An explanation intended to elicit your sympathy/make you forget I'm a horrid blogger

To quote my wife, “Oy.”

We have been absent for awhile. It has actually, in part, been (for me) recovering from my birthday, but that’s a long and drawn-out story. I will begin it with an anecdote.

My sister returned from the gym recently and indicated she had a gross story. She said she was working out on a machine and realized that the guy using the machine next to her smelled like ass. So I said, “Well, perhaps he’d just been working out for a long time and was really sweaty?” She said that, no, that was impossible. He smelled like dirty butt in a way that can only be achieved by not washing one’s ass for at least a week or so. She said that she tried breathing through her mouth but then felt like she was eating his dirty ass smell and, all in all, it was a horrible experience. She ended the story by mentioning that he finished before her and walked over to his girlfriend…

To which I replied, “Wait a minute. GIRLFRIEND? THE MAN WITH THE STINKY DIRTY ASS HAS A GIRLFRIEND???”

Yup. She confirmed that, while she and I are both clean assed but single, the dirty smelly man who cannot bother to clean his butt has a girlfriend – who presumably embraces him, as it was obvious to my sister that she was in fact his girlfriend.

I found this horrifying and have been obsessed with it ever since. The reason for my obsession, and for the bender I embarked upon after my birthday, which subsequently caused me to catch a nasty cold I’m still kind of recovering from, is that I was unceremoniously… dumped? I’m not sure you can say “dumped” but whatever it was, it occurred a couple of days after my birthday.

I hinted on this blog that I was, like, kind of dating someone. I hinted and then removed that part of the post when I realized this blog comes up if you google my very unique name, which I kind of accidentally revealed to him (yes, I was dating someone who did not have my full name for a few months) and I got paranoid (sign #1 you are not meant for someone: it terrifies you that they might find out you actually think about them enough to blog about them). It was bumpy and at times infrequent, allegedly due to his ongoing personal and work dramas. But we got along well, I thought. There aren’t many people I really want to hang out with in a nearly empty bar for hours and hours, but he was one of them. And he liked Daria. Big selling point for me.

It must be understood that I am socially awkward, kind of a drunk, and really bad at male/female crap. So I went back and forth over inviting him out for my birthday celebration, because I’m a wuss, my friends would be there, I didn’t know if they’d like him and vice versa, my palms would be sweaty, blah blah blah. But I did, and he said he’d come… and never showed up. And never contacted me, ever again! Which resulted in me getting wasted as hell, that night and many subsequent nights. And too little sleep. And as a result, my body freaked out at me because I was treating it very badly.

And I’m posting this because I no longer give a fuck if he sees it (not that I’m flattering myself, believing that he’s checking up on me via the interwebs or anything). I’m kind of tired of pretending to be blasé about things like this, and I'm sick of wondering whether it was "serious" enough to get upset over, wondering constantly whether I'm overreacting. Fuck that. I was hurt, and angry, and I’m still kind of both, and who cares if the internets know?! And why would I want to date someone if I’m scared to reveal any kind of emotion in front of them? Oh yeah, I’m a masochist and kind of emotionally repressed. Well, I’m trying to work through that.

So anyway, there is my last month or so in a nutshell! But also I’ve had a good deal of fun. The drinking may have been a sad response to a stupid, pathetic situation but it was also good times, and not too much of it was done alone. Plus there’s pumpkin beer and red wine to be had, scary movies to watch, pumpkins to carve, and Halloween outings to plan. I fucking love fall, so I guess it’s the perfect time to get over the end of a summer fling.

And also – I’m going to be a lion for Halloween! It’s exciting. The outfit is kind of slutty (can you, as a woman, find one that isn’t?) but I’m adding leggings. Which makes it still kind of slutty, I think. Oh well!

Still – I cannot make something work with a misanthropic divorcee with a long arrest record (yes. yes.), but that smelly-assed motherfucker has a girlfriend? Oh. My. God.

How to avoid feeling terribly ill

You could probably just NOT do the following:

Drink until midnight. Wake up at 6 a.m. when a gentleman caller leaves, realize you are starving, and eat a few pieces of leftover steak and a slice of cheese. Drink a bunch of water. Go back to bed.

