Category Archives: Pop Culture

The Church of Latte(r)-Spiced Pumpkins

Posted on September 9, 2015 | 4 comments

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Posted in Food, Humor, Pop Culture

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My dad is in the cheese business

Posted on September 7, 2015 | 7 comments

There I was. Just minding my own business. Looking like a hungover Cruella de Vil with my gallon-sized black coffee and my big dark sunglasses and my resting bitch face. Sitting at an outdoor table quietly attempting to write a beautiful and heartfelt rant on why I thought Blake Lively was the devil.

When suddenly, the three of them plopped down at the next table. A blur of bobbing, shiny ponytails and leggings.

And with a shudder of horror, I realized Yoga in the Park had just let out and my personal space was being invaded by the Millennial Yoga Girls.

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Never one much for movement if not strictly necessary, I decided to hold my ground and keep typing away, wracking my brain to come up with synonyms for the phrase “just the worst” to describe ‘ol Blakey Poo. But professional scribe though I am (with the tiny, tiny paycheck to prove it), I couldn’t help but be distracted by their conversation.

“Like, I’m not impressed, you know?”

“Yeah, like, she would say ‘get on all fours’ and then tell us to sit up and I was, like, wait, what?”

“Yeah, she was obviously a new instructor. Like, watching YouTube yoga videos doesn’t make you a professional, Jessslyn.”

“Oh my god, that’s so funny.”

I was getting ready to get up and leave before my brain committed suicide when I overheard the one with the shiniest, most bobbing-est ponytail say “My dad is in the cheese business.”

A unique enough sentence in its own right, sure. But it was the fact that she trailed off after saying it. And just left it at that. Like her dad being in the cheese business was self-explanatory.

Granted, I missed the beginning of the conversation. But what conversation topic can be reasonably concluded by the statement “my dad is in the cheese business”? It was like that old Lewis Black joke about “if it wasn’t for my horse, I wouldn’t have spent that year in college.” Her sentence just kept rattling around in my brain.

So, I reluctantly decided to stay and eavesdrop. For, you know, professional reasons. Who knew? There might be a comedic goldmine here to exploit. At the very least, I figured, I could live tweet their conversation since they pretty much spoke in audible tweets anyway and maybe get a few retweets by people who are even older and even more bitter than I am that the world around them is changing without their consent.

“Yeah, I just spent, like, half my paycheck buying a bunch of [unpronounceable hipster food].”

“Oh, did you get it at Whole Foods?”

“Yeah. I mean, you know me. I like to buy local whenever possible but, like, Whole Foods is Whole Foods…you know?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Oh my god, you guys are so funny.”

My fingers were practically smoking across the keyboard. I knew it was wrong. You shouldn’t make fun of the young folk just because you’re old now and grew up in a different generation. But I just couldn’t help myself.

“It’s like I told him, ‘Joshua, you can’t, like, wash those jeans. When they get dirty, you put them in the freezer to kill the bacteria.’ Everyone knows that.”

“Ew. He washes his jeans? What year is this? 2009?”

“Oh my god, that’s so funny.”

During a lull in the conversation, when they were all taking the mandatory post-yoga, pre-coconut water refresher selfie, I Googled “annoying Millennials” to help pad whatever snarky blog/column/essay these notes would turn into when I read something that stopped me in my tracks. According to the Pew Research Center, the Millennials are considered anyone born after 1980.

Which meant…

No…

It couldn’t be…

But it was…

I was one of them.

But, but, but…

I’ve spent my whole life associating myself with Generation X. To this day I still love to rock purple lipstick and would slap my own mother if it meant I could get my hands on a bottle of old-school Chanel Vamp nail polish. I worship Nirvana and David Foster Wallace. Winona Ryder in “Reality Bites” is my spirit animal. Hell, I still consider the word “slacker” a compliment.

And now those bastards at the Pew Research Center have made me one of the oldest millennials instead of one of the youngest Gen-Xers. And no one wants to be the oldest of their generation. Because now instead of having the excuse “I was born in a different time, kid,” I’m just the pathetic, out-of-touch grandma that gets Grindr and Tinder confused.

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My whole sense of self has been shaken. If I’m not a Gen-Xer, then just what the hell am I? Besides the woman now frantically texting all her younger friends “What is Snapchat? And how is it different from Instagram?”

But worst of all is the realization that I’ve been cut off from my own people all these years while I was busy shopping for second-hand flannel shirts. I know nothing about us, other than the snarky columns I’ve read from bitter legitimate Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers.

