jennsylvania

Leftovers

The polls are now closed. 

Thanks for your 3,234 tour city suggestions!!  I love that you guys are excited!  (However, I'm a tad less excited about counting and tabulating said results.  I suddenly wish I hadn't been too lazy to fill out the DePaul University paperwork last spring, as this is a job with UNPAID INTERN RECEIVING CLASS CREDIT written all over it.)

Anyway, this time of year is normally what I like to call The Holiday Drinking Season.  Generally I'm done with all my new-book work by Thanksgiving and I have until January to do a whole lot of nothing.  But for some reason this year I'm still busy writing and editing.  I have two more projects to complete before I can exhale, relax, and post a proper blog; I'm hoping to be done before Christmas.  Until then, I'll make due with another holiday staple - leftovers. 

Following you'll find a whole bunch of unrelated topics that I haven't had time to develop.  There's no theme to tie them together.  Plus, I don't have any kind of big finale, so chances are high I'll just end the post abruptly.  

Point? 

I'm going to stick all these thoughts in a big stuffing, mashed potato, and green bean casserole sandwich and call it lunch. 

Maybe it's not a real meal, but if you're hungry, it'll do.

* * *

A LOT OF SAP

We have a couple of big windows in the front of the house in a bumped-out section of the living room.  This spot's pretty much the perfect place to put a Christmas tree.  We didn't set it up there last year because I couldn't figure out how (read: was too lazy) to rearrange the furniture to accommodate one.  Plus, after spending so many years in apartments where trees wouldn't fit, we erred on the side of caution and bought one too small to properly fill out that space.  We ended up putting it next to the stairs, which was fine.

Little did I know that Fletch spent the entire year imagining how magnificent a larger tree would look in that spot.  So, when we went to Home Depot on Saturday, he pulled an "I insist" and dragged me over to where they kept The Big Trees.  (The "I insist" card is an immediate and irrevocable debate-ender and can only be played by either party once per quarter.)  (This is my gift to you this holiday season.  When employed judiciously, the "I insist" will increase your marital happiness ten-fold.) 

After slicing open a dozen webbed behemoths and deeming them too sparse or too dry or too lopsided, Fletch spotted a quiet giant standing outside of the fray.  Fletch snapped closed his jack-knife, regarded the looming Frasier fir, and stated, "I have a good feeling about this one." 

We paid for our purchase and overtipped a couple of kids in Carhart jackets to help Fletch hurl and secure it onto the roof of the car.  That's when we got our first real clue as to the tree's true size.  "This thing must weight 150 pounds," Fletch said.

When we got home, we (read: Fletch) somehow managed to take it off the roof and wrestle it up the front stairs.  The second Fletch got to the living room, he dropped the beast onto the rug, thus causing the entire house to shake.  This was our second clue as to what might be looming beneath the festive green webbing. 

Then it was up to me to figure out new furniture placement.  (Turns out to have been easier than anticipated.)  After everything was moved, Fletch fought the tree into the stand and then slashed open the thin threads holding in all the branches.

Remember when you were a kid and they had those little dinosaur sponges that would instantaneously swell up ten times their original size when you got them wet? 

Yes? 

Then you've got an accurate picture of what happened once the tree was released from its plastic prison.  With a resounding WHOOMP, branches flew out in all directions and I suddenly found myself in the middle of a Chevy Chase movie.  Sticky green limbs boinged into the ceiling, knocked the spring-bar-loaded sheers out of the window frames, and smashed into the glass. 

Fortunately, whomever designed this house understood the Christmas Vacation vibe the bump-out would inspire and installed in reinforced panes. 

However, I'm not taking Pella off speed-dial because of the assholes also known as my kittens.  Do you have any idea how goddamned exciting it is for a pack of feral cats to suddenly find an eleven foot tree in the middle of their habitat? 

I could practically hear the thoughts rattling around their tiny brains as they assessed Treezilla. 

Chuck:  "DIS BELONGS TO CHUCK NORRIS!" 

Odin:  "IS OUTDOORS INDOORS NAO!  MUST MAKE PEES!" 

Angus:  "OH, NOES IS MONSTER, ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK!"

They've now spent the last five days hanging out under the tree, climbing the tree, doing their best to knock the tree through what I imagine are very expensive windows, and generally beating the stuffing out of the lower branches.  I've yet to decorate it because I fear exactly how batshit-crazy they'll go once it's covered in shiny round objects.

