Wherein I continue to not do drugs

I've never used crack.

I never thought that would bother me, but now I have strong feelings about a thing called Trivia Crack and I wish I knew just how closely the two are related.

My guess is that, aside from the superficial, market-y, tongue-in-cheek type comparisons (so addictive! fun to share with friends, but then you get mad at each other for weird reasons!) the two actually have very little in common. Trivia Crack may waste some of your time and strain your eyeballs, but it has not been decimating impoverished communities for the last three decades.

This is where my strong feelings come in: Trivia Crack is dumb. The name is dumb, the questions are dumb, and if my victorious record against strangers can be believed, most of the people playing it are dumb (because seriously, y'all, I don't even know where I am most of the time). And yet, I have played maybe fifteen games since downloading it on Saturday. I've seen and heard of many other people playing it. There are t-shirts featuring "Trivia Crack characters".

I don't get it, but it's a thing in America, and so I care (see also: most politicians, the VMAs, Sex and the City reruns).

Dearest America, why are we getting all excited about something named Crack? Why do we not think it is wack? Would you play a game called Trivia Booze or Trivia Endemic Community Problems?

Actually...America has a strange, long, presumably proud history of naming things in a way that one sincerely hopes never turns out to be literal: Death by Chocolate, the surprisingly web-savvy Slap Ya Momma hot sauce, Kahlua Mudslide, Sex on the Beach (think of the sand, people -- it's not worth it!). Hell, we have a long tradition of just calling things "crack" when what we really mean is "it's really good". I've seen crack pie, crack cookies, crack brownies -- almost all sweets, although I'm sure that there's a bacon crack somewhere - the pinnacle of "add this word to anything to make it sound good" mania.

And I guess the "mania" bit is what's really tying me in knots about this game. I don't know much about crack, but I've been led to believe that it makes you feel PHENOMENAL. And then it makes your life EXCRUCIATING. It's a substance of extremes, of power - it gets hold of you, and then your life cannot be separated from it. Naming the best pie or brownies or bacon in the world pie/brownie/bacon crack is still extreme, but it makes sense. I have been transported by pie! I have felt like I might be willing to shiv someone over some really great bacon! I understand the highs and lows, the agony and the ecstasy of America's relationship with food.

Life-changing pie, however, Trivia Crack is not. I've been, at turns, mildly annoyed and slightly smirky about it, just as I've been about a lunchbox-clammy RingDing. Calling it "crack" goes way beyond normal salesman-like braggadocio. It's utter nonsense that tears at the fabric of our shared language and, thus, our culture.

We all know marketers are lying to us, but the lie is supposed to have some hope of truth in it. If we don't stop this fast-rolling boulder of misnaming now, grocery stores will start labeling day-old bread "loaf o' crack"; my terrible mailman will earn the title "bacon mail crack"; TMZ will be "the crack of television journalism"....and then, all of  a sudden, crack will mean bad...and then it will all make sense...

Disregard all of the above, Trivia Crack, and godspeed!

My Ovaries Did Not Steal Your Soul

I write about commercials a lot, I know. Here's the thing: ad men speak the hearts and minds of America. That's their job. They know us better than we know ourselves, and they use that knowledge to hypnotize us into a frenzy of purchasing:

"You have a problem with your dad? This nice, bearded, dad-ish-looking (but not too dad-ish because he's also kind of hot) guy will now sell you soap. Use the soap to wash away the metaphorical ickyness you feel about your dad, and you will feel better about that whole real-life problem thing."

That's fine - pensieve me to pieces, ad-men, because I want to be sold products that are appealing. I love soap! And psychological closure! I don't, however, like it when you sell a lifestyle that is in direct competition with me.

For instance, you know that ad where the guy - just your average dopey white dude - has a beautiful wife and healthy, happy kids and a ridiculously grand house in the suburbs that he surely got using his wife's money because he doesn't seem to ever go to work, just drives the kids around and barbecues?

You don't know which one I'm talking about? Come on, the one where the guy has all this, but he's still sad because something's...missing?

You still don't know? No? And the kids grow up, and fake iPhone commercial music plays in the background with hipsters going "Oh oh oh OH" and you maybe want to cry but you're not sure why? That one? You know! You don't?

TRICK QUESTION! You will never figure out which one I am talking about, America, because it is ALL OF THE ADS that are designed to appeal to my husband:

"Are you a man? Are you a man with ABSOLUTELY NO PROBLEMS because you are in the charge of the entire world? Buy this thing anyway - just in case."

