Having had the opportunity to try on several pairs of jeans lately, and being reminded of how frustrating that activity usually is, I have made a definitive sketch of what most clothing designers seem to believe the dimensions of the average woman are:
Now personally, I’ve never seen a woman who looks like this, whether in real life or on the catwalks, but apparently, they are legion.
In reality, my figure looks more like this:
I never take fliers. It is very annoying to be walking down a sidewalk and be abruptly clotheslined by somebody shoving a piece of paper into your face. Who the hell on this green, revolving Earth ever wants a flier? For anything? Who ever has followed up on whatever was being advertised on said flier? Nobody. When somebody hands somebody else a flier, they are either handing them litter, or a piece of trash to be carried until the receiver finds a trashcan. Everybody else should do as I do, and decline to take them, so that whatever stupid freaking business owners are still fliering will freaking stop it already. I. Hate. Fliers.
Along the same lines, postcards for shows are a giant waste of money and a thoroughly ineffective marketing tool. Nobody ever, ever, ever goes to a show they weren’t already planning on going to (because they have a friend involved with it) because of a damn postcard. Best-case scenario here is that one or even two lonely old people in from out of town might possibly, conceivably go to some show just because they saw a postcard for it, but even if you get three such audience members (which is an improbably high estimate), their admission is not enough to recoup whatever you spent on the postcards. I hate being handed postcards more than fliers, because I actually have to take the postcards and act interested, and then I have to carry them around until it’s ok to throw them away. Even if I actually plan on going to the show, I’m going to look in my email inbox (where undoubtedly there are at least fourteen different messages about whatever show it is) to remind myself of the time and place, not paw through my various handbags looking for some torn-up flier I was handed at a party three weeks earlier.
In marketing, it’s like…somebody starts doing something, and everybody just does it forever, whether it’s worth a damn or not. These measures are not effective, and they are annoying, and they result in a huge build-up of worthless clutter in my purse. Everybody, just stop it.
Another thing nobody agrees with me about – and I know with the economy in the shitter this is hugely optomistic of me – but can we just be done with change already? It’s heavy and it’s dirty and it gets everywhere and it makes whatever else is in your purse smell like coins, and I amass pounds of it, and then when I try to actually use it up by counting out exact change when I buy something, it massively pisses off the cashier and everybody behind me. The only thing you can really do with it is give it to homeless people, but then you have to juggle your bag and root around in it and shake it back in forth, all in a moving subway car, while you totter back and forth, and the homeless person politely waits and also totters back and forth, and everybody in the car stares at you and then you look like a real stingy asshole for not just giving the homeless person a dollar, especially after they stood there while you rooted through your purse for five minutes, and anyway, everybody (including the homeless person) knows you’re just trying to offload your obnoxious coins. I hate small change, and I can see no good reason for it, and with the way prices are these days, why can’t things just be rounded up or down to the next stupid dollar? At the very least, get rid of everything but quarters.
So, and but this is pretty funny. It explains how to shut up a music geek at a party. I used to kind of do this (make up a fake band) on occasion when some snobby guy at a party asked me what bands I like, but now I just never go to parties where I’m likely to run into any guys like that. Or maybe it’s just that everyone suddenly realized it’s rude to grill strangers about their musical taste.
Two yards over from us, right outside my window, there’s a family with 24 children. Now that the weather’s nice, the children are let out of the house at about 9:00 a.m. and they remain outside until midnight…or even later. Now, I’m pretty outspoken about the fact that I don’t much care for children, but even if you think the little darlings are presh, you would probably agree with me that these particular children blow. I mean, they are just the worst freaking children ever. Imagine 24 little banshees setting up an inarticulate, piercing scream, and then maintaining that scream for fifteen hours a day, seven days a week, and you will begin to have some idea of the constant soundtrack that has accompanied my waking and would-be sleeping hours for the past several weeks.
