Music-love and creepy search terms

Every once in a while a musician comes around that I can't help but gush about. Fiona is like this for me (if I were a man, I would be completely incapacit -ated by her, for sure). Same with Tribe Called Quest and People Under the Stairs. I almost also feel this way about Wilco and Bonnie Raitt, but not quite. And definitely Hendrix, but that's so cliche.

The point? Right. My new heterosexual musical crush is Jessie Baylin. (That's her, up there above all this nonsense you're reading). I can't get enough, and you can't download her off ITunes, so you'll just have to go here until her site is up. And here is good,because there are four songs you can listen to, full-length. So go here.

DO IT!

She actually reminds me a bit about a non-angsty (or almost so) Fiona... same deep, rich tone in her voice, but totally accessible and very sexy. So basically not so crazy. And with a touch of jazz about her. To my male readers: fantasy material looks. Love her.

Okay, I'm done now.

But she's rad.

In fact, I wish we were friends. So I could be sort of rad by association. And also be heartbreakingly hip, of course, running around with John Mayer and whatnot in Los Angeles wearing very outdated shoes that everyone else thinks are incredibly cool because they're ugly and that's ironicwhen you're beautiful and sorta famous.

God, that is pretty awesome, I imagine. Until you're no longer slightly famous. Because then you're either so famous that you're available for public humiliation or just some sorta vaguely pretty blonde in ugly shoes, with very few marketable skills, waitressing in a nasty diner where there are roaches, if not rats, in the bathroom alongside a mop that smells like a combination of egg-salad, mold and vinegar.

Sorry. Tangent. Jessie Baylin = RAD. Basically, that's all.
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And now, for "search terms leading to Legwarmers":

wear shit pants
resolve chocolate stains
shit her pants drunk pictures of
blistering when wearing heels
clumsy but getting some
i want to try legwarmers in bed
naked with legwarmers
pictures of boys spray tanning

These all make a lot of sense, right? I mean, who doesn't want to know how to wear shit pants?

And who knew there were so many people with legwarmers fetishes? Welcome, friends. We don't judge here. (Well, unless you suck. Then we judge).

And as for the poor lost soul seeking pictures of boys spray-tanning, all I can say is WOW. Yay for the Internet: allowing creeps to be creepy 24/7, in real life and virtually. I am very, very afraid. Like, of you. (No, not you... YOU. Over there. In the little boys' underwear, rubbing that Spiderman doll where his bathingsuit would cover, were he to wear a bathingsuit and not that spandexy red and blue thing. Yeah, YOU.)

...

So, what have I learned from this little exercise?

I've really got to start writing about more of substance and intellect and less about, well, all of the above.

HEATwaaaayve! Naked! Bagels! Laywers!

Over the past week, Seattle has experienced a major heatwave. (No, not like the band, like the weather.) And it almost killed me.

It has been so fucking hot here that at night, even after popping a Xanax AND a Tylenol PM (which I'm sure will probably kill me if the heat doesn't), I STILL can't sleep. Instead, I lie there on top of my bed very close to naked, "glistening", as each one of my limbs goes entirely numb (because of the drugs), and fantasize about either dying of heatstroke or driving to my air conditioned office in my underwear, breaking in, and sleeping under my desk until morning, where I'm awoken by our small and very shy hispanic office cleaning man, who is hitting me with his vaccum cleaner, trying not to look at the strange half-clad white girl under her desk.

Meanwhile, what I should really be concerned about is the fact that I'm so heavily medicated that I couldn't get out of bed to save myself if there were a fire or defend myself if there were a prowler (and even if I did, I'd be in my underwear, and with all the drugs there's no way I could get further dressed, so that would be pretty embarrassing, too).

(And other totally logical and likely examples of dangerous things like that.)

By the time I got to sleep last night, it was 4:15 a.m., and I was sprawled out in the middle of my livingroom floor in front of the sliding door and open screen door and window, with three fans pointed right at me and set on full-speed, pushing around air so hot it feels like I'm being blowdried all night. Awesome.

When I finally started to wake up, late, I was groggy and disoriented from the long night, and it was bright as all shit in my apartment. So, I kept my eyes closed to ease into this whole "waking up after 3 hours of tortured sleep" thing. The noise was incredible. It was like I was lying in the middle of a helicopter pad. And then I realized, as I really began to wake up, that it was super bright in the place because all the windows were open. All the windows were open. OPEN. And I was LYING, BARELY CLOTHED, ON MY FLOOR with my hair blowing everywhichway, for all the neighbors and commuters on the street directly outside my sliding door, to see.

