Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend

My ascetic lifestyle; plants named Fred

Since placing my reproductive organs high on a shelf in a seldom opened closet and removing myself from the world of human entanglements/relationships/interaction for the most part except to shuffle around in a bathrobe and slippers, smoking a cigar, scratching my belly and yelling at neighborhood kids and then belching, I’ve been remarkably surprised how much I don’t miss being out there. Maybe I really am dead inside, I’ll occasionally think. There are certain things that penetrate the strange satiety though—strange because it seems unearned—and make me suddenly remember what it was like to go to parties and date and go to dinner and put on lip gloss with that nervous/excited feeling in your stomach. (now I just put it on with a “what’s the point of it all” feeling mixed with a “damnit Sally Hanson, why did you have to discontinue Always Asher, WHY WHY WHY?” feeling) The things that get through to me? Well, certain people I’ve met in the midst of all this, and for some reason, the movie Walk the Line.

Wait a minute, my sister just told me she bought a plant for her office and named it Fred. I told her my plant was named Fred and she said her plant looks more like a Fred than mine. THOSE ARE FIGHTING WORDS!

I’m in CA

Sorry readers, didn’t mean to be so cryptic. Or did I?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Anyway, I’m back in California playing guitar at another wedding. Not really. I’m getting my hair straightened. Not really, I’m here for work. I thought it would be super awesome but now that I’m by the beach and on deadline(s) I’m realizing that I wish I were just on vacation! Not that I like the beach, but that the beach makes you want to be on vacation.

Could I possibly say and then negate anything more in the above paragraph? No. Get it?

I was thinking about liveblogging the flight, except I wouldn’t be able to truly liveblog it since you have to turn off the internal transmitters of the [this is where my brain tunes out] but anyway, the things I would have said were:

1. I found a loogie sitting on the floor of the airplane bathroom. I thought of cleaning it up, and then decided that I didn’t want to come in that close contact with it. Instead I had to basically do this uncomfortable hopping gyrating thing to move around in there so as to avoid accidentally dragging a shoelace through said throat snot. Just thinking about it makes me want to retch.

2. okay, maybe it was a small puddle of soapy water

3. I’m not sure though

4. it was about two inches from the toilet. I don’t even want to think about what it was.

5. Foamy urine?

6. ugh

7. Hell’s Kitchen is entertaining. I’d never seen it before. But Bobby? Infuriating!

8. Real Housewives of NYC is kind of boring.

9. Six hours and 17 minutes flying time is long time to try to get into a show.

10. The male flight attendant smelled good. First I thought he was albino and I was thinking that were I liveblogging this I would say that the flight attendant is albino, and I wonder if that’s good luck. But by the end of the flight I’d totally come around to realizing he both had pigment and smelled good.

11. I really liked that band Belly. Liked/like. I was listening to King on the plane which I recently found and put on my iPod and then I was thinking that I listened to this album 13 years ago or something and am I a relic? Are my tastes fossilized? I liked/like Throwing Muses too and I still list them when people ask about my favorite bands, but I’d forgotten about Belly.

12. So then I decided to listen to Whatever Hits from the 90s or whatever it’s called. But I only listened to a couple songs. I had to scroll past a lot of them.

13. I’m procrastinating.

14. I mean, the funny thing is that I don’t even really like girl singers, or in the old days I didn’t. With the exception of Kristin Hersh and Tanya Donnelly.

15. The old days being before I started playing in a band because I think that changed my tastes.

16. Tobey is as cute as ever, in case you’re wondering.

17. Fred the Jade Plant and Rita the Golden Pothos (yes, I have another houseplant. I was waiting for the right time to tell you. Number 17 is as good a time as any) are doing well, for those who asked.

18. “Wouch” or “WOWCH” is what you should say when someone surprises you by saying something insulting. (wow + ouch)

19. Guyvice is when a guy offers you guy advice (guy + advice) except I was recently told that “guyvice sounds like a device to make my head explode.”

