family | Annietown

Archive: family

I have clean underwear now but I am not clean.

So they “found” my luggage and delivered it to me. They did not know what happened. They fly to only three cities, you’d think they’d know what was up. They are sorry, but not sorry enough if you ask me. They delivered it. It was in one whole piece and not several pieces as I had anticipated. Christmas was not ruined. Not yet anyway.

Now I think, hey I have clothes! I have my gifts! I shall take a shower. A glorious shower. I shall wear new clothes. It will be amazing. Oh, wait, what’s this? My parents haven’t had HOT WATER in two days?????? Dude. Even my crappy compartment in New York has hot water (most of the time). An outrage! So now I must drive to my friend’s house which is 40 minutes away because my parents moved out of the Valley, but in the opposite direction from where all the “action” is. This is because my parents do not like “action.” They see “action” and they think, you know what? I will avoid it. I will go way over here. But then everyday I will drive to the “action” and it will be a very far drive. It is better this way.

I’m sorry for my odor everyone. It’s not my fault. I swear. When the situation allows it, I pay very close attention to personal hygiene. So now I recommend that everyone step back a few feet from me. Or stop breathing. Either one is fine.

Posted December 21st, 2007 in family, not raging | 8 Comments »

I do not have clean underwear.

The best part about going to Los Angeles is sitting next to an eight-year-old beastchild who cries and whines and bellyaches because she wants to watch a Disney princess movie and then for some reason, she throws up on her mother and the stench overwhelms the entire cabin. OK no, you’re right. That’s not the best part. The best part is sitting next to a couple who decides to fight for the first half of the trip and then make out the second half, but wait, they are sitting behind the boyfriend’s parents! What?!? Who does that? No wait, alright, alright, I’m lying. That is not the best part either. The actual real best part about going to Los Angeles is landing at LAX and waiting over an hour at the “baggage carousel” which is, interestingly enough, not as festive as a carousel but twice as annoying. The even bester part is that when the bags finally start coming down this baggage poop chute contraption, you realize they are totally drenched from the rain. But wait, wait, that’s not really the best part. This is the best part:

People tell you–unapologetically–that your luggage has gone missing. They just don’t know where it is, they’re sorry. The good news is that they will write a claim on your behalf. Oh how lucky I am. What does the bag look like? I say it’s green. They show me a profile sheet of different bags of different styles. Kind of like when people go to the police station and you flip through books that have pictures of criminals, except instead of criminals there are bags with labels like “soft-material, upright, with wheels and extending handle.” So now there is a claim on my behalf! 1 bag, style: 22, color: GN. I would rather write a claim on my own behalf, to be honest. After all, I am a writer. I can write my own claims, thank you. If you start writing for me, then I will be out of a job. So, then, my claim:

CLAIM: YOU HAVE LOST MY BAG. YOU HAVE NOT ONLY RUINED MY CHRISTMAS, YOU HAVE RUINED EVERYONE ELSE’S CHRISTMAS BECAUSE THEIR GIFTS ARE INSIDE THAT BAG. YOU KNOW, THE ONE THAT “HAS GONE MISSING.” MY CLAIM IS THAT YOU ARE INCOMPETENT.

There was another woman too, whose bag had also “gone missing.” She was on her way back from Australia. She was very tired. She started to cry. Then she started to get angry. Then she started to cry. I was exhausted just listening to her.

Having said all this, I am in Los Angeles. Hello, there. Also, I do not have clean underwear and my hair smells like vomit. The time is 5:17 am New York time, which I am currently on, despite the fact that I am in Los Angeles. I am wearing random things that belong to my mother, including her underwear. It is new underwear, fresh from a little tube, but still, it is strange to be wearing my mother’s underwear. Plus, it is big. Because she’s bigger. My mother laughed at me. Thanks, Mom. Why don’t you just kick me in the throat while I’m down? It’ll make the lack of luggage go down much easier.

I am going to go to bed now in order to wake up from this horrible nightmare. Maybe tomorrow I will have luggage and my friends and family members will have gifts. Or maybe not. If that is the case, I shall continue to sleep.

