My friend Anna, who is organized and owns a labelmaker, just asked me if I’m all packed. I thought I’d answer her with a photo:
Interior design from TV shows and movies
I should be packing. I should be packing clothes for LA and Canada and I should be putting things in bottles and then ziploc bags and I should also be stuffing socks into shoes. By my own logic, I plan to go naked in Orange County.
Anyway though, I just found this site about how to get the set design looks from TV and movies and it’s cool http://silverscreensurroundings.blogspot.com/
For someone who has so little style, it’s weird that I’m spending so much time reading about style. I don’t plan to apply it. I just like to look at the pictures. And yet my words have style. Sometimes I speak entirely in corduroy.
Also, Gossip Girl made me cry tonight.
Furniture frottage
So I think maybe it gets worse before it gets better because while I feel much saner about the couch these days—meaning I feel like eh, it’s a couch, there are a lot of different colors I could be happy/unhappy with—I will admit that yesterday one of the sales guys at Crate and Barrel caught me surreptitiously lean down and then rub my face against a couch cushion. I had to see how it would feel if I were napping on it! It was a nap test!
But perhaps the way I did it, as if I wanted to get a better look at something and then oops, lost my balance! I seem to have fallen forward and landed on my cheek, I better just sweep to the right before getting up—wasn’t the coolest. And then when the guy looked at me across the store, and he had this expression of horror on his face, I shot him a steely “let’s not tell anyone about this,” look. It’s ok though, because I caught him making a huge furniture faux pas a couple weeks ago. He told me two couches were made by the same manufacturer when they so are not.
You see, I could sell that store’s furniture, that’s how intimately acquainted I am with each line and each collection and each manufacturer and each couch’s cheek feel.
Tomorrow I go to LA for MINI. Then I’m in Orange County for Thanksgiving and my dad’s bday (all his kids and their spouses and kids are coming! I’m bringing three husbands, four kids and a turtle) and then I’m going to Canada to film six episodes of a TV show. I’m not sure which one yet but if I had my choice it would be “You Can’t Do That On Television.”
That’s not true. It would be Facts of Life. I don’t care that it wasn’t filmed in Canada. But I actually do know which show. I just don’t want to tell you because I like to keep secrets from you. It makes me feel important. You know, like I’m on the inside of something and you’re on the outside of it, pressing your face against the glass—or the couch cushion of my heart—begging to be let in. Look, here we are, all of us on this side of the couch cushion having a jolly time and totally knowing the name of the TV show and laughing and saying “aboot” when we mean “about” and paying in dollars that are called dollars but are different! And there you are, alone and confused, wishing you could be included, mumbling something about maple. It’s so sad.
More about Chile
Ok so my friend the NYC Donut Reporter who also goes by Duane Reade and also by Mike Boyle posted a much funnier and more descriptive assessment of yesterday’s Chili thing than mine and I dare say he paid better attention than I did because I learned quite a bit of stuff from reading his blog. Stuff that presumably I heard yesterday as well. And I know what happened. See, a few minutes in I decided I should update my twitter. Then I tried to think of something clever. Then I decided that I would pretend I didn’t realize that this was a lunch for the country of Chili and instead thought it was about chili, you know, the meaty or not crock pot thing with beans. So then I tried to figure out how to best convey that. Then we left.
It's come to this
Fabric swatches on my couch.
More fabric swatches.
More.
There aren’t different swatches in each photo. Just a different configuration.
In other news, today I went to a press luncheon presentation for Chile. This is one of the perks of not working in an office—getting to go to things like this. See, I used to get invited to stuff like this all the time but had to say no because if I vacated my desk for three hours I might never come back. Back in those days I was young and naive. I didn’t know what I know today, which is that even though you might think Chilean food is spicy, it’s not. That’s one of the big misconceptions about this diverse and friendly country with many organic ingredients. “Flavored well, not spicy,” said a bald man wearing a pink tie. Also, there is something called Merken and NO ONE made any merkin jokes. That’s how civilized this crowd was.
Um, what else? Please forgive me, I’m distracted by Jeff Conaway and that piece of work Vicki Whatshername. Oh wait, I’m wrong! He’s not bitching at Vicki! He was telling the new tech Luisha that he doesn’t like her. I should never multitask like this.
So I jotted down a few choice sentences I heard today. These are they:
“I just want to give a shout out to the avocado oil.”
“Basil? Sauvignon? Love it!”
“Sole Valhalla”
“It’s not a wine that shouts at you with exclamation points.”
My friend Mike took some photos which he told me he’s heard are referred to, in the porn business, as food porn. Or maybe it was in the food writing world.
I’m joking as I’m actually familiar with this atrocious term and long ago decided that until a naked person appears in the photos I don’t think we should be calling it porn. Have people no respect for porn?
Um. Oh, Mike’s photos:
Oh, also, also! I think I’ll get to drive a MINI E which is the new electric MINI. I’m totally going to try to plug my hairdryer into it.
Wear yourself out by listening to me go on and on about furniture
Earlier today I had a whole temper tantrum inside my own head and decided that when I got home I would write a blog post entitled “I don’t know how I feel about my couch. P.S. I’m neurotic and going to die alone.”
Then I found out that title had already been taken so I had to go with the one above.
See, I’ve been going back and forth on this couch. Not literally. On the upside, it’s comfortable. On the downside, sometimes I look at it and think “it looks like barf.”
But considering how goddamn long I took to decide and how annoying I was about it shouldn’t I just love it? Love it to pieces?
