dancing with the stars

What is up with this show? I don’t mean just the ratings, but did you know all the stars and the ballroom dancers keep hooking up? I guess it’s the intimate nature of ballroom dancing and jazz hands, but what’s messing up my equilibrium is that these ballroom dancers are a new breed of reality stars and keep hooking up with legit stars! Like one of them hooked up with Gerard Butler from “300.” Gerard! You had abs of steel in that movie! Surely, you could make out with say a Lindsay Lohan or a Halle Berry. And you know what, Gerard Butler hasn’t even been on the show, so he has no excuse of things just getting “crazy” when he was learning a routine. He’s just supporting a new strain of reality stardom. Where is your self-respect, man. It boggles my mind, people.

my inner incredible hulk

Wow, so the job is kinda stressful right now. There’s been a recent promotion that like if I were on the “Hills,” would feel like people promoting Heidi over Lauren as the lead character, but whatevs. My main point is someone at work said some mindless racial comment that made me explode. First, it started with “do you know karate,” which I was like “thanks, yeah, all Asians know karate.” And then segue-wayed (how do you spell that?) to the familiar “ching ching chong” stuff and suddenly, I became enraged and totally EXPLODED and read this guy the riot act, red in the face, and firm. After I exploded, he tried to joke with me, and I returned “oh, now you want to joke with me? After you insulted me? i’m not interested in being your friend. Be a racist on your own time, not in front of me,” etc. etc. etc. I mean, I was like the soul of a strict step aerobics instructor possessed my body. Other people came forward to calm me down after initially being stunned, because I’m usually low-key. Later, he apologized and it’s fine.

Normally, I wouldn’t bother because the people who make those kind of stupid remarks have the IQ of a num-chuck and if you flip out every time it happens, you get pooped. It’s not you can get mad at a mentally retarded person for being retarded, etc. But I think because of the Hills maneuvers, the exploding bosses, the not knowing what I’m doing with my life, and the fifth comment of its kind I’ve dealt with led to my rare Incredible Hulk moment. Eeee gads.

Jessica Simpson

Oh my God, I hope things work out with Jessica Simpson and Tony Romo, because I just can’t take the desperation any more. You know like she’s got to be a bit jealous of her sister, what with the impending marriage and baby that happened after she lost her normal-human-weight and got the nose job. It’s just like, DUDE, BUT I WAS THE PRETTY SISTER, etc. etc.

enchanted forest

In my Maryland weekend getaway, we drove past a place called Enchanted Forest in Elliot City — and I got a flash! When my aunt lived in Columbia, MD, she used to take me and my cousins there every summer. It was this park with child-size fairy-tale sculptures. Like you could pose with Jack and Jill tumbling down a hill. Or you could go to the cottages of the three bears and try, their chairs and beds (no porridge). And we have all these photos in the family albums that are very seventies of me and my cousins, with my aunt and mother at the park — my cousin Ed looking terrified, my cousin Aimee so young that she had the dexterity of a bobble head doll. I was telling my pal Alex that I remembered forcing myself to go shake hands with a bumble bee (an actor dressed up as such) when I was five, feeling absolute thrill and terror at talking to this character, this celebrity.

So it was wide-eyed wonder I pulled up next to the place on Route 40 West. People, it hasn’t aged well and doesn’t even really look open. Like the welcome sign was missing an “E” and the paint was peeling from the castle entrance…and it was like a weird, Sopranos dream sequence, an afternote in a new mall complex dominated by PetCo. Pictures to come.

my week from hell just exploded…and 180’d to not so bad

Wow, so I’ve been fabulously grumpy b/c of all the work stress I just underwent, screaming bosses, lack of matzo, bok choy subway man after cabs refused me, etc., etc. Tonight, I’m hosting my friend Alex who was the last one to leave the apartment and kept harping “I don’t know I’m nervous how the door locked. The door knob wasn’t moving when I locked it. Is that normal?” I had no idea, but I wasn’t worried about it, figuring she was just being paranoid. We were having dinner with separate people (me with co-workers, which felt so awkward, and just reinforced how much I just wanted to get home and go to bed.) When we got to the apartment tonight at midnight, indeed, the door knob didn’t budge and we couldn’t get in. What the hell do you do? My super was asleep and my neighbors are cranky so I was just like in an unbelievably bad mood. We called the locksmith.

While we waited for the locksmith to arrive thirty minutes later, one neighbor down the hall came out to just glare at us and inspired me to feel “I hate people.” I was just sitting outside my apartment feeling utterly miserable about life. On the other side of the door, there was sleep and TV, my PJs. Solomon the locksmith finally came and said the problem was the doorknob was locked on the side of the door (I cannot for the life of me explain the mechanics through writing this) and that he needed to drill a hole through the lower lock to unhook it (we were only offered keys for the top lock, not the bottom lock). He said it would cost us $55 for the drilling and $150 for labor. UGH. So I’m out two hundred bucks (which Alex is covering now, b/c she’s convinced she did it so I can’t complain) plus we’re going to have loud drilling that would disturb our old, cranky neighbors. Great, just great.

