Back in Business...maybe!

Besides being a hotshot editor/writer in Denver, Colorado, I owned and operated my own wedding/event planning company. As you can imagine, it was the best job ever created.

Whenever someone I know announces their engagement, I beg them to let me help. What I know is the billion-dollar bridal industry is 100% geared toward relieving people of as much of their money as possible. They will actually encourage couples to take out loans or second mortgages to finance a one-day event.

What every engaged couple needs to know is that a beautiful, classy, and crowd-pleasing wedding can be achieved without the bridezilla-creating stress and without breaking the bank. No, really. My company made the local style magazine for a wedding that cost about $1,500, but looked like $1 million.

The secrets are creativity, flexibility, good advice, and patience.

I'm helping a bride-to-be here in NYC, and it's stirring up the awesome memories of being a wedding planner. Who knows? I may just hang out my shingle here in Bay Ridge.

In Other News...

I found the magic tool to end chronic knee pain caused by
chondromalacia patella, which--in this case--was caused by over-enthusiastic rondes des jambes and such.

YAY!

Where is Dubai and Why are They Buying Ports?

Answer one: United Arab Emirates, new home of Michael Jackson and site of personal islands for gazillionaires, shaped like the world's continents and countries. We're talking, rich beyond your MegaMilion dreams.

Answer two: Well my dad says it's, "just business". Maybe, but in light of world political climate, I'd say it's bad business.

Now a group of Arabs are complaining of discrimination. Why is everyone getting upset that some nice Arab businessmen are buying rights to ports in the United States? Boo! You meanies!

Going out on a shaky limb here, but do think maybe a group of Germans got upset about world outrage after the Nazis invaded Poland? There were a lot of different kinds of Germans, you know. Not all Nazis. Nice, family-oriented, peace-loving Germans.

And in this country, we have daily fodder for outrage regarding our current administration. When this moron is finally out of office, I predict much sorrow over the carnage that happened "right under our noses".

Here's an idea: stop voting lunatics into office.

"Palestinians" voted Hamas into office because they were tired of Palestinian Authority corruption and tired of being poor. They bought into Hamas' schtick about it all being Israel's and the western world's faults. Think they were poor before? Now they are bereft of foreign aid. Soon they will be prevented from working and going to school, and even more so for the women. That'll be a nice change. Guess whose fault that is? Not Israel, not the west. Those wacky Israeli Arabs did it to themselves.

There was a point in there somewhere. Oh yeah: Hey Arabs and Persians? Clean house. Even if it is "all business", even if you are gentle, peace-loving families, you'll want to do everything possible to distance yourself from the people our President dedicated his Homeland Security Office to keep out and the people dedicated to driving Israel into the sea and the people who want to turn back time in all Islamic countries to the Dark Ages.

And another thing: stop voting lunatics into office.

:end rant:

Party's Over

According to Slate, blogs are "so over". The Financial Times even deigned to weigh in, with an article sporting the headline, "Time For the Last Post". New York has blogging as its cover story, a story so boring and pointless, I began to suspect the authors were too busy shopping sample sales and maintaining their hipster haircut to research their article, and simply culled Lexis-Nexis for filler lingo. Bah! Let me tell you a secret: the vast majority of reporters and magazine writers are as far from cool as my new boyfriend Jeremy Bloom is from winning a gold medal at the Olympics.

So don't be sad, fellow bloggers: all this means is the herd moves on to the next trend, the fame/fortune-seeking bloggers are shit out of luck (no more book deals, suckers!), and we recreational bloggers will keep right on truckin'. Whew!

Here's to you posting about whatever it is that interests you at that moment. I check all my friends blogs, every day. Got me a fancy-pants visitor tracker, too. Not especially interested in the traffic in terms of numbers, more to check out the people checking me out--there are some totally unknown, kickass blogs out there, I hope they keep at it.

This post was inspired and informed by the cool kids at the blogosphere lunchtable: Gawker

Ciao, babies!

I'm getting the Hay-ell out of here for awhile. All's well, just a much needed R&R in the land of the Amish. Be well, catch ya next week!

Mr. Mrs. F--have that baby already!

Tick...Tick...Tick

Ok, so those close to me know I'm a moody motherfucker with a volcanic temper. Due partly to my illness and partly to my innate feral personality, I take happy meds to keep me from training to be a sniper and going on killing sprees. Why, these days I even tolerate being told what to do and how to do it (in special and rare circumstances)without a single twitch.

