Category Archives: Humor

Two guys, a girl and not a DVD to be found

Posted on August 25, 2011 | Leave a comment

The life of a writer is tough. I mean, after so many months, you run out of movies and TV series on Netflix to distract you from the fact that you should actually be spending your time writing.

Which means you now actually have to write.

And no self-respecting writer actually wants to write.

Hell, most of us just do it because it’s easier than data-entry or flipping burgers.

So, we writers are endlessly looking for other ways to distract ourselves from creating the next Mediocre American Novel. And thanks to the whole 90’s nostalgia wave sweeping the country currently and my “never say die” attitude when it comes to procrastination, I have found a new way.

Why the hell can’t you find “Two Guys, A Girl and a Pizza Place” on DVD? Or Netflix, for that matter? Or, well, pretty much anywhere?

For those of you that don’t remember the show (or are too young to remember…which, if you are, get the hell off my blog, you make me feel old), “Two Guys, A Girl and A Pizza Place” (which was later changed to “Two Guys and a Girl”…because the TV execs apparently finally realized a TV show title should not resemble a haiku…in length or form) was a show that ran from 1998 to 2001 on ABC. From what my old ass remembers about it, it was a good show, not great, but highly entertaining.

But more IMPORTANTLY, it is the show where not one, but TWO of my imaginary husbands got their start. The sitcom featured both Ryan Reynolds and Nathan Fillion as main characters.

I mean, I looked everywhere for this show. To no avail. Even Amazon, which has a page for the “complete DVD set,” has the disclaimer, “when becomes available.” Apparently, whichever company owns the rights to it now doesn’t think it would sell well.

Even the Internet pirates let me down. The only place I could find episodes, besides a few 15 minute, low quality videos on YouTube, was some scary eastern European-ish (or possibly Martian, judging by the language) website, which had the first season, but no dice on the other three (which I’m not linking here for fear the TV gods will go on the war path and take it down).

Now, granted, a lot of my frustration stems from the fact I am of the Internet generation, where we literally can have everything at our fingertips. Any information, any image, any video. So the fact that I can’t have something makes me want to throw a Generation Y-sized tantrum.

And so, I say we Gen Yers and Xers no longer stand for this. We want the crappy, laugh-track sitcoms from our youth and we want them NOW. So let’s flood the Internet with our demand for more Berg! And Sharon! And that guy on the left that no one can ever remember the name of!

It is our instant-gratification, self-entitled RIGHT!

Plus, I think we can all agree the world needs even more scenes of a shirtless Ryan Reynolds.

P.S. Between obsessively trying to track down episodes, I did do SOME actual writing. So for you suckers hard-working people with actual jobs that want to waste even more time, you can check out my latest two posts for the Weekly Dig, where I bastardize the Bard’s work after seeing Shakespeare in the Park and get all gangster on a trolley. And, of course, my latest Advocate humor column, where I reveal my brilliant new plan to make new friends based solely on their pop culture preferences (you Next Gen Trekkers are in…Original Series? Hit the road, loser).

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Hair today, shaved tomorrow

Posted on August 3, 2011 | 3 comments

I know I’ve been writing about my dog a lot lately. And I’m sure it’s getting annoying.

But good news! I promise it will stop.

Right now.

Right now…

After this post…

WAIT! Wait, don’t leave! I promise this will be the last time but ifyouleaveyounowyou’llreallyregretitcausethispostisatleastmildlyamusing
andit’snotlikeyouhaveanythingbettertodoandohheydidyouhappentoseewhere
typingthewordsclosetogetherlikethismadeitspelloutthewordtitheh.

Anyway, as I was saying, I’m sure you guys are tired of hearing about my dog. But in my defense, writers tend to write about things they know. And since I now work from home, most of the things I know revolve around spending 10 hours a day stuck in the house alone with Buffy.

Ah, yes, the glamorous life of the freelance writer (I also now know 52 ways to make Ramen taste less sucky…The key? Drink heavily while cooking).

The other thing that happens when you spend this much time at home is that you notice just how truly dirty your house is. I mean, when you leave to go to a job every day, it’s easy to ignore the pile of dishes, the crumbs, the beer pyramid on the coffee table, the hobo who has taken up residence in the southwest corner of the living room. But when you can’t escape the filth, you’re forced to deal with it on a daily basis and…*SHUDDER*…clean. Like regularly. And not on my preferred former cleaning schedule of “I can’t take it anymore…where’s the mop? Sh*t! Do we have a mop?”.

Which, brings me back to my dog. With this new cleaning habit I have acquired, I also now notice just how much dog hair he sheds on a daily basis. Whereas before I was used to the random “dog fur tumbleweed” moseying through the house, it has now escalated to “Indy running away from the giant boulder” proportions.

There’s so much hair that I’m starting to suspect Buffy isn’t even really a dog, just some mutant strain of dog fur that once rolled through a puddle of nuclear waste, became self-aware and started to asexually reproduce.

