IF I DO NOT GET GEORGE MICHAEL OUT OF MY HEAD I’M GOING TO SHOOT MYSELF IN THE HEAD.

On Saturday it was my friend Zechariah’s birthday and he had people over for…turkey. Yes. He made a turkey. He and his ladyfriend Natalia apparently had to drive all over the place to look for a turkey. They found it “in the ghetto in Red Hook.” I didn’t even know Red Hook had a ghetto, but there you go. Anyway he actually made a turkey! Like, whole! Thanksgiving in September Birthday Party. Zechariah is among one of the most eccentric yet charming people I know. He’s a very good person, better than me, but totally random. I mean really random.

So I helped Zechariah make a salad. I’m like, tell me what to do, and I’ll do it. He says ok. Take these mixed greens. Add spinach. OK! Done! Add carrots, but make them bite sized. You know, like in chunks. OK. Add celery. Fine, even though I hate it. Not my salad. He says, ok, what else? Hmm…he dumps an entire container of trail mix (sunflower seeds, peanuts, raisins, etc) and dumps it in. OK, what else? He takes an entire head of cauliflower and cuts it into big ass chunks and throws it in. Big. Ass. Chunks. So I’m picking through the salad and cutting up the enormous pieces. Raw cauliflower. Rough on the tummy. Good for the colon. SO then he takes a handful of whole, dried apricots and dumps them in and I go no no no no cut them up, cut them up! He says, why? I imagine someone getting a quarter head of cauliflower and a whole apricot at the end of their fork. So, I beg him to let me take all the apricots out and dice them. He says fine, fine, but you’re being uptight. This salad is strange, I think. Then he holds up two jars of marinated artichokes and he says, would this take it over the top. And I say, you know what? Do it. Take it over the top, just like Sly Stallone. So he busts them open and dumps it in. Then he says, make a balsamic vinaigrette.

It was the most insane salad EVER. I mean every bite was like a new discovery. There were no two bites a like. You’re like ok this bite has peanuts in it, but the next bite, I may not get peanuts. I may get cauliflower. I may get a cashew. I may get some kind of seed or an artichoke.

Then while we are eating he’s like OH MAN I TOTALLY FORGOT TO PUT IN THE POTATOES. Oh well. Fucking hilarious. Seriously.

My deepest thoughts, in a numbered list, below.

1. My co-worker and friend Brian Levinson was on Jeopardy and WON. Oh yes. We all watched it at Pete’s Candy Store in Willy, which is NOT a candy store, NO IT’S NOT A CANDY STORE STOP HOUNDING ME. Anyway congratulations to Brian! Bring home more cash monies and maybe your ass can finally buy me a cup of coffee you cheap bastard. I hate your guts. All of them. Even the bits of gut that everyone is like, what part is THAT from? WTF? Yeah, I hate that part too.

2. After Jeopardy was a quiz pub, also hosted by Brian, also at Pete’s Candy Store. We always lose so I’m not sure why I bother ever going, but I only go when Mike is in town from Hawaii, because that is how he rolls. Anyway I did NOT drink because the last time I got too drunk and left before 7. Oh yes, so this time I learned my lesson. Anyway I contributed to ONE answer and that was El Debarge. (The topic was “bands that have -bar in their names). It was the audio round. I was like El Debarge, holla. I hate myself.

3. I went to some fancypants writing/literati event last night at the new Enrique Norten building which is down the street from me. They say it’s on York but you and I both know it’s on Canal. You can’t give some other street name to a building that is SO CLEARLY on Canal, at the anus, if you will, of the Holland Tunnel. Anyway the building is meh, and I can’t say I’m a big fan of the colored LED lights in the lobby. It’s like being transported to an 80s disco. WHERE ARE MY FEATHERED BANGS? Anyway, that is NOT THE POINT. I am not a literati, but Aidan F-C is and works for a hoity toity (sp) “literary magazine.” I didn’t quite understand the event, but they asked famous/scenester writers to write a piece of flash fiction (Lewis Lapham, Jonathan Ames, Jonathan Lethem, Paul Haggis, AM Homes etc. and even Ernest Hemingway but he, unfortunately, was not at the party last night). Then they posted them on little boards and projected them against the building, which is nice. I dunno if it’s still up tonight, but it’s worth a look. Diesel and North vodka sponsored the event. i was so very very confused. I think it’s one big PR thing for Diesel and North and Norten. It made me a little nauseous. Anyway the pieces of fiction were great. And on the way up the elevator, I was standing next to AM Homes and the elevator ‘host’ was like well the bar is to your left and the flash fiction is to the right but I won’t tell anyone if you go straight to the left and I said, oh I’ll tell. I’ll totally tell. And then AM Homes said the same thing. So we are clearly the same person. Except she’s like waaay more successful. AM Homes if you are reading this, don’t you ever, ever steal my joke again or I’ll beat your little literati fancypants right up. JK JK JK, let’s be Facebook friendz LOLZ!

