Sunday Top Ten Part Two: I Refuse To Believe That It's Only Me Feeling

First of all. Good news. Good good news. The source of HPS's email conundrum: her signature. This issue has been targeted and subsequently conquered.

So: more questions in life, not in dreams. I have weird dreams. Last night, I was on vaycay with my Dad and my brother, and then we went home and I had all these Calvin & Hobbes books, and I was like, "I should text Carly about her tattoo." That's not supposed to make sense, it's just what happened. In my dream. Haviland was sleeping next to me, dreamily, with her earplugs. Platonically, obvs.

Questions. Things that I do not understand. I gotta say, the first round of this was pretty hot. The "59th Annual Kings County Tony's" are still raging on -- but Jaimie's informed me that they're possibly not incorrect -- AND we've fixed Haviland's email, I've got plans to fix my phone problem, and Stef was not The Biggest Loser. Um, did anything else happen? I forget what my questions were now. Oh, yes! I encouraged one person to buy a book, so we're closer to fixing that problem. I should ask "Why Is There World Hunger?" But, you know, that's awfully ambitious, and I am, as we all know, a bit of a self-depricant. I just made up that word, P.S. Actually, I thought it was a real word until my auto spell-checker underlined it, informing me of it's Non-Reality.

SUNDAY TOP TEN, PART TWO: ITEMS 5-1 OF
THE GREAT MYSTERIES OF LIFE THAT I DO NOT UNDERSTAND

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5. Why Do Men Yell At Girls On the Street?
I've gotta say first off, the short hair's reduced this by at least 85% which's, honestly, fucking amazing. This city is a hotbed of women who've got interesting methods of dealing with women. I don't get it. Does it work?  I look down, and I walk, and I seethe, 'cause I've got my little baby wrath. If I'm eating an ice cream cone and some dude yells that he'd like a lick -- chances are pretty high I'm not gonna give it to him, unless it's like, Leisha Hailey, or um, Abraham Lincoln. 'Cause you gotta admit that actually, it'd be pretty awesome to hang out w/Abraham Lincoln. Also, if I'm with another girl and you tell me that it's "a beautiful thing" or that you support gay marriage or something, I hope you vote and masturbate a lot. I don't know what I hope or what that means. type type type. I'm fairly confident that there's not a huge crossover between Cajolers and Autowin-Readers, so this is really just me doing what I do best, which's complain to no avail. To hell with all that progress we made earlier this week, let's WHINE.

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4. Why Does Everything Take So Long?
Like, when was the last time I said to myself "Wow, that was quicker than I expected?" Um. Hahaha. No, seriously, a long time ago.

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3. Why Does my Gym Suck So Bad?
New York Sports Club sucks. I'd join a more expensive gym, but: 1)I've got no money and NYSC currently just continues to charge my credit card obvs, 2)NYSC is already about as expensive as gyms go. I mean, the next step up'd be like, Equinox, or Reebok, or New York Health & Raquet Club, but then I'd be surrounded by Serious Douchetards and it'd be farther than two blocks away. New York Sports Club charges $90/month and what do we get? Crap. I've complained about NYSC before, so I'll be brief and only mention here New Complaints:

-Many of the machines (about 33%) audibly creak or make otherwise unbearable noises, and there're rarely signs warning you of this. Really the best you can hope for is that no-one notices that it's you doing all that creaking, 'cause then people will start glaring at you, like "get off that machine, it is creaking super-loud and annoying everyone," when they oughta be glaring at the maintenance staff, who're doing nothing.

-The magazine rack is a total tease. I don't even know why it's there. I've stumbled upon an Entertainment Weekly maybe twice and GQ once, but generally it literally contains CATALOGS (Like, is that good gym reading? Maybe it is if you can afford things in catalogs. Also I'm not talking good catalogs like delia*s, but useless ones like um, furniture homewares whatevs. I don't know, are catalogs good gym reading, you tell me, I'm the expert.) and back-issues of Cookie (a parenting magazine, not, unfortunately, a magazine about Cookies).

-Jackie Warner does not work there.

Does your gym suck? Does everyone's gym suck? My gym in Ann Arbor, Liberty, was awesome. That's the Brazilian Women's Soccer team in the picture, no joke.

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2. Why Does [redacted] magazine continue to rock my world, month after month?
Although it's clearly just the nature of the beast [is that the right expression? Whatever means like, obviously, "a natural consequence of the freelance writing biz to begin with"?] that just happened to befall me at The Worst Moment Ever, one might think my affections for this publication would've lessened following the Great Article Kill of '07. I've tried to hate them but I don't. It's my favorite magazine. This isn't even intended as a way to sleep myself into the "comments" section they've recently added to the front of the mag, which, p.s., I think is totes retarded [and you can quote me on that] or garner a staff position [though obvs I wouldn't mind one, I suspect this isn't the most mature path to such a thing], I genuinely find this magazine to consistently rock my world.

