Ikea: Malm

"Hey, can I use the drill on these?"
"Huh? Oh, no. NO, no, no, no, no. Do you have a little wrench?"
"A wrench?"
"Yeah, mine came with a little wrench. Does it have a groove on the side?"
"A what?"
"A groo--just let me look at it. Oh, this has a screw head."
"I know it has a screw head, I'm not a fucking idiot."
"How many of them do you have?"
"Like a million."
"Yeah, you can use the drill, but I don't have the cordless one, and the torque--"
"Christ almighty, I'll just USE the SCREWDRIVER."

---

"Do you want the mattress higher or lower?"
"I don't understand the question."

---

"Hey, can you grab me the crescent wrench while you're down there?"
"Do you mean an adjustable wrench?"
"I mean a CRESCENT wrench."
"It's still in the truck. I'll have to go out and get it."
"You only have one? You have like, 5 toolboxes."
"Well, I don't use the crescent wrench very much, because I have a wrench set that--"
"Oh my God, please stop talking to me!"

Scientology is a Cult

I know, I know. But it bears repeating. Especially after this bullshit.

Way to win the award for Fastest Opportunistic Vultures to Land after a Tragedy. Assholes.

Cufflinks!

I distinctly remember sitting around the house for years, watching TV and never being able to answer what I thought was a simple question: why are local commercials so god-awful? It didn't seem so difficult. You write a commercial, it's good, so it gets produced. The end. Right?

Not even close.

It wasn't until I graduated college and actually got a job writing local commercials that I realized that they were inherently bad--it's the nature of the medium. Business owners do not trust you. They know what they want, and what they want is for their neighbors to say "Oh, I saw your baby on TV. She is adorable!" You can try to steer them in a different direction, you can cajole, you can tell them outright that they are wasting their money if they put what they want on the air. 99 times out of 100, they will not listen to you.

Invariably, customers will choose to have all of their employees out in front of the store saying, "come visit us today!" in unison. Never mind that you can never understand what the hell people are saying in unison, they want their employees in the spot, dammit! They also want their daughter with the speech impediment to list every single thing they have in their inventory in thirty seconds. It'll be amazing.

After a while, you die inside and you give up. You forget how to write anything that doesn't include the phrase "for all your ________ needs." This is why local commercials suck. This is why local commercials will always suck. It's a depressing fact, but a fact nonetheless.

It's been nearly two years since I've written a commercial, but there's still a small part of me that hurts every time I see a bad one--because I know what the people went through who made it. So when I went to the UCB Theater earlier this week and saw the video below, my first thought was "FUCK YOU."


Not fucking funny. Except, totally funny. Damn you, Krohmpf.

I am a failure

Okay, so I'm working on like, 3 different entries right now. One I like but is taking longer than I wanted it to, one that I don't like and have kind of given up on, and one that only exists in my head.

I also have some potentially fun news, but I'm awaiting outside confirmation.

So, basically, I've got nothing. Hence the title.

On an unrelated note, isn't Heroes a great show? I'm in love.

You're on Notice!

It's your time to shine!

I hate buying certain things. Every time I go to buy socks, underwear or deoderant I get pissed off. It's not so much the act of buying these things that bothers me, as it is the idea that I actually have to pay money for them. I really don't think I should have to pay more than a dollar for any of these products. I also think they should ideally come in bins which I can just shove my hand into and come out with a sock/underwear/deoderant supply for the next year.

Every time I go into Duane Reade and see some stupid stick of Secret with a $5.50 price tag, my vision blurs and I'm filled with rage. Unless it's a dire emergency, I cannot do it. I cannot perform the act of giving a surly drugstore employee an Abraham Lincoln and change so I can shove my baby-fresh PH-balanced purchase in my medicine cabinet and start my morning smelling like an infant in a clean diaper. Which leads me to do my shopping at the 99 cent store.

I love the 99 cent store with an almost sexual passion. I love the randomness of the Jesus figurines next to dinner plates next to toothpaste. It's a perfect storm of discounted crap and I adore it.

So after I tried to put on deoderant the other day and realized that I was doing nothing more than scraping plastic against my armpits, (which, blood? Does not keep you fresh) I knew it was time to make a trip to my favorite store.

