Guilty, guilty, guilty

No, I did not end up blogging over Christmas. I'm sorry. I wanted to, but I couldn't type when I was too busy doing other things with my hands... namely, using them to shove things into my mouth.

Oh suuuuure, Christmas is about miracles and family and the sweet baby Jesus in his little straw-covered pajamas. Unless you're me, in which case the Reason for the Season is completely encapsulated by the quest to consume so much eggnog that, if you cut me, I would bleed that sweet creamy nog from my very veins.

Regular posting to resume soon, but in the meantime (while I digest), please enjoy this photo of me eating an ice cream sundae the size of my head.

Yes, I'm trying to make you jealous.
P.S. Tell me that it's working.

Phoning it in and heading home

In 20 minutes, I'll be heading back to my apartment, where I'll

1) pack a bag

2) load the car

3) drive to the Upper West Side to pick up a random, gay stranger from the Craigslist rideshare board before continuing on to upstate New York

Actual phone conversation with my mother, upon telling her that I was ride-sharing:

Mom: I'm assuming that this person isn't creepy. Or a psychopath.

Me: No Mom, he's fine. He's gay. And... uh, gay people can't be serial killers.

Mom: Oh, sure, then that's fine. I mean, as long as he's out of the closet. He's out of the closet, right?

Me: Uh, yeah, I think so.

Mom: Because if he was still in the closet, he might hate women because he can't make himself be attracted to them.

Me: Right.

Mom: And then he might try to kill you.

Me: Right, but he's not in the closet, so...

Mom: ...so you're fine. Have fun!

Posts will be limited at best for the next week or so, but I'll see if I can't throw some photos up here or something. And in the meantime, dear readers, I hope that you have a happy holiday season and a gay New Year!

So the question is this: Will this country want to actually watch a woman get older before their eyes on a daily basis?

Unrelated: Will Rush Limbaugh ever stop giving us reasons to hate him?



If you haven’t heard about this yet, here’s the gist: after the above photo of Hillary appeared on the Drudge Report yesterday, Rush Limbaugh used his airtime to pose the question of whether America is willing to elect a woman to office... and then watch as she undergoes the well-known physical effects of Being President (namely, becoming craggy and haggard-looking).

To be fair, here’s the full transcript of Limbaugh’s monologue. And to be honest, it’s not exactly incendiary in and of itself -- more than anything, he’s reporting old news:

“[Men] aging makes them look more authoritative, accomplished, distinguished. Sadly, it's not that way for women, and they will tell you.”

Well, okay. But if that's the question -- whether America wants to see a woman aging in public office -- then let me ask one of my own.

Why, in the name of God, are we still talking about this as though it were an acceptable topic of conversation?

In The Contender, there’s this great moment where Joan Allen, playing a vice presidential candidate, is being harrassed by an obnoxious little slug of a journalist. And in her infinite, awesome patience, she says, “If I were a man, nobody would care how many sexual partners I had in college. And if it's not relevant for a man, it's not relevant for a woman.”

Replace “sexual partners” with “wrinkles”, and “in college” with “on my face”, and you have a compelling statement about the validity of bringing a woman's physical appearance into the political arena. Nobody would ask this question about a man. Ever. Nobody is concerned, for example, about whether the American people will “want” to watch Barack Obama’s pretty man-face become worn and weary under the stresses of presidential office. Nobody is freaking out that Huckabee, faced with waning approval ratings, might start hitting the pizza buffet and morph back into the portly fellow he once was.

Why? Because it’s got fuck-all to do with their potential to effectively run the country, that’s why. This is the run-up to a major presidential election, not an episode of America’s Next Top Model.

So why, instead of sighing and saying, “Oh yeah, but this is just how it is for women, and it’s really sad, it’s really just too bad”, can’t we finally, finally do something about this infuriating, bullshit, double-fucking-standard? Isn't it about time? It's a credit to the U.S. that its government treats the two sexes, by and large, as equal. American women are mathematicians, doctors, lawyers, firefighters. They're in every branch of our military. They're fighting in Iraq, and coming home with brain damage, burn scars, and missing limbs.

