What Is This, Opposite Day??

In junior high, and possibly high school, we had Sadie Hawkins dances. If you've never seen a Miller-Boyet sitcom, a Sadie Hawkins dance is where the girls ask the boys. As if, you know, girls weren't allowed to do that normally.

Anyway, my entire life, I assumed Sadie Hawkins was some sort of wacky feminist from the 60s who *gasp* asked a boy to a dance, was shunned by her school and community, and eventually went on to Berkley to have numerous abortions. I decided to wikipedia her, just to prove my own correct assumption, and I was horrified to discover that this feminist icon (from 1937!!!!!) is FICTITOUS!

"Sadie Hawkins Day is a fictional holiday that originates in Al Capp's comic strip Li'l Abner. It was a day-long event observed in Canada and in the United States on the Saturday that follows November 9, named after Sadie Hawkins, "the homeliest gal in all them hills." Each year on Sadie Hawkins Day the unmarried women of Dogpatch pursued the single men. If a woman caught a man and dragged him back to the starting line by sundown, he had to marry her." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sadie_Hawkins

So somehow, this morphed into a school-sanctioned event for PATHETIC ladies who can only get a date by running down a boy and catching him in some sort of giant butterfly net.

It kind of makes me sad that this feminist/sexist dance is the elaborate construction of some old-timey male cartoonist. Though, it's nice he wanted even the ugly spinsters to get men, albeit in a pretty criminal way, when you think about it.

Good thing I actually never went to one of those dances. I was too busy committing my fossil collection to memory to waste my time with social interactions.

Apparently, you can BUY a Spin the Bottle Kit. Hey kids, just take a bottle from your fridge. Works just as well.

I don't understand the appeal of Spin the Bottle. Does anyone actually like this game? Maybe boys do, in that it gives them the excuse to kiss tons of girls guilt-free without going through the trouble of actually convincing them to kiss them. I would love to be around the guy who invented that game and was pitching it to a party--"Hey! I have an idea. What if we take this bottle, and spin it around, and then whoever it lands on has to kiss me." And the girls are like, "what if we don't want to kiss you? Clearly we're not kissing you now." And the guy is like, "right, but then YOU get to spin, and maybe you get to kiss that boy you have a crush on." And somehow, the girls who fail to realize that they hold all the power in who kisses them, give up that power for a Heinz bottle and the possiblity that Crushy Jones will be FORCED to kiss them. I'm not sure it's a great trade off. It might be the exact point in a young girl's life where she gives into the inevitable lady choices she has to make--family or career, looks or brains, boyfriend or friends. And sadly, too often, women they make the choice to let go of their power and let men and the bottles of the world decide what's easier and more digestable. "Hmmm, I guess I'll kiss you. There you are." But I digress.

Plus, is it just me, or is Spin the Bottle just a glorified version of Pass the Cold Sore? I mean, GROSS. You wouldn't put your mouth on everyone's fork at the party, so why are you willing to kiss them? There's a reason even prostitutes won't kiss on the mouth. (At least, I assume that's the case. I also assume their only vices are flossing and wanting more out of life than a fancy apartment after Richard Gere offers it to them. That and I assume they are almost always almost raped by George Costanza.)

Granted, in my lifetime, I've only been to one party that involved Spin the Bottle, and that was sometime during junior high. I had suddenly and briefly found myself part of the Cool Clique. I think it happened because our school made a rule that you could only sit four to a table at lunch in an effort to avoid lunchtime cliqueyness, so the top four cool kids were seated together, and somehow I wound up in the second top four cool kids table, which was deemed cool by its proximity to the top cool table. Our two tables joined forces in our coolness, and became an eight person clique at all other non-lunchroom times. Therefore, before they realized that my days were spent doing homework and collecting fossils, I was part of their Cool Clique. Man, if only my school knew that their anti-clique plan somehow created an evil power clique the likes of which I've never seen before...

