Friday, January 21, 2011

WANNA PEEP MY TWEETS? Yeah you do! Follow me at @Firgalicious or become a fan by clicking "Follow" in the upper righthand corner. All the cool kids are doing it!

Let's take ten, shall we?


How do you know when you've gone on too many first dates?  When you rather sit on your couch alone and watch thursday night tv and play on your laptop or read a book than have to sit through one...more....interview first date. (btw I totally started reading BOOKS again! No not articles on the internet, but actual books made from paper, that you flip the pages and you know, read! ....one of my many new year's resolutions).

Sometimes you just need to take a step back and take a breather. And that's exactly what I'm doing. Maybe it's because it's winter and it's only natural to want to hibernate. Or maybe it's because I was overly ambitious when I first joined an online dating site last summer, going on upwards of 6 dates sometimes in a week, not joking, I double booked on more than one occassion (meet bachelor #1 for early drinks and do your best not to appear drunk when you rush off to meet date #2 for later drinks and dinner to sober up).Or maybe I just am boreddddd of asking and answering the same questions over and over and over again. "How do you like your job?" Not much. "What do you want to do?" I DON'T KNOW! It's like the American version of the tiresome Argentine question "Where you from??"

Whatever it is, I am taking a much needed break from first dates, at least for a few weeks. I was supposed to go out with someone last night and I couldn't even be bothered to text the guy back to decide where to meet. It may have been a bit callous, but I don't know him, and I think he'll get over it. It's easy to tell when someone's faking it and really doesn't want to be there. There's a stench to it and I don't want to be giving off that stench, so I'm not gonna. I think after sitting on my couch for a sufficient amount of time I'll eventually want to brave the storm again and get back out there (quite literally sometimes, I cancelled a date last week due to snow conditions, can ya blame a girl?), but for now I'm going to curl up with Judd Apatow's "I Found This Funny," and call it a (very pleasant) night.
"There is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration." 

It's like privacy in a bag!



A useful napping product has emerged in the napping arena in recent months, the Snazzy Napper! Basically it's a blanket with a nose hole that you throw over your face that the commercial believes makes you actually disappear and is "cool." It's a good idea in theory, if it did actually made you disappear. Unfortunately though, it's more of a "Who's that crazy lady in the corner with the blanket over her face? Is she dead?" type of situation. And it's definitely not cool. 

As I've mentioned in the past in passing, napping is one activity at which I excel. I was always a good napper as a kid, and then in high school I really started to hit my stride. And these were the days before inventions like the "Snazzy Napper" were considered hip and trendy. I'd take a shower in the morning, take a quick nap, then get up and get dressed. I'd go to school, speed home and nap for 15 minutes and then get ready for field hockey. To this day, every time my friend Jenny calls me, she asks me "Did I wake you?" It doesn't matter if it's 7 am or 7 pm, it's just a habit from growing up.

I had never faced an instance where my napping was considered problematic until a couple of years ago. As I got older and bolder, I started napping in more public spaces. I'd take a quick snooze on the bus, or even close my eyes for half hour while laying on a blanket in the park. As an English teacher in companies in Buenos Aires, every day I'd have to travel all over the city to my various companies, often with time in between, and boy was it exhausting. There was one company in particular that was quite far but it was a fun technology company, the students were cool and the pay was good and so I taught there.

Those mornings I taught a very early class at 7 am beforehand and then I'd catch a shuttle that would take me to the faraway company, but annoyingly the shuttle left only once every two hours. This either made me 30 minutes late or 1.5 hours early. So I'd arrive early at the tech company and sit in their lounge which was equipped with ping pong tables, video games, foosball, and irresistible beanbag chairs. I'd read in the chairs and occasionally shut my eyes for a few minutes. Who was I harming? No one! I was always on time for class, and it's not like I was shushing people who got rowdy while playing FIFA.

Well one day I received an email from the institute where I worked saying that many people complained to the HR woman at the tech company about the random napping lady in their lounge, and could I please never nap there again, as it wasn't the first time it happened. Granted most people in the company did not take English classes with me, and to them I was just some weirdo sleeping by the ping pong table, but my students who knew my situation all understood, I had a lot of time to kill!

