oh. my. god.

A new reality show where people’s dogs compete to be named America’s Greatest Dog. All I can say is NOOOOOOOOO!

romance

my romance with step aerobics continues. last night, i went to class after a long hiatus and it was glorious!

Before class:
Teacher: Your lips are so…
Me: Inspiring? So that you teach step like it’s never been taught before?
Teacher: They’re like edamame.
Me: That is so racist.

During class:
Teacher: Do you have epilepsy?
Me: No, why? Are you bringing out a strobe light?
Teacher: No, no, just the way you’re doing shoulder shrugs, I was getting worried.

Can you feel the love??? Have no idea if this all translates, but the background noise during these exchanges is my hysterical giggling.

anne hathaway breakup

Do you find the timing suspicious? Her Italian boyfriend has apparently a kabillion money fraud issues and just as the truth started to surface, she dumped him and started plugging her movie. It reminds me of when J. Lo. dumped Puffy with the whole gun fiasco. I mean, I don’t think either lady needs to go down in flames due to their men’s retarded behavior, but it’s just interesting timing.

comedians gone bad

Remember when Eddie Murphy was on SNL, or when you saw the reruns of him on the E network? He was friggin hilarious. He played Gumby, Mr. Robinson’s neighborhood in a ghetto, and in the movies, for a short spell, he was still edgy in “Beverly Hills Cop” and “48 Hours” (never saw it, but feel free to call on it to support my point.) And now he’s like a toe-licker and the star of cr*p like “Haunted Mansion.” The same thing seems to be happening with Mike Myers — he was great in “Wayne’s World” and the first English shag king movie (title escapes me right now, but you’ll know what i I mean), and now, he’s incredibly unfunny and divorced. Is it that these dudes get loaded and take on more and more commecial fare without any heart or bite?

Please Steve Carell. Don’t do that to me. I really think you’re funny and you can act. I love “40-Year-Old Virgin,” which all my friends know and my junior high school teacher still doesn’t understand. “Get Smart” seems suspiciously high-profile, commercial to be, but not as offensive as “Evan Almightly.” Just stick “the Office.” Maybe those guys will keep you real and humble.

konichiwha

Dude, some guy just said this to me outside my office and I let it pass without comment, but I don’t always love ignoring this stuff. My friend Calvin always says something when he hears racist comments, something simple like “Excuse me? Did you say something?” And that calm confrontation is usually enough to fluster the commenter. Thoughts? I need something other than ignoring, b/c then I obsess and then I don’t really get over. I understand you don’t change the other dude, but there’s got to be something more satisfying than what I’m currently doing. What do you do with unwanted street comments?

sick day

So I finally succumbed to my three-week cold and stayed home, and welcomed Mom and Dad, since they were both home sick too. Mom happily ensconced herself on my couch in front of her Korean soaps we DVR’d for her (she digs this contemporary one where all the handsome men have metrosexual hair and the characters go on for inordinate amounts on mundane things like the nature of sleeping pills or how to best take care of a pet bird, in between family and class clashes) while my father cleaned my kitchen.

It was great to have the company, as I hate staying inside all day. As I was having one of my coughing fits, Mom rubbed my back, just like the good old days of childhood, and gently said, “You know, you’re really getting old,” which only made me choke more b/c now I know who to turn to when I need a pep talk. I think the only thing she says that’s funnier is when she practices her words from Spanish class on me. Like she’ll call, and just count to twenty-six in Spanish with her Korean accent. It’s pretty awesome.

By the time they left, I was still a cough-a-holic, but passed a few hours quite amicably in their company and my kitchen looks fabulous.

subway freak show

Sometimes, going on the subway is like going to friggin freak show. When I went to go meet my friend Ali for lunch on Sunday, there was an old lady cursing the hell out of everyone b/c she kept asking “Does this take me home?” without, of course, specifying where home was, then would scream her head off when no one knew the answer. Then there was another dude who worked for the MTA who had a pony and was on the tiny side with a beard that started so far up his face I couldn’t stop staring at him. It’s like, is he a woman with a beard? Is he? I couldn’t wrap my mind around it. (Incidentally, I think the current American Idol winner David Cook looks like a lady with a beard.) Okay, two sightings does not a freak show make, so I’ll throw in some homeless guys with open flies. How’s that? I just needed to get out from underground and see the sun fast.

kites!

