Memoirs Of An Evil Genius

The Strangers

This past weekend I was in Boise, Idaho (my first time!) for a cousin's wedding. I was actually really impressed by how beautiful it was there. Low-key, of course -- I mean, there were far less helicopters and police blockades and gun-wielding maniacs than in my current neighborhood -- but you can't really hold it against them. Anyway, the weather was beautiful, I got to spend time with some of my extended family, and four weirdos picked me up in the bar at my hotel, so it really had all the earmarks of a successful weekend.

I shouldn't say "picked up", because that makes it sound salacious. It wasn't salacious. It was just...bizarre. Anyway, the story is this: the wedding wrapped up and I was hustled to my hotel by midnight, which for me was 11pm, and I was totally not tired at all. So I picked up my book and went down to the bar. Argyle teased me for reading at the bar, but dude? Remember that this is Idaho we're talking about. Anyway, book + dirty martini = :) So I'm reading my book and enjoying my martini, and this shitfaced quartet -- three girls, one dude -- belly up to the bar and start gabbing amongst themselves.

I am from time to time a shameless eavesdropper. I can't explain it, but ever since about the fourth grade I have gotten endless enjoyment out of other peoples' conversations. But only if they don't know I'm listening. Sometimes (read: often) people will have "outrageous" conversations when they suspect (read: hope) other people are listening, and that is excruciatingly tiresome. As soon as someone says to me any of the following dreaded phrases, I write their name down on my list of People Who Suck:

"We're kind of weird!" -- You're NOT weird. You're just like everyone else. Everybody has quirky conversations with their friends, but many of them do not publicly pat themselves on the back for it. Shut up.

"We're probably scaring you, aren't we?" -- No. No, you are not "scaring" me, you are depressing me, both because you clearly wish for me to be scared (by how weird you are) and because you think that being scary-weird makes you somehow a more interesting person, and there is a difference.

"I hope we're not SHOCKING you!!1!" -- Yes you do.

Deliver us from Life Performers. Anyway, these people were so fucked up they had no idea I was paying any attention to them, which made them hilarious. Also, I was pretty fucked up after the wine I had at the wedding and the dirty martini (which I got for FREE, because when I want to I can apparently charm a bartender with the best of them!)(or, possibly, he was leering at the drunk girls and didn't realize that he never charged me.) so for me to notice how drunk THEY were...well, it tells you a lot about How Drunk They Were.

So, in a move that is rather out of character for me, I ingratiated myself with the subjects of my study and we yakked for a time about this and that before I decided it was really time for me to go to bed. We all ended up leaving at the same time, and once we got on the elevator, they invited back to their room for an "after party".

I should have said no. I mean, CLEARLY. But I was drunk and amused, and I said to myself, "Self - this is a story you will be able to write about on your blog," and that clinched it. So there I was, sitting in a chair in some weird peoples' hotel room while they smoked pot and ate sandwiches and tried to force-feed me Babybel cheese, and as I was sobering up by this point I started to play MY favorite game when I meet strangers, which I like to call Make Shit Up. So I gave them a fake name and a fake background, and I told them I was 23, and that I was in a band, and as I was talking I started to think to myself that they actually really and truly were starting to freak me out, and I wished I had just gone up to bed, and I started worrying about how I could gracefully extricate myself. And then, when I was in the middle of a sentence, the dude decided it was time for everyone to go to bed, and literally pushed me out into the hall and closed the door in my face.

I didn't wait around to see if this was a joke, or if someone would open the door in a moment to apologize -- I turned and ran for the fucking elevator. I did not see them the next day, OR EVER AGAIN, and this was exactly as it should be.

The moral of the story, obvs, is DON'T TALK TO STRANGERS.

Hair Today, If You Don't Pull It All Out

I'M NOT DEAD!  I swear!  I know it's been a month or so since my last update, but it's just because I've been busy.  Busy NOT choking my producer to death, which believe you me has been a lot of work.  I don't want to go into details because it will kick-start a rage that will NEVER DIE, but suffice it to say that my homicidal impulses have been getting a workout like decathletes preparing for the Olympic games.

