Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Insert foot in mouth.



During an emotional interview at his Statehouse office with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Sanford said Chapur is his soul mate but he's trying to fall back in love with his wife.

Seriously? Who says that? To a newspaper, no less! Oy. Your wife is going to cut you, man. Like, seriously cut you while you sleep.

HERE.

I don't understand WHY he is still talking about it. Or why HIS WIFE IS. Why are they playing this out in front of us? The sooner they shut up, the sooner it's over. (I am a genius. I need my own PR agency.)

Monday, June 29, 2009

Kind of incredible advice, really:

Some of you guys tease on Pen for her abuse of ellipses, but did you see what she wrote in comments a few posts ago? I mean, seriously. I love her.

"Just stop being indecisive....it will make you miserable for your entire life......so just stop it. it is easy. Make your first bold decision.....do it......."



What's the best advice anyone has ever given you?

Herb & Dorothy.

"One thing we cannot do is articulate why we like something," Vogel says. "That was frustrating to the filmmaker, but I never studied art history, so I never learned the vocabulary of talking about art. It's just a gut feeling."



I need to see THIS.


Sunday, June 28, 2009

What home project are you putting off?


What's the thing you know you really need to do or fix, and you've been putting it off? Why?

My list is a mile long, but deciding on lights for the kitchen is my current #1 irritation because I have been in indecision-land about that one for months. We still have bare bulbs in there. Glamorous.

What's your thing? And what's the hold up?

If your project is stuck because you're not sure what to do or you need design advice, email a photo and a few sentences about your dilemma and I will post as many of the questions/photos so that readers can offer up advice to help you kick start your project.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

I could talk to you about dead Michael Jackson,


but THIS was the most interesting thing I read in the paper today.

The slideshow is awesome.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

I enjoy a good open letter...


And when it comes to writing anything, even a short comment, DAVID never fails:

"I guess that decency is what this entire letter is about. I damaged your car, and I tried to do what was decent and right. You, conversely, decided to be the biggest bitch you could possibly be. I can't think of anything you could have done to be more successful in that endeavor. Well done Madam.

I phoned my insurance company the moment I got back to my office, and they've assured me that you'll be made whole. To be honest, I told them that you were spectacularly mean and that I'd appreciate anything they could do to make the process more painful for you..."

We're all a bunch of fucking fatties.



From "Mother’s Fight Against Junk Food Puts a School on Edge" in The New York Times HERE.

And then you have to read THIS, which was published in the UK last month about her.



Full NY Times article:

MeMe Roth, a publicist and an Upper West Side mother of two, is getting really, really mad — “and I do not mean angry,” she clarified. “I mean mad, like crazy.” Ms. Roth is being driven mad by Public School 9, where her children are in second and fourth grades, and it seems that P.S. 9, in turn, is being driven mad by Ms. Roth.

Ms. Roth, who runs a group called National Action Against Obesity, has no problem with the school lunches provided at the highly regarded elementary school on Columbus Avenue and 84th Street. What sets her off is the junk food served on special occasions: the cupcakes that come out for every birthday, the doughnuts her children were once given in gym, the sugary “Fun-Dip” packets that some parent provided the whole class on Valentine’s Day.

“I thought I was sending my kid to P.S. 9, not Chuck E. Cheese,” Ms. Roth, a trim, impassioned 40-year-old from Atlanta, said in an interview. “Is there or is there not an obesity and diabetes epidemic in this country?”

When offered any food at school other than the school lunch, Ms. Roth’s children — who shall go nameless since it seems they have enough on, or off, their plates — are instructed to deposit the item into a piece of Tupperware their mother calls a “junk food collector.”

This solution seemed to be working pretty well until Ms. Roth’s daughter dutifully tried to stick a juice pop — a special class treat from her teacher on a hot day — into her plastic container. The teacher told Ms. Roth’s daughter to eat it or lose it, and according to the child pointed out that she had seen the young girl eating the corn chips served with school lunch — did that not count as junk food?

