My Ode to Solitude

Let me start by saying that I adore my beau. We have lots of fun together. And we spend a lot of time in each other’s company. Let me also add that one of the things I love about him is that his house is more than 15 miles away from mine. There’s something about being able to come home and completely be myself that’s so lovely. Living alone affords lots of creature comforts.

• I can come home and change into my uniform of sloppy sweater and Care Bear pajama pants without worrying about being sexy (because, believe me, it’s not a sexy look).
• After a long day at work, I can decide against cooking and have a meal of string cheese, gummi bears, and wine with nary an eyebrow raised.
• My pets aren’t forced to divide their loyalties.
• I can use all of the hot water.
• I can sleep in the middle of the bed on all of the pillows.
• I can up my chances of going to the Olympics in the Sliding Across the Kitchen Floor in Socks category through constant practice.
• My cooking failures don’t have witnesses (I was the only one in attendance for the Empanada Disaster of 2009).
• I can watch all of the embarrassing TV I want. My beau would never sit through an entire episode of Project Runway, much less an entire season (don’t even get me started on the embarrassments that can be found in my Netflix queue).
• Two words: remote control.
• I can conduct all beauty rituals in private. In public, my roots are magically nonexistent, my eyebrows magically shaped, and my toenails magically painted. Why ruin the mystery?
• Nobody has to hear my annoying renditions of popular songs when I insert my pets’ names where the lyrics call for baby.
• When I dance around the house, the potential for injuring someone with my flailing limbs is greatly reduced when nobody else is there.
• I choose all of the décor. I can put owl decals on the living room wall and paint the whole place Pepto-Bismol pink if I want to (though, really, yuck).
• When I’m sick, nobody has to bear witness to a coffee table that’s piled with crumpled Kleenexes and mini-donut wrappers.

After reviewing the above, I’m pretty sure my beau is fine with that 15-mile distance as well.

Part of the Madding Crowd.

I’ve been to a number of concerts. And while I love seeing bands live, the memories that stick with me the most are the ones of the concertgoers around me. Of course I remember being filled with happiness and thoughts of John Cusack with a boom box when Peter Gabriel sang “In Your Eyes,” but I can also vividly picture the dude next to me who was so drunk he swayed at the most gravity-defying angles and never once fell over—a stunning achievement. Here’s a list of some more memorable concertgoers.

Huey Lewis and the News—(Go ahead and laugh; you know you perk up when you hear “I Want a New Drug.”) It was one of my first concerts. There was a couple next to my friend and I. The girl was much older and more sophisticated than we were (probably around 20), and she was disgusted that she and her date had to sit next to children. When she crawled over us to buy a T-shirt, she gave us the nastiest look she could muster. It gave us great pleasure to note that her fly was wide open.

Norah Jones—The guy behind me repeated the same mantra for the duration of the show: OhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHot OhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHotOhMyGodShe’sSoHot.

Hank Williams III—Half of the show was an old-time country tribute to his dad and his grandpa; the other half was ear-bloodying, hair-curling death metal. Three elderly women came to the show and really enjoyed the first half; they also sat through the entire second half (surrounded by head-banging, purple-haired, pierced metalheads), and smiled and clapped politely after each song.

Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood—A woman in the next row slept through the concert (in a $150 seat—that’s an expensive nap). She did wake up eventually, but it was only to go buy a cookie.

Death Cab for Cutie—It was at an outdoor venue. The kids in front of us (early 20s) were so excited to see the band that they jumped up and down… for the entire show. Ah, youth.

The Rockettes Christmas Spectacular—I had overindulged (over-overindulged, to be honest) the night before at the company holiday party, but I’d promised my family I’d be there to enjoy the show with them the next morning. I arrived on time (a little green) and settled in. Everything was fine, until the little kid in front of me (who must have overindulged in something as well) puked all over his row. That was the longest show of my life.

Super Diamond—Everybody seemed to be chemically enhanced at this Neil Diamond tribute (Mr. Diamond, by the way, was my very first concert). It’s hard to pick out one memory from this show, but it would have to be the woman who was so swept away by the music (and whatever she’d taken before the show) that she climbed into the lap of the wheelchair-bound man next to her and rode him and the chair around for the rest of the concert.

Aerosmith and ZZ Top—The fellow in front of us seemed very popular with the women around him, even though they didn’t seem to know each other very well. It became clear to us later that he’d hired his dates. Ohhhhhhh.

Robbie Fulks—My date kept screeching “Play Burn Together!” at the band. When they finally played it, he leaned over and whispered, “This is our song.” The song is about how we’d burn together in Hell. You’ll be shocked to know that the relationship did not last, and he’ll be experiencing eternal damnation with some other lucky lady.

Joys and Annoyances. Joynoyances?

Joys:

• The smell of the Halloween-candy aisle
  
• Big, fluffy snowflakes (Date Snow—it looks really good in your hair)
  
• Scary-movie marathons during October
• Windshield wipers that work really well
  
• Warm, fuzzy socks
  

Annoyances:

• The guy who has to wear shorts when it's snowing outside
• When folks pronounce it "Supposably"
  
• My neighbor who just happens to stand at the window buck naked when she sees my beau pull up outside
• Those plastic, faux testicles that hang from the backs of trucks
• Walmart
  

Balloon Family Christmas Special—Prison Edition

Well knock me over with a feather. It turns out that the Heenes just wanted to pitch their own reality show (I heard Balloon Dad’s self-recorded theme songs for two proposed shows. Based on those alone, neither show was going to get—ahem—off the ground). Don’t we have enough reality shows? And when are we finally going to take the “reality” tag off of them? I was thinking about this last night. If someone lived in a vacuum and these shows were their only grasp on reality, the following would completely cease to exist:

• People with desk jobs
• Real breasts
• 20-somethings who live in large cities and have crap jobs, crappier apartments, and subsist on Ramen noodles
• Women Hugh Hefner’s age
• Couples who have six children or more and jobs to support their families
• Women who can dress themselves
• Cakes that do not turn out well
• Shy people
  
• Washed-up celebrities who fade gracefully into oblivion
• Functional families
• Wedding dresses that cost less than $9,000
• Average cooks
• Women who are single and are fine with that
  
• People who work for Donald Trump who don’t see him every day
• Folks who can have a drink or two and then stop
• Individuals who met a significant other in any kind of normal fashion (i.e., not from a pool of bachelors or bachelorettes who vie for fantasy dates and roses)
  
• People who are neither too fat nor too skinny who just try to eat well and exercise a bit
• People who read
• Playboy Playmates who date men their own age
• Folks who get pulled over by the cops and calmly hand over their license and registration and accept the ticket
• Women who think plastic surgery is a bad idea

If that's reality, I'm about as unreal as it gets, folks.