Not cool. So not cool.

After an evening of country music at an 85th birthday party this weekend, I parked my car on Beverly Blvd. It was 11pm. I wouldn’t get out. I had driven 10 mph for the last 20 minutes... prolonging the drive as much as I could so I could just delay the entrance to my friend’s get-together. It wasn’t the fear of heading alone into a party that was causing such delay. Oh no... I would prefer if it were. Instead, it was the Nathan Lane/Short lady who does Lisa Simpon’s voice version of The Odd Couple. NPR was broadcasting, and I, entranced by the story, was glued to my car seat. Let me say it again: I was listening to a play on the radio. And I was enjoying it so much that I delayed my entrance to a party full of boys and alcohol. To listen to a play. I had just come from an 85th birthday, I was listening to a play on the radio, and I had even clipped a coupon out of the newspaper that morning.

ACT 1 had ended while I was driving, and I had gasped in fear because I couldn’t stand the suspense. Would Felix ever let go of his neurosis? Would that other guy ever get to go on a date? I couldn’t wait! I almost went to my trusty iPhone to find out, but good old NPR pulled through and began ACT 2 almost immediately. Phew. I’d broken a sweat of despair. But as I sat parked outside the party, I finally realized: I AM LISTENING TO A PLAY!

I decided I needed to enter said party instantly in order to salvage the bit of cool I had in me. So I deserted Felix and the other guy and marched right in... but things didn’t improve. The guest of honor had his sweater tied around his neck like a tennis pro. It went something like this:

ME: Nice sweater tied around your shoulders.

OTHER GUY: Yeah. You look like you’re straight out of Vampire Weekend.

ME: Oh, I’ve never seen that. Is it good?

OTHER GUY: Um, it’s a band.

ME: Oh.

Awkward silence.

ME: So... you ever listen to The Odd Couple?

It was then that I realized I’m not cool. I’m just not. I have no clue who is Vampire Weekend. I have no interest in looking up who is Vampire Weekend. And that is ok. I’m actually pretty cool with not being cool. I can’t even think of a synonym for ‘cool’ besides ‘hip.’ More evidence that I’m neither.

Now that it's all out in the open, I might as well admit:

*I don’t like Radiohead. Sorry. I tried.
*I don’t have a TV (And I only stream episodes of Jersey Shore and 30 Rock).
*I wear skinny jeans but not because they’re in style. Strictly because they make my butt look better, which means I will be wearing them long after they are out of style. Sorry, future kids.
*I’m currently reading a book on how to harness the power of your chakras.
*I sometimes eat cereal in bed.
*I refuse to spend more than $50 on any article of clothing. Ok, more like $30.
*This is my favorite song of all time:


*I love socks with hearts on them.
*My favorite past time is finding grammatical errors on signs.
*I still need a bedtime story to fall asleep.
*I think bars are too loud. If you want to hang out, let’s go to dinner.
*I’d rather stay home and write/make something with construction paper/discuss the effect of ants on erosion than stand in line to get into a dance club.
*I do not understand anyone who spends a bunch of money on a designer purse.
*I sometimes think movies are a waste of time.
*I would not be able to recognize Justin Bieber if he sat next to me on a plane.

Just as I wrote ‘Justin Bieber,’ I realized that I have become my mother. Days before I turn 30 and it’s already happening. I am now just like the woman who watches TV at a volume so loud that deaf people in Texas can hear. But I think she's cool. I'm the one person. So, it's not so bad. Who's down for some water aerobics?

Lemon Circle Chinstrap Femur Glub Glub Glub

Are people ‘these days’ crazier than people ‘back in the day?’ I hate to ask this because it makes me sound like a demure old woman who still wears red lipstick and pantyhose and shakes her head at the new loony generation. Demure I am not. Fuck. So I’ve been rationalizing, convincing myself that we have the same number of crazy people as we did back in the day and that the current rise in news coverage and media just makes it seem like nuts has become the norm. But lately I've been thinking that there are just a ton of whackos in the world. Let’s see...

First there’s this satan plane guy who threatened flight attendants with water. Bad plan, dude.

Then there are the people who concocted a plan to make schoolgirls sick. Really, imagine coming up with that around a conference table.
GUY 1 - Then all the girls will start feeling faint.
GUY 2 - I'm loving this idea.
GUY 1 - Maybe we could make them vomit all over themselves.
GUY 2 - They will NEVER go to school again.
GUY 1 - Muaahahhahaaaa.
GUY 2 - My beard itches.

And then, there's this woman who ‘accidentally’ microwaved her baby.



