Me!? I’m scared of everything! I’m scared of what I saw, I’m scared of what I did, of who I am. And most of all, I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling, the rest of my whole life, the way I feel when I’m with you.

Dance with me.

Yes, hello, I am coming out of my long, dark silence to tell you that in remembrance of Patrick Swayze, you should go watch Dirty Dancing.

Y’all. I love Dirty Dancing. So much. It’s so important. Because for all the nice Jewish little sisters born between about 1975 and 1990, Johnny Castle was much more than just a hard-scrabble dance teacher who didn’t want to join the house painters union and only wore one pair of black dress pants over the course of the entire summer of 1963, when everyone called Frances Houseman “Baby,” and it didn’t occur to her to mind.

Johnny Castle was a revelation for the Jewish little sisters of the 1980s, a choice cut of 100% traif with great hair who could dance–on the floor, on a log, in the water–and who thought Baby’s big hair, big nose, and generally grating, overly idealistic verbal diarrhea were somehow sexy. So when, after that busy week of learning the mambo to perform it at the Sheldrake so Penny could get her backwoods abortion, Baby squeaked the above plea to Johnny in his charmingly rustic Kellerman’s cabin and Johnny turned Baby into a Woman, the sexytime hopes and dreams of all the Jewish little sisters of the 1980s came true. It might have taken some of us another 10 years to put it all together, but Dirty Dancing shows us: As long as we can dance, or do whatever that thing is that lights us up, we can have big hair and big noses and go on annoying diatribes about human nature, and holy shit, someone will love us, because we are smart little bitches who can light up a room–we just might not know how yet. So if we don’t have the balls to do it ourselves (and hey, sometimes we don’t), Johnny Castle, who believes in us, will come get us out of the corner.

So go home and watch Dirty Dancing tonight, since I’m sure it’ll be on TV, and imagine you are a super awkward Jewish little sister of the 1980s (if you aren’t already one by birth), and see how great it makes you feel.

Oh, and then download the soundtrack and try to walk down the street listening to “Do You Love Me,” “Love Man,” and “Cry to Me” without dancing. Because it is impossible.

[image via here]

First of all, if you don’t know what Twitter is, just read this.

Now. There is this other fun thing about Twitter, which is “favoriting” a Tweet. And if you have your nerdy self registered up at Favrd, you get to see which other members of the Twitterati (AKA other registered Favrd twitterers, and don’t worry, I’m already hating myself for making that one up, if I did) have favored your tweets.

So. I get Favrd about once a day by exactly one fellow twitterer out of the 115 or so that follow me presently (I am the smallest of small potatoes).  Here, interestingly and in chronological order and with but two omissions to protect the innocent, are the only tweets I’ve ever twooted that have been favored by MORE than one person (aka 2):

• Rock of Love Bus. I feel so bad for the ones with their own boobs. All two of them.
• Welcome back, Post-Nasal Drip, did you have a nice vacation? You & Pounding Headache can have your old rooms back. Then go fuck yourselves.
• uh, was not kidding about that burrito. it just DEMANDED i nap. i was folding laundry, & it said NO & threw me on the bed. 2 groggy hrs ago.
• in other news, i just buried my hand in the fat folds of my cat to warm it (my hand, not my cat) #notaeuphemism
• boss just asked if i have an NYC allergist. “i don’t HAVE any motherfuckin’ allergies!!!!” i replied. i should lay off the afternoon coffee.
• dear banana republic: i ride the subway. ergo, i will never, not ever, not ever ever, buy white jeans. SO PLEASE STOP. love, abby
• possibly the best spam subject line ever: “Meat Wanna Feel like you’re in Vegas? Banana.”
• y’all know i’m just trying to get through the day so i can go home and play donkey kong, right?

