what i've been doing besides not blogging

* Discovering the music of the next Jason Robert Brown: www.pasekandpaul.com. These are the kind of kids who make you so ashamed you haven't done anything with your life, since they're still in college and have hot Broadway actors scrambling to perform their songs, but the songs are so good it doesn't matter. I especially recommend "I've Gotta Run," which is clearly the new "Stars and the Moon" of the group.

(I bet that three people at most have a clue what I was just talking about, and at least one of then was Jen. Shall I bust out a reference to tick, tick... BOOM! and call it a day? Well, EJ can't decide. Zing!)

* Registering for class. Yup, I'm going back to school. For real this time. Well, sort of for real. It's kind of messy. Let's just say I'll be in class in three weeks. And that, if all goes according to plan, I'll be a third of the way done with my masters in history by the time I actually become a candidate for the degree. In the meanwhile, should you have questions about post-colonial sub-Saharan Africa in the Atlantic context, I can hook you up.

* My yen for lefty protests pretty much died when I left the People's Republic of Ann Arbor for college, but I'm pretty sure that attending a rally to save Darfur wearing my "Give me your thirsty, your drunk, your befuddled masses" kickball t-shirt was the nail in the coffin containing my youthful idealism.

* Going back to school means finishing up fun reading for a while, so there's been a lot of that:








* Realizing with great horror that Rachael Ray and I have the exact same haircut. Since I despise Rachael Ray and actively wish her pain, this is completely unacceptable. Look, if you're going to call it "EVOO" instead of "Extra-Virgin Olive Oil" and then every time you use it say "And now time for some Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, or 'EVOO' for short!" THEN IT'S NOT REALLY SHORTER TO SAY "EVOO," IS IT, YOU ROTTEN WHORE?

AND HOW COME YOU'RE SO DAMN PERKY? AND STOP PUTTING MAYO ON EVERYTHING.

My hatred for Rachael Ray really deserves its own post. For now, suffice it to say that I cannot, will not, share her slightly overgrown bangs and shoulder-length layers.

itchies

I've been a little mopey about some stuff lately-- family stuff, money stuff, friend stuff. Nothing disastrous, but lots of nagging itchies that just won't go away.

And then when I checked my Facebook updates, I saw that my friend Aaron had a new blog. Oh, and that apparently he's in Togo. With the Peace Corps.

And reading his stories somehow made the itchies stop itching:

http://aaroninafrica.com/

Back to work. Happy Monday, kids.

and i saw an episode of 90210 for the first time in like five years

I stayed home from work today with a distinctly nasty sore throat. Apparently when one is starting to feel feverish and have difficulty swallowing, she should perhaps not go to Black Cat for the Islands concert. You'd think I might have learned my lesson about weeknight rock concerts after a Sunday night The Go! Team incident that (admittedly, after a day of kickball) left me shuffling around like Ozzy Osbourne. But no, we here at EJ Takes Life like to learn things the hard way. Plus, we're getting too damn old for our own good.

It was a good show, but Black Cat crowds tend to the annoying side of reverential. Nineteen-year-old virgins in hooded sweatshirts stand stock still, perhaps occasionally nodding along as they vacantly gaze at the band. Hands in pockets and carefully positioned to be no more than eighteen inches closer to the nearest bystander, they dutifully applaud or, if especially daring, will cry out "Fairfax!" if the lead singer happens to ask where y'all are from.

It's rock and roll as interpreted by Millennials, and I gotta say, I do not approve of what the kids are doing today. What happened to youthful indiscretion, ill-advised moshing and life-threatening injuries sustained in pursuit of music? Kids, your parents partied harder than you when they were your age. Loosen up! Dance a little! The music is peppy and fun and has a good rhythm! Let the music move you! Or, y'know, at least move.

Or maybe you all are trying to be responsible employees and not get yourself sick so that you have to spend all day on your couch sucking on cherry Halls while watching Alias on DVD and telling your cat "That's Jennifer Garner! Mommy has a girl crush on her!"

perspective, people

While I do happen to think Cynthia McKinney is batshit crazy, this is not really that bad. Anyone who has worked in politics knows that being called a fool is practically a compliment. I still have warm fuzzy memories of an earlier boss calling me, at various points during my tenure, "incompetent," "retarded" and my personal favorite, referring to me as "the idiot assistant" while on the phone with the editor in chief of a national magazine.

And people ask why I don't work in politics any more.

the roosevelt at DC9

Because pimping your friend's band is one of the best (worst?) blogging cliches:

On behalf of DC's own up-and-coming rock band, THE ROOSEVELT, I'd like to invite you to our show on Tuesday, April 25 at DC9 (1940 9th St NW). We'll be performing with two other DC bands, Let's French and Kitty Hawk, both of whom are outstanding local acts.

WHO The Roosevelt, DC's next not-so-big thing

WHAT Show at DC9 with Kitty Hawk and Let's French

WHERE DC9, 1940 9th St NW, WDC

WHEN 9:00P, Tuesday, April 25, 2006

All the cool kids will be there.

my pride and prejudice moment

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single girl, in possession of a goodly sum of drinks, must be in want of someone she says she can't stand.

Or, as someone told me last night, "You can't plan chemistry."

for these gifts we are about to receive

When I called to wish my mother a Happy Birthday last night, something momentous and earth-shattering happened (and yes, her visit here was lovely. We ate like it was going out of style and gossiped about everyone in our extended family and went to the Spy Museum where she was an incredibly good sport and crawled through the ducts to "spy on Castro").

My mother asked for my advice.

I know.

I KNOW.

My dad is both a notoriously late shopper and an impassioned gift giver. This means that he wants to give the girls in his life things they will love, but, because he doesn't have a clue where to start shopping, he waits until the last minute and then calls someone else in the family for advice while standing in a pool of his own panicked sweat in Marshall Field's.

Since the advent of online shopping, gift-giving in our family has become a remarkably impersonal yet efficient process. We email one another the exact links for items we find desirable with the exact color, size or amount indicated. Family members then coordinate amongst themselves exactly what they will give one another. True, this system does limit the surprise factor (like the time my sister chose to mark the birth of Christ by giving me a DVD of Superfly), but it also limits awkward moments and ill-advised purchases (like the time Dad inadvertently bought all of us sex toys).

So the system generally works. Dad isn't as big a fan as the rest of us, and he does tend to try to spoil our mom. To her credit, she does not encourage this. In fact, she will sometimes attempt to gently tell him that while she loves the thought, she simply does not have use for another Lladro figurine. Her interests in frugality, however, sometimes trump timing and decorum. This is exactly what happened when he gave her her birthday present.

To be fair, this was partly my fault. I'd told him to wait to buy something for her so that I could collect data from this weekend. True to form, she hauled me into Ann Taylor and pointed at a purse. "That," she said, "is perfect. Tell your father that he can get me that for my birthday." Subtlety is wasted in my family.

I informed my father and he dutifully went to Ann Taylor, credit card in hand. However, they were sold out. Thrown by this wrench in the machinery, Dad went next door to Kay Jewelers and purchased pearl earrings. Then he went back to Ann Taylor and special ordered the bag.

I learned all this when on the phone with my mother yesterday. "He gave them to me and my first thought was 'I already have two pairs of pearl earrings! Who needs three pairs of pearl earrings?' I mean, I only have two daughters, and you don't even have pierced ears!"

"And you said this to him when he gave you pearls?" Pleasnopleasenopleaseno--

"Weeeell..."

"MOTHER. REALLY."

"I know, I know. I don't think it was the right thing to say. What do you think I should do?"

"Go back in time and graciously accept the nice gift from your husband? Was he hurt? Is he giving you a hard time?"

"Well, not really, but when he took them back--"

"Wait, he took them back? Right after he gave them to you?"

"Well, they were expensive and I don't need them! So yes. And he didn't seem devastated, but he looked a little hurt. Believe me, I'm beating myself up enough for the both of us."

"OUCH. Well, you could..."

I proceeded to rattle off a list of suggestions informed by a lifetime of women's magazines and mediocre relationship milestones of my own. Buy him something, leave him a note, tell him how inspiring their oldest daughter found it that they could go through a significant and awkward moment that involved money and emerge just fine from it, laugh about it, get it out in the open, etc.

I could tell none of these were sticking and she was growing more anxious about the whole thing when my dad walked in the door and she put him on the phone for a second.

"Dadman, heard you all had a little incident last night."

"Shoot, yeah. Oh well, it's just stuff in the end." He sounded upbeat and genuinely happy to be having this conversation.

"So you're not hurt or anything? You should just know, Mom feels really badly about how she handled it."

"I was DEVASTATED." Uh-oh, he's in community theater mode. "I was torn to pieces; how could she love me and treat me in such a way?! No honey, of course not. Shoot, she made me take them back and now I can buy her a fifteen dollar bottle of wine and sock the rest away for a golf trip. Now, I'm gonna go take your mom out to dinner on her birthday. And, I may even kiss her a little bit."

So really, my only advice should have been: marry a great partner and the rest will take care of itself.

celebrity baby smackdown!

I can think of no better way to mark one year of blogging at EJ Takes Life than to dedicate this post to little Suri Holmes Cruise. "Suri" is apparently a Persian name and is also taken from the ancient Hebrew saying "Suri-ously, this child is fucked."

