Monthly Archives: June 2010

Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. For real.

Oh man. I should have written this post Thursday night or Friday early morning when I was still riding the high from being at a live taping of my favorite radio program, Wait Wait Don’t Tell me. Instead I am suffering from the backend of the pendulum swing, crashing hard, filled with doubt and self-loathing.

This is a confession from a self-proclaimed dweeb, dork, geek-lover, fangirl, star-struck middle-aged woman who behaved age-inappropriately on Thursday night.

1. Stuff that I said about how I never develop crush on celebrities? Total baloney, it turned out. I had the biggest grin on my face and was giggling like an idiot the whole time I was getting autographs from Peter Sagal, Carl Kasell, Charlie Pierce, and Paula Poundstone. (Roxanne Roberts left by the time we finished our “shopping spree” at the Wait Wait “Shameless Commerce Department” – a homage to another popular NPR program, Car Talk).

I am going to chalk it up to these brilliant people being so humble and so gracious that I could not but be awestruck by their total awesomeness.

I was also giddy from being swept up by the “camaraderie” in the auditorium. It really does feel incredible to be surrounded by like-minded people. For a second, I thought I could understand why the teabaggers go to tea parties.

2. I was so star-struck. I didn’t even care that I failed to bring a “real” camera with me. Just being there was good enough for me.

What a fucking idiot was I? Who went to an event of a lifetime and did not even think of bringing their camera?

3. Yes, my friend and I bought a lot of souvenirs. Well, Linda had to buy something for everybody she knows: lucky woman. She is surrounded by people who actually would kill her if she went to the Wait Wait taping without bringing home something for them.

Me? Not so lucky. Probably would have been more like a taunt if I gave my co-worker Idiot America by Charlie Pierce.

“Awesome! This is like Disneyland for Liberals!” I exclaimed with 100% sincerity.

4. I stumbled forward when it was my turn to talk to Peter Sagal.

“Hi. I brought my own sharpie! This is like Disneyland for the Liberals!!! Ha ha ha.”

Peter. Silence. He might have raised his eyebrow.

“Who is this book for?”

“ME!” I might have squeed. Definitely giggled. A lot.

Peter. Silence. He might have raised his eyebrow.

“May I take a picture of you?” I added, out of breath, “I’ll just Photoshop myself in later.”

Bad habit of mine: pathological need to be funny when I am nervous.

Peter. Silence. He did give my phone a great smile.

Peter Sagal. THAT is a smile, right?

5. Although Peter Sagal was my ~~fangirl~~ fanmatron crush, it was beyond cool to see Carl Kasell in person.

It was surreal to WATCH Carl introducing Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me…

6. Carl, as I had imagined, was very gentlemanly and very gracious. While I was getting an autograph from Carl, Charlie Pierce said in his booming voice, “Somebody here must have done some shopping!” I looked up just as he noticed his book in my arm.

“Good. Let me come over and sign that book for you!”

Yipeee! In my mind, I jumped up and down while clapping my hands.

“I am sure Carl and I can multitask!” Charlie said, as he took the book from me.

“Would you mind if I take a picture of both of ya together? I’ll just Photoshop myself in later…”

Serisouly, dude. Enough with the stupid joke already…

“Sure. I don’t think Carl and I have ever had our pictures taken together before!”

“Cool! I hope this does not mean [insert failed attempt at coming up with some apocalyptic phenomenon to show how witty I was in front of friggin’ Carl Kesell and Charlie Pierce. Smooth. Very smooth].”

Carl & Charlie. Together. Squee!

7. I lurv Charlie Pierce. Even more so after I read the introduction to his book, Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free.

Actually he had me at the title of his book. But oh wow, the blurb for this book made me cry out YES YES YES!

The Culture Wars Are Over and the Idiots Have Won.

A veteran journalist’s acidically funny, righteously angry lament about the glorification of ignorance in the United States.

With Idiot America, Pierce’s thunderous denunciation is also a secret call to action, as he hopes that somehow, being intelligent will stop being a stigma, and that pinheads will once again be pitied, not celebrated.

Charlie walked over to the other end of the auditorium when he learned that he hasn’t signed Linda’s copy. With Linda there, I finally had the courage to ask to have my picture taken with my crush.

“Do you want me to send you the picture?”

“Sure!”

“Give me your address so I can send it to you! Ha ha.”

Oh, I am having a heart attack remembering this while I type. Ugh.

Charlie had his arms on both of us. Squee!

8. Although the taping is live, the show when aired will have already been edited. It’s very interesting to watch them doing the retakes.