After the momentary frozen shock of it all (and a few "WhoOOOOoooo!"'s from outside), I rolled over onto my stomach and army-crawled to the hallway, in my undies, where I found refuge in the form of a pillowcase, which I wrapped around me like a too-short towel/too large tube top and dashed into my dark, hot bedroom, where I sat on the floor and half-giggled, half-burned in humiliation until I was approximately 10 minutes late for work, exhausted and still not dressed.

Awesome.


But, on the upside, my office is today full of 1)food 2) coffee and 3)reasonably attractive young lawyers.

Fridays are bagel days at my office. And that makes me VERY happy, as I spend the rest of the week calorically scrimping (no breakfast, Zone Bar for lunch, a couple Americanos, and salad for dinner) so that I can drink whatever I want (alcohol is very high-calorie!) and, most of all, indulge on bagel day.

Today was 1/2 a jalepeno bagel with jalepeno cream cheese and 1/4 a cinnamon twist bagel with strawberry. Delicious and incredibly overindulgent.

To top it all off, we've also got a bunch of lawyers and consultants in our office this week, (apparently we only hire the 25-35 year old, attractive lawyers and consultants - Yay!!!) which means we ALSO had fresh coffee in every office (I guess to impress/motivate them. I dunno). I am on my third cup. Buzzzz.

So not only am I focused (thank you, caffeine) on work, but I've also been incredibly productive otherwise today: I've made eyes at at least three delicious little lawyer-types, who keep walking by my office.

Probably because they think I'm cute. (Which would be a minor miracle, as on three hours of sleep I look like Rob Schneider.) So far, at least one made eyes back. (I think. Or maybe he was checking himSELF out in my window.)

(I've got to stop with these excessive, sarcastic, parentheticals.)

(It's really getting ridiculous.)

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Have a good weekend, all!

(And if you have a little time to click around, check out Ron Silliman, who is smart and on point with poetics. Because after you leave here, you probably need a little intelligent stimulation. Just looking out for you.)

It's a bad sign when your PR agency needs some PR.

As we were recently discussing the plight of PR in the comments section of a recent post, I couldn't resist reposting this gem of a terrible and offensive pitch by a now-unemployed PR professional. Gawker did a great job of covering this, front to back.

Gotta love unabashed racism. Unbelievable.

Pearl Jamming and a damn good weekend

It was a good weekend. I managed to cram 4 days of festivities into two whirlwind tours of fun. I'll keep it short, but here's the gist:

Spent all day Saturday on either the beach or a boat at L's cabin. On the beach, I read trashy magazines, threw around a football, and drank beers. On the boat, I watched wakeboarders ride, drank raspberry vodka from the bottle, listened to SoundGarden and pretty much felt like a badass. The company was good, the music was good, and it was that classic summer day you never want to end.

By the time we got the boat off the water, I was pretty sure it couldn't get better (remember, I was three sheets to the wind, in a swimsuit, in the sun, and no one had yet shat themselves). But then it did.

A couple of my friends and I were unexpectedly offered free tickets to the Pearl Jam show that evening by a new (generous) acquaintance. The concert was at the Gorge in George, Washington. Not only is this my favorite venue (for a number of reasons but mostly the aesthetic appeal of the place -- it's just breathtaking), but I was already pretty close, my friends are die-hard PJ fans, and the prefunking was done.

I was in, with three friends.

Now, it was hotter than two rats copulating in a tube sock at the Gorge. We're talking 89 degrees after the sun set. But I was so blissed out the whole time just to be there that I didn't even notice. It was good. Like, really good. Teenage Wasteland was a particular high point, as was Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, of course. But you can download it here and see for yourself.

After the concert, we went back to the cabin where we crashed and then got up the following morning for an early drive home, during which I slept shamelessly the whole way, half draped over my helpless (but admirably patient) backseat companion (who doubled as a pillow).

Upon arriving home, I changed and went to the much-anticipated company picnic and -- surprise! -- had a great time. It was again a zillion and a half degrees, but at one point all the execs kids had a waterfight and somehow my CEO and I got involved, which was both fun and totally necessary to prevent me from actually melting right there in the park.

