champagne_rising

Dear Apartment: You've been a lovely friend.

2011-12-21T11:11:00.000-08:00

Ending any sort of long relationship: hard. Even if that relationship is with an apartment.

Saying goodbye to a dear and constant friend: also hard. Even if that dear and constant friend is a street address.

Closing and locking the door on a huge chunk of your young adult life, and turning in the key (while hoping for a security deposit refund!): melancholy, bittersweet.

So, it is with some difficulty and a melancholy, bittersweet spirit that I say goodbye to my beloved Edgewater apartment ("building B, down by the water, west of the pool -- sorry, it's not well marked!"), wishing its new residents as many cozy, comfortable years there as I enjoyed.

There were a lot of firsts I had inside the walls of that Apartment 350. Truth told, it was my first apartment altogether, so everything that happened inside those walls was a first, of sorts.

First cinnamon rolls baked in that kitchen. Discovered my love of cooking altogether and vividly remember spending the last $12.37 in my broke-single-girl bank account on butterscotch chips and baking soda and SALT.

First fruit fly infestation annihilated after surviving my first refusal to wash dishes on a regular basis and my first decision to revert to disposable plates, cups, and forks until I could bleach the bug spray off of my "grown-up-dishes."

First "Big, Manly Television" purchased and moved into that apartment.

First credit card account opened.

First car financed.

First corkscrew purchased.

First bottle of wine I'd ever bought was opened using that first corkscrew. It was horrible wine, but the bottle was so pretty. I saved the bottle and it sat on my window sill until I moved out this weekend and threw it away. Goodbye, first crappy bottle of wine.

First dates, first kisses, first fights, first cries, first "staying-up-all-night" phone conversations, first breakups...all inside the walls of that warm, cozy, perfectly protective, beautifully sheltering refuge. No first "I love you's," interestingly -- those all happened somewhere else....interesting.

First REAL Christmas Tree (it stayed up until April and was -- eventually -- shoved out the second story living room window in dry, brittle little pieces).

First time I'd ever had space to appropriate an entire closet specifically for SHOES. This pad was a Girlie-Girl's Dream.

First drain clogged with hair that I was singularly responsible for creating and fixing.

Then there were the many's.

Many shower curtains purchased. I could never find one that I loved.

Many batches of cookies baked.

Many bottles of champagne sipped.

Many nights falling asleep to the lull of 520 traffic -- to me, it was as soothing as the ocean waves. The best type of white-noise, the type you get so used to, you have trouble falling asleep without hearing.

Many mornings waking up to cheerful little birds chirping right outside the window.

Many pairs of jeans purchased.

Many drawers filled up with cosmetics I never used (and, ceremonially, FINALLY threw out this week).

Many visitors "ooh-ing" and "ahh-ing" over the gorgeous view.

Many loops around the driveway looking for parking.

Many trips hauling groceries up the stairs, wishing parking wasn't so miserable.

Many mornings scraping ice from the windshield, wishing there was a garage.

Many summer weekends by the pool working on my sunburn.

Many afternoons on the patios of the restaurants down the street, perfecting the burn.

Many trips to the cute little carpeted grocery store.

Many gag reflexes when I'd open the fridge and realize I'd cooked too much for one person, and hadn't ditched the leftovers quite soon enough.

Many movies watched.

Many pop songs danced to.

Many blog posts written.

Many jobs. A few promotions.

Many afternoons walking through the front door, thinking, "I NEVER WANT TO MOVE OUT OF HERE. I love this house!"

Many lost pizza delivery drivers.

Many trips to "The Attic" for a burger and a Stella.

Many trips to Sorella's for a Bud Light and a horiatiki salad.

Many Friday night SVU dates with Christopher Meloni.

Many Saturday morning infomercials watched (because there was only one television channel I could tune in).

Many Christmas ornaments hung.

Many presents wrapped and placed under the tree (and then hauled out to mom and dad's to be un-wrapped).

Many New Year's Eves spent thinking, "Well that didn't really turn out like I planned...."

Many birthdays celebrated.

Many throw pillows purchased. I could never find quite the right combination.

Many loads of delicate stuff washed by hand and hung over the shower curtain to dry. And then in front of the open window when that didn't work quickly enough. And then in front of the hairdryer because it was still taking too long and a handful of quarters for the washing machine seemed like too much.

Many bikinis worn by the pool.

Many pedicures balanced on the edge of the bathroom sink.

Many spins around and around for the final "butt check" in the full length mirror before leaving the house.

Many pairs of pants hemmed by the light of Nip/Tuck episodes.

The list could go on.

I spent nearly a decade and the better part of my twenties inside those walls. When all else might have been up-in-the-air, confusing, disappointing or painful, unlocking the front door and walking into my Girl Cave was a constant comfort.

Those walls saw me cry.

Those walls saw me lip sync in my undies.

Saw me try on fourteen outfits before leaving for work in the mornings.

Saw me try on thirty two outfits before my first date with "this cute guy I remember from junior high."

Saw me eventually give in and wash those dishes, or take out that trash, or get up early on a Saturday to get in all of my "errands/shower/laundry before 9:57am so I could snag the BEST lounge chair by the pool for my 6 hour sunbathing shifts.

Saw me gain weight, lose weight, cut my hair, color my hair, dash out the door or stay in bed all day.

So, I'll miss this place.

That said: it's time to make some new memories inside some new walls. I'm looking forward to the next firsts. Our first home purchase. The first garbage disposal in nearly a decade. Having our own family soon, and creating a new home for ourselves and eventually our kiddos and watching them make their own memories inside of our own new walls.

But every time I drive past those old, brick buildings, I'll still probably wave, and feel just a little wistful, a little melancholy, because there's so much of me etched into those walls.

Bye, house.

The Art of Fielding: A Novel (gee, ya think?)

2011-11-01T09:10:00.000-07:00

First pet peeve: novels that tell you they're novels right on the cover.

Gee, I'm buying this from the fiction section of Costco, for instance, of COURSE its a novel. And also: don't underestimate a savvy book-buyers ability to discern whether they're buying A NOVEL or a cookbook. It's crazy the way we can actually figure that much out on our own.

But, anyway.

First problem with this book: I accidentally bought the hard copy. It took me a day or so to figure out what I'd done. I hit "purchase now with 1-click." As you do. And kept refreshing the Kindle wondering why my new purchase wasn't showing up. And kept refreshing. And kept refreshing. And then a hard copy showed up on my doorstep in an Amazon box and I realized I'd bought The Real Thing. The real, large, heavy, hard-copy, bulky, PHYSICAL novel.

My goodness.

The next thing The Novel had working against it: it's own press. Er -- yes, I purchased this not so much because I was hankering to read a baseball-themed bromance about self-discovery in the dregs of a protein shake, but because the dollar figure of writer Chad Harbach's advance was leaked to the press and legions of curious had to know if the writing warranted that giant $650,000 figure. As if any of us know what "warranted" looks like in this case, as if we had anything to compare that against. I just knew that was a lot of money, and if a first time novelist could command that dollar figure (in this era of declining advances and tightened publishing company purse strings) , I needed to find out what he was doing right.

So I read "The Art of Fielding" (A Novel).

I finished it in 3 sittings. Worth mentioning, because I slog through most books in a single evening so there's no petty internal struggle over "WHY" I'm picking the book back up and whether I'm GENUINELY compelled to turn the next page or whether I'm simply reading out of some rote sense of duty to complete the project I've begun.

With this book, that internal struggle was strong each time I hefted the book up onto my lap. Mr Wonderful would ask me, "Is it any good?" and I would say, "I'll wait until I'm done to answer that. I don't know yet." Which was my opinion up until the final pages. "I don't know yet." I was trying to separate my envy over the publicity and the giant advance check from my enjoyment of The Novel in its own right and finding that separation very difficult.

And, as many reviews I read prior to dead lifting the novel warned, this was not a plot-driven baseball story, this was a character-driven baseball story. And it's not a baseball story at all, not really, because there's not really all that much baseball actually played out on the pages. It's just that the characters do their unfolding in relative proximity to a baseball field, for the most part.

So, I'll quote the book jacket to give us our synopsis:

"At Westish College, a small school on the shore of Lake Michigan, baseball star Henry Skrimshander seems destined for big-league stardom. But when a routine throw goes distatrously off course, the fates of five people are upended.

Henry's right against self-doubt threatens to ruin his future. College president Guert Affenlight, a longtime bachelor, has fallen unexpectedly and helplessly in love. Owen Dunne, Henry's gay roommate and teammate, becomes caught up in a dangerous affai. Mike Schwartz, the Harpooners' team captain and Henry's best friend, realizes he has guided Henry's career at the expense of his own. And Pella Affenlight, Guert's daughter, returns to Westish after escaping an ill-fated marriage, determined to start a new life.

As the season counts down to its climactic final game, these five are forced to confront their deepest hopes, anxieties, and secrets. In the process, they forge new bonds and help one another find their true paths. Written with boundless intelligence and filled with the tenderness of youth, The Art of Fielding is an expansive, warmhearted novel about ambition and its limits, about family and friendship and love, and about commitment -- to oneself and to others."

Got it?

Okay -- my official decision on whether or not the book "was any good."

Yes -- but.

Yes, The Novel was good in that the sentences were finely crafted, the prose obviously labored over with an eye and an ear to fluidity and clarity and philosophical repose -- but --- we had some "hollow character" issues. For instance: if we're expected to care whether the purported "protagonist" Henry lives or dies, Harbach needed to imbue him with a certain whiff of humanity or some menial degree of warmth or depth that was simply NOT THERE. Henry was, essentially, no more than the mitt into and out of which a baseball flies. SO, when we're expected to CARE about the person attached to the mitt: we don't. Which poses something of a problem when so many pages are dedicated to his mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical decline. Frankly, there's a scene where he wanders out into the lake to swim in a (naturally) weighted vest. It's a "workout," apparently -- I ended up hoping it was a suicide attempt. The character -- not so much a protagonist as a catalyst or a fulcrum or a prop -- was insufferably wooden.

Yes, The Novel was good in the LITERARY sense; Harbach wielded the classic literary references (Melville, Chekhov, you name it) like I wield a knife around frosting. With much slathering. Which, sure, serves to remind us that The Man behind The Novel is well-educated, well-read, and well-equipped to remind us of both -- but -- the trade-off was authenticity. Missing from between the lines of literary reference upon literary reference was any sense that these were really, actually, young 20-somethings doing the thinking, the speaking, the behaving. If we'd been told that these characters were 33 or 43 instead of 23, perhaps some of the crisis of identity they experience while strung-out on Schlitz (yes, Schlitz) and Vicodin might have felt more believable.

And -- yes, I'm going to go here -- there was this small matter of misogyny. Okay, okay, that's a strong term. Perhaps it was less a malicious intent to make women look useless and more of a uselessness for women in general that bleeds through. First, I have no illusions that this is a book about men. Written by a man, for men, starring men. There's nary a female that crosses the page (save for the token "love triangle girl") but -- when they do make an appearance, the only currency with which Harbach arms them is a sort of clumsy sexuality that plays out almost like caricature. Pella, the "Girl" in The Novel, manages to market herself to intellectually and spiritually confused man-boys as though the only language all college kids speak fluently involves condoms.

Finally (and I know this will sound terribly nit-picky), there was a certain quaint, classical, almost old-fashioned tic to the way Harbach writes that evoked, culturally, anyway, a mid-century sort of college town. Something out of the 1950's. So it felt in-congruent any time he'd work in an iPod or a text message reference. It was as though we were straddling generations, comfortably floating through a 1952 collegiate paradise of baseball and puppy love and all things clean and contemplative, and then the iPhone reference would pop up, or he'd invoke the "PowerBoost" protein shake and the illusion was shattered.

However -- when it gets down to it, if you ask me "was it any good?" I'd still end up saying, "Yes." Even though it wrapped up a little too neatly, the "happily ever after" felt a little too easy, and -- FERHEAVENSSAKE -- he actually went with the lame "sports movie" ending where the crestfallen player has the opportunity to take up his cross and save the team in the most spectacularly cheesy, eye-rollingly unrealistic climax EVER. I kept thinking to myself, "Tell me he doesn't go there. Tell me he doesn't go there. Tell me -- oh NO. He's doing it. He's having the little guy come in to save the day. Damn if he didn't watch Rudy too many times growing up......"

So there was that.

But the character of Mike Schwartz really should stand the test of literary time -- were I teaching a high school Lit class, I'd probably have them dissect the Schwartzy at length because he seemed like the least wooden, most believably human character in The Novel.

Would I buy this for family members for Christmas?

Hmmmmmmmmm. Only for the family member who are literature students (or teachers), I think.

I do not get hot for Fassbender.

2011-09-22T13:31:00.000-07:00

Uh, I need something explained to me.

WHY AM I THE ONLY PERSON WHO DOESN'T THINK THIS MICHAEL FASSBENDER GUY IS THE ULTIMATE SEXY? Lemme clarify -- not only am I not quivering in my little girl boots over this guy, I think he's about the most bland, vanilla, un-sexy, overrated, concave-chested, pasty-skinned dullard this side of Alex Skarsgard.

To further confound me -- this Fassbender guy is in every single movie released in 2011. I'm serious. Every. Single. Movie. IMDB the guy. It's ridiculous. It's like one morning Hollywood woke up, grabbed "that guy, uh, that one who was in that Basterds movie with Brad Pitt -- uh, that one guy with the name -- the odd name..." and decided to cast him in every single movie for the rest of the year.

Fassbender.

I can't escape the man.

Likewise: can't escape the legions of women who seem to want to do every unseemly thing under the sun to this guy. With this guy. While thinking about this guy. Whatever.

Then I hear that he's got some film called "Shame" coming out where he plays s a sex addict. Huh. And they're probably going to have problems finding a company to distribute the film in the states because it will inevitably end up with an NC-17 rating (due to some full frontal Fassbender) and, gee, now the celebgossipsphere is alight with women who can't seem to slurp the drool back into their mouths at the idea of checking out his cheeks. Andwhatnot.

I realize I'm not making much of a case for myself by posting tons of pictures of him -- but it was a study in the blase, trying to find a picture of him where -- even with my head tilted and my eyes blurred -- I could manage even a mildly interested shrug of "huh. Ehhhh he's OK, I guess." I came up short. Ladies (and studio executives and casting directors and wild donkeys and helium balloons and poltergeist) are going ape over this????

I just don't get it.

And I couldn't tell you if the guy can act, because I haven't seen any of his movies. OR, I saw that "Inglorious" movie a few years back, but wouldn't remember this guy from Adam (all of those uniformed men looked the same to me......). Which means he's bland AND forgettable.

I know, I know, not all men can be as dashing and handsome as my Mr Wonderful. He's one-of-a-kind. But I'd at least expect the planet earth to chose someone REASONABLY interesting, with a REASONABLE amount of character in his face and a REASONABLE dose of photogenic....oh......SWAGGER to inflict upon the greater movie-going/gossip-cruising/air-breathing public.

I know, I'm in the minority when it comes to a lot of the standard issue hot tickets. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Ryan Gosling, Robert Pattinson, Justin Timberlake, Daniel Craig.....uh, I'm suddenly drawing a blank on most "standard issue hot tickets."

But this one: I just don't get it.

Clue me in.............convince me.

Speidi brought me back.

2011-09-19T12:42:00.000-07:00

Amazing that after a long absence, the gossip story to get me back in the swing of things is something as tacky as Heidi Montag's 25th birthday.

But first --

GOOD LORD, the anti-wrinkle eye cream industry really has us ladies by the balls-we-don't-have. Fer-real. After logging a solid 12 years in front of a computer screen for the better part of most daylight hours, I realized I squint. Whether I squint because the screen is bright, because the text is small, because my eyes aren't what they used to be, or because I'm concentrating hard on something (and the obvious facial expression in that case is, apparently, squinty-scowl), I've developed those telltale "fine lines" around my eyes. Er, truth told, they're exceptionally asymmetrical, as well, with my left eye ending up far "squintier" than the right.

This simply will not do.

And, furthermore, it presents an EXCELLENT opportunity to BUY MORE COSMETICS.

Great.

So, I take to the webernets in search of a nice, sensitive-skin-friendly, wrinkle-reducing eye cream (even though the suddenly frugal, saving-to-buy-a-condo skeptic in me thinks I could continue to just slather on the Cetaphil in huge, goopy quantities before bed and call it good). But it's hard to resist when I realize that the anti-aging category is basically a whole new world of brands and products.

Elemis, Rodial, Cle de Peau, Clarins, Perricone, Kerstin Florian, Peter Thomas Roth, Caudalie, 3LAB, Decleor, ReVive, Kate Somerville, Anastasia, Erno Laszlo, Thalgo, SK-II, La Prairie, Prevage, Arcona, Shiseido, Chantecaille, Mario Badescu, Kinerase.....and that's just for starters. That doesn't even include the brands like Dior, Lancome, Estee Lauder, L'Occitane, Guerlain, and La Mer that I've heard of before and am reasonably comfortable pronouncing.

And the price tags? Um, think "car down payment." At least that's the case if I discover I actually LIKE one of these magical serums and plan to buy more than once. The "Fine Lines and Wrinkles" business is SERIOUS BUSINESS.

I guess when it comes to V-A-N-I-T-Y, those people who bank on our willingness to spend crazy amounts of cash on surprisingly similar looking white creamy stuff in pretty jars know that if something sounds French, we'll spend more. If something purports to contain something extracted from an orchid, we'll probably spend more. If something on the packaging looks suspiciously similar to a word we already know, but the letters are rearranged in a "luxurious-sounding way" that creates a new, bogus word (like "Regenessence," for instance) we'll probably spend more.

If the lid is painted gold, we'll spend more.

If it's called a SERUM, we'll spend more. If it's "advanced" or contains "peptides" or is called something completely, preposterously STUPID (like "Renegergie Life Volumetry Eye Volumetric Lifting and Reshaping Eye Cream") we'll probably spend more.

Egads.

So, I guess I'll just go to the drug store, stand in front of the Olay aisle, and pick out something reasonable.

Wait -- hold that thought. I just tried that. My reaction was something like: "Holy Skittles, they actually want me to pay $40 for something made by L'oreal? Are they CRAZY? I'd rather have that 'Renergie Volumetry' crap -- it has a fancier jar."

When the Dior product ends up looking like the AFFORDABLE choice, I start thinking I need to start a cosmetics company, and make something with a french name, containing Orchids, the reproductive organs of honey bees, the bark of a plant that only Bear Grylls knows how to find in some jungle we've yet to discover, and we'll put it in an opaque jar with a gold lid, enclose a little spatula, make our packaging minimalistic and confusing, and we'll charge $300 a pop.

Oh.

Wait.

La Prairie already does that?

Okay, then, I'll retire my search and go back to talking about Heidi Montag for now.

Because, frankly, as much as I hate to kick a self-conscious girl when she's down (or drunk, as the case may be), this girl needs to think about some eye cream, or some "Glamtox brightening formula" or some "Peptide anti-aging serum" or some flippin pixie dust, because a 25 year-old girl should NOT look like this:

That's the Donatella Versace-sneer-of-a-thousand-regrets.

HOWEVER, since she charged $20-40 admission to her birthday party this weekend at a club appropriately named Vanity, I think she'll be able to afford the best the cosmetics counter has to offer. Er, wait. Except she prefers surgery to cosmetics and she's -- allegedly -- still as broke as, well -- ME.

Maybe a little catch-up is in order. When I last wrote about Mrs Pratt back in April, she had ditched a bunch of weight (weight that she'd put on while recuperating from her surgery marathon) and was hosting a pool party in Vegas. She looked like this:

Gaunt n' glittery. Aaaaaaand, now check her out this weekend:

So, I'm not going to pick on any sort of weight gain - heavens knows I'm still battling the "love pounds" gained when Mr Wonderful and I started dating and seemed to live on champagne and chocolate cake and mexican food for months at a stretch. It was delicious, but I'm paying for it. We're female, we yo-yo, no big deal.

But the face......

Her face looks like she's been to hell and back this year, and THAT is what startled me in these pictures. The dead eyes. The puffiness. The sort of sallow, unhealthy-looking complexion (I mean -- the parts NOT covered in "junior high girl let loose in Victoria's Secret beauty department" levels of gold glitter). She looks rough, and she looks older than any 25 year-old I've ever partied with.

And then let's take a talk about the "Sp--" half of Speidi, public enemy Spencer Pratt. He's looking greasy and chemically bloated, too. I'm not sure how old he is (close to 30?), but he's looking like a washed up, worn out, middle-aged has-been, too:

Clearly, there was not a lot of wiggle room for these two to parlay their famous-for-nothing history into anything as reasonably abiding as Lauren Conrad's eponymous clothing line and web businesses (come on, let's give the girl credit -- what other reality starlets have landed contributing gigs with Forbes magazine?). BUT -- it's been pitiful to watch these two slide into the pit of fame despair.

I'll be honest -- I feel for Heidi.

I've been pretty open about my sympathy (I'm choosing to call it sympathy, not pity), because she's an insecure person who's chosen to chain herself to someone who preys upon her vulnerability and need for acceptance and thinks that by bending to his whims, she's being accepted.

From what I can tell, she's still simply being played.

If I were Heidi, I'd make like an embarrassed ex-starlet and run back to the Colorado from whence she came. I'd hole up with my family, hire a REALLY flippin good ghost writer, and start shopping my memoirs around. Hey Heidi -- if you're looking for someone to help you get started with that, I'd be game. Just a suggestion......

And if I were Spencer: I'd move to Florida, find a sugar mama (maybe someone who used to be on Jersey Shore or something) and PRAY that no one down there recognized me. Because he started out with a decent career creating and producing unscripted "fluff" programming for the MTV generation -- but I think he wore out any tenuous welcome he had with that crowd, years (and several faux marriages and divorces) ago.

But anyway -- here they are, partying in Vegas like it's 2008 and people actually want them there.

I won't lie -- if I'd been in town and caught wind of the party, I'd have forked over the $40 to get in -- then I'd pose for a picture with Heidi, toss it up on Facebook, and cash in on the giggles it netted for a good, long time. If nothing else, it would give me one opportunity to be the girl with the LESS damaged hair for once.

Bump conspiracy.

2011-08-29T11:08:00.000-07:00

I had a dream on Saturday night that I was pregnant. And so was my mom. And she was giving me delivery tips. And I had the easiest delivery in the history of deliveries, right from the comfort of home. Popped out a beautiful little girl, named her Lydia Grace, then got frustrated with my camera for defaulting to "Saved by the Bell Collage Mode" and layering all of my pictures of my little bundle of joy on top of each other with a neon paint-splatter "effect" over the top. Meh.

Bad camera.

But, was a nice dream -- she grew up very quickly, she was beautiful (but interestingly aloof), she didn't like waiting for me to fumble with the camera when taking her picture.....normal sort of stuff.

I guess I'm just getting to that "oh. I DO have a ticking clock" phase of my life for the first time in recorded history and am dreaming of painless births.

Relayed the dream to Mr Wonderful and he agreed -- Lydia Grace is great name. So, check that one off of our relationship list: we've named our first unborn kiddo. Mr Wonderful also believes that dreaming about your future babies has something to do with "the ghost of that twinkle in your eye" communicating with you before they're a biological reality.

Huh.

Sooooo -- this is all just a lead-in to dish about the fact that Beyonce's recently-revealed super-baby is already the focus of a few rather darling conspiracy theories. Mostly, they cite a performance just 10 days ago where no bump was in sight. Now, fast forward to this weekend's VMA's and some hyper-suspicious types wonder whether Beyonce sported a faux bump for the sake of announcing the pregnancy.

My take: probably. Ferheavenssake, she uses Spanx and custom underthingies to craft a smaller waist and flatter belly, why the heck wouldn't she pad the bump when she needs it to look "just so" for the purposes of big, televised reveals?

Apparently the perhaps-padding vexes the heck out of blogger Sandra Rose. In THIS POST, she pretty much calls the presumed augmentation the most narcissistic stunt she's seen in 19 years in the music industry. Here, to spare you some link-clicking, I'll quote:

In my 19 years in the music industry, I’ve seen narcissistic celebrities go to absurd lengths to grab headlines. But Beyoncé really took the cake tonight at the MTV Video Music Awards when she showed up on the red carpet with what was obviously a fake baby bump.

Beyoncé made sure she was going to upstage every celebrity at the awards show even before the show began, by announcing her pregnancy — a pregnancy that no one saw coming even though she has not left the public eye in months.

I find it necessary to remind my readers that Beyoncé was just onstage 10 days ago in New York with NO visible baby bump!
Now all of a sudden — 10 days later — she shows up at the VMA’s with a swollen belly looking like she’s 6 months pregnant? LOL! I can’t stop laughing!

And of course the gullible Beyoncé Stans fell for the lie just as easily as they fall for all the crap that Beyoncé and her camp shovels their way. Well, we’re not fooled because we know that a pregnant woman doesn’t go from 0 to 6 months in less than 10 days!

Beyoncé may very well be pregnant — and if she is, congrats to her and Jay Z — but that baby bump she was holding all night like a basketball was as fake as a $100 dollar bill with Barack Obama’s face on it!

Wow. Who knew Beyoncé could stoop so low just for attention?

Ummmmm - jaded much, Sandy? Ferheavenssake, she's a celebrity with a big announcement to make -- do we expect this particular brand of diva to underperform? Hardly. Look -- according to Radar, she's due in February so she's somewhere around 3 months along. I'd imaging that can look different ways on different women. Apparently THIS is the picture of her from 10 days ago:

I see draping. I see a dress intended to hide the middle. And, I've heard that a belly can actually really "pop" from "meh, bloated" to "whoa, baby" in a matter of days, anyway.......I wouldn't know -- I've only ever given birth in dreams. Where umbilical cords were no issue at all and nurses and doctors arrive in your home at the tinkle of a little bell to fill out birth certificates for you and fawn over how magnificently you just delivered. Ahem.

Anyway.

Do I think it was a prosthetic belly? Nope. Do I suspect perhaps a bit of...augmentation so that there was NO doubt in the public's mind that, yes, she is incubating a little Mini-J spawn? Yes, I do suspect. Am I dreading the probably unavoidable ballad following birth of spawn that's tantamount to a super-vibrato lullaby? Yes, I'm dreading. It was bad when XTina did it, it will be just as gratuitous when Beyonce does it.

HOWEVER - in the spirit of graciousness: congrats to the parents-to-be.

This kid's gonna fall out of the womb with some serious swagger. And better hope Kanye is this kid's godfather. Oh, the things a toddler could learn from a guy with diamond teeth.......

Wow, a bad movie I ALMOST had the good sense to turn off.....

2011-08-22T12:30:00.000-07:00

Things we've covered here before: Heather loves bad movies.

Things we may not have covered here before: Heather (lately), specifically enjoys Kristen Bell's quasi-slapstick-ee brand of bad movies -- those movies that can't quite decide whether to fall back on trite physical humor, or cutesy wry sarcasm or whether to just slap a pretty dress on her and pit her against good looking co-stars who lack much charm. Remember "When in Rome?" No? No worries - it was bad. I liked it.

BUT. There's a line I draw. Um -- a line that I just discovered today, when I had to continually PAUSE the movie "You Again" because it was so uncomfortable I couldn't watch any more. I had to flip over to a different browser tab and cleanse my mind's palate with a little Sephora-cruising or Huffington Post-trawling. It was THAT. BAD. I wouldn't have thought that any movie combining Jamie Lee Curtis, Sigorney Weaver, Victor Garber AND Betty White could actually BE so horrible -- but -- um, wow. It was REALLY bad. Yeah, I kept going back for more, but it was in a brain-twistingly self-loathing way -- I was enjoying the pain. Hating myself for it, but enjoying the pain.

It wasn't just the "20-something lovebirds" claiming that "Kiss On My List" was their favorite tune, then singing along loudly, off-key.

It wasn't just the pre-wedding dance lessons that ended in a family "dance-off" to Britney's "Toxic."

It wasn't just the over-played cameo by Kristen Chenoweth (that was enough to make me HATE an actress I normally find cute and likable).

It wasn't just the attempt to make denture cream funny, or Sigorney Weaver cougar-sexy or Kristen Bell's faux acne believable.

It wasn't just the completely cliche "little brother character" that writers love to abuse for bad, one-liner quips that no real 12 year-old would EVER utter.

It wasn't just the ewwww factor of watching Victor Garber make repeated "AH-OOOOOH-GAH" faces at Jamie Lee Curtis over and over again.....

It wasn't just the range of inconceivably contorted facial expressions that Kristen Bell manages (and seems to assume are quirky and endearing when -- in fact -- they're flippin horrifying).

It wasn't just that the dude cast as the "hunky brother" had total John Edwards hair.

It wasn't just the choreographed dance routines and white-girl rapping at the wedding rehearsal dinner.

It wasn't just the repeated use of BAD KARAOKE as a vehicle for laughs.

It wasn't just the fact that female conflict was reduced to plate-tossing, hissy-fit cat fights.

It wasn't any one of those things on their own. It was a little bit of all of these things.

So, what's the premise?

Um - Kristen Bell's character was a geek in high school (I can relate). She had an "arch nemesis." Ehhh, can't necessarily relate. She grows up, gets sexy, becomes VP of a successful PR firm (heh -- right. Only in the movies). She goes home for her brother's wedding and discovers her future sister-in-law is none other than that "arch nemesis." Along those lines, her mother (Jamie Lee Curtis) also discovers that her own high school nemesis will now be in the family as well. Hilarity ensues. Er, at least, Kristen Bell tries to unravel the pending marriage, hoping that love-scales will fall from her brother's eyes and he'll dismiss his hot fiance on the grounds that she did mean things to his little sister an indeterminate number of years ago.

No one can let go of the past. No one can forgive anyone else for what happened that indeterminate number of years ago. Girls can't run fast, geeks can't dance, ugly girls are bitter, pretty girls are bullies who are out to get us all, women are always looking for the next excuse to pull one another's hair, the career-driven woman is secretly miserable because she's not happily married, when girls are emotional they'll sit in front of the fridge and eat everything in sight (*gasp -- CARBS AND ALL - ! gasp*), all men are gullible buffoons following the best rack around town, when in love, people sing Hall & Oates songs -- dear heavens, the stereotypes, the stereotypes, the stereotypes.

But I can live with stereotypes if they're well-written, and actually snag some legit laughs AND if they omit choreographed dance numbers. Wait -- in the case of "She's All That," we completely forgive the choreography. BUT -- Usher was not in "You Again." And, let's face it, Kristen Bell is just not QUITE the movie star studios keep trying to convince us she's become.

Real life: we don't hold grudges against the other "mean girls" from high school. We become their Facebook friends and console ourselves with cheap comparisons over who's gained (or lost) more weight since high school. We don't ruin their weddings, or pull out old videos of their worst moments to air in front of all of their friends and family. Is it just me? Am I crazy? Are MOVIE GIRLS so desperately, artificially VENGEFUL that they're giving real girls a bad rap? Or do we do that to ourselves.....?

Big sigh.

I watched the whole thing. Begrudgingly. The John Edwards Hair didn't get any better. The girls made up in the end, everyone lives happily ever after. Do yourself (and women everywhere) a favor and DO NOT WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Thanks.

{Updated + Pictures} Mall Girl and Mountain Boy tackle Mt Pilchuck. Mall Girl learns things.

2011-07-26T09:45:00.000-07:00

{that's me! in the snow! almost to the top! Tip: click the pics to zoom!}

I climbed a mountain this weekend. It was covered in snow. I have photo evidence. Me. On a mountain. In the snow. That mountain up there, actually.

Rather than a play-by-play with lots of paragraphs, let's do a Top 10 List to document my foray into Things A 10 Year-Old Can Do With Ease But With Which I Struggle Mightily. No shame there. I'm an indoor girl, for the most part. Reading, writing, lip syncing to pop music, that sort of stuff. Not afraid to try new things as long as those things come with an easy button and a safe word. This mountain: no easy button. No magic carpet back down the hill. Magic carpet woulda been righteous, actually.

