I was wrong once

One time, Kelly and I got into an argument about what you call that foam-rubber thing rednecks use to keep their beer cold. She called it a "coozy," while I insisted it was called a "cozy." I mean what kind of stupid word is "coozy?" It sounds very much like a derogatory term for vagina, which Heather calls Veronica in the film Heathers.

This was back in the day before UrbanDictionary.com. We went to a party or a bar or someplace and asked everyone "What do you call that foam-rubber thing you use to keep beer cold?" Turns out, the fucker is called a coozy. You learn something every day.

The lovely pink coozy (seen above cradling a Raison D'Etre) was purchased by me from a band called Dent May and His Magnificent Ukulele. They are very cool and sing a hilarious song called "I'm An Alcoholic." I think this is the best thing I've ever picked up at a band's merch booth, and Dent May even gave me a deal on it.

My special power: invisibility

You know, a couple of months ago I made a commitment to myself to stop complaining, but sometimes complaining exorcises ideas that bother me and I am never bothered by them again. I hope that is the case right now. Also, I am a bit on the passive aggressive side and sometimes tend to complain to the wrong audience, rather than the one with whom I have my grievance. This is something I'm working on.

Mikela and I went to dinner tonight at a local pizza place and our conversation eventually came around to one of the seeming paradoxes of dealing with service industry people: the fact that if you are patient, polite, and understanding of how busy servers/bartenders/baristas are, they sometimes ignore you; while rude, pushy, demanding people (who often seem to be stingy tippers) get all the attention in the world.

At dinner, I stood at the bar forever and couldn't get a refill on my beer because I wasn't rude enough to elbow between people eating at the bar and get in the bartender's face (Not that I actually needed any more beer. What I did drink led to the crankiness you are now witnessing). The bartender couldn't be bothered to notice me even though two of her friends were standing right next to me. I always err on the side of being too timid in this type of situation, never saying "Excuse me!" when I need to, so the frustration I feel is ultimately at myself. I don't want to come off as an obnoxious asshole. Why should it matter, anyway? Do I care if the bartender thinks I'm a bitch? What's she going to do to me? How does she know I need something if I don't speak up? She's fucking busy. So what do I do? Why, complain to Mikela, hapless bystander, of course. And be a bad listener. Boo!

I'm afraid of acting like one of those people you're embarrassed to go out with: I used to have a roommate who was so demanding and rude that she would tip horribly if the server didn't banter and coddle her in a specific way. After the laundry list of special things said roommate asked for when ordering, I was lucky if a server even remembered to bring me water.



Conversely, when I want to be invisible it never happens. At work I can't have five minutes in a row without one of my coworkers walking by my desk and commenting on something totally stupid--usually it involves the look on my face. I'll be working quietly and someone will walk by my desk, stop, turn around, and come back to ask me if anything is wrong or why I look confused, bored, or annoyed. My all-time favorite has to be the time a guy came over, crouched down, looked up at the ceiling, and asked me "Is there something interesting up there?" I was in the middle of figuring out some really complicated problem when he interrupted me with his stupid question.

This just cracks me up

My friend Polly just sent this as a Myspace bulletin, and I just felt like sharing:

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares of Delta Airlines one year ago, you will have $49.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares of AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today.

If you had purchased $1,000 of shares of Lehman Brothers one year ago, you will have $0.00 today.


But, if you had purchased $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer,
then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received $214.00.

Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle.

It is called the 401-Keg.


A recent study found that the average American walks about 900 miles a year.

Another study found that Americans drink, on average, 22 gallons of alcohol a year.

That means that, on average, Americans get about 41 miles to the gallon!

Makes you proud to be an American!

Fried eggs and demonic furniture

I know, I know, I'm going to have to change the name of my blog to "I like to take pictures of my food." But yesterday I made hash browns with the leftover potatoes from Friday's potato salad. The hashbrowns turned out more like a giant latke,

(no, not that Latka), and today I ate the leftover latke with a fried egg on top:

which was insanely delicious. I doused it with Tapatio, but I'll spare you that image, because Tapatio-sprinkled food looks kinda gross.

On Saturday I had lunch with the wonderful A. Wolfe at Cafe Ole, which has surprisingly good fish tacos. After lunch, I wandered down to Renewal, where I beheld an amazing sight:

This may seem like a very mundane chair--and it is, except that it's upholstered in the same fabric as a couch my very old roommate Gloria brought into my apartment with Kelly in the year 2000. Several years ago, I met someone who had a love seat from this same furniture set. I'm pretty sure this was once all a single room set and the separate pieces are trying to find their way back to each other through me. I mean, seriously, it looks pretty demonic if you ask me, like the chair in the book version of The Amityville Horror that comes alive and tries to bite George Lutz, (I think it's a chair, though it may be some other piece of furniture). Real or no, that is the scariest fucking book I've ever read.