The SadWhiteDude-ificiation of America continues. Cars, soaps, watches, cheeseburgers - it doesn't matter what the product is because the thing being sold is a man and the maintenance of his manliness. Man-tenance seemed silly but harmless, until I realized that somehow, some way, the thing getting in the way of every man's manliness - according to the commercials - is me. A man's living his life, growing chest hair, polishing guns, whatever, until some lady shows up. Then, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, she drops a cute farmhouse on his head, and it's all over for him (although, you  know, he lives in the farmhouse with babies instead of shriveling up underneath).

There's a car commercial out now that exemplifies this whole "women are master hunters of the man beast" thing. The commercial tracks the relationship of a man with his automobiles. There are other human people somewhere in this guy's life, but they are irrelevant to his trajectory. He is a meteor of manliness streaking across the night sky in his shitty foreign car, and none may touch him in his glory. He gets his first car when he is 16 because, of course, privilege. Then he goes to college (like, of course! white dudes!) where he majors in grilling and pranking. Then marriage. There's a fleeting shot of a babe in a white dress; SHE DOES NOT MATTER. Then kids. Gotta drive them around for, like, ever. But then, THEN -- praise God who is clearly a dude -- those little turds go off somewhere, the wife is...out (shopping? who cares!), and Man Guyly can finally go back to driving his little red roadster, which is all he's wanted his whole life so leave me alone, okay? Gawd! The tagline is something like, "Be yourself again."

What kind of gaslighting has that babe in the white dress been running on this poor man for all of these years? Did she clunk him on the head each morning? Convince him his name was Darren? Force him to stay at home grilling all those nights when really all he wanted was a nice Panera salad?

In other words, how in the world did having a wife and kids and a billion new cars over the last 25 years stop this guy from feeling like "himself"? How much more himself would he have been living alone in his roadster on the edge of a picturesque cliff? Either this commercial is demented or I need to reevaluate my entire understanding of the man psyche.

"The old ball-and-chain" is a weird idea to be reintroducing to the American public right now. Poor old Man Guyly and his roadster do not have to sneak off to the Elk Club to get a little peace and quiet, and I'm not sitting at home in fluffy slippers fretting over whether he'll like my Jell-o salad. I'm not trying to be married to a guy who hides his true identity from me for decades or who turns into DadBot3000 (generic model, no upgrades) the moment our family gets too big for a two-seater coupe.

Yet, thus spake the ads, and thus my concern. Is this what dudes really feel like? As they circle the board in the Game of Life, do they feel not victory but
? If so, what can I possibly do to stop it?

It's almost enough to make me want to go out and buy some stuff - you know, fun things, cars, cheeseburgers, make-up - just to improve my life a little bit. Just in case. So I can feel like myself again.

Not a Funny Post

My dog died Sunday afternoon.

It seems stupid to write about it - like some New Agey closure workshop - and it seems stupider to write about it here. I know that if the one, lone hopeful who may still check this page comes here looking for chuckles, she will be disappointed. Sorry, lone hopeful -- I can't think of anything to do right now that doesn't make me cry, and at least here I won't lose what all I'm trying to say.

I just accidentally read a great essay about this very thing by Actual Professional Writer Meghan Daum, in her book The Unspeakable. I will do my best not to mindlessly plagiarize, but I do want to emphasize a point she made about dogs being adult security blankets. The thing I am saddest about (and I know this is selfish) is that there's no one for me to talk to or hug whenever I want. My husband wouldn't mind too much, until I started expecting him to greet me at the door and uncontrollably kissing me whenever I came within range. It wouldn't be the same.

Of course, I don't just feel bad for me. I feel bad for my husband, who also has no one that will sit stoically beside him while he pats her head and yammers about his day, his drive, his crazy wife. I feel bad for the dog, who got very sick very fast and had a tough go of it in the last week of her life (although on that last day, she was hand-fed an entire can of food - her first full can since hospitalization - and then held in my husband's lap for a good twenty minutes while we cooed and giggled and gave her as much coddling as any dog could hope for). I hate that she was alone when she died, and I also hate that I am sort of guiltily glad we weren't there to see it.

Everything sucks right now. My dog is gone, I'm almost thirty, I'm on my period, and I have a mere three days until I am shunted into the void of summer, where, instead of spending days sharing secret margaritas with Ella while Gerard is at work, I now have nothing but time to miss that beast. She deserves to be thought about a lot, but I don't know if I can bear it. The same way we deserve to have a clean house but haven't been able to sweep up the last of her hair or scrub the last of her drool from the walls. We even agreed today not to wash the shorts Gerard was wearing when he cuddled and fed her that last day - even though they are covered in slobbery food crumbs.