Other things I've been doing: removing the old, beat-up chair from my bedroom and replacing it with a cabinet; filling said cabinet with the pile of books, rapidly expanding like the blob, beside my bed; restocking said pile of books with rash and ill-conceived purchases from Amazon; eating Cadbury Creme Eggs; and going to bad movies.  I've been doing more than that, but I've been out drinking tonight and can't remember all that stuff.

Oh!  I also got a haircut.  There's a place in my neighborhood and I've never gone there - mostly because it has a person's name in the title without words like "super" or "fantastic" or "EZ", which translates loosely to "expensive" -- but I was kind of feeling like I wanted an expert at the helm for once.  Frankly, though, it seems like a waste of money as I wear my hair pretty short and it doesn't take much skill or critical thinking to execute that particular look.  And back when I decided that I wanted to do that "shaggy" look the kids were all going in for, I found out that when my hair gets longer?  It gets all wavy and curly and impossible to manage.  So I went to one of these pricey salons and asked the hairdresser (I feel so sophisticated!) to help me find a controllable look I could sport while continuing to let my hair grow out.  So she said she'd just cut the curl out of it, and fifty dollars later I walked out with a buzz cut.

Anyway, I avoided the expensive places after that, because what's the point, right?  Except that the last two times I went to the cheap places they cut that part above my right ear just a smidge too high, and I looked like Claus Von Stauffenberg's mentally handicapped cousin from Mayberry.  So I thought I'd give it a try one more time.  The woman who cut my hair was a close-talker, and an over-sharer to boot, and as she styled me she YANKED on my hair about A HUNDRED AND FIFTY TIMES.  I'm surprised I have any left.  More so because, in addition to the yanking, she CUT ALL MY HAIR OFF AGAIN.  They all say the same thing: "I LOVE your hair!  I wish MY hair was like yours!  I'm just going to cut the curl out of it."  And then later, "You like SHORT hair...right?"  I do like it, though.  I just with it hadn't cost FIFTY DOLLARS.

There I go with the rage again.  Anyway, you'll all love to know that Argyle totally told our loud-sex neighbor's roommate all about the loud sex, and apparently the roommate has been mortified on the loud-sexer's behalf about the loud sex.  Maybe you didn't love to know that.  But I've had wine.

Okay, I'm going to bed now.

No Place Like Homicidal

OMG.  Argyle is at a bar RIGHT NOW sitting next to FANCY CRANE, and I am out of town and cannot drive to the bar like a lunatic, get all up in her face, and GEEK the FUCK OUT.  I AM SO MAD.  I AM CRAZED.  Seriously. This is NOT FAIR.  The Universe is trying to hurt me, right?  WHAT IS THIS?  No, but I'm really like insane about this.  To be fair, Ulrich and I have been out wine-tasting all day, so my judgment is somewhat impaired, but I AM REALLY PISSED ABOUT THIS.  I will never speak to Argyle again!  HOW DARE SHE MEET FANCY WITHOUT ME!  THAT BITCH!

Okay.  It's okay.  I'm okay now.  I swear.  I'm...going to breathe.  And maybe have more wine.  AND SEETHE.  No, not that last part.  I'm going to practice my Zen breathing and I'm going to be okay.  It's all okay.

IT IS NOT OKAY.  I am losing my mind.  I'm going to cry for a minute, but then I'll be fine.  No!  I'm fine.  Don't worry about me.  *sob*

Actually, there are possibly worries needed for my future, because I may commit a murder and be incarcerated.  Not Argyle -- I talk a good game, but I could never kill her because there would be no one left who knows how to Swiffer without leaving clumps of residue all over the fucking apartment.  (Seriously, why can't I figure this out?  I'm a college graduate, people!)  No, I am going to assassinate A CERTAIN PERSON I WORK WITH*.  I don't want to go into the whole thing because it would just piss me off all over again, and I spent two hours explaining it all to Ulrich yesterday, but the man needs to just die.