Hasn’t this been fun? I think so.

~~~

Meanwhile, as a very important and wholly unrelated footnote, please hug your friends and loved ones regularly and tell them how much you love them.

Here’s my Pressing Issue:

ONCE upon a time, I had long hair that I didn’t know what to do with. I didn’t know how to use product in my curly hair, I didn’t know not to to brush it, etc. etc. Mom, naturally, based her treatment of my hair on what she knew about her own hair, so I had a blow-dried roll of bangs that frizzed at the slightest sign of moisture (which, given my area of origin, was daily) and a giant puff of hair behind it, which usually wound up being strapped into a low, unfortunate ponytail. I may have blogged about this in the past.

And then! I had it all chopped off, age 16. I learned the ways of product. I shared the ways of product (you are welcome, Davis). I was a product pro. I still am a product pro! With the exception of a few months during my sophomore year of college and the past year, I have spent the last nine years with my hair floating freely between my ears and my shoulders. I could wash it in a second. Some days it looked crazy, some days it didn’t. It is a decidedly unsexy look for me, but Jesus H. Arrojo is it easy.

And THEN! I started letting it grow. This was… sometime over a year ago. And now, totally uninterested parties, it is LAWNG. Real, real LAWNG. Lawnger than it has ever been–down to here, down to there, down to where it stops by itself, as it were. And because it is still curly (duh), I still don’t brush it and just throw some product in after a shower and let it hang out for like three or four days. The problem with this is the shower part–it takes me FOREVER to shower because I spend all the time that you normal-haired people spend brushing/styling your hair in a three-day period… in the shower, brushing (with my fingers) out 3-4 days worth of knots, loose hairs, and city detritus.

What of it? you ask? Well, I am not, how you say, so good at getting out of bed in the mornings. And I am not, so to speak, really that interested in, standing in the shower WORKING on my hair (because it is work, it is like more than a foot of work in some places), especially when I have just gotten out of bed. So I get mornings like this morning, when I woke up and lint-rolled my dining chairs instead of washing my hair. OR I can shower at night and have great-looking hair for like, an hour before I sleep on it and wake up looking like a homeless person. One day of crazy hair… and then three days in a ponytail.

I am at a breaking point. Should I grow up and learn how to shower on a regular basis and take the time to take care of my hair? Or should I just fuck it and chop it all off? I’m not what you would call a petite person, or what you would call a person with notable facial bone structure.  Accordingly, chopping off The Great Balancer would probably make my face look flat and mushy and the rest of me look… eh, larger. But I demand to not be tortured by my hair and suffer the fate of the women who came before me! And no, I will not grow dreadlocks.

I need help, people. What do you think?

* bad reasons include: television; boyfriend; more television; board games. These are not bad things, just bad reasons for not blogging–plenty of people who watch too much TV, play too many board games and have excellent significant others blog extensively and well.

You know what? Let’s talk about me growing up first.

Ways In Which I Feel Old, Which Is A Bad Thing

• I can’t keep up with Twitter. I’m sorry, I just can’t.
• When I walk down the hall to the ladies’ room at work after sitting for a while at my desk, my right hip pops every time I pass marketing.
• I got something in the mail about SOCIAL SECURITY.
• I have two cats (this, I realize, is old news, but now it’s starting to sound like OLD news, if you know what I mean. My coworker even gave me a cat toy, how crazy must I seem?).
• Everyone on America’s Next Top Model is younger than me. When participants are my age or older, they are called out for looking old in their photos. What?
• My gray hairs are breeding. I swear.
• I am almost to the point where I ask people in quiet public spaces to chew their gum, or their burrito, or their cud or whatever, quietly. If you are a loved one of mine, I have always asked you to do this. But now, I find myself sitting in waiting rooms and silent subway platforms wondering if asking someone to STOP SMACKING makes me a crazy old lady. I think it does.

