I never meant to shun you, studly man muffins. Look, I even wrote a post about farts just for you. Here’s one where I talk about the crazy stuff people have said to me. I know you’ll like that one.
I can be brunette, too. Baby, I can be anything you want me to be.
Don’t make me think about how I always lose the “who’s funnier, men or women?” argument with my husband (I see no reason why this has to happen, just because he is, in fact, funnier than me), or that you will only ever like male singers, male comedians, and male talk show hosts.
You should know that my favorite authors are predominantly male (Bill Bryson), if not straight (David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs), and I think that you look very cute in your mismatched socks and 5 o’clock shadow.
Remind yourself that so many guilty pleasures are universal, as is exceptional writing.
I am open to your suggestions, Beefcakes, so please let me know what you’d like to see on this blog. I normally wouldn’t put any restrictions on this invitation, but just remember that I’m trying to get Freshly Pressed (i.e., on the home page of wordpress.com), and for some strange reason they don’t seem to support nudity, nor does my husband.
There’s something that no one is talking about, and I often wonder if it’s because they’re afraid to open their mouths. I say that because the thing no one is talking about is:
HALITOSIS.
(Not a guilty pleasure, per se, but something I take great guilty pleasure in blogging about.) I’m not sure why I have to keep explaining this unfortunate ailment, but here we go: Halitosis is the medical term for someone with odorous breath.
And usually, it’s CHRONIC.
As in, IT NEVER GOES AWAY.
The other night I went out for Indian, and the fact that I noticed (and by noticed I mean I think my eyes were tearing up) a table mate’s breath in that environment should tell you everything you need to know about halitosis.
Part of me wonders if it’s sort of like a patronus, where the smell is unique to the smeller. To me, halitosis breath smells like old man poop. And that’s the nice way of putting it. The other part of me wonders if the afflicted know they have it. My biggest fear is, of course, that I have it, and no one is willing to tell me.
There are official ways you can test this, one being a Halimeter. I’m not making this up. According to reference.com, a Halimeter is a portable sulfide monitor used to test for levels of sulfur emissions in the mouth air.
There is also something called halitophobia, or delusional halitosis. This is the intense fear that you have bad breath, and apparently may effect 0.5-1.0% of the adult population. (I’m not sure if that statistic includes me.)
In other words, this is serious stuff, people, and I don’t know why there aren’t charities and 3k walks set up for halitosis sufferers and those willing to stand in their immediate vicinity. It stinks of conspiracy, if you ask me.
My husband and I try to take our dog for a walk every day, which usually amounts to 3 times a week. The only option by our house is to do a full 2-mile loop, and some most times E.L. Fudge cookies in front of the T.V. wins.
Perhaps the real reason I am hesitant to embark on this exhausting trek is because so many things baffle me along the way. (Click on any of the pictures to enlarge.)
MILE 0.15: Here is where my dog decides to relieve himself. Every time. As if he KNOWS it’s just far enough away from the house to require me to carry his feces for the remaining 1.85 miles.
MILE 0.41: I cannot for the life of me fathom why climbing this hill mountain never gets easier. No matter how many vodka shots I turn down the night before.
MILE 1.05: I don’t have a picture of Mile 1.05, because Mile 1.05 scares me, and I’m fairly certain that if I showed you why, you wouldn’t be able to sleep at night, and then I’d feel really bad (but would mostly worry that you’d stop reading my blog). Suffice it to say, the house at Mile 1.05 has a rusted sign on the gate, leading up to a dome-shaped apartment/garage, and it reads: HONK BEFORE YOU ENTER.
MILE 1.11: And if you’re not already freaked out, look what I recently discovered behind this seemingly-innocent house: a legitimate cemetary! They did a very good job disguising it; it took me almost 8 months to notice. But this worries me even more. I have so many questions, the first being, as I’m sure you’d imagine, are those people or pets? …And this is why I need to stop asking questions.
MILE 1.18: Luckily, it’s not long before we land in Pleasantville, but this too perplexes me. Are forsythia bushes supposed to look like that, and have the rest of us been offending Mother Nature unwittingly? And, P.S., what kind of birds are landing at this residence? I didn’t think turkeys could fly that high.
