Did I Ever. Her name is Goldie. Her face is RIDIC. The tiny sound she makes at the end of a yawn is incredible.
Sleep? Not terrible, but not “before” sleep.
My bod? Not terrible, but not my “before” bod.
Life? Not terrible…and so much better than my “before” life.
You guys. I directed a music video for this amazing NYC-based band, COLD BLOOD CLUB. Check them out immeds. There are about a billion people in it, their sound is a DELIGHT for the ears, and they have a tambourine player. A. Tambourine. Player.
On top of all this deliciousness, my future husband, future sister-in-law, and future father-in-law all showed up to be Featured Extras aka dance their faces off.
Also also, at one point I was directing so HARD (read: standing onstage, dance-flailing like a loon so the extras would see my strange, beguiling body contortions and be forced to enthusiastically pity-dance along) that a wayward drop of pee escaped my body. I tell you this not to disgust, but to entice viewership of a video that was such a passion project, some might call it a passionate PEE. Sorry, PLEA. Passionate plea.
Anyway, towel off and WATCH THIS PUPPY! xo
Gather round, ladies and gents! Strap on your beanies and your sturdiest boots, because shit is about to get MESSY. Make sure you have a snack in your canvas tote (I suggest a Kind bar or one of those hummus/pretzel packs), some Tullamore Dew in your flask with the ironic phrase engraved on it, and don’t forget your phone charger because you’re going to want to IG the shit out of this.
The Shit Out of What?
Why, the GIRLS Season Finale! Or as I like to call it: A BEAUTIFUL MESS. The hysterics! The theatrics! The awkward cheek kisses in front of a step-and-repeat! This finale was jam-packed with emotion, heartbreak, longing, and more angst that you’d find in a Hot Topic on a Saturday afternoon.
Where Will You Begin?
Excellent question – I think the best way to wrap up this up-down-every-which-way rollercoaster of a season is to do it on a character-by-character basis.
Cool. Let’s start with Hannah, the “authentic” Iowan.
I’m gonna stop you right there and tell you the character we have to talk about FIRST and FOREMOST and possibly FOREVER is…..wait for it….drumroll please:
ADAM’S MISSING SISTER CAROLINE AKA LAIRDS BABYMAMA AKA HEY NABE AKA OMGMYBRAINJUSTMELTEDOUTOF MY EAR.
That.
Was.
Amazing.
She’s….downstairs….the whole time….folic acid…just getting the mail…feel my bump…I…lacy nightgown…the Iced Tea shelf….I. I can’t.
[falls to the floor]
You alright?
[Shaky] I think so.
Can we talk about Hannah, now? The star of the show?
Fine, fine, let’s do it. Hannah, you sly dog! Look at you, acting like a total cray cray last episode and then applying to grad school on the sly! Iowa Writers Workshop is indeed the #1 writing MFA in the country (though it’s absolutely impossible that Marnie knew that unless it was written on the bottom of her Pinkberry cup). And Nutballs Horvath just snuck off an application sometime between pulling splinters out of her butt last season and stealing free snacks from her advertorial gig this one. Gussied up her writing portfolio, scrubbed “E-book Author” off her resume, and got herself a one-way ticket to Pretentious Literary Book Deal World! You go, Corn Husker!
The athleticism, the courage, the extremely steep downhill slide – no, I’m not talking about the Winter Olympics in Russia’s fairest (read: alllllmost done being built) city, I’m talking about Episode Six of GIRLS! The emotional slaloms, the breath taking jumps…of logic, and the international flavor…of the Chinatown lunch joint Marnie and Ray cause a totally unnecessary white person scene in.
Yes, this is the splendor and majesty we’ve come to expect when the GIRLS writers flex their formidable sitcom muscles and unleash Episode 6 onto the ice like a manly female curling team from Belarus. Mustache wax – optional. Victory – mandatory.
In honor of the highs and lows – all award worthy – of this episode, the Medal Ceremony shall feature the following:
Gold Medal for Energy Conservation: Hannah Horvath, for not turning her computer on once at her new job! Look, even though it is made abundantly clear that “Advertorial” writing is not the same as “Real People” writing, she PROBABLY has some official GQ email to check somewhere, right? Maybe a quick note from Jenna Lyons, the J. Crew Creative Director Turned Thespian who played Hannah’s super warm and fuzzy boss in this episode? Did she have it in her rider that she – and the rest of the GQ Advert Staff – had to wear head to toe J. Crew (or J. Poo as my Bestie, a former store manager, calls it) the whole episode? She’s so sassy. You micromanage those new, expensive copper pipes! I’m going to email you to ALSO say I work there, too! Can my computer come with a power cord, please!?
