Lee’s Unpublished Entries, Vol. 1 (a post by Lee)

When I was home for Easter this year, I discovered an old journal in my closet. It’s sometimes fun but mostly incredibly painful to scour through old journal entries and see what mundanity I felt compelled to document. I browsed through this particular notebook and decided I’d share some of my least most poignant preadolescent insights in all their unedited splendor.

8/8/00
My camp is leaving for Costa Rica today. When we go to the rain forest, I think it’d be cool to see monkeys and sloths. If I’m lucky, I’ll get a good picture of a monkey. If I’m even luckier, Mom will let me enlarge the photo and frame it in my room.

8/11/00
We are in Tellahorsa, which apparently is actually spelled Tilajari. We rafted down the river, and I saw tons of sloths and howler monkeys! My life is complete! Right now I’m watching “Road House” on TBS, because it stars Patrick Swayze! Hurrah! We’re gonna have a really big day tomorrow, so I’m gonna stop writing now.

8/15/00
I read “A Child Called It” by Dave Pelzer today. That was a bad idea.

8/19/00
We returned home to New Jersey today. I found some feathers.

8/24/00
At Kelly’s today, I made up a dance. It’s called “The Hot Tub Cha-Cha.” Everyone was impressed. [Ed.: False.] I am glad and sad camp’s over. It’s hard to have two emotions at once, since they’re so opposite one another.

8/27/00
Steph gave me good advice today. She’s my Ann Landers!

8/28/00
I never want to forget that French trip last year where we saw Carson Daly (host of TRL), Travis Barker (drummer from Blink 182), and Tyrese (I think he’s a singer). I’m playing Dogz right now and creating an Adoption Kit. Mental note: Find out who Johnny Depp is. Philippe had Elliot over today, who’s this awesome short kid. Mom told me not to see Space Cowboys because there are too many famous people in it, and that means it’s a bad movie. I can’t work tapes on my boom box. It’s very confusing. Adam Sandler reminds me of Mr. M (in case I read this when I’m elderly – Mr. M was 7th grade science teacher). [Ed.: In case I read this blog post when I'm elderly - Mr. M was nothing like Adam Sandler.]

9/2/00
Bon Jovi’s song “It’s My Life” is pretty good. I want to get his CD. It’s almost school time so we went to Staples for school supplies. I got a cool binder and cool pencils. Here’s a picture of Leonardo DiCaprio:

9/7/00
[No text, just two more pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio.]

9/9/00
I’m interpersonal.

9/10/00
I had a dream last night where I brushed my teeth. Philippe was running really fast down the hall today, and I stuck my foot out, and he flew. I’m calling him Superman now. He’s sitting in my room working on a drawing of a truck. I wish they’d let us carry our backpacks in the hallway at school. I think rules like this is what my Civics teacher Mrs. H meant when she defined totalitarianism.

9/23/00
Amy, Stephanie, and I saw 9 Days today. We were in the front row. We all got to slap the hot guy’s hand! They signed my Jets hat. Remy called me “a lucky loser.” Sassy!

9/26/00
Jenna was kicked off of Survivor today. Rudy had immunity. I haven’t heard from my pen pal Anze in a long time. Kenzie’s cat Skitters may die today or sometime soon.

9/30/00
Simon’s aunt’s brother, Josh, used to work for MTV, and he met MANDY MOORE! So cool. Who is Robert Iler?

An Above-Average Evening of Mediocrity (a guest post by Josh)

Y’all, AM and I are feeling super-ritzy today because our dear friend Josh called and requested he write a guest post for this blog! Flattery is the way to our hearts, so well-played, Josh! I fear he is severely overestimating our readership, but we are delighted to spotlight his great story nonetheless. Enjoy!

I love Anna Marie and Lee’s hilarious recaps of daily life in Houston, so I asked if I could contribute a post about my trip last night to the Houston Aeros minor leaguer hockey game. I don’t have a blog, but I wanted to write something. Lee said this seemed fine, so here we are. (Just for the record: my first appearance in this blog was Anna Marie’s post about ice sculpting, where a picture of me was included giving a regrettable thumb’s up).

This was my first Houston Aeros game, and I was immediately awed by a showcase of how to do things halfway. As a pro sporting spectacle, it lacks money, sponsors you’ve heard of — unless you’re a “sun spot” fanatic — and the quality of the game is a little sloppy. I expected a ton of fights, but was only teased by a few pushes and shoves. But it was my first hockey game, so just being there and hearing the slap of the puck and people getting slammed against the boards was pretty gratifying.