MILE 1.30: Now not only am I in Pleasantville, but it is 1952 and the neighborhood kids have gone for a dip in the watering hole.
MILE 1.52: I have not yet figured out why these people have a miniature pony, nor why I feel so disappointed when it chooses to hide in its shack (in case you don’t already know, I could do without horses).
MILE 1.60: There were 3 sheep here before winter. It’s spring now. Where are they? Oh, god, don’t tell me they’re behind the house at Mile 1.11.
MILE 1.71: Every time I pass one of the three (yes, three) Christmas tree farms in our neighborhood, I wonder how anyone could ever think New Jersey is anything less than a magical, pine-scented armpit, where everyone says, “How YOU doin’, amongst this fine bucolic splendor?”
MILE 1.79: You might not be able to tell from this photo, but this mailbox’s general girth puzzles me. Just look at the massive posts holding it up. Do they often get large packages containing the parts needed to assemble Dolly Parton’s bra, or a shopping mall? Or do they have a very small-but-unhygenic houseguest who comes to visit frequently enough that it requires drastic sleeping arrangements?
MILE 1.90: Daffodils. They’re everywhere! Why?
MILE 1.91: I will never, EVER understand why this house always has a ladder resting against it. Not always in the same place, but always there. If someone is trying to sneak out (or in), they’re not being very sneaky, or consistent. And if repairs are underway, why am I not seeing any progress? That ladder HAS to be messing with their Feng Shui.
These are all things I don’t understand. What I do understand is that if <insert deity here> wanted me to walk 2 miles every day, he wouldn’t have made Fudge Stripes taste so good.
THE END.
Wait, wait, P.S. – a little shout-out to someone else who’s confused: click here.
I like to think of myself as Old Money. Not because I have, or have ever had, any sort of real money, I just think if I did, I wouldn’t brag about it. I wouldn’t buy a McMansion on Millionaire Row and send my kids to ivy-covered prep schools, and I definitely wouldn’t drive a BMW. (I would buy a real mansion on secluded acreage, send my kids to boarding school, and have a chauffeur.)
What I’m trying to say is, I know I shouldn’t brag about my engagement. It’s just that, well, I’m so POSITIVE it’s better than yours (and am excited to read your comments to this effect), that it seems like I owe it to you to tell you that you can stop trying now. You’re welcome.
Four years ago, I said to my boyfriend something like, “My entire sense of self-worth is riding on how you propose, so I really need you to pull out all the stops.”
Unbeknownst to me, he took my words to heart and began plotting. When we flew to Las Vegas for my 25th birthday, he already had the whole thing planned. We arrived the day before my birthday, and on the morning of April 30, 2007, I couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t let his decrepit-yet-metrosexual shoulder bag out of his sight. I started to become suspicious, but when he took a shower and I poked around, no ring was to be found.
I tried not to sound disappointed when he gave me a toothbrush as a gift. I’m very passionate about dental hygiene, so it was quite a thoughtful token.
I won some money on the slots and we went to the Paris restaurant for dinner. Things were looking up. We were excited to go see Amazing Johnathan perform at the Sahara. I’d been wanting to see him live for FOREVER.
When we arrived at the Sahara, my boyfriend made a big to-do about going to get our tickets, and someone ushered me straight to the front of the theater as if they knew me. The suspicion returned.
The show began and, to my horror, my boyfriend started texting.
“Who are you texting!?” I hissed, reminding him through my narrowed eyes that not only were we two feet from the stage, but also that I knew how to make his life miserable because only one of us could cry on command.
He put his phone away and Amazing Johnathan asked if there were any volunteers in the audience whose name began with “E.” My boyfriend, Ed, raised his hand and was selected to go on stage. Amazing Johnathan asked if Ed was with anyone, and he replied,
“Yes, my girlfriend, Julie.”