Plus, ponder the existence of Kate Gosselin and Michael Jackson and people who get face lifts when they're 90 and people who spend $300 on dog clothes and people who hang themselves on hooks for sexual pleasure. And there's also that Austrian guy who kept his daughter in the basement and raped her all the time, the extremists who want to kill anyone who draws a picture of their god, the weather, reality shows about hair salons and choosing wedding dresses, Flava Flav, Pokemon, Scientology, Asian porn fetishes, politics, the Sky Mall, people whacking off to strangers on ChatRoulette, and now that double chicken sandwich from KFC.

So... I’m right, right? People these days are crazier. Or am I just nuts and people who get facelifts to look like a cat think that something is wrong with the world because of all those wacky bloggers who like to travel and make poo jokes? Either way, I’m assuming we’re all just going to get crazier as time goes on and technology gets weirder. We'll all be spooning robots and wearing clothes made of hair any day now. Oh God! Help! Run for the hills!

Side note: When searching Google, I also found this headline. Did this conjure up an image of a gigantic roast beef and cheddar with a diaper in it for anyone else?

An apology to you, dear readers. All five of you.

Dearest blog readers,

I would like to apologize for the lack of entries this week. I regret to inform you that my brain has been squeezed of its creativity this week at my new job and is currently void of all creativity, wit, and humor. I accidentally used it all during the days of Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. In an effort to impress my new bosses, I gave them all that I had, leaving you, poor reader, with nothing. This was truly an accident. I thought I would have been able to create a blog entry on Wednesday evening or on Thursday, but that is when I noticed that all the jokes had been used up. Please note the language I am choosing right now. I am not even a bit funny. I have begun several entries, one in which I poked fun at 420 and the people who celebrate it. I wrote a bit about the people at parties who compete for the prize of ‘Dude Who Smelled the Weed First.’ I was referencing those certain folks who think they have street cred when they say, ‘Oh shit, somebody’s smokin’ the [insert newest hip term for weed these days]’ in an attempt to let everyone know that THEY know what weed smells like. I don’t really like those people, so I felt it would be great to call them out on 420. Sadly, it was the last joke my brain was able to generate, and the rest of the entry fell flat. I also tried to write essays about Chia pets, Kate Gosselin, and Stegosauri (I believe that is plural of Stegosaurus but not sure.). Neither of these proved funny. I sat in a café and listened to cliché dialogue. While hilarious, it did not help. I stared at several walls, which also did not help. I test drove a Honda Civic and never brought it back to the dealer. This also didn’t help. I have learned that nothing helps when the resources are completely depleted. I’m sure there is an environment joke I could be using after that last sentence, but as you can see: all humor is gone. Sadly, I am faced with an entire blog-free week. I figured no one would notice, but I received an email yesterday from someone who called my blog a “snoozefest”. Therefore, I am writing to acknowledge the problem and assure you that all creativity is replenished weekly. Everything should be back to normal on Monday. Until then, my darling readers... until then. In the meantime, would anyone like to buy a Honda Civic?

In case this horribly unfunny entry has bored you:

This chick has also experienced writers’ block.

This guy wears T-shirts sometimes and seemed to have quite a fruitful week (he must not be working very hard during the day).

This man is drawing every person in New York. That’s pretty ambitious.

This article says that I might have caused all the recent earthquakes, but leaves me wondering why there aren’t more tremors around Halloween.

Irony

I woke up in a cannon today.

It's hard out here for a hippie.

I’m having the hardest time being a hippie lately. I had no problems last year-- never brushed my hair or wore makeup, carried my life in a sack, lived wherever I felt like it. Life couldn’t have been better.

But now I’m in Los Angeles.

Chihuahuas wear designer clothes and you’re an oddity if you don’t have a German-engineered car. Plus, my adult acne requires I wear some fancy foundation for anyone to take me seriously, and I was forced to buy some decent jeans due to my exhibitionist butt crack. So, I’m now feeling like ‘one of them.' I’m a paradox-- surrounded by creative directors in Diesel jeans by day and meditating in lotus at night. It couldn’t feel more weird. I know a guy who just paid $50,000 for a couch ('It is the focal point,' he rationalized). Some of my friends are struggling to raise $400 to send a year’s supply of water to a village in Africa. Where the hell do I fit in the mix? If I could, I’d sell that couch, pay off my student loans, and go to Africa to deliver the water myself. Does that make me a hippie or just some chick who says she’s a hippie but is just lazy and wants to use travel as an excuse for never having to work?

