Breaking & Entering

Day drinking rarely leads to anything prosperous or productive. This day was to be no different. You know those days where you wake up, and the sun is shining, and you're like 'I would like to go out and have a drink today, enjoy the sunshine?' But then one drink leads into 1200? Derek and I had randomly hooked up through the years. We had been best friends for years and years, had even lived together for awhile, but never took that fateful leap into a relationship. As he described it best, "If I would drink and light myself on fire and then run down the street, I would look behind me, and there you would be, lighting yourself on fire and trying to catch up to me." We had been friends for years, since Enterprise, and I had known his roommate Mikey since college. We met up during the afternoon, and I caught him during a recent breakup from his girlfriend, a weak moment for him, and we hung out for the rest of the day. Some of his fraternity brothers had joined us at their house, and we left for 2nd Street. There was a point when I was at Legends, a local sports bar, where I had two glasses of house chardonnay in my hands, and someone had ordered me a third glass, where I looked at Derek like 'I can't do this any more hoss.' Derek and Mikey took me outside and got a cab for the 1/8 block to my house (I was that bad that I couldn't even walk. Someone called my name from down the street. To this day I still don't know who it was, but Mikey shoved my head into the cab, and we went to my apartment). When the cab dropped us off, I told Derek and Mikey that all they had to do was pop the screen to my window off. I had done it a million times before. I often left my windows open for this reason. So Mikey popped off the window screen, and Derek jumped in...and then a woman screamed into the darkness. The details are fuzzy, but this is what Derek and Mikey rehashed to me: we broke into the wrong apartment (they all look alike in my defense). The lady turned on the lights, told Derek that she had kids sleeping in the other room and asked what he was doing in her apartment, and then opened the door to find Mikey holding her screen window and me passed out in her bushes. I know that not all stories can be as whimsical and dreamlike as that, but if we learned anything from this story it is that you should sleep with your windows closed.

Amber Alert 90210 style

It's not every day that you meet a 24 year old...that wants to date you...while you are 35 and on the brink of having non-child producing eggs. I do stand-up comedy intermittently, and one of the times that I went to the Gaslamp in Long Beach to do a show, I met little Timmy Appelbaum. He's a huge talent, and I hope that he gets very big. In more ways than one. He's only 5'6 and has the appetite of an Olsen. However, he is very funny and charming and very very 24. When I first met him, he was drinking a Bud Light, and we told funny stories back and forth. We were waiting for our show to go on. He was to go on  first, the bullet, and I was to be #6 out of 9. He had a very funny set, and I rambled through mine. Not that mine was bad, but in all of the hype and adrenaline, you don't really remember what you said. At least that has been my experience. So we exchanged numbers at the end of the show, and he ended up coming down that weekend for the Grand Prix. Apparently he was in a car accident the Friday night before he was supposed to come down to Long Beach, but he was gentleman enough to take the Metro (aka public transportation which deserves a hand job at the very least considering that it was public transportation). Our day went smoothly and we ended up making out after a sexually arousing game of shuffleboard at Acapulco Inn, but the day ended with me insisting on garlic knots and pizza, and falling down the entire 1/4 mile length of 2nd Street on my way to get home. We did not end up having sex, but as I am true to form, I woke up with different pants on but the complete top and hat I was wearing the day before. As he is the only white person I know that lives in Korea town, I said that I would take him home on my way to the Staples Center the next day for the Lakers game. Our ride home was an interesting one. He told me that he was going to move to Washington DC, and when I asked why, assuming that it was for a work promotion or opportunity, he said it was just because. Ahh, that's right. You are 24. That's what you do when you are 24. You move places just because. He said that these plans were probably on hold since the money that he had saved up at Chili's as a waiter was just enough to tide him over on people's couches until he made it big, but if not, then he would have to go to law school. However he had not told his friends that he was not moving, so when his friends texted him that they wanted to take him to lunch before he left, he did not defer, preferring the free lunch before he left. He texted one of his friends, saying 'do you want to rap?' His friend answered 'rape?' He said 'no, like the black people do.' His friend wrote 'Either way.' Again, the 24 year old mind works in mysterious ways. The entire time that I was driving him back home, I kept peeking out my windshield at the lit up traffic signs on the 405, praying that there would not be an Amber Alert for a gray Toyota Matrix as I drove him home. As I dropped him off and we said our good-byes, I leaned  forward to hug him and swore I still smelled the baby powdered head that are often associated with newborn infants.