Between the passive-aggressive denunciations of my efforts on the job, and the way he a) doesn't listen, b) doesn't communicate, and c) expects me to nevertheless divine exactly what he wants and do it the way he wants it while not listening to me or answering my questions and telling me 'do whatever, I don't care' before then publicly accusing me of screwing things up by not doing what he wanted WHICH HE NEVER TOLD ME OH MY G-D I'M LOSING MY MIND AND I CANNOT STOP SHOUTING WITH WORDS!  He seriously ruined my life like eight times on Friday, to the point where everyone sitting in my cubicle area offered to buy me drinks and/or help hide the body.

I am trying to be calm and sensible about this, believe it or not.  I am trying to remember to forget about work when I'm not at work, but for reals?  This man makes me glad that I may be testifying in court on Monday and unable to go to the office.  Let him figure out how to do shit without me for a day.

Except that he won't.  He'll just wait and give me a passive-aggressive lecture about how I've wasted time by being subpoenaed and now have to really buckle down to make up for it.  That fucker.

Okay.  I need to go and practice more Zen breathing.  Send help.

*I am changing certain indicators in order to preserve a little privacy.  Not that I think THIS PERSON will ever read this?  But loose lips sink ships.  The person sitting in front of me has been leaning over my wall all day long to talk very loudly about my homicidal impulses, and I don't need to add any fuel to the fire.

We Don't Want YOUR Fries With That, Bitch!

So today is my birthday.  No, no -- don't get up!  I appreciate it, but really the applause is unnecessary.  I am OLD today, though.  OLD.  Well, old-er.  Old enough that if I were a famous actor I would start getting parts like "Single Father" and shit.  Well, maybe not me.  I would get parts like "Single Mother's Gay Best Friend", and I'd just be the catty, dishy guy who works with her at her interior design firm, and I'd be featured in the expository scenes where she's gushing on and on about the guy she met through her friend, and he's soooo beautiful (and he'd be played by Ashton Kutcher or some other such predictably affable comedian), and then I'd have to sigh and say shit like, "Oh, Susan (Drew Barrymore NO DOUBT,) you are so lucky!" and I'd have to act like I hate her for being so lucky, but really I'm so happy because she's my bestest friend and I know how broken up she's been since her husband died in that freak accident two years before.  And then there'd be a series of miscommunications between her and Ashton and she'd think he was a deadbeat, or a gigolo, or a con man, or something like that, and I'd be featured in a series of split-screen phone conversations where I'm in a bubble bath or something equally fey until FINALLY all is settled in the end and the young lovers waltz off into the sunset and everyone wonders, "HEY?  WHAT ABOUT THE GAY BEST FRIEND?"

So last weekend, Ulrich and Argyle and I had a night on the town.  Old-school.  I mean, we got SHITFACED.  Like, we drank...and then we drank some more...and then we drank some more, and THEN we decided to go to the bar, where we drank and drank and drank, and some dude tried to pick up Argyle (but he wasn't good at it, so he and his wingmen picked up ALL of us to get to her), and then the three of us stumbled home drunkenly but happily.  This is where the DRAMA begins.

We wanted chili fries.  You cannot get chili fries at any of the fast food places in our neighborhood.  So we had to go to the grocery store and buy chili and cheese, and then walk down to McDonald's at 2:30am to get fries.  But the place is closed after, like, midnight, and we had to go through the drive-thru.  Except that we were on foot.  So picture me and Argyle standing between cars -- PATIENTLY -- waiting to get to the window.  (They wouldn't acknowledge us at the speaker, you see.)  We finally get up there and ask for two orders of fries, and the manager comes up and gets ALL IN OUR FACES and says, "We don't have time for this!"