After five minutes of loud drilling, we’re in! I feel halleleujah bells go off in the head, and feel RELIEF. At that point, we heard our neighbor buzzing someone in the front door and commented on how wild it was that they were expecting guests at 1 a.m. My husband arrived and surveyed the scene, joked to make us feel better. He said “honey, I know you’re in a bad mood, but look on the bright side, your hair looks really great right now.” And when I was in the bathroom looking to see if he was right, four white cops rushed in.

Turns out my neighbor called 911. And THAT is when I truly began to feel great again. It was the point where the bad day turned into a musical. Apparently, my neighbor panicked when she heard the drilling and thought house robbers were getting ballsy with the drills and her boyfriend was about to come out in the hallway with a butcher knife and his hammer. She said a few years someone really did try to break in and when she looked through her peephole, all she saw was one big eye. (Majorly creepy).

The cops were cool about the false alarm but said it took too long to get into the building and left with a “in a real emergency, you’d be dead.” Ahhh. We hugged and thanked our neighbors and promised to get brunch next week. Whew. Can’t wait to sleep.

has-been bands to love and hate



has been bands to hate

* KC and the Sunshine Band ( I’m sorry, I don’t know why, but I hate their music. Like “play that funky music, white boy” makes me want to kill myself.)
* Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam Full Force (Though maybe I hate them so much that I now like them.
* Ice House (They sang “Electric Blue.” Gag)
* Roxette
* Divynyls
* Wild Cherry

has been bands to love

* Journey (oh you Steve Perry, of the tight jeans, feathered hair and dulcet tones. Dude, I want to write a musical simply for the experience of having guys audition with “Oh Sherry.”)
* Chicago (Karate Kid. Enough said.)
* Night Ranger
* AC/DC
more to come

stupid racist comments during my insane work week

Ugh, this week, I’m working like my hair is on fire and in the last two days, I just heard stupid comments directed towards me like “ching ching chong” and “he-RO” and just this afternoon, “bok choy.”

The last one was delivered with a smile. I was stuck on the subway after pulling an all-nighter for work b/c no cab would go to Brooklyn, and just ran a meeting for 600 people, after getting reamed out for the lack of matzo at the breakfast table. (And when we finally got the matzo, no one ATE IT), so I was in no mood for bok choy man. In fact, all I did was turn to him and stare at him until he felt uncomfortable and moved away from me on the subway car. But seriously, people, “bok choy?” “Ching chong?” “He-Ro?” Am I invisible? Do I look like I care what you think? The only thing, i swear to god, that is keeping me going is “Stronger” by Kanye West. I’m like yelling the lyrics to myself when I listen to it “what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger!” Thank you, Kanye.

your google doppelganger

Ay caramba, have you ever googled yourself? The results can be creepy, but honestly, what did I expect? If you google “Tina Lee,” you get a blond, caucasian psychic in Florida who owns the URL tinalee.com, and she’s emailed me and seems to be very pleasant, though never offered me a discount. The other Tina Lee I’ve seen online is a softcore porn model, and she owns the url sexytinalee.info. And what creeps me out about that is I looked up her bio and her signature is exactly the way I signed my name…in fifth grade.

In any case, i can always take back the night and start chubbytinalee.com or sarcastictinalee.com, crushing-on-frodo-tinalee.com.

Paris Makes Dalai Lama A “Citizen Of Honor”

OH my God, I just read this title in the New York Times (click here for the article) and I totally thought it was about Paris Hilton. And I was like why would Paris make the Dalai Lama a citizen of honor? And it didn’t totally far-fetched b/c my cousin who started a coat company emailed us pictures of Paris in one of her coats with a Dalai-esque guy, but truly, there’s no excuse. Oh jees, there goes my brain.

bidets in korean restaurants

So I’m trolling the web, b/c you know, it’s the busiest time of the year in my office, and so I find it the best time to see what’s out there, and I encounter this blog’s post of a commercial for a Korean bidet, which I can’t play at work, but perhaps you can play it at your job and get in trouble.

All of which reminded me of the fact that Koreans like these super high-tech toilets. And this past winter, when I used the restroom at a Korean joint, I encountered of these sophisticated contraptions. There wasn’t really a traditional flushing lever, there were like nine options, none of which I understood (because they were all in Korean), but that was okay with me, because I usually just press buttons before I read instructions or details anyway. And I was super-curious about like what do these buttons do? Like rinse you in a special way? Turn the water purple? Do your dishes, walk your dog, hold you while you weep softly? I pressed an orange one, and a shot of water totally got me in my eye past my glasses and left a streak on my beautiful dress. ha ha ha. Winner move.