This clip shows Carl doing a retake of “GGGGOOOOAAAALLLLL” in honor of World Cup.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zaBx9R2Yk8

It is unfortunate that I failed to successfully record and save the first “GGGOOOOAAAAALLLL” Carl did. He must have gone on for longer than a minute (It felt like forever) and the audience was screaming and whooping and pumping our fists (Ok, maybe I was the only one that did the fist pumping since the audience was more refined than say at a rock concert…) His face turned red towards the end: I was so worried that he was going to pass out!

9. Things I would not have learned about Peter Sagal if I were not there on Thursday:

He was a snake charmer in Michael Jackson’s video Remember the Time. Unfortunately it was left out of the final cut.
Peter DID shake hands with MJ. And, according to Peter, “shared a moment.”
He was an extra in Drew Barrymore’s movie Doppelganger in 1993.

Here is the video clip (taken with my Blackberry so apology for poor quality) of Peter disclosing his stellar resume in the entertainment industry.

10. Paula Poundstone was the funniest. And the most gracious. For starters, Paula said matter-of-factly, “Listen to three kids whine” when asked what she will be doing this summer.

I am having such a girl crush on her as I relive my “time with her.”

We had to wait to meet Paula Poundstone because she actually talked with every single person that asked for her autograph. When it was my turn, the excitement of the night has made me completely lose my mind. I could not stop laughing.

She wrote,

Lin, May things always strike you funny. Love.

For 24 hours I have been replaying our exchange frame by frame, tormenting myself, wondering whether she thought I LAUGHED too much. Now I saw the word, “LOVE”. I am just going to take it literally. Paul loves me. Period. Life can go on again.

11. Linda wanted the book to be for her mother-in-law, so Paula wrote,

Linda kept on yelling out things about you during the show.

12. Linda told Paula her name is “Lin-da”, so I said, “And I went without the Duh,” which took Paula by surprise. She paused, thought about it, and chuckled.

PAULA POUNDSTONE LAUGHED AT MY STUPID JOKE!

BOO-YAH!

Did I tell you I have developed a crush on Paula?

Last Day of Innocence

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He may not know it but today marked an important milestone in my oldest’s life, and also in our life as parents.

My husband walked the boys to the bus stop this morning and he even took some pictures of them together waiting for the bus ~~albeit with his phone~~*. This will be the last time they do this. My children will no longer attend the same school at the same time. It is kind of strange to realize this.

Today is the last day of grade school for my oldest child. After the summer, he will be a 7th grader, going on to junior high. I am ~~dreading~~ seeing it more and more as the end, or the beginning of the end, of childhood innocence for him. For us.

I am terrified. To me, junior high is alien territory. A murky space between child and teens. Where the physiological development of your child propels them across the threshold of adulthood when they are still babies.

My baby.

I did not grow up here and all my education of the American high school experience and culture came from watching high school movies produced in Hollywood, starting with Porky’s. It suffices to say that Porky’s is not very helpful, nor is it reassuring, in preparing me for junior high because, well, all these movies are about senior high schools. Junior high schools are way under-represented in Hollywood. The only movie about junior high school in my recollection is The diary of a Wimpy Kid. A movie so unsettled me that I repeatedly asked my husband, “Is it really that bad? These kids are only 12?! How can they be so mean?” until he lied and said, “No, it’s just a movie. Now stop being so crazy,” and forced my children to promise me that, yes, they WILL tell me if they are being bullied in school because “I WILL GO KICK SOMEBODY’S ASS!”

Oh, yes. I am on full-patrol bully alert. I am sharpening my shuriken and start my 12-step training as a ninja assassin because God forbid if I make it worse for my children by giving those bullies a chance to retaliate.*

I went to an “Introducing New Parents to What Junior High School is All About” meeting a few months back. The principal gave us a rundown of the curriculum, the classes offered, the extra-curricular activities available, the amount of homework expected – “Two hours minimum, and more if they take a foreign language class”, and the rules especially regarding electronics – “NONE allowed. Don’t even bring them to school.” There was a walk-through of the school property, which I missed because my son did not inform me of the meeting until that afternoon, and from what I was told, an attempt to explain how the kids will be divided into two groups because there are too many of them, the Switch and Swap between classes, and something about the homeroom not being really important since the kids are based off of their lockers.

Lockers? You mean lockers from which things inadvertently fall out and the owner of the said locker will be ridiculed and thus be relegated to the Purgatory of the Uncool? You mean lockers where the smaller kids get shoved into by the bullies all the fucking time and nobody ever stops them or at least alerts the authorities? Is it just me? Nobody else sees these lockers as potential hazards and should be purged from high schools? Or are the movies completely made up?

Good. Now I feel better. I should also stop remembering each and every high school torture scene I have seen.

Then there was the cafeteria. The pièce de résistance in every high school movie. Although I mocked myself for taking the movies too literally, I soon realized, much to my dismay, that the significance of the cafeteria is not an exaggeration by Hollywood. I spent half an hour listening to moms rehashing and reviewing the cafeteria seating assignment process and policy shared with us new parents.