Here we go:

Top 10 Things Mall Girl Learned While Chasing Her Mountain Boy Up A Really Steep, Snowy Hill

{clawing my way to the top. more often than not: sliding right back down}

10 - Just because every seventy year-old woman and eight year-old girl on the trail pass you like you're standing still doesn't mean you're out of shape. It means you're VERY OUT OF SHAPE. Own it. Acknowledge that you're the hiking equivalent of the lady doing 47 on the freeway, then get over it.

{this is my "I'm not so sure about this mountain-climbing gig" face. it quickly becomes my "why did you talk me into this?!" fit of rage.}

9 - When you throw your hormonal Mall Girl hissy fit about halfway up the mountain, make sure there's no one around to see. It's OK to beg and plead with Mountain Boy to accompany you back down to the comfort of the parking lot -- but when those elementary school kids and grandmothers pass you, keep yer flippin mouth shut.

{blue skies, sunshine, Puget Sound in the distance, forcing a smile for the camera, AGONY - !}

8 - It's difficult to call it hiking, really, when you're sliding backward down the "trail" you're trying to climb UP. That whole two-steps forward, one step back idiom is true. Except it's more like a half-step forward, six feet backward. Rinse, repeat. The trick, however, is to find the nice packed-out spots dug in for you by the seven-foot tall GIANTS that blazed the hill before you. Following in the post holes of giants makes for a really easy, natural, graceful, glamorous-looking trek.

{shockingly, I do not look miserable here. give the kid an Oscar.}

7 - The phrase "I don't have it in me to follow your pride up this mountain!" was actually quite poetic. Too bad you were wrong, and he was right, and the fact that every inch of your body hurt and your head felt like it was going to explode did not, in fact, keep you from hauling your jiggly buns up that icy hill. And while it pains you to admit he was right and you DID enjoy yourself, you also think your definition of "enjoy" needs some rethinking if bug bites and frozen fingers and bum knees are in ANY way included therein.

{awwww. mountain smiles.}

6 - There's always going to be that know-it-all at the top of the mountain with more gear than they need, eager to show off how much they know about everything. There's also always going to be that cute girl in aviators with great legs and a fantastic tan who shows up at the top in neon-orange daisy dukes, not a bead of sweat in sight, looking like she just wandered in from the beach. So, you can count on death, taxes, know-it-alls and girls who make you jealous. Inalienable truths.

{Trail: often quite narrow}

5 - These boots are amazing. They were comfortable from the moment I put them on, had incredible traction, and went 6 hours in the snow without letting ANY wiggle its way inside the boot. Feet stayed warm, dry, comfy, supported, and I'd recommend them to any and everyone. No rubbing, no blisters, no sore spots. Great ankle support, great breathability, great water resistance. AND they look quite nice. Ultimate footwear win. See, Mall Girl can be counted on to find GREAT shoes no matter the occasion.

{Pausing to appreciate that we're Up Very High.}

4 - The mountain has ears. When you wonder aloud "what the trail must look like underneath all of that snow," don't be alarmed when a random dude pops out of nowhere to enthusiastically inform you that it looks "A lot like that rock part you just passed! Lots of boulders!" Thanks, dude. Spooky, but thanks.

{I like to imagine this is what I'd look like at the top of a run if I ever learned to snowboard. In this case: preparing to skid my way down the hill.}

3 - It's possible to completely re-evaluate your entire philosophy on life and your present success (or patent lack of) while sliding your way "up" the mountain. Like, is the fact that you're an inherent quitter the driving force behind your stalled-out career? Is the fact that you constantly doubt yourself and your capabilities the reason you're unwilling to take many chances? Are you constantly playing it safe? Do you love limits and saying "I can't" and are you EVER outside of your comfort zone? Is the fact that Mountain Boy is successful and well-respected and driven and determined the reason he can make it up the mountain AND own several homes and you're here whining and crying in the snow with a few hundred dollars in the bank? Maybe. But your feet are warm and dry and he's wringing out his socks, so there's that. Minor Mall Girl Win.

{Boulder-scramblin. As "random hiker guy" said - "it's not bad. If you're hanging by your fingertips and it gets 'really rock climb-ee,' you've gone the wrong way."}

2 - You never knew you liked granola bars until that first bite at the summit. After you conquered. And made it to the top without so much as a skinned knee. That was the tastiest granola bar you've ever eaten. And those were the most amazing views you've ever seen.

{big, huge, gorgeous views went on for ever and ever and ever}

1. One word. GLISSADE!!!!!! Two more words: TREE WELL!!!!!! A few more words: LEARN HOW TO STEER!!!!!!

Yep. The trip back down was a wild ride, complete with some good old-fashioned Butt Sledding. Learned the hard way that picking up too much speed and being unable to steer is as dangerous as driving a car with no breaks. And skidding off of the trail and into a tree well could have been MUCH, MUCH, MUCH worse. But try not to think about that. Instead, think about the accidental 360 spin you did on your way down the next path. Style points. Sure, your arms and legs were flailing in all directions, Ninja-turtle style, and yeah, you need to work on that whole "stopping" part, but that 360 had to have looked pretty cool.

{At the top! Stopping off to enjoy the views in the lookout tower.}

So that's that. I climbed a snowy mountain. And yeah, so did your mom, and grandma, and preschool-aged nephew. But I'm new to this. Gimme some time and I'll be that know-it all at the top with lots of gear, looking badass in her neon orange daisy dukes. Just wait.

As of this morning, I've also learned that sore muscles and bug bites are both more sore and more itchy 36 hours after the fact. I can't remember ever being so stiff or so scratchy - ever. And not just mosquitoes. Weird biting flies. I have bug bites ON THE PALMS OF MY HANDS. They were vicious, blood-sucking mountain monsters from which there was NO ESCAPE. And I don't like to share my victory with them.

So, *scratch, scratch, scratch* more lessons learned. Next time: bring bug spray.Here, have some more pictures:

Operation Naked Face - 12 days and counting.

2011-07-22T16:05:00.000-07:00

Okay - ignore for a moment the fact that I'm making a similarly funny face in both pictures (and that I wear the same headband nearly every day) and instead appreciate that I'm sharing pictures* of my nearly two-week-long foray into makeuplessness. Operation Naked Face 2011.

I'm not sure what precipitated the "let's shed the mascara and brow gel and end the quest for the perfect 'shimmering champagne/taupe/bronze/hint of raisin' eye shadow and go baby-faced for two weeks" beauty about-face, BUT - if nothing else, I'm enjoying a recurring jolt of PURE FLIPPIN GLEE every time I rub my eyes. Which I've been doing vigorously, repeatedly, lots -- BECAUSE I CAN.

Yes, I look about thirteen. Yes, I sat in my soul-sucking cubicle and took pictures of myself two days in a row. But I can say this: there's something infinitely time-saving about this approach, and it's certainly cheaper, long-term. And makes makeup "fun" again. As in, "hmmm, maybe I"ll treat this evening as a special occasion and break out the ol' mascara. Or maybe not." So far the answer has been "Or maybe not," but it's given my poor face a break.

I'm certain there were times in (very recent) Heather History when a trip to the Starbucks drive-thru on a Saturday morning would not have been conducted without some concealer, but now that I'm dipping a toe into "life with some under-eye circles," I'm actually surprisingly unselfconscious with the state of my face.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. Ooh, ahh, give yerself a medal - you've gone TWELVE WHOLE DAYS without the clumpy black stuff on your eyes - good for you -- uh, there are totally those of us who do this EVERY DAY...."

Well, you're better women than I. Or you're a dude. But probably not because I suspect very few dudes clicked this link. Basically. And if you did, good on ya. Welcome to Mind of Girl. Meet The Girl who's made a hobby out of curling her eyelashes. The Girl who carries the entire bathroom drawer around in her purse "just in case she needs to touch-up." The Girl who owns at least 24 different shades of eyeshadow that would appear to the uninformed examiner as "brown" (unless you're my momma and can match me shade for shade). BUT: I'm proud of my twelve days.

It's a weak, vain brand of pride, but I'm proud just the same.

Blessedly, my coworkers recognize me, the dog doesn't bolt away from me whining, I've had NO "my goodness, you look TIRED" comments and I've saved HOURS of my time over the past few weeks (hours that I've obviously redirected into super-noble pursuits like online shoe shopping).

Things that I haven't given up: tending to my eyebrows. They get plucked and combed and trimmed just the same (they just end up looking uneven and sparse and pale). I still slather on the moisturizer. I'm never without my chapstick. HOWEVER -- this is monumental.

It feels good. Clean. SIMPLE.

I'm gonna keep it up.

(just hide my eyelash curler from me or it's all downhill from there.......)

*Because I'm feeling particularly brave, you can click the pictures to zoom 'em. Really zoom 'em. Am I ballsy or am I ballsy (and in need ot a root touch-up, apparently)?

Technical difficulties, dude.

2011-07-21T11:32:00.000-07:00

That's gonna be the blanket statement I use to describe basically EVERYTHING right now. Career, bank account, hair, weight, blog layout, Seattle's weather - TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES. If I were to, oh, Venn Diagram all of these, the point of intersection would be a lovely black wedge of mild depression. Speaking of Venn Diagrams, I went ahead and made one. Nothing says "company's dollars hard at work" like Heather, MS Paint, and the circle-drawing tool. Also speaking of Venn Diagrams: my sister and I were at our hilarious best in the middle of a particularly boring logic class a few years ago when we decided the entire chapter on these diagrams was immediately more fun if we re-named them Vin DieselGrams. Heh. See? Funny.

So, about those technical difficulties.

Career. Ugh. Big sigh. Big, long, obnoxious sigh. I've spent the last dozen years KILLING MY RESUME. SLOWLY. With a spoon. Or a dull, plastic fork. Or a garlic press. Name your utensil. I don't yet have an entire college degree under my belt. I work in a tech support job (a resume-killer in its own right, since "telephone software support" doesn't easily segue into ANYTHING ELSE, let alone a job that uses the parts of my brain I actual ENJOY USING), AND climbing out of this professional hole, re-directing the career ship, even starting over from scratch have ALL (repeatedly) proven to be EXCEPTIONALLY difficult, daunting prospects.

And these prospects fight back, dammit.

They're not just like, big, brick walls standing in front of me, keeping me from any type of professional fulfillment, they're walls with teeth and Uzis. They're the Duke Nukem of prospects. And for the most part I keep my spirits up by rambling about celebrities here on these pages, or by working on my novel, or by drinking champagne. BUT, now and again....the spirits sink. Like when I realize how desperately removed I am from the career I assumed I'd have since I was eight years old.

It's my own fault, sure -- I've accepted jobs in a panic-stricken bid for health insurance, I've chosen shoes over college credits, I've opted to put myself on hold for years at a time -- BUT, the course correction seems to be nothing but switchbacks. Expensive switchbacks. Switchbacks that force me to toss all hundred or so college credits out the window in order to start from scratch yet again. Frustrating as all get out.

So there's that.

Then there's the bank account. That's definitely experiencing some technical difficulties.....but enough said there -- who hasn't struggled with that...?

Hair. Uh, because I'm vain and obsessed and no amount of Bumble and bumble seems to lift the follicles from damaged and frizzy to damn fantastic, I've declared the hair my Beauty Blue Screen of Death.

Weight. Yes, I'm still a pound or two from my personal panicky maximum. Finding very little willpower (see above reference to lifting spirits by drinking champagne).

Blog layout. Uh, darn you, Google+ with your difficult-to-interpret cataloging of albums that led me to delete photos that were uploaded as part of this blog. SO, I'm going to have to re-attach photos over the next few weeks. Yippee. And the layout needs an overhaul in general - thinking I'm going to start self-teaching myself some web design junk and fix it myself. It's in need of a facelift. Apologies for the missing pictures (which, unfortunately, render a few of these posts sort of comically incongruous).

Seattle's weather blows, dude. It was raining, dark, and 50-something while I drove to work, listening to some in-home care nurse on NPR telling the rest of the country how to keep cool in the "dangerous heat wave."

Oh really?

Tell them the best solution would be to come visit Seattle, where it's rainy and cold and barely likely to hit 70-degrees in these last few days of July. Holy mother of bubble gum, it's almost insufferable how little sunshine we've seen this year. 78-odd minutes of temperatures over 80 degrees do NOT a summer make. And I'm a summer girl. I'm impervious to humidity, I'm like a lizard for the heat. Send me into the desert and let me bake - I'm never warm enough, I've been "too hot" only once in my life (and then, only because it was windy in the 122-degree situation, so it felt a little hard to breathe), I drive with the heat on in the car in the summer, I WANT TO BE WARM. Yes, I live in the wrong part of the country. No, I'm not planning on fixing that any time soon (see "bank account technical difficulties").

So, beneath all of these gripes I languish.....moody and whiny while I abstain from junk food and bubbly and
Buying Things between bouts of moderate motivation that find me trolling the webernets for online degree completion programs with the vague idea that if I spend the money to finish the school, someone will find me as qualified as the other 22 year-old recent grads out there and offer me some sort of entry-level opportunity to do formally what I presently do recreationally. You know, the way MOST people go about getting the jobs they want.

It's not cheap, it's not quick.....it doesn't make for entertaining blog material, but hey....it's life. It's my personal Vin DieselGram.

Tristan Walker gets the last laugh.

2011-07-19T16:18:00.000-07:00

Earlier title of this post:

"I'd be tempted to suggest that Foursquare, the Stanford Business School, and the English language go shoot themselves, but that would be missing the point."

Here's the deal. On the one hand, I rather wish I hadn't seen this article in the San Francisco Chronicle today, BUT, on the other hand, I must admit I am completely engrossed in the, uh....LIVELY conversation it has generated (and, yes, by lively I mean "Ruled By The Sort of Rage Heather Loves Reading In Web Comment Threads").

The headline was catchy: "This Email Got One Stanford Student A Huge Job At Foursquare." I was curious. Sure, I wanted to know how to net my dream gig with a single email. I wanted to send a message so completely intoxicating, Salon and MSNBC and E! Online alike would crawl all over themselves to snag me as a contributor.

Turns out the headline was a little misleading -- turns out it took eight emails. Details, details. Whatever. Meh. I can send eight.

To provide some brief back story, I'll mention that Tristan Walker was a first year student at the Stanford Graduate School of Business who decided he desperately wanted to work for Foursquare. Fair enough. He tracked down the cofounders on Twitter and fired off an email. Here's what he sent:

Hey Dennis and Naveen

How’s it going? Hope all is well!

My name is Tristan Walker and Im a first year student (going into my
second year) at Stanford Business School (originally from New York).
Im a huge fan of what you both have built and excited about what you
guys have planned for FourSquare. It is an awesome , awesome service.

I would love to chat with you guys at some point, if you’re available,
about FourSquare. This year, I’m looking to help out and work
extremely hard for a startup with guys I can learn a ton from. Dennis,
with your experience at Google and the Dodgeball product, and Naveen,
with your experience at Sun and engineering in general, I know I could
learn a great deal from you both!

Before business school, I was an oil trader on Wall Street for about
two years and hated it! Moved out to the Bay/Stanford to pursue my
passion for entrepreneurship and the startup world. This past spring I
had the opportunity to work for Twitter as an intern and learned a
ton. Solidified my commitment to working at a startup that I’m
passionate about, and FourSquare is one of those startups that I
believe in.

I know you guys are probably getting inundated with internship-type
requests, but thought it’d be worth a shot! I can assure you Im humble
and Im hungry! Let me know if you’d be interested in chatting further.
I definitely look forward to hearing from you.

Stay awesome!
Tristan
@tristanwalker

I didn't edit any of this - so the obviously excluded apostrophes and other kooky, conversational bits were Tristan's and Tristan's alone.

He did get a job.

At first I was outraged (hence the "all involved should shoot themselves" title). The company actually relented and hired this kid? This sort of horrific writing (times eight) was actually successful? And if he writes this sort of crud for a job interview, how must his Stanford application package have looked? And they ADMITTED him? To GRADUATE SCHOOL?

I was angry and -- apparently -- so were all three hundred or so other folks who commented on the article. In the throes of my ire, I even fired off my own rebuttal to a commenter who suggested that "we dutiful, middle-class, college-educated folks were trained to be overly attached to the artifacts of the process and unaware of the essentials. Our schoolmarms were WRONG: Avoiding typos and me-statements, etc., etc., are not The Evidence of Professionalism and Intelligence and Worthiness. They were discourse rules. Marketing rhetoric. This guy mastered the appropriate discourse for his context."

I initially found that logic disgusting and dismissive. Didn't this commenter realize we were talking about a student in one of the nation's most prestigious MBA programs? Are we all supposed to fall on our Proper Punctuation Swords in the face of this obviously more savvy business student who knew how to work the system when the rest of us are stuck in the dark ages? How dare someone show so little regard for a complete sentence -- and how dare other people STAND UP FOR HIM?

I may have posted something that looked a little like this:

"I think the vitriol is valid. We're not so much disgusted by the fact that this kid landed his dream job via dogged determination, we're disgusted that our ivy league schools are admitting and graduating students that have an obvious and cavalier disregard for the basic tenets of written business communication.

Flagrant disregard for the basics of written English is what's irksome - basic tenets of professionalism are hardly mere marketing rhetoric.

'Appropriate discourse for his context?' Ehhhh - not so much. More like battering ram. Bug someone enough, eventually they relent -- but it would soothe our ever grammar-loving souls if the 'bugger,' as it were, at least used an apostrophe or two."

Might have. I'm not saying that's exactly what I tossed up there, but.....might have.

And then the dust settled. I took a few deep breaths, reluctantly released my death grip from the soap box and thought about this again. Tristan Walker is currently Foursquare's director of business development. According to the article, he's built partnerships with recognizable giants such as Bravo, MTV, CNN, New York Times, NBA and Starbucks. He's been successful. He wanted a job with a tech company, he snagged himself a job with a tech company.

I might be appalled by his approach, but we can't argue THAT IT WORKED. In fact, I started to wonder if he wasn't "in" on the joke. Perhaps he wanted to "dumb himself down" slightly in order to get his foot in the door. Surely, if he was so patently unable to string a basic cover letter together, he wouldn't have had the clout to snag an acceptance to Stanford, right?

RIGHT????

That's the hope to which I'm desperately clinging, anyway.

In that spirit:

Hey, Salon.com Honchos? If you're out there, I'm completely willing to abandon parentheses and ellipses entirely if it means you'll let me contribute to your Life section. Or TV section. Or Books section...or.......yeah.

"Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq"

2011-07-16T20:46:00.000-07:00

I read "Shade it Black" today in a single sitting and wanted to write this while the details were fresh in my mind. As I write, I'm listening to a recent interview Fresh Air's Terry Gross conducted with Jessica Goodell, a Marine Corps vet who penned this memoir about her time spent in the Mortuary Affairs unit in Iraq. I heard part of this interview on a commute home recently and was transfixed...I'm glad I took an opportunity to hear this again after reading Goodell's story. You can listen to the interview here. The title of the book is culled from the practice of indicating missing body parts on dead soldiers by shading those areas black on a diagram of a body.

The book itself is equal parts chronology of Goodell's time spent processing the dead bodies and remains of deceased Marines and a delicately poetic philosophy on death, war, feminism and PTSD.

There's an interesting conversation between herself and the co-author John Hearn where he asks her to imagine herself down the road with an eighteen-year-old son - here's the conversation as described by Hearn:

"What would you tell him if he were to announce that he was enlisting in the Marines?" I asked.
"I'd tell him to go for it," she replied.
"What would you say to an eighteen-year-old daughter who told you she was joining the Marines?"
"I'd say, No you're not."
"No discussion?"
"No."
"No compromising? You wouldn't suggest, for example, that she graduate from college first and then decide whether or not to sign up?"
"No."
"Just a straight-out 'No you're not'?"
"Correct."

One of the most interesting themes in Goodell's book deals with the conflict of women in the Marine Corps. She mentions often that women aren't accepted as proper Marines but always qualified instead as "Female Marines." Second class soldiers. Not strong enough, or fast enough, or tough enough, or...MARINE enough. To the male Marines -- the real Marines -- women are classified in vulgar categories as "either bitches, dykes, or whores." For those women, fighting not to become a stereotype means isolating yourself, chosing not to socialize, deliberately distancing yourself from the very solidiers who's lives you've sworn to die protecting. They've sworn to die protecting yours, too.

Add to that isolation the fact that she volunteered to be part of the Mortuary Affairs unit in order to get to Iraq in the first place. These Marines were particularly separate by virtue of the work they performed. When you're wading through unidentifiable remains all day, when you're responsible for identifying body parts blown to mush by roadside bombs, or when you're piecing missing limbs back together into some semblance of a soldier in order to return those fragments to the family back home, you're too close to death. You smell of death. You're unable to eat: burnt food smells like the burnt flesh you process all day. You live among the dead, you're unwelcome among the living.

Jessica Goodell's deployment ends after eight months. "Coming home," emotionally, takes years. Social anxiety, drugs and alcohol, abusive relationships -- they're all standing between Goodell and "normal life." The discharge from active duty does nothing to prepare a soldier for life back home. A quick questionnaire about libido and appetite and a terse suggestion to see a counselor back home are all the help that's offered. Medications are prescribed. That's about it.

Upon arriving home, she makes the observation that "everyday life had the feel of a shopping mall on Black Friday and you were there alone, among total strangers, wandering around or, at most, transacting business. The Mall of America.

"All of this--the rampant consumption, the materialism, the self-centeredness--the Corps had purged from us; then we were dropped back into the middle of it all. The experiences of war, of combat and death, left us jittery in public places, jumpy at the sound of fire crackers, sleepless at night. And it was these changes in what we saw as important, in who we were, in how we lived, in the bonds that connected us, or didn't, that created deeper problems in adjusting back to our old lives."

As she gradually re-engages with society, she begins re-forming her world view based on difficult questions she asks herself about the nature of war. Questions for which there are no easy answers. She reads voraciously. She points to Chris Hedges, to Peter Berger, to C. Wright Mills and draws parallels between life in a Marine platoon and life in society at large, ultimately concluding that, "the close bonds and deep meaning that characterize a Marine platoon can be created in the wider social world, even if not so easily in our own. And, importantly, the conditions that foster closeness and meaning in the Marines needn't be forced upon us. We can choose to be good based upon knowldge and truth, and upon freedom and choice. The traits that make a person 'good'--knowledge and wisdom and courage and justice and honest and humility and an ability to focus on what is important outside of oneself, among others--can be cultivated and used to make relationships and communities 'good.' A good community in turn will encourage virtues and will promote sacrifice, and sacrifice will generate meaning and love, both of which will be all the sweeter because they are freely chosen. This is what I believe. This is my hope."

It's a beautiful book that tackles difficult subject matter delicately, sensibly, colorfully. As she recounts her return back to "normal life" the storytelling was vivid enough that I felt uncomfortable with life in America as well. As she struggled to get out of bed, I empathized, felt a certain dark discomfort settle in at the thought of what a frivolous, selfish and consumer-driven nation we're shockingly proud to have become.

Toward the end of her interview with Terry Gross she's asked whether she believes the treatment of women in the Marine Corps will ever improve and, if so, how. She says that "...there's an easy fix, and that would be not to have women in the Marine Corps, but that's not the correct solution.....but rather to teach both the men and the women about the roles that we play....."

It's hard to reach the end of the book without giving serious consideration to the roles we're asking military service members to play. We're able to sit at home and watch sensationalized news stories about the grim conditions, but we're still fairly uncomfortable thinking about the toll those conditions take on the men and women who serve, particularly once they come back home.

HIGHLY, highly, highly recommend this book. It's a quick read, it's beautifully written, it's emotionally and spiritually and philosophically compelling, it's difficult and uncomfortable and vivid. Should generate great conversations.

"Shade it Black: Death and After in Iraq" (Jessica Goodell and John Hearn)

Worst Fridays: Forgotten Topic Edition

2011-07-15T20:59:00.000-07:00

I'll get to the point of that silly picture in a moment.

Remember when I used to do those "People having a worse Friday than...." bits where I bolstered my sense of self-importance by finding celebrities having terrible days? Let's do that again. Link-fest time. I know, I may never top the moment where I declared myself less lame than David Beckham, but the man WAS holding a giant plate of fish sticks in the middle of the soccer field while grinning wildly. I just can't reconcile that with any conventional definition of "cool."

Er, full disclosure: this was not a bad day at all in The Office Full of Old Men Who Discuss Weight Watcher Points Ad Nauseum. In fact, it was a lovely day - our phone lines suffered some sort of Friday-itis and refused to accept incoming calls for several hours. This left me with plenty of time to catch up on important online discussions about whether or not we ladies should aspire to look like Kelly Brooke. The consensus: of course, dolts.

First up: Today's viral favorite, The Sean Bean Death Reel, courtesy of the fine minds at Pajiba.
What you need to know: Sean Bean has swagger. Sean Bean looks good in period costumes. Sean Bean has perfected the "I had no idea you were gonna shank me" expression -- equal parts surprise and smug resignation. Resignation because Sean Bean always plays characters who look good in period costumes and then DIE. I'm struggling to remember a film in which Sean Bean lived to the end. Sean Bean should probably never be cast in a romantic comedy alongside either Emma Stone or Jennifer Garner in which he plays an unexpectedly romantic bloke who'd previously only been good as a pub crawl buddy. Because he'd DIE. Ooh! Speaking of pub crawls: we remember Sean Bean was in a bar fight last month, right? He may or may not have been wearing a period costume when he was stabbed in the arm by a patron wielding a shard of broken glass, and like a true stud who's used to being surprised with sharp objects, spun right around and ordered up another round? Atta boy, Sean Bean.

Anyway: go here to see the (GRAPHICALLY VIOLENT) Sean Bean Death Reel.

Right then.

Next up: Jon Hamm & Matthew Lewis.
What you need to know: This Matthew Lewis kid is apparently in Harry Potter. His character has the unfortunate name of Neville Longbottom. I had never heard of him until today, BUT, apparently this 22 year-old man-child has pulled something of a Laney Boggs transformation. Read that as....he's all that. Ehhhhhh.....I'm calling Hollywood's bluff. Just because an awkward British kid grows into his nose, gets his teeth fixed and puts on a smart suit does not immediately give us license to fawn. Fer serious. So what's that got to do with the price of Hamm? Welllll - people are drawing Jon Hamm comparisons. Darn, I wish I had the patience to dig up a link to the site where I first read that, but, yes, folks are calling this toothy Lewis kid the Second Coming of Hamm. Again: ehhhhhhhhhhhh.....until he manages to make exploding out of a womb, covered in slime while playing a saxophone seem like the perfectly logical ending to an SNL skit involving dream catchers, I'm keeping this guy solidly perched in the camp of other Potter alums who will have to work long and hard to break out of the magical prep school mold. Some days I wonder if JK Rowling shouldn't just round them all up and whisk them off to some sort of commune where they can relive the glory days in peace, free from the weighty expectations of forward career momentum.

The larger question -- why does this mean these guys are having a bad day? From my vantage point, it doesn't bode well for Jon Hamm that tabloids are already trying to replace him with someone younger and more gangly. It doesn't bode well for Matthew Lewis, because there's no way he can live up to that comparison, and it's all downhill from here. And it doesn't bode well for my peace of mind knowing that I may be subjected to more pictures of this kid in the near future, but I can always go watch The Sean Bean Death Reel to clear my head. Therefore: their Fridays are worse than mine. That picture up there, by the way? That non-blonde is Lewis. He's not helping to sell me on the skinny tie trend much, either.

Last up: Rock Stars
What you need to know: It's very hard to avoid Harry Potter Mania this week. So I won't try. I'll just embrace it and revel in this oddly genius Rolling Stone feature they're calling "Rock Stars Who Look Like Wizards." Aw, my man Eddie Vedder puts product in his hair and wears a natty velvet sport coat. It's actually a pretty creative concept....I mean....you can't exactly call Taylor Swift or Bieber "rock stars" proper, BUT, they're famous music people. And if Biebs wasn't frightening enough already, they made him into He Who Must Not Be Named (or however that phrase goes. I'm not down with the Potter Lingo).

Again - why does this mean rock stars are having a bad day? For one, they're in a Harry Potter Photo Feature. How the mighty have fa-----nevermind. Also: I'm pretty sure it's not fair to Eddie Vedder to appear in any sort of photo essay along with Taylor Swift and Lady Gaga. Ugh. Either way - score one for photo editing, but it's a knock to the Rock Star Image, fair and square.

Here - to guarantee nightmares, I'll sign off with this:

An open letter to all 19 eager Nordstrom sales associates who so desperately wanted to direct me to their Cropped Tees.

2011-07-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

Dear Startlingly Perky Sales Associates of the Northgate Nordstrom:

Yes, I'm fine, thank you. No, I'm not looking for anything in particular. No, no -- I'm not "going out" tonight, I'm simply killing time on a lunch break. That's so great? Why yes, yes, I suppose it is. Am I having a good day at work? Oh. Well, it's an average Tuesda---no, wait - Yes, it's an AWESOMEDAYOHMYGOSHTOTALLYTHANKSFORASKING.

Thank you for your concern, but I'm doing just fine finding my proper size and color while I stand in front of this rack of nicely organized cotton t-shirts grouped under the "Small" section of the rack. But I'm certain if I needed help, all 19 of you would rush to search through the shirts exactly 8 inches to the left, in the "Extra small" section.

Thank you for directing me to the rest of the racks of "super cute cropped jeans that you just got in," but then, I suppose, perhaps self-consciously you decided to qualify that with "but you obviously already knew that." Yes, I was holding three pairs of cropped jeans while browsing those small t-shirts.

Did I see your rack of Really, Really soft cropped tees?

No, no I didn't.

Would I like to?

No, no I wouldn't.

Oops, sorry -- I apologize for the blank stare I caused all nineteen of you -- presumably girls who are Not Going Out Tonight And Are Killing Time On Their Lunch Break would ordinarily leap at the opportunity to snatch up your Cropped T-Shirts.

I, however, am not one of those.

I do further apologize, however, for throwing a complete loop in your otherwise flawlessly executed sales pitch, for I fear very few lunch break shoppers are ever so brazen as to say, "I'm just not that into the whole short t-shirt thing, sorry."

I did learn, however, that if I'd like to send all 19 of you scattering, I only have to act patently disinterested in something over which I ought to be gleefully excited.

Like $20 belly-baring cotton shirts.

I'm fairly certain that seven of you were named Chelsea, and fairly certain that one of you named Jennnnnnnifer helped me with my dressing room. Yes, everything's working out just fine for me in here. The lighting is perfectly sufficient to make my saddlebags look pale and jiggly, the three-way mirror just excellent for reminding me that I forgot to tend to the back of my head this morning when heading out the door, and absolutely flawless at identifying that bit of back-of-the-arm fat that I never realized I had.

Yes, thanks, everything is still working out just fine for me in here.

No, I don't need any other sizes, thanks.

Yes, everything is -- surprisingly -- still working out just fine in here.

Truly - the next time I need to mobilize an army of girls in unseasonably slouchy boots to recite particularly inane customer service hooks, you'll be the first I'll call.

Taking my jeans and running now, before anyone can point me toward the Totally Super Cute Denim Shorts.

Yours,

Heatheradair.

Everything I need to know about life I learned from {sheepishly} watching "Twilight."

2011-07-11T15:04:00.000-07:00

Forgive me. Truly.

I caved.

I watched "Twilight."

No - I'll be honest : I watched ALL THREE. And (GASP) I actually went and found a Breaking Dawn trailer of my own free will. And enjoyed it.

Shame, shame, shame.