If the American public can handle that, then it's about time, really, that they could handle the inevitability of crows' feet.

Worth 1,000 words

The most authentic thing you'll ever see at the "Holiday Shops" at Columbus Circle.

They say that breaking up is hard to do, now I know, I know that it's true.

Before we begin, let me just clarify that this breakup story is 1) anecdotal, and 2) utterly unrelated to an actual romantic relationship -- a fact that I only mention in case anybody reading is highly emotionally invested in my possible future as Mrs. Brad. (Not that I can fathom why anyone would be, unless you are Brad, in which case don't worry. And also, could you please wash your towel because it is making the entire bathroom smell like balls.)

And now, let's begin.

Dear readers, have you ever found yourself dating someone who, though fun at times, was something of a dud overall?

And you always planned to end it… eventually?

But somehow you didn’t get around to it, and then suddenly the dud dumps you, and you’re all, “What the…?!”, and the dud is all, “You never supported my dreams,” and you’re all, “I will eternally regret that I did not dump you first, you stupid dud,” and then the dud begins dating someone who looks just like you except not as cute?

Well, that TOTALLY happened to me. Except that it was five guys, not one, and they were bandmates, not boyfriends.

If you’ve been reading for awhile, you might remember that – once upon a time – I mentioned singing in a band. I did this for two years, until last April, when I was unceremoniously dumped via email without a word of warning. (Dumped is the word, too – musician relationships are just as fraught as dating ones. It is with good reason that, when a band’s members tire of making music together and go their separate ways, it’s referred to as a “breakup”.)

In my case, though, the band itself didn’t break up. Instead, they went on without me, and after a few months their website announced that they’d found a new singer – a petite brunette, just like me. A soprano, just like me.

Even coupled with the schadenfreude that came from seeing how shitty their e-newsletter had become since my departure (in addition to fronting the band, I wrote all their news and website copy), my irritation couldn’t outweigh my hurt feelings.

It wasn’t so much that I’d wanted to be in the band forever. As much fun as it was, and as loyal a following as we had from a particular demographic in New York, we just weren’t that good. Also, as I found myself in a serious relationship, my interest in playing the role of Onstage Singing Sex Object for a band of guys who kept pressuring me to “Dress sluttier next time!” was starting to wane.

But I had expected, as any fully-invested collaborator would, as any friend would, that my departure from the project would at least merit a conversation. It was a relationship like any other; didn’t the rules of common decency apply? To return to the dating metaphor – what kind of asshole ends a two-year relationship, out of the blue, via e-mail?

So even though it wasn’t a romantic breakup, I started indulging in classic breakup behavior: haunting the band’s myspace page, talking shit about them to anyone who would listen, simultaneously hoping and fearing that I’d see one of my former bandmates on the street and give him a piece of my mind.

But eventually, of course, the pain went away. By the time I did run into my former bassist on the way home from work, I was over it enough to give him an emotionless stare and simply cross the street. And when the announcement went up that they were playing a show--their first gig since I’d left--at which the Singer Who Was Not Me would make her debut, I felt only the smallest twinge of pain in that old wound, the one created by my unceremonious dumping.

A small, small pain that has since been replaced by the exhilarating sensation of sweet, sweet revenge, when the following message (which I swear I did not write) appeared in their website guestbook the day after the show:

Could you find a more beautiful girl for vox? Your new singer is terrible!

The new singer has since quit.

And, like any self-respecting young woman whose boyfriend dumps her for another girl only to find himself single and embittered (and, on certain lucky occasions, infected with an STD) when the Other Girl screws him over, I am watching from the sidelines.

And oh, boys, how I am laughing.

The road less traveled is paved with your hideous visage.

Yes, that's right -- it's time for another edition of "Dear Googly", in which I explore the unusual search strings that bring all sorts of unexpected visitors to my piddling little website.

Interestingly, most of you get here one of two ways - by searching for "Leigh Lezark" (which is understandable, since the post detailing my hatred of her is on the front page of results), or, alternately, by searching for some permutation of the phrase "naked bitches in india". Which is far less understandable, since my blog is linked nowhere within the first seven pages of search results (and possibly more, since I got rather bored after the seventh page and simply stopped looking). You certainly are a persistent bunch, you lot. Your relentless pursuit of information about nude, contrarian Indian women is an inspiration to us all.

