Different. Better. Please.

JUDI







DIFFERENT. BETTER. PLEASE



It was Liz’s favorite day of her favorite season, but this Halloween, she felt nothing at all. Just the night before, her fiance Mike had called off the wedding. After he’d left, Liz had spent most of the night sobbing until finally passing out around five a.m.

Now she stared at the ceiling until her eyes drifted over to the bedroom door. On it hung the costume that she’d been so excited to wear just 24 hours earlier. It was one of those ubiquitous sexy costumes, a pirate wench dress straight off the rack, but Liz loved that it was stunningly gorgeous in its color and detail. Hanging in Mike’s closet in his apartment was a man’s pirate outfit. It had been the first “couples” costume Liz had ever planned with someone, and looking at it now brought back a fresh slew of tears, and a brand new searing of pain.

As her body shuddered with sobs and her heart felt like it could literally be shattering despite all scientific evidence to the contrary, Liz tried desperately to make any sense of it all until her brain hurt too much to think anymore. She sat up and hugged her knees to her chest, and as she screwed her eyes shut, wishing all of this to be different, wishing for anything but this grief, her wishes came out in words, surprising herself, but filling her with a bizarre and blessedly relieving warmth.

“Different. Better. Please. Different. Better. Please…”

Over and over, Liz repeated the words, feeling like a crazy person, grateful there was no one around to see her like this, but even more grateful for the calm. The calm soon grew into an urgency, taking on a life of its own, and the room seemed to rock back and forth as if it were on a boat. Suddenly, Liz had remembered a time in her past that she’d long forgotten about. A time when she’d chanted some other seeming nonsense, and watched as her words seemed to float out of her and onto the walls around her, first fluttering, then dancing together like kaleidoscopes.

She had thought that was a dream, or simply a wild imagining of a kid. But now her words seemed to swirl once again. She unclenched her body, and sat up straight, with newfound strength, repeating the words, but now with authority. And her words, just as they had in that forgotten time years before, found their way onto the walls, where they seemed to dance, but this time there were no kaleidoscopes. This time, the words kept fluttering about as if looking for something. Liz felt some unease, but couldn’t let herself stop it. She had to see what would happen. And she didn’t want to return to the pain. So she kept repeating, softer now. What were they looking for?

And just as that question passed through Liz’s mind, the colors on the wall stopped swirling. They formed strong, purposeful lines and shot straight over to the door, surrounding the pirate costume, spinning around it in triumph. As the colors sped up, they banded together to form an almost blinding white glow, and Liz didn’t know what to do now. Shit had gotten seriously scary, and though she was scared to stop, she was more scared to keep going. She ceased her chanting, and held her breath. Waiting.

The light remained, but grew slower, and duller. Its strength seemed to wane, and Liz let out her breath. As she did, the light suddenly grew even brighter than before, and appeared to collapse into the costume, then disappear. As Liz shook with relief and shock, from within the costume, the light reappeared. This time, it shone out through every bit of color in the pirate costume, and the dress seemed to come to life for one split second, until the light disappeared for good.

Along with the costume.







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Demetri Martin

Demetri Martin Rules!







I feel it is my duty as an American and also a human being to inform you that Demetri Martin is one of the awesomest people on the planet, and if you don’t watch his show, you should start TODAY.





I stumbled across Mr. Martin a few months ago after the Firewall of Doom. There is a site that is like Pandora, but for comedy. I started a Lewis Black station (who is of course, also very awesome but not the subject of today’s PSA), and Demetri was one of the comedians on the station.




Not sure whether it was the first sketch of his I heard or just the first that grabbed me, but OMG OMG OMG if “Jokes for Guitar” literally made my jaw drop, over and over. I loved the way his mind worked, that anyone would even think to think of some of the things he was saying.




So Javier started DVRing his show, Important Things with Demetri Martin for me, and I have fallen in love with it. Part of this could be that Demetri is 36, and intentionally or otherwise, has basically created a very ‘70s-esque set and show, which of course appeals to my nostalgia and “Romper Room” memories. And seriously, the budget for this show must be like two dollars. That is the thing though. His brain alone is all that is needed to create magic.






Javier is the one who alerted me to Demetri Martin’s 224-word palindrome poem as testament to Mr. Martin’s astonishing brain. And dude.





Some of his humor is deceptive in its seeming simplicity. A lot of times I find myself laughing a beat later because my brain has to spin around and catch up. Like something is too funny and amazing for me to even fathom it at first. Other times I will watch something like his sketch about rats and religion and my jaw drops again. The man is brilliant. And I love dry, deadpan humor more than almost anything.





Besides all that, he is a humongous dork, or at least plays one in his comedy. He lacks the pretension of so many younger guy comedians, acting like he’s the shit and people should form a line out the door. He lets his awesomeness speak for itself. It’s really, really refreshing and makes me like him even more.






