The Year In Review

January: If you buy an ergonomic shovel, you will effectively end substantial snowfall in New England for the year.

February: Sole dominion over the remote control is not overrated.

March: "Not everyone likes your dog (or whatever else) as much as you do."

April: There's no part of a lamb that isn't delicious if it has been roasted on a spit in your friends' front yard.

May: Trust your instincts. They're smarter than you.

June: It's criminal that the only way I can access a Wawa is to also brave the Jersey Turnpike. Still, this may be a fair trade.

July: Never pay more for a wine tasting than you would pay for a bottle you know to be good already.

August: Some loves really are eternal.

September: Big Pharma makes great pills to treat Crazy. They have yet to find an effective treatment for Asshole.

October: Orange and black is the new red.

November: Sometimes it makes more sense to choose whiskey... and Lady Gaga.

December: Cynicism is easy. Optimism is tough-- and sometimes a pain in the ass. But don't stop believing. Really. Don't.

The Manda Swears She is NOT Making This Up

My dad used to listen to NASCAR on the radio.

Yeah. That's right. NASCAR. On the radio.

For a long time, I couldn't think of anything more useless than broadcasting an auto race on the radio.

Then, Weekend Edition on NPR brought an even more useless broadcast on Saturday morning: wine tasting on the radio.

Yeah. That's right. NPR. Not The Onion. Not Saturday Night Live.

The broadcast, which featured four varieties of Port included the following "joke":

SIMON: And why don't we start there with the Australian port. This is Whiskey(ph) Blake Classic Tawny.

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: Yes. And this comes from...

SIMON: By the way, that happens to be the name of the young woman I took to the junior prom.

Oh, Mr. Simon, you're so very droll!

And then there was this golden word choice:

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: So let's give it a sniffy sniff.

That really just happened. Someone said "sniffy sniff" on live radio. These are our tax dollars at work, people.

But that's not the funny part. The funny part happened when these guys started talking about football:

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: By the way, very common. And more importantly, I mean this is really, you know, because it does have a little bit of the higher alcohol content, this is really - for example, are you a Bears fan?

SIMON: Am I Bears fan? You know that. Of course.

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: So you don't mind...

SIMON: If you open my veins, it'll be blue and orange.

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: I know. I know.

SIMON: Yeah. Yeah.

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: So as you know, my Jets are playing your Bears the day after Christmas this year.

SIMON: Yes, I know.

Mr. VAYNERCHUK: And it's a big game for both of us. And it's going to be cold. And it'll probably be snowy. And for everybody that's going to Soldier Field, you know, this is the kind of wine you want to have at your tailgate, because it will warm you up. So this is really very time sensitive.

I think way too many people - port's a little bit out of fashion, Scott. You know, port was very, very big 30, 40 years ago. It's calmed down quite a bit. And I think there needs to be a resurgence, because there's a lot of stuff - we have a 10-year-old pawny(ph) port here. We have a late bottled vintage port here. And then we have the classic thing that most people think of port where you buy a 50, you know, something that's 50 to 150 bucks a bottle, which is a vintage port.

Why don't we try the Quinta Do Noval, because I know we don't have unlimited time. And I want you to try this. It's very special.

Yes. That's right. They're suggesting Port. For tailgating. You should try this. It will match your sweatshirt which reads "Pretentious Douchebag." And Port is reasonably strong, so maybe you won't feel it so much when some burly guys kick your ass... for drinking PORT AT A TAILGATE.

I wonder what kind of Port goes with stadium cheese and hot dogs....

The quotes above don't really do this justice. In case you missed the link above, to listen to the broadcast, click here.

"You'll Shoot Your Eye Out, Kid"



In America, we have holidays that are distinctive to our cultural preferences. July 4th is the holiday we celebrate with booze and explosives. Thanksgiving is the holiday we celebrate by eating until we can't see our own faces.

We've also taken other holidays and made them distinctively American-- bringing the best of out other holidays into the mix as well. The Christmas season features the booze, the overeating, but mainly it's a celebration of capitalism. Add New Year's Eve and you've also got more booze and explosives. It's the most wonderful time of the year.

To ramp up the capitalism angle you've got your Black Friday, your Cyber Monday, your Doorbuster Saturdays and your Chartreuse Wednesday. If going out and fighting your way through the unwashed masses isn't for you, then you've got the Interwebs... and catalogs.

Someone keeps leaving catalogs in the break room at work. Just near the coffee pots. I assume this is some kind of effort at being green-- which Kermit tells us isn't easy.

Last week an American Girl doll catalog appeared on the break room table. The eight-year-old girl who still lives in the nougaty center of my soul took a look and recognized that if she were able to get out and play, she would have spent the last three months following her mother around with a dog-eared copy of this catalog talking non-stop about the pretty pretty dresses and the cute furniture and oh look! This one comes with a dog AND a pony.

36-year-old Manda looked at this book and got all judgy wondering who would pay $95 or more for a plastic doll. 8-year-old Manda tapped Middle-Aged-Bitter Manda on the shoulder to remind her that in 1982 the one thing she asked for for Christmas was a Little People Doll. Those were handmade, soft sculpture dolls that went for between $125 and $150 in the lean years of the Reagan Era. But they came with their own adoption papers and a signature on the backside to prove authenticity. Every time we went to the mall, I would linger in front of the glass case in Belk's, looking at the rows of friendly looking, cuddly dolls.

And even 36-year-old Bitter Manda can appreciate the cost and time that goes into making a doll totally by hand. Bitter Manda is pretty sure American Girl dolls are manufactured in China.

It was a pipe dream. There was no way my mom was going to drop that kind of cash on a doll, even if she could have afforded to.

That was my Red Ryder Carbine Action Range Model Air Rifle.

When 8-year-old Manda told her second grade class she wanted an "adoption doll" for Christmas-- during some kind of bent sharing time-- the other kids laughed their asses off. And 8-year-old Manda did what she always did in second grade when the kids were laughing at her: she turned her desk over while still sitting in it.

The following Christmas, everybody had heard of "adoption dolls," and every one of those kids from second grade were sending their parents over hell and half of Georgia (literally) to find one. The Little People got renamed Cabbage Patch Kids; they were mass produced, and the shortage made $150 for the original version seem cheaper than cheap.

And to boot, it seemed like everybody's grandmother was trying to figure out how to make one in "soft sculpture" to try to appease the kids whose parents weren't going to be able to deliver the real goods. Those were dark days. Those were pre- eBay days.

It was also maybe the first documented time I was ahead of the curve.