Today, however, was not the day of Naked Indian Bitch Seekers. Today, I was blessed with a visit from an individual with particularly unique tastes:



Dear sir or madam, allow me a moment of my own research.

Ahem.
So, "cockroach faces", eh? Dear Googly must confess to being somewhat perplexed. Have you ever seen a cockroach? For what possible purpose would you want to be close enough to see its face?

Well, never you mind. Dear Googly is here to inform, not to belittle, and so I am pleased to inform you without casting a single stone of disdainful judgment that cockroaches... do not have faces. I checked.

They do look a little bit like Darth Vader, though.

Ow.

Sometimes I wonder exactly how many days of my life have been spent carrying furniture up and down the stairs. Three full-apartment moves in four years, each located in multiple-story walk-ups, and each followed by the acquisition of additional furniture... it all means that I (and everyone I could guilt-trip into helping me) have devoted an awful lot of time to the lifting and carrying of large objects.

This weekend, it was a dresser. It started out alright -- we lifted it out of the car and carried it into the building with no problem, stopped for just a moment (grip readjustment), and then started lugging it up the first flight of stairs.

"It's tipping," said Brad.
"It's not."
"It is."
"Ok, hang on," I said, "Just let me... yikes!"

There was a scraping noise. One drawer -- only one -- had succumbed to the pull of gravity and was now hanging open.

"Drawer! Drawer open!" I yelled. "We have to put down the dresser!"
"No, it's ok," said Brad. "I'll close it."
"Really?"
"Yeah, if you can hold up your side."
"Okay," I said, steadying myself.
"You ready?"
"Ready."
"Okay, I've got this," he said. He snaked one hand around the front of the dresser, and then, autoritatively, slammed the drawer shut.

A white-hot bolt of excruciating pain.
A white-hot bolt of excruciating pain in a very weird, nay, impossible location.

I screamed.
"What?" said Brad.
I was not interested in talking.
"AAAAAAAGH!"
"What?!"
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!"
"What the hell is wrong with you?!"
"AAAGH OW ow ow ow ow owyoumotherfucker."
"Huh? What did I do?"

I glared at him.
"You closed the drawer on my nipple."

Yeah.

Of course, there was a slight spatial difference between the plane of The Side of the Dresser (against which I was pressed for leverage) and the plane of The Open Drawer.

Of course, my right-hand bosom would escape into the gap created by that slight difference...

(Fig. 32A)

...thus subjecting itself to an impromptu mammogram when the drawer was shut.


Brad's look-on-the-bright-side assertions nonwithstanding ("I guess this means you have big boobs, right?"), if this ever happens again, somebody will have to die.

So damn un-pretty!

The BBC news site ran an article today about an Argentine gentleman who has embarked upon a very personal crusade. His name is Gonzalo Otalora (which reminds me, for some reason, of one of those incantations out of the Harry Potter books), and he’s hoping to legislate away the natural human tendency to favor pretty people over ugly ones.

Given that men are generally exempt from that sort of discrimination, at least in comparison with the pressures that women experience, I’ll admit that I was skeptical. After all, there have been a billion studies showing that men can balance out an unfortunate visage by being smart, or funny, or successful. Whereas for women, big tits are still considered a greater asset than a medical degree.

So all I could think, really, was: This guy must be really super-duper ugly.

Which, according to the story, he is. I’m not sure I agree – I mean, the photo of him as a teenager does make him look like a cross between a circa-1970 Michael Caine (it’s the glasses) and Lon Chaney as the Phantom of the Opera:

But this other, more recent photo of him as he brings his campaign to the streets of Buenos Aires makes him look… well, like a normal guy. Right?

Still, his story (Bullied at school! Ignored at the disco! Sentenced to a life of insecurity that would prevent him from ever forming meaningful relationships or getting a good job!) is pretty sad. So I was all set to back him up in his crusade to legislate the ugly-hating right out of the modern world. Down with appearance discrimination! Bring on the petitions! Let’s have a parade!

