch all week - I need to conserve my energy."

Despite the nagging feeling that I was woefully under-prepared, I was getting very excited. A few days before the race the organizers sent out a tantalizing e-mail. There would be mud, red dye, strobe lights and four feet of standing water. We should "use our best judgement" in the event we had a seizure disorder, or an allergy to latex. Oh, and could we also print out and sign this wavier indicating that we understood we might potentially die? It was starting to sound awesome.

Race day came, and H-town and I got up at the ass crack of dawn to drive out to the race site. There were actually three of us who would be running together: me, with my half- to quarter-assed training, H-Town, who also hates running but had trained diligently, and Callie, who is a maniac and does this sort of running shit all the time. We discussed our training regimens and reactions to it on the shuttle from the parking lot to the race site. I reported my reaction the same way I always do: I am never, EVER running anywhere ever again.

Callie, H-Town and me, blissfully unaware of what lay ahead.

On arrival at the actual race site, we got our race packets, put on our numbers and our flag belts and got in line to check our bags. Each of us was in a different line, but we all had a similar experience of being given tips by people who had already completed the race. We already knew there were two kinds of zombies - "theatrical" zombies who were for show, and "athletic" zombies who would chase you and take your flags (this was the zombies' job. If you finished the race with none of your flags left, you were dead, and weren't eligible to win a prize). We were advised to look out for zombies who looked theatrical, but would turn around and chase you after you'd passed. We were also given advice for the "four feet of water" we'd been warned about, namely that it was way more than four feet deep, it was very cold, and we should grab the ropes to pull ourselves across rather than try to swim it. We all met up at the starting line and compared our notes. And then the race started.

We were not prepared.

Our various levels of training made no difference as we quickly realized that no one had actually trained properly at all. Running at a steady pace on relatively level, always dry, usually concrete surfaces is in no way at all adequate preparations for running through the woods up and down ridiculously steep hills, the surface of which had been reduced to a muddy slop, while being chased by zombies. In hindsight we should have been practicing running up and down various inclines and a fuck ton of suicide sprints.

We first realized this when we encountered our first obstacle - giant piles of hay we had to climb over. We reached the top and looked down to find a sea of zombies waiting for us on the other side who were sprinting after people trying to get their flags.

Holy Fuck.

 This would become a theme - go through some arduous task like climbing up a cargo net or clawing your way up a muddy hill, and face the waiting zombies on the other side/at the top. Also, for something that had been billed as a 5K run, there wasn't really a whole lot of actual running. Sprinting away from the zombies used up most of your energy so that when you did get to a zombie-free straightaway, you were usually too spent to run it. Which really didn't matter anyway because those sections were almost all so incredibly muddy you couldn't possibly have run through them without constantly falling. Still, it was pretty cool and we were having a ton of fun.

Until.

The water obstacle was to swim across a pond. There were two ropes stretched across it to help in pulling yourself along. We scrambled down the embankment and stepped into water up to our waists. It was stunningly cold, but seemed manageable. For five seconds, until we took another step. We all found ourselves submerged to the neck in 40 degree pond water. There is no way to grasp exactly how cold that is without actually doing it. The shock of the cold hit me like an anvil to the chest. FUCKING HOLY HAIRY NUN TESTICLES, I thought, but didn't say, because I was too stunned to speak. The bottom of the pond was nowhere to be found. We pulled ourselves along the rope hand over completely numb hand, urged along by H-Town, who was the only one with the ability to speak and was channeling her inner Dory - with Tourettes- all the way across. "JUST KEEP FUCKING SWIMMING!" she screamed. "FUCK YOU, NEMO!" I had a sudden moment of clarity remembering the text of the waiver I had signed - I could actually for real die in water that cold if I didn't get out of it as quickly as possible.

Somehow we all managed to get across to the other side and pull ourselves up the steep embankment. With two miles to go we were now cold, tired and soaking wet. Additionally, my saturated hoodie added another 10 pounds of weight for me to try and run with. We got to a very steep downhill that I almost ended up tumbling down, only to be faced at the bottom of it with an even steeper and higher hill that we would need to climb, which was also a river of mud. Climbing it took just about everything out of me, so when the zombie who had been sitting on the ground giving people high fives as they came over the hill suddenly jumped up and snatched away my last flag I barely even reacted. It actually turned out to be more fun once we had no flags left to worry about (it's not like we had any shot of coming in the top 3 anyway). We started deliberately messing with the zombies, trying to hug them and get them to high five us. We also did our good deed for the day and started running interference for the runners who did still have flags, blocking the zombies from being able to reach them, or tricking them into thinking we still had a flag on us somewhere.

The end was now in sight. Cold, wet, exhausted, filthy, lungs on fire, we could see the finish line (chain link fence that you had to crawl, or as H-Town did, slide under), and Callie led the way for the three of us, who were all determined to finish the race actually running. We babbled to one another excitedly while we got our medals, developing the strategies that would have been a lot more useful to us if we'd thought of them during the race. We grabbed our bags so that we could change into the clean and dry clothing we had brought, pausing first to have our photo taken together while we were still a hot mess, and giving the photographer and her friend who had yet to run all the advice we could think of. The shoes we ran in were all destroyed and we threw them away with great ceremony. Then we went off in search of the free beer we had been promised and something to eat.

The beer was like the nectar of heaven. The cheeseburgers H-Town and I procured were the most delicious either of us had ever had in our lives and we ate the crap out of them. We said goodbye to Callie, who is insane and was teaching a yoga class later in the day, and decided to head down near the course to watch some of the next wave. We stood near the first obstacle, the giant piles of hay, with a number of other people who had also finished the race, and watched as the next wave crested the hay and headed into the sea of zombies. We'd been through it before and knew that the direction they needed to run wasn't readily apparent, so the entire spectator gallery began shouting at them and pointing "To the right! THE RIGHT! Head for the trees! Go towards THE TREES!" After the wave passed by us, we went to the section between the maze and the downhill, where a ton of zombies waited in ambush all the way down the hill. Again, we used our knowledge to help the runners. "Wait for a group! Go in a group! There's too many of them, you'll never make it by yourself! Everyone go together and overwhelm them!" Most people took our advice, and a few of them even gathered around a leader who would get them all geared up Braveheart style and then all together make a break for the zombie gauntlet shouting guttural war cries. One who didn't was a guy dressed up as Superman, who actually did manage to get past them all without losing any of his flags, although one of the more enterprising zombies managed to steal his cape.