Because when everyone was going crazy in 1983, I already had mine. Got her in 1982, and to this day I don't know how my mom managed to pull that one off. She had blonde pigtails, and a pink dress with butterflies appliqued on it. Her name was Dorothy. She went with me pretty much everywhere for the next few years-- until it became creepy to carry a doll around in public, then she became a throw pillow on my bed. And she still lives in the closet at my mom's house, waiting to be passed along to those hypothetical offspring.

So, in December, I celebrate capitalism the same way I have since I was in college. I go to my local big box store and unleash 8-year-old Manda in the toy department. I fill up a cart, then I take those bags to the local Toys for Tots drop off. They're not my offspring, but they're also not hypothetical.

Putting the Bizarre back in the Bazaar

Maybe I should be happy that the holiday season makes people more friendly and polite to strangers. Living in New England, of course, I'm grading friendliness on a sliding scale-- around here the holidays mean that maybe other drivers will just give you the finger and not try to run you off the road, that people in public will might shove you out of the way a little more gently, that retail workers might scowl a little less deeply.

But, People of Boston-- specifically the woman in front of K-Rock and me at the Bazaar Bizarre on Sunday-- the holiday season does not mean you get to insert yourself into the conversations other people are having near you.

You don't get to giggle when the two women in line behind you are talking about people you don't know.

You don't get to advise us on where to have lunch because you overheard us talking about eating soon.

You don't get to tell us about some TV show that wasn't as good in the second season because we were talking about how the new season of Burn Notice isn't doing it for us.

When one of us observes the cute little French bulldogs walking down the other side of the street, you don't get to use that observation to try to insert yourself into the conversation of the people in front of you.

You don't get to interrupt our conversation to comment, loudly and apropos of nothing, that you like my tote bag.

You don't get to stare at us more aggressively than the last guy who tried to pick me up in a bar.

It's taken me decades to develop the skills necessary to initiate conversations with strangers. Sometimes it works out well. Sometimes not so much. But the appropriate way to engage someone else in conversation is to open with, "Excuse me, I couldn't help but overhear..." This way it's not quite so creepily obvious that you are listening to our every word-- or at least it indicates a level of contrition about it.

If they're interested in including you in the conversation, they will likely respond with a question or some other remark to engage you. If they say something like, "yeah," and then turn back to one another, then the game is over. You then turn around and try to at least seem like you're not listening in. You do not continue to stare at them. This makes you seem like a stalker.

Then you engage in whatever those people are talking about. You don't try to turn the subject around. You listen politely and comment when appropriate. If the conversation fizzles, then see above-- turn around and go back to your own business.

I know it's the holidays. I know crafty-type people tend to be more open to conversation than a lot of other subsets of the population. We like to talk about making stuff and the stuff other people have made. But it's a craft fair. It's not Woodstock. Don't make the people behind you in line resort to sending mean texts about you, literally behind your back.

The Manda Finds Reasons to Give Thanks This Holiday Season

Lots of reasons to be thankful this week. Thursday's dinner featured deep fried turkey courtesy of Uncle Jimmy, who took a break from riding around to marinate the bird in beer before immersing it in boiling oil out in the backyard.

And this is the song that's been stuck in my head for a week:


One other thing to make me thankful. Four days. Two airports. Didn't even come close to getting felt up, but they did make me take off my cardigan. I thought this part was weird, because they wouldn't have made me take off a pullover, and pullovers tend to be bulky and easier to hide stuff in than a cardigan.

I digress.

So it seems that the brouhaha over airport security is just another instance of the media spinning out of control and creating a problem that probably doesn't really exist in a meaningful way. No, I'm not crazy about naked x-rays of myself being out there someplace, and I think they're silly and pointless.

More importantly, though, there's some poor schmuck in a room somewhere who has to look at the naked x-rays of all these travelers. I've seen the people who are flying. The average American doesn't look like Halle Berry. The average American doesn't even look like Chuck Berry. It's bad enough to see most people with their clothes on-- and I include myself in this assessment. This can't be a fun job.

And this poor schmuck presumably has a social life. What does he tell his friends about his job? What happens when he goes on a date and gets asked what he does for a living?

More than the ickiness and social embarrassment, the boredom must be soul-crushing. Like even more boring than teaching high school.

So, let us all be thankful that we are not that poor schmuck.

And Suddenly, Travel is Fun Again

Flying home for Thanksgiving on Wednesday, along with the rest of the U.S. population. I'm reading a lot of reports in the news about new TSA regulations, full body scans, people getting groped.

So at least there's the possibility of some action this week. There's the silver lining.

The Suz is challenging pretty much everyone she knows to moan and scream while they're getting frisked. Then thank and tip the friskers.

The Kiwi suggests I wear a red thong and the panda hat. Obviously this would be an error. It should be an orange thong, clearly, because that's the color of Giants Nation.

A dude from high school is thinking of marketing underwear equipped with mousetraps to deter more aggressive searching.

I might not mind if it made me feel any safer, but it doesn't. I still remember the time I made it to Raleigh-Durham with a can of mace in my handbag. I didn't do it on purpose; I just forgot it was there.

And I'm pretty sure I could hurt someone with a knitting needle if I needed to do so. And I remember that scene from "Grosse Point Blank" where John Cusack killed a dude with a ballpoint pen. Seems like just about anything could become a weapon with a little ingenuity.

Not that I'm encouraging that. It just seems like everything about national security is completely reactive. A dude puts explosives in his underpants, so now we all have to be subjected to public fondling. Seems to me the only thing that comes of that is that the dudes with explosives will figure out another place to put them.

But the more important question is this: if TSA doesn't grope me on Wednesday, should I be personally offended?

Duckie Dale, I Feel Your Pain



Style channel is showing Pretty in Pink. I can remember a time when I loved this movie, and now I want to punch everyone in this film who isn't Duckie Dale. And Annie Potts' character-- she's okay, because she has a cool wardrobe.

But, seriously, who gets all in a twist over a guy named Blaine? It's not like he has other redeeming qualities.

And Jon Cryer aged way better than Andrew McCarthy did.

I guess it's appropriate that the Style channel is showing this movie, because this is the movie about the triumph of style over substance. The girl ends up with the cute, vapid, cowardly boy who treats her like crap instead of the funny, quirky guy who adores her.

So for a movie that seems so unrealistic in so many ways-- the weird class conflict never rang true for me, and I'm pretty sure I work in that high school-- I guess the ending is pretty much true to life.

More disturbing than this, this showing is sponsored by Subaru, who somehow got their hands on the rights to "If I Should Fall From Grace With God," which is one of the better songs ever recorded.

So The Pogues sold out.

I'm disappointed by the "happy" ending.

I hate these reminders that my childhood is officially over. I think I'm going to go buy a box of Froot Loops and try to forget this whole incident.