I know that this feeling will subside. The emptiness -- as though we'd tied a string from her to our us and, when we drove away from the animal hospital, she yanked our insides out like bloody baby teeth -- it will fill in. Mostly. With different stuff. But it will. Now, though, it is hard, and it seems so, so unfair and unreal. Like some Game of Thrones shit.

Unlike HBO, though, real life has no magic reset button (also wayyyy fewer titties - sorry dudebros), so I'm just going to quickly write down things I loved about Ella so they're always here for me to flip back to when I'm ready. In no particular order:

1. Sharking: This is what we called it when she would circle around the bed or the ottoman, just waiting for us to dangle a body part over for her to lick.

2. All the snorting (and other disgusting noises). We were frequently awoken by her snorting just outside our closed door, the cute version of this:

3. Her adorable freaking face...

 ...which remained adorable...

...to the end

4. Her accommodating nature. You could do anything to this dog - pick her up, use her as a pillow, stick your fingers in her mouth - and she wouldn't do anything to stop you. I mean, she might jump in your lap and try to lick you to death if you poked and prodded her too long, but really, she was here to please.

5. Hence, The Dance: her greeting for everyone who walked through the door involved much bouncing on the back paws and punching with the front. Oh, and snorting.

6. Agility! This dog could jump like a freaking gazelle. And then she would get very sleepy and drooly.

7. The drool, oh the drool! Man could this dog drool! At the park, it was a deeply disturbing, particularly slime-like form, that would shoot up in long strands that covered her muzzle when she shook. Sometimes it got so thick and long leaves and branches would get stuck in it.
Indoors was more normal. Sometimes it was a steady, faucet-like drip (like when she was watching us cook), sometimes a long, viscous drool stalactite. She was particularly drooly when we ordered Indian food, which she loved. If there is chicken tikka masala in heaven, I know a dog who is swimming in a pool of it Right Now.

8. And while she's doing that, she's going to be making the most crazy, loud eating noises. This dog worked her jowls like Elvis worked his hips. And the smacking and crunching and glormphing that resulted (especiallywith potato chips) was way better than "In the Ghetto".

9. I also liked how she passive aggressively sneezed at cigarette smokers.

10. And how she was a certified idiot at fetch. You could throw something, she would chase it, and then, after making sure it was dead, she would run off. It probably didn't help that her mouth was the worst at all mouth things. She couldn't catch or pick up anything, and she certainly couldn't bite (not that she wanted to).

11. One tap on the couch, and she was up beside you. She knew it was wrong, but she knew what she liked.

12. My god did this dog like comfort. Pillows, blankets, carpets, more pillows -- if it was soft, she was on it.

13. She also liked riding in cars - a throwback to her first day with Gerard, when he drove her all the way to Atlantic City to meet his brother. Our car has drool splotches all of the back windows that we are not ready to clean off yet.

14. Sleeping on dirty clothes. I guess this fits under "comfort-loving", but I like to think she also liked us and our smells so much that she was willing to forgo her bed if she could have our dirty sheets and t-shirts instead.

15. In fact, she loved us so much, she (with the help of a life vest) spent most of one summer in Maine repeatedly conquering her fear of water to save our lives! She would see us splashing in the lake, cry, groan, run up and down the dock, and then gracelessly leap in. She flailed over to use, herded back to shore, and crawled out of the water seething with disgust and fear.

16. Although she could be strong and semi-athletic, one of the best things about this dog was her gentleness. She would never, ever hurt anyone on purpose, and she was surprisingly good with puppies and kids - even the strange little boy who ran up to her on Newark Avenue, grabbed her face and kissed her right on the mouth with no warning. She looked a little shook up after that one, but she allowed it.
           a. I mean, for goodness sake, this dog loved holding hands. She would put her paw in your hand and actually squeeze with her little foot pads.

17. She also allowed us to dress her in costumes and coats of varying levels of ridiculousness. Banella was always good for parties.

18. And she was a lovely hostess (once she got over the habit of peeing everywhere from excitement). She loved everyone except our friend Doug who, for reasons we could not discern, was clearly the DEVIL. So he would get growled at, but everyone else would get kisses.