Now the thing with buying deoderant at this particular store, is that they generally only have two kinds. Avon and Tussy. I had previously had a negative experience with Tussy. Turns out, buying deoderant because the name makes you giggle isn't the best idea, as you will end up wearing a scent that actually smells like sweaty armpits. I put it on and immediately felt and smelled like I had just run a 5k. It was the antithesis of deoderant. It was oderant.

So I went to the store intending to try the Avon, which I had avoided up to this point because of it's creepy ball applicator. At this point, I figured the creepy ball was preferable to smelling like a gym bag. I'm trying to decide between powder fresh and original when I spot something pink out of the corner of my eye.

"Well hello, Ladies Choice. How are you today?"

A lone stick of invisible solid had infiltrated my beloved store. I was excited. I checked around me to make sure no one else had their eye on my treasure. Relieved to see all of the other customers perusing the Goya beans and screwdrivers, I snatched it up.
I get home and get ready for the inaugural application of the deoderant I chose because I'm a lady. This is when I notice something important. It had sparkles. It said so right on the label. My deoderant has fucking glitter in it.

I was flabbergasted. I could only imagine the thought process. "Girls. Pink. Smell. Pretty. Flowers. Unicorns. Timberlake. Boobs. Stars. Sparkle! That's it. Fucking glitter! IN! THE! DEODERANT!"

Who needs this? Who is the person who is sitting at home, feeling badly about themselves because their armpits just aren't...shiny enough? Is this an actual demographic? Are there support groups? More importantly, did Ladies Choice advertise this innovation?

INT. LIVING ROOM. TEENAGE GIRL SITS FORLORNLY ON A COUCH. MOTHER ENTERS THE ROOM AND JOINS HER.

VO: The teenage years are difficult for everybody. Changing bodies and hormones can be especially tough on teenage girls.
MOTHER: Hey sweetie, is something bothering you?
DAUGHTER: No mom, everything's fine.
MOTHER: Come on, you know you can tell me anything.
DAUGHTER: It's nothing...It's just that--
MOTHER: I think I know what this is about. And don't worry, I had the same problems when I was your age.
DAUGHTER: Really?
MOTHER: Yes. It's your armpits, right? They just don't feel...pretty enough?
DAUGHTER: Yeah! How did you know?
MOTHER: Hey, I was a teenager once too, you know. All women have this problem. Of course, I wasn't as lucky as you are; I had to suffer in silence.
DAUGHTER: Lucky? How?
MOTHER: Well, you have Ladies Choice deoderant and anti-perspirent.
DAUGHTER: But I've been using deoderant for years and I still don't feel pretty enough.
MOTHER: Yes, but you've never used Ladies Choice. It has sparkles.
DAUGHTER: Sparkles?
MOTHER: Sparkles. Built right in.
DAUGHTER: Wow! I'm going to try it right now!

CUT TO MOTHER WAITING OUTSIDE OF THE BATHROOM. DAUGHTER COMES OUT.

DAUGHTER: I feel so pretty. Thanks Mom!
MOM: Don't thank me, thank Ladies Choice.
MOM AND DAUGHTER: (To camera) Thanks Ladies Choice!
VO: Ladies Choice deoderant. It's your time to shine!

If you know the words, feel free to sing along.

Yesterday was the kind of day that we all have. You know, the kind of day where you get off the train and you think, ow, my toe hurts. Which is weird, because you've been walking around all day, and it didn't hurt before, but now, after you've been sitting for a half an hour, it suddenly feels all stabby. But you move on.

You're walking around; it's after 10 pm and you haven't had dinner. You just got off of work and you decide you should probably get food before you get on the next train to go home. So you're walking around, and one of your heels has worn down so that the nail attaching the heel to the bottom of the shoe is exposed. So you're making a very uneven and annoying click CLACK sound as you walk. Click CLACK, click CLACK, click CLACK. You are way too fucking tired to deal with this. So you try to walk lighter on your left foot, which has the worn down shoe. Problem is, that makes you put more weight on your right foot, which has the stabby nail. So you start doing this weird kind of limp that makes you look like you were born without knees, and the crazy part? Is that there's a guy walking toward you who is doing the exact same walk you're doing--except it just looks like his balls hurt. Then you worry that it looks like your balls hurt, which of course, brings up the concern of whether or not it looks like you have balls that could be hurting. It's a very awkward situation.