The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Manda



For most of my life, I've had a plan of some kind. Most of the time those plans have been fairly normal-- e.g. I made it through college, got a good job, bought a house-- but have become ultimately dissatisfying. Sometimes those plans seemed insane on the face of it-- e.g. my first trip out of the U.S. had me landing in London with $300, a work permit and a dream-- but worked out well.

For the last few months I've been operating with no plan at all, and this scares me. Even a completely crazy plan (on the face of it) is better than feeling aimless.

And then, three days ago on craigslist, a plan began to take shape. I found a houseboat for sale near San Francisco for $3200. I thought to myself, "Manda, you HAVE $3200 saved. You were just going to waste it anyway. Why not waste it on something that only might be a disaster instead of something that certainly would have been?"

I sent the sellers an email after doing the math on what it would cost to keep the thing moored until I can get there. It was possible. It could be done! And it would give me a Plan.

The ad was a little sparse on details regarding plumbing for this rig. Or a refrigerator. Or the electrical supply. And I know next to nothing about boats.

So it's probably for the best that the sellers didn't write me back.

Still, I was disappointed. More like crushed, actually.

So now this is all I can think about. I looked at an ad for a lovely sailboat today. I know even less about sailboats than I do about houseboats.

So today, I think I want to spend next year living on a boat in California. Is that so wrong? Surely I can learn what I need to know. I'm smarter than the average bear.

So, yes, this idea is insane, but sometimes that's the best kind. It's almost sure to be a disaster, but not as potentially disastrous as some of the other ideas I've kicked around here. It would be unassailably cool. And the disaster is always so much more interesting than when things go according to plan.

Notes from The Fun Car*
Today's post contains adult language. Sorry, Mom.

The best part of a road trip with friends is the dialogue that emerges on the road. 18-21 hours together in a car can make anyone punchy. Here are some highlights. We wrote them down.

*The other thing about a road trip this long is that there is no fun car. After about 45 minutes you just want to be there already. I've omitted the slap fighting and threats to turn this car around, little missy.

Running into traffic at the Delaware Tolls:
The Manda: *sounds from Primal Scream Therapy*
Special K: We used to be the fun car. Now we're the angry car, fueled by resentment and broken dreams.
The Manda: Balls!
The Suz: I guarantee this is all caused by one asshole who had to cut over to pay cash.
The Manda: Dear Delaware: Suck it! Love, Manda.


Crossing the Delaware Bridge and seeing the phone number for the "Crisis Hotline:"
The Manda: I want to call that number. I'm having a crisis. (Holds hand to ear, phone-style) 'Hello? No, I'm not going to jump. I just don't know what I want to do with my life. And I've been in the car since Thursday! Homeless? No, I have a home. That's part of the problem...'

On the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway:
Special K: Welcome to New Jersey?
Manda: It seems right to listen to hair metal in New Jersey.... Oooh. Write that down!
Special K: We need more cowbell.
Manda: We need more Van Halen.
Special K: David Lee Roth is our co-pilot.
(Hitting traffic on the Parkway, after switching to another playlist)
Special K: WTF? The Van Halen was protecting us.
Manda: I got Def Leppard's greatest hits somewhere in the CD box.
(At the next tollbooth)
Manda: I'm paying the state of New Jersey to take away the sanity I just rallied for.
(Rolling out of the tollbooth and resuming normal speed)
Special K: There is traffic magic in the hair band. (To stereo) OK, I will pour some sugar on you if you would just get the traffic moving.
(Power ballad comes on. Manda hits Forward)
The Manda: The first rule of traffic is no power ballads.
Special K: The second rule of traffic is never talk about the first rule.

Entering Connecticut
Special K: Welcome to Connecticut. Michael Hutchence is now our co-pilot.
The Manda: Welcome to New England. Take your mini van and get the fuck out of our way.

Passing a power line with the big multicolored balls on it
The Suz: I've always wondered what those big balls on power lines were for.
Special K: Maybe they're to keep birds off. Maybe they're electric balls.
The Manda: Ooh! Electric Balls. That's a great name for a funk band. 'Ladies and gentlemen, put your hands together for Electric Balls!'....Write that down.

A Billboard near New Haven:
Special K: Exxxotic Haloween Costumes. See how they spelled exxxotic with three x's. Sexy.
The Manda: And classy.

Entering Rhode Island:
Special K: Rhode Island is neither a rhode nor an island. Discuss.

The Suz lending her usual critical analysis of pop music.

The Suz on Journey's "Separate Ways": So this is about some guy who had a one night stand with a woman and now he's sitting around in some sad little room in case she leaves the other guy she's with? This song is kind of pathetic.
Manda and Special K: Yeah, but it rocks!

The Suz on The Who's classic "Behind Blue Eyes": This is not a happy song.
The Manda: Ooh! Ooh! Right. I know this one. 'Oh, I'm so fucked up. Nobody understands how fucked up I am.' I used to know that guy! But he had green eyes...
Special K: Yeah, but it rocks!
The Manda: It does, indeed, rock.

 The Manda Relives a Moment From Her Youth



The last time I remember going to theWaffle House was a stop with The Heathen my last semester of college. We were on the way back to campus after driving many hours to and from my grandmother's funeral.


The Waffle House* was always the go-to location for eating after a night out at the fraternities or, when we were feeling especially fancy, a bar or club. We had a local diner as well, Dottie's, which I hope is still there, but Dottie's was all the way on the other side of town, and sometimes we just couldn't make it that far.

And sometimes you want to order something "scattered, covered, smothered, and diced." Those would be the hashbrowns, and they fry those bad boys up in a ring filled with grease before the scattering, smothering, covering and dicing commences.

At 2:00 in the morning the Waffle House clientele is a little, well, different. I had a friend in college who used to call it "the who's who of mental illness." Not sure that applies, but it's a reasonably cheerful mix of sauced college kids, truck drivers, second shifters, and maybe a few oddities thrown in for flavor. It's great people watching.

Down South, there's a Waffle House on just about every interstate exit, and this feature is the primary redeeming quality of I-95 in northern Maryland. On our harebrained adventure to our nation's capital, I was promised a waffle, and I got a waffle.

The clientele on a Sunday morning includes people coming out of church, people going to church, weirdos who have just attended a rally to restore comedy, and lightly sauced college kids.

They don't have the Waffle House up North. The Suz and I have thought about selling all our stuff and getting the first franchise in Massachusetts. We figure we'd make a killing or end up killing each other.

I mention this because K-Rock and Special K were Waffle House Virgins. NayNay knew about it as a result of a long-distance relationship that ended years ago but carried on far too long. And The Suz and me, it goes without saying, are old hands at the Waffle House, even though neither of us had been to one in at least a decade.

