Shut up, Ryan(s).

Last night Javier and I were watching Season Three "Office" episodes that he'd DVRed for us to watch. And during one of the eps, he blurts out, "Ryan's a DICK!" And seriously, I was like, thank GOD someone else said that, because I was worried that I was being all project-y and bitter due to past woes.

But seriously, I hate Ryan.

Don't get me wrong. I think B.J. Novak is brilliant and I love him. And Ryan cracks me up on a regular basis, and I very much enjoy watching Ryan the character.

But as a heterosexual woman, I hate Ryan the guy.

See, I can understand Ryan's bitterness about becoming full-time. It's hard to find a job, and he did sort of fall into the dysfunctional vortex that is Dunder-Mifflin. But he is such a jerk to Kelly, seriously. He is like the worst specimen of dating guy out there, IMO. I mean, I have no love lost for the misogynistic dude who goes out and has sex with everything in sight with a "Hey, baby, I'm a player" mentality. But at least that guy is simple and up front and if you fall for him, it's kind of your fault. Ryan, though, he is the worst. From the get-go, he's behaved like Michael Mancini on "Melrose Place" when Sydney blackmails Michael into marrying her. And I don't remember what Sydney had on Michael, but it was pretty big, I think. THAT is the only excuse for behaving the way Ryan does -- if a crazy hooker cum blackmailer can ruin your life.

Ryan? Like, maybe he made a mistake, hooking up with Kelly while drinking. But from the second that happened, she's been nothing but honest with him, and he's been nothing but dishonest with her. And worst of all, he stays with her! And acts in every scene with or about her like he is some poor victim, and it is so very, very annoying.

Ryan always knew what Kelly was. She was always outwardly desperate; it isn't like she was all cool and chill and once she roped him in, freaked out and tried to keep him with her. She's a celebrity-obsessed, baby-wanting bubbly chick, but she has a good heart. She doesn't deserve the pained looks, and the broken dates, and the unreturned phone calls. Yes, she should break up with HIM, but I can also see why she'd be confused. When the Scranton branch was supposed to be closing, he didn't tell Kelly that they should probably just break up. He took the complete coward's way out, and said that he thought they could have a future together, if only. Then when the "if only" came true, he just kind of acted all victimized again, instead of acknowledging his own screw-up.

Kelly is annoying and pretty dumb, and I wouldn't want to date her, myself. But I'm not. Dating her. Ryan is. And he needs to man up. And if you are a guy out there who totally empathizes with Ryan and thinks he's a victim, chances are that you need to grow a set of balls. If you are a girl out there who is with someone like Ryan, then chances are that you should dump him for a guy with some balls. And also probably grow some figurative ones yourself.

Charm and wit and intelligence are great, but when they are paired with a lack of compassion for people who treat you well, they are a dangerous combination, and lead to being a Plainview husband. Don't do it. Just say no to being a Ryan!



©2006

Blonde Ambition

If you are going to get to know me at all, then I really must explain to you my hair in 1989.

In order to understand that I was neither a) schizophrenic nor b) on acid, you really need to understand just how much we as girls in the '80s needed to look like female sitcom stars. We're talking pre-Internet, even pre-Hairstyle magazines that sometimes still have "The Rachel" on the cover. All we had was television and Teen Beat. For me, my actress hair of choice was Brooke Theiss, Wendy Lubbock from "Just the Ten of Us." I saw this goal as achievable. However, in order to attain it, I had to get more serious about achieving both the perfect white-blonde, and the perfect curl in my pin-straight hair.

Step one, obviously, was to use Touch of Sun (like Sun-In, only "better"). Every single morning, I was like someone on "The O.C.," waking up at approximately 4am. For them, it's to bond with parents and go to the diner for several hours and also possibly get into a fistfight. For me, it was to shower, spray Touch of Sun all over my head, and then blowdry my hair. Over and over.

All the effort was paying off. My hair was finally getting white blonde -- excellent! I was well on my way to the perfect "Wendy," when I got sidetracked unexpectedly by the reigning queen of television girls: Alyssa Milano.

Alyssa Milano was, of course, the best one out there, because not only was she so pretty, but every boy in the world loved her, including Smurf. Hi, Smurf! And see, in the past, I never even ATTEMPTED to emulate Alyssa Milano, because she had that thick, wavy, long, Italian hair that I'd spent my life deeply envying, knowing it would never be mine.

