Look ma! I'm on TV! On the Internet! In a Newspaper!

So, a very enterprising young student writer for the Arizona Daily Star, Samantha Munsey, interviewed me about thrifting after reading my Hello Giggles stuff, Adventures in Thrifting. 

She does a near-magical job making me appear coherent, seeing as how I had driven back to Tucson from Illinois two days before and was literally leaving for Russia an hour after the interview. I'm hot, disheveled, wearing crooked glasses and say "Um," and "Like," many, many times (Toast Masters would not be proud).

I also hunch my shoulders like WHOA! though I comfort myself with the notion that I was very tired and stressed and the slouching (BECAUSE OF A MEDICAL CONDITION) gets worse when I'm tired and stressed. 

Anyway, fabulous editing job Samantha! Seriously, I'm impressed, because I know how much I rambled and wandered around and how loud and crowded it was in there. There's also this really magical moment where I say, "I'm wearing a pink fluffy dress!" and the sleeve of said dress falls off my sloop-y shoulders. 

But I was prepared, because after the interview I was so worried I looked deranged during the interview that I practiced talking into my iPhone camera in weird and embarrassing ways (lots of British and Southern accents and weird faces) and forced myself to watch them, to prepare for the worst.

But honestly, it was really fun to do the interview, Samantha Munsey was a peach, a professional peach, and I think she did an amazing job putting the video together. 

Vagina Toadstools

Thoughts for a Sunshiney Morning has something very special for you today: a guest-poster, Ivy Wilson! (Found here and here). This post involves Germany, yeast, and mushrooms. Or, as Ivy Wilson deems them, Teutonic Toadstools:

Vagina Toadstools

I’m not a great baker, but I know that bread is supposed to rise.  Now that I live in Germany and no longer have a full time job, I spend more of my day cooking that I did back in America.  When my bread dough didn’t rise, I blamed myself for getting the cheaper of the two yeast brands at the super market.  I promptly returned to the grocery store and purchased the more expensive yeast.  It was made by a well-known, high quality German brand, but it was dead too.

I consulted my most Martha Stewart of German women friends.  “Oh – the dry yeast in Germany is crap,” she said.  “Go for the fresh yeast.”  I don’t know what fresh yeast is, so I said to hell with this nonsense and baked a chicken instead.

But, there was one place that day in Germany where yeast was alive and well.  It had become itchily apparent that there was an overgrowth of yeast in my females.  I’d had a few yeast infections before, and I was well aware of the symptoms.  So – what’s the big deal – you might think.  Surely women in Germany have vaginas that occasionally get a little yeasty.  Surely they have drug stores in Germany.  Just go to one and buy a German yeast infection treatment.  Well, not so fast.  

CAN WE GO BACK TO THE DAYZ. Except not really.

Despite protestations that I was never going to attend a fair again (too many times going to fairs convinced I was going to have a good time, only to puke up blue cotton candy or spend an obscene sum of money to get sunburned and nauseated by beer and deep-fried snickers which seemed like an awesome combination at first but then my friends wanted to go ride a spin-y ride and then I got sick (FAIRS ARE BAD PLACES FOR THE WEAK OF STOMACH), or one time I got yelled at by a cop in the parking lot who slammed his hand down on my car and screamed "DON'T YOU KNOW THE RULES OF DRIVING IN MINNESOTA??" -- this is what fairs do to people), I was easily persuaded to attend the Pima County Fair with @theKFoss by 1) The promise of a free admission pass and 2) Being told that Boyz II Men were the featured entertainers. 

Of course, I remembered almost immediately a reason I do stay away from fairs: rides that make can me pukey and discriminate against odd numbers: 

This is why fairs are bad for a teenager's self-esteem. It's a very restrictive model!

It was also quite hot at first -- I guess it was the earliest day on record that Tucson has hit 100 degrees. 


But gradually, as it became clear that I wasn't going to puke up blue cotton candy or cry over being a single rider (vast improvement over fairs of teenager-hood), I began to enjoy myself. Night fell, and night has the magical ability to turn to fairs from depressing places to magical, neon-lit tabernacles of delight. 