19. She would even sit in their laps if allowed. Ella, like all great, large dogs, had no idea how big she was. She loved it when people sat on the floor (or let her on the couch) and she could curl up between their legs.

20. Aside from us and laps and pillows and Indian food, Ella also loved nature. Getting that dog into the right patch of grass or sand could bring on the fastest, fiercest, surge of joy I've ever seen. She would run in quick circles, gasping, with her mouth wide open, trying to inhale the scene. When she was spent from running, she would plop, flat on her side in whatever it was that had made her so happy and refuse to move.

21. Another move of hers I really liked was the flop and groan: This dog played it cool. She never begged for belly rubs, but if you happened to come by and give her one, she would look up at you for a few seconds and then heave her whole body over with a groan while her legs started kicking around and her head burrowed into the carpet.

22. She was always scared by her own farts.

23. And finally (for now), even though she was the biggest softie in history - seriously, maybe a big pile of custard in a dog suit - she was a great guard dog. At least, she barked a lot. I don't know what would have happened if anyone made it inside, but I did feel safer with her in the house.

I miss her. I love her. I'll never meet another one like her.

Wherein I lie to my friends

I did something very stupid the other day: I told my friends I was writing a novel.

We were talking about books we'd been reading, books we'd wanted to read, books we'd been gifted and were avoiding reading, and then, there it was. I'm writing a novel. Oh, you're working on a big case at work? I'm Writing A Novel.

It just slipped out. Whoops! Silly me! 

That's not quite true. It didn't slip out from nowhere like the little cockroach of a thought that it was. After hearing one of my friends gush about a 29-year-old author whose novel was blowing her mind, pure, mean competitiveness jolted it out of me. I flung it out - a monkey turd reaction. Twenty-nine? Twenty-nine? Very soon, I'll be twenty-nine. If I don't publish my novel before then, this girl can go around feeling superior to me, with her books and her publishing and her obvious focus. I couldn't have that, so instead, I said "I'm writing a novel." I fibbed. Hard. And I wasn't even drinking (although I was rapidly becoming more hungover as we sat there, and thus feeling very much like a gutter-crawling, surly artist of Romantical olden times).

I've written three pages in three years.

T.S. Eliot wrote "Prufrock" when he was twenty-two. F. Scott Fitzgerald pounded out Gatsby when he was around my age. Even cranky, lupus-ridden Flannery O'Connor scratched out her first novel when she was twenty-five. I can barely cook myself dinner on a semi-nightly basis.

Of course, because I'm me and this is America, this makes me feel like I'm losing some sort of competition. No matter that I work all day at a job that is not writing, and Ezra Pound is not my mentor, and I cannot afford to travel about to various European townships for "inspiration" -- they have done it, and I have not. They are Known, and I am a Nothing. There are only so many defeats a girl can take, even if they do result in Great Achievements for Mankind. Rather than accept defeat (in the loosest of terms -- can you lose a game when you're more like a mascot than a player?), I keep telling people that I am writing a novel.

I do want to write a novel. I even have two whole ideas sloshing around in my brain. They've been sloshing around up there for years! By this point, actually, they're probably just the withered, rat-eaten skeletons of ideas - shipwrecked tourists who held on to hope until the mangos ran out. Or they've gone native, have started mating with other weirdness in my brain. I'm going to sit down to type my novel (really! I will!), and horrible, toothy monsters will spill out, all muscular verbs and sharp dialogue, but no poetry.

At my job that is not writing, I cajole and/or coax young people into being better writers. I make them believe that I know all the secrets to being a good writer. I occasionally (but never to their faces) mock them for being such bad writers, and I tell them, "The only way to get better  at writing is to do it." I may be bad at accomplishing the act of writing, but the act of teaching I have pretty well sewn up, so I have to take my own advice.

This is where lying to my friends comes in. Somehow, I -- I! -- have managed to attract kind, supportive people as friends. It's impossible, or at least exhausting, to keep telling novel-based falsehoods to kind, supportive friend-people because they - poor saints! - remember facts about my life, and they ask me how it's going. Really! They've heard me speak in real life, and they still manage to drum up interest in how I would write down words for general consumption. They don't do this for their sakes; they know that I may end up writing something horrible or offensive or boring. They do this because they would like to see their friend succeed.

