My Own Planet

Paris in Tennessee (but not Paris, Tennessee)
So Nashville isn't exactly Long Island, I'm not exactly Audrey Hepburn (I think we all know that if I were a Hepburn, I'd be Katharine), and Jeff isn't exactly Humphrey Bogart. But there was a convertible, there might have been moonlight, and there was definitely me singing "La Vie en Rose."

The combination of this and driving past the airport led us to speculate about the possibility of hopping on a flight and spending the weekend in Paris. In the event that such a thing were feasible, we came up with an itinerary of must-sees for our whirlwind trip. Assuming we were to catch a flight on Friday night and arrive in Paris on Saturday afternoon, here's how our weekend would go:

-Shopping at Printemps and Galleries Lafayette, where I would have the forethought this time to buy WAY more Petit Bateau T-shirts
-Chilling in the Luxembourg Gardens
-A drink (or two or three) at Le Dix, home of fabulous and fabulously cheap sangria
-Dinner at Refuge des Fondues
-More drinks at our favorite bar in Montmartre, the name of which escapes me at the moment
-Pain au chocolat from the patisserie across from our hotel for breakfast
-A trip to the FranPrix down the street, where we would buy them out of their entire selection of Hot Pockets to take back to America

Then we'd fly out mid-day on Sunday, arriving back in the U.S. in time to get a good night's sleep before work on Monday. Of course, since neither of us is currently independently wealthy and/or a sitcom character, this weekend we remained in Nashville, which meant shopping at Green Hills, assembling a computer desk from Target, singing along to The Killers while speeding down the highway at 3 a.m., narrowly missed Kid Rock sightings, and aspiring-country-star karaoke. And while all that was pretty awesome and everything, it's still no French Hot Pocket.

At least they haven’t ripped off Joe Six-Pack. Yet.
Let it be known that I had this idea first. And also let it be known that I had it better.

Not that the idea of having a bunch of writers compete for the chance to pen a story for Rolling Stone isn’t perfectly fine. I mean, it might be more timely if it were coming a little closer on the heels of Almost Famous, but whatever. And as far as celebrity editors go, Jann Wenner isn’t a bad pick.

But facts are facts, and the fact is that Jann Wenner is no Bonnie Fuller. Or Anna Wintour. Or even Graydon Carter. And while you might get a more well-rounded pool of applicants (at least gender-wise) with Rolling Stone, you’re not going to get nearly the drama you would if a bunch of girls were competing for a job with, say, Bonnie Fuller at Star or Anna Wintour at Vogue. (Believe me. I work at a magazine with a bunch of girls, so I know from drama.)

At this point, I can only hope that Fox will adhere to tradition and rush to the table with their own cut-rate, low-rent version of the same concept, because I’d bet you money they could nab Bonnie. The woman was made for Fox.

Obviously, I don't have enough work to do
Don't ask me how I ended up spending most of my morning reading Baby-sitters Club fan fiction; suffice it to say that it has much to do with a conversation I had with Kate last night during which we desperately tried (without much success) to recall the name of Amanda Delaney's $400 Persian cat. I'd like to say that I thought the fan fiction might somehow reveal the name of the cat, but that's not entirely true. Mostly, I was just curious to see what people thought might happen once the baby-sitters finally moved on from their 12 years spent in eighth grade. And wouldn't you be, too, when the stories have descriptions like this one:

The BSC accompanies the Kilbournes to Amsterdam. Stacey discovers an underage brothel, Claudia eats magic brownies, Jessi goes rastafarian, and Mallory is a dork.

Ha! There are also a few TV crossovers, with shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Lost. I personally never would have made the connection between either of those shows and the BSC, but now that I think about it, I can totally see Claudia kicking some vampire ass and Stacey developing a huge crush on Matthew Fox. And they'd do it all while wearing stacks of bangle bracelets and poodle-shaped earrings, of course.

UPDATE: Priscilla. The cat's name was Priscilla. My morning's endeavor was not for naught.

Why do I always get stuck sitting next to the asshole?
Seriously. Why? Today at the pool was no exception. At first he seemed fairly harmless, merely making repeated comments about all the butterflies flying around. Unfortunately, my attempts to politely ignore his butterfly comments didn't seem to be working, so I fell back on my tried and true avoiding-conversation-with-annoying-strangers method: reading. I took out some freelance work and began poring over it.