Plus, there are funny signs. 

Sitting Around in a Twilight T-shirt Wearing a Star Wars helmet on my head

I'm fond of posting this picture whenever I make the assertion that I'm Not a Nerd: 

I bought this Twilight: New Moon t-shirt at a thrift store; I just couldn't believe how awesomely awful it was, and so snatched it up immediately. I've worn it only once, upon the occasion here depicted; I went over to a friend's house for a BBQ, thinking only folks I already knew were going to be there and that they would think the shirt Immensely Funny. 


Then some people I didn't know showed up. 

Peak Peak

So, I went on quite a grueling hike up Picacho Peak today (if you click the link, you'll see that there was a Civil War re-enactment going at the same time! Did you know that Westernmost skirmish battle of the Civil War was fought at Picacho Peak? We didn't see the re-eanacment but we did occasionally hear cannon fire during the hike). *Also, apparently "Picacho" means "peak" in Spanish, so the name can be translated as "Peak Peak." **Also, apparently, the whole Peak is a lava flow, but scientists have never been able to figure out where the volcano that exploded the lava was (clearly, aliens involved somehow, no?).


I've passed Picacho Peak numerous times; it's one of those landmarks that indicates you're leaving Tucson for real when you head on a road trip. It's right by the similarly iconic Ostrich Farm and it's not far away from the prison sign that says "Do not stop for hitchhikers."


I thought that after a shower I was gonna collapse into a heap. But instead, I find myself looking at pics and movies from the hike and wanting to post them (admittedly, I am doing this lying in bed, from which I shall not stir). I haven't even got all the photos that my friend N. took, but I the ones I have are so GOLD that I MUST post them. 


This one should not make laugh as much as it does, given that it's me (trying) to be funny. 

Here are the boning flies referenced:

Baby Seals Make U Fall In Love

Okay, so it turns out I know nothing about photoshop/image manipulation, which I wanted to do in response to this Jezebel article Watch Ke$ha's Sarah McLachlan-esque Plea on Behalf of Baby Seals

But basically...

Ke$sha says

And the baby seals are like, WE R WHO W R! 

(I highly recommend listening to the Ke$ha video while being mesmerized by baby seal gif).

gif from Fuck Yeah, Baby Seals

Thrift Store Male Objectification!

Another one that's a little too saucy for Hello Giggles, but Bad Cholla sent me a picture of this epic poster for sale in a local thrift store: 

 Although...really...a woman's touch? Won't any touch at all do, really?

Call for Thrift Store Finds!

I'm putting out a call for weird and funny things that you've found at thrift stores! 

This one couldn't go on Hello Giggles, but I present it as an outtake for you all: 

The Blanket With The Inappropriate Towers on It That Do Not Make Me Think of Towers:

Everything I love comes together in an explosion of unicorns farting rainbows

Lately, it's like the world is designing things especially for me (magical thinking? what's that?). 

Joel McHale reflects on Supernatural: 



As The Onion AV Club puts it: you just don't get stuff like this on any other show:

“You're saying an octopus did this?” a Winchester asked the medical examiner. “Not just any octopus,” the guy replied. Later, once the brothers were beginning to get a vague sense of what was going on, Sam said, “Now, the question is, how did a unicorn come off this sketch and kill Billy's dad?” You just don't hear dialogue like this on the shows with some combination of CSI, NCIS, or Law & Order in their titles. Maybe if every show on TV did have dialogue like this, I wouldn't enjoy it so much when I get to hear it on Supernatural. An alternate possibility, at least as likely, is that if every show on TV had this kind of dialogue, I'd never leave my living room.

And earlier, Misha Collins shows up on The Soup and beats up Joel McHale!:



In conclusion: 

Thanks to here!

AND LOOK AT THIS PROMO:




And on Tuesday, Misha Collins will be on Ringer and then the Fug Girls will recap it and everything I have ever wanted will come true.  

