Tag Archives: Hollywood

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Five Reasons To Have Children When You’re Young And Stupid

I was the accidental product of older parents. A bonus child, as it were. By the time I came a long Mom and Dad were as laid back about parenting as they apparently were about birth control.

It's called a condom, you silly beatniks.

It’s called a condom, you silly beatniks.

I probably would’ve taken this fact for granted but my sister, Lori (the closest in age to me with a nine year difference) told me often while making me touch the electric fence as penance.

Behold to the right, the tool of sibling torture: the electric fence!

Behold to the right, the tool of sibling torture: the electric fence.

This generously imparted knowledge left me with a Rainman-like reaction to electrical shock of any kind and the desire to wait until my thirties to have a child. I reasoned that as an older parent I would be able to avoid giving birth to a sociopathic child who enjoyed torturing younger kids and avoid stretch marks in my twenties.

Look, my Mom’s stomach was a road map of maternity and I wanted to spend my twenties in a bikini. Yes, I was shallow. Let’s not judge.

There I am living the dream--the extremely shallow dream.

There I am achieving my goal.

Well as luck would have it (and by “luck” I mean a rampant fear of commitment) I did wait until I was older to have children. Even older than my mom. I had to have special tests for elderly pregnant ladies and everything. Who says I can’t stick to a plan?

No seriously, who says that? It’s not nice to talk about other people behind their backs. I have feelings, you know.

Anyway, I’ve been very happy with my decision for the most part, but last night I was lying in bed after a particularly taxing bout of ineffective parenting and I started thinking about the down sides of my plan. Nothing is perfect. Not even Meryl Streep (but don’t say that out loud in Hollywood).

I'm an acting tour de force and a g.d. American icon, you sniveling fence toucher."

“I’m a g.d. American icon, you sniveling fence-toucher!”

  1. First of all, let’s address the stretch marks issue since it had such an impact on my decision. If you’re going to ask your skin to perform the greatest of all hat tricks and stretch over an additional human, you want to do it while you’re still producing some collagen and your skin has all of its elasticity.  Later on your skin is going to stretch out and then give up, much like my father in front of prime time television. And despite what I thought in my teens, you don’t stop caring about your looks and life in general when you hit 40.
  2. Also, grandparents are more valuable than gold. Aside from being the only people in the world who want to watch your kids without a salary attached, they will also keep your kids supplied in quality socks, underwear and the type of frilly dresses that you would never buy but little girls go ape-sh!t over. You want to get grandparents while they are still alive and young enough to care. Let’s face it, when you’ve gotten to the age where you’re deaf and in a diaper, you don’t get as excited about tiny sticky humans. My kids only have one set of grandparents left and we have a team of doctors forcing them to stay alive. It’s a lot of pressure.
  3. When you’re young you think you know everything. There’s a certain freedom in that. You don’t have to constantly second guess yourself. You are free to blissfully screw up your children with complete confidence. I agonize over screwing up every day, which ironically doesn’t make me screw up any less. It just takes the fun out of it and screwing up should be fun. Like a Van Wilder movie.
  4. Parenting is stressful and it’s hard on a marriage. If you get married and have children young you have the chance of getting through the challenging years and then rekindling your marriage while you and your spouse are still young enough to travel without breaking a hip. Or you can cash it in while you’re still young enough to take an attractive picture for a dating website.
  5. One word: resilience. As much as I hate to admit it, I’m more fragile than I was at 25 when I thought that knees magically went on working forever and at 2:00 a.m. I have a hard time caring about anything other than another four hours of uninterrupted rest. You have to have a fever, the likes of which could start a house fire and make you speak in tongues to rouse my empathy at that hour and even then you’re guaranteed terrible parenting the following day.

So there you have it. Now you can make an informed decision, justify/regret the decision you already made or just pour yourself a cocktail and ignore this post all together. Personally, I recommend the latter. I also recommend Tylenol PM, so that you don’t lie in bed crafting lists like this until all hours of the night. Trust me on this.

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Photo Credits:

Midnightdirectives.wordpress

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Cheesecake Off Of Taylor Lautner’s Abs

True Confession:

I made a $12.50 contribution to the Twilight empire. I saw Breaking Dawn. In the theater. And now I’m outing myself.

Behold the shame

Behold: shame and an approaching weather system.

You might roll your eyes but sometimes a girl just wants to watch a Matrix-style fight scene with pretty people in paper snow, surrounded by CG werewolves. Much like a key lime cheesecake, it has no nutritional value, but is still delicious. Like Taylor Lautner’s abs. Or a key lime cheesecake eaten off Taylor Lautner’s abs.

Caution: those abs are wet. You will end up with soggy cheesecake.

Let’s not judge.