But all of a sudden! Alyssa Milano had a new hairdo! It was layered, with thick bangs. And much like Alexis Bledel today, Alyssa Milano defied all natural odds to become even more beautiful!

And the brilliant thing was, I already had bangs. So obviously, all I had to do was cut my hair to look like Alyssa's! Forget Brooke Theiss! I wanted the best!

Obviously, the next scene found me in my room in front of my...slanted...mirror, with a pair of dull scissors.

Yeah.

Ignoring all laws of nature, and physics, and, I'm even guessing, geometry, I set out to transfom my just-below-shoulder-length, super-fine, super-straight, (not naturally white) blonde, Irish-girl hair into...Alyssa Milano's hair. Which, BTW, was almost down to her waist.

"WHAT HAVE I DONE? SWEET JESUS, WHAT HAVE I DONE?" I might have sung if I had been transported to a future with "Les Miserables," but if I HAD had access to a time machine, a great many of my problems would have been solved, such as the fact that I now sported an, albeit whitish blonde, upside-down staircase on my head where my hair used to be!

WTF!

I made the most of it, and thanks to the popularity of alligator and banana clips, as well as the laser light show of bangs that I sported, I could basically cover up the damage and wait for time to work its sweet, sweet magic.

Crisis mostly averted. All was well. The end.

Only here is where Stripe JUMPS INTO THE POOL to unleash hell on earth! Because just when you think life is safe again...I buy a home perm!

I must have started watching "Just the Ten of Us" again. Or seen one too many Ogilvie® commercials DURING "Just the Ten of Us," because while I can explain to you the misguided logic behind both the Touch of Sun and the scissors, I absolutely cannot explain why I decided to give myself a home perm the night before I had to go to sleepaway camp for the first time ever.

And yet.

There was something about the combination, in the '80s, of plastic rods, rolling papers, and the smell of sulphur. For a girl like me, who dreamed her whole life of having curly hair, these things symbolized power. Control. The ability to take control over my hair destiny.

Well, this perm went as all my other perms and bodywaves that had gone before it -- unimpressive, limp, but slightly wavy! TRIUMPH!

Until.

Like I've said, I have super fine, soft hair. When the air gets humid, my hair doesn't frizz, it rolls over and dies. So I was completely unprepared for the sensation of my hair...growing outwardly...as my mother drove me to Shannon's house, where I was sleeping over so we could leave for camp in the morning.

Shannon greeted me with a look that can only be described as quizzical. "Did you do something different to your hair?" she nervously asked.

"Oh, I gave myself a perm," I said as nonchalantly as I could, trying with all of my cheerleading spirit to squelch the sense of panic I was feeling as my hair expanded around me like Violet when she turns into a blueberry.

"Oh!..."

Okay, now you see, Shannon was (hee!) the nicest person in the WORLD. And to this day, she remains the most diplomatic of friends, the best at getting along with everyone. So for SHANNON to not throw me an "It looks nice" bone was a BAD SIGN.

I rushed to the mirror in Shannon's hallway.

"Oh my God!" I cried.

Shannon continued to look confused, and at this point I realized that the look I mistook as confusion was actually one of worry and concern.

My hair...MY HAIR!

You know how in television when people suffer loss, how sometimes they go through really stupid and self-destructive behavior, but it doesn't affect them until that ONE moment, where it all of a sudden HITS them and they just break down and sob? Like Rory, when she breaks up with Dean. Like Willow, when she decides to stop being evil and start being real.

Like me, when I stood in front of the mirror, and saw a yellow, upside-down staircase of straw, uber-poofy "hair."

Ohhhhhhh. Nooooooo.

Apparently, putting nasty perm chemicals on top of BLEACH doesn't exactly lend itself to a positive end result. And worst of all...

...I HAD TO GO TO CAMP TOMORROW! And I truly believe that this is what spawned my present-day social anxiety. I mean, as it was, by 8th grade, I weighed 130 pounds and was carting around a DD chest. I wasn't fat at ALL, but I thought I was, considering that I lived in a Lilliputian land, like what IS it with Christian girls? Every girl at my school and from camp was like five foot one and weighed 90 pounds. So as it WAS, I had deep-seated (seeded? SOMEONE TELL ME!) body issues.

And you can say, well stop being shallow for half a second and just have fun, but: please see the opening paragraphs. Junior high was not a time for self-possession and objectivity. That was what college was for, only then you felt bad for not being self-possessed, so you ate ice cream and wore ugly sweatshirts.

