Dear All Guys Everywhere, Especially in Bars and On First Dates,
When you say “back when I used to have long hair,” you might think it’s code for “back when I was in a motorcycle gang and recorded with Chris Cornell,” but we hear “back when I spent my evenings jacking off to the bassline of Metallica’s One in my parents’ basement.”
Love,
Sarah
I love my friend Steve because he sent me his resume to look over, and it actually includes the phrase “multi-platinum recording artist Martina McBride.”
My birthday is in less than two weeks, and while I will be celebrating with a coed slumber party (more on that later), I won’t be celebrating 26. I decided that I wasn’t really satisfied with how I spent 25—there was a lot of squandering and laziness and some poor decisions—so I’m calling a do-over. Therefore, on June 10, I’ll turn 25 Part II: Electric Boogaloo.
What is the traditional gift for someone turning 25 Part II, you ask? Since I’m always thinking of your convenience, I’ve devised this helpful chart to make your shopping trip a breeze! No: thank you.
Any of the below are deemed acceptable:
So get to it! Jack White ain’t gonna buy himself.
Seriously, I’m so excited about this year. Things are going to change; I can feel it.
When you go to the Mexican restaurant for lunch and order large margaritas, and then the waiters decide that they want you to get up and dance with them to the mariachi band, and they call you bonita senorita and twirl you around and give you and only you a sombrero and a shot of tequila and the whole restaurant chants and then cheers when you suck the lime, who are you to turn them down?
To the owner of the teal Ford Probe with the aqua vanity plate that read SNGWRTR:
Ohhh I bet you are.
To the guy on the black and silver motorcycle with the matching black and silver jacket and black and silver shoes and black and silver helmet and black and silver ZUBA PANTS who waved at me and swung both legs over the saddle so they were just inches from the pavement and then sped down the higway that way for several minutes:
Call me!
Dear Officer Dickrash,
Thanks for pulling me over on my way home at 7 this morning! I was just wondering, do they teach you phrases like “Miss Brown, I should write you one whale of a ticket” at the academy? Because, to be honest, I don’t think that’s a unit of measurement recognized outside of TOTAL DICKHOLE circles.
Just looking out for you,
SB
P.S. I was still hungover and not wearing a seatbelt. Sucker.
You know, I think one of the most overlooked casualties of September 11 was the fact that that “Buckwild” song suddenly lost its momentum. That shit was on its way to THE TOP.
I am not buying any more lip gloss or lip stain or any of that shit ever again. I bought a box of strawberry popsicles at the grocery store the other day, and if I want a wet red mouth, I just eat one before I go out. Tastes better and it doesn’t cost $14. Plus, it’s kind of a punk rock way to get red lips.
In other news, I just filed something called “The Unicorn Plan.” I love my job.
I knew it was wrong, but I couldn’t help feeling a little superior when I erased the previous user’s search query of “wedding planning” and typed in “Stephen Jay Gould.”
My mom is cooler than your mom because when you ask, “What do you want to do for Mother’s Day?” she says, “I don’t know, maybe see A Mighty Wind and then go by the arcade and play some air hockey.”
The best thing to do on Tornado Night is to go over to Brian and Erin’s house and turn it in to Lots of Wine and E! True Hollywood Story: the Hilton Sisters Night.
Evidently, the Hilton sisters are “huge in Japan.” Dude, isn’t everyone huge in Japan? I bet I’m huge in Japan. As Erin said, “you’d get off the plane and there would be throngs of people shouting Sala Blown! Sala Blown!”
Maybe since there’s so many people in Japan, everyone assumes that the crowd at the airport is representative of their popularity, when it’s really just a crowd at the airport. Or maybe Andy Warhol is right, and we all really do get 15 minutes of fame, but it happens in Japan and you never even knew about it. There could have been a wave of little plastic electronic toys or schoolgirls’ underwear in vending machines or crazy flash videos ALL FEATURING YOU, and you were just sitting there in America, crying in your car on the way home from work and eating your Healthy Choice dinner and watching Judging Amy and not getting laid, totally oblivious to the brief frenzy you created overseas.
One thing I’m always up for is a good “the power of Christ compels you” joke.
I don’t understand these little exercise short-shorts with things printed across the back. I’ve half a mind to make a pair that say LOOK IT’S MY ASS.
Wherein I reveal trivial things about un-trivial people. I’ve done it again and again and again. I am a machine. I am also a machine when it comes to trivia.
My brother once had E. coli meningitis.
Tony shrugs and says “it must be the money” in the most casual, off-hand way and it makes me laugh everytime.
Emily cried during the part in The Two Towers when the white horse ran down the hill in slow motion and I will never let her forget it.
Erin is a real-life sexy librarian.