We drove home in absolute exhaustion, extremely pleased with ourselves for choosing an early heat when we noticed the traffic backed up for miles along the two lane road that led to the race (the traffic turned out to be a  huge problem and quite a few people unfortunately didn't get to run). We got home and spent 15 minutes excitedly relaying to H-Town's lovely wife all the details of our adventure before passing out.

I hate running, you guys. I really, really mean it. But there's just something about being chased by zombies. So despite the fact that I still swear I will never run again, when H-Town turned to me on Sunday afternoon just after we came home from dinner and suggested that we might want to sign up for the zombie run next year in Indianapolis  I agreed that we were kidding ourselves if we thought there was any chance that we won't.

I Might Be A Super Massive Nerd

Search terms that have recently led people to this blog:

"I can't bend my legs in my stormtrooper outfit"

"Can the ton ton make it to the first marker"

It's possible I may need to diversify my hobbies.

Got Three Hours To Kill?

I'm sure you're all sick of me telling you every time I'm on Total Talk Nonsense by now, seeing as I've been on it a lot lately, but this time is different. This week on Episode 234, I am in studio for the second time in order to respond to a listener request that I sing something on the show. So that happens. Additionally we discuss Scott's weekend trip, Riot Fest, the worst songs of the 80's, running, science, an upcoming contest for the listeners, a contest to be judged by the listeners, and when it's ok to go full Marty. But most importantly, to reiterate, I sing live on the show. So, you know, check that out maybe.

I Need To Hang Out With Fancy More Often

In honor of National Coming Out Day today

Me: Wait, "lesbian" is a verb now?

Fancy: Yeah. I lesbian, you lesbian, he/she/it lesbians...

Me: I don't think he lesbians.

Fancy: Well he would if he could.

There's Never A Dull Moment At Riot Fest

Riot Fest was this weekend and the bartender and I attended, as we do every year, because apart from getting to see a whole lot of excellent bands at the one music festival that is indoors, it is also some of the best people watching of the year. This is the same festival where I nearly incited an actual riot by wearing a shirt which read "I should be in the kitchen" last year, and the one where we saw a guy come out of the pit with his eye socket crushed the year before that.

This year we showed up for the last four bands at the Congress on Saturday night. Almost immediately we saw an 18 year old kid walking around in a TSOL shirt and the bartender had his first chance to get his damn-kids-get-off-my-lawn on. "Please, that band broke up before that kid was even born," he lamented (sort of, in that no original members were left after 1990). We headed down to our usual spot (down near the front to the far right of the stage, near the beer and away from the pit, with the rest of the old people) just in time for Strike Anywhere.

Just a note for my friends who don't frequent punk rock shows: the pit is a space generally right in front of the stage where people basically slam into one another on purpose, which is allegedly fun. A circle pit is a space either there or just behind there where these same people frantically run around in a circle while slamming into each other on purpose, and bears a strong resemblance to a stampede of jacked up apes. This is also apparently fun. Anyone can go slam/run around in these spaces BUT it is important to be prepared for the fact that as you are slamming into people, other individuals will also be slamming into you, and you'd better damn well be prepared for it. There are no safe zones in the pit. Those are the rules. This is why I found it hilarious when the weirdo guy with the Santa Claus beard who was standing still in the middle of the circle pit waving his arms like he was directing traffic got noticed by one of the stampeders, who promptly ran directly at him at full speed and knocked him flat on his ass. (Side note to the other people in the circle pit: the reason your circle fell apart is because you started it at the beginning of a four minute long song. No one wants to keep running for four whole minutes. You know the songs. Pick a shorter one next time you assclowns.)

As Leftover Crack took the stage, our safe zone away from the pit was invaded by a lone lunatic, who created a one man pit for himself by pacing back and forth like a lion stalking its prey and intermittently hugging random people while screaming into their face. He was hilarious, but his flailing around reminded me that the bartender hasn't fully recovered from his surgery. Even on the sidelines things can happen, so I took the opportunity to position myself on his left side at a slight angle, so I could be his bodyguard against stray dancers. This came in handy when some girl in a big fucking hurry to get down front decided that she didn't have time to politely slide between people like a normal person and instead came running through the crowd throwing elbows like Kevin fucking Garnett. She got me square in the ribs and I was sore most of the next day.

Suicide Machines were on next (Riot Fest has a history of bands reuniting to play it, which is how I got to see Screeching Weasel a couple years ago) and, while they did rock, they didn't leave us feeling any younger. "Yes, I'm talking to you young lady," the singer said to a girl down front. "ARE YOU READY TO POGO?" Most of the crowd responded by screaming and doing just that. I tested out my readiness for pogoing by bouncing on my toes a little bit. Flakes of rust started falling off my knees and I informed the bartender I was too old to pogo. "Me too," he said, without even bothering to check the status of his knees. He knew.

The headliners of the night were the Descendents, who were absolutely fucking phenomenal. Additionally, I finally felt less decrepit when Milo Aukerman decreed that "Thou shalt not commit adulthood". Given that he bears a remarkable resemblence to my dad I decided to take that to heart.

The Descendents alone would have been worth the cost of admission, but the glory of Facebook came through to make this the best Riot Fest ever by informing me of a secret promotion at Taboo Tabou entitling me to 50% off any vibrator in the store with my Riot Fest ticket stub and/or wristband. You better believe I was all over that. I took advantage of the brilliant weather Sunday afternoon and walked down to procure my very first Lelo for the bargain basement price of $80. Worth it? The only reason I'm typing this post is because I'm recharging it already.

Even More Commericals I Hate

Today is not a good day. Yesterday wasn't so hot either. The good news? I watched a lot of television because of it, and in so doing, became aware of a whole new crop of commercials that I hate. Please enjoy my misplaced rage!

It's popcorn chicken time again at KFC! I love this. It is, in fact, the only time I ever voluntarily eat at KFC. This time around, though, their promotional material for this glorious event is suspect. The premise is not so bad - popcorn chicken is really small pieces of actual chicken, whereas nuggets as found in other fast food establishments is some sort of ground up and reconstituted mish-mash of bits. Therefore popcorn chicken is superior to chicken nuggets. Fine, I'm on board with that. What I'm not down with is their expression of this, i.e. "What part of the chicken is 'nugget'?" I don't know, asshole, what part of the chicken is "popcorn"? Popcorn ain't no body part I ever heard of. I agree that your chicken gets the blue ribbon in this contest of mediocrity, but you can't justify that by claiming the competition's chicken isn't a body part and then naming yours something that is ALSO not a body part. That's an easy mistake to fix - just leave your snarky comment out of the commercial and carry on explaining it without resorting to poorly executed sarcasm that makes no fucking sense. Now pass me the honey mustard and fuck off.