Immediately following the picnic, I got on a ferry and headed across the water to an island where a friend of mine recently moved and bought a boat. We killed three hours on the boat, and then went to a nearby restaraunt on a pier and ate our weight in seafood.

By the time I finally got on the ferry home, it was 11:30 and I was full, completely exhausted, and happy. You can't ask for much more than that.

Mailman, books, poems, picnic.

Mailman:
So I go to my mailbox this morning, cringing, anticipating it to explode with bills and the like. But all I got was some junk mail and a note written on the back of one of those "Sorry you missed us, our next delivery date will be:" postcards. The card read like this:

"Hi, I'm your mailman, Ron. I saw you moving in and I just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood. Hopefully I'll see you around!"

Rad. So now not only am I probably in serious debt with the utility companies, but I'm living alone and the mailman, "Ron", knows where I live and is motivated enough to write me little notes.

My life is so bizarre.
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Books:
I just finished "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss, which I loved. Intelligent, charming and deeply funny, intensely personal, moving. Told by an 80-year old man who fears becoming invisible. (A fear I must admit I share. That and NOT becoming invisible.) Good fiction from a talented writer.

I just started "The Brief History of the Dead" by Kevin Brockmeier (what is it with me and fictional history?) and "Water for Elephants" by Sara Gruen. I'm reading both at the same time, because I couldn't decide between the two and didn't want to wait to start either.

One involves the connection, conversation and communion between the dead and the living based on the lifetime of memory and the other involves a circus, a stubborn elephant, and unrequited mid 1930's love. Good stuff.
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Poems:
I have those little magnetic words leftover from my days in college when I was pretty sure I was a poet and I was fascinated by E.E. Cummings, met Billy Collins and was in love with a boy who could write me under the table, into tears, and most importantly, into bed.

I keep these words on my fridge and on another board in my art room (where my piano, easel and computer live). I regularly smush these around with the palm of my hand just to see what is coincidentally created. Of course, it's usually nonsense. The other day the only thing I could pick out after the smushing was "Squirrel apple on fire", which I don't even get but is sort of funny.

But this morning I must have had the magic touch, because I pulled out a couple real gems. I like doing it this way because I always feel like when the words form something sensical that it's some big cosmic signal to me or something. Anyway, today's include:

Collect butter colored petals I
this flower has the look of
fashion.

...and...

Man
I believe you in that suit
almost.

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Picnic:

[Side note: Any time I use the word "Picnic", it reminds me of one of my favorite of Billy Collins' poems, "Picnic, Lightning", and of the line which inspired that title, which came from Lolita:

"My very photogenic mother died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when I was three, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of her subsists within the hollows and dells of memory."

...which I committed to memory long ago, because it's awesome.]

I have a company picnic this weekend, and for the second time in two months, I have to attend a huge company function single. You see, everyone at I work with is married. All the execs, all of accounting, and 70 percent of the sales team, the other few of which are in serious relationships. So I'm a veritable freak of nature amongst my colleagues.

And I'm pretty sure there won't be alcohol or anyone else single there. Someone should really write a survival guide for this kind of thing.

In fact, I might actually pray for lightning.
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Have a good weekend!

You have to be smarter than the mailbox.

Ever since I moved (in May), I haven't gotten mail.

The reason for this is that when my landlord gave me the keys to the mailbox, she just sorta gestured over her shoulder to this big shiny metal box on the side of the road and said that although my unit number is 2, my mailbox number is 10. Then she pointed to the smaller of my two keys and told me this key would gain me access to my mailbox.

She was a nice-enough lady, but old. And clearly very ditzy. The lady could hardly focus from sentence to sentence, and in order to see the place, I had to schedule an appointment around when she got her hair done and when she got her nails done. The point is that this woman was no genius, and was so old/technologically simple-minded that she didn't, for example, know what Craigslist was, or even really how to use the Internet. So, though I'd never had one before, I presumed remote mailbox operation would be a simple task. If she could do it, I could do it.

Wrong.

For two months, I've been periodically going out to that goddamn mailbox and trying my damndest to insert my key into the one lock on the front side of that box -- the street-facing side.

Each time, no dice. There is honest to God no way my key goes in that hole. And for months I couldn't figure it out. To my credit, neither could the other two people I put this problem to (though one was a 9 year old and the other was an asian stranger on the street one Sunday afternoon who asked if I was OK while I banged the big metal box with my fists in frustration like a cromag or some type of monkey).

