Takeback the Morning

I am so over ESPN.

I am forced to watch ESPN every morning when I am getting ready for work. My husband does not understand the value of the morning weather or news, but he does see a profound beauty in watching the same episode of Sports Center that he saw the night before.

When we first moved in together, I tried to convert him from ESPN to the Today Show. But his hatred of Katie Couric prompted many a morning argument. In his defense, the Today Show is about 90% garbage. In my defense, that remaining 10% is chock-full of weather, news, and hilarious puns by Al Roker.

I then switched to NY1, because when you don’t have time to read the paper yourself, they do it for you. But Pat Keirnan was also annoying to my dear husband. Well then! You know what is annoying to me, buddy? You whining about morning news show anchors everyday! And so I gave up.

We've been watching ESPN in the morning for a few years now, and I have to say that it is the worst network ever. They are only concerned with two things: The Yankees and Brett Favre.

If you don't watch ESPN, you probably think I am exaggerating for comedic effect. If you do watch ESPN, you are rolling on the floor, doubled over with knowing laughter.

Brett Favre is everywhere. His retirement cock-tease has been all the rage on ESPN for years. Hell, I was even watching a game last weekend and one of the commentators kept dropping Favre’s name. ESPN must be on his payroll. All press is good press, right?

But the Favre issue is in now way as offensive as the Yankees phenomenon. As previously mentioned, I am over the Yankees. I was actually excited for this baseball season to end so I could stop hearing about the freakin' Yankees, their stadium, and their player’s martial affairs. Obviously, I knew all about the Yankee's last game of the season, and I was psyched. No playoffs= no more Yankees. But no.

ESPN did a 10-minute expose this morning about the Yankees NOT making the playoffs. Really? There is nothing else going all in the entire sporting world that you have to cover a team NOT doing something? This is quite possibly worse than "Who's Now?" (on-field success and off-field buzz)

Call Me! Call Me Anytime!

My office computer is PAINFULLY slow. Oftentimes, I whip up a post while waiting for my online sales database to load. Sadly, I am not kidding. It's astounding how inefficient it can be to work at a technology company.

This brings me to my ultimate pet peeve. My Brick.

My Brick is actually my cellphone. At first glance, you would think the Brick is, in fact, the first cellphone ever made. At second glance, you realize that it is actually the world's smallest laptop. I did not intend for that to sound awesome.

I used to have a gorgeous, slim, easy-to-handle Blackberry Pearl. It fit in my purse, had a lovely rollerball, and rocked a variety of badass ringtones. But when I changed jobs, I learned that my new employer does not support Blackberry. BOOOOO!

And so I had to get a new phone. But instead of choosing a phone that was to my liking, the Brick was thrust upon me. The Brick weighs about 4 pounds. It does not fit in the cellphone pouch in my purse. Its touch-screen features require a coke nail for proper use.

I keep waiting for a new work-supported phone to become available on AT&T so the Brick can have an "accident." But until that day, I suffer.

The irony is that I am in mobile. And I work for a company that makes cellphones. It's really embarrassing.

Something else embarrassing about my phone is that I can't figure out how to silence my ringer once it starts ringing. There have been plenty of days when I have forgotten to switch my phone to vibrate and my entire office was treated to my lame ringtone of the moment. The latest ringtone (which is no longer topical AT ALL and thereby even more embarrassing) is David Cook’s Billie Jean. Yes, I am aware that American Idol has been off the air since May. I am also aware that I am 30.

Aside from being embarrassing and out-of-date, I also have a hard time hearing my DC ringtone. My husband is endlessly frustrated by my neglect in answering my phone. The other day, it came to a head.

CinS called me 9 times (as verified by my missed calls log) and burst into our apartment in a tornado of frustration.

"I called you 9 times! If you wanted to go out to dinner tonight, you should have answered your phone!"

"Oh. Sorry. It was in the other room."

"What if it was an emergency? You never answer your phone!"