As long as we're doing fast food, let's go over the newest offering from Subway, shall we? The promotion they have going on right now is that all of their foot long subs are $5 throughout the month of October. Neat! Cheap shitty food! Loads of it! What shall we call this too-much-bread-barely-any-meat extravaganza? Oooo I know! How about Anytober? How about no, dickface? That is the worst portmanteau I have ever seen. You're replacing "Oc" with "Any"? That's not even the right number of syllables. Did you think real hard on this one, or did you just use the first stupid idea that popped into your head because it fits in with your already nauseating theme song? It's my favorite month of the year but from a television watching perspective I can't wait for it to be over so I don't have to see this commercial ever again. Anytober. Eat shit, Subway, you already serve it to your customers.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled, less rage inducing advertisements.

Sibling Fight (Except It's With My Best Friend's Sibling, Not Mine)

E-Town: how's the runnin?

Me: there is zero chance i will be ready. or ever do this again
zombies and [H-Town], i keep telling myself. zombies and [H-Town]

E-Town: you're tougher than that
just do a slow jog

Me: it's warm enough this week to go running outside again, so that's a bonus

E-Town: that's good
make me proud of ya

Me: still wish you could make it :)

E-Town: yeah, me too
we can kill them in Indy next year
I might try two of them next year

Me: that's crazy talk. I would potentially be a zombie next year though

E-Town: I'd punch your face if you came near me as a zombie

Me: you aren't allowed to hit the zombies
so nah
imma take all your flags
anyway, home go time. have a great night!

E-Town: I'd hit you.
night

MrSteve May Know Too Much

MrSteve called Friday morning for a chat, and ended up getting more than he bargained for (don't worry, he's used to it). Specifically, he got some (slightly) greater detail on my encounters with the stranger than I went into on the blog. Which really just confirmed what he'd already assumed, to wit:

"I kind of figured something happened because that's how you shake hands."

I resemble that remark a bit too much to be offended.

England Trip Do Over - Part 4

After a few false starts on Sunday, I finally managed to get out of the hotel and meet the mutineer at the Red Hart for a delicious lunch of various things that had been fried (ordering a meal all on my own the night before had depleted my social bravery reserves, so I got him to order for me in exchange for buying him some chips*). We ate over an intense discussion about playing in bands and the relative superiority of +44 over Angels and Airwaves, which we both agreed was steaming pile of emo horseshit. I also had two Strongbows. I should have realized ahead of time that this would turn out to be a mistake later on, but I was distracted by my delightful company and the onion rings. After lunch we headed back to the hotel where the mutineer kept me company for a few hours until the day's main event.

Steve had been telling me for weeks that he was going to have me tend bar in his pub while I was over. I had been telling him he had no idea what he was saying for just as long. "I think you'd be a natural at it," he told me, despite my repeated explanation of how I already knew that wasn't true: a) I have crippling social phobias and b) I break and/or spill EVERYTHING I touch. When I told the bartender of Steve's plans over dinner one night he dropped his fork in shock and asked if Steve had ever actually met me. Luckily, events transpired that prevented him from implementing this ludicrous idea. Instead, he came to the hotel to pick me up, where I showed off the coils of rope that had been left behind on Saturday before heading down to the car park where we stood in awe for 10 minutes watching a black squirrel frolic by a tree (hey, it's not every day you see a black squirrel).

We headed out to a place called The Rusty Gun, obviously the most appropriate place to take an American visitor to dinner. It's also one of the most appropriate places to take Steve for dinner. As he will be the first to tell you (the comic will be the second), Steve only eats weirdo food. Take him anywhere in the world, and his instinct is to find the most outrageous thing on the entire menu and then order it. He's the exact opposite of me, really. No matter where I go, I pretty much only eat four things - pasta, hamburgers, prawns and dessert. It's because I know I like these things, and I want to make sure I do not starve to death because I ordered something I might potentially hate. Steve, on the other hand, is on a perpetual culinary adventure.

I will now go back on what I just said about myself in the previous paragraph. I order the same things over and over again everywhere, mostly, except that when I'm in England something weird happens to me where I suddenly decide it's time to try some new vegetables. I don't know why this happens - maybe it's because certain things are more common there than here or maybe it's because I'm drunk a lot - but my first trip over to see the comic I ate some parsnips in an attempt to appease his mother (the poor woman nearly short circuited when he told her I didn't eat potatoes and almost gave up on making me a roast dinner altogether. Instead she went overboard and made about twelve sides in the hope that I might like at least one of them) and I have been addicted to them ever since. For starters I had prawns (see?) and Steve ordered the soup of the day, which was celeriac. I'd never heard of it. "It's a root vegetable," he told me. "Try it." I was dubious, owing to the word "vegetable" which typically connotes "horrible things are about to happen in the vicinity of your taste buds" to me. But he wouldn't drop it, so I borrowed his spoon and (after a rambling description of Don Hertzfeldt's animated short Rejected when he gave me the crazy eye for holding it up and shouting "My SPOON is too big!") tentatively tasted the soup. Immediately, Beethoven's "Ode To Joy" began to play. Diamonds rained down from the sky, a pile of kittens appeared out of nowhere and a bevy of angels hovered nearby smiling benevolent smiles at us. Celeriac is DELICIOUS, and I made him write it down for me so I could look it up later and see if we even had it here (we do, but it's called celery root), which he did while I inhaled pretty much all of his soup.

It was at around this point when the trouble started. We'd gotten a beer at the bar before being seated and then ordered a bottle of wine to go with our dinner (me, something that had the word beef in it and seemed safe, him I don't even know what the fuck) which I drank what I felt was more than my fair share of because he kept insisting he was driving. Then our waiter, a charming and ingratiating man who resembled a young Lurch with a shaved head, brought over the dessert menu which had something on it that contained the word "chocolate" three separate times in its description. Obviously I made Steve order it for me, thus giving him the opportunity to order us some dessert wine as well. You may recall I was two ciders into the day before Steve had even shown up. Consequently, by the time we left I was well and truly fucked.