So you're looking for food, but nothing looks appealing at all. Except a pretzel. Pretzels are simple; it's hard to go wrong. So you turn toward the pretzel place, and in the same motion turn away from it, because there's a crackhead in front asking for change and you cannot DEAL with a crackhead right now because you were born WITHOUT KNEES.

So instead, you get some frozen yogurt, which you quickly get bored with, so you throw the rest of it away. The train comes, and as you're sitting down, some 40-year-old straw hat-wearing, LaFours-looking motherfucker with a Mick Jagger pout that makes you want to slap his mouth with your book gets onto the train and sits next to you. And then, the existence of God is confirmed because as he's bending over to sit down, his stupid fucking hat falls onto the festering subway floor. And instead of just snickering to yourself like you normally would, you openly start to giggle and you sit on the train for the rest of the ride with a goofy-ass grin on your face.

So then you're home. You take off the heels that you've been wearing for the past 16 or so hours and see that the last two toes on your right foot are covered in blood. You feel kind of hardcore, but mostly just tired and annoyed.

But then, your annoyance is tempered by happiness as you realize that today is Wednesday, which means that Project Runway has made a cozy little home for itself on your Tivo, just waiting for you to bask in its glory. As you settle in bed, listening Heidi Klum's comforting and familiar lack of "R's," everything seems like it's going to be okay. Then Michael comes on. Dear, sweet, hot (neck tattoo!) if not for the fucked up grill, Michael. He's doing his first interview of the episode, in which he says, "I'm not trying to be 'Captain Save-a-Ho.'" And with that, an inner peace washes over you and you don't care that you've been home for less than an hour and you have to get up in six. You've got 35 more minutes of Captain (Not)Save-a-Ho.

That's just the kind of day it was.

Suck it, Soccer. F you, Futbol.

I'm on the 2 train to Penn Station yesterday, on my way to the airport. We get to 14th street and the train stops--but the doors don't open. I sit for a minute, reading and trying to avoid the, "aw man, can you belive this?" eye contact of my fellow commuters. All the sudden we hear the conductor, not directing this to us, but saying, "Yeah, somebody shot at the train. The police are coming down to investigate."

First the stabbings, now this? Is this because of the World Cup? Is this our answer to Soccer hooligans?

Think airport security is a pain in the ass? Guess what: It's your fault.

There are a lot of things in life that straight-up suck but are unavoidable and actually good for you, like taking out the trash. Or going to the dentist. Or getting out of bed in the morning. You know that cavity won’t fill itself, that your apartment will start to smell like an open sore, and that you need to get up and go to work so you can afford that filling and the apartment that won’t have the same stench as the scene in Gone With the Wind with the dead and wounded soldiers lying out in the Atlanta sun, because you’re enough of an adult to take out the trash in a reasonable time frame.

You know these things are necessary, so you do them—but you don’t look forward to doing them. Airport security is in this same category. Bad men got into planes and did bad things, so we need to go through a bit more red tape to get to Florida. Most people understand this and are grateful that security has been tightened and that it is more difficult to get on a plane. What’s a little inconvenience when it makes us safer?

At least, that was the feeling in the year or so following September 11th. National Guardsmen were hanging out with guns, security lines were longer, and old ladies were being searched in ways they probably hadn’t experienced since they snuck away from the dance with their beaus after a long evening of sarsaparillas and the Lindy Hop.

We took the delays in stride and just got to the airport a little earlier. A year passed. Then two. Then three, and there were no more plane-related catastrophes. So we started to slip back into our old habits. And we became impatient. Airport security once again went from our protectors to our enemies. Instead of people who were just doing their job, TSA employees became incompetent yokels hell-bent on making us late for our flight. They were unhappy with their station in life, so they decided to take it out on us. One of my jobs is doing market research in Newark Airport. In this capacity, I go through security sometimes eight times a week. And here’s what I’ve learned: It’s not them, it’s you.

It used to be that anyone could get through security and go right up to the gate. Airports were filled with the intimacy of tearful hellos and family members and loved ones waving goodbye until they saw the plane taxi down the runway. Now, in order to get through security, you have to either have a boarding pass or a TSA badge. With fewer people going through security, it would stand to reason that the lines would move faster, or at least at the same rate at which they moved before, but they don’t. Every day I see security lines that snake around the terminal in such a way that it begins to look and feel more like a figure-eight that is just feeding on itself with no end in sight.