Brian B.’s bachelor party allegedly included both a drunk clown and a mariachi band.
Laura had never seen one single episode of Seinfeld until last week.
Ryan once got me kicked out of a bar, and while doing so, fulfilled one of my New Year’s resolutions.
Josh has let me cut his hair when we were both shitfaced three times now. (I’ve used this one before, but it keeps happening, and the haircuts turn out to be so unbelievably good, it really bears repeating.)
My father once lost a tooth during a bar fight in Japan when he was in the Navy. He does not like telling this story, or being asked about it.
Cameron is both the creator and owner of the most bad-ass robot costume known to man.
Joey once woke me up with the gift of Robert Pollard’s shot glass, but what I really wanted was a sandwich.
Kerry and I once made a bet to see who could be the first to slap everyone’s ass at a party where we knew no one.
My mother always has a red Tootsie Roll Pop somewhere in her purse.
I was almost a hand model. No shit.
I highly recommend seeing X-2, and I also highly recommend seeing it with someone who is a comic book fan, so they can fill you in on things you don’t know before the movie starts. Like the plot of the first movie.
Me: Well, I know that they’re mutants, and they have a mutant school? And Jean Luc Picard is good and Gandalf is bad?
Him: Right. Like “School Ties,” only with laser vision. And less anti-semitism.
Lately I’ve noticed myself making a lot of off-hand comments about my taste in men, and while it’s about 97% sarcasm and 3% fact, this is a dangerous habit to get into, because if you do it for too long, I imagine that suddenly you look around and you’ve become one of those whiny, haggard capri pant-wearing bitches in yogurt commercials. Also, it just makes you sound like an idiot for ending up with all these allegedly worthless guys in the first place. And besides, after really thinking about it, my taste isn’t that bad.
I like nice guys, not assholes or players or whatever the fuck it is we’re calling immature these days. I’ve never dated anyone I would have been embarrassed for my parents to meet. And while I have admittedly picked some real winners in the past, like the guy who wanted me to pay his parking ticket when he parked in a fire zone on our first date, or the guy who cheated on me for three months and then refused my break up, or the guy whose Indian name would have been Heap Big Waste of My Time, or the guy who went off his meds and dumped me on my birthday, I’ve never dated anyone truly evil or cruel or hateful. As a matter of fact, I’ve had two truly wonderful ex-boyfriends, and I should quit bitching and give credit where credit is due.
I met J. in college and we hit it off immediately and dated for four years, and I think that everyone thought we were going to get married, us included. That didn’t work out, but that’s really for the best and now we’re great friends. J. had this infectious enthusiasm, and he knew more about music than anyone else in the history of the world, and made the best mix tapes and loved my family and he would get down on the floor and play with children wherever they were, and we both could make each other laugh harder than anyone else. He was the first guy I ever felt completely comfortable enough around to really be myself. He was also very kind-hearted and patient and dedicated to making things work. One time in college, I had a nightmare that freaked me out so badly that I called him in the middle of the night, and he came out of a dead sleep to tell me to imagine that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore were hanging out in my doorway, guarding my room, and ain’t nobody gonna fuck with them, so go back to sleep, baby. This was so totally and inexplicably one of the most heartwarming things ever that I think of it now whenever I have a bad dream.
The last guy I felt really seriously for was B. He was super smart, with the dryest sense of humor and a flawless delivery and brown eyes and dimples when he smiled, which is an irresistible combination for me. He was very quiet and thoughtful, and I’m positive that had he been born a few decades earlier, he’d have been all horn-rimmed glasses and sexy tan forearms in short-sleeved plaid buttondowns and working at NASA. B. was one of those people who said the funniest things just under his breath and then never repeated them, so making him laugh made me feel like the coolest person in the world. He would listen to me talk for hours, and I never once felt like he wasn’t 100% interested in what I was saying. He was also very gentle and sweet and self-deprecating in way that would put Lloyd Dobbler to shame. He won my heart when he told me that before he called me on the phone for the first time, he went and brushed his teeth.
Both J. and B. were good listeners and excellent writers and very dependable, and they were both an enormous source of strength and comfort to me. Both of them were more than just boyfriends; they were my best friends, and they made me very happy while we were together. Of course, they weren’t perfect and neither was I, and our relationships obviously weren’t, but they were both sweet, kind, good people, and even though it didn’t work out with either of them in the long run, I no longer view this as a failure: I know that I’m so lucky that they played a part in my life. And thinking about them like this makes me excited about my future, because if I managed to attract men this great in the past, whoever comes next is going to be fucking amazing.
I just hope he doesn’t have a buttchin.
I’ve used the same bath soap forever now, so I decided to be bold and branch out last week. It took me three showers to figure out that the new soap smells like my ex-boyfriend’s cologne.