This is it, I thought, and smiled. As I gracefully walked on stage, I can assure you that I was not shaking in the slightest (because that would be the normal reaction, and I was clearly far from normal, living out the most outstanding engagement story that was or ever would be told). Amazing Johnathan asked me to put my hand on an orange while he cut around it. It would have been an embarrassingly unfunny trick -for both of us- except that when he opened the orange, there was indeed a diamond ring inside! It looked so sparkly…and sticky.
“Do you know what that is?” Amazing Johnathan said, rather dumbly if you ask me, because we all knew why we were there, and Ed got down on one knee.
“Will you marry me?” Ed asked, and I tried to think of something interesting to say. Why had I not been rehearsing this for the last 25 years?
“I suppose,” I replied, sure my wit would go unappreciated.
Amazing Johnathan congratulated me and then kissed me on the lips while everyone howled. Well, at least I can be the vehicle for someone else’s applause, I thought graciously.
For some reason, Amazing Johnathan decided to continue with his show after that, while I spent the remainder of the night grinning and cleaning orange pulp out of my new accessory.
Four years later, I’ve yet to hear a better engagement story, but if I do, I’m willing to give you my ring. I can’t wear it. It makes me break out.
DISCLAIMER: The following representation of “Equus” is the view of one blogger and one blogger only. And even though said blogger is 28-years-old and should be able to write about plays and nudity with a certain level of maturity, in reality, she can’t. So, this post bears little resemblance to the actual play itself, which is obviously a masterpiece worthy of Daniel Radcliffe and his penis. Thank you.
The jokes were flying during the spring of 2008, once my mom said she wanted tickets -for her birthday- to the new Broadway show, “Equus,” starring a naked Daniel Radcliffe.
Harry Potter’s Magic Wand.
Harry Potter’s Hairy Potter.
You name it, I said it. Of course, she wasn’t the only one who had interest in the play. I’d been reading the J.K. Rowling books for a decade. Now things were getting serious, and I wasn’t sure what to make of my beloved Daniel Radcliffe’s new acting endeavor. Any amount of Harry Potter-special-feature-viewing will show you that Daniel is the coolest, most modest, mostest talented bloke around.
But, was I ready to see his…PENIS? With my MOTHER? I couldn’t even think the thought without blushing!
Much ado about nothing, you say? No, that’s a different play. I have a LOT to say about this one. Our seats were really close.
November 15th finally rolled around, and it was time to face the music. Except this wasn’t a musical. The play is, in case you are not familiar with plays about emotionally disturbed teenage boys who love (I mean LOVE) horses, a bit of a downer. In fact, it’s downright disturbing. Sexy men in intimidating metal hoof-clogs stomp around in the dark, wearing tights and horse heads made out of wire, while Daniel, completely dwarfed by these creatures, strokes them suggestively.
It’s around this time that you’re thinking, This isn’t the type of gay porn I’d normally sit down to enjoy with 1,156 perfect strangers and my mother. But the acting is phenomenal, so you try to tell yourself you’re not just waiting for the Big Reveal. You pat yourself on the back for paying attention to the dialogue. You are a cultured, forward-thinking Broadway theatre-goer. You even spell ‘theatre’ with the ‘r’ before the ‘e’ in your head, and pronounce it like John Lithgow would. Thee-A-Tahhh.
You do wonder how it’s going to happen, though. There are quite a number of horsemen (and by horsemen I mean the men dressed as horses) to pick from, and they all kind of look the same, as horses do. Plus, it’s so dark. Will you be able to see anything? You didn’t pay $119 plus processing fees and convenience charges for a G-rated experience.
A blonde girl, the same age as Daniel’s character (17), is introduced, and you start to hope he’ll snap out of his equine trance and go at it the old-fashioned way. Well, he does, in a matter of speaking.
Sometime shortly before you convince yourself you can hack it, Daniel and his lady friend strip down to what their mommas gave them and he mounts her on top of a large black box (a hay bale?). They mock hump while Daniel’s character fantasizes about Black Beauty and you not-so-objectively critique the girl’s breasts (which you later recall when she makes her debut on “True Blood”). He can’t close the deal and runs around the stage in a rage, his naughty bits jingle-jangling about (did I mention he blinds six horses? That’s the kind of drama we’re dealing with here, people).