The kids will have a few weeks to sit wherever they want. The day before the designated day, an announcement will be made. “Tomorrow is the day!” On the designated day, wherever the kids are sitting and whomever they are sitting with, THIS IS IT. They have to remain in that seat for the next 3 months.

The moms seemed to be satisfied that there will be quarterly rotations. So I was too. After I made this mental note…

Note to Self: Child MUST attend school on THOSE FOUR days. Even if he is coughing up blood.

All this pressure to be COOL. To NOT be uncool.

I seriously admire all of you who have grown up this way, who have gone through and survived this unscathed. Just sitting here thinking about it, the pressure is getting to me so much that I want to slit my throat. Because the boundary between COOLNESS and UNCOOLNESS seems so… fickle and arbitrary. One has no control over it. You become the hostage of your peers who are just as confused as you are.

As I watched the children at their 6th grade party having the time of their life, I wondered whether these kids knew that their carefree days were naught: Did they know that this might be the last time all of them would be hanging out as a group and stay in such proximity to each other (for 100% innocent fun), no cliques in sight? That this would be the last time the D.J. did not need Bill Pullman’s speech at the end of Independence Day to rouse everybody to participate equally, more or less?

My heart ached.

For almost all of them this was probably the first “dancing” party they have been to. They were excited. And awkward at the same time, not sure what to do with their long limbs when the music started pounding. While I wearily noted down a few kids that could be easily pegged as “future jocks and queen bees in the making” and I mentally gave them the Robert De Niro “I’m Watching You” hand sign, short and tall, small and big, boys and girls, they all acknowledged each other’s existence. They were all hanging out and being uncool together. Crossing that mile marker. And that made it totally cool.

*I started out wanting to write a sentimental piece about how my baby is all growing up and no longer a child. Apparently, my school of parenting is Unsentimental Parenting. Somehow this turned into an exercise in mental anguish and pre-battle prep and I am psyching myself up like Mr. “I Pity the Fool” T.

*Correction: I forwarded my husband the email version that Feedburner sent me and he would like it to be known that he actually remembered to bring an ACTUAL camera with him that morning to the bus stop. That’s more than I can say, honey. You know how I only take pictures with my iNotPhone now.

* Yes, I email my husband selective blog posts of mine to 1. inform him what’s going on in this household because chances are he has no idea (and this may or may not have something to do with him being a road warrior). 2. prevent him from reading posts that I don’t ~~want~~ need him to read.

Warning: Do not read this if you are my husband

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The Kitchen Witch tagged me for an interesting exercise…

No tan lines?!

Clarification: A writing/blogging exercise. Not the kind of exercise being vigorously practiced by Barbie and Ken as shown in the photo.

“If tagged, you need to list (and then explain your reasoning) 5 characters you’d like to do the horizontal whiplash with,” according to the bewitchin’ lady lording over the Kingdom of Cookery.

As an over-thinker and an anti-over-sharer when it comes to businesses in my own bedroom, I have been ruminating and debating on my choices.

Digression: Alas, this sort of explains why no fireworks are coming out of my bedroom, or my crotch for that matter. (Hey, I figure I need to throw you some TMIs so you won’t cry foul…)

I am embarrassed to say, yet obviously not embarrassed enough to lie about it, the first character that came to my mind was…

Father Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds. Do you remember this popular mini-series in the 1980s? Richard Chamberlain played the tortured priest? Man oh man, for a young teenage girl in Taiwan, that show had some of the most erotic, passionate scenes I was able to witness.

Digression: Ok, my mother did bring me to The Blue Lagoon with Brooke Shields by mistake. Fortunately for my mother, I was too ~~dumb~~ young to understand any of it. The realization of what goes on in that movie came to me out of the blue one day while I was sitting in the classroom in COLLEGE. I went, “Ohhhhhhh………. I got it!”

Forbidden love between a Catholic priest and an impressionable young girl whom he had known since she was four? COME ON! How hot is THAT?

This was of course before the world learned of the prevalanec of child abuse conducted by the Catholic clergy. Looking back now. YIKES. I think I really did throw up in my mouth when I watched again, for the purpose of researching for this post (Seriously, the sacrifice I make for you guys…), the long awaited consummation between Meggie (Rachel Ward) and her relationship with Father Ralph.

The following scene, in 1983, was called “the most erotic love scene ever to ignite the home screen.”

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc0bF2HMP_E

Mr. Rochester in the BBC Mini Series, Jane Eyre, played by Timothy Dalton. Another one of my earliest fantasies. This was before Dalton had the misfortune of being James Bond for two measly Bond films and immediately became UNCOOL because almost everybody hated him as Bond.

