The girl on one side of me is reading Good Carbs, Bad Carbs. The girl on the other side of me is reading How To Win Friends and Influence People. I am listening to “Tales of Brave Ulysses” on my iPod and trying to decide if I need to get on the ball or stay off it.
Next week’s Cringe is going to be filmed for ABC Nightline. I already have the readers lined up, but we’ll still have an open call for volunteers at the end like always, so if you want to read your teenage journal on the national evening news, I would say maybe come to Freddy’s on Wednesday night.
Josh has been trying to get me to do a podcast with him for over a year now. I personally have never listened to a podcast, mostly because until recently I didn’t have a pod, but also because I’m not exactly hip to technology or trends or things that happen around me. He finally persuaded me via the tried and true method of gifts and alcohol, buying me giant headphones for my birthday with the condition that I use them for podcasting. Then he invited me over to his house, got me drunk, and put a microphone in front of me. Here is the result.
Warning: I laugh a lot.
(If the above link doesn't work, try this instead.)
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Last Friday, I was at a really fun afterparty celebrating Cyan’s release of The OH in Ohio, and the free bourbon was flowing, and I was hanging out with other people’s brothers, and it was all totally awesome, right up until the part where I got robbed. Some dildo relieved me of both my wallet and my digital camera. I can replace everything in the wallet aside from the $20 cash, but losing the camera breaks my heart.
I have been really overwhelmed with all I have to do now to prevent identity theft in the next 60-90 days, now that someone has all of my personal info, aside from just canceling my credit cards and filing the police report. You also have to contact Equifax and Social Security, as well as your last three sexual partners. Virgins, third base counts for you. And getting a new license is a pain because they ask for the license number on the old one. I DON’T KNOW, IT’S ON MY OLD ONE. Internet, I cannot urge you strongly enough to take everything out of your wallet this minute and photocopy it. I also cannot urge you strongly enough to turn your back on a life of crime, because it’s not badass; it just leads to loads of paperwork. Instead of robbing a bank, why don’t you just become a CPA? That’ll scratch that itch real good.
Oddly enough, I have jury duty today. They let me in the courthouse without a photo ID, which I find unsettling. Also, I walked right by the giant sign that said NO FOOD OR DRINK while drinking my vitaminwater. A little hustle, boys? For show at least? Or are you too busy napping with the jailhouse keys in your back pocket?
I had jury duty once back in Oklahoma, and it was nothing like this. Here in NYC they done got computer labs for the jurors and Ed Bradley and Diane Sawyer in the informational video! (I was hoping for a Jerry Orbach cameo, but that might have been too much.) The video opened with some medieval dudes binding a guy’s hands and feet and tossing him in a lake to illustrate “trial by ordeal.” Brooklyn Supreme Court, you are not fucking around, and I respect that. Now let’s see if we can’t get some of that justice tossed ‘round my way.
UPDATE: Someone turned in my wallet to the 9th precinct! Without the cash, but with everything else! I don’t suppose I’m going to have this luck with the camera, though. Dammit. Scarecrow, I’ll miss you most of all.
Check it: my quote made the headline! The wording of the story sort of makes us sound like an off-shoot of Mortified, which is completely erroneous, but I guess press is press, right?
I spent last week back in Tulsa. It’s weird going home to a place that won’t ever really be your home again. I always feel strange coming and going between Tulsa and New York, because while I love being from Tulsa, I know I won’t ever live there again, and while I love living in New York now, I know I won’t stay here forever. I still don’t really know where my home will be, and sometimes that makes me feel anxious.
However, my week back in Tulsa was anything but anxious. I did nothing but swim and shop and go to movies and hold people’s babies. I drove on the highway late at night and ate lots of nectarines and avocados. I even spent an afternoon perusing vintage nudie mags. In the evenings, I’d sit around talking to my parents while we listened to Simon and Garfunkel or The Band on their record player, and then my brother and I would fall asleep on the couch watching Kung Fu Hustle or Empire Strikes Back. I even got to revisit that favorite feeling from my childhood, the one where you swim late at night, go to sleep with chlorinated hair, then wake up in the morning, pull on your still-damp suit, and go swimming again.
I got a few things accomplished while I was home, though, like going to the orthodontist and having my retainers tightened. Shut up. Yes, I still have my retainers, and if I’m sleeping alone, I still wear them. Mostly because back when I was fourteen, my orthodontist struck deeply upon my fear of my teeth reverting to their pre-braces horror by telling me that the longer I wore my retainer, the longer my teeth would stay straight. This was the only piece of advice from my teen years that I heeded, and man, I should get a fucking Retainer Medal by now. They hadn’t been adjusted in over a decade, though, so I made an appointment and sat in the lobby with all the thirteen year olds, reading an article about Benjamin Disraeli and eavesdropping about sex ed. When I got back to the chair, the nurse? dental assistant? orthodontal assistant? The girl my age in scrubs said, “What are you here for?” And I said, “To get my retainers tightened,” and she picked them up and said, in awe, “How long have you had these?” and I mumbled, “Uh, fifteen years,” but in my head I said, “I have sex sometimes! DON’T JUDGE ME.”
The other thing I accomplished was not quite as much, uh, an accomplishment. One day my brother and I floated in the pool for an hour, coming up with horrible disaster dessert names a la Chocolate Thunder Mudslide and all that crap you find at your typical American crap-on-the-wall restaurant. Here are the fruits of our afternoon:
Chocolate Miscarriage Mountain
Double Chocolate Penetration
Cherry Berry Gang Bang w/Fresh Whipped Cream
Lemon Cancer Crunch
Chocolate Holocaust
Chocolate Genocide
Chocolate Auschwitz
Chocolate Final Solution
Raspberry Abortion Surprise
HPV Pound Cake
Monkey AIDS Pie
Moist Clap Cakes
We also floated (ha) the idea of a harsh reality restaurant, with entrees named things like This Steak Will Give You Diarrhea, and Your Daughter’s Pregnant Salad with Your Son’s the Father Dressing. Then we called it a day and focused on just floating, no thinking.
Vacation is awesome.