How to Not Sound like an ASS on a DATE

Since I’m into the lists lately… I’ve got one more for you. If you’re single/interviewing for a job/trying to impress someone – here are some items you might want at the tip of your tongue. FYI: You’ll sound like an idiot unless interjected at the appropriate time.

***Solid Winston Churchill Quote: "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. "
1. Brilliant NO WAY fact: The SEC leads the NCAA in total major violations of rules since recording began in 1953 with 42 violations.
2. Fascinating Statisti: (you didn’t find in a Malcolm Gladwell book or that 29% of relationships end because someone is cheating): I’d stick with 40% of people own dogs, in comparison to the 38% who own cats. Which are you?
3. Sports Trivia: (women this impresses other women too): The San Diego Chargers of the NFL are named after a credit card.
4. Stupid joke: What's the difference between snowmen and snowwomen? Snowballs
5. Fact that makes you appear to be a subscriber of Rolling Stone: Before they were Led Zeppelin, they were “The Whoopi Cushion.”

If someone doesn’t know the following – it’s a sign that maybe there is a lot more they don’t know….
1. The only man to ever be President and Vice-President but never be elected to either was Gerald Ford.
2. The difference between THEIR, THEY’RE and THERE
3. The answer to, “Are you single?”

Ready, Set, SUCK IT UP

Where the hell did the love-hungry articles written by macho men in GQ go? Every issue included some heart wrenching narrative scribed by a befuddled journalist attempting to mend his sanity by disclosing his soul to the world. Around six months ago these endearing ditties stopped, not replaced by anything other than more articles celebrating the brevity and intelligence anything with a penis inherently can relate…. And so every month with great anticipation I enter the pages of GQ I’m greeted with disappointment because there is a huge hole. And as a woman reader of the fantastic tome I’m pissed. These exposes were the only proof that men found “the relationship” as confusing and tormenting and awe-inspiring as women...seem to be obsolete. GQ has abandoned me with my archived editions. My favorite read was Adam Sachs “ Divorce: The Ultimate Aphrodisiac” check it out below… A stellar book could come out of his vulnerable and brilliant string of flings he reveals to readers in his candid reflection of divorce.

Funny story about Adam: I was so pumped about our coffee appointment that I emailed my associate editor, “Oh My God I’m so excited to meet this fabulous writer.” And accidentally, haphazardly hit return- to Adam! Unanticpated fan mail, which (thank god) enticed a shared chuckle between the two of us at coffee. http://adamsachs.org/GQ-Sachs-Upside.pdf

Not a digression, but yesterday in an editorial meeting I tossed out this idea – and since no one thought it was fabulous… my blog gets the leftovers….

Below are several activities you can still enjoy during this debilitating economic epidemic.

1. Passion. Kick off the heels and throw back your hair and relish some really good (ahem) necking?
2. Run. If your wallet can’t be fat, your ass doesn’t have to.
3. Give in ways you can’t. Volunteer, become a mentor to an at-risk teen, write thank you notes to people whom you’ve ignored. Reach out to the person who would least expect to hear from you (generally an older relative)… You’ll get immediate gratification in ways (ahem) necking can’t accomplish.
4. Remember. Take stock of your life up until now. And what the hell do you want now the rest of the world sucks?
5. Invest in something insane and crazy. If you have a little bit of disposable cash – search for an opportunity, which might not make sense as a secure and responsible investment, but a company you’d LOVE to see flourish… in this economy anything could be explosive. Might post some stocks in the next several days…

Before All Else, Be Armed - Machiavelli

I wish I could find something funny about this whimpering economy. Sheltered in my make-believe American utopia where I routinely admit to relishing labels on my totes and the cost of haircuts that could feed a family for a week in Uganda, I can’t comprehend the value of a dollar in the eyes of a peso.

Summers in Brazil and discovery videos from Africa don’t penetrate my bubble of health insurance and paved roads, in which I innocuously reside.

