No More Naps For Me, Thanks.

This is the first job I've had in...oh, six years or so where I haven't been encouraged to work a whole lot of overtime for free. I'm hourly here, as is everyone else, which means that when my 40 hours is up, it's up, and home I go, jiggety-jog. It's kind of great in a way, since I typically work 40 hours by about noon on Thursday. It's also kind of great because after working where I did for two years, where my boss regularly called on the weekends and in the evenings without regard for the fact that I had already worked sixty hours that week...yeah, this is better.

For this story to be funny, you need to know a little about the layout of our living room and its furniture. If our living room were a clock, which it isn't because, you know, it's a room, not a clock, and also, it's not round, but go with me here; if it were a clock, the fireplace would be at 12, the kitchen would be at 3, the window facing our deck would be at 6, and the front door would be at about 10:30. Our couch would be the hour hand and it would be 6 o'clock--so basically, the couch stretches along the wall between the deck window and the front door.

Got it? No? Doesn't matter really.

I was lying on the couch with my head towards the window (in other words, facing toward the door, which was down by my left foot.) I was watching "The West Wing" on DVD on my laptop, which I like to do when I'm reading the entire internet, because I don't have to focus on two different things at two different distances, which makes my eyes tired and also makes me throw up.

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I fell asleep with my laptop balanced on top of my pregnant belly, "West Wing" still playing. Less than an hour later, the cat made some kind of a vaguely human-sounding noise somewhere in the house, which woke me up. I know it was less than an hour later, because "West Wing" was still on the same episode. The scene that I happened to wake up to featured Josh and Toby standing opposite the President's desk, both wearing dark suits.

I was asleep long enough to be exceedingly stupid when I woke up. You know that kind of deep and extremely restful sleep (it seems to be particular to the second trimester of pregnancy) when you wake up and you're not sure where you are or what's happening and you don't, in fact, register the fact that you've been asleep at all? Yeah, it was that kind of a thing.

The first thing I saw was Josh and Toby standing in front of me in dark suits--on the laptop screen of course, but in my head they were right there in front of me. In my peripheral vision, I registered my living room, with the front door by my feet. And literally, this is what I thought:

Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff are in my living room! Why are Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff in my living room? Did I leave the door unlocked and now they're just standing by my feet at the end of the couch, talking? Where did they come from? What the hell is going on?

And I jumped about a mile before I realized that there was no conceivable logical way that Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff had committed a B&E mid-morning at my house, dressed in costume from "West Wing," and reciting dialogue from the show while standing next to my feet at the end of my couch. But that split second was probably one of the weirdest of my entire life.

Day 4: Mortifying

I have had notable crushes on the following celebrities: Joe McIntyre (from New Kids on the Block), Kiefer Sutherland, Ricky Schroeder. Johnny Depp circa 1988, Tom Cruise circa 1987, Ben Affleck, Brad Pitt, John Corbitt, Kyle McLachlan, Vince Vaughn, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Seth Rogan, Edward Norton, and Bradley Whitford.

It is my most fervent hope that my tastes continue to evolve.

Edited: Gahh! Sarah's right: I did forget Anthony Bourdain. Tony, I'm so sorry. Come 'ere, I'll make it up to you.

Dear Anthony Bourdain: Will You Marry Me?

I once had a conversation via email with Goon Squad Sarah about Anthony Bourdain, about how he was like that guy in high school that you got totally drunk at a party with once and made out with a little, and who then broke your teenage heart when he didn't talk to you the next day in school, and then broke it again when your best friend marched up to him (he was smoking behind the baseball dugout) and asked him why he never called you, and he said that he didn't know your name, and then he hit on your friend. Sarah and I realized that we had actually known the same guys in high school, despite the fact that I grew up in Michigan and she grew up in Florida.