Steve drove me back to the hotel, where clearly the only thing to do was head for the hotel bar and pour more cider down my throat. We phoned Nat the Evil Lesbian to join us, and together we hatched diabolical but hilarious plans for when I return in March. Our laughter seemed to attract the attention of the people at the next table - a nice couple from Lincolnshire who may or may not have been at the wedding the previous day (I asked them but don't remember their answer because I was piss drunk). After Steve left (early, I decided, even though it wasn't. I had gotten the Loud), Nat and I joined them at their table where we regaled them with tales of how we'd met and what we'd done all week and they told us about their grown children (or something, I was drunk). They were genuinely disappointed when we rose to leave and even more so when I explained that my level of drunkenness would most likely prevent me from meeting them for breakfast before they went home in the morning. It did.

I woke up Monday and was not any more English or 20 years old than I had been earlier in the week. I was supposed to have lunch with Felix and Charlie and their progeny. When Felix texted me to let me know something had come up and they couldn't make it, I gratefully went back to bed until the middle of the afternoon. I only got up again in order to collect the stranger from Hitchin station, who had cleared a few hours of his schedule to spend the afternoon with me tying knots in things and showing off some tools he carries around in a very nice pair of cashmere socks. I was starving by the time he left and decided to go out for a delicious roast dinner (no parsnips, sad sad). That accomplished, there was nothing left to do but pack up my things (and my new rope) and try to catch a few hours sleep before catching a bus to the airport for my flight home (I didn't. Instead I called the bartender and had him put the cat on the phone so I could tell her I was on my way home because I am insane).

Even when I've been away somewhere brilliant, and even when I leave somewhere before I really feel ready to go home, I always feel an enormous sense of relief as soon as I'm back on the ground in Chicago - it's how I know I'm in the right place. I was grinning from ear to ear the entire cab ride back to my apartment. When I got there, I discovered that my amazing roommate had bought me two bags of Nacho Cheese Doritos (I do not know what they do to the Doritos in England, but it isn't good), some Reese's peanut butter cups and a huge pumpkin (he would later tell me it's my "practice" pumpkin to help me decide what to carve on my real Halloween pumpkin). Home sweet home.

I'll see you in March, Hitchin.

*Fries.

England Trip Do Over - Part 3

I woke up Friday to brilliant sunshine and a wide open day. Both of these things are atypical of all my previous trips, so I was very excited. I wandered around by myself for a bit, simply because I could. The one thing I made it a point to do was wander up Tilehouse Street because it is my favorite street in the world. Since I grew up with an English family as a huge part of my extended one, I'd been hearing about it all my life, and had developed a picture of what England looked like in my own head which was shaped entirely around the loose oral history I'd been hearing about since I was 3. My first time visiting the comic he had taken me on a walking tour of Hitchin, which I thought was lovely, right up until we hit the bottom of Tilehouse Street, where I stopped in my tracks and stood with mouth agape. That was it. That was my England. Apart from its not being constantly shrouded in mist (and I've been told to come back at a different time of year because it will be), Tilehouse Street was exactly what I had been picturing all my life. It was like someone had mined my brain, extracted that image and had it built in real life. The comic insisted that was to be expected, as my family was from St. Albans which is just down the road and looks very similar, but I wasn't having it. Magic had just happened. I wanted to stay there forever.

Tilehouse Street

I was getting pretty hungry, having not eaten the night before, and had decided to call Nat the Evil Lesbian to see if she wanted to meet for lunch, but decided first to have a walk through the arcade. Which is where I simply ran into her. It was my second time bumping into someone I knew and I was probably overly excited, as walking around town bumping into people is basically her job desciption. We went and got some lunch which we ate on the lawn at St. Mary's Church, and which led to the only dark point of what was an otherwise perfect day: on finishing our lunch, we were about to throw our rubbish in the bin* when Nat exclaimed, "Oh look, there's a giant spider in there!" There was. A giant, GIANT spider. Like, huge. Like, way bigger than any spider in England has a right to be, because listen up England, one of the reasons that I go there is because there are not supposed to be any huge bugs that can get me, ESPECIALLY not spiders. THIS IS WHY I DON'T GO TO AUSTRALIA OR BRAZIL. You are supposed to be a safe haven for me, and you are RUINING my fantasy of a land of tiny harmless bugs with your ridiculously large bin spiders. CUT IT OUT. Nat, the one who is terrified of actors dressed up in scary outfits who pose no real threat to her whatsoever, for some reason decided to THROW HER THINGS IN THE BIN ANYWAY, thus disturbing the giant spider which obviously WAS a threat to our lives and making me scream like an idiot, "What the fuck do you think you are doing? THERE ARE OTHER BINS. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

When I'd calmed down a bit and thrown my own rubbish away in a different, spider free bin (I made her check before I would get near it), she went about doing the tour guide portion of her town ranger job, and took me inside the church, to meet the coffee guy in the square, and to her office where I bought a bunch of souvenirs including a bottle of delicious apple juice to take home (which did not end up lasting even 24 hours). Right around this time, I got a text from MrBalls, who was on his way into town with his best friend, her husband and their offspring. I went off to meet them at Halsey's for tea where we ended up having the best waiter ever. First of all, he had no idea what cakes they had, so we sent him in to go check. When he came back he still didn't know what one of them was. "It looks like the apple ones, but the decoration on the top is different so I think maybe it's not. But the woman who brings the cakes said this morning that she had changed some of the decorations so it might be. I really don't know." I fell in love with him. After our tea and a fork duel, MrBalls and I popped over to see Felix at his salon before heading to a birthday party at the Sunrunner.

We were early, and so we got our beers and sat outside waiting for the others with one other friend, the mutineer, who had shown up when we did. People started trickling in one at a time, most of whom I didn't know but was introduced to by MrBalls, Nat or Sulu. Much of the night is fuzzy because beer! What I do remember is MrBalls saying the mutineer was the most perverted person he knew, which made my head spin around fast enough to cause whiplash so I could argue the point - they both conceded when I pulled my pink bullet vibrator out of my purse, turned it on and started poking the mutineer in the arm with it. Later, after the party started winding down, he was kind enough to walk me home and make sure I made it safely into my bed.