Anyway, it was at this Cool Clique party that someone suggested Spin the Bottle, and I guess the mom chaperone thought this was acceptable party behavior, so in their DRIVEWAY of all places, we played Spin the Bottle. No one really wanted to kiss on the lips, it turned out, so it went to the cheek, which went to a hug, and soon everyone lost interest. It was probably a sad moment for the boys, but I was thrilled to see this Cool Clique had some common sense about their general mouth health and could find better things to do with their time. This was, of course, before they decided to hate me for fun, which is another story. Let's just put it this way-- kids are bitches, whether they play Spin the Bottle or not.

Painted into a Corner

You know what's super gross? Nudes. As in, nude art. I have no problem with the human form, but I do have a problem displaying it in your living room. I mean, seriously people, would you hang up a Penthouse centerfold in the dining room? No. Just because it's painted doesn't mean it's worthy of being on your wall. It's super awkward if you go into someone's house, and there's a nude hanging up there, because I always just CAN'T LOOK AWAY, but try to avoid it, but then I get caught looking at it, and then I feel the need to comment on it and sound arty, but of course I know nothing about art and always end up saying, "Man those are some realistic nipples."

Okay, confession time, I really have never been in that situation, because I don't think I'm grown-up enough to really have friends who hang REAL art in their homes. I have a theory on art in your home and it goes like this....as a kid, you hang up pictures of things you draw. It's usually messy (unless I drew it, because I was a fucking brilliant artist. Ask my parents.) As a teen, it's photos and movie posters. After college, it's framed posters. Then it's framed cool looking photos of like, a black and white shot of 1935 San Francisco and those French modern posters that say like, CHOCOLAT with a cat on it, until you realize all your friends have the same thing. Then it's starving artist art that you buy at a convention in a hotel. Then real art. I can only guess on the last two steps because I'm not there yet, but I always see the commercials late at night for like, $15 paintings of a country house sold at the Marriot.

The Best Channel to Make You Feel Bad About Yourself, 24/7!

So, because I like torturing myself, lately I've been watching a lot of HGTV. It's torturous because 1) I don't have a house and would very much like one, so watching people decorate or buy houses sort of depresses me, and 2) Most of the people on the shows are idiots. Seriously.

House Hunters is particularly frustrating to me. I have yet to watch an episode where the couple didn't take issue with something stupid in the house-- "Uggg! This wall color is gross!", "I hate their furniture!", and "There are too many trees in the backyard!" I'd like to let these home buyers in on a little secret. When you buy a house, you're allowed to change stuff! Fascinating, I know. It might be shocking to some, but wall color is easily changed with PAINT. Also, houses typically don't come with furniture. So maybe you find the current owners' baby crib to be tacky...but that doesn't matter because 1) you don't have kids, and 2) YOU AREN'T BUYING THEIR FURNITURE. It's like not buying a TV because you don't like what channel it's playing in the store.

What's also weird-- they show the couple three houses, and apparently they have to buy one of them. I'm not sure if they get to see more but they just don't air that part, but seriously, talk about pressure. I can't buy shoes that quickly. (Granted, I suck at buying shoes, but STILL).

The other show I hate but keep watching is Designed to Sell. Basically, people who can't sell their house have designers come and make their house presentable so they can sell it. You never see them really sell it, so I suspect nearly all of them lie about the "I'm trying to sell my house" part. Especially because the homeowners ALWAYS freak out when the designers make big changes to their house. Like, calm down people. Moving your TV from one wall to the other sort of doesn't matter if you're MOVING. What do you care if they paint your house pink if it attracts more buyers? What I really hate, though, is that usually the homeowners have like, one billion kids toys all over the place, dorm room furniture, and a plastic chandelier. They're all, "Why won't people buy this place?" Uhhh, because even though you're not selling your crap to them, no one wants to see your nasty shoes in the dining room. Also, you just know they're gonna take that home sale money and trash up another house, and it pisses me off.