Lord love a duck, I am so hot for Anthony Bourdain. He is beautiful, has an incredibly sexy voice, has Distinguished Silver hair, and can cook like an unmitigated motherfucker. He does eat some of the most disgusting bits of the most disgusting animals I have ever seen in my entire life and I really disagree with him about Hung from Top Chef, but he is hot enough that I don't care. Witness:

Hi Tony. That's a nice...bone. And when I say bone, I mean...you know, bone.

Maybe one of the ten thousand reasons that I love him is the interview I just read with him, in which he says the following about Sandra Lee. You know, Sandra Lee from "Semi-Homemade With Sandra Lee", also known as "The Coming Apocalypse Starring The Food Network?"

On Sandra Lee: “Charles Manson and Betty Crocker’s love child. She gets that
glassy Squeaky Fromme look when she’s talking about her tablescapes. I want to
call security.”

The rest of the interview (which took place in Washington D.C.) can be found right here. We ran into him at Eastern Market when he was in town--this was quite a while ago now, but I did what I typically do when confronted with a famous stranger, which is to stare like I'm suffering from brain damage as he nods politely at me. I am smooth, I tell you.

NaBloPoMo Day 29: Hello, Jesus? He Hung Up

I would try to think of something interesting to say, but all in all, it's been a bit of a day, and now "Real Genius" is on cable. Have I mentioned how much I love this movie? So. Freaking. Funny.

Wait, don't answer that last question I just asked. I know the answer. Yes, I've mentioned it. Last year, during NaBloPoMo, as a matter of fact, I mentioned it. Still, never mind. One of the greatest movies ever.

One of the best movie lines ever: "I was just thinking of the immortal words of Socrates when he said 'I drank what?'"

Look closely at Lazlo in the following clip. You may recognize him as Uncle Rico from "Napolean Dynamite."

NaBloPoMo Day 28: Elephantitis of the Face

I'm just thinking, what's up with Javier Bardem's head? Why does it look so enormous on his body? He's so beautiful, and it's totally ruined by the effect that he looks like a bobblehead.

Behold:

Javier, you are too fine to be so...bobbly. Seriously. Maybe it's that you're dressed in black, and it's slimming. Still.

I would wonder that you can even hold that giant melon up, except that I've seen your neck:

At least you didn't keep the Prince Valiant hair from "No Country For Old Men" which, to be honest, wasn't really helping the whole ginormous-head issue.

And in an unrelated tangent, what's up with Turtle being able to get Jamie Lynn Sigler in the season ender of "Entourage?" Seriously, Turtle, Jamie Lynn will always go for the Vincent Chase of the group. Always. Even if her therapist is right and she is addicted to losers--it's gonna be Johnny Drama for her. Accept your lot in life: the girl from the dog park with the giant face --you know, the one who was Joey's college roommate on "Dawson's Creek."

Come to think of it, maybe she's out of your league too. She's probably with Javier Bardem, their giant heads lolling helplessly on the ends of their comparatively tiny necks.

NaBloPoMo Day 8: Breathless

Goon Squad Sarah and I are both obsessed with the Twilight series.

Yes, I admit it. I made fun of numerous people for it, and now I'm totally having to eat crow, but 14-year-old me would never have had a boyfriend if I'd read Twilight, because I'd be out looking for Edward Cullen. No one else would have measured up.

And now there's a movie. A movie! I don't care how much fun Dan makes of me, I am so there.

The actor who plays Edward is named Robert Pattinson. He played Cedric Diggory, who met an unfortunate end in "Harry Potter and Appallingly Bad Movie." That's not really what it's called, but I've blocked it out of my head because the movie was so bad. Also, I don't feel like walking across the room to see what the movie was. You know which movie it was.

Something is wrong with my internet and I can't upload pictures to Blogger for some reason, but you can do a google image search for him. He's hot. Just trust me.

Anyway, this is what he recently said about kissing in an interview with USA Today:

"I always get carried away when I'm kissing people. I just go nuts."

Thanks for that, Robert. No, really. Thank you.