Mr Rochester

This mini-series was also aired in 1983. I am now convinced that 1983 was a watershed year for me. The year of my sexual awakening. Now that explains the sudden urge to pee when I watched these mini-series. “Ohhhhhhh………. I got it!”

So… to begin answering the question for realz… I have to start with Fitzwilliam Darcy from Pride and Prejudice. I don’t know why: I seem to have a thing in my fantasy for the aloof yet secretly passionate and protective type.

And I was VERY happy with BBC’s adaptation in 1995 with Colin Firth as Mr. Darcy.

Mr. Darcy

A dripping wet Mr. Darcy. This is a bit too much IMO.

To further prove that I have a thing for aloof yet secretly passionate and protective type, the one character that gets my panties really really wet is the vampire Bill Compton from The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris. Oh my lord. I have never ever read romance novels except these books. And oh my lord, let me exclaim again, they are bordering on porn, or at least my over-imaginative mind received similar amount and severity of stimulation from reading these pages.

And it’s not just Bill the Vampire. All of Sookie Stackhouse’s lovers are hump-worthy on the pages: Eric Northman, a vampire that is depicted like a Nordic god, a viking in his past life, with a gorgeous body built like rock and an insatiable appetite for “fun”. Her third conquest, Quinn, is a friggin’ “SPOILER POTENTIAL so I cannot say what kind of animal he is here”! It suffices to say that whichever animal Quinn is, the sex scene as penned by Harris definitely lives up to the said animal’s reputation. Grrrrrrrr….

I read the first six books in the series non-stop last year when we were on the beach for a week. I was addicted. Obsessed. Like a sex fiend. Only came up for air when reality called.

There I was, sitting on the beach in bright daylight, between my mother-in-law and my father-in-law, surround by screaming happy children, reading these words: (And mind you, I am leaving out the MORE explicit parts in this paragraph…)

As I squirmed uncomfortably in my beach chair, I wondered why there was not a sticker on these books (or on any of the romance novels…) and whether anybody could tell that I was being aroused…

“His fingers and his mouth were busy learning my topography, and he pressed heavily against my thigh. I was so on fire for him I was surprised that flames didn’t flicker out of my finger tips. I curled my fingers around him and stroked… I reached between us to put him at just the right spot… I tried to yank him back, but he began kissing his way down my body… His mouth was talented… he turned his face to my inner thigh, muzzling it, his fingers moving steadily now, faster and faster…”

Oooo child. I need to go take a break. Be right back.

I’m bbbbaaacccckkkkkk! Thanks for waiting. That wasn’t long, was it? So where was I?…

Of course, HBO later, much to the dismay of my panties, adapted these books into the cultish True Blood. Oh yeah, baby. Bill you can bite me any day. Or night for that matter.

Bill Compton: the Un-Vampire from True Blood

As I am coming… to the end of this post, I want to be really really really honest with y’all. Like 120% honest: I fantasized about having sex with one of the aliens from the movie Cocoon. I don’t even care that the object of my lust shown in the following clip is female so I may be entering the realm of homoeroticism inadvertently. I am pretty sure these aliens can assume any shape they want to be. Maybe I’ll ask that the alien morphs into Mr. Darcy.

Yes. I am lazy. Didn’t I tell you that? I love how in this fantasy of mine a la Cocoon I do not need to do anything. Not even lift a finger. Nada. Oh man. I am excited just thinking about doing absolutely nothing.

The best part of this award? I get to pass the award along and tag the others to play this game so I can live through your fantasies vicariously. (Yeah, I know. That makes me an uber loser for having to live my fantasies through your fantasies…). What I really wanted to do here is to copy and paste my entire blogroll. Instead, I am going to beg you, implore you, beseech you, “puppy eye assault” you to go ahead, accept this award, own this challenge and write about the five characters that give you that “tinkling” feeling. Or please share by leaving a comment.

In addition, I’m going to round up the usual suspects who I assume would DELIGHT in such an opportunity to talk about the objects of their sexual fantasies. PLEASE DO consider this as my sincere adoration rather than an accusation, ladies! Yes, my darlings. I am putting you on the spot. The G Spot.

Andrea @ A Little Bit Rock n Roll

Gorgeous @ A Vapid Blonde

Elly @ Buggin Word

Mrs. Sexy @ Mrs. BlogAlot

Mary @ Pajamas and Coffee

Patty @ Patty Punker

She who is “NOT Kaiser Sose. Spartacus. or Your father” @ The Sky Is Falling

And I seriously would have been the most egregiously remiss if I did not tag Wicked Shawn @ Wicked Girls Think It for this one.

I think we are all in for a treat.

*Rubs hands* EXCELLENT!