Ways In Which I Feel I Am Growing Up, Which Is A Good Thing

• I get Christmas cards, often from adult-type people who have spouses and babies. I love being at a point in my life where I know people with babies and people who are with it enough to send Christmas cards.
• I think I stopped taking shit from people. I know this can’t be 100% true, that somewhere, somehow, I will always believe certain bits of bullshit both knowingly and unknowingly. But the amount of BS I am willing and able to stomach in the interest of keeping the peace, preserving others’ sanity, or avoiding the inevitable has decreased significantly in recent months, and I am the better for it. I don’t pretend to be interested. I fake almost nothing. You should try it, it’s pretty refreshing, and I hope marks an up-tick in self-esteem after what seem to have been some questionable years.
• I wear big girl shoes. I know, I’ve been trying for a decade now, and I think I’ve said this before, but now I’m pretty sure I’ve really got the hang of it. If a girl can learn to wear a dress well, she can learn to make it through a night in heels, right?
• I have politics-related thoughts that go deeper than the statement, “the person who runs this country is an idiot.” It took a while, but I got there.
• Sometimes before I buy things, I ask myself if a) I have the immediate cash to afford it, and b) if I actually actually want it. Behold! A grown-up!*

Now let’s talk about 2007, what do you say? Good? Yes?

It’s amazing to me that a year ago, on my birthday, I was sitting at Piece with the Chicago crowd, and Austin was hitting on Carrie and it was pouring, just pouring, and we went and got ice cream after pizza, for no good reason and I was a little on the porky side and knitting my fingers to the bone and scheming. A few days after my birthday, I flew to New York and it wasn’t even cold outside, and we ate at Penelope’s and went out for Sloan’s birthday at Second on Second and I hated leaving. I hated leaving again in March when I was back for Winston’s show. I really hated leaving in May when I was here with my family and just wanted to stay and play with them and with Morgan. But I didn’t so much hate leaving in June, since I had a job in the bag and I had a ton of stuff to take care of in a short amount of time, and then I was back, for real, in July.

It’s still strange for me to talk about “last” summer as one of barbeques in Chicago and I’m From Barcelona at the pool party in Brooklyn; of my going away party at Guthrie’s and McSorley’s with Buh-weet and Pratt; of John Mayer with Em on a freezing lake shore day and of Farm Aid on Randall’s Island. I was in a million places (and often in a million pieces, to boot) and it feels like I was in all of those places at once.

I was going to write some more about things that were great about 2007, but maybe I will let you discover them on your own, except to say: lolcats, Juno, 30Rock, Fat Bastard Shiraz, Banana Republic jeans, Reuben’s Empanadas, God is Not Great, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Ant Farm, Hanky Pankies, retail therapy, lobster, long hair, parents, roommates, friends, friends’ roommates, angels, oranges, burritos, wedding cakes and guidebooks.

And now it’s time to talk about the universe! I’ll keep it simple.

Okay: The Universe is Awesome. Pretty sure that’s all there is to say about that, right? It’s awesome, and it’s good to us, biologically and karmic-ly, and I think we should continue to be in awe of it. It’s the great unknown! Unfathomable! Awesome!

Anyway, welcome to a new year, everyone. Welcome to a new quarter-century, me. Welcome to more of the same, universe.

*Does not apply to drunk pizza, crumbs cupcakes, threadless tees.

Instead I will just tell you that this morning on the Subway, as I was getting off to go to work from the airport, I saw a guy, a young, not unattractive guy, cleaning his ear with a ballpoint pen.

It just took me five minutes to realize that those were dates and that the internet was not, in fact, giving me sub-awesome post ratings on a scale of 1 to 10.  I was indignant!  Just an 8.14??!  The internet hates me! (Not that we didn’t know this already). But then I realized, “No, freakshow, it isn’t all about you.  Sometimes it is about Aloysuis Lilius.”

The end, happy Fridays.

me: i am jealous of their dining day
i had a baby bagel
veggies + hummus
leftover rice

KP: i had a salad from doc greens which was later shot to shit by a chickfila milkshake

