D.C.

This weekend I’ll be crossing two things off my Life List: riding on a train (a real train, not the LIRR) and visiting Washington, D.C. I’ve wanted to go to D.C. since the third grade, but I had cruel parents who always took us skiing or to the beach or to Disneyworld for vacations. The humanity! Parents, if your child’s dream is to get locked overnight in a museum or a library, don’t take them to Space Mountain because you’re just wasting money. But now that I’m a grown up and can stay up as late as I want and spend my paycheck on alcohol and hotels and novelty chewing gum, I am thrilled to spend a weekend severely dorking out about history and science and government and my forefathers and someone might need to taser gun me before I say glaven. Too late!

Anyway, tiny bottles and walking shoes have been packed, tickets to the Spy Museum purchased, and Heather has promised to distract any guards necessary so I can attempt another life goal: curling up and taking a nap in the lap of the Lincoln Memorial. If I end up arrested for that one, remind me to go ahead and tell the story of how last weekend I broke the law by opening Norman Mailer’s son’s mail. That’s a great story just going to waste right now, all because of stupid potential jail time.

Senioritis

My dad usually starts his workday by reading the New York Times online and sending me links to interesting stories, typically articles about outer space or religion or something, the kind of stuff he and I dork out about together. I can tell that he’s having a slow afternoon at the office when I get a link to this treat at 4 pm, along with the message from sender: “Is this great or what? Talk about a maggot gagger.”

I can’t decide what I love more—that my dad was bored enough to click on the Vows section, or that lurking somewhere deep inside my financial planner/marathon running/salad for dinner/wash the car every Saturday whether it needs it or not father is a snarky girl.

We then had the following email exchange:

Me: I think there’s more to this bandaged hand business then they’re letting on. “Nervous preparations with his rambunctious groomsmen.” Like those boys were all blushing and giggling and fainting in the side room like the Bennet sisters. Sounds more like a chainsaw/stripper accident if you ask me.

My dad: The Bennet sisters?

Me: From Pride & Prejudice?

My dad: Oh of course, I remember the series in DC Action Comics featuring Sgt Rock of Easy Company where nothing comes easy.

Attached was this image.

I called him at this point and said, “So what are you doing, Dad?” and he said, “Eh, reading Elderhostel magazine. Someone sent it to me. It’s for old people who want to travel or something.”

I hate your guts

So, I have a crush on this guy, and it must be pretty bad, because being around him transforms me into a super mean fourth grader. I don’t know what happens; I’m traditionally a sort of insulting flirter, but this is way beyond the pale.

I’ve noticed that I do this thing with people I dislike, where at first I worry that they don’t like me, and I really obsess over it for awhile before realizing, no, actually, I don’t like them. This situation is the exact opposite. It took me hanging up on him, making fun of him, calling him names, and then insulting his physical appearance to his face before it dawned on me: I didn’t dislike him, I liked him-liked him.

Originally it was just me being rude, but now that I know where it’s coming from, it’s combined with a powerful middle school urge to hide in a closet whenever I see him coming, and if I can’t, I just say the meanest thing that pops into my head. I get fucking flustered and I hate it. For some reason, he keeps talking to me, but I fear that if it ever progresses to the point where he goes for the lean in, I might end up breaking his kneecaps before I can stop myself. This makes me nervous when he tries to make small talk, and then I end up blurting out things like, “What, were you raised in an orphanage?” And I don’t say this in a playful or sarcastic way: it comes out of my mouth in this disdainful, curt tone like I am seriously insinuating that his parents gave him away when he was an infant because they didn’t want him. But oh man, apparently I do.

Text messages saved in my cell phone, vol. 3

You’re so NY now, B. Tapas, brunch. What’s next? Manolos and a sperm-bank baby?

Um, hello, Ator

Johnny Damon you cocksucking piece of shit traitor I will murder your family

We haue to do something about this jeep commander thing

My handwriting analysis says I’m a wife-beater.

So I’ve determind that (X)’s biography will be titled … The Legend of Bagger Douche.

“Did I tell you all about the bitch I’m suing?” – Jon, just now

Don Knotts is dead. Long live Don Knotts. So who’s still up for beers and burlesque tonight?

They were all frothin’ all along the mouth

On his birthday chuck norris randomly selects one lucky child to be thrown into the sun.

Wow. I sure am watching Ladder 49.

I AM OFFICIALLY SMOKING UPSTAIRS IN THE HOUSE AND IT IS WITH MOMS FULL CONSENT. THIS IS SO HUGE.

He’s obviously secretly gay and violently stupid.

Drunk with coworkers. Bad idea. Offered boss couch.

I am confident in my ability to keep a woman, just not a man.

Oh come on. Like I’m supposed to actually sleep with every person I trade flirty emails with? Also, I send flirty emails to YOU, and I’m suddenly remembering that I hate your guts. xoxo

I’m talking with a frenchman about Madmartigan!

You should blow work again tomorrow and come dancin with me and the mrs

Whatever, you’ll love me til the day you die.

No sersly nyc is gay.

No, but I have seen Air Bud. Same diff.

Me too, thanks for the thermometer!

OH MY GOD WHAT IS YOUR DEAL DO YOU HATE FUN OR WHAT

Girls covered in skin are HOT.

I want these motherfucking snakes off the motherfucking plane! Also Dad says Kelvin Sampson’s going to Indiana.

In the sky you are!

Hurry up and get off the plane, Jay has to go number 2

I think I’ll miss you most of all, scarecrow.