"I'm sorry. I hate my phone."

CinS then proceeded to dial my phone while making exaggerated angry faces. He followed the noise (that I still couldn’t hear, but somehow he could), fished my phone out of my purse and held it up to my ear.

"Melissa, you are a professional woman. You cannot have a ringtone like this. Maybe if your phone rang like a phone, you would hear it. I don't care if all the other 17-year-olds tease you for not having a cool ringtone, but I need to be able to reach you. Change your ringtone now."

"But...."

"The only possible reason for you to have this ringtone is for when David Cook calls you."

I then exited my body to fantasize a tame, corporate rock-and-roll lifestyle in which David Cook calls me on a regular basis.

"Get a real ring please," my husband says.

And so I did. Now, when my phone accidentally rings at the office, I answer it with pride, not hushed tones. But I do miss DC. And definitely cannot show my face in the high school parking lot ever again.

The Blogtari Factor

A friend of mine IM'd me a link to the Gawker post about Sarah Palin's email account being hacked. At first, I was excited. I thought there would be some major scandals revealed like receiving bribes from Pro-Lifers and Oil Conglomerates, or at least an offer from CoverGirl for their Infallible Lip Color. But no. The Gawker article has absolutely zero substance. You can see some pictures of her kids. And no, they are not nudie pictures. Just regular, fully clothes pictures of her kids sitting in the grass.

SNOOZE!

In fact, none of the recent onslaught of Sarah Palin news has been very interesting. I do not need to know that she once dressed as Tina Fey for Halloween. I do not care she uses Yahoo! mail. I am utterly indifferent about the 3 different Palin action figures available today on political spoof sites everywhere.

The media should have quit while they were ahead - announcing Bristol's pregnancy from her Baby Daddy whose My Space profile does not want children.

Ever since Babygate, Palin has been a bore. In fact, I could argue that all of the Britney Spears-inspired media attention Ms. Palin is getting is doing far more to raise her party's profile than anything John McCain is up to. And the GOP thinks the "liberal media" is against them. Hmph!

I am very much looking forward to the debates so we can start talking about real political issues again. Because you know what else I don't care about? Obama's love of the NBA and McCain's lobby for proper healthcare for boxers! Yes, I am forced to watch ESPN, and yes, both candidates were interviewed to talk about their favorite sports. I miss Joe Biden and his Amtrak antics.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not a hard-nosed politician. I enjoy my news in bite-sized, lowest-common-denominator chunks. But I do think it's a bit silly to turn our politicians into entertainers. They are not entertaining people. That's why they are in charge of stuff.

And news outlets, please lay off Ms. Palin. The more you make me think I should care about her, the more I may care about her. Let's just let her fade away into Geraldine Ferraro-like obscurity, shall we?

Dolls

Hey reader(s?) - I know you've been desperate for a new blog post, and I apologize. I was in San Francisco last week for a conference and some fun. Note: these were two separate events.

To maximize my fun time, I decided to book myself a flight home on the redeye. I have taken one other redeye in my life, where I stabbed Cillian Murphy in the neck with a pencil, so I wasn't really prepared for overnight travel.

I have some Ambien left over from my honeymoon, and thought it would be smart to take said Ambien to sleep through my flight home. I would awake at JFK feeling revived and alert, and then head home to work in my jammies all day. Despite the use of unprescribed drugs, my plan seemed very responsible. Round 1 to Melissa.

I arrived home at 8am and wasn't feeling very energetic. Round 2 to Ambien.

I crawled into bed to nap for a few hours. I got 5 hours of sleep on the plane, and was planning to round it out with 2.5 more hours before my 10:30 conference call. After almost 8 hours of rest, I surely would feel great for the rest of the day.

Instead, my ass was kicked until noon. I woke up to 3 voicemails and my alarm blaring. Ambien wins by a knock-out.

I also required a second nap yesterday from 5-730pm. Damn you, Ambien, you've already won. Do you really need to show off?