We arrived at the game and things got off to a rocky start. My sister’s purse was VERY thoroughly searched, and security was not pleased to discover her water bottle. Judging by the fan base, the assumption is that this is filled with straight vodka that she plans to chug and then “get in someone’s face.” (There was one guy wearing a camo-Aeros jersey who banged on the glass every time a player got near it — sort of a reverse zoo gorilla situation if that makes sense.) My sister’s water bottle is very fancy (Fischers LOVE water) and cost more than her ticket, so she had to go back to the car to save it.

After that hurdle, we found our seats, and I had the extreme pleasure of awkwardly asking a woman wearing a thousand Aeros buttons, an Aeros jersey, and an eye patch to move so we could get in. I realized after asking that she was disabled and was having a hard time getting up. I offered that we could go around instead of asking her to move, and she angrily screamed, “I”M ALREADY UP.” I really felt welcomed into the Aeros community.

A child was then sitting in my seat, and I had to ask a string of nearly 9,000,000 children to all move down one seat. Luckily a parent intervened and made it happen because the kids all looked at me with complete befuddlement, as if I had just passed out complex math problems.

Once situated, we realized that a 7:30 starting time had been inexplicably delayed to 8:15 or so, and we watched the zambonis go around and around. When the game was finally underway, the Aeros appeared to be in control with the Bulldogs on their heels. A goal was scored fairly quickly, and we all went completely nuts. It was also an introduction to the fact that jock jams are basically a form of crack for children. As soon as something like “Whoomp There It Is” goes on, kids in the stands gyrated and convulsed uncontrollably. I imagine they’ve had to outlaw any jock jams ever being played over elementary or middle school PA systems because it would cause pandemonium. Also, the biggest moment of applause and uproar throughout the night, including goals, was when they played Justin Bieber’s “Baby.”

My friend with the eye patch seemed to be the only real fan, and during slow moments of play would just shout in a groaning tone, “BORING.” Also, during bad calls, she would hold a small voodoo doll-like ref puppet hanging from a noose. It was disturbing. She also had some kind of zebra thing hanging from her seat that I don’t really want to know the significance of or how it might relate to the dark arts. She also liked to hold really small signs with lettering on them that were maybe visible from no more than 5 or 10 feet, like an eye test for fans. Because I was (thankfully) so close to her, I did catch one directed at the ref that said, “ARE YOU PREGNANT? BECAUSE YOU’VE MISSED 2 PERIODS.” This was not only inappropriate for the number of children in the audience, but also unnecessarily limited to use during the third period. I did not see if maybe she had a series that fixed the number to match just how many periods the pregnant ref had missed.

Speaking of refs, this appears to be the most horrifying job choice that one can make. Players and pucks fly at you with reckless abandon, and you have to hop up onto the bench like a rodeo clown trying to get away from the bull. I have no idea how they can concentrate on the game. I would be so concerned for my own safety that I don’t think I would ever make a call during a game, and if I ever blew my whistle, it would probably just be out of random fear and panic. Luckily, I was seated next to my friend Kat who could explain hockey’s rules, some of which seem kind of subjective, probably because they realize most are arbitrarily made in a life or death situation.

Eventually the Bulldogs tied up the score, and the game reached a stalemate. The Bulldogs appeared to be faster on the ice and better passers, but our mighty Aeros did not flinch. As the periods ended, we were treated to what can best be summarized as a bad high school talent show. They isolated a grouping of children from different schools in an unused section of stands (of which there was no shortage), and these children would perform a song or “talent.” One consisted of them banging bright, orange buckets probably purchased that morning from home depot. It was like a DJ Screwed version of Stomp as they slowly moved buckets around and eventually used drum sticks to create a very unintentionally syncopated abstract beat.

When we weren’t watching cobbled together high school or middle school renditions of songs, they tried to get fan interaction going to get us all completely pumped. One of these was a very literal form of pumping — fist pumping. It was gratuitously long, over two minutes, and people fatigued as soon as they realized all they were doing was fist pumping toward no specific aim or goal — remember, there’s no money or significant sponsors so free trinkets aren’t given away; everything’s for the love. I tried to capture this fist pumping in a video. They could not let a child win a free tan from sun spot, so they gave away a seat upgrade. The jumbotron camera laboriously tracked the lucky family as they slowly made the journey down multiple rows to their new and improved seats. It was excruciatingly long and felt like some piece of experimental film.