NaBloPoMo Day 5: Silent All These Years

In 1992, when Bill Clinton was elected President, I was 16 years old on election night. I couldn't vote yet, and I had tickets to see Tori Amos in concert at the State Theater in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Brian VanderArk opened. He is the lead singer of The Verve Pipe, which, at the time, was a local band. That night, he came out alone and played the acoustic guitar and sang. It was the first time I ever heard a song called "The Freshman." Years later, it became an enormous hit.

Tori came out on stage in jeans and a plain white t-shirt, sat down alone on stage at a grand piano, and she was stunning. Breathtaking. Shattering.

Without question, it was one of the most haunting, unforgettable, and beautiful nights of my entire life. Election night 1992. I think of it every time I hear Tori Amos' voice.

Here she is, singing "Silent All These Years." It was her final encore that night.

What I Learned Today

I love Facebook. I have learned so much on it, including that people who I thought didn't like me in elementary school now want to be my friend.

I have serious questions about use of the word "friend" as employed by Facebook, but whatever.
But one of the things I've learned today, via facebook, is this: the bald guy in OKGo, the one who lip-syncs all their videos, is Tim Nordwind. He was in my fourth grade class.

He was the first hipster I ever met.

Further Proof That I Am Really An Enormous Freak

I didn't see the thing on MTV with Seth Rogan and James Franco smoking the fake joint that MTV supposedly put them up to...although it sounds non-funny enough to be something that MTV thought up.

And so, this has nothing to do with the fake-pot-smoking incident. Which may or may not make it weirder, but whatever.

I have a crush on Seth Rogan.

Seriously. I can't stop thinking about him. I think it's the voice; it's the same with my crushes on Vince Vaughn and Phillip Seymour Hoffman. I also like brainy, dorky guys, and he is that. If you haven't seen Knocked Up go do it. It's on OnDemand now if you have HBO. That scene in the hotel room in Vegas with Paul Rudd, where he has the epiphany about how great love is, is too funny for words. I can't even remember the last time I laughed that hard.

My new job has started, and I am exhausted and totally brain-tired. It's really fun.

Too Weird For Me To Be Making It Up

Let me just say that people who find this blog using Google are probably disappointed at how mundane and disgustingly suburban my life is. I'm sorry, but there is no Mom+boy love, or Oldre mom+boy, or naked mom love boy, here, or at least not the kind you're looking for. Oh, and you're a big creepy skeev, by the way, and if I ever find a way to figure out who you are, I'll publish your email address. Go away.

Is it possible to synthesize Val Kilmer? Sadly, no. Because if it were, I would synthesize him circa 1985. Behold:

The Navy regrets to inform you that that guy was eaten. By this guy:

Dude: step away from the guacamole. That is tragic.

Illegal to sell cars in Maryland on Sunday? Not that I know of, but I haven't tried.

How to evict your boyfriend If he signed the lease, legally, you're probably stuck with him. If he's that shitty though, do yourself a favor and evict yourself instead. Move out while he's at work. I did that once.

Is it illegal to dye chicks in California? Clearly not.

Heroine Crushed By what? This sounds like a good story.

Google Best Pose For Conceive A Baby Clearly, I can't remember how I posed, or I'd go ahead and pose that way again.

"Literally take a test drive" Yeah, Vehix.com, "literally" and "practically" are NOT the same thing. If you're on your couch, you're not test driving anything but your remote control. Don't take liberties with the English language since you clearly don't have a grasp of its finer points.

And my personal favorite...

Backpack Sex Machine I bet you're a hit at parties, aren't you?

This or That, Pop Culture Edition

Monday morning: Dan is at work, Max is at school. I am lonely. Leave me a comment.

1. This or That: Project Runway or America's Next Top Model?
2. This or That: TiVO or DVR? (or does it not really matter?)
3. This or That: Jack Johnson or John Mayer?
4. This or That: "Juno" or "Knocked Up?"

Guest-Starring Roles: Cheaper Than Therapy

Have you seen the CBS show "How I Met Your Mother" yet? I mean, it's been on for, like, two years, people! Come on!