Seriously, a slice of cheese? What the hell is wrong with me?

WWCBD?*

Man, we are bad at this blogging stuff.

To get back in the swing of it, I'll just share a short tale I call: "My Wednesday Night."

Originally, I was supposed to go for drinks with this guy I met (gasp!) on the internet. But that ended up not working out. He's forgiven, mainly because he is English, so I guess we're meeting up next week.

That doesn't mean I wasn't a little disappointed though. So I used my last $19 to buy a bottle of red wine on the way home (well, I had $5 left over after that) and I drank the whole bottle alone while watching dvr-ed episodes of Gossip Girl with my dog and smoking too much.

How hot is that? Wait, WHY are men breaking dates with me?!



*That's "what would Carrie Bradshaw do?" Not this, I'll bet -- thank god.

Tatu

Yes, that's right -- Boulos and I are acquiring accents, shaving ten years off our ages and starting a pop group whose mystique will lie in our ambigous sexual relationship, which is to say, the rumors that we "are doing it."

No, actually, WE ARE GETTING ROCK N ROLL UNICORN TATTOOS THIS WEEKEND!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For reals. This has been years in the making, but somehow we just came up with this plan like a day ago. I don't know why we didn't think of it before. It's my birthday weekend (kinda -- that's what you say when your bday is the day AFTER a national holiday). So, so many of our friends are reuniting in NYC this weekend. It is just natural that we do it now.

I understand that many people probably do not know what a Rock n Roll Unicorn is. The fact is, you can't really know a Rock n Roll Unicorn. It is, by nature, enigmatic and difficult to describe. It's like obscenity, really. You know it when you see it -- don't ask me to describe it.

Luckily for you, we will take pictures of our brand new tattoos and post them here!

Lollapalooza

I'm sure you're all on the edge of your seats awaiting my review of Saturday 8/4 at Lollapalooza. Well, I don't like to disappoint. So here you go.

I am lazy, I sleep late, and I don't do well spending all day in crowds, so I didn't show up til 3:30 and only saw 5 bands. But it was totally worth the $80, and I'm gonna tell you about it.

Cold War Kids
Originally we'd planned to get there at about 2:30 to catch either Silverchair or Stephen Marley, though I have no idea what either is doing these days. That didn't really work out and so we got there just in time for Cold War Kids.

They sounded really good, but they were on a little side stage and this created the only "dear lord, get these people away from me!" conditions we experienced all day. A tiny bit of that reaction may have been due to my sober state, which I did not maintain after CWK, thank god. But it was packed and we were quite far from the stage. Plus we were facing west and people crossing the park were walking north/south, and thus right into us. This blew.

The lead singer had a lot of enthusiasm and I'm quite excited about seeing them open for the White Stripes in October. But we were just too far, it was too crowded, and I was too hot to really get into this.

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah

I basically just wanted to hear them live and had no desire to get near the stage. So we laid down an little blanket and sat on the grass, which was lovely after standing in the throng watching Cold War Kids. It also started to cool off and get breezy, which was nice. CYHSY sounded pretty good; I'm not a huge fan but I like what I've heard of their newer album. A lot of rather hot and slutty girls around us were dancing happily. I bet these dudes get laid a lot, by better-looking chicks than you'd suspect.

Regina Spektor

We left CYHSY early to catch Regina Spektor. We should have left my house the night before for a chance to get near the stage, because she was a helluva lot more popular than I expected. We were planning to head back across the park towards the end of her set, so we took a spot on the far left side of the stage. Unfortunately some very loud, very bad metal was being played not very far away on the left, so at first she was very difficult to hear (plus it was just her and a piano or occasionally just her and a guitar -- none of the bells and whistles heard on her albums). She was incredibly cute and endearing. She seems like one of those people you want to hate because they seem naively nice, but you have to love them for it. At one point when the bad metal was still going on, I thought she was singing about those dudes fucking up her songs. I've since discovered she has a song about neighbors fucking to her songs. I still think she might have changed the lyrics to fit the situation.

I was really impressed by her ability to keep people completely enchanted with her music despite the bare-bones set up. She doesn't have the raw punk spirit of Patti Smith or the haughty cheekiness of Tori Amos, but she killed us with kindness, and it was fun.