Because I don’t. But I think I like it. Maybe? I don’t know. I like it better now that I bought throw pillows for it (I haven’t decided which ones I like, hence the three different pillows.) Earlier tonight I decided I’d go with a silver, gold and white theme which is neato and, um, yeah. Neato’s all I got on that one. Fancy? Neato and fancy? I could do neato and fancy. And secretly Christmasy.
But then sometimes I look at the couch and think “it looks like a giant gum eraser.” I also think it looks like liver and I also think it looks like steak that’s been chewed up and spit out. Also: gristle.
But then I see it in photos and I think maybe it’s ok.
See, complicating matters is the fact that the delivery men nicked it in a couple spots so C&B offered to replace it. I explained that it was kind of difficult to get it into the space so they’re sending someone out to look at it here to see if he can patch it up in situ. What does in situ mean? Hold please.
God I’m smart.
Um, yeah, so anyway, if I act fast I could get this big gray menace out of my apartment and my life forever and then I could invite something else into my living room that I will go nuts about. Seriously, I’m sick and tired of myself.
But it’s not like I never like anything ever. When I look at my bed, my white duvet covered bed, I feel calm and good. I don’t have this crazy ping ponging meat-comparison making reaction happening.
Yet I’m not at peace with the decision to just return the fucker either. That makes me anxious too.
Let’s talk about my last apartment, shall we? I moved into it under duress. I wanted to stay in the apartment I was in before that, my first real apartment in New York, but it’s a long story and that wasn’t feasible so there my sister and I were, needing to find an apartment or break up and she had a friend who was vacating this great apartment in the village and we went and looked at it and because I couldn’t find anything else I said yeah, that’s fine. But then before we pulled the trigger I began doubting the decision and was freaking out and begged a friend from work who was later my boyfriend, unless he was already my boyfriend at the time, to go look at the place with me. We did and he reassured me that it was a great place and I would be happy there.
Sadly it was a terrible place and I was miserable there.
Or rather, it was a pretty decent place but I wasn’t happy there anyway. I never liked that apartment or that neighborhood. Also, there were mice. Oh my God, my couch looks like a big sheet of mice.
So I was thinking about all this this morning and thinking that if I’m having doubts about the couch, instead of letting myself be talked into it, I should just honor those doubts and not keep the damn thing and just wait until I find one I really feel good about.
But then sometimes I look at it and I like it.
And it’s comfortable. It’s really comfortable.
So then why not just get it in a different color?
Because that will take 12 weeks. And plus I’m trying to avoid having people remove it and bring in another one but I’m not sure why I’m trying so hard to avoid that. I mean, just because my idea of hell is moving furniture doesn’t mean that someone whose job it is to move furniture feels the same way.
But still, I just feel like I’m doing it. That thing I do. I don’t know what that thing I do is which makes it hard to know whether I’m really doing it, but I suspect I am. I mean, this feels very me in the extreme. I hate extreme me.
I’m also trying to see if it’s possible to get slipcovers for this couch. I mean, I know you can order them from C&B for about a thousand dollars but for that much, I may as well just get a different couch.
Still reading? I’m sorry to put you through this. On the upside… um…. well okay technically there is no upside. Oh wait, I know! Today I saw a woman pushing two black poodles in a stroller!
Also, I’m aware there’s a world that exists outside me and this couch. I find that annoying, too.
And then I see this photo and I like it again.
I also like ducklings.
Here I am not thinking about couches.
My couch is eleven hours old
And already I’ve fallen asleep on it and nearly lost the remote control in its butt, or whatever the appropriate furniture term for seam between the cushions is.
Also, I know the couch is much older than eleven hours but I choose to ignore the life it led before we crossed paths.
Also, unrelated, I don’t like video chatting. I just don’t. No thank you, gmail.
A joke about furniture
Note: sometimes I come up with terrible jokes, the kind that make you groan. It’s getting worse as I get older, though my allergy to cats is getting better as I get older. I don’t know what to make of this. Eventually my sense of humor will deteriorate to the point where the only kinds of jokes I can make are truly embarrassing and at that point I’ll know it’s time to have kids.
Anyway, to the joke, and I use the word “joke” loosely:
Woman: It’s an occasional table.
Man: Well, what else is it? (maybe this should be: What’s it when it’s not a table?)
Or maybe it should be “What’s an occasional table when it’s not a table?”
But then I don’t know what the answer is.
That super long ring before it goes to voicemail
You know when you call someone and it rings four or five times and then it rings a sixth time and you think the ring is about to stop but then it redoubles its effort really rings like it means it and then goes to voicemail? What is that? Is that the ringer giving up? Or is that the ringer giving you attitude? Like “FINE! Have it your way! I’ll put you through to voice mail.”
This is not to be confused with the ring that lets you know you’re interrupting someone’s call: That weird high pitched tone at the end of each ring which makes you think maybe you should hang up because you know they’re on a call and they know you know.
Anyway, if I ever do stand up comedy again perhaps I’ll make the above funny. Has anyone done anything on phone rings? Am I ripping off Seinfeld? I’d really rather not be.
Wait, I have one more thing to say about rings and ring tones. I had to change all my phones to regular sounding ring tones and my alarm to a beeping sound because my brain is an evil sponge which grasps a few bars of melody and then replays them over and over and over and I couldn’t stand my personal soundtrack being “Calypso.” It was like I was trapped in a Girls Gone Wild commercial. I think maybe I already wrote about this? Well, it’s still true though.
I'm on the Joey Reynolds Show tonight at 2am
I’ll be talking about internet dating. You know you totally want to hear that. http://www.wor710.com/pages/46370.php