One of the reasons I took Ambien without consideration of the consequences, is because I am reading a new book. My friend Jen K recommended that I revive my love of Jacqueline Suzanne, of Valley of the Dolls fame, by reading her other books.

I am currently reading a terrible tale called The Love Machine. It follows the same formula as Valley of the Dolls. Woman takes tranquilizers, falls in love, drinks excessively, marries for money, becomes famous, and dies before her time. It is all very glamorous. Just like my Ambien coma. Sheer glamour.

I think I am still suffering from the after-effects of the Ambien coma and/or jetlag. I am barely functional, so please forgive me for having nothing at all amusing to say. I know that Jen K will be especially disappointed that the one post where she is mentioned is so lame (she’s been lobbying since her June wedding). But then again, I did mention her twice (now three times!) so that will probably make up for it.

I’m honestly about to pass out at my desk and drool all over my Sudoku. Maybe if I take this red pill I'll feel better.

Vampire vs. Werewolf

As Melissa mentioned in some blog last mumf, we once stayed up til like 2 on a Sunday night debating the merits of vampire vs. werewolf. Sure, the benefits of each have been covered extensively in the media -- Teen Wolf, Blade, and Once Bitten come to mind -- but when you really get down to brass tax, no coverage every looks in-depth as to the day-to-day practical implications of being a werewolf vs. a vampire.

At first, it seems like a no-brainer: why not be a vampire? Benefits include: living forever, flying, being generally bad ass, and having a city all to yourself at night if you want it. There are more types of people out there than food, so the blood variety must be extensive. And you always look good in black. But seriously, how would you do it?

For me, it comes down to this: being a vampire (Blade aside) means you're pretty much cut off for half the day. Forget the garlic, silver, or no reflecting business, that's besides the point. Being a vampire means that dawn to dusk is off limits for you. No more nice fall days. No relaxing stroll through the neighborhood on a weekend afternoon. If you're a collegiate vampire, sorry broheem, but no gameday for you. You never get to see a cool purple/orange sunset, and many of the sights to see in the world are closed off.

So you can move somewhere like Iceland or Alaska or Russia where for a large chunk of the year, it's only light a few hours a day. And if you're the aforementioned collegiate vampire, you go to a Sarah Lawrence or other liberal arts school that is sans football. Fine. But how do you make a living? What's a job you can get, besides night security guard or graveyard shift WaWa sandwich artist, that pays really well? Even assuming that a night security guard job pays well, then you necessarily are spending at least 6 hours of your available 12 at work. So really you have only a couple hours a day to do anything, at a time where most people are sleeping. So it's lonely as hell.

But still, everyone thinks being a vampire is so rulio. They wear black; listen to electronic music from the late 90s, hang out with other gothic vampire types, and get to Mike Tyson who(m)ever they want whenever they're hungy. So what?

As I explained ad nauseum to Melissa that night, I'd take Werewolf any day. First of all, a werewolf pretty much is a gnarly bloodthirsty beast only during a full moon. Even if there were 2 full moons a month, that's essentially 2 nights a month of inconvenience vs. half the day everyday of a vampire's existence. No, werewolves can't fly and aren't immortal, but they can also lead a semi-normal life. Look at Teen Wolf, he got to hang out during the day and even got to surf a van. That should be enough right there.

All you really need as a werewolf is a remote place to chill for 2 nights a month. If you have an internet connection, then you know when the full moons are coming. Hell, they're even printed on most calendars you'd get at the Hallmark store. So it's a full moon on a Tuesday in April. You're a werewolf in New York city and you work as an ad executive. All you need to do is to leave perhaps an hour or two early that night and take a train upstate or drive towards Albany. Even with a modest income, you'll be able to afford some small farmland within an hour and a half of NYC. So you get as much acreage as you can with your money, and set up an air mattress or whatever to inevitably crash on. Then the full moon strikes and you become a werewolf. But the beauty of it is that you're at your remote home outside the city, either locked in your small dwelling or surrounded by enough acres that you won't alert or piss anyone off. If you experience some bloodthirst, just populate your farm with some livestock and go to town. You'll be like a drunk chick at a pizza place in the Upper East Side on a Friday night.