It's like riding a bicycle. You never forget how to order. There were hashbrowns. There was bacon. There were eggs. Don't judge me, but I passed on the grits-- turns out you can get them in New England if you know where to look, but you can't get anything scattered, smothered, covered and diced without facing felony charges.

And the waffle, all crispy around the edges, butter melting into the little squares. Who cares if the maple syrup is real?

It was glorious. Even more glorious than the signage at the rally. It was absolutely worth driving 8 hours each way.

We left the Waffle House the only way anyone can ever leave the Waffle House: stuffed. Special K remarked as we got into the car, "At least our farts will smell like maple syrup." I couldn't possibly take credit for a line like that, and I don't have much to follow it either.

*Style guides take note: Despite its official name Waffle House, the Waffle House is one of those rarefied institutions that should always include a definite article when referenced in conversation or writing. See also, the Wal-Mart, and the K&W.

Dear Giants--

Thank you.

Just so you know, though, you're stuck with me now.

Love,
Manda

Glorious Glorious Signage- Round One

People who know me, know that I love to take photos of signs. I have a collection of photos from the American West that all read "Nugget" in some form or another. Weird. Arsty. Touristy. Whatever. I dig signs.

So an event like the Rally to Restore Sanity held a plethora of appeal for me. Hell, I couldn't get anywhere near the stage, and if I wanted to watch the Jumbotron, I could have had the same effect by staying at home and watching the event in my jammies.

The Suz and I went out on the move, getting the best-- well, maybe not the best, but certainly the most visible-- of the signage the event had to offer.

Below is a sampling-- some with captions. Someday, when I have more patience with facebook's uploader, I'll add these to my feed over there.

The most meaningful message of the day...

We like the way this one thinks.

Mutual photo op... Giants fan....

I prefer MLA or Chicago Style, but AP works too....

And just in time....

This guy's hat allows him to taste color.

According to our cab driver, this is actually true...

Ms. Smith (and K-Rock, Special K, NayNay and the Suz) Return from Washington

There's a moment, in any city, just as the sun is peeking over the horizon, when most of the city is still asleep save for a few garbage and delivery trucks-- maybe the odd taxi-- when everything is quiet, and if you're lucky enough to be out on the sidewalk, it feels like the whole place is yours alone. This is the most beautiful moment in the urban day, and at a moment like that even Washington D.C. looks pretty damn good.

NayNay and I got to be part of that magical morning time today as we made our way from our dodgy hotel to the parking garage. It felt like the right way to end a weekend that turned out to be unexpectedly wonderful. But the weekend was mostly about politics and baseball for me, so, really how could it get much better than that?

I said I was too apathetic to make a sign, and I was. Luckily, other people were more industrious than I. So I went with the panda hat, one more time. As a result, I am happy to announce the discovery of Giants Nation. Mine was one of three panda hats I spotted on the Mall yesterday, and people kept coming up to me for fist bumps and stopping on the street to cheer at me. Nobody thought I was celebrating the National Zoo, which was a concern for me going in. I'm not going to lie.

That's the Money Shot-- which is why I look so serious. When I accomplish my plans to take over the U.S. Government, I'll have that photo put on all the currency. Yeah, I know: "Manda, why don't you just make it easy on yourself and take over some marginally stable Third World country?"

And I say to you: "Where's the fun in that? If it was easy, everyone would do it."

Or I could say that the U.S. is pretty close to being a marginally stable Third World country already, as evidenced by the angry morass of humanity milling about out there.

I'll break down more highlights (the Garden State Parkway, Waffle House, Mulletwatch 2010, the glorious glorious signage, my regrets at not bumping up against Eddie Izzard) as the week continues, provided something more interesting doesn't happen. Right now, I have more than 250 photos to edit, the Game is on, and I just spent 18-21 of the last 48 hours driving a car up and down the Northeast Corridor.

Ms. Smith (and K-Rock, Special K, NayNay and The Suz) Go to Washington (Part Troix)


If Jon Stewart can't restore my sanity, I don't know who's up for the job. I know he's the only man on the planet who can lure me off the interstate into the festering heap of sleaze and competition that serves as the nerve center of the free world.

Yeah, don't much care for D.C. This is problematic for my journalistic aspirations, but I'd rather labor here in obscurity and keep my sense of humor.

I was down there for a few days over the summer, and I could not discern a sense of humor of any kind that I'm aware of. I could discern soul-crushing heat and humidity, though. If those people in charge are going to hell, they should feel right at home. Got to see live Giant Pandas in captivity, though, so that made the experience worthwhile.

Turns out I'm too apathetic to make a sign. I'm too apathetic to even get the materials to make a sign and then neglect them in my kitchen for six months.

And clearly I'm bitter.

There's been a lot of press about this rally talking about how it's a genuine political event. Maybe it's not just the capital of our fair nation that's lacking a sense of humor.

For a culture that seems to prize humor so highly, we don't have much understanding of the purpose it serves. It's a genuine political event insomuch as it's satirical, but most people understand that word about as well as they understand irony-- probably because they learned about irony in the lyrics of a dumbass song.

The whole point of most humor, and especially satire, is to point at what's ridiculous in the world and say, "Look how ridiculous that is/you are... Now, go FIX IT!"

And the FIXING IT is the genuine political event-- or it would be, anyway, if anyone ever got serious about fixing anything. And there's the punchline.

Things You Can't Say In Front of People

Today's post contains some mildly adult themes and content. It also contains the funniest/ weirdest story I've heard in months. Proceed with caution.

So here's a workplace scenario. I'd like to emphasize that this did not happen in my workplace, so this may lend us all a clue about how urban myths get started.

Employee A and Employee B, both female, don't know each other very well at all, except maybe in passing. At some point during the workday-- water cooler, copier, something like that-- Employee B walks up to Employee A and quietly says the following: "I can see your nipples."

Employee B then walks away from Employee A, leaving Employee A to think to herself, "The fuck?" and run to the ladies' room to inspect the quality and structural integrity of her brassiere.

Now, if I'm Employee A, my next stop is Human Resources to file a complaint against Employee B. But that's just me, and, as I said, I wasn't there, and I'm not going to sell out the people who were there or their workplace.

But as I also said, this is the weirdest story I've heard in months. It's like something that would happen on The Office if The Office aired on HBO.

Presumably this is less about harassment than some kind of misguided variation on "Your fly is down." The difference is people generally want to know when they're walking around with their flies down, but not so much a girl can do about room temperature if the thermostat is somewhere in the basement.

Just sayin'.

So when NayNay heard this story, it led us into a lengthy discussion of words that make us uncomfortable. Now, I like to think I work in profanity-- as Jean Shepherd put it in A Christmas Story-- the way other artists work in oils or clay. My internal monologue tends to contain more instances of the F word than an episode of Entourage-- speaking of late night on HBO.

