Category Archives: nostalgia

I Speak Simpsons

Simpsons pictures that I gone and done

The Simpsons just began its 25th season and I haven’t seen a new episode in about 10 years. But I still speak the language.

People have written hundreds of essays about Simpsons quotes and quoting The Simpsons in everyday life. Quotes beyond your typical “D’oh!” and “Exccccellent” and “Eat my shorts!” (Although I don’t know anyone who still says that last one.)

Then there are longer quotes that seem misplaced, but make sense in the right context. For example, if it’s a bad day outside or something isn’t going your way, you could say, “Lousy Smarch weather.” Or if it is a beautiful day and things are going your way, you could say, “Everything’s coming up Milhouse!”

coming-up-milhouse

Continue reading

Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

What’s in My Bedside Drawer.

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Bedsider.org. But all thoughts and opinions are my own, so come at me. old nyc metrocard

Bedside drawers can be very personal spaces. You could have ANYTHING in there. Like a baby. You could have a living baby in your drawer. And that’s your business. Or, if you don’t want babies like me, you can go to Bedsider.org and figure out which method is right for you to prevent babies from suddenly occurring.

Because when people think about what’s usually in beside drawers, they think about super secret sexy stuff. We all know what I’m talking about. To quote Bea Arthur’s Dorothy Zbornak, “Condoms, Rose! Condoms! Condoms! CONDOMS!”

Continue reading

Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

Missing Holden Caulfield.

new york city pop art billboard ad underwear

Holden Caulfield, via J.D. Salinger once said,

Don’t ever tell anybody anything.  If you do, you start missing everybody.

This has always stuck with me.

You know how certain songs cause you to time travel? You hear a song and your mind takes you back to where you were where you heard it and what you felt and who was there. When I hear “Thirteen” by Big Star I remember this incredible date this sweet guy took me on in New York. I didn’t have a lot of time and I warned him, trying to convince him that we couldn’t go out because even though I wanted to, I knew it wouldn’t work out. I was just too busy. But he was persistent, and not in a creepy way. In a way that was so sincere that I let my smile take up my entire face. I told him I had, “like, two minutes” — and he took it to heart. He hailed a cab and we went to an Italian restaurant…down the street. We went through three courses in about one minute. Literally. He planned this ahead. We took our leftovers over to a movie…on the sidewalk. He set up a TV to play Manos: Hands Of Fate, the best of the worst films ever made. It’s such a bad film that he was able to condense the entire thing into twenty seconds. Then he asked if we had time for coffee. Well, we had about thirty seconds. We went back to the Italian place that suddenly had coffee and desert set up on the table. It was the most romantic thing anyone had ever done for me. And somewhere, “Thirteen” by Big Star was playing. And I will forever tie that song to that incredible memory. It didn’t work out between us. I eventually went back to my ex.

Also, none of this happened to me, this happened on How I Met Your Mother.

Ha ha. Got you.

Sorry. I don’t know why I did that.

I got terribly astray from what I was saying, which was that if you let it, anything can remind you of everything. As humans we try to find connections in our lives, where there are none. For example, you’ll tell your friend over lunch about someone you went to high school with, and hours later, you’ll run into that very person on the street. And you’ll say, “My God, what are the odds?!” But if you really thought about it, you’d realize that the odds weren’t that extreme; maybe you were in an area where your former classmate lived, or you only noticed your classmate walking down the street because you had just mentioned them, or your classmate mentioned on Facebook a place they went to for lunch and that’s why you went there; you simply disassociated your classmate from the entire experience because it’s more meaningful to believe that it all happened by some delightful wink of the universe.

don draper wink

Okay, look, I’ll finally get what I’ve been trying to get to. And that is, it’s nearly impossible to forget anybody or anything you’ve ever done that ever meant something, even if it was only slightly. I’ll see a girl wearing fingerless gloves and I’ll think of 14th street in NYC. I’ll hear a Bob Dylan song and have a sudden and brief fervent passion for a boy I had a crush on in college. I’ll smell a certain shampoo and remember my staying with my ex-boyfriend at his house in Rochester. And I do these things — we all do these things — because we want to. Even though it hurts. Because unless you’re a psychopath, you can’t but feel emotion, even if it’s people you think you don’t give a monkey about. It creeps in, but you don’t notice it. To you, it’s like, “Why the hell am I missing Stephanie from elementary school? I haven’t thought about her in years.” It rains and I think about my apartment in New York City. And I think about what a hassel it was — but a great hassel — to move in. I thought about how it would be a ragtag group of me and my friends dragging a couch up a staircase like in Friends. Asking them, hey, can you move for free? I’ll treat you guys to coffee. And then I’m nostalgic for a moment that never even happened.

