Blogger: The best editor I could hope for

So I was writing a post yesterday about my love of Fall and the season premieres of The Office, Desperate Housewives and Greys' Anatomy. The post ended up being a little on the long and bloated side and at one point trailed off into a conversation I had with someone about Pumpkin Spice Frappucinos. I read it over, wasn't thrilled with it, but thought it had some good points. I was posting the accompanying pictures when Blogger decided to eat the entire post.

Shit.

I spent the next five minutes trying to make the post come back, which of course it didn't. I cursed myself for not saving a copy like I usually do. I debated whether or not I was going to rewrite it. Then I understood.

Blogger knew.

Blogger thought my post kind of sucked and said, as it picked its teeth, "I wasn't really feeling it."

Fair enough. Thank you for keeping my shit together, Blogger.

Next post: the severely truncated version of my season premiere post.

Ronald John Hemenway

Five years later, and we've gone on with our lives. We go to school, we go to work, we vote for the next American Idol. We are rarely faced with reminders of that morning, five years ago. For some people, though, the pain of that day is still fresh. It is something that they live with; it is a part of them.

On September 11, 2001, Ronald Hemenway, 37, went to work. He had a successful career as an electronics technician first class in the Navy, where he was known among his shipmates as being intelligent, mature, and having a great sense of humor. He would always joke around with his friends on the ship about being so hairy he needed to shave three times a day. His career in the Navy ultimately sent him from his home in Kansas City to the Pentagon.

An avid horse enthusiast, Hemenway bred horses before joining the Navy and still kept two at his parent's home in Kansas. Right before the attack on the Pentagon, Hemenway and his wife Marinella had been looking at property in Virginia in order to make a home for their horses and two children, Stefan and Desiree, who were only toddlers.

Stefan and Desiree are both in school now, starting the process of growing up. While their memories of their father may be dim, projects like 2,996 are keeping not only his memory alive, but the memories of all of the people who died on September 11, 2001. It's five years later. We've moved on, but we have not forgotten.

Okay. So if Suri turns out to be a puppet, MK overdoses on "anorexia," Leinart says he's not the dad, and Nicky gets knocked up by that elf, I'm good

I'm not going to try to do one of those, "I know I should write more, but I haven't been because of xyz and I promise I'll do better" posts, even though...yeah. Anyway, we're going to talk about when obsessions become tangible.

I love celebrity gossip. I know it's not important, that there are events in this world that usurp whether or not Suri Cruise a) exists, or b) was birthed by a glassy-eyed runaway deep inside the bowels of the celebrity center.* From what I understand, there's a war or two happening somewhere...over there, and the Silver Fox keeps on talking about some sort of water-damage in New Orleans. I don't know much about it, but he seems really worked up about it every night on CNN.

None of this, however, changes the fact that ohmygoddidyouhearjessicaisdatingjohnmayer? She has a creepy father, ditched her sweet, understanding husband, turned orange, and is dating a dude with fish lips--while her ex is dating a hot lady who regularly appears in Maxim. Delicious.

So when I heard about Fafarazzi, which is basically fantasy football for celebrities, I, of course, became immediately obsessed. Knowing nothing about fantasy sports, I of course, screwed up my first round draft picks and missed out on the sacred tabloid cows of Paris, Jessica and Lindsay. Little fake Cruise, however, has proven to be quite the boon. After an ill-advised and sentimental draft of Pete Wentz, I dropped him, along with Owen Wilson and others and shook up my roster last night. I'm currently third in my league, but only one point separates me from second.

I'm betting on some more Couric news leading up to her putting on her serious face and talking about explosions and stuff, John Mayer's side of the story/fan-saving denial, and I'm really hoping that the Go Fug Yourself girls are right about the less-skanky Hilton girl.

Obsession is bad enough, but when you're actively rooting for Maggie Gyllenhaal to be pregnant with her brother's kid just because the points that would garner would be phenomenal, your mental state is probably less than desirable. But seriously, Scarlett. Where's the sex tape?

*Seriously. There is no third option. It's one of the two.

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.