But it seems that I seriously underestimated the assholiness of this guy. I hadn't been reading for five seconds before he turned to me and said, "And what is she reading?" Like, is there a more annoying conversational habit that refering to the person you're talking to in third person? I mean, other than refering to yourself in third person? The only one I can think of is my number-one pet peeve of all time, which is when someone ends every sentence they say with a condescending "okay," and it was just my luck that this asshole had a penchant for that conversational tick, too.

I explained, in as few words as possible, that I am a writer and was doing some freelance work. As fate would have it, the asshole also did some freelance writing, which he obviously thought qualified him to immediately ask me how much I charge. Put on the spot and not knowing how best to sidestep this completely rude query, I told him.

Apparently, he decided I wasn't charging enough for my work, because he got up to go to the bathroom (why I didn't run like hell at that point, I will never know), and when he got back, he decided to give me, in his words, "30 seconds of business advice." As he's going through his spiel on how best to pitch ideas to trade magazine editors (I decided against telling him I used to be a trade magazine editor who made it my business to brush off assholes like him), I'm trying to be polite by smiling and nodding. In the middle of his speech, he suddenly stops and says, "This is not a smiling matter. This is serious business." Yes, that's right. The asshole actually told me to stop smiling. So I tried my best to look serious, but I may have veered off somewhere around annoyed. Either way, he didn't seem to notice.

When he finally finished the spiel (which I'm sure I don't need to tell you lasted way longer than 30 seconds), I simply nodded and said, "I'll take it under advisement." He kind of snorted and said, "Well, I'd use it to make money, but that's just me."

He's lucky he left the pool at that point, because I was about 10 seconds away from grabbing one of those foam noodles from the nearest kid and beating him with it.

Reality sets in
I can't believe I've been living in Birmingham long enough for my check card to expire. But I must have, because I got a new one in the mail today. And the fact is that, in 15 days, it will have been exactly three years.

Wow.

That's all.

First impressions
I’m beginning to think that maybe the landlords of Birmingham should teach a class on how not to rent an apartment. Here are some sample lessons discovered on my walk last night:

-One landlord had just had a new concrete patch poured in his parking lot, which some obviously disgruntled tenants had inscribed with a few choice words about how much the landlord sucks and how much they’d screwed the tenant over. (They’d also dated it, presumably to give it an air of credibility.) This, in my opinion, is pretty freaking awesome. Landlords, you should always remember to check your concrete for derogatory remarks from residents before it sets!

-Another building had a sign outside advertising an apartment for rent, which was chained and padlocked to a nearby tree. Because nothing says “this is a safe, secure building” like having to chain down your cheap-ass plastic sign so it doesn’t get stolen.

Revisited: The hot kiss on Lost
Ever since I started catching up on reruns of Lost, I’ve been waiting to see this kiss between Kate (formerly known as Surprisingly Dewy Brunette) and Sawyer (formerly known as Scraggly Long-Haired Guy) again, just to see what my reaction to it would be once I had a bit of context. After all, that kiss was one of the major reasons I started watching Lost this summer, along with all the critical acclaim, and the fact that I’d originally wanted to watch it anyway but didn’t because it conflicted with America’s Next Top Model, plus the fact that Matthew Fox is pretty easy on the eyes in his post-Charlie Salinger incarnation.

And I found that, while the hotness of the kiss was tempered slightly by the backstory, and also by the torture scene that directly preceded it, it was still pretty damn hot. I also totally stand by my earlier observation that Kate really is surprisingly dewy, considering her circumstances.

Also revisited: Joss Stone
Once I rediscovered the wonders of the skip button, I decided that I really kind of like Joss Stone (or at least six of the songs on her album). However, I maintain my earlier assertion that she’s overrated, because having an album of 15 songs, only six of with are worth listening to, isn’t that spectacular of an achievement.

Lost in translation
Last night, I suddenly decided that it would be a worthwhile goal to learn all the words to “La Vie en Rose” (en français, bien sur). That way, if I’m ever riding in a convertible down a moonlit lane in Long Island with Humphrey Bogart (or, preferably, someone who isn’t dead), I can sing lines from the song to him just like Audrey Hepburn did in Sabrina.