However, this whole week--Valentine's Day notwithstanding--I've been on a slow burn. Vague disgruntledness and petty griping grew to teeth gnashing and increased Tourette's-style swearing. Here I'd like to point out that, while it isn't unreasonable to imagine, I actually had nothing to do with the fire in our apartment building yesterday.

Please don't think for a moment Superfly's at fault: he's not and, in fact, he keeps me from going apeshit, without even trying or even knowing it. Yay Superfly!

This morning,--or rather, this afternoon (I took a sleeping pill to prevent all-night plotting)--I awoke in an especially foul mood. Idiotic things like the pug losing at Westminster, or constantly losing at mah jong online, pushed me ever closer to the edge. My mouth hurts from frowning and I'm getting wrinkles for sure from the eyebrow-smooshing. This sucks.

Worse, nothing that usually cheers me up is working. My dear friends Mr. & Mrs. F are having a baby tomorrow. My friends LB and Rackie are in love, finally. I had apple butter on my toast. meh.

Along comes an email from this complete and utter psychopath, whom I've already blocked but who wrote from another email, and sends me an absolutely incendiary email. Long story, short: rich friend loans broke friend some money. Broke friend loses job and goes on Disability. Rich friend and broke friend get into a petty online disagreement. Rich friend turns on broke friend, harassing and making absurd demands, even though broke friend is paying rich friend back, albeit slowly. As soon as this debt, which I definitely appreciated and intend to honor, is repaid, I will go back to not knowing this person exists. I hear she bashes me on her blog, but really, you can't make me care. I don't read her blog for the same reason I don't read the Koran: not interested in the blatherings of crazy people.

Aside from this buffoonery with me, the same nutjob terrorizes all her "friends" and anyone else who crosses her path. We all knew girls like this in jr. high school, but I guess I thought even they grew out of it, eventually. Sadly, Ms. Straightjacket has no real-life friends and is estranged from her family. She is only a threat to people to who take her seriously, but I still feel bad for her.

I've been in psychiatric facilities a couple of times, because there are no proper facilities for mood and anxiety disorders--they just lump us in with the schizophrenics, depressives, and substance abusers. One of the things you do while a guest there, aside from balloon volleyball and yoga, is learn about mental illness.

My crazy loanshark stalker is, as far as I can tell, a narcissistic sociopath.

I'll be glad when this feral mood passes. Maybe the next one will be a Disco mood! They're my favorite.

He Was ROBBED!

At the Westminster Kennel Club's annual dog show, held last night, Dermot the pug lost to an unspeakably hideous bull terrier. It was fixed, I say! Simply do not ask how this happened, parce que je ne sais pas. Poor Dermot!

Happy Valentines Day!

"...The Catholic Church's attempt to paper-over a popular pagan fertility rite with the clubbing death and decapitation of one of its own martyrs is the origin of this lovers' holiday.

As early as the fourth century B.C., the Romans engaged in an annual young man's rite of passage to the god Lupercus. The names of teenage women were placed in a box and drawn at random by adolescent men; thus, a man was assigned a woman companion, for their mutual entertainment and pleasure (often sexual), for the duration of a year, after which another lottery was staged. Determined to put an end to this eight-hundred-year-old practice, the early church fathers sought a "lovers" saint to replace the deity Lupercus. They found a likely candidate in Valentine, a bishop who had been martyred some two hundred years earlier."

Blizzard '06

Before the very first snowflake fluttered down from the sky, caught a frigid breeze, and sploshed on to the end of your nose, my own Superfly predicted this storm would be dubbed "Blizzard '06". His prescient enthusiasm ought to be properly credited, n'est-ce pas?

Of course, I scoffed and rolled my eyes. Having lived in Colorado for an excruciatingly long time, I view East Coast predictions of "blizzards" the way I view East Coast assurances of "mountains". Thusly expert in all things blizzard, I watched the snow fall faster and denser, felt the wind whip through clothes and shake bones, and ice begin to accumulate in unwelcome places and thought, "Hey! This Nor'Easter is the real deal Holyfield!"

We watched the news--those poor bastards sent outside to report on the storm, the frozen snot!--and Superfly said, "I bet Bloomberg says it'll cost the city $1 million per inch of snow." He was close: some reporter asked the mayor how much it would cost, referencing that old quote. All reporters admonished people to stay out of the street, while standing in the middle of the street. Of course people are going to walk in the street--that's where it's plowed, duh!