The words that cause discomfort, as NayNay and I see them aren't the truly profane ones. And, again, anyone who has spent more than ten minutes with me behind the wheel of a motor vehicle can attest to my relative comfort with all kinds of four letter words. But an anatomical reference like "nipple" makes us nervous. NayNay also expressed distaste for "moist," "insert," "piggyback," and "buttocks."

I'm actually not crazy about "distaste."

I used to work with a woman who got the creeps anytime someone said "Marlboro." And that's what's so entertaining about language.

Going Going Guano

One night, one summer-- I can't remember which year, they all ran together after a while-- The Suz and I were sweating our faces off at The Old Apartment. We might have been debating whether or not to go get ice cream, just to get a few moments of sweet relief in an air conditioned car.

We were mostly worried about why her cat, the Bub Man, was sitting on the back of the sofa mewling at the framed print of the London Underground map.

The sun was setting outside. It was too hot to move. Then, in the dimming light, it happened. A thing, with wings and a face, came crawling out from behind the map and proceeded to skitter across the wall.

I leapt to my feet. "Holy shit! It's a bat!" I said. I may have used a few other words to describe the bat, but I'm trying to keep things PG-13 around here as much as possible.

In crisis mode, we swept the cats down the hall into Suz's room. Then we came back out to the living room and stared stupidly at the tiny creature hanging on the wall.

It wasn't even our first bat. The first bat was in my apartment way back when I still lived down south. I called Suz at 1:00 in the morning, hyperventilating.

"You sure it's a bat?" she said.

"Yes! It has a face!"

She advised me to call animal control, which I did. Woke some poor sheriff's deputy from a sound sleep to come take the bat away in a garbage bag.

Previous experience with Boston Animal Control and the Police Department told us that was not an option. We'd gotten a bat in the apartment a few summers before, and were told we were on our own. Bats are a protected species in Massachusetts, so they're not allowed to kill them.

So from us to the wise folks at Boston Animal Control: have it your way.

We stared at the bat for a few more minutes, then it flew over to the window frame. When it unfurled its wings that little sucker was at least seven feet across.*

I dashed into my room and prepared for battle. I emerged wearing my winter coat-- did I mention this might have been the hottest night of the year?-- my Wellies and a fleece hat. This was overkill, yes, but in my defense, I do not want a live animal trapped in my hair, ever.

Gingerly, Suz removed the screen from the window and handed it to me. She had a towel in hand.

"Okay, so I'm going to flick it with this towel," she said. "Then maybe it will fly out the window. You-- are you listening to me?-- your job is to hold up the screen and keep it from flying down the hall. Can you do that? Manda? Can you do that?"

"Um... yes."

And so we proceeded with our daring plan. Suz flicked the towel toward the tiny creature and it proceed to unfurl itself to roughly the size of a pterodactyl. It flew around the living room and I collapsed to the floor, rolling myself into a ball under the protective layer of window screen.

You know the way girls scream in horror movies? I could totally get work in a horror movie featuring bats.

"Manda. Manda. Did you see where it went?"

"No." I'm out of breath now and crying a little.

"You had one job to do! One!"

So we didn't know where the bat went. We called E-Money, because he was still returning our calls in those days. We never played the "we're helpless girls" card with E-Money, because he wouldn't have bought it anyway. But that night-- after 9:00 and after it started to rain-- we played that card.

"It's a bat. And it's not turning into Christian Bale--" she told him. I was still unable to breathe.

Then we waited in the hallway, behind the protective window screen. It was our only defense.

Through the wall we could hear our next door neighbor practicing his trombone. That guy was always practicing his trombone.

"Manda, you were screaming bloody murder," Suz said.

"Yeah. I know. Let's not talk about it."

"No, but they're at home," she gestured toward the common wall. "They didn't call the cops or anything."

"Nice," I said.

The story ends with E-Money arriving about an hour later. He looked behind all the furniture and declared the apartment bat-free. We hoped the little bugger had flown out the window after all and went to our rooms for an uneasy night of sleep.

Three days later, Suz took the recycling bin to the market to return the endless tide of Coke cans for a small fortune in deposits.

And she found the bat. Dead. In the bottom of the bin.

That wasn't our last bat. The last bat turned up in February of the last winter we lived in The Old Apartment. Suz faced that one alone, and it was just as well. I'm pretty useless in these situations. I did get to call the building manager and yell at her about it, though, which was pretty satisfying.

For fifteen years Suz has saved me from bats, literal and metaphorical, of all shapes and sizes and kinds. She once told someone I'd saved her life a thousand times over, and she's done the same for me at least twice as many times. She's talked me down from the ledge and told me to go, to do, to be. I am who I am today largely because of her-- and someday I will make her pay for that.

Happy birthday, my friend. You're a wizard by any definition.


*This is speculative.

Ms. Smith (and K-Rock, Special K, NayNay, and The Suz) Goes to Washington: Part Deux


We've got one week to go, and we at Little Blue and its affiliates are all gearing up to go feel the sleaze in The District.

People are making signs for the Rally to Restore Sanity, and they're posting them over there. Before I go over there to post my sign proposals, I'm going to post them here, so anybody out there (all seven of you) who wants to add some input on this matter, should speak now. Otherwise I'm likely to just show up for this event wearing a Gaga wig or a panda on my head again.

That could actually happen anyway. Depends on how nuts the Jersey Turnpike makes me this time.

 There's this option:

Or this:

Or:

And of course....

"I Told You I Was Freaky"


Dear Red Sox--

I have a confession to make. I've been cheating on you. A lot. Since June. It's unwise, it's torrid, and it's Freaky.

You know how these things happen. One night you're sitting in a bar, and you're just trying to drink your beer and watch the game in peace, but then you start eying the other team. I know they caused you serious injury and took down half your roster. I was sorry when that happened, I really was.

I thought it was just my excitement to go on vacation to San Francisco that was causing these thoughts. I tried to ignore them. But you know how it is. You're in another time zone, and one day you're striking up a conversation with a stranger because you're both wearing a Sox cap, and the next thing you know you're out with The Kiwi wearing a panda on your head and eating garlic fries.


I made a lot of excuses. It doesn't count if they're in another league. It doesn't count if you're in another area code. It doesn't count if they're in another time zone.

But don't blame The Kiwi for this. It would have happened anyway. And it's not because they're younger or better looking (even though they are). Things haven't been great for us in the postseason since 2007, and let's face it, we never really recaptured the magic we had in 2004.

I'll always love you, Red Sox, as much as I ever did, and I'm not leaving you. But maybe it's just not natural for a person to be committed to one team for her whole adult life. Maybe a woman's got to do what a woman's got to do, even if it's in California.