If my friends were normal people, I could, while slogging through the hellfires of prolonged, focused writing, comfort myself with the idea that, once my work was completed, I would happily pass on the mantel of friendship-lying, patiently waiting for them to fib about having read my completed opus. Knowing my friends, though, they will come back to me within a week, trailing folders of copious, constructive notes and snappy hashtags to build internet buzz for my book. I am probably not the Next Great American Writer, but I do have good friends. Fitzgerald had Hemingway, and O'Connor had her peacocks, but I think I'm winning this one.

Wherein I Use Summer for Lesson Planning

I'm afraid I've become mature.

Well, mature-er.

My friends and loved ones have been noticing the disturbing signs of change for a while. "You're always working," they say. "I know Friday nights are tough for you, but..." they wheedle. "You've mellowed," they point out.

Mellowed. Like some sort of food product left in the cellar too long; I've probably also gotten stinkier, but that's for another post. This mellow, thing, though - I don't like it. I used to have an edge! I was so angry about ridiculous things! I used to hurt my throat yelling when we went out at night, and then, to rest my voice, I would go climb a tree or run around the block. For years, Gerard was sure that his death would be directly related to me yelling at some burly stranger and him having to defend me.

Lately, though, I've given up on aggressively stating my opinions about where large strangers should be sitting (not on the subway steps!) or standing (not in the doorway, fool!). Maybe it was becoming a teacher, or maybe it was just me getting older (although, no matter how many times I tell my students that I am astonishingly, creakingly old, I am not really in the vicinity even of middle-agedness), but my attempts to correct people's unacceptable behaviors have become much more didactic, and less rageful and insane. Because I have not entirely given up on having OPINIONS, Gerard still slightly fears the wrath of strangers, but he no longer believes that I am going to get him beaten with clubs.

Let's get married!

Thelaurenbell is getting married in about six weeks. No longer will she be thelaurenbell. No longer will she have most of her savings (the pizza truck will be worth it, though). No longer will she have much of her already questionable sanity - at least for the few days leading up to THE BIG EVENT.

Or, that's what she has been led to believe. She really won't have any money, and she really will be giving up that sweet, succinct last name, but the whole mind-losing thing, well, I've known crazy, and so far, the impending WEAVING TOGETHER OF TWO SOULS has done little to affect her current levels thereof.

If the magazines are correct - and Martha Stewart's magazines are always correct or so help her she will end you -  weddings are full of stress, jitters, bridezilla-ing, crazes, and other things that are distinctly the opposite of lying in a hammock somewhere. If you're not Nitpicking Napkin Colors, you're Putting Out that In-Law Fire* (*Real headlines from wedding magazines.** [**No, they're not.]). I wish wedding planning was full of as much excitement and adventure as walking into Mordor, but so far I have dealt with NO FIRES. Not a one. Not even, really, the metaphorical type - which is what I assume that headline about your in-laws was talking about because, otherwise: sad. Wedding planning is annoying, but straight-forward. It's like those silly magazines only want you to think this is impossible so that you will buy more of their "helpful" prod- OH.

Just Another Day at the Naming Factory

Demoted. Again. Once, I was the king of product naming, the Necromancer of Nomenclature (and, yes, I did come up with that one on my own. I know.). But now is the twilight of my greatness. My star dims. One more "Sleep Cheap" fiasco could darken it for good.

I thought I understood the sweet science of product naming; I dazzled my professors in "Fun Rhymes 350", cracked the curve on my "Alliteration Always" exam, but, lo, here I sit with the dummies in Household Appliances. Where is the poetry in adding "-matic" to the end of everything? What ho the lyricism in random strings of numbers? An Insider Tip for you, compassionate listener: the only difference in the CoffeeMan3500 and 4500 is the price. Do not tell your coldhearted friends. They care only for what comes out of these machines - not what goes into them. 

It must be love

Gerard: "You could get yourself a reputation as a really weird teacher without even trying that hard."

Me: "Because I want to keep a pencil case full of beef jerkey?"

Gerard: "Yes."

3 minutes of slow, silent walking through the aisles of Target

Me: "Beef jerkey is a lean and delicious snack that is also a useful motivational tool for hungry teens."

Gerard: [he laughs because I am so right] "I can see you tossing it to them for each right answer."

Me: "See?"

we look at pencil cases 

My left hand, as a mouth: "Miss, can I borrow a pencil?"
My right hand: "Sorry, I don't have any pencils."
My left hand: "But isn't that a full pencil case?"
My right hand: "Yep, but it's full of jerkey!"

Gerard: Ha


3 minutes of slow, silent walking through the aisles of Target

Me: You really think I would be a weird teacher? My kids love me!