So do yourself a favor and check out “Important Things with Demetri Martin.” Because he RULES!!!


©2009

Lights Go Down

I managed to get away somehow. I wasn’t sure what I was running from, but some others from the house and I were trying to get away. We’d just entered a rougher area, but were almost out. There was another street just across the way, with houses. I couldn’t tell if they were safe. They might have all just been part of the entrapment scheme.

But one thing was for sure, that became more and more evident, the further we got from the house – we had nothing to lose. That house had evil in it. People were being held prisoner and they didn’t even realize.

We prepared to go down the hill and cross the road. Every foot of distance we put between ourselves and the house, and the woman in it, was a foot closer to safety. And we had miles to go.

But then they spotted us. The woman, who was beautiful, older, with wavy brown hair and big brown eyes. Eyes that she was really good at getting to seem kind. I thought I saw otherwise.

And here, outside and away from the house, so close to a world besides the one she’d convinced us was the world, I knew I hadn’t been paranoid.

“You’re evil!” I cried. And she looked gobsmacked. No one ever was rude to her. And something in her eyes flickered, and she faltered, for the briefest of moments. I pounced on that, and cried out again, “You’re evil!” This time more forcefully.

Then she gave us a stern, “Time to go” gesture. I felt myself weaken, but didn’t want to go. Still, the road looked so dark and the hill seemed so steep. The houses across seemed to have cobwebs. And the others were following the woman. If I stayed out there, I’d be all alone in the darkness.

But this is your only chance. Something inside of me was screaming, close to panic, absolutely desperate to get away.

But that something grew weak, and was no match. I followed the woman and the others back to the house and into the yard. People were mingling and it would have been nice if I didn’t now see that it was essentially a prison yard. We weren’t free to come and go. I wished I’d kept going. Now that the woman had walked away, I was feeling stronger and wondered why I’d ever let myself come back here. Something bad was going to happen.

Then we saw it, in the sky – white lights. They were so beautiful, but they were going to hurt us. People started screaming to run for cover, and so we did, as the lights hit the ground as little meteors. They created a wave of physical chaos that pulled people down, but a tornado that held people in the sky, powerless. I heard someone scream out, “Cassie!” in that way that people can only scream when they see their friends dying. I turned around and I didn’t see Cassie, but I saw the shark. For some reason, we had a shark corpse that lived with us. I never liked it, but I really didn’t like seeing it spinning through the air, its guts spilling out, helpless…but maybe finally allowed to rest at last.

As quickly as the destruction came, it ended. And just as we had before, we obediently followed our leaders, this time to a basement. The horror of moments ago was quickly forgotten, as there was a party going on. So many of my friends were there. It felt like, oh, the problem with the house was that I wasn’t here at the party the whole time. We laughed and hugged and drank and sang.

I went to use the restroom, and when I came back, the party was locked away and I couldn’t get in. The room they were in looked so warm and inviting – but they looked vulnerable. All put in one place for the next attack. I screamed, banged on the door. I needed to warn them. They couldn’t hear me.

I had to get help. But I felt myself weakening. My bones weren’t supporting me. But there was a tunnel. Maybe if I could just get through it…

I dragged myself along the ground because my arms were all that was working. The ground cut me and I was getting filthy. But the only thing that mattered was this, doing this, I had to do this. Every bit of adrenaline and resolve was being thrown into this task. The closer I got to the end, the more confident I was. My body could repair itself. What mattered was freedom. Salvation.

I got to the end. The light was so bright and beautiful. Everything would be okay.

The woman was there. She had changed in appearance; her hair was blonde now, and her eyes were light, but the same. Worse. Now she didn’t have to pretend to be nice for the benefit of the others. It was just me. Her face contorted into rage like I’d never seen. She pointed a gun in my direction.

Please don’t…

…Thud.

The light beamed even brighter, and then disappeared completely.




©2009

So!

I'm coming a bit full circle here. Started on Diary-X (RIP), and have been blogging a ton on Myspace. Alas, Myspace and Facebook have been firewalled at my job. Rage. But I'm going to make the most of it and post here old school style. Since I can kind of just dick around here, and I don't even know if anyone is reading, I can post whatever I feel like, and that is kind of fun.

I apologize for the disastrous formatting of my archived blogs. NO idea how it all went down that way. But I was all obsessing over fixing that and importing all my blogs, and the obsessing was getting in the way of the blogging.

So here I am. Thanks to anyone reading this; I'll be posting more. More casual than my Myspace blogs. Or more fancy. WHO KNOWS! Ah, the freedom. Is this what people talk about when they say how great it is to be away from all the drama of Myspace? Well, screw that. I miss Myspace terribly. But this can be a good outlet, and besides, Blogger's all respected and stuff.

Have a great day!