I’ve only identified one minor flaw in the plan so far, which is that when I’m not looking directly at the words, I seem to want to substitute some of them with ones that are similar in sound but quite different in meaning. Thus, this:

Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas

(When he takes me in his arms
He speaks to me all low)

Becomes this:

Quand il me prend sans les bras
Il me parle tout bois

(When he takes me without the arms
He speaks to me all drunk*)

And that’s an entirely different song altogether.

*I may have taken some liberties with this translation. (Bois technically means “drink,” not “drunk,” but it’s a lot funnier that way.)

Thoughts from my lunch hour

-When you see a children’s dance studio that has caution tape cordoning off part of the porch, you can’t help but wonder what went down there.

-Debit card readers on the menu boards at Sonic? Genius. Absolute freaking genius. And also really, really dangerous, especially when you consider that the Sonic in question is open 24 hours. It’s a good thing they hadn’t thought of this kind of thing back when I was still in college, or I would’ve been in some serious trouble.

Overheard on the web
This is my new favorite site. Hilarious. And while I do like scanning it in the hopes that one day I’ll come across a snippet of one of Danielle’s conversations (I think I’d be able to tell), I kind of wish it wasn’t limited to New York.

Then again, if they branched out into Alabama, the conversations posted might be similar to this one, which I overheard at the Birmingham airport a few months ago (paraphrased slightly, as my memory isn’t that good):

White Man #1: I’m so glad our representative is speaking out against this whole gay marriage thing.
White Man #2: Me, too. I mean, really. I’m just getting tired of all these people demanding equal rights.

And then instead of inciting fits of laughter, the site would provoke fits of fury. Perhaps it’s best to keep it confined to New York, then.

Isn't it funny...
...how you can be having, like, the best day, and all of a sudden, one of your friends calls to announce that she's met the man she's going to marry, not in some Snow White someday-my-prince-will-come kind of way, but in that practical they're-actually-talking-about-getting-married kind of way, and it just totally trumps your great day, which you come to realize was really only great because you got a lot of things in the mail.

And here I was thinking that receiving bubble bath, a paperback copy of my novel, and an autographed picture of Chase all in the same day was about as good as it could get. But I totally forgot about love! Silly me.

How I became an inadvertent swimsuit thief
Yes, it's true. I am a thief, albeit an inadvertent one. This is the tale of how I spiraled into a life of accidental crime.

This morning after pilates, I decided to drive out to the Target pretty far from my house to see if they still had the Isaac Mizrahi swimsuit I tried on at the beginning of the summer and desperately wanted but did not have the money to buy. (I had already checked the Target very near to my office, and they didn't have it.) Since my annual 5-percent raise kicked in yesterday, I felt like splurging on a new swimsuit. Much to my dismay, this Target did not have the suit, either, merely oddly sized remnants of it (nor did they have in my size the yoga pants I also wanted to buy). My heart set on a new swimsuit, I headed down to Old Navy to check out their selection.

They still had plenty of suits, although it took some digging to find correct sizes. I took a few into the dressing room and was pleased to find that my favorite one actually fit pretty well. I decided to buy it, and went about hanging up the other suits, which is quite a laborious process, what with all the weird hanger pinchy-things involved. I was just about to hang up the suit I had selected when I thought to myself, "They're just going to take it off the hanger when I take it to the register. I'll just save them (and me) a step by leaving it off the hanger." Remember this, readers. I was trying to help the cashier! (And, OK, technically myself, too, but you don't have to remember that.)

So I take the suit up to pay for it. It's important to note that, although many of the suits on the rack had orange tags marking them down to $4.99, mine did not--it still advertised a price of $12.50 per piece. I figured it was probably on sale, though, and just hadn't gotten tagged, but even if it wasn't, I planned to buy it anyway, as it was still cheaper than the Isaac Mizrahi suit I'd originally set out to buy. Anyway, I get to the cash register, hand the girl the suit, and she scans it and gives me my total: $5.44. Upon receiving this total, my face registered a very visible expression of surprise, to which the cashier responded, "I know! Isn't that great?" This segued into a discussion of how my sister and I once found basic black swimsuits at Old Navy at the end of the summer for--I am not kidding--$2. Anyway, given all of this, I just figured the suit had been marked down again, which was not at all outside the realm of possibility, as they were advertising a 75% off clearance sale. I left the store, elated at the incredible bargain I had just stumbled upon.