No luck. The key looked good, and everyone else seemed to be getting their mail just fine. With one lock and one key and no sign of a problem other than my inability to make the key open the lock, I was at a loss. I knew I was doing something wrong, but couldn't figure out what.

So today, when I got an email from Geico saying my car insurance renewal form had been returned and that there was a problem with my mailbox that could cause a lapse in my insurance, I finally gave in. I mean, this was a matter of the law -- there was just no getting around it... I needed into that mailbox, and I needed my landlord's help to do it. Beaten, I buckled and called her.

Me: Yeah, Anita? It's me, um, from unit 2? You know the mail key you gave me?
Anita: Yes, honey. The key for your mail.
Me: Yeah, well, it's broken. I've been trying since I moved in to get my mail, but it won't go in the lock.
Anita: You haven't gotten your mail for two months?
Me: No, you see I was really busy and stuff, but now I need to get it and I can't, because the key doesn't work.
Anita: Well are you putting it in number 2's box? You know, number 10?
Me: I would, but there's only one lock, you know? And my key doesn't fit.
Anita: Well honey -- [laughing, now]-- you're on the wrong side of the mailbox. YOur box is on the other side. That front lock is for the mailman. You just have to walk around the box to get to your lock. Have you tried that?
Me: Oh, just kidding! Ha! Wouldn't that be funny, though? If someone thought their mailkey was broken and tried for 2 months to get their mail but the whole time they were just on the wrong side? But I was just kidding about that. Because that would be pretty dumb.
Anita: No you weren't, honey. Alright, well, I have to go.
Me: Wait! No, I WAS! I totally know how to use a mailbox and stuff! I work in technology! I am very resourceful!
Anita: Bye bye, then!
::click::

So now I guess I know how to get into my mailbox. I feel like a moron, yes, but I have access to the box of wonder, joy, and bills. Speaking of which, I haven't paid a utility bill since I moved in (due to the mailbox situation), so I've probably figured this all out just in time for my water and electricity to be turned off due to past-due balances.

Oh, one other awesome thing: I also didn't recieve phone bills during this time, and just today called to determine what I owed Cingular. The icing on the cake? Not only did I owe my regular monthly bills, but an additional $165.98 in charges related to phone calls I made out of the country to someone I was (casually, but still) dating up until a couple weeks ago. (He spent a week or two out of the country on vacation and I -- foolishly and expensively -- kept in touch during that time). AND I anticipate recieving at least one postcard that he sent during that trip as well, as soon as I open that mailbox. Which is awesome. So my ego, pocketbook and emotional well-being will all have taken a significant beating by the time this day is done.

Being a masochist, I'm really looking forward to that.

I'll keep you posted, but please don't be surprised if my next post references my newly-aquired night shift at the local Taco Time. I might need the job (and my pride is pretty much out the window at this point so no loss there).

Poo Tube Recall

You know that innertube my friend rode on that caused her to crash, poop, and display extreme hypochondria? (You know, this story?)

Well, check this out:CPSC's Kite Tube is being recalled due to deaths and serious injuries, both of which are WAY worse than pooping yourself in public.

So if you happened to purchase one of these puppies and my story of woe and rectal misfiring didn't put you off the thing, this might.

Toys these days. Sheesh.
Be careful out there!

I Lovett!

Following fourth of July weekend (please recall the poo story and the fact that I drank 60 beers over the course of 4 days) you'd think I'd return to work on Wednesday with a mission to relax, hydrate and look into rehab facilities in which to hunker down for the weekend. And if it had been a normal weekend on the horizon, I might have. But it wasn't. You see, Saturday night meant one much-anticipated, awesome thing:

Lyle Lovett at the Chateau St. Michelle winery!

I know you're expecting a joke, but the truth is that I've been a Lovett fan since long before the Julia Roberts wedding fiasco, and I was really looking forward to it.

So I did some conditioning Friday night. You know, light lifting, a drink with a couple friends, and before I knew it, it was Saturday. And I was beside myself with joy.

Part I: Lyle Lovin'ett!

I kicked off the day by going with L to purchase an 8-foot kiddie pool, which I proceeded to blow up almost single-handedly. We then filled it with ice-cold pool water and layed in it in our bikinis all afternoon in the blistering 80-degree Seattle weather.