3. Marco is organizing speakers for a Nokia internal conference and asked me to speak. It’s in the Pecha Kucha style (20 slides, 20 seconds each slide) and I’ll be talking about what I’d do with the million dollars Nokia saves if the employees carpooled. I was thinking I’d buy 1 million 99 cent bags of Frito’s and then I’d have one million cents leftover so it’s like I’d be making money on the deal.

4. Uh, I need to go to the grocery store.

I just spent OVER AN HOUR trying to find parking in this town. I started in my neighborhood, went down to Tribeca, then toward City Hall, then toward South St. Seaport, then Chinatown, then I said, fuck this, I am going to go to over the goddamn Manhattan Bridge to DUMBO, went there, then went to BK Heights, and then was heading toward Boerum and realized what a horrible decision that was and then turned around, went over the BROOKLYN Bridge and then went back through Chinatown and Tribeca and then contemplated paying for a parking garage which would’ve easily been $50 but decided I rather spend my $50 on anything else other than parking (pants, eggs, crack, not in that order) and then I ended up a block away from my apartment in a “Monday” spot, so I have to move it tomorrow morning before “street cleaning” happens and do this all over again. OH GOD. THE. ABSOLUTE. WORST. I have no idea how people have cars in this city, but holy crap I wanted to die. Apparently Chris and Roz spend hours moving their car each week. And everyone knows the goddamn city does not clean the streets so alternate side parking is a joke, plus half the fire hydrants are dead and yet we still can’t park in front of them. Seriously, I almost started crying it was so awful. Let me tell you, the streets are lousy with douche right now. Turns out there is a UN General Assembly plus the San Gennaro festival but that doesn’t really explain why Brooklyn parking situation got me by the short and curlies. But anyway, hello. I am back. The wedding was awesome, congratulations to John and Karina, they are among my favorite people on this planet, I mean that. Actually the wedding sucked, I mean, people were crying everywhere and it wasn’t at Burger King. The BrainPOP Jr. team made an animated biopic of them and it totally blew everyone’s minds and made Karina cry. That was the point, to make her cry. I’m apparently good at it, for what it’s worth. In a related note, I woke up this morning with the worst hangover I’ve ever had in my life. OK maybe not my life, but definitely top five. My brain felt like a dehydrated apple ring. Spongy and moist yet dry and chewy.

My friends Karina and John are getting married this weekend, so I’ll be heading out to the Jersey Shore (pronounced sho-uh) to get drunk, pretend to get shit stuck in my eyes, and refuse to dance to “YMCA”. But I just wanted to say OH DEAR GOOD GOD NEVER EVER EVER GET MARRIED EVER. The amount of work required so that everyone can party is totally insane. I mean get married blah blah, but just, like, do it at Pizza Hut or something. If you do it at Burger King you’ll get a crown, for FREE! None of this eight thousand dollar deposit crap or whatever it is. I don’t even know, I pulled that number out of my ass, but I know Burger King would be cheaper. Anyway, it’ll be fun. There is some kind of beach/water/ocean involved and I believe the couple is getting married underneath a skeleton of a whale. I dunno I’m totally making this shit up. I’m excited! I’m staying at a place that looks like Barbie’s dreamhouse (but in a good way?) and Karina said there will be dolphins. DOLPHINS. In fact she keeps texting me OMG OMG DOLPHINS DOLPHINS. I have not linked her to all the YouTube videos of dolphins trying to sex up people, and vice versa, because I am a classy lady. Anyway I better see a fucking dolphin or I’m totally going to GO OFF. In Canada, I did not see minks or beavers as promised so I’m on high alert for bullshit promises, but I should be used to this since I live in America. But you know what I mean.

I am in a wedding next weekend and had to get a dress altered. So I walk into the gettin’ place and put on the dress and the guy proceeds to pin everything and all that stuff. But he’s almost medical about it. He pokes me in the butt. We have to take it in down here. Poke poke. Then he goes up top and pokes each boob and says we take it here too. Then he goes to town on the side, near the side boob, or what Doretta would call the backfat boob area, and pokes that, maybe it is ok here, tug poke tug. Then he goes back to the butt and he’s pinching fabric to take it in but he also kind of pinches my butt and then he tugs and then smooths the fabric over my butt, i.e. smooths my butt. Then he says, OK all done, it will be seventy dollars. And I thought he said seven and I was like sweet, and he’s like no seventy, and I thought I heard seventeen, and I was like sweet, and then he said, no no, seventy, seven zero. It is very complicated job (it is kind of, but $70 complicated? I dunno). Seventy United States dollars. That is the price of shame. He was Nigerian I think and had these crazy blue eyes. Anyway he’s a very good tailor, but like you know he does not care to be ginger with the butt or the boobs. Poke poke tug. The girl who was there before me was getting some strapless number altered and he was like tugging at her boobs and shaking his head, too big, too big. He meant the dress, I think.