So here are my tips for homeowners-- If you own a futon, a beanbag chair, cover your couch with a bedsheet, and think Kill Bill posters are acceptable forms of wall art, you shouldn't be allowed to own a home. I don't care if I'm being snobby. You can own Ikea furniture, that's perfectly fine. But there's a certain moment in all our lives where we have to grow up an evaluate our furniture and really objectively decide if it looks classy or could be mistaken for a coke den. This is a public service announcement, from a bitter apartment renter who lives above the laundry room, under the Mystery Burper, and next to the Loud Sex Couple. Please, crappy homeowners, I'll trade you.

What's Spanish for "seriously?"

When I was in seventh grade, I took Spanish 1 as an elective class. Sure I could have taken something fun, but I chose the intellectual route. The reasoning was that Spanish 3 is automatically an above level class, which gives you a higher GPA, so I could start that freshman year of high school and have a leg up on people who started Spanish in eighth or ninth grade. It was brilliant, masterful construction on my part (and my mom and aunt's who helped me schedule these classes as if we were plotting a bank heist). Yes, I went against the advice of my guidance counselor--"Don't play the GPA game. You won't win." But I did win, and though I was miserable, taking classes like College Prep and AP Computer Science 2, in the long run...ok, in the long run it was pretty much awful, too.

So, Spanish. I don't know what it is about Spanish textbooks, but they all seem to have been made in the early 80s and never updated (seriously, we always had to learn the Spanish word for "discotech." PS, it's "discoteca.") Each unit we'd learn vocabulary that had no real practical application to the world, or the world in a Spanish-speaking country, unless Spain is filled with carnivals and zoos, because we seemed to learn those words over and over. If I needed directions in Mexico, I couldn't ask, but if I wanted to describe that the ferris wheel was next to the lion tamer, I totally could.

If I had to do it over again, I would petition the school to allow me to take Sign Language. I could totally be one of those people who do the signs in the corner of the tv, or on stage at like, an awards ceremony. It would also prevent me from being in the very familiar situation of Spanish 3-- my teacher had a late night at the discoteca, and instead of teaching, made us listen to Shakira songs for two days straight. Seriously.

In West Philadelphia....

All my memories of after school activities during elementary school went something like this: Come home. Do my homework. Eat a sandwich. Watch TV. Go to bed. The TV usually included some variation of reruns of Full House, Family Matters, Step by Step and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

For a long time, Fresh Prince of Bel-Air totally confused me. As I was somehow sheltered from all popular music (I'm not sure how that happened, exactly, but as a kid, I just simply didn't listen to music), I had no idea who the Fresh Prince was. In fact, when I heard about the TV show, I thought he was an ACTUAL prince, like royalty, and I couldn't figure out how that made for conflict-driven TV. I watched one episode, and Will needed to get a job or something, and I was constantly screaming at the TV, "You don't need to get a job. YOU'RE A PRINCE!" (This could be why I spent my days watching TV and not playing with actual people). This went on for a long while, until one day I was mentioning this to a boy at school, who of course looked at me like I had completely lost my mind.

Our conversation went something like this: "Hey, you know that show Fresh Prince?" "Yeah." "It's really dumb. He's a prince, but he gets into all these weird situations that would NEVER happen to a real prince. I mean, seriously, where's his crown?" "Uhhh, you know he's not an ACTUAL prince, right? That's just his name?" "Oh. Of course. Yeah....but remind me again, why is that his name? It sounds like a dumb name." "He's a super famous rapper, duhhhhh." And then I'd sink into my corner, and busy myself with getting straight A's, because I was awesome, and too smart for stupid rap songs about parents not understanding or whatever.

BUT. Now that I'm fully versed in all things Fresh Prince (and all things black, I might add, in that the show taught more about black culture than Family Matters ever would!), I need to share a secret with you. I thought this was common knowledge, but apparently it isn't. So we all know the great theme song...but did you know there is a LOST VERSE to the song?? If you did, then you can roll your eyes and go about your day, but if you didn't, your mind can explode this very instant. I found it. And it's terrible, terrible quality. But here it is:

FRESH PRINCE VIDEO

I hope you all enjoy that as much as I did. YouTube is great for many reasons, but no reason greater than finding the Fresh Prince theme song over your lunch hour at work.