By 3 p.m., tanned and showered, I was ready to start the evening. My Lovett partner in crime picked me up and off we went to the winery - a beautiful outdoor venue with, you guessed it, LOTS of my two favorite things: wine and food. OK, three favorite things: wine, food, and Lyle Lovett.

We bought a bottle of vino, some fruit and cheese, and settled into our 9th row seats. Now I don't know if you're familiar with Lyle and his fan base, but I learned some very interesting things at this concert, besides the fact that he's one of the best live performers I've ever seen and his huge band kicks ass:

1. Men at a Lyle concert are very likely to be with a woman who is significantly better looking than them. I've never seen such an incredibly high number of "eh" men to "wow" women before. Staggering. And something to think about, guys. Maybe pick up a CD sometime, huh?

2. Booze + proximity to Lyle + voyeurism = pure entertainment in the form of interpretive dance. When Lyle plays at a winery (booze) and the dance floor is at the front of the seating area close to Lyle (proximity) and directly in front of thousands of people (voyeuristic), women will dance. You cannot STOP a woman from dancing in this situation. And as most Lyle fans at this particular concert were white and middle aged and seemingly very aroused (??) by Lyle and/or his music, this translated into lots of really awful, drunk dancing by overweight women who seemed to be imitating strippers, sometimes actually grinding on the courtesy ropes and poles that sectioned off the dance floor. I actually captured this on my phone and may well post it here if I can figure out how to. Priceless stuff.

3. Red wine goes down very well at an outdoor summer concert. We finished bottles one and two without blinking.

By the time we left, we were understandably tipsy (read: sloppy drunk). But we still had a second item on the night's agenda -- a very important item and one I felt very passionate about not missing -- a "welcome back to the social scene, Liz" karaoke party at the Horseshoe Tavern.

For those of you unfamiliar with me, I'll clarify: karaoke (watching it, singing it, whatever) makes the world go 'round. I understand it can be tacky and classless and showy. Normally those things would bother me, but karaoke is the exception to the rule. With the right people, it's the absolute most fun you can have when not snorting cocaine off the chisled bodies of rock stars or purchasing your third multi-million dollar estate.

By the time I got to the Horseshoe (in a cab, thankyouverymuch), I was done. D-O-N-E. I waltzed into the place wearing my sunglasses like a moron (it was dark) to much ado. After obligatory air kisses, bear hugs and beer ordering, I proceeded to totally fall apart, insisting all my friends dance with me (swing, I guess), swapping my sunglasses for corrective glasses for bifocals for a trucker hat for a cowboy hat and back to sunglasses - though not mine, pinching the nipples of a particularly large male friend of mine (he wasn't a big fan of that) - repeatedly - and generally causing ruckus.

By the time I left the place, air kisses turned to poorly aimed half-cheek-half-lip kisses and dancing looked more like some sort of pirate peg-leg swagger. But we were happy. And I was so relieved to be back on the map after a 3-4 week social hiatus driven by my weird work schedule and exhaustion.

I got a ride home, of course, and passed out.

Part II: Sunday

Woke up with a remarkably mild hangover, presumably because alcohol has been coursing through my veins pretty consistently for the last two weeks straight, so I'd begun adapting.

Decided it sounded like a good idea to do breakfast. Which I did, with a friend, and a bloody mary.

Walked around a bit, discovered the World Cup final was on, and pushed into an Irish pub, where I drank a Guinness (why?) and watched Italy win (yay!).

Working on drink three, now, my friend and I determined it was time for lunch. Where else but the Red Hook Brewery? That's right, folks. Nachos and another beer. And then, the tour! $1 for a brewery tour, history lesson, and 6 5 oz. samples of beer. Delightful.

After the tour, we went back down to the brewery pub, where we split a Stout Float (If you haven't tried one, you must. Red Hook's Stout beer (on nitro!) in a big glass with a scoop of vanilla bean or coffee ice cream. Heaven in a cup.)

So yeah, that was the day of the Lord for me. After the float, it was nearly 8 p.m. We closed out the brewery, took a walk around the grounds, and I headed home. If you're my Myspace friend (please don't lecture me), my current profile picture is of me at the brewery that afternoon. See how happy I am? I know, I know. Just makes your heart warm.

A long, beautiful weekend.