Gold Medal For XXX Bent Over The Couch Sex: Shoshonna and Her Geographically Challenged New Nameless Boyfriend – he may not be able to find the library, but he sure found another spot. Also, I don’t want to know that Shoshonna likes her ponytail pulled. Unsubscribe.
But then the East German judge pointed out that she ruined the NYU GIRLS GONE WILD shot by yammering about open lines of communication, so the judges have deducted points, leaving Doggy Style Shosh with a nice, shiny Silver.
Reprinted courtesy of Ladygunn Magazine
Never make gender assumptions about co-workers’ children, ESPECIALLY their names. Examples: Cameroon? Yeah, that’s a two-year-old boy. And he’s white. Alva? Five-year-old tiny lady. Fitzsimmons? Don’t even ask. Don’t. Even. Ask.
People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. People who work in glass-walled offices should remember other people can see them when they pick their noses at their desks.
There will be people in your office who shit talk other people. Okay, everyone does this to some extent, but SPECIFIC people have will have a black belt in it. And you will probably, inevitably, be friends with these people. And you will listen and often laugh as they chastise _____ for wearing that ______ yesterday or _____ for not knowing his breath smells like ______. But know this – KNOW THIS – someone who shit talks anyone, shit talks everyone. Yes, that includes you. So don’t give them any ammo. And never repeat their tidbits to others. Landmines. The lot of it.
Avoid going to the bathroom between 10:35 am and 10:50 am – this is when most people are taking their first coffee dumps of the day. Related Advice: When you go into the stall and the toilet seat lid is down, take a moment and think. There’s a reason someone closed it. STEP AWAY.
This may sound harsh, but that’s what everyone in an office is. Bones and stomach linings and never-ending appetites for whatever you put in front of them. And I mean WHATEVER. Have some leftover cookies from your baking binge last weekend? Drop them off at The Dump Table, where all the stray extra food ends up: old donuts, the grazed-over bagel platters from the Tuesday morning meeting, the odd jar of pickled eggs that Steven from Marketing got on his trip to Hungary with a woman you’re pretty sure wasn’t his wife.
This will happen to you at least once a week. You’ll accidentally see something fleshy, illegal, or otherwise NSFW on someone else’s computer screen. If only you had walked louder, maybe they would have heard you approaching and spared your eyes and their reputations from the mutual smut that binds. Rapid Minimizing: the art everyone needs to learn. Especially you, Juggalo Porn Larry.
1. Rapping is really hard. Props to everyone who does this for an actual living.
2. Watch out when you’re going for a “showy” swig of the cheap champagne you’re holding while standing on a boat. That shit is gonna be BUBBLY. Oh I get it…that’s where the nickname comes from.
3. Consider your outdoor shooting location. And by that, I mean mayyyyybe you don’t want to shoot on a stoop a few steps away from the projects on a Saturday morning when literally everyone in the entire world (thugs, wannabe-thugs, cops, rubberneckers, tourists, an old Asian man wearing a pointed straw hat carrying two huge loads of who knows what tied to the end of a long beam and balanced on his shoulders, angry grandmother types, and homophobic hecklers, to name a few) are walking past. And by walking past, I mean filming you on their phones.
4. Already-worn wedding dresses CAN find a second life through music, specifically rap videos. Specifically this one.
5. You can never have enough fake money. Pretty self-explanatory.
6. Your true friends will be revealed when you ask everyone to dress up in insane outfits and spend multiple hours/days bouncing along to the beat as you lip sync to yourself in front of a camera. The ones who show up and give it their all = GOLD.
All this being said, look out for Ghostmime’s first video – COMING SOON!!!!!!
Reprinted courtesy of Ladygunn
I am 34 years old. I neither have a mother nor am a mother. I lost my own years ago and probably won’t become one for a few years still. This Sunday is Mother’s Day. And it blows.
Being a child without a mother is tragic. Being a relatively young adult without one is a little less sad, but still really, really sucks. My mom died when I was 20 years old and there’s not one day that passes where I don’t think of her in some way, be it fleeting painful memory or still-funny inside joke. It hurts every day. I resent that once a year I am forced to stare my motherless stature in the face while others make brunch plans and send flowers.
