Bucking Tradition

The Oakton Patch editor e-mailed last night to clarify how I wanted to punctuate "Underpants" (written as a pronouncement, so we decided upon an exclamation point) in my article that was published today.

I love my Oakton Patch editor.

Let me know what you think of my latest: Traditionally Untraditional, and if you think the exclamation point was the way to go.

As the cool kids say, I'm a Herb,
Brutalism

A Christmas Gift

My friend, Lisa, and I were talking about our iPhone auto-correct recently, when a "true, dat" comment I meant for her to receive turned into a head scratching "true far."

I think by now, everyone has seen the list of best-of auto-corrects that was making its way around the Internet -- which is unfortunate, because the one that Lisa shared with me today is better than any of those.

She told me that last week, after her teenage son missed his ride, she texted him and said "walk to your friend's house and I will pik u up later."

Innocuous, right?

Or at least it was until the iPhone auto-correct changed it to:
                                        
                                                 "I will oil u up later."

It's a slippery slope,
Brutalism

Having Some Decor...um...

One of my favorite parts of the holiday season, other than making sure my mimosa-to-relative ratio is mathematically accurate, is pulling out the boxes of Christmas decor.

Opening these boxes is a little trip down memory lane that I enjoy as I gingerly unwrap and carefully hang all of my tree ornaments -- a collection that was comprised of about eleven ornaments before my Christmas-loving friends took pity on me and began presenting me with these every year so that my tree would be somewhat respectable.

With that, and so that you can share with me this special time of year, I thought I'd take you on a little tour of my Christmas tree. Here, dear friends, is a very Brutalism Christmas:

Of course, there are some traditional ornaments such as these:

Didn't realize he was "The King" of Israel...

There are also themed sections on my tree, like the homage to my childhood in Virginia Beach...

Although, if this accurately depicted my childhood, there would be an
ornament representing cripplingly low self esteem.

...and ornaments that capture the fun memories of the Oktoberfest party we've hosted for the past several years:


Just needs an ornament of my mom's husband in his underpants to be complete. 



There are ornaments from a fellow Dilettante commemorating our years in the Dilettante Club...

...or possibly her bra size...

...and an area dedicated to my two orange cats:

The one of me stepping in cat vomit and screaming four-letter words while threatening
to call the pound is just out of the frame.

There is also a special section of the tree for my daughter. Someone suggested that I start a tradition of buying her an ornament every Christmas that reflects something she likes or does that year. Which is generally a great idea, though it was kind of difficult to come up with something the first year, when she was only two months old. Let's face it, at that point, the only real love she had was this:

And she was apparently two months old in 1894.

(I do get concerned that when she reaches sixteen, something that reflects "what she likes and does" will be an ornament of a tattooed alt-rocker named "Damage.")

And of course, there are ornaments from my days working for the gun lobby:

If trees are ornamented then only ornaments will have trees. Or something...

And possibly my most cherished Christmas piece, from a Jewish friend and via the Dollar Store is this:

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

In The Holiday Spirits

This photo makes a lot more sense after you read my weekly Oakton Patch humor column here.

No, it doesn't.

My Life Now Has Porpoise (Groan)

A highlight of our recent vacation to the Bahamas was the "shallow water interaction" with the dolphins my daughter and I did on our second day there. (Another was when Canetto tried to access Brutalism from our hotel's business office and got denied with a message saying the web site included explicit material.)

Our adventure began in an area of the resort called Dolphin Cay. After getting suited up in wet suits, we got briefed on meeting the dolphins so that we'd know how close we could get to them, where we should and should not touch them and what we could expect from the whole experience.

It reminded me a lot of the time I scored a 'meet and greet' with Harry Connick, Jr.

Harry...awed by the silver-tongued devil that is Brutalism.

It was unbelievably cool to be that close to Harry the dolphin the hairy dolphin. (That makes no sense.)
The best part was probably when our hip, young Bahamian trainers prepared our lily-white group to high-five the dolphin. One trainer said, "You need to say, 'Wha-CHA!' and the dolphin will hold his flipper up to give you five.”

Hip, young trainers with the whities. And me with scoliosis. WTF?


We all practiced saying “Wha-CHA!” as a group a few times (and no, I have never felt cooler...thanks for asking), then one woman from the group walked up for her turn and said meekly, "What's up?"

The trainer said, "Come on...you can do better than that...it's more of a Wha-CHA!"

So the woman tried again, and if possible, it came out even more stilted. A barely audible, "What’s up?"

Even the dolphin looked embarrassed for her.

The next person was even more hopeless...he walked up and asked, "What is up with you, Mr. Dolphin?"