Training Day

It always makes me laugh when black people have conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories. I remember in college, let's call it Fall 1996, that Tupac died. I was talking to my suitemate Quincy, obviously African American as I know no white people with that name, and when I brought up Tupac's murder he was like 'you don't believe that Tupac is really dead do you?' I need to paint a visual right now because it is imperative to this story. I had literally just moved to Long Beach from a small farm town in Central Illinois three weeks earlier.
"Um, yes. Yes, I do think he is. It's all over the news," was my answer.
He looked at me like I was a white girl from the Midwest wearing pig tails and overalls...which I was. I might have only had one overall strapped over my shoulder at the time in a valiant effort to be cool.
Fast forward 15 years later to a random conversation that I was having with a black friend of a friend about Tookie Williams, one of the Crip gang members who was convicted of shooting a convenience store employee, and sentenced to the death penalty. When we talked about the murder Tookie was convicted of, this guy was like 'do you realize that Tookie was convicted of crimes that others committed? Do you really think that he killed that convenience store worker?'
"Um, yes, yes I do," I said.
I can't help but imagine this paradise where Tookie and Tupac are hanging out with Harriett Tubman in the underground until...what, I'm not sure. It's just a funny visual.

The shot

I had not seen Branden since college, like 3 years ago. Time had passed, and memories and hairlines had faded. But I always remembered Branden as the nice Asian guy from the Sigma Chi fraternity that was super sweet. And not that he was not now, but let me set the scene. It was a Saturday night, and Branden and I, who had recently rekindled through Facebook, met up at Dogz. Btw, I thought Dogz would be douchy, but it is the coolest most chill bar on 2nd St. Long Beach. Anyway, they have this shot that is awful, but you win a hat if you take it. It is Everclear, Bloody Mary mix, mustard, and the tip, just the tip, of a hot dog. It is like a right of passage, other than wearing an RVCA shirt, into Long Beach cool culture.
I ask Branden if he would like a shot, but he declines. I am not one to push the issue as I do not want to be held accountable for anyone's actions, let alone my own. He still drinks beer the way Paris Hilton devours camera time every time she sees TMZ, but I thought that it would be fun to end our night at Crow's. For those who aren't acquainted with Crow's, just know that this is the place where you should end your night. I have kissed both a midget and a friend's dad there. I hope that I don't have to explain myself any further, and you're getting the picture of what kind of place this is. Either way, Branden drives me the half mile down to Crow's, and in that time, he tells me that the reason he did not take the shot is that he has had two DUI's. I wasn't sure if it was inappropriate to ask him to pull over so that I could walk the last 2 blocks to Crow's or not, but I did double check to make sure that my seatbelt was fastened. Does the first time you're taken to the clink really not deter one from future episodes of drinking and driving?

Cocoon

Since my patience is thinner than a piece of sashimi sushi, I may have even less patience for the elderly than I do babies. You get why a baby shits their pants, but you have to question if an adult is merely doing it out of spite. When I lived in Florida, I definitely felt like my road rage was much worse there than it was in California. In California, everyone is in a hurry and likes to fulfill their egos by weaving in and out of traffic in a Convertible Porsche and honking their horn...this is similar to the fulfillment a 4'9" gent with Spider sunglasses gets when driving his Ford F-250 in the Inland Empire.
I recently ran a 5K that I swore I was in shape for. This bout of smugness resulted in me drinking bottomless mimosas the entire afternoon before, which then led me to waking up in my bikini with a wicked smoker's cough and yesterday's makeup. I finished the race in 39:30 which I was sadly very proud of at the time. I usually have small goals when running 5K's, like beating the women pushing strollers and the blind, but this day I merely just wanted to finish the race. The warm Southern California sun was beaming bright by 9am in early March, and I was sweating out champagne and orange juice like it was my job. Our friend Juleen was way ahead, so Denise and I ran/walked together. I hate to add this to the story but I'm 3 house chardonnays in as I write this so what the hell. Denise may or may not have been suffering from walking pneumonia during the race, and she still waited for me to catch up to her. We decided to use an elderly I assumed to be 80+ year man as a marker...he was the one to beat. His apparent afflictions ran the gammet from scoliosis to camel toe, but he ran undeterred the entire time, and ended up smoking us. I'm not sure that there is a moral or a punchline to this story as much as it was just funny.

I was recently told that I bond with kids because I am a kid. First of all, I do the opposite of bond with kids. In fact, I don't like them as a general rule. They need too many things like clothes, food, books, medicine, shelter and unconditional love. If it came down to buying diapers or going to a White Sale at Nordstrom's, a nice pair of Jimmy Choo's will win every time (the kid can air dry).
Second of all, I am only a kid if kids like to drink house wines and smoke Marlboro Lights. Please, I grew up in Illinois, not Wisconsin.
**Disclaimer: you will only possibly understand this post if you were raised in the Heartland :)

Fluffy

I am no fitness expert as my body fat percentage is probably pretty close to my age (mid-thirties). However, the fitness commercials that they show at the gym are funnier than watching Step-Brothers. The funniest one I have seen to date is the one I saw last week. A girl whose body type I would affectionately describe as fluffy literally did one sit-up and then pounded her fists on the ground, fed up that the feeble amount of exertion she put into her workout was miraculously not working.
Listen, I am fully aware that my strict diet of taquitos and chardonnay is not doing me any favors. I just think that fitness videos should be more realistic. Especially the ones that they show in gyms. Just sayin'.