They also did a giveaway where everyone tries to throw a puck in a very small basket to win money from a casino. It was awesome to see all the pucks fly from the crowd onto the ice — imagine thousands of black pebbles skipping and slipping on a pure white canvas. The contest itself was like a bad carny game and appeared to be basically impossible. 1. To actually land it in from the stands, you’d have to be able to throw a puck a significant distance that would require professional baseball skills. 2. The basket was not much larger than a puck.

Between these halftime/timeout oddities, the game was a nail biter. The Bulldogs tied it 2-2, and it went into sudden death overtime. The Bulldogs won on an uncontested slapshot. As we walked out a man angrily summed it up best, yelling to no one in particular, “SHIT SHOT. THAT WAS A SHIT SHOT.”

Office Space (a post by Lee)

For reasons unclear, my office at work attracts a variety of foul creatures – and I’m not referring to my students.

It all began last March, when I noticed strange squeaking noises emanating from my printer. I opened the paper tray to discover this:

Yes, folks, a mouse converted my printer into his vacation home.

A few months later, my coworkers and I were enjoying lunch together when one of them concernedly asked, pointing to a spot on the floor, “Uh, what is that?” You know what it was? Cat poop. There was cat poop on the floor. How in the hell it got there, I will never know. I immediately wigged out, seeking something, anything, that could purify the air particles around me. My supervisor, on the other hand, who after 40 years in education is apparently fazed by nothing, simply walked over, picked it up with a tissue, disposed of it in our trash can, and then continued eating.

And then came the Great Fruit Fly Invasion of 2012. This time not just my office was affected – the entire upper school was wholly infiltrated by fruit flies. I attribute this infestation to two causes in particular:

1. Children are disgusting. They discard their teenage shrapnel all over the school – items ranging from chunks of challah bread to underwear (yes, this actually happened) – inviting all sorts of insects and critters into our hallowed halls.

2. The head of school’s dog is a jerk. He’s developed a habit of entering our office after all of us have left and knocking over our trash bin in his quest for leftovers.

After appeals to the maintenance staff and the CFO to spray down the building or institute a rule banning students from eating food outside of the cafeteria went unanswered, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I spent an entire morning designing multiple types of homemade fruit fly death traps to spread around the office. My most effective trap – a glass jar filled with apple cider vinegar and a couple pumps of dish soap (to break the surface tension) – killed over 100 flies in 6 hours. My least effective trap – ersatz flypaper (honey spread on cardboard) – killed one. But every death counts in this war of attrition, y’all.

I am The Exterminator.

After 3 days, the flies were fully eradicated. My actions even provided a learning opportunity: a few students asked me for help in establishing their own fruit fly death traps. I thought my office space woes were over until I arrived at work this morning, only to discover that mosquito season has begun; I got bit within seconds of sitting at my desk. It never ends…

In Honor of Robert (a post by Lee)

Today is Robert’s 25th birthday! Robert is one of my dearest friends from Davidson and, also, an icon.

I met Robert a few days into our freshman year, when he sashayed onto my hall and announced he was converting our lounge into his “second closet.” Not a month later, he started using my closet to store his wet clothes. Homeboy had a lot of clothes.

Robert quickly became a ubiquitous presence on our hall and also an eminent character on campus. That fate is hard to avoid, of course, when you’re both 6’6″ and wonderful. When he studied abroad in France second semester of sophomore year, I so profoundly suffered from his absence that I created popsicle stick Roberts, personalized for specific situations. Examples included: “Masticating Robert” for trips to the Commons, “Jackie O Robert” for any event requiring elegance, and “Party Robert” for self-explanatory occasions.

His glorious return to campus in the fall of our junior year was a time of much excitement. Most of our class studied abroad that year, so Anna Marie, Robert, and I engaged in a lot of quality time together. We wasted hours upon hours binge-eating pretzels, watching YouTubes of cats (Robert’s favorite hobby), and playing in the costume trunk. I don’t remember us getting a lot of work done, although I have a vivid memory of the night I cranked out a 25-page paper in one sitting while Robert read two entire books so we could be prepared for our 8:30 class the next morning. That night, by the way, was both a personal highlight and lowlight of my college career.

Robert spoiled me by becoming my roommate senior year. I gained insight into his more private peculiarities, a favorite being his habit of spending Sunday mornings eating chips and salsa in his bathrobe while watching Gone With the Wind.