I burst out laughing and said loudly what (I thought) everyone else was thinking, which was: "Wow. These are the whitest ‘Wha-CHAs’ I have ever heard."

I will take the complete and utter silence and palpable disdain from both the white group and the black trainers as me single-handedly promoting racial unity in the Dolphin Cay.

Werd,
Brutalism

================================================================

For what we learned, Indonesia and Hong Kong, click here
For what we learned, Costa Rica, click here
For what we learned, Italy, click here
For what we learned, London, click here

For what we learned, Iceland, Belgium, and the Netherlands, click here
For what we learned, France and Morocco, click here

For what we learned, Southern Spain, click here

Getting Schooled

Do you remember how great preschool was? When you got to spend every day surrounded by friends while wearing comfortable clothes, playing fun games, creating craft projects and enjoying nap time and catered snacks?

It's just like when I worked for an Internet start up company in the late nineties.

It is also the subject of my latest Oakton Patch article, which you can read here.


Off to eat some paste,
Brutalism

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

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

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.

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

Happy Halloweens

I've got a new column up at the Oakton Patch, swingers.

It's about Halloween turning into a multi-day holiday. Or me turning into an old fart.

You decide -- check it out here.

Look Out, Roger Ebert

I'm disturbed by the movie I saw last weekend:

Jackass 3D.

Not by the sweat-drinking or the upside-down projectile defecation.. No, that's just good, wholesome fun.

I'm disturbed because I found a lot of the movie tedious.

I don't say that lightly. Back in the day when my husband brought the first Jackass movie home on a rented DVD, I might have made a comment about how stupid he was for wasting his time on that kind of nonsense. (I was apparently in a position to judge because I spend all my spare time reading Dostoevsky trying to find the end of the Internet.) At the time, I had not seen the show, but was familiar with the concept after hearing Johnny Knoxville and the rest of his gang interviewed on the Howard Stern show a few times.

Yet, when he put it in, I was immediately in love.

(That's what she said.)

From the moment I heard the opening music, I was glued to the television. I watched that DVD three times in succession and then promptly bought the DVD and the soundtrack -- which I still contend is one of the best movie sound tracks, ever.

I loved the second installment even more. Every stunt had a playfulness and hilarity about it that was ridiculous and funny and charming all at once. Especially if your idea of charming is someone who will put on underpants attached to a bungee cord and jump out of a tree.

I think I have just given you a lot of insight into the types of men I'm attracted to.

But this one? It seemed to be lacking the lighthearted fun that the first two movies had. It seemed more mean-spirited and well...kinda stale. Also? Not nearly enough music.

It definitely had its moments, but overall...just not the fun romp in the crocodile pit of Jackasses past.

Steve-O needs a drink,
Brutalism

Update: Hippest Snippets linked to today's post. Hippest Snippets rocks.

Mighty Neighborly

My weekly humor column is up at the Oakton Patch. Check it out here.

(And below is the e-mail I received from my editor letting me know that the column was being posted. This may be the best working relationship, ever):

I just set your column to run for tomorrow morning. In addition to your two swingers references in the text, I added a third in the subhead. That brings the total Oakton Patch swingers references count to ... three.

Why Won't He Just Take Me Hunting Like All The Good Husbands Who Want To Be With Their Mistresses?

10/19 UPDATE: This post was featured on DC Blogs and HippestSnippets today. Thanks, guys! 

My husband wants me to keel over and die so he can finally be with the much-younger mistress he has stashed away, like some trapped Chilean miner.

That is the only valid reason I’ve come up with as to why he is making me get up at 5:30am every day to do P90X with him.

For the uninitiated (meaning, the people who can still laugh and cough without severe abdominal pain…>sigh<  I remember those carefree days…) P90X is an extreme workout program that you do in the comfort (heh) of your own home.

This morning (the third morning of the program), I actually pretended I was asleep when he asked if I was ready to get up and do this. Since he knows I am the lightest sleeper, ever, he persisted and I got up and went downstairs for today's exercise session -- something called “plyometrics” (from the Greek "plyo-" meaning "Goddess of Torture" and "metrics" meaning "thank you, sir, may I have another?").

This is a challenging workout. Now, don't get me wrong. We have weathered many challenges in the years we've been together, such as: spending 24 hours a day together during a two-month cross-country road trip, planning a wedding, raising a child, living with my in-laws for six months to afford the aforementioned two-month cross-country road trip, and the current season of "The Office." Interestingly, none of these prepared me for the challenge that is not punching him in the brain when he wakes me up at 5:30 and tells me it is time for an hour-long S&M session...minus the fun part.

