Category: Uncategorized

I’m not a huge fan of St. Patrick’s Day. Or maybe I’m just not a fan of holidays. But St. Patrick’s Day specifically is one of my least favorites. With Christmas and Thanksgiving, it’s implied that you might travel to go see your family. So if you don’t end up traveling, it’s justifiable to go to the movie theatre by yourself and see Wicked or A Complete Unknown after sneaking in a Sausage McMuffin with a hash brown and two ketchup packets. Theoretically.

But on St. Patrick’s day, there’s a social obligation to have drinking plans, or else you seem like you have no friends. Which makes me want to double down on both the not drinking and the not having friends. At least with the 4th of July, there’s a higher expectation around activities. People seek out fireworks and desperately try to find a friend of a friend of a friend who has a boat. St. Patrick’s Day is kind of like a vacation is Nashville, in the sense that every bar will offer you the same experience. Green beer. Corned beef and cabbage. Contracted teams of 8-year old Irish dancers performing for 40-year old divorced men.

I often wonder what percentage of people who go to the bar are actually enjoying it. Because to me most people are there for one of, or a combination of, these two reasons: trying to meet someone, or distracting themselves from the stress and monotony of their every day life.

“Looking to add fulfillment to your dull, dull life? Then become part of the greatest musical sensation ever to hit Bikini Bottom partake in St. Patrick’s Day.” I’m titling this post after this scene btw.

I myself prefer a combination of the two above-mentioned reasons, but more-so lean towards the first since I’ve written off Hinge in Minnesota. Some people just perform better out in the field and on the frontlines. For example, I’ve made the recent discovery that a Harley Davidson jacket I thrifted from Poshmark has the power to make a bartender attempt to flag me down for discounted drinks (though unsuccessful). And then, later on, tell me the story of how he tried to flag me down because he remembered my coat. Haven’t really continued experimenting with the jacket, but full disclaimer it might only work on divorced men over 40. Which ironically might make it the perfect St. Patrick’s Day fit. It’s a shame I will not be making an appearance.

If you need me this SPD weekend, I’m going to an 11am showing of some Robert Pattinson and Mark Ruffalo space movie. And speaking of Mark Ruffalo, no one ever talks about the fact that in 13 Going on 30, Jennifer Garner wakes up married to (and I’m quoting the movie here) the New York Ranger with the hottest ass. Like, you’re not even gonna go to MSG for free ONE TIME before you start having a full-on existential crisis? Okay.

I definitely don’t wish I had the personality to do stand-up, but I am very intrigued by the joke-writing aspect of it. To the point where, right before I left Anheuser-Busch, they actually paid for me to take an eight-week class at the Comedy Cellar. And even if that is the funniest professional development endeavor I’ve ever had to expense, I still sort of wonder what that would’ve been like (undoubtedly terrifying in many ways, shapes, and forms due to the end-of-session showcase they required).

But once I was officially enrolled in the class, I started writing down little starter bits in my notepad. Because I was afraid that by the time I got to the first session, I’d have no material: meaning I’d have to force shitty material in order to satisfy the course requirements, which of course would not be very funny-person of me. So here are a few of those:

• Going to a record store with my grandmother and having to debrief her afterwards that, while it was very nice of her to compliment the acrylic nails on our male cashier, dragging out compliments for too long can seem insincere and become misconstrued as sarcasm.
• Life is like the aisle you have to stand in at TJ Maxx while you’re waiting to checkout. All you want to do is leave the store (die), but instead you have to wait forever and look at all the stupid shit you’re surrounded by in the meantime. “Sure, I guess I’ll get this Math degree, even though I don’t know when I’ll actually use it.”
• Why are couches always so intricately placed on the side of the highway?
• 75 hard people are the worst.
• I hate when guys act like meeting my parents is a big step. Because what they don’t realize is that, on any given day, they could be five margaritas deep at a Mexican joint talking to a complete stranger about how kids shouldn’t have to write essays on George Floyd at school. They will talk to anyone about anything, and will probably struggle to remember you tomorrow.
• I don’t have a fear of missing out, I actually have fear of going out. Fogo kind of sounds like pogo. Does your inner monologue ever remind you about death in weird ways? Like, “I probably won’t ever jump on another pogo stick before I die.” And then it makes you want to prove yourself wrong, like, “Fuck that. I’m buying a pogo stick tomorrow.”