When I say this kid has balls, I’m not trying to be cute. Seriously, what 5-foot teenage boy has the nerve to do this 8 times a week in front of thousands of people? Does he ever get aroused? Obviously he doesn’t have anything to worry about, or he wouldn’t be up there. Right?
…Right. Sorry to disappoint you, readers (really, I am). Everything checks out. He’s got a perfectly above-average*, uncircumcised, unaroused Little Daniel. What’s more, I DIDN’T die of embarrassment. What I AM having a hard time (pun intended) shaking, though, is all the horse stroking. I REALLY don’t like horses.
*I should tell you that when I was discussing this upcoming post with my mother, she had a different take. “Disappointing,” was the word she used. “But I wouldn’t expect you to know any better,” she added. …Thanks, Babs.
I was half-watching an episode of “Bizarre Foods” with Andrew Zimmern earlier this week when something alarming happened. You know, it’s the show where the bald guy travels the globe eating the most disgusting looking-sounding-smelling foods known to man. Normally, it’s all light-hearted fun, and you can easily half-watch while you’re busy a) working on blogs, b) wrestling the dog for the frisbee, and/or c) drunk. On this episode, though, he suddenly had my full attention.
“I was homeless for a year,” Andrew Zimmern said, which, no matter in what context, is ALWAYS out of the blue.
My head snapped up and I stared at the T.V. Did the effeminate host in the pink button-down shirt holding a scorpion kebab just say he was HOMELESS? For a YEAR? (And is THAT why he’s willing to eat anything?)
Yeah, he did just say that.
Naturally, this got me thinking about conversation bombs. Those little one-liners people drop, mid-conversation, that bring the discussion to a screeching halt, while you, bug-eyed and cotton-mouthed, try to figure out a way to get things back on solid ground or run away without being noticed. I always thought one of my own conversation bombs was a real show-stopper:
“I didn’t go to high school. …I was home-schooled.”
But really, homeless bomb trumps home-schooled bomb any day. Don’t you think (vote below!)? Here are some of the more memorable conversation bombs I’ve ever heard, all said directly to me over the past fifteen years. Recognize any?
“I don’t really like music.”
“Well, you get married at 17 because there’s nothing else to do.”
You might be thinking this is the post where I finally talk about the fact that I own Season One of “Laguna Beach” on DVD and have watched it, in its entirety, on two separate occasions. Or maybe this is the one where I put up a picture of when I dressed as Doogie Howser for Halloween. There’s a good chance, you think, that I’m about to tell you how much I love guillotines.
You’re wrong.
While all of those things are indeed shameful guilty pleasures of mine, I have one that goes FAR BEYOND any I’ve just mentioned. In fact, I can’t believe I’m going to talk about it now, but, as promised… Let me start by telling you about something that happened last weekend.
Last Saturday night, my husband and I were, true to form, hanging out watching T.V. Somehow, the topic of Jonathan Taylor Thomas came up.
“Is he younger than you?” my husband asked, trying to imply that this was another one of my creepy obsessions with the Teen Beat contingent.
“No,” I promptly replied, adding, “He was born on September 8th, 1981!” I then quickly pulled up his profile on imdb.com, confirming my credibility.
I realized it had been a long time since I had thought about Mr. Taylor Thomas, or trolled (and possibly contributed to…) fan fiction sites about said star of yesteryear. Rest assured, this is not the mystery guilty pleasure of which I speak. The confession, while absolutely J.T.T.-related, is far more disturbing.
You see, when I was 13, like most 13-year-olds, I was a tad…boy crazy. Emphasis on the crazy. Because real-life boys never paid me any mind, I had to turn my focus toward the more famous variety. Any normal Jonathan Taylor Thomas fan might have been satisfied with plastering their bedroom walls with posters (oh, I did that, too), but not me. Even meeting him at a taping of “The View” wasn’t enough.
I decided to become a vegetarian.