Guess I’ll just have to face it. I am a woman with one foot in each generation. Rendering me essentially generationless.

Still, having never been one to back down from adversity, I plan to embrace my new Millennial status with gusto.

Now, does anyone know where I can buy coconut water and if it pairs well with copious amounts of vodka?

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Posted in Humor, Pop Culture, Women, Writing

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Press one for English & two for the self-destruct button

Posted on August 9, 2015 | 5 comments

I don’t know if you guys have been keeping up with the news lately, but according to the headlines I’ve been skimming on Twitter, robots are poised to take over all our jobs. Or something like that. I never actually click on the links because as the mother of a toddler, all I really have time to read are listicles about how to lose 10 pounds in 10 days.

(Note to the editors of Huffington Post: If you really want to keep people informed, you should start combining the relevant news of the day with the fluff. For instance, I would totally read a story with the headline “Scientists have finally created artificial intelligence and also, here are 8 fruits with anti-aging properties”).

It sounds scary, I know. But I, for one, am not worried about the day the robots inevitably take over the world because as it turns out, they are just as incompetent as us humans. I know this because I just spent the last hour sparring with a completely incompetent automated menu robot for the electric company.

And, contrary to popular belief, it’s actually incompetence that is the real job generator in this country.

For example, let’s say you work at a company with the incredibly creative name of Company Inc. Your boss’s boss, Pete, hired your boss, Tim, because they “know” each other through networking (networking, of course, being a fancy word for how dumb people keep getting promoted). Now Tim is utterly incompetent. But Pete can’t just fire Tim. Their kids go to the same tennis camp, for crying out loud. So, to pick up the slack caused by Tim’s incompetence, Pete hires Carol, who happens to be the wife of his golf buddy, Tad, for a brand new position with a fancy title like “associate manager of operations” that sort of indicates she’s also your boss but not really but kind of but not really but it doesn’t really matter because it doesn’t stop her from acting like she’s your boss anyway.

Carol is also incompetent. Sales go down. Your workload doubles because no one besides you knows how things work.

Starting to feel the heat from his bosses, Pete decides the best move is to fire Tim and Carol and promote you.

Ha! Kidding. That would actually make sense.

No, Pete decides to hire a 21-year-old “social media liaison” named Kimi because obviously the problem is brand recognition. Kimi is also your boss. You think. It was never really made clear. But she sure as hell acts like your boss during her bi-weekly presentations on dumb crap like “Utilizing Twitter Hashtags For Maximum Penetration Into Untapped Markets.”

Meanwhile, Tim gets a huge bonus for bringing his frat brother, Winston, on board to be the new assistant manager of associate operations. Winston is also your boss, or at least that’s the way it comes off when he informs you that you will be taking a retroactive pay cut because times are tight in the company right now and there is simply no more room in the budget. The good news, however, is that they are making you a part-time employee so they can take you off the company’s insurance plan, meaning you’ll have more time to spend with your children.

So, obviously, as you can see, there is a direct correlation between incompetence and job creation. You now have four direct bosses. Four people who had jobs created specifically for them because the person hired before them sucked so hard.

America!

Anyway, what was my point? Oh yeah, I was trying to pay my electricity bill and there was a glitch on their website and so I had to deal with one of those automated menu robots on the phone and it was horrible and blah blah blah.

But the point is, the robot was just as incompetent as any human. It couldn’t help me. And 67 minutes later, when I finally got a human on the line, they were able to resolve the issue thoroughly and efficiently.

Ha! Kidding again!

No, Lydia was unfortunately unable to help me, so transferred me to her manager Raj, who was unable to help me, who transferred me to his manager, a fast-talking, angry woman whose name was something like Pffffftboobra (or so it sounded when she shouted it at me) and so on and so on.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I’m not worried about robots taking over all our jobs. Because no matter how sophisticated we make the robots, they’re still being built by humans who have no less than four idiot bosses breathing down their necks. Meaning the robots will be deeply flawed because Tim, Carol, Kimi and Winston will continually come up with unnecessary “improvements” for you to add to the system just so it looks like they actually do something all day.

Which means the customer will always eventually need to talk to a human.

Which is really for the best considering only a human brain can truly appreciate the vulgar and curse word ladled rant from an exhausted mom of a 16-month-old (who is screaming in the background) about how all she wants to do IS PAY HER FRACKING BILL, YOU $#&^ing MORONIC &@!%ing DILLHOLES.