Until I got to this part:

It's not fair, he said. The beautiful people get all the breaks. Beauty is a natural advantage and he wants the good-lookers to be taxed to finance compensation for the ugly people.

I think the word I’m looking for is “oy”.

Because on one hand, drawing from my own narrow experience (as a semi-pretty girl living in a large city), I don’t exactly think that the Prettiness Index (PI) is tax-worthy. For my part, with one notable exception*, the PI hasn’t netted me anything except free plums from the farm market guy in McCarren Park and the occasional, unexpected subway hump.

Perhaps things are very different in Buenos Aires.

On the other hand, I pity poor Gonzalo – forced into corners all his life by people with more perfectly-formed faces than he. (It’s like an Argentine Male version of Mean Girls. It’s like, Mean Argentine Males.) But really, should these paragons of beauty be punished for their utter physical perfection, just so some snaggle-toothed mouth-breathers can feel better about their lot in life? Aren’t they ugly in the first place because God hates them, anyway? (And I’m sorry people are so jealous of me. I can’t help it that I’m so popular.)

*A story for another time. Suffice to say that it involves a $500 pair of Manolos.

A dream deferred explodes right in my eye

For the past couple months, I’ve been attending an Ad Class at SVA. This is, according to the Copyranter, one of the best ways to break into the wonderful world of copywriting (and if you think it might be a mistake to take one’s career advice from a foul-mouthed anonymous blogger who might not even be real… um… why don’t you fuck off and get a real job!)

I like my ad class. A lot. I mean, where else would I be patted effusively on the back, by professors and classmates alike, for creating something like this?

Obvious disclaimer – this advertisement is utterly fake and in no way affiliated with, let alone sanctioned by, the organization which it purports to promote. Let the legal junkies be satisfied.

But the other fun thing about Ad Class is that it takes place at a college. And college, even one in the middle of NYC with an active Continuing Ed department, is still largely populated by college-aged kids – a bunch of whom were sitting in the hallway near my classroom when I arrived.

They were mostly girls – pretty ones, wearing carefully-applied makeup – and all of them were bent studiously over several stapled pages of script. A few nervous-looking guys, also with scripts in hand, paced the hallway and muttered lines to themselves. Over one girl’s head, a hastily-scrawled sign read: Casting Call.

Huh, I thought. Interesting.

I exited class twenty minutes later to find that the hallway was largely empty, save for a skinny, unshaven kid whose nervous pacing had brought him all the way to the opposite end of the hallway. He was reading his script and walking, with quick little steps, over the same circular patch of floor.

As I passed him, my curiosity got the better of me.
“Hey, what’s going on here?” I said.
“They’re casting a student film,” he said, eyes darting.
“Oh. Okay, cool,” I said, turning to go.
“Are you an actress?” he asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Anyway, good luck!”

But as I walked down the hall, I started second-guessing myself. Because, once upon a time, I had certainly wanted to be an actress. I’d even tried to pursue theatre for awhile, taking classes at school and attending massive, cattle-call auditions in New York City rehearsal spaces, only to come up against the same problem: Completely apart from whether or not I was talented enough for a career on stage or screen (doubtful at best), the people I’d run into when I was out auditioning were, invariably, assholes. Self-involved, insecure, undermining, sniping, judgmental assholes.

So I abandoned my dream, because while pursuing a career in theatre is nearly always foolish, it becomes pretty much indefensible once you realize that you hate Theatre People.

But as I trudged down the stairs, I forgot all that. All my little dreams – of looking beautiful onscreen, of inhabiting a character more glamorous than my own sad little self, of delivering a performance so moving that it would reduce grown men to tears – came rushing back to me.

Well, I thought to myself as I turned around and skipped back upstairs, why not?

There was a lone girl manning the Casting Room door when I got back to the hallway.

“Are you here for casting?” she asked brightly, looking at me.
“Well… I was just passing by, but… well, maybe?” I said.
“Um… okay?” she said.

I felt immediately insecure and disgusted with myself; here I was, four years out of college, nervously up-talking with a seventeen year-old.
“What can you tell me about the film?” I asked.
“It’s based on an Edgar Allan Poe story,” she said. “We’re just looking for a young woman to play the wife of this artist, he’s the main character.”
I thought for a minute and then said, “Okay!” Hey, why not?