I'm all, "Listen, I'm offering you money -- I just want two orders of fries."  And she repeats, "WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!"  For what?  Walking over to the heat lamp and picking up two things of French fries?  Because seriously, that doesn't take long.  So the three of us get into this EXTREME DEBATE at 2:30 in the morning about what exactly is going on here, until I snapped out, "I am offering you my money for your product, and you are refusing it!  You are saying you do not want my money!"  And she says (try to guess) "WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THIS!"  And Argyle barked out something pithy and we stomped off.

But we did not stomp with our tails between our legs.  Oh no!  We marched RIGHT BACK to the apartment, got in Argyle's car, DROVE BACK TO MCDONALD'S (at 3:00am), ordered our French fries, waited in the drive-thru line, got to the window, and then Argyle leaned over and shouted, "Oh!  I'm sorry -- we forgot!  YOU DON'T WANT OUR MONEY!" and then drove off at 1780mph, all the way over to the Carl's Jr. next door so we could wait in the drive-thru for another fifteen minutes to get our fries.  FOR WHICH WE GLADLY PAID.

We had briefly considered ordering two of every item on the menu at McDonald's before driving off, but it's not like they can't get your license plate number a million times while you're waiting.

Anyway, this is why we will NEVER EAT THERE AGAIN.  And you should not either.  Don't let anyone ever tell you not to do things just on principle, because it was the most awesome fun we have ever had.

Food For Thought

How is it that I haven't written anything for, like, three weeks and yet don't have anything to say?  I ALWAYS have something to say.  Even when I say nothing.  Problem is that laziness makes you rusty, and lately I'm like the fucking Tin Man.

I've been trying to up my reading habits.  Last year I read fifteen books, and while that's well above the nation's average of four per year (that's 4, as in 4 SHAME), I still feel like I need to pick up the pace.  I used to read fifteen books in the summer.  Granted they were all crap, but at least I was taking stuff in, you know?  Anyway, I like crap.  DON'T YOU JUDGE ME.  I have decided, in addition to reading more, to broaden my horizons as well.  This is why I've been reading more travelogues and culinary retrospectives!  Okay, so, not setting the intellectual world on fire, but at least it's not all dime novel shit!  Not all of it, anyway.

This one summer, when I was in summer school (I barely passed geometry that year, and my parents were so mad at me for not getting an A -- excuse me, "living up to my potential" -- that they forced me to retake it in summer school; it was hard for me to communicate to them that barely passing was actually where my potential hit the wall, and further that if one hour of geometry five days a week for the school year wasn't enough to help me maximize said potential then two hours a day six days a week during my vacation wasn't going to do it either) (I believe I finally got that message across by failing miserably) (point: mine), I was reading a different book every one to two days.  This was during class, of course, so I wasn't the teacher's pet I don't think, but he didn't look like he was good with pets anyway.

Right now I'm reading The United States of Arugula by David Kamp, and I really love it.  If you like food and culinary anthropology, it's really a great read.  For Christmas I got a copy of A Revolution In Eating, and I cannot wait to start it.  Unfortunately, it makes me want to throw a French dinner party.  Truly unfortunately, I am not equipped to throw a French dinner party.  I mean, I could certainly try my hand at the dishes themselves, and likely have the batterie de cuisine to put it together, but what we DON'T have is a table.  This is an issue for dinner parties.

Okay, I need to get the fuck out of the office.  I am tired and I am going to Arizona this weekend, which is going to be a long drive, and we are leaving tonight.  TONIGHT.  I still haven't packed.  It should be fun, though!  (The trip, not the packing.)

Everyone enjoy your three-day weekend, and I'll see you back here on Tuesday, whereupon I will ruminate on this new show called Make Me a Supermodel! 

Flying/High

I hate flying.  To begin with, I don't enjoy being 30,000 feet in the air -- call me crazy -- with nothing to break your fall but 90,000 pounds of fiberglass and aluminum, and maybe, like, a rosebush.  I also hate the fact that unless you are traveling WITH someone, you inevitably sit down next to somebody who wants to be friends.  I do not want to be friends.  I want to read my book and NOT DIE.  This does not seem to me to be an unreasonable request of the universe.