I don’t know. But the best part is that I don’t have to know. Because I live in Venice Beach! You could wake up in Venice Beach stuffed in a cannon. You could crawl out of that cannon and find an eyeless homeless man, a guy selling cotton balls and taser guns, and a yuppie jogger pushing twins in a five-thousand-dollar stroller. And none of this would seem weird. And you’d say to a man playing bongos, ‘Excuse me, do you know why I woke up in a cannon?’ And instead of looking at you as if you had five noses, he’d tap his friends on their leathery shoulders and they’d all help you find out why you awoke in this cannon. And all together you’d find a guy sleeping in the sand who remembered that you were at the local freak show (the one that features an assortment of 2-headed animals) and that you volunteered to shoot yourself from the cannon after downing a magnum bottle of Opus One (bought for you by this Hollywood big shot at a bar down the street for $749 plus tax). And then you’d hear that the freak show owner stuffed you in the cannon but ran from the cops right afterward because he’s also the owner of the medical marijuana joint across the street that was getting raided. You know the one, next to American Apparel. And so you fell asleep in the canon until now when you just awoke to the aforementioned plus a dude frying up worms on a pocket kerosene grill, not because he’s homeless but because he’s a shaman and these particular worms are from Tibet and will help him with his Tantric sexcapades, about which you don’t want know-- trust me.

It’s a strange place, this Venice area. On the beach, it looks like a scene out of Rishikesh, India-- free yoga, dirty dreadlocks, street sleepers, seedy taverns, and marijuana. Lots of marijuana.

Four blocks over is where the hippies become pseudo. Here the marijuana is legit, the bars have bouncers, and the coffee shop baristas draw hearts in the latte foam. The dreadlocks on this side of Venice were professionally installed by a guy with thick plastic glasses and expensive skinny jeans. The yoga classes run upwards of twenty bucks.

It’s strange, this paradox of lifestyles. But I love it. Because I’m neither nor. I’m not one but both. I am a daily contradiction. I like chocolate and bread pudding. I want it all. I’m every woman. It’s all in me. And there’s no point in choosing now. So, I’m gonna ride my 400-dollar bike down to the free yoga and meditate the day away with the drum circle. And then maybe wash it all down with a plate of foie gras in truffle oil. (Ok, I would never eat foie gras, but the vegetarian shit I would like doesn’t sound fancy enough to make this dichotomy sound so astounding. So just imagine something really awesome & pricey on a plate served by a super cool hipster with funky pants and Converse.)

Venice is it.

Macho men that spend sunny weekends choreographing dances on their roller skates. Where else?

Do they even make Bud Dry any more?

Why can’t I ever spell license or exercise?

Wasn’t dating easier in junior high when we called boys on 3-way and got our friends to talk to them about their feelings?

Am I the only one who cringes in remembrance of ruined white shorts when I see the Japanese flag?

Why do musicians think it’s cool to sample sirens in their music? I have pulled over twice lately due to sirens coming out of the radio.

Why are the dishes always dirty even after I wash them?

Why don’t more people just agree with me?

What are babies thinking? Maybe they're agreeing with me but can't say so.

Why is farting so taboo if everyone does it?

Why ask why? Try Bud Dry.

Why does that one sock never make it into the washing machine?

Why is dyslexia so hard to spell?

Why do our taste buds prefer croissants to carrots? Damn you, creator!

Why do all men's colognes remind me of frat parties?

Why are there so many rules?

Why is it sometimes so hard to do the right thing?

Do aliens think that humans are like cars because they run on a weird brown liquid that they must ingest every morning?

Why do we continue to ask each other how we are when the response is always ‘fine’?

Why do we always respond ‘fine’ when people ask us how we are?

Why can’t I resist butter?

Why do I always have to pee right before the movie starts?

Why do I feel obligated to give a tip to the guy who pours my wine into a glass?

Why didn't Benicio del Toro respond to the Craigslist 'Missed Connection' I posted about him?

Why do people always seem to say ‘long story short’ after they’ve already told a long story?

Why are polish and Polish almost the same word? I've been fooled at car washes before.

Does Anonymous get mad when he sees his quote? And when he tries to claim it's his, do people just laugh?

Why do we argue so much about questions to which we’ll never have answers?

When did we stop clapping upon plane landings? I guess we got over the amazement. I wonder how many other things we now take for granted.

Why did we create this whole system of money and working? Bad idea.

What was the original meeting like where the designers unveiled the UPS uniforms? Did the corporate guys like the brown at first or did they have to be coaxed into the brown?

Why are you reading this? Go volunteer or something.

A decade is ten years. That's a long time.

It’s April 8th, 2010.
I have one month left of my twenties.
Holy.
Mackerel.