Why, you rightly ask? For one reason, and one reason only. You guessed it. J.T.T. wouldn’t be caught dead gnawing on a turducken or snarfing down a White Castle sack of 10.
Do you understand what I’m saying here? I gave up McDonald’s french fries for this kid, because they were made with beef flavoring. And guess how long this nonsense lasted? 5 and a half years! My entire teenage life! That’s just…just… there are no words.
Now, please, I beg of you, post a comment sharing at least one of your most shameful guilty pleasures. I’ll be here in my closet, amongst the skeletons, not enjoying a Boca burger.
I realized something today, and I’m not quite sure how I feel about it. I’ve come to conclude that the more embarrassing something is for me, the more amusing it is to you, dear reader.
With that in mind, I’d like to talk about Parents. Don’t they just say the darndest things? (I know it’s a two-way street, Mom and Pop. Remember when I said I wanted to quit the flute? Or when I told you I wasn’t going to college because I was going to be a screenwriter?) More often than not, people claim that their parents are an ongoing source of shame. Usually, I disagree with these ungrateful little bastards.
Except this one time.
"My mom let me leave the house like this, and now I'm one of the first things to pop up when you do a Google Image search for 'embarrassing.'"
Now, I’m not going to talk about the time they put my dog to sleep without telling me, or the many times they let me leave the house in white tights and boxer shorts. No, no. That would just be unenlightened.
I’m going to tell you about something you can probably relate to. I’m going to tell you about the time they told me I could be anything I wanted to be when I grew up. What the fudge, right? Why don’t we try lowering the bar a little, Babs and John? Some days I can barely remember how to tie my shoes. Yesterday, I asked my husband which side the heart is on*. In case it’s not already abundantly clear, I AM grown up, and I CAN’T be anything. In fact, the list of what I CAN be is getting shorter by the minute. I can’t even audition for American Idol anymore!
Before I sound like one of those ungrateful little bastards myself, I should pay tribute to all of the things I CAN do, thanks to my parents. So here, in no particular order, are my inherited skills:
I make a mean carrot cake.
I can paint a room without taping up the edges first.
I can play Chopsticks and Heart and Soul on the piano.
I can recite most of Dirty Dancing.
I can ABSOLUTELY recite every lyric to every John Denver song ever recorded.
I can use “merkin” in a number of ways during family Scategories without getting in trouble.
…Thanks, Mom and Pop.
*My husband would like you to know that I can’t really be faulted for asking this question, because I have a severe case of [self-diagnosed] selective dyslexia, whereby I usually cannot tell the difference between left and right. “Even when you’re looking RIGHT AT the GPS!” he is saying now. He is sweet, but I don’t need his pity.
"You'd better not laugh, you stupid b*tch." ...Wait, I don't think that's it.
If you don’t know what this post is going to be about, please go back and read the title. In fact, please make a point of always reading my titles. I have really good titles. Most times, I won’t repeat them in the post itself, so you should go back and read the title again after you’ve read the post, so you can truly appreciate how clever I am.
Now, where were we? Ah yes, Project Management Boot Camp. Did you know there was such a thing? I didn’t either, until I decided to look for a new position at my company and then they actually hired me. During the interview process, I was told that there was this incredible opportunity to attend a Project Management Boot Camp in Pennsylvania. Not wanting to spoil the interview, I grinned and nodded enthusiastically.
“That sounds perfect!” I said.
If everything worked out, I would attend the Boot Camp during my first week on the job.
“The timing couldn’t be better!” I said.
When I got the job, I asked,
“Who do I talk to to get signed up for this Boot Camp?”
I then found out that they weren’t calling it Boot Camp to be funny. You had to leave on a Sunday night and wouldn’t return until the following Friday night. “Evening activities should conclude by 10pm” the sample agenda read.
“It will be fine!” I told myself and registered.
On Sunday, March 6th, I drove the 45 miles southwest, trying to keep an open mind about both the Boot Camp and Pennsylvania. Now that I had bought my first home in rural New Jersey (yes, such a place DOES exist), I really needed to be more welcoming of my neighbors to the west, whose country music stations were starting to invade my radio frequency.
