I don't know how to quit you, Johnny Weir

You're a fake tanner? Any tips?
"The mystic tan. I was doing the cocktail for a little while. I was doing mystic tan and then running into the tanning bed as well. I'm not really that far into my tanning training yet this year. Tips? Make sure you wear the hairnet. And make sure you don't shower for two and a half hours, not three. 'Cause three, for some reason, it sticks a little harder. But I've been doing the lay-down tanning bed, and where my butt cheeks push together there's a white triangle because it never gets tan."

How can you not love this guy?

veep

Oh Dick Cheney, you moron:

"No wonder Brokeback Mountain is bombing in the heartland. Real men don't surprise each other by falling in love. A true friend accidentally shoots you in the face."

meet the fockers

Saturday we went to his house for his sister's anniversary party. There were a million family members, in-laws, god-parents, family friends, pastries, and neighbors. Way, way overwhelming. Way.

But really, really nice. I made friends with neice and reigning Cutest-Kid-Ever Arielle, which was a personal and highly satisfying goal. We bonded over her strobic ring and my sequin shoes. I talked with Steph who is the sister of my old USY advisor Erica, WHO I LOVE. I talked with honored sister about whoknowswhat and dad about Queer As Folk actors and mom about her delicious pastries and notorious TIOH personalities. Brother wasn't there because he broke his nose in two places at a roudy synogogue baseball game last week.

I met several aunts and grandparents and brother-in-law-in-laws, and I came away with this feeling of it must be really nice to have so much family nearby. Neither my mother's nor my father's families live on this coast (or country), and I was always a little jealous of those friends who grew up with their relatives. Sure, there is putting up with crazy Aunt Marylin who never stops talking, but there is also recognition and fraternity among cousins.

I had a long talk with Jodi in which I divulged how happy I am right now, and then we sat on the stairs and watched the boy greet his relatives. I'm very aware that he knows about this page and checks it periodically, and I'm trying not to edit, but dang it's hard when you want to spill everything but know it's for the best to keep some inside. It's a daily back-and-forth about what constitutes GOOD PACING. If I've learned anything in the past three months it's that I can't rush things.

Oh, and let me not forget the zamboni action that took place this weekend at the Orange apt. It rules.

meet the parents

What an overwhelming weekend. Friday night we had dinner with my parents. I have never before brought a boy home to meet mom and dad. The thought of it still makes me uncomfortable, even though the event is over. And it's not that I'm worried for the Boy, he can totally hold his own. Actually, I love watching him interact with my people and my friends because he gets along with everyone so EASILY. Especially with the Shabbat Club boys, Ronnie and Ben-- I LOVE BOYS.

It's just that I don't like my parents knowing things about me, knowing how I feel. Because they know everything else about me, I'm really protective of my personal life. But I can't really hide anything these days. I'm constantly smiling and when we're together, I can't not touch him. Miriam has reported on more than one occasion, "It's like you share the same energy source." The old me would say that it is really pathetic, but the new me doesn't care and PDAs the hell out of her weekends.

(Side note--Dude, even cross-country skiing during the Olympics is exciting. The announcers totally sell it and make me care who wins the race. I'm such a tool when it comes to the Games.)

Dinner turned out fine, obviously. My parents love all my friends, and they especially love those friends who are Jewish and whose parents are involved in either the Jewish community or education (Jerm gets double points here) and good god, of COURSE they are going to love the friends who are MALE. J won over Aaron with his appreciation for the blue wall paint and just the fact that he is his older sister's boyfriend. And he watches Lost. Aaron and I share the same discriminating taste in our friends: they absolutely MUST watch our favorite TV shows. Everything else is gravy. The Jerm got another point because someone brought up the word "truthiness," a Bushism made up and popularized by Stephen Colbert. And then I gave him an additional fifteen points because I found out that he "did a little relaxing" with his neighbor before dinner because he was nervous, and I think that's cute. I pretty much think everything he does is cute.