Maybe it was a morbid curiosity about whether or not these movies would live up to the terrible hype. They did. They were pretty terrible.

Maybe it was the fact that Mr Wonderful was the first one to suggest (in earnest) that we hole up at our vacation cabin and "watch the Twilight movies."

Maybe it was the fact that I do love bad teen movies, regardless (let's go way back to the inexplicable heydays Freddie Prinze and Julia Stiles in movies like "She's All That" and "10 Things I Hate About You"). They're fun. They're filled with that geeky brand of angst that's hard to fathom now that I'm a "grown-up."

Maybe I just felt marginally pop-culture illiterate when the stars of these movies became such hot Hollywood commodities and I had no idea if these kids could act to save their lives or not (for the most part: nope).

WHATEVER my weak little rationale, one thing's for certain -- much like my foray into "The Hills" yielded so many indispensable life lessons, the same is true for the Sparkly, Mouth-Breathing, Swaggering, Shirt-Eschewing, Brooding, Twilight characters.

Everything I need to know about life I learned from watching Twilight.

1 - Teenage girls are stupid, melodramatic twits who ought to be avoided at all costs, particularly when they think they're "IN LOVE." You can't trust 'em not to dive off cliffs, or run off with werewolves, or thrill-seek on the back of a sketchy guy's motorcycle, or wear nothing but flannel shirts. Twits, I tell ya.

2 - Gloomy, rainy climates make people moody, morose, maudlin, and -- GASP -- prone to drab clothing. Seriously - there is a "NO SMILING, NO COLOR PINK" policy in dreary weather.

3 - It doesn't matter what part of the country you're in: cops love a good mustache.

4 - Someone's ACTUAL age doesn't matter as long as they LOOK like they're about 18 and are at ease in high school classrooms. In fact, you can be a spooky, concave-faced centenarian, but as long as you stake your claim to a table in the cafeteria, you're no longer a creepy predator. Boom. You're a brooding, mysterious sex symbol.

5 - Doctors with lots of fully-grown, adopted children have the coolest houses on the block.

6 - Movie prom dress fashion will ALWAYS be lame.

7 - If you're going to shape-shift into a giant, fluffy dog, make sure you wear homemade Bermuda shorts. Shirts are a pain when you're shape-shifting, but those denim cutoffs make the transformation to were-creature a lot easier. Plus, no one messes with a pack of dudes in homemade denim Bermuda shorts.

8 - Kids in capes are creepy. They're probably up to no good.

9 - Being grounded is flexible. If your mustachioed cop-dad grounds you, just be really, really punctual about his curfew. It will drive him nuts, he'll accuse you of brown-nosing, and will lift the grounding in order to force you to spend some face-time with your were-buddies. Just sayin. Punctuality and obedience are real buzz-kills for cop-dads.

10 - If you're un-dead, go with the darker hair color. Blonde is really unforgiving on dead skin.

11 - Cute, perky girls give the best graduation speeches.

12 - You may really struggle with maintaining the will to live when your pasty-faced, predatory, centenarian boyfriend dumps you and leaves town, but after those screaming nightmares abate and the food aversion subsides and you start going to school again, watch out. You may just need to dash off to Italy to save that boyfriend's life, and when he agrees to Vampire You Up in exchange for marriage, you'll probably get all sketchy and waffle about the purposelessness of marriage and run off with the primate-looking werewolf in Bermuda shorts, which is really a dick move. But then, see #1.

13 - It doesn't matter whether you're 5, 15, 25, or 105, having the "birds and the bees" discussion with your dad will always be uncomfortable. For both of you.

14 - There may be some generational conflicts of expectation surrounding said "Birds and bees" when you date (pardon....court? become betrothed to?) your centenarian. You've been warned.

15 - No dude ever looks masculine, commanding, or virile while SPARKLING.

16 - Alaska has "really good science programs."

17 - When you're forced to choose between a knuckle-dragging Bermuda shorts-wearing half-wit who probably eats raw ground beef and loves you for NO GOOD REASON AT ALL and a wimpy, pale, whiny, dead guy who gets all glittery in the sun: probably best not to snuggle up against one for warmth while making the other one watch.

18 - Secret engagements. Never a good idea.

19 - Pissing off super powerful vampires with better hair than yours - also, never a good idea.

20 - Mobilizing an army of brooding, trendy vampires to fight the vicious baby-vamps that are subservient to that good-hair-lady? Surprisingly GOOD IDEA. Turns out they're all brooding and trendy for a reason. Mostly that has to do with the civil war, and scorned lovers, but it makes for some burly fighting.

21 - Supernatural boyfriends are, in general, simply not a good idea. It's difficult enough to manage cross-cultural relationships, or relationships with a significant age difference, or secret relationships parents don't approve of. Roll all of that up inside a "he'll never die and you're desperate to become soulless like him" wrapper and its simply too much for the average mouth-breathing 18 year-old girl to handle. Again - see #1.

22 - Dinner dates with sparkly un-dead are sort of a drag. The upside: you'll never have to worry that he won't like your cooking.

23 - Given the choice between nomadic baseball groupie and un-dead fangirl: go with baseball! Baseball players are the sexy. Clammy, cold, dead guys with an ooky tendency toward stalking, dumping, returning, and stalking again are not the sexy.

24 - We all look better doing homework in fields of purple wildflowers. It's impossible not to look positively Shakespearian while being nuzzled in a field of pretty purple flowers.

25 - I'm not sure how you can managed to get knocked up by a dead guy, but judging from the previews, that's exactly what happens. That's another conversation you probably don't want to have with your dad.

26 - Hang around with werewolves long enough and you'll probably get slashed. Mauled. Bitten. Snacked on for dinner. But hey, they'll lobby that at least they're alive and their body temperature is reasonably above room temperature. You're supposed to be wooed by this. This is insane.

27 - Humans have a very lame sense of smell.

28 - Synthetic versus down? Synthetic would be better. Werewolf in Bermuda shorts only in an absolute pinch. It'll make that secret fiance very testy.

29 - Yellow is a pretty fetching color for graduation caps and gowns.

30 - Melodrama is highly, highly, highly overrated. And, in general, is a huge repellant to the gentlemen. SO, if you're high-drama, wishy-washy, indecisive, given to tantrums and dramatic cliff-jumps: avoid human men, stick to the beasts and the dead guys. They'll -- for some INEXPLICABLE REASON -- pine for you to no end.

There ya have it. Now go live prosperous, highly successful lives. Because I've just shared everything you need to know about life. Really. It's all you need to know.

MyFavoriteThings.

2011-07-01T15:41:00.000-07:00

Happy Celebration of Independence from The Country That Brought Us Kate Middleton.

In the spirit of patriotism, let's support the American economy and buy some things. You know, the real reason 3 day weekends were created: retail sales. Ad circulars. Big box zero percent financing offers.

SO, in an ode to the things upon which I fairly regularly squander my *modestly* hard-earned dollars, I've come up with a list of the things that I really, truly love. Things that were worth the cash. Things that I use judiciously and then replacing once they are actually, entirely used up. Things toward which I have sworn some small measure of brand loyalty. Things you probably oughtta love, too.

So, Happy 4th! Let's go "imaginary shopping." Bonus: almost all of it's on the cheap. Because I may have online shopping carts filled with thousands of dollars at Barney's and Bluefly, but in "real life," this kid shops Target. Ross. More Target. Bartell's. Sephora. Target.

Enter my...uh...boudoir (that also includes some kitchenware and stuff).

Voluminous Mascara ($7)
I've used this for 90% of my mascara-wearing life, with some ill-advised forays into Dior, Chanel, Hourglass, Lancome, Stila, Mac....none of them hold a candle to L'Oreal's Voluminous in Carbon Black. It's buildable, flexible, the brush is easy to work with, it doesn't flake or clump or smear. This is THE mascara. And at 7 bucks, impossible to top.

Target tank tops ($8)
So, I hate bras. Hate 'em. Instead, I rely on camis and tanks to keep me covered underneath tops. These cheap, ribbed tanks from Target are my favorite - they're soft, stretchy, long enough to stay put, and they come in every color of the rainbow (even pretty little floral prints to round out another obsession of mine: tank tops in girlie flowered patterns). Stock up.

Urban Decay Eye Primer ($18)
Don't leave home without it. I don't, you shouldn't. If you want your eye shadow to stay in place for 18 hours, want your lids to be smear-proof, crease-proof, smudge-proof, get yourself a tube or two of this primer. It's available in a handful of shades (some can even be worn alone as their own shadow) - I prefer the original sheer color that comes in the purple container - it blends perfectly and sets my eyelids up like a canvas....

Sonia Kashuk Eye Makeup Remover ($10)
This two-toned solution is gentle-as water, works as well as paint thinner and doesn't leave any sticky/oily residue behind. You give it a little shake to combine the layers and everything from mascara to waterproof liner is gone in a few swipes. Bonus - it's as good as Lancome (another brand of remover I love) but it's less than half the price. Find it at Target.

Michael Antonio shoes (from $25)
This is probably my favorite cheap shoe label. Er, affordable, without looking cheap. Stylish without being so trendy they date themselves. And there's something about this brand that makes the BEST blue colored shoes out there. Blue pumps, sandals, boots....I'm going through a phase where I consider turquoise a "neutral" color that goes with anything, and I LOVE a fun pair of bright, robins egg blue shoes. I own at least 4 pairs of Michael Antonios - they're a pretty good value. Well-constructed, easy on the eyes, INEXPENSIVE!

Physicians Formula Shimmer Strips ($13)
This kid has sensitive skin. There are probably only one or two brands of bronzer out there that won't cause me to break out in an itchy, pink rash. Good think these hypoallergenic Physicians Formula Shimmer Strips come in at least half a dozen colors, can be used for bronzer, blush, or eye shadow, and are drug-store priced. The color stays put all day, and the amount of shimmer is JUST right.

Machine denim (from $30)
I love cheap jeans. Styles change so often it's hard for me to pony up the cash for nicer stuff knowing they'll look dated within a year or so. Which is not to say I haven't caved and decided it sounded like a good idea to parade my spending around by way of recognizable back pocket designs that declare me a Seven girl or a Citizens fan or a Hudson sort of chick....I've done that. BUT, when it comes to the staples of my denim wardrobe I discovered these cheap-o Machine brand jeans that I absolutely LOVE. Most of them are pre-distressed with funky holes like these ones......

La Vanila Grapefruit perfume (from $18)
I've always wanted to have a signature scent. Growing up, my mom always smelled like Shalimar. My best girlfriend smelled like Clinque Happy. My sister found this great "Jade Blossom" fragrance that they've since discontinued, but it smelled "like her." I've never had a signature. This comes close. It's warm and creamy with citrus notes. I've found it's a great BALANCING scent to mix with others that need some mellowing. It lends a great vanilla note to other brighter, more fruity fragrances. I buy the travel-friendly roller ball and leave it in my purse at ALL times.

Lancome Cosmetic Brushes (from $20)
I'll admit, there are some things that just ought not be skimped on. Makeup brushes are one of those things. I may like budget moisturizer, budget foundation, the most affordable eyeshadows I can find and $7 mascara, BUT -- if a brush leaves bristles all over my face or feels anything like a pipe cleaner while I'm using it: it's headed straight to the trash. Er, wait - no, it's headed straight to that giant, multi-level tupperware cabinet thing in the hall closet where "things I don't like but might want in a pinch later, when all of my good stuff is eaten by the dog" go to live in perpetuity. Along those lines: I love Lancome brushes. They're soft, they last forever, they're the goods.

Make Up For Ever Lip Gloss (from $18)
A lot of ladies swear by Make Up For Ever foundation and primer. I'm sort of "meh" on that front - you can do just as well with most Revlon stuff these days. HOWEVER - when it comes to lip gloss, I'm with those ladies. This stuff is fantastic. It's a sheer cherry color that works great year-round AND (the best part) - it's minty! It's practically impossible to find minty lip gloss any more. They're all PASSION FRUIT and STRAWBERRY and other things that remind me of being 4 years old. This is fun because it makes your lips tingle, it tastes yummy, it stays on better than most glosses and it's a pretty, pretty, girlie color. Dig it.

Avocado Oil (prices vary)
So, my hair and skin are VERY dry. Constantly dry. I've started keeping avocado oil around because it works on both and smells nicer than olive oil. Rub a few dots on my cheeks in the winter before bed for good overnight moisture with no rash-inducing fragrances or weird parabens to behave like artificial hormones. I also like to add a drop or two to my palms, rub them together, and smooth it through the ends of my hair at night for some deep conditioning. Also works for massages, for taking off lip-stain and other tough-to-remove makeup, and -- in a pinch -- you can cook with it!

Cetaphil Moisturizer (from $8)
Okay, I can't smear oil on my face all the time. Cetaphil is the gentlest I've found, and I've spent almost " Creme de la Mer prices" on moisturizers in my life. Works well under makeup, goes on easily, has the nice pump bottle, price is hard to beat. It's good stuff. I was hesitant because the packaging looks so....utilitarian. BUT, my little aesthetic-enhancing "bathroom counter" trick is to fill up a pretty soap-dispenser with the lotion - easy-access, with an increased pretty-factor.

Slouchy Forever21 sweaters (from $12)
I own too many of these. I suppose it's because I've discovered these unstructured, loose-fitting, drapey sweaters are a great way to combat a fat day, still feel reasonably put-together, and the boat-neck-esque style on top showcase a part of me I actually like, even on a bad hair day: neck and shoulders. They're great with cropped skinny jeans and flip-flops on a comfy day, or some heels in the "evening." For all of those "evenings" when flip-flops aren't good enough? Ehh - I live in Seattle - they're always good enough.

World Market stemware (prices vary)
Once upon a time, I bought a box of 9 white wine glasses for less than $10 at World Market - that felt like a good deal (no, it's not Ross prices, but the quality of the glasses are so much better - delicate and dainty and infinitely more breakable, but so nice to hold). Either way, they're my go-to shop for all things stemware. It's fun to mix-and-match, and they're affordable enough to acquire in all different shapes and sizes.

NARS blush ($27)
So, every girl I know owns this blush in the Orgasm shade. It's probably Sephora's best-selling makeup product of all time. I went out on a limb and bought this in an electric, cotton candy pink shade called "Desire" instead. It looks SHOCKING in the compact but turns out looking just perfect on my cheeks - a little flushed, a little "just-came-in-from-outdoors" wind-blown, looks just nicely pinched-pink. Love it. Peachy colors tend to come out looking a touch too orange on my cool-toned complexion, so this one has just the right pink/blue undertone to match. My new favorite.

Nexxus Humectress conditioning treatment (from $8)
So, for awhile it was possible to buy a tube of Loving Care conditioner that was the thich, rich, intense equivalent of the tubes that come in a box of do-it-yourself hair color (and I ALWAYS do it myself). I love that conditioner. HOWEVER - they seem to have discontinued that. In that case, this tub of Nexxus is about as close as I can get. It does a pretty respectable job of detangling my frizzy, brow-beaten hair mess....and if I leave it on for about 10 minutes, it actually looks mostly shiny once dry. Which isn't saying much about the state of my hair, but this is about the best conditioner you can find at the average drug store/grocery store/non-salon. And it won't cost you Bumble and bumble prices. And the B&B stuff is no better, anyway.

Sea of Shoes.com
Okay, okay, you can't go buy this girl, but her fashion blog is my FAVORITE. She's gorgeous - love her fiery red hair and adorably impish face - she can wear the heck out of clothes and her site's photographer is a genius. Envy that this girl's only 22 or so and is getting nearly 100K hits a day on her site, seaofshoes.com. She makes me want to try bangs again. Sort of. If they looked as nice as hers. Maybe.

With that - Happy Fourth!

Kate Middleton (and husband....what's his name?) is in Canada right now, wearing a fascinator with a maple leaf on it. Sort of wish they'd made it stateside for the Holiday - would have loved to see her try to work stars and stripes into some prim-looking, structured little dress with her requisite almond-toe pumps.

May I put LinkedIn in its place, please?

2011-06-23T10:54:00.000-07:00

Huh.

Who knew that in the competitive social media landscape, LinkedIn was the equivalent of the aloof cheerleader in high school who claimed that people who didn't like her were "just jealous."

At least that's how it appears when The Atlantic Wire releases an articl e claiming that women just don't "get" LinkedIn. They go one further and purport that we're less "savvy" at social networking than men.

Full disclosure: The professional networking site itself defines "savvy" in a rather unusual way -- "a ratio of two things: 1) the ratio of one-way connections that men have to connections that women have, and 2) the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members. We label an industry as “female savvy” when, for example, 45% of the industry is female and where women have 70% of the connections. A perfectly neutral industry is one in which the % of females in the industry is equal to the % of connections that women have in the industry."

Okaaaaay.

Now, I'd be taking this declaration more seriously if the Pew Research Center had themselves deemed women less fluent in corporate social-professional networking, but this is the scorned company itself declaring that because fewer women USE the site, it must naturally follow that they don't UNDERSTAND the site.

Bit of a jump from Observation A to Insult B, I'd say, particularly given that the same study indicates that "As with the use of most social media, SNS users are disproportionately female (56%). Women also comprise the majority of email users (52% women), users of instant message (55%), bloggers (54%), and those who use a photo sharing service (58%)." Soooo, we use electronic forms of communication in greater proportion than men, but when it comes to THIS PARTICULAR SITE, we're just dumbfounded as to how to make it work for us. Couldn't possibly be that we don't like the product.

Actually, the study itself, "Social networking sites and our lives: how people's trust, personal relationships, and civic and political involvement are connected to their use of social networking sites and other technologies" is a fascinating read. The Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project took a look at our use of social networking sites to investigate how our participation relates to our "varying social behaviors and attitudes." The study actually pointed toward an interesting discovery: that we're MORE intimately connected with one another now that we're all up in each other's business on the webernets.

Here's my perspective on the LinkedIn disparity -- it's very similar to the Wikipedia gender disparity (that is, the fact that most creators of Wikipedia content are male) which was explained very well by Kevin Drum of Mother Jones:

"The gender disparity is real. But I suspect the reason has less to do with women having trouble asserting their opinions and more to do with the prevalence of obsessive, Aspergers-ish behavior among men. After all, why would anyone spend endless hours researching, writing and editing a Wikipedia post for free about either The Simpsons or Mexican feminist writers? I think that "having an opinion on the subject" is far too pale a description of why people do or don't do this. You need to be obsessed. You need to really care about the minutia of the subject and whether it's presented in exactly the right way. And you need to care about this in a forum with no professional prestige. You're really, truly doing it just for the sake of the thing itself. I've long been convinced that this tendency toward obsession is one of the key differences between men and women. I don't know what causes it. I don't know if it helped primitive men kill more mastodons during the late Pleistocene."

Aha. In that case, it would make this observation within another Atlantic Wire article that much more accurate. "Given that LinkedIn is the only specifically business- and career-oriented site on the list, are these numbers a reflection of the real world's male-dominanted hierarchies, slipping in to pixelated form? Or is it just that men are more into uploading resumes and feeling important on the Internet? We're kind of leaning to the latter..."

Aha. And there it is: professional accomplishment versus relationship-building, one of those age-old, hallmark gender differences.

I'll be frank - I log into LinkedIn only occasionally; typically after a rough week at work when I want to touch up my resume and dip my toe into the job prospecting pool. Immediately following that, I'll head over to Facebook to cruise through pictures of So-and-so's anniversary weekend or engagement photos or baby pictures or whatever - because it takes my mind OFF of the work situation and places it back in more comfortable, people-oriented territory.

LinkedIn tends to reduce its users to a series of positions they've held, to a series of colleagues who's work they recommend, to organizations who's board they chair. Reduces them to their resumes. And perhaps, for men who (to generalize) tend to extract a greater sense of worth from accomplishment than from relationship, the cooler, hands-off nature that comparing resume size on LinkedIn provides is, inherently, more attractive to men.

And it's not that we don't "get it."

It's that we don't like it.

At least not in our spare time. Not for fun.

Hide your....Cindy Crawford lookalikes. Canalooney is dunzo.

2011-06-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

And lo, the day was finally upon us.

Somewhere in the gorgeous Italian countryside, a slightly horse-faced "model" with the most magnificent backside ever to grace a brazillian-cut bikini is crying "shoulda kept her mouth shut about that marriage thing" tears into a very expensive pillow that probably still smells like George Clooney's commitment phobia. I suspect.

She's now part of the club. The Club of Perky Brunette Arm Candy Not Allowed To Admit They'd Hoped To Marry George Clooney." There are a handful of them.

Makes me wonder - why the international hangup with whether or not this guy puts a ring on a girl's finger? Why do we care if he's settled down, monogamous and reproducing? Nationally, culturally, we can't fathom someone successfully high-profile NOT placing marriage and children at the top of their priorities. And, on the flip side, what woman (in her right mind, not in her Elaborate Fantasy Mind) would actually want to be shackled to this guy for the long haul, anyway? The guy's married to his work -- and it's not just films; he's heavily invested in charity/ambassadorial work in the Sudan. It's enough to keep the guy busy. Until Darfur looks like the Garden of Eden, there will always be something more important to Cloons than picking out the right diamond and running around to the OBGYN appointments.

Oh, gee look -- I was right. He said it himself in an excerpt from "The Daily Mail."

‘I tried marriage and it didn’t work. I have had long relationships with women and they get bored with me working all the time. My fear is that I would make a lousy husband and I don’t want to put myself, or anyone else, through the pain of finding out. If I was my girlfriend, I wouldn’t put up with me for very long.’

See, for all of the fantasies this guy inspires in a surprisingly (confoundedly) large percentage of American imaginations, he'd be one heck of a disappointment in real life. And he's very up front about this. SO, to the small army of strikingly similar-looking, caramel-haired women left in his marriageless wake: you can't say you weren't warned. And make no mistake about it, you WON'T be "the one who changes his mind." And beginning a relationship with any such delusions pretty much puts an expiration date on the fantasy relationship (no matter how amazing your ass looks. Ahem).

And while we're analyzing what Elisabetta did wrong - how about this comment made recently to an Italian news source:

‘I could never be with someone who every time he opens his mouth says he doesn’t want a child with me or to marry me...My boyfriend has not given an interview on his private life since 1999 – everything that you read is just a rehash of stuff that has been written in the past...My second job at the moment seems to be maid of honour. For the time being that’s how it is, but I’m not putting any time limits...Who knows what will happen? I am a firm believer in marriage, in the future I will be married, but for the time being I am happy as I am. I don’t need anything to confirm how happy I am.’

Er - uh...got it.

She drank her own Kool-Aid.

She believed the reports that she might finally be "the one" to squeeze the Happily Ever After out of the most publicly confirmed bachelor we've seen in years. Which makes the rest of us average folks up here in the cheap seats chuckle deliriously - we saw it coming - was she so secure up in her Lake Como tower that she thought she could start dropping hints to international media outlets and actually prove the rest of us wrong?

Apparently.

Note to the next cocktail waitress or wannabe actress or international swimwear model out there: stay young and pretty and don't kid yourself: he's not gonna marry you, sweetheart. Just ask any of these ladies:

Also: I, for one, will not be tumbling all over myself to make Lake Como my next vacation spot, hoping that I (in all of my young, perky auburn-haired beauty) might be the next one to take a ride on Clooney's motorcycle. I guess having an upper lip is sort of up there on my list of requirements.........

Admission: I ADORE "The Voice."

2011-06-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Yeah, if you'd have told me a few months ago that I'd be one of those Reality Singing Competition Fangirls...I'd have punched you in the teeth. But then, if you'd told me a few months ago that I'd own three pairs of white jeans and be pairing blazers with them in earnest, I'd also probably have punched you in the teeth. So, maybe that means when I swear I'll "NEVER" do something or watch something or wear something, it's basically more like a mild statement of distaste and a worn out attitude toward American Idol, from which all other obnoxious talent television has been spawned. I watched the first season of American Idol - that's it. No "Dancing With the Stars," no "So You Think You Can Dance," no "America's Got Talent" (grammar - ugh!). Nope. Not even those a capella barbershop singing contests hosted by ex Boy Band wash-ups. At least not of my own free will.

I hate those shows.

Previously, the fanatics that wanted to SQUEAL about them on Facebook or Twitter (or in actual conversation -- yes, I still occasionally have those) were IRKSOME at best, blocked from feeds at worst.

Yeah, I'm that fickle. Ditto people who post too many things about sports championships or how miserable their lives are. Apparently I use social media for my own glee and amusement and have a sort of zero tolerance policy for divergent interests. Sad truth. There's an entire cadre of articles out there talking about the fact that our preferences (and customized sidebar ads and anticipatory Google searches, etc) are shrinking our world view and creating sheltered little bigots out of us...and I think, to a slight extent, I can see that manifested in my own webernet lifestyle. You mean there's a world out there beyond discount designer overstock sales and shoe websites???? How long before we're never even exposed to things that don't match our browsing/posting/searching/THINKING habits? The more I think about how easily that could happen, the spookier the webernets become.

But what's THAT got to do with "The Voice?"

N-O-T-H-I-N-G.

Except that I broadened my horizons, set aside my Singing Show Reluctance a few months ago and absolutely fell in love with "The Voice."

Yeah, that show where Christina Aguilera shows up and seems drunk and flashes parts of herself we shouldn't see unless we call her mommy and depend on those giant silicone globes for food. If you catch my drift. Seriously, I make at least one comment per episode to the effect of "Look at those things! Ohmygoodness -- it's like they're screaming for mercy! Make it stop!" And then I force Mr Wonderful to stare at them, too, and agree with me. "Aren't they scary? Doesn't it look like that bustier thing HURTS? Do they freak you out?????" And he'll kindly oblige, admit her outfits are sort of obscene, decides she looks generally inappropriate and we can go back to wondering why the Cee Lo wears sunglasses the entire time.

My theory: ALL of the judges are loaded on something. The Giant That Is Blake Shelton admitted as much last night. Something like, "It's not just water in my glass."As the show goes on, the judges get more and more punchy, the one-liners make less and less sense, the jabs between each other seem increasingly confusing. And that's part of what makes the show fun. There's great singing, some fun, incoherent "competition" between the judges, we get to see glimpses of famous pop star personalities, get attached to the competitors - it's fun.

And then I read THIS article on Mashable that brought attention to just how interactive the show aims to be for viewers. Here's a snippet:

The Voice is about a journey, and Yaron says the NBC.com homepage has been focusing on “24/7 storytelling and continuing all of the reality stories and experiences of the artists and the coaches and the rivalries between them.” By cultivating the story online and providing a look behind the scenes, The Voice is becoming more than just a weekly television show — it’s nonstop entertainment online, complemented by an hour or two of live performances every week.

“The artists are not sequestered, they’re encouraged to talk about the show as much as they can,” Haislip says. “Regardless of how they do on the show, they still will come out of the competition with something that is going to help them in the future, and they’re all getting a huge leap ahead of the competition.”

That “something” Haislip refers to is digital savvy and a strong fanbase. From the minute they landed in LA for blind auditions, artists were given training in blogging and Facebook Pages and handed Samsung Galaxy Tabs and cameras to document everything from team dinners to rehearsals with photo and video. Each artist has his own hub on the site that links to a blog, Facebook, Twitter, video and photos — viewers really have the opportunity to be heavily invested in the show and the artists, and that translates to better ratings and higher engagement. Giving the artists free reign has let their personalities flourish — Beverly McClellan has started a fake talk show called, “What’s Up With That?” and Jared Blake captured his new ink session on video.

“This is something that every other reality show has kind of shied away from, but we feel really strongly about it,” says Yaron. “We are giving the artists the same platform that real musicians have. We’re training them and mirroring the new ways in which the music industry works. We’re giving them the tools to be the next Lady Gaga. It will help them stay in the competition and become successful music stars. We felt that it was time for a reality show to do that.”

I LOVE that. I love that the show is not grooming contestants to be better COMPETITORS, but to be viable, successful artists who have cultivated a strong, involved, interactive fan base BEFORE they even hit the studios, before they've even won the competition. That's smart.

Of course, it's also gimmicky, and yes, they do dedicate time during each episode to lots of Tweet babble and patting themselves on the back for the fact that they're trending world wide, BUT, the fact that they've introduced social media and iTunes into the voting process is pretty convenient. It treats the competitors on the show like legitimate recording artists straight out of the gate. Makes sense.

So, onto the actual SINGING part of the show.

Here's the thing: from the very first audition episodes, I LOVED all of the would-be competitors. Part of that stems from the fact that the producers hand-selected many of the competitors, most of whom had already established themselves as artists, but in a smaller, less "NATIONAL TELEVISION SHOW" sort of context. Some had small recording contracts, some were backup singers, some traveled around with their bands - the level of talent was MUCH higher than American Idol straight out of the gate. And rather than subjecting us viewers to hours and hours of REALLY LAME audition episodes, they paraded competent singers up on the stage, weeded out the few that didn't appeal to the coaches, and hit the ground running with really strong performances from REALLY likeable competitors.

They weren't all polished and pretty, but they all have compelling personal stories, amazing talent and an immediately likeable..."watchability" that meant I was always bummed when the episode was over.

Also working in The Voice's favor: the format from episode to episode was different. A few audition rounds, a few "battle" rounds that whittled the field down by half and left the coaches to pick the stronger of two members of their teams after the team members competed against one another in coach-selected duets. The chemistry between the contestants was great. The song choices have tended to be more fun and current than a lot of what I remember sitting through during American Idol. The spirit of the judges tends to be encouraging; there are no snarky Cowell-esque sycophants out to tear anyone down, the coaches seem genuinely excited to see their teams succeed - it's great.

That said: I have some favorites. AND, for a little sample, I've included videos of their live performances over the past week along with the original songs they covered; in both cases, I think The Voice competitors created stronger renditions of the songs than the original artists. These are some skilled performers. Different styles, different genres, different demographics they probably appeal to, but I think they're both marketable and feel like they'd have solid careers ahead of them.

So - enjoy.

Vicci Martinez - Jolene:

Dolly Parton - Jolene:

Dia Frampton - Heartless:

Kanye - Heartless:

I totally had this on repeat in the car this morning. Don't judge. Wait til the 4:50 mark and get the giggles instead.

2011-06-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, today's reading comes with instructions.

1: Listen to the ABBA song.
2: (All the way to the end).
3: Come back and read the rest of this.

I'll wait.

See, you can enjoy some dorky pictures of the lovely Agnetha Faltskog while you listen.

So. Are you in a good mood yet? Because Mr Wonderful and I had a conversation this weekend while fixing dinner that went something like this:

"It's impossible to listen to ABBA and not be in a good mood."

"Yeah, if you listen to an ABBA album and aren't in a good mood afterward, you should probably just commit suicide -- "

"-- And you're actually probably a sociopath."

Which, I think, is completely true.

Also true: In my nearly dozen years of commutes to work, I've never ended up in a fit of hysterical giggles until this morning, when I put "Chiquitita" on repeat during my drive. Not Waterloo, not SOS, not Mamma Mia. None of those make me giggle as much as the very precise pronunciation of "Chi-qui-tee-taaaah" over and over again.

I'm sorry, you make it to the end, to the 4:50 mark when the song gets so damn JUBILANT and it's impossible not to enjoy Monday morning. It's shrill, corny, unadulterated FUN. Just when you think the song is done, that hokey piano comes back with this carnival ride-esque vigor that just had me in stitches. Like, eight times in a row. I couldn't stop myself.

Anyway.

Here: just to give you a little relief from the fact that I gushed about ABBA for a page, let's do a little "Duchess of Issa" (look it up) outfit assessment.

I'll admit: I adore this girl's style. She's gorgeous. She's got amazing legs. She's a bit thin these days (envy, envy), which she wears well, but it makes clothes fit a little less....delicately. This gig here: needs a belt. The boxy jacket with the swooshy skirt has me confused, but the least she could do was add a belt to break up all of the white. And maybe a brightly colored clutch.

