Children Are The Future

This woman with webbed feet did such a poor job painting her toenails that I can't help but wonder if she has webbed fingers. Either way, it's good to know, based on the smaller foot in the picture, that webbing is not hereditary.

Bond Girl

"Make me look like the girl from Quantum of Solace," I told the barber at Rudy's as she wrapped the security blanket around my neck.
"What?" she asked as though she heard me but couldn't understand.
"The new Bond girl with dark hair."
"Oh, I didn't see it."
"Oh, neither did I, but the billboards are everywhere!"
"Nah. I haven't seen them."
Some people use hyperbole but I write in very literal terms: the last time I hiked up a mountain and looked down on the city of Los Angeles I could see TWO sky-scraper-sized ads for Quantum of Solace in which Daniel Craig and the bitch with the dark hair [who comes from the area of Spain where the popular dominant gene is to have six fingers] are walking through the desert. Another ad, not visible from "Inspiration Point," was a few blocks away from the barber shop, on the same major street.
"She has the brown, short hair?"
"I haven't seen those ads."
"She was born with six fingers."
"What? I'm sorry, I really don't know what you're talking about."
"Really? Does your seeing-eye dog drop you off at your chair every morning and come back to pick you up at five?" I thought. I then explained that she should cut my hair above the shoulder and put in some light bangs.

Shorts

If these didn't have a dick hole I could wear them in the summer- time when it's too hot for tights. They also come in brunette and ethnic.

Products Made With Greeks In Mind

I'd never seen the catalog before but Mia said it arrives every year before Christmas. Ellinas Multimedia's shopping booklet, enthusiastically putting the Greek in Greek-American, at five pages, isn't quite long enough to be hilarious. We don't belong to any Greek organizations that would have our Los Angeles address, so either E.M. has access to an invasive database of pure blood Greeks, or our mailbox number was given to E.M. by relative with whom we have trouble relating.

Without an actual cover, the catalog's outer page is the first page, advertising a new product to the Ellinas Multimedia holiday line: Baklava-flavored Popcorn, available in one and two gallon tins. "We took Yia Yia's [grandmother's] secret Baklava recipe" and put it on popcorn, and then put the popcorn in "designer tins that say Merry Christmas in Greek! (after Christmas lids will say, 'Baklava Popcorn' only)."

You can also order mugs that read a literal, "Good Christmas," and mugs that read, I <3 Theo! [uncle], Thea!, Yia Yia!, Papou! [grandfather], Nouno! [godfather], and Nouna!, the <3, of course, is a navy-and-white striped heart with a small white cross in the top-left chamber, in turn reading a literal, "I Greek-love uncle!" There are also ageist license plate frames that warn, "Prosexee! Yia Yia is Driving."

The catalog has two pages [of the five] featuring bottled olive oil and olive oil-based soaps, if you can believe it.

On sale for $29.95, down from $34.95, is Taki the talking and singing [in Greek] stuffed bear, who has a red fez that reads, OPA, which matches his traditional, red tsaruxia shoes [with black pompom at the toe]. An animated Taki also appears on pillowcases that read Good Morning and Good Night in English [beneath the Greek].

There are drink coasters themed with your favorite Greek island [Mykonos or Santorini, guys?] and children's books/flashcards/education CD-roms of "Greek4Kids" and "My First Hundred Words In Greek" [which I need].

I also need the baby bib with Greek Food Groups because it's corny and accurate.

Mia pointed out the Super Papou t-shirt, which obviously mocks the Superman emblem, and then sighed, "I wish we had gotten this for him before he died." It was surrounded by aprons that read, "DESPERATE GREEK HOUSEWIFE" and "↑ Definition of a Greek God." I considered ordering the "got ouzo?" t-shirt but the largest size it comes in is XL.

On the last page they have a selection of Christmas Cards. My favorite is the one with dancing Christmas characters that reads, "Merry Greecemas," because at first it looks fucking stupid but then when you say it aloud, it really does sound like you have an eastern European accent. The other cards make reference to Santa Claus coming down the chimney late to deliver presents, referring to his lack of punctuality as following, "Greek time."