I should say that I had a wonderful Christmas vacation.  I went home, I saw my toddlin' nephew, I taught him how to say "octopus" (he said it like "OW-psss", and then I GAVE HIM ALL MY MONEY), and gave/received a lot of wonderful gifts.  I got to play with my dog and hang out with my friends, and my four-year-old niece invited me to her birthday party.  I told her that, as I live 2,500 miles away, I probably couldn't make it.  Her response?  "Ask your mom!"  I had no more money left, so I gave her my blood.

THEN.  I had to go home.  Ever since I enjoyed this little experience, I have been a...not so good passenger.  I tense up, I sweat, and every jitter of the plane causes me to start carving my last will and testament into the tray table in the hopes that it alone will survive our death drop into the rosebushes.  So I do what all God's children are supposed to do -- I get good and tipsy before climbing aboard, and try to let my buzz dispel the clamor of nerves.  We were maybe a half-hour into the five-hour flight (and I was maybe twenty pages from the end of my book) when the girl at the end of my row leaned over and asked in a drunken stage whisper what I was reading.  I explained, to the best of my abilities.

Drunk Girl: THAT SOUNDS GOOD!

Me: It is good, actually.

Drunk Girl:  I AM TOTALLY STEALING YOUR BOOK!  HA HA HA!  I NEED MORE WINE!  DO YOU LIVE ALONE?

Me:  No, I have a roommate.  A crowded house, actually.

Drunk Girl:  GIRL OR BOY?

Me:  A girl.  But our boyfriends come and go.

Drunk Girl: OHHHHH!  ARE YOU BISEXUAL?

Me:  Um...no.

Drunk Girl (disappointed):  OHHHHH.  SO YOU'RE STRAIGHT-UP GAY?  I'M BISEXUAL.  I LIKE BOTH!

Me:  That's...what that means, all right.

Drunk Girl:  YOU'RE ATTRACTIVE.

Me:  ...thank you.

So by this time, everyone on the plane knew that I was straight-up gay, and that my new best friend liked it both ways.  I was a trifle embarrassed, but tried to communicate that although I appreciated the company, it was reading time now.  She didn't get it.  She proceeded to inform me that she was flying out on an impulse to party with some guy she didn't know, whom she suspected would possibly be picking her up at the airport.  She used some...outmoded terms to describe him, which I will not reprint here because I find them to be impolite and inappropriate.  Just imagine her screaming "high yellow" or something similar, and you have the basic idea.

During the last forty-five minutes we bonded again when we encountered some minor turbulence in our descent that nearly sheared the wings off the plane, and I decided that if we were all going to die I wasn't going to meet my maker until I'd eaten every last piece of chocolate in my carry-on.  I shared, and this seemed to further cement our bond.  At the baggage claim, she was still with me, and still in...high spirits.

Drunk Girl:  I CAN'T BELIEVE THAT STEWARDESS CUT ME OFF!  I NEEDED WINE!  WOOOO!

Me:  When the hell are they going to send out our luggage?

Drunk Girl:  DOES THIS OUTFIT LOOK TOO WHOREY?

Me:  Nope, just whorey enough.

Drunk Girl:  HA HA!  LIKE YOU'D KNOW.  NO, YOU WOULD, BECAUSE YOU'RE HOT.  WOOOO!

Me:  ...where are my bags?

Drunk Girl:  WHY IS EVERYBODY STARING AT ME?  IS IT BECAUSE I'M DRUNK, OR IS IT BECAUSE I'M DRESSED LIKE A WHORE?

Me:  Can I pick more than one?

Drunk Girl:  I LIKE EATING PUSSY.  IT'S THE BEST!

Me:  ...

Drunk Girl:  YOU SHOULD TOTALLY TRY IT!