In a truly fantastic turn of events, Brooke Shields and her husband also had a baby girl today. If we travel back in time to the gentle, 2005 days of Tom Cruise's descent into a PR cautionary tale, we will recall that he mistook "promoting a summer blockbuster" with "publicly advise Brooke Shields on how to treat postpartum depression with Centrum." Clearly, the universe is not without a sense of humor.

Fifteen years from now Suri Holmes Cruise will be diverted from the L. Ron Hubbard-approved path to Scientology Level MCIVXXXIILM or whatever the hell they call Heaven by the (equally unfortunately-named) Grier Hammond Henchy, who will lead her astray on down a road paved with Midol and Benadryl. A classic Hollywood tale of too much, too soon. From there it's only an ill-timed snort of nasal spray until they're photographed leaving the Chateau Marmont after a threeway with Moses Paltrow Martin.

Well, good luck, Joey Potter. You're gonna need it.

i will follow you into the dark

Because there can't be too many photos of the Mall at sunset.




When Ben Gibbard is the subject, a blurry photo becomes art.

attack of the bobos!

This afternoon I ordered artisinal bread over the Internet.

Somewhere in Bethesda, David Brooks is spontaneously orgasming.

twisting my stomach into knots

No posts for the weary. They make me work at work now, and then I clean when I get home. I clean because my mother is visiting in three days, a subject I wrote a very neurotic post about only to have Blogger delete the entire damn thing. Suffice it to say that I have Mommy issues, and that they have made me do really insane things like bleach-wipe the insides of my ventilation ducts (never mind that my mother is A. not staying in my apartment and B. I haven't seen her dust or 409 anything in over a decade). Suffice it also to say that I am fed up with Blogger and its adolescent mood swings. My one-year blogiversay is coming up and I just might celebrate the occasion by migrating to a new server-- any recommendations (or cautionary tales) from the peanut gallery?

Tonight is Death Cab for Cutie and Franz Ferdinand. It's gonna be freakfraggin awesome, if a little nostalgic (whither fall 2004?). Stay tuned for blurry photos and recaps of white people dancing in the aisles of their forebearers.

I will neither confirm nor deny that tonight, at an undisclosed location in suburban Virginia, a certain opinionated brunette was known to have performed a karaoke rendition of the Tiffany classic "I Think We're Alone Now."

All missions in Operation Attain Mature Adulthood are in full active swing. That is all for this briefing.

angrily slammin' it

Every morning I get to my office at 8:30, check email, check voicemail, check in with my boss and then run around the corner to buy a cup of wildly inconsistent coffee (one day my vanilla latte has absolutely no vanilla syrup, the next it's so sugary it might as well be from a gas station)(but it's an independent place and not Starbucks, so I feel the pull to keep buying from them despite the varying degrees of taste). Then I sit back down at my desk and sip at my coffee while reading the daily news on my favorite website-- IMDB.com.

The gossip is usually at least a day old, but the language is priceless. IMDB has a truly delightful way with verbs. Celebrities are forever "slamming rumors," "racing to contradict allegations" or "angrily lashing out." Oh, the action of it all! Simple pull-quotes are wildly exaggerated. To take but one example:

"Heath Ledger is desperate to have five more children... [he] is convinced having six children will bestow endless fame and fortune upon his family!"

The quote this came from? "Six. That's close to the figure we're talking about."

Reading IMDB's gossip news, I'm struck by the linguistic banality of my own writing. I've never hotly confronted anyone, and am fairly sure that I've never slammed rumors of any kind nor been embroiled in any wrangles. I'm not even sure what being embroiled in a wrangle is, although it sounds pretty fun, if a little messy.

Maybe I should start blogging in the manner of IMDB News: "EJ hotly contradicted reports that she bracingly overslept this morning. Hair akimbo, she angrily slammed rumors that she cares more about ten minutes of extra sleep than blow-drying her fair locks. 'Yeah,' she said to a reporter, 'I was tired this morning.' Fans scrambled for more information, shrieking in angst and running wild through the hills slaughtering innocent woodland creatures when her publicist would neither bash nor assert these allegations."

boom boom boom

There is literally a spring in my step.

Climbin' up on Solsbury Hill, I could see the city lights...

I'm literally bouncing in my flipflops down the bumpy brick sidewalk. The world is full of news good and bad. Dear friends are in love and getting married. Someone has died. I flounce my way to the drycleaner. The sudden sunshine makes mundane errands positively joyful.

I was feeling part of the scenery, I walked right out of the machinery...

The Hill is full to bursting with the smell of cherry blossoms. When you live in Washington in the spring you don't stop to smell the flowers; the scent halts you in your tracks and shakes you by the shoulders. It's not just the blossoms. Every other front yard has suddenly exploded with flowers and the gardeners who tend to them.

When I think that I am free
Watched by empty silhouettes
Who close their eyes but still can see
No one taught them etiquette

The streets are filled with people. Children racing plastic trucks down the street, their yoga-pant clad mothers walking behind them in gossipy pairs and threesomes, always keeping one eye on their shrieking kids. Twentysomethings, the men in suits that always look a little too big for them, walk from the Metro with a cell phone or an iPod bud attached to their ears. Retired couples putter in their front yards, watering plots of tulips and impatients.

It's days like this when I love this city and this neighborhood the most. Then OOF I trip over a loose brick in the sidewalk, snapping me out of my goofy reverie.

I will show another me
Today I don't need a replacement
I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant...

I wander through Lincoln Park. The steak marinating in the fridge needs at least another fifteen minutes, and I've already run all my little neighborhood errands. I've never been an outdoorsy person, but over the last year I find myself craving sunshine and grass. Sunshine and grass in a controlled manner, of course. The kind where families of every color play together on the jungle gym, where friends meet to kick around a soccer ball after work. A park. So simple, but so wonderful. Is there anything better than a sweet oasis in the middle of a crazy, messy world?

My heart going boom boom boom...

Now thunderstorm clouds have blocked the sun and are starting to race overhead. But they're not here yet. Right now it's just me and the dogs and the happy strangers bonded by our joy at just being in this moment. And, of course, Peter Gabriel.

When the storm does come I'll stand on the street to brace myself against the wind. And then I'll go home and eat my steak and drink my wine and be just as merry.


"Hey" I said "You can keep my things,
they've come to take me home."

ch-ch-changes

So much happened this weekend. I mean, so much. And because kickball has started and I have a good quarter of a keg coursing through my body, I won't attempt to do it justice here and now.

But it's great to know that no matter how much seasons turn, people change and the road of life continues to bend, there is one constant in this ever-evolving world:





Tori Spelling will always have TERRIFYING cleavage.

thursday remainders

In the interest of saving cash I found myself at home on a Thursday, watching The OC for the first time in at least a year. And of all the comedy, intentional or otherwise, that has ever been on this show, nothing can top Mischa Barton pretending to hesitate over a bump of coke. It's like Peter Gallagher hesitating over having bushy eyebrows.

New recipe: Slice off the top quarter of a head of garlic, drizzle olive oil on it and roast uncovered in a 450 degree oven. While it browns, roughly chop 1/2 white onion and cook over medium-high heat until soft and golden-brown. When just becoming transluscent, add 2 tablespoons balsamic vineager and a dash of red pepper flakes, then turn the heat up to high. Cook until balsamic vineager is reduced to syrupy consistency. Slice up a sweet French baguette, smear roasted garlic on pieces and top with balsamic onions. Consume with red wine (I had a 2003 Lake Anna Claret-- fantastic) and when done, brush teeth for at least 45 minutes.

RIP, Lulu's. I'll be sure to pour out a Rohyponol-laced Hurricane in your memory at some point during the weekend.

I never thought I would say this about tiling and grout, but my new bathroom is BITCHIN.

"Guilt and politics are both the enemies of sex." I would venture even further than the article mentioned and posit that a man's level of skill in bed is inversely proportional to his political leanings. Overwhelming anecdotal evidence and a quick perusal of Casual Encounters on Craigslist suggest that, for whatever reason, conservative men tend to be less conservative in bed. This debate has been around forever, but I think Tucker (for once in his career) uttered a succinct and spot-on summary of an issue. And, more importantly, I happen to completely agree with the point. Ugh, I can't believe I agree with Tucker Carlson on something.

who knew celebrities swearing would be so cool?

This is fantastic. I mean, wouldn't you like to live in a nation where state-sponsored television advertises its programmes by having their actors recite their favorite cuss words (and where by spelling it "programmes" one is using proper grammar and not being a wanker)? That is a relationship to entertainment I can get behind, unlike that of a nation that spends its days downloading wmv. of Scott Stapp being blown by groupies yet two years after the fact still reflexively cringes at the thought of JANET JACKSON'S NIPPLE OH THE SWEET HUMANITY OF IT ALL.

Janel Maloney, I've never seen this side of you before. I like it! And Zach Braff... lovely. To think we had you cast as a one-trick pony after Garden State.

And this is very NSFW, as was discovered when I was hooking up my new speakers today. Hey, the woman who shares my wall spends all day BOOMING about expense reports. In my office, when we get loud we mix it up.

splurge

For about two weeks now, I've been significantly freaking out about money. Transferring the deed of my car over to my name and the subsequent hike in insurance payments (because I am a twenty-four-year-old single female living in an urban center who had ONE speeding ticket in her ENTIRE LIFE and it was for 32 IN A 25 MILE ZONE AND IS TOTAL ASS BUT WILL COST ME AN EXTRA $34 A MONTH FOR THE FORSEEABLE FUTURE and I'm sorry I got all shouty there BUT REALLY) means that a significant chunk of my paycheck is now spoken for. Yes, I got a raise when I got my new job. But I still don't make a lot of money, and need to save for books and tuition. It'll work, but it'll be tighter than I'd like.