I have feta cheese on my salads everyday, and call my grandparents and godparents by their official names. I actually love ouzo, especially when you pour a little cold water in with it, or take a shot of it when it's been mixed with lemonade. I'm also late for everything, which is why I get these jokes.

Don't Start Conversations This Way

Getting Serious

I run a booking agency out of my computer, which is sometimes in the kitchen. I've got a solid roster of great people for whom I'd love to organize six consecutive European tours, with one offs on cruises and celebrity hayrides and the long-awaited revival of airships [I think it's safe to write that we've recovered from the Hindenburg]. In preparation, I have, over the past three months, built up six Google spread sheets of venues. They are titled: EU!, da north, da south, da wild wild west, da middle west, and College Venues. Excluding the first spread sheet, the venues, separated by region, are organized by state, and then city, with their calendar, and all of their contact information, and then I created a column for "Notez".

Although I've Google-shared these documents with several people, I'm the only one who adds to it, and probably the only person who's ever read them over, so these Notez are Notez To Self. At some point in September, I developed a system of adjectives to describe the venues. One of them is "serious," which refers to the level of fame of the bands performing at a venue, compared with the aggressiveness of the language in their website's booking instructions. If a venue's calendar has mostly corny band names [Frigid Magnet, Greetings From Hell, etc] with an inexplicable Monotonix date and, to request a show, demands that you fill out a booking survey with references and warns that, due to the high level of submissions, they may take up to 3 months to respond, the venue may warrant a Note like, "less serious than they wish" or "tribute bands play here." If the venue planned a bunch of Two Sundays Til Death-style bands but had an upcoming Vanessa Carlton show, they received a "Vanessa Carlton serious" or "seriously hilarious." And if they required a mailed-in press kit I wrote, "are they serious??????"

In my EU! spreadsheet, I called two places "gay," although I generally don't resort to slurs, but these were kind of earned; for one venue I wrote, "probably gay" for a place named "Razzmatazz," which didn't update its calendar, and then for another venue three rows down I wrote, "Franz Ferdinand gay" [because the space had an upcoming Franz Ferdinand concert, because European culture is developmentally delayed].

So if you wonder how I spend my unemployed days at home, or if you're a band, questioning why I haven't organized a show for you just yet, please respect and pardon my behavior; through diligent research, I'm trying to get more serious.

Abba - Gold!

Usually on afternoons when other people are home, I listen to a lot of Abba, embarrassingly enough. I assume the influx in Abba-blasting is somewhat related to now living in West Hollywood, the gay capital of Southern California, but for some reason this incongruous behavior is less common when I have more privacy. My dad will walk by the kitchen, or come to my room to inquire about something, and instead end up asking, "Abba again?"

Sometimes when people are in the same room with me for an extended period, seated across from me quietly accomplishing something, I'll have a fierce craving to listen to the Mamma Mia: The Movie soundtrack, which is significantly worse; not only was Pierce Bronson cast, but someone in the musical direction department had advised him to grunt out the lyrics to S.O.S. ["I try to reach for you, but you have closed your mind..."] for the middle-aged lady viewers [who were the average-age only viewers] to get off to later. Meryl Streep doesn't sound too good, either, but I posted her cover of Mamma Mia in my blog - well, one of my blogs - and 3 people downloaded it! The only good thing about the soundtrack is that the first half of Lay All Your Love On Me is sung by a man, with the lines changed to, "I wasn't jealous before we met, now every man that I see is a potential threat," which sounds so much better because obviously the song is meant to be gay.

Last week I was in the West Hollywood post office to get passport pictures taken and I was listening to Abba. At some point I probably put on Waterloo because it's my favorite Abba song. Without any filter, I've told a bunch of people to download it. Other people in line at the post office thought it was weird that I was getting passport pictures and looked me up-and-down, including the stocky guy in an Under Armor shirt whose shoes resembled rubber toe-socks. I do agree that shoes should be close to the ground so as to keep the walking experience as natural as possible, but faux webbed feet are very unsightly. However, unlike people who wear Under Armor in the real world in the real world, I had a feeling he was really cool.