It never used to be this bad. At first, I thought he was shedding so much just out of spite because I refuse to let him eat that uppity cat next door. But then I realized we now live in a place with seasons. Like, four of them. And four seasons means cold and hot. Which means pets gain and lose fur on a regular basis. Which means 94 percent of my life will henceforth be devoted to sweeping.

Not that I’m bitter.

Or anything.

I mean, it’s just EVERYWHERE! Every corner! Every crevice! It gets into the fridge! The A/C vents! The couch! And the last straw…my BOOZE!

Oh, and I’m pretty sure the majority of my major airways. Maybe even the minor ones.

It just floats through the air, with the greatest of ease, settling on everything like a 1930’s dust storm.

And I am at my wit’s end. Which is why, depending on just how many more vodka and cranberry juices I have tonight, Buffy will wake up tomorrow morning looking like this:

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Feeling hot, hot, hot…and semi-homicidal

Posted on July 26, 2011 | 6 comments

Full disclosure: I have never actually been to Vietnam nor fought in a war over there. So therefore, I can’t “technically” have a flashback to ‘Nam. But I’m pretty sure that during last week’s heat wave, I had the closest approximation a civilian can get to having that experience.

As the temps continued to climb into the 100’s here in New England, suddenly I was thrust back to the five years I spent living in South Texas. While I may have actually been walking down Newbury Street in Boston, in my mind’s eye I was back in that steamy (non)jungle, whimpering and rocking in the fetal position as my sobs mixed with my sweat.

For those of you who have never been to Texas, or anywhere in the South during the height of summer, there are a lot of ways you could describe the “seasons” down there:

Hot, Hotter, Really Hot and December.

Hot, Hotter, DAAAAAMN! and Satan’s Asshole.

Hot and Humid, Hot and Humid-er, Drought and Mosquito.

But personally, I think the best way to sum up the seasons down there in regards to my personality is: Homicidal and Slightly Less Homicidal.

(Of course, over time I got a little bit more used to the Texas heat. For instance, while my first summer was spent mostly lying down on the floor spread eagle by a fan in nothing but my skivvies, my last summer there was spent lying down on the floor spread eagle by a fan in my skivvies and a tank top).

Now, you may be thinking, “If Texas is so unbearably hot, how come so many people live there?” And the answer to that is very simple.

I am 100 percent a super-mega-ultra-wussy when it comes to heat. And the rest of the world is, in fact, not.

See, while normally I look like this:

…when I got hot, I turn into this:

To most people, being hot is a natural occurrence that happens from time to time and is no big deal. To me, however, being hot is akin to the end of the world and makes me want to stab little baby bunnies in the throat.

And the thing is, I don’t know why. I don’t know what it is about my chemical makeup that makes me turn into the Hulk (APRILL STAB BUNNY!) when it gets above 80 degrees. I see other people out and about, enjoying their days during the summer and not frothing at the mouth with one eye bulging out of its socket a’ la Mr. DeMartino from “Daria.” And I wish more than anything I could just deal with the sweating and the heat index and the steaminess rising from the concrete and the SWEATING AND THE STICKINESS AND THE SUNSHINE AND DID I MENTION THE SWEATING AND AHHHHHHH!!! DIE, BUNNY, DIE!

Yeah.

Anyhoo, the good news is the heat wave is finally over and Boston is back to seasonal temperatures…meaning I’m back to my old, non-bunny murdering, self. And I gotta tell you, it’s good to be back.

That is, until this weekend, when temps are supposed to climb back up into the 90’s…

Here bunny, bunny, bunny…

*No bunnies were harmed in the making of this blog post…too bad I can’t say the same for that raccoon.

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Boston: America’s Mean Girl

Posted on July 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

It’s not always easy coming up with new subjects to write about (it doesn’t help that my go-to cure for writer’s block is drinking beer).

But every once in awhile, something comes along that makes it just too easy. Like, say, two smartie pants from the University of Michigan doing a survey to find the top 50 meanest cities. And then giving the title of No. 1 big, bad meanie to my new city of Boston.

Considering gifts like this don’t happen very often (especially since Tom Cruise has apparently temporarily jumped off the crazy train) I jumped all over it in my latest Weekly Dig Post: The Trolley Trollop: Wicked Mean.

So read it. Or else I’ll send a bunch of Bostonians over to your house to give you a nuclear wedgie.

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The 10 Canine Commandments

Posted on July 18, 2011 | 3 comments

So, for the 11 of you that actually read my last post (oh yeah, I checked the site stats…I’ve officially doubled my audience, bitches), you know that me and my dog Buffy have been having some relationship problems as of late. It finally got so bad I had to lay down the law and give Buffy the 10 Canine Commandments.

Granted, I hated that I had to do it because I like to think of Buffy and I as partners-in-crime, but our house was dangerously close to turning into Sodom and Gomorrah (oh God, that poor, poor pillow…I don’t think it will ever recover) and something had to give. 

