Amberance: Camera Whore

So waaaaay back in August I did a calendar shoot at VaVoom Pinups. I had originally scheduled it for a project that had to be cancelled (email!), but I decided to keep the appointment anyway, mainly because I am a massive narcissist of long standing. I sincerely mean that. Where almost every other woman on the planet is ducking out of candid photographs telling you how hideous she is, I have never met a camera in my entire life that I didn't immediately jump in front of. I have loved having my photo taken from birth, which is obvious to anyone who has seen any childhood photos of me as I am standing in some sort of ridiculous pose in Every. Single. One. I have never outgrown this habit.

Me at age 7 posing in lingerie and a stupid hat.

Me at age 33 posing in lingerie and a stupid hat.

I obviously enjoy being looked at. In related news, I am now immortal: my amazing friend Charlie so loved the photos from the shoot I did prior to this one, he went and had one of them tattooed on his arm two weeks ago:

IMMORTALITY. Unless Charlie dies, that is.

That's beside the point really, I just felt like mentioning that I AM A TATTOO YOU GUYS.

But back to the story: for the more recent shoot I'd done 14 outfit changes, mostly based on suggestions from those of my friends who are known to be perverts. This made for photos that were a little more risque than the results of the the first photo shoot I did. When I got the proofs I sent them out to a handful of trusted advisers, among them MrTrivia. When I saw him the next day, I asked him what he thought of the photos. He looked uncomfortable. "Ummm...you know there's, like, full frontal in some of those photos, right?"

"Yes. I was there."

"Ok. I just, you know, wanted to make sure you meant to send me that."

I pointed out that my current aspiration was to take all my clothes off on stage in front of strangers and he conceded that I had a point.

I had the whole finished package shipped to me at work because I am ridiculous and because it's now almost a game to see how much I can get away with before they fire me (a couple months ago the CEO mentioned he was tired and I offered him the pillow from under my desk so he could take a nap. I still work here). BrownsFan suggested I put Post-it notes over the bad parts before she looked at it, by which she meant specifically my belly button because she thinks they're gross. Tits and ass, no problem. Navel, GTFO. She's awesome.

This is not the going to be the end of the "take awesome shiny photos of me" thing and here's why: one of the outfits I'd planned to wear for this shoot was Leia's metal bikini from Jabba's palace. There's a guy on the internet that custom makes them for way more money than any sane person would spend on a costume, but they are excellent and so I am getting one, but I didn't have time to get the order in before the shoot so OH WELL I GUESS I WILL JUST HAVE TO GO BACK AND DO IT AGAIN. I really, really, REALLY like having my picture taken you guys.

TBS: Very Funny (Just Not On TV)

The TBS Just For Laughs comedy festival sponsored by Twix (clearly the most hilarious of all candy bars) was this past week and I was lucky enough to be a part of the very first event AND the very last event, while seeing my future husband and getting a bunch of free candy in between. Every bit of it was fantastic and way the hell funnier than the TBS prime time line up of shows, most of which can be described in almost any way you want except "very funny". But allow me to start at the beginning.

The festival kicked off in the most awesome way possible: by confusing the shit out of tourists. The MP3 Experiment is a flash mob* created by the group Improv Everywhere in which participants download an MP3 to their iPod (or similar), synchronize their watches with the atomic clock on the website, show up in an appointed place wearing an appointed color shirt and at an appointed time everyone presses "play" and follows the instructions. I'd been to one before about three years ago, and while it was fun, it was cold and raining and not a lot of people showed up. Not so this time. I got on the train to go downtown and immediately noticed a group of about five people in solid colored t-shirts of red, green and yellow attempting to covertly drink a batch of vodka and lemonade from a tube they'd rigged to a container in one guy's backpack who were clearly up to the same antics I was. In fact, about 1,000 other people turned out to be up to the same antics I was. I installed myself near the bean and played a quick game of "Who else do I think is playing?" while I waited for it to be 1:30. At 1:30, chaos organization erupted. Here is a short video of it. A few awesome people with no idea what was going on decided it was best to just go with it, and started following us around doing whatever they saw us doing. The highlight for me was during our attempt to make ourselves into a giant target. While crushed in with all the other people wearing green shirts, I found myself looking at two guys standing near me who were looking right back and grinning. "Dude, you're the girl from the train!" one of them said. "I KNEW it! I knew you were playing!" High fives were exchanged, vodka lemonade was shared, memories were made. It was an amazing day**.