Posted December 19th, 2007 in family, not raging | 7 Comments »

Fear and Loathing in Los Angeles

Tomorrow I return to the greater Los Angeles area (ahem, the Valley) to visit my family. I have decided to do things a little differently this year, as an experiment. Normally I get to L.A. on Christmas because we don’t celebrate it because my parents rather spend all day at church with their friends than spend it at home all together, and I don’t blame them since I much rather spend Christmas with my friends (though not at church), so it kind of works out for everyone involved. Then I stay until New Year’s which is a big holiday for our family, where we actually spend time together and fight and the cousins have to sit around listening to our relatives complain that we are horrible people for not breeding. OH MY GOD WE ARE NOT BREEDING. But this year I’ve decided that I’d like to spend New Year’s in New York because I don’t think I’ve ever done that before, and even though New Year’s is my least favorite holiday, it might actually be my favorite if I spend it with people I actually care about and not my family. Ha ha ha. NO really. So I’m going to L.A. now and do the pre-holiday warm-up with my family. It is good to change it up. Maybe. The whole thing can suck, I have no idea. Holidays make people crazy. Like I said, it is an experiment. Experiments can go horribly wrong and sometimes you end up burning your eyebrows off, just saying. Then the stench of burned hair kind of follows you around. Again, just saying.

Also: darts. I really suck at them. You’re throwing sharp objects at something. This should really be my forte. But no. I suck.

Also: The “this is not part of your imagination” that I heard was actually a COMMERCIAL for a stupid A&E show and now I feel really violated. Why don’t they just break into my apartment and rearrange my furniture and then take a photo of themselves with my toothbrush up their bums? Just saying.

Also: My right eye is crying but my left eye is not. My left eye thinks my right eye is a big baby. My left eye wants to punch the right eye to make it stop crying but knows it will only make it worse. My right eye isn’t really crying, it just has something stuck in it. My left eye is calling bullshit on the right eye. I mean, what a lame excuse. Suurreee. My right eye is indignant, no really, something’s stuck in it. My left eye thinks it could be the ‘very special episode’ of Friends that the left eye saw recently. My right eye is pissed because it really hates that show and it’s not its fault there’s a writer’s strike going on and Daily Show and Colbert Report are not running new episodes. Besides, my right eye much prefers watching The Wire and has Netflixed season 4. The left eye is tired of hearing the right eye’s excuses. The left eye is walking out on the right eye, which now makes the right eye cry for real. You can’t leave me, says the right eye. The left eye says, oh yeah? Watch me.

Posted December 17th, 2007 in family | 7 Comments »

Fa la la la la the finger

OK. Does anyone actually like Christmas music? If so, please identify yourself so I can punch you in the throat and call you a liar. NO ONE likes Christmas music. Jesus doesn’t even like Christmas music and half that crap is about him. So, why are people playing it? Sometimes I want to break down in the store and just cry and then have a throwdown with the first “customer service representative” I see. Christmas shopping is already stressful enough, it’s like they are actually trying to kill me. Santa, why are you trying to kill me? I don’t know which is the worst Christmas song. It might be the “Twelve Days of Christmas” song because it’s about twelve days long. Like, why not just sing “99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall”? Or it might be “We wish you a Merry Christmas” because the song is like 5 minutes long but there are only 10 words. The word to minute ratio is very, very bad.

That reminds me of how my mother called me “Santa Claus maid” when she in fact meant to call me an elf. This is because I am on the petite side of the human scale. I’d be huge for a dog, mind you, but for a human, I am kind of small. But not, like, that small. But you know what I mean. The point is this: if you have read Happy Birthday or Whatever, you already know this. Sometimes I find myself saying things I wrote in the book and people call me on it. Like, yeah Annie, I read it, duh. It’s particularly bad with my close friends because they’ve heard it a million times, and then read it, and then now they have to hear it again. I’m surprised I have any friends at all, really. So then I get embarrassed and it kind of puts a damper on the conversation and I have to be like oh sorry, I forgot, say, that’s a nice shirt you got on.