And when a person is stripped of their job, their survival, in a messed-up way, someone’s job is how the world evaluates their worth, their contribution to society. And suddenly it’s obsolete, and then it is too late to turnaround.

Craiglist classifieds are overflowing with stellar resumes and still 50,000 Americans are wandering aimlessly around our democratic streets curious who is going to cover their mortgage. What happened to job security? Is there such a thing, and is it appropriate for such a concept to exist in a laissez-fair economy.

There is no such thing as a real promise- because who can actually predict what the future will heave at us? I love how America uses good faith as collateral… just in case government bonds go to hell. But think: In every aspect of our lives…. Marriage could end in divorce, a road trip could end in a car wreck, and botox could get boxed. Without any type of guarantee in life how the hell are we supposed to protect ourselves?

We can’t.

All we can do is try to protect each other.

Jesus wrote a blank check, One I haven't cashed yet.... - Cake

Is there something you’d like to change about yourself? Throw an unhealthy addiction or detrimental habit, like French fries or procrastination to the wind? With the assumption that the garbage man will discard the nasty buggers with last year’s rubbish and you can move forward, stripped of any error. Or then, there is the category of change focused on “improvement” … where the newly purchased Nikes will lure you onto the treadmill, or your calendar will somehow create space to clean out your closet, the projects and image renovations on your “to do” list for the last ten years, will somehow magically get done? (I've had three bags full of goodwill clothes sitting in my car for weeks!)

The above mentioned without doubt can happen, whether it be a life coach, heart surgeon, or fashion trend, eventually the burdens on our mental check list will either become unimportant, we’ll survive around the gook or we’ll get fed up with our fat that we'll unconsciously eat less. But these things are trivial in comparison to the changes that make me curious… the change in how we perceive the world. How might we respond when someone a poses a question to which we haven’t had the courage to answer, even to ourselves. To swallow pride and ask for help, or advice, and then execute, without knowing how to calculate the risk. To acknowledge the chips in our shoulders, sandblasted by an old flame, which resulted in us being jaded, fickle and flawed? Knowing whether or not, if someone dedicated enough could ever heal those invisible wounds.

What about the endearing silly qualities that differentiate us, asking for an insane dinner order, an inability to parallel park, arriving a few minutes late (or too early), do they add dimensions of color to our already-matching complexions, or are they just annoying nuances that need to be shed. After being told that "everyone is special" 7-year-old Dash Parr from the movie The Incredibles replied, "Which is another way of saying no one is special. "

What would happen if we forgave? What would happen if we abandoned doubt on the curb and pressed onward unafraid? Never hesitating for a moment about the “what ifs”, the mistakes, the imperfections that humanize us? The things we say, and more importantly the things we choose to leave unsaid, what would happen if we let it all go? If we let fear go?

The fear of Christmas without our parents, turning into a homeless waste on the side of the road, being diagnosed with cancer, and god forbid the most debilitating phobia of them all… being happy. That maybe, the little pieces of life we envy from the couple still smitten walking their dog in Wash Park, the great-grandmother about to have her 100th birthday, the culinary wizard/marathon runner/soccer mom who is still hot, hell, Bill Gates, those little pieces are waiting around the bend. Maybe the daydreams that haunt us at 3am while slaving away, trying to make it.... might turn into tomorrow?

It’s frustrating to imagine that we don’t have control over our reactions entirely… Yes, the majority of our life we can scheme, strategize and plot each speculative detail. But we cannot anticipate who will waltz into our life, unassuming and unaware that they will have the capacity to change our course. Our internal compass, convincing us we're headed north, but calling it "north" is pretending there is no fate. Every person who crosses our path leaves something in our wake. Whether it a funny joke, a totaled car, the flu, a new friend, or your “other”… tomorrow is unwarranted. How do we change how we’ll react if we don’t have a clue exactly who it is that will run into us?

