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Don't look up

Okay so I’m at a cafe with my laptop being one of those people who sits at cafes with their laptop getting stuff done. Based on a scientific survey of myself, I can tell you a little about what those people who sit at cafes on their laptops actually get done:

Not much.

I plan to rectify this soon by going parachuting with my laptop. I figure the sensation of the wind whipping through my hair and probably giving me some kind of air wedgie will break this seal of inactivity.

Crap, I just remembered another thing I haven’t done which I need to do: buy a parachuting outfit. What, you think I can parachute in this ballgown? Never again. This is strictly a sitting and looking pretty crinoline.

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Did you miss me?

Did you? Because I sure missed you. I missed you so much that I added the paypal donate button to its own page. I realize that logic is tenuous and you might not realize how my offering you a chance to donate money to me is a sign of how much I miss you but you see, I work in mysterious ways. Just go with it. In exchange for your donations I promise to keep being funny and delightful. Perhaps I could sweeten the deal by promising never to sing? Never to make you eat meringues? Never to cheat on you with other readers? I’m joking however I’m going to start offering media training, speech writing and public speaking coaching services so if you know anyone who needs help getting ready for an engagement, send them my way!

In other news I’m very sleepy and I need to write my McSweeney’s column and last night I ate some shrimp that had heads on them. I removed the heads before eating them but still. Actually, I have more to tell you about the shrimp heads and dinner and a realization I had on the way home which involves retainers but I think I’ll save that for the candlelit dinner I plan to have with all of you tomorrow morning.

I love you.

Do you think that’s a good breezy sign off? I think so too. Or should I go with something more casual like:

Don’t leave me!

It’s cheerful, right? Ends on an up note?

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Pardon the construction

Perhaps you’ve noticed things look a little different around here? That’s because I got breast implants and poured a bottle of Sun-In in my hair. Also, I got gold teeth and had some of my fingers removed. Just the ones I wasn’t using. I just wanted a change. Also, this blog is now on WordPress which is why things look different and some things are missing and I can’t stop crying. Hold me?

Thanks.

Things should be looking amazing and neato-er and running smoothly and even betterly soon.

I love you.

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Stand up versus TV

Sometimes my body gets really ambitious and instead of adjusting back to New York time from California time my internal clock jumps ahead to Chinese time. How else to explain the way I stayed up all night and then threw myself off a bridge because I haven’t given my husband any sons? How else to explain the way I stayed up all night and then ate fortune cookies? How else to explain the way I stayed up all night and then did a shot of lead paint? I don’t know which vaguely offensive cultural stereotype to go with here. What I’m trying to say though is that I stayed up late and then slept late because I’m still on California time. Let’s leave China out of this.

So last night I did stand up and it was fun and it was great to meet some fans who made the trek! I hope I was just as delightful in person as I am in… oh who am I kidding… of COURSE I was!

Um, so here’s the thing. You’ll hear people say that with stand up you get immediate feedback and instant gratification because you know right away if people are laughing or not and then you can base your relative self-worth on this. (I added that last part.) But see, as a veteran TV appearer-on and a sort of stand-up neophyte I can say that this is malarkey and hooey and bull honky and baloney and a barrel of lies and a cask of untruths and a spool of inaccurate thread and a sweater sewn out of yarn that tells tall-tales and, well, you get the idea.

Unless you don’t? Because I could go on.

Side note: In California my friend Mikelle was bit by her mom’s parrot and then Jodey started making jokes about how the bird is into MMA and ultimate cage fighting and then a little while later I was like “Yeah, it does cage-fighting!” which I suddenly realized was funny because birds are in cages but apparently that’s what Jodey meant when he made that same joke minutes before.

But back to how I’m sort of funny: from the stage it’s kind of difficult to hear the crowd reaction. Was I carried off the stage on the shoulders of the crowd? No. Did people laugh? Yes. Did they throw tomatoes? No. Did they throw cold cuts? I wish! And so I felt like I did well but like I was barreling through the material for the first 3/5 of the set and really only kind of was in the moment for the last 2/5. Say what you will about me, but I’m good with fractions.

And then after I sat down and felt this gaping neediness along the order of “will someone please validate my existence?” which I can tell you, is a very attractive feeling to have. I’m surprised more people weren’t lining up to get sucked into my yawning desperation vortex. I mean, I concealed it, but it was there.

With TV this isn’t so because you actually do get instant feedback because first of all, you can tell how you did or rather, I’ve been doing it long enough to pretty much know right away how I did. Then there are all sorts of producers and other people who’ll tell you how you did. And then you can watch the tape and see how you did. Am I coming off as completely irritating right now?

The problem arises when you suspect you did crappy but a producer is saying you did a great job but you sense they’re just being nice. That might result in a car ride home filled with doubts and What Am I Doing With My Life?s.

Which is why I really should be doing something or other for me, and not for the reaction, and yet when my life’s passion is to cook sugar free meringues and share them with the world, tell me how I’m supposed to hide that light under a bushel? You know?

Oh, in other news I need to write another McSweeney’s column wherein I give advice about life and career and money in a satiric fashion. Maybe I should answer some questions and boss you around? Put your financial/career/recessionary questions in the comments, won’t you?