(And, eeeeep, speaking of unicorns and rainbows...)

Tragic Lost Opportunity for more 30 Rock clips

Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate...ack!



When posting about my party below, I completely forgot to include this 30 Rock clip, which sums up my attitude to entertaining:

Snow Mad

When you live in Arizona, you don't see snow much. Or at all. When you encounter snow for the first time, it can be...well. A little overwhelming. 

I hiked Madera canyon today, with two friends who each have a cute dog (for stats, check this snazziness out). We got up high enough that there was still some snow on the mountain peaks. My friend's dog, Rupert, had...quite the reaction when experiencing his first snow:



(There's also a close-up of my ass in the video, if you're into that sort of thing. Plus my voice). 

The thing about this video is...this did not happen once. It happened over and over and over again. He became so excited that we dubbed it "snow madness." After all, he's just a poor, desert-dwelling dog. It's natural that his first snow drove him a little crazy!

The little man-made ponds on the hike were also frozen. Being fairly stupid, I decided to tread on the ice to see if it would hold me. It did!

This looks fake but isn't.

30 Rock: I want to go to there.

I tried to find two clips from 30 Rock today for a Hello Giggles post: either the one where Liz Lemon is caught wearing a bathing suit as underwear or the one where she says, "I'm not sure you want to take advice from me on this. I ate a Three Musketeers bar for lunch and my bra is held together with tape." I could find neither, but I satisfactorily wasting time looking at 30 Rock clips and now I have them book marked for the right occasion!

So to celebrate 30 Rock coming back soon, here you go.

A reminder of why Jack Donaghy is the best ("It's after six. What am I -- a farmer?" is the moment I knew I was in the love with the show).

And now -- 30 Rock clips for any occasion!

Things!!

So forever ago, I was like "Here are all the things my next blog post will include!" And since then I've been blocked, because I realized I wanted to write about a bunch of things that...didn't really relate together so well. So I thought I'd talk you through my thought process. 

The Punner in Me Is Happy

A certain philosophy grad student I know has a food blog!

Guess what it's called? 

I know. Awesome.

I aggregate Writing is Hard stuff

Becky Tuch, of The Review Review (to which I contribute; you know, just FULL DISCLOSURE and everythin') recently wrote a post called "Writing. It's Hard." I really liked it. In the comments, I wrote "I'm share this on facebook, blog, etc. IMMEDIATELY"--apparently so excited over the post that I typo'd (I meant to write, "IMMA SHARE this").

Anyway, as a wriiiiiiter I of course have a special fondness for "Writing. It's hard" posts/articles, because they make one feel a little less alone/crazy. So I thought I'd aggregate of a few of my recent and/or easily accessible via web favorites.

1. "Writing. It's hard."  This is, like, so true for me! Except for the part about "For years, you've been getting up at six-thirty." HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

2. "Peter Bognanni writes a blog post." Sample quote: "But then I couldn’t help thinking about how I actually work when I write. And how random and strange and totally un-process-like it is in every sense."

3. pamie, "Eyes on the Prize." Sample quote:

"One time I had gotten out of the shower having finally figured out an ending to a chapter, and the only thing I had to write on was an ATM receipt that was in the pocket of the clothes I’d been wearing before I got into the shower, and the only implement I had was my index finger, dipped in my own blood from a cut I’d given my shin with my razor in the shower.

It had better be the best damn chapter in the novel, because I wrote it in shinblood."

Sort of gives a new meaning to that oft-repeated quote about "Writing is easy. You just sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." In this case, "Writing is easy. You just cut yourself shaving, get struck with a good idea, and write out said idea on an ATM receipt in shinblood."

4. Solipsism.  

Speaking of typewriters. 

5. Referenced previously, Zadie Smith "That Crafty Feeling."

6. I had to. Yes, I have a problem. Even though this clip doesn't have my favorite lines: "If I'd known it was real, I would have done another pass" and "If I were a psychic, do you think I'd be writing? Writing is hard." (No worries: I transcribed that on my facebook page.)