Regardless, embarrassment and an apology ensued. Now if the Snazzy Napper had existed back then, maybe this entire situation could have been avoided!

Monday, January 17, 2011

The Aftermath of the Globes

The Golden Globes went mostly as expected last night. I predicted almost all of the major category wins correctly, but unfortunately only took home second place in a pool I played with some gals and gays. I think it's blatantly obvious who will be scoring Oscars come the end of February (hint hint The Social Network, Colin Firth, Natalie Portman). But as always, dutifully playing the role of the drunken cousin to the Oscars, The Globes provided some splendid surprises and entertainment last night. A few of the awards from last night's performance that I think deserve mention are as follows: 
  • Walking the extremely fine line between funny/cruel/inappropriate/uncomfortable/great/terrible Host: Ricky Gervais, for offending almost everyone in attendance, simultaneously making us viewers feel awkward and awesome while watching actors squirm. 
  • Most Blatant Sexual Come-on Joke: Robert Downey Jr. for stating that he'd like to sleep with every actress nominated in the musical or comedy category including Emma Stone who's nominated for playing a high school student. 
  • Biggest "Celebs, they're just like us" Moment: Angelina Jolie reapplying lip gloss. All this time I thought those perfectly pouty lips were automatically replenished with color splendor from within. 
  • OMG WTF Are You Wearing But It Totally Doesn't Matter Cause You're Still Awesome Award: Helena Bonham Carter, because seriously, who would expect anything different?
  • Most Deserved Standing Ovation: Michael Douglass for being alive and beloved by all, even if he did make Wall Street Money Never Sleeps. We all make mistakes. 
  • Nip-slip 2011: Jane Fonda showing more skin than intended. Older women exposing their breasts is not a good look.
And there you have it folks! 

Saturday, January 15, 2011

Not exactly a Friday evening Pick-Me-Up

I saw the "wrist slitter" Blue Valentine last night, and as my friend so astutely pointed out, there are two very important lessons to be garnered from that film: 1. Even really sexy guys like Ryan Gosling become ugly once they're married. 2. Don't get married.

I think that sums it up quite nicely.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Astrological Meltdown!

How much do we project onto ourselves what we're told about ourselves vs. project onto the world who we really are? The age old question that one can never really know the answer to. I was confronted with this conundrum yesterday in the wake of the ASTROLOGICAL CRISIS! of 2011.

Up until yesterday I was a libra. I very much identified with the libra characteristics and took much delight in being a libra. I know a lot of people think astrology is bs, and maybe it is. But to me, it's no more bs than religion, per se. When I first read about my sign, when I was 11 or so, I felt an immediate connection and something about it made total sense to me. "Oh stop it, I'm only being indecisive 'cause I'm a libra!" or "Yeah, I'm easygoing, I don't like the dramzzz, I'm a libra."

See what I mean? Am I really like that, or did I read the characteristics on wikipedia one day and subconsciously decide to mold the sign to fit my personality? Either way, it's happened. You can go round and round forever like the chicken and the egg. Then came an internet explosion yesterday, telling us "HAHA jokes on you! You're someone completely different than who you thought you were, succccccka!" These whacko astronomers said that "because of the moon's gravitational pull on Earth, the alignment of the stars was pushed by about a month," thus fing up everyones sign, and making me a virgo. A virgo?! Are you kidddddding me? No offense to virgos it just ain't me. No way no how, not gonna accept it.

After that complete mindfuck yesterday, turns out all order in the world has been restored! According to the internet today, zodiac signs are the same as they ever were if you adhere to the tropical zodiac (which apparently most of us do).

The moral of this story is I am a proud libra. Whether I adapted to be that way or was born that way is irrelevant. And don't believe everything (or quite possibly anything) you read on the internet.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

The Man with the Angry Face

When I think of all the bad dates I've had (and I've had my fair share), there's always one in particular that tops the list. One of my first experiences dating a fiery Argentinian, was this guy named Hernan. He was Latin sexy, tall, dark and handsome. I met him at an upscale restaurant/bar which was once a mansion that's been converted. He and his friends were sitting at a table ordering rounds of champagne, when he invited me and my friend over to join them. They were very curteous, buying us drinks all night long and engaging in conversation in broken English. He regaled me with stories of his house in the ritzy beach resort town of Punta del Este, in Uruguay. His eyes were dreamy and his voice seductive, and when he looked at me, his intensity burned.
 