There, we'll go out on that note.

Pardon me while I get totally whiny and self-obsessed. Or, just skip this post.

2011-06-02T14:55:00.000-07:00

(yes, I am permitted a few sentences of sheer, unadulterated, sickeningly self-conscious WHINING. Happy Thursday).

I got on the scale this morning.

Heh. Heh. Heh. (Or, Wah Waaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh, as the case may be.)

I know, I know, it's asking for discouragement, inviting self-loathing, cause for derision.... Man, is it ever.

Full disclosure: I'm both vain and insecure AND -- ordinarily -- only hop on the scale when I feel like I've dropped a few pounds - to re-affirm myself or something. I learned ten years ago that attaching a number to a "yikes, I feel jiggly and bloated" morning is a sure-fire way to generate SERIOUS DISGUST. And when you've had twelve successive months of "yikes, I feel jiggly and bloated, but man was that beer tasty" mornings, about the worst thing you could do is "check to make sure the batteries on the scale still work."

Yeah....they still work.

Cue the discouragement, self-loathing, derision and serious disgust. The validation that, "no, you don't just FEEL like a heftier version of yourself these days, kiddo. You ARE."

I could put a positive spin on this and say, "Hey, I now weigh what I did in high school!" Er, except my high school number was a few bags of sugar MORE than I've weighed in 10 years.

Nothing will send you running back to the Americanos and banishing the lattes like a morning at the cusp of swimsuit season when you look at the scale and think, "hmmm - I've only ever been THAT number before when I hopped on here WHILE HOLDING MY PURSE."

I've heard this is a "natural part of getting older." The whole "metabolism slows," and "jiggle finds new places to call home," and all that jazz is simply to be expected. Welcome to grown-up-hood.

Well, I'm a week from 3-0 and lemme tell ya: these hips are definitely committed to getting older. In fact, they've blazed a trail straight ahead to 46 or so without my permission.

So it's a strange, new world. A world of "huh. there are little rolls of blubber at the top of this bra thing. How bout that!" And "Hmmm! When I wear this cute little waist-cinching belt, now there's a little puddle of TUMMY that plops out under the belt. Wow!"

It's pretty much like I've become Amy Adams in "Enchanted" and I'm twirling and marveling my way through a gloriously baffling new world in which I hardly recognize myself when prancing around in my undies, and am not quite sure what to make of all of this. Like I've fallen out of the mythical land of "Flat Tummy And Thin Upper Arms" and into the harsh reality of "Why Does That Keep Rippling After I've Stopped Moving???"

Maybe I just have to get used to the fact that as a woman of a child-bearing age who sits at a desk all day, does nothing that could be called physical activity (unless re-curling my eyelashes is exercise) and loves her glass or two of wine in the evening, I'm just finally unable to skirt the fact that I'll be wearing that behavior on my tummy. Cheeks. Hips. Knees. You name it. AND, I could further decide that this is to my reproductive advantage - that with some extra meat on the bones, it's biology's way of telling me I'm in good shape to support a little bundle of joy one of these days.

But the inalienable truth here: it's hard when you don't feel pretty. When you'd rather hide yourself under things than appreciate yourself in them. When your primary goal is "conceal, conceal, conceal." When your go-to Fat Jeans are much, much, much too tight and you're probably weeks of a liquid diet (or a good flu) away from fitting into them even snugly. When you pass your reflection in a mirror or window and think...."wow, I used to love seeing my reflection...now.....well - is that REALLY how I look to everyone else?"

At any rate: this isn't a plea for sympathy - it's this sort of compulsive need to just get the complaining out of my system. Whine about it. Admit that I'm not happy about it. Own up to it. Recognize that I'll want to take pictures of myself and some friends at a little birthday shindig next week and thinking, "ew, but there are so many angles I don't like these days - can we just hide me behind a couch or something?" And that's new to me.

So, we'll just call this The Day I Threw Up My Hands and said "Enough already! We're losin those pounds and we're losing em NOW."

Because I would like for 30 to be the advent of the time of my life during which I'm actually in better shape. Would like this new decade to mark the beginning of taking BETTER care of myself, not resting on the doughy laurels of "happy and in love" as though that were some excuse I could use for the next 50 years of my life.

To get all dorky about it: Goodbye Bra Bulge. Goodbye lumpy tummy. Goodbye saddlebags. Goodbye chipmunk cheeks. Goodbye muffin top. You're a pain in my ever-expanding, rather dimply ass and I think it's best we not be friends.

SO. THERE.

(Oh - but surprisingly bigger boobs: you can stick around. I like you well enough.)

If you only read one (okay, THREE) books this year......

2011-06-01T11:51:00.000-07:00

I'm haunted. Truly. And Mr Wonderful (who, incidentally, became something of a "book widower" this weekend) is probably particularly glad I've finished reading these.

Because I COULD NOT PUT THEM DOWN.

A little back story. Started reading about that Jennifer Lawrence actress being cast in a film version of some book called "The Hunger Games" slated to be released about a year from now. This casting tripped an inordinate amount of press (like, more than "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" when its movie adaptation was announced). More people signed on. I started seeing names like Stanley Tucci. Donald Sutherland. Woody Harrelson. Elizabeth Banks. Wes Bentley. Lenny Kravitz. Liam Hemsworth.

"What the heck is this gig even about?" was my prevailing thought. "And why is it getting so much tabloid attention????"

Ah, apparently it's a "young adult" novel that is "very popular."

In my mind, that puts these books in the company of "Twilight" and makes them, therefore, "particularly toxic."

BUT, I'm curious. Because I read somewhere that Suzanne Collins, author of "The Hunger Games" was thrilled with the casting of Jennifer Lawrence. And any time a novelist gets this excited about some relative newcomer having the chops to tackle their beloved main character: I get a liiiiiiiiiiiiittle curious.

Cue Amazon, at this point. Sent a free sample of "The Hunger Games" to the Kindle.

Became promptly hooked.

HOOKED.

Hooked, hooked, hooked.

(er, while giving myself the side-eye, thinking "Um, but this is a Young Adult Novel I'd Assumed Was In League With Twilight." Because that's what 12-20 year-olds like these days, right? Poorly written fluff about vampires and warewolves filled with clammy, undead make-out sessions between centuries-old, sparkly spooks and the high school-aged object of their undead affection? And junior high girls get all swoon-ee and stand-in-line-overnight-waiting-for-movie-tickets crazy and a couple of reluctant, relatively unknown actors get catapulted to global super-stardom?)

BUT, let's be ABSOLUTELY clear: Suzanne Collins' MASTERPIECE trilogy ought NEVER to be associated with Twilight in any way, shape, or form.

So there's the back story.

Then there's that small matter of my general reluctance to read anything that's so massively, commercially successful it makes an extreme minority of those who avoid it. Think Dan Brown. Jonathan Franzen. Harry Potter. Eat, Pray, Love. Books about hobbits. And yes, Dragon Tattoos. I have this sort of perverse aversion to those "must reads." And suddenly, it seems these Hunger Games books are EVERYWHERE, and there I am, curled up on the weekend, reading a book a day, wandering voraciously around the weekend vacation cabin with my kindle held aloft, praying to the 3G gods for just a SINGLE BAR OF COVERAGE so that I could download the next in the series.

Worse (or better, take your pick): I was actually thinking about the characters for the hours in between. When I wasn't reading, I was desperately hoping that Collins would get it right and deliver her characters into the happy ending I wanted. They DESERVED that much. Her characters are real enough, believable enough, loveable enough, and frustrating enough that you feared (since they, clearly, have a mind of their own outside of the confines of the page) that they might just screw up their own happy ending.

Really, these read like a single, multi-volume opus more than three standalone novels. Because, for instance, reading only "The Hunger Games" without following up with the other two would sort of be like eating the chocolate off of the outside of a peanut butter cup. Nice, tasty, melty. But not as satisfying as scarfing down the whole thing. Or tossing it in the blender with girl scout cookies and Butterfingers and ice cream and making your own blizzard. Like that.

I won't give the ending away. But I will say that about 10 pages from the end of the third book, I had braced for supreme disappointment, and would have been ready to heave the Kindle at the dog (or whomever) had she gone for the easy out. THANKFULLY, Collins is smart enough to know that she's written some of the most loveable, flawed, READABLE characters in contemporary literature, and to rob her readers of the ending we ALL want would have been -- truly -- as cruel as the Hunger Games themselves. But she wasn't above leaving us in suspense.

How about a synopsis?

In their entirety, the books are a sort of social commentary on war -- the way war creates monsters of men and heroes of children (er - that's actually sort of a poetic way to put it. Way to be, Heather).

They're set at some point in the future - a future in which America proper no longer exists, in which war has left the country ruled by a wealthy capitol city, and the rest of the land is divided into twelve isolated "districts." To remind these districts that they're under the sovereign fist of the capitol, each district must send two "tributes" to participate in a nationally televised, gladiator-style death match every year. The tributes are young - between the ages of 12 and 18. They're minimally trained. Only one may come out alive.

So, we follow the heroine, Katniss Everdeen (yeah, I know. Collins had fun with the names) as she voluntarily takes her little sister's place as her district's representative in the games. We're in the arena with her and 23 other reluctant killing machines as they form alliances and do their best to stay alive. She's under the watchful protection of her district's other tribute, a boy who's been hopelessly in love with our little heroine since they were kids.

That's the first book. The other two follow Katniss through the Games' aftermath as the country is plunged into another war.

Sure, there's the sort of familiar "underdogs rally against oppression and the cannibalism of rampant capitalism" less-is-more moral running throughout. There's the "war hurts everyone, especially our youth" message wound in there. There's the question of "is there a difference between doing a good thing for a bad reason or a bad thing for a good reason" dilemma that resurfaces plenty of times. We see the ills of wasteful consumerism, of unchecked greed and sloth and any other number of deadly sins. We have crooked politicians and saviors with murky motives and the stuff that good page-to-screen stories are made of.

AND, yes, there's the sweet little love triangle that knits most of it together.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that these books should be standard reading material in high schools. There's enough blood and guts to hold a kid's attention. There's enough good, clean puppy love to hook the day dreamers, and, under that, about every social issue under the sun gets tackled in one of these three books. Family versus country. The value (or cost) of lies. The price of war. The moral quandaries of leadership. Lots of good stuff.

But, in the end, just REALLY, really, really, particularly, beautifully well-drawn characters - characters who would make excellent role models for our kids. Characters who seem so real, you're left rather hollow and lonely and desperate for more once you finish the books. Sort of like that empty feeling after the holidays, when the family has packed up and gone and the house feels a little too quiet and you miss having all of those people around. A little bit like that.

With a nice, happily-ever-after ending that Collins spent all three volumes nursing along the readers' desire for.

Perfectly written. Best books I've read in years.

And now that I've read them, Mr Wonderful can have me back.

(PS - I certainly hope this Moviefone article comes true and these movies WIPE THE FLIPPIN FLOOR with those Twilight wimps. Over and out.)

(PPS - Team Peeta.)

Let's focus on what's REALLY important today. FAST FIVE - !!!!!

2011-04-29T10:44:00.000-07:00

Hey, look at that! I'm a girl under the age of 102 and I'm capable of thinking of something other than The Big, Fat, British Wedding!

Like, uh, A MOVIE WITH LOTS OF GIANT, TATTOOED, BALD MEN. Happy "Fast Five" day, ya'll.

Bet you didn't know that so far, the fifth installment in the longest-running exercise in hyper-manly sexual tension is also:

"the best-ever debut for a Universal title and the biggest for the action franchise yet."

At least that's the word from The Hollywood Reporter, which also mentions that the film has already grossed $3.7 million from it's midnight release yesterday and is expected to draw the year's biggest opening to date.Oh - and its opened in several countries overseas and is already number one everywhere it's playing.

Because this franchise is flippin awesome.

NPR has their own, understated way of acknowledging its flippin awesomeness, too. They've declared it "A progressive force" in American cinema.

Got that? The article is pretty good, actually, drawing comparisons between this man-heavy metal-fest and more racial-centric flicks like "The Blind Side." By this guy's approximation, the Fast and Furious crew are much more progressive. Yep.

Paul Walker, Vin Diesel, Tyrese, Ludacris and Assorted Hot Chicks are obliterating racial barriers in ways that other, "better" films can only dream of doing. A film critic from the Boston Globe chatted with NPR's Michele Norris yesterday and put it this way: "Basically it promotes race as this very normal thing," Morris tells NPR's Michele Norris. "Around these cars are these very different types of people, but it's not the subject of the movie like it is in most Hollywood movies. Race is just a matter of fact." It "...has just sort of exploded into such a thing in these movies that it almost doesn't even matter." Of producer and star Vin Diesel he says, "And I think one of the things he wants to try to do with these movies — whether consciously or not — in achieving that effect is to sort of eliminate race as a point of conflict and use race as a sort of point of normalcy, which I think is a really revolutionary thing to be able to try to do and achieve."

AND, he also acknowledged the fact that, while women in the Fast and Furious movies may be primarily one-dimensional bikini models, he points out that, frankly, the dudes are, too. It's not just shallow, hard-bodied women in various states of trendy undress: it's shallow, hard-bodied men in various states of tattooed undress. Equal opportunity shallow.

Because these movies are as good as it gets.

You know, for those of us who LOVE really awkward dialogue and testosterone and punching and bald guys in wife beaters and exploding and loud cars making really loud car noises and the gratuitousness of bad hip-hop soundtracks. Which I happen to love.

So, happy Fast Five Day.

Now, go forth and enjoy the best movie of the year. The Rock's in it, too. You know, in case he makes the difference between "nah, I'm not into that crap" and "oh, well, fine, I'm sorta into that crap."

They must be kidding. Tell me they're kidding.

2011-04-28T15:45:00.000-07:00

Okay, sorry - let's just get a few things out of the way.

First: I will NOT be dragging my pretty little buns outta bed at 3am to watch The Royal Brouhaha. There's not enough coffee in the world. And in the age of You Tube, why should I have to? AND, actually, I don't even want to. I want to oogle pictures of her hair and dress after the fact, I want to get the E! Fashion Police take on her getup, I want to be done with it. Because, sorry, have you SEEN the "Royal Wedding Program?" that they just released to us 'plebs? Wedding's gonna be about 3 years long. I'll be having babies of my own before that ceremony concludes. But anyway.

Next: I do think Kate Middleton is highly adorable. I have Kate Thigh Envy. She's svelte and pretty and photogenic and well-dressed and charming. Good for her. Don't envy her the lifestyle she's marrying into, don't envy her the in-laws, but I definitely envy her wardrobe. And her thick, shiny hair. Speaking of hair:

Third: William. Dude. Cut the hair, bro. Shave that straight off. It's embarrassing us. They've taken to cropping your head in important pictures to hide the ookiness of What's Left of It. . SHAVE. IT. OFF.

Now that we've categorized my attitudes about The Wedding, let's get to the good stuff, shall we?

Like the article in the Christian Science Monitor (yes, that) which suggests that The Royal Brouhaha is "hurting marriage in the US." They're being earnest. The article cites lavish reality television programs and events like the pending Will and Kate snoozefest as being primarily responsible for fostering an unrealistic ideal within women that their wedding must be on par with The Royals, and, when we realize this just isn't within our budget: WE CALL THE WHOLE THING OFF.

A woman actually wrote the article (which I find rather hard to believe), but that's neither here nor there. The CEO of the rather tacky bridal search engine website JustWeddings says this:

“We are in an age of reality television, particularly including lavish Hollywood-type weddings, such as those on “Real Housewives,” “The Bachelor,” and “The Royal Wedding." The amount of reality television portraying the “perfect” wedding (with an unaffordable price tag) is one of the biggest causes for the drop in marriages,” Some couples, she suggests, are “not even getting married, and using the $30,000 toward their living, whether they buy a home in the down economy or rent."

Sooooo, if we can't have a wedding like something out of an over-produced reality show, we pout, whine, feel sorry for ourselves, and jip ourselves out of it entirely? Show me that girl. Show me the girl who says, "If I can't have everything monogrammed and be dripping with real diamonds, a Vera Wang gown and bridal Louboutins, I won't get married. I'll just buy a stupid house for my pitiful fiance and myself."

Riiiight.

No, we ladies say "screw it, we'll buy a David's Bridal dress, we'll make our own invitations, we'll figure out how to create our own antiqued votive holders with spray paint and craft supplies, we'll go for cheaper wine but lots of it, and we'll have the time of our lives."

Really.

My personal bias against the trappings of "show pony" weddings runs deep, sure. I've been to enough weddings to know that the silly centerpieces and the floral arrangements and the save-the-date cards and the bridesmaids' dresses are totally lost on all of the guests and they just come to see the bride walk down the aisle, hear the vows, get weepy at how lovely it all is, watch the couple kiss, then hit the champagne and party for a few hours. That's the reality of weddings. The lavish Royal Treatment is totally for the sake of the bride, so that she can have that smug sense of self-satisfaction when she throws away all of those centerpieces, thinking, "I'm really glad my husband's great aunt liked these. Now my marriage will be a success."

Please.

Anyway - if the Christian Science Monitor thinks that watching some Brits get married at 4am will ruin a generation of women's willingness to get married in a setting that's anything other than Disney-Perfect, they've got a thing or two to learn.

Do we still want to look like a princess when we walk down the aisle? Sure - we want to look red carpet stunning for the most photographed day of our lives, but I've not met ONE woman who says, "You know, unless I can afford Lake Como and a 100 grand budget, I'm really not interested in saying 'I do.' How 'bout you, honey?"

The Royal Wedding isn't ruining anything. Except for that well-guarded secret of who designed Kate's gown. I am curious to see that dress........

I have a plan. But in my plan, there will be no bare-chested men in blouses with bad, shaggy hair.

2011-04-26T11:20:00.000-07:00

Riiiiiiiiiight.

Er, no, I haven't written, nor will I ever write something called "Freesia Fantasy." AND I'll be darned if I write a single scene where a guy with Mary Lou Retton hair and a billowy man-blouse ever drags his intended beloved out into a field that matches her gown in order to flex his traps and caress her in the most neck-twistingly uncomfortable position imaginable. It's just tacky. HOWEVER - romance novel genre, prepare thyself: Heather Adair has decided to dominate the living daylights out of you.

In the least bodice-ripper context imaginable.

Because I just don't see myself dressing my heroine up in anything that could be construed as having a bodice that could be ripped in the first place. Commonplace. Pedestrian. Average. And I don't know the first thing about petticoats.

The historical romance marketplace is pretty well saturated. I'll leave the Scottish lords and the woefully willful mail-order brides to the writers who get excited about kilts and corsets and silk stockings and raven-maned stallion dudes. I've read those. The Scottish lord isn't looking for love, but damn if he didn't stumble across a brunette with a fiery spirit who just happened to have lost her mare in his fancy Scottish swamp. He promptly falls in love with her. Pardon - he becomes promptly consumed with blazing lust and an irrational desire to POSSESS her. And her fiery spirit. And her roguish, unconventional desire NOT to marry the old, rich guy who lives in the next manor over and is the sworn enemy of Scottish lord.

I'll let him pull her hairpins out with his teeth, I just don't see myself writing Kilt Lit.

Which is not to say that we're not left with plenty of story lines to mine in my quest to become a multimillionaire by writing the sort of cotton candy, beach fluff you can tear through in 134 minutes flat while working on your tan. It's a goldmine. And I'm itching to pan for gold.

Check these stats: the Amazon Kindle store has, as of this moment, 930,959 titles available for wireless delivery. 17,464 of those titles are literary fiction. 15,311 of those are sci-fi, 35,768 are mysteries or thrillers, and 46,765 are ROMANCE. Fabio is KILLING the other genres in terms of selection. Which, I can only assume, mirrors demand on one level or another, or they wouldn't be publishing the heck out of them.

Cue Heather Adair's entrance.

The key to my success here lies in the fact that I don't approach this genre with the same sense of trepidation I approach serious, literary fiction. My novel-in-progress (er, the one that's been in progress for YEARS now) is slightly more serious fiction. It's my Jeffrey Lent tribute piece. My multi-generational family saga that dares not to progress chronologically. My heart and soul are tied up in that novel. Which makes every step I take toward its ultimate publishing culmination something like life or death. STRESS.

A fluffy little romance piece meant to help me learn the ropes of the publishing industry (and wipe the floor with the competition) is motivating, rather than flipping intimidating.

So that's where I'll make my entrance. The not-so-scary genre. Where pulses quicken with that first meeting of lips, and predictable characters burn longingly for the lightest brush of their lover's fingers on their cheek.

Seriously.

Mark my words - give me a few weeks to crank out a draft and I'll be sending query letters all over God's Green Publishing Earth. Countdown starts...NOW.

Dude. I feel her pain. And other boring Friday stuff.

2011-04-15T11:40:00.000-07:00

If you knew my super-secret blogger password and could sneak in and check out my "posts-in-progress" you'd be like, "uhhhhhh - she's got a lot of unfinished shiz about makeup."

Yes, thank you. Yes I do.

Because I keep starting these complete cop-out posts that are basically "oooh, surveys I found online about what dooooofus men think about chicks and makeup" and "oooh, NARS products that I want" and "ooh, another study - this one links lipstick sales with larger economic trends."

"Oooh."

It's asinine.

So what do I do instead?

Find an article where Jen Particularly Boring Aniston whines about hating her hair cut and feeling like a soccer mom and I think, "Solid. I can totally get behind that brand of ire. I feel her."

Instead of being pleased with her new chin-length bob, she’s been telling pals she feels like a “dowdy-looking soccer mom”!

“Jen feels the new cut is a mistake,” an insider divulged. “She was promised by her stylist that the new haircut would make her look younger, but she thinks it has the opposite effect.”

While those close to the 42-year-old actress keep telling her how cute the new cut is, “she doesn’t believe them,” continued another source. “As far as she’s concerned, it looks terrible.”

Jen’s displeasure with the new hairstyle has brought back a flood of insecurities from her past.
Explained the source: “She’s always had issues with her nose. “She thought she’d come to terms with its shape, but without her long hair she thinks it looks too big for her face again. She also thinks the haircut makes her face look rounder and she hates that. Her hair was really a major security blanket.”

Totally get it.

And then I stop and think, "ANOTHER hair post? Really, Heather? You whine about your hair as if there was something wrong with it. C'mon you brat, don't hate. Get this action together and come up with something interesting to write about."

Yeah, okay, voice in my head is right - get your act together kiddo - at the very least, find a reason to make fun of Glee or Olivia Wilde or the Countdown to the Royal Wedding or something less self-absorbed.

On the other hand, voice in my head doesn't quite recognize that it's Friday, and still thinks I should be held to a non-Friday standard of effort.

In which case, whiny Heather wins and will just talk about hair and let you in on this little secret:

I can tell what Google terms direct people to my page.

And it's hilarious.

For instance, you MAY end up here if you Google:

hey i’ve got skillz
photo of stanley tucci with beard
megan fox brown wedges boots
girls in undies
slanderbeeking (or, it's cousin, slander-beeking)
eminem champagne
snookie ass
cougar cruise
the situation pics
OR, apparently any combination of Christina + Aguilera (frankly, I'm thinking I should just turn this into an XTina fansite - I get more traffic every day to my "Decade of XTina" post than anything else. Eh, people Google her a lot, I guess).

Anyway - cute to have a fly-on-the-wall view of people's googling habits. Mine are MUCH more dorky.

"Gwyneth Spatula" for instance, for my last post.

So anyway - what else can I halfheartedly subject us to on this Friday morning?

OOH - how about a music recommendation?

It is with no small measure of SHEEPISH enthusiasm that I recommend you check out "Light Me Up" by The Pretty Reckless.

Yes, the Taylor Momsen band.

It's good, actually.

If lingerie-instead-of-clothes and warpaint-instead-of-eyeliner is her secret: it's working. I'm willing to forgive the "Look at me! I'm EDGY!" antics since, behind all of the hardcore hype, girlfriend can actually sing and has a solid band to back her up. She had a hand in writing all of the songs on the album (how much of a hand....your guess is as good as mine), which was produced by Kato Khandwala - he's also worked with Breaking Benjamin, Morningwood, Paramore and My Chemical Romance. With the exception of a few very Sheryl Crow-esque sad love ballads -- which are actually quite good as well -- the album is mostly punk-edged power pop - sort of grungy pop/rock with good hooks and singalong-able choruses and stick-in-your-head guitar riffs with some playfully scandalous lyrics. Yes, there's a song where she's talking about teasing a priest in a confessional and suggesting she buy his silence by offering to commit....indiscretions with him after she admits to killing a lover who scorned her. You know, typical 16 year-old girl stuff. Er........but it's catchy - really! If I had to draw a comparison, I'd say it's....Butch Walker meets The White Stripes meets The Veronicas with a little dose of Sheryl Crow tossed in.

So, yeah - check out The Pretty Reckless. It's commercial rock, but it's better than what other "models-turned-actresses-turned-singers" out there are cranking out.

With that: HAPPY FRIDAY.

5 years later. Thanks, Gwyneth.

2011-04-13T09:47:00.000-07:00

I just looked at the calendar.

EXACTLY 5 years ago today I read an article on Gwyneth Paltrow written by one insanely amusing little blonde blogger with whom I'd eventually become casual "e-friends." She wrote this genius feature called "Gwyneth Paltrow -- she's not just like us!" for MSNBC. Until then, it had never dawned on me that the entertainment sections of major news networks would ever solicit the sarcastic wit of pop-culturally fluent post-college, marginally employed, hyper-motivated, generally underpaid twenty-somethings with a penchant for clothes out of our price range. Girls sort of like me. I found her blog and was instantly impressed by her contagiously readable writing and her every-girl appeal. She was funny! She was smart! She wrote about famous people! And shopping! And she made the same joke about the name Phil that my sister and I had made! Wouldn't it be funny if it was spelled Fil!

So, I decided to start blogging.

Back then it was over at "Observations on Stuff That Doesn't Matter," which I retired after 6 months when I discovered I was visually bored with the layout and had become a dull writer, phoning in cop-out posts about what I ate (or didn't eat) for breakfast - BUT, that's getting ahead of myself.

2006 was really the Golden Age of Weblogs - this was when Myspace was still relevant, Facebook was still for college kids and personal blogs were actually the go-to method of disseminating irrelevant information to everyone we knew. It was an era in which we still "networked socially" but the mechanism was different - it was an "I'll link to you on my site if you'll link to me on yours" world in which we all started our days by cruising everyone else's daily posts, commenting feverishly and hoping those comments directed traffic back to your own site. Or netted you a spot on a well-read blogger's "blogroll." Or snagged you an invitation to write a guest post when the site's owner went on vacation. Instant visibility. Instant readership. Instant inspiration to keep writing.

I ended up networked with a lot of New York City twenty-somethings. I worked the comment sections hard AND, for a brief stint, some of the most well-respected, widely read, wittiest bloggers in the 'sphere would drop by my site and pay attention. In 4 months I received as much traffic on that blog as I've received here in 4 years. I wrote every day. I had visions of straight-up, unadulterated grandeur, visions substantiated when handfuls of bloggers just like me began snagging book deals (or offers to write for Gawker; ironically, they're running a big Gwyneth feature today....interesting to see how some things DON'T change).

My plans at that point were to figure out how to become an occasional contributor to the entertainment sections of CNN.com and MSNBC.com and FOX.com. Never happened, but that was my focus.

Actually, for old time's sake, here's a snippet from my very first post, 5 long years ago:

I'm as envious as the next office rat about kids who's parents can afford expensive ivy league educations (and, ok, fine, I guess the kids had to work a little themselves), but add "Sophomore Harvard Kid With Book Deal" to that and I'm certifiably green-ish.

SO - imagine my disappointment (naw, better that that--my UTTER DISMAY...yep) when I noticed an article today about a teen chick-lit writer with a two-book deal and a "reported" six-figure advance being accused of plagarism. A Harvard student. Contributor to a local newspaper. Published author (aHA - so SHE'S the one out there stealing all the gigs I want while I'm sitting in an ergonimic antithesis, slapping the fax machine around, hoping the bank reconciliation balances for once...just this once...!). Fraud. Uhhh, yep, that's right. fraud.

Ok, so I'm probably overreacting...I'm just the aspiring writer-contributor-ivy leaguer stuck sitting at a desk all day in the accounting office of a construction company withering on the proverbial vine ("Yes, Bob Jones of Bob Jones Hauling and Excavating, I did sent your check for $624.12 on Friday, we paid that invoice in full. Yep, if you haven't received that by Wednesday, gimme a call back, I'll be glad to stop payment and reissue the check!" Now, be a good Mr Jones and never call me again! Thanks!)

I guess it made me start thinking...are the Harvard and Princeton and Stanford students of the world trading original, genuine thought and authentic compositions for an easy cruise on the coattaills of their alma mater's reputation? Have they become so disconnected from the rest of us working stiffs that they figure their school's brand is credit enough? Who needs to write their own material, they've got the greatest academic label in the country slapped on their forehead, who will bother to challenge 'em? I mean really, they worked hard enough to get where they're at, right? Isn't that enough? Good to know Harvard's busy creating the next generations's independent thinkers...

Sigh.

Oh, and I promise, I won't be nearly so soap-boxy by tomorrow...just had to brush off my "holier-than-thou" microphone and get a little social disdain worked outta my system. Watch out plagarizing ivy league sweetie-pies the country over...I imagine your agents will be thirsty for a hard-workin cute young thing like me once they're finished with scandalous damage-control. I've got plenty of my own ideas.

Ah, for now, uh...back to accounts receivable. Rich Guys A, B and C need to pay for their million-dollar remodels...hope their $450 toilet paper holders are servin 'em well. I imagine they probably graduated from someplace like Yale themselves...

Ehhh, not so bad. Sounds like me. My grumpy attitude about entitlement hasn't changed much. Different job now, new people to complain about. Still hoping to snag my own 6-figure book deal soon...

The thing about Golden Eras, I suppose, is that they're short-lived, over too quickly, appreciated more after the fact than during the heyday. So, too, with blogging.

Since we were all in our twenties and eager for better jobs, better paychecks, better apartments, and better boyfriends, things were constantly changing. The girl who inspired my blog was accepted to Columbia's journalism program and started working toward her Masters. On her first day, some of her professors admitted to enjoying her blog (which, by the way, she shut down the following week).

Some snagged big promotions at their "real jobs" and ended up with less time to devote to posts on pop stars and gripes about being single.

Others got married, or had babies, or just got tired of the pressure to stay entertaining. Facebook came along and made blogs (in their lengthier, wordier, more essay-like form) feel a little outdated. Then Twitter. Why waste time on 2 pages when you can get your fix in 140 characters?

Some of us stuck with it.

I'm still here.

Things have changed in the background, my peripheral focuses have evolved, my jobs and roommates and boyfriends have changed.

But not the fact that I still get an adrenaline rush from a well-crafted sentence.

Not the fact that I still want to entertain people with words.

Not the fact that I love the English language, love the impact of punctuation, love the whimsy of Unexpected Capitalization, love the never-ending source of giggles provided by famous people.

Not the fact that I'd love to snag book deal after book deal and live out my days in front of the keyboard, finding new famous people to target, new ways to make fun of myself, new topics to whine about and new ways to string words together.

However: I don't hate Gwyneth.

Not when she says things like, "The reason that I can be 38 and have two kids and wear a bikini is because I work my [expletive] ass off. It's not an accident. It's not luck, it's not fairy dust, it's not good genes. It's killing myself for an hour and a half five days a week, but what I get out of it is relative to what I put into it. That's what I try to do in all areas of my life."

Because I think that's a good parallel for what I'm trying to craft for myself here. I write every day. I work hard at this "second job" to keep my mind sharp and my writing skills honed and my love of all things literary at the front of my brain. So that when I find a publisher and hand over my finished product, I can be proud about the fact that it's not luck or some trick of nature that got me there - it was years of hard work that finally paid off.