When you wake up back in human mode, you get your shit together and catch a train back to the city, probably in time for work. Not to mention that some full moons will fall on weekends so even fewer people will notice your absence. The great thing is that you can even spin it to make you look normal. "Yeah I like to go up to my place upstate a couple times a month just to unwind and work remotely from my office there." While you're grawing cattle, your co-workers will think you're kicking back in front a fireplace with your laptop, checking and organizing your emails.

So there you have it. Lonely, poor vampire vs. Well-adjusted werewolf with a modest vacation home upstate. Take your pick.

Boys Don't Make Passes...

I wore glasses for a few years after college. Contact lenses and I do not get along, and the opthamalogical technology of 1999 was just not up to par with my cranky eye needs. So I wore glasses.

And like many girls in the early 00's who wore glasses, I was called Lisa Loeb by lame turds who thought it was clever to call girls with glasses Lisa Loeb. This grew old rather quickly, so I switched to contacts about four or five years ago. The contacts still bother me, but they are now mildly tolerable, as opposed to the searing sand particles of Y2K. I long for lasik.

Because I can't tolerate my contacts for more than a few days in a row, I sometimes wear my glasses during the week. Yesterday was one of those days. I wore my glasses throughout the day, and didn't feel any Loebier than I do on any other day. But my glasses definitely give me a little extra edge.

Let's back up for a minute.

My non-verbal cues are decidedly unfriendly. Throughout my life, I have never been approached at a bar or a networking event or even stopped on the street to be asked for directions. So I have decided that I look mean and unfriendly. Which is not necessarily true, unless it's hot and there are a million people breathing on me.

This is not a recent development either. I remember a trip to a bar in college with my two friends, Eryn and Erin. In the first few moments following our arrival, some girl approached Eryn to ask a question, and then a guy approached Erin to ask something else. What they were asking is beyond me. I've never been one to ask questions at a bar, other than "will you buy me a drink?" But the point is, these strangers approached the group of us, and chose to ask me nothing at all.

After this trip to the bar, I started to notice that strangers asked my friends all sorts of things, and no one ever bothered with me. A construction worker once heckled me, not with lewd comments or wolf-whistles, but with one simple word, "smile!"

So I must give off a nasty vibe. My aura is probably black.

But yesterday, in my glasses, three people asked me for directions on the subway. THREE! This is my all-time world record. I was so excited to be asked that I went out of my way to be extra helpful. Best informed tourists ever.

I may wear my glasses more often so I can yuk it up with the people. It will be great to help people who are lost downtown and to meet new people out on a Saturday night... unless it’s hot… and as long as they don’t start calling me Tina Fey.

Target

I sort of want to buy some SPAM to follow one of the many tantalizing recipes I see in my gmail.

I wonder, does SPAM have a chef on staff creating tasty(?) concoctions to make my folder of junk email more enticing? Must be.

I used to work for a company with a website, so I know a thing or two about search marketing and Google Ads. And there is some human out there lovingly creating those SPAM text ads. And that person is likely very underpaid.

As a former employee of an online marketer, I know that a lot of Ivy League smarts went into building the Google Ads algorithm. But I have to say that I seem to have outsmarted Google.

Google Ads thinks that I am planning a wedding in Dallas, TX.

I see ads for "Dallas Dream Wedding" and "Gowns Near Ft Worth" all the time. As a married New Yorker, it's a little disconcerting, yet kind of awesome. I feel like I am living a double life.

One as a bitter, 30-year-old New Yorker who is about to strangle tourists and FOBs on public transpiration, and one as a 21-year-old Texan about to marry and buy a 5 bedroom home for $100,000 where I can cook SPAM Vegetable Strudel.