Renewal also had this gorgeous pumpkin-colored mid-century couch for a mere $229:

That's a steal! Oh, if only I weren't so broke!

After Renewal, I went to Hastings to rent Smart People and The Lives of Others. Netflix be damned! On my way out, I saw the following book, which I just had to share because it looks pretty amazing:

Yes, that's right; it's called "God's Concubine." Amazingly, according to Amazon, it is not about any strange religious sects, but rather, "In the long, complex second installment of her Troy Game quartet (after 2003's Hades' Daughter), Australian author Douglass moves her teeming cast of mythic heroes from ancient Greece to 11th-century England (aka Albion)." Okay, then.

I watched Smart People yesterday, and I really liked it. Thomas Hayden Church and Ellen Page were wonderful as always, and Sarah Jessica Parker didn't annoy me in the least since she wasn't playing that grating Carrie Bradshaw character. I have yet to watch The Lives of Others, of which I'm apprehensive because I'm afraid it'll have a heartbreaking ending and color my moods for days like Children of Men.

Finally, here is the photo Polly's husband took of me with my giant beer. Look how good my eyebrows look!

Potatoes, Beer, and Six Degrees of Separation

Yesterday it snowed like crazy. Here is my attempt to photograph my snowy deck:

(Since it's only 33 degrees right now, that snow is all still there!) My friend Mikela came over and we made steaks and French potato salad. The French potato salad came from the Barefoot Contessa's recipe, which can be found here. It is one of the most delicious things I have ever tasted. Here is a photo:

I was first inspired to make French potato salad last winter when we read Ernest Hemingway's A Moveable Feast in my senior seminar, where the theme was Food in Literature. Here's the passage that made me hanker for some vinegar and olive oil marinated potatoes:

Eating is wonderful too and do you know where you are going to eat right now?
Lipp's is where you are going to eat and drink too.
It was a quick walk to Lipp's and every place I passed that my stomach noticed as quickly as my eyes or my nose made the walk an added pleasure. There were few people in the brasserie and when I sat down on the bench against the wall with the mirror in back and a table in front and the waiter asked if I wanted beer I asked for a distingue, the big glass mug that held a liter, and for potato salad.
The beer was very cold and wonderful to drink. The pommes a l'huile were firm and marinated and the olive oil delicious. I ground black pepper over the potatoes and moistened the bread in the olive oil. After the first heavy draft of beer I drank and ate very slowly.

Mikela and I had wine with our steak and potatoes, but last week I went out with some friends for giant Oktoberfest liter beers at a great beer and pizza place called The Front Door. Here's Polly with her distingue, (though I didn't know the formal name for it until just now; we were calling them Hobbit beers because you look like a Hobbit when you're drinking one):

Polly told me about a book she'd read that proved the theory that there are only six degrees of separation between any 2 people on earth. Wikipedia has just informed me that much of this theory was developed by a Hungarian. Of course it was; we Hungarians are smart. The whole six degrees of separation thing is sort of how I approach a lot of things in life. For example, look how easily I connected two seemingly disparate events: drinking giant beers last Saturday, and cooking steaks and potato salad yesterday, with a random paragraph from Hemingway, (whom I have a sketchy relationship with). I didn't even think about any connections until I started writing this post. Awesome!

If only I could find a job utilizing this connecting skill...

Anyway, Mikela and I ate our steak and potatoes with some roasted broccoli, like this:

Mmmm, steak and French potato salad. Tyler joked that we are all old now, since we were all spending our Friday night doing wholesome kitchen activities (he was making cookies with another friend). Yup, being old is fun!

An Open Letter to Alcohol

Looking back, I never thought it would come to this. However, I think it's time we parted ways. We used to have so much fun together: partying all day and all night, visiting strange after-parties, making out with random guys, annoying the neighbors, breaking laws, trying new drugs, throwing up, sleeping past noon, and all the other rock and roll things I can't think of right now.

But lately--how can I put this--you bore me. A few sips and I just think, "ugh, isn't there something better I could be doing?" Whereas I used to have nasty anxiety about all social interactions, and needed you to help me get through said interactions, I don't feel that way anymore. I still have anxiety, but now you make it worse. I find social hour more enjoyable with zero drinks than I do after having one or two drinks--any more than that and I'm a lost cause, puking in garbage cans and such. All of my current anxiety stems from the fear that others will remember the stupid things I've done whilst drinking. Eliminate the drinking, eliminate the anxiety.