Of course, all good things must end, and we eventually left the Davidson bubble to flounder in the real world be productive citizens. I don’t get to see or talk to Robert on the daily, as I used to, but fortunately our friendship is so easy and strong that when we do see each other, we pick up just where we left off: drinking cheap beer laughing.

Happy birthday, Robert darling! Here’s a cat video for you:

I <3 Awards Ceremonies (a post by Lee)

So last night was the 84th Annual Academy Awards, more widely known as Lee’s 3rd Annual Academy Awards Extravaganza. It was a big night for me, for so many reasons. But first! Let’s go back in history and revisit the past two parties.

The first iteration of my Oscars bonanza took place in 2010. I only had 3 friends kept a very exclusive guest list, so only Jordie, AM, and Kate attended. While I was actively engaged in the ceremony to the point of near-riot when they cut Patrick Swayze from the In Memoriam section (I AM STILL ANGRY ABOUT THIS), Jordie read files for work, Anna Marie tied ribbons, and Kate actually had her back to the TV the whole time. I swore that never again would I host an event that would allow for such blatant disinterest.

The next year I sent out an invitation to about 40 people, heavily encouraging costumes and promising food inspired by the 10 Best Film nominations. Because I’d actually seen most of the nominated films, it did not seem too difficult of a charge. The menu was:

True Grit: true cheese grits [apparently I was not particularly witty in 2011]
The Fighter: punch
127 Hours: trail mix
The King’s Speech: Royal-tea sandwiches
Inception: 3-layered dip [in honor of the 3-level dream ]
Toy Story 3: alien cupcakes
The Kids Are All Right: Nic’s Tomato Salad is All Right [inspired by Nic's/Annette Bening's line, "If I hear heirloom tomatoes one more time, I'm going to shoot someone."]
The Social Network: Mark Zucker-burgers [my first attempt at black bean burgers; I failed remarkably]
Winter’s Bone: coconut pie [crystal meth looks like coconut to me, is what I was going for here...]
Black Swan: swan wings

All was going well until that very last dish – the swan wings. I had never even held a chicken wing before, much less made them. It was a scarring experience. If you’re wondering, to make wings you have to cut through the bone in two different places in order to remove the wing tip. It is a vile procedure.

By the grace of the Oscar gods, somehow the food was ready by the time folks started showing up. Something I hadn’t taken into account is that our apartment, while spacious for intimate gatherings and dinner parties, is not the greatest venue to host 30 people for a sit-down event – especially because we only have one couch. That coupled with the fact that we are the proud owners of the world’s smallest TV meant that we all got to know each other real well real quick.

Anyway, the party went off without a hitch (except for the part where NATALIE PORTMAN ROBBED ANNETTE BENING OF HER OSCAR, DID THAT REALLY HAPPEN!? On a related note, I am way too emotionally invested in the Oscars.) and a few people even wore costumes! Costumed people are my favorite people.

So now that I’ve rehashed the past couple of years, let’s talk about the 2012 Oscars. First of all, you guys, the party almost didn’t happen. I KNOW! Sadness and devastation! A few minor issues prevented me from organizing the party, but most problematically, we were having issues with Comcast. In that our cable had been out since mid-December and Comcast wouldn’t send a technician out to fix it. And then Anna Marie bestowed upon me a most glorious gift: she negotiated (read: bullied) our leasing office in to letting us use their clubhouse for the Oscars, without charge!

Here’s this year’s pun-heavy menu:

The Artist: The Tartist [apple tart]
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close: Extremely Lard and Incredibly Toast [buttered & toasted sandwiches]
The Descendants: The Desandwichants [a stretch of a name; Hawaiian sandwiches]
The Help: The Help Yourself to Some Sweet Tea [...sweet tea]
Midnight in Paris: Midnight in Pear-is [roasted pears]
Moneyball: Honeyballs [self-explanatory]
The Tree of Life: The Brie of Life [this is the one menu item Anna Marie contributed, and she admitted to stealing it from a blog]
War Horse: War HorSeeds [this was... just a bowl of mixed nuts... I'm not proud]
Hugo: HUnGOver [This was the drink station. YOU GUYS. I feel like this is some Will Shortz level of brilliance.]

But, really, who cares about all that because guess what happened? MERYL STREEP WON! Fun fact: Meryl Streep graduated from my podunk New Jersey high school way back when, so I am disgustingly loyal to her. VIVE MERYL!

