I Was Invited to a Ladies' Pampering Night

...so I showed up in adult diapers ready to be burped (soybean already lactated for me). How was I to know that it meant peachy gauze tops, Sauvignon Blanc, and making clever, snide quips about men? I was in quite a mood as my nanny strollered me home.

People Use Facebook to Mourn Celebrity Deaths, Celebrate Commercial Holidays

Because nothing says "we connect" like posting YouTube videos of a recently passed rock musician or agreeing that "Dads rule!" Social networking sites: the best place to boil any originality you have down to oft-quoted phrases tweaked slightly by a quirky noun. Or, as of FB's recent policy decision, provide an informative data feed to marketers, newsrooms, and the questionable curious.

Hall(ywood) of Mirrors

Normally I get myself dressed in workout clothes and go to my gym in the morning. This morning, I was instructed to get dressed in workout clothes, go to my gym's parking lot, and ride a shuttlebus to set. On set my role was to appear to come out of a gym after working out. No working out happened there; so when I was wrapped, I went to my real gym for a workout, wearing my real workout clothes that earlier masqueraded as fake ones. ("Is this your real coffee or your prop coffee?" the propmaster asked me in-between takes.) At my real gym for my real workout, a camera crew roamed, filming contestants for a reality show. There I was, real-working out, surrounded by contestants only fake-working out, since they just needed a few minutes of footage here and there. Back at home, I half expected behind the initial walls to lie a team advising me on how to best present, enact myself. "We know the manipulations you need," they'd say, "to be truly authentic."

Lady Fix-It

First comes the gas smell, then the inability to heat toaster waffles in your oven (don't own toaster). The option of bumping yourself off old-school talented writer-style is officially out: these new ovens know to stop the gas flow. Besides, you don't want to get out of a loveless marriage or a spiraling sense of existential doom: you just want a landscape for maple syrup. Did you know there are other options besides calling your management company and wheedling a visit from a handyman out of them? You can use the interwebs to do it yourself!

If you have never taken apart your oven and re-lit the pilot flame on your own, you may feel free to sit back and admire my prowess. Like any true repairperson, I effectively got rust and charcoal all over my clothing, and grit my teeth all purposeful-like while employing my pretty IKEA tools. The trick to find the pilot light is indeed a trick, however. It is not just an obvious spot you place a match to. It is not a button, or a miniature dachshund in an Amelia Earhart cap waving from a model plane that you have to give a biscuit of fire to. If you examine the inside of your oven, you will think it is just urban legend that there even is such a thing: doesn't the heat instead come from the the rubbing together of two thoughts?

In reviewing the various unintelligible diagrams proffered, I realized there was only one thing to do, and that was stir-fry vegetables for lunch. When that was done, I unscrewed the base of the oven floor, unscrewed something that looked like the roof of a little red schoolhouse, and then set about sticking matches into various orifices until something took. Then after I'd put the whole megillah back together again, the light went out. Rinse, repeat. And voila! To fix the stains on my dress, the internet dictated lemon juice. I added water, sugar, and ice cubes. I have good taste in clothing.

Finally, in the order of journalistic honesty, I must confess that it was not toaster waffles I made at all, but the warming of corn tortillas. I abused your love of tree sap, dear reader, to connive you into reading this post. But tortillas, my friend: are they ever good filled with homemade guacamole, cherry tomatoes, and romaine. Are they ever.

Sometimes Your Mother Suggests That You Get Drunk In Order To Manage Your Neck Pain Due to Processing Complex Emotional Issues

And you do.

Symptom and Symptom

Girls, boys, and the gender-free, one of my favorite pastimes is to explore medical diagnoses online. At times it's kind of like watching a liar in action who is open about his fraudulence, and at other times it's like listening to a highly optimistic person suggesting her theory of the universe. Either way: both fiction and comedy.

When a strange rash broke out on my wrists, I wanted to know what other symptoms I might expect. Perhaps the cause lay in an insect bite, an allergic reaction to a flour tortilla, the restructuring of memes dominant in my mind? Some suggestions from the internet included:


Here are what I can only assume are the causes for these ailments:

+ Wrist rash and Abnormal walk:
Overexposure to "The Holy Grail" while reenacting scenes from "Life of Brian."

+ Wrist rash and Abrupt watery diarrhoea:
Inability to spell various bowel movements.

+ Wrist rash and Abscessed teeth:
Vampires that held down victims with rope.
Handcuff-loving dentists.

+ Wrist rash and Absent eyebrows:
Ladies with unattractive extremities don't deserve to have expressions.