Me:  ...no thank you--

Drunk Girl:  OH, RIGHT.  NO, IT'S COOL!  YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE COCK YOU WANT!  I LIKE THAT, TOO!

Me:  Oh Jesus, please send my bag out right now.  I will donate to the church -- any church -- just please.  Please--

Drunk Girl:  I SURE HOPE MY RIDE SHOWS UP!

Me:  Yes, we all do.

Drunk Girl:  YEAH!  OTHERWISE I'M GONNA HAVE TO STAY WITH YOU!

Me:  Oh, look, it's my bag!  Bye!  Don't get killed!

And it actually WAS my bag?  But even if it wasn't, I was going to grab the next one that rolled by anyway, take it into the bathroom, change into someone else's clothes and make a mustache out of toilet paper, and then sneak back to the opposite side of the carousel to wait for MY shit to come through.

I am never taking the plane again.

CROSS YOUR LEGS

Jamie-Lynn Spears is pregnant.  Oh, yes she is.  This is not a drill, folks!  This is the real thing!  The SIXTEEN-YEAR-OLD sister of Britney motherfuckin' Spears is going to HAVE A BABY.  They are like The Beverly HIllbillies FOR REAL.

I Said, "I Want to CRUSH James Bond," Not, "I Have a CRUSH ON James Bond!"

I always knew I was GORGEOUS.

Pride of Dracula

I am going stir crazy.  My boss has asked all of us in my department to put in "an extra hour" every day for this next little while in order to meet a hastily organized deadline or two.  Seeing as I do NOT get up earlier than I absolutely have to, and seeing as I refuse to stay any later than I can possibly manage, this means I have been working through my lunches of late.  This means I have not gotten a BREAK at WORK all WEEK.  I am going crazy now.  All work and no play, and all that, right?  I have half a brownie sitting on my desk and it is STARING at me, because it wants to seduce me into eating it, but I am STRONG!

That's bullshit.  I'm totally eating that brownie right now.

I'm going on vacation next week, and that should be nice.  In the meantime, we're watching The Hills again, and although it's not quite as titillating as last year, it's still generating a lot of conversation.  See, we like to stop our shows every minute or so to expound on why Spencer is a scary douchebag, and how he looks like a serial killer in training.  This is not really a joke -- we are seriously afraid that when he gets a little older, he's going to start keeping women in a pit in his basement.

I just finished my brownie.  OMG, if and when I die?  Please promise me that you guys will see to it I am buried in a coffin made of brownies.  That was so awesome.

Oh, and that reminds me of a humiliating story that's as good as any to end this post: when I was in college, I took this sociology class.  My professor would routinely go on these colorful and bizarre rants about personal space issues, his cat, eating a gallon of ice cream in one sitting, and odd behavioral quirks.  One day he happened to bring up Bela Lugosi -- I don't know what y'all know of the original Dracula, but the man sort of...became obsessed with the role and lived it.  Not with the blood drinking, but he walked around in costume all the time and slept in his make-up in a coffin and shit; weird.

Anyway.  My professor asked if any of us were familiar with how he was buried, and of course I knew the answer, so I practically LUNGED out of my chair with my hand raised, and he called on me, and I blurted out in this really smug voice, "In a COFFIN."  And then I looked around all proudly as I sat back down, like, suck on THAT bit of trivia, bitches!  It wasn't until he supplied the additional (and salient!) factoid, "...in full Dracula costume," that I realized I'd sort of picked the wrong element of that funeral on which to focus.  Like, yes, dumb-ass, he was buried in a coffin; as it turns out, that's not so uncommon. 

I was thinking about how he SLEPT in a coffin, and how creepy it was, but I couldn't exactly explain that to the rest of the class, so everyone just sort of SMILED at me after that -- in that way that you do whenever you're about to use the Royal We with an adult. ("And how are we doing today?")  Not my finest moment.

And let that be a lesson.