His mistress has no idea what she is in for.

Single-Minded

My weekly humor column is up at the Oakton Patch.

This week, it is about my decision to have just one child. (It's not what you may think.)

Also this week, I reference poop for the first time in the column. I love milestones.

Cheers!
Brutalism

A Simple Solution

My weekly humor column at the Oakton Patch is up on the site.

It is about burglary.

Because crime is a laugh riot.

Check it out.

A Not-So-Gifted Athlete

During elementary school in Virginia Beach, I was part of the gifted program. I like mentioning this because it means that at some point in my life, I was actually considered somewhat intelligent. (Granted, in grade school at that time what qualified as “smart” was probably not eating paste and being so painfully shy that the teachers just assumed you were some sort of genius. But whatever.)

The way the gifted program in Virginia Beach was structured was that you went to your regular public school four days a week, and then one day a week you’d go to another elementary school where you’d have your gifted classes with kids from all of the other schools in Virginia Beach.

As part of the curriculum, we took awesome groovy classes like “Values Clarification” and got to sign up for “Special Interest Units” where we’d learn about specific subjects – anything from hieroglyphics to archaeology to oil painting.

We also had to do contracts, which means we’d share a particular interest or talent of ours with the class once a quarter and then receive feedback on our presentation from our peers. I don’t remember many of mine…but I do remember doing one about carob. (Ridiculous aside: One of my mother’s best friends in Virginia Beach owned a spice company, and one of the products they processed and marketed was carob powder. The friend asked my mother to be the spokesperson, so for a brief time in the 70s, my mother starred in some very low-production-value local television commercials hawking carob.) Somehow, I got involved in this pyramid scheme and ended up proselytizing the benefits of carob to my class. I remember there not being much interest in what I had to say until I pulled out a bag of Doritos that listed carob as an ingredient to share with the class. It was on that day that I learned something that has continued to serve me faithfully. And that is “know your audience” “Americans will always give you a better peer review when you ply them with anything ending in –itos.”

I suppose my real gift was being wise enough to realize that based on how freakishly smart a lot of my classmates were, I was probably the cut off kid; you know…the last qualifier who just barely made the program. Let’s face it, while my peers were taking apart and re-assembling computers, I was mimicking acts I saw on Circus of the Stars. We had an understanding, though. I never questioned any of their BASIC programming or said that Princess Leia was not that hot and they would pretend that I deserved to be there as much as they did.

There was one magical time when I did not feel intimidated by the future Bill Gateses, however, and that was when it was announced that we would be having a field day.

We had one of these in regular school, too. This was the day when everyone participated in standardized physical competitions and ribbons were awarded. There was always the one kid who won the blue ribbon in everything (cough cough…Canetto…) and then there were kids like me, who got second place in jump rope one year and rested on that laurel for the duration of her elementary school career. (YOU try jumping 151 times in one minute, haters.)

But the field day in the gifted program was my day to shine! God knows, the pasty kids who played Dungeons and Dragons and spent all day drawing intricate designs on graph paper whose IQs were approaching infinity had nothing on me when it came to physical activity. (Or lactose tolerance, frankly.) In a hilarious twist worth noting, the administration actually dumbed down the physical events for the field day. Instead of the 50-yard-dash and shuttle run, we had events like sack race and egg toss in deference to the gifted spazzes.

I remember distinctly that on the morning of the field day, I was confident that I would own the events. I would finally earn some respect among my gifted peers in what was sure to be a showcase for my athletic prowess. I would find my niche! I would earn those blue ribbons! I would be a winner! And I continued to live that dream until my egg broke in the first round of the egg toss and I came in third in the sack race.

It took a long time for me to re-gain my athletic confidence, especially because there were more humiliating experiences along the way -- like the time I tried out for the track team in junior high and built up too much momentum while winding up to throw the discus. I spun around so many times and so violently, that when I released the discus, I just kept going until I stumbled sideways and fell over. It's pretty much a given that you will not make the team when the coach asks your name while unsuccessfully attempting to stifle her laughter.

At least I have my hieroglyphics expertise to fall back on.

Worth A Thousand Words

So do I, nerdy artchitecture t-shirt site, so do I. (This is listed on the web site under a section entitled "I love Movements." heh)

At Home With Brutalism

That's the name of my new column that is running for the first time today at Oakton Patch.

(So what if it's not Rolling Stone or Newsweek? That did not prevent me from running around the house doing the Mary Katherine Gallagher "Superstar". Tim is not sick of that. AT ALL.)

Thoughts on the column name? On the column itself? On anything else you care to discuss?

Check it out and let me know.