Gerard: I'm sure they do.

     

Luiggi's

My mom worked at Luiggi's Pizzeria in the 70s. It's still in Lewiston, Maine, where, according to my mom, "all the riff-raff hang out" - never mind that she once lived in Lewiston and attempted to raise two children there.

I took Gerard to Luiggi's last week.

I know, it's the second story in a row about Gerard. My writing class - the people who told me to "concentrate on the carnage!" for my lobster story - pointed out to me that he is my comic foil, and gushed all sorts of things about how brilliantly hilarious I was for writing him as my straight man. Unfortunately for Gerard, he is not a made-up tool of humor, but a real man who simply has no choice other than to go with me to these things and try to remain calm.

Thus, I took him to Luiggi's, and, because it has TWO "g"s in the name, I could offer him TWO promises: 1. a better understanding of my childhood and 2. the off-menu sandwich known as "the A-bomb."

We parked outside the Blue Goose, a dive bar to which my 15-year-old future mother once delivered Luiggi's lunchmeat pizzas. All the pizzas at Luiggi's are lunchmeat. Even the "cheese" pizzas come with thin shavings of salty deli ham. The restaurant has many signs that point out this unflinching commitment to sticking it to vegetarians, but no signs explaining why.

Luiggi's offers no such thing as a "dining experience." If you asked one of the middle-aged counter workers about "ambiance" they would laugh you out the door. There's a counter, where you order your pizza or spaghetti or sandwich, and there are some booths and tables, where you eat them. The lighting is fluorescent, the decor wavering between non-existent and bizarre. There is no memorable color to the plasticky tables and chairs, no pictures - and no visible health department rating - on the walls.

This was a cherished piece of my childhood. Though I had not intended to fill Gerard's head with visions of little me as a grimy street urchin, I was sticking by it. This time around, I would not be embarrassed by Gerard's compassionate gaze as he stared deep into yet another Bell family vacuum of reason and good taste. I braced. I set my eyeballs to "blazing with pride" mode. I stared him down, and...

I'm taking Gerard to his first lobster boil.

“Now, you should know that this isn't the type of 'lobster boil' they have in Cape Cod.”

“I've never been to one of those either.”

“Good – those are dumb. All kinds of corn and potatoes rolling around, getting in your way. Those fancy pants think they are too good for a plain old lobster on a plate.”

My lobster is simple, approached the way my family has approached everything since the grands-peperes and grands-memeres crashed over the American border in a wave of French-Canadian immigration a century ago. My family has un-recipes: Corn – boil water, toss it in. Potatoes – bake. Boiled dinner – heat broth, add whatever you find in your fridge, wait.

Newspaper reports from the early 20th century widely assume that Franco-Americans are  simpletons. Our highly literal interpretation of what we still call “a lobster boil,” adds some muscle to that idea: We take a lobster, and we boil it.

The boiled lobster is my summers, my birthdays, my family parties. It's so entrenched in my family's life processes that when we moved from Maine to South Carolina, there really was no question of where to have my first birthday south of the Mason-Dixon line -- it was Red Lobster or bust. 

Six-year-old me had no idea the gasps of horror that this decision would elicit from foodies hearing this story years later.

In Hot Water (and other food puns about a pickle I'm in)

Excellent thing: I'm in this class at the New York Public Library, and they are paying me to read and write and hang out with other teachers and eat way too much catered food.

Not-so-excellent thing: I am expected to complete 750 words of "food writing" by Friday.

Here's the thing about food writing: it's amorphous. It's nothing and everything and a little bit crazy and a little bit boring. Describe the sandwich that you ate today. Bam! Food writing. Recall a recipe your grandma gave you. KaBoom - food writing! Tell me why artichokes are considered a sexy food. Woohoo! Food writing (and thanks for explaining it because seriously - do you know what they do to your digestion? It's the opposite of sexy).

I came in with some ideas, but the more I research (fine, attempt to research. I am stupid at computers.), the less clear I am on what I want to do or how to do it. I feel like I'm lacking some revelatory food experience that would anchor my story. I don't "experience" food - I just shove it in my face. I haven't had a supremely memorable meal that changed my life. My family doesn't have recipes that have been handed down. My grandmother made fried baloney sandwiches. My parents cook a lot of pasta. I eat nachos almost every meal.

I enjoy food. I have questions about it. I want to talk about it with other people. I just don't know - based on what I have to offer them - that they would want to talk about it with me. I have 3 days left to write, and I am stuck. I'm in hot water. My goose is cooked. I'm in a pickle. My sandwich has no mayonnaise. I'm one egg short of a carton. (I promised puns - but not good ones.)