Frankly I found this movie thought-provoking. For instance, did you know that ancient vampires all learn perfect English? (Well you would if you’d stop wasting your time watching Oscar contenders.) Even the vampires deep in the Brazilian rain forest who still wear loin cloths take the time to enroll in their local ESL class, which is helpful when you have a giant vampire war. Let’s face it, delicate battle strategies can get lost in language barriers.

Imagine that you are lined up for battle with a bunch of other amber-eyed immortal hotties. Tension is mounting because a whole bunch of Italians are carrying a can of Sterno with your name on it. Italian vampires might behave like autistic drag queens but they’re vicious and connected.

Sheldon meets Liberace meets Vito Corleone.

You turn to the jungle vampire next to you and helpfully suggest, “Hey, fly through the air and rip the head off of that guy over there.”

Miss loin cloth, pointing in the opposite direction, says something ancient and rainforesty that you don’t understand because tribal-speak wasn’t even offered in your high school.

You roll your eyes. Where did they get this girl? Is she some sort of undocumented vampire who Matrix-jumped over the border? So you say (loudly and with extra enunciation),  “No. The. Guy. Over. There.”

Then she shakes her Amazonian flat-ironed hair with attitude and babbles something unintelligible with emphasis like she just insulted your mother, which is totally disrespectful because your mother died 200 years ago.

Meanwhile, the guy you were trying to get Miss Loin Cloth to kill flies through the air and rips your head off and now where are you? Stuck in eternal damnation, that’s where. And all because Miss Loin Cloth couldn’t even invest in a phrase book. I mean, do you have to do all of the work? You’ve been busy looking impossibly beautiful and drinking the blood of woodland animals with your equally beautiful immortal soul mate.

This Amazonian vampire is fresh from a stint on America’s Next Top Model and a Michael Jackson video.

Speaking of soul mates. I was watching the scene where KStew and RPat were lying in a field of flowers and KStew lifted the CG gauze that made up her mind shield so that RPat could watch a video montage of painful acting moments from the three previous Twilight films, which apparently demonstrated how KStew had loved RPat more than anyone had ever loved anyone else in the history of the world. RPat was enthralled and asked for another peak at her glorious awkwardness but KStew declined, saying, “We’ve got a really long time,” to which RPat replied, “Forever”  or “Eternity,” I forget which exactly because I was having not one but two epiphanies at the time and epiphanies screw with my short-term memory.

First of all, KStew’s video montage suggests that all of the painful acting moments in my past were actually signs of deep abiding love.  Will someone please alert my acting teachers? This is extremely encouraging news.  I think perhaps deep abiding love has caused all of my crappy writing as well.

And second, eternity is a long G.D. time. Holy prenups, Batman. Even ten years is a really long time when you don’t even take a nap to break up the monotony, but forever? Centuries of your soul mate not wiping the deer blood off of their expensive shoes before they track it through your magically clean, tastefully decorated home might have you eying your own can of Sterno. I think I’d have to have some sort of vampire open marriage because that’s just mind numbing craziness, but maybe matrimony is different when you sparkle. I wouldn’t know.

Alas, since this was the final installment of the Twilight extravaganza, I’m done with guilty pleasures for a while. Unless the latest James Bond film is still in theaters, because you know I love car chases and cool gadgets…and key lime cheesecake tastes just as delicious when eaten off of Daniel Craig’s abs.

Mmm, cheesecake.

Delicious. And this cheesecake is appropriately aged.

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Photo Credits

movies.about.com

Criterion.com

Wikia.com

HighlightHollywood.com

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A Plus Sized Uterus

I saw a new gynecologist this week. My last ob/gyn was fantastic, but not conveniently located and driving to her office felt like a cross-country trip. I found myself wanting to rent a motor home to drive to my appointments but motor homes are murder to drive through Hollywood and I was afraid that I’d run over homeless people. I’m against running over homeless people. Except for the one who threw up on my car at a stop light. He had it coming. Judging from the contents of his stomach at 9:00 am, the fact that he was wearing a parka in July and his crazy astronaut-style moonwalk, I was doing him a favor anyway.

Side note: I did not actually run over that homeless guy except in my mind and if you could see what else happens in my mind you would see that running over a homeless man is the least of my mental offenses.

“She is a complete nutbag and I know nutbags.” (image via dreamstime)

Anyway, my new ob/gyn is cool but I think we got off on the wrong foot. First of all, she asked me about any health concerns I might have and when I listed them she smiled and said, “welcome to your 40s.”

Evidently becoming 40 is the worst thing you can do for your health. Worse than eating bacon and cubes of butter for breakfast every day, which makes me feel a little foolish for eating oatmeal with chia seeds. But the fact that she was so cavalier about my geriatric health issues irked me. She didn’t even give me a card to soften the blow. Something like:

Welcome to your 40s. Sorry your body is turning on you, but at least you’re still alive.