Lately the ability, no, actually the desire to change has been a subject up for debate. Should we change who we are? Should we be blindly accepted for who we are? I don’t think we should ever sacrifice or apologize for what we love about ourselves, but should we try to embrace the things which people love about us? Even if who we are is a mixture and combo of our backgrounds, blood type, books that have bled into our soul, a leftover of every person who has walked into our life and we have loved deeply....and the people with whom we allowed to love us and they chose to walk out.

There isn’t an answer to change. At sharp turns we’ll overcompensate, and at tough decisions we’ll underestimate, by default and preparedness, we’ll unconsciously self-correct and adjust, eventually becoming who we already are. And while a friend, or co-worker, or random stranger at a party, or that “other” can be so perfect at the start… the authenticity will start to surface, and the funny flaws somehow manifest into rational, quirky traits, and they’ve just whittled their way into our hearts. How does one probe without being offensive, or act without due diligence. How do we let hurtful words slide off our back without catching the chip on our shoulder? How do we not over analyze the warm and fuzzy thoughts articulated to us over text message, or while sipping steaming chai?

Next week I'll scribe about sex or drugs or something equally frisky. I promise.

Until then....I’m starting to realize the words that are supposed to tie a relationship into a perfect bow aren’t simple, black or white, or definable. Sometimes the prettiest bows require four hands, a YouTube video and a southern drawl. Recently, when someone isn't making sense to me, I try to see where it is they're coming from, and maybe where it is they want to go. I'm not hard of hearing, or eager for the world to chant kumbaya, I'm just a girl who is sometimes misunderstood, but more than that wants to understand.

I CAN'T HEAR YOU DARLING!

Naked fingers delicately paint the air with earnest volition. A woman in her late thirties is sitting cattycorner from me in a coffee shop. She is deaf. The man across from her has dark skin, maybe in his early or mid-forties. His soft eyes move along with her hands, absorbing and translating. He is speaking methodically, enunciating each syllable. The sounds he is making are of no value to her, she can only understand his lips.

Tables are strewn with textbooks and the small space is littered with Saturday afternoon enthusiasm. People with running shoes and dog leashes are sipping lattés. But through the minutia of the busy coffee shop, his voice is the only one I can hear.

His language is universally spoken and her language is not. I wonder what it feels like to observe life quickly swirling around you, a quicksand of time drowned by silence, and not be able to say anything about it. And the same loud world is blind to her. I wonder if the glass wall is rose-colored, or does she even notice it exists? I wonder if the silence keeps her from her feeling chilly and isolated, as painful words have the power to do. Do voices make her feel invisible or maybe invincible because she might not know how many words, discussions, and feelings are wasted or neglected? Words are so easy to toss around when there is little effort in receiving them. Might there be any freedom in living a life mute of nonsense?

Did they both go to trouble to learn how to understand the other? All that for a date?

It’s odd. Typing and people watching, a joyful scenario any writer can relish, and recently I’ve run out of what to say. My paragraphs are mechanically imperfect and my thoughts lack structured coherence, but every sentence is woven together with truth as much as confusion. Each word inserted not for cadence, but rather for interpretation. Enough of a twist to separate myself from the text messages and emails and bored journalists, you have to reread, only if to forget. While not oppositional, truth and confusion are close cousins, one often resulting in the other, a by-product or a leftover… Life seems to be layered with uncovering truth and subsequently being confused knowing it now exists. Threatening or benign, truth can’t be deleted or recovered, it just is, and the only choice we have is to accept it, or walk away.

“I did let them know our plan was to quietly celebrate in the mountains, just the two of us. Or I thought I made it clear. ” He explained with frustrated scrawled on his face.
About five seconds passed where she deftly orchestrated motions into the air. Not placidity, but she was calm with a reassuring nod.
“I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want a bunch of people over to your place, go grocery shopping and cook, etc. with moving next weekend. Do we need to call a moving company?” His voice dropped an octave.