 The following Thursday, I forewent my usual drinking night at Tai's and instead met up with Mr and MrsTrivia, Mr. and Mrs. Paulblo and Mr. and Mrs. Eldest of the Brothers Whose Last Name Rhymes With Schmongola for dinner at Elephant and Castle before making our collective way over to the Chicago Theater to see Demetri Martin and Some of His Friends Who Are Also Comedians. Demetri Martin, by the way, is going to marry me someday when he finally meets me and falls hopelessly in love with me and my hilarious t-shirts. I wore one to the show which I thought he would like, but as I was sitting in the balcony he didn't see it and instead pulled some other guy up on stage to look at his t-shirt (said guy had asked Demetri what was with his very plain shirt because it wasn't funny and Demetri brought him up for a comparison. Guy's t-shirt was a drawing of Jesus shooting Charles Darwin in the head and read "Evolve this". "So my shirt just has a line on it and isn't funny, and your shirt is what's wrong with America," Demetri observed. Point Demetri). The show and everyone on was hilarious (though I think Kristen Schaal was holding back her best stuff for her own show which makes total sense), in particular Hannibal Buress, who we are seeing again in July. I was sitting in a different place from the others who were downstairs and MrTrivia had graciously offered me a ride home, so we had agreed to meet out front at the end of the show. On the way out I received several complimentary Twix bars which amazingly happened to be the exact size of fun:

 



This is precisely how big fun is.

 Outside , I walked over close to the street and began scanning the crowd for MrTrivia and/or the rest of our party. Seeing none of them, I texted him and said "I'm already outside! What do I win?"

"I am too right in front. Where r u?" he responded.

I looked around for him some more but didn't see him. "Right in the middle near the street" I replied and continued looking. As I did so, I noticed a tallish man standing right in front of me turn around slowly. Upon sighting me he said "Seriously?" We'd been standing right next to each other for five minutes without noticing.

The festival closed last Sunday with a show titled Steve Martin and Martin Short in a Very Stupid Conversation. When I saw that Steve Martin was coming to town I freaked a little. I've been wanting to see him live since I was about 7 years old, right around the first time I saw the King Tut clip from SNL in re-run. A good chunk of my childhood was spent next door with my best friend Mary watching Dirty Rotten Scoundrels nearly every other day (also we were watching a lot of Jean-Claude Van Damme movies for which I have no explanation save that we were very young). Martin Short is no slouch either, and the show opened with various clips of their work, including their appearance together in The Three Amigos, a little Ed Grimly and the absolutely legendary Great Flydini. They then had a piss funny conversation in which they interviewed one another, Short interviewing Steve martin about himself, Martin interviewing Martin Short about what he thought of Steve Martin. Martin Short sang a song, Steve Martin played the banjo (brilliantly - there's a reason the man's won 4 Grammys) and then Short returned to the stage and interviewed Steve Martin again as Jiminy Glick. Meanwhile, I was pissing myself, had tears streaming down my face and laughed so hard and so long my abs still hurt four days later. It was funny on an absolutely insane level that should not be achievable without performance enhancing drugs and well worth the quarter century wait.

Demetri: Call me.

*Note to the City of Chicago, CPD and Chicago area news outlets: the crime spree you've been witnessing this summer involving roving bands of teenagers ganging up on individuals in the downtown area to beat up and rob them which you all have been calling a flash mob? Stop doing that. Try group thugging, gang activity, or some other wording of your choice. That is not what flash mob means.

**It started out that way anyway. In case anyone is wondering what happened to the other two posts I was planning about my trip to England, due to an e-mail (!) I received when I got home from flash mobbing, I just don't feel like writing them anymore. Sorry.

Amberance: Fun and Social (No, I'm Serious)

It has taken me well over a week to sit down and write this post detailing the events of two Thursday nights ago. This is due as much to the fact that it took me nearly this long to recover from it as it is to my well documented laziness.

In the past several months, I have inexplicably developed a social life. My good friend MrTrivia is in large part responsible for this, having gotten me addicted to playing trivia at Witts and introducing me to some really cool people. Two weeks ago, our standing plans for Wednesday night trivia got canceled due to everyone but MrTrivia and me bailing. We decided that two people was not enough for trivia and decided to skip it for the week, leaving open the possibility of meeting up at Tai's the next day.

Thursday rolled around and it looked like it was going to be a typical Thursday with no MrTrivia due to this text message I received mid-afternoon: "I remember now why I got married. When my wife is here she makes me go to bed, but when she is out of town I stay up all night playing video games. Don't think I'll make it tonight." I had also gotten a text from MrSteve asking if I'd be around. MrSteve has gone and got himself a girlfriend and so understandably does not always show up for the Thursday ritual. I assumed he'd be showing for one and then heading off to visit his lady as per his recent custom. I was wrong on both accounts.

Shortly after I showed up for dinner, MrTrivia walked in. He had apparently texted everyone else we know as well, because they started showing up a few at a time. Notable amongst this group was Steve G. Steve G is one of Cap's fraternity brothers and is somewhat difficult to describe. He the kind of person where he shows up and you're excited to see him because you know the evening is going to be hilarious and then you regret it later when you've been thrown out of several bars due to his jackassery.