It wasn't until I returned home and took the receipt out of the bag that I realized she had, in fact, only charged me for half of the swimsuit. And perhaps this makes me a bad person, but if you think I even thought for a minute about driving back out to that Old Navy and giving her the $5 for the other half of the suit, you'd be wrong. For one thing, it's not a short drive, and for another, this error was only marginally my fault. Sure, if I'd put the suit back on the hanger, the cashier would have easily been able to distinguish the fact that there were two pieces. But it's not as if I did that with the intention to confuse her and get away with only paying for half of the suit--I was merely trying to save us both a little time and energy. Besides, she should have been a little bit more careful with her scanning in the first place. And if the situation were reversed--say, she had shorted me $5 in change and I didn't realize it until I got home--I definitely wouldn't have gone back to get it. So I think maybe I'm OK, karmically speaking.

Then again, shortly after I left the store, with grand plans to wear my new swimsuit to the pool this afternoon, it started pouring. So maybe I'm not.

I'll take things that are overrated for $500, Alex
Because I rarely listen to the radio, I often hear a lot about various singers and bands without ever having heard their music. Sometimes, if I hear enough about a certain singer/band, I will feel compelled to check him/her/them out, just to see what all the fuss is about. This is how I found Ryan Adams and Norah Jones, both of whom I found to be worthy of the praise. It's also how I discovered Joss Stone, who I'm not sure is.

After months of hearing about her here and there, I finally heard Joss Stone's music for the first time on my way to Paris. One of the songs on our fancy little in-flight entertainment system was "Right to Be Wrong." When I heard it, my first reaction was that all the hype surrounding her was justified. I think part of it was the way she growls the phrase "so just leave me alone"; part of it might also have been sheer relief at no longer having to try to explain The Incredibles to the Russian woman sitting next to me, who didn't speak a lick of English.

I still enjoy "Right to Be Wrong" because it reminds me of going to Paris, but, after burning a copy of a co-worker's Joss Stone CD and listening to half of it on the way home, I found the remainder of it a bit disappointing. I think it's the writer in me that's turned off by her tendency toward cliches, although I'm not sure I expected more from a 17-year-old songwriter. There's something else that bothers me about it, too, perhaps that the production seems too polished for her gorgeously unpolished voice. Maybe I'd have better luck with the live album.

Then again, I'm no music expert, so perhaps there is something objectively marvelous about Joss Stone that I'm just not seeing. But you know, I've got a right to be wrong.

So just leave me alone.

Ill-advised advertising slogan of the day
On my way to the gym, I pass this billboard. It's advertising some sort of Gator-/Powerade type sports drink, and the text on it reads, "It'll kick your thirst and come back for you."

I can't be the only one out there who doesn't particularly want my sports drink to inflict bodily harm.

Hurricane, schmurricane
So here's the thing about my electricity: It tends to go out when faced with even the tiniest gust of wind. When Hurricane Ivan hit last year, I was without power for the better part of the night and most of the next day. A few weeks ago, we had a routine storm, and I was power-less for an entire morning. Given this precedent, I was more or less certain I would be without electricity for most of the Hurricane Dennis experience. Which is why, yesterday afternoon, I packed up some stuff (including the perishable foods I wanted to save, which amounted to half a carton of milk and some strawberry jam) and headed to my friends Chris and Lee's house, where not only is the electricity historically more reliable, but also where I figured I'd have something to keep me entertained should the power go out, as they were playing Clue and making margaritas.

However, I was a little bit wary of what I would find when I finally made it back to my own apartment this evening. During the last hurricane, my window leaked pretty badly, but I managed to keep it sort of under control with some strategically placed buckets and towels. Having vacated my apartment during this hurricane, I feared I would be walking into a flood plain or, at the very least, a miserable sweatbox that had been without electricity for quite some time.

So you can imagine my surprise when I opened the door and found everything...exactly as I had left it. The power never even went off. Not for a minute! And, as a result of my hurricane antics, I was completely exhausted all day from having stayed up past midnight playing Clue, plus I have no milk because Lee and I used all of mine to make an unusually large batch of pudding while watching The Cosby Show.