7. Holy crap, I almost forgot this! 

8. ETA: continuing in the funny vein, Jason showed me this.

Signs of Life: Window Display Fail

1) I know they were going for a "set up for a proposal" but it just looks, at a glance, like the window display is for a regular old pair of house keys. This is confusing. I genuinely expected the post-it to read, "Sorry for the mess, we've had a break-in and the thief tauntingly left the keys to the store behind."

2) The big set of keys kind of make the ring -- no slouch in the sparkly department -- look tiny in comparison. The reaction to this potential proposal set-up would be, I feel: "Ooooh, keys! -- Wait, look, a ring! Oh. It's kind of small. No, no -- I mean, it's nice. But not as big as these keys, you know?"

3) Wait, is this imaginary person proposing to SOMEONE THEY HAVE NOT YET SWAPPED KEYS WITH? This seems like a bad idea. Someone tell them they are rushing things!

4) Again, I don't mean to be so picky, but -- any important announcement/question: a break-up, a proposal, a firing, a declaration of terminal illness, whatever, should not be declared via post-it. "Hey, there's half a Subway sandwich in the fridge": sure. "Let's be together always?": Not so much. Not a case where you want to say it with office supplies.

5) The message on the post-it itself: "Come and go as you please but stay with me always." This is confusing. Do they want me to come and go as I please or stay with them always? WHICH ONE IS IT?

6) For example: What if I left for Bulgaria for like several years? Would that be okay? "Hey, I'm back!" "But you were gone for several years!" "Yeah, I went to Bulgaria. You said to come and go as I pleased." "But I've married and had children with another in the meantime." "But I said I'd stay with you always!" "But you left." "But you said come and go as I pleased! Jeeeez, mixed signals, much?"

Really Old Pictures of Food: How in the Who and the What Now?

Someone sent me this article about "how and why" photos of food are shared online. Probably because I eagerly snap photos of anything I come close to "making."

The upshot seems to be that most photos of food come from:

Keeping a Food Diary: 25% this lends itself to the self-tracking trend we have covered before.
Documenting the Process of Cooking: Driven by the motivation to show their creation, 22% of food photography is people self-documenting their proud foodie creation.

ETA: All this talk of food-documenting reminded me of Food Junta, which is currently under construction but a great source--in contrast to me--of professionally-presented foodie documentation. Although it is not food, I do need to make this when I get back to Arizona, because we have actual rattlesnakes there.

Self-Documenting My Proud Foodie Creation

New Celebrity Endorses Leek-y Cauldron Diet

My heart can't take this, you guys.

Pamie (Pamela Ribon) commented on my blog. She tweeted the fug girls about me, who tweeted her back. She's following Yogurt on Tumblr (I said I'd get that link in every time).

Because everyone knows that the best way to express love is through money, I'm buying this right away. And then this.

So, to recap, not only has all this happened, but: Jennifer Egan is friends with me on facebook. I also know someone who knows someone who is her cousin.

I know someone who knows someone in The Decemberists.

I know someone who knows someone who knows Richard Siken.

Please don't act like you're not impressed. You're just embarrassing yourself.

Oh, and if that weren't enough, you know that roller derby I went to? I went with her and him. Yeah, that's right. ROLLER DERBY.

So now that I'm a celebrity, you're going to have start treating me accordingly.

But being a celebrity comes with certain responsibilities, such as looking your best. So I thought I'd share some tips.

First of all, no one goes on diets anymore. Diets are bad; we're supposed to enjoy and savor food. Like the Europeans do. I'm technically half-European, but I'm half-British and, for complicated historical reasons, people don't treat you as a gastronomical expert if you're British. When you try to serve them delicious things like marmite on toast, they get all squirrel-ly with you. (Sigh -- you Yanks. Marmite is delicious, y'all).

But if you're French, people listen to what you have to say about food, which is where this comes in. It's not a "diet" you see -- it's a commitment to wellness and savoring food and making things that taste good and are good for you. I made this in the past from her website, and I liked it. And in the process, I discovered this: the leek soup kick-off weekend.