And then we went home and watched THE OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT A REWARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!

hukt on foniks

Pretty much the only thing Open Court Reading has going for it are these fabulous Alphabet Sound Wall Cards. Each card represents a letter of the alphabet, and has a picture that truly represents each phoneme that letter can produce. For example, the A card has a lamb, to represent the short a sound. The B card has a ball, C has a camera, etc. During OCR Training, my partner-in-crime Chris and I decided to create a new set of ABC cards, one whose pictures are better examples of our crazy language and more representative of the day-to-day life our students lead. (If you have to ask what any of these mean, you are clearly not from the barrio, nor are you in touch with today's youth.)

A - tap that ass
B - butherface
C - cancer (See how these are better? Both the hard C and the soft C sound are represented.)
D - dirty sanchez
E - heavy petting (Two spelling patterns represented.)
F - fo shizzle, my nizzle
G - ganga (Both hard and soft Gs.)
H - hippie
I - pimp
J - jack daniels
K - cock
L - lovely lady lumps (Alliteration.)
M - melons
N - ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall
O - johnson
P - pearl necklace
Q - quickie
R - Rodriguez, Ricardo, Ramirez, Raul, Rosa
S - sausage (Here we borrow OCR's S card, because it rocks.)
T - titty twister
U - drugs
V - vag
W - whiskey
X - Xtasy
Y - Jagermeister (Sometimes a word begins with a sound made by another letter. Crazy English.)
Z - zebra

SH - shut up, woman!
TH - thong (As in flip-flops. Get your filthy mind out of the gutter.)
CH - chud

Olympics fever

I wrote this in 2001, while abroad and waiting for my sorta-boyfriend to write me back that he either still loved me or had a new girlfriend: (It was the latter, the asshole.)

"It's a good thing that I have break right now, and that I have nothing to do with my time. And so, like I have done every two years before now (every four years before 1996), I have immersed myself in the world of international sports. I have logged about 10 hours of television time so far. It's fantastic. You can ask me about any sport, I've watched it.

"I am an avid Olympics fan. No matter the season (summer or winter), no matter the sport, I will be in front of the TV or the computer or the newspaper, whichever medium delivers the most pictures and scores. I become obsessed.

"My favorite, along with thousands of others, is figure skating. My favorite of that is ice dancing. Just a bit of trivial information for you. I also enjoy watching speed skating (the most good looking athletes compete in this sport--kip carpenter the most good looking of all. Oh look, and a bronze medal winner), downhill skiing, and the ski jump (the one where they do all the turns--and, by the way, the athletes in this sport become shorter over time as their spines are compressed when they land so hard on the snow). Yesterday I watched the biathalon, which when you think about it, sounds really boring. Skiing and shooting. But they have some really good commentators and so I found myself completely absorbed.The luge is a really fun sport to watch. It's almost impossible for the TV cameras to keep track of the luger (?) and so the whole time you are watching blips of a dark thing whizzing by, and then the camera changes, and you see another blip whiz by. Then the camera changes again, and so on. When they get a relatively straight portion of the track (? is it called a track?) it is fun to watch the luge person lying there like a heap of blubber. They just look really uncomfortable. Toes pointed out, hands tight at the sides, neck slightly strained to see over their belly....

"The one sport I have not watched yet is Curling. This is a rediculous excuse for a sport. One guy rolls a heavy thing across a piece of ice and his teammates SWEEP THE ICE IN FRONT OF THE HEAVY THING SO THAT IT WILL GO AS FAR AS POSSIBLE. Using BROOMS!!!!! Ss that sad, or what. How is that a sport? How did they get them to admit this as a sport in the Olympics when one of the chief tools of the game is a BROOM? I don't think one drop of sweat will be shed. I am wondering what the commentators do during Curling matches. I mean, what exactly do you SAY at something like this? "Well, George, that was an excellent sweep by Kevin Martin (a Canadian. real guy. I looked him up). A little heavy on the thistles, but he sure smoothed that ice down." "

google images search word: "handball"

"Thanks for forwarding this to me at work. I thought it was going to be hilarious, so I got everybody crowded around my computer and opened up the link, not knowing what would show up. Boy was I embarrassed when a naked man showed up. The weird thing was, though, that when I said I was going to close it Byron said 'No. leave it up for a second.' I've never heard more quiet in my life."