As I sat in the corner, getting polaroided and stared at, the amphibious man went up to the mail counter holding whatever he needed to ship. Taking his wallet out to pay, I could hear him lightly sing, "Money, money, money..." and I knew I'd been right.

Alaina Wants To Eat The Red Taco From Taco Bell

Jim Henson Endorses American Express From Beyond The Grave

Everyone else in this commercial is alive.

Bitch I Will Cut You

Two Turntables And A Microphone

After I saw Beck with my dad and had had a few of these pineapple-vodka drinks, I txted a bunch of ppl who still live at SUNY Purchase [most of whom don't really know each other]:
Are there any recycling dispensers @ purchase that still read "bottles and cans and just clap your hands" and if so can you take cell phone pix for me??

In some flash of brilliance from unidentifiable Purchase students [which I rarely saw before or again], recycling bins that had read "Bottles And Cans" were tagged with, "And Just Clap Your Hands," accompanied by a stencil of two clapping hands. None of my mass-txt receivers were able to deliver on an image.

On the last day of seventh grade, I wore a Two Turntables And A Microphone, Odelay-tour Beck t-shirt to school. I always thought it was cool, especially because it paired different shades of blue. However, the moment I stepped into school, like an anxiety nightmare wherein I haven't even started my summer reading and showed up to school without pants, I realized that the turntable belts are positioned on the shirt to outline breasts, with record holes representing areolas. I was mortified and later got rid of the shirt, but I definitely wish I could wear it now.

Crotch Sag

I've been wearing my leggings along my pelvic line ever since I stopped wearing jeans [which were also at my pelvic line, because I only wore jeans when slouch fit waists were king]. Unlike with denim, there generally aren't any zippers or buttons in the front of leggings to distract from the extra fabric originally allotted to cover the lower stomach, but I welcomed it. I often imagine that it somehow makes my thighs look cooler.

One day, when I still lived right off of the tough streets in Bushwick, I was wearing long johns, and like most days when I left my apartment, some women on the street made fun of me. At some point, probably because of my sneering, they began to feel guilty and then made comments to each other that actually I did in fact look cute in my pajamas. I wasn't having it.

But ever since I invented it, crotch sag has been all the rage. Other women across the nation, across the world, have an interest in keeping their pelvises heavily draped and their upper thighs totally imaginary. In about five hours, tons of them will be welcomed into H&M to viciously peck at the new, budget Comme des Garçons line.

And of this line, which will obviously go the way of Isaac Mizrahi for Target, do you know what the only distinctive garment is [to me]?

I need to put a lock on my hamper!

Skype

The only Americans who use Skype are weirdo backpackers and kids that did service trips in high school school and, for a few months, tried to keep in touch with Vikki from Vienna. The iChat option to videochat is responsible for most of the American interest to conduct webcam convos, as prior to that webcams were primarily used by sluts.

Unfortunately, iChat's videochatting connection is weak when it comes to cross-Atlantic face-to-face experiences. With Colby in Paris, and now Beljum, I was directed to download Skype. I leave Skype logged in all the time, and started getting unsolicited messages.

With Skype, the conversation box opens with a person who wishes to speak with you before they have said anything. One day, when I was still living in New York, a Skype user with a Taiwanese name initiated a conversation with me, but hadn't said anything.
"Herro?" I sent across the world.
He or she sent back a smiley face.


I was getting so many middle eastern requests for cyber sex [especially when I jokingly set my location to Yemen] that I made my Skype icon a photo in which I'm obviously nude so I could get even more. And I did! Even after I had changed my profile to say that I live in the USA.

Eventually, it started getting annoying. I'd sit at my computer, minding everyone else's business, and then start profusely getting Skype phonecalls from international strangers. I'd deny the call, and they'd call again, and again, and again! When I was in fifth and sixth grade, I would constantly enter weird chatrooms ["AZN ONLY!" "Pagan magic"] and get into long conversations with really scary people. It would have been so much worse if they had somehow been able to show me their genitals. Skype actually makes me nervous to raise a child [overseas, as thankfully no beautiful American children have Skype].

Skype has its LDR benefits. I'd rather not have to use it, though.