One-Hit Wonders: January 2010

• heavy petting to frustration


• hope 2010 brings promises of greater heights to conquer


• sunshine daye lesbian wedding


• "dating a yoga instructor"


• che guevara rogue brew


• all russian online sex and friend dating @hotmail.com . emails 2003/2010


• will the world get destroyed on 2010


• men drinking and massaging milky breast


• milla tube galore


• nipples and big tits on the dinner menu


• why did some homes in the 1930's have curtains on their cabinets instead of doors

Roadtrip: Portland (Part 2 of 2)

about to get sauced: the big day finally arrived! my baby cousin was going to get married, which was the whole reason behind this trip. thankfully, i had packed a flowy, flowery dress to wear for the occasion that did a good job hiding my emerging beer belly.


non-beer belly: my cousin Mike (on the right) and his new bride Kerry are efficient people. not only was their wedding ceremony short and sweet (always a good thing), they wasted no time with family planning and are due to have their first child later this year, a boy.


don’t tickle me! my cousin is rad despite the tickling. she’s nothing short of a superwoman who impresses me endlessly with her ability to juggle working, mothering, gardening, budgeting, cooking, cleaning, blogging, project planning and tending to that shock of beautiful, red, curly hair. plus, no else is named Gitella. yep, my cousin is one of a kind.


how cute is this kid? this is one of Gitella’s many impressive accomplishments — her adorable son, Jack Ryan, who kindly allowed Mo and i to stay in his room during our visit and never once complained. i never get tired of this kid and his freckles.


other impressive accomplishments: her daughter Edie and 10-year strong marriage to husband Roman.


my impressive accomplishment: my date was super hot — like smoldering, combustible, flammable, third-degree burn hot. and i’m not just saying that because i want him to build me a shelf in the laundry room.


how cute are they? that’s my Ma dancing with my Mo and looking a little too cozy with my hot date. i think she and i need to have a little talk about boundaries.


yes to sugar: because Kerry’s dad is a caterer, all the food tasted marvelous. thankfully, my flowy dress accommodated seconds, maybe even thirds.


sibling head stack: and to think Gitella and i almost threw Mike over a balcony railing when we were kids. i’m glad we kept him alive, especially since he’s about to become a daddy. big congratulations to the new happy family.


circling the Hood: the day after the wedding, we headed 50 miles outside of Portland to Mount Hood, the tallest mountain in Oregon, standing roughly 11,000 feet high. according to its Wiki page, it’s still considered an active volcano with a 3% to 7% chance of erupting in the next 30 years. its last "minor eruptive event" occurred in 1907.


Hood in super zoom: it’s home to 12 glaciers and has its own weather pattern that renders it way colder than the area surrounding it. even as we approached it, the wind picked up and the temperature seemed to dip 20 degrees. still, people love to ignore Hood’s many dangers and climb it for sport, often dying in the process.


our sport: after shivering by the mountain for half an hour, we needed some warming up so we headed to Hood River’s Full Sail Brewery for a sampler platter. i love, love, love this brewery and count its Session Black Dark Lager, sampled for the first time during this visit, as one of my favorite beers. you should try it.


harvest time: the drive to Mount Hood wound us through Hood River’s famed Fruit Loop, where we ate apples picked from the orchard that morning, apples so delicious that we walked away with a 10-pound box of them, which Gitella converted to apple butter.


back to school: the day after our trip to Mount Hood, Mo and i continued the sightseeing at Clackamas Community College campus to see what the crazy kids are learning these days. not surprisingly, they’re learning how to ditch class and smoke pot, which isn’t a far cry from my college days, though mine were spent listening to better music.


actually: we were there to see the buildings designed by Portland’s Opsis Architects, who, to my untrained eye, did an awesome job. Mo seemed to agree.


not very comfortable: this "couch" is made of concrete. no lie.


delta skelta: after our stroll through campus, we decided to work off the beer with a hike through the Sandy River Delta, just east of the Sandy River. the hike was relatively flat and populated by hikers with their dogs, which gave me some much needed dog therapy. i made out with every dog i saw while Mo consulted the park’s directory in search of our next destination.


there it is: it took some hunting, but Mo and i finally found the Elliptical Bird Blind we came to see, designed by Maya Lin as part of the Confluence Project, a series of seven outdoor installations and artworks across the Columbia River that spans two states and commemorates the Lewis and Clark expedition of the early 1800s.