In the meantime, thanks for stopping by - knowing I have even a few people reading what I write keeps me going.

5 years and counting.

LADY OXFORDS: I don't get 'em.

2011-04-12T15:03:00.000-07:00

As a continually recovering Clothes-a-holic, I have decent tradition of appreciating (if not necessarily jumping on board with) a solid handful of micro-trends. My personal fashion victory rests in the fact that I appreciate SUBTLY in my micro-trend adhesion. Meaning: I'll rarely strike people as trendy, but neither will I seem specifically outdated. Unless the weather is cold. In which case I lose all sense of what looks good and revert to an ugly habit of hoodies and woolly socks......but anyway - I can appreciate the unusual "ew, I don't think I like that, but give me 3 months and check back" styles that come and go with the seasons.

Meaning: I may not go straight-up cropped tee and paper bag waist pants YET, but, I can appreciate incorporating a short, boxy sweater with my jeans. It'll just have a cami under it and you won't be seeing my squishy belly. I spent last summer in rompers. I own a full-length jumpsuit -- BUT -- it's black (therefore perfectly acceptable out in public in the least Kardashian way possible).

Obviously, Sienna Miller I am not.

Speaking of she (or Taylor Swift up there, take your pick) - there's a startling trend sweeping areas south of ankle. No, not the socks with platform sandals thing....that one still has me a little vexed though not altogether opposed to trying it once it becomes a little more mainstream and a little less solidly camped in "fashion-blog" territory. What's the trend?

Lady Oxfords.

Huh?

Here, let me show you:

Yeah.....

Now, I can get on board with brightly colored ponchos, with mixing stripes and florals, with maxi skirts (don't like 'em since I'm short, but can recognize the bohemian stylishness of them), with novelty tights, with harem pants, with clunky heels and yellow eye shadow and ombre hair color. But wimpy little man-shoes with wimpy little laces and wimpy little "are we pointed or not?" toes and non-committal little heels? Er, not so much.

Apparently, after doing a little "street style" research I've figured out that they're meant to be worn primarily one of two ways: with skinny jeans and unstructured tops (lending a less-than-menswear look to the rest of the outfit while the feet get all man-style), or with some sort of flouncy, girly skirt. So the point is to balance out the sheer ugliness of the shoes with something dainty on the body.

How about this: skip these ridiculous-looking excuses for shoes and wear something dainty on your feet. I understand, these are the next generation, more stylish sister to the also-dull ballet-style flat. So, wear them as you would little flat, round-toed slip-on things.....

People are actually paying $415 for THESE????

My fifth favorite memory of all time. Give or take.

2011-04-11T15:03:00.000-07:00

Glorious things happened today.

It was -- miraculously -- not raining during my drive to The Cubicle this morning. Even better, there were slices of REAL, actual, unadulterated BLUE SKY. There were mountains with sun shining on them. For all of the delight I felt barreling down the freeway on my way in to The Cubicle today it may as well have been my birthday, anniversary AND the day I wake up without split ends, jiggly hips and can afford to buy those Adriano Goldschmied Angel cut destroyed jeans without remorse.

The heavens opened up for me today and a beautiful, sparkly beam of Jesus Juice followed my little, unwashed Toyota and me all the way to work.

Also, as it's Monday, it's the day that I cruise along to an Alanis "Jagged Little Pill" soundtrack, deem it Flashback Monday and discover the following:

I discover that singing along with Alanis at any point in the day, but particularly first thing in the morning, means that I sound something like a cat in heat.

And something like a dog who's just had its paw slammed in the sliding door.

And something like Aaron Neville after a swift punch to the balls.

I also discover that singing along with Alanis at any point in the day makes that point in the day that much better. For instance, that moment cruising across the the lake on I90 and seeing SUNSHINE for the first time in MONTHS is both an incredible blessing, cause for shrieks of joy, AND is made better by singing along with "Mary Jane" in the background. Every point in the day THAT much better.

AND I discover that singing along with Alanis will ALWAYS bring back the memories of the first time I tried buying her CD. Aside from "No Singing at the Table," and "Don't Leave Your Discarded String Cheese Wrappers Sitting Around Where Dad Can See Them" (don't ask) the "first time I tried buying an Alanis CD" memory is one of my favorite examples of my parents exercising their right to create arbitrary rules for their happy, table-singing, string cheese wrapper-tossing, Bad, Bad Music-buying children.

Huh?

Yeah.

So. 14 year-old Heather (who was probably wearing knock-off Doc Martens, dark green jeans (YES.), a giant flannel shirt stolen from Dad and a scrunchie on her wrist) was browsing CDs at Fred Meyer during a weekly grocery shopping trip. Heather spied Jagged Little Pill. She showed it to Dad who, in an unexpected moment of teen girl pop music fluency, said, "Hey, she's nominated for some Grammys!" which Heather took as his understated acquiescence to Heather's purchase of the CD (because parental acquiescence was critical at this point; she was a good little middle school kid who listened to nice, clean music and had nice, clean friends and was only interested in nice, clean boys who attended her church and absolutely viewed cigarettes and fruit-flavored malt beverage as agents of the Devil and would not have dreamed of listening to anything so impure as a singer-songwriter who dared sing the "F word" without at least implied parental consent; she was no moron.).

She proudly carted her Pill home, excited to turn up the freshly procured copy of "All I Really Want" at maximum cheap boom box volume in the bedroom, surrounded by nice, clean pictures of kittens snipped from several years of old calendars and a nice, clean picture of Keanu Reeves from Speed in the corner where it seemed less sinful. Extraordinarily well-behaved, this Heather.

CD is enjoyed for a week or so. Fast forward to the Grammys. We gather to watch; this is back when awards shows still managed some shred of glamourous believability and the suspense actually felt a little more authentic. Alanis performed "You Oughta Know"live.

Alanis had to be censored. You know the line. "And are you thinking of me when you _____ DEAD AIR SPACE______ her?"

Oh, mother jumped up like....well, like Aaron Neville after a swift punch to the balls and made a fantastically unilateral declaration:

"NONE OF YOU ARE ALLOWED TO BUY HER CD."

Because she's not nice and clean, obviously.

Panic.

Complete and utter panic.

Must not let her find out that I've already purchased the not nice, not clean CD and listened my little heart out over the past week -- miraculously, WITHOUT turning into a wayward, cigarette smoking, fruit-flavored malt beverage-drinking, cursing, school-skipping, non-virgin at any point during the listening process. But it's early yet. The effects might be cumulative - I might be simply one more "You Oughta Know" listen from that wayward, not nice, not clean lifestyle.

So I do what any lunch money-conscious 14 year-old would do.

Sold it to a friend.

Ah. Now I can rest easy.

Now I don't have to shove the CD case furtively under the pillow when Mom comes into my bedroom. Now I don't have to worry that the finger of God will split the skies and strike me down or afflict me with an out-of-wedlock pregnancy (fate worse than church girl death). Now I'm back in everyone's good graces, without Mom (or God!) even being the wiser for it.

The catch: my friend took some reasonable amount of pity on me and made me a cassette tape copy.

Er, she played the CD on her computer and set a tape recorder up next to the computer speakers and hit "record" so I ended up with this sort of pirated-sounding bootleg version that I left discretely UN-labeled and listened to on my Walkman when I was safely out of the house.

If we believe it, I still managed to make it through my formidable years without smoking cigarettes or drinking Smirnoff Ice of any flavor or letting any boys shove their hand up my shirt, even if I wanted them to. Pregnancies averted. Didn't become a runaway. Didn't swear like a truck driver or skip any classes or even so much as take the Lord's name in vain for years and years to come.

They did good, those parents of mine.

It was years before I told Mom this story.

I think I was still afraid she might confiscate my digital copy of the album....?????

"Worshippin' Worshippin' YEAH!" (Also, I'm sorry in advance)

2011-04-08T10:51:00.000-07:00

So, somehow my sister must have known that I had a horrible dream last night; I was attacked in my bed by a "Rock & Chop" wielding mad man and when I escaped and recounted the story to my mom, she laughed at me and said, "that's what you get for having deranged friends." I tried screaming at her that her beloved first-born's LIFE HAD NEARLY ENDED AT THE HANDS OF A GIMMICKY KNIFE, but in my dream, I could only hoarse-whisper with a particularly crazy-eyed expression. I mean, when your own mother laughs at your narrowly-missed death......oy.

Sis MUST have known this because it's the only reason I'll give her a free pass for her efforts to divert my thoughts from machete-like knives by blasting some Rebecca Black while we were getting ready this morning.

Thankfully, she thought ahead - rather than letting me leave with "Friday" stuck in my head, she followed it up with the SNL "I Just Had Sex" video so I got to walk outta the house (in frustratingly uncomfortable shoes, actually) humming something a little less suicide-inducing. HOWEVER, now the song's stuck in my head again.

SORT OF.

There's a Nondenominational Mega-Church parody video making the rounds that is absolutely fan-flippin-tastic. It's called "Sunday." And a cute little blonde girl rides in the back seat while MOM drives. And they make it to the service in time for her to lead worship (n a modest little denim jacket, bad bangs and no discernible lip gloss in sight, no less). They even toss in some nice, law-abiding, no-texting-while-driving Rap Dweebs who get to issue the best line in the entire video:

"We're goin to church on saturday night - WHOA! Tomorrow's EASTER."

Don't get it? Then you obviously weren't raised in a Nondenominational Mega-Church. Because obviously you don't go to the Sunday Morning Easter service. That would be altogether too crowded. Better leave the parking lot mess to the casual attenders. The Easter Guilt attenders. Go on Saturday night with the rest of the really righteous. Or something.

Anyway - little blonde Christian passes the communion plate and the offering bag. She does Wednesday youth group. Her only slip: I'm pretty sure Jesus would prefer we not put our lives on the line by riding on the back of a convertible (that's what SEAT BELTS are for, good Christian children!). I gotta hand it go them: the people who made this video are startlingly well-versed in the stereotypes of the Mega Church, straight down to the attempt at a "rock concert!" platform from which the blonde leads her Worshippin. Not bad. Not quite as awesome as the "death metal" version of the original, but a solid, squeaky-clean parody that at least made me giggle.

I mean the girl's bangs....are just....impressive. This is so ME as a 12 year-old.

Um. So. When the world ends, we'll all crawl out of the sewers in...red fishnet body stockings?

2011-04-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

Just so we're clear: immediately PRIOR to the world ending all the hipsters will jump into the surprisingly crowded sewers to grind around on each other with startlingly well-coordinated choreography.They'll do this sewer-dancing completely sober -- not a red plastic party cup in sight. And they'll be sort of grimy and sort of greasy-looking and evoke the general idea of pure STANK, but it'll all seem pretty cool, because along with plenty of dudes that look like Project Runway rejects: Brit's there.

In a shockingly awesome leather jacket that I sort of want to reach through the screen and steal from her. To prepare for the end of the world, of course, when I might need to defend myself against frightened hipsters or sewer monsters. By dancing at them with my crazy spiked shoulders.

So yeah, Brit's there. With unsurprisingly NON-EXISTENT EYEBROWS.

Sidebar: this girl is killing me.

The fake hair doesn't look too bad in this video. Her body looks righteous. Yeah, her facial expressions are completely mired back in the 1998 days (17 year-olds can pout. 30 year-olds shouldn't) but the overall look is pretty decent, AND YET, for the love of all that is holy about dancing in the sewers, please, DEAR LAWD, find this girl a makeup artist who believes in the art of the brow pencil. Draw those bad boys on. She'll look less like a kid who got into mama's secret stash of eyeliner and Kardashian lashes. C'mon - just cuz we're waiting for the end of the world is no excuse to neglect one's brows.

FER SERIOUS.

But anyway.

We'll know the world's about to end because Brit actually looks happy. And able to move on her own. And almost dance on her own. And she SMILES and jumps around.

This is all because Ke$ha wrote the song, of course. Because everything Ke$ha touches turns to gold (edible lactose gold even, but that's another video for another day). Yep. Britney looks happy and alert because she's singing a song penned by Ke$ha. Actually, further off-topic, Mr Wonderful and I were discussing the fact that neither of us are particularly in Dollar Sign's "target demographic." Which then led to wondering about exactly WHO her target demographic may be. And coming up totally empty-handed. I mean, I flippin love the kid, but I couldn't quite figure out to precisely whom she's trying to appeal...obviously not Mr Wonderful. He likes Real Music (with the occasional XTina exception. Cuz I'd shank him if he dissed my XTina). Probably not even trying to appeal to me, though I'm admittedly not remotely averse to music that mentions glitter in the lyrics like 1274 times on one album. I like bad pop. Whatever - someday when I bump into Ke$ha in the sewers before the world ends I'll ask her.

Speaking of End of Days - by the end of the video, the world has, apparently, ended.

We know this because...er, because Brit's wearing a red mesh...body stocking...thing. And she crawls out of the sewer into the sunshine. So - pre-apocalypse we party in the sewers without any booze wearing drab colored leather with really technically styled hair. Post-apocalypse it's sunny and urban and....Britney's the only one left on earth.

Actually, that sounds sort of okay with me. And much less stressful than, say The Book of Eli's post-apocalyptic dust bowl fantasy of sunglass porn. Britney's version looks a little more like Chicago on a nice day. The sort of post-apocalypse that pretty much makes me want to go watch a baseball game and eat a hot dog and drink a $17 beer out of a plastic party cup.

In my red mesh body stocking.

Okay, let's get this bit out of the way while I'm thinking about it: would it KILL anyone to put Brit in some "normal" clothes? I mean, I understand there's this whole idea of "video chic" that involves variations on vinyl leotards and that apparently video babes between the ages of 13 and 33 can't lip sync convincingly unless 100% of their ass is showing, but what would have been REALLY cutting edge here would have been to toss her in some awesome vintage-looking AG denim crops with some sky-high heels and a white t-shirt. Get her makeup done right, toss on some funky jewelry, repair the weave that looks like it really HAS been drug through the sewer, and impress everyone with how normal she looks.

Because there are a few quick scenes in the video where she manages a truly authentic, honest, happy grin, like she's finally having fun again. I'd rather they dress her in something that looks like a girl who's recovered and likes to dance rather than a girl who's been eaten by something Joan Collins may have coughed up a few decades ago.

Other than that: let's call this video a success.

(It's totally because of Ke$ha.)

I changed my mind. It happens.

2011-04-01T14:11:00.000-07:00

I hate peas.

They're the only food I've ever gagged on, they're the one food that Grown-Up Heather has yet to decide are edible in ANY way, they still creep me out with their fleshy little skin and their mushy, squishy, grainy insides.

I hate 'em.

That's nice, Heather. What's that have to do with the price of -- (shoot - I can't remember how that idiom goes...the price of milk? of barbie dolls? of tater tots? beats me). Nice, Heather; what's that got to do with the price of Sour Patch Kids?

Er, not much, but I'm gonna try to make some sort of parallel anyway, I guess. Fair warning.

See, for the most part, foods that were banished from my grade school repertoire and declared unilaterally "GROSS" have been, albeit slowly, allowed to infiltrate the present diet. I discover that things I assumed I hated for YEARS are actually, mostly, pretty tasty.

Tomatoes. Zucchini. Cheddar cheese (in moderation). Green beans. Even more recently - red wine, Chinese food, pork. Acorn squash. Eggplant. Marshmallows. Yogurt. Some chocolate. For the most part (with the exception of peas and....ooh, sour cream - yuck) I've realized that these gastronomic bad guys weren't really all that bad. I mean, I'm not going to race out and blow cash on Panda Express in this lifetime or sit down with a plate of nothing but pork, but I'll eat it and not make my "bourbon face." Bourbon face. The face (and entire body shudder, actually) that happens if I take a sip. The smell, the taste, the way a perfectly good maraschino cherry can suck up all of that icky, creepy bourbon and catch me by surprise when I THINK I'm just going to sink my teeth into red food coloring and some artificial flavor. Oh no. Bourbon cherries. Anyway.

So it goes with celebrities.

I'm a catty, judgmental, nit-picky sort of girl. Famous people can do something as simple as date the wrong person and I'll be all kinds of turned against them. Or I can love them with a startlingly unhealthy devotion for no reason at all. Natalie Portman, for instance. I love her. She can do no wrong. Why? We have the same birthday. Same year, same day. We're soul mates or something.

BUT, I've been feeling a little generous lately with my "Ugh, you're an obnoxious twit, I can't stand you" list.

Giving people a free pass to leap off the list. Cut them a little slack. Actually admit that I don't hate them. No, Taylor Swift gets no mercy, sorry.

Who does? For starters, Blake Lively gets a free pass this week. The "peas and sour cream" of Hollywood are sliding onto my "some chocolate and the occasional slice of melted cheddar" list. Which is not to say she's made it to the "champagne and cheeseburgers" list, just that I don't necessarily want her to be hit by a bus this week. Ooh, by the way, speaking of cheeseburgers, I just discovered that Jack in the Box has a Jr Bacon Cheeseburger that's only a DOLLAR and 400-and some calories and, while a little limp and lacking a certain amount of burger panache, is actually QUITE good when a girl is on a cash and calorie budget and also has a compulsive Friday "Treat Myself to Junk Food at Lunch" habit. Just so you know.

We'll start with Blake. I'm not sure why I immediately couldn't stand this girl - maybe because I'm female, and much like our aversion to Jessica Alba, we're generally averse to women about whom men are wont to say things like, "Dude - I'd tear that sh*t up" or other such nonsense that's particularly encouraging to us normal, "Not Blake or Jessica" types.

Also: she's an actress who can't act. But she keeps getting roles. And keeps dating high-profile men. And keeps being called an "actress," when clearly, as any of us who have seen her in either of the Traveling Pants travesties would know: this is simply not the case. She's a head of hair with the world's most enviable legs. Who also gets attention for being a "fashionista" when the only evidence I've seen that warrants such a label is her inexcusable proclivity toward ankle booties. And harem pants. And being seen frequently alongside Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Wintour.

So what changed?

The delightful movie "The Private Lives of Pippa Lee," In which she "non-acted" in the role of a younger version of Robin Wright's grown-up character who's married to octogenarian Alan Arkin. She got to play this sort of affected, bohemian, orphan of sorts who eventually flees the nest because of her drug-addicted mother, played to the hilt by a very fantastic Maria Bello who has really nailed Acting Like a Junkie. Basically it was an excuse for the movie to dress her in awesome retro clothing and have her walk listlessly down a beach looking lost and hungry and hungover.

After watching this (absolutely delightful) movie, something about my opinion of her changed. I sort of took her for what she is: a girl who can't act, particularly, but can really decorate the hell out of a movie screen if the role calls for someone to stand around and look pretty - maybe sort of cry from time to time, and generally look fantastic in clothes.

So, I was expecting too much and hating her for expecting her to be something that even the studios don't seem to expect her to be. They know she's glorified set dressing, but she's appealing that way. In a beachy, all-American, Barbie-doll sort of way that made me want to slap on some messy eyeliner and a blonde wig and go wander the beach in a mini-skirt. Cuz it had this cool sort of "sexy-trashy-orphan" cache that I liked.

Blake gets a pass. I no longer loathe her. And, in fact, she's done well not to mess with her face, surgically speaking, which I admire, too. She's got her natural lips and her natural nose and they're sort of girl-next-door-esque and I like that. She seems benign. And it's hard to hate pretty and benign, even when she's trying to convince us that she's an edgy, high-fashion actress. She's not peas, she's marshmallows.

Oh - and about that "Pippa Lee" movie? See it! It's surprisingly delightful - tackles a rather heavy subject with some lightheartedness and charm. And Robin Wright is aging BEAUTIFULLY. She was luminous in this film in a completely natural way that I adored.

Plus, with cameos and bit parts by everyone from Winona Ryder to Keanu Reeves I'm surprised I hadn't heard more about it when it came out a few years ago.

Story time with Heather's Hair Dysmorphic Disorder.

2011-03-30T15:55:00.000-07:00

I went through this phase many, many eons ago when I was trying to grow my hair out from some sort of "not-quite-like-the-photo" haircut, and in an attempt to sexy-it-up I colored it a truly heinous, not-found-in-nature, also "not-quite-like-the-photo" shade of dimensionless black.

It was straight-up Alan Rickman in Harry Potter.

I was seeing Snape every time I looked in the mirror.

I'm kind of having one of those moments now. Not that it's a horrible shade of teenager-black. Not that it's choppy and Rickman-esque. Just that I've changed it...and every time I look in the mirror, I see a bad haircut.

Okay. It will make more sense if I tell a fantastic little story.......

The story begins long, long ago in an ancient land of blow-drying, drug store self-coloring and all manners of vicious heat styling, where a girl-warrior fought valiantly to beat her unruly, wavy hair into peaceful submission.

The girl-warrior desperately wanted the longest, prettiest hair in all of the Kingdom of Tresses. To her waist was (is) the plan. But in her greedy, length-loving eagerness, the warrior decided to forgo regular trims. Her demoralized, brow-beaten, angst-ridden hair shriveled up in listless abandon. Tried to make a break for it at every opportunity. Was willing to break itself in half if it meant being spared another round of curling, flat-ironing, flat-ironing THEN curling...they couldn't take any more.

The girl-warrior looked at photographs of herself from years ago and realized that her once peaceful locks had...gone rogue. Without scissors or trimming, her hair had lost the will to live, it's will (and it's many split ends) had been broken. Off. Broken off. Inches gone over the course of a few years.

Trims. In her narcissistic quest to rule the Kingdom of Tresses she'd lost her greatest ally - her hair itself. The damage was irreparable and -- the girl realized -- without emergency care, the great army on her head would only continue to wither and break.

In despair, the warrior grabbed a pair of kitchen scissors.

As she chopped away, excising the dead bits, hoping it wasn't altogether too late to save, she had a moment of panic. She realized just how much of her warrior identity was wrapped up in those poor, tortured, lifeless strands of hair. Strands which were now swimming in the toilet, finally free, finally released from their split, fried, frizzy suffering.

Without them, the girl wasn't sure whether she could go on. Her curling irons and straighteners taunted her, she could hear them whisper...."just you try to curl that hair now. your dreams of having Stacy London hair are gone - GONE down the drain! You're AVERAGE now - ORDINARY. Enjoy your tepid, VANILLA hair, Princess - bwuahahahahah."

"What have I done?" the warrior-girl screeched in a panic, tugging at the ends of her shorn, clipped (fine, HEALTHIER) hair, wishing that she could will it to grow. But it was not to be. In order for her ultimate domination of the Kingdom of Tresses to come to fruition, she'd have to nurture, love, care desperately for the strands left on her head.

Regular trims.

Banishment of the flat iron to nether regions unknown.

Recommissioning of the Great Hot Oil Treatment.

Forgiveness.

Only then would she perch upon the thrown of Ultimate Hair Domination.

The End.

Basically.

So, here's what we're left with:

And here is how I know I have Hair Dysmorphic Disorder: I look in the mirror and see SHORT hair. And I panic. Because, truly, like the spoiled hair warrior kid, the closer my hair grew to my waist, the better I felt. And now, seeing this stuff hanging there barely past my collarbone may as well be a pixie cut (ooh, but don't tempt me, I've gone there before) for all the glamour I feel I'm left with.

Seriously.

I may as well have shaved my head. I'm experiencing a crisis of identity. Where is my hair? Where is Heather?

And that's completely ridiculous, because, as I can see in the picture, I have plenty of hair left. And it's happier, healthier, more well-adjusted hair less likely to make a break for Mexico when I'm not looking. No, really, I could run my hands through my hair and it would break off into tiny pieces. I could grab a piece and barely tug and it would break. It wasn't pretty.

But, with enough silicone and curling ironing and punishing into submission it could manage to look pretty.

It was abuse, however. My poor hair deserved better. Continues to deserve better. Therefore, I'm going to lavish all the love, attention, and healthy habits as possible on this new hair so that it will grow to be lovely, strong, dependable hair. So that I can blow dry it without seeing tiny pieces like confetti in the bathroom sink afterward.

Seriously. It was that bad.

Maybe it's time to invest in some actual hair scissors. So that I don't have to send the kitchen shears through the dishwasher every time it's time for a snip.

The beard gets the girl (particularly if scruffy guy looks like her). Odd.

2011-03-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

(oh, and I mean that literally - facial hair. beard. whiskers).

Anyway - shocker: I spend pretty much all day on the webernets. Keeping up with celebrity crap, doing "fantasy shopping" by racking up $1200 in an Anthropologie online shopping basket that I'll never be able to actually purchase, planning vacations, cruising other blogs, watching back episodes of SVU or SNL or Big Love, taking Meyers-Briggs personality tests and discovering I rank differently every time I take them....whatever.

So inevitably I stumble upon silly studies from time to time, like the one that identified ideal female proportions (mine! mine! mine!) and others that speculated on cohabitation's effect on the success rate of a marriage (no discernible effect!) and some that look at important things like, um, womens' preference for facial hair on men with respect to long-term relationships.

The latest: we ladies love some stubble. Um, particularly if the man with the stubble looks similar to us. Or our fathers.

Yep. Found a separate study conducted by the University of St Andrews in Scotland that focused on a woman's tendency to be attracted to a man who looks similar to herself. Or shares facial characteristics with her father (if the father was present and the daughter had a positive relationship with him). Odd. BUT, it explains why Kanye is dating this woman. Seriously. At a glance it's not totally obvious, but if you look at facial proportions, its insane how much these two look alike. The distance between their eyes, the relative size of their chins compared to the rest of their face, the space between their nose and mouth, the ratio of their forehead to the rest of their face....it's crazy.

The way the Tamsin Saxton, a postdoctoral research fellow involved in the study puts it in an interview with the UK Telegraph,

"Previous research has often found that women can be attracted to masculine men, but also a bit suspicious of them. However, women tend to trust men more if they look like them. So perhaps the resemblance cancelled out the women’s suspicions. Or maybe the women felt they were better matched with men who looked like them, because if two people resemble each other, they might both be attracted to each other.”

It's totally true. I see couples who look like they could be siblings all over the place. My working theory has always been that we're attracted to what's familiar - not necessarily in a narcissistic "I want to date ME" sort of way -- but that we find comfort and attractiveness in faces that feel familiar, similar to ourselves - non-threatening. Apparently that's close to true. And the reason has to do with the facial hair study, indirectly.

This is an analysis of the Stubble Study, also presented by The Telegraph:

Researchers found that women are more attracted to men with stubbly chins than those with clean-shaven faces or full beards.

Women participating in the research rated men with stubble as tough, mature, aggressive, dominant and masculine - and as the best romantic partners, either for a fling or a long-term relationships.
The findings of the experiment, carried out on British women aged 18 to 44, could explain the appeal of actors such as George Clooney and Brad Pitt who cultivate their unshaven look.
The explanation for the preference is not clear, but experts in human evolution say that that facial hair may be a signal of aggression because it boosts the apparent size of the lower jaw, emphasising the teeth as weapons.
Psychologists at Northumbria University who carried out the new study believe that stubbly men may offer women the best worlds - not too strongly masculine, but mature and with the potential to grow a full beard.

The researchers carried out the study using computer technology to alter pictures of 15 men’s faces so that they displayed different degrees of hairiness. Five levels of facial hair were used - clean-shaven, light stubble, heavy stubble, light beard and full beard.

The pictures were shown to 76 women who were asked to rate them for masculinity, aggression, dominance, attractiveness, age, and social maturity. They were also asked how desirable each man would be as a short-term or long-term partner. Faces with full beards were judged to be the most masculine, aggressive and socially mature. They were also thought to look five years older.

They were rated the least attractive and the worst choice for a short-term relationship. Men with light beards were considered the most dominant. Those with light stubble were rated the most attractive and as the ideal romantic partner for the short or long term. Clean-shaven men finished bottom for masculinity, dominance, aggression, and social maturity, and they were the least favoured choice as a long-term partner. They came second-to-last for attractiveness.

Writing in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, the researchers conclude: “Facial hair, or beardedness, is a powerful sociosexual signal, and an obvious biological marker of sexual maturity.

"Facial hair may have been sexually selected by females on the basis of associated male success, despite its threatening appearance. Clean-shaven faces therefore may suggest appeasement, as well as being an obvious sign of sexual immaturity.

"Increasing levels of facial hair were associated with increased perceptions of aggression, in that bearded faces were perceived as being the most aggressive, whilst clean-shaven faces were rated as being the least aggressive. And as facial hair increased in a linear fashion, so did female ratings of masculinity and dominance.

"In desirability for a short-term relationship, a female preference for male faces with stubble or light beard was found, with clean-shaven and fully bearded faces being the least preferred. This indicates that females are not selecting faces displaying relatively high or low masculinity, but are rather preferring males who are clearly mature - post-pubertal - but not too masculinised. The same pattern was found for preferences for a long-term relationship."

The researchers now want to extend their study internationally. Dr Nick Neave, who carried out the study with Kerry Shields, said: "There are large cultural differences in perceptions of facial hair, and we are hoping to expand on this research by conducting a large-scale study assessing female perceptions of male facial hair in different in as many countries as possible."

Maybe I'm just a sucker for any sort of pop-psychology study that purports to tell us why we like what we like, BUT, I have to agree on both counts. Check the Posh & Becks W cover at the top - I mean, sure, he's BARELY got the facial hair, but the two of them certainly look alike. And if you ask most ladies whether they prefer their Becks shaven or scruffy, most choose scruffy. Myself, eh, I find him too wimpy-pretty, even unshaven to weigh in on that front, but I get it - even wimpy-pretty girlie-men look better with a little scruff.

Let's make it personal and compare some pictures of my hot piece, Mr Wonderful, with myself and my dad. First things first - yep, Mr Wonderful has facial hair. A perfectly stubbly jaw and a more "precisely maintained" goatee-type thing around the chin. Blue eyes. Very little hair on top of the head. I'm a green-eyed kid, but the more I stared at pictures of us, the more I decided we fit the mold:

Our cheeks are very similar. The whole "distance between eyes, nose, mouth" situation is pretty similar. Our complexions are even quite similar. As much as I like to think that I'm above the fray and will fall for a man by the sheer force of his sexy, fact is: ehhhh, there must be part of me that finds him hot because there's a familiar element to his face.

And, frankly, if I'm being honest, there are even some parallels to my dad. Dad is bearded, blue-eyed, short-cropped hair. Yikes. I fit the mold, I'm a predictable woman. I'd be in the majority with these silly studies.

I hate to be predictable. Er, I mean, I'm just like Victoria Beckham and that makes my man just like...Kanye? Yeah. Pretty much.

And if you accuse me of using the studies as a weak excuse to post cute pictures of me and my hot piece: you're half right. We look good together (even if we look alike). And so do my mom and dad (above).

So there.

Who's next for Bradley?

2011-03-22T12:03:00.000-07:00

So, a few years ago I managed a bit of staggering brilliance when I created a quantitative scale ranking possible future boyfriends for Natalie Portman. Read the genius here. I thought it might be fun to do the same thing for Bradley Cooper since he finally ditched that waxy, squinty, drawn-looking blonde that used to look something like Renee Zellweger.

The Frisky had the same idea this morning, but reading their slightly weak list of generic A- and B-listers who seem like cop-out picks, I thought I'd get a little more scientific. You know -- enlist Google and IMDB n' stuff.

Here's the Super Special Strategy:

First, we make gross generalizations about Mr Cooper.

He's a decently good-looking guy who has no idea what to do with his hair and lacks much fashion sense when left to his own devices.

He plays an asshole really well (leading us to believe perhaps he's not acting all that well and he really is an asshole). He also plays meek and dweeby really well (leading us to believe perhaps he's not acting all that well and he really is meek and dweeby). So, he's either a dork or a douche or a particularly versatile actor... hard to tell which.