Part of the reason for the wait is simple physics. You have 200 people going through two metal detectors and it’s going to take some time. That’s just a fact. Everyone could be going through naked and the security person still has to wait for that little green light to come on before you can be waved forward. It’s a slow process no matter what, so why do you insist on exacerbating the situation?

Don’t look around, because I am talking to you specifically. Why? Because you’re not John Cusack and you’re not Ross Gellar. You didn’t rush to the airport in a fit of romantic pique. There was no thunderstorm that caused a downed power line, leaving your cab stuck in a horrendous traffic jam this close to the airport. You did not then throw money at the cab driver and take off running through the stopped cars with only your copy of Rolling Stone to shield you from the downpour. You did not arrive at the airport dripping wet, maxing out your credit card to buy a first-class ticket on your true love’s flight because that was all they had left and, as we all know, you have to have a boarding pass to get past security and profess your love for her. None of this happened because you’re going to Phoenix to visit your brother. You’ve been planning this trip for months.

So, you’ve known that you were going to fly on an airplane for a while. You know that part of the deal is going through the security line. So what’s the deal with the studded belt and the dog collar, huh? You really needed to wear that today, Sid Vicious? And hey, Dippity Do-Rag. I understand that your Timberlands are going to be integral to navigating the frozen tundra of Atlanta in July, but they are fucking huge. They are not going to let you through with those on. Seriously. Don’t try. It will not happen. And to the guy in the Hard Rock Orlando sweatshirt? Okay, you’re a smoker. You rock hard, I get it. Oops, you left your lighter in your pocket. No big deal. It’s an understandable oversight. But the Swiss Army Knife on your keychain? Are you fucking kidding me with this? Is it your first day here? And by “here,” I mean, “on this planet,” because come ON, dude. That shit will not fly. And I mean that quite literally. Leave the weapons at home with your children, where they belong.

Because I love/hate all of you, I’m going to give you some tips on getting through the security line in a reasonable fashion.

1. Take off your shoes.
I don’t care what kind of shoes they are. If you are at an airport with the word “International” in the name, do not wear them. I know that the sign says that they “suggest” you remove your shoes, but if you don’t you will automatically be searched. So wear something that you can slip on and off easily. In other words, wear the flip flops, pack the knee-high lace-up Doc Martins.

2. Try not to wear a coat or blazer, and definitely do not wear both.
You will have to remove them and it’s going to be a pain in the ass and take up a lot of time.

3. Don’t pack a laptop in your carryon luggage.
I know that you’re really trying to beat your high score in FreeCell, but it’s not worth it. You’ll have to take the laptop out, put it in a separate bin and put it back in your bag. Unless you practice this a lot, it’s going to be awkward and time-consuming. If you must bring it, when they tell you to take it out of the bag, that does not mean take it out of your rolling briefcase but keep it in the protective cover. Dumbass.

4. Empty out your pockets before you leave the house.
You’re not driving anywhere on the airplane and vending machines take dollar bills, so you don’t need $15.64 in change.

5. Don’t wear a belt.
It’s going to set off the alarm. Try wearing pants that fit instead.

Basically, what it boils down to is realizing that you are, in fact, heading to the airport. Simplify what you have with you, and if your wait isn’t shortened, you will at least have the pleasure of looking down on the unprepared fools with seventeen necklaces and knee-high boots.

And how was your Memorial Day?

A three-day weekend with beautiful weather. What more could you ask for?

Last night I was up a lot later than usual. When I went to sleep, I dreamt that it was the next season of American Idol. Katherine McPhee was back and in the final two again--against me. I was blonde and had to choose my three songs because we were just about to go on the air. I was being rushed around and thrown into hair and makeup, all the time thinking, "what are these jackasses thinking? I can't sing!" I was very dissapointed in the American public for voting for me.

Part of the reason I was up so late is because earlier that day I took a shower, laid out my clothes and blacked out for about five hours. During my slight coma, my subconscious wrote and acted out an entire 22-minute episode of Malcom in the Middle. I remember thinking it was weird because the parents each only had one line and it was the series finale. When I woke up, I realized that what was weird was the fact that I don't watch Malcom in the Middle.