I can’t really judge her about the card thing. I’m not really good about giving cards either and she’s a busy doctor. But an Amazon gift card would’ve been thoughtful. Just saying.

“My doctor threw me an enlarged prostate party!” (image via dreamstime)

Then she asked me about my job. I said I was a stay at home mom and a blogger. Again she smiled and asked what kind of blog.

“A humor blog,” I said.

“Good for you.” she replied.

Subtext: Another stay at home mom who writes a blog. Such a cliché. And a humor blog? That’s weird because she’s not that funny.

I might have been projecting there. It’s hard to have a dignified conversation with someone who has their head between your legs, which is why you never hear stimulating dialogue in porn. Still, I had to really fight the urge to add, and an astrophysicist just to make myself feel better. I did resist the urge, because it’s also not a good practice to lie to someone who has their head between your legs. Before and after they have their head between your legs is okay, but not during.

“A vagina never lies.” (image via dreamstime)

Just because I run over vomiting homeless people in my mind doesn’t mean that I don’t have moral standards.

Then the doctor mentioned that my uterus was large and I got all up in her grill.

Large? Large as in slightly chubby and cute like the babies it developed? Or large as in call Richard Simmons because this uterus is morbidly obese and house bound? Am I going to have to buy a second seat on an airplane for my uterus? Are people going to judge it for its size instead of getting to know its personality? Because my uterus is so much more than just a dress size. Why is it that having large breasts is a good thing but having a large uterus garners you criticism? I bet there are cultures where a large uterus is desirable. If Hollywood didn’t set up impossible standards by constantly showing anorexic uteri I bet we wouldn’t even be judging the size of my uterus. Why do we as a society castigate uteri for being different than the norm? My uterus is big and beautiful and I refuse to be ashamed of it!

I didn’t actually say those things but I thought them. Loudly. I was totally about to declare the inherent beauty of my large uterus out loud, but then she said, “You probably have fibroids.”

“Oh.”

So I put my underwear back on and took my large, fibrous, forty-something year old uterus home, fed it a cupcake and looked at the stuff on Amazon I’d buy if I had a gift card. Later on I dressed up as a super hero and went to a screening of The Avengers. I bet Scarlett Johansson has a big uterus.

“I do have a large uterus and men love it.” (image via dreamstime)

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Bozo Motley

I’m vain. I’ll admit it. Sure, I might wander around in unattractive workout clothes without makeup for most of the day. Or week. And I’m more than willing to humiliate myself in any number of ways in the name of comedy. But despite my goofiness and sometimes slovenly exterior I still like to look presentable when the time calls. And the time is about to call.

I’m going to be on stage for the first time since Jesus had acne and to commemorate that fact I decided to get my hair freshly done. My hair didn’t really need to be done. It looked fine. But I was shooting for fabulous. I wanted to feel special.

“Do not blaspheme, my child. I had a couple of pimples at best, but a little Proactiv cleared it right up.” (image via dreamstime)

I made an appointment with my hairdresser, the one in Hollywood who has guns tattooed on her hips and is so cool that she really shouldn’t even be cutting the hair of a housewife from the Valley, except that she’s too cool to even care. She is so cool that the space shuttle flew by three times just trying to get an appointment. She is so cool that I always walk out of the salon ten shades cooler than when I walked in just because she talked to me. Yeah, that cool.

And I did what you never do right before a big occasion. I asked for a change. I asked for more red in my hair. Because I wanted to make an impression.

Well she gave me what I asked for. She most certainly did. Lots of red. In my hair. Enough red to really make an impression. And also burn some retinas. I didn’t notice how bright it was in the salon, because I was intoxicated by the coolness, but I think I caused some accidents on the way home.

“Oops, my bad.”

When the shelf life of my cool status had expired and I looked in my own mirror, I thought, Whoa! followed by, Oh sh!t, WTF, sweet baby Jesus, am I supposed to do with this?

A friend of mine tried to assure me that my hair would look great on stage. I appreciated her effort considering that she had to squint through the glare to talk to me. And I think she was probably right. My hair would look good on stage. At the circus.

Am I the only one who thinks this clown looks drunk and terrified? (image via dreamstime)

After putting on two pairs of sunglasses, my friend also mentioned that I could tint my hair with coffee. This sounded like a brilliant idea. I wouldn’t have to spend another day traipsing through Hollywood to correct my hair, layer my head with more chemicals or (ahem) admit to my hairdresser that I wasn’t cool enough to carry off my edgy new hair color. And Hubs always leaves at least a cup’s worth in the pot.

I took the coffee left in the pot (which judging by the smell had been made in the 1990s) mixed it with some conditioner, slathered it on my hair, wrapped it in a towel and let it sit for an hour before shampooing.