The next day I got up late and had time for very little other than to have some tea and a shower and get sort of dressed before heading to the train station to collect the stranger, who was spending the afternoon in Hitchin with me. I walked him through the square pointing stuff out as if I owned the place, and we stopped for some coffee and a snack at the coffee stand where I greeted Rick the coffee guy like I'd known him all my life. A light rain dissolved into an absolutely beautiful afternoon, which I missed entirely due to the fact I spent all of it indoors. However, it seemed to be thoroughly enjoyed by the wedding party going on in the hotel right outside my open window, which we spied on in between various attempts to disrupt it.

After walking the stranger back to the train station, I realized it was getting a bit late (by Hitchin standards) and I had better find something to eat before the whole place closed down. This led me to do the unthinkable: I discovered a restaurant BY MYSELF, went inside it BY MYSELF, ordered dinner AND dessert BY MYSELF and somehow got through all of those things without dying or bursting into tears. I got a text from the comic sadly informing me of our F.C.'s latest humiliation (which I had wisely chosen not to watch) and text-gossiped with Nat about our respective transgressions the previous evening.

As mentioned in a previous post, I am not English and I am not 20, and my liver can only handle so much abuse. Consequently, instead of going out on the most lively night of the week, I called it a night and went to bed. Besides, I was meeting Steve for dinner the next day, and I had not yet spent an evening with Steve that didn't end with the room spinning. Sunday would not turn out any different.

*trash in the garbage can

England Trip Do Over - Part 2

There are two things I forget every time I go to England: 1) I am not English and 2) I am not 20. I woke up at 7:00 a.m. Wednesday morning with a raging hangover and wanted nothing more than to down a glass of water, roll over and go back to sleep. It was not to be. We had planned a trip to Thorpe Park which everyone had been looking forward to for a month, and begging off because I drank too much was not really an option. I got dressed sitting on the floor of my room and made it downstairs to the car where Sulu, MrBalls and i.c. hater were waiting on Nat and me. "Good morning!" grinned i.c. hater as I slid into the backseat.

"No," I replied. We collected Nat and headed out. Now here's the thing: I love roller coasters. LOVE them. But some years ago I started noticing a change in my constitution. I had always gotten a bit motion sick on long car rides, but at some point in the mid 90's I realized that I was starting to get motion sick going on roller coasters. One particular trip to Cedar Point ended with me collapsing in tears - I'd gone on three brilliant coasters and was so shaken up and nauseous I was sure I would never be able to ride again. Luckily, I quickly discovered the joy of Dramamine and my thrill riding ways were able to continue. I was totally pumped, despite my hangover. "Even if I puke after every ride," I announced as we walked in, "I am going to RALLY LIKE A CHAMP." We got on the first coaster and I kicked my feet happily as we chugged up the first hill. And then we plunged down it.

You guys. There is no amount of motion sickness medication in the world that can counteract the effects of both motion sickness AND being hungover at the same time. I came off the ride almost in a daze from how bad I felt. We ended up settling into a pattern where I would go on two coasters in a row and then sit one out while I recovered. This worked out really well since as it turns out, Sulu is kind of a giant pussy about roller coasters and I often had her for company.

The newest attraction at Thorpe Park is Saw. There are two rides: an absolutely insane roller coaster with a drop that is greater than vertical and a sort of haunted house type thing. We went for the haunted house first. Along the way we had picked up a couple more friends, so the seven of us plus the four or five people behind us were lined up train style with hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them and sent inside. We were immediately accosted by a terrifying man who went straight for Nat (she was in between Sulu and me), prompting her to scream, or rather screech "STOP TOUCHING ME!" This had the effect of basically painting a target on her, and in every subsequent room the monster people seemed to go straight for her. I got through the entire thing mostly ignored while Nat kept up a steady stream of screaming and yelling: "STOP TOUCHING ME! GO AWAY! FUCK OFF!" The situation wasn't helped by the fact that our friend at the front of the line was as terrified as Nat was and was leading the line along at a pace that made it seem as if her shoelaces had been tied together.

Next up was the roller coaster. There was a queue*, so we were idly chatting while we waited when someone brought up Ben & Jerry's ice cream (this happens every time MrBalls and I are anywhere near each other) and led to a comment from i.c. hater to the effect that he hates ice cream (i.c. hater! Get it?). We demanded clarification. "Well, I don't like the way it is so cold. It's really a bit agro, isn't it?" The rest of us were all perplexed, but true to his word he refused to eat it any of the Half-Baked pint we bought on the way home.

This time around, it was Sulu who became hysterical on the ride. She was sat between Nat and me for moral support, and the both of us were patting her legs reassuringly as we went (straight) up the hill and she babbled uncontrollably. At the top of the hill she started screaming and she did not stop for the entire ride. She was physically shaking when we came off it. I was a bit shaken up as well, but it was of the hangover variety, so as the rest of the group prepared to get back in the queue, I was fully prepared to sit it out with a PTS Sulu. Except that when the suggestion was made to go again, she was the first one to agree, and then she RAN to the entrance. It was impressive actually, I don't think we could have paid Nat to go back in the haunted house.

Saw the roller coaster. Note that the way up the hill is vertical. Sulu was not a fan.

The drive home was much more lively than the drive out had been and, as previously mentioned, we stopped for a pint of B&J's which four of the five of us shared, though the bulk of the thing was consumed by myself and MrBalls. Also at some point we invented the term "Dickmuff".

The next day I was feeling much better, which was important because I had some seriously grown up plans, y'all. Specifically, I managed to get to Hitchin rail station, buy a ticket and a return from the nice ticket counter man, get myself on a train to Kings Cross in London and then find the prearranged meeting point at St. Pancras station all by myself LIKE A MOTHERFUCKING ADULT. I was meeting a total stranger, hence the bright purple, highly recognizable hair. I'd been internet stalking him for some seven years, and realizing that I could do whatever I wanted on this trip and that I had nothing to lose, I'd e-mailed him and asked if he would be interested in meeting me for a drink. I should back up a bit. The stranger is sort of my idol, internet-wise. His writing is spectacular and is the standard by which I judge all other websites of similar material. I'm not the only one who has noticed, either - his site is fairly popular. So when I sent the e-mail, I wasn't really expecting there to be a response, let alone that the response would be "yes" and "I'll clear my afternoon for you." I figured it would get lost in the sea of fan mail he must get constantly, or that perhaps he doesn't bother to arrange meet-and-greets with potentially crazy fangirls from the internet. I immediately freaked out because HOLY CRAP WHAT AM I GOING TO WEAR and also shitshitshit what if I can't think of anything interesting to say? By the time of my trip we'd been corresponding for a few weeks so I was marginally less nervous (though not comfortable enough to do something intelligent like wear shoes intended for walking in, given that he had told me we'd be walking a fair amount. Instead I wore heels because looking good seemed way more important and I like to pretend to myself that I'm hardcore). We went for lunch and had tapas (my first time, somehow I had missed out on this brilliant cuisine for the first 33 years of my life) and then went and found a coffee shop that served genuine for real delicious coffee, which I took a photo of because I had never seen real coffee before anywhere in England. It was a wonderful afternoon and went by very quickly. The stranger had another engagement, so we made plans for later in the week and then I went home (by taking the tube back to Kings Cross because I am VERY MATURE).