 

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Posted in Humor, Parenting, Pop Culture

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How it feels when you get carded in your 30s…

Posted on July 22, 2015 | 2 comments

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Posted in Humor, Pop Culture

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I’m one of them

Posted on September 28, 2014 | 2 comments

I don’t know who she is. I don’t know her name or what she looks like. All I know is that she ruined everything. 

She just couldn’t keep her mouth shut. Just had to declare it from every virtual rooftop she had downloaded on her phone. And then all the others joined in. And now, they are the laughingstock of the Internet. 

It didn’t have to be this way. There was no need to go public with how basic they were. No one had to know how they bought a pumpkin spice latte when it was still 85 degrees. No one had to be privy to their almost slavish devotion to leggings paired with boots. Let alone their adoration for faux fur-lined vests. 

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Which is why if I ever find out who the first woman was to openly declare how much she loves fall, I’m going to strangle her with my infinity scarf. 

Why do I care so much, you ask? Because…(*whispers*) I’m one of them. 

And now, thanks to one million Instagram accounts overloaded with photos of ladies holding up a red leaf to their eye while they coyly smile at the camera (#snuggleweather), the world knows we all exist. And just how ridiculous we are. 

And they hate us. 

Oh sure, you could argue (and you would, in fact, be correct in arguing this) that I’m part of the problem. That just because I try to keep my basic-ness a secret doesn’t make me any better than the rest. But I didn’t ask to be this way.

Do you think this Aprill spelled with two L’s wants to be lumped in with all the Britanni’s spelled with an “i” and Megyn’s spelled with a “y”? That I want to wear vintage T-shirts featuring movies I’ve never seen or bands I’ve never listened to underneath my cozy knee-length cardigan (a knee-length cardigan that is just one of the 67 in my collection)? 

Do you think I want to race to my closet as soon as September 1st arrives and pull out my favorite furry slippers while wrapping both of my hands around a mug of green tea and sighing contentedly while I look out a window? Or that I want to curl up with a good book and read all day as soon as the temperature drops below 70 (my moleskin notebook and fancy pen placed just so beside me)? That I want to waste time scouring Pinterest for decorating ideas before realizing I suck at decorating and end up just shoving some sunflowers into a pumpkin? 

Do you think I want to be the person who only eats gourd-flavored baked goods for three months straight? Or that I want to be the person who snort lines of cinnamon like it’s cocaine while chugging apple cider martinis?

No. I don’t. I don’t want to be a part of this cliche. But here I am, frolicking in the pumpkin patch with the rest of my basic brethren. 

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I wasn’t raised this way. I was raised in a home where hoodies were merely something you threw on when it got cold. Where coffee was something you drank black. Where fall was simply just another season. My mom didn’t own Ugg boots or oversized, non-prescription, black frame glasses. No one in my family drank beer that was any flavor other than beer. The only candles that burned inside our house were birthday candles.

As a young girl growing up in the ‘90’s, wearing my torn flannel shirt and purple lipstick with my Nirvana CD blasting from my gigantic boombox, I never dreamed that I’d turn into that grown woman who lights 43 pumpkin-scented candles and asks her husband to cuddle on the couch in our Halloween jammies while we watch a “Gilmore Girls” marathon. In fact, I’m pretty sure that young girl would kick my ass with her Doc Marten boots if she knew what I became. 

But I can’t help myself. I don’t know if it’s nature or nurture. If I was brainwashed by the powerful pumpkin farmer lobby in Washington or if Eve herself made an apple-scented candle with the forbidden fruit and then knitted a cozy yet stylish hat out of fig leaves. All I know is that, as much as I try to fight it, I love all this fall crap. And now, courtesy of Hayleigh and Bayleigh and Jyssycah, I am the butt of several thousand Internet jokes.

So, thanks a lot, ladies. You just couldn’t keep quiet, could you? Couldn’t just let us all continue to worship this time of year secretly in the privacy of our own homes. Had to blast it out there, with no thought of all the shrapnel that would rain down on the rest of us.  

I swear, I’d throw this venti Salted Caramel Mocha latte in all your faces…

…if only it didn’t taste so good.

…(Sip)…

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Posted in Humor, nature, Pop Culture, Women

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Catwoman loves my hair

Posted on September 17, 2014 | 5 comments

You know that old saying, “This is why we can’t have nice things”? Well, my husband and I are the poster children for the phrase “This is why we can’t do nice things.”