So I've been trying not to spend cash on things I don't need, and with the exception of a used hardcover edition of Lake Wobegon Days, it's been fairly successful. And even with that, Cranky Jim gave me a frequent shopper discount. Lord knows I've probably paid a mortgage payment for him over the last few years.

Lean Cuisine for lunch. Drinks from the free kegs at kickball. Netflix for entertainment.

But sometimes a gal's gotta say to hell with the budget. Sometimes when she's walking home from a really busy day that started a very busy week, she'll pass by a group of adorable children selling homemade jewelry and Easter cards from a pint-sized card table across the street from where she saw that guy peeing in the churchyard a few weeks ago. And... sometimes, even if she isn't exactly rolling in dough these days, she's gotta splurge:







Best twenty-five cents I ever spent.

the sexual life of history majors

"Whatever, K wants to do it on the Guttenberg Bible."

"HAHAHAHAH."

"It's not like I'm turned on by bibles-"

"But printing presses make you hot?"

"It's like it's a prop, okay? All forbidden and stuff."

"OOH. I know where B wants to do it.

"Where?"

"Remember when we were driving back from Drunk-in-the-Woods? And we stopped at the Stonewall Jackson Shrine? And there was the rope bed that he died in?"

"YES! She totally does! She wants to have sex in Stonewall Jackson's deathbed!"

"Ew, you guys, that's so gross. I do not."

"You know how some fathers and sons drive around the country going to all the baseball stadiums? Well, B can drive around the country and get laid at the shrines to Civil War military figures."

"Ooh, I've got an even better one! Is the barn where Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern still standing?"

"I'm intrigued."

"B, your next trip home to Chicago is going to be a lot more interesting."

"Wait, there's a fire station built over it now. Oh damn... oh yeah..."

"This is both incredibly ironic and SO HOT."

*ping!*

I'm not that judgmental a per--

BAHAHAHAHAHAH!!

I'm sorry. I couldn't even finish typing that sentence without laughing. It's just so blatantly not true. Of all the not true things that ever were, are or will be, this is the most untrue of them all. It is the Triple Crown, the Olympic Gold Medal, the first moon landing of falsehoods.

I'm well aware that it's not my best feature, but damnit, it's fun. Every New Year I vow to try to be more open-minded of other people's choices of words, clothing, beverages, significant others, etc. etc. But then someone orders a Sex on the Beach, or uses the phrase "grow as a person" or cuts me off on 395 while sporting a license plate reading "VA QTEE" and *Ping!*-- a little barb, unintended but totally warranted pops in my head, and all thoughts of trying to be a better, more easygoing soul just are pushed out by the URGE TO JUDGE.

An expert in judgment, such as myself, can also take things to the next level and judge others FOR being judgmental and then contradicting themselves. To avoid being hypocritical yourself, it's generally best to have defined and constant categories for judging the judgers. For example, I judge anyone who is anti-choice but pro-death penalty. *Ping!* People who claim to be open-minded but use "gay" as a pejorative adjective ("Dude, she made you watch Ghost? That's so gay!") *Ping!"

I also judge people for judging others' taste in music. I have to work a little harder at this one, as I myself am often tempted to issue an edict on the taste of others. But generally I feel that music is such a fluid and ever-changing world that one has to be overly invested in so they can keep up with what's up and coming. Three years ago Death Cab for Cutie was a hot rising indie act, now a lot of people consider them to be overexposed and cliched. Yet the music hasn't changed a bit (except for "Someday You Will Be Loved" from Plans and do NOT get me started on how much I hate the lyrics of that song, God! they are so condescending and if a guy ever left me a note saying "someday you will be loved" after a one-night stand I would hunt him down and remove his testicles with a garlic press). I don't have a lot of patience with people who claim to like a style or a group, and then lose interest as soon as people who don't read Pitchfork twelve times a day discover it. It's snobbish and all about the image. The composition of the buying public doesn't change what's on the record, and that's all you should care about. Listen to what you like, and the hell with everyone else.

So I judge those who judge music. And I judge those who say one thing and then contradict themselves. All this is by way of telling you that when I burned all the songs from my sister's iPod over Christmas, I didn't know exactly what I was getting and that while I was walking to work this morning listening on shuffle, up popped an all-male, all-freshman a capella group's arrangement of John Mayer's opus "Love Song for No One" and the first thing that popped in my mind was "Dude, this is the GAYEST THING EVER."

*Ping!*

Crap.

kilter

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"
"I think you can in Europe!"

So say the geniuses of 10 Things I Hate About You.

Meanwhile, I know you can be off-kilter. I certainly am right now. I just left a bar (which we cabbed to and where we paid cover, thus a significant investment in the night) for no good reason. I was suddenly seized with this overwhelming feeling of... something. Not tired, exactly, and not sick. Like that weird out-of-body feeling when you take two Tylenol PM and then stay awake longer than you should. This strange "omph" that hit me out of nowhere. I tried to rally; grinding up on E and the girls to Nelly and throwing back my gimlet, but just couldn't get it up. I left after just over an hour. Not trying to be dramatic here, but it was unsettling. Like the urge you get when some sixth sense is trying to push you out of harm's way. It really freaked me out, so I left.

Has this ever happened to you? Some feeling just comes over you that you have to get out right now? And if so, how does one get ON kilter?

SOME people have st. patrick's day and their alma mater playing Duke this weekend

So, SOME people were going to guestblog for me today, but SOME people got way too busy with their brackets and alcohol consumption (right, like I'm actually going to believe you were working today). I apologize for SOME people, and hope that you weren't waiting with bated breath for SOME people to tell a really disturbing yet hysterical story involving a Chinese massage parlor.

Since I don't plan to be sober for the next 58 hours, I'll instead leave you with last year's account of St. Patrick's Day. It's a little more terse than accurately reflecting the fun I had, but I wrote it before I met this brutally hot Irish construction worker on O'Connell Street. Ladies, if you're ever talking with a guy and ask him "so how many tattoos do you have?" and he has to pause to tally... go home with him. Seriously. Don't say I never taught you anything.

promises, promises

I am such a bad blogger. It's not my fault! They actually make me work at the new job! I almost didn't finish my bracket in time, much less have time for the navel-gazing you all come here for every day (although I DID finish my bracket and I'm now tied with B for #1 in our pool which is so unexpected and awesome and never going to be repeated that I'm going to totally brag about it way past the point of obnoxiousness). And I tried to write last night, but the Most Insane Game of College Basketball Ever kept making me jump off my couch, both startling Sadie into hiding under my shoe rack and repeatedly knocking my laptop over.

Today will be more of the same, but you all can expect a fun surprise later on today. Trust me, we're going into this weekend with a bang.

And Kathryn and I-66, many (belated) thanks for another great happy hour. I had fun seeing faces old and new, but especially want to say hey RoarSavage and Kris. It was fantastic to finally meet both of you! One of my favorite things about this blogging shiz is seeing how other people write when they're (mostly) completely uncensored-- what their styles are, their subjects, their intended audience, the quirks and phrases that make each writer unique no matter how much we all "borrow" from one another. I really enjoy the writing of these two in particular, and it was great to see that they were just as fabulous off the page.

So seriously. Check back later today. It'll be good.

apparently you can't say "douchebag" in the washington post

Thank you, Metro Express! You have no idea how it brightens my morning when I flip past actual news to the Blog Log and my own words are peeping up at me (especially on 40 degree mornings when I left my heels at the office and have to wear flipflops for the commute). I (and the Intern Hata) really appreciate the mention.

But what really blows my mind is when there are two pre-8 AM suprises relating to the Metro. Linda Cropp was doing a meet and greet outside the Eastern Market Metro this morning. Now, normally I care enough about DC politics as I do soap operas... mildly diverting if I have a severe fever and a lot of time on my hands, but otherwise way too messy to follow. And at least on soap operas, the people involved are fun to look at.

But I've done Metro meet and greets with candidates before and I know they suck. Most GOTV efforts suck, but anything involving the candidate herself is extra high pressure on the poor staffers. And GOTV especially sucks when it's unexpectedly cold and you're surrounded by crabby commuters occupied with envy of their New York compatriots who get to bring coffee on the subway. So I smiled and shook her hand, and even deigned to take a flier. It could have been a lot worse, after all. If Lyndon LaRouche ever tries to ask for my vote before I have Starbucks in my system (or for that matter, if he just ever tries to ask for my vote) I am not responsible for any damage that may occur.

Hope to see you all tonight at Happy Hour!

and you think your interns are dumb

Ever have an intern who had to be taught how to open a spreadsheet? Or maybe he told the chief of staff "watch out, I plan to have your job in a year?" Or maybe a whole herd of them were hogging the bartender's attention ordering Smirnoff Ice and loudly complaining about having to work 20 hour weeks? Ever been waiting for the Metro with a 19-year-old sporting a security badge and smothered the urge to inform him that, as you are standing at the platform at BALLSTON and are therefore nowhere near the United States Capitol, he should remove said badge IMMEDIATELY lest he look like a total douchebag?

Have I got the site for you. No, I do not run it. Yes, I know who does. Vent away, friends. Vent away:

myinternsaredumb.blogspot.com

my name is ej and i'm a target-holic

So how gorgeous was it this weekend? What'd you all do to enjoy the sunshine? Me, I spent money I don't have on stuff I don't need!