He's Georgetown educated (an "honors english" student - he gets points there), he pursued a Masters of Fine Arts program at the Actors Studio Drama School at New School University. So, he values his craft, he's not afraid of academia, he spent time learning.

He's having his "hot right now" career moment but I feel like he's earned it - he's paid his dues, worked the trenches with small bit parts in old TV shows.

Aside from one short-lived, 4-month marriage to actress Jennifer Esposito about which he will say little more than that it was "an experience" he claims to be a romantic at heart who plans to "mate for life." So, more slightly mixed (or difficult to interpret) messages there. Admirably, however, he plays it quite close to the vest with his personal life, opting not to comment on "romances in progress."

He has one nasty mouth in magazine interviews - comes off rather like he's trying too hard - or like he's afraid of being taken as soft so he tries particularly hard to seem edgy, world weary, tormented, tough. So, I suspect under all of the four-letter words, he's insecure. Actually, witness this snippet from Details magazine that pretty well proves my points:

During one shoot for The A-Team in Vancouver, he says, "me and Liam Neeson were supposed to be helicoptering down into Baghdad with fucking guns and the wind machines blowing. So I'm hanging on and there's fucking Liam Neeson and I got a gun and there's music playing and it's as if I'm making a movie. But actually I am making a movie. It was so fucked-up. It was very surreal."

It's a word he uses a lot. It was surreal to see himself turned into a brick-house hunk for The A-Team, which features lots of shots of his sweaty, bulging biceps and concrete pecs. "I had to literally transform my body," he explains—for six months prior to filming and during the shoot, the already fitness-obsessed actor cut out sugar, salt, and flour and underwent grueling two-hour workouts with a trainer every day.

"As the movie progressed, I got in increasingly better shape," he says. "There's this one fight scene with Liam Neeson toward the end, where it's, like, the apex of the work. We finished and Joe's like, 'Brother, come here, look at this,' and he played it back, and I swear to God, it looked like my head was digitally superimposed onto someone else's body.

"I was like, 'This cannot be me—that's the way I look?' " Cooper says. "It was so fucking surreal, 'cause as a kid I only fantasized about looking that way. Remember Soloflex commercials? That was huge when I was a kid. It was like, 'I wanna be the Soloflex guy. Mom, can we get the Soloflex?' "

And yet, even toned and trained into superhuman shape, Cooper still fixated on his physical imperfections—or at least those he perceived. "Even in that body I'm in," he says, "I still saw them, absolutely." He still felt a bit like the Elephant Man. "Oh, sh*t," he says, laughing again. "This is going to be like, 'What a f*cking asshole. Oh, really, you feel like f*cking Elephant Man?'"

So, we've got the Bradley ground covered, now let's proceed to the next phase of the Super Special Strategy:

We decide whether he's better off with someone just like him, or dramatically different from him.

In this case, I'm thinking he's probably going to be better off with ladies of a similar bent. Er, as I did with Natalie Portman, I googled a list of the Bradley Personality Gross Generalizations. Searched for "insecure educated actresses with bad language." Retrieved: Kristen Stewart.

Hmmmm. Okay, she's having a hot-right-now couple of years. Verdict on whether she's a good actress or just a girl perpetually tagged to play someone like herself is up in the air. Her hair is generally bad. Her style is questionable. She gives interviews where she tries to sound wise and worldly and usually just ends up sounding like a high school kid who got her hands on some Vonnegut or Steinbeck. Which she did. She seems to like to read. That's as much as I can give her on the "educated" front - she's young and hasn't hit college yet so not sure if she's going to decide to go the Smart Actress route or the "I'm rich as sin, who needs that stuff" route.

And there's that small matter of "she's young AND already in a relationship." So, while superficially K-Stew might seem decently similar, the age and availability factor drops her on the Bradley's Next Girl Meter (BNGM). On a scale of 10 I'd give her a 5. I like Bradley with someone closer to his age (36).

That's the third part of my Strategy, by the way. The numeric ranking.

So, let's think about women he's dated in the past to point us in a particular aesthetic direction. There were several years with Renee (fair, blonde, waifish). Jennifer Esposito was athletic and Latin. He was "reportedly" linked with Jennifer Aniston briefly (blonde and athletic) and with Sandra Bullock (fair-skinned, brunette, fit). Okay - so, while he doesn't have an obvious inclination to blondes, or a tendancy to spring for the exotic-looking complexions, he likes his ladies in good shape. Nice abs and upper arms.

Okay. We're looking for a lady who likes the gym, has probably been to college, who's career is on the upswing and who is in it for the long term. I'm inclined to want to match him up with someone who has slightly more immediate name recognition than he does because I get this slight "social climber" vibe from him. Like he's not above using a dating relationship to elevate his fame status. Like he's insecure enough he thinks he has to talk a big game and date a big name to feel relevant. But not someone likely to completely overshadow him, because that would leave mister "body image issues" feeling like he's been left behind. He'd feel emasculated.

In that case: a fit and bookish A-lister who would get him past any velvet rope.

Anne Hathaway?

She's pretty A-list right now, but she also manages to stay relatively paparazzi-free (I get the feeling that's important to the Coop). We didn't see him pap'd during most of his relationship with Renee outside of a few shots of them leaving the gym. Frankly, I wondered if the entire extent of their courtship wasn't just a series of Stairmaster dates and medicine ball tosses while making sexy eyes at each other. Anne is immediately recognizable. Seems to take acting seriously. Seems to have toiled for years in the land of goofy, saccharine tween movies before making her mark on the grown-up world. Strikes me as smart. Maybe too smart for Bradley. Maybe too high strung and excited, too. But moving in the right direction. Closer to his age. Single (as far as I know right now). At the top of her game. Seems reasonably baggage free, down to be someone's one and only.

We'll give Annie an 8 on the BNGM. Not bad, but not quite perfect because she has the potential to eclipse him on the celebrity scale.

You know who else is a good-looking actor at the top of their game, certifiably famous but low-key with a smart sense of humor, bad hair, bad fashion, great body who paid their dues with a lot of small bit work before striking it big?

Jon Hamm.

I'm giving the Hamm a 9 on the BNGM meter. Only problem: he's not single. But they'd look good together.

Okay, so we're not quite there yet.

How about Charlize Theron?

Ooh, this could be good. See, I like Charlize. She's beautiful. Seems low-key, strikes me as smart, is pretty widely adored by men and women alike (versus someone like Jessica Alba who's universally gorgeous but universally loathed by women for her whiny "I'm not pretty, I don't get it" schtick that feels so fake). She's precisely his age. She's in fantastic physical shape. She makes some questionable style decisions but has that modeling background that makes most of her missteps forgivable (so, she could teach him a thing or two about looking good - help him figure out his hair issue). She didn't attend university proper, BUT she studied ballet at the Joffrey Ballet School in New York City, so she's spent time honing her craft in NYC just like Cooper did.

She's single. Moreover, she seems like she needs to have a good time. She dabbled in some Sean Penn dates after her split with the long term boyfriend Stuart Townsend (long term - good thing - she seems to want to settle down). She was rumoured to have hooked up (or been pursued by) Jeremy Renner, she dated Stephen Jenkins for awhile, so she, like Bradley, doesn't have a hard and fast "type" that she always dates.

They're both sort of golden and glowing and sun-kissed and would look killer together on a red carpet (or during a post-yoga dash to the local Starbucks).

I'm giving Charlize a 10. Now, go forth and date. Because I said so. And because I'm Patti Stanger-brilliant at these match-ups.

Dear Younger Version of Heather:

2011-03-21T13:36:00.000-07:00

Yeah, yeah, you're absolutely copying Brad Paisley, he had the idea first with that "Letters to Me" song, but whatever - original idea or not, how about we have a little chat. With each other. With yourself. With me. One and the same.

So, these days, as I get a little closer to my 30th birthday, I've been nostalgic - been thinking about you a lot and wishing I really could zap myself back in time and give you some tips and pointers along the way. Nothing that would absolutely change the course of your life....I'd just like to take you by the shoulders and shake you silly when you let little things get to you. Wish I could lurk over your shoulder and affirm you here and there when you did something really well. Wish I could assure you that things will really, truly, definitely turn out JUST FINE.

I promise.

You'd be shocked, in fact, by just how fine things will end up.

They'll be nothing like you planned, your path will look nothing like you envisioned, you'll wade through things you never thought you could even dream up, let alone live through - and, miraculously, you'll love where you end up. You'll love yourself for being more tough than you thought. For being more flexible and adaptable and creative and patient than you thought. For being more capable and bold and resilient and loving than you thought.

HOWEVER - we really should have worked harder at that whole math thing. Numbers? Yeah, you probably shouldn't have just let it slide with the idea that you'll be accepting screenwriting Oscars by the time you're 24 and who needs algebra for that, anyway? Reality will step in and remind you that you're no Diablo Cody (you'll hear about her for the first time when you're about 25, when you just started blogging and thought that was the golden brick road toward literary renown. You'll figure out this is not the case about 3 years later). Take math a little more seriously. You may just end up in a job that requires it.

You'll also develop this clothes-buying hangup. The roots on this one are deep - so I'll warn you now: when Dad makes fun of you when you're 15 for wearing that striped t-shirt he bought you every day -- you remember the one, that mustard-colored striped number from Gap that he brought home for you the day you had your braces put on -- don't let it bug you so much. He was right - you wore that thing every day. If he didn't say it, someone else would have. PLEASE dear, don't let that become something you feel like you have to overcome for the next 15 years of your life. Actually, you could speak up at that point and let him know how much the gift from him meant to you - you were thrilled he thought of you, thrilled he spent the money on something frivolous, thrilled to finally have a shirt that wasn't a hand-me-down - tell him that. Then force yourself to only wear that thing once a week or so........seriously.

And that kid in middle school who asked if your hair could POSSIBLY be any more frizzy? If you spend the next decade trying to defy nature and have super-sleek, straight-haired-girl hair, you'll end up with THE WORST split ends imaginable. Badly damaged hair. Like, it will break when you run your fingers through it. So do yourself a favor - embrace the frizzy. Seriously, it will save your hair years from now. What does that kid know, anyway? His hair was sort of, um, worse than yours!

You'll wake up one morning in high school and have hips. Yep. It'll happen over night. No, your jeans won't fit the same way they did when you went to bed the night before. Yes, this will take some getting used to. Yes, you'll appreciate these eventually. It will just take a VERY LONG TIME. But you'll get there. Guess what, kiddo - when you hit your 20s you'll actually find your stride. You'll feel sexy. Wait for it. Really. Late bloomers get the last laugh.

College will be this sort of protracted, hyphenated, drawn-out ordeal that will last more than a decade and is still not finished when I'm writing this letter to you. If I could pass down some earnest encouragement: shop less, school more. YES. Save the dollars, kid, those shoes are really only going to be cute for like, 3 months tops, but a few credits of classes will be priceless. Put the debit card away, go to school. Because you'll beat yourself up a lot over the next few years for not finishing.

Keep writing. But more than that, set goals for yourself - finish the book. Find a publisher. Fight for yourself.

There will be a sad moment in an office restroom when you're about 22 years old where you'll lock yourself in a stall and SOB your mascara off wondering how you managed to so desperately lose touch with that 8 year-old version of yourself who knew PRECISELY what you wanted to do with your life. Of course, that crisis of identity was also during a period of time where you were drinking too much and making sketchy decisions about EVERYTHING, so you were sort of out of touch with more than just your 8 year-old self. Also - that job you had in that office full of hormonal women? Yeah, maybe don't take that job.

Actually - PLEASE - avoid that job.

But if you completely ignore me, succumb to that temporary sense of cash-strapped desperation and -- against your better judgment -- DO take it: don't feel too bad about taking off with some post-its and ballpoint pens and a few rolls of tape if you eventually decide to quit abruptly and deliver your resignation surreptitiously in the middle of the night. They made you cry over Sweet n' Low, fer the love of pop tarts. And that woman who hated you? She'll end up getting fired, anyway.

Learn some basic HTML as early as you can. It's useful.

When you're in your early 20s there will be this moment where you're cruising down the freeway and decide you MUST - at that very moment - dig out your Britney Spears "In the Zone" cd. You'll look down for a second to flip through a stack of CDs and you'll rear-end someone and total the only car you ever really loved. If you're on a rainy freeway in that little white Acura and have a Britney emergency - seriously - don't take your eyes off the road. You'll miss that car for years and years and years.

Watch "The OC." Great show. Over much too soon.

If you can afford that little rental house on Alki, go for it. You'll regret not living there. The apartment you do end up with, however: to die for. Get excited for that in advance.

You'll go through a phase where you think about going to cosmetology school. Then you'll go through a phase when you want to go to law school. Then you'll go through a phase when you want to go to culinary school. Then you'll go through a fashion design phase. And a philosophy phase. And a criminal justice phase. Unfortunately, can't tell you which of those to pursue, since, as of today, we haven't pursued any of them.

Mom and Bethy will continue to be amazing people in your life, through every step of the process. You've got a beautiful family - appreciate them.

And those bumpy phases the family goes through toward the end of high school - those get better, too. You'll get to see mom and dad fall in love again and it's fun to watch them adore each other, finally. They'll giggle together. Yes, giggle. There will be pet names and all. Hard to believe, but it's true.

Floss more often. Don't roll your eyes at me - DO IT.

Think about learning to play the guitar or the piano or something. I think we'd enjoy it.

You'll discover joy of the Doyle She-Cousins years too late. We should not all be well into our 20s before we discover how much we really like each other. It's a great discovery (there will be matching t-shirts at an age when you should probably not be wearing matching t-shirts. There will be some line-jumping hi-jinks at Disneyland. There will be this...FROG). Get to know them earlier.

God is there all along. You might not feel like He is, but believe me, he's there. He never goes away. You might not do a very good job of paying attention to him for years at a time - but if you take any of this advice, take this: talk to Him more often.

That belly button piercing will last until you're about 25. You won't miss it when it's gone. You'll be the first person you know who gets hers pierced, by the way, you little trail blazer, you.

Don't cut your hair your senior year. It won't look anything like Kimberly Williams in that Relativity show, it will take years to grow out, you'll get about 3 "whoa, you cut your hair!" remarks of the horrified variety and no one really knows what to say when you show up to school nearly bald. Don't. Cut. Your. Hair.

Absolutely take that life-sized cardboard cut-out to prom. You'll be very proud of yourself for that. It was a moment of true individuality. It was your turn to say, "Hey world, I don't care what you think." You normally care what people think MUCH too deeply. That night will be a glorious opportunity to do something unexpected and revel in how lovely it feels to be unexpected, original, carefree. You'll have fun.

Go to your 10 year high school reunion. I almost don't want to spoil that surprise for you, but there's someone from school (if I tell you who you will NOT believe me), someone that you've never even spoken to who, later on, will absolutely blow your mind. You'll meet him when you're 28. That will change the course of your life.

Your life, by the way, will be amazing. Full of unexpected twists and turns, but by the time you hit 30 you'll be the happiest, most blessed, most content you've ever been. You'll appreciate the journey that's brought you here, you'll be looking forward to your next 70 years on earth, you'll accept yourself, love the woman God created you to be, and appreciate that the best things, the things most worth having, the things you value the most are the things you worked hard to achieve.

But seriously - don't cut your hair.

With MUCH, MUCH, MUCH love,

Older Heather

BAH.

2011-03-14T12:06:00.000-07:00

A lot of Americans are overweight. SURPRISE! Something you didn't know!

The media bombards us with unrealistic physical standards of neo-human perfection. REALLY?! You mean Miranda Kerr doesn't look like that in real life???? You CRAZY.

People in entertainment are expected to be exceptionally thin. WOW! I mean, I always heard the camera adds 10 pounds, but.........

When underweight famous people put on a few, they get called fat. NO WAY! Miley is totally NOT fat, she's just...rounder in the face. And Christina, she's just....booze bloated????

Gee, seems to me there's very little healthy medium. So, what gives? What's a girl to do?

Wellllllll.........

If you're Holly Madison, you strip down and show off your cellulite in an un-retouched photo shoot for a magazine in a bid to convince us that you are, under all of that makeup and peroxide, actually just like the rest of us. Sort of like when Jennifer Love Hewett's cellulite was accidentally broadcast to America and she did her best to talk out both sides of her mouth. The "I love my curves!" side and the "by the way, I'm only a size 2!" side, which sent a sort of jumbled message BUT still netted a huge "how I lost the weight!" magazine cover.

If you're Giuliana Rancic you starve yourself nearly to death then take to the webernets to broadcast your unhealthy relationship with yourself via a "lifestyle blog" where you desperately attempt to convince people that you're "fab! fit! fun!" Sort of like when a girlfriend says "I'm SOOOO over him!!!!!!" you know they're totally sobbing themselves to sleep to a Berlin soundtrack and living off of Girl Scout cookies.

If you're LeAnn Rimes, you stop eating and replace meals with surgery. Nose job, boob job, you name it. All justified under the umbrella that your man "likes skinny girls and you want to keep him happy." Sort of like....um, I don't know, that desperate girl who used her boyfriend's ex-wife's cosmetic surgeon for her new boobs. Oh, wait - same girl. Same act of desperation.

If you're Christina Aguilera, you maintain an air of obliviousness, let them call you chunky, and drown your sorrows in wine and Mystic tan booths. Sort of like what happens to most pop stars when they fall from public grace by doing the things most of us have probably done out of the glare of flashbulbs and tabloid covers. What? Like you didn't go through a boozy phase after a breakup? Or put on some weight after a big vacation was over (that vacation that involved a bikini and nothing but diet coke for the week leading up to the vacation.....MANY of us have been there, I'm not alone in admitting my own body image issues that have lead to unhealthy choices from time to time.......just without the "welfare-related arrests" or the high profile missteps, lyrically OR literally....).

If you're Jessica Simpson you find a man to validate you and swaddle yourself in a series of really puzzling outfits while falling asleep on a mattress stuffed with nothing but cash. Er, at least I'd imagine she does - the girl's clothing empire has netted her millions upon millions - which is, apparently, not enough to convince a girl not to go out in reindeer-printed leggings, but hey, if I were filthy rich........

If you're Kate Middleton you maintain an air of sophistication, poise, class in public. Then when there aren't babies to kiss and boats to commission and royal events to host, you waste away to nearly nothing, leaving you looking rather like the hipless, waistless, bustless pre-adolescent with very pretty hair and lovely suits who gets to accompany Prince William down the aisle, but about whom newspapers write open letters of desperate concern, begging you to "ditch the wedding diet."

Hey, there's no part of me that's claiming to be better than them, or above these techniques. Shoot, I ended up standing in front of a mirror in my undies the next morning wondering if my backside looked better or worse than Holly's (similar, I decided - we carry it in similar places and in similar proportions). So, let's play "guess which one of these chicks actually makes Heather pissed off?"

Is it:

A) The playgirl has-been who admitted to loving french fries and decided to do away with the digital retouching

B) The tabloid TV personality who claims to want a baby so badly she'd do ANYTHING, but would darn near eat the living head off of someone who suggested she might have better luck if she gained 5 pounds

C) The home-wrecking Twitterphile who must realize on some level that the man who cheats to be with her may be the man who cheats ON her, and so goes desperately out of her way to be "perfect," in a vain effort to keep him loyal (or captive, choose your perspective)

D) The drunken diva who seems to have misplaced her son. Or, um, replaced him with a man-child boyfriend who may or may not be part of the problem.

E) The ditsy millionaire who yo-yos depending on the state of her romantic life but can never escape the paparazzi "did she or didn't she gain a few?" scrutiny that was probably enough to drive her little sis to a pretty obvious eating disorder

F) The Once and Future Princess who knows she's about the become perhaps the most photographed woman in the world and is understandably image-conscious on the eve of her big, history-making nuptials

Take a guess.

Who pisses me off the most? Well, it's not Holly Madison and her shadows of normal-woman-thigh. It's not LeAnn Rimes, misguided though she may be - she is her own worst enemy and will probably implode soon enough (or her implants will......yikes). It's not Xtina - she's in denial, and bound to bounce off the bottom soon enough - it will probably have more to do with needing to replace all of her pants - vanity will get her first. It's not Jessica Simpson - she has harmlessly battled a handful of margarita pounds here and there that she admits she's tired of seeing pictures of in the tabloids. It's not Kate Middleton, Lord knows I'd be the planet's least gracious Bridezilla in the face of that brand of notoriety.

Nope - the one that gets a visceral reaction from my (slightly jiggly) gut:

Why that would be option B, one Giuliana Rancic, the not-quite-celebrity with the most-talked-about womb in America. She's thin. Very thin. Too thin. Image-obsessed. Food obsessed. FERTILITY obsessed. She's quick to cite the fact that Nicole Ritchie, Rachel Zoe and Victoria Beckham were all, also, exceptionally thin women who managed to have babies, as though that -- and fertility treatments -- alone were enough to mean that she should manage to, as well.

Her doctor suggested that she put on 10 pounds in an effort to increase the success of her IVF treatments. She gained 5 and balked that it should have been enough. She snapped at detractors and argued that she works in an "image-conscious industry" in which, I don't know, a 10-pound gain would be tantamount to suicide? I don't get it.

SHE is helping to perpetuate the negatively image-conscious industry that's so obviously damaging and SHE is her own evidence why she is NOT fit to be a mother. To care more about those 5 pounds than she cares about creating a healthy environment for an unborn baby is ridiculously selfish. To be more obsessed with her weight than with the welfare of the child she's yet to be able to conceive is...disgusting. To be so afraid that someone might look at a pregnant lady and say, "ew, she looks.....PREGNANT" is obviously painfully unrealistic, and she's so out of touch with the reality of how she ACTUALLY looks that she thinks people WANT to look like her (hence the weird "Fit! Fab! Fun!" website that really serves to propagate her disordered eating and obsession with body image).

Reality check, Giuliana: if you gained 10, we'd probably think you looked pretty. Right now you look....grasshopper. If you gained 10, we'd be able to relate to you a little. You might look good in those clothes. If you gained 10, you'd still be in an underweight percentile, you'd still look good on camera, but you'd demonstrate that you're serious about giving birth to a healthy baby.

Right now - you're just everything that's wrong with our body images right now. So take part in stopping the cycle of abuse - stop the self-hate and the fear of everyone else's opinion and get healthy. TRULY healthy, not website-fluff-calorie-counting-skinny-jean-recommending-we-can-see-straight-through-the-hype sort of healthy.

We may be an overweight nation, but if the other alternative is dangerously obsessed with the state of our upper arms....we're no better off in your "Fit! Fab! Fun!" world than we are in our cellulite-stricken, heart-disease riddled, diabetic wonderland of flab.

You should be watching "Southland."

2011-03-09T16:26:00.000-08:00

I don't watch a ton of TV (er, um, unless it involves auctions, storage units, picking, pawning, logging, gator-shooting, or gold mining....). What I do watch I scam online...and when I find a show I love, it's a dangerous thing -- I'll end up watching 9-hour marathons on a Saturday, the characters will pop up in my bizarro dreams...I start thinking that Omar's a real person and wondering how he's doing since they killed his pretty boyfriend. I cry when Stringer gets popped. I shame myself over being the ONLY PERSON ON THE PLANET who preferred Jack to Locke (I mean seriously, kiddo...). I worry about whether or not Audrina will find a good guy, she picks such lame d-bags. I end up falling asleep wondering what Benson will do if they take Maria Bello's son away from her. I think about kidnapping Sally Draper to spare her growing up with that shrew of a mother. I approach my television with the gravity usually reserved for...important things, like new Gaga videos (hated it) or Natalie Portman's Oscar dress (loved it).

So it's no small matter when I find another show I love. It's like inviting someone new to join the family. It's like sitting down to "define the relationship" with someone you've been dating. "Are you my boyfriend? Really? And I'm your only girlfriend? SERIOUSLY, though? And you're ready to declare it on Facebook? Are you sure? And did you know Facebook is now like a proper noun that gets spell-checked if you don't capitalize it?"

That sort of serious. Inviting a new show into my repertoire is a big deal.

So it's with a great sense of triumph and a serious sense of security for the future of our relationship that I publicly declare Southland my new favorite show.

"What-land? I don't think I've ever heard of it."

Yeah, that's probably because it was advertised as the Great White Hope for the prime time slot vacated by ER a few years ago.

UNFORTUNATELY, it was just too smart for the average viewer. Grisly, nuanced, subtle, great writing. You know, the type of show the networks have no idea what to do with and would rather air Two and A Half Men reruns in place of. That sort of show.

The sort of show with characters that have conversations that REAL LIFE people might have, complete with the occasional blank stare or irritated shoulder shrug or stupid comeback. The sort of police procedural drama that doesn't pander to the lowest common denominator with lame interrogation sequences that reek of Psych 101. They don't need fancy famous guest stars or huge budgets with special effects.

It's shot in a very raw, almost grainy single-camera docu-drama style that makes you feel like you're really there, on the streets of LA, working the cases with the detectives. You're really there in the back seat of the squad car while the patrol cops cruise the streets. You're really there when the angry crowd of gansta punks start to close in on the cops.

Many of their extras are real LA street kids, gang members, moms and dads and normal folks - it lends an air of believability to the entire show to have people that don't look like they were in makeup for three hours to look "rundown and tough."

The show doesn't glamorize the cops or demonize the criminals in a predictably two-dimensional way. These cops have problems. Drug problems, marital problems, self-confidence problems, ego problems. The relationships between the cops and their partners feels authentic. The writing is smart and snappy without being artificially witty (not that I don't love me some Aaron Sorkin, it's just that REAL people don't speak like that. They have to think and breathe before the rapid-fire repartee can commence).

The actors are TOP NOTCH. When an awkward, tough-guy detective is trying not to cry, you really feel that lump in his throat when he speaks. When he twists his mouth in a fake, frozen looking smile, you know it's because he's barely holding it together. It's not over-wrought melodrama, it's real people.

The show just wrapped up its third season on TNT last night and I loved every second of it. Rather than a cliffhanging finale as the last two have been, they went out on a pleasant note, with some upbeat new changes for the characters that left me looking forward to the dynamics of next season.

Also - strangely, for a gritty, often bloody, always suspenseful cop show on a network geared slightly more toward the dudes, I can't help wondering why Southland ended up so short on babes and heavy on guys who look great in uniform.....oh well. Either way, it's a great show. Season 4 can't come quickly enough!

"You know what you really got arrested for? Public intoxi-WINNING!"

2011-03-07T13:23:00.000-08:00

Warner Brothers just officially canned Charlie Sheen.

First things first - you know what's totally NOT winning right now? My lunch.

A couple times a week I slum it at the local grocery store sushi cart. Which is wasteful right there because I don't like rice, so my sushi consumption is pretty much limited to peeling the seared eel off the top of the roll, slathering it in soy and throwing away a lot of little rice doughnut debris.

So I take the time to drive the whole 3 minutes up the hill to the grocery store, walk in, and they've just....vacated the sushi rack. No cheerful little chef guy, no overpriced ahi salad, no beloved eel roll. Just an empty rack where the sake used to be. Like they knew it was a MONDAY of a Monday and they knew I'd be coming and they just pulled the sushi rug right out from under my feet.

Begrudgingly settled for a bland "Mediterranean Tuna Sandwich" on a soggy hamburger bun. But I don't like bread, so I'll dig the tuna off the bun and cast a mean-looking glower in the sandwich's general direction because it is, so pointedly, NOT eel and half of it will end up, so pointedly, in the garbage.

ALSO - while I may patently refuse to go on the record about Charlie Sheen any further at this point (for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is his complete disrespect for women, children, the fame he's receiving for being a wayward asshat, my unwillingness to give any more airspace to men who mistreat women AND his willingness to look a weekly $2 million gift horse in the cracked out mouth), I am perfectly happy to toss up videos of other people doing their best Charlie impressions. So, under the WINNING! front we have Bill Hader on SNL this weekend; he did a pretty spot-on version of Senor Crack himself in their "Duh! Winning!" skit.

He nailed the voice. He nailed the crazy eyes (well, Bill Hader has crazy eyes anyway, so he just has to look at the camera to give me the heebies). Also loved that the guests on his show were other famewhores of questionable repute. Like my poor Christina Aguilera (who is one more trip-and-fall away from a Britney-level of immortality toward which no one wants to be sentenced). Abby Elliot (who needed bigger hair, more cleavage and worse lipstick to really bring home the Christina imitation) warbled her way through a litany of the pop stars most recent missteps, including the public intoxication arrest, to which Fake Charlie says, "You know what you really got arrested for? Public intoxi-WINNING."

Which makes me think (a little tangentially) that we've yet to see a pop star really RECOVER from their downfall. I sort of feel like the shelf life of a pop tart is increasingly abbreviated and once you do something to bungle your good graces in the public's eye, the ladder back toward redemption and sold-out stadium tours is VERY, VERY, VERY long, high, and difficult to climb in heels. But that's a different commentary for a different day. For now, I think XTina should probably retire to a safe, sober place somewhere in the hills of Montana and return several years from now with a killer role in a Broadway show that will endear her to a newer, higher brow demographic. But that's just my take. If she wants to hire me for publicity purposes I'd be happy to accept my salary in shoes. Otherwise, I'll keep covering her random antics as my inspiration allows, because my "Decade of Christina" post continues to generate more daily traffic than any other post I've ever written.

Back toward the real point.

I'm gonna go ahead and say it: Miley was pretty good on SNL this weekend. She does Bieber better than she does Lohan, and she sang a little too often, but I've gotta hand it to her: the twit has stage presence. She looked classy and appropriate during her monologue - she tackled the Stupid Salvia Controversy very succinctly by drawing attention to all of the celebrities who are notoriously MORE poorly behaved than she is, gave a musical shrug of the shoulders to her bong indiscretion, reminded everyone she never said she was perfect, and EVEN squeezed in a little wink-nod reference to the recurring Vanessa Bayer skit that parodies her. Apparently her weak Lohan impression was enough to enrage Our Lady of the Stolen Necklace, because she sent an email to Lorne Michaels expressing her disappointment over, I dunno, being such a flippin EASY target????

I was oddly thrilled with this little "Face Cream and Rockabilly CD" number in all of it's Dynasty-esque glory. Mr Wonderful was a little puzzled and found it less funny, but the absurdity of packaging face cream with a cd, in proportions that require you to continue to buy more of both for no particular reason was pretty hilarious. And I felt like she held her own alongside Kristen Wiig pretty well (which all guests aren't so fortunate as to be able to manage). She was pretty natural (which comes from growing up on stage, in front of the camera I'd imagine). She's really filled out in the face lately - which has strangely endeared me to her - she's growing up, her proportions are changing a little, she's wearing a little more...padding these days, which is startlingly normal....and I always like having those, "aw, she's filthy rich and still gets chipmunk cheeks from time to time, too!" moments.

Anyway - she did well. I'll admit it.

On being a girl. Who's neither mermaid nor knocked up nor ugly-hot.

2011-03-04T12:08:00.000-08:00

Well, sort of. My alternate title was something like, "Ways that Huckabee, The Little Mermaid, and what I'm calling The Sexy Librarian Complex undermine ladies" sounded waaaaaaaaay too "Wag of the Finger" for a Friday afternoon. And while I'm not, typically, terribly ashamed to spend post after post camped on my slick little soapbox, I figured fewer readers would be inclined to even bother with a tirade that begins with a 16-word title that sounded so...femidictive. New word, by the way. Combine feminist with vindictive and you've got the second viable word I've created this year. The first: VERBUSE. Meaning: verb abuse. The incorrect use of a verb in a way that ratchets up my blood pressure. See the word: GROW.

But ugh, this is off to a boring start (and this really wasn't meant to be a grammar lesson. I was, actually, quite bad in the official grammar part of English classes back in the day. I know how words ought to be strung together, I know the difference between Hung and Hanged, I know Who versus Whom, I know when a semicolon is appropriate, but talk transitive/intransitive and --- oh holy jeez, this just went from boring to damn near unreadable).