As such, I climbed high onto the couch and read Buffy the following:

I am the Human, your Owner, who brought you out of the land of Shelter. Thou shall have no other owners before me.

Thou shall not make any other Human your idol. Thou shall not shake or play dead for them, nor lick their nose in an affectionate manner; for I am a jealous Owner.

Thou shall not bark in vain, such as when thou hears a noise anywhere within the tri-state area. Thou shall bark when a serial killer named Meatclaw enters thy house.

Observe the ball and go fetch it, as the Human, your Owner, has commanded you. For six times straight you shall do this, resting on the seventh, for your Owner is now bored and no longer wants to play.

Honor your mother and father, (thy human version, not canine, because the latter didst totally abandonth you…and, let’s be honest, might have tried to eat you) so that your days may be long and not filled with newspaper swats.

Thou shalt not kill, unless it is a spider in the house, in which case, your Owner commands you to eat it, for spiders are an abomination in my eyes.

Thou shall not commit adultery unless thou has been neutered. Thou shall also not lay with a pillow or thy Owner’s friend’s leg as thou would with another dog, for that is an abomination in my eyes as well.

Thou shall not steal thy Owner’s underwear from the hamper and drag it out in front of company. Nor shall thou think it is a game when thy owner tries to retrieve the underwear and run around the house in a playful manner, underwear still firmly entrenched in your mouth.

Thou shalt not poop in thy neighbor’s yard.

Thou shalt not covet thy dog down the street’s bone, or squeaky toy, or dead bird, or non-neutered and spayed body parts.

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Reason No. 513 why I shouldn’t quit my day job

Posted on June 30, 2011 | 1 comment

Hey kids,

Wanna play a fun drinking game? Then listen to my dear friend Dennis interview me on his Blog Talk Radio show and take a shot every time you hear me say “um” or “like.”

I guarantee you’ll be wasted by minute seven.

And if you can’t manage to make it through my Mid-west, Valley Girl way of speaking, you should at least check out his other interviews with other writers and creative types. They’re fun and insightful and not chock full of awkward giggles.

Luckily, I am not a public speaker by trade, so you can check out the much less annoying edited and censored me via my latest post on DigBoston.com (edited by REAL professionals for your reading pleasure).

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I’m really starting to hate you, Mark Zuckerberg

Posted on June 21, 2011 | Leave a comment

Well, it finally came. My 30th birthday was Monday (meaning when people now ask me my age, my go-to response henceforth will be “vintage”…and for them to “stop being so damn nosy”).

It ended up being a really good birthday. Well, except for the morning, which was spent trying to clean up a VERY BAD dog who thought a wonderful gift to his owner would be rolling around in some other dog’s fresh poo (consequently, he is now on canine probation).

But the afternoon was spent with my friend Patrick, where we had a shamelessly nerdy time drinking at coffeehouses, perusing used book stores and discussing “Battlestar Galactica” over beer (or to sum up for fans of “The Office”: Books. Beers. Battlestar Galactica.). And the evening was spent drinking wine with my husband and watching a penis-shrinking chick flick.

And then, as night rolled around, I spent the next three hours on my laptop, frantically trying to respond to the 900 million or so posts I received on Facebook.

See, it used to be that on your birthday, you’d get a couple of cards in the mail, a phone call from your mom and maybe a good friend, and, if you were lucky, perhaps a free shot or two at the bar from some random, who deduced it was your birthday after you climbed on the bar and yelled “It’s my birthday, bitches!!!”

But now, everyone knows it’s your birthday. Facebook announces right there on your profile whose birthday it is that day, basically passive-aggressively telling you “don’t be a schmuck…wish this kid a happy birthday, huh?”

On one hand, this is great. Nothing makes you feel quite as special on your special day as having 1,034 of your closest virtual friends wishing you a happy birthday. This is especially true when you’re spending your birthday in a new city where you’ve only made a handful of real-life friends so far, like me.

But my problem is that I don’t know what is proper Facebook birthday etiquette. Do I have to respond to each post individually? Or can I just make a blanket “thanks, everyone” post? And if so, how many exclamation points after “everyone” do I use?

But if I do that and someone wrote something really funny, like, “in honor of your birthday, I’m going to bong a Natty Light”, is it ok to “Like” that post, or do I have to like all the posts then?

And what about the posts that go beyond the standard “happy birthday” message and include a follow up message? Or even a question, like “Happy birthday! Crows feet really suck, huh?” Is it rude not to write back?

Is a free e-card on the same level as an electronic gift card to Starbucks? And where do someecards fit in? What about the guy who made a hilarious JibJab video featuring me? Do I need to reciprocate? Not to mention, for everyone who wrote on my page, am I expected to write on their page for their birthday? What if I don’t know them? Or did know them at one point but totally forget who they are now? What about the ones that sent me an actual message, instead of a wall post? Does that deserve a response?

I JUST DON’T KNOW. AHHHHH!!!

Where’s Emily Facebook Post when you need her?

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