The reading, the dream, the concourse, the chair

I went to Wendy’s book reading last night but sadly got there after she’d already read because that’s the kind of friend I am. It’s the job, I tell you, I had to work late! I ran into another college friend who’s just given notice to go freelance. “So you can watch TV, sleep and get a puppy?” I asked. He said YES in a way that is more affirmative than just a simple YES would imply. More like YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! “It’s the freelance dream,” I said, but up to that point I didn’t quite realize how much the dog is part of everyone’s freelance dream. And no, I’m not living that dream, but that’s okay too because I have a jade plant named Fred and am working on a chest infection. Not really! Mom and Dad, if you’re reading this, I feel a little hoarse and my throat hurts but chest infection really is going too far.

Today I discovered the labrynthian shopping concourse beneath the building I’m now working in which connects to the subway! I thought this would be a way to avoid the elements but it’s pretty cold down there. Still, if it had been snowing I would have avoided the snow—except I left after the subway entrance closed. But I went to the underground Duane Reade earlier in the day and enjoyed the frigid covered access. On my way out of the building I stopped by the Red Eye green room, making my evening rounds, to say hello to my favorite makeup and hair people and anyone else I might know in there. I think I actually walked in and said “hi, I came to brighten your evening with the joy that is my presence.” Then I complained for about 15 minutes and left. Not really. 12 minutes. Thursday I’ll be in the hot girl chair I think, which is good except it means I can’t wear my usual waist-down attire of hotpants and thigh high boots, which is what I’m always wearing in the newsroom when you just see me from chest up. Dang!

Fred will be so jealous

Because I agreed to do Red Eye on Valentine’s Day. I plan to wear red. Or just a diaper while holding love’s bow and arrow. Take the high road on that one please.

Also, speaking of Fred, despite my plans to stay home hanging with my houseplant while working on new moves to fold in (seamlessly, of course) to my competitive ice dancing routine, I just put in a full day at Page Six Magazine, where I’m acting as senior editor for a bit. I worry the ice dancing will suffer, is the thing.

Also, I felt that moment where I realized the lobby, which has always been about Red Eye for me, is about to become about Page Six for me. Does that make sense? And then some day I’ll go to do Red Eye and it’ll be like going to do a show in the building where I work or once worked, as opposed to now, where I’m still flummoxed by the elevators. “I’m going to one, are you going to one?” a man asked me today, by the elevator bank. I just stared at him, dumbfounded, as if he were speaking a foreign language which I once knew. Then I began drooling. The thing is that I’ve always prided myself on my ability to discern up from down—left and right not so much—and so if I lose that one I will be directionally challenged in 360 degrees, which is really going to suck. Some other sense will just have to overcompensate. Hopefully a useful one, like my sense of humor. Or my sense of which peppers are spicy. Or my sense of which movies are going to suck, except I really made a judgment error when I dragged my mom and sister to see Out to Sea.

I’ve come to care

…way too much about Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. He’s just so sage and knowing. And calm and serene. I interviewed him once. It was him and Adam Corolla. It was at the MTV Music Awards in 1997, back when I was 14. (Did I mention I’m 24? Because I’m not.) They were joking about Madonna’s sudden British accent. Maybe it was 1998? Anyway, the point is that I hope Jeff Conway pulls through! Also, I search longingly through my DVR’s “search by title” function for new episodes of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. The title is my go-to joke when I need to make fun of silly reality shows, which apparently is often, but between you and me there is nothing joking about my strange obsession with the show. I think it was from watching with bewildered curiosity the episode “Dude you’re so pregnant” or whatever it was called. That guy that she almost married–such insouciant douchiness! And those cute puppies! And the way Bruce Jenner always looks taken aback because his face has been pulled into a permanent expression of surprise. What does insouciant mean? That’s one of those words I repeatedly look up and forget. My brain refuses to latch on.

Also, my friend Rob got a dog. Rob and I were talking to each other recently at a party about how we both want to get dogs and are dangerously close to it and then he off and did it! The same dog he was talking about at the party that he’d seen on the internet! He is my hero for he is brave and not afraid to get a dog. Not that there’s anything lacking in my relationship with Fred The Jade Plant though, because I experienced something close to vegetable nirvana earlier.

Now that I’m going freelance

…I have the time to open up my heart to something that can both give and receive love. Meet Fred:

Fred, getting ready to drop a one-liner

He’s brand new but already I can tell we’re going to get along great. Plus, he tells the funniest jokes!