She didn’t sign back. Instead reached for both of his hands.

I hope I can pack all 171,000 Oxford approved words into my cranium. Extracting the appropriate idiom or synonym, inserting it into conversation, so the person with whom I’m speaking can accurately understand me. But dialogue is a struggle. Microsoft Word allows me to backspace, add and shuffle sentences around, so when I hit save, or send, it’s done with cognizance. Packaged, wrapped with spell check and removed of any extraneous blunders that otherwise would have weaseled their way into a phone call or after dinner cocktails.

And so I digress. This woman gently staring into the eyes of this man, understands exactly what he is feeling and with no audible exchange. I’m starting to wonder if maybe words can be more of a barrier than a bridge.

American Sign Language has 7,200 expressions. Does she desire such dexterity, intimacy with a convoluted vocabulary, 26 letters that if formulated correctly can create literature, masterpieces and lyrics, newspapers and opinions? If you don’t know how the words sound can your conscious talk to you inside of your head? Or is there just the peaceful silence I still fail to locate in my sleep.

Reaching for her bag, a strange emptiness swept over me. I guess these two people, who probably haven’t noticed I’m sitting across the room watching them gave me a silly hope that some things might be worth fighting for, had to go.

Before the two walked away, abandoning me with iTunes and a hundred images to dissect and reassemble. I saw him do something that I know every couple does. He lips parted and without a sound he mouthed, “I love you.”

STUCK IN AN ELEVATOR. Aka: Involuntary Confinement with a Broken Blackberry

A temporary ride in a small square cubicle…

Objective: Vertical Transportation.
Obstacle: Polite requiem/bad weather jokes.
My advice: Make sure you hit the powder room before climbing on board.

Around ten pm an elevator decided to stop between the 18th and 19th floor of my building, with me as its lucky passenger. Fortunately (unlike most of my jaunts in elevators) I was well equipped. Expecting company the next day and far too lazy to stop by a liquor store I had purchased a bottle of vino in Earl’s (conveniently corked) not an hour earlier. So while my friends were waiting downstairs at Earl's for me to grab a sweater… The elevator chose to take a breather.

The car sort of vibrated a bit and then a hefty CLUNK. Not shaking, not like an earthquake, but enough for a girl who is phobic of getting stuck in an elevator, crashing to my own demise (pitch black in a box – always think worst case scenario) to get scared. I begin searching the box for an alarm… a search button of sorts.

Before pulling my blackberry out to call 911… an omnipresent husky voice asked, “Are you okay?”

Bewildered....I examine myself. Search the ceiling for cameras and respond with a whimper, “Yes, but I’m a bit afraid.”

Terrified, and irritated that my friends will all be taking shots soon and I’ll just be trying to entertain myself with no book, or lap top or boyfriend, or even a freaking stranger! While my building is the safest, soundest and most bulletproof structure west of the Mississippi I felt like Karma was catching up with me. The only proof I could rummage up after being told to “press certain buttons, hold tight, be patient, all is good, we’ve called the fire department” was, “I am the least patient person in the universe (notoriously late) and so this is what God had to do to me.”

I stretched my calves and uncorked my bottle of cab, and starting fishing for sympathy texts from every poor soul in my address book. Damn, it’d be funny to pull together stories of people that got stuck in elevators, imagine the conversations?

The little bar on my blackberry was blinking with exhaustion, and soon I realized the only conversation I’d be enjoying was the one with myself (and the occasional few words with the technician trying to get me free from the locked jaws of this stupid freight elevator- padded walls included)…. Woops, did I leave that part out?

So my mind wondered past my To Do lists…. Fretted a bit about tomorrow, but when I realized I had nothing other than me to keep myself company (As a guilty extrovert - I was screwed)… I allowed my thoughts to lollygag and linger, rehashing happy memories, replaying the euphoric hours happening just days before ...... again and again.