So, you make this soup out of leeks (called "the magical leek soup") and you live on it for a weekend:

Leeks are a mild diuretic, and 48 hours or so of leek soup would provide immediate results to jump-start the recasting. For me, it was the start of a lifelong commitment to wellness as well as the beginning of my appreciation, my love, of leeks, about which there is much more to say. It is a trick I still use from time to time; do try it the first weekend.

But it's not a diet, y'all! Because it tastes delicious:

Both versions are so good, and an adventure for most palates, that you will have a very hard time seeing them as prison rations. Especially if these tastes are new to you, jot your impressions of flavor and fragrance in your journal. In time, this exercise will intensify your pleasures, and you may want to keep a regular diary of your experiences gastronomiques

Things I Like Collide

My "blog list" is entirely blogs-by-friends-that-I-like; I've thought occasionally of putting up blogs and sites that are not written by friends (but rather by people who convince me through their blogging that if we were ever to meet in real life, we would inevitably be best friends).

Recently, there have been some stirrings in the world-of-blogs-I-read. There's hyperbole and a half: I introduced a friend to it and then took the opportunity to catch up. I laughed so hard that my abs actually hurt; I can thus recommend it not only as a blog but as an ab work out (it's so popular at this point, tho', it really doesn't need my wee little recommendation). My laughter at this blog has also been so intense that ON TWO SEPARATE OCCASIONS while I was reading it, someone came in from the other room, genuinely concerned that I was hysterically crying.

Anyway, friend-I-introduced-to-it was a fan and I was like "I know! She's so great! Why she doesn't have a book is beyond me!" Then the next morning, hyperbole and a half announced that she was, indeed, coming out with a book.

[Insert joke here about how now is the appropriate time to ask the universe for a million dollars, etc.]

I've also read pamie (comedy writer Pamela Ribon) for many years. I've even bought two of her books, as a thank-you what-not for all the free content she's provided me.

Anyway, I went to the Tucson Roller Derby championships the other day (bear with me, THIS IS ACTUALLY AN EXCELLENT SEGUE JUST WAIT). Anyway, Roller Derby has recently come into popular consciousness because of Whip It, which I have not seen (but plan to!) and round about the same time, Pamela Ribon came out with a book, Going in Circles, which is a fictionalized account of her experiences with roller derby and divorce (which I have not read, but plan to!)

So I went to roller derby, which reminded me of pamie, so I checked it, and she has a really excellent piece about being a female writer in comedy, sparked by pilot/tv staffing season and Tina Fey's Bossypants (which I have read parts of).

Then today, I checked jezebel, a site I frequently read, and the first post is all about female writers in TV, and it quotes Pamie's post.

So. Do I:

(1) Have my finger right on the beating heart of popular feminist consciousness;

(2) Have clairvoyant abilities;

or

(3) Way too much time on my hands to surf the Internet.

Next, I expect Go Fug Yourself to write a piece on Supernatural that references Marcel Proust and romance novels and all of my obsessions will come together in an explosion of sparkles and rainbows (Go Fug Yourself is also pretty good at addressing my obsessions, from their eerily-similar-to-mine preoccupation with Brenda on the original 90210 [edited to add: I cannot find this on their new, advertisement-heavy layout! Boo!] to their Britney Spears Monologues.)

So, I guess I'll put these blogs on my blog list, seeing as how there's clearly a psychic link there. I should put a permanent link to Bossypants up there, too, seeing as how I've mentioned it so much, despite only having read sections. Oh! Oh! I can also link to Yogurt for the billionth time! [Note: Billion = four]. Because her latest is about a female-written comedy! Ha ha! (Let's see if I can figure out a way to link to her in every post).

Finally, have some pictures of roller derby:

From Jason

Tina Fey on early attempts to style her hair:

That feeling of "I'm pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I'm just gonna do it anyway" is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook.

It's the essence of the Nervous Chef!