The advent of spring means tank top season, and so I ran to Target yesterday to pick up a package of wifebeaters. I left eighty minutes later and $127 poorer. Target is lethal like that. I should not be allowed in there unsupervised and in possession of a working credit card. Among the unplanned items I purchased:

* DVD of Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle
* 26 plastic hangers
* Purple gaucho pants
* 1-inch barrel curling iron (please note I already own both a 3/4 inch and a 1.5 inch model)
* Men's XL flannel "Vote for Pedro" pajama pants
* Stuf by Hillary Duff washcloths

I think you get the point.

Seriously, is there a support group for people who have no self-control at Target? If there isn't, I'd gladly start it. We'd only go there at preassigned times, as to resist the bored whimsy that often strikes when there's nothing good on TV and we think to ourselves "I really need a Wet-Dry Vac and some new mascara." We'd go in groups and unplanned purchases would have to be defended by the shopper and voted on by the assembled party:

"I need this Bocce ball set because it's marked down from $89 to $73."
"But you live on the eleventh floor of a city building. There's no grass within five blocks of your home."
"... Did I mention it was on sale?"

There would be no visit to the DVD section. No good could come of it. We would decide what we wanted to own and order it on Amazon. And upon checkout, we would be required to give a final inspection of the contents of one another's carts, harshly determining the necessity of proposed purchases.

I really feel that there's a market for this.

memoirs of a functioning junkie

I have a little game I've played with myself for the last month. It's called "Where Were You In Europe One Year Ago Today?" It's a fetching little way to escape the mundane details of day-to-day existence. If faced with some unpleasantry, such as paying bills or mounting work deadlines or absolutely no one worth eyefucking, much less actual fucking, I escape to the dock at Nyhavn or the Viktualienmarkt or even the world's most insane train ride through central Italy, just because it was novel and scary and exhilarating.

What's been surprising me is that I don't play this game more often. As recently as September I was in serious backpacking withdrawl, practically having the shakes from being stuck in the same job, with the same people under the same roof every single day for the foreseeable future.

Travel addicts, especially solo travel addicts, are like all other addicts. We're thrillseekers who crave the fix of the exotic. We're impulsive and selfish. We remove ourselves from old support systems until we hit rock bottom. We travel because we want to forget our lives, sometimes permanently. We leech off others by absorbing their unfamiliar conversations, cuisines and cultures.

The kind of travel I love isn't always pretty. It's often messy and terrifying, and always scrappy. Scrappy. Perfect word for what I love. Improvisational and free, being responsible for no one and nothing but your own survival and comfort.

The kind of travel I love tests the people I love. When you cut ties and set off own your own, others don't always want to do the extra work to maintain that love. Looking back, I can't say I blame them. Who wants to rely on a blog and the occasional email for friendship? Who wants to put forth the extra effort to be a companion to someone thousands of miles away? From a purely practical standpoint, I completely understand the impulse to put me on a shelf until I got back.

For the most part they took me back when I returned. So now I'm here, firmly entrenched in a pattern of daily life. There are people I owe things to, be it money or time or an open mind. There is a cat that will be more than happy to remind me if I forget to feed her. For the first time in almost a decade, there are no big shifts on my horizon. No move, no new job, no relationship upheaval, no shows, no big change. I'm the picture of steadiness (or will be when I use my tax refund to pay off the good people at AmEx).

On March 8, 2006 I had a staff meeting. Then I drafted a whole bunch of reports and color-coded my filing system.

On March 8, 2005 I decided I was bored with Roman statuary and bratwurst and went to Amsterdam for a week of the sort of debauchery I will not mention on the Internet. Except that I will and he had a HOT accent and there was much Heinekin and THC involved. And Arcade Fire was there, too.

But today I'm also going to the DC Independent Film Festival with some friends and then trying a new restaurant. Exhilarating? Not really. Safe? Well, it's not exactly rappelling down a sheer cliff face. But it's new to me. And it's certain to be lovely, because my friends are lovely people.

I met a lot of travel junkies while I was backpacking. People my age who wander the world with a knapsack and a passport, tending bar or picking fruit to keep them in hostel payments and clove cigarettes. They all had battle scars and glorious stories, and all but one of two of them would someday go home, wherever that might be, and pick up where they left off. Because that kind of life, no matter how brutally pure and intoxicating it is, can't be maintained. People aren't meant to live without strings. I don't meander through Irish bowers in my head all day because doing so keeps me from living. Like it or not, I'm acknowledging all the tedium (but a lot of really pleasant stuff, too) that fills the days. Dare I say... maturing? Accepting being an adult?

Junkies usually either crash and burn or sober up and acquire that glassy-eyed, be-rehabed look. I'm hoping I can be like the mythical alcoholic who functionally has a glass of wine. Maybe even one who sometimes gets plastered and does regrettable but entertaining things she fuzzily remembers, but still thrives.

planning my mother's easter weekend visit to DC

Mom: So what would Jesus do at Drag Brunch?

EJ: Well, I'm guessing he'd knock back the sacramental wine and stick a twenty in the tranny's panties.

Mom: *speechless and horrified*

EJ: And maybe after we do the Spy Museum you can shotgun while I drive the short bus to Hell.

it's hard out here for a girl who wanted brokeback mountain to sweep the oscars

Dear Members of the Academy,

Seriously? CRASH? I know it's set in LA and you guys love watching your town onscreen, but didn't you find it just a touch... oh, I don't know, condescending, overbearing, pedantic, unrealistic and simplistic and not to mention TOTALLY INSULTING to have a film about comtemporary racism be made entirely by white people?

Although, well-played on Best Song. You guys always award actresses for playing hookers, but then they disappoint us by showing up in clothes that (well, sometimes) cover their goodies. Just put the hoes onstage! Way to cut out the middleman!

I enjoyed the tasteful tributes to film noir and what I think was musical films... I happened to miss that intro because us girls were hollering really loudly upon finding out that one of our ranks doesn't get the appeal of George Clooney. Side note: do you guys also think that if George Clooney and Oprah ever teamed up, they could conquer and run the entire planet? Can we appoint an Academy committee to explore the logistics of such a campaign?

And thanks for choosing Jon Stewart. He can come back next year and that'd be just fine with me.

Your friend,

EJ

PS: Giuliana DePandi, what the hell was up with your nipples? Were you icing them every time the camera panned to Isaac Mizrahi, knowing that he wouldn't be allowed to fondle anyone during this awards show and therefore E! would have to find some other way to have really tasteless breast action in their red carpet coverage? Or was it really just a chilly spring afternoon in Los Angeles?

it's the people that you meet when you're walking down the street, it's the people that you meet each day!

Mention gentrification in DC and you're likely to be greeted with either angry tirades or guilty feet-shuffling. I'm somewhere in between. Do I like that long-time residents are being pushed out to PG County by skyrocketing rent in my neighborhood, or the blatant current of racial conflict that runs through what we politely call "transitioning neighborhoods?" No. But nor do I care for the dulcet ring of gunshots echoing down the street. If I did, I would still be living in Detroit, thankyouverymuch. No, I go for the neighborhoods that are a good five years past gentrification; the ideal combination of urban reality and being able to walk down the street without having a knife plunged into my ribcage.

I love my neighborhood to the point of obnoxiousness, but gritty it ain't. Where visitors used to troll for crack, they now troll for organic vegetables. I like that my block is sunshiney and full of young families with impossibly cute cubby-cheeked children bouncing in expensive slings on their daddies' chests. I like that I have enough friends in a five block radius that I can, at any time of the day, pad over to someone's house in my sweatpants for some guilty pleasure television. And, because I am a total geek, I really love that we have conversations like:

"Do you wanna stop by the liquor store after work?"
"Which one?"
"The one by Mary Landreiu's house."
"Do they sell the hard stuff?"

But frequently I feel a pang for the Eastern Market of yore. The Eastern Market of my freshman year of college, when we were warned by overearnest orientation leaders that it was Not A Good Idea to go there alone or after dark. The Eastern Market that held the now-defunct shady Las Placitas franchise, makers of the world's strongest margaritas and willing to give them to anyone old enough to order them. The Eastern Market, where, stumbling back from yet another night doing our part to keep up morale in the armed forces at the Dirty Pigeon, we'd pass people smoking blunts out on their front stoops in the same manner my Grammy used to sip a cup of coffee on her patio.

I was on the phone with my mother yesterday walking home from work, telling her about my new job when, lo and behold, I noticed a gentleman relieving himself on a tree across the street. A tree in a churchyard. At 5:30 in the afternoon. Mid-stream, he caught me looking at him and shifted slightly as to better conceal his junk. But, unlike every other guy I've ever accidentally locked eyes with while he was urinating in public, this one didn't start ranting and raving. And hey, if you're going to live in a city then people are gonna pee on the street, and if people are gonna pee on the street then quiet and unobtrusive peeing on the street is the best way to go.

And this morning, I was stopped from crossing Penn because of a motorcade. I was prepared to be all internally huffy, because in college we'd forever get stuck behind a stream of nineteen towncars because Clinton wanted a burger or a Bush daughter had to pick up her forgotten credit card from Smith Point, and we'd whine and be all "Ugh! Motorcades are so annoying!" but secretly feel incredibly cool because hey, college sophomores everywhere are late to class but WE were late to class because the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES WAS DRIVING BY US. WE WERE SO MUCH COOLER THAN YOU.

