Going to California

It has been hot here. Very very hot. And I’ve spent the past week and a half tour-guiding visiting friends and family around the city. I’ve loved having them here and showing them my favorite things, but I do not need to spend one more second on hot New York pavement, taking cold showers twice a day, and getting a summer cold from the air conditioner.

Tomorrow morning at 6 am, I am getting on a plane bound for Megan’s family’s house at Lake Tahoe, where I will spend the following week swimming, boating, eating, drinking, reading, playing board games, playing cards, and playing 20 Questions with Sarah N. My goal for the week is to revert to age six and never take my bathing suit off at all, just put clothes over it if necessary, even if it’s still damp. I will not check my email, and I may not even turn on my phone. Then I will spend a few days in San Francisco, eating babies and trying to find this lime-ginger juice I bought at a farmers’ market the last time I was there. I am having the Harry Potter book shipped to Bryan Mason’s office so I can read it on my plane ride home. I have purchased a sun hat and prescription sunglasses and three vacation books. I have packed both a cover-up and a scarf. I am ready.

New York, I love you, but I will not miss you, not even a little bit.

NPR, Humping

A story about this week’s Cringe is going to air on NPR this Sunday morning, on Weekend Edition Sunday, if Robert Smith can find some way to edit around Sara Barron’s porno screenplay authored at age eleven, featuring boobs, wieners, Umbro shorts, complete frenching, incredible humping, and people peeing on each other at climax.

Oh, I can already see the search strings now.

EDITED TO ADD: You can hear the story by clicking on the above link to Weekend Edition Sunday.

American USA #1 Cringe

Tonight, Wednesday, July 11, Cringe is back in the U.S.A. Come and keep your comrade warm! Or just come and buy your comrade a beer, whatever. Your comrade is flexible.

What Claudia Wore

Francine O. sent me the link to this brilliant site, and if you were a preteen girl at any time in the past twenty years, I promise you at least five minutes of enjoyment. If you were a dorky preteen girl like me, make that thirty.

Claudia was always my favorite member of the BSC, because she was an artist, like me. And because her grandmother Mimi lived with her family, like me. And then her Mimi died, like my Mimi. I felt a kinship. But I wasn’t Japanese and I could spell my way out of a wet paper bag and my mother would have never let me out of the house looking like a human sunset, so that’s where Claudia and I parted ways. But we’ll always have the Phantom Caller. And those gigantic jar lid earrings.