But as a 13-year-old girl on your way to camp with people you've never met before, you don't care about your energetic spirit, or your ability to make people laugh. You care about the fact that some BITCH (who was actually a sweetheart) named Lauren has the perfect white-blonde hair, even perfecter than Wendy's!

And hers is natural.

And meanwhile, yours has gone from the "Wendy" to the "Ray Bolger."

And 14 years later, with absolutely no irony, you purchase another home perm. But fear of the past gives you pause.

And you leave it in your cabinet, but move it with you from apartment to apartment.

And you wonder: Elliott from "Scrubs" maintains that all women are still 13-year-old girls inside. So the question is, will that inner 13-year-old once again have her way with the setting lotion?

Only time will tell.










©2006

Junior Low :'(

It's been awhile since I humiliated myself, especially since last night at my work party, I had the presence of mind to remember that open bar + Corona = Godsend. So since I didn't fall down or anything, I feel lacking, and am going to share with you the famous "Fading Shadows." It's a song I wrote in eighth grade for a boy that I was in love with, who, alas, loved another. His code name was "Herbie," and that is what I shall call him. Anyway, I wrote this song about my sadness:

All the time you ignore me
And pass me right by
I turn around rejected
And I almost start to cry

Then the hurt changes to anger
And I solemnly swear
That I love you no more
And I don't really care

Ohhhh
Fading shadows
Of the way that I feel
Shadows are fading and I don't know what's real
I need time to get over you
I need time to heal

I think there was more, if for no other reason than I have always felt very strongly about bridges. But that is all I remember. And I will tell you this song was no joke. I was very proud of it, and even wrote piano music to go along with it!

However, all my creative efforts were for naught, as, okay. See, I spent the whole year in eighth grade love with this guy, and that is intense. And he of course loved Kerry, because everyone did, that I was used to, but then they went out, breaking my heart and also creating an uncomfortable connection in my mind with Rod Stewart's "My Heart Can't Tell You No."

Finally, though, they broke up, and I must give myself retroactive props for actually feeling bad for the both of them, looking so sad. But we all must move on, and for me, I thought that moving on would maybe happen at Great Adventure. You see, our mutual friend Christina was having her birthday party there. Exciting! And Herbie and I got along pretty well, but you know in "Friends" when Rachel's like, "He needs to see me outside of work so he can start falling in love with me!" about JoshOOAH? That is totally how I felt. I mean, I'm not a morning person. I'm only going to look so good when I do my makeup on the bus, and have to wear a uniform. But in real life? He simply had no idea just how curly I could get my hair, you know? I had Benders! Also, I had this totally awesome outfit I was going to wear, and seriously I was rocking a dangerous combination of 1989, a weird sense of humor, and fashion inspiration from The Baby-Sitters Club. So you can only imagine what this outfit looked like. I will tell you that the skirt had ruffles, and was to be accompanied by my green hightops.

PLUS, I shine at amusement parks! That is totally my tomboy equivalent of sports! Meaning that I will do ANYthing at an amusement park; I love that adrenaline immensely. It's actually probably a good thing that Action Park closed down when it did. Considering that I saw the bloody pictures on the line for the Alpine Slide, laughed, then went full throttle down the entire hill.

Anyway, what? Oh, right. So I was seriously looking forward to this day. Even if Herbie never liked me as more than a friend, I genuinely liked him as a person, and everyone going. Plus, Lightning Loops was still around, and that ride ruled!

About a week before the party, I was asking Christina about it, and she looked visibly uncomfortable. "What's wrong?" I said. ("What's wrong Dad...what's wrong Dad...what's wrong Dad...") She was all, "I don't want to tell you."

!

"No, you can tell me, what is it?"

"Herbie...isn't going to go if you're going."

!

"What? Why?"

"He said he hates you."

GONG!!!!

So that was that. He hated me. To this day, I'm not sure why, but I felt it was rather harsh. Not like me, sure, but hate? So yeah. That was really depressing and confusing. Also, we didn't even go to Great Adventure. We went to see "K-9" with Jim Belushi at the Valley Stream theater, then had a sleepover at Christina's house. We watched Guns N' Roses videos, and that was the night that I decided I thought "Patience" was overrated.

And slowly, my heart healed, and I was able to unrequited love again in ninth grade.

Anyone who says that being a teenager is the best time of someone's life is CRAZY.




©2006 (the blog); ©1988 ("Fading Shadows" -- BACK OFF!)