And this weekend, guess where I'll be? Back at the cabin, for pant-pooping-pong-playing-pricelessness, round II. Ding!

(I love the summer.)

My Best Friend Pooped Her Bikini: A True Story and the Birth of a Nickname

Today, I am going to tell a story that will 1) probably make you pee yourself 2) you will re-tell to someone you only sorta know because you desperately wish it were your story and 3) will forever be my comeback to my best friends witty barbs. Why? Because today I'm telling you the story about how last weekend, she shit herself.

[See how I did that? Grabbed your attention right off the bat so I didn't lose you before you realized how awesome I was? I should really be a writer. I'm fucking unbelievably good at this.]

In the last two weeks my friend L. and I have been on a bender of brobdingnagian proportions.
...

[That last sentence is one of the many reasons I LOVE my little dictionary.com word of the day emails. I mean, who uses that word? Here's the definition:

Brobdingnagian \brob-ding-NAG-ee-uhn\: Of extraordinary size; gigantic; enormous. As in: "The venture capital business has a size problem. A monstrous, stupefying one. Brobdingnagian even." -- Russ Mitchell, "Too Much Ventured Nothing Gained", Fortune, Nov. 11, 2002]

...
Anyway, as I was saying: Following my horrific travel experience, I was in serious need of some social stimulus. I missed my friends! I was working my life away! I was feeling entirely too responsible!

So I did what any of you would do: called up my best friend and rallied her support in getting me back on the right (slightly buzzed) track. She was more than happy to help, in light of the fact that our ritual trip over the mountains to her cabin for the fourth of July was fast approaching.

I drove over on Friday after work and planned to take Monday off. During the 4-day vacation, we spent 4 days laying on the beach/in the water/on a raft/in a boat drinking tepid beer, absorbing harmful UV rays and getting sand in every crevice of our bodies. It was glorious.

Throughout the weekend, other friends came and went from the cabin. They came and went and a new crew would arrive just as the others left, giving L. and I the constant appearance of having just started partying (a minor PR miracle). This meant that while our company was always starting fresh, we were just layering party on top of party, starting at about 10 a.m. and wrapping up around 4 a.m. every night.

One fateful afternoon (don't ask me which one) we had a group of friends with us at the beach, along with along with an older couple. The older couple and their daughter, who is our age, were discussing with us a cool new pulled-behind-the-boat contraption called the kite tube.



In theory, this device, if pulled at remarkable speeds, hovers above the water at heights of 10 to 20 feet, in effect "flying" through the air behind the boat.

Now, while to me -- a person with a serious fear of heights, pain and embarassment -- this sounded awful, it sounded exhilerating to L. Luckily, I had an out: I had to walk back to the boat launch to meet one of our friends who was just arriving and so could not go with the group to ride the flying death-tube. So I left, and they piled in the boat and tore off. The next part of this story has been compiled from the re-tellings of those of my friends who were at the scene of the accident:

Apparently a couple of the guys tried to get the tube to fly, with varying degrees of success. But when L took off on the bat-tube, she caught a ton of air. Now I'm not sure if she got overexcited and did something to cause the tube to flip or if it just sorta happened, but the next thing everyone knows, she's out of the tube, lying in the water clutching her ass and fighting tears.

She gets in the boat, where she tells them to take her directly to the beach. Once there, her brother carries her from the boat to the shore. As he did, they had this exchange -- with L in tears:

L: "Neil, something's wrong."
Neil: "It's okay. What hurts?"
L: "No, seriously. It's my ass."
Neil: "Okay, what about it?"
L, horrified and fighting hysterics: "Neil, there's something coming out of my ass."
Neil, shuddering and nearly dropping her in an attempt to get as far as possible away from her ass: "WHAT?! Like, alive or dead? Jeez!!"
L: "I need to go to the hospital. NOW."

You see, L had gotten a water enema. These, for those of you who have never fallen while waterskiing, are very painful and sometimes (as in this case) cause bleeding, etc. And bleeding L was. But when she really freaked out was when she reached down to remove the fabric of her suit from her heinie-hole and felt something hard.

L is more of a hypochondriac than I. When she felt the hard something, she was convinced not only was she in pain, but she was dying. In fact, once on the beach, she ran up to one of the mom-types there and explained to them, in a panic, that she believed she had shat out a vertebra and was possibly not going to make it to the hospital alive.