So I'm waiting for the familiar whine of sirens to pass, thinking how weird that a motorcade would be driving into the city from Southeast at 7:45 in the morning, when I suddenly realized: not even a diplomat would travel in a white caged-in school bus.

Organic vegetables, public urination AND early morning prison transports. I really do love my neighborhood.

the roosevelt wants to be YOUR band

What are you doing on Friday night? Why, you're going to come hear my friend R's band, The Roosevelt.

WHEN: Friday, March 3 at 8:45.
WHERE: Grog and Tankard
COST: $7 at the door (yeah, I know, but a chunk of it goes to supporting local bands and is therefore money well spent)

In encouraging me to spread the word, R suggested I use some GOTV strategies from campaigns past. Even though I'm pretty sure Ron Wood would never utter that particular combination of words, their music is damn good and R is a damn good friend who sat through three hours of show tunes to see me make out with a gay man. For this reason alone, I wouldn't miss his set. Check them out!

The Roosevelt: "American Drunk"
The Roosevelt: "When I'm Good"

let's be honest

What I say I'm going to give up for Lent:

- Drinking two pitchers of Miller Lite the night before I start my new job.

- Self-indulgent, navel-gazing blog posts.

- Making lists of things I know I'll never check off.

- Buying albums on iTunes just because I read about them on Stereogum.

- Watching reruns of Law and Order: SVU (because I live alone and always wake up in the middle of the night petrified that I forgot to deadbolt my front door but too scared to go and check).

- Softbatch chocolate chip cookies.



What I'm actually going to give up for Lent:

- ...

SO MUCH BETTER THAN ER

If I still believed in the Judeo-Christian God, I would pray to Him that I never, EVER have sex as bad as Meredith and George did tonight on Grey's Anatomy. The horror! The HORROR! I have not the words to describe how INCREDIBLY AWFUL AND PAINFUL IT WAS TO WATCH, THOUGH TYPING IN ALL CAPS MIGHT SOMEWHAT CONVEY THE AWFULNESS. I could try to describe it but I would fail, because nothing in English can capture how TERRIBLE it was. Maybe there's a phrase in another language for "nonviolent yet still awful sex that should never, ever happen." German is really good for those kind of phrases.

The irony is, before we watched the episode, we were talking about how much we miss sex. Apparently, we needed to be more specific. We miss GOOD sex. At very least, the kind that does not make you sob while your partner goes down on you.

But Kim let me borrow Season One on DVD, which I'm watching as I type this. Mmmm... Patrick Dempsey... elevator...

That's more like it.


Oh, and Ellen Pompeo: young lady, get your hair out of your pretty face and eat a pizza. Your stringy bangs and scalpel-like collarbone are turning me into my mother. AND STAND UP STRAIGHT, MISSY.

hold onto that feelin'

Do you ever have those really random nights where you look around you and think, "how the hell did I wind up here?" Like, just to pick an example at random, when you decide to go rollerskating in Odenton, Maryland and find yourself singing "Don't Stop Believin'" for your turn at karaoke at a really lame birthday consisting entirely of NSA employees, none of whom you know?

Yeah, me neither. No seriously, my ankles hurt a little this morning.

And on an even more serious note, readers of the lovely and talented Sharkbait know that she's been going through a very sad time after the death of her aunt. Well, her aunt left behind a husband and their seven children, whom she home-schooled. Sharkbait's uncle, now a widower, works two jobs and rarely sees his children. Since his wife passed away, he would like to quit one of those jobs and spend more time with the kids. However, they have medical bills to pay, school bills to come (the kids can no longer be home-schooled), no insurance... it's an untenable and unimaginable situation. She and his family could use our help, and I encourage you to email Sharkbait, known in the real world as Jessica, at findingsharkbait at gmail dot com for details.

the long-awaited but heavily censored bar mitzvah pictures

From the Bat Mitzvah. And yes, those are bubble Star of David necklaces everyone is wearing. Let the hate mail commence.



Early in the night, when The Birthday Kids still look relatively human.




My college friends had my mother secretly email them pictures of 13 year old EJ, which they turned into T-shirts...


... and posters. You guys are ASSES. And I love you.


It's not a Bat Mitzvah without the Electric Slide.

Oh PLEASE let Adam's future law firm stumble across this picture!

"Hark! Let's away to the tequila shots!"

"Um, Libs, you have a little... nevermind."

I think my favorite moment of the night was when some people drunkenly cornered other cast members from Company and held them captive for ten minutes, talking about how much they looooved them and how they were sooooo much better than the actress in the making-of DVD of the show.

I would rarely post so unflattering a photo of me, but it's the only one including Geoff that doesn't look like it was taken at a gay rave.



Um, I don't recall that dance from bat mitzvahs I attended in middle school.










So yeah, the Bar/Bat Mitzvah was awesome. And just for fun, here's a photo of a patriotic chicken:

make 'em throw stone at virgins

Okay. So let's see here.

Drunk in the Woods was awesome. We did indeed, get drunk in the woods. We also got Drunk in the Hot Tub in 17-Degree Weather (Coors Lite, playing Fuck Chuck or Marry? while our hair froze), Drunk in the Central Southern Virginia Vineyards (Cabernet Franc, asking directions to what Dan the Wine Guy termed an Italian restaurant and which actually was a Pizza Hut) and Drunk in the Extremely Accusatory and Recrimination-Filled Five-Hour Game of Risk (pretty much every beverage in the house, no further explanation of activity necessary).

Since getting back from Drunk in the Woods, I have been offered a new job, accepted said new job and am giving notice at current job as soon as I work up the nerve to tell my boss that not only am I leaving but that TODAY is my last day. Things are that toxic around here, friends. I already have my bags packed. Literally. My ActorFest New York 2003 canvas tote is stuffed full of collected business cards, hand lotion and a steak knife I once brought in when I brought lox and a quarter-baguette for lunch. My boss is very, very lucky that in the following months I forgot that I'd left that knife in a drawer.

I'm so nervous I'm practically scratching at my face just to have a distraction. I couldn't be happier about leaving, but things are so nasty right now that I dread any further comments from my boss, even though I rationally know that I'm moving on to bigger and better things and that he can't hurt me or my career anymore. That all said, I'm not the hugest fan of confrontation and I'm really not the hugest fan of dealing with people who behave irrationally.

After Lord knows how many bottles of wine and sleeping for fifteen straight hours on Sunday night, I think I need another vacation. Deep breaths, EJ, deep breaths.

There, that's slightly better. It's like my Daddy used to tell me: "Make 'em throw stones at virgins." To this day, it's the best professional advice I've ever gotten. You can't control how other people are determined to treat you, but you can control your response to it. If you're in a lousy situation, the best way to get the upper hand is by keeping your cool and letting the other person be the bad guy. Make 'em throw stones at virgins. I'm telling ya, east Tennesseans really have a way with the euphamism.

decoding the universe, part the second

My friend R called me last night on his way to Valentine's dinner in an existential tizzy. I love R because he's the ideal combination of caveman guy and overanalytical girl. Neither of us would ever hook up with one another in a million years, and so we get to be as messy and neurotic around each other as we damn well please. Our friendship is a great sounding board on which we can try out ideas for our relationships before actually attempting them in a space with consequences. Plus he gives great IM and has helped me move in the summertime, and therefore has my undying loyalty.

But I digress. R was curious about my theory that the universe is full of signs and sends us signals about our behavior. More specifically, he wanted to know why the universe was suddenly throwing ex-girlfriends in his path left, right and center. He ran into one old girlfriend out and about, and only to see her quoted in a Post article the next week. An article on Valentine's Day and relationships. A quote in which she paraphrased something he told her when they dated. And did I mention he ran into her while going to see his new girlfriend? And that the quote of hers was about a movie that I had just purchased on DVD A MERE FIVE DAYS AGO?

If you couldn't sense my sarcasm towards the end of the previous paragraph, my point is: if you take this "sign" thing too seriously, especially in a company town where everyone under 35 is a member of at least one online friendship network, you're going to make yourself insane. After a certain point, it's not the universe speaking to you; it's just that everyone yuppie twentysomething has occasion to ride the Red Line a few times a week.

Now I find this turn of events intriguing, but not as interesting as their wildly disparate views of the occasion on which they ran into each other. They wound up on the same Metro train one day during rush hour and said a brief hello.

Man response: (thought that went through head when he saw her) "There's [Old Girlfriend]. Oh, she's talking with someone. Don't want to interrupt."

Woman response: To email him the next day (I'm paraphrasing here): "How is it that you're still not civil to me three years after we stopped dating? THREE YEARS! Can't we at least acknowledge each other? This isn't a big town!"

Man response to woman response: "Uhhhh... huh? Sure. OK."

Hearing R describe this scenario last night, and reading the written summary of it in my work AND personal inboxes this morning, I was reminded of the Dave Barry book my mother gave me for Christmas.** It's such a classic example of how men and women are capable of looking at the exact same situation and seeing two completely different things. One woman's rude snub is one man's polite deference.

Who knows why this is? Who knows why men and women can be raised in the same environments and yet view common experiences through completely different lenses? It's a grand question, one that no one, certainly me, will ever be able to fully answer.

But why is the universe throwing ex-girlfriends in your path, R? It's telling you: "Look at who you had to wade through to get where you are! Don't fuck it up with New Girlfriend! It's scary out there!"

Easy as pie, baby. Throw me a challenge next time.