This, incidentally, was around the time I got drunk. Three cheers for my High School antics; were were allowed to bring 2 bottles of water into the park so I brought one of water, and one of heavily spiked vitamin water. Since I still bought about $40 worth of beer, I don't feel too badly about this.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs

I had never seen the YYYs live before, and it was awesome. Karen O is my hero and everything I aspire to be. Bitch is crazy, in the best possible sense. She had all kinds of weird accessories including something that looked like a small tent my sister had when we were little, but in black and white. She sounded damn good, though. Their new single "Down Boy" is the sexiest song this year. Download it illegally, I promise you won't regret it (J/k, I buy almost all of my music. seriously. I'm not a good for nothing, entitled piece of scum like you). They sang a bunch of stuff from Show Your Bones, too, and a few from Fever to Tell, including "Y Control" which is one of my favorite songs ever. I was very happy about that.

During their set, I left to go to the bathroom because at this point I was drinking beer and peeing frequently, like I do. We weren't very close to the stage, but a lot closer than we had been to Ms. Spektor. I absolutely forgot to take a look at where, exactly, we were standing, though. Like a total moron, I had left my bag and my phone with my friends. I spent the majority of "Maps" wandering around looking for our spot, which is kind of funny.

Spoon

We caught a couple of songs from Spoon when we were walking over to the other stage to see Interpol. I like all of the songs I've heard by Spoon, but these first 2 or 3 sounded like really, really bad classic rock. Like the Doobie Brothers -- the Michael McDonald incarnation of the Doobie Brothers. Maybe it just wasn't an appropriate buffer between YYYs and Interpol, and my head was in the wrong place. Then it started to rain and we left for beer and food.

Interpol

Oh, lovely boys who make lovely music. Interpol and the YYYs were my reasons for attending Lollapalooza. We got there about 20 minutes before the set, but didn't even try to get very close because a) there were porta potties just down a lane from where we stood, which was important for both my bladder and my bad sense of direction and b) we were never going to get incredibly close, so I decided to deal. I was pretty much drunk at this point, and then friends of my friend gave me a few shots of vodka.

I am not a dancer at shows. I'm more a watcher and listener. But I was drunk, I love Interpol, and they sounded great. So I was dancing. Not like a damn fool, but dancing. The people around us were a mix of Interpol fans, people they'd dragged along, some curious sorts, and old men smoking pot who had clearly come straight over from Patti Smith, who had played at a nearby stage. This one dude who was dancing around like a fool gave me a high five when he saw that I knew the words. It was pretty awesome. More people are into this band than I thought. Fun times.

Then we went to a bar in Wicker Park, where we always seem to end up when the night is heading toward blacked-out drunken embarrasment. We must have had a premonition of where we were headed, because we were there pretty early, by about 11:3o, and drunk off our asses and acting like fools by about 1. It was a fun night.


Pitchfork's review of Saturday is actually pretty good and not too douchey, a real first for them.

At Least It's Not That Old Lady, Dirty Pantyhose Smell

I have been experiencing hygiene issues for the past week or so.

That sounded disgusting. Okay, here is the issue: I have been noticing that I have smelly armpits. Like, yeah, BO-smelly. But I use deodorant! The same one I've been using for months, except I recently bought a double-sized stick of a different scent. Maybe this is why it was on sale... maybe I will never buy sale deodorant again (it IS a brand name, in my defense).

In any case, I checked and it's anti-perspirant as well, like I always buy. I've never had a severe armpit sweat issue like, oh, about 1/2 of my female friends have. And I've never had this smell issue! It's really getting me down. I bought a new deodorant during lunch but I almost don't want to try it, for fear it won't work and I will be left smelly and friendless forever.

To top it all off, later this afternoon is the party (with booze) for my new office and I don't really know 1/2 these people. I'll probably get tipsy, throw up my arms in celebration, and promptly become the office reject.

Great.

Family History

So the Bears are going to the Super Bowl. This is a very big deal in Chicago, since their last trip was 21 years ago – Boulos and I agree that this makes us feel old, since we remember it very clearly.

