Shit That Makes Me Cry

I'm getting fucking weepy as I get older.Seriously, it's like every new chin hair is a little electrical wire that leads from the outside world straight into my heart.It happens on the bus when I'm reading US Magazine and unwittingly flip to an ad for one of those cleft palate charities. It happens at work when I check CNN and stumble across their requisite horrific violent crime of the day. Hell, it even happens when I'm watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey, and Teresa tells Dina that she wants her to be the godmother of her two day-old baby, who is already bedecked with enough spangles and bows to make Johnny Weir seethe with jealousy.

What happens is that my emotional gag reflex kicks in, fast and furious. Imaging someone trying to hold back vomit, and now imagine that the vomit is actually tears. Now imagine that person letting out a strangled gasp that sounds kind of like a parrot imitating someone gargling. Now imagine that this person is sitting next to you on a crowded bus I know -- I AM SO CHARMING.

Anyway, in honor of my newfound hormonal imbalance, I decided to make a list of some embarrassing things that make me cry other than the song "With or Without You" by U2.

Ahem...

When Zack and Kelly break up on Saved By the Bell while, in the background, Jesse and Slater do a lip-synch duet to Michael Bolton's "How Am I Supposed To Live Without You."

The Captain and Tennille of Zack Attack, ladies and gentlemen.

Looking at other people's ultrasounds... even if those people are total strangers (Note: I am talking about the old-fashioned black and white 2-D ones, not the creepy 3-D sepia ones that make the fetus look like it's been sculpted in cheese -- um, no offense, parents-to-be.)

The end of An American Tail. ("Fievel?" "Papa!" brings out the full-on ugly cry.)

When people get "revealed" to their family and friends on fashion makeover shows. (The sight of someone's formerly dumpy loved one finally getting a clue and wearing a bias-cut skirt has the same effect on me as chopping onions, apparently.)

The Sarah McLachlan ASPCA commerical (And I don't even like Sarah McLachlan OR cats OR the song "Angel", dammit. And I will tell you exactly why I don't like them as soon as I blow my nose. I'm not crying. It's just raining ... on my face.)

When Gene Wilder loses his shit at Charlie in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the 1971 version, thankyouverymuch -- Johnny Depp's Michael Jackson impression freaks me out) after Charlie and Grandpa Joe break the rules.

"What are wire hangers doing in this closet when I told you: no wire hangers EVER!?"

This last one I think is not so much from sadness, but rather fright mixed with sympathy for Charlie's crushing loss of a lifetime supply of candy. That is rough, dude.

Hot vs. Cold

There comes a point every summer when I fantasize about shivering to death somewhere amidst snow-capped mountains, kind of like in that movie Alive only with several boxes of Clif bars so that I'm not tempted to chew on someone's leg.

[It’s supposed to be in the mid 90’s this week. Throw in that there is no air conditioning in my apartment, the heat will be relentless. It's not just hot, it's viscous. It'll be like wading through a week-old Jello shot left out in the sun that smells like pee and garbage. Plus my thighs smack together when I walk. It is the very definition of suck.]

Of course, there also comes a time every winter when I romanticize burning forever in the pits of Hades (which, let's face it, is probably inevitable, given that I watched Valentine’s Day on DVD, voted for a socialist Muslim, and just made a joke about real-life cannibalism among members of the Uruguayan rugby team).

Anyway, choosing between too hot and too cold is one of those questions that divide people in a really combative way. A good analogy is that central Twilight battle -- Team Edward or Team Jacob -- since Edward is waxen and bloodless and has a basal temperature about the same as a witch's teat, while Jacob is warm and brown and has abdominal muscles that work harder than I did during my rebound job.

But my point is -- would you rather sparkle in the sunlight on a mountaintop while gnawing on an energy bar with numb, blue lips OR have your eyelashes singed off while drowning in your own sweat and bemoaning Heidi Montag's terrible elective plastic surgery?





[P.S. Those are not stagnant cups of hobo urine that are making Taylor Lautner's nostrils flare so sexily in my super-impressive Photoshop collage... they are coconut Jello shots. Which is maybe even worse.]

Wow, this is the most feel-good post ever.

Excuse me while I go hump my office air conditioner.

Lady Mags

I have a love/hate relationship with women's magazines.

I love how thick and glossy they are, filling my mailbox with the intoxicating scent of perfume and the promise of a lazy afternoon spent looking at candy-colored baubles and the freakishly static, almost meditative planes of Nicole Kidman's face.

But I hate how lazy and vapid they are, assuming that women don't appreciate real wit or sarcasm, pretending that we don't notice that they just publish the same fucking "Easy Summer Beauty" or "The No-Diet Diet" articles every single issue with different pictures, and assuming that if they run a single photo of a real woman or plus-sized model that it undoes all of the subtle "hate your body" messages they've been sending for decades.

Sometimes, though, they go beyond insulting.

To borrow a phrase from Tropic Thunder, sometimes they go full retard.

Allure, for example, features "insider's guides" in each issue that offer fashion, beauty, and social advice from experts. They mean well, but if you just read the headlines it's hilarious.

I took the liberty of imagining a literal explanation of one of this month's entries...