Back in Hitchin I discovered the one thing that would make life in a small town in England difficult for me (actually the second of two things. As I apparently told everyone repeatedly while drunk, what I would miss about Chicago if I moved is that I can get Mexican food made by real Mexicans when I am drunk at 5 in the morning, and in England even if I could find something open that late (unlikely) it would almost certainly be curry and I don't like curry. Tacos!): everything shuts ridiculously early. Well, I say everything, but I mean everything decent - Subway was still open when I got back, but I didn't go for it. I was starving but there was no way I was eating Subway, which I can get at home, while I was in England. It's the principle of the thing. Instead, I went home and made myself some hot chocolate, surfed the internet for a while and went to bed. I had an adventure planned for the next day insofar as I had absolutely nothing planned at all and was going to be truly on my own as far as how to entertain myself. Shut up, it was very exciting for me.

*Line.

England Trip Do Over - Part 1

I got two entries into my chronicle about my trip to the UK in May before I found out what I suspected all along - I shouldn't have gone. But I did go, and on my last night there, not only did I FINALLY get to spend some quality time with my Hitchin friends, but I even managed to meet and instantly befriend a few more, most notably MrBalls. And since I'd already scheduled the time off work in September for a different trip I wouldn't be going on, I decided to take a mulligan on that first trip, go back to England and do the things I wanted to do the first time.

It is amazing how much easier it is to pack for a longish trip overseas when you don't have to pack five pairs of shoes, twenty ridiculous outfits and a dozen sex toys. In fact, I wound up taking a much smaller suitcase, which was enormously handy during my travel marathon of the brown line to downtown, the blue line to the airport, the tram to the international terminal, a plane across the ocean, the longest line to clear customs ever, the tube to Kings Cross and a train to Hitchin, where blessedly MrBalls was there to pick me up in a car I'm pretty sure he bought specifically for its strong resemblance to a storm trooper helmet (also the smaller suitcase allowed my colleagues at work to make fun of the neon kitty cat paw prints I'd painted all over it to make it recognizable at baggage claim). After checking in at the hotel, we headed across the street and had a beer while we awaited the arrival of Nat the Evil Lesbian who was joining us for lunch. After some nice Italian  food with another beer and a trip to Just Desserts for a piece of cheesecake that tasted like angels having sex in my mouth paired with a delicious pear cider, we started casting about for something to do for the rest of the day. This was important: I'd been up for over 24 hours but sleeping was not an option. The only way to get through the jet lag associated with long distance travel is to power through that first day and not go to bed until everyone else does. Obviously what I needed were mass amounts of depressants. For this we headed down The Vic*, which seems to qualify as my local despite the fact that I don't even live in the same country. There we picked up a couple more friends, i.c. hater and the beautiful Sulu. Unfortunately, we also picked up a completely random drunk at the next table. I'm not sure how this happened, though I suspect it had something to do with my hair (Melle had cut it several days before under the instruction that she make me instantly recognizable to a complete stranger in the middle of London. She translated  that into bright purple with some red peeking out around my face, which for some reason does not get you a free upgrade on Virgin Atlantic). Regardless, I made the same mistake I always make - I was nice to the idiot and then we couldn't get rid of him. It wasn't so bad at first. He was annoying, but also seemed quite taken with my foreignness, right up until I corrected him that my accent wasn't Canadian but American, at which point all hell broke loose. Suddenly I went from adorable purple haired tourist to wayward insolent colonist. "You're our CHILDREN!" he shouted at me while I ill advisedly stoked the fire by loudly giving thanks to France for financing our revolution and for the lovely statue. When he called MrBalls fat, we took it as our signal to leave and went down the road to a different pub, where we met up with Sulu's old school friend who was freakishly tall and where I had my first accidental run in with someone I know. The Canadian barmaid from The Vic was drinking at a table with some nice gentleman (who would later engage me in a fabulous compare and contrast conversation (cricket/baseball, rugby/American football) which for once didn't involve an argument over which version was better) and we recognized each other. And then I got the Loud. "OH MY GOD NAT I JUST RANDOMLY RAN INTO SOMEONE I KNEW IN HITCHIN," I screamed at her, apparently  repeatedly all night long. After several hours of this, Nat finally walked my drunk ass back to the hotel. We had to be up early the next morning for our day at Thorpe Park.

*Or, in the American vernacular, down to The Vic.

England Trip Do Over: Preview

There will shortly be a series of blog posts up about my trip to England last week, but until I get them up, here's a conversation I had with Fish on the subject of my more untoward activities during my trip to tide you over til I have a real post written:

Fish: so will you be keeping in contact with this person?

Me: i imagine, from time to time
oh and i got to keep all the rope

Fish: I saw the Facebook post. The Man didn't give you no trouble with that at the airport?

Me: Well it was in my checked bags and also, they are not insane over there. I didn't even have to take off my shoes

Fish: No full body scans? That's too bad

Me: I know right? HOW WILL THEY KNOW IF I HAVE A BOMB IN MY VAG?

Fish: recon team

Me: oh well, ok then. that's way better anyway

Running Update: Week Two

I think the status of my running experiment is best summed up in this conversation with H-Town's brother, runner extraordinaire:

E-Town: how's the running?

Me: I want to stab everything.
btw, I learned this: Do not run on the same day you have burlesque class. FYI

E-Town: haha, ok

Me: my legs are like spaghetti today

E-Town: thin and tasty?

Me: limp and wrapped around a fork


I seriously look like I have just now discovered my knees and I'm still getting used to them. I was confused about why my body was rebelling against this so much - the running part I understand, but I was a dancer for 14 years and I felt like I should be holding up better in the face of pliés and hip circles. Then it dawned on me that the last time I did a plié I was about 17. My body already knew that, and clearly is telling me "No fucking way, lady. You are every day of 33 years old, so stop trying to bend your knees sideways." As with most advice I am given, I've chosen to ignore this, and the 26 seconds of choreography we learned last night has been run in my office today more than once, though I'm not sure if it's because I want to get everything down perfect before the next class or because I like to touch my butt.

