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Archive | old ARIYNBF

Stuff that happened yesterday

Yesterday I got a call from Yami as I was in the middle of all this, saying she had a surprise for me and I needed to come over right away. I’m not really a come over right away kind of person but then she put the surprise on the phone and it was Paula, the singer of the band we used to be in who now lives in Seattle. She was at Yami’s house! Because these ladies think it takes me five hours to get ready, they told me I couldn’t take a shower or do my hair or put on makeup or even put anything in my purse that wasn’t already there, I just had to come over with whatever was already in my purse. It’s a good think I had an overnight bag in my purse or else I never would have made it there within three hours. (Not really, I made it there within the hour which even I was shocked by.) New York has done something to my ability to be punctual. I don’t really know why or how, and Koryn might disagree, but sometimes I’m actually on time.

Speaking of on time, I hope you’ll all tune in to my show today featuring Yami and Dustin! We’ll be calling Paula on the phone!

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C Gibbs, "All She Wanted" on Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend

Boy I’m having a bitch of a time trying to figure out how to get the player to offer you download options (audio & video and just audio). I’m pretty sure this is easier than I’m making it. Anyway, Blip is irritating me right now. Remember you can also get to these clips and episodes on iTunes and I’m starting to make stuff available as an audio only podcast as well. How exciting for you! Oh, also, you know how I’ve been labeling these last few clips July 21, 2010? It turns out they’re from the August 8, 2010 episode.

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When Koryn walks in…

Here’s what happens when Koryn arrives on my show. If I were really ambitious I would edit together a bunch of these entrances. I’m not that ambitious though because right now I’m staring at Tobey over the top of my laptop and I’m dying from the cuteness shooting out of him in all directions like some kind of indiscriminate cute bomb.

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On Sunday's ARIYNBF: There will be burps

Sunday’s ARIYNBF will be an effervescent fizzy affair and I mean that quite literally as Yami and I (and perhaps DUSTIN) will be drinking various carbonated beverages to see which makes for the most immediate belch. (I imagine we’ll also be grading said burps qualitatively).

Now I know what you’re thinking: that’s brilliant! Thank you, I agree. See, the way it came to me was last night I took a sip of Diet Root Beer and had a near instantaneous reaction. Then I wondered what it was about Diet Root Beer that’s so predictably burpy. Then I contacted Yami who said she’d be honored to belch on my show.

By the way, I’m quite aware that I may drive people away with this segment however I can’t help myself. It’s just good entertainment and also, it will be fun right up until the point one of us accidentally barfs.

Also? All the other amazing stuff which you have come to love including fan phone call and Just Me Or Everyone and Dating Experiment and Deleted Tweets and me shooting myself out of a cannon.

Also, I just added a little album on the show’s FB page for show sponsors. Go there and take a gander, won’t you?

And completely unrelated, Dustin recently reminded me of this humor-piece I wrote about why you should be grateful to be poor. Click it if you want to be mildly amused!

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On Sunday's ARIYNBF

On Sunday’s episode of Alison Rosen Is Your New Best Friend, C Gibbs of Lucinda Black Bear will be playing live in my apartment. Here’s one of his music videos.

I suspect when he plays on my show it’ll be a little less bombastic and more ballad-y, more akin to his stuff on his earlier albums, but I could be wrong. He’s one of my favorite musicians though, so I’m really excited.

Also? Other surprises including all your favorite things plus other things!

Hey, here’s an idea! Send your phone number for the Phone a Fan segment and maybe we’ll call you. Send it to fanphonecall@alisonrosen.com.

See you Sunday at 7pm ET/4pm PT!

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Informal formal visits and my own personal war effort

Tomorrow I’m doing a brand new episode of Alison Rosen Is  Your New Best Friend even though I was tempted not to do one, but I can’t deprive you of me. It’s just not fair. Because it’s so late in the day I’m not sending out Facebook invites yet again because they won’t get there in time. Instead I’ll be knocking on each of your doors individually later on today and I’ll be expecting you to invite me in for a light snack. Nothing fancy, just make sure it’s something you would serve royalty. There’s a chance I may need to use your bathroom so please see to it that you’ve cleaned it top to bottom and inside and out and put out the finest hand-milled French soap. And when I say hand-milled I expect you to mill it yourself. If you don’t know how, this is no time to learn. Just call your local neighborhood miller and find out if they do soap, in addition to whatever millers do. Anyone? I know I read the Miller’s Tale in college in my Chaucer class but that information has long ago been replaced with other stuff. What kind of stuff? Let’s discuss that over caviar when I drop in for an informal formal visit.

In other news, it’s hot but not TOO hot in New York so you can breathe a sigh of relief if you were wondering how I was coping. Don’t get me wrong, I prefer cold weather, but it’s not so hot that I want to die.

Actually, come to think of it, sleeping in this weather is kind of difficult, which is why I look so sleepy and also AM so sleepy.

How sleepy am I? Very. You would definitely not want me driving your heavy machinery unless it happened to be air conditioned and then we could talk.

Anyway, I have a lot of things to say but I can’t say them because of the Marvin gag order but just you wait, internet, because a flood of stuff is all bottled up in here.

That sounded kind of menacing, didn’t it? I didn’t mean it to.

In fact right now I feel kind of estranged from words, which are my favorite things in the world right up there with ducklings and puppies, and it’s a fairly shitty feeling and it’s contributing to this amorphous directionless blob feeling I’m having.