Also, did I mention how each of the kittens is coated in a healthy dose of sap? 

The only upside is each time the kittens walk across my computer desk, they smell like gin and tonic.  From an olfactory perspective, it's almost like I'm participating in The Holiday Drinking Season.  Which is nice.

* * *

CARDED

For yet another year in a row, I'm too disorganized to send out Christmas cards.  My intentions are always good and ideas rock-solid (everyone wants a photo of a pit bull in a Santa hat and beard, yes?) but it's been a perpetual FAIL in terms of execution.

However, with all the press the Copenhagen summit has received, I'm explaining my lack of holiday greetings as an attempt to be "green."

Am kind of a hero, really. 

(Unless you count driving a 14 MPG car against me?)

* * *

COLORIZED, INDEED

I've been working my way through a list of classic, must-see films.  This weekend, Fletch and I were feeling particularly festive after buying Treezilla, so we bought the colorized DVD of Holiday Inn.  If you're unfamiliar, it's a classic film starring Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire and it's full of famous Irving Berlin music.

We'd never seen it before, thus were completely shocked at how casually racist a few scenes were.  I mean, maybe those were different times and that kind of stuff was common back then, but sweet baby Jesus, was it ever culturally appropriate to perform an ode to Abraham Lincoln in blackface?  Fletch was all, "Is it just me, or is this incredibly offensive?"

No, honey, it's not just you.  

And by the way,"White Christmas" has an entirely new meaning for me after seeing that movie. 

Thanks a lot, Irving Berlin.

* * *

Hey, wait, this whole thing had kind of a theme afterall. 

But I can still end abruptly.

Hey, Philly? I'm Talking To You

UPDATE:  Am going to close voting on Wednesday because I should have a pretty good cross-section of the most popular places by then.  Thank you!

Remember last year when I asked everyone to vote on where I should go for my book tour? 

And some cities got all complacent because I'd been there before and those residents didn't think they had to vote?  And since they didn't vote, I didn't come?

Same thing goes for this year.  We're starting to plan the tour for My Fair Lazy and we need to get an idea of which cites are most popular. 

Please do me a proper and leave a brief comment with the name of the place you'd like me to go so we can get a running count.

(And I'm sorry, we won't be able to consider any states outside the continental US, foreign countries, or "straight to Hell.")

Thanks and maybe... SEE YOU THIS MAY!

Swing And A Miss

Here's another unsuccessful attempt at something:

There’s been so much speculation in the last few weeks about Tiger Woods:  “What really happened the night of his accident?”  “Did the pressure of being in the spotlight cause him to crack?” “Will his personal peccadilloes affect his ability to hit the long ball?” 

Sportscasters and pundits alike ponder the moral and ethical ramifications of Tiger stepping outside the bounds of his marriage.  Tabloids explore the seamier side of the issue, gleefully speculating on whens, wheres, and which cocktail waitresses.  Fans want to understand what made him stray, while sponsors scramble to determine if he can still sell sneakers and sports drinks. 

Me? I only have one question for you, Mr. Woods: Were you really that anxious to part with $300 million dollars? 

Now I’m not telling you how to run your business or your life, Tiger.  But when a man signs and then violates a $300 million dollar prenuptial agreement, I have to wonder.  Were you tired of seeing so many zeroes on your bank statements?  Or do you hate financial institutions and you simply ran out of mattresses to stuff?  Was it hard to keep your pants up when your pockets were so filled with gold?

The only logical explanation is that your money’s a burden and you’re desperate to unload it.  But if so, perhaps you could have considered these fine alternatives?

According to Sen. Mary Landrieu, $300 million large is exactly what it’ll take to remedy the shortfalls in Louisiana’s budget.  If you weren’t on the hook for the prenup, you could totally write the Great State a check.  You’d thrill not only the residents, but taxpayers all over the country!  I bet we’d all run out and buy Buicks, Nikes, and Gatorade with the money you saved us.  Plus, the folks in NOLA would treat you like a conquering hero at Mardi Gras, bestowing all the beads you could carry.  You’d be so beloved, every girl on Bourbon Street would flash you.  Since that sounds like the kind of thing you’d be into, everyone wins!