Posted December 3rd, 2007 in family, Happy Birthday or Whatever | 9 Comments »

Pimp My Chair

With the help of an anonymous architect, I have tricked out my chair. It is so tight and so pimp that every chair within a 300 mile radius is weeping from jealousy. They look at themselves and they wonder, why, baby Jesus, why can’t I be pimp? Am I forever damned to this life of mediocrity? Is there any hope?

Oh, but there is.

I have posted directions on how to turn your stupid, non-pimp, and non-tight chair into the Rick James of chairs (crack pipe not included). You can read about it on the Emeco blog, over here. But heed this warning: If you cannot handle the pimp, you should not even bother looking. I mean it. This chair is only for people who understand the power of pimp and can use it for good and not evil. Good meaning pimping and hustling. Evil meaning everything else.

And in other news: Last Known Settlers, my rock n’ roll band, has put up musical tunes for your enjoyment. You can check it out on MySpace because we don’t actually have a “real” website and Nathan would totally freak out right now if he knew, but shh don’t tell him. It’s our little secret. If you see Nathan please do not mention this to him.

I am going to Los Angeles in a few weeks to visit the family, i.e. get annoyed. I called my mother on Thanksgiving and told her I was going to spend it with a big group of friends, and she asked “Everyone you friend marry? Or are they….SINGLE?” Gasp! Choke! Sputter!

OH GOD NO NOT SINGLE PEOPLE!

Anyway I told her that we were all single and old and unhappy and we’d all sit around the table wiping our tears, and then after pumpkin pie the girls would have a contest to see whose ovaries were more barren. Clearly I’d be the winner. My womb looks just like the Gobi Desert, with camels and everything. She did not think this was funny. I kind of thought it was funny though. But I am one of those people who laughs really really hard at their own jokes. I am my own best friend.

But here is a fact: 41% of Americans 18 and older are unmarried/single.

This is a real fact. Not one of the fake ones you see on TV. Anyway it is almost like 90 million people. So for everyone out there who has to deal with a parent complaining about your barren womb stuffed with camels and scorpions and roving bands of nomads, fear not, my friend. You are in good company.

Posted November 27th, 2007 in design, family, music | 11 Comments »

In Los Angeles

I’m in Los Angeles now, for an education conference. I got here a few days before it started so I could visit my parents and why I do shit like this I do not understand. It’s like I could’ve just slipped into town quietly, gone to the conference for three days, and then go back to New York–simple, clean, no headaches, good times for all. But I decided no, no, better visit the parents and harsh my mellow. Anyway I get to their house and there’s a sticky on the door: “Gone to San Jose. – Dad.”

“He go San Jose?”
“I guess so. How come you didn’t know about it?”
“How come YOU not know?”
“Because I don’t live here. But you’re his wife.”
“So, you his daughter.”
“But you’ve known him longer than I have.”
“But you know him you whole life. I only know maybe half my life.”
“That’s still longer than me.”
“You relate more to him.”
“Dude, no one relates to him. He’s crazy.”
“No, I mean you relate. You his daughter. You have same blood. That mean you know him more.”
“That has nothing to do with it. You’re crazy.”
“See? You just like Daddy.”

Last night I went to the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre and watched their MySpace show, where they bring up an audience member and show and discuss their MySpace profile and then do sketches based on it. Anyway I volunteered myself and I kind of realized while being up there that my MySpace profile is really boring and it doesn’t play music or blink or bounce or flash or scroll and there are no photos of me being “like, totally wasted.” Go look at it and fall asleep. I was kind of embarrassed about how absurdly lame it was and also because I have like 116 friends but they are book stores and inanimate objects. And I didn’t even friend them. I gave Doretta my password so she could just manage my MySpace for me. How sad is that? Plus two of the profiles belong to Micah. So basically I have like three friends. Anyway they did this one sketch where an author met an art director at HarperCollins for a book cover meeting in which they revealed a cover of a Leprechaun drinking whiskey while hitting someone with a stick. I was like SHIT THAT IS BRILLIANT.

Posted March 15th, 2007 in family, not raging | 1 Comment »