And we'll always have hating the Yankees.

Love,
Manda

There's Always Room for Jello

Today I ate orange Jello for lunch. It was from the school cafeteria. It had little sad bits of fruit cocktail hanging around in it. It was not a color that exists in nature, except perhaps in certain select volcanoes.

And this got me thinking: How hungry does a person have to be before he says to himself (and I say he because I don't think any woman has ever been this hungry), "I'm feeling a little peckish. You know, I think I'll take these bits of bovine cartilage and boil them down until they make a goo, then I'll eat that. Yes. Bovine goo. That is the answer to all my problems."

The thing is, it caught on. Then somebody said, "You know, we can take this bovine goo and add artificial flavors to make it fruity. Then we can add artificial colors to make it appear appetizing in a nuclear kind of way. People will love that. They will totally buy it."

And we did. Then we started coming up with all kinds of other crap to put in the goo. Sad little bits of fruit cocktail. Other goos, like mayonnaise. Nuts. Berries. Bits of tree bark. Booze, of course. Whatever. Anything goes with Jello.

I have similar thoughts about other stuff to eat. How hungry was the person who ate the first lobster? Who decided mold in cheese made it more desirable? What was the thought process driving fried butter?

Clearly I'm not going to get any sleep tonight.

And We're Back! Sort of....

Yesterday NayNay married Mr. NayNay. It was the best of times.

I ran video for the ceremony and parts of the reception, which may introduce a new sideline as I go through this process of rewriting my own narrative. After the ceremony, I hung around the happy couple, getting video of them hugging various friends and relatives before going to get the Official Wedding Photos taken.

This activity put me at the back of the line to get my place card and sign the register. In my defense, I didn't know it was a line line. I thought maybe it was people milling around for the doors to open.

At any rate, I'm stuck at the back of this line, by myself, and the people in front of me are all at least there with their other people. So I have the following conversation with the people immediately in front of me:

Manda: I'm sorry, is it okay if I just go up ahead and see if--
Woman in Line: Oh, are you looking for your other half?
Manda (with authority): Yes. Yes I am.

And so I commence to delicately push to the front of this line that I don't really know is a line. I hear the woman again explain to the other people I'm asking to excuse me, "She's looking for her other half."

My "other half", is five people. Actually, it's more than five total, but at this occasion, five. K Rock, Special K, Ms. H, The Greek, and The Director. The Suz and The Kiwi and The Great Mrs. M were not in attendance, and I knew where NayNay was.

There are others. Lots of others that I know I can probably call to bail me out of whatever nonsense I get myself into. But these are my other half on a daily basis. When I kvetch, they are there. When I laugh, they are laughing with me. When I am mad, they talk me down from the ledge. When I cry, they pick me up and remind me to breathe.

And when I walk into the wedding reception, they order me a Scotch at the open bar.

"'Ich bin ein Berliner' means 'I am a doughnut.'"

Uncle Jimmy brought some disturbing news from back home. He tells me that the food of choice at the Dixie Classic Fair this year is a cheeseburger with two Krispy Kreme doughnuts used as the bun. A quick Google search is telling me we're a bit behind the curve on this one, but still...

...This offends me on so many levels, I feel that I might need charts and graphs to fully express my disgust. And this isn't just those 50 pounds I seem to be missing talking.

The Krispy Kreme donut is the best proof for the existence of a benevolent god that I can find on this planet. Served warm under the glow of the "Hot Doughnuts Now" light, they are melty and sweet and heartbreaking in their beauty. I don't eat them often, because nothing that wonderful should be an everyday occurrence.

I had one in London this summer, just to be sure that the people at Harrod's hadn't corrupted the magic. After seeing what they did to the lemon filled (which is the only thing in the wide world better than plain) in the Tesco kiosk (meringue on top), I had to be sure the basic message hadn't gotten lost in translation. I am happy to report that the Harrod's counter passed muster.

But the problem with the fair people, and the ratfinks responsible for putting meringue on the UK lemon filled, is this. You do not screw around with perfection. This goes beyond "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." You run the risk of angering whatever deity was kind enough to bestow the precious combination of yeast and sugar upon us mere mortals. There's just no reason to add a cheeseburger. Or meringue. And I think a world of history and literature has shown us what happens when you anger the doughnut gods.

The Manda Welcomes You To Her Freudian Nightmare

Right now my dad's brother, my Uncle Jimmy, is sleeping in a van in my driveway. I have always known my Uncle Jimmy as one of The Responsible Ones in the family.

Uncle Jimmy is not homeless. He's got a pretty nice little house in the Piedmont Triad in N.C., even though it does look a little like time stopped in 1975 on the inside. He worked a steady job until he retired a few years ago, and now he works in his garden and on various indoor building projects involving wood and tools I don't understand.

We are do-it-yourself, make-do-and-mend kind of people. Comes from the years on the farm, I'm sure. My grandmother once repaired her coffee percolator using an old fuse. These are my people.

But yesterday morning, my Uncle Jimmy woke up at 2 a.m. and decided to, as he puts it, "go riding around." He has a van that he's tricked out for this purpose, with a gas generator and a fold out bed in the back. So yesterday morning he took off up I-95 and spent the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Connecticut, because the van in a Wal-Mart parking lot is his preferred accommodation on the road.

He called me up this afternoon, because he's on his way up to Maine in the morning and thought it would be nice to take his niece out for dinner. I tried to insist that he sleep in the spare room in my house, but he would have none of it. Mom, if you're reading this, I tried.

As I said, though, he's the responsible one.

His brother, a.k.a. Dad, "went riding around" once when I was in college, which would make him about 60 at the time. He went riding around on a Honda Gold Wing. To Alaska. I didn't know where he was for 6 months, because he left strict instructions with his friends not to tell me. He didn't want me to worry.

Then there was the year after Hurricane Andrew hit Florida and the surrounding areas when he lived on a sailboat in the Bahamas, doing repairs on other sailboats.

Apparently Dad and his sister-- also a Responsible One, a retired English teacher-- just got back from a long trip out West. Today would be the first I'm hearing about it.

After my mom and dad split up when I was about 3, he hitchhiked to Florida, which is where he has lived since, off and on anyway.

I've had many people who have told me this messed me up, and I assume they mean it created some kind of convoluted issues of trust and abandonment for me. I've never bought that. But I do wonder sometimes which is worse. For a girl to have a father like mine and resent his absence? Or to have a father like mine and totally idolize him?

But here's how I'm starting to think it might have messed me up. The Kiwi says I'm having a midlife crisis right now, but what if it's more like I've reached the age where a genetic marker gets switched on? Only instead of a terminal disease, this marker makes you want to do things like leave your job, home and family and ride a motorcycle across North America?