I rarely watch it, but this show is freakin' hilarious. It's about a group of New York 20-somethings, told from the point of view of Ted, one of the friends, who is recalling to his future children how he met their mother. The former Doogie Howser, M.D. plays one of the 20-somethings, and I find him perfectly adorable and smarmy in all the best ways. Alison Hannigan, who I loved on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" is another, and she's cute and charming and funny. I rarely laugh out loud at something on TV, but this show is reliably funny enough to make me choke on something every time I watch it.

In general, the show is truly one of the best things around, which is why I was stunned when they announced they had cast Britney Spears in a guest-starring role on the show. Seriously? Didn't she do, like, one bad road trip movie about eight years ago?

I just watched the episode. I am just stunned, but she's actually not awful, as long as your expectations are low. Okay, she's still the worst thing about the show, but since it's a great show overall, it all kind of averages out. Her weave looks terrible, her acting is a little community-theater, and she still looks like she's fighting a case of the crazy, but I give her credit for making an effort to derail her own trainwreck.

You can watch the show online for free, here.

Half an Orphan

Okay, well, let me just say that I certainly hope that this isn't actually going to happen.

I've been disturbed by this whole story all week, and I've been trying to think of something to say about it. I mean, it's always sad when someone dies young, and for no real reason.

But he had a daughter. Lately, every time I look at my son, I think of him growing up without knowing his father, and of Heath Ledger's daughter, who will grow up without hers. What started it was a picture I saw of a little square of concrete outside of Ledger's home in Brooklyn, and "Matilda" scratched in the concrete. Above it, her little footprint was pressed into the cement. It was a secret, until he died, and now it's being turned into a memorial to him, covered in flowers and messages from mourners.

I think about him passing that footprint every day, and how he, like my own husband does, must have looked at how tiny it was, and remembered the small heft of his daughter in his arms when she was new, how tiny she must have felt, how light. I think of him feeling the gravity of fatherhood every time he looked at that footprint.

It's not easy for a girl to grow up without a father. It touches everything about her life. It changes how she sees herself and it can shape the relationship she has with her mother and with other men. All the love in the world from a mother can't fix the broken part of a girl who doesn't know her father, who doesn't have his love or approval to teach her what love or approval should look like.

It's sad when someone dies young. It's sad that his family has lost this bright light. It's less sad that we won't get to enjoy his gifts--I enjoyed "Monster's Ball" and "Brokeback Mountain" and his roles in them very much--but it is still sad.

But for Matilda Rose, who is two, it is probably the biggest tragedy she will ever have to face. If she is at all like Max, she knows her father, knows to ask for him and look for him. I hope that we can leave her, and the rest of her family, alone at least long enough for them to say goodbye to him.

Heath Ledger's death is a tragedy, and not in the trainwreck, media-circus kind of way. It's a tragedy because he left a daughter behind, and she will carry fatherlessness around like a handprint on her heart.

Baby Mama

Apparently, Britney Spears' little sister is some kind of television star on a show for 8-year-olds, I guess. I mean, I'm not familiar, but she's famous enough to be on the news this morning.

She's sixteen. And she's pregnant.

Britney, when asked, said, "Ding dang, y'all, Jamie-Lynn's pregnant! I'ms gonna be an aunt, or maybe an uncle. We don't know if she's havin' a boy or a girl yet."

You know, I'm not, like, all weird and judgey about teenage pregnancy. My husband's a high school teacher, and I got over being shocked his first year teaching, when he had four students who were knocked up. One was even due at the same time I was, with the same obstetrician and at the same hospital--Dan and I kept imagining awkward scenarios where she and I ended up as roommates in the postpartum ward.

But this seems just so weird to me. I mean, sixteen-year-olds get pregnant all the time, I get it. But she seems really excited about it. She's planning to move back to Louisiana to raise the baby with "a normal family life."

I wonder where she's going to find a normal family. I mean, her mother was writing a parenting book when this happened. Seriously? A parenting book? From Britney Spears' mother? Did I hear that right? We're not talking about a children's book, something about, I don't know, pigs and tractors and hootch stills?