[Nevermind the fact that in order to shit a vertebra, it has to break off your spine (which would paralyze you) and puncture your intestine (causing internal bleeding) and then travel through your intestine and out your sphincter. She really really thought she pooped a vertebra. Logical, huh?]

Mom type, trying not to laugh: "Honey, it might just be a bowel movement. Why don't you go check it out?"

So she did. And when she returned, she was still hobbling and holding herself, but she was also a bit bashful.

All concerned observers on the beach: "Well?"
L, bashfully: "Well, um... I just pooped my pants. So, yeah."

A half hour or so later, I returned from my trek to the beach and was surprised to find L (and a few of our other friends) back. I addressed the group, asking how it went. Immediately, L's little brother chimed in:

Neil: "Guess what L did?"
Me: "Um, what?"
All (including the older couple and 4-5 strangers on the beach: "SHIT HER PANTS!!!"

I was shocked. I grinned and gasped for air, waiting for the story, and while I collected myself enough to ask what in the hell that meant, L hobbled up to me, clutching her rear end, hysterically laughing out of embarrassment, drunkenness, and likely shock, and shrieked "And the turd was the size of a chicken nugget!!"

Can you say insta-nickname?

Yep. Now good ol' L goes by Nugget (or The Nugg for short). And no matter what she says about what I do from now on, I have a watertight, built-in comeback (which I've already worn out) that goes a little bit like "Well, at least I didn't shit my pants!"

I love my life. And I also love Nugget, for having a brilliant sense of humor about the whole thing.

The rest of the weekend consisted of more sun, sand, and servesas. But after the "incident" it was also peppered with potty humor which was admittedly terrible, but in light of the fact that someone actually pooped in her bikini, much funnier than it should have been.

Friend 1: "Let's go cliffjumping!"
Friend 2: "I would, but you know how that scares the shit out of Nugget..."

Friend 1: "I was thinking of maybe having a water -- will you pass me one?"
Friend 2: "Nah, Nuge poo-poo'ed that idea."

Friend 1: "I'm hungry. Anyone up for some chicken?"

Nugget: "Want another beer while I'm up?"
Friend: "Well, that DEPENDS!"

Friend 3: "Hey Nugget!"
Nugget: "What?"
Friend 3: "Remember that time you shit yourself? That was awesome!"

And so on.

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It was a weekend not to be forgotten. A secondary story involves me learning that I apparently have a natural ability to play beer pong (which I never had before last weekend), but it pales in comparison to the poo story, so we'll just leave it at the fact that I'm pathetic, having played beer pong for the first time at 25 and being proud of my skill.

If anyone knows a nice man who can marry me now, while I'm still in good shape and before this gets ugly, please email me. It's getting scary how quickly I've regressed. Pretty soon I'll be at keggers smoking Swisher Sweets, making out with 18 year old boys and calling my parents for rides. ::shudder::

More on the Legwarmers Binge-Fest 2006 to come... Happy Monday!
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Click it or ticket

Video (and band) of the week: When I Wake Up by Wintergreen.

There is one main reason this video (and, by extension, this band) is kickass: Atari love. The music video for "When I Wake Up" tells the story of one of the greatest flops in video game history -- a debacle that actually caused Atari to destroy millions of copies by burying them in a landfill. Yes, it was THAT bad. It actually makes it onto the list of "Worst Video Games Ever". Seriously.

The video is good. The band is, too. They were here in April and put on a good show. Very indie, and mixed/produced by Fiona's ex-producer, which is a vote of confidence for me. But my clearly Atari-driven love for them begs the question: can you love a band only for its videos? And if so, are there other examples of this? I know I've hated bands because of videos before. For example, U2's "Numb". Lame, lame, lame.

Also, if I had ever liked these guys in the first place, this would have definitely turned me off. Weird stuff.


A song recommendation, or rather two:

Inara George -- Mistress

I've been listening to a lot of Inara George again. She's got some great lyrics. in Mistress, she lilts: "Will you take me as your mistress?/long and dark hair/will you cut it off when it is useless?"

And No Poem is acerbic and great: "You're no poem when you open your mouth... if I were you I wouldn't talk -- I'd just keep dancin'".

And, just to rot your brains until my next story (which is about pooping your pants):

George W., K-Fed and Myspace. Aaaah.

Have a good weekend!