This is from my DC trip to visit my friend Sung Ji. When my husband saw this, he said, “aww, honey, you’re not supposed to jump up with the kite. You’re supposed to let the wind take it.”

Yeah, I know! There wasn’t any wind at the moment. No one took the picture of me with the kite that was near the top of the Washington Monument, okay? Because you’d have to be in outer space to see that one. Thank you.

Father’s Day

Of course, Father’s Day was mostly spent with mom, b/c that’s the way it is in our family. I took her to a museum and bought her a soft serve ice cream, the latter of which made her extremely happy. She was the only parent I could drag to the Brooklyn Museum to see the Murakami exhibit (Murakami did the Kanye West “Graduation” album cover and does a weird art where fine arts and commercialism meet, apparently. I don’t know that I got what the point was, but I definitely loved the weird, chaotic, cataclysmic stuff like this the most:

rather than this stupid stuff (no offense if you like it):

It’s the type of art Dad HATES so he ended up staying home to make us dinner. I know, we’re terrible, but we had a lovely dinner anyway.

Today, I called to see how he’s doing. He had his crown replaced, but he was distressed for having lost his glasses at the dentist office. I told him I lose things like my glasses all the time, lots of people do, but he was still feeling discouraged, b/c of course, he was never one of those people in the past. And I asked, referring to the crown-implementing procedure, “Are you hurt, Dad? Does anything hurt” And he said, “Only my ego.”

rock wall climbing

Yesterday, I went to a rock wall climbing birthday party for my friend Felice in NJ, and it was everybody’s first time, but I kind of got the impression I was the only one with a fear of heights. Like me and rock wall climbing is kind of a joke and it doesn’t even sound real when I say it aloud, which is probably why I agreed to go and I didn’t stretch (the latter being a big mistake).

Like just that morning, I was making eggs for breakfast but I couldn’t bring myself to crack the egg b/c I had convinced myself it felt more solid than usual and that I would somehow crack open a baby chick inside. I don’t know how or why I thought that, but as soon as I get freaked, that’s it, I stay freaked, and had to have my husband crack open the egg (which turned out fine). So the egg story is just to illustrate how I’m not really someone who should be on a wall.

The first time I went, I got up two feet off the ground and looked down, and just froze, while a wiry pregnant woman scrabbled up twenty feet to the top easily to my right, and an eight-year-old did the same on my left. No biggie. I’m shown up by pregnant people and children in athletic activities all the time. Eventually, I talked myself into going again and went up to the top three times (peer pressure). Apparently, some of the trick is that your body, including hips have to be as close to the wall as possible. I mean you’re kind of like a squashed bug on a windshield holding on for dear life. Like your knees and elbows are at 90 degree angles and every part of your body, including your face, is smooshed against the surface.

There are these plastic rocks off the wall that actually have handles, which is very helpful, and other rocks that really only seem to be nubs. I mean, they’re like so small, they’re like a period or maybe a semi-colon at best, and you’re supposed to put your toe on it and haul your body weight up. Um, yeah.

But anyway, I do feel cool that I overcame my fear and got to the top. Ben, Felice’s husband, was cheering everyone on and asking how they felt. Everybody shouted stuff like “this is great!” and “I’m having so much fun!” and “Exhilirating!” And before I could shut my mouth, I yelled “This is horrible! I feel like I’m dying!” which, you know, isn’t that positive, and I really shouldn’t say stuff like that in public but there you go. When you go down, you get released pretty quickly, which made me scream but apparently, no one else was scared like that b/c no one else screamed. Thank you.