This prompted one of Ms. Roth’s infamous heated e-mail messages to the school. Which, in turn, prompted administrators to pull her daughter out of class to discuss the juice pop incident, which only further infuriated Ms. Roth, who said her daughter felt as if she’d been ambushed.

What followed was the kind of meeting in which bureaucracy masquerades as farce, or maybe it’s the other way around. Ms. Roth and her husband, Ben, say they were told by Helene Moffatt, a school safety official, that if they considered the regular dissemination of junk food a threat to their children’s health and safety — and indeed, they do — they should request a health and safety transfer, something that generally follows threats of violence. That transfer request, they were told, would also require filing a complaint with the police.

“What would that conversation even sound like?” asked Mr. Roth, who works in marketing. “ ‘We know you guys are dealing with stabbings and shootings, but stop everything: We have a cupcake situation’ ?”

Both parents left feeling they were being pushed out of P.S. 9, which they perceive as exhausted by Ms. Roth’s intense lobbying for, among other things, permission slips for any food not on the official lunch menu. It would not be the first time: The Roths previously lived in Millburn, N.J., where, after Ms. Roth waged war on the bagels and Pringles meal served to kids at lunch, received e-mail from one member of the P.T.A. that said, “Please, consider moving.” That was in 2006, and P.S. 9 has been hearing about its transgressions against healthy eating pretty much ever since.

“The community is very concerned,” the principal, Diane Brady, wrote in an e-mail message. At the meeting with Ms. Moffatt, Ms. Brady said that Ms. Roth “was hostile” and “threw candy onto the table and cursed.” It was not the first time, she added, that Ms. Roth had “displayed this hostile behavior.”

Ms. Roth’s message is hardly outlandish: There is an obesity epidemic, and there are probably better ways to celebrate a child’s birth than sending a passel of kids into sugar shock in the middle of math class.

Her extreme methods have earned her attention before: The police were called to a Y.M.C.A. in 2007 when she absconded with the sprinkles and syrups on a table where members were being served ice cream. That was Ms. Roth who called Santa Claus fat on television that Christmas, and she has a continuing campaign against the humble Girl Scout cookies, on the premise that no community activity should promote unhealthy eating.

“She has some valid points, but the way she delivers them is abrasive,” said Jim Stanek, a fellow P.S. 9 parent, who responded angrily to an e-mail message Ms. Roth sent to around 75 parents saying that the physical education teacher who served her children doughnuts probably “couldn’t pass a standardized phys ed. test.”

It is too bad that Ms. Roth’s suggestions come in e-mail messages strung with too many capital letters and undiplomatic, if accurate, scare tactics (on the threat of diabetes—“we’re talking amputations, blindness, endless finger pricking, endless disabilities”). It would probably benefit New York’s students, and no doubt Ms. Roth’s family, if she tried to catch a few flies with honey. Make that agave nectar.



***

I am a little irritated that the Times didn't really give enough backstory on the whole thing. It seems like Elle tells the better story HERE,

From Elle: "...She has since relocated to New York City, where, she says, nutrition standards in public school are among the best in the country and she no longer has to deal with those 'undersexed PTO-fraus.'" (That made me laugh.)

Friday, June 12, 2009


"I wouldn't regret [my "Brian" tattoo] if we weren't together. I can always have a kid and name him Brian. There are options." - FHM, June 2007


"Well let me tell you what [High School Musical] is really about. High School Musical is about this group of boys who are all being molested by the basketball coach, who is Zac Efron's dad. It's about them struggling to cope with this molestation. And they have these little girlfriends, who are their beards. Oh, and somehow there's music involved. You have to get stoned to watch it." - Esquire, June 2009


She's hilarious.

HERE.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Gardening conversation with the fiance:


Me: My cauliflower is all diseased... bugs are eating the leaves.

Him: Fuck that. Grow nachos.


Can you even imaging how great that would be??? Yes. GROW NACHOS. I need to get on that shit.


In other news, every time Groove Armada comes on Itunes, Rickey (my dog) leaves the room. I think that means he has better taste than me. But that doesn't stop me from loving Superstylin'. (Yes, click there. Gets good at 0:17.)