And on top of that, the guys who live next door (in between us and the children) have also ventured out into their back yard. Which is fine. Except that they (and their friends) are of that breed of partiers who think the only way to enjoy socializing is to get drunk and scream. Back when I had a social life, I was in the ‘get drunk and lay around’ or ‘get drunk and vehemently discuss politics’ or ‘get drunk and laugh hysterically at everything everybody says’ social circles, and I have never understood the ‘get drunk and scream’ set. I mean, what are they even doing? What are they talking about? You know who I mean, right? Those who go “wooooooooooooooooooo!” over and over? What is that? If any wooers are reading this, seriously, explain to me why this happens, and why it is fun, and how it is even remotely tolerable for the people you are with. Why do woooooers have friends at all? They’re always surrounded by crowds. To me, the whole point of getting drunk in a backyard is to let it all go, to relax, to chill, to stare at each other and laugh at nothing, and let the wind blow through the chimes. I usually feel like screaming “wooooooooooooooooooooooo” when I’m at my most sober and parachuting from a plane. Not at 3 a.m., when I’ve had enough alcohol to knock out a horse.
Memorial Day eve, the guys next door at about 10 or so got out a guitar, and started screaming the lyrics to some songs. You’d expect drunk people to have a relatively short attention span for this kind of thing, right? No. They did the entire songs, and they kept it up, in unison and just screaming, for a full hour. And of course, since the kids were still outdoors, they started trying to scream over the drunk guys, and the drunk guys wouldn’t be upstaged by a bunch of children. Escalate, escalate. And the women attending the dude party crowed with forced laughter, trying to convince themselves they were included.
This is a bit of a tangent, but frankly, I just don’t comprehend the general jubilance that most people seem to be brimming over with at all times. It seems to take so little to make other people happy. One more damn, stupid Friday night with the same people drinking the same beer and talking about the same nonsense, and people go “woooooooo!!!!!” for sheer joy. I’ve never gotten that much joy out of a mere party, even if it was one of the (few) parties that actually turned out to be really fun. A party can be pleasant or it can be dull, but it’s rarely a portal to ecstasy (unless you’re on it). But most people are positively stoked all the time about nothing. These are the people who are so thrilled to be drinking and going “wooooooooooooo” that they will keep it up until the sun rises, and do it all over again the very next night. Even in my most hard-partying period, I either had to stir up some interesting shit (read: make out with somebody), or I was pretty much over it by 2:00. The only times in my actual life that I’ve felt such joy I could have screamed “woooooooo” for hours were the times when someone had just given me an award.
Which explains a lot about me, and now that I write that, I guess it’s not that it takes so little to make other people happy, but rather, that it takes so much to make me happy. Perhaps I should examine that.
(On even more of a tangent, I have a theory that this is how potheads get started: they’re formerly active people who one day realized that if they just deadened enough brain cells, they’d actually become able to tolerate the crushing boredom of sitting around living rooms with their friends, watching a movie that everyone has already seen three times. Woooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Anyway, back to the subject at hand, I don’t actually mind the next-door guys as much as the children, because the guys next door so far (knock on wood) have gotten quiet once it hits 11:30 or so (also, a couple of them are attractive). But the kids are out there screaming all hours. Children are officially more obnoxious than drunk twenty-something hipsters.
Speaking of children ruining things for everybody else, I believe I’ve mentioned before that I find the increasingly crowded running track to be another drawback of summer. I usually run about 11:00 a.m. on weekdays, and it’s a pretty good time to go. Yesterday, however, there was a nursery school on the track. Some childcare workers had taken a whole gaggle of kindergarten-aged children onto the track, where of course, the kids were all over. I was running past, and a little girl waddled right into my path; I swerved to avoid her, and she somehow managed to leap over a whole lane and get in my way again, at which point, I pretty much knocked her over. “Hey! Hey!” I barked, trying to warn her, but she was in her own world. The childcare worker, to her credit, yelled at the little girl instead of me – what I don’t understand is, this track is right in between a giant, grassy park, and a big playground. Given those other, clearly more appropriate and desirable options, why the hell would they bring the kids onto the crowded running track?
The city’s got me feeling so hassled this week that I’m even feeling crowded in my own bedroom, what with all the backyard hoopla. I feel overrun – wherever I am standing, someone will undoubtedly suddenly need to be standing right there. If I find a deserted area, five minutes after I get there, four people will come sit on my damn lap. Hey, New York: why don’t you all let me know wherever it is that you’re not going to need to be, and I will go there?
And yes, I realize that the answer to this question is “anywhere else on the planet other than NYC.” Sigh.
