Book smart vs. Common Sense
On the heels of the “ghetto-party” drama at the esteemed University of California, San Diego this week—which I will be writing about shortly, believe you me, oh yes I will—my husband’s business partner found a note on the ground, lost by, presumably, one of the University’s fine, over-achieving students. It concerns me how this individual is managing in life and more so, how she/he is going to get through tomorrow without the lost memo.
Hand written in pencil on a postcard-size piece of paper with violins and cats on it (see? Already, I question the functional capacity of this person), is the To Do list:
- 7:10am = Sleep
- 7:40 = Get ready
- 7:45 = Walk to school bus
- 8:00 = Get to class
- 8:50 = Class
- 9:00 = Walk
- 9:50- Class
I mean, where on this list is this person supposed to squeeze in breathing?
Dear John Mayer,
When Playboy asked you whether black women “throw themselves” at you, you said:
“I don’t think I open myself to it. My dick is sort of like a white supremacist. I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock. I’m going to start dating separately from my dick.”
Well, jeeze. This is awkward but…dude! You said that—among many other inane things— OUT LOUD. To a reporter. And anyway, do you really think your racist dick is the reason black women don’t dig you?
The Benetton folks must be cringing.
Honey, you are an affront to frat boys everywhere and that’s a damn near impossible feat. You are not smart. You are not cute. You are not deep. You are not intellectual or witty or cool or hip or dope or fly or whatever it is you fancy yourself to be. You have a small, small, small brain and a very big mouth. You are a self-important asshat raised to the 11th power, quadrupled by dickheadery, topped with three servings of phony and one heaping scoop of overcompensation.
Do humanity a favor, John Mayer, and please stop talking. Just shut the fuck up and go far away. Make that annual Mayercraft Cruise of yours permanent. Put on your Gopher-from-The-Love-Boat costume, set your vessel on starboard tack and make a bee line for an iceberg.
Just…yeah. Don’t come back.
xoxox,
~aaryn
Breeze it, buzz it, easy does it
As I begin preparing to go on Euro Gallavant 2010—also known as Debt Fest 2.0.1.0, or Reinvent Yourself: The 21st Century Edition—I’ve been making contact with a few other writers with whom I’ll be sharing prosecco toasts and sunsets over the Amalfi Coast. I sure hope they’re not talkers, boy. I like my sunsets lonely and profound and weighted with deeper meaning. Sort of like J.D. Salinger. Ah, shoot. Who am I kidding? What’s a sunset without friends and a few tipsy oohs and ahhs and holy mother of Jesus can you believe we’re in fucking Positano?!?
One of the people I plan on spending some serious time with is this woman right over here. I spent several days perusing her blog and getting lost in her incredible interviews (especially this one), which are amazingly thoughtful, pitch-perfect-inquisitive and deserving of larger publication. All I can say is that the screenwriters for Jerry Maguire couldn’t write a line cheesy enough for the occasion of meeting Sariah in person.
Without a script, I’ve decided my best bet is to play it cool. Not like Danny Zuko impress-my-friends cool. But more like a don’t-fawn-or-try-to-touch-her-hair cool. The way I figure it, if I don’t knock her over and hump her leg on day one, that will be West Side Story cool.
But I’ve strayed now from my original intention, which was to borrow the questionnaire part of Sariah’s interview. Because it’s so damn cool. As in, The Birth of:
What are your necessities?…Love; kisses from my daughter, both landed and blown; sunglasses; CO Bigelow Mentha Tint lip gloss; heels of all kinds (stacked, stiletto, kitten, princess, wedge, what have you); booksbooksbooks; The New Yorker; On The Street with Bill Cunningham; the family bed on weekends; alone time; my Canon 40-D and 50mm lens; Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, any Thelonious, Jimmy Smith, Gene Harris, Chet Baker, Ella Fizgerald…oh hell, all kinds of jazz that I couldn’t possibly live without, especially Cannonball Adderly’s and Bobby Timmons’ swingin’ masterpiece “Dis Here” set on repeat, cruising up the coast as a passenger in my husband’s classic Mini, windows down, volume at 11. Picture it…
Nothing smells better than. . .my daughter’s skin after a bath and her scalp after oiling; the space between my husband’s nose and upper lip after he shaves; early mornings in a canyon.
Nothing tastes better than. . .Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups/Trees/Eggs/Hearts with an ice cold glass of water.
Nothing feels better than . . .Hey, now…
I’d rather be…laughing and toasting with friends on my back patio during a summer evening, my home filled with people I adore, than doing just about anything else, especially faxing.
If you could live in any other epoch, which would it be? As far as fashion goes, the 20s or the 60s (ala Mad Men). Otherwise, this one seems to be working out well for me.
If you could jump into any painting, à la Mary Poppins, which would you choose?
“The Tree of Life,” c. 1909 by Gustav Klimt
What about you? What are your answers to Sariah’s pressing questions?
I almost have it memorized
Next week is Staff Appreciation week at Ruby’s school and since everything seems to be about Ruby’s school these days, I thought I’d share this gem, sent to me by my friend The Lethal Weapon. You know who you are.