I’m also just getting to the stage – who am I kidding, I’ve been here a few years now – where my friends are becoming mothers themselves. And that’s another gut punch, in a way, because these women I’ve grown up with are now all members of a society I can’t belong to, at least not yet anyway. They’re being celebrated this weekend, coating the walls of Facebook and Instagram with photos of handmade cards with wobbly writing, just-picked bouquets, and smiling husbands holding chubby toddlers. And I’m happy for them, I am. I’m just happy from the outside of the circle, looking in.
My best friend, her husband, and their insanely terrific two-year-old came to New York to visit me last weekend. Spending time with this baby, this living, squirting, bubbling representation of their collective selves wasn’t just fun (and exhausting), it was good for my soul. I got the inside peek at what it’s like to be a mom and for the first time, it didn’t seem like a completely alien concept to me. In fact, it seemed almost do-able…eventually.
Then I think about having a child who will never meet my own mother. Never hear her off-pitch singalongs to Bonnie Raitt, never see her eyes crinkle in the corners when she makes a particularly funny (read: corny) joke, never taste her lemon meringue pie. And it makes me sad…but not sad enough to not have that child, to adore them, whisper to them first thing in the morning and last thing at night how much I love them, how I’ll always love them, how they’re everything to me. Because that’s what my mom did for me.
And I know she was right.
Put on every piece of jewelry you own. At the same time. Feel like hard-core rapper or your great Aunt Gerty (without the purse lined with plastic that she took to all those buffets when you were growing up). Marvel at your sparkliness. Take many photos. Do not post on social media until after you are well, in case you need another sick day tomorrow and your boss doesn’t understand the benefits of “putting a ring [and bracelet and choker from the 1990s] on it.” Now say BLING!
We all have those “courtesy friends” we follow, people from high school, from a job we no longer have, distant relatives, etc. And then there’s that whole dirty sub-genus of FB friends: your friend’s exes. Why are we still following any these people? Do we care about their trips to Florida or the fact that one of them “got crunk” [are people still doing that?] on Valentine’s Day?
Here’s the deal, while it’s a bit cruel and a lot over the top to defriend these fools, no one said you can’t UNFOLLOW them. Hit the little arrow on the top right corner of any of their latest inane status update, and then hit “Hide.” It will then give you a short menu, and you choose “Change What Updates You Get From [insert name of poor fool here].” Hit that.
It will give you a drop down menu of WHAT exactly you want to hide. Scroll all the way down the list to “Unfollow.” Boom! No more photos of the children your high school boyfriend’s wife keeps popping out at an alarming rate!
Yes, everyone knows that sick days are the best time to catch up on all of those deliciously weird 80’s and 90’s movies you’d never watch if there wasn’t snot pouring out your nose and enough Dayquil to kill an Oompa Loompa coursing through your veins. But take a few minutes away from CLUE (far and away the best Sick Day Movie) and scroll on up your channels. Get to one where everyone is speaking a language you don’t recognize. Stop. THEN – watch it for a bit. This works the best during a Spanish telenovela or whatever the Japanese equivalent of these gems is. Now start speaking aloud (your dog won’t mind, I promise) and making up your OWN lines, based on the facial expressions and ensuing over the top hand gestures of the speakers. Feel what they feel. Guess what? You speak Japanese now! Konnichiwa!
Now I know you’re sick, much like I am, and that means low energy. But you have to keep yourself well hydrated and well fed. “But,” you whine through your stuffed nose. “I have NO food in my house.” Guess what? You have a delicious cornucopia of taste sensations just WAITING to be tossed together in your fridge. Set a timer for 30 minutes, channel the haughty disdain of Padma Lakshmi, and say to yourself, “Self, your time begins…NOW.”
Quick! You have 30 minutes to cobble together some sort of meal based on the meager offerings of your cupboards. But don’t fear! Have only a medium-old loaf of bread, a can of tuna, some dried cranberries, and some coconut milk? Welcome to “Creamy & Fruity Tuna Salad on Toast Points.” Chef Tom gives it two thumbs up. You’re IN the finale!
Especially endangered sea creatures. Each pet is a different kind of learner (visual/audio/kinetic). I, for instance, find that my dog retains much more of the lesson when he makes contact with the subject, classifying him as a kinetic learner.
reprinted with permission from Ladygunn.com
First Glance: He buys you a Jameson shot. Then another one. And one more. He’s the life of the party!
Deeper Gaze: He’s a 24-hour-party…who will soon be in rehab. Or jail. Ain’t nobody got time for that.
First Glance: He’s wearing a $3,000 suit. And $800 shoes. And a very, very nice watch.
Deeper Gaze: Sure, he likes the finer things in life. But people who collect showily expensive objects like that tend to thing of everything as an object…including their ladies.