I think I have to just own the fact that I'm not a super-cute, funny, har-har-har, "LOL, ROTFL, OMG you're SOOOOOOO funny!" sort of writer. These days. I manage wit from time to time, but mostly I'm just cranky with well-executed punctuation. There are worse things. I'm just not gonna make you giggle today, that's all. If you want to giggle, go remind yourself how magnificent Natalie was in the "Natalie Raps" days. Here, I'll make it easy for you.

Okay - back to getting serious and un-funny.

First off: The Little Mermaid.

Really, I could use any of the Disney movies to this same end, but I've actually been neck-deep in The Little Mermaid soundtrack over the past week or so and, while singing along with "Poor Unfortunate Souls" at the top of my lungs in traffic and realizing it would be the PERFECT karaoke song, ALSO realized that any little girl who watches this movie is getting about the world's WORST example of what a woman's priorities should be, like, EVER.

So the first question is, "uh, Heather, why the heck are you driving around blasting Mermaid tunes?" And the answer is, "because Part of Your World was stuck in my head and it was driving me NUTS, so I took to iTunes and bought the soundtrack to placate myself - complete with weird covers of half of the songs done by Disney hacks like The Jonas Brothers. Seriously. They cover 'Poor Unfortunate Souls.' And Ashley Tisdale sings 'Kiss the Girl' (gag) and Jessica Simpson sings -- oh nevermind. Anyway - the song was stuck in my head, I bought the album."

The second question is, "uh, Heather, why is The Little Mermaid the most toxic example of womanhood, like, EVER? And what does this have to do with Huckabee and librarians?"

Well, let's look at it this way:

Young girl (fine, mermaid, but since those are mythical creatures upon which the average elementary school student is unlikely to stumble in the course of their day, we'll substitute "human" for "merfolk" and make the analogy easier to follow) decides she's SOOOOO discontented with the trappings of her current life she must absolutely leave it all behind and make a break for the dark side. Cross over to the fascinating, off-limits land of the OTHER people (in this case, upright, air-breathing bi-peds, but for the sake of example, could be anyone DIFFERENT). Her father is a tyrant who'd rather declare the other people "bad" instead of presenting any sort of cogent argument in defense of protecting his cadre of daughters from the "others." This backfires, and daughter decides she's gonna defy daddy and sign over her soul in order to go be with a MAN whom she's only met once (while he was unconscious, mind you), with whom she's never spoken, and for whom she's willing to completely change in order to be with.

So - in human-speak, we've got a girl willing to endure physical pain to impress someone she's only just met in a bid to piss off her parents. Think, oh, plastic surgery to look more like the girls on TV, maybe. She's so fed up with iron-fisted, ask-no-questions parenting that she'd abandon everything she's every known to chase after someone she's only just met.

In the end, she gets in over her head and her father jumps to her defense, saves the day, slays the, um, octopus to whom girl has sold her soul and reclaims his daughter. At which point a NORMAL girl would be all, "ooh, dad, THANKS for saving me, you were so right, I belong here where it's safe and where I'm not Octo-Prey and where I can be myself, and hey, by the way, these bi-peds aren't all bad, maybe we could talk about it!"

But nope. Disney decides, in fact, that the happy ending would be for her dad to pussy-out, put his daughter's romantic happiness first, succumb to her whining, and send her back to live happily ever after with Prince Stranger. Oh, yeah, Prince. Because if we're taught nothing else by watching Disney movies, we're taught that our primary goal should be to secure a husband, and that he better be a rich prince. Because we're not worth much on our own apart from our good looks and our ability to charm a rich man senseless with our great hair and big, gigantic eyes.

*Cue a massive roll of those big, gigantic eyes.*

Every one of these Disney neo-fairy tales has the same bottom line. Our primary purpose as burgeoning women is to find a rich prince to marry us. No matter how much pain and separation and trial we have to endure to snag the man. Our life is a success once we've netted the prince.

I could go on, but you get it. The funny thing is that the lyrics of that Poor Unfortunate Souls song was supposed to represent the vile, reprehensible machinations of a deranged evil witch, BUT, the trouble is that Disney is espousing PRECISELY this:

You'll have your looks, your pretty face.
And don't underestimate the importance of body language, ha!

The men up there don't like a lot of blabber
They think a girl who gossips is a bore!
Yet on land it's much preferred for ladies not to say a word
And after all dear, what is idle babble for?
Come on, they're not all that impressed with conversation
True gentlemen avoid it when they can
But they dote and swoon and fawn
On a lady who's withdrawn
It's she who holds her tongue who gets a man

Yep. Pretty much.

Okay - moving on to the next knock to girls: Huckabee. Today he's making headlines for suggesting that Natalie Portman is "hurting America" by having a baby "out of wedlock."

Ah, wedlock. That word that's never used alone, only used in conjunction with "out of" and always seems to refer to the conditions under which Poor, Unfortunate Babies are born. Which is fine - that's still pretty much the conservative, evangelical party line on babies, that they must be born within the structure of a traditional marriage - and I'm not going to dispute that fact. I don't plan to have a kid until I'm married, I want to raise my children within the context of a traditional, nuclear family with two parents, I want to parent as part of a partnership, I care fiercely enough for the children I've not yet conceived to want them to be raised in the most supportive, healthy family environment possible, so, yeah, I track with him on that point.

Where I do NOT agree is when he gets into vague stats about single moms:

"Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock....You know, right now, 75 percent of black kids in this country are born out of wedlock. 61 percent of Hispanic kids — across the board, 41 percent of all live births in America are out of wedlock births. And the cost of that is simply staggering."

Oh, Huck.

Shut your mouth.

Let's check some ACTUAL, US census stats along a similar vein:

"The age of custodial mothers has increased over the past 14 years. In 1994, one-quarter (25.4 percent) were 40 years or older. By 2008, the proportion had grown to over one-third (39.1 percent). The proportion of custodial mothers under 30 years of age decreased from 30.9 percent in 1994 to 25.8 percent by 2008.9
The educational level of custodial mothers has also increased during this period. In 1994, 22.2 percent of custodial mothers had less than a high school education and 17.1 percent had at least an associate’s degree. By 2008, the proportion of custodial mothers who had not graduated from high school decreased to 15.5 percent and the proportion with at least an associate’s degree increased to 26.9 percent.10 "

"Custodial parents receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), fell from 22.0 percent to 4.3 percent during the past 14 years."

"Among White children in families, 22.4 percent lived with their custodial parents.5 The proportion of Black children in families who lived with their custodial parent while the other parent lived outside their household (48.2 percent) was more than twice as large as the proportion of White children. Among children of other races— including American Indian, Eskimo or Aleut, Asian or Pacifi c Islander, or other races—16.1 percent lived in custodial-parent families. Approximately one-quarter (25.4 percent) of Hispanic children, who may be any race, lived with their custodial parent."

Look, I don't know where he got his info, it's not possible for me to go out and refute each of his percentage stats in a meaningful way, and I'm not out to disprove him based on numbers - I'm out to raise a little bit of alarm over the cavalier way in which he dismisses single mothers, while at the same time supposing that "out of wedlock" equals "without a partner." The two are not synonymous. Two unmarried people raising children together would, technically, count as "out of wedlock." But are these necessarily poverty-stricken welfare moms living in crack dens with 8 children, depending on the state to support them? Hardly. Oh - and, by the way, along the lines of "the goal of our lives should be to get married," Huck also said, of Natalie's statements during awards season:

"She was very visibly pregnant, and it’s really it’s a problem because she’s about seven months pregnant, it’s her first pregnancy, and she and the baby’s father aren’t married, and before two billion people, Natalie Portman says, ‘Oh I want to thank my love and he’s given me the most wonderful gift.’ He didn’t give her the most wonderful gift, which would be a wedding ring! And it just seems to me that sending that kind of message is problematic."

Hey, heads-up, sir: she's engaged. Getting hitched. Planning to raise the little genius "in wedlock" (or however you use that phrase in the affirmative). But to say that the greatest gift we could ever hope to receive from our men is a WEDDING RING is sort of, oh, ignoring that whole matter of LOVE. Support. Devotion. Loyalty. Partnership. None of which are necessarily guaranteed by virtue of a ring. She's (presently) in a loving relationship, excited to raise her kid with a man who likewise loves her - what's to hate about that?

OH - or is it that he thinks so little of the American public that he assumes any 17 year-old girl who sees a knocked-up actress thanking her boyfriend for the gift of life will automatically use that actress as an inspiration to get pregnant and live off of the state? Trust me, Huck, the institution of marriage is not being denigrated when an engaged woman raves about her fiance and her unborn child.

Some of the comments on the "Feministing" blog where I read the Huckabee quotes were very intelligent. Here's are some favorites (pardon in advance, they're lengthy):

Commenter 1:

Huckabee’s words are really quite telling—he thinks that somehow marriage prevents poverty.

"But it doesn’t.

You know what would prevent poverty among women and children?

Ending sexism.

But that would be too much for Huckabee because he ignores the history of what marriage actually has been."

Commenter 2:

Clearly we can jump all over his assumption that having children outside of marriage is somehow worse than having children inside of it, that somehow a marriage provides something that a committed relationship does not. However, I would like to go after a few highly practical points:

He could increase of participation of marriage by pregnant or would-be-pregnant women by allowing same-sex marriage (relevant when women who have same-sex partners undergo in vitro fertilization), providing children comprehensive sex education, and giving women greater access to birth control. On the topic of baby bumps in particular, not unnecessarily constraining access to abortions would allow women (generally unmarried) to end unwanted pregnancies that would have led to such “unwholesome” baby bumps.

However, Huckabee has priorities besides just curtailing the rates of pregnant people who are unmarried (or is unmarried people who get pregnant?) He also advocates for his brand of Christianity that is often at odds with many of his stated goals/concerns, and any sort of opinion base needs to establish what the priorities are, and what consequences or trade-offs it is willing to pay to work towards each of its goals.

One more set of points deals with his interest in the racial minority statistics, because history is very relevant. Until 146 years ago, Black people in the US were usually slaves. For them, they did not have rights. They were not in control of their relationships with each other, and any legal notion of marriage was controlled by their masters. For many reasons, marriage was not as desirable to slaves as it was to free White people. Even when slavery ends, Black people were still subject to abuses by White people and the government, and it is not unreasonable that they would not have fully warmed up to participating in the White man’s construction of marriage — and submitting forms that would potentially draw the government’s attention to them. It’s really not until the Civil Rights of the 1960s where racial minorities gained more serious protections that such people would be mostly safe to participate in this institution, but there is still a terrific amount of cultural inertia that leads to the disparity we see today. Marriage wasn’t a real option for so long that it simply lacks the relevance and significance to Black people that it generally has to White people.

Of course, there are also confounding factors that can contribute to this disparity (wealth, education [wealth-segregation contributes to quality disparities here], a mass media obsessed with differences), but culture is pretty powerful stuff.

It doesn’t surprise me in the least that Huckabee hasn’t thought that through — I hadn’t even really thought about it until ~a couple years ago myself. But then, I don’t have my own opinion show.

DBT: That’s a rather telling omission, isn’t it? The Internet has jumped all over it, and I don’t think Huckabee is going to be able to outrun this idea."

Commenter 3:

"Because I have a Republican father, and heard stuff just like this my whole life, I understand the logic of this particular attitude. But it’s more a tone-deaf assumption that all single parent situations are similar and inherently detrimental. And it’s a romanticism of the old ways where one parent worked and another stayed home. That’s increasingly a thing of the past, just as marriage itself no long resembles its former self.
But before you can criticize single-parent African-American households, we have to talk about the culture of incarceration among black men, and the legacy of generations of economic inequality. And the same basic economic inequality applies to Latinos as well."

Commenter 4:

Man, I so didn’t want to be disappointed by this guy. But to say:
“Most single moms are very poor, uneducated, can’t get a job, and if it weren’t for government assistance, their kids would be starving to death and never have health care. And that’s the story that we’re not seeing, and it’s unfortunate that we glorify and glamorize the idea of out of children wedlock”
That’s ridiculous, it’s arrogant, it’s ill-informed and it’s an out-dated way of thinking. With the divorce rate as it is for our generation, better believe there are plenty of HARD-WORKING, employed, single-moms living WELL above the poverty line, CERTAINLY not relying on public assistance and doing just as well as any other mom out there.
Let’s talk deadbeat dads, shall we? Stop demonizing mothers, Huck.

Oh - and about that whole ugly-hot Librarian Complex? Yeah, this got too long - you can read about it here on Pajiba. I totally agree.

Anyway - this ended up long, rambling, unfocused and probably without much of a "thesis." Other than that I kept finding examples today of women being given too little credit - and we're starting our girls on these lame messages very young. Hmmm. And we wonder why I struggle with self esteem and body image issues and a consumer-driven lifestyle that stems from a deep-seated, much-loathed sense that I'm not good enough as-is....hmmmm, thanks, Disney!

"I don't appreciate you SlanderBeeking my name...."

2011-02-25T13:21:00.000-08:00

This flippin made my week. Fer serious.

Here, let's play a word association game....

I say, "unicorn heads, rainbows, gunfire, muenster cheese, DAWSON, champagne, taxidermy and sexy awesomeness" and you'd say:

"One of Heather's really great dreams....but, like, AFTER a night of too much booze and mexican food and Cadbury eggs."

And I'd say "you're so close! It's my dream come true AND it's a new Ke$ha video."

And you'd say, "OH. Totally makes sense now."

Right????

Because I love this chick and I love her weird mind and I love the fact that they're creating a new video for her perfectly obnoxious song "Blow" and she's all, "ooh, we could get some dudes in tuxes wearing fake unicorn heads, and I could feed them champagne and lick their nostrils while dressed like Tina Turner, but maybe with better hair, and then we could totally get DAWSON Van Der Beek to show up and pose all James Bond like, and then we could BOTH rip our bras off from our clothes, and then we could fire RAINBOW GUNS at each other until he's dead and we can decapitate some unicorn dudes and in the end I mount DAWSON'S head on the wall! After I eat a tiny triangle of cheese!!!"

And her handlers are all, "yeah, that's pretty rad. What color should Dawson's bra be?"

I mean, how can you NOT love this exchange that takes place in the middle????

"Well....if it isn't James Van Der Douche."
"I don't appreciate you slanderBeeking my name, Ke-DOLLARSIGN-ha."
"Thank you for the snack, it was quite delicious."
"You're welcome."
"Was that....muenster cheese tickling my taste buds?"
"Of course. Muenster is like edible lactose gold."
"Agreed. Shall we dance?"
"Let's."

And then they shoot at each other with white plastic guns.

I mean, that's flippin cinematic genius. Seriously. And I totally want them to be a new couple. They have chemistry. It makes me like that cereal-box-headed has-been a little better once I see him making fun of himself and having fun with it.

I'm declaring this The Most Fabulous Video Ever Made. Well done Ke$ha. I knew I loved you for a reason.

What Sports Illustrated does right.

2011-02-15T16:05:00.000-08:00

Let's give credit where it's due: the dudes at Sports Illustrated "get it."

Cruised through a photo gallery of the last 21 years of SI swimsuit covers and with the POSSIBLE exception of Marissa Miller in 2008, there's not a bad choice in cover models for a solid two decades. And yes, once again I realize that Big Brother would take one glance at my browsing history here at work some days and think, "that's totally a 17 year-old dude trapped in a 30 year-old chick's body." Between the SI covers, the "Miley almost flashes her boobs in a see-thru dress!" headlines, the "Hot celebrities in bikinis!" sites and the occasional search for car parts or fast food menus, my web browsing habits would suggest I'm not doing a very good job at being either professional OR female.

But as for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit covers: they do a great job.

As a girl, I can give a complete thumbs-up.

They pick women who look like women.

Not plastic women, not little girl women. Sexy ladies. Ladies that, while not like anyone I regularly pass in the aisles of my local drugstore, seem like an ALMOST attainable ideal.....the version of us that might have a chance to make an appearance if we lived on a beach, ditched the bottle of wine at dinner and preferred cucumber and long runs at sunset to french fries and "Gold Rush: Alaska."

Ladies whom, it seems to me, most men should want to, um....Grocery Shop with, to coin my own new euphemism.

This year is a great example. We've got a model named Irina Shayk on the cover. Now, boobs of questionable natural origin and baby-daddy drama in the form of a World Cup girlie-man aside, there's not much about this woman that I immediately hate. She looks healthy! She looks natural! She has hips! Obviously she's in good shape, but she's not all gristle and chest bones and clavicles. There's a little meat on her upper arms. She's got beachy-looking hair and a pretty amazing face. She looks -- GASP -- human.

Now, I'm used to finding a zillion things to hate (fine: you could also read hate as envy, covet, whatever) about pictures of famous chicks in bikinis. Their patent lack of hip. Their disproportionately giant bolt-on racks. Enough space between their thighs to drive a battleship (not a euphemism). Complete absence of saddlebags. And though Ms Swimsuit Edition 2011 certainly isn't sporting cellulite or extra rolls under her ass (thips, I call them - that area between thigh and hip that carries all of my extra, um....foodstores for those long winters of hibernation or in case the world ends and we need to live off of our reserves.....), she looks like a hyper-sexy version of a REAL person.

Not jacked on surgery or lipo'd until she's got the proportions of a 12 year-old kid.

Well done, Sports Illustrated, for nailing 21 years of covers featuring women we'd ALL like to wake up in bed next to. Or Grocery Shop with.

Other favorites through the years: Bar Rafieli in 2009 (hips! more women with hips!) and Yamila Diaz-Rahi in 2002 (back before PhotoShop was so dramatically abused).

Keep it up, SI. The ladies like it, too.

(I think I get it.....is the sky falling????)

2011-02-09T11:39:00.000-08:00

I hate myself for spending ANY time thinking about this, but.....I've figured it out:

I understand why the Kardashians are such media gold.

I know, I know - I wasn't going to so much as reference them, let alone dedicate entire paragraphs to my "aha!" moment, but then I figured - "screw it - how many times have I asked myself WHY these women are still snagging magazine covers? I owe my skepticism a little relief......"

We whine about the fact that they're "famous for nothing," but I think that's precisely WHY we can't look away. It's sort of like what would happen if one member of that gigantic family of girls we knew back in high school - those annoying, ditzy ones with big boobs and big hair and plenty of boyfriends and an easy spot on the cheer squad - ended up with a sex tape that led to a reality show that led to tons of magazine covers and red carpet appearances and spin-off shows and more magazine covers and product endorsements.....

It's sort of like they seem ALMOST normal enough we could picture OURSELVES or people we know in the exact same sort of magnifying glass - and because they broadcast every detail of their lives (every lactating, ovulating, weight-gaining, hair-coloring detail....), we feel like we KNOW them - and there's this sort of double whammy effect - they're somehow accessibly familiar in the first place, then we "really get to know them" via stupid articles where they interview REAL celebrities, and more radio morning show sound bytes, and all of sudden we realize precisely how they gained so much power.

It's because of people like me. People who LOATHE their ubiquity, but read the articles in spite of myself.

There was a moment today when I realized that Kim is now recognized by her first name alone. Huffington post had a story called "Kim Explains Weight Gain" and I knew immediately who they were referencing. What other Kim would be yapping about gaining 10 pounds while in New York? What other Kim would headline the entertainment section of a news site? What other Kim would be so arrogant as think we care about those 10 pounds?

Kardashian, of course.

Oh boy!

I mean, shoot - I'll admit - I've been suckered into visiting her "Shoe Dazzle" website where (as the sidebar ads suggest - ugh) you can "Dress like Kim!" ACTUALLY, it's not so much "dress like Kim" as it is a subscription service that sends you shoes and purses every month for a flat fee of 40 bucks and free shipping. So, basically, it's like the old record club, but with platform pumps and peep-toe booties. Their Jimmy Choo knockoff-esque purses aren't half bad, I'll admit....begrudgingly. Because it's the truth: these hags are consumer gold and for as much as I roll my eyes I'll still read the articles. Most of us do. Even if it's just to point an irate finger at the magazine and the computer screen while we shriek "DIE! JUST DIE ALREADY!" we're still participating in their Empire.

And when Mama Kris hits menopause and makes the rounds on The View and the Joy Behar show and appears on the Oprah Network to talk about "What to expect when you're going through The Change" she'll still probably net ratings and still snag a magazine cover and she'll continue to rake in money for The Empire.

Anyway - today's thesis, in a nutshell: We watch them BECAUSE they're famous for nothing. And somewhere, in the deepest reaches of our collectively fed up psyches, we're morbidly curious about "normal" people who become famous overnight - about the sisters who still fight and hit each other and compliment each others boobs when they're looking particularly good and still borrow each others clothes without asking and still can't really find a boyfriend who will stick around. They struggle with weight gain and fertility issues and fix it all with retail therapy - so really, they're pretty much just like us.

(that sound you just heard was me tossing myself off of a cliff......)

I put myself through this Harper's Bazaar interview where the writer finds new and amazing ways to brown nose....which says to me that the industry knows she's worth enough money that they handle her with kid gloves and cower at the foot the the Throne Kardashian. Because putting her on the cover sells the magazine.

Here are some snippets....(I'd say "kill me now," but with that cliff maneuver, I'm already one dead puppy):

On consumerism: Kim is an avatar of American consumerism. "Once I tweeted, 'Oh my God, I just tried a Golden Oreo. I've never in my life had something so amazing,'" she remembers. "Then Oreo sent me crates of them. To my door." She amuses herself: "Hmm, I like Bentleys, flat-screen TVs, diamonds...."

On being easy to relate to: But for all of this, Kim is not a brat—and, in her own way, is weirdly relatable. She tends to speak of herself and her sisters as one being. "We have the glitz and the glam, and people want to live vicariously through it. Personally, though, I'm the first to say I have to work out extra hard, and it's such a struggle for me to eat healthy. I have sister issues and parent issues and all sorts of things."

On her mask of makeup: Today, Kim is in all black—sunglasses, saucy boots, her famous curves on display. But refreshingly, her face—so often covered with a counter's worth of product—is nearly makeup free. "I didn't have time to go home before this interview, and I was like, I have to go do my hair and makeup." She smiles with a level of bravado. "But I'm getting more comfortable not having a face full of makeup."

This is, quite literally, disarming. Under all of that product, Kim is a beautiful girl, her dark Armenian features a lesson in comely symmetry. So why so much spackle? "I do rely on having a full face on," she admits. "But I get that this"—she gestures to her face—"is more fashion. It's hard to let go. But then I think the glam can be my fashion. It's my own accessory." Like Lady Gaga and crazy shoes? "Yes! It's my crazy shoe."

On Botox and cosmetic surgery: Kim tried Botox last year on the show. "All my friends had done it, and I was curious. But I saw such a change in what my face looked like. It didn't work for me. Someone told me yesterday that I needed it. That is so ridiculous."

She fields plastic-surgery questions all the time. "Some people say, 'You've definitely had your nose done.' If I had, I would say, 'Here's the doctor, he's amazing, and I'll make the appointment for you.' Sometimes I'll see pictures that say I've had my nose done, and the before pic is after the after." She attributes the nose debate to her favorite makeup trick, contouring. "Someone saw me last night and my nose was so contoured. And they were like, 'You've had your nose done?' And I was like, 'No, wait until I wash my face.'"

Eminem will gospel-shame you into driving a Chrysler.

2011-02-07T14:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I guess now I have to buy a Chrysler. I mean, I wasn't really in the market for new car, or an American car, or even a big, conservative, manly-looking car, but now that Eminem (er, I'm sorry - Chrysler?) has invoked history and "boot-strappiness" and images of angels and finally sucker-punched us with the ever-effective advertising power of a Detroit gospel choir and some theatrical finger-pointing....I guess I have to buy a new car.

Because after an estimated $12 million commercial spot and some extra millions in production expenses and a million or two for Eminem to appear and wag his finger at us with the power of angels and choirs to back him up the LEAST they stand to gain is my measly 20K or whatever they're charging for the big, black ManMobile, right? And to recoup that I guess they'd only need another 749 of us to apply that same logic. Ooh - I just looked up the price tag - my guess was pretty spot-on - they're starting at about $19,300. Hey, I'm good. I like my cars. I can guess what they charge for a reboot of the Sebring.

So - the commercial. My first thought was that they'd really created a pretty effective commercial. It was grandiose - it was emotionally stirring. It was at the same time both gritty and poetic. It made good use of the familiar "Lose Yourself" riff with which we all associate Sir Em. It finished with a very in-your-face plea - very "dude. I'm a rapper. I drive this car. You should drive this car. And you can forgive me for shilling for Brisk tea at the same because it means I'm making money through endorsements rather than big headlining tours, and that's all meant to protect my sobriety. Dude. So drive the damn Chrysler and be tough and recovered like me."

Honestly, 10 years ago if you'd told us Eminem would be bustin out the gospel choir guns to convince us a revamped, re-named Sebring is what sexy luxury is all about, we'd pretty much have laughed in your face.

But this is Eminem rebooted, too. Detroit's been to hell and back. Eminem's been to hell and back - why not spend a WHOLE LOT of money on the longest commercial in Super Bowl history to suggest that both Detroit and Eminem, after something of a hiatus, are both back and fabulous. The idea is sound.

But the imagery....the imagery was flat depressing.

Shots of a run down, frozen, industrial-looking Motor city spliced alongside clips of churches, steeples, statues suggested a definite undercurrent: God is on dirty Detroit's side. And since Eminem is their new badass mouthpiece, the logic would follow that God is on Eminem's side, too. Which is, again, an interesting comparison to draw, particularly when we think about how audacious that would have seemed just a few short years ago. So maybe, what we're left with after that commercial, is less any sense of urgency to Buy American and more a sense of "wow, Eminem sure has come a long way - and he's looking so skinny...."

I suspect, "Wow, that one car commercial where Eminem looked skinny was cool" is probably not the flavor Chrysler wanted to leave in our mouths.

There's a line about halfway through the commercial where the narrator says, of luxury, "it's as much about where it's from as who it's for."

PROBABLY also should have re-thought that line. Because to ponder that one makes us realize how true that statement really is - when a beauty product is from France we give it more credibility, assume it's better, more luxurious. When a handbag or a pair of boots comes from Italy, we assume it's of higher quality or -- yes -- more luxurious. Stereotype association. Which works when the stereotypes are glamorous.

Stereotype association with Detroit goes something like this: Unemployment, unemployment, cold, unemployment, cars, unemployment, 8 Mile, unemployment....something along those lines.

And suggesting that the "hottest fires make the strongest steel" really only serves to make Motor City, USA sound like a surly, calloused, unyielding, big, chilly chunk of metal that's been seriously burned. And surly chunks of metal don't really evoke luxury. Likewise, STEEL itself doesn't make me think "change," or adaptability or fluidity or resiliency. Or make me want to drive the car. In fact, the entire thing leaves me feeling chilly. Like I want hot chocolate. And maybe I'd like to drink that hot chocolate while letting Eminem drive me around for the afternoon. But then you'd be glad to get home, and let Em go on his way - because, sort of like that Chrysler, you might think about taking something notoriously, historically volatile out for a test spin and a cup of cocoa, but you don't take it home, long-term.

But, I think, few people will probably dissect the commercial to this extent. Instead, they'll spend the rest of the afternoon whistling that little bit about "mom's spaghetti" on his sweater and not quite remembering how the rest of the first verse of "Lose Yourself" went after all of these years.

Meaning mission to gospel-shame us into buying the re-named Sebring was NOT, QUITE EFFECTIVE. But it looked nice.

Women and film-making: the celluloid ceiling

2011-02-02T16:33:00.000-08:00

This isn't exactly NEW news, but as I've been researching some stats on the issue of the gender disparity in behind-the-camera film-making roles, it's really begun to resonate with me - that the same statistics persist YEAR after YEAR after YEAR and that the issue gets so little media airtime is -- or should be -- shocking.

What's the issue?

When it comes to film, there's still a thick, bulletproof, shatter-resistant glass ceiling.

It's been deemed the "Celluloid Ceiling" by those in the industry. As soon as you step behind the camera, the ratio of men to women working in film is staggering. Let's look at some statistics:

According to an annual study titled "The Celluloid Ceiling: Behind-the-Scenes Employment of Women on the Top 250 Films of 2010,”conducted by San Diego State University’s Center for the Study of Women in Television and Films, "women make up more than 50 percent of the U.S. population but they made up a mere 7 percent of directors of major motion pictures in 2010...only 16 percent of all movie directors, executive producers, producers, writers, cinematographers and editors in major films -- 1 percent below the 1998 figure and the same as it was in 2009."

An LA Times article about the same phenomenon summarized the situation by saying "A woman is more likely to hold a seat on a Fortune 500 company board (15%), serve as a member of the clergy (15%) or work as an aerospace engineer (10%) than she is to direct a Hollywood movie (7%)."

The persistence of this disparity is pretty startling as well. Women are simply not making inroads into film-making. In fact - to the opposite extreme, we're actually losing ground. Consider this statistic from the study: "the percentage of women directing major movies declined from 9 percent in 1998 to 7 percent in 2009 and 2010. Women comprised 2 percent of all cinematographers, 10 percent of all writers, 15 percent of all executive producers, 18 percent of all editors and 24 percent of all producers in 2010."

Following Kathryn Bigelow's 2010 Academy Award for her work directing "The Hurt Locker," there was some buzz in the industry about "The Bigelow Effect," optimistic that a watershed win for one woman would open doors for others languishing in obscurity. According to Martha Lauzen, executive director of the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film, Bigelow's win "affected [her] career, but we're not at that point where there's a halo effect that reaches out to other women."

Put another way, Melissa Silverstein, who co-founded the Athena Film Festival to celebrate women's leadership in film chatted with the LA Times and observed that "if this were a Fortune 500 company and they looked at these statistics, they would have a diversity committee working on this immediately. How could you have a company in the 21st century and less than 10% of its leaders are women?"

Martha Lauzen said it beautifully in the same LA times article: "I don't think people know when they walk into a theater that nine out of 10 times they'll see a film by a male director It's not just an employment issue for women, it's a cultural one for all of us. Movies make a difference in how we see the world and how we see certain groups of people. These are the architects of our culture."

I got involved in a discussion on an article I found on the website "The Wrap" that dealt with the fact that the ceiling, in the movie-making industry, seems to be lifting higher and higher. It cited a handful of female directors such as Lisa Cholodenko, director of “The Kids Are All Right,” along with Nora Ephron, director of "Julie and Julia," "You've Got Mail," and "Sleepless in Seattle," and Sofia Coppola as women who have made films that were very well-received in Hollywood. But one commenter on the site said this:

"Maybe stop reporting on this same old superficial women in film story and start reporting more on qualified women directors. I saw this on twitter -- this article runs about the same time every year in newspapers. Look into Jessica Stover or Lena Dunham. Ones actually making good work or even innovating the business. Some are blatant in interviews about avoiding hollywood period because it's sexist -- where's that interview? Riding hood looks terrible not exactly a shining example neither was twilight. why not hire some of the more ballsy burgeoning female directors to write here even? the old guard is too entrenched in the system and the media is sexist at higher career levels. you have the choice on what you report and repeat -- I agree with [previous commenter]. writing about these films and directors would have more improvement than writing this same old story."

Something about that attitude didn't quite settle with me. I responded with this:

"On the one hand, I'm tempted to agree with you. Simple posting stats and bemoaning the numbers does little to create much awareness or instigate much change - BUT - on the flip side, a glut of stories about fantastic, cutting edge, and forward-thinking females in film-making would sort of feel like tossing a sheet over the very same stats - fact is, in "corporate Hollywood" there is still a huge gender disparity.

I'd love to read about successful women filmmakers as much as the next girl, but there's something to be said for bringing attention to the numbers game -- even if by rehashing statistics that haven't changed much -- that drives the point home: women aren't snagging those roles in the same proportion as men - and a handful of interesting pieces that glamorize the few who do still isn't going to shift the balance of power....."