You make me do stupid things such as: obtaining phone numbers for people I have crushes on and sending them obnoxious text messages; mistaking talking for making out and then telling other people about my mistaken perception that so-and-so and so-and-so were making out when they absolutely were not; allowing my friend's stupid "ex" boyfriend to ask me condescending questions such as "But what do you REALLY want to do with your life? But no, what do you REALLY want to do?" and "But what kind of guy DO you like? I mean, what kinds of things do you look for in a guy?" and not punching him; being nice to whiny guys who try to kiss me and then whine at me "but you're beautiful!" when I tell them I'm in love with someone else; allowing married ex-coworkers into my house who are totally disrespectful of my stuff and then hit on me in the most vulgar way imaginable; sleep repeatedly with sleazebags; take twelve years to finish my Bachelor's Degree; act like an idiot or a jerk so as to make me wake up regretting everything I've done the night before and find it miraculous that I still have friends; and let's not forget all the time I've wasted being hung over and the weight I've gained.

That's not to say we didn't have our good times: I made a lot of friends drinking; I danced a lot; you helped me to get laid; and I have memories and stories to last me for many years. But lately all you give me are vague feelings of annoyance and aggression, headache, nausea, and horrific hangovers. And sometimes you just make me sleepy.

You do little to alleviate my existential boredom.

And these are the reasons why we must part ways, Alcohol.

Thank you and fuck you.

Drinking is Dumb

Why do we do this to ourselves? Why must we go out drinking at night when it makes us so sick the next day? Aren't I a little old for this? I'm typing this at Leighann's house, where I spent the night because I was part of her femmes fatale dinner and drink-a-thon last night. Now it's 5 pm and I'm still here because I don't feel well enough to risk getting in some cab to go downtown and get my car. Leighann is not well, either and thus cannot take me to my car on her little scooter.

Stupid, stupid, stupid Jenny! I have "squandered my Sunday" as my friend put it so eloquently on Facebook. And I have my marathon day tomorrow that goes from 7am to 10pm and there is a fly buzzing around in here that is driving me insane. I need to get my shit together so I can swing by Port of Subs on the way home. Mmmm, Port of Subs. I am so hungry.

Several G&Ts, a shot of Tuaca, and a Spicy Tendercrisp later...

Published almost simultaneously on Myspace.

I woke up from the weirdest dream this morning. I was on vacation with some friends in California or somewhere. One friend was trying to set me up with her ex-husband, who was also on the trip, but they kept running off and having sex in mausoleums. My other friend and I went for a walk and ended up hanging out with this big bunch of locals sitting around outside of a mobile home and smoking. I realized one of my left molars, (which I really do have problems with), was loose, so I panicked and my friend and I headed back to the hotel, seeking the hotel's in-house dentist.
This is where it gets really weird. As my friend and I were nearing the hotel pool, Ricardo Montalban approached us and started sweet-talking us, trying to sell us on his master plan. He wanted to turn us into cyborgs. We jumped into the pool, knowing he couldn't go in the water, since he himself was a cyborg. We swam out into the middle of the pool, and Ricardo just stood on the edge proselytizing to us about his cyborg dreams. He was dressed like the millionaire from Gilligan's Island, in a navy blazer, white pants (ugh, the horror!), and a red ascot. The hotel and pool were really elaborate, the pool extending under the entire hotel, which had a mall and many restaurants and coffee shops. My friend and I first tried to swim in circles around each other in order to make Ricardo get sick and give up, but this didn't work because cyborgs don't get sick. So we went under the bridge he was standing on, and swam on, under waterfalls, past palm tree islands, past all the shops and ladies having coffee, to the far side of the hotel. Here, the pool just sort of got shallower and shallower until it became dry ground, imitating a natural body of water. Of course, Ricardo was there. My friend ran away from the pool and disappeared, while I tried to run back into the water. I woke up just as I was struggling to get back to the deeper part of the pool.
I have always found Ricardo Montalban vaguely menacing after being exposed to The Wrath of Khan at the tender age of eight. Near the end half of his face gets melted off, and it really freaked me out. I had always thought Mr. Roarke was creepy for more reasons than just being omniscient and keeping a little person for a pet, but after that movie, Fantasy Island moved several steps up the sinister scale for me.