And that’s why I understand Holden Caulfield, that beloved outcast, so beloved by our generation it’s become cliche. Because nostalgia will fucking kill you if you let it. It’s like alcohol or drugs. Some people can enjoy nostalgia recreationally. Others let it ruin them. The worst thing is that sometimes you don’t even need to talk to someone from your past. All you have to do is see their photo or time travel via a song or memory and you’re right there and by the time you come back, you’re completely hungover with nostalgia.

God, imagine how i’m going to feel when I’m forty.

Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

You.

vintage lipstickYou. No, not you. The other you. Maybe.

I would now like to address all of the different Yous. As in, more than one person. As in, this is not all about one person.

You need to stop. This is my fault, I should have been more direct. It’s not going to happen.

You are working on being a better friend, and I really appreciate that. You’re probably the only true guy friend I have left. Even though you did that thing that I will never understand, I can’t use it against you for the rest of our lives. Also, you owe me a drink.

You were my friend and you disappeared and it’s probably because of that thing that happened. Even though we were apparently both fine with it. You’re right in what you said; what I suggested, I didn’t really want. But I do want you to be my friend again.

You seem like you want to become my friend, a real friend. I really liked that conversation we had on my couch. I was touched. But I can’t rely on you to follow up and follow through. I wish you would. But you disappear and you don’t even try.

You probably don’t even read this blog anymore. You meant a lot to me. Still do.

You are actually a wonderful guy friend. I’m so glad that happened. I wish you lived here. If things stay as they are, I accept your invitation for that thing in the spring.

You, I am so angry with you.

You and I talk about having sex, hypothetically, but I don’t know if that’s the best idea. I think you’re just lonely.

You disappeared, but it’s okay. I wasn’t feeling it anymore either. The sex was fantastic. Hope you felt that way too. Sorry your roommate thought I was being murdered. Really glad she didn’t call the police.

You wondered what happened. You pulled a classic Schmosby and honestly, that changed a lot in our dynamic. I still think you’re great though.

You are just confusing as hell, but at least you know it. I hope you know that I do want you in my life. I don’t know how. Glad it isn’t my fault. I’m not going to campaign for myself. You’ve already told me how awesome I am. If you ever figure this out, let me know. There’s no deadline. Just see what happens. There’s something there. Let’s put a pin in it.

You, I forgot to respond to your email. Sorry.

Address all of your Yous in the comment section. Very freeing.

Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

Smile through the tears.

Thank you Invisalign for sponsoring this post. Invisalign, a new alternative to braces, is celebrating 2 Million Smiles (2 million straightened smiles and counting!).

I’ve been on this high school nostalgia binge which is kind of like a McRib binge, and I don’t recommend either one. Now that I’ve done both, I feel a little ill, and am trying to fight off the regret.

I found a photo of me in 8th grade and wanted to go back in time and hug that girl. I’m giving the shiest of smiles, only barely revealing my purple and green braces, which turned out to be the school colors, which made me want to die. I hated every moment of wearing my braces. In my dreams, I can still feel the rough metal scraping the insides of my mouth. I also had to wear headgear at night. I rarely did.

There was this thing out called Invisalign, the new alternative to braces. To date, Invisalign has straightened 2 million smiles and counting. I was not one of them.

Oh, so sad for me, I know, that my parents could afford modern orthodontia for their little girl, but not the one she wanted. But really, braces have a special way of making a young woman feel like the absolute worst of everything ever. It’s hard enough when you don’t look like the typical teenage dream; when my friend asked me, “Do braces get in the way when you give head?” saw my horrified expression, then gracefully tried to retract it with, “Oh, I guess you haven’t…done that yet…yeah me neither” I felt like maybe I didn’t belong in my year, like I accidentally “Big”ed my way into this body, this life, and I was trapped.

Damn you, braces! I wish I had Invisalign. I didn’t. I don’t think my mom believed in it and thought they were too expensive. I don’t know if they were, and now they’re probably more affordable than ever, but you can figure that out for yourself here. So instead, I looked like this:

My BFF Michelle got Invisalign and my mom thought they were great, and was like, oops, sorry, enjoy those braces. So I wore those braces, and I eventually came out the other side. Here I am with my beloved mother (she’s on the left):

I guess what I’m trying to say is, go blonde.

For more information, please visit Invisalign. I was selected for this opportunity as a member of Clever Girls Collective, and the content and opinions expressed here are all my own.

Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

Sexy costumes suck.

Halloween is a big deal to me. As a kid I always loved dressing up. I took great pride in my costumes. In 10th grade, I dressed as Alex from “A Clockwork Orange” and no one knew who I was. My dad thought I was Liza Minelli from “Cabaret” and most of my friends said, “Hey your eyelash fell down.” One teacher at the school got it, and he asked me, “Are you a ‘Clockwork Orange’?” And I said yes, and he said, “That worries me.” (Love you, Mr. Everett). I made that costume using things from my closet and my high school’s wardrobe room and now they sell pre-packaged Clockwork Orange costumes for both men and women (the woman’s version is a dress/skirt). And there’s a photo going around on Pinterest of some toddler dressed as Alex, which is a super cute idea, to dress your little son as a rapist. Have people actually watched this movie the entire way through?