For $300 million bucks, you could have funded HUD’s Recovery Act, which is aimed at both re-housing homeless families and preventing them from facing the kind of crises that lead to homelessness.  Home-wrecker?  Pfft, more like a home-saver!

Maybe you could bail out the Philip Morris Corporation and pay emphysema-stricken Cindy Naugle her $300 million dollar judgment?  Granted, most aren’t particularly sympathetic to the plight of Big Tobacco…and yet we’re not so keen on philandering fathers, either.  (This one might be a wash for all involved.)

Don’t want to drop all that cash in one place?  No problem!  If I were you, I’d have invested $100 million in Twitter’s latest round of financing with the stipulation that no pajama-clad blogger tweet anything about me but my winning smile and Masters jacket collection.

A while back the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $100 million dollars to help eradicate polio.  Now Tiger, are you going to let some browser-crashing-nerd steal all your glory?   Or are you going to fork over so many bills those future generations of blindfolded swimmers will think that “polio” is what comes after “Marco”?

The cliché-loving part of me would take the last $100 million to buy the world a Coke.  However, according to recent estimates, it would cost around $6.5 billion to purchase one twenty-ounce bottle for every single person in the world.  I suppose folks could share, but that would entail multiple people placing their lips on the same thing, which is exactly how you got yourself in trouble in the first place.  Maybe we should scratch that suggestion.

So, I guess I’d take that $100 million dollars and buy Elin something pretty… like an island.  I suspect she deserves one.

A Quick Essay Having To Do With Nothing

Here's a little sample of a project I've been busy with lately.  Ultimately, this piece wasn't successful but I still think it's decent enough to share.

I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories.  I mean, I don’t doubt the Apollo mission was real.  When Neil Armstrong took one giant leap for mankind, I’m convinced he did so on the moon and not a soundstage in West Hollywood.  

I believe Elvis is neither alive, well, nor patronizing a Burger King in Michigan.  I’m pretty sure most UFO sightings stem from the Heene family’s desire to be on television.  I feel like barcodes are nothing but inventory management keys and I’m willing to wager the biggest secret the Freemasons are keeping is where the keg’s hidden. 

Point?  My closet’s full of hats but none of them are made of aluminum foil.  Yet despite my firm belief most events can be explained by Occam’s Razor, I’m fairly certain people in my life are conspiring to kill me.

I suspected my cleaning women had it out for me when they waxed the pedals on my elliptical machine, turning grippy rubber pads into tiny skating rinks.  (Fortunately, the machine is largely decorative.)  My misgivings were confirmed when I noticed the stairs had been glazed into glass with a hundred coats of Pledge, while my shower floor’s been untouched for so long it should be mowed, not scrubbed.

I have a hunch Jordan, my ancient gray tabby, is in on the plot.  For the past seventeen years, she’s been content to huddle motionless on a heating duct like a small, furry homeless person.  But ever since I had her decayed teeth removed, she’s taken to darting out in front of me a la Hogan’s Alley.  (Can she still chew, you ask?  Judging from the filet she swiped and inhaled last week, the answer is yes.) 

Hey, guess what, Jordie?  I’m not Leona Helmsley and you’re not in the will.  Also, after paying the equivalent of college tuition for your surgery, my only asset is a handful of plus-sized Madras plaid pants.  This brings me to the next likely conspirator - Martha Stewart.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock - or in a gym – you’ve noticed the cupcake revolution.  Once the bastion of school birthday parties, cupcakes are now sold in boutiques, not bakeries.  (Coincidentally, a dozen costs exactly as much as the original Apollo mission.)

Happily, gourmet cupcakes can be replicated at home using Martha Stewart’s recipes.  The woman calls for using a pound and a half of butter in a vanilla-cream frosting that’s so addictive the cake becomes nothing more than a lipid-delivery-vehicle.  I consider every insidiously delicious bite another step on my path to an angioplasty.

The fourth horseman in my coming apocalypse is the guy up the street with what I call the JFK assassination-mobile.  Said Lincoln Continental came complete with its original 1961 muffler, which stopped muffling around the time LBJ slapped a pair of longhorns on its hood.  The extent of my neighbor’s mechanical prowess entails revving the engine for hours on end, which serves the dual purpose of (a) causing the blood vessels in my brain to rupture and (b) nothing.