6 weeks till awesome

Fuckem.

Team Awesome

I spent last weekend in Atlanta, officiating the wedding of Jay and Patti, two of the very best people I know. I’m not quite sure what led them to believe I should be trusted to get up in front of a bunch of people and talk about love, since the last time I said “I love you” to someone, their response was to start crying and then immediately get on a plane and fly 3000 miles away, a reaction that I’m sure caused no lasting damage to my confidence or sanity. To be fair, the last time someone said “I love you” to me, my response was to make an urgent WTF face into my pillow and then say, “Uh… likewise?” Smooth. Anyway, I didn’t just talk about love during the wedding; I also waxed nostalgic about punching the groom in the face and said the word “awesome” at least twice. Warlords on Atari 2600 was also mentioned, but not by me. There was not a dry eye in the house.

It was a really beautiful and really fun wedding: in their own backyard, close friends and family, homemade Chinese dumplings and lots of booze. We had a tornado watch the night before, woke to a thunderclap at 7 am, and it rained most of the morning, but the sun actually came out at the exact moment Patti walked down the aisle, to (you’re not going to believe this) “Here Comes the Sun,” and it stayed out the rest of the day. This means everybody won: I got to be in the south for the spring and smell a tornado watch again, and Jay didn’t waste the past six months landscaping his backyard just to have an indoor wedding. Go team weather!

For my reverending services, Jay and Patti got me this awesome ring that doubles as a bottle opener, with EMANCIPATOR engraved inside. I also ate an entire lemon, rind and all, on a dare from Alexis and Blake. That little trick paid for my cab ride home from LaGuardia AND freshened my breath! All in all, an A++ experience.

Here are my pictures from the weekend. Highlights include a beautiful bride, a gun full of tequila, Jason Royal stripping down to his wife’s underwear in a bar, and Sturge. If you are my mom, I would maybe not click.

Best of the best

Thank you to everyone who came out to Cringe last night, and man, there were a whooooole lot of you. It was the best show yet, which was fitting, and I just couldn’t have been happier with the whole thing. I’ll write more and maybe post some pictures later, but right now I have to get on a plane and go marry some people.

Have a great weekend!

Best of Cringe

UPDATE: Holy crap for crap! Cringe gets a mention on the cover of the New York Metro today! Along with some strange stock photo of a crestfallen mom. Awesome! If you aren’t coming tonight, maybe that’s okay, because I feel like there’s potentially going to be some fire code violations. But also rumors of cake. Your call!

Tomorrow night is the Best Of Cringe One Year Anniversary show, and it’s going to be, uh, the best. Of the past year. With a few treats and surprises. Featuring such one-name-only crowd pleasers as Blaise, Marc, Stuart, Aaron and Josh, plus other funny people who do not have websites, or maybe they do, and I am forgetting them because I do not have the program list in front of me right now. You should come. I know I’m definitely going. But get there early if you want a seat; it’s been filling up way before 8:30 lately. Which is great, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe not so great for those people who can’t get a seat.

Also, check it out: Cringe in New York magazine.

Old Lady Brown

The cover story of last week’s New York magazine annoyed me. Number one, I think it’s pretty effed up to turn your kid into a Mini-Me, which is exactly what most of these people are doing, no matter how much they protest. They are hoping their kids seem cooler than other kids as some messed-up reflection on their own coolness. Yeah, sure, when I have kids, I plan on playing the music I like for them. I used to do that with the kids I babysat for, and I was proud the day the 5-year old girl made a request for “The Good Life” by Weezer from the backseat by saying, “Play that ‘Shaking Booty’ song.” And I’ll admit I’ve daydreamed about putting my babies to sleep by playing “Havalina” by the Pixies on repeat in their room. But it’s not like this is the first generation of parents to expose their kids to their own music. Hello, were anyone’s parents hippies? I know I’m not the only one who grew up with Peter, Paul and Mary, or Simon and Garfunkel, or the Grateful Dead, and who still likes that stuff. But it’s one thing to expose your kids to cool stuff and another to just decree that’s What They Like.

No offense to children, who I think are some of the best people on the planet, but kids traditionally don’t have the most refined taste. They need a chance to grow into that. And not giving them any other options but your own “cool” taste is like stunting their growth. This is kind of like when I’d offer our dog my leftovers, and my mom would say, “Oh, he won’t eat that, he doesn’t like green beans.” Woman, if let alone, the dog would drink from the toilet. I know, I'm just rambling and cranky now, and sort of refuting my own argument. I guess, in summation, I’m saying: let your kids drink from the toilet a little, people. Otherwise you’re just raising a bunch of boring a-holes to be.

If I can be cranky and hypocritical for a little longer, the other thing that irritated me about the article was the cover photo, of all the guys of different ages wearing screened tees and hoodies and jeans and brightly-colored sneakers. I am so tired of that guy, the hoodie guy. I feel like Jon Favreau in Swingers, when he says, “And it’s like I’m supposed to be all happy because she’s, like, wearing a backpack?” The last three guys I’ve dated all owned this jacket. All in the same color. Granted, I’m hardly a fashion maven, and it’s not like I don’t own all the same shit too, but can we at least change it up a little? There’s nothing like a button-down, untucked, sleeves rolled up. Man. I love that. Or maybe take it out on a limb, try something new. I mean, I would totally go out with a guy if he was dressed all early-space program astronaut. And then settle down and raise a bunch of NASA babies who listen to nothing but Burt Bacharach. Keep your Death Cab for Cutie brats off my lawn!