As I got older, I got less inspired. I actually started to have dreams, not just around Halloween but year-round, that it was Halloween and I didn’t have a costume and I was scrambling to find one. This has to mean something deeper, and if you want to figure it out, go for it. This year I really wanted to be Jarvis Cocker or Paul McCartney, but to find a good Beatles suit is expensive and I am not nearly skinny enough to be Jarvis Cocker (though to be fair, few are). So I decided to cave and buy something. I got into a nostalgia kick for “The Lion King” and thought the best idea ever would be to dress as Simba.

My mission became far more difficult than I ever thought. First of all, all Simba costumes I found were for toddlers, which is fucking bullshit. At most it went up to 10 year olds. For adults, there was, I kid you not, a “sexy” Nala costume. What the fuck is this malarkey? How is that even close to a lion costume? Why do you have to make Nala sexy?

And it just got worse. Every single lion costume I found was a “sexy” lion. Here are some examples. I just wanted to be a normal, giant-ass jungle cat. But all the good lion costumes were made for men or boys. And the men’s costumes don’t fit well on me, because I am a petite girl, like Estelle Getty sized, and I can’t wear something unisex and expect to be able to move in it. I succumbed to the Cushzilla lion onesie/pajamas and it’s comfy and I love it, but it made me sad that the best thing I could find was a unisex jumpsuit that is meant for someone way, way taller.

I also wanted to be Han Solo. Hey guess what? Even though it’s Halloween, a time when people are supposed to dress up as whatever or whomever they want, female Han Solo costumes do not exist, unless you’re into cosplay and you make one, and I barely know how to properly put on a bandaid, let alone sew something. I also thought about being Indiana Jones. I’ll let you compare the male Indiana Jones costumes to the female ones.

Yes, I could thrift and come up with an Indiana Jones costume, but why should I have to? Why are the only available female versions of Indiana Jones costumes sexualized? It’s Harrison Ford, he’s already sexy. Why doesn’t anyone want women to dress up as a non-sexualized version of a Halloween character? Do they not trust us? Do they think we won’t make it look good because we have boobs?

If you want to dress as a sexy version of something, I don’t care. Go ahead. You have every right to wear whatever you want. But I wonder if by supporting costume companies like Leg Avenue and Dreamgirl, companies that saw a huge boom within the past few years, we’re telling people, “Yes, this is how we always want to look, please make us sexy versions of everything, like Bert and Ernie.” And they did.

And honestly? It makes me sad. What do you think?

Don’t forget to check out my “Sexy” Costumes = Normal Bowie Costumes here on my blog and a slightly extended version on Hello Giggles. And if you’re looking to be Shelley Duvall from “The Shining” look at my post Fashion and the Shining.

Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook

Whatever happened to the teenage dream?

justin bieber wrapping paper

I mean this is what instagram was made for, right?

Why did I hate being a teenager so much? Being a teenager is awesome. Nothing you do matters. Nothing. Teenagers, I’m not trying to put you down; on the contrary. I’m trying to empower you. Don’t you realize how awesome it is when nothing you do matters? You can do anything. Anything! Go to school, don’t fuck up your grades, and then do whatever the hell you want. Stay out late on a school night. Wear something stupid. Be ignorant. Don’t try to be an adult. Being an adult kind of sucks, I’m gonna be real. There are a lot of great things about my life, like I get to legally drink (even though I still get carded which is both flattering and extremely embarrassing), I don’t have to tell my parents what I’m doing all the time, and I can basically say, “Fuck this shit, I’m an adult!”

Now here are the downsides: as an adult, drinking takes a harder toll on my body, I actually miss my parents telling me what to do because now I have to make those decisions for myself, and if I say, “Fuck this shit, I’m an adult!” I have to deal with the consequences, good or bad. And guys, my knees hurt. I’m in my twenties, not even my late twenties, and my fucking knees hurt after a workout. Which reminds me, does anyone have a good workout DVD/whatever other than The 30 Day Shred? Because The Shred works but it kills my knees every time. And as vain as I am, I don’t think it’s worth it. So yeah, your stupid knees hurt and you have to find a job and keep it because you have to pay for boring shit like bills, and sometimes you cry in the corner of the shower thinking, “LOLOLOLOL” in your brain. Because being an adult can be absurd.

I didn’t appreciate being a teenager because as a teenager I felt ugly, hated that I looked so young, and wished I didn’t have to go to school. Those were my problems. Those aren’t problems. Those are, “Shut up you’re not ugly, one day you will LOVE being told you look young, and get your shitty body to school you idiot it’s a lot easier than real life.”

Teenagers: have some fucking fun. I mean it. If not for you, then for Uncle Almie.

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...
Share

Follow me on Twitter | Facebook