It has not escaped my notice that when I was about 3, the Old Man would have been about the age I am now. And it's got to be nature, not nurture, because in our history, talking 8 times a year would be considered frequent. And then my Uncle Jimmy shows up in my driveway on a Monday afternoon.

And don't get me started on the great grandfather who was about the same age as me when he got shot. Family legend says it was a horse deal gone bad-- I swear I am not making this up-- but my aunt (the English teacher) maintains it was probably over a woman.

We're also pretty sure he changed his last name at some point, but the details of Grandpa James's (he's my uncle's namesake)early years are unclear.

So these are also my people. And, Suz, compared to these people, we are rank amateurs.

And for the record, our surname is Smith, not Buffett.

The Crazy Cat Lady Speaks

“You’re just going to be an old lady with cats?” he says.

“Well, unless I meet a guy who doesn’t suck, yes,” she says, with emphasis on the word “suck” to indicate she is talking about him. She doesn't know if he gets it.

The cat thing really gets under her skin, though. It’s the thing all guys seem to say when she indicates disinterest in marriage, which is to say, she's been hearing the cat line since she got her first boyfriend at sixteen. She has two of them-- cats, not boyfriends-- which is the acceptable ratio of cat to single woman without making said single woman appear crazy.

She says she'd like to get a dog, but they’re a lot of work. And you can’t leave them for days in the care of a friendly neighbor while you take off for California, or London, or Peru. Cats are easy; they’re portable, and they aren’t bothered if you stay out late drinking whiskey with a guy who is still sucky after all these years.

Actually, that’s not fair. She doesn't know if he sucks in the present tense, she just knows he sucked years ago when she was dating him. Right now, in this bar, he’s good company, but this is probably because she's not sleeping with him; she has no plans to sleep with him, and that relieves her of the worry about who else he’s probably sleeping with. This leaves her free to just enjoy her whiskey.

“Your standards are too high,” he says and takes a drink. “Good luck finding a guy who doesn’t suck,” he adds, so maybe he got what she was saying after all.

Of course, she's lying.

It’s got nothing to do with meeting a guy who doesn’t suck. She's probably met a few of them, though no names spring to mind. The truth is, she likes being able to take off to California, or London, or Peru if she wants to. She likes being able to eat cereal for dinner and not worry about feeding another human being. She likes being able to stay out late and not having to share the remote control when she's at home. She likes not having to shave her legs if she doesn't feel like it. And she really likes the fact that the only underpants she ever has to wash are her own.

But she'd also like to have someone to talk to sometimes, and maybe have some adventures with.

She gives him this. He’s damn charming. She can see how her younger self would have fallen for the self effacing and warped humor, the knowledge of baseball, and history, and current events, the freedom of spirit. It’s becoming apparent to her how this guy was able to talk her into some very careless behavior the night they met.

She can’t figure out if that’s what he’s after right now or not, but she also can’t imagine what other reason he might have for getting in touch with her.

She's pretty sure he’s not here to save her from a life of spinsterhood, loneliness, and cats, but he also never makes a pass. When they part ways at the end of the evening, there’s some talk about meeting for dinner the next night, but she assumes they will not speak again for another three years, if at all.

But that’s not what happens. There will be a ball game and one of the best nights of her life, followed by one of the worst mornings. There will be other drinks in other towns. There will be long conversations about more than just banter. Bit by bit, she will lose her armor. She will start meaning it when she tells herself everything will be okay. She starts thinking maybe she doesn't have to have all her adventures on her own. She starts wondering if cats are enough.

He will never make a pass, but for the first time ever, he will see her naked.

And then he will be gone, and he won’t say goodbye. She will learn about it in a facebook status.

Her family-- the one she's chosen, not the one she was born to—- will have the inauspicious task of holding her up. After six months, she will not be able to recognize herself.

But she's in there somewhere; I know it.

So she finds the hustle first. She paints her deck. She gets some writing work. She snags an editing job. She resurrects her wreck of a blog and she gets a readership. She starts cleaning out her house and looking westward. She tries to remember that fundamental decency and a belief in the basic goodness of other people are not naïve, even in the face of bullshit. She focuses on all the people who love her instead of the one who doesn’t.

She hugs her cats.

She rolls up her sleeves and begins the long process of getting herself back.

And she wonders if a van can be tricked out with a bed, a generator and maybe WiFi and a litterbox.

The Manda Wonders Why She Doesn't Work for The A.V. Club

Somebody actually made the following movie: "Zombie Strippers" starring Robert Englund and Jenna Jameson. Tagline reads, "Bloody mayhem in the champagne room."

Englund, you may remember, gained fame in the 1980's with his portrayal of Freddy Krueger in the "Nightmare on Elm Street" film series. Jameson is well known as an actor and producer of adult entertainment.

But it's free on On Demand, and K Rock and I have a pretty morbid sense of curiosity, so we decided to give it 20 minutes while we were waiting for the take out to arrive, even though we were wondering how it ended up among the regular On Demand free movie offerings.

A quick check of the IMDB revealed that this film was produced in 2008, in 18 days-- which incidentally is the same number of days it took to produce Sofia Coppola's "Lost in Translation"-- and came in under budget at $1 million.

I don't really know where that million went, because it wasn't for production values, acting, or special effects. A lot of barbecue sauce went into making this film.

But it IS clearly revealed from the outset that this is to be a horror movie: the opening voiceover tells us that it's W.'s fourth term in office with Arnold Schwarzenegger as veep.
K Rock: "So far, it's like something from The Onion."
Manda: "So it's a political satire."
K Rock: "Silly us for underestimating Jenna and Robert."

The plot of the film is fairly simple. A zombie gets loose from a government lab that is conducting experiments to create a super-soldier. The zombie makes his way to the town of Sartre-- yes, like THAT Sartre-- Nebraska. The town name, naturally, adds some intellectual credibility to the proceedings.

Upon arrival in Sartre, the zombie ends up at a strip club called The Rhinoceros, because the film is loosely based on a French allegorical play of the same name. This parallel further underscores the deeply existential implications of the film's themes and content.

K Rock: "Never before has a Jenna Jameson film inspired me to read French literature."
Manda: "Have you ever seen a Jenna Jameson film?"
K Rock: "Well... no...."

The first zombie-- Private Birdphlew (or some other spelling that is pronounced Bird Flu) bites a stripper (Jameson) at the Rhinoceros club, she then does her dance as a zombie, which makes the crowd of frat boys from Central Casting go wild and start throwing money. The unscrupulous club owner (Englund) then pressures the other strippers to become zombies so he can take their earnings while feeding them selected members of the audience. Of course, these audience members become zombies as well, but they're kept caged up in the basement of the club, because obviously you want to keep increasing numbers of live zombies incarcerated in the basement of a bar.