It was pouring rain and the two-lane highway kept abruptly turning left and right. This should have been my first clue. But no.
“I’m going to learn so much!” I thought.
I checked into my nice, but not as nice as my own bedroom, hotel room and hung up all of my outfits for the week, looking to see where the iron was, just in case. “I am a professional, wrinkle-free businesswoman now,” I said to myself.
If I hadn’t eaten before I’d left, I could have had complimentary room service.
“This is going to be like an all-expenses-paid vacation,” I mused.
At 7:30am the next morning, I filled my ice bucket so that I could tuck my vodka to bed for the day, like any good vodka sitter-slash-drinker. When I went to re-enter my room, a strange man opened the door.
“Oh, sorry, wrong room!” I said, realizing I was two doors away from my own room. I briefly recalled the time I went to the wrong house for a Christmas Eve party and stayed for 20 minutes before anyone realized it. Finally they pointed me next door. Snapping back to present day, I noticed this man had a notebook and added, “Although I think we’re headed to the same place!”
He gave me a strange look, but it didn’t dawn on me until much later that someone with a bucket of ice and someone with a notebook should NOT be going to the same place.
I recovered from the momentary embarrassment and reported downstairs to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. All five days were to start promptly at 8am. A few people were milling about, grabbing bagels and coffee, including the man I had just bumped into. “Maybe now he won’t think I’m crazy,” I thought, but watched as he took a seat at the opposite end of the restaurant.
Twenty minutes later, we gathered in the large, freezing conference room that was to be our home for the next five days. I had a panicky moment where I couldn’t find my name card, but there it was, in the far left corner, next to wrong-hotel-room guy.
“Whew! Imagine if they didn’t have me registered!”
I introduced myself and looked at all of the neat trinkets in front of me.
“I am going to get the royal treatment!” I thought, amused by the blue camouflage bandana and dog tags at my work station.
There were only 17 other people in the boot camp and I didn’t recognize anyone, even though they were all from my company. We were broken into two teams, blue and green, based on the color of our bandanas, and told that we had to wear our dog tags at all times or we’d have to buy the intructors a drink.
“What fun! My team is going to win everything!” I thought, glad I didn’t trade for a green bandana as soon as I sat down, like I had wanted to.
The two instructors both had Southern accents, which seemed to enhance the Boot Camp theme. I wondered if either one would snap during the week and tell us we were worthless little maggots. I kind of hoped they would.
“What happens in boot camp stays in boot camp,” they told us, and the first sense of foreboding came over me. I wondered how many more times people would say that stupid line before I died of boredom.
As they went over a disconcertingly vague verbal agenda for the week (they wanted some things to be a “surprise”), I quickly realized that the reason for such late nights was because we would be in lectures all day and in our teams all night, working on projects. If I thought I was going to get to watch Vampire Diaries and Glee, or ever see the light of day that week, I was sorely mistaken.
By Day 3, shortly after our team had to perform a dance number, to a song of the green team’s choosing (I would tell you more, but I’m afraid the instructors know where I live. I KNOW they know where I work), I hit a low place. A very low place. The kind of place where you think of the American Idol contestants during group week, or the poor bastards on The Real World, and for the first time ever, feel a genuine kinship. If someone brought me into a confession room just then, pointing a camera in my face, I’m not sure what I would have looked like, but it wouldn’t have been pretty. You would have been sitting at home, with your sweet dog and loving husband, judging me for binge drinking and sobbing during dinner “breaks.”
Project Management Boot Camp broke me, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to look anyone in the eye when I returned to work. (I still can’t look at the CD of photos and video clips they sent us home with.) Luckily, I’m almost as good at (BIG, FAT) white lies as I am at blog titles.
“It was a fantastic learning experience!” I said to my new manager the following Monday, staring at the cracked leather on my left boot.
“I would definitely recommend it!” I wrote, when the training department sent around a survey two days later.
Written by Julie Davidoski, Certified Project Manager (CPM)
Go Jules Go 