In conclusion, on Memorial Day, my brain tried to eat itself.

I know this city is killing me

I come from a very healthy family. We're fortunate in that no one in my immediate family has ever suffered from an illness more major than the flu. People in my extended family tend to live to old age and then just...die. Sure, we have our accidents; my dad's car crash, my mom's various horse mishaps and my sister and I just being stupid and falling down, but all in all, we've pretty much got our shit together, healthwise.

Growing up in a family like this hasn't made me feel invincible, exactly. I'm still terrified that one of us will get into a terrible car accident and die. There was a year in college that I was convinced, for no particular reason, that I had cancer. Then there was the time after college when the doctor actually made me legitimately afraid that I had cancer. I know that I am fallible--at least as far as the major things are concerned. It's the minor things, the afflictions of the "common people" that I strongly believe shouldn't be able to touch me.

There was an incident in college where I went out to dinner with a friend and a bunch of his friends whom I had never met. It was a hoppin' friday night in Harrisonburg, so the restaurant was busy. When faced with a crowded restaurant and a choice of smoking or non-smoking sections, I always choose first available. Nobody's going to be smoking at my table, so it doesn't matter to me in the least, and generally, my friends agree.

Except this particular evening, I was not with friends, I was with strangers. Who soon turned into enemies. When I went to ask for first available, one of the girls told the hostess that we needed non-smoking. When I asked why, she explained that one of the guys had asthma, to which I responded, "Why should I have to wait 45 minutes just because that dude's too lazy to breathe right?"

I don't make the best first impressions.

I was, of course, kidding when I called the guy's lungs lazy, but I would be lying if I didn't reveal three things:

1. I was kind of annoyed that we would have to wait.
2. There is a part of me, a part not governed by science or reason, that kind of believes that exposing his lungs to smoke would make them stronger.
3. That I'm kind of better at life than him.

With good health comes a certain amount of arrogance. Being arrogant about something so fragile, something so often out of your control, is a dangerous thing because it can come back to bite you in the ass. I used to have a roommate who was flat-out allergic to everything. Our fridge was filled with anti-allergy pills, liquids, sprays and Lactaid. And I knew that every time I opened the fridge, laughed to myself and called her a loser, that I was tempting fate. But that didn't stop me. I could go roll around in a field of wild flowers while drinking a big glass of milk and eating a grilled cheese, and she couldn't. Therefore, I was awesome and she was not. She wore glasses when she drove, too. I mean, come on, she couldn't even see right! The question of who rocked the hardest was quickly asked and answered. I took a vision test that year and found out that I was 20/15. Nobody could touch me.

When I moved to New York, I started getting sick more often than usual. At first I chalked it up to stress and not taking care of myself and moved on. Then I read this article and found out that New York was trying to kill me--well, not me, exactly, just losers with allergies. I didn't have allergies, so this article clearly was not about me.

Then, recently, I was at work. I had to update one of our databases using a medical book with very small type. I worked for a while and then realized I was squinting. Me! Squinting! Like a common middle-aged housewife trying to read her grocery list in the supermarket. After working on this for the entire day, I had a hell of a headache. It didn't go away until the next afternoon. I started to worry. Did I need reading glasses? My dad didn't need them until he was 40. I'm only 25. Is this the first crack in my shield of genetic superiority?

Last weekend, I came down with a cold. I could feel it coming on. My eyes were watery, my nose started running, I knew it would be only a matter of time before I got a sore throat and a headache. Except none of that happened. For the past four days I've only had sneezing, runny nose and itchy, watery eyes. JUST LIKE ONE OF THOSE STUPID PEOPLE IN AN ALLERGY COMMERCIAL.

Am I this old? Have I reached the age where my body slowly just stops working? Because, no. I can't handle that right now. I've always joked about being old and boring, like how I barely partied in high school because I was too busy working all the time, paying bills and listening to Rod Stewart. Or my senior year in college where I was in bed by 8 or 9 so I could wake up at 3:45 in the morning and go work with Drinky McWhorepants and The Surly Asian. Yeah, Kona's so sleepy, ha ha. Deep down, I was still better than all of you.