Training Day (Or, I Must Be Fucking Crazy)

You remember that movie Training Day with Denzel Washington, where he's a crooked narcotics officer training Ethan Hawk and all kinds of horrible shit happens? Yeah well my first training day for this 5K I'm running was a lot like that, except with less forcing people to smoke PCP and no one got shot. Though, given the way my legs feel right now, if I were a horse and not a person I would have been taken out back and shot this morning. It's possible I'm being a little over dramatic. It's also possible that I'm not, and that running really does suck as much as I'm telling you it does.

I'm using the highly touted Couch to 5K program, which a number of my friends have done and insist that it works and that they love to run now. I got up yesterday at the ass crack of dawn, slightly wary but also fairly excited. I was going to run! Like those people that I see running! That was going to be me! Day one of the program starts you off slowly: 5 minutes of brisk walking followed by alternating 60 seconds of running with 90 seconds of walking for 8 reps, totaling 20 minutes. This seemed like a no brainer. I can run for 60 seconds at a stretch, right? I'm in excellent shape overall - I lift weights and I shadow box. Piece of cake.

After the first 60 seconds of running I was ready to kill myself. What was I thinking with this whole running bullshit? Am I some kind of idiot? I spent the 90 seconds of my break sifting through my iPod until I found The Prodigy's Smack My Bitch Up and put it on repeat. It was the only song I had that was angry enough to match my complete hatred of this incredibly stupid form of exercise.

By the time I had finished I'd calmed down a bit, mainly because I knew I was going to get to spend the rest of the day telling people how bad it was and have them pat me on the back and tell me I am awesome sauce. And I did - I bitched and complained about it the entire day to everyone, including Jon and Scott of the incredibly awesome podcast Total Talk Nonsense while I was at their worldwide headquarters recording episode 228 as an in studio guest and being all famous 'n shit. In reality I felt pretty good. I had made it through the whole first workout without giving up, I was energized, confident, proud of myself. I could picture in my mind running the whole 3.1 miles while dodging zombies left and right. I set my alarm for 5 a.m. this morning so I could get up and run the same thing again.

When the alarm went off I was ready. I fucking OWNED that horrible workout yesterday and today would be even easier because I'd already done it! I got out of bed and...

HOLY MOTHERFUCKING CRAP ON A CRACKER. Mentally, I was totes prepared to go out and run. Physically, however, my legs were saying, "Like fuck you are, stupid ass. We're not falling for that shit again. Go away and come back tomorrow." The pain, which originally seemed to be mostly confined to my shins, was tremendous. Then I sat down on the edge of the bed and realized the pain in my upper thighs was even worse than the pain in my shins. Then I stood up again to go wash my face and to my utter astonishment noticed that my ass was actually on fire. Really? My ASS hurts from this? Because, as I said before, I lift weights frequently and there's squatting down and lunging types of things I do that work those muscles and I KNOW that my ass is in shape and what the fuck? H-town's brother, who started out on the same couch to 5K program and now can run like the wind, told me that the reason my ass hurts is because running works the muscles in a different way than weight lifting does. By "different way" I assume he means "the way of the devil". I was obviously not running anywhere today. As a matter of fact, the little bit of walking I did between the train and the places I needed to go saw me stumbling around downtown Chicago like Lurch and frightening all the children and several adults.

If it wasn't for the fact that I love H-town and really want to do something cool with her and also the part about the zombies I would just give up this very minute. I am right now sat on my couch and plotting out my plans for the evening based around doing the bare minimum of moving possible. Because my legs...oh lord, my legs. The Run For Your Lives zombie 5K is October 22nd. Beginning October 23rd I am NEVER RUNNING AGAIN.

I Do, However, Love The Game "Arguments With Friends"

Just an FYI: Blogger spell check corrected four words I had misspelled in this conversation alone

Fish: you should get words with friends
its basically scrabble
but you can lose to me

me: you're the hundredth person to say that and i will tell you what i told everyone else - i can't play any scrabble based games because i can't fucking spell

Fish: see
but this one
tells you when it's not a word
and it uses the scrabble dictionary
but if you try and make up a word
it is like "go fuck yourself"

me: but if i type a word that i know is a word and i just have it spelled wrong will it suggest "did you mean..."? like a normal online dictionary does?

Fish: no mam

me: yeah, not playing that

Fish: pussy

me: you are also forgetting that i am entirely antisocial and don't want to play much of anything with my friends
you'd be like "let's play a game!" and i'd be like "yes, let us both play a game...separately"

Fish: right
and you can
it's not real time
its almost like you are playing over email
you play a word
and then the other person plays a word when they have their ipad and 10 minutes to burn
i am playing one person right now who hasn't played a word in 10 days

me: oh good, because that's how long it would take me to figure out how to spell a word

Fish: Drama queen is actually 2 words

me: so is suck it

You May Say To Yourself, "My God, What Have I done?"

I wasn't kidding about that sentence at the end of the last post. As of yesterday, H-Town and I are officially signed up to run a 5K together in Baltimore in October. We are neither of us runners. H-Town is in fact quite fond of saying she would never run unless she was being chased. Someone evil obviously overheard that, because this is no ordinary 5K race - it is a 5K race with an obstacle course built into it and you do all these things while being chased by zombies.

I have no idea what possessed me to think I should do this, really. It's like I saw the phrase "chased by zombies" and laughed so hard at the very idea that I didn't even notice I was signing myself up to run three GIANT MILES, because if I had noticed, I'd have been like "What the fuck is this bit about the running? Uh-uh. FUCK. THAT." and, you know, not done that. You guys, I HATE running. I really, really hate it. I am that girl in the morning that pisses you off walking idly up the stairs to the train platform when you are late for work and the train is pulling up right now and oh my god, bitch, can't you hear the train is coming? GET OUT OF MY WAY. Dude. No. There is no way I am running up the stairs to catch this train because guess what? It is rush hour and there will be another train in, like, five minutes, so chill out because I am NOT running.

So yeah, running, not for me, and yet I'm going to have to run pretty much constantly for the next two months or so if I have any hope of surviving the zombie apocalypse that I have somehow managed to talk myself into. Training for a 5K should turn out to be pretty entertaining to you, the ones who are smart enough to just sit there and watch me get chased by zombies instead of doing it yourself. I'll keep you posted. Now then, where IS that large automobile?