But here’s the thing: I don’t believe. And one of the (many, many, many) obnoxious things about running in artistic circles is that all winter long, every time you sniffle, you are forced to be polite about a billion recommendations of pills, powders, needles in the back, elaborate hand gestures, and licking of stickers that will, the person swears to High Holy Alterna-Deity, immediately cure you of all pain, whether physical, emotional or existential.
First of all, the human body is not all that difficult to understand (at least on an introductory level). Neither are germs, the immune system, or for that matter, calorie intake and its relationship to weight gain. Yet for some reason, so many people view these very simple concepts as more elusive than quantum mechanics. ‘Surely,’ their reasoning goes, ‘it’s just as likely that some elaborate rhythm of hand-clapping will eradicate my cold, yes? I mean, it’s all magic anyway, right?’
No! No, illness is neither magic, nor particularly mystifying! And beyond just that, there is not an immediate and simple solution to every possible problem. Sometimes when you, for example, have a cold – you just have a damn cold! And you have to have the cold until it’s over with. And you can’t just snort some snake vomit, or drink your own urine, or pray to Damballah, and be immediately cured. Sometimes things are both unpleasant and unavoidable. Deal with it.
And while I’m spazzing about this, if you actually think that Eastern (or more specifically, Chinese) hope-based medicine has it all up on evil, chemical-properties-based Western medicine, I think you are totally insane. I have been to China. Those who rely on a wink and a prayer do so because they have no other option. Not because their non-medications are more poetical, and come in attractive red-and-gold tins with dragons on.
And along the same lines, here’s a statement I simply do not on any level comprehend: ‘Surely a kindergarten teacher knows more about curing illness than everyone who’s gone to medical school, right?’ What? What goes on in people’s minds? I swear, I’m next expecting someone to say, ‘You know, we all just assume that shooting yourself in the face is detrimental to your health, but maybe it actually cures cancer. I don’t just swallow accepted knowledge!’
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UPDATE: Oh, snap! If anyone was offended by my cavalier dismissal of all holistic remedies above, prep yourself for some well-deserved schadenfreude. Not one hour after blithely publishing the above, I was stricken with the most hideous and inexplicable illness I’ve had in years.
I had gone into Manhattan to put in some hours at a theatre where I volunteer, and long about 4:30, a slight throat irritation metastasized into a full-blown raging fever. I had not put in any time at this theatre in weeks, however, and felt I couldn’t leave so soon after arriving, so I continued to work away (no doubt infecting everyone around me), and around 6ish, thought I could help matters by consuming a huge vat of Thai dumpling soup.
Not long after that mistake, a great need for a bathroom came over me – a much more private bathroom than the communal, centrally-located one-seater in the theatre – and I realized I would simply have to go home, as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, this being Saturday, the L-train had gone to its usual weekend heart-of-darkness schedule (because surely no one wants to leave Brooklyn on the weekends, right?), and was shuttling one train every 16 minutes from Union Square to Bedford, causing such a massive pile-up on the platforms as to make the tunnels nearly impassible. There was nothing for it but to grit my teeth and push on through. It was a very, very long journey home. There were many drunken throngs of early St. Patrick’s Day revelers. The crowds, finding no easy space to store their elbows, attempted to shove them repeatedly into my kidneys. In addition, I suppose a raging fever makes a pale woman more attractive – my flushed, sweating face acted as fly-paper to a ridiculous number of reeling, slurring fellows, who, I can only hope received for their trouble (in addition to a whoof of serious Thai-dumpling-garlic-breath) a hearty dose of flu germs.
At long last, I reached my apartment, where, true to my philosophies, I reached for neither green tea nor junebug snot, but rather took a Vicodin, certain that, if it didn’t cure what ailed me, it would at least knock me unconscious for a good twelve hours. However, whether because the drug was expired, or the horrid, mystery fever was too strong for it, it did nothing at all, and I was wracked by fever until sometime between 3 and 10 the following morning.
I feel fine now, though, and this ordeal did not change any of my opinions as to the inefficacy of various alternative medicines (though it did shake my belief in the cure-all properties of powerful painkillers). At the risk of being slapped down again, I will boldly declare that I recant nothing. NOTHING!!!