I DID NOT KNOW THIS:

Uranus, seventh planet from the Sun, (INSERT YOUR ANUS JOKE) actually ROTATES ON ITS SIDE. On it’s side!!! So the other planets spin like a top, but Uranus spins like a rolling ball. That means its poles are where other planets have their equators. DUDE. MIND EXPLOSION. How have I lived this long without knowing that? Did everyone know this? I am totally late to this party. And now I show up and everyone’s dressed up like Karl Lagerfeld except me. Like I just totally missed something. DUDE. ROLLS LIKE A BALL. I hate myself.

Scientists think a planet hit “your anus” when it was just starting to form and knocked it on its side.

Listen, I want to LIVE THERE. Except for the fact that it would suck royally, it would be really nice to live on a planet that rolls but I would get really tired of the anus jokes.

Hello friends. I need a favor!

Can you guys send me, or post below, a picture of the chair you sit on or a particularly ugly or awful chair in your office/home. I’d rather the picture be taken with a regular camera and NOT from a cell phone. It’ll be for a blog post I’m doing for Emeco. Your butt does not have to be included in the chair. Although if your butt is included I will not turn it away. I would never turn away free ass ha ha ha. “But,” I’d like to survey everyone’s chairs. My chair at work is, much like Goldilocks, too big and too hard. That might be the only time too big and too hard is a problem. INNUENDO! IN YOUR ENDO! Oh god how do I do it? A mystery. Anyway, yes, a picture of your chair please! You can email it to me at annie at annietown. My point is that every chair sucks. There is no such thing as “just right.” Goldilocks was stupid. YEAH YOU HEAR THAT GOLDILOCKS? YOU SUCK.

In other news, I have yet another song in my head. It’s a local Los Angeles/Orange County commercial for a car dealership:
Well, you won’t get a lemon!
(I would’ve got a lemon?!?)
At Toyota of Orange!

Angelenos will know it well. This commercial and the one with Cal Worthington and his dog Spot (which is NEVER EVER a dog, but like elephants and giraffes or whatever) are among my favorites. Also I like the Pete Ellis Dodge, Long Beach Freeway/Firestone Exit/Southgate commercial. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I love me some car jingles.

I also have “Build Me Up, Buttercup” stuck in my head. I’m a mess! A mess!

So I’ve had these eggs in my fridge for awhile, and I noticed that they expired yesterday. My friend was like, dude, just throw them away, but I felt bad. Because, you know, they are eggs. Chickens worked hard to give me these eggs. They said, hey, you, Annie, take my eggs. My unfertilized, unborn children. I buy the fancy, cage-free, organic eggs, but you know, an egg is still an egg. It’d be like a slap in the beak to throw them away, right? Like here, I knit you this sweater, and you are like oh yeah this sucks, I’m going to toss it because sweaters are for losers.

So I decided I would boil them. Hard-boiled eggs, or as some people call it “hard-cooked eggs,” which sounds funny to me. Cooking an egg isn’t hard. And like, you aren’t really cooking are you? You are boiling water. That’s not cooking, that’s boiling water. Anyway I do this so they’d keep. So I boil them all and then I realize that I actually do not like hard-boiled eggs. So there you go. I make egg salad, which I don’t particularly like, and then I eat an egg-salad sammich, which I don’t particularly like. And now I have leftover egg salad. Mayo-less. Because while I tolerate but kind of don’t like eggs, I really, really do not like mayo. So there. If you guys want some egg salad, I have, like, a lot. I would feed it to chickens if I could. I wonder if eggs taste like chicken to chickens.

Sometimes I have to force myself to eat. I think hey, it’s eating time, time to eat. And then I get sad because the absolute last thing I want to do is feed the facehole. So then I wander around the “nabe” thinking about fooding options and everything looks expensive, gross, or both. Then I’ll end up at Whole Foods, getting a sammich, feeling empty inside, but not account of the lack of foodstuffs in the belly. Then the sammich sits on my desk for a long time until it gets so gross there’s really no way I want to eat it.

But I do. Because if I don’t eat I become a monster.

So, what I’m trying to say here, is that life is really hard for me. OH DEAR GOD MY LIFE IS SO HORRIBLE. SAMMICH OR NO SAMMICH? WAAAHHH. Eating is so hard waahhhh who’s a big baby? waaahhh nobody wubs me, etc.

/end of whine