**True Story: My mom met Dave Barry on one of her business trips last year and asked him to autograph a copy of his book Dave Barry's Guide to Guys for her daughter EJ. While signing, he asked her how old her daughter was. "Twenty-three," my mom replied. "Ooooooh," said Dave Barry, handing the signed book back to her, "she needs to lower her standards."

patience, child

Forgive my lack of updates. My laptop battery died on Saturday. Plus, I was busy becoming a woman.

Oh, you'll see.

a collection of things that would once have been lame away messages, but no longer are used as such because i haven't been in college for two years

So who else thinks that Nick and Santino totally hooked up during filming for Project Runway?

I am so not listening to you when you tell me I should never write because you are not only a hideous writer yourself, but a severely self-absorbed jackass.

I might have to go see Final Destination 3 because it features both my favorite Canadian teen soap opera star AND someone named "Texas Battle."

AWWWW, G-DUB!

Two days until we put the "Bar" in "Bar Mitzvah."

Ten days until Drunk-in-the-Woods.

maybe because my party clothes are so binding

Alicia Silverstone spoke the stone-cold gospel truth when she said "I know it sounds mental, but sometimes I have more fun vegging out than when I go partying."

Because if I were out then I would have missed out on my mother, who yes, is in fact a member of Facebook, telling the story of how she was inadvertently invited to a toga party at State. More specifically, I would have missed the immortal and completely serious quote:

"The invitation said togas mandatory, but because it's winter in Michigan that pants are allowed. I find that quite considerate."

And I also would have missed out on spending an hour watching TV starring my favorite newly engaged couple. I love Mandy Moore. Just adore her. I feel like she would be really excellent to go to Anthropologie with, and I'd try on a $78 t-shirt and feel all sorts of yuppie guilt about wanting to purchase something so silly but she'd not only talk me into it by telling me how awesome I look and how much I'll wear it but will be so convincing that I will somehow feel right with humanity about buying something so incredibly self-indulgent.

Okay, I'm leaving my apartment now.

the thing about jenny

The thing about Jenny is that everyone else calls her Jen, right down to the campus newspaper that quoted her extensively in an article about dormcest and floorcest and is now one of the first things to come up when you Google her, which just delights me to no end, but I get to still call her Jenny because that's mah prerogative.

The thing about Jenny is that she's so incredibly self-possessed and carries herself so well, I can't believe she's only nineteen today. She has the poise and dignity of someone ten years older, someone who has already been elected head of state and can pull of signing an executive order to bomb a rogue nation while wearing a ball gown.

The thing about Jenny is that she drop dead freaking gorgeous. It is very clear who got the best pick of the genes in our family.

The thing about Jenny is that she's drop dead freaking brilliant. This girl got a 5 on the AP BC Calculus test when she was 16. I know. I KNOW.

The thing about Jenny is that even though she's so smart and pretty and kind and good, she still has a lot of little kid in her. Every so often (like twice a day), she'll just kind of space out and not quite BE in the moment, even though she still participates in coversation and appears to be processing oxygen. We call it Going Off to Jennyland. I imagine that Jennyland is a lovely place, filled with rainbows and unicorns and fluffy pink cotton candy clouds.

The thing about Jenny is that she is the WORST dancer in the world. She's gotten significantly better, but is still known to injure those around her (and herself; the girl bruises like a peach) whilst completely ignoring the pesky details of rhythm and beat. She's also once got into a car accident in the parking lot of a Starbucks, but these flaws, nay, quirks, just serve to make her more endearing.

The thing about Jenny is that she's also a great listener, possesses the world's driest sense of humor, starred in a cable access dramadey that still has a cult following at Michigan State, is capable of eating seventeen pounds of macaroni and cheese in one sitting without it having any effect on her ass, takes great pictures and, most amazingly of all, has no ego about any of it. She has no idea how fantastic she is, and that makes her all the more fantastic. Frankly I kind of hope she never gets it, because the ego that girl should by all rights have would be roughly the size of Lichtenstein.

The thing about Jenny is she rocks, and I couldn't be luckier to have her as my sister and my friend. Happy bithday, Jennnnaaay.**


(**This would have been published yesterday, on your ACTUAL birthday, but Blogger was down for maintenance.)

the nightmare in the middle of superbowl XL

What did you all think of the Superbowl? I don't especially care about either the Seahawks or the Steelers (or, for that matter, pro football), but I did find the halftime show amusing. Who knew that The Rolling Stones are now being sponsored by Tim Burton?





And it's not that I haven't enjoyed all these articles talking about the renaissance of my hometown. (Okay, so I'm not technically from there but we ALMOST moved to Detroit instead of Ypsilanti when I was a baby, and really, Ypsi is just like the scrappy little kid tagging after the big bad thug of Detroit, wanting to be just like it and hang out on street corners smoking blunts in broad daylight, kind of like Anybodys in West Side Story but with more guns and sans the elegant and groundbreaking coreography and oh my God, I really do have a gay man inside me *END TANGENT.*) But really, these articles are just grasping at straws. Methinks it will take more than the presence of a Borders to revitalize downtown Detroit... like say, a willingness to redefine the entire economic focus of the region and a population that doesn't flee the inner city like refugees?

scenes from quizzo

Scene 1

Player 1: Is it just me, or has Bush not said anything of actual substance in 20 minutes?

Player 2: "TERRORISTS BAD. AMERICA GOOD." [pause] Anyone wanna do shots?

Scene 2

Player 1: So [Player 3] and I were talking upstairs-

Player 3: And we were thinking: what if Kevin Federline were, like, the ultimate practical joke?

Player 1: Yeah! Like he's actually some artsy dude with black plastic glasses who decided to drop out of Tisch and play the most phenomenal prank on a thoroughly jaded public. And "PapaZao" is really a test of just how far he can take the joke before we all catch on!

Player 3: No, that'd totally be thesis quality. They'd give a PhD for a project that was so involved as to include actual offspring.

Player 1: Y'all ain't ready for my post-post-postmodern irony!

Scene 3

Player 4: I feel like one of these articles comes out at least once a year.

Player 1: [reading aloud from article] "'It’s not like, Oh, I’m going to hit on her now. It’s just kind of like, you come up to a friend, you grab their ass,' she explains. 'It’s just, like, our way of saying hello.'" Oh, [Player 5] I'm so sorry I didn't finger you on the way in! I still love you, don't worry.

Player 5: No worries, we'll catch up later.

either/or, baby

CNN is reporting that playwright Wendy Wasserstein passed away today from complications due to lymphoma. She, along with Christopher Durang and Neil LaBute, is one of my favorite playwrights. I still remember the first time I read The Heidi Chronicles and how deeply it affected me. My copy is now dog-eared and stained with drops of red wine from late-night readings, but her characters never fail to make me do that gesture I picked up from my mother-- the one where, even though nobody is around, I open my eyes wide, grab at my heart and go "mmmph!"

Wendy Wasserstein wrote about complicated, intelligent women who refused to settle for less than they felt they deserved and the various prices they paid for it. She acknowledged that education and hard work bring new sets of compromises to make, that women who strive for success may well feel stranded. Her work was bittersweet brave and deeply rooted in often-unpleasant truths. She not only identified the compromises some people make, but she asked why they had to be made in the first place. By writing critically about feminism, she made it stronger.

This weekend I read a fascinating Salon.com interview with National Review editor Kate O'Beirne. She's making the rounds to promote Women Who Make the World Worse, an unnecessarily provacative book that asks, among other questions, "did feminism make the world better? Or even, better for women?" Now, I could do without her namecalling, and she engages in a classic right-wing oversimplification and distortion of complex arguments (overly litigious society => we were better off before there were any sexual harassment laws on the books). She shoots herself in the foot when she suggests that if we want American women in the armed services then we should train our sons to hit little girls. And don't you think it's time we all stop writing about Sex and the City as if it were social gospel instead of a canceled fantasy television show?

But! But but but. O'Beirne asks some big scary questions that every woman, really every person who cares about social progress in America should be asking. We shouldn't be scared to examine feminism, or the civil rights movement or the gay rights movement and ask "What did we do wrong? What did we do right? How can we make day-to-day life better?" Too many people are so invested in the success of these movements that they are afraid to step back and examine them with a critical eye.

We were lucky to have as brilliant an artist as Wendy Wasserstein examining these questions for us. I think the best way to honor her legacy is to keep looking for answers.

Heidi: Well, I have a daughter. And I've never been particularly maternal. I'm not real practiced at sharing. But, Scoop, there's a chance, just a milli-notion, that Pierre Rosenbaum and Judy Holland will meet in a plane over Chicago. And Pierre will tell her his father named him for a Canadian prime minister, and she'll say she was almost named for someone who sang "My Boyfriend's Back." And he'll never tell her it's either/or, baby. And she's never think she's worthless unless he let her have it all. And maybe, just maybe, things will be a little better. And, yes, that does make me happy. - The Heidi Chronicles

the war on malaise

malaise \muh-LAYZ; -LEZ\, noun:
1. A vague feeling of discomfort in the body, as at the onset of illness.
2. A general feeling of depression or unease.

A bunch of academics got together and somehow determined that January 24th is the most depressing day of the year. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the entire last two weeks of January, and the first couple of days of February, are thoroughly, scratchingly, oppressively yech. That's right, I nouned an excited utterance. And oh yeah, I verbed "noun." Winter Doldrums mean one gets to take liberties with grammar.