And there are a lot of boobies.

So there you have the existential themes and content.

Eventually the army-- wearing belly shirts-- shows up to save the day, which prompts K Rock to comment: "Are those regulation haircuts?"

One of the army guys gives us pause, actually.
K Rock: "This guy thinks he's in a Blaxploitation film from 1977."
Manda: "I thought he was going for the Ice-T on 'Law and Order' vibe."
K Rock: "But the beret and the hint of an Afro and the clearly posturing dialect."
Manda: "That's where I was getting the Ice-T effect."

The film contains other stereotypes that are so over the top that I can only hope and pray that they were meant to be ironic. There's the Sleazy Manager's business partner, a woman with a generic Eastern European accent that she either learned from watching Bela Lugosi or "Rocky and Bullwinkle" cartoons. There's the maintenance guy, Paco, whose cart features a Mexican flag and a bottle of tequila and whose lines mostly seem to hinge on rehashing variations and puns on "We don't need no stinking badges." Paco goes out in a blaze of glory, wearing a sombrero and an ammo belt and smoking a cigarillo. It was like watching a living, breathing South of the Border billboard.

Yet the film has its moments of genuinely funny dialogue, like when The New Stripper, a wholesome Midwestern stereotype working to afford a colostomy for her grandmother, says to her religious right boyfriend: "Maybe there's more truth to me taking off my clothes for emotionally stunted men so my grandmother can shit in a bag than in my staying pure and virginal for you."

Between that and the stripper zombie reading Nietzsche, there was some real potential for some female empowerment and breaking of stereotypes. Alas, the gratuitous nudity kind of killed that potential.

Later, K Rock and I would deconstruct the film and agree that this was a movie that could have been cult classic campy, but the influence of production execs who were looking for more nudity was bleeding obvious (pardon the pun). We ended up watching the film in about half the time allotted because we fast forwarded through most of the dance sequences.

Still, the film included this exchange just after Jameson becomes a zombie:
Jameson: "I've never felt more alive."
Other Stripper: "Sweet irony."

Which means this movie is still smarter than Alanis Morrissette.

The Manda Goes to a Wedding Shower


On Friday afternoon the Work People had a wedding shower for NayNay. We ate things with cheese and toasted her with champagne. She opened boxes of place settings and kitchen utensils. It was lovely, and I couldn't be happier for her and the soon-to-be Mr. NayNay.

But I don't get wedding showers.

This is not standard singleton sour grapes about how people get to marry the love of their lives AND they get a lot of free merchandise to boot and if I don't marry the love of my life I get bupkus. It's not like that.

I was introduced to the man who in ten days will be Mr. NayNay almost four years ago. I remember this very clearly, because I pulled NayNay aside-- I think I may have even grabbed her by the collar-- and said, "If you fuck this up, I'll kill you." I'm always happy when it turns out I'm right about other people's relationships. It happens so rarely in my own.

Who am I kidding? I'm happy when I'm right about pretty much anything.

And it's not about the stuff, because people-- including NayNay-- offered to throw me a housewarming when I bought Little Blue. I refused because I don't really get housewarming parties either.

It's all the planning. It's knowing what kind of china you're going to be eating from for the next few decades. It's getting all gooshy about modern appliances. I can't muster that much excitement about salad tongs. I watch people open these boxes at these things-- and I've been to many of them-- and I can't wrap my head around going all misty-eyed over flatware.

Right now, as I write this, my mom is thinking about window treatments for my house. I'm content to let her do it, mainly because I don't care what's on my windows as long as my neighbors can't see when I'm in the living room playing Rock Band. I think all of this means I'm missing something essential about being female.

Females are supposed to nest, or so we're taught. My current war against my belongings makes me think I'm really engaged in a long process of tearing my nest apart so I can fly again.

Or maybe I'm just abnormally averse to having to write thank-you notes.

Mercifully, we didn't have to do that thing where they make a hat out of the bows from the presents and make the bride wear it. That custom originated with the sour grapes crowd; I'm sure of it.

At Crazy Manda's Everything Must Go

Picture it: Summer, 2002, Top of the Hill in Chapel Hill, NC
Two guys and a girl sitting around a table drinking I don't remember what. A game of "I Never" has devolved into a series of increasingly personal questions and answers, which will eventually lead the trio to agree that "What goes on in Chapel Hill stays in Chapel Hill."

The evening ends with the Queen Mother of all personal questions: "What's the most embarrassing CD you ever bought?"

I'm pretty sure my answer to this question at the time was Poison's "Look What the Cat Dragged In." The only other answer I remember was from the guy who did the asking: Madonna's "Like a Virgin." We weren't even talking CDs anymore. We were talking about tapes.

Still, it's easily the most personal question anyone has ever asked me. I can't even think of another question that's more personal.

And this evening, I think my answer could safely be ALL OF THEM. Or at least pretty much everything I bought during the 90's.

If you've been following along at home, you know I'm engaged in an all out war against my belongings. I've already put my DVDs and my books on the chopping block over at Amazon. And last night, I started listing CDs, which seems kind of futile because nobody buys CDs anymore. This part of the experience is humiliating, even though it's just between me and those anonymous buyers picking up Pearl Jam's "Ten" for a quarter. You can deny a lot of things about your past, but those boxes of jewel cases stand as an eternal testament to how lame you once were.

At least until you woman up and start listing them for sale.

How many places have I lived since I moved out of my parents' house in 1992? A lot. There was a two year period in there when I changed residences no fewer than six times. That might have been the happiest two years of my life, come to think of it. And yet, somehow, in all of this moving around, I somehow still have a copy of Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill?" Are you KIDDING ME? If I go the rest of my life without ever hearing that woman screech out "You Oughta Know," then I can safely say that the rest of my life will be superior to the years up to now in a substantial way.

I didn't like that song when it came out. And that was in the midst of my first big breakup. I was the target audience. Hell, I'm still the target audience. I'm the angriest woman I know personally. But it's got stupid lyrics and the music is boring.

Come to that, I have a nasty habit of judging harshly people who don't know the correct context and usage of the term "irony."

Why do I even own this CD in the first place?

And that's not even the most embarrassing CD I've got here. It's just the most embarrassing one I'm willing to admit in front of people-- all five of you.

My mom never kept any cool records. Or maybe she just never owned any cool records, so maybe I've erred on the side of caution in case some kind of imaginary progeny I might have would want them. Even though I'm pretty sure at this point any progeny I ever have will be strictly imaginary, even if they weren't, I couldn't face them after they'd seen what's in these boxes. I'm having a hard time facing the boxes myself.

Ahhh, but at least we have Blonde on Blonde. It's gonna be okay.