My father was there to see them win, in New Orleans. It sounds like quite the time. 13 men in all drove from Chicago to New Orleans in some kind of Winnebago-type vehicle. These included my father’s two uncles and his then-stepfather. My dad was 27 and probably one of the youngest guys on the trip; he and most of these men were big drinkers. That last sentence is actually a huge understatement.

His aunt sent them off with a big batch of chili. Thirteen men, a Winnebago and a bunch of chili sounds like a fun time, huh? According to my father, the men had an agreement that whoever was driving at any given time would not drink. And this was breached about fifteen or twenty minutes into the trip, when his stepfather began drinking a large amount of whiskey at the wheel.

Someone knew a guy who lived in New Orleans, and they parked the trailer thingy at his place, using his electricity. Some of them stayed in the guy’s house and I’m guessing they all used his bathroom. According to my grandma, she “does not know how his wife dealt with this,” but the woman was reportedly “a nurse who smoked pot every night,” which might explain her general coolness and permissibility.

My father told us that he and his uncle ended up at a strip club alone one night, and they met a guy who took them to a party at a trailer park. Everyone else at this party (including their new friend) was black, and my dad and his uncle were convinced they were going to be mugged. But they just ended up partying until dawn, when the man kindly returned them home. Of course, this is the story my dad shared. You have to wonder about the other stuff they did.

Over the years, I have seen several pictures of the guys with their bad-eighties hair and glassy, drunken stares and smiles. There is one of my uncle mooning the camera – I just found out last night that Jim McMahon had mooned the press and this picture is an homage. Which is classier than a random picture of ass, you know.

Family history is important, and so very fun. Hearing this story last night made me feel very straight-laced and rather ineffective in my attempts at drunken adventures. I am only 26, though, so I guess I have another year to plan something to rival this. Maybe when Boulos, my sister and I visit Nashville in April….

By the way, my aforementioned great-uncle, Tommy, passed away rather suddenly last week. He was a really great guy and probably took good care of my father in situations like this. He took care of everyone, in fact. Um, this story really didn’t capture him. I doubt he frequented strip clubs, but they were in New Orleans – I’d be in strip clubs in that situation (not performing, though, you dirty birds).

So, yeah. This is as close to a football-themed post as you’ll get from me.

I Continue To Do Reprehensible Things

Oh, I was supposed to share this story a long time ago and never quite got around to it. It is called:

“How I desecrate family values,” or “Babies? VOMIT!” or “Hi, my name is Amanda, and I’m….”

This occurred when I was visiting Miss Boulos in New Jersey. In an attempt to recapture our more recent youth, we went to Winnie’s and sang karaoke on Saturday night. We drank Hawaiian punch, as we usually do. For anyone unfamiliar with Hawaiian punch, it is basically a mixture of every liquor in the bar, grenadine, lime juice and pineapple juice. A tropical Long Island iced tea, if you will.

We drank something like 9 pitchers of it (there were other people there, but we later decided that the two of us alone consumed at least 4 or 5 pitchers ourselves). We sang many, many songs, including our Ticket to Greatness, of course. We took a livery cab back to Jersey, I passed out on the sofabed fully clothed. Boulos woke me briefly so that I could eat the Texas toast she’d so lovingly prepared. What a good wife. I passed the fuck out again and did not wake until it was nearly time to catch a train so that we could spend the afternoon with our friend Lisa, her husband, and her one-year-old baby, Ava.

While Boulos encouraged me to get the fuck out of bed, I mulled over the previous night. “Hey, it’s really a shame we never sang Love Shack.”

Boulos looked at me with incredulity. “We sang Love Shack.”

“What about Spice Up Your Life?”

“We sang that.”

“I Wanna Know What Love Is?”

“Yup.”

So, apparently I had blacked out. Keep this in mind. I almost never black out, in spite of my near-constant consumption of copious amounts of alcohol.

We ate cereal, I opted not to shower or even wash my face, but rather “touch up” my make up (yes, this is kind of appalling. I had not seen Lisa in about a year). We got on the train. We talked about food, a lot.

Lisa picked us up with el babo in the backseat. She was adorable! Seriously, the very picture of innocence and beauty. My uterus fluttered, and the baby was very polite when I sat next to her. She didn’t even hiss or spit, which would have been totally understandable.