I've blogged about them before: on their bizarre habit of declaring the Mood-of-the-Moment and then contradicting themselves the following week, the "I am" cover story about the "ME" generation which inspired me to create Riese's 15-Year-Old MySpace Page, their "Best of New York" feature which inspired my short-lived "Best of Not New York" feature, um, and, etc., etc. Bla bla bla, me me me.

Okay, so:
1. (August 27th) This story, "Conspiracy of Two: Why did Artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake Commit Suicide? A Chronicle of Their Descent Into Madness," literally gave me goosebumps and actually partially inspired my August OverShare; "they were artists, after all, and artists are allowed a degree of lunacy" ... looking at this article gives me goosebumps again, all over again, it like, stabs me and guts me, this fucking article.
2. (October 1st) On a lighter note, the unthinkable's recently happened to me: my agoraphobia's resulted in a lessened desire to go to the gym, previously cited as the One Thing I Always Can Do. No longer true. Even though my habit of exercising is not an attempt to get thinner, as I am already thin, I still enjoyed "Does Exercise Really Make Us Thinner?: The Scientist and the Stairmaster: Why most of us believe that exercise makes us thinner--and why we're wrong" it's like, the ultimate validation for lazy-asses everywhere. Genetics is Destiny, y'all, so give the fuck up, sorz. Personally, I can give you this advice: when depressed or overwhelmingly passionate regarding someone who's got my heart and/or body, I get emaciated. When not at this elevated or rock-bottom state, I stay the same. Exercise's pretty much irrelevant, but it gives you endorphins and has kept me alive even though most other parts of my life are dedicated to the pursuit of pleasures that're not so good for my heart, like drugs, not sleeping, drinking coffee, drinking alcohol and heartache. Also I'm always letting things tug at my heartstrings. Haha. Puppets. Ha. Hm, you know Heart the band? Good band. Know Heart the song? Good song. Know heart the organ? Good organ, beware of attacks.
3. Other articles I've enjoyed recently include: August 13th's "The Near Fame Experience," about the aftermath of Bravo TV-reality stardom, "The Deliverymen's Uprising" about the shitty conditions and attempted unionizing of NYC's delivery guys [I always overtip, now moreso] and "Awkward Phase" about Michael Sera, August 20th's "Why New Yorkers Live Longer" which points out why you totes should exercise and reinforces my monthly hypocrisy theory about this magazine and September 3rd's "Watching Matt Drudge," because I'm always intrigued by the simultaneously famous & illusive. Also, August 6th's look at secret gay relationships enabled by craigslist: "Married Man Seeks Same for Discreet Pleasure," and July 2nd's reminder of how much cooler everything was before we were born, "Long Hot Summer of Love."
4. Following the "1" theme to "stories about quasi or completely insane artists": Sep.24th's "How Edward Mapplethorpe got His Name Back: His long, tortured road through art, drugs, and brotherhood," October 1st's "The Life Obsessive with Wes Anderson," September 17th's "MisShape's After-Party" (I just noticed this was written by one of the best editors I've ever had the pleasure to work with, at nerve obvs, Michael Martin, which's also funny as we were banned from pitching party-photo-related stories at editorial meetings, in addition to any Scientology, Star Wars or burlesque related stories) and 'Spring' Allergy: Jonathan Franzen because I love Jonathan Franzen and Spring Awakening: The Musical both.
5. Just today: Totes overstayed my elliptical trainer's welcome reading a solid cover story about the hypothetical Hilary Clinton presidency re: Bill, "The First: Female President, Male First Lady, Former President in the White House" and, for some bizarre reason unknown to me as I find real estate to be resolutely Not Interesting, "Apoplectic at the Apthorop." Like, I was glued to that article. Sometimes their cover art is totally retarded though, I gotta say.

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1. Why Aren't We Massively Faboulous/Achieving Our Wildest Dreams In Life/Writing and/or Starring In "The L Word"?
[This question, unlike, say "Why is my phone bill so high?" is more-or-less rhetorical, like, I'm not asking anyone who's reading this to help us in this area, as you've (you=readers) all been remarkably and inspirationally helpful in every way you possibly could be as far as this is concerned, OBVS.]

Eddie: Your epitomb. What is that you want on your epitomb?
Patsy: I want: "She was fantastic...."Patsy was here."
Eddie: No, daring, you can just have "Patsy Stone".
Patsy: Oh, Eddy, Eddy. Wait for this. Wait for this: "Eddy: Still no thinner."
Eddie: These are really funny. We could sell those.