me: mmmmmmmmchickfilaaaaaa
there is one in jersey i think

KP: also at NYU

me: WHAT
CHICKFILA AT NYU?

KP: yup, google it
probably dont have breakfast, but its in a food court
kara’s bro can get you in if its not acessible
or kelly for that matter

me: OMG

KP: i cant believe you didnt know that

me: MY HEART LEAPS

KP: you dont even need a car for that one

me: no! adam garber was telling me about the one in jersey
I KNOW!
hahaha

KP: jon still hasnt had chickfila breakfast. tomorrow may be the day. he’ll need the energy for move-in
i tell him it will change his life
he has a chckfila right on the corner, he’s so excited

me: whoa
that is awesome

KP: shyeah

me: is the one at nyu any good?

KP: i never went, it never worked out. toof ar for during my internship. jon tried one weekend but went to the wrong dining hall
i’m sure it is. its probably like the one at piedmont hospital

me: oh my god
i am so excited
i will go this weekend
if i can get in
i will figure this out
SOMEHOW!

KP: i’m sure it’s easy. i have no diea how jon messed that one up
you can probably jsut follow your chickfila spidey sense

And y’all, here it is. I will see it soon, sooner than it knows.

My answer, the only one I can think of and the one I’m pretty sure is 100 percent correct, is as follows:

“Because everybody in the world wants to.”

And I don’t think she was asking it because those reviews are bad. As a matter of fact, they’re pretty spot-on and not unclever. What’s remarkable about them is that yeah, I could have written them. She could have written them. We watch, we know the jokes, the connections to previous episodes. More important, we know the conventions of that addictive combination of Web-based humor and mass media. So when you add all of that to well-above-par writing skills, what’s the problem? Why isn’t TWOP banging down my door?

My answer, this time in three parts, is once again as follows:

Part One: In Which I Blame A Lack of Connections
I have very fake blog-to-blog-to-real-life links to one or two TWOP writers through Miss Doxie, but for serious, I got nothing. A friend recently told me that she was the only person she knew in her undergraduate career who didn’t have some “in” at the college she attended and in the exclusive groups she was a part of. An Ivy League fluke somewhere between the scholarships and the legacies, and that she was still getting over this, four years into her professional career. The key word in this one is fluke. You can’t break into something new without an in. This is old news, but it’s truer than ever.

Part Two: In Which I Blame Society
Ok, this is where my research department would pick up the slack for me (in the universe where I have a research department). Someone recently (last three years) wrote a book/article/essay/rant about how “kids” today (those thirty and under) all think they’re special and on track for fame fame fame, and all totally wrong about this.

Aside: I would not be lying if I said I may have seen this on the Today Show, where Matt and Meredith (possibly Katie, depending on dates) nodded their heads while the little wheels inside churned out well obviously not my kids, my kids are special!

The point is, whoever wrote/ranted about this is right. There are too many of us in the first place, and too many of us think we are the greatest thing since Justin Timberlake, and upwards of than 99 percent of us aren’t even up to par with an unsliced loaf, much less JT.

It reminds me of Joe Epstein’s 2002 op-ed piece in the New York Times, “Think You Have a Book in You? Think Again,” the one that boiled my 19-year-old blood so much that I looked him up on the NU directory and shot him an email, which was probably dumb considering I was banking my entire college career on getting into the Creative Writing program. You have to have TimesSelect to read it online, but the gist is that everybody (81 percent of Americans) thinks he or she can write a book.

Epstein writes:

“Certainly, it is a democratic notion, suggesting that everybody is as good as everybody else — and, by extension, one person’s story or wisdom is as interesting as the next’s. Then there is the equally false notion of creativity that has been instilled in students for too many years. It was Paul Valéry who said that the word ”creation” has been so overused that even God must be embarrassed to have it attributed to him.”