Ad Nauseum

Dear Facebook,

There are two and only two ways in which you are better than Myspace. One, you don't break all the time. However you are antiseptic and boring, so for me, it balances out.

But the ONE thing that I genuinely prefer about Facebook over Myspace is that the ads are slightly less disgusting. Only to sign on today and see that the dreaded side-view diet pictures are following me over! I DON'T NEED TO SEE THOSE! Every freaking single time I sign on. At least Myspace is scary and badass. You kind of have to expect horror at any given turn. Here, it's just sad and pathetic.

Thanks.

~ Judi





*************************





Dear Myspace,

One big reason for the exodus to Facebook is, well, the aforementioned breaking all the time of everything. You can only see the dreaded: Sorry! An unexpected error has occurred…, before Myspace becomes the equivalent of a flaky boyfriend. Fine if there is no kinder, gentler boyfriend available, but enough abandonment, and people seek out greener pastures. And don't get me started on your shoddy treatment of your final bastion of loyalty, the bloggers. Richard covered that quite nicely the other day.

Still, I still love you the most. Facebook's smug and irritating. However, what I'd like to discuss today is that deeply horrifying ad of Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, and someone else who looks like she just got off the swings at the playground.

Guys. One of the reasons Facebook took off the way it did is that you’re kind of famous for attracting sexual predators. So WTF ARE YOU THINKING? That "Who's the Next Disney Bad Girl?" thing looks like one of those "Fuck someone tonight in Freeport!" ads mixed with the outtakes of "Human Trafficking."

For ALL the censoring you do, the deletion of blogs because someone's got a bee up his or her bonnet made up of personal beef and ulterior agendas, one might think you'd be slightly capable of monitoring your own site advertisements to not look like irony incarnate, tied up in one underage package. It's shit like that that makes me want to drop all loyalty to you and just spend my days huddled in fear, exchanging fake daisies and pokes against a plain white background over yonder.

Just something to think about. You desperately keep copying Facebook in an effort to stop the hemorrhaging away of your users. Well, you don't have to do that! You just have to stop being a bad parody of yourself.

Thanks.

~ Judi














©2009

International Bar Crawl in NYC!

So Saturday, January 17th was…









First off, meet Francesca:









I met Francesca in 1987 when she was three and I was 12. I was a mother’s helper for her family. She and her family moved to Florida though, and I lost touch with the family. But in 2005, we got in touch through Myspace, and she traveled from Baltimore to come to the crawl and stay with us for the weekend! So I hadn’t seen Francesca in almost 20 years! Francesca wore my Go-Go blazer to represent for Japan.




And of course, y’all know Shannon, of Snickers and Samara fame.









Shannon was representing for Ireland (notice her shiny pin!) and Russia, because of her coat (not pictured) and also ‘cause she is Russian.




Now okay, you see that orange thing in the first picture? That is what I was supposed to wear. A German beer maiden costume. But wonder of wonders, it was way too big on me! Good in a way, bad in a way. So instead, I represented for Scandinavia and Finland in particular! Children of Bodom woooo! And in an unprecedented turn of events, I even wore a jacket! Javier said I had to :-/









We took the train, then a cab, and finally arrived at Caliente Cab Company! Here, we would be drinking to Antarctica, since CCC specializes in excellent frozen drinks!









And lo and behold, if it isn’t MILTON!!!









I met Milton in Oneonta, and hadn’t seen him in years! I was so excited! But not as excited as him. Not ONLY did he get to drink a fruity frozen drink, he got a glo bracelet as well!









Meanwhile, we got some flautas, and they were lovely!












Shannon and I got some strawberry margaritas, which were delicious! As Javier took our picture, I told Shannon to look cold since it was Antarctica! She apparently completely ignored me, and I apparently am a very angry shiverer.








Francesca is not a drinker. But she got into the spirit with a peach margarita! Leading to silliness.












Powerpuff Girl Wondertriplets with our glo bracelets!






At long last, having survived “the train ride from hell,” Donnie, the guest of honor, arrived!






Woohoo!




Guys, it’s SO sad. Donnie’s moving to Atlanta. Even though it was only my second time seeing her, I’m going to miss her so much :’(




I do not have a picture of Javier with his frozen drink, but he got one! I’d include a FAIL pic but there is NO TIME because we must depart for Africa. Say goodbye to the Taco Taxi!*









*That’s what she said.




For the next bar, we went to Duplex!






We forgot to take a picture, and this is what the Internet gave me.




Africa, baby! We all got “Giraffes,” and they were REALLY tasty. One of the most awesome things about bar crawls is confusing the hell out of the bartenders, like WTF, you need 7 Giraffes? Javier said the bartender was hesitant to make them, much like the Quarter Irish, but more on that later. But they were made, and they were delicious!






Vodka + Blue Curacao + Sour mix + Banana liqueur + Sprite =






Joy and girl bonding!