They're all naked? I...need a bloody mary: Surviving comedy (barely)

Maybe you've just finished reading Hatchet for school, or Netflix'd Alive, or perhaps, despite being the type of person who openly mocks reality shows, you're chilling out in front of your television on a Thursday night watching Jeff Probst smarm his way through another episode of Survivor. Inevitably, you ask yourself the question, "what would I do?" "How would I survive?" Most people are confident that their primal skills will kick in and they will be naturally adept at spear fishing. They will know which berries are poisonous and which are simply delicious. They dream of fashioning clothing out of foliage and animal skins, of killing with their bare hands. I hold no such delusions; being raised a vegetarian, I am, in a word, fucked.

Luckily, living in New York doesn't present many opportunities for me to die a slow, painful death due to my lack of survival skills. I may have no sense of direction, but I can find my way around a grid, and I am never more than thirty feet away from a bagel. The Jews may start all the wars in the world, but they do make a delightful breakfast food.

Perhaps I ensconced myself a little too much in my plastic bubble of urban safety, rocked myself to sleep one too many times to the refrain of, "it'll never happen to me," because last weekend, I found myself face-to-face with humanity at its most basic: inside the UCB theater for the Del Close marathon.

Once a year, for $20, you get seventy-four straight hours filled with Improv comedy. Seems like a good deal, if you're into that sort of thing. I am into that sort of thing, so the prospect of this was very exciting. Sure, there were going to be a lot of troupes I had never heard of, but there would also be people from Saturday Night Live, Best Week Ever, and my personal heroes, The Upright Citizens Brigade. Three days, nearly 150 shows, one wristband, and you could come and go as you pleased--in theory, at least.

So here's the first thing I learned: My friends and I aren't the only people in New York who think this would be fun. When I arrive, slightly tipsy from an elongated happy hour, at 10 pm on Friday night, there is a huge line to get in. I find Charlie, and we wait in line for Dave and Laura. It takes over an hour to get in, and I miss the first two shows that I had wanted to see. That's when I realize this shit is serious.

Sure, they say you can come and go as you please, but if you want to see specific shows, you'd better keep your ass in that chair, because once you leave, it can be hours before you get back in. I stayed until about 3 in the morning the first night, and went home knowing that I would need to come correct the next day.

I arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon, armed with gatorade and a box of cheese crackers. Unlike the night before, I was dressed in comfortable clothes and had plenty of cash. I got in line, and shortly after Charlie met me, he made a run for fruit and protein shakes. I was fortified and ready. I was staying through the entire night.

There's not much I can really say about the next 16 or so hours. Over a week later, I'm still trying to make sense of it myself. After a Friday night that included Horatio Sanz in a Dr. Phil costume consisting of a plastic breast on the top of his head for a bald cap and a piece of electrical tape serving as his mustache, and a group called "Emanciprov" that featured Matt Walsh as a bullwhip-wielding slave driver, I thought I was reasonably prepared. I was reasonably wrong.

It was the type of evening in which two guys did a thirty-minute comedy show as Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr.

It was the type of evening that had beer chugging and banana eating contests between the performers and various audience members.

It was the type of evening in which a dude dressed as Flipper attacked people.

It was the type of evening that featured a comedic wrestling show, that ended with one of the members taking off his clothes and running around the stage with birthday cake on his ass.

It was the type of evening in which I found myself on stage, slow dancing with a stranger to Benny and the Jets at 3:30 in the morning.

It was the type of evening that dissolved into chaos, prompting a very tired Doug Benson to leave the stage in the middle of a performance, saying "this is stupid" and hang out with his tiny Asian girlfriend in the row behind us.

The thing about the Del Close marathon is, once you're in, all vestiges of polite society leave. The effect of a black, windowless theater and a non-stop assault of comedy causes everybody who shares the space to become immediately feral. Survival instincts kick in and you start looking around, figuring out who you can get away with killing. At 8 am, you giggle because there are four guys over there drinking beers, shirtless. Then one stands up and you realize they are completely naked. And nobody says a word as they help themselves to the donuts that one of the troupes thoughtfully provided.

At the end of the marathon, once your friends have all left you, and it's been over thirty hours since you've slept, you may find yourself having a short conversation with Ian Roberts in the middle of one of his shows about how you don't like talking about being a vegetarian. "Good, so you know it's wrong then." he says to you. And you do know. Because even in New York theater, the time may come when you need to kill to survive.