why 12 year olds should NOT have cell phones

You got this SO wrong. The talent this season has been severely lackluster and my only glimmer of hope was a mere smattering of contestants. The two pictured above were among them. How Puka Shell David Archuletta 2.0 and Miss Pre-teen Donut Hole State Fair at the Radisson were spared is beyond me.

If Big Mike and Crystal don't make it to the top 4, I will set a recycling bin on fire.

6 degrees to your Happy Place

I remember it like it was yesterday

All the good parts anyway – hot summers with what seemed like a permanent smell of BBQ in the air. My swing-set in the backyard with the cheap, slippery plastic seats (which I would later fling off backwards into the wooden fence behind it while trying to show off with “no hands”). The neighborhood kids and I laying on Joni and Joe’s *hill trying to determine what animals or objects the clouds seemed to take form. Micro Machines on NES in Kelly’s basement. Playing oldies records on her record player. Endless hours of playing at Dumper’s Park, before the parkway was built and ruined its charm. How much charm can a park named Dumper’s have? Sleepovers with Sarah (two nights in a row were a bonus!) and being completely flabbergasted by the fact her parents let her draw (the batman symbol?) on the walls in her room. My dad’s ‘daisy dukes’. My mom’s half mullet. Omi’s (grandma’s) thick German accent echoing throughout her house, 2 doors down, while she was either a. calling me her little shit or b. Am Telefon mit ihrer Schwester im Deutschland (on the phone with her sister in Germany.) Sometimes we’d all congregate there, get the fried chicken, fries and cole slaw from Gold Rush (still the best fried chicken around if you ask me. Or Uncle Mike) and play Yahtzee while watching music videos on MTV. You hear that MTV? MUSIC VIDEOS. If we were lucky, Omi would pipe in with her rendition of the Beavis and Butthead laugh, or fall asleep while shaking the dice. Either or.

Our neighborhood in the 80s was all about block parties. One street was all single family homes and the next, closest to the park, was mostly duplexes. To this day my memory of that street just includes ‘the twins’. Two large women, with black hair, who lived upstairs in one of the duplexes and would enjoy the block parties from the comfort of their balcony. I remember thinking how odd it was that two grown women could look exactly the same. Like, the ‘twins syndrome’ only affected kids? Perhaps it was because we had 3 sets in our class at St. Paul’s. We’d watch the South Shore Water Frolic fireworks from our porches (or Walgreens parking lot) – and if we were feeling unruly, throw a softball onto the middle of KK, wait for a car tire to make contact with it and watch it ricochet off the curb. Hey we didn’t have xbox live or guitar hero in the 80s! We had to get creative. On days I stayed at Omi’s house I would sit in her big picture window and guess which color the next car that passed on KK was going to be. Looking back I’m sure she made this game up to get me away from watching my aunt and uncle’s **wedding video all day so she could watch Matlock or Perry Mason.

I could literally go on for hours, but in the interest of my poor reader(s), I won’t.

So, why the clusterf*ck of childhood memories?

Corey Haim died.

I know. I’m hearing a collective, “Seriously?!”

Though I don’t own ALL of his movies, or have even SEEN all of his movies - one holds a special place in my heart. The Lost Boys. This has long been a cozy favorite of mine. Cozy? Isn’t it about vampires? Yes, yes it is. But I will forever associate with my childhood in Bay View. Two of my friends on our block were named Kelly – so making it as simple as possible for our young minds, they were identified as Big Kelly and Little Kelly – which, in retrospect is sort of awful for young girls. However one was tall and one wasn’t so that was that. Big Kelly LOVED The Lost Boys and would force us to watch it whenever possible. Probably as punishment for turning on all the lights at 1am, waking her up and telling her it was morning so she should get dressed. And she did. Ooooh brutal. While I don’t have many memories of Big Kelly – The Lost Boys is still a very current connection to what I view as the best era of my life thus far.

So, RIP Corey – I hope wherever you are, you finally find the peace and happiness your little movie from 1987 brings me.




*this hill I speak of was essentially a clump of grass at a 40 degree angle off the side of their house in an alley. Ahhh, city life.