How To Wear A White Shirt
(adapted from the June 2010 Allure)
1. Go to closet; open it.
2. Pick out a shirt (the item of clothing with no legs that isn't long enough to cover your ass) that is not red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, black, brown, pink, or any of the aforementioned colors in pastel. Also avoid prints. Pick something the color of clouds, only not rain clouds… or sunset-reflecting clouds. Hmm, that could get confusing. Ok, pick something the color of fresh fallen snow that has not been peed on.
3. Does the shirt button up the front? In that case put your arms in the holes and then fasten all the buttons. If there are no buttons, stick your head in the top hole and your arms in the side holes and pull the front down over your chest and stomach.
4. Oh, wait, do you have breasts? If so, reverse step 3 and put on a bra first. Since your shirt is white, your bra must be that fetching shade of beige that recalls a two day-old Band-Aid, or leftover flan, in order not to show through.
5. Ta da! You’re done. Except for pants, which will be discussed in next month’s issue.

I loathe the bus...

I miss the days when bus drivers were actually allowed to talk. Most of the time they were boring, just announcing the stops in monotonous voices that sounded not unlike the grown-ups in Peanuts, had they lost the will to live. But sometimes, magic happened.

Like this one time, during rush hour, when my bus driver growled, "Next stop... hell!" (At least he was being honest.)

And I'll never forget the time my female driver said, sighing, "To the two men giving each other a hand jobs, we can see you. We can ALL SEE YOU."
Now we just have automated, voices with flat, regionless accents that jabber incessantly between stops. One recording warns passengers to "protect yourself," and every single time I finish the sentence in my head "... before you wreck yo self." (Those automated voices should totally rap.)

There's also the transit tunnel buzzkill robot who basically tells us that the crumpled Subway wrapper on the floor beneath the sleeping homeless man, next to the cup of either pee or Mountain Dew, is probably rigged to explode.

And then there's this one: “If you see an elderly, pregnant, or handicapped person near you, offer your seat. You’ll be standing up for what’s right (pun intended). Courtesy is contagious, and it starts with you.”

Look, I have nothing against the elderly, pregnant, or handicapped. I'll stand up for what's old, or fat, or blind. But courtesy is not contagious, no matter how much you pun. What's contagious is the hacking cough of the man leaning against the pole (DUDE. THAT IS NOT. YOUR. POLE.) ...or the glances of relief when the very vocal insane person decides to stop arguing with the Metro Driver of the Year poster and exits the bus... or, surely, the bench being used by the two men giving each other hand jobs at the back of the bus….

Lost

I love Lost.

Last week, I actually wept watching it--and I don't even cry at funerals. (I know; I'm a terrible person.)

Anyway, as anyone who’s been following Lost knows, the final season has been set up as a kind of good versus evil spiritual showdown between two characters I could not care much less about: Jacob (the goody-goody, who looks perpetually stoned, like a middle-aged Jeff Spicoli) and The Man in Black, who is NOT, cruelly, played by Tommy Lee Jones and who is apparently going to destroy the world as we know it. When not in human form, he basically looks like that Icelandic cloud of volcanic ash that’s been fucking up air travel for the past few weeks. When the show ends I guess he’ll go back to following Pig Pen around.

While I know that the ultimate battle between good and evil forms the basis for many pop-culture pairings (I’m speaking, of course, of duos like Garfield and Nermyl, Amanda Woodward and Allison Parker, and Alexis Carrington Colby Dexter Rowan and Krystle Carrington), I’m left kind of cold by this story arc. Don’t get me wrong—I’m still totally obsessed. It’s just that if the entire basis of Lost turns out to be Radio Raheem’s monologue from Do The Right Thing, I am going to be pissed.



“Lost,” though, I will grant, is a much better title than “The Story of Right Hand, Left Hand.” (Ahhhh! Which brings us to Mr. Hand, Jeff Spicoli's history teacher nemesis! I love it when my blogs come full circle. Also, judging from yesterday's and today's posts, I think I need to Netflix Fast Times at Ridgemont High.)

I Pity the Fool

I've always kind of hated April Fool's Day. I mean, if you can come up with a really good prank that's cool, but most people just use it as an excuse to lie.

Like, telling your boyfriend "I'm pregnant," waiting for the look of horror on his face, and then being all, "April Fool's!" is not an April Fool's joke.
I'm pretty bad at April Fool's jokes. The only good one I ever pulled off was in 2005, when a guy I was seeing foolishly gave me his email password (which was, awesomely, 80085... get it? Try typing it into a calculator) to check something for him while he was stranded somewhere computerless. I abused my powers by firing off an email to his family telling them that he couldn't hide it anymore, that he simply loved the work of Anne Geddes (The guy I was dating was a photographer and he hated Anne Geddes. If you showed him a baby dressed as a pea pod he might drop-kick it.) That was a pretty sweet moment for me, and one that I have never bested.

Happy April Fool's Day, though!

P.S. I'm really a man.

Faux Boyfriend of the Week

The fact is that I’m having a hard time picking hot new dudes and am tempted to start recycling them – kind of like my past boyfriends.

Let’s be honest, it’s pretty sad when some of the actors from the Harry Potter movies start looking like good options. And I’m not talking about Ralph Fiennes or Gary Oldman, I’m talking about Rupert Grint. Yeah, I know, disturbing. I’ll admit to having spent some time looking for hot photos of the kids. I’ll also admit to thinking he’s doable. Sure, he’s 14 years younger than I am, but who cares? He’s 21 and as far as I’m concerned, that’s old enough for me.

That’s when it occurred to me that I was limiting myself to TV and movie stars. There’s a whole world of hot and sexy athletes that I haven’t explored (literally and figuratively).

So, my dear tens of readers, this week I present you with hot British Baller, Michael Owen.

Here’s what I can tell you about him, he’s British, he’s hot, and he likes to play the soccer. That’s good enough for me!