Except for my darling Superfly's quick jaunt to the bagel store for some breakfast, we stayed the Hell inside. Watched "Top Gun" and the Olympics. Napped. Watched more news about Blizzard '06 (Lightning storms in Jersey? Power outages? Wow!) Surfed the 'net for new cookware because we had our first cocktail party at Casa del Bay Ridge (massively successful), and now we're hooked!

Monday morning reality brings train delays and messy streets, kids outside playing in the snow, and my internal acknowledgement that I need to move somewhere warm.

Primal Quest

So, Superfly and I went to a media launch party last night for Primal Quest. He was schmoozing for his photography business (specializing in outdoor/adventure sports photography), and I was there for the free drinks.

Before last night, if you asked me what in tarnation Primal Quest is, I would've rolled my eyes and dismissed it as an extreme-sport hobby for millionaires. Er,...mea culpa. Here's a quote from their media kit:

"Primal Quest is not only the last of the great expedition-length adventure races, it is generally considered to be the most difficult endurance event on the planet. It is the longest, largest and most lucrative adventure race in the world, sending 90 Co-Ed teams across 400+ miles of the most rugged and remote terrain in North America."

And it isn't limited to super-intense Ironman elite athletes, either. Present at the party last night, and featured in their media kit is one Randall Huebner, great-grandfather. Superfly talked to him for a bit about the training they do for this race while I watched the server drawing ever near with free appetizers. The Primal Quest athletes were asked to raise their hands, we were astonished to learn the very normal-looking woman standing next to us in a fleece jacket and Peruvian hat is a judo champion, diving champ, firefighter, and Ironman triathalon winner for her age group (which looked to be the same as mine).

There I am: hanging out in a cool Chelsea bar and sipping a free Cap'n & Coke, coming dreadfully close to thinking, "I can do this. I can train like a demon, find sponsorships, become a Primal Quest competitor..."

Shaken, fortunately, from my reverie by a table full of swag from Primal Quest sponsors, I fill my arms with logo keychains and energy bars and score one last piece of mini-portabella pizza before we jet back to Brooklyn. If you've ever taken the R train to Bay Ridge, you know I'm joking about the "jet" part.

The life of an elite, world-class athlete is not for me. For one thing, I hate to wear socks. Back to watching them on ABC Sports on a lazy Sunday afternoon, pushing their competitive selves through insanely punishing endurance and strength trials. Some things are just better left to the professionals.

PRIMAL QUEST

Hello Dahn Hak people!

I doubt you remember a post I wrote back in October about a "yoga" cult. I'd forgotten about it, too.

Thanks to my trusty blog tracker, I find that I receive lots of visitors from an anti-Dahn Hak website and from others I assume want to check out the unelightened buffoon who dared besmirch the name of Ilchi Lee.

Whatever. I'm either too smart or too easily distracted by shiny objects to take part in cults. Evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the Anti-Dahn Hak movement, but I have other windmills for my tilting pleasure. To the people who probably have their chakras in a twist about the Dahn Hak-bashing, I say: Time will tell. When your money is gone and you still aren't enlightened, you'll see.

Got to give the little bastard credit; Mr. Lee has quite a lucrative racket going on, and the part-PT Barnum, part-evangelical preacher/hustler is really working for him. The more he's discredited and threatened with deportation (not that Korea wants him back), the more dough he rakes in.

There you have it. Thanks for checking out my blog, y'all! I don't mind at all if you link or paste my blatherings on the subject. Please give credit where due.

Pilates

Hardly a new fad, Pilates has been known to the dance crowd since, well, forever. The founder, Josef Pilates, found in injured dancers and athletes his inspiration for the optimal posture alignment and muscle training exercises you'll find in studios and health clubs all over the damn place.

Back in 1988, when my spectacular onstage injury ended my dance superstar dreams, both the orthopedic surgeon I visited and my favorite dance teacher recommended Pilates. Known for increasing core strength (today's hottest workout buzzwords!), Pilates also does wonders for flexibility and total body conditioning. In no other fitness class will you be so focused on your breathing and the correctness of your form. After this class, and no other, you will feel muscles long tucked-away and dormant spring to life, causing you to feel convinced you can accomplish a round-off back handspring. You actually can't though, so just enjoy the feeling peacefully.

If someone tells you Pilates is a great way to lose weight, give them a swift kick. How dare they lie to you so flagrantly! If you aren't mostly in shape already, Pilates will probably frustrate you into never repeating the effort of dragging yourself to the studio. Here's the benchmark: If you, laying flat on your back with your arms overhead, can pull yourself up to a sitting position and then over to touch your toes, without dropping your arms, you're good to go for Pilates.