So, hey, here's an idea: help me. M'aidez (that's "help" in fancy French restaurants). What can I write? What food experiences do you want to re-live? What food questions do you need answered?  I have some ideas below - vote on these or write in your own.

- All you can Kill Buffet: A friend of mine recently suggested to me that you shouldn't eat anything you wouldn't be able to kill. That effectively strikes spiders from my diet (I can't bear to get close enough to smash them), but what about other critters? Do I really need to kill, or consider killing, them to enjoy their tender flesh?

- Home Cooking: I'm curious about what I consider my "childhood food": Italian sandwiches, whoopee pies, lobster (but not lobster boil), boiled dinner. Where does Maine "cuisine" (haha) come from? If it were the French, why don't we have more poutine?

- Home Ec: Don't really know where this piece is going.  I think I'm still just mad that I got a B for burning my waffles in 8th grade.

VOTE NOW or STARVE (intellectually speaking. I will not take your food. Unless it is poutine.)

A Funny Story that I Should Probably Write but Won't Get Around To:

Phil Collins Attends the 6th Annual 'Phil Collins Day'  in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Disguised as a Man Who is Not Phil Collins

 

Wherein I hate on oft-used English phrases

I am so over the term, "Like a fish out of water."

I don't know if all of you have had the extensive icthyologous experience that I have, so I'm just gonna tell you: A fish out of water is dead. It's not "like" anything, except maybe something that flops sadly on its side for a few minutes before expiring.

Really, the only way I can see it working as a simile is:  "He was shot in the stomach, and, for a brief moment, as his life flashed before his eyes, he was like a fish out of water. Then, when he died, he was like a fish who had been out of water for too long. Only his eyes weren't so buggy." Morbid, but possibly effective.

Wherein I demand more horse-punching

When you're in the suburbs and it's raining and you're terribly bored, it sometimes seems like a good idea to go to the movies. The magic of Hollywood will amuse and enrapture you, and you will have two or three fewer hours to try desperately to fill. Such was the thinking when I went to see the latest Planet of the Apes movie last weekend:

our scene opens on L and G slouched on the couch in a coma of inactivity
TV: Planet of the Apes! Watch It! This is a preview voiceover!
G: You think?
L: Eh...
The preview shows what looks like a gorilla punching a horse
L: Yeah, I'd watch that.

Birds

I like birds because they always look pissed off:

Harumph

Hrmm

It's like they think someone is always trying to put one over on them.

Well, that was weird

I know that my lovely, wonderful, caring parents understand me because they are always recommending top-notch films and television dramas for my viewing pleasure. They don't just throw out recommendations willy-nilly - they have an exacting, hi-tech, algorithm-filled vetting process that goes a little something like this:
1) Watch.
2) Become confused.
3) Decide the watched thing is weird.
4) Call me and say, "Have you seen this thing? You'd like it - IT'S WEIRD."
 
I am that person in my family.

If my parents were to recommend something to my sister or their friends or the mailman or the dog, they might say, "You'd like it - it's interesting/jentacular/touching/happy-making." But for me, it's just "weird," the subtext being "[like you! You zany kid with your Brooklyn and your ugly gremlin dog!]"

Nobody does it like I do it

Here's how I wanted to start this entry: "I talk to myself more than anybody I know."

This statement is true - in a way. I really do talk to myself A LOT. In fact, I would say I am keeping a conversation running in my head at least 87% of the time that I am awake. [PS: I almost put "alive" there instead of "awake". DO NOT PANIC. It was just a mistype; I am NOT a vampire. I am always alive...at least 87% of the time.]

It's not all color commentary, either. If you looked into my mind, rarely would you see: "And here comes the orange juice into the glass! Glug glug glug! That will be delicious!" Nor is it some sort of long-running inspirational speech to myself. I do not kid myself into thinking that I am my own personal Coach Taylor.



OMG EVERYONE WATCH THIS SHOW RIGHT NOW!

Ahem...

That's funny - you don't LOOK like your picture on the Internet

I don't often buy things online. Mostly, this is because I'm cheap, and I simply do not buy things anywhere, ever, unless they are edible.

Time and the cruel streets of New York had other plans, though. My shoes - trusty since freshman year of college - had gotten so hole-y that my students were beginning to think I was a secret hobo who lived under my desk. And goodness knows you can't trust a secret desk hobo to teach proper sonnet explication.