rabit, magpy, deer: the slats of the bird lookout are engraved with the names of the new animal species identified during the expedition and recorded in Lewis and Clark’s journals, the species’ dates of discovery, latin names, common names and current statuses (extinct, endangered, recovered or flourishing).


sweating for art: i must confess that i wasn’t expecting much when Mo told me he wanted to visit this site, but when i was standing inside the airy lookout, reading through the names (while sweating profusely), the place did feel — for lack of a better term — historical. and not just historical, but interesting. it almost made me forget about that great beer i tried at Full Sail and look at birds instead. almost.


the enchanted forest: but the day was waning and the drive ahead was long, so we left The Nature and returned to the city to enjoy our last night in Portland, which was spent ogling at the city while surrounded by family, beers firmly in hand.


so what have we learned? oh, portland! how do i love thee? admittedly, only sparingly. it’s not that you’re not amazing because your wonders are many — your eco-consciousness, smart city planning, well-paved roads, beautiful scenery and crisp air make you divine. your people not only recycle, they compost, grow their own crops, reuse greywater and bike instead of driving. you are a liberal’s wet dream of a city, a progressive wonderland full of funky shops, good breweries and people who really care.


the big but: you’re too damn white! and it’s a damn shame, because with a little diversity you’d be on the list of Cities I Love rather than the list of Cities That Are Too Damn White. i hope that you figure out how to attract more ethnic types in the coming years — not only because they can make some mighty tasty food with their exotic spices — but because your utopian ideal can never be fully realized without them. or maybe i’m talking about my utopian ideal, which, admittedly, looks a lot like my hyper diverse Los Angeles.


no hard feelings: because i still think you are gorgeous. all that rainfall (and time in the gym) has really paid off, giving you some breathtaking scenery just outside your city border.


thanks! Mo and i appreciated it during our drive through your state. so while i don’t love you, Portland, i do like you. and because you are home to cherished members of my family, whom i do love, i will see you again — and see you often.

many more photos in the slideshow:


next installment is the final stop of the roadtrip: Seattle.

Dish-Interested Double Feature

please note that Dish-Interested, my nonsensical celebrity gossip column, now has its own fan page on Facebook! granted, i created the fan page to shamelessly self-promote, but i can't create a million fake user accounts to populate the fan page so you need to either 1) do it for me; or 2) become a fan. (option 2 is easier.) thanks for the support and tell your book publisher friends! what follows are the last two columns:

Dish-Interested: 2009 Gossip Roundup

Oh, where does the time go, my superstar friends? Seems like it was only yesterday we were learning about Michael Jackson’s surprise demise. And now we have Brittany Murphy’s cold body to add to the pile of wayward celebrities who can’t get a grip on their prescription drug use. She joins Adam Goldstein (a.k.a. DJ AM) in the roped-off VIP room in the sky — a room Heath Ledger has surely been keeping cozy since his own prescription pill-popping death in 2008. At least he got an Oscar out of that deal.

But who cares about DYING anyway when there is so much more fun to be had by CHEATING? Yes, cheating was the new black this year, as countless celebs got caught with their pants down in the presence of people who were not their spouses, thereby making 2009...

Dish-Interested: Guidos Taking Their Fist-Pumps, Poofs and Self-Tanner Beyond the ‘Jersey Shore’

In an effort to prove that the Hamptons are not the only place to vacation on the East Coast, MTV brings us ‘Jersey Shore,’ a reality show that follows a group of self-proclaimed “guidos” and “guidettes” who spend a lazy summer partying at the shore in a guesthouse paid for by MTV. Think ‘Real World’ but with no diversity. Instead, the housemates chosen for this show are all unnaturally tan Italian-Americans with funny accents in their early twenties.

When they’re not recovering from hangovers, they pass their time at nightclubs drunkenly rubbing up against strangers… and each other. Cue the make-out sessions back at the house’s hot tub, from which spring some spectacular wisdom (in addition to some less spectacular STDs)...