But now I'm not. And I hate that. That's all I had going for me, and it's gone; replaced by a big box of Benadryl and plans for a new vision test. What am I going to do now? Learn a skill? Develop a talent? It's a little too fricking late for that. I don't really see myself becoming a master juggler anytime soon or developing "goals" or "dreams" or any of those other things that used to be beneath me. Oh sure, maybe I have "issues" and I should "talk to someone" and work on my "rage." But that sounds an awful lot like therapy. And therapy is for suckers.

Jesus died for our sins...but he came back for the chocolate

Tradition is important. It keeps families and societies together, and creates warm memories for generations. Easter is a holiday rife with family tradition. Some families gather all of the relatives for a morning at church followed by a home cooked meal filled with ham and things in casserole dishes that involve marshmallows. Some families have Easter egg hunts in the backyard, while others prefer to roll their eggs on the front lawn of the White House with their two mommies.

I didn’t spend my Easter doing any of these activities. In fact, I didn’t do anything Easter-related on Sunday. Even my Jewish boss had a big dinner to go to. I spent the day shopping. Besides, on my calendar, Monday is the actual holiday; Monday is the day the Easter candy goes half price. More specifically, it is the day the Cadbury Crème Eggs go half price.

To me, that is Easter: a hollow chocolate shell filled with sugary goo dyed to resemble the unfertilized beginnings of a farm animal.

Easter candy started showing up in the city around mid-February. I found my first egg of the season in a Duane Reade on the Upper West Side. My discovery, coupled with the roughly 120 grams of sugar, lulled me into a false sense of security and complacency. Even as the months went on and I didn’t see any more eggs, I didn’t panic. Even when the lack of eggs seemed to be a citywide epidemic, I maintained my faith--until yesterday.

I hit three different Duane Reades yesterday after work, including, I think, the original one, each time heading straight for the discounted candy. I found jellybeans, chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, white chocolate bunnies, jellybeans, but no Crème Eggs. They had Snickers eggs, but do you know what those are? Not the fucking same, that’s what.

Three Duane Reades, three times I walked away empty-handed. The city of New York is clearly trying to oppress me. But I’ve got 238 more Duane Reades and I haven’t even started on the Rite Aides. You may have won this round, but this is not over, New York, because I’m going to start a new Easter tradition...of kicking your ass! And this time, I've got Jesus on my side.

I wrote this on the train on my way to work this morning.

Shit that has pissed me off before 9am.

1.I’m sick. I’ve been fighting off a cold since the end of last week and I was winning—and then Jim T. Zombie had his graduation show for his UCB Impov class on Sunday. Long story short, I drank for roughly the entire day and fell in love with a bartender. By Monday morning, the cold pretty much had me where it wanted me. I had a terrible night’s sleep last night because the snot running down my face kept on waking me up.

2. Buckley decided she didn’t feel like pooping this morning. She just wasn’t into it. One thing she will be in to? Taking a dump on my bedroom floor while I’m at work.

3. Hey—remember like, two days ago when it was sunny and about 75 degrees? I wish I could. Unfortunately the wind has blown into my eye sockets with such force that it has stabbed holes throughout my brain, leaving me with no short-term memory or capacity for love.

4. There was a man in front of the train station talking to another guy while wearing a large horse blanket/poncho accessorized by a pair of blue sweatpants on his head. I looked at this guy and could immediately tell that he wasn’t wearing pants on his head because he is homeless and/or crazy, but because he’s an asshole.

5. The fat people sitting on either side of me right now on the train. They’re both taking up about 1 ¼ seats, leaving me in the precarious position of perching on the very edge of the seat, leaning forward and praying that the next sharp turn or sudden stop doesn’t send me careening head-first off of the seat into the metal pole directly in front of me. Because then I’ll be that girl—the girl who’s bleeding all over the train and holding up the morning commute. I hate that girl.

6. You know, when you’re a dog, it’s difficult to focus on things like pooping outside when you’re busy eating the chicken bones scattered throughout your entire neighborhood. Buckley’s daily diet can be expressed most accurately via pie chart:




7. The girl sitting across from me wearing “skinny” jeans. These are stretch jeans with severely tapered legs—basically denim leggings. I hate the fact that all the shit I wore in the fifth grade is high fashion now. Shut up skinny jeans and shut up, girl wearing skinny jeans. You have like, three cold sores. You’re not better than me.