On the ride to Lisa’s apartment, I started to feel a little carsick. We got there, had a cigarette (outside – we try not to give babies lung cancer), and I asked for a glass of water. After sitting in their living room for maybe half an hour, I just had to say it: “Guys, I think I need to throw up.”

This is possibly the best thing ever said to me: “Oh sure, just do it in Ava’s bathroom, right there.”

So about two seconds later, I kneel in an adorable bathroom full of little duckies – duckie towels, duckie shower curtain, it was so cute -- and heave my guts up. Everyone in the living room, by the way, can hear every disgusting moment of the surprisingly long and drawn-out vomitfest. And, wonderfully, my immediate thought post-barf was:

“Yum, tastes like Texas toast!”

I am totally disgusting, I know.

If anyone else has a nice story about giving the big Fuck You to decency, now is the time to share.

Morality Tale

Ayayay, my wife and correspondent, Boulos, is home sick today. This means that I am bored. I suppose now is the time to update re: my escapades of the past few weeks.

Sidenote: god, I love this picture. One lady is in her Sunday best, with hat, and flashing some crotch. The other is possibly a man (?), and wearing a skin-tight -- not minidress, but mini-skort type thing? I think it really captures the feel of the night I'm about to describe.

Well, in her post about being drunk and disorderly, Boulos implied that I had a rather insane night that same weekend. Yup. It was 3 weekends ago, the first in October. My sister and I went out with a crowd for her best friend’s birthday. We started out at a club on Rush Street, and this is the kind of thing that makes me really hit the bottle – I know I will not have fun at a club unless I’m drunk. Once I’m drunk, I’m a fool and I dance like a moron, but have fun. I made a very prudent decision to start out with vodka, then switch to gin martinis, and end the night with a series of tequila shots with beer chasers. Wise move; I was pole dancing with the birthday girl’s sister before long (for those unfamiliar with clubs/bars on Rush Street, they generally feature a pole on the dancefloor, specifically so that the female clientele have the option of acting slutty and ridiculous while drunk). We went to another bar, another pole, and things get hazy. We tried to go to a third bar, one that I visit pretty regularly. I got as far as the ATM – there was CLEARLY something wrong with it, as I remember my transaction taking about 15 minutes -- but I was promptly escorted out after being told I was “overserved.” My friends didn’t even get in; they’d been turned away at the door. Apparently the b-day girl’s sister was attempting to argue her sobriety as she fell into the street. We were, altogether, a class act.

But wait, it gets classier! I must preface the next part with this: I do not condone drunk driving. I am totally against it and generally take cabs everywhere when I am drinking. Yet on occasion, I find myself at the stupidly overconfident stage of drunkenness with a set of keys in my hand and a car nearby – again, this is no excuse, but it happened. On this occasion, it seemed imperative that I obtain McDonald’s for me and my sister, so off I went. I had been carrying a tiny purse, and had separated my house keys so they would fit. I entered the house to get my car key – and apparently decided to exchange it with my house key. Cut to me standing on our porch with a ripped bag of McDonald’s in hand, fully aware that my sister was passed out on the couch. I rang the bell 100 times. She had 57 missed calls from me the next day. Eventually I began pounding on the door, which woke up the man who lives below us. When he opened his door to ask me what was going on (this was about 4 am), I gave up. I walked back to the car – which was parked next to the side entrance of a church – and resigned myself to a night in the backseat. Which is a really pathetic fate, when you are alone. I left my sister one last plaintive message, and passed out (in a miniskirt with fishnets and slutty boots, I might add). Around 6 am or so, I elegantly opened the door, delicately vomited on the curb, and shut myself back in. I was the definition of a “lady.”

I woke up around noon –having slept through the part where churchgoers gawk at the drunk, sleeping hooker/gutter girl parked outside – and my sister finally let me in. We listened to my messages together; they started off angry and ended rather pathetically. I vowed to never drink to excess again. Then, the next weekend was upon us.

This is a long post, so we will keep that “to be continued.” The next weekend’s story is not as great, but still an evening of booze, fun, and adventure, and probably one that a sane person would not experience in the immediate aftermath of drunken near-homelessness.

I may also write about our new dog, if you are lucky.

P.s. In case you are wondering, mystery celebrity after whom I model my weekend activities = George Michael. Sleeping in cars and all that.