**Apparently, I was completely obsessed with the wedding video of my aunt and uncle, which I was the miniature bride in. And I liked to watch it multiple times a day while naming the entire wedding party as they walked down the aisle. I was 3.

It's ste-FAH-ni

This post requires the photo you're about to see, and not much else. And if you've seen Baby Mama, it's that much more hilarious.



Thank you, Dave & Buster's.

G of I G

Before I forget...

My New Year's Resolution this year was to begin a campaign to get Ellen Degeneres to follow me on Twitter by way of a series of intriguing images. However, in keeping with my tradition of quitting something after achieving no results in a near immediate timeframe, it lasted 3 weeks. Damn you generation of instant gratification!

Call of Duty: Grammar style

PSA:

Here's a little treat I happened upon while on my journey to wash my extra special coffee cup.


I feel as if it is my duty to bring ridiculous mistakes such as these to light. Everyone over the age of 12 should know the difference between loose and lose, your you're, their they're and there.

Something is backwards if you can spell 'efficient' but not 'lose'. Having said that, maybe they did in fact use the spell check function as it would not detect 'loose'. Regardless, Curtis, you should still know the difference.

Now, obviously I'm not perfect and from time to time make these mistakes myself - the difference is proof reading and using the spell checker. Especially if you're going to put it in 36pt font.

Betcha can't guess who took it upon themselves to correct it.

BJ!

No, piglets. Not that.

I'm referring to Baby Jessica. The year was 1987 - a small baby, by the name of Jessica, fell into a well. She was stuck.



Stuck real good. Stuck for what I'm sure felt like years to her. Maybe decades. Well, I've totally Baby Jessica'd this blog.

No one wants me to go all John Madden on this piece and give a stroked out play by play of the entire last year, so I'm going to list words and short sentence fragments to hopefully fill in the HUGE wormhole in this blog.

Here goes...well nothing...

don't remember
don't remember
Las Vegas
Move to duplex with Kelly
don't remember
Birthday camping
Volleyball
16 weeks unemployed
Copious pitchers of beer
don't remember (betcha didn't see that one coming after 'copious pitchers of beer')
JOB! JOB! JOB!
GERMANY! GERMANY! GERMANY!
My love, my life, my boo boo

The indisputable highlight of 2009 was going to Germany and meeting my Godson Max, landing a pretty great full-time job comes in second.

I am a marketing specialist designing marketing materials for mutual fund clients of Quasar Distributors (a subsidiary of US Bancorp). The end.

I'm running out of steam.

Now that we're up to speed. I'm moving. AGAIN. Imagine that! Yes in true "this is your life" fashion, I'm watching everyone take two steps forward while I take two steps back (thank you Ms. Abdul) and moving in with my brother. To the apartments I lived in when I was 21. I like reverse. Especially in a car with a manual transmission. It makes that cool toy car noise...

BUT, it's all for the sake of my savings account, pad that effer like a cozy room in the looney bin. I'm ready to take the stairs two at a time and get me some ass...ets. Hopefully in about a yearsish time I can start hunting for a house. I'm going to set a goal for a down payment - and update the blog with percentage progress.

I've become much more conservative with my spending and now that I've released this electrifying news to the interwebs, I'm going to look like a major asshole if I don't come through.

Maybe I should blog about exercise...on second thought...

...what was I talking about?

These days are spent incredulously staring at the television while visions of pregnant teens, their immensely rude and ignorant counterparts, "situations", and orange poser Italian dwarves flash before my ever-aging eyes.

And on that note - it's past my bedtime. I guess the plus side of not posting in 5 quarters...I mean 15 months (I work too much?) is that all...3 of you...get this Year in Pictures review.



















(the last just represents the 'don't remember' portions of the recap)

This was an awful reintroduction.

And you'll never get those 3 minutes back. For that I am truly sorry.

the hills are alive...

With the sounds of all kinds of shit. I sincerely apologize for practically being on a milk carton for about the last 5 months. There's really no specific reason or excuse for it other than I just never felt like it. I'm an adult, that's reason enough - I don't have to answer to anyone - YOU'RE NOT MY REAL DAD!

