Thursday, March 09, 2006

Marty, That Was Very Interesting Music

So what happens when you play “U Can’t Touch This” and “Superfreak” back-to-back?

Oh child. If only you could have been there.

So it’s Flipper and G-Force’s birthdays, and what do we do one another’s birthdays?

If it’s my birthday? We Ready the Horrible. But if it’s anybody else’s? We daaaaaaaaaance.

Okay, first we eat fourteen tons of pasta. But then! Dancing!

I would like to know when the human body reaches the digesting apex. It’s definitely not after 30. Because first we went to the Olive Garden and then we went to Pleasure Island (which, despite its porntastic name, is actually a part of Disney World, and you’re not allowed to smoke or fling flesh or re-imagine the topiaries in nasty positions, which is totally what I would do were I left unsupervised on property) and I was unable to move without activating the Spew Sensors for at least an hour. Perhaps my attempted definition of “meal” as “seventeen breadsticks and a slab of chocolate” played a role here.

Here’s what I like about Olive Garden, even after you take away its cheesecake: It’s approximately as authentically Italian as Seagrams Golden Wine Coolers, but the staff is so earnestly committed to The Fake, it actually becomes preferable to the salad. There’s nothing quite like sitting in Nebraska as a person with a “Daleesha” nametag asks if signorina would like parmesan on her fettucini alfredo. So when I got lost on my way to the bathroom (this should come as no surprise to any of you) and found myself in the kitchen, the busboy provided me with a personal escort to the Little Bambina’s Room. Like, he offered me his arm. The kitchen staff doesn’t stroll you past your friends to the hand dryers at Applebee’s, no siree!

On to PI! But only the cool kids who can subsist solely on breadsticks are allowed to call it PI!

Let us pause for a moment whilst I explore my love-hate relationship with Walt Disney World. I hate it; I hate it so very much. It’s wholly fabricated, it’s crowded, it owns the solar system from here to Uranus, it charges you to inhale its precious Mickey-shaped oxygen molecules. And yet! I love it; I love it so very much. You’re a princess! You’re on an Imperial speederbike! You’re in France, with actually having to smell France! Oh, Walt. I wish I knew how to quit you.

And at Pleasure Island? You’re in the ‘80’s. We shot to “8-Trax” (which, again, porntastic, but awwwwesome) and it was by far the most populated club in the joint. There were Rubik's Cubes to sit upon and an enormous screen that played actual, non Carson Daly-pockmarked videos, and there was Vanilla Ice and the Weathergirls and pre-frightening Michael Jackson. And a few guys did that thing, you know, that thing where ten million people are attempting to dance a surface with the square footage of a Tic-Tac, so guys will just kind of dance their way over and inch up beside you and all of a sudden ohhhhhhhh, whoops! Look at that! You’re chest-to-boobs!

But Flipper and I are masters of The Redirect, which means that we never make eye contact and simply present the world with our backsides, and Oogie busted out the Look of Death, so our little group danced largely unmolested. It opened an entirely new branch of philosophy: If a guy thinks he’s dancing with you, and indeed is dancing in the same general area you are, but if you never agree to it, and in fact would flick this person directly in the eyeballs if he even asked the favor, are all interested and disinterested parties still, in fact, dancing alone?

We went to The Beach Club, where there was a live band. It was one of theose live bands that take being a live band very, very seriously. They had something like eighteen guitarists, and they all had perfected that True Guitarist Look, the one where to prove how sincere one’s guitaring is, one must appear, facially, to be in a great deal of intestinal distress. “SCREEEEEEEEE!” went the guitarists, in decades-long solos, and one guy played behind his back (“Just to show you can,” Flipper explained) and then, because he wasn’t entirely sure he had quite established himself as having the most sincere pumpkin patch around, he played a few bars with his tongue, which I’ve heard about, but never actually seen. I suppose I was meant to be impressed by this, but what would have been truly sweet was if the drummer had tried that.

Then we went to Mannequins, which has a spinning dance floor, because drunk people + involuntary rotation is always a good idea.

I need to sit down.

Will it ever stop? Yo, I don’t know at: mb@blondechampange.com

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Upopinions

-I liked "Achy Breaky Heart."

-We need to bring back the Latin Mass. Also, bangle bracelets.