I’ve spent a lot of time hiding the fact that this day was coming. I omit the year whenever I can. I respond “I’m in my twenties” when people ask my age. Because, for most of my life, I’ve dreaded May 8th, 2010. I've dreaded the wrinkles, the chest freckles, and all the expectations that I failed to meet. But here I am, facing them all. And there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

And, actually, I don’t really want to.
Because the twenties.... well, the twenties were brutal. Incredibly fun and inappropriate, but difficult. They say the twenties are all about figuring yourself out. But they don’t usually say this until you’re turning thirty. Upon my twentieth birthday, I wish someone would have said, “You’re gonna try a bunch of shit in the next decade. And some of it you’re going to absolutely love. And some of it is going to make you feel either disgusted with yourself or sad or confused or just plain mad. But you have to go through this stuff so you can see what you’re all about. So do it. And don’t look back. But try to learn from every situation.”

But nobody said a word about that. So I found myself waking up in random hot tubs and crying in showers and screaming all the way to work. And I didn't understand what it all meant, so I just kept waking up in random hot tubs and crying in showers and screaming all the way to work. But I didn’t take the time to learn from all that stuff until I recently took the year off to mull it all over. Here's what I could have learned:

20 - I turned 20 in Spain. This was around the time that I drank too much street calimocho and threw up in my boyfriend’s mouth. No lesson learned then, but upon further review, I should have seen: I needed to control my alcohol. And that the guy who simply wiped his chin and took me home was a keeper.

21 - I got kicked out of a strip joint on Sunset Blvd for being a belligerent eye-roller and taking off my top, even though I was simply a patron and did not possess any of the assets required of a stripper. Should have learned: To control my alcohol. And that I should cross off ‘stripping’ from the list of back-up plans (still have yet to do that).

22 - Freaking out about my steadily climbing grad school debt, I finally stopped drinking to focus on getting a job. I focused a lot on that and only that. So it all went by in a flash. I only remember wearing slutty outfits and having a panic attack that showed itself in chronic foot itch. I was in South Beach! Should have learned to balance.

23 & 24 - I lived in London, Sao Paulo, NYC, and SF. Should have noticed I was more interested in traveling than advertising. WHY didn’t I see that then!?

25 - The chronic foot itch came back on the first day of my first job. All I could think about was the year’s lack of spring break. Should have realized that this job was a mere stone on the path to something bigger. Like most things are.

26 - Moved in with a boyfriend after knowing him three months. Should have learned to NEVER move in with a boyfriend after knowing him three months.

27 - I shot lots of commercials and actually enjoyed myself with clients. Never trusting myself, I cowered in the corner and became the girl who always said, 'I don't know. What do you think?" I should have realized I’m actually good at my job.

28 - I slaved away for 16 hours a day doing more than I could handle. Should have learned how to say no. And that being married to a job (especially one that doesn't really help many people) wasn't how I wanted to live my life. Oh wait, I did learn that. So I...

29 - ...traveled alone and finally learned all these lessons all at once. But most importantly, I learned to listen to myself so that future lessons won’t take another round-the-world trip to sink in.

In honor of these confusing yet exhilarating years, I will spend this last month of my twenties reliving them all. I plan to get totally wasted, travel, fall in love quickly, work feverishly, and perhaps take my clothes off in a strip club. And I will also go skydiving and make an eggplant parmigiana because I want to. Yes! This will undoubtedly be a great month. I will let you know if I make it to 30.

The year was 2000. I wore my jeans up to my bellybutton. My haircut looked like a mushroom, and I drank tequila for sport. And then I wondered why I couldn't meet a decent guy.

Ok, yes I had mushroom hair, but do you see that six-pack? Hot damn. I still thought I was fat. Could have learned to love my body and use it to my advantage. Sigh.

2008. Better hair. No more padded bras. No more tequila. Getting closer. Plus, I finally realized that relationships are the most important! That's when I left everybody I knew to go traveling. I swear it makes sense kinda.

This is the face of learning. Sometimes it takes a wooden pillow and a mosquito net to get the brain to make sense of stuff.

L v L

Laurenne: See, Lawrence. Everyone was so supportive after that last post. So many even offered to help me find a job. Not only are the people I know pretty amazing, I am too. So there, bitch.

Lawrence: Yeah, whatever. You’re so lazy. You couldn’t even get a blog post up about this for the whole week. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Lazy lazy lazy.

Laurenne: I had 5 interviews this week! And I had to spend one day eating croissants.

Lawrence: I can’t hear you.

Laurenne: I read a quote from Quincy Jones today, Lawrence. It said, “Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me.”

Lawrence: Um. I think he was talking about people in the music industry. Not his own ego.

Laurenne: Well, I'm talking to my ego. And it's not talking back. Not one more word about my cellulite. It only looks like that in the bathroom lighting.

Lawrence: That’s what you say, but--

Laurenne: Shut Up!

Lawrence: You just--

Laurenne: Ahem.

Lawrence: You just bought three shirts from Miley Cyrus’s clothing line at WalMart.

Laurenne: All right! You win again. I’m pathetic. But not for long, Lawrence. Not for long.