What contributes to the yechness is that there are a lot of distractions that should take away from the yech. I've seen both Match Point and The New World, and loved them both. I'm reading a very interesting biography of Queen Caroline, who I'd never heard of but is turning out to be a fascinating individual. I'm finally getting my lazy ass back to the gym, fighting the hordes of sofie-clad sophomore girls for access to the elliptical, and it's beginning to pay off. It's been freakishly warm and I've taken long walks around my neighborhood, a place I adore living.

But documenting these little joys, and the larger joys of friends and family, right now just makes the yech more intense. It feels forced and not a little pathetic, the equivalent of an Oprah-inspired to-do list of happiness. Well-intentioned but inadequate.

I know what the problem is. It's not January, but the re-evaluating we do in the new year. It's That Which We Do Not Blog About. It's work. Not my specific job (although heaven knows there are issues there). It's something much more than that. It's that I've been looking for something new for two months now and have come across almost nothing that inspires or excites me. It's that, reading over the job duties for positions that would be a logical next step for me, I actively cringe. Bored workers make career changes all the time, but when well-meaning people ask me what I want to do, I have absolutely no answer. No cause that interests me, no activities I can get enthusiastic for. In short, no passion.

And it's not like I haven't been trying to recapture passion for a long time. Oh, I've been a good little soldier in the war on malaise. All the stuff you read in Carolyn Hax's column: "get involved in your community, meet new people, pursue new hobbies." Good lord, the number of people I've met and people I've been since I got back from Europe! I've been so open to newness and potential, but I still haven't encountered passion.

So? What's the problem with that? Most people don't have passion for what they do. Most people don't expect work to fulfill them. Look, I wish that I didn't demand to love my work. It would make life a lot easier if I could be okay with a white-collar cubicle job that has a certain measure of security and a decent atmosphere. It would make life a lot easier if I could be fine with being in a tolerable, if mediocre situation. If I could just shut up and be thankful for what I have, which, let's face it, ain't that awful. I've had awful; this ain't it.

But look, you have to get passion from somewhere. I no longer expect somebody else to provide it for me. Honestly, I never really did. You count on someone else to make you happy, you're inevitably going to be disappointed. They let you down, they go away, circumstances get in the way of good intentions. Work-- that's something I can control at least a little bit. With work, I am in some capacity capable of making myself happy. I can hear a voice (my mother's) saying it's childish and naive to expect so much from work, but I know that there are people who, even if they have bad days, genuinely love what they do for a living. I look at these people and think "and why not me?" Expecting so much is one of my most endearing and most obnoxious traits.

Historically, I've been really good at making Big Life Changes. I didn't hesitate for a second to move across the country for college and the happiest I've ever been was when I quit my job and backpacked. I'm not scared to change course and take risks, in large part because I have a really good safety net. At the same time, I don't take unnecessary leaps. I never pursued a childhood dream job because I knew I didn't have it in me to succeed at it. I'm a Nazi about paying off my credit card in full. I balance risk with reward, but once I determine to take a course of action I go at it.

If I had really big cojones, I'd leave this job that makes me miserable, wait tables and pursue a new goal that I've just begun to articulate. It's a big reach, huge competition, low pay and impractical for many reasons. It's scary to admit that I want something extraordinary. Saying it out loud, even to people who are nothing but supportive, means that it's documented that I want something I may not get. I've defined a goal that I might not reach and that makes me vulnerable. And there is nothing I hate more than being vulnerable. Well, except for people who use the phrase "grown as a person." They make me BONKERS.

But oh my God, does it feel good to have a goal again! And I really think I might be good at this new idea. Maybe good enough to someday make a living from it. I know the odds of success at it, but I also know that there are plenty of people who make it work for them. I look at those people and think "and why not me?" I hope that I am always able to look at this scenario and see opportunity, not overwhelming obstacles.

One Augustiner-soaked night in Munich, I wrote this in my travel journal: "The world is bigger than I'd ever imagined, but also infinitely more manageable than I'd been taught."

Clichés are such because they have truth in them.

This entry will so fuck with my Sitemeter

"Aaron Carter"

"Boy frosting"

"Hawaiian Donkey Punch"

"Michael Clarke Duncan"

"Naked lap dances"



Since I'm too lazy to write a regular post, try to guess the category that all these team names came from during Quizzo last night.

pants, not yelling

On the Red Line during this morning's commute: a group of Roe v. Wade protestors, complete with a little boy hoisting a "Would You Abort Me?" cardboard sign. Because nothing says "family-friendly vacation" like "bitter, divisive political demonstrations at the Supreme Court." It's Disneyland for the loud and socially conservative!

On the New York City subway yesterday: No Pants 2K6. Improv actors riding from Brooklyn sans pantalon.


I so live in the wrong town.

Johnny Lingo Day

I absolutely believe in signs.

Not necessarily booming voices from the sky or grilled cheese sandwhiches bearing the images of saints. But I do sincerely believe that the universe is capable of registering its approval or disapproval for a course of action one has decided. Have you ever been walking down the street feeling full of yourself, practically prancing with self-importance from acing a tough assignment or looking especially good, only to trip over something you didn't see because you were strutting? That's the universe telling you chill out; you're not THAT great.

Walking to yet another first date last night, I decided that if this one didn't go well, I was done for a while. After Snooty French Guy, Alcoholic Guy, Only Talked About His Marathons Guy, Homophobic Episcopalian Minister's Son Guy, Insane Tattoo Guy and the rest of them, I'm. Just. Tired. I simply cannot have any more boring first date conversations with strangers. It never leads anywhere and I don't see my friends enough as it is. I'd much rather hang out with them than some random dude who has the potential to turn out to be a huge troll.

"But EJ," you say, "couldn't he also turn out to be a fascinating, kind, brilliant individual whom you would wish to date for long periods of time and have phenomenal sex with?"

Touche, dear reader. Perhaps you are right. Still, it's time to start focusing on the "have realistic expectations" part of my New Year's resolution, not the "keep eyes open for something extraordinary" part. The latter should be merely a reminder, while the former is an operating philosophy.

So, as I'd somewhat expected, last night was a bust. I can deal with a Bush administration employee, a guy who isn't over his ex and a guy who is still shell-shocked from Katrina. However, the combination of all three traits in one individual is too much for me. Thank you, I'm sure you're a good guy, but no. Nonononono.

I woke up about 8:30 this morning, freakishly early for EJ on a Saturday, filled with a renewed sense of purpose. Do I clean my car, which I've been putting off for about a year? Do I finally finish reading Sense and Sensibility? Do I go to Eastern Market in my fuzzy new purple fleece and buy overpriced organic vegetables for an exotic homemade dinner?

I never wake up with energy, especially so early, and was a little freaked out. I surfed channels for a bit to warm up to the day and HOLY CRAP. There it was on one of my kejillion movie channels: The Legend of Johnny Lingo.

Johnny Lingo was legendary at my high school. They would announce Johnny Lingo Day over the PA system with the kind of gleeful voice that's usually reserved for announcing state football championships. Johnny Lingo is a really goofy Mormon-financed movie about Johnny Lingo, the greatest trader in the South Pacific. He leaves his island to go make his fortune, but first promises that he will come back for Mahana, the plain and poor girl who nobody wants to marry. When he does come back, he is rich beyond anyone on the island and he pays EIGHT COWS to marry Mahana. Suddenly *POOF* Mahana brushes her hair and smiles, and she's GORGEOUS.

Every student had to take a state-mandated health and well-being class as sophomores, and every class watched Johnny Lingo. Since it was one of the few universal experiences for every student in that enormous suburban warehouse, it attained a legendary status, even though the acting is beyond wooden and the production values are comparable to the home movie versions of fairy tales my cousin Katherine rewrites so that her largely stationary infant daughter plays all the main roles. Johnny Lingo is supposed to be all about self-esteem and having inner strength and goodness, and in turn bringing out the best in others by having faith in them.

This morning, watching this movie with twentysomething eyes, I could not BELIEVE that they showed this crap to teenagers. Basically, it's saying that Mahana needs a man to believe in her in order to bring out her inner strength and beauty. But what would she have done if Johnny Lingo had met a hotter island girl while trading seashells, or gotten eaten by a shark on the open seas? Was she just supposed to sit around and wait for a guy to give her father a bunch of cows before she got her shit together? If they really wanted to have an inspirational movie, maybe Mahana could have gotten off her ass, caught some fish and run a goddamned comb through her hair while Johnny was off sailing (and do not even get me started on the idea of navigating the Pacific Ocean in THAT handmade canoe).

Like eighty percent of what I learned in high school, Johnny Lingo is irrelevant bollocks. What are the odds that it would be on TV this morning, this one morning that I happened to be awake before noon, after making a resolution to myself? Signs, dear reader. Universe is full of them.

And damn if I'm waiting around for someone to pay eight cows for me.

C'est aujourd'hui grand fete

One of my favorite not-so-secret sites to check is Salon.com's Daily Download. It always delights me when I see a guilty favorite of mine (The Bacon Brothers, anyone?) being given love by the highbrow folks over at Salon, and it's a really good way to get free music I've never heard before. I used to download a lot of stuff from Pitchfork and Stereogum, but now they basically carry the exact same music, and are on such a neverending quest to out-hipster one another that when I browse them I feel as though an invisible electronic hand will soon tap my shoulder, whispering "and who let you in here?"