Meanwhile, Milton’s friend Joseph arrived!







And Michael came with his friend Eric! I met Michael at 7-11 when I lived in Levittown. And he RULES. Eric was really nice too! But we did not take a picture of them at Duplex, as we were moving on! To pizza!












Francesca loves this movie “Devotchka” (sp?) because it makes her very, very sad. So randomly she likes to take “Devotchka” pictures. Look sad!










The next bit of time was rather nightmarish, as all the bars seemed to disappear, and like if you were watching a movie, you’d say that’s not realistic, it’s Manhattan on a Saturday night. There may as well have been tumbleweeds! Or at very least that aggressive smoke that comes from the street in New York stuff that is filmed in LA. Anyway, it was truly bizarre, and truly confusing. I was upset and felt for sure everyone’s night was ruined, but everyone was so upbeat and awesome – thanks guys. Seriously, another REALLY nice group of people. And all’s well that ends well, because we ended up here:









I cannot say enough good things about this place, or the people in it. From the man in charge, whom I believe was the owner, to the bartenders, to the patrons. It was a great vibe. It was a classy place, but really laid back, and no one made us feel weird for getting kamikaze shots in a wine bar, for Asia. I wanted a Mai Tai, because few things in life bring me greater joy than a Mai Tai even if it is ten degrees outside, but when in Rome, you know? So to speak. ALSO, this gave us the opportunity to pay homage to Mike, aka Smartass Blog Kamikaze.


















That is Michael and Eric in the picture with me! They are totally fun and awesome. Guys I hope you’ll come out again!















Donnie found a kindred spirit in Francesca, as they are both masters at Glass Finagling, and scored an Amstel Light glass!









We gave glo bracelets to the (I think) owner and bartender, and they invited us behind the bar, which ruled!









Seriously guys, if you’re ever in the area – check out this bar! Tell them the weird people with the glo bracelets sent you.



Next up – Australia! Which we drank to here:









I’ve been here for shows before, but never just to hang out. It was GREAT. Fun and lively, but very open and spacious. And did you know that a vodka martini with lemon was originally called a Kangaroo Cocktail!


















Donnie made the executive decision to switch to Europe because she wanted a Guinness. Which I could not argue, because a) it was her bon voyage, and b) I’m pretty sure begrudging someone a Guinness is an equivalent to a cockblock. Guinness is magical. (AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)






Wanna see a magic trick…






It’s…GONE!




Meanwhile, Milton returned!









And wonder of wonders, it is none other than Deep Thought himself! He came all the way from Virginia, but it took a long time because of the inauguration. It was midnight when he met up with us! He’s awesome, even more in person than I could have imagined. DT, I don’t know if I’m allowed to use your name, so I will call you that, it was a pleasure; thank you so much for traveling to hang out with us.









I’ll tell you right now, we never got to the Americas. Which I will justify for two reasons: Javier and I were the hosts, and he represents South America and we each drank a Sam Adams on the train in. [/FANWANK]. Also, and this is just logical fact: The Peculier Pub is one of the best places to end a night of drinking, ever! It calls to us on the bar crawls, like the mermaids, each to each. They sing to us, and we respond. There is no choice.




Previously, at…


















Anything can happen. Tonight, Europe happened, and fresh on our high of Libertarian bonding, with DT, Donnie and I invoked the name of Spud!












Because truthfully, where would we be without Spud and his Amazing Text Of The Quarter Irish? Certainly not terrifying bartenders everywhere, having them put together an alcoholic Ecto Cooler!












So as promised and in keeping with tradition, we all toasted to Todd and drank our fluorescent green drinks. It really does amuse me to no end, going to a bar that’s famous for one thing and getting something completely different. I mean, Peculier has like 85 billion different beers and we get this? At 3 a.m.? YES.






Chicken wings!




And then something truly awesome happened. Donnie gave a speech.



















It was incredibly touching. Like, I can’t even describe the amazing feeling of hearing it. Thank you, Donnie. You always have a place to stay in New York, whenever you want to visit : )






IRL (((((HUGGS)))))!




In recognition of Donnie’s love for bar glasses and her farewell party, we gave her one of those Lolita glasses (if you don’t know, check them out, they are so great). This one was called “Pub Crawl!” Yayyy!









But not too much time could be spent crying and being sentimental! Donnie had waited all night for her shot: Jäger.












^^^^^ A dude from San Antonio!







Finally though, the dreaded last words “Last Call!” came, and the ensuing sadness. We parted ways, not before crying all over again. Come to my bar crawls, people! You will shed tears!



A montage to wrap it all up:



Penn Station!







The train!












~ THE END ~




Thank you SO much again to everyone who came out. I had such a wonderful time. Thank you for braving the cold and the trains and the roads…just, thank you. I love you guys ♥















©2009






Click here for Donnie’s blog on the night!