When you're so caught up in the present, tangled in incredible conversation, the type where the words someone is saying, are so captivating you don't want to stop listening, but just thirsty for more... that's when you know you're living. Lately I'd enjoyed many an exchange so titillating... I appreciated my time locked nineteen stories above the Mile High City to step back. I carefully sorted through the layers of laughter and serious discussions, and pure curiosity to figure out what exactly about those particular conversations was so powerful.

Sometimes I get so busy loving/scheduling/analyzing life... I forget I can derive joy from a memory every time I pause long enough to relive it...

Then arrive the succulent memories, the funny ones, the comical anecdotes that rip sanity from your innards leaving your stomach aching with raw… so tender and so exhilarated…

You’re alive.

I chortled like a drunk idiot to the chilly air (I was nursing the red wine slowly… in fear of being discovered by firefighters intoxicated, but much more terrified of the possibility I’d have to tinkle and well…. Enough Said!) and when sitting up was no longer fun. I scooted my rear end up to the wall, extending my legs upward, so I appeared to be a massive L shape…getting my jacket and jeans and hair dirty, and relishing the unanticipated silence.

Until a knock on the door and five fire fighters appeared above me, ladder in tow, ready to save me from my adventure in solitary confinement. I was a bit sad to wave goodbye to my little box, the same box I’d venture into the next morning or evening.. the same box that carries me from my home and back. But now the box had more of me in it… memories, ideas, internal dialogue, the personal thoughts that make you smile…
Had I not pushed that button on that Saturday night, never would have come to fruition.


Sometimes when you’re all alone and you don’t have a choice, but to sit there and let your brain go where it may… are the moments worth holding onto.

Conclusion: Never enter an elevator without an extra cellphone battery and a bottle of booze.

The Art of Faking It

Normally speaking, I allow the days approaching New Years to become a spiritual journey into the depths of my brain. I leisurely take hours of afternoons selfishly mapping out the leftover of my life, with colored sharpies and stick-it notes. I dwell on the amazing moments tucked away in 2008 journaling with typos and adjectives. I dream big and eat bigger, and then justify it all by a long run (sans guilt from the doctors) listening to rap spiced with the occasional melancholy song, which remind me of old memories I refuse to let go of, and then as the clock breathes life into a new year, I swallow every last drop of nostalgia with a generous glass of wine. Because moving forward is rough, especially when everything behind was so perfect…


I’ve never been one to embrace change. But I’m damn good at faking it.

How many conversations have you had this past Christmas season at cocktail gatherings with friend, foe and strangers alike… The type where you’re teetering on uncomfortable heels, balancing your eggnog with awkwardness… silently pretending to be fascinated by someone’s verbiage… the nothingness that pales in comparison to your own nothingness… and yes, this entry is probably being interpreted as terrible of me to type, but seriously consider who you’ve offered your listening time to. Don’t you feel a wee bit better of your altruism for helping someone feel like they’re interesting enough that you’d voluntarily listen to them? Isn’t that all we want in life? To feel worth being heard.

Because regardless of how bored, or boring that someone might be, or the conversation they were droning on about… their nephew, boss, cat, terrible book they got through simply to get their mother-in-law to pipe down, there is certain energy, a light, a passion shared when someone is speaking about a subject in which they care- and then that boring subject suddenly starts to sparkle - and now that is subject is interesting - why? Why, because somebody cares!

Even watching their arms orchestrate through the air, hearing the octave change in their voice, like a melody, a contagious cadence- it’s infectious. Physics, the atoms exhaled and embraced are unstoppable little organisms in which we thrive off of… And what they're saying might have no value to us, but inside of their words… there is a person carrying this vibrant glow, and what they’re saying resonates even with us – and then we’re (I’m) not faking it anymore. I’m simply happy that someone has found something in which to believe in, enough so, that they're smiling, enough that they’re talking to me about it.