Per the above, I will stick to blogging.

But I felt hyper in-tune with everything I saw or heard or thought, which was very New York of me. Or at least, selectively in-tune. I opted to block out the fact that I saw a pedestrian get movie-scene hit by a Prius while walking 5th Ave to my very first day of work. Like, flips in the air and all. Or also the time when I thought I was having heart palpitations, so I went to a walk-in clinic on a Saturday just for the doctor to tell me I was having an anxiety attack (fun). Other than that, I adored my 50-minute MTA ride where I listened to Harry Styles and contemplated what I would someday make of myself.

Now that I’m in Minnesota, the only thing that hits the same is scrolling on my phone for an hour with an iced coffee in the parking lot of a Lifetime Fitness. There’s not much to ponder about here – which I like! Maybe all of us in the MSP are the true city-slickers for choosing a city that’s relatively undesirable for regular city folk. Maybe.

Whenever I hear a Bowling for Soup song, I always think about one of two things:

1. The screenshot where someone DM’d them asking if they were bowling on behalf of soup, or to earn it (they confirmed it was to earn).
2. The fact that they do the intro song for Phineas and Ferb.

And if there are other people around when either of those cross my mind, I almost always verbalize it.

I was never really a huge Phineas and Ferb girl because it made me mad that their sister could never catch them. I was also, like, fifteen years old when the show was in its prime – at which point I should’ve graduated to watching shows with human actors like The Real World. But Phineas and Ferb was practically the only thing on Disney Channel past 10pm on weeknights, and I needed to fall asleep to Disney Channel because Paranormal Activity had convinced me that I’d be killed by a demon in my sleep. My rationale was: is a demon really going to attack me while Disney Channel is on? How embarrassing would that be for the demon?

My point being, I’ve seen a fair share of episodes despite not being a fan. So now there are just random Phineas and Ferb-isms that live inside my head. For example: “So peanutty you won’t even taste the chicken,” which a friend in my math class and I used to whisper to each other out of context and giggle over. We did the same with, “That’s my horse!” from Ed, Edd, and Eddy but that’s a different, equally-past-our-age-range cartoon that we won’t explore today.

One time an acquaintance of mine got a bad haircut and I referred to it as the Doofencut, for no reason other than to seek revenge for the time years ago when I went to Super Cut and let the hairdresser convince me into getting bangs – leading to the guy I was with to refer to it as, “THE Super Cut.”

I’m afraid of the day when people realize that half of my personality is quoting cartoons, and the other half is just recycling bits from past talking stages. One of my favorite bits includes WWE culture. Which I don’t really ‘recycle’ per se, but love to reference.

I put myself on record admitting that I enjoy when men reenact the WWE with their friends, although I’m not sure how common of a thing that actually is. Like imagine you’re at a house party and someone takes over the bluetooth speaker, plays the Triple H walk-in song, and then starts spraying a High Noon out into the air in the same fashion – proceeding to fake wrestle with their buddies. It’s funny and I hate it. Because NOW picture the Triple H spray routine (if you can call it that) happening at a Bruins game with a Dr. McGillicuddy’s nip. I witnessed it, it really happened, and I’m sad to report that it was a crowd pleaser for the two rows behind us.

People forget that the muse for “The Girl All the Bad Guys Want” by Bowling for Soup watches wrestling, by the way!!! It’s in the lyrics. Hey – did you know that Bowling for Soup does the intro song for Phineas and Ferb?

I want so badly to enjoy Tate McRae’s new album, but I can’t because I don’t understand any of the words she’s saying. Picture your grandma hearing rap music for the first time and going, “this sounds like a bunch of racket,” and that’s me trying to decipher Little Miss Hair Flip’s lyrics. Why are the beats so overproduced? And why are people not causing more rackets these days?

I heard once that when you turn thirty you stop listening to new music: an allegation I’m now actively trying to beat. Sadly I know there’s some truth to it, because I no longer naturally retain full verses of Drake songs. Or maybe it’s just that I have adult obligations preventing me from putting the same energy into learning them. I’m a grown up, I can’t be wasting two hours of my day in the Sun Tan City parking lot, drinking my little iced coffee and restarting the same song over and over.

And not for nothing, but we are ELEVEN iterations of iPhones past “my side girl got a 5s with the screen cracked, still hit me back right away,” and no one realizes how much that hurts me inside.