[She calls it "epitomb," I know she means "epitaph."]

Did you read The Devil Wears Prada? That book sucked. Also, The Hills? I just don't get it. There're so many things that I don't get. The L Word? The weirdos that always win America's Next Top Model? Elisabeth Hassleback? I may've mentioned this before.

I feel like this one -- "1" -- is probs inappropriate on a number of levels, including: totes biting the hands that [literally] feed and validate and agree with us, there are children starving AND un-fabulous all over the world, I think I've talked about it before, probably more than once. Just pontificating, and sharing with you a piece of our world, because ...

It's just that: to be honest, this is, seriously, our Number One Mystery of the World Conversation Topic. And for some reason I continue to feel like I must always Be Honest. Srsly. (It's less serious when you spell it like that.)

I mean, did you hear Haviland sing "Part of Your World" on my cruise video? Well, yeah. I've been described as probs no less enjoyable than whomever wrote the copy for my smartwater bottle or wrote some crap somethingsomething. Why aren't we [we=all my wonderful talented friends] as fabulous as Eddie & Patsie, Paris & Nicole, Ariel Levy & The Wife of Ariel Levy or Ernie & Bert? Like, I want to be like in the Oliver and Company song: "Perfect Isn't Easy," which COINCIDENTALLY I happened to lip sync ON MY FUTON in the mid-nineties, and I think I used a necktie as a boa, which was a little forewarning of things to come.

One might argue: in order to become a famous author, I need to write a book. To which I would say: touche.

It's weird, over here, on this side of things. It's like we're so close we can touch it, we can wear its wigs and its shoes. But it's also very distinctly Not It. I guess we don't know if we'd like "It" either, we're just guessing, and mostly, we want stability, somewhere good to start from instead of to look at. Somewhere with less roadblocks.

I clearly can't talk about this in any rational sense. Because -- because life is irrational, p.s.

Off topic, kinda: Sometimes, almost anything seems better than this, even things that are worse, or were worse, at the time. Sometimes it's refreshing to get shaken to the core -- no, it's actually terrible -- but it's more exciting while surviving the shakedown than to be wrecked on the other side, which's like, not only just as depressing, but slower, and with no chance of instant turnaround. I clearly am no longer talking about anything. Let's segue, shall we?

Yes, lets: fear is the color you've all exposed, now I gotta get up here and prove the importance of my clothes of my pose ...

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So there're a lot of other mysteries of life that didn't make the cut, which means I might continue on this topic for a few more posts, even though it'll no longer be Sunday or officially part of the Sunday Top Ten or potentially "good." Many interesting topics've been passed over, like "Why does Kozmo.com not exist anymore?" and "Who watches Everybody Loves Raymond even though My So-Called Life got canceled?", "Iraq: WTF?", "Why do I wear makeup to the gym?", "Why is it so difficult to perform very simple tasks?" and "Why does that one Rilo Kiley song have like, a whole minute of empty space at the end?" "Why doesn't i-tunes sell every Tegan & Sara song ever written?" "Why're we perpetually out of paper towels and/or toilet paper even though we're all super good at stocking up?" "Why do all music lyric sites have 500 pop-up ads?" etc. No seriously, there are other good ones I promise. All up in the ol' noggin. Tick-tock.

Soon my face will be on every magazine
and then my voice will be on every frequency
take my heart while you're at it
why don't you sign me up to sell me out,
Hard core superstar by far you're the ultimate star,
Hard core superstar by far, you're the ultimate star,
Do you wanna be a superstar?
Do you wanna be a superstar?
I am my angel 'til death I do
I saw my first angel and it was you.
-Tegan & Sara, "Superstar"

Oh, you know what. False alarm. One more question:

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0. Does Anyone Feel that "Serving Size" is an adequate serving?

I know why serving sizes are oriented as they are, obvs, as my mother was a professional Nutritionist and I know way more about food, nutrition, the food pyramid, calories, diets, carbohydrates, food groups, vitamins, low-fat cooking etc., than I ought to, but I feel like the word "serving" is misleading, and it annoys me when the lady & fitness mags try to "remind" you how big a serving size is, as if that's the source of your dietary issues--going over a palm-sized amount of chicken -- as if that's actually an adequate amount of food for anyone over the age of 8 months to consume. Also, I think I use too much coffee, because I seem to go through a bag of coffee and a thing of creamer in like, three days, and I only make coffee in the morning, the rest of the day I go to D2. That's all, fo'real.

Seriously. Srsly.