Monday, November 29, 2010

Fantasy Island

We were in the Bahamas for Thanksgiving.

I was very excited about the whole trip except for the flights, since all I've been hearing in the news is that Bristol Palin better not win Dancing with the Stars, girlfriend I could probably look forward to getting a full body scan.

Apparently, I am not TSA's type, because there were no experiences with full body scanners, although on the way home, I was selected for a random screening. (Which was presented by the security agent with such enthusiasm, that at first I misunderstood and thought that I had won something.)

And I had...a chance to get felt up by a "woman" in front of every single other passenger in the tiny three-gate airport. I mean, sure. I may have envisioned that my first experience with girl-on-girl action would take place with a woman in uniform somewhere tropical like the Bahamas, and perhaps I even pictured her making me take my shoes off and barking orders at me while my husband watched...maybe I had even spent a few moments over the years thinking about how she would rifle through my purse before I left...and how I would feel a mixture of embarrassment, shame and exhilaration unlike anything else I had ever known...

But what I did not anticipate was the part where an obviously grieving woman shuffled by clutching her rosary beads and mouthing a prayer.

Thus ended my adventure on Paradise Island. So to speak,
Brutalism

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Just Like The Pilgrims

I've been on vacation...so be prepared for a recap that involves a gentleman not getting into the hot tub with me after he declared it a "tepid urine pool," swimming with one-eyed dolphins, and losing my engagement ring. Good times, folks...good times...

In the meantime, my latest humor column about my first non-Traditional Thanksgiving is up at the Oakton Patch.

Check it out here.


Can't wait to share the adventures soon. Have a great Thanksgiving!
Brutalism

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

What A Trip

UPDATE: Hippest Snippets linked to my post today. Thanks, Hippest Snippets, for now including links to my posts about lap dances -- I'm really classing it up...

In other news...


My latest humor column about a recent trip to New York City is up at the Oakton Patch. Check it out here.

And here's the rest of the (not quite as family-friendly) story that did not make the Patch:

I spent last weekend in New York City with my mom and my five-year-old daughter. And several bottles of wine that our hotel kept giving us in an attempt to keep us in our room so that their complimentary wine hour would remain child-free. Now that I know this, I may reverse my decision to stop at one (child that is...not bottle of wine.)

I organized a get-together Friday night so that we could get a quick visit with friends and family who live in the area, which is how we ended up with a party that included my cousin, a friend who did a semester in London with me during college, one of my husband's friends from high school, and a kid I used to babysit who is now married with children of his own. In retrospect, I probably should have also invited a rabbi and a priest, just to round out the joke in the re-telling of this story.

During dinner, I asked what everyone had planned for the rest of the weekend. My friend, Dori, mentioned that she was taking her seven-year-old daughter and her daughter's friend, Ben to the movies and would therefore be chaperoning their "date." I said, "Oh...that is so cute...or at least it would be if Ben wasn't 42." As I was worrying that I may have crossed a line, my friend, Rob, jumped in and added, "Yeah...but he has great candy." And then we all had a hearty laugh about pedophilia, the way good friends who don't get to see each other often will do.

On Saturday, we met my friend, Meredith, for breakfast. Somehow, this happened as we were waiting in line for the restroom at the restaurant:
which caused the woman standing in line behind us to ask, "you're not from around here, are you?"

Afterwards, we strolled around Rockefeller Center, and the NBC Studio store, where Meredith and I yelled loudly to each other across the store, "Here's that Biggest Loser Team Bob Christmas ornament you've been looking for" and "Here's that Dunder Mifflin snow globe you've had your eye on."

After twenty years of friendship, it really never gets old.

During all of this, my daughter found a combination fan/candy thing (a battery-operated fan that held Skittles in the handle, WTF?) that I promptly named "Fandy!" She asked if she could have it, so I agreed because Hey! We were on vacation. I got into the 40-person line behind people who actually were buying the Team Bob Christmas ornaments, and finally got up to the register where they rung up my purchase, and I realized that Fandy! cost $7.99.

Sheesh. For eight bucks, I could have gone one block over and received a lap dance from an aging Rockette.

It was a non-stop weekend and a truly memorable one.

At least everything that happened before all of the free wine.

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Psycho-phant

This past weekend, I got a very small taste of what it must be like to be in the popular clique, to be in with the in crowd, to be too sexy for my shirt, to be down with OPP...

In other words, I totally glommed onto my friends' coolness in a watching-from-the-sidelines-kinda-way. (It's exactly like "dating up" but with friends. And without the romance. That may be the worst analogy I've ever used.)

On Friday night, my friend John Marshall was in DC from NYC to perform at a comedy showcase in Adams Morgan organized and emceed by the hilarious and very good-looking (I'm not just saying that because he handed me a beer from the stage halfway through the show, though that did have something to do with it) Jeff Kreisler, which featured about 10 other comedians including Lizz Winstead (co-creator of a little program called The Daily Show). This event was at a very small and funky arts space. I know John because he is married to Meredith, who has been one of my best friends since we met when our then-boyfriends lived together in a row house in DC in a section of the city where hookers were regularly arrested in their front yard and homeless squatters used their basement as a porta-potty. They also lived with a drug dealer named Winky. But that is a story for another day.

After getting home at 2:00am, I was up at the butt crack of dawn to get ready to go to the Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall. Prior to the Rally, I met up with friends at a bar in the District to celebrate my friend, Amy's, birthday. Because nothing says, "I'm celebrating sanity" more than a couple of beers at 10:30am.

God Bless America.

(I have no idea who American-flag-thong-guy is. No matter how many times my husband asks me.)

After several hours spent in the gorgeous weather and enjoying the creative signs of rally-goers (and hearing absolutely nothing), I decided to further restore sanity by dressing like a cartoon character and heading to our friends' party. Everyone at the party really put effort into their costumes (with the exception of one woman who said that she wanted to go as "tic tac toe" and tape a container of Tic Tacs to the toe of her shoe, but sadly "ran out of time" and thus, had no costume). Ponder that for a moment.

As we were driving to the party, our friend, Rob, called. Rob is an actor/musician who lives in NYC who was in the DC area to play a gig for which he had been flown in, and was calling to invite us to it. He was very excited about the party and was telling us how big it was going to be (that's what she said) and that it was going to have great food and an open bar and the live band (obviously). As soon as he described where it was, I grabbed the phone from Tim and said to Rob, "Oh my God. I know the person throwing that party." Because I do. She is the woman who owns the company I work for who was throwing a huge bash to raise money for charity.

From what I hear, he blows a mean horn and was the hit of the party. Which means that I shamelessly informed everyone I work with on Monday that we are friends. (And that we found a lace thong in our guest bed one time after he and his girlfriend spent the weekend with us.)

Also a story for another day,
Brutalism

...Which I Am Now Singing To The Tune Of "Police And Thieves", Incidentally

Today, one of my personal favorite posts is up at Laugh out Loud. It is, of course, about poop.



Yesterday, my weekly humor column ran at the Oakton Patch. This one is about me being a big, fat liar.

We've got it all.

If by "all" you mean "feces and lies,"
Brutalism