We are, to put it nicely, casual people. We’re the Gap of couples. The Olive Garden of lovers. The Netflix of man and wife.

Not that there’s anything wrong with this. In fact, we prefer it this way. There is no shame in our footie pajama Saturday night game. But it does make for several rather interesting “fish out of water” tales from time to time.

For instance, take our recent trip to New York City. See, even typing that previous sentence felt weird. We’re not the kind of people who say “our recent trip to New York City.” We’re the kind of people who say “our recent trip to Target.”

My husband, however, causal though he is, happens to be a very talented artist and designer. On a lark, he had entered into a poster contest for the new FOX show “Gotham” and ended up winning, scoring us a free mini-vacation and tickets to the New York premiere of the show.

And it was going to be fancy. Not fancy-fancy, but fancy enough that Ryan had to borrow a suit and I spent hours scouring my closet, trying on different things and asking him things like “would it be inappropriate to wear a dress to the premiere that has a curse word on it?” Not to mention the fancy driver who was going to pick us up from the airport in his fancy car and the fancy Manhattan hotel with its fancy shower that didn’t have any major clogs (like SOME showers I know) we would be staying in.

All this for two people who don’t know how to tip a doorman or a driver without looking like huge dorks. (In fact, my husband’s preferred method is to just loudly state “Here.” while awkwardly stuffing a fistful of cash into their unsuspecting hands).

Luckily, we clean up pretty good when absolutely forced to, so we made it to the “Gotham” premiere without embarrassing ourselves too horribly. I even made it up the five flights of stairs to the post-premiere party in five-inch heels without stopping halfway through (just lying breathless on a step, telling people to “just leave me here, go on without me, remember me when I’m gone”) like I really, REALLY wanted to.

Now, as far as I can tell, the main goal of a movie or TV premiere party is to skulk around the room until you weasel your way close enough to one of the stars to ask them to take a photo with you. Unfortunately, Ryan and I are those people who like to think we’re above having our photos taken with celebrities. That’s what we tell ourselves, at least. Yeah, we’re way too cool for that. What with our own personal websites and curse word dresses and all. They’re just people, people. How lame.

In reality, however, we are totally those people who want our photos taken with celebrities. We’re just too scared to ever actually ask. So instead we just awkwardly stood around, drinking our fancy drinks that we awkwardly grabbed off some waiter’s tray and awkwardly sipped while trying not to cough because it was a grown-up drink and we’re used to “cocktails” that have pop as one of the main two ingredients.

Even the liquid courage from our fancy, grown-up drinks didn’t help. It did, however, help us come up with an ingenious idea. One that we call “reverse photobombing.” We sat at a table, camera phones at the ready, and when a celebrity (or pretty much anyone with really, REALLY straight teeth) walked into the background, we would take a photo.

Ahem…

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Needless to say, we were quite proud of our cleverness.

And drunk. We were very, very drunk.

But then, while my husband and I are snapping photos and giggling like a bunch of third-graders who just stumbled upon a stack of nudie magazines, suddenly the young actress who plays Selina Kyle sits down at our tiny table. She’s close enough for us to touch her. Close enough for us to touch her in such a way that we could get slapped with a restraining order. We immediately both give each other “The Look.” The look that only couples who have been together long enough to know each other’s bathroom schedule can give one another. Here was our chance.

He looked at me and with one raised eyebrow silently said “Should we ask her to pose for a photo?”

To which I looked at him and with two raised eyebrows (because I can’t raise just one because it’s a stupid skill I can’t master no matter how much I practice in front of the mirror) silently answered “Nope. I’m still too chicken shit.”

I did, however, work up the nerve (after downing yet another drink) to say, directly into her face, “You were wonderful in the show.”

And then, dear reader, and then, she looked at me, and directly into MY face said, “Thank you so much. I love your hair.”

Naturally, being the mature and sophisticated 30-something woman that I am, I calmly yanked my husband’s arm out of its socket and said “CATWOMAN LOVES MY HAIR!”

To which he lovingly replied, “You’re not being nearly as quiet as you think you are being right now.”

And so, the moral of this long, rambling, semi-pointless story is this:

Catwoman loves my hair. And that’s pretty much all that matters.

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Posted in Humor, Pop Culture

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Say it isn’t so, Robin Williams

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Posted on August 12, 2014 in Pop Culture

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