as the new year approaches

i've really started to think re: life priorities.

and when i say life priorities, i mean the commencement of american idol in january and whether i'll find a way, sans cable, to watch it this year. i've followed the past seven seasons (hi, i'm old) with rabid (except the fantasia year, that was more along the lines of tepid) interest.

but dedication has been waning over the past couple years (there was nowhere to go but down - we used to tape - vhs - every song clay aiken sang...) and without my own cable i'd have to procure a fellow fan and then glom onto them and their couch twice a week? unlikely. also i'll be in classes tuesday and wednesday starting january. also that new songwriter judge chick is going to ruin everything.

hmm. thank you for walking me through this. it has been cathartic and informative. i do believe that seacrest...i'm out.

do you watch house hunters on hgtv?

because i do. (that is until our cable gets shut off, of course...8 days and counting...) and you should.

i deeply enjoy it. the 1, 2, or 3? formula, suzanne wong's blunt bangs, the snazzy little tune.

a few things about it enrage me, tho, giving me a chance to purge the day's tensions, puking them all over my tv screen:

1) people who walk into a cavernous room and say. "it's a liiiiiiiii-ttle small." then shake their heads in disdain. no wonder furr-eners hate america. get a clue! a family of four could live comfortably in your pallatial bathroom.

2) people who comment on the paint choices of a potential house. "i don't know...there sure is a lot of yellow." followed by a heavy sigh. are you serious? that will take 1/4 of a day to fix. and i wonder who voted for bush.

3) people who worry about their furniture. "i really love the whole house...but will our bedroom set fit?" ridiculous.

4) people who call golf courses "great views!" ...no.

5) people who are obsessed with stainless steel appliances. sure, they're attractive, but also just a phase - just like that avocado laminate from the seventies. making this a deal breaker is insane.

but i hope no potential participants read this because i really don't want any of these things to change; i'd have nothing to yell about and yelling makes me happy.

joan cleaver and kim kardashian

last night, whilst heating up some leftovers and blah blahing to clay re: a couple i know who has a rather heartbreaking imbalance of duties, i say, in complete earnest:

"and he doesn't even keep house!"

uh, excuse me?

perhaps it would have been okay to say: "he needs to clean more" or "he could at least make the bed" but "keep house" ? when bja starts cattily judging other people's housewifeing skills ala 1952...sister's gotta get a job.

in other news, how awful is kim kardashian on dancing with the stars? she's completely out of touch with her body (seems weird, but i find the girls who flaunt it often don't understand it) and her blank stare gives me the spooks. also: susan lucci needs to eat a bag of potato chips.

we'll be there in 1 sesame street and a mister rogers

as i've mentioned it before, i've got a hole in my brain when it comes to anything spatial.

(side note: as i type "hole in my brain" i'm reminded of someone i knew, from somewhere i've been, who actually did/does have a hole in his brain. i can't remember who this person is, but i do remember it explaining a lot when i found out.)

this problem can also, often, cross over into other areas of measurement: time, money, mass. i always say if people knew just how weird things were inside my head, they'd be impressed with how well i get along. one of my coping strategies is relating everyday things to larger concepts.

por ejemplo:

when i was little, hanging with my mom on errands or on long road trips up to maine, i'd often ask the often-asked question: "how long till we get there?" to which she would answer in television show units.

sesame street = one hour
mister rogers = half hour

and time confusion was wiped out. i still use this all the time. if i have a really gruesome dentist appointment approaching, i think "okay - it's just an episode of big love and an episode of frasier. it'll fly!" strangely it never really does...

other useful tools:

once i figured out that a box of cheez-its weighs a pound i was golden. if someone asks "can you lift 40 pounds?" i think about 40 boxes of cheez-its and do the muscle math. try it - i think you'll like it.

oh, and

in our vending machine at high school, a twix bar cost 25c. (i also walked uphill both ways, barefoot through the snow.) and so, we measured all moneys against that. ooo! i just found five dollars on the ground! 20 twixes! i still equate quarters with peanut buttery goodness.

there're more of these cheats bouncing around in my head, but you get the idea.

now if there was only one of them could help me understand how to stop the blow darts, i'd be all good.

i really want something from j. peterman

i just have to decide what. a few months ago, i requested the catalog online, just because i had to see it in real life, just because i had to know if elaine spoke the truth. and seriously people - it does not disappoint. the clothes all have pleats, the descriptions all reference sundance or lady godiva, and the illustrations are straight out of highlights magazine. i love to climb in bed, pull on my hoodie, and read aloud - in a british accent, duh - some of my favorite selections.

currently, it's:

"she's married to a doting london banker with a genealogy that predates the magna carta. they're quite an item in the smart set."

right?

i laugh, you laugh, but deep down we all want a maroon velvet coat with shoulder pads and peterman knows it. he's got x-ray vision into my soul and doesn't care how much i make fun, because ultimately, i'll lock my doors, make sure no one's watching, then lay down my credit card. the picasso shirt? the secret thoughts coat? the harlow pants? i'm dizzy with options!

the idea of a new job (oh, where are thee) one day, where nobody knows me yet and i can recreate myself beforehand becomes an all-too-distracting daydream during my constant death march through craigslist. a daydream that includes homemade lunches, lipstick, shiny hair and a thomas jefferson shirt. oh, how they'll envy me.

just as lifetime has their army wives program,

i do believe my girlfriends and i should put together a similarly themed production entitled mckinsey wives. we could talk about our over-familiarity with airport routes, our advanced understanding of timezones, our love of expensed room service.