Annual

oh hello, blog. how are you? i am fine, thanks for asking. i know it’s been a long time since i’ve given you proper attention. i have a lot of excuses for neglecting you for so long, but none of them are any good.

sure, i’ve been keeping busy with freelance work, some socializing, and a few lazy days of reading in bed and watching Jersey Shore online. it’s been a lovely reprieve, to be sure, but one i must snap out of because i have many things i want to write about. there’s that roadtrip from september i need to finish chronicling and some home improvements i need to detail. plus, there are Deep Thoughts i want to discuss.

let’s start now with some Deep Thoughts on the new year, shall we? 2009 was lousy for everyone and i’m as happy as anyone that time has moved us into a nice, even-numbered year that is a new beginning in so many ways.

not only do we have a whole new decade in front of us — yes, sticklers, i know the decade doesn’t officially begin until the start of 2011, but work with me anyway — but we finally have a name for that decade: The Tens! not since the nineties have we had a name we could all agree on for a decade. i’m not sure what the last ten years are to be called. the Aughts? the Naughts? the Big Zeros?

whatever they were, they are gone thankfully. sure, they had some bright stops for me personally, but 9/11, eight years of Bush, two wars, economic meltdowns — BYE BYE! i’m sure the next ten years will be nothing short of perfect and prosperous. if everything in life is cyclical, they better fucking be.

for me, this upcoming year will be rad because i am determined to make it rad. i have lots of BIG PLANS, all of which will effortlessly come to fruition because i want them to. (and yes, i am writing this after having two glasses of wine.) let’s start with some new year’s resolutions:

• take better care of my health: seriously, when did i turn 80? i wake up too frequently with weird aches and pains, amplified always by the rain. my energy is not what it used to be. i have ever-deepening crows feet and laugh lines. my hair has started to thin, with the rest of me starting to thicken. hello, thirties, you suck. i can do better and will.


• spend less time in front of the computer: actually, what i need to do is make the time i do spend in front of the computer more meaningful. this means not wasting 10 minutes reading everyone’s status update on what they’re having for dinner on facebook — and responding with my own lame comments — when i’m only going online to check email. i know i made the same exact resolution last year and then forgot to follow through, but this year i won’t forget.


• become prolific: along with spending my time with the computer more meaningfully, i need to write more than i currently do — and faster. the copywriting i do for freelance clients and the Dish column i write for fun are activities that take far too many painstaking hours to complete. plus, there’s you, little bloggy, who bears the brunt of my neglect. but no more! ooooh, look, Michelle is having taco soup for dinner.


• work as much as possible: in short, i need money for a bunch of home improvement projects i want to undertake, investments i want to make and vacations i want to take. work is the way.

but first, another glass of wine.

Somebody Was Sprayed in the Face by a Skunk

i’ll give you one guess who that somebody could be. i suppose it was only a matter of time. the skunk and Pinko had been flirting for months, maybe even a year, with a few near encounters averted only by my seeing the skunk first and screaming at Pinko to GET OVER HERE RIGHT NOW, which she would do at lightning speed, confused by why the hell i was yelling. then i would shoo the Pinks back into the house while the skunk and i glared at each other as he casually walked away. sometimes he even gave me the finger. other times, Pinko would see him from the deck and bark like a retard while i yelled at her to SHUT UP ALREADY from inside the house.

this time it was 5am on a tuesday morning. Mo got up at that ungodly hour for reasons still unknown, leaving me to sleep until my alarm went off. he opened the front door to let the dogs out into the yard and BOOM!, my furry shithead made a beeline for the skunk, who sprayed her square in the face before scurrying away unharmed. her face scrunched and sneezing uncontrollably, Pinko ran back into the house, bringing the smell of satan with her like a little souvenir from hell.

i was lying in bed at the time, listening to the ruckus unfold outside and wondering whether i really needed to get up or if i could just feign ignorance, fall back asleep and deal with it later. once the smell hit my nose, i knew sleep was out of the question. by the time i got up, my sleepy eyes burning, Mo was already running the bathwater. i looked at the Pinks, who sat in the corner of the bathroom with her ears down, giving that i’m-so-sorry-for-what-i-did-let’s-just-focus-on-how-cute-i-am-instead face. she looked radioactive. i approached her face with my own and almost fell backwards when i got a whiff. she smelled like burning rubber.

two baths followed, consisting of five shampoo sessions. internet research also followed and revealed that a tomato juice bath does not actually kill skunk smell, but a product called Tecnu does. so we got some Tecnu and lathered her up. then we burned some sage, some scented candles, laundered everything, opened doors and windows, turned on fans — everything short of an exorcism to expunge the smell from the house.

a week later, the house still had a faint skunk smell and Pinko’s face still has a strong skunk smell. at least she’s been on her best behavior.

In 2010, The World Will Be Destroyed