In the meantime, MrSteve had also showed and brought along his girlfriend, the actress. The significance of this cannot be overstated: MrSteve has done his very best to keep us from meeting for as long as possible because of some nebulous fear he has that Something Might Happen - at his expense. So his bringing her to Tai's on Thursday was a momentous occasion, which I marked by squealing and throwing my arms around her the second they walked through the door. Much as MrSteve had feared, the actress and I got on famously and spent most of the night talking while MrSteve made a David Byrne "My God, what have I done?" face.

By now there was so much activity that I had begun taking notes, despite knowing they were unlikely to make sense when I sobered up. Here are some:

• "Shark guy: We just didn't know they would travel those kind of distances for sex. Me: What? Have you HAD sex?" It was shark week that week, and I was ODing on shark programming. I'd sucked the bartender in as well, and so we had it on in the bar. The show we were watching was about the mating habits of Great Whites, and the shark guy's comment led to me demanding that MrSteve look up the distance of how far I've been known to travel for a conquest on his iPhone. (I have traveled 1/7 of the total circumference of the earth. Eat that, sharks.)
• "Paulblo!" I coined this term for our friend Pablo, who has recently discovered a discrepancy in his first name on several government documents. Some of them have him listed as Pablo, and others as Paul. He's been having a bit of a nightmare getting it sorted out. For the rest of us it's been really entertaining as we've all started treating him as if he were two separate people. Pablo declined to go out with us, so MrTrivia sent him a text: "Dear Paul, Pablo is being a douche. Meet us at Tai's."
• "Steve G's phone: I have feelings for you! Fas. (e-mail [MrTrivia] and he'll explain)" I have no idea what this means. Neither does MrTrivia, I checked.
• "[the actress]: It's an equation. A 39 cent kite times two engineers = you need to buy a more expensive kite. Me: Yeah, they need a kite like in The Kite Runner, but without the rape." MrSteve was telling us a story about how he and his brother struggled to get a cheap kite to fly. I was, naturally, looking for an opportunity to say something wholly inappropriate.
• "Penis pancake!" MrTrivia cleared this one up the next day when I found a photo of a cock-shaped pancake in my e-mail.

Eventually, MrSteve and the actress went home, a bunch of girls Steve G. invited showed up, and MrTrivia and I stepped out so he could have a cigarette. We ended up having a very long conversation, during which Steve G. and the girls came outside. "Fuck it, let's go to Carol's," Steve said. By now I had run out of money, it was 1:30 a.m. and I just wanted to go home, but Mr "money is no object" Trivia was not having it so we said goodbye to the bartender and cabbed it over to Carol's. I had never been to Carol's before. It is a divey country bar with a 4 o'clock license, the worst beer selection in history and frightening looking barmaids and bouncers. They were having karaoke night and I had to spend 10 minutes explaining to MrTrivia that people who really sing do not do karaoke and I was not playing. Steve "G Money" was though and we suddenly remembered just how dangerous it is to let him have a microphone. He announced that he'd gotten divorced that morning (he hadn't), sang a horrible country song (badly) and then finished by telling everyone that what he said about the divorce wasn't true - his wife had fallen off a cliff and died (his wife was at home safe and sound and probably furious with him because she doesn't like him going to Tai's). Following this MrTrivia and I went outside where at some point I decided I really needed to be smoking. I immediately regretted that decision because there was no chocolate milk handy and I can't smoke without chocolate milk (it's my smokin' milk). While we were out there, Steve G. apparently decided he'd terrorized these people enough because he came outside and shouted "FUCK THIS! Let's go back to Tai's." We did.
It was now 3:00 a.m. I shocked, SHOCKED the entire staff with my entrance and the fact that I was still awake, let alone still out and still drinking. I don't remember much of what happened after that, except for a Steelers/Wolverines fan that wanted to take me to dinner (NO! A thousand times no!). At some point I wrote a note to myself which simply reads "titty fucking". I have no idea. The next thing I knew, the lights were up and everyone was being asked to leave. I stuck around, figuring at this point I might as well just catch a ride home with the bartender. Meanwhile out on the sidewalk, MrTrivia was trying to hail a cab so he and Steve G. could go out for breakfast, and Steve G. was putting his nipples on the window and waving at us. MrTrivia later told me this behavior continued at the diner where Steve G. offered the server a handjob for a free slinger. For my part I went home and left a bunch of insane comments on Facebook, then fell asleep for an hour in my clothes. The bartender had to wake me up for work, where I spent the day fueling my consciousness with Diet Coke and trying to will time to speed up so I could go home.
MrTrivia, thanks for a great night out and for not letting me give in to the temptation of being a responsible adult. It turns out I don't hate fun after all.