Not Very A-Peel-ing (a post by Lee)

Two summers ago, Michael, Anna Marie, and I embarked on a weekend trip to Austin. En route to ATX, we decided to make a pit stop in New Braunfels. New Braunfels is famous for two things:

1. It is home of Wurstfest, a festival dedicated to German food, polka, and beer (more like Bestfest)!
2. The Guadalupe River runs through it, which means folks can go tubing!

There is nothing better on a hot (read: 103° and suffocating) summer day than to sit in a tube and lazily float down a river with some friends and beers, so we visited the Tube Haus and kicked our celebratory weekend off right.

After going through all the folderol of payment, tube selection, and sunscreen application, we finally set foot in the river. Y’all, that water was as cold as Voldemort’s heart. I felt like Rose at the end of Titanic. Ugh, it was dreadful. To make matters worse, by the time we acclimated to the water and sat in our tubes, we realized that the river was at a record-setting low so we had to perpetually hoist our hips to avoid unfortunate rock encounters.

Despite these conditions and the fact that our fellow floaters became rather choleric by the end of the trip, we had the loveliest time on the Guadalupe. My joy was only slightly diminished by my consumption of an entire party-sized bag of Ruffles potato chips; I am a disgusting and impulsive person. But still! Floating the river was the perfect pregame to our night out in Austin.

After we got to our Howard Johnson (which, by the way, was the grottiest place I’ve ever been to in my life – it’s worse than Delaware! – and just thinking about it makes me want to bathe in a tub filled with bleach, oh the HORROR) and showered, it was off to the theatre to see Michael’s friend perform in The Drowsy Chaperone then hit up Sixth Street.

Sixth Street is in downtown Austin and is famous for its plentiful bars and music venues. It’s basically a glorified frat house for undergrads at the University of Texas. Anyway, it’s not really our scene, but when in Rome! A few things of note happened that night:

1. I ran into Patrick Swayze! Well, not really, obviously, but I did encounter a bouncer who was quite strikingly Swayze-esque.

i KNOW, RIGHT?!

I have harbored a huge, unrequited crush on Patrick Swayze ever since watching The Outsiders in Mrs. Burke’s 7th grade Language Arts class. I even wrote him a 12 page love letter. (He never wrote me back. I operate under the assumption that he lost my mailing address.) When he passed away, I received phone calls from my friends’ moms, checking to see if I needed anything. So meeting his doppelgänger was A Big Deal for me.

2. We were dancing at a club and glanced down at our feet – and we realized we were dancing on top of sharks! Y’all, the dance floor was a shark tank. It was disturbing, cruel, and fascinating all at the same time.

3. Most importantly, we discovered that I was severely sun-burned. My memory is that I reapplied sunscreen rather frequently, but I guess I didn’t.

ow.

A few days later, after returning to Houston, my skin started to flake and peel off. I looked real unfortunate and like I was suffering from some terrible disease.

all the boys be callin'.

To help expedite the process and return my body to normal as soon as possible, I actually started peeling off my own stomach skin! I didn’t lose my tan; I removed it.

yuck!

Because my chest was also burned, my skin would slough off onto people’s car seats due to seatbelt friction. All in all, I was a pretty gross person to be around for a while. And for the next month I had to drive by myself most places.

Someone Like Remy (another painful video by Lee)

I’ve been pretty exhausted lately. It’s reached the point where today I actually had this conversation with Anna Marie as I was toodling off somewhere:

Lee: Peace be with you!
[a beat]
Lee: …Is that from the Bible or Star Wars?
AM: Girl. Bible. You’re thinking of “May the Force be with you.”

So when Remy’s birthday rolled around this year, I sort of hoped he’d forget about it so I wouldn’t be expected to, you know, do anything. Unfortunately, my brother is self-aware and remembers things like when he was born.

I set a dangerous precedent for his birthday and Christmas gifts, in which I make him atrocious music videos, like this and this. He hasn’t forgotten about those, either, as I was reminded over gchat on his big day:

Remy: where’s my music video?
me: you needy Nelly
I’ll think of something. I still have… 9 hours?
Remy: i don’t know what time i was born…but let’s pretend you have until tomorrow morning
me: I work well under pressure.
Remy: well, i’m not going to pull your leg, but if you want to make me a video i’m sure i’ll love it

No pressure, right?

Anyway, I decided to truck through and comply with his request. Be careful what you wish for, however, because sometimes what you want for your birthday is something meaningful and special but what you get is an atrocity like this:

Happy birthday, Remy! I hope everyone is lucky enough to know Someone Like You.