+ Wrist rash and Absenteeism in children:
The children got tired and went home. Also, they had fleas.

iPhone Now Omniscient!

The new iPhone 3GS is due to hit stores this Friday the 19th (just in time for my half-birthday, whimsical present-givers!). There are an incredible amount of new features that would have any Apple devotee or just plain human life form drooling and chomping at the bit. These include faster speed, voice control, a 3 MP camera, video recording, Internet tethering, and an internal compass for those of us who don't know north from yesterday's left. A quick glance to the website, however, doesn't fill the consumer in fully on what the phone can do.

Want your heart rate monitored? How about your thyroid? Did your body fat percentage decrease? iPhone acts as your doctor-away-from-HMO. Are you sitting around, wondering when that job offer or red carpet invite will come your way? iPhone can not only see into the future with perfect accuracy, but it also has picked out an outfit for you to wear. When's dinner served? iPhone already made it, and then when the yams burned, ordered you delivery. Then, when you ate too much and went to bed early, iPhone curled up beside you and told you you're pretty.

Sooo worth the upgrade.

Yes, Giant Hamster Billboard, I Submit to You

So big.

Solution 'Stache

Due to the fact that Los Angeles is wont to breed air I am allergic to, I finally purchased an air filter yesterday on my way home from the shoot. Having spent the day in a fake mustache, I wondered why allergens couldn't just get trapped there and leave my respiratory system alone. Even more frightening than lame coughing attacks that make me look like I am about to asphyxiate, however, are the pictures and language on the side of the air filter box. Smoke! Mold spores! Dust mite debris! Next to disarmingly creepy images are descriptions of these intruders, with key words highlighted so that from a distance or if you have eyesight troubles you will know what's what. WEEDS RODENT DANDER DEAD SKIN or FECES SALIVA PIPES... Yet, nestled in the midst of this real-live ghost story is an image of a cheery Golden Retriever and his tabby friend. Look above them: cancerous wisps! Look below: an insect that looks like a man-eating pimple! One wonders if the manufacturer thinks seemingly lovable pets are actually demons trapped inside soft fur. Like a slow child I want to rescue them from this bad company. Perhaps like me they too could don facial hair, and at least temporarily, hide out.

Hidden Gem for You

Netflix, you see that I enjoyed such quirky half-hour comedic episodics such as "Flight of the Conchords" and "30 Rock." In both, there are awkward protagonists in cute glasses! And I am a fan of that charming documentary "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" as well as that New Zealander masterpiece "Eagle vs. Shark." I love birds, whether real or just as felted costumes worn by humans in love! Yes: clearly I would enjoy watching footage of Nazis pillaging works of art throughout Europe in a movie with "rape" in the title. Q.E.D.

Fancy Lady

The wife from Hygenowang lives on! I will be reprising the role known as "Fancy Lady" in Team Tiger Awesome's new web series for FOX called "Hollywood House Husbands." Here are some answers to questions I know are on your mind, dear reader:

Q: Are those your real pearls?
A: Yes, they are mine, but they are not real. They are actually made of diamonds coated in sawdust and festooned with the spittle of underage workers.

Q: Are you an actual bitch in life, or just TV?
A: I am nice, unless you are my fake husband and cheat on me while a camera crew films me outside my fake house.

Q: Is Team Tiger Awesome actually composed of tigers who put you in things because their things are for FOX and you are really a rabbit (amount of daily consumed lettuce as evidence)?
A: Mmmaaybe...

UPDATE 6/9: TTA has ditched Fancy Lady in favor of putting me in an undercover detective-in-drag housewife role, Terry. I got a haircut today, because that's how Terry would roll...she would not have split ends. That's Method, folks.

Get Me to Them to the Greek

Last week I had a blast working as Rose Byrne's stand-in on the Nick Stoller film "Get Him to the Greek." A spinoff of "Forgetting Sarah Marshall," this Apatow production charts the journey of rocker Aldous Snow (Russell Brand) as he is escorted by a young music exec (Jonah Hill) to his comeback concert at the Greek theater in Los Angeles. I did get a chance to see a cut of a scene filmed in last month in Vegas, but the real treat of the whole experience was getting to watch lengthy improvised takes, which had us all doubled over trying not to laugh out loud while the camera was still rolling.

In addition to getting to meet and work with the gracious stars and hugely talented crew, I got to lie in a hay-filled manger holding a plastic baby, see a man purposefully lit on fire, and ride a tiny metal circle 30 feet straight up into the air while an entire African village's dance was choreographed below. All that, and lunch options including a choose-your-own-Pad-Thai bar.

I love Hollywood.