Something I'm verging on not being. The instructor, who nodded approvingly at me through most of the class, had to come over and hold my feet down. Yes, I did want to shrivel up and die, thanks for asking. Luckily, I wasn't the only flailing pudgesicle in the class, so there was no overt mocking. I just carried on and averted my gaze from my mirrored reflection.

Thankfully, the instructor didn't ask--as so many have recently--"Are you pregnant?". Weirdly, they tend to look skeptical when I tell them I have a chronic illness and that I'm recovering from a knee re-injury. Oh, well, shutting them up is more motivation for me to get back in shape.

I still am not used to all these fitness instructors sounding like extras from "Saturday Night Fever". Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Valentine's Day

Here's me thinking this isn't something that portly old Catholic had in mind for his legacy: Fluffy little stuffed lions that purr and roar when you squeeze their paws, holding a bright red stuffed heart, adorned with a lace outline and proclaiming, "Be Mine, Valentine".

I have a longstanding feud with this Fake Holiday. All Fake Holidays, but this one especially. Maybe it was designed to break up the monotony of winter or was a genius greeting card promotion. However it started, it's become a day of torture for nearly all Americans. The pressure! In a relationship? You have expectations, pal. Not in a relationship? Could you be a bigger loser?

Way back when, I threw an Annual Anti-VD Party: A get-together for all those who, like me, were opposed to Valentine's Day. Singles and couples gathered for swanky cocktails, comfort food, and Love Gone Wrong songs. Naturally, after a few of those sidecars and martinis, the party degenerated into people sitting on the floor and decrying their lack of love, sniffling and stirring the ice in their glass. Just pathetic.

Not me, brother! I've always believed that L-O-V-E would find me when it was good and ready to do so. Sadly, I remained in several relationships that clearly weren't the real deal, out of fear I might be wrong about that LOVE thing. But when it's the real thing, you know it, and when it isn't, you know that, too. Even if you aren't prepared to admit it. Perhaps you have lessons to learn from Mr./Ms. Wrong, but I say: time's a-wasting. Get your lessons-learned badges and get out!

Well, Love found me on February 19, 2005. Love is still here, reading the paper over in the corner chair. Love is very low-maintenance; I mean, what else can be recharged just by eyeballing the Object of your Love across the room, doing a Superbowl Shuffle? Love, thusly regenerated, just smiles benevolently over the Arts & Leisure section and goes about its business.

Our "anniversary" is a full five days past VD, when the conversation hearts are piled up with Valentine bears and lions in a cart by the store's front door. We couldn't be more pleased with the timing. For this momentous and happy occasion, we will go to a JDate party, just like we did last year at this time, and where and how we met. The actual location of our first meeting is scheduled for demolition soon. So we'll go over there after the party, with our Listerine Breath Strips, and salute LOVE.

Fat Saints, ugly flower arrangements, and chalky chocolate hearts be damned!

Here's to LOVE finding all you suffering without, and soon.

Bloggers Gone Wild

Superfly and I met up with a couple of bloggers last night for a rousing old time of beer, darts, and witty banter. Short of "outing" either one, I will say that he is quite the celebrity blogger and she's already been the victim of senseless anonymous nastygram blog comments, I'd hate for one of those loose cannons to put two-and-two together and stalk her for real.

The four us did a little pub-crawl in Bay Ridge and gossiped and groused over Guinness and Harp (three out of four are Irish spawn), and feasted on the cuisine of Mexico. He-blogger demonstrated a remarkable way of consuming chicken wings that I found to be beyond my capabilities. Speaking of being lame, I totally suck at throwing darts.

Superfly owns his very own fancy-pants set of darts, the sight of which caused he-blogger to get all wide-eyed and drooly. He-blogger and Superfly tried to teach me the correct form for throwing darts, but all I could do was huck the damn thing as hard as possible in the general direction of the dartboard. I think I'll stick to karaoke.

She-blogger is so adorable and hilarious, I could hardly stand it. She tells stories and jokes with admirable aplomb for a shy person, and had us roaring most of the night. It would an outstanding thing if those two get together, I say.

Tomorrow we tape an application video for Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Wish Superfly luck!

The Gayest Thing, Ever

After the yoga debacle yesterday, I was trepidatious going back to NYSC this morning. However, our salesperson at the club raved about this Power Dance class, about how much fun she has taking it. She totally had me at the word, "dance".