Last night, I’d just fallen asleep when the pictures on my wall began to rattle.  For 911 purposes, I needed to verify it was my neighbor’s car and not some other jerk with a forty-eight year old muffler.  So I dashed to the stairs where my socks hit the friction-free zone and caused me to take flight.  I banked off the wall and bumped down twelve of the slickest risers ever.  Miraculously, I landed on my feet only to stumble over the cat and into the leg of the couch.  The subsequent snapping in my left foot prompted shouting so loud I feared I’d burst a buttery artery.

As I clutched my chest and my foot, I finally realized the highly coordinated plot against me and I vowed to buy aluminum foil first thing in the morning.  You see, I have a hat to make.

Taylor, Show Me On The Doll Where The Bad Cougar Touched You

(Caveat: Yes, this is another Twilight post, and no, I'm not going to bust out the action figures.)

(Should you have already tired of my obsession, you might want to stop reading here.) 

(Also, I've gotten a lot of shit from people about digging the series, but come on!  Worldwide, Stephenie Meyer has sold EIGHTY-FIVE MILLION BOOKS.  As an author, how do I not get behind that enterprise?)

I'm finally finished with my edits, so I celebrated by seeing a New Moon matinee.  I'm fairly pressed for time the rest of the week, so I was delighted to have the opportunity to go yesterday.  Otherwise, I'd have had to wait until next week, which is fine, although there's something vaguely exciting about catching a movie at the beginning of its run. 

I got to the theater early and had plenty of time to collect my trashcan of popcorn and bucket of Cherry Coke before choosing a good seat.  (I never finish more than a third of either, yet having ample qualities of both is key.) 

As I settled into my chair, I began looking around at the rest of the crowd.  Normally weekday matinee audiences encompass all ages and sexes - there are the retirees who stop in to see a show after hitting the bookstore, college students killing time between classes, high school kids skipping class, Bally's members who just worked out so hard they're too rubber-legged to make it to the parking garage, the unemployed, and the underemployed. 

But yesterday I noticed the only people in the theater were women in their thirties and forties.

"Wow," I thought.  "Welcome to Cougar Town."

(I interrupt this New Moon post to say I just received seven pies via FedEx.  SEVEN PIES.  My friend works for FoodsAcrossAmerica.com and she's coming for Thanksgiving, so she said she'd take care of dessert... apparently for the rest of our lives.  She wasn't sure what everyone would like, so she sent one of everything.  Which is SEVEN.  Seven pies should go fairly nicely with the THIRTY-SIX pounds of wine I'm having delivered tomorrow.  Turkey?  Screw turkey, there's no room in the fridge for a bird.  Pie and wine for dinner it is!) 

(Would not be the first time.)

Ahem, ANYWAY, the second the movie started, the theater went quiet.  No, scratch that - dead silent.  I've never been in such a crowded place with so little noise.  People weren't even shifting around in their seats.  No one was pulling out cell phones to text message, nor was anyone whispering amongst themselves.  I'm talking utter, rapt, undivided attention.

Which made it all the more obvious when the entire audience gasped as Taylor Lautner removed his shirt. 

Which then made the entire audience laugh in embarrassment, and suddenly every Cougar for Cullen in that room started doing the kind of math that does not lead to any answer other than shame and possible jail time.  The great irony is when Robert Pattinson went shirtless later in the film, the audience didn't let out a peep.  You, with the pasty English belly - out of the way for the werewolf! 

I'm not writing this as a review, because despite how much I enjoyed the film, parts of it were just silly.  I mean, the CGI werewolves were supposed to be terrifying, not hilarious.  And regardless of accuracy, Jacob removing his shirt to staunch Bella's blood is only going to spur on gratuitous head wounds every time this poor kid walks in a room. 

I guess my point is if I were Pattinson, I'd be on the phone with my agent, like NOW, demanding that I have more face time in the next movie because the kid completely stole the show.  What's funny is Taylor Lautner's chemistry with Kristen Stewart was so much more palpable than hers with Pattinson, and they were actually dating at the time. 

I'm going to put the prediction out there that if Lautner continues to choose roles as well as he has, he's going to end up the biggest star of this whole enterprise.

He's got that kind of charisma.

And pecs.

I wonder how he feels about pie and wine?

(P.S.  Team Jacob!)

(P.P.S.  Team Age of Consent?)

(P.P.P.S.  Team Shame.)