It’s 9:03. I just have to make it to work. If I get to my building and the guy gives me too much milk in my coffee I’m going to dump it on an old lady’s head. Not because I don’t like old ladies, or because I think that would make the guy think next time, but because they’re usually shorter than I am, creating the best coffee-to-head ratio.

Because a revolution without dancing is not a revolution worth having.

Okay guys. We need to talk. I'm not telling you how to live your life here because, seriously. It's not like I have my shit together in any way. So let's not take what I'm about to tell you as a demand, but more of a favor to me. Except that you must do it. Immediately. Yesterday, if possible.

And the thing that I am asking you to do? Go see V for Vendetta. Right now. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Unfortunately for us all, my vocabulary isn't nearly big enough to adequately encompass the awesomeness that is this movie. Not since Matrix: Revolutions have I had such a good time in a theater--not that the two even compare. If watching the second Matrix was like getting flowers delivered to your house, watching Vendetta was like getting a delivery of puppies laying on a bed of cotton candy and pooping sunshine.

I don't even want to say too much about what happens in the movie because I don't want to infringe on the unparalled enjoyment that you will experience by going into this with fresh eyes. All I will say is this: For the first 45 minutes or so, Beast, Blaze and I watched the movie and enjoyed it. It was pretty good. Natalie Portman is lovely, shit blew up, everything was pretty cool.

Now, everybody knows that Natalie Portman gets her head shaved in this movie. This is important because this is pretty much the point where the movie goes pear-shaped. Things flat-out just stop making sense. After a few minutes of this I catch movement out of the corner of my eye. I turn my head and see Beast shaking from laughing so hard and trying to contain it. Suprisingly, up to this point, I had shown remarkable self-control; but seeing her cracking up sent me over the edge, and within minutes, I had tears streaming down my face.

There were many things that struck us as funny--the dialogue and storyline being pretty close to the top. What really killed me though, is that for the last hour of the movie, everytime I saw this guy, all I could think of was this guy. Now that would be a movie worth seeing.

No, FCUK you

Every season brings a new annoying clothing trend. Like this. Or this. And some of them refuse to die. Like this. And while I'm sporting a whole new crop of forehead wrinkles from furrowing my brow in disgust after being optically assaulted on a daily basis just by living in this city, these trends really aren't any more than a minor annoyance. Besides, they actually serve a vital purpose—they allow me to spot hipster-fucks from 50 yards out so I can easily avoid them. The furry boots tell me who to hate, and for that, I thank them.

There is one trend, however, by which I cannot abide. FCUK shirts. My hatred is so intense, in fact, that it has transcended the mere shirt and now includes the entire company, French Connection. I first saw these visual affronts three years ago when I was in Ireland. I saw a ton of women and even some men wearing t-shirts that said, "FCUK you" and "Born to FCUK." At the time, my reaction was something like, "Whaa—oh. Huh." And that's about it. After I returned to the states, I never saw them again. They were completely erased from my mind until a few months ago, when they started popping up constantly.

It took me a while to put my finger on what bothered me so much about this particular trend, especially since, on the surface; it is about 100x less annoying and prevalent than a lot of others. Then it hit me. What pisses me off so much is that they take two things that I hold very dearly: cursing and puns, and bastardize them. And then, on top of that, it's just so...stale. I look at those shirts and it's like, "yeah, ha ha guys. It's like "fuck," but it's not. Good one. Jackass." Because the thing is, it was funny when The Dixie Chicks did it--back in 2003. Now? The joke's pretty much run its course.

But not only will French Connection not let the TOTALLY RACY AND NAUGHTY t-shirts die, they continue their assault against "the man" with their new TOTALLY RACY AND NAUGHTY commercial which features—get this—two girls fighting and like, TOTALLY MAKING OUT, Y'ALL! We're so cutting edge! Except for when Britney, Madonna and Christina all made out at the VMA's—in 2003. And when Madonna was in Britney's "Me Against the Music" video and there was fighting and almost making out—in 2003.

In the era of teen orgies in primetime, French Connection's entire image just comes off as desperate and needy—like a celebrity's "accidentally" leaked sex tape or anything involving Lindsay Lohan. What French Connection really needs to realize is that what may have been totally awesome in 2003 is just kind of sad now.