He got my phone number and called me immediately the following day, inviting me on date. We went out to a steak dinner (obvs), then a bar for drinks after, and everything was lovely. It was a weeknight and getting late so I asked him to take me home, but he flat out refused. "Just another drink" he begged, which turned into another bottle of champagne, which turned into it being 4 am (their 4 am is like our 12 am), and me very cranky and pissed off. I finally left him at the bar and took a cab home, promising to never see him again.
 
Then I got bored. There were a number of more dates over the next couple of months, always with a new twist. His passionate intensity that first drew me in, turned out to be more closely related to anger. I found myself fighting with him over the most inane things all the time, and it was hard to tell if it was rooted in translation difficulties (as my Spanish at that time wasn't exactly stellar) or general disagreements. But things were always interesting and even though I knew he wasn't for me, he provided me with distractions, stories, and experiences that I thought made him worth the trouble
 
The last date (and here's where the real fun begins) I went on with him was to a bar with a bunch of his friends. He insisted that I leave my friends to come join him, only to ignore me soon after I arrived, and leave into another part of the bar for a while. He returned to the table arm in arm with a breathtaking Argentinian woman. "OMG, did he just pick her up in the other room, with me here? What the F is going on?" I thought. They sat at the other end of the long table from me, chatting intimately, and when I asked who she was, the reply I unanimously received from his friends was that she was his "cousin." Well I didn't know the laws very well in Argentina, but cousins DO NOT KISS LIKE THAT! (Unless of course you're Karen from the movie Mean Girls).  
 
He would later drive away like a bat out of hell with her in the passenger seat, no explanation or regret. In the following days and weeks I got calls and texts, explaining that she was an ex, it meant nothing, they were really over now. But we were through. When I told him I didn't want to see him anymore, that he seemed too angry a person for me, he said he wasn't angry, that was just his face. I guess I wasn't the first person to tell him that.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Dead birds falling from the sky! Snow in 49 out of 50 U.S. states? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE PEOPLE?!

The Accidental Liar

Have you ever thought about making up a completely false persona when you're going out on a date? For whatever reason: you're weird, bored, hate your name, wish you came from more (or less) money. Well, I may or may not have gone out with a guy under false pretenses once. Bear with me, it wasn't exactly my intention to do so, it just kinda...happened.
 
When I lived in Buenos Aires I worked on a viral marketing project for a few months. My initial plan of action was to essentially spam all of my friends on facebook and see how far that took me. It turned out not that far. So, I came up with the brilliant plan to create a fake facebook account in order to spam complete strangers without having to add random friends and mess with my personal life. I was actually shocked at how many people accepted my "fake" friendship - within a day I had in the ballpark of 500 "friends." One of the guys I spammed ended up messaging me back and asking me ("Lauren") out. He was a cute British guy living in BsAs, and what kind of American girl isn't a sucker for a British accent? So after a couple of messages back and forth I agreed to go on a date. Movies and some drinks. 
 
We arrived at the movies, and we immediately recognized each other - I used a real picture after all. He didn't introduce himself by name so I wasn't given a window to do so either. Into the movies we go, barely having had more than a couple minutes of light chit chat. After we head to a bar and order some beers. At this point we'd been out for a couple of hours, and my palms were quickly becoming sweaty and all I could think about was that I gotta come clean and tell this guy that I'm not Lauren, I didn't go to Michigan and study Business, and I don't speak French and Chinese in addition to Spanish. But how could I artfully bring that up without making me seem like a freak? The answer is you can't. 
 
Conversation was flowing smoothly and he seemed to be enjoying my company so I thought now's as good a time as any, just do it. I casually said,  "Wanna hear a funny story?" And then launched into the tale of the marketing campaign, and the fake profile and thus fake identity, and topped it off with "I SWEAR I'm not crazy!" trying to laugh it off. He unfortunately wasn't so amused and moments later asked for the check. I am not the best liar and it doesn't come naturally to me, but I sometimes wonder if I were, how long I could've kept this second life going and dated the Brit. Wouldn't it have been a great story to tell the grandkids?