After searching for her hairbrush for 15 minutes
The Gaydi Project: Oh! Here it is! It was in front of my face the whole time! Duh.
Sam: Why didn’t she just look there first?
Doppelgänger
Ira Glass is something else. He’s smart. He’s funny. He’s nerdy-sexy. Terrifically so.
In other words, my type.
But my husband defies all adjectives, without the glasses.
So you can imagine that when my mother-in-law told me—after I took this picture, panting, sweating, fanning myself—that she was giving these glasses to my nephew, Thanksgiving almost got ugly. Had my sweet nephew not seen that they truly belong on someone else, I might have been the fugitive on CNN this past weekend.
My punkin’ across time
THEN…
AND NOW…
This is, like, totally bananas
I’m the recipient of The Honest Scrap Award, the only award that I have ever accepted on this blog. I don’t believe in these bloggy awards, much the same way I don’t believe in tiaras for women over the age of 12. But! I do quite like the bitch who presented the award and so, for her, I’m going to divulge some honest crap. Just. This. Once. Because you all know how I never do that. And please, to the masses of 19 people who read this blog: Don’t go giving me any more awards because ignoring them always makes me feel bad.
Now, moving on. I’m only following the steps here as dictated by the aforementioned bitch and she said I should do the following:
Mmmmm, okay. Thanks? I think? No, really: Thank you. Thank YOU! Merci! Muchas gracias!
2) Share “10 honest things” about yourself.
1. I wear my pajamas, a.k.a. my Uniform, as often as I possibly can.
2. I think death will be a lot like being under anesthesia: I won’t even know I’m gone. This makes me a lot less afraid of it than I used to be and more appreciative of Right Now. I mean Now. Okay, NOW is already in the past but I mean Right This Instant. Pfffft! Gone! You get the idea.
3. While I think I got the death thing all squared away, I’m terrified of failure and can expertly employ excuses to avoid even trying.
4. I watched the Rachel Zoe Project one time, by accident, and was swirly-eyeballs hypnotized. I think she is one of the most pretentious, self-absorbed, catastrophic women I’ve ever not seen in real life. She’s oily, too, which bugs the compassion right out of me. Like, who rubs her down with the EVOO? She is exactly the kind of woman I would never want to be or be friends with, for that matter. And yet, despite it all, I would let her dress me. For free, no less.
5. I like to paint my husband’s toenails. He has perfect feet. Blue or green or glitter polish preferred.
6. I take a lot of pictures but have very little idea what I’m doing.
7. By the time my father dies, he won’t remember that he didn’t love me. I will remember but I’ve made my peace with it. My daughter will always know her father loves her more than anything else.
8. I loathe Crocs, cats, Disney themed clothing on adults, the advertising of religious beliefs via bumper sticker or window decal, pickled herring, bigotry, ignorance, Rachel Zoe (see above), ostentatious jewelry and burping. To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, these things—individually as well as collectively—are not just plain terrible, they’re fancy terrible. They are terrible with raisins in it.
9. As long as I’m talking about fancy terrible with raisins, have you seen Kathie Lee Gifford lately? She falls in my love-to-hate category. I just can’t get enough of her yuk-yuk-yuk laugh and frenetically blinking eyes.
10. Everyday, I wake up to a kiss goodbye, the Perfect Cup of Coffee on my nightstand, and the knowledge that I’m not half the partner my personal barista is. It’s good to play up, I say.
Whew. That was…something. Finally, per my lovely friend:
3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs I find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged me.
Okay, see, this is where I have to bail. I just can’t do it to anyone else. But I invite you all to please play along and if you do, leave a link in the comments so I can come read all about your honest scat. I mean, crap. I really want to hear it, I do. I just can’t help being the weakest link in this chain. And oh, hey, as long as I’m being honest? I’d like you to know that Wordpress formats my photos however the fuck it decides it wants to at any particular moment, and the fact that the motherf!*^%!g award banner up there at the top is aligned LEFT makes me crazy like a crooked painting in the home of a stranger, which I can never stop myself from fixing. That I can’t fix that banner up there is nearly enough to make me want to delete the stupid fucker.
I just really love this guy
My favorite Facebook status update from today:
“Tim Wise thinks he understands the right-wing anger over the President’s education speech & the importance of hard work in school. See, they prefer the last President–the one who bragged at Yale commencement about being a lazy, mediocre C student, and told them how that was ok, because you could be mediocre and still become President. And they love Hannity and Limbaugh: both of whom found college too hard and quit…”
And on an unrelated but still related note, how far would you go for health insurance?
It’s all about the equipment
My esteemed editor at CityBeat, Dave Rolland, ran his first 5k today. He announced his results on his Facebook page:
“My time was 26:12 (8:26 minutes per mile). I came in 171st overall (out of 1,217). I was 15th in my age/gender group (out of 39). And I think I was the only dude running in cargo shorts.”
I am very proud of Dave but have to question his choice of attire. Cargo shorts? Fine for hiking the Uintas or just shopping around at R.E.I, but not exactly built for aerodynamics. I’m certain if he’d worn the proper clothing, he could have shaved minutes from his time.
Something like this could have seen him place in the top three overall.
Maybe next time, Dave. Maybe next time.