This situation seems to me rather like a cancer, poisoning womens' fight for true equity in the workplace.

I love movies - I really, absolutely love them. I'd love to participate in making movies -- writing them, directing them, you name it - but to read anecdotes like this one from Catherine Hardwicke, director of the Twilight franchise, it could be a painful, uphill battle. Hardwicke wanted to direct the film "The Fighter," but recounts the fact that she "couldn't get an interview even though [her] last movie made $400 million." In her words, "I was told it had to be directed by a man -- am I crazy? It's about action, it's about boxing, so a man has to direct it ... But they'll let a man direct "Sex in the City" or any girly movie you've ever heard of."

I may pick this up again later when and look at an interview with Martha Lauzen where she talks very candidly about some of these statistics.

For now, I'll stand firm in my resolve to recruit my sister and become the girl-version of the Coen brothers. We can do it.

I've got skillz. With a Z.

2011-02-01T11:45:00.000-08:00

So, uh, I have a wicked new talent.

Or, maybe not a NEW talent at all - maybe I was sliced outta the womb with this ridiculously under-appreciated, really, uselessly excellent skill.

Someone should pretty much create a game show to showcase my wizardry - that's about the only way I figure I could ever get rich off of this. It would be a Spike or a USA or a JOE TV sort of game show - not that my skill is ENTIRELY "NSFW" but it's one of those tacky things that would be appreciated by bored single guys at a slightly higher rate than, say, the demographic that settles in for an evening of HGTV or Lifetime....Bravo maybe. Maybe I should pitch this to Bravo.

Anyway - about my Mad Skillz:

I know celebrity backsides.

Asses.

Show me a picture of a celebrity bum, I'll tell you to whom the bum belongs.

I'm right, like, 90% of the time. It's insane.

The gossip blog Agent Bedhead includes a mystery celebrity ass almost every day, so I can keep my talent polished. Sometimes they're so PhotoShopped it's hard to tell, BUT, in the cases where it's a candid photo of a real person not edited to high heck for use in a magazine - I can usually guess correctly.

How do I do it?

Well first off: I'm exceptionally gifted. Own that first and the rest shall follow. So, aside from straight-up God-given talent, I have a handful of criteria that work pretty well to help me narrow it down. First - I spend LOTS of time on celebrity gossip cites honing my familiarity with the various bumps, bulges and curves of plenty of chicks presently in the limelight (I haven't tried out this trick with any dude-celebrities....but I think I could tell my Matt Damon from my Jon Hamm if pressed).

ALSO - context plays a huge role in figuring out who's curves belong to whom. For instance - if it's a teeny tiny skimpy bikini on a girl with no hips, I narrow my knowledge of girls with no hips who like to show themselves off (perhaps due to a recent weight loss) and come up with a handful of possibles. Then I take skin tone into account. Is it a fair-skinned, no-hipped attention whore or a golden-skinned, tiny-hipped bikini babe? That narrows the field considerably. Finally, we've got a skinny person in tiny clothes - are they toned, or are they just a no-eater? This helps, too. There are plenty of skinny celebs who just have very little fat because they're afraid of so much as a latte. But then there are the running-on-the-beach-o-philes; they'll have perkier backsides and less cellulite.

How about WHAT they're wearing? If it's not a bikini - is it a mini-dress that screams "Me! Look at me!" or something a little more "hiding out, avoiding cameras" or "dashing into Whole Foods" appropriate? Or, have I seen something that looks like that backside before - but from the front?

Combine all of these and my odds are pretty good.

Here's a sample of recently "yep! I was right!" predictions:

/\ Halle Berry /\

Process of elimination went something like this: she's fit, she's curvy, she's got a waist and golden skin and isn't rocking some sort of 20 year-old starlet lace tights and boots with her cutoffs. So she has taste. And she knows she looks good enough in just a tee-shirt and cutoffs that she doesn't need to dress it up. Who's a golden-skinned grown-up who would look good in a paper bag and has enviable curves? Halle Berry! CORRECT.

/\ Jessica Biel /\

This one was surprisingly easy. Who has one of the notoriously nicest backsides in Hollywood? Who's in great shape with terrific legs and not much for waist and hips? Who's fair skinned, so NOT seen out on the beach often? Who has bad taste in clothes and therefore probably bad taste in swimsuits? Aha. And I was right.

/\ Katy Perry /\

Sorry - another easy one. Who likes to wear tight plastic outfits and would be lame enough to wear a glorified Wonder Bread bag on stage?

/\ Leighton Meester /\

Here I had to default to "where have I seen something hideous and lacy and sheer recently and WHO was wearing it?" Who's desperate for attention, young enough not to know better, misguided enough to think this is high-fashion and ill-advised enough to wear it out of the house? Why Leighton, of course. It's hard work trying to upstage Blake Lively!

/\ LeeAnn Rimes /\

This was my example from earlier. No-hipped, fair-skinned, bony blonde with linebacker shoulders who obviously likes to exercise and wants to show it all off. Our favorite Twitter hog, Mrs Eddie Cibrian.

/\ Lindsay Lohan /\

The leggings gave her away. All I needed were the leggings and boots and knew who we were dealing with. Extra tip-offs: long fried hair and ugly jacket - she's rarely seen without a cropped jacket and giant purse these days...

/\ Megan Fox /\

She has lumps! I wasn't expecting lumps! But this one was pretty easy, also. Megan is constantly bragging about her tiny waist, she's got the long, thick, dark hair, and I could see a piece of tattoo on her arm. The lumpiness had me doubting myself, but my first guess was correct - it's the (not so) Fox.

/\ Miranda Kerr /\

This looked like a snippet from a Victoria's secret catalog - add dark hair and we're probably dealing with either Miranda Kerr or Alessandra Ambrosio. I'm HIGHLY envious of (and therefore startlingly familiar with) Alessandra's lower half, and this ain't it That leaves Miranda as the likely culprit. CORRECT!

/\ Olivia Wilde /\

I thought I remembered seeing Olivia Wilde wearing a drab olive bikini awhile back. And I know she's not particularly tanned, and not particularly hourglass-esque, so this seemed likely. Bingo!

Oh - and that one at the top? Vanessa Hudgens.

See - I'm good! And you're jealous! Or you're embarrassed that you were just caught looking at these at work! Or you wonder if you have what it takes to beat me at my own game show!

You don't.

In case you were wondering.

This is my claim to fame. For now.

Let's talk L O V E, shall we?

2011-01-31T12:15:00.000-08:00

So, ALMOST-funny story....

Actually - "funny" isn't the right word. Ironic? How about that - an ironic story.

Went to see "Blue Valentine" on Friday evening. Don't want to toss out too many spoilers, so I'll just say that it was EXCEPTIONALLY conversation-provoking and would be especially poignant for couples to watch together. There was plenty about the characters that I identified with, having lived through the decay of a relationship awhile back that felt in many ways quite similar to the one decaying onscreen. There were points at which I wanted to tell the Michelle Williams character to see the red flags ("Don't marry the guy! You'll resent each other before you know it!) then points at which I wanted to tell the Ryan Gosling character to cut his losses and walk away ("Dude. She's not worth the pain no matter how much you love her....."). It made me wish I could reach through the screen and counsel them - er, honestly, to hand them a copy of "The Five Love Languages" and force them to face the expectation gap in their little love story - differences between what she expected of him and what he was prepared to give her - differences between their ideas about whether or not love should conquer all or whether they should have to work at fixing things. Differences about affection, about work ethic, about how early in the morning he starts drinking....lots of conflicting expectations....

So, we watch their relationship flounder over the course of the movie, which cuts back and forth chronologically between the falling-in-love and the falling-apart aspects of their story, and finally culminates in a wedding moment posited alongside the "I think we're over" moment that made both all the more powerful.

My mom and I both left the theater feeling like we wanted to rush back to our gentlemen and snuggle up to them and let them know how much we appreciated what was GOOD about our relationships. Nothing like watching lovers crash and burn to make you grateful for stability. Trouble is, when we're on an emotional movie high, it's tough to explain exactly why we come home clingy....

Either way - the best I could do when I got back to Mr Wonderful that evening was explain that it was a really terrific movie, and that I loved him a lot.

And, apparently, SIGH heavily when he asked me for a back rub that night.

Gee - nothing says "I love you and appreciate you and am glad to be with you!" like acting put out when he asks for some affection. Wish I realized this at the time.....we've both established that physical touch is a CRITICALLY important expression of love for both of us - so being told, "Fine, if I HAVE to," via my reluctance was pretty much tantamount to saying, "No, I won't love you, and your request to be loved is an imposition upon me."

Ouch.

And right on the heels of my movie-watching indignation about the characters' arrogantly poor communication and patent lack of willingness to see their situation from the others' perspective.

Joke's on me for falling prey to the same arrogance - the bonus, in this case, is that Mr Wonderful is a fantastic communicator and is committed to talking about things when they come up - when he feels a rift between us, when he feels under-appreciated, when he feels unloved - so rather than just turning bitter and resentful on me, we talk about it.

Er, sure, truth-be-told I'm always caught off guard whenever he honestly admits to feeling unloved - I get indignant - "HOW can you feel that way?!?!?!? I DO love you - and since I love you, how could that ever be misinterpreted????? OBVIOUSLY I love you - I'm not DELIBERATELY trying to make you feel bad - how dare your feelings be hurt?" And - yikes - I get defensive and accusatory and the whole thing becomes unnecessarily messy - my age-old "fight or flight" mechanism kicks in - I always default to "flight." I was trained that way. Taught (whether directly or accidentally) by dad that you don't bring it all to the table when you're emotional, you back off, re-group, re-evaluate, cool down, then come back when you're ready to talk like a calm, normal person. HOWEVER, on the receiving end, Mr Wonderful is left with this: "I say I'm feeling unloved and like there's distance between us and you want to LEAVE on me?"

It's ugly.

And invariably I end up busting out the big alligator tears, feeling threatened and accused and surprised and feeling confused that it's even possible when I love him wholeheartedly to ever slide off track and leave him feeling otherwise. Alas.....it happens.

Also - sorry, Mr Wonderful, for the probably unnecessarily personal glimpse into Us, but it seemed relevant.....OR, it was fitting timing that on the heels of being convicted about the delicate, precious nature of love, I can be as callous as a movie character any day.

SO - Blue Valentine.

This was one of those films that forces you to evaluate your own relationships and to hope against hope that you're not so arrogant OR so comfortable with the state of things that you completely mistake your comfort for healthiness or assume that because your needs are met, that the other person's are as well.

It reminded me that it's a good idea to do a "love-check" every now and then - to take each others' temperature and make sure both people's needs are being tended - because - as in this movie, it's all too easy to let time pass, wake up one morning and discover we resent the other person for not fulfilling us (when the reason they're not fulfilling us is because they're feeling neglected themselves), and we expect that the things that make us feel healthy and loved are the same things that make our partner feel healthy and loved. Guess what: they're usually not.

And just because a love affair BEGAN effortlessly and desires seemed perfectly aligned and everyone was thoroughly, blissfully happy from the outset doesn't mean it can CONTINUE effortlessly, and to mistake the ease with which we fell in love for the ease with which that love will be maintained and strengthened would be, um....a grievous error.

But we make that error all the time........

ALSO - there was a line toward the beginning of the film that I've been pondering for several days. The Ryan Gosling character says, while philosophizing about romance with some work buddies:

"I feel like men are more romantic than women. When we get married we marry, like, one girl, 'cause we're resistant the whole way until we meet one girl and we think I'd be an idiot if I didn't marry this girl she's so great. But it seems like girls get to a place where they just kinda pick the best option... 'Oh he's got a good job.' I mean they spend their whole life looking for Prince Charming and then they marry the guy who's got a good job and is gonna stick around."

Something about the way he delivered this just made it sound SO true......I had to wonder whether or not men and women really DO approach marriage this way.....I guess I've probably bumped into my fair share of both who seem to fit this stereotype. But while I can't speak for men who've met the girl who changes their minds about forever after-hood, I think I can provide an explanation for the "Oh, he's got a good job" line.

Our Prince Charming changes.

When we're 18, our idea of the Perfect Man is this sort of James Bond meets Eddie Vedder meets Mr Darcy meets Indiana Jones meets Mr Big meets Paul Rudd in Clueless amalgamation who will hold our purse in the mall and write amazing love songs about us and save us from every threat of danger, be the envy of our friends and our swashbuckling soul mate and look good in a suit, in a cowboy hat, in a flannel shirt, or in nothing at all. We don't much care what he does for work or about his relationship with his family, or whether he prefers cats or dogs, boxers or briefs, wine or beer, well done or medium rare, toilet seat up or down, kids or pets, beaches or ski slopes, Adam Sandler or Eddie Izzard -- whatever. We're looking for a caricature.

And then we grow up a little.

And Price Charming becomes the guy who will be a compassionate father. The guy who will be a dependable partner. The guy who gets along well with your dad and your grandmother and your cat. The guy who makes a great companion. The guy who also really knows how to kiss. So, yeah, the guy with the good job who is gonna stick around. And that's not saying we're settling or that we give up on romance, just that we're realistic about what we want for the future.....and realistic about the fact that sustaining romance means finding someone we can feel safe with....

Either way - interesting to hear a character in a movie take the "in defense of men as hopeless romantics" stance......because I think I do understand what he's saying in the male regard - you spend your first several decades ambivalent, and then meet someone about whom it's not possible to feel ambivalent and decide you don't want to lose that girl or that feeling, so you better lock that down before....uh, before she changes her mind, maybe? Finds "something better?" I mean, sure that attitude bothers me because it assumes that women are fickle and constantly trolling for a better offer (not true! not true!), but fear and love do tend to, unfortunately, go hand in hand, so stands to reason there's a certain amount of trepidation that having found a girl worth keeping means that she won't want to be kept......

I could probably ramble on dating theory for pages, however - so I'll just cut this short and say:

GO SEE BLUE VALENTINE.

And then come back shoot me some comments about whether or not you agree - are men more hopelessly romantic?

OH, and I suppose I'd be remiss if I didn't reference the quickly infamous, much-discussed scene that nearly netted the movie an NC-17 rating? The oral scene. My take: meh. It was definitely more explicit than its Black Swan counterpart, but, I thought, less disturbing or...uncomfortably graphic than a scene between the older version of the characters where wife deigns to have bathroom-floor sex with husband in the most pathetic, pitying sort of way, that, since they're both drunk, leads to utterly, convincingly uncomfortable moments of hurt feelings and threats of violence and all-too-realistic tension between the two when the husband wants his wife to want him, and she just wants to get him out of her way.......that was more difficult to watch than a happy girl with her pants down. Just my take. The greater shock came from context.

So there you have it.

The Fox lost the hotness. This is hardly breaking news.

2011-01-28T14:17:00.000-08:00

I think the moment we all REALIZED that she was no longer even moderately relevant was when we watched the De Niro acceptance speech at the Golden Globes where he made a joke about her and we all cringed because he was so obviously....out of touch. A joke about people wanting to feel up Megan Fox? That's odd and outdated. We don't WANT to feel up Megan Fox anymore - doesn't the old guy know that?

But then I saw these pictures of her today and thought, "hmmm - so not only is she pop-culturally irrelevant, she's not lookin so hot these days, either."

Some of that MIGHT (might!) have had to do with the outfit she's wearing up there in that picture (more photos here). Usually I love these sort of thrown together, "watch me strut my funky boots," out-and-about-pumping-gas sort of looks......But seriously? Weird little sailor shorts and washed out looking grey hosiery with some weirdo clunky not-quite-ankle granny wedges? It's just...off. Check out the big-headed/large-footed perspective:

And it's not just that she's gotten so thin, I rarely accuse celebs of needing to gain weight, I figure being unnaturally skinny comes with the famous territory - BUT - she tends to look anemic these days. Wan. Washed out. In need of a good Mystic session or three.

She "tried" to pull it together for the Globes - but there was something "fresh off the surgeon's table" about her face - she looked immobile, waxy, her makeup looked like a mask.....she looked limp and listless and pained.

And then there was the Jonah Hex premier last year where she looked like a fish-lipped skull with a wig in a poorly-fitting dress and some bolt-on mammaries. The hotness hit the skids. Incidentally, so too has her career.

It's all a far cry from just a few years ago when her 2008 red carpet look screamed "By the way: I'm the hottest chick on the planet. And we all know I crawled outta bed looking this way"

So what'd she do with the hot?????? She got married, for one, but that's no definitive kiss of death. She lost her part in the Transformers franchise to a Victoria's Secret model, but that franchise was pretty well dead the second the Bumblebee Camaro sprayed car-jizz on Isabel Lucas. And I think most of us would have preferred to see Megan come back and dead-eye her way through another blue-screened cheese-fest rather than have to deal with the "story line" surrounding her new, blonder replacement.

Anyway - we know she's ridiculously self-impressed in interviews, we know she runs her mouth off and gets herself in trouble with directors, but what we don't know is: can she get the hot back?

Methinks no.

She's dabbled with cosmetic surgery, so her 2008 face can never come back. So the face itself is wasted. She can add five pounds to her frame and spend a few weekends on a beach towel to get the voluptuous back. Seriously: check out this before and after (the before was from back in 2004). Let's keep in mind: this chick is BARELY into her twenties. A 23 year-old should NOT look like this after just a few short years of "fame."

Brings up another point that's really resonated with me recently: with the exception of Demi Moore (who denies really having anything but a little lipo done), I've NEVER seen a woman look better AFTER elective cosmetic surgery. Lips injected with filler NEVER look like normal lips. Cheeks implanted with Lord knows what NEVER look like normal cheeks. Foreheads stretched and pulled and brows jammed with Botox NEVER look like normal foreheads and eyebrows. Nose jobs never go unnoticed. Reshaping your chin always leaves you looking like you went under the knife. A messed up face ALWAYS looks like a messed up face.

Trouble is, this girl had all the right equipment to BEGIN with. She was absolutely, completely, UNFAIRLY gorgeous.

And now she's a washed up starlet with a jacked face and knobby knees who turns into the butt of bad Robert De Niro jokes.....

Anyway - first step toward getting the hot back: ditch that horrible sock-boot combo. Your hair looks too good to be seen in public with those legs dressed the way they are.

Oh, the old "briefcase full of cocaine" trick [UPDATED]

2011-01-27T15:58:00.000-08:00

So, I sort of hate to glorify bad behavior. I try not to mention any of the Kardashians any more than "necessary," I didn't jump on the Lindsay Lohan rehab gossip bandwagon, I'm reserving judgment on the celebrity status of the various "Teen Mom" stars, and I've been so -- honestly -- patently DIS-interested in the rapid decline of Charlie Sheen that I haven't even had it in me to mention any of his stupid, drunken, coke-antics.

BUT - now he's hospitalized, his mother and father are by his side, doctors are saying "...it's serious" and I'm finally going to just come out and say it:

Charlie - would you just OD and die already?

Please?

Because I don't think I can handle more years of "hookers and blow" stories while he struts around in a cheap fedora looking like warmed over, sweat-stained jaundice in complete denial of the utter mess he's become.

He's web-stalking hookers now. And before he was raced to the hospital this morning with that severe abdominal pain, TMZ reports that "After hours of drinking...a person showed up to the house with a designer 'briefcase' -- that contained multiple 'bricks' of cocaine."

I'm just going to assume that "briefcase" still means briefcase. That it's not some sort of ironic euphemism for "barely legal hooker's cleavage" or other such nonsense. In which case, it sounds like he's in the sort of radically amped up decline toward which serial killers are so disposed right before they target the main cop character in a crime novel and personally mark them for death. That's the same point at which they usually make their one -- ultimately fatal -- mistake that leads to their downfall and probably ends in a shootout in an abandoned cabin.

In Charlie's case, I think he'll just die.

You can only go on so many sex-and-coke benders before the liver (or pancreas or kidneys or stomach or any other number of important organs) throw all their chips on the table and declare the hand too rich for their blood.

Because the day he seeks LEGIMATE rehabilitation is the day we actually start eliminating the enemy by shooting chickens out of crossbows.

And I think I can handle a few solid weeks of Charlie Sheen retrospectives where we catch a lot of "Wall Street" and "Platoon" clips and we catch lots of quotes from Emilio "Hey, whatever happened to him, anyway?" Estevez and we re-watch "Hot Shots!" and we feel poorly for his children and army of ex-wives and we lose interest in social-climbing "escorts" with fake blonde hair and names like Jordan and Candi and we NEVER HAVE TO HEAR ABOUT ANOTHER TRASHED HOTEL ROOM AGAIN.

Because I can handle a brief bout of intense "it's so sad - he just needed help" fluff news stories and I can handle seeing his photo in the Academy Awards memorial segment and I can handle a few moments of nostalgia for the days when I had a life-sized cutout of that Shooting Chicken From Bow scene on my bedroom wall and a legitimate crush on Topper Harley and then we can all MOVE ON.

And if that's callous, then how about this:

Get your ass in rehab, Charlie. Because they'll never let you borrow a new liver otherwise. Not Hollywood Rehab - but ACTUAL treatment somewhere in....North Dakota where there are no porn stars to distract you and the hookers look less like last year's prom queens and more like Women From North Dakota.

And then, when you're out, you can go live in a home you built with your own two hands somewhere in Wyoming, and you'll surface every few years to make a touching Lifetime movie and your E! True Hollywood Story actually has a decent ending.

Don't be the next Anna Nicole.

Do it for Topper Harley.

(UPDATE: darn - it's not acute bodily failure - it's some sort of stomach hernia that causes "stuff" to back-up into his esophagus and cause extreme pain........darn. He'll live to party with porn stars another day.....)

File this under: SO. HIGHLY. UNNECESSARY.

2011-01-26T12:14:00.001-08:00

I remember about a year ago a girlfriend and I went to one of those "yes! we'll serve you booze here!" movie theaters a few days before Valentine's Day to see the year's most unapologetic chick-flick, "Valentine's Day." No shame here. I like girl movies. I like ensemble casts. I like to make fun of Topher Grace. I like to heckle Ashton Kutcher. I like to contemplate Jessica Beal's impressive thighs. Things like that.

We got there early, we ordered up our drinks, we stood in line with 152 other women, giggling about the fact that none of them could convince their men to come along -- even with the promise of Scotch brought directly to their seat.

Turns out they over-sold the show. We had our drinks. We didn't have a seat. Oh, except they could pull a chair "into the doorway for one of us if one of us would like to watch the movie."

Screw that. As much as I love the idea of watching a movie from a "vestibule" while seated in a plastic chair sipping overpriced bubbly, I'd only do it if the BOTH of us could sit in the vestibule on plastic chairs together. As there was only room for one plastic chair: we begged unsuccessfully for a refund, guzzled another cocktail and split.

Off to another theater - one of those megaplexes with lots of screens and plenty of show times and a real, actual parking garage. We ordered popcorn. We stood in another line. A line that wrapped all the way through the theater lobby. A line of hundreds. A line including three men.

The ratio looked about like the show Ryan Gosling's band "Dead Man's Bones" played not long ago - except in this case, a little less exciting of a crowd to watch because girls didn't have their racks out like they thought if their cleavage looked good enough in the dark Gosling would track them down after the show and insist on taking them back to his hotel where he and his cuter band-mate could make her the filling in their musical man sandwich. This was just a "dateless Friday night at movies with girlfriends" crowd. The ratio of skinny jeans and boots to all other attire was still tipped heavily in the skinny jeans direction, but basically - a lot of girls and a lot of giant vats of diet Coke.

The movie was fine. I mean, each member of the giant cast probably got their six minutes of screen time. Every body lived happily ever after. Jennifer Garner got to wear cute little kindergarten teacher dresses and Jamie Foxx dropped by to be annoying. It was forgettable. Bradley Cooper was gay. Taylor Swift was insufferably shrill. Nothing special.

BUT, thanks to Gary Marshall's severe hangup with saccharine movies starring women desperate to get married, we're getting a sequel to "Valentine's Day." It opens this December. It's called "New Year's Eve." Oh boy.

Even better: Bon Jovi signed on to play a "rock star."

Who else is in the already-too-star-studded-to-allow-even-six-minutes-of-screen-time-per-actor cast? Halle Berry, Jessica Biel, Lea Michele, Robert De Niro, Abigail Breslin, Zac Efron, Ashton Kutcher, Sarah Jessica Parker, Michelle Pfeiffer, Hilary Swank and Sofia Vergara.

I see that list and think, "Um, Robert De Niro and Zac Efron better really bring the big guns, because, uh, there aren't nearly enough boys on that list to pair each of those actresses up with "true love" by the credits."

And we're getting new reports of new people added to the cast daily, so I can only imagine that by the time this mess hits theaters nearly a year from now, there will be 174 people signed on and the movie will have to be nothing but one big musical montage that parades them all through the streets of New York for a few seconds at a time and leaves the rest to our imaginations.

I do love a good musical montage.

Anyway - mark your calendars. December 9th.

He must be great in bed...???

2011-01-25T14:22:00.003-08:00

First up - Jason Sudeikis. The new David Spade. As in "he must smell really great, or give really great....um....COMPLIMENTS....or have something fantastic going on south-of-belt" because I can come up with no other reason why this man gets up-close-and-personal with as many A-listers as he does.

I know, I'm blinded by the fact that he has fluffy hair, so I can see no further, I'll admit that much. I kept trying to put my finger over his hair in that picture to decide if he would look any better bald (trick question: of course he would), but then I get this sort of "goofy Bryan Cranston a'la Breaking Bad" vibe which doesn't really help much, either......though I do love Bryan Cranston.....

Back to the Dork at Hand: first off, he's a funny enough guy. I enjoy him on SNL, though there's nothing particularly memorable or spectacular or all that original about his schtick. But he's good. HOWEVER - in the past year he's had his name (and other things) associated with Jennifer Aniston, January Jones and NOW: Scarlett Johansson. And he accomplished all of that BEFORE that "Hall Pass" movie even opened. You know - THIS movie:

Okay, I actually chuckled a few times during that preview. The chloroform bit - decently amusing.

Now, the ScarJo camp has issued bland but reasonably believable denials. "They're just friends," and "They became buddies during Scarlett's SNL hosting gigs," or "They have mutual friends," but my guess is that she actually might be slummin it with The Sudeikis when she thinks no one's looking. Because he's probably one of those "cute once you get to know him" types that surprises you with some impressive.....um....SINCERITY.....er....behind closed doors.

Anyway - he just finished up a 6-month run with January Jones and apparently "tried" dating Aniston - so he's got a "Bland and Blonde" type that he likes. He was married to 30 Rock writer Kat Cannon before the Series of Aniston Denials, but I have to wonder if this isn't the beginning of a long line of head-scratchingly high-profile girlfriends for this guy....

I just don't get it.

So I won't try.

Moving right along.

Also under the SLUMMING heading we have the next installment in my "Heather Dreams Celebrities are Embarrassed to be Seen With Her BUT They Can't Stay Away" series.

This time: Jason Statham. He probably popped up because the Daily Mail had some non-story about the fact that he and his Victoria's Secret model/girlfriend have finally returned home from their Extended Caribbean Holiday and can get back to that business of playing house in their big, new, fancy American Mansion.

New twist: my mother was nowhere in sight to berate my lame flirting skills in this dream. Which wouldn't really have mattered because last night, Senor Statham was quite drunk. And we were in some sort of post-apocalyptic London which was mostly flooded. There was trash floating all over the place.

But on one little floating concrete island we had the home of his current model/girlfriend Rosie Huntington-Whitely and on another little floating concrete island we had Casa de Heather. And as much as he loathed himself for it (therein: the slumming), he just couldn't stay away from MY little floating concrete island in the wasteland of neo-London. He couldn't help himself, he wanted a soggy piece of me. This made Victoria's Secret Rosie very mad.

Now, I never want to be the reason a supermodel is pissed off and resorts to tossing supermodel glares across the swampy city -- BUT -- I can't deny the smug gratification I had when I became "The little ordinary girl [that] could." Anyway - dream commenced. The Statham kept getting tossed out of bars. He was trying to drink himself back into the Supermodel arms, I can only suppose. And every time they tossed him out of a bar, he ended up on my flooded doorstep. Ehhhhh, maybe it's because she looks like THIS without makeup on......(sorry - cheap shot, couldn't help it)

So yeah...my dreams are good to me. And in dreamland, Mr Conflicted didn't even have booze-breath. Just a lot of aggression. Because - uh, he's Jason Statham. I refuse to believe Jason the Man actually goes shoe-shopping with his model-girlfriend. Who are we kidding - Jason the Action Hero totally hangs out in dark basements doing pull-ups with his pinkies and getting pumped to kick someone's teeth in.

And I'm not a girl that likes a tough guy. So the whole "I'm ANGRY - I'm DRUNK - I don't know if I wanna nail you or send my FIST through that WALL!" routine is no good, even in dreams...now shoe shopping....shoe shopping is good.

In other news - Oscar nominations are out! This is my NFL post-season equivalent. I'll issue my "wishes and predictions" in a few weeks - for now, it looks like I've got some movie-watching ahead of me.....

Ha - !!! I mean....uh.....litigiousness knows no bounds.

2011-01-21T16:08:00.000-08:00

Yeah, um, this is straight out of that SNL skit "I didn't ask for this." You know - the one with the Jon Hamm "Best Cry Ever" (which, by the way, I see has been made into an actual ringtone....geez, I need to get my hands on that). The skit involved a fake talk show starring the victims of random incidents caught on camera that become "epic web fail" vidoes. Like Kristen Wiig's character getting hit over the head with a hammer, which then gets mixed into a hip hop video. Or Jon Hamm "crying" (a sound that's less "cry" and more "dying baby whale") which gets auto-tuned and goes viral. And the subjects whine and moan about how they "Didn't ask for this" while the producer and host of the show try not to laugh in their faces.

Pretty entertaining.

Anyway - this is pretty much a real-life version of that....a woman was walking through a mall. Woman was texting while walking. Woman didn't notice a giant FOUNTAIN in front of her. Woman falls into fountain.

It's glorious, actually. Don't watch where you're going while texting and you'll end up face down with all of those grimy Mall Fountain Pennies that people let their kids toss for good luck......

So, it gets better.

She got a lawyer.

The attorney is conjuring righteous amounts of vitriol over the fact that it took mall security 20 minutes to find out whether or not she was okay. And that's not acceptable. And "what if she'd been elderly?"

Let's pick this apart a little bit, shall we?

First: it was HER FAULT. When you walk into doors and windows and fall down stairs and drop things on your toe because you're NOT PAYING ATTENTION, it is NOT the door's or the window's or the stairs' or the rock's fault. It's YOUR FAULT.

That's like saying, "oh, oops, I was texting and driving and ran into this here wall. Geez! I might have been an old person and run into this wall and died! And what took the police so long to get here and tow my car away - I might have been suffering! I think I'll SUE!"

Seriously. It sounds that ridiculous.

This article breaks down what happened and why she's holding the mall responsible for their slow response (they took 20 minutes to track her down - she'd left by that point I guess). Um, a little hard for mall people to find your @$$ when you immediately climb out of the fountain, mutter "ain't no thang....." and book it to your car out of embarrassment. What did she EXPECT the mall people to do?????

In her words: "My issue is I don't think security was professional because they didn't send anyone to check on me until 20 minutes later and I had already left."

Because you fled the scene. Ya eeeeeedyote.

(That's "idiot" with an accent, by the way).

Further: this would NOT have happened to a senior citizen. They don't text and walk. They don't! They're smarter than that. They are! The average senior citizen would not attempt to do ANYTHING else while walking, let alone focus their eyeballs on a tiny screen or the tiny keys of a cell phone. They wouldn't!

Anyway - hopefully she's learned her lesson. And, if not, I think I should start up the real life version of the 'I Didn't Ask For This" show and toss her up there as my first guest.