The girl, who really was very sweet, took down my name and contact information. “I’ll just check with the director,” she said, moving toward the closed door, but then stopping abruptly. “Oh, wait – I forgot to get your age. How old are you?”
“Twenty-five,” I said. Her eyes widened, and I thought, Oh, shit.

I mean, duh. It was a student film; twenty-five year-olds were not part of the equation. Twenty-five year-olds go to SVA to take classes for the betterment of their careers. They do not wander the halls, stumbling into student film casting calls which are being run by people who are not yet old enough to vote.
“Um,” I said, “I wasn’t really thinking about that part.”
“Oh it’s fine!” the girl said, quickly. “You don’t look that old at all.” And she disappeared into the closed room.

I would like to say that I had some self-respect: that I chose to forgo the audition, that I walked out with my dignity intact, that I took the opportunity to remind the casting girl that for the love of Pete twenty-five is NOT OLD.

Instead, I suffered. I suffered through an endless wait, I suffered through the sidelong glances of the preening Theatre People in the hallway, and then, finally, I suffered through the world’s shortest, crappiest screen test. I stated my name for the camera, sat in an uncomfortable chair, and followed the uneasily-given instructions of a director and crew who were all (1) visibly petrified of the Old, Old Lady who had crashed their audition, and (2) so young that they could not even grow goatees (although trust me, it did not stop them from trying).

And then I thanked them for their time, and I left.
If there is not already an official, state-sanctioned method for killing a young woman’s thespian dreams, I think I’ve found a pretty good candidate for the job.

slump.

I love the holidays. The crisp bite of the winter air! The proliferation of free candy on people’s desks! The sweet sound of seasonal tunes over the grocery store PA system!

And, of course, the general business slow-down which, last week, led my manager to say, “We don’t have much work coming in, so we’re reducing your hours to 3 days a week for the next couple months”… !

Okay, maybe not that last one.

On the one hand, four-day weekends are nothing to sniff at. I lurve me some four-day weekends.

On the other hand, though, the reduction of my paycheck by 25% has knocked me down to a level of poverty that vaguely resembles my financial conditions circa age 21 (when the only apartment I could afford was bordered on two sides by a couple of penis-exposing pervs).

After doing some simple math, (7 – 3 = 4), I’m unnerved to realize that the Days That I Work are now outnumbered by the Days That I Do Not Work. Which makes me feel like I ought to get a second, “but look how hard I’m trying!” job – you know, the ones that are usually reserved for ex-cons (see Morgan Freeman as a supermarket checkout boy in the Shawshank Redemption) or retired-but-still-sprightly seniors who enjoy the feeling of being “useful”. (See legions of grandparent-aged WalMart Greeters, employed exclusively to welcome the waddling, mega-store masses to their temple of eternal consumerism. No wonder suicide rates among the elderly are on the rise.)

I should have been a banker. Or maybe a prostitute.

* * *

P.S. Not that you owe me any favors, dear readers – the pleasure of your company is all I’ve ever wanted – but if, by any chance, you’re looking for a writer, don’t be shy about emailing me.

Surprise education by way of broiling

Human beings are a comparison-loving species. We're always talking about what things look like ("People are always mistaking me for Katie Holmes!") or taste like ("chicken", "burning") or smell like ("ass"). Pointing out the similarities between one sensory experience and another, unrelated sensory experience is a pretty standard conversational tool -- it puts a potentially alien idea into a context that everyone can relate to. I mean, who hasn't eaten chicken?

So when a foul aroma filled the room when Brad and I turned on the stove for the first time after Thanksgiving, and we both said "Ew, something smells like piss", it seemed -- at the time -- like just another functional metaphor. Nobody thought that the source of the smell, much as it resembled piss, actually was piss.

Did you guys know that mice, if given the opportunity, will crawl down through the openings in a gas stove's burners and have, like, an Excretion Party inside the oven for a week?

Yeah, me neither. But I just spent an hour scrubbing the results out of my broiler pan.

Mouse poop: it looks just like little black grains of rice.