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More about my bday and unread mail

I came home tonight to 236 unread email messages which would be kind of overwhelming if I weren’t so used to being important. “Holy crap, I haven’t dealt with this many unread messages since I came back from the war and also since that time I had surgery,” I fibbed to myself, having neither been in a war nor had surgery. I mean, occasionally I’ve engaged in mindgames so ferocious they almost qualify as a war, but that didn’t affect my inbox. And I had oral surgery to bring down an impacted cuspid but that was before the invention of email. Oh dammit there I go again with the lying. I don’t know if I’m coming or going sometimes.

So yeah, loads of email and also, I’m officially old as of tonight. You wouldn’t know it to see me though since I exude such a fuckload of joie de vivre. In fact I’m giving off so much joie de vivre that the nation of France formally wrote to me and asked that I go easy on the joie because I’m overdoing it. What nerve, right? I mean, one man’s overdoing it is another man’s doing it just right. But whatever, I know it’s hard to keep up with me and my vibrating chakras.

Last night I went to Detroit (the club, not the Motor City) with a couple friends who I’ll call Phil and Collins, for reasons I haven’t quite figured out, and at the stroke of midnight which was my birthday they put stickers on me and then we played the world’s longest game of pool because we all suck. I imagine Phil would disagree since he beat Collins and me but only but a pair of balls. Collins and Phil also wore stickers because if I was going to walk around like an idiot covered in stickers I wasn’t going to be the only one. I saw Collins tonight and he still had stickers on the back of his jacket and this morning I woke up to find a sticker on my sock. By the way, they weren’t even birthday stickers. They were Batman stickers I think. “I’m so glad you went along with that,” said one of them, I think Collins, because they’re always surprised when I decide to have fun instead of sitting on the sidelines quietly judging everyone. Not really, however they have taken to calling me a “show pony” based on the considerable hair and makeup time I require and so they’re always surprised when I agree to sleep under keyboards and walk around wearing stickers. One of them made me run in the street just to see if I could do it since he claimed he couldn’t imagine me running. “I run like this!” I yelled, swishing my hands back and forth and doing a weird sort of skipping/shuffling/jumping kind of thing. It’s not really how I run, but then, how a woman runs is a very personal king of thing. Sometimes it’s like they don’t know me at all. They’ve also taken to letting me know how horrible my driving is, which is kind of true, except I let them know that the constant hectoring was in fact making my driving worse, a point made all the more poignant when I literally almost got in an accident because I was thinking about my hair. I only wish I were joking.

So then tonight for my actual bday a group of us went to a seafood restaurant and the crazy thing is that some of these friends went to dinner for my bday ten years ago, that’s how goddamn old I am. My friend Bret and I reminisced about how we were going to form an X cover band for an afternoon and then there was other reminiscing and then I forget what happened but I know at some point I began yawning because that’s how filled with joie de vivre I am. Then we went to Detroit, not because we really wanted to but because we couldn’t figure out where else to go. Oh wait, before that went spent a long time outside debating whether to go skinny dipping. I explained that it’s so like me to do that and that seldom is there a party where I’m not whipping my clothes off and jumping into a body of water. Sometimes even a bathtub or puddle! Also, I’m not sure why I’m concealing the identities of Phil and Collins, probably since I’m bored, but for the extremely careful reader and even the haphazard reader, Collins has appeared in this blog previously in various incarnations including as Toilet Duck.

Where was I? Oh yes, I was old. So then I decided to leave and I didn’t even give into sentimentality too much. Am I crying right now? I’m not actually. Not at all. Tomorrow I fly back to NY, back to all my NY friends whom I’m excited to see. Hopefully we can go skinny dipping.

Oh, and I’d like to give a big fat sticker-covered shout out to all of you who are awesome and who make me smile and whose comments I adore and who are the most loyal internet bunions a gal could have. I know I may not give the individual shout outs as often as Anna but I talk about you guys all the time, as do my parents. So thank you for reading!

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chocolate and nostalgia

Hey you guys. I’m so remiss in posting and my head is swirling and my hair smells like chocolate. That’s not figurative. It literally smells like chocolate because I got it straightened with actual chocolate. They just squirted chocolate syrup all over my head and then smushed it around. It’s all the rage in Brazil apparently. The thing is that I asked them to leave the nuts off and then next thing I know everyone’s putting their nuts on my head. And I could do without all these flies, you know?

So I’m starting to get the OC confusion I get when I’m here too long and I start attaching willy nilly like some kind of suction cup that only sticks to things on the West Coast that once were a part of my life. Does that make any sense? I could probably explain better but I’m late to go to dinner with my parents and the guy I went to prom with. See what I’m saying?

See, for the first couple days I was here I had a head full of New York and was like, What kind of vacation is this if my head hasn’t given up all this junk?” And now New York feels so far away it kind of scares me. But then I’ve been here before and usually once I’m on the plane I’m plunged back into my old life which is my new life but you know what I mean. Unless you don’t. Also, I’m not loving “plunged” but couldn’t think of a better word.

And do I have a puppy yet? No.

Anyway, just wanted to say a quick hello. I’ll be back to regular blogging and perhaps even being funny very soon, I promise. I miss all of you!

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