I don't even know where to begin....to start boring you to tears. I have to say the last 5 months or so have been pretty good to me with only a few hiccups, which have since been resolved - well...all except one. That being the job situation - yes ladies and germs I'm still flopping like a fish out of water who's gills have then dried up. To top it all off no one's found me lying motionless on the carpet to rescue me and put me where I belong. My creativity's all dried up and I'm suffocating in a world I was not made to live in.

With all that being said, things actually be on the upswing as there may be a chance I'm scraped off the carpet next Wednesday. Keep all of your extremities crossed. Please and thank you.

The end of July and August brought me nothing that I should write home about - although it could just be the glorious 4 weeks in September/October spent with 2 of my favorite people in the world that fogs up those end-of-summer memories. My cousin Nina and her husband Achim arrived on September 15th and stayed with me until October 10th. While the massive chunk of time off put a huge mack-truck-sized dent in my bank account, it was definitely well worth it. We visited my almost permanently intoxicated, shotgun wielding family in da U.P eh for my cousin Erin's wedding. Nina was thrilled to experience an 'American' wedding and I was thrilled there was something other than Miller Lite on tap for the reception.

We flew to New York at the very beginning of October and quickly realized I was far more excited than they. We covered a lot in 3 days and by the end I had felt like I walked to the ends of the earth. Our hotel was marvelous and in the center of everything which allowed us to experience a lot with little effort. I finally got to see a bit of the 'Today' show - as corny as it sounds it was a little surreal seeing Al Roker and Matt Lauer within feet of myself. Then as luck would have it I caught a glimpse of LL Cool J reading 'Corduroy' to some unruly children. We took a bus tour with various odd tour guides and learned where Mariah Carey and Leonardo DiCaprio live, where Paul Simon and Joan Baez first got their start, that people like to stick their heads up the bull's ass on Wall street and finally that you shouldn't be surprised when an older, military-esque black man in fact speaks German. Though had you been there you would have known it seemed EVERYONE in NYC speaks German. I had to frequently look up at the Empire State Building to make sure I was in fact in NYC and not looking at the tv tower in Alexanderplatz, Berlin. We used the tour bus as our personal taxi and visited the sobering ground zero site (which looks a lot different than 2 years ago), walked the south street seaport to get a better view of the Brooklyn Bridge and took a jaunt on the Staten Island Ferry to get a good look at ol' Lady Liberty. We held on for dear life atop the very chilly and very windy Empire State Building at night where I took at least 100 pictures. We dined at Justin Timberlake's restaurant where I inhaled the most glorious mac 'n cheese with bacon. But the one thing at the top of my list was to visit The Dakota, the apartment building where John Lennon's life was taken by a coward, and Strawberry Fields. It was a little bizarre, standing in the place he last stood.



















I had been there before - but I can't begin to express to you how much I love New York City. While I'm not sure I could live there without feeling like I was living in some sort of modern day, whirlwind fairytale - I am absolutely sure I'd like to be in the city at least another 93485673498576 times before I kick the bucket. Maybe it's because I always feel like I'm apart of something when I'm there, even as I'm walking briskly down 5th Ave, alone in a sea of strangers. It's invigorating and I always feel a sense of sorrow when I have to leave.

I was once again filled with a sense of sadness, that's sometimes overwhelming, when my family had to leave. No matter how elated I am at the first sight of them, there's always this tiny speck of pessimism in knowing that it will be short-lived. It's a difficult thing, having people that close to you live so far away. But I suppose I should think of the glass half-full (of some sort of dark german lager) - I have something wonderful to look forward to for the next year when I hop aboard a plane once again - and get to meet my new little cousin. I wonder if deutsch baby googoos and gagas are different?

I'm not going to indulge in a certain other aspect of my life as it seems whenever I do, it's the kiss of death. I'll just say the universe opened up and dropped in my lap something pretty promising.

I'm going to TRY and keep this thing updated more frequently than once every score - but no promises, because as Dru Hill says "I never make a promise, I can't keep."

Til next time friends - I'm off to brave weather the eskimos, or Sarah Palin, should be jealous of.