I'm With The Band (And Other Things Currently Scaring The Shit Out Of Me Right Now)

Whenever someone comes along and rips my heart out of my chest, then stomps it into mush, scoops what's left into a glass jar and puts the jar on shelf in a display case to keep as a trophy, I always react in the same way - by immediately engaging in a series of terrifyingly out of character behaviors that outwardly appear to be exciting new ventures but are really half-assed attempts at self-destruction. If I ever tell you I have taken up skydiving as a hobby, have decided to study entomology, or wish I had more opportunities for public speaking, you should probably assume I am actually just very sad and suggest moping about the house in sweatpants eating ice cream out of the carton as a safer alternative.

In news that may or may not be related to the preceding paragraph, I have recently joined a band and taken up burlesque dancing.

I signed up for burlesque classes in what can only be described as a fit of rage - reading through an awful e-mail (!) for the hundredth time, I suddenly went all Right Said Fred, decided I was too sexy for your party, and googled "burlesque lessons chicago" which led me to the fucking brilliant Studio L'Amour and the associated Everleigh Social Club, where after about 15 minutes into my first class, I decided I was going to become a Starlet as soon as possible. Then I actually saw the Starlets perform and thought "Holy shit, I will never be that good". Then I went home and decided I damn well will be that good even if it kills me because there really is no way I'm disco dancing, so I'm just going to have to shake my little tush on the catwalk. Now, I know there are a few people out there who don't know me as well as they think they do, and are wondering why I think taking my clothes off in front of strangers is out of character. I assure you that none of these people have ever seen me naked, and anyone who has knows that this is, in fact, very out of character for me. I'm just saying to watch out, I don't want you to trip over the irony. The point is, I'm doing that.

Almost immediately after signing up for the burly class, I got a message from my dear friend TTN Jon inviting me to audition for a band he was playing in called the Newburys. The singer they had sort of quit unexpectedly, and with a gig coming up they needed someone to fill in pretty quickly. I went to the audition and they liked me, so I started very quickly learning songs since all told we had precisely four rehearsals (including the audition) before the gig. So here's the thing - as much as I like to pretend to be all punk rock n' that, I've really only been to rock shows as a spectator. I've never actually been in a band before. Ever. Sure, I've been on stage singing loads of times, but classical music is an entirely different experience, one that seems custom made for me since having a personality is largely frowned upon. Fronting a rock band, however, almost invariably means talking to strangers, which falls squarely into the bucket of Things Amber Doesn't Do. Another problem - the friends who were coming to see us have all been in rock bands before and know what they are doing and I quickly developed a massive complex about sucking in front of them. I was also wholly convinced I was going to forget all the words, which terrified me until my amazing roommate pointed out that the songs were originals and no one in the crowd actually knew the words, so if I forgot them I could make something up and no one would know the difference.

I spent all day Saturday freaking the fuck out. I would frantically go over songs for an hour, then become worried I was over-preparing and start worrying about something else. Such as what to wear - I walked to Taboo Tabou and bought a corset because I obviously did not own one single thing I could possibly front a rock band in, which I then didn't wear because it seemed like I was trying too hard. Then I got worried I didn't know the words and went back to frantically going over songs. This cycle repeated itself until I finally just said "fuck it" and got in a cab before I could chicken out of the whole thing. This was my best move, really - I had a posse of supportive friends around me who kept me from disintegrating, plus the door guy who gave me some advice on my way in and lifted me off the ground in a giant bear hug on my way out.

I did ok, mostly. I remembered all the words, stayed on pitch and faced out at the audience, where Scott was taking millions of photos for me with my camera and holding my purse (he's a great purse holder, you can tell he's married) and Phil was standing down front giving me a thumbs up and mouthing encouraging things every time I looked at him (which was a lot). What I didn't do was sing particularly loud, move around very much or talk to the crowd really at all. The volume thing was mostly mechanical - many of the songs were at the far end of my range, and all the air in my lungs was being used up to hit the pitch correctly. The lack of movement was less stage fright and more a function of performing really depressing songs. Even with a catchy melody and an upbeat tempo, dancing around to a song with lyrics about spousal abuse seemed fairly inappropriate. Not talking to the crowd? Ok, that was all on me, but for real I HAVE NEVER DONE THIS BEFORE so, you know, lay off me. We did well enough that the crazy guy with biking gloves on dancing in front started screaming for ONE MORE! which was really the only time I managed to speak to the crowd. "Oh thanks, but we can't. Seriously. We genuinely do not know any more songs. Really." This was not a lie. (Later crazy guy would say I was good and ask me to "touch" him. I put my hand on his shoulder and he thanked me and left.)

The one thing I hadn't thought to prepare for was that after our set, people I didn't know would come up and talk to me. I really have no idea why I didn't think of that, and it wound up being by far the most frightening part of the whole experience because HOLY SHIT PEOPLE ARE TALKING TO ME. Overall, though, I didn't die, which was where I had set the bar so I win.

Next up on the tour of Shit I Shouldn't Be Doing: I'm going to Baltimore to run a 5K while being chased by zombies. FYI - I don't run. Ever.

Battle Of The Florae

MrBalls*: my plant is dusty
i'm not sure how to dust it without cleaning every leaf

me: as far as i know that is the only way to clean a plant

MrBalls: it's got a lot of leaves though

me: ok new plan, get very drunk, then wash the plant

MrBalls: good plan, I was hoping to meet someone tonight but she is ill
maybe i'll just clean my plant

me: lol yes, that is a good substitute for a girl. plant.

MrBalls: hmm not sure about that, plants don't do the same things

me: oh right. sorry i was thinking of boys and vegetables


*MrBalls is a relatively new friend who has not appeared on Bizzybiz before. I have no idea what his real nickname is or if he even has one, and making one up based on things I know about him would all sound geeky (because most would have the word geek in them). He's asleep right now (I assume, or possibly drunk cleaning a plant) so I can't ask him about his nickname either. MrBalls comes from a fucking brilliant episode of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. I have absolutely no idea why that popped into my head but suffice it to say it is in no way a reflection on my dear friend or his balls and in fact it does not remind me of him in any way whatsoever. I probably should have gone with something about ice cream (he likes it).

It's Shark Week Again, Y'all

via icanhascheezburger.com