Oh NO

I used to think that owning an umbrella meant I was a grown-up.

In my defense, it was an extremely rad umbrella: an impressively spring-loaded implement in a mature, steely-gray.  I was a freshman in college, and I wrote a whole essay about it (for fun, by the way, just on my computer one day. Aside from being stupid, I was also a mega-dork. Not like now, when I write in a BLOG which is so very very different from an essay in a Word Doc.). I loved this umbrella so much, that I had a recurring nightmare that it would be taken from me at an airport security gate, robbing me of my very obvious super-adulthood.

Eventually, I realized that when you eat all of your meals in a cafeteria - and two-thirds of said meals consist of cereal and soft-serve ice cream - you are not an adult. But the foolishness did not end there.

I then moved on to thinking that cleaning your own bathroom (occasionally) marked the true gateway to adulthood. I laughed at my former, umbrella-revering self as I swept the tiles of the sorority house bathroom. Of course, that was also the period of my life when I thought that building wizard staffs from cans of cheap beer and then puking into bushes was a great way to spend my Saturday nights. This made me a TOTALLY FUN (well, until the puking) person, but maybe not a particularly grown-up-type person.

Now, though, I think I have cracked the true code of adulthood: I have run out of things to be angry about. The magic of youth, wherein I could rattle off 300 word tirades about a new HORRIBLY STUPID THING THAT SHOULD NEVER EXIST each week, has scattered like a pile of glitter confetti in a windstorm (or some other sad simile...). I have left that magical land behind and zoomed straight to old-crotchety-person-who-complains-about-the-same-thing-over-and-over-again-hood.

And you, dear reader, are left saying, "Yes, Great Auntie Thelaurenbell, we know the New York Times is full of idiots - you told us that 800 times!" and "People are annoying! Especially when they are doing crazy math and somehow 4 of them manage to take up 10 subway seats! Yes! Is it time for your nap?" 

So here's the thing: how to reclaim that halcyon era when, every time I left my house, a new thing so enraged me that I had to scream it to the Internets? Is there a magical fountain of youth anger out there somewhere? Do I just have to start leaving my house more? Or (NO!) reading the Times again (I tried this morning - all I could get out of it was, "The French don't keep statistics on race? Umm...what? That seems silly." Silly! That's the best I could do!)?

This is what it means to be old. The sitcoms tell me that, usually, when people get old and boring, they lose interest in sex and going out to dinner, thus leading to hilarious, half-hour-long standoffs with their significant others. For me, the issue is far more personal, and more grave. Dinner? Sex? PSHAW - where is my righteous indignation?

A Very Special Winter PSA

thelaurenbell crawls from her deep, dank hibernation space to tell you this: please, dear people, cut those stitches that hold the tails of your coats together. Your coat tails are not an extra sleeve, or a wee little headhole for small-headed people who enjoy wearing their coats upside down. They are not a special breathing apparatus hole for when you do that thing where one person sits on another’s shoulders wearing a long coat and they pretend to be one, unusually tall, unusually lumpy person.

No, no, no.

They are tails. They are meant to waggle free in the breeze, like the flowing tail of a fine stallion. They cannot be restrained! To restrain your tail is to restrain your SOUL.

Also, it makes you look dumb.

New Yorkers like to think that they look extra-super-wicked-cool at all times. New York, I tell you this once, and I tell you now: you cannot look extra-super-wicked-cool when your bottoms are unnaturally constrained by stitched-together jacket hems. You look like The Penguin, and he is not even plain old unhyphenated cool.

This nonsense has so distressed me lately, I've started entertaining elaborate fantasies of carrying around tiny (non-threatening!) scissors and just...snipsnip - solving everyone's little rear-binding issues. I would be like a superhero - a modern-day Batman solving this most modern, most pressing of problems, de-Peguinizing people withe the tiniest flick of my leather-gloved wrist. People would greet me with "hurrahs" and tears of joy. This is what goes on in my mind.

But NO! Let us not go there. You must not let the figments of thelaurenbell's overactive imagination come to life and run ramshackle over your fabled streets. New York, you are better than this. You should not NEED a vigilante of tail freedoms. You should be able to handle this yourself. Do not make me be that person with the nail scissors, stalking people's bottoms on the subway (see exhibit a - and please note that I painstakingly wrote those true-to-life sound effects backwards for your benefit, dear readers).

This concludes your very special winter PSA.