Epstein also makes a brief argument that the drama of religion (the struggle for personal salvation, being unique in God’s eyes) took care of an individual’s need to be recognized and admired by his or her peers, but that as society secularized, that inner need became an outer one.

Regardless, it’s the same story as why I’m not writing TV reviews.. Too many irons in the fire. Too many spoons in the pot. Too many eggs in each poor Web or print publication’s basket. Standing up and standing out among the sea of eggs outside each basket is particularly difficult, given the fact that eggs don’t have legs, unless they are Sheldon. This metaphor is now over.

Part Three: In Which I Blame Myself
I have a difficult time identifying what I really, truly want. Rather than engaging in self-study or meditation, meeting with people who can help me make these decisions (not you, Mom), or learning how to cut my losses when I aim wrong, I tend to attempt anything and everything that looks remotely appealing. This is how I end up with most of the things in my closet, most notable the shoes and bags that don’t get a lot of action and a seemingly infinite quantity of shirts. Shirts shirts shirts. This is how I end up spending a bit too much time with the occasional bad-decision male companion. This is how I end up with many, many types of cereal which I will never eat.

i’d like to think ryan seacrest overdoes the phrase “this is american idol” every week because he knows how awful it is, or there’s some bet about how cheesy he can make it, or it’s like an ongoing backstage joke.

also new jersey is PISSED about bon jovi’s “Philly Soul” tshirt. PISSED.

also also if we are gonna do this bon jovi night, PLEASE GOD SOMEONE SING BED OF ROSES.

well, now we know why phil is still here. but he still looks like an alien.

holy crap jordin is doing livin on a prayer. holy crap. i am more than a little scared. do we think melinda is gonna sing bed of roses?

insensitive comment re: “rock week” to gina, seacrest.

jbj doesn’t think jordin has the chops…

come on come on jordin make this wooorrrrk….

okay. acceptable. got a little scary in the middle but she brought it back. also she looked pretty badass.

lakisha, this sounds like it could be a good song choice. however, it is not bed of roses.

MORE SOUL, LAKISHA, MORE SOUL WILL SAVE YOUR ASS

YES YES YES THAT IS WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT THANK YOU, LET US ALL SEE HOW THIS WORKS OUT FOR YOU.

ooh, drunk-clap paula!

randy, in the middle of the song she heard me begging for soul. that is why she got better. doy.

gross, simon, gross.

OH JESUS GOD NO. oh wow, lip gloss.

i hate blake.

i hate blake more than i ever knew i could. glad he’s complementing the new dye job with some guyliner.

the only way to not hate blake is to imagine that he is jason bateman doing an impression of a bad bad pop singer.

prediction: simon is horrified.

how does paula know that a twinkle in jon’s eye and a flushed face means he’s “diggin’ it?”

reality: simon was not horrified. OR WAS HE. you’ll notice he did not give his own opinion.

CHRIS, PLEASE SING BED OF ROSES.

aww, screw you chris.

“Nasal is a style of singing” when you can’t hit the notes.

Though I do kind of like his evil face.

Mostly, this season blows.

“Melinda shows her rock face” makes me think Melinda is not singing Bed of Roses, so I am pissed.

I enjoy Patrick Dempsey’s Mazda commercials. He has a nice voice. Did I ever tell you about the client who sounded like him on conference calls who I then met and was in fact a pudgy Indian man? Disappointing, but not as disappointing as the fact that Melinda is not going to be singing bed of roses.

Have a Nice Day is a shitty song. I’m sorry. Melinda, please do better than JBJ does.

Melinda is making quacking noises.

Which is a shame, because girlfriend can sing without quacking. I must say, though, she is rocking the rock thing.

Simon and I have the same sunburn.

OH HOLY GOD WHY IS THE PRESIDENT ON AMERICAN IDOL

Dubya shouts out for Bono. I don’t think Bono deserves that.

Phil: Coulda sung Bed of Roses. Similar syllabic content to Blaze of Glory.
Jordin: Ouch, yeah. Everyone’s gotta have a bad one.
Lakisha: Wins the night!
Blake: Not worth a recap. Imagine it’s Bateman being funny. Just keep trying.
Chris: Is he really still on this show? Really?
Melinda: Ok, I believe the Tina references the judges were tossing around. But I hate that song.
President & Laura: Please leave the show alone.

Sent via camera phone to my email from Mom.