I have half a mind to just delete this entire post but I have another half a mind to not and then another half a mind which is just thinking about TV shows. It’s a wonder I can fit into hats.

In addition to being estranged from words apparently I’m also estranged from jokes.

Imagine if you are in a war suddenly and it suddenly gives your life shape and meaning, especially if maybe before the war you were struggling a bit in your chosen profession and wondering if it wasn’t time to shake things up but not knowing exactly how. So just when you were considering a massive shakeup along comes a crisis which happens to be a war and so you ship off and you’re dealing with war stuff every single day from the moment you wake up to the moment you sleep, which is not enough by the way, and you know this war is going to change your life but a little bit you’re aware that there’s maybe something opportunistic in the way you’re throwing yourself into your new war duties because  you needed something to throw yourself into. At the same time it’s a blessing you were able to ship off at that moment, because the war effort wouldn’t have been the same without you. So then let’s say that particular battle is dying down and you’re debating whether to stay on for the rest of the war, or to return home, where things are less dramatic and poignant and ratcheted up. But see, if you return home the war will still be waged across the country and you feel wrong not being there. But you’re also aware there’s a very good chance you’ll join the war and put the rest of your life on hold which would be a mistake even if it’s easy.

Not that any of this is easy.

In the midst of writing the above I lost track of all the metaphors. I guess what I’m trying to say is hard shit is happening across the country and I feel weird being here and I feel weird being there. I just feel weird. And also sleepy.

The end.

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A list because you love lists

So I’m back in New York after six intense weeks of Marvin care and I have so many things to say it’s making it hard for me to say anything. This is a hazard when you’re a blogger who is known for sharing the details of your life. Also when you’re known for being achingly beautiful. I’m telling you, spending nights in the hospital did my complexion no favors. And that delicious hospital cafeteria food went straight to my hips. I think I should make a list of things I need to tell you:

1) I trust you’re all coming to see me Thursday in News Distillery at the 92Y. Here’s a story about Faith Salie that mentions it if you want more info which you probably do because you’re so like that.

2) I’m really proud of the ARIYNBF shows I put on in CA and I’m glad I did that even though at times it was hard.

3) Perhaps you’re reading this and you’re new to me and you’re wondering what I’m talking about.

4) Soon I will be able to speak about it, I think, but for now I have to be all vague and elliptical but here’s what you can know: one of my family members whom I’ve named “Marvin” was just diagnosed with something no one wants and so I’ve been helping out.

5) Not crabs, though no one wants them.

6) Or Jordan almonds.

7) Before the Mad Men premiere I kept wanting to write a list of “Mad Men inspired drinking games by someone who doesn’t watch Mad Men and doesn’t understand drinking games.” That person isn’t me, of course, since I watch Mad Men and love to drink till I puke.

8) It would be a persona. A device. A trope, if you will.

9) You won’t.

10) By the way, I don’t actually love to drink till I puke. In fact I seldom drink these days which is all part of the way I don’t have fun and am letting life pass me by.

11) woe = me

12) I’m actually tired of the Goldenrod Footbridge. Can you believe it?

13) In the past going home to CA was taking a break however a few days before I returned to New York it was suggested to me that I should return if for no other reason than I clearly needed a break and needed to get strong again before coming back to CA. This idea that New York is now the place I go when I need a break is doing all sorts of funky things in my head.

14) Specifically it’s doing the electric slide.

15) “A Marvin being sick marks the true end of childhood,” said a therapist.

16) Or maybe she said, “A Marvin being sick truly marks the end of childhood.”

17) Well, you get the point.

17.5) Not MY therapist! What use would I have for therapy? My brain is perfection and my emotions are a thing of beauty and my thoughts conform to the Platonic ideal of thoughts and my feelings are so appropriate you only WISH you had my feelings.

18) It’s hot in New York. I kind of hate that.

19) True Blood is now my favorite distraction and I’m sad I’m all caught up.

20) Also? I’ve been cheating on Splenda with Truvia. Just a little though.

21) I miss Tobey.

22) Congrats to Natali Del Conte on the birth of her baby boy!

23) Thank you all for the encouraging words you’ve sent my way.

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On tonight's ARIYNBF

Here’s Jenna Kim Jones and I looking effortlessly cool on a recent show

Tonight’s show is going to be a big happening. A real don’t-miss-this kinda rocking good time. The kind of thing that your friends will be talking about long after it’s over and if you miss out you will feel like a real dipshit. Do you want to feel like that? I don’t think so. Did you know that once my mom and dad and sister went to Vienna without me and they still talk about it, sometimes forgetting that I wasn’t there? Assholes, I tell you.

Anyway, I didn’t send out the regular Facebook invite thing because I suck and I’m fine with that. On tonight’s show, writer/comedian/Daily Show staffer Jenna Kim Jones, whom you know from her appearances on my show in New York will be on the show because she’s in California as well and how cool is that that we’re both here? Exactly. Also on the show? Paul Layton who over the years has been referred to as “cute Paul” behind his back. I like to throw it in his face. He plays guitar and sings and I’m not quite sure the exact style of his upcoming EP. When I last heard him he was playing some glammy poppy kind of awesome stuff. You love that.

So tune in tonight at 7pm PT/10pm ET. DO IT!

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