we would discuss how important it is to a have a girlfriend in the same situation, who just gets the differentness of this lifestyle without a million questions/comments/judgments ("wait - he leaves on monday morning and doesn't come back till thursday?!"), and happy dances with you when your guy gets a home-based project. (like mine! starting today!) the cameras would show us gathered 'round, instead of a quilt, an episode of project runway. damning heidi klum for her otherworldly cheekbones and texting our husbands that we miss them.

what is it about

luke perry, age 25 (playing 16), drawling: "my name's dylan mckay and i'm an alcoholic" that's pleasantly/strangely goosebump-inducing? sorry, new 90210, you don't stand a chance.

i used to wear

my sweaters inside out and cut out the collars and poke a hole for my thumb and all this lunacy that i was certain made me look artsy and interesting and very busy. i also liked to cut slits in the side of my jeans and sew in extra fabric - because, well, i was insane.

i eventually came to my senses and stopped with the scissors, and i think things have really made a turn for the better. that is until this morning, when i tried on a pair of tights that felt a little too, well, tight. i could practically feel the light bulb appear over my cartoon head as i ran to get the scissors and cut off the elastic band.

the whole operation fell to the floor around my ankles, threads unraveling and underwears showing, and the neighbors yet again got a peek at my white, white flesh. now you'll have to excuse me, i've got a project runway app to fill out.

tsai love you

in high school (and college and now) i had a ming tsai obsession. his cherubic little face, his somewhat halting speech pattern, his husky arm mixing things i wanted to inhale. he had his own show on the food network - east meets west - and i loved it, watched it every night. i specifically recall a chorus trip to toronto when i was 16, begging my roommates to change the hotel tv off of mtv so i could get my fix. the ignorants thought i was kidding.

a few years back, cc picked up on my desperation and surprised me with a birthday dinner at ming's restaurant, blue ginger. dee-lish.

but then, one day, mr. ming took a powder. vamoosh, out of my life! no goodbye, no postcards, no nothing. i was stricken and no, nobody could take his place. yes, i love alton, yes i love bobby. but our love was...different.

but then! tonight! following a particularly ka-ching episode of antiques roadshow (4 different people with items over $25k wha?!) pbs ran a quick promo for...wait for it...simply ming! holy hell, the gods have heard my prayers, people. dvr set. bliss underway.

why won't tim gunn say

"make it work" anymore? did he get sued for trademark infringement or something? captain picard thought he was saying "make it so" and got territorial? i don't understand. he keeps throwing these weird alternatives our way and it's not okay:

"do it."
"make it good."
"go to work."
"make it happen."

no. no, no, no.

i'm officially in love

with netflix's 'watch it now' feature. the fact that i can cue up this fine man, speaking upper crust nonsense in his british tongues, burberry trench flapping oh-so-debonairly behind him, with simply the tap of my finger and the kick-up of my legs is, well, frankly, life changing.

a small window into my life

rockbanding:





murder she wrote'ing. this series reflects my absolute delight with tom selleck guest starring on a "recent" episode. jb fletcher and thomas magnum in the same room?! could life get better? answer: add matlock and then, no. (also: new couch prominently featured. love!) (also: white bindi prominently featured: post-wedding zit killing ops.)

so i'm a little slow

sure, i knew about this american life and prairie home companion and things of that nature. and understood they were urbane and hip and enjoyed by people who like things i like.

but in my life, in general, my brain has to work extra hard to listen to and make sense of books on tape or talk radio and so i steer clear. i'm a serious visual learner and as much as i love to talk, i find the digesting and understanding of the listening process slow and frustrating at times. (let's not even discuss the nightmare that is multi-person conference calls. i feel like i've barely escaped from azkaban by the time they're over. )

but recently, much in the way i feel i've singlehandedly discovered both frasier and coffee, i've been like wow national public radio wow! thank you for all your fun little things and constant chatter! you're the perfect way to spend a car ride to the airport and i find you extremely relaxing - a delightful note struck between silence and the beach boys.

and while my slow-on-the-uptakeness may seem laughable, i'm really quite content with it. just think how many old things i've got left to discover! wings season 1 on dvd here i come.

i know i'm unhealthily obsessed and no one cares, but

i have to get this off my chest.

it makes sense when monk or matlock or magnum run into murder once a week, because they're detectives or lawyers by profession and they signed up for the body toll. what makes less sense to my delicate constitution is why the hell a teacher-turned-mystery-writer keeps running into bloody corpses everywhere she goes. there were 264 episodes of murder she wrote and every episode saw the murder of at least one person. do the math! i did!

mrs. jb fletch originally hung out in maine exclusively, but i guess the producers decided that was getting a little far fetched - all these dead people in the vacation state - so they made her start traveling around to la and nyc and other godless locales of vice and destruction.

i guess this helped some? but no, my god, what if in a span of 12 years, just in your everyday doh dee doh life, you came across 264 dead people? and still remained so jolly? and still wore cheery seersucker kerchiefs and rode a bicycle with blueberries in the basket? wouldn't you feel just the smallest bit depressed about things? if it were me, if i couldn't have a cup of tea in the morning without someone bleeding out on my sneakers, i just don't think i could go on. and while i'm sure this was all supposed to be very inspiring to the elderly, this ballsy old lady taking on criminals left and right, wouldn't it mostly just scare the shit out of you?

there are just so many questions that i have, you see?

sunday

i do enjoy when the appraiser on antiques roadshow decides a family heirloom is worth 50k, turns to the owner and says "but i know you'd never consider selling it" and the owner looks stricken and guilty and confused because of course they would.

if you haven't seen this yet

i think you should. my most loved (only loved?) commercial out there right now. just you try and resist its charms:



mike rowe! les stroud! bear grylls! jamie and adam! stephen hawking! singing a campfire song! ah, happy.