“Your head smells like the good old days when we mixed coffee with dirt and drank it in a bunker.” (image via dreamstime)

Let me tell you what stale coffee can do for your hair. Not much in the color department. Evidently coffee cannot magically take the clown out of your hair. It can however, make your hair reek like a burnt cup a joe in a roadside diner. And who doesn’t love bad road coffee? I’ve donated several layers of stomach lining to the stuff myself. When the process was complete, my head smelled like it had been sitting in the cup of a fat, unwashed truck driver with a giant belt buckle and sallow skin.

(I don’t know why I’m so down on truck drivers. I’m sure many of them are lithe and rosy and smell like honeysuckle.)

Even after washing and conditioning, my hair smelled like a 1970s teachers’ lounge. If Bozo the Clown taught high school algebra, he would smell like me. He would also make me wet my pants. Because he’s evil.

Anyway, I’m excited to take my new train wreck coiffure on stage. I think it’s going to add an edge to my performance. I mean there will be lots of normal looking women on stage but only one with stinky clown hair. And when you think about it, that’s pretty special. Right?

Conor painted a picture of me. I think he really captured the intensity of my new hair.

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Hollywood Armchair Detective Part I

I have a guilty pleasure: dramatized police procedurals.  Love them! I love mystery and witty banter and forensic stuff. I love trying to figure out who did it. And I don’t mean to brag but I’m one heck of an armchair detective. It’s a gift really.

However, being married to a cop has almost ruined it all for me. See, Hubs is a slave to silly things like occupational accuracy and the laws of physics. These shows are painful for him to watch and his pain sucks the marrow out of my enjoyment. As a result, I mostly watch these shows on my own, although occasionally I will put one of them on while Hubs is in the room just so that I can hear him groan and leave the room like he’s about to pass a kidney stone.

Hubs doesn’t know what he’s missing. I learn so much watching these shows. If Hollywood hadn’t had the fantastic notion of chronicling the goings on of abnormally attractive detectives, coroners and lab technicians, I would still be in the dark. I’m passing this knowledge on to you because I’m a giver. Like Typhoid Mary.

Because Hollywood has taught me so much, I’ve split this post into two parts so as not to overwhelm. In the words of Sir Francis Bacon, knowledge is power and too much power given all at once can make your head explode (I added the last part.) Here is the first generous helping of Hollywood knowledge. Use it wisely.

  • Coroners and lab technicians spend their days diligently solving crime and apprehending criminals in expensive designer clothes. I thought they mostly did autopsies and processed DNA but I was so wrong. I also had no idea that public servants and government workers made boat loads of cash and had incredible cutting edge tastes in fashion. That is until Hollywood educated me. Now I know that standing on the unforgivingly hard floors of morgues and labs just feels better in stilettos.

She wears the same shoes to cut up dead bodies (image via dreamstime)

  • Good looking coroners like to hang out with good-looking detectives. And when they do, hi-jinx and crime solving ensue. I don’t know why Hubs never invites coroners over for dinners and family cookouts. Then again, I don’t think I want Hubs spending all of his time with a hot coroner. Watching Hubs exchange witty banter and solving murders with some good-looking smarty-pants just might make me want to kick a coroner’s @ss. If Hubs is going to take some unarmed chica in impractical shoes to a dangerous crime scene, it’s going to be me.

She best stay away from my husband's crime scenes! (image via dreamstime)

  • Detectives often cry in the interview room while divulging painful personal facts to hardened criminals in order to obtain a confession. This strategy always works, probably because hardened criminals are notoriously empathetic, which makes total sense when you think about the painful childhoods the criminals must have had. What allows this technique to work so well is that criminals hardly ever ask for a lawyer and when they do, the lawyers sit silently in dismay while the detectives manipulate the hardened criminals into a confession. Nobody wants to interrupt a hot, crying detective. It’s just not done. Hubs seems to be ignoring my suggestion that he cry more at work, which might be why he’s not a detective.

This detective cried at least once an episode (image via dreamstime)

  • Crime labs investigate every death with the same amount of time and resources. Vagrants who seemingly died of natural causes get the same exhaustive efforts that high-profile murders do. And they are all investigated with state of the art equipment not seen outside of secret squirrel government agencies. Crime labs can be this thorough because they never have a backlog of lab work to catch up on. Nor do they have bureaucrats breathing down their necks about overtime hours and the super fancy hologram machine they used to recreate an image of the vagrant’s butt. This is very good news for the residents of Vegas, New York and Miami, because it means that there is hardly any crime and the city governments have plenty of money. So head on down to City Hall to get your free handout and don’t be afraid to carry it around in an open fanny pack.

*I am kidding. In no way do I condone the use of fanny packs.

"Oh sure, now you tell me." (image via dreamstime)

 

There you have it. You are half way to earning your Masters in Armchair Detectivery from Hollywood University. You should totally hit the campus pub. You’ve earned it.