-I have never seen, nor do I plan to watch, 24.

-Or The Sopranos.

-Joel Grey is very attractive.

-I have absolutely no desire to see Cirque du Soleil.

-Swing dancing should have never gone out. Either time.

-Bill Simmons is wearing on me. (I wanted to write that he is a self-indulgent, one-trick pony, but then I remembered that I myself am a self-indulgent, one-trick pony. Have you read my archives? It's the same four jokes with different sparkly hair ribbons. But at least I recognize this about myself, and do not inflict upon the world 5,000 word essays every other week about the FREAKING CELTICS.)

-Gasoline fumes=delightful olfactory experience.

-This will come as a total shock to him, but I really don't care what George Clooney thinks.

-Coffee is icky. For the world's best caffeine injection, go to one of those cappuccino machines in a 7-11. French Vanilla for Plebes, awwwwwwww yeah.

I mean it at: mb@blondechampagne.com

Monday, March 06, 2006

Flash

I needed to get a headshot for a SuperSecretDoubleProbation project that I'll tell you all about as soon as I'm allowed, but for now just understand that this was NOT my idea.

So, if you know me in real life, you know that I pretty much look like a pale-type person, with very little to recommend me except maybe I don't appear to be concealing any weapons. You may be blinded, but you're only marginally frightened.

And it was up to this photographer person to turn Normal Me into Non-Barking Me, which... good luck. They gave me a makeup lady and a hair person and soft lighting and everything, and it was very confidence-boosting, because I sat in her chair and she circled me a few times muttering, "Well, you don't have any lips" and "Or hair" and "I don't even have any foundation this pale." She had to create a new shade of foundation for me. Like, she ground up some chalk in some snow or something, I don't know.

I knew I could trust the photographer's eye for detail by the way he spelled my name "Marybeth Ellies" and pronounced me as having, quote, "a Mamie Van Doren thing going on." And I had to do research, when I returned to my apartment and took my face back, to find out if this was an insult or a compliment.

I think it depends on which Mamie the photographer was referring to. Because if it's this one (link provided by Tim the Reader, who suggested that I look into this newfangled thing called "Google"), then, just... no. In these pictures, Mamie has lips and presentable thighs, and the resemblence continues to end the more you look at her.

But if the photographer was refering to this Mamie, who was approximately 700 years old at the time the picture was taken, then, again, just... no. Somebody's getting sued before the sun goes down.

Then I realized that Mamie was featured in Girls Town, which in turn was featured on Mystery Science Theater 3000, which means... this movie was so bad, it needed robot puppets to make it right again.

I've seen this episode. Mamie chews gum a lot and says things like, "Don't flip your wig. I get your signal." Also: "Daddio." Boy, am I flattered.

The photographer spend a great deal of time zooming the camera in on and talking about my eyes, which he said were "great, just great, and all we'll need to do is darken the blue rim around the iris and take out the redness and lengthen the eyebrows and get rid of the bags and whiten the non-blue parts, but other than that, just great." Then he sucked out parts of my soul.

He sat me on a stool, and then he paused and-- you'll think I'm lying--but he paused and actually put a finger to his lips and then he said, "You know what, this... just isn't working for me." Like the Project Runway guy was going to burst out at any moment and start berating everybody within earshot. And then he made me lay down on the floor and fold my hands under my head and adopt some sort of glassy-eyed Precious Moments stare, and this, too, was deemed "great," and "very natural", and I don't know about you, but I set my makeup gun to "Whore-riffic" every time I want to be my natural self.

There followed a week and a half of Photoshopping.

Then I had to sit in large dark room to look at the edits, and I hope this never ever happens to you:


I hope you never have to see your own self projected at eight hundred times your normal size, especially while wearing an expression that asks if you, too, can taste the alcohol in the Long Island Iced Tea. Photographer guy was like, "Great, just great!" and I was all looking for the airsickness bag, because... there is a thing as Too Much Me. I run a BLOG. My EMAIL ADDRESS has my initials in it. I am all ABOUT me, and there it was: Too much me. I'm like one combover and two ex-spouses away from Full Trump Status.

Gah, I have to end the post. Even with the edit box all the way down to the bottom, I can still see bits of elbow and hair, and even that is too much me.

everybody's on the same cycle in girls town at: mb@blondechampagne.com

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