You may or may not know that before the illness, before the kids, before the career-ending injury, I was a dancer. A bun-head, a ballerina. You certainly would never suspect it, looking at me now. Pathetically, dance was my whole life. All those dreams of NYBT dashed against the rocks of chondro malacia patella, the toe shoes I wore when both knees blew out when I was en pointe relegated to the dark corner of my closet.

Once I recovered and was rehabilitated, I had to find ways to stay in shape. First it was aerobics: I got a little too into it and re-injured my knees. Then it was weight-training, running, and boot camp workouts: I got a little too into it and re-injured my knees. Finally, I settled into yoga and pilates: great for flexibility, not so great for keeping weight off.

A friend of mine is probably the fittest person on Long Island, and he gave me some great advice for getting in shape without permanently jacking up my knees. He whole-heartedly despises commerical gyms and the "personal trainers" therein. Their uselessness is well known, but I do need someone to bark at me and help me stay focused. Distracted by shiny objects much?

So Monday I shall endure a "personal training session" with one of the dill holes I see schlumping around NYSC. Neat!

About the Power Dance class: Picture, if you will, a former Broadway dancer,'40-ish male, who looks like someone's Irish uncle and sounds like Richard Simmons, if Richard were a baritone from Flushing. He's singing, he's dancing, he's running around the room, he's cracking wise and calling all us elephantine mesdemoiselles, "Bubbies".

We cha-cha, we rhumba, we merengue. To the shrill sounds of "Gypsy", "Funny Girl", and "Phantom of the Opera" we pirouette, we ronde des jambs, we do a kickline in sweaty workout gear and ugly shoes. Somewhere, from deep inside me, emerges old dancing Trouble, and I start showing off my arabesques. He looked over, nodded, and said, "Nice form!" I was thrilled to pieces.

It is fabulously absurd. Only the gayest person in the world would enjoy something like this. Color me in rainbow stripes--I can't wait until the next class!

Touchy, Touchy

First, a disclaimer: I have the dumb luck to be one of those people you either love or hate at first impression. It's ok, my heart will go on.

First day at the new gym, first yoga class in NYC. I've been a gym rat for a good 15 years, so this should be no big whoop. Superfly woke me from drooling, snoring sleep and off I went, schlepping the 10 blocks to NYSC. People peer curiously at my yoga bag, a lovely blue/green tube on a strap. If I was in an evil mood, I would've motioned toward it, indicating it was a machine gun. Not today! It's actually a very nice day and I'm over the moon with self-pride at dragging my ass out of bed to work out.

Helpfully, the club is flanked by McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts. Oy. It's ten minutes until class time, so I book into the studio to find...it dark and empty. Obviously, I'm in the wrong room. Where I've taken yoga previously, people are lined up outside the studio 20 minutes before class. After running all over the club, I finally asked a surly club employee where the yoga class would be held. Same dark, empty studio.

Only four other people trickle into the studio before the instructor deigns to join us almost 10 minutes late. She's got that typical yoga instructor stringbean body, long, ratty hair, and an extreme grimace. She's hacking and clearing her throat, which she continues to do, nauseatingly, throughout the class.

She's singles me out, of course, for petty bullshit. Despite my explaining the 8-month gap in practice and a lack of knee cartilage, she wants me to push and pull my limbs beyond what is safe and healthy and complained I wasn't trying. She said absolutely nothing to the four other people in class.

After we exchanged Namaste wishes, I said, "I hope you feel better soon."

She screamed, "I'M FINE! I FEEL FINE!" and stomped off.

Ok, then I hope you choke on your own phlegm and die, you fucking bitch.

State of the Union Address

Hey, you probably think I got all frothy with rage, listening to Mr. Bush's desperate, clinging to false hopes speech. I'm sorry, that's the wrong answer.

I wound up on the train from PA that stops at every podunk village between Lancaster and New York, making it a solid four hour trip. Home in time to watch American Idol, but no amount of insipid teasers from network reporters swayed me into watching that turkey shoot. Superfly and I went to Rocco's Pizza instead and talked Knicks over ziti and minestrone.

Here is what I have to say about the State of the Union address: Don't you just love those little sesame balls at Chinese buffet places? So sweet and mushy.

In other news, it's February 1, meaning today is the day Superfly and I join the gym and start eating healthy (hence the ziti LAST night). We're going to get in shape if we have to kick the crap out of some people to do it.