But hey, at least those margaritas were tasty. And isn't that what really matters?

In other news...
A Proust-reading Irish socialist named Paolo wants me to fall in love. He didn't specify whether it should be with him.

Observations from a Saturday morning at the gym

-It bothers me probably more than it should when my pilates teacher uses the phrase "palms of your feet." Really, it's all I can do not to scream out, "Soles! Soles!" I've only just managed to get over what seems to be every fitness instructor's penchant for using the oh-so-technical term "sit bones." Still, I'm loath to correct her, because I don't want to be that person. Let's face it; I'm already that person enough as it is.

-On my way out of the Y, I noticed a woman, presumably fresh from spinning class, wearing bike shorts that said "spinning" on them. Like, how incredibly ridiculous is it to wear an article of clothing to an activity that advertises said activity? That's like wearing the concert T-shirt at the concert. In my opinion, this kind of thing is only acceptable if you happen to be the instructor of the class, and then only marginally.

"Ever take it off any sweet jumps?"
Today I said "Luckyyyy" to a co-worker, complete with full-on Napoleon Dynamite inflection, without even realizing what I was doing until the word was well out of my mouth. Which made me wonder: Is it bad to imitate Napoleon Dynamite without meaning to imitate Napoleon Dynamite?

I decided it's definitely not good.

Patriotism: alive and well
My friends and I spent a good portion of this weekend talking about how we wanted to live in another country. Hopefully, a baseball game, two rounds of fireworks, and the abundant quantities of beer consumed made up for it.

And are spelling bees quintessentially American? Because we had one.

A series of random thoughts

-Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed how eerily similar the trajectory of Ben Affleck's current romance is to that of his ex-girlfriend, Gwyneth Paltrow? You know, the whole get pregnant after dating for a while, then get married in a secret and sudden ceremony months before the baby is due thing. One can only hope that the similarities will end here, and that Ben & Jen won't name their progeny, like, Pear or something. Because what the world definitely does not need is more celebrity children named after produce.

-This afternoon, while on the way home from the office, I happened to be the person stopped at the light right next to the guy panhandling at the intersection. I always hate being this person because, since I never carry cash on me, I never have anything to give them. However, today I had with me half of a Tuscan chicken sandwich from Panera. I had earmarked this half of the sandwich for my dinner to prevent myself from eating anything at tonight's baseball game, as last time I did that, I was deathly ill for most of the next day. But I figured this guy could use the sandwich more than me, so I rolled down the window and asked him if he wanted it. He accepted, and looked very impressed by the Panera bag. But then he just stood there with it, which I didn't understand. I felt he should have started eating the sandwich while I was still there, just to show me how much he appreciated it. Plus, if he was worried that he wouldn't get any money if people saw him eating a fancy Panera sandwich, I see no better time for him to have eaten the sandwich--after all, all of the people behind us had just seen me give him the sandwich. So what gives? Had someone else just given him a sandwich, too, so he was full? Or was he waiting for someone to pull up and offer him a Coke to go with it? At any rate, I just hope he's eaten the sandwich by now, because if he doesn't eat it soon, it's going to go bad, and then I won't be the only one who's deathly ill tomorrow.

-Chase told me last night that he is now on a first-name basis with Justin Timberlake. This is very exciting, because it means that I am only two degrees of separation away from Justin Timberlake, who is one of the five guys on my freebie list (along with Jude Law, George Clooney, Chris Isaak, and Ryan Adams, who I am seriously considering replacing with Joshua Jackson after I saw how much he's let himself go). Anyway, I told Chase that the next time I'm in L.A., he is to introduce me to Justin Timberlake. Because the thing is, Justin's hometown is only about 30 minutes away from the town in which my grandparents live (which is how my cousin once came to be sharing a dressing-room mirror with Britney Spears, but that's another story). I figure that if Justin and I know each other, when we both are visiting our respective families over the holidays, we can hang out, possibly at the skating rink where I once busted my knee open when I was seven. Although I think they've turned that into a bowling alley now, but who cares? It will still be fun.

-Finally, I've just received news that one of my favorite bloggers is back (and better than ever) after a one-and-a-half year hiatus. Rejoice!