Same news program: kids who have sex education are statistically less likely to have sex before age 15. 79% and 59% less likely for boys and girls respectively. I mean, that's, you know, fairly significant.

So look, say you've got a swimming pool. You can tell your kids that the pool is dangerous. You can tell them to stay away from it. You can put a fence around the pool with a locked gate. But whatever you do to keep your kid out, this is a fact: your kid is going to get into that pool. Sooner or later, your kid is going swimming. Do you not think that you should maybe get your kid some swimming lessons? How is that not the responsible thing to do?

I really just can't fathom how this is even a question anymore. Sex education for Max? Yes please. Whatever it takes to keep him out of the pool as long as we can, we'll do it. But we've got no illusions about the fact that it's a decision he will make for himself, regardless of what we want. Did no one tell this kid, this Jamie-Lynn Spears, about where babies come from?

She seems to think that this will all be some kind of kick, some kind of good time. Look at me, I've got an expensive handbag and a nice car and a baby, y'all! Like I said, I'm trying to not be judgey, but give me a break. Parenthood is tough. It's hard work. I'm not saying a sixteen-year-old doesn't know how to work hard, but how is this something that a kid, and she is still a kid, could possibly be ready for?

And she has the audacity to tell other kids that they shouldn't have premarital sex. Really? No premarital sex? Well, I'm pretty sure you've lost all your credibility with anybody who was listening to begin with, and you really sound like a hypocrite, but definitely tell your own kid that too. I'm sure it'll work out for her as well as it did for you. Jamie-Lynn, 30-year-old grandmother.

Wanna know what parenthood is really like, Jamie-Lynn? Why don't you ask your big sister? I hear she's a shoo-in for mother of the year, y'all.

Dear Britney:

Stop it. No, seriously. Cut it out.

You know, we all have bad days, but not all of us have to do it in the public eye. Let me just say that you would be really smart to not be in the public eye for awhile. Pack a bag, go find a beach to recline on somewhere, hire some kind of mental health professional, and get your head together. Think shit over.

Your career: probably not salvagable, but not that big a loss anyway.

You children: Ahhhh, there's the rub. As of the day after tomorrow, they're moving in with their father, and if you can't get your shit together for your sake, it would behoove you to get it together for theirs, or you'll watch them grow up in paparazzi photos.

Look, you've become a national spectacle. It's really sad, and I feel pretty bad for you, because I really question how much of it is actually your fault and how much of it is the fault of people who couldn't bring themselves to tell you no. You're clearly the recipient of some fairly shoddy parenting. That much is pretty obvious. But you're not a child. Make an effort to rise above it.

You might consider going away, Britney. Give us a chance to miss you, and give you a chance to acquire some of the skills that you need in life. Consider carefully-monitored medication for what I can only assume is some kind of post-partum psychosis combined with being woefully spoiled. I'm not blaming you--most people aren't blaming you. The combined hormones resulting from two babies in just over a year are not inconsiderable. Surround yourself with people who are not afraid to tell you the truth, because you seem to have a problem telling yourself the truth.

And stop flashing your bajingo all over the news. Really, put on some undies, lady. It's part of being the growup. Your kids will eventually catch wind of all of the press that your va-goo-goo gets, and they will be embarassed to know you. Your kids will be embarassed by you anyway, every kid is, but you'll be more likely to be paying their therapy bills than their college tuition.

I don't know how much of what we read about you is true, and I don't really care. Mostly I don't pay attention, but what I do know is, they don't just take kids away from their parents for no reason--my experience is that it's pretty damn hard to get kids taken away from lousy, neglectful, abusive, drunken and ignorant parents, let alone superstar parents.

Get your shit together, Britney. I'm embarassed for you at this point, and I feel sorry for you. But mostly, I'm scared to death for your boys. If you had any sense, you would be too, and you'd realize that you're all they've got, and maybe you could try to be more than what you've shown us so far.