But Salon is great. All of the loony Swedish folk music with none of the early-High Fidelity tedium. Might I recommend Keith Murphy "C'est Aujourd'hui Grande Fête?" Really a lovely choice for a sunny January weekend that will reach 65 degrees.

C'est aujourd'hui grand fete on prendra bien un coup/D'avoir
une maitresse qui boit de ce bon vin le soir et le matin

Allons se promener avec celle qu'on aime/On s'assoit sur l'arbette
pour ecouter chanter le rossignol d'ete

Ce joli chant d'oiseau nous invite la belle/A parler d'amourettes
a l'ombre du hameau il n'y a rien d'aussi beau

A quoi pense-tu donc, tu pense au mariage/Tu crois prendre une femme pour etre
ton support mais tu te ferras tort

C'est aujourd'hui grand fete on prendra bien un coup/D'avoir une maitresse qui boit de ce bon vin le soir et le matin

I have no idea what it means (something about a waitress?), but doesn't everything sound better in French?

esprit de l'escalier

It was great seeing you all at Mackey's last night! Alas, I don't have any pictures (stupid camera with its 13-second shutter delay), but from my view it appeared as though a good time was had by all. Special thanks to Kathryn for organizing!

I ran into someone on the Metro the other night who I'm not a huge fan of. Frankly, he's not that huge a fan of me either, but we have a lot of friends in common and so play nice. As we were waiting for the Green Line he mentioned that he heard I was blogging a lot lately.

"No more than usual," I replied.

"But you like it?" he asked. "You enjoy strangers reading your thoughts?" He has one of those Secret Jobs We Don't Talk About and is very good at propelling conversations away from himself. If you're not careful, you'll wind up telling this guy your life story and never learn anything about him. He also has a way of making benign things seem somehow icky.

"I suppose so," I said. I was not in the mood to play ball.

"Well, I gotta ask," he said, "why don't you just keep a journal? Why put it all out there where it can get you in trouble?"

I gave my stock, self-depricating answer: "Narcissism, of course."

What I really should have said was "Because I never would have met all these really cool, brave, witty, smart people if I was just writing for myself. They're an incredibly fun and welcoming group of writers and I learn from them and am inspired by them. And I feel very lucky that I'm able to call them friends."

Esprit de l'escalier, kids. Use it in a sentence today. And thanks for a great time!

l'chaim?/!

Question of the Day:

So Eric and I are throwing ourselves a Bar/Bat Mitzvah for our mutual birthday party. We are both WASPs; this is a celebration of both Ironic Judaism (so hot for 2006) and the fact that we spent way too many weekends as middle schoolers drinking mocktails and doing the limbo as our peers became men and women, while we languished in Protestant childhood.

But I digress. So, is this cake



a) tasteless/tacky/how could you possibly eat a Torah-shaped confection at your birthday party?
b) fabulous/tacky/you MUST eat a Torah-shaped confection at your birthday party!

weekend by numbers

60- Total dollars spent in Ironic Urban Bowling at Lucky Strike on Friday. Don't get me wrong, it was a lot of fun. Bowling always is. However, I can enjoy non-ironic suburban bowling just as much. I do not require plasma TV screens showing scenes from A Clockwork Orange above my pins, as if to calm the delicate hipster nerves: "It's okay to bowl! See Alex de Large? He makes this ironic, and you're still cool."

24- Years old Miss Becky is today. Happy Birthday, Miss Becky!

27- Excellent "Becky as a child" stories we heard from Robin, her mother, at dinner last night. As a small child, Becky was in a dance recital where her partner had to keep kicking her to make her dance, because all she wanted to do was stand on stage in her fluffy pink tutu and sing along to the song ("Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail, in case you were wondering).

1- Number of moms who made it to last call at St. Ex last night. Robin is the wind beneath my wings. She was awesome. My mom would have had four cosmopolitans, done the White Man's Overbite in the middle of the floor and punked out by midnight. Well done, Robin. I salute you.

3- Times I was forced to rebuff "Marc" while his cute friend, who was so much more my type, lingered in the background. This is a situation I have never really mastered-- what do you do when the guy you actually want to talk to is the buddy of the guy who incessantly hits on you? Common sense says to just leave them both behind, since the guy you like is not going to step all over his buddy once he's "staked his claim" (unless it's one of those really nasty pissing-contest-type situations wherein you are not so much a person to be talked to or even a hot girl to pick up but a faceless prize in a neverending competition that has nothing to do with you). But it still sucks-- the other guy was totally my type. Tall, thinnish but not skinny, white, with cute but not overly precious glasses. I so go for that.

2- Rank of the line "So, are you a gold digga?" on my List of Top Five Lame Pickup Lines.

78- Dollars spend on as-yet-unidentified part for my car. Necessary, though, after:

1- Flat tires and spectacular wipeouts in Chinatown on Friday night. It's been a long week. I really could have done without that.

1- Number of Big Important Things I'm Not Supposed to Know I accidentally discovered on Friday. No, I'm not writing about it in more detail than that. The people involved have specifically said "don't blog about this."

2- Number of really melodramatic, slightly drunk, entirely self-pitying blog posts I wrote and somehow had the sense to keep in Draft mode.

97- Imagined percentage of the film budget for Tommy that was spent on mind-altering substances. I'm watching that movie as I type this entry, and My. God. In. Heaven. What were these people on???? It's noon on a sunny Sunday, I'm not even a touch hungover and I'm freaking out. And we haven't even gotten to the part where Tommy starts playing pinball, much less the part where Ann-Margaret starts rolling around in the baked beans that shoot out of the broken television. I think I'm going to go read some Jane Austen in Eastern Market just to chill out a little. Wait, is that Jack Nicholson? And is he singing? AM I REALLY HERE? IS THIS REALLY HAPPENING??

First rule about Half-Pint is that we don't TALK about Half-Pint

I so love that Netflix's Top Recommendations to me (based on movies I've watched and that are in my queue) are:

1) Little House on the Prairie, Season Three

2) Fight Club

emily's reasons why she's having an extra glass of wine tonight

EJ: don't you just want to CUT every woman on TBS tonight
Jen: cut them deep.
EJ: i am exercising my right to be in a foul mood tonight
EJ: all day long i've wanted to kick other people
EJ: i wanted to kick this girl was walking outside union station with ugg boots under her suit
Jen: perfectly reasonable
EJ: and then i wanted to kick the girl behind her because her shoes were better than mine
Jen: it's all about shoes with you today
EJ: oh no, i've wanted to kick people for lots of reasons
EJ: i wanted to kick this woman for holding up the line at the metro escalator
EJ: and then i realized she was blind
EJ: and i wanted to kick myself for being a bitch
Jen: you're going to hell.
EJ: and i wanted to kick the girl who i followed to her car in the crowded harris teeter parking lot who then waved me off and SAT IN HER CAR ON HER CELL PHONE
EJ: and i wanted to kick [name redacted for dooce-related reasons] for being a [vile epithets and graphic name-calling, ibid.]
EJ: and i wanted to kick the cat i'm cat-sitting for because he has a freakishly prominent spinal cord and a really annoying meow
EJ: and i wanted to kick mom for not having her cell phone for the last 5 days
EJ: man, this feels really good
Jen: i'm glad for you
EJ: and i ALWAYS want to kick daisy
Jen: every day.
EJ: that cunt
EJ: oh, and i want to kick heather graham for having a sucky show that is a pg-rated wannabe sex and the city that MAKES ALL SINGLE GIRLS WHO COME HOME FROM A CRAPPY DAY AT WORK WITH THEIR GROCERY BAGS TO BE GREETED ONLY BY THEIR CATS FEEL LIKE THE MOST TRAGIC CLICHE EVER
Jen: oh, em
Jen: things are not that tragic
Jen: you have to try really hard to be "Heather Graham's reason's why not" tragic
EJ: no, i'm just having a woe-is-me day
Jen: to which you are entitled
EJ: better to bring out the big guns of crap single-girl-in-the-city TV and get it all out at once
EJ: by the way, i'm blogging this

why on this night do we finally realize life is pretty damn good after all?

I had one of those nights last night where it's made clear that God, or whatever happens to frolic in the sky and play with our silly mortal lives, is still at least a little bit on my side. That despite the baby spit-up and jogging fall that left me scraped and bruised and a work situation that makes me want to staple things to my head (or maybe someone else's head), that I'm actually really lucky. Some twentysomethings stumble through life without being part of an Urban Family. I have two. What did I do to deserve such excellent friends? Because I want to keep on doing it.

Plans for the Birthday Bar Mitzvah are coming along swimmingly. Hold February 11 for all semi-tasteless festivities. L'chaim!

like pollyanna, only with mild profanity

The Lord giveth: I have an interview I'm very excited for on Monday.

The Lord taketh away: Riding the Red Line while running work errands this afternoon, a baby spit up on me.

But I brought GYM CLOTHES today. HAH. Didn't see that one coming, did you, you all-knowing smartass? Gym clothes, as in "I get to wear a 'GW Football: Undefeated' t-shirt and pilly black running pants for the rest of the day and my boss can't say anything about it." See? I WILL find some good in this divine attempt to wreck my afternoon.

And though I will no doubt be visited by a plague of locusts or be enslaved by the Egyptians for my heresy, here's my response to God for attempting to overshadow the best news I've gotten all week: NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH-NYAH.

God, you cannot barf on my parade.

a slightly delayed but entirely serious christmas wish

Dear Internet,

Please help me find a new job. Preferably one that does not involve nudity or personality cults. Thank you!

Your friend,

EJ