First Glance: Two words: HOT DRUMMER. Bonus words: Tour bus sex!!!
Deeper Gaze: You really want to have sex on a tour bus? Have you ever woken up with a stranger’s hair in your mouth, wearing someone else’s socks on your hands? Do you want to start now?
First Glance: Thick-rimmed, smudged glasses? Check. Three-day-old, insomniac stubble? You betcha. Encyclopedic knowledge of late-1980s German cinema and the passion to discuss it for 75 minutes straight on your first date? Achtung, baby!
Deeper Gaze: What seems like a fiery monologue of cinematic adoration can often belie a level of self-involvement that doesn’t acknowledge your long-empty martini glass and the fact you’re considering popping your own eardrum with your olive toothpick. When people misbehave on a first date, remember this: it will only get worse.
First Glance: Devastatingly perfect hair, two rows of gleaming white Superman teeth, and pores you couldn’t even find with a microscope. This guy is a God!
Deeper Gaze: This guy is a gay. Move it along, Mister Sister.
First Glance: He’s the friend of a friend you meet at a BBQ who dazzles you with his aspirations of teaching English in Cambodia, sheep herding in New Zealand, and hiking the Andes while making a documentary about the unsuitable working conditions in Yerba Mate packaging facilities.
Deeper Gaze: While his passport is yet unstamped, his subterranean basement in Gowanus, mounting unpaid credit card bills, suspect “freelance work,” and permanent fixture at the bar on his corner all point to those seven deadly letters: S-L-A-C-K-E-R.
The bottom line:
Look, I’m not saying everyone in a nice suit or who has travel ambitions is an emotional minefield. You just need to read the signs and proceed with caution, no matter the outer shininess. Because people have a pretty interesting habit of revealing exactly who they are, we just often choose to ignore it in exchange for an arm across our chest when we sleep and someone to go to our cousin’s wedding with.
But look deeper and be open to maybe being wrong sometimes. Because the sooner you extricate yourself from the un-best, you open yourself (and your schedule) up to meeting the actual best.
And that’s what you deserve, Hotpants.
Well, it’s not a holiday card, but it IS my Personal Best of 2012 List. Happy Holidays!
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD. Easily. Hands-down. Stunning in every aspect.
My Morning Jacket at Williamsburg Waterfront. Jim James and His Navajo Cape = Amazing.
Tie between Brett and Megan’s nuptials in a small Michigan town filled with PIRATE STATUES (?!?!?!?!) and Samantha and Patrick’s classy California soiree. Either way you cut it, my friends have good taste.
Leslie and Pete’s beachfront vows in Tulum, Mexico. Thanks, job + Hurricane Sandy.
Tie between the Cocker Spaniel puppy I dropped in the breeder’s New Jersey bathroom and the Ibizan Hound I forced down a kiddie pool water slide in Connecticut. Call PETA!
That would be running out of paint halfway through painting my bedroom walls with Ami and instead using the last of the purple to paint THIS on it instead:
Tie between watching Ollie navigate his first Brooklyn snowstorm and the moment I discovered that massaging his paws puts him in a Zen-like state of bliss, so much so that when I was done with one of his paws, he picked up his other one and shoved it in my face like, “Well? Go on!”
Oh, basically every time we’re outside and there’s a loud sound. Or a quiet sound. Or wind. Or still air. Or someone looks at him.
The nimble-fingered 14-year-old in Forever21 last Thursday who lifted my iPhone. Mazel Tov.
Tie between the coffee shop mugger I thwarted trying to steal my computer and my friend’s purse AND the blatantly obvious restaurant mugger in the theater district who was clearly leaning towards my friend’s purse, whom I asked “Everything okay back there?”, causing him to abruptly leave the restaurant. After trying to steal a bottle of wine from a nearby table. Class act.
Easily Thanksgiving 2012 ..and Meximas (Christmas 2012 in MESSSSSICO) hasn’t even happened yet!
This Hubble Telescope Advent Calendar – NERD ALERT. Is is RAD.
You know who you are.
Featured within this article? The best VIDEO of young Ryan Gosling that you will ever see. He dances. In a silky black shirt. Also he’s 9 and it’s 1993 and you will NEVER LOOK AT HIM THE SAME WAY AGAIN.
Throwing my dog, my sh*t, and my hopes in my car and driving across the country to test my mettle in the Big Apple.
And if 2012 is any indication, 2013 is looking quite merry and bright indeed. Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!!!!
annabelle m. walls 