It's The Most Hideous Time Of The Year

On an unrelated note: I arrived to work (read: the residential apartment building I work in) this morning to a horribly loud alarm going off in my office/apartment. I called down to the doorman, he heard the alarm through the phone and said “I’ll send someone up”. 30 minutes later I’m still getting blasted in the ears with this heinous noise. It is at this point I decide to take action.

The “alarm” is on the floor next to the window. I opened it and took the battery out. I’m basically a lady MacGyver in the making. So the alarm stopped, and 3 hours later no one has come to check on me. I know it’s not a smoke alarm, because a smoke alarm on the floor would be hilarious/stupid. But could it really be some sort of burglar alarm in this rich old persons building? In an apartment on the 12th floor of a building with no fire escape? I. Am. Baffled. Maybe it’s a Carbon Dioxide alarm and I’m about to fall down dead. Nice.

Soooooo, why is this the most hideous time of year, Brady? You spend your days marveling about how you wish this weather could be like this everyday of your life. And you want to eat all of your meals outside even though you probably do that less than once a week. What’s your beef?

I’m glaaaaaaaad you asked. It’s because this is the time of year when TV shows come to an end. Last night, as I got into bed upon my arrival home at 10:30, every description on my DVR had the words “season finale” in it. It was SO sad. No new 30 Rock? I don’t see how I can possibly go on. 30 Rock is my sun, my moon, my everything. I need it to get out of bed in the morning. I need it to continue living. A Thursday without 30 Rock is like… I don’t know… Something really really awful. When I have my own sitcom we’re not going to have seasons. It’s just going to go on forever. And maybe as many people who read this blog will watch my show (aka my close friends and family… and not even that many of them). And just when the show is starting to go into the part of Tina Fey's life we're all familiar with. The anticipation for next season is already killing me. Who remembers when Alec Baldwin called his daughter a pig? No one. Because 30 Rock fixes everything. It rights all wrongs. It is everything that is good and pure.

But on the plus side, I do enjoy the team B of shows that make the rounds in the summer. New sitcoms that only last for 3 episodes, ya know, stuff like that. And so help me God, if Entourage doesn’t come back sometime in the near future (I know it’s not really a summer show anymore, but I like to pretend like it still is) I will totally FREAK OUT. People like to hate on Entourage, but I’ve always liked it. Even when it was bad, I maintained that it was good. It’s like, certain shows and actors do the same thing every time. If it’s a good thing, then by all means, go for it. Entourage falls in that category (as do Jeremy Piven and Adrian Grenier).

Vince Vaughn falls in that category (Yeah, I saw Fred Claus, in theaters. What?). Will Ferrell has a cast of varieties of the same thing, but you know it’s all pretty much the same. But these people pull it off. Because it’s good. And it’s funny. Scarlett Johansson (yeah, I brought her up again, so what??) does the same thing every time, but it is awful. It is something no one should ever have to watch. But somehow she just keeps coming at me with the same character and the same look and the same voice and it’s enough to make me want to start cutting myself.

So although I watched all the comedy season finales last night (30 Rock, Parks & Recreation and The Office) I still have my drama finales to go (Grey’s and Brothers & Sisters). But what do I do after that? Start watching movies? Sorry, that is way too much of a time commitment for me. Seriously, the two movies I have on Netflix right now I have had, in my possession, since December. That’s right, I have paid Netflix no less than $75 to simply keep these DVDs in my apartment and not watch them. Awesome.

Live comedy shows at Upright Citizens Brigade and The Pit might be my only option… but I can’t do that from my bed, so it’s a far less attractive option.

And now I give you, a tribute to 30 Rock, brought to you by my borderline psychotic obsession and the wonders of Google image. May God (who?) rest your soul until you return again in the fall. I'll miss you everyday.

Facebook We Go Hard. We Go Hard.

I don't know why I'm like this about certain things, but sometimes I have an annoying/unstoppable amount of brand loyalty, somewhat similar to abused-wife syndrome.

When I was an intern at MSNBC I hated all other news stations. I didn't even like watching news TV in general, but while I was there I thought it was the best thing around. I thought Fox was too conservative (even though I didn't watch it), CNN was too liberal (even though I didn't watch it), and MSNBC was right in the middle- neutral and perfect.

We even filmed a promo while I was there, which I don't think ever made it to air because it was actually the stupidest idea EVER, that had like someone installing a new TV, tuning in to Fox News and having the TV tilt to the right, changing the channel to CNN and having the TV tilt to the left, and then tune into MSNBC and the TV would settle in the middle. STUPID. My fellow interns and I read this script with bewilderment as we helped to make flight and catering arrangements for the HEAD OF OUR DEPARTMENT to fly to LA to supervise the shoot. You need to go to LA to film something I could easily film with the web cam on my MacBook? Get a life.

Anyway, even after seeing genius ideas like that bite the dust, I was still blindly loyal to MSNBC, shleping my way to and fro Secaucus, New Jersey every day. But I kind of think I was brainwashed there. I had two TV's on my desk (having a job without a TV on your desk is not worth having) and one was always tuned in to MSNBC. When Mel Gibson got arrested that summer and spewed his anti-Semitic nonsense I watched (unwillingly) nonstop coverage of that incident for three days straight. It was too much to handle. But once I was done with my internship and back at school, MSNBC and all news television were forever knocked off of radar.

So the other brand that I am tirelessly loyal to is Verizon. I'm not really sure why. But I think I've had the Verizon vs. Cingular/AT&T fight more times than any other argument that has ever been had on this planet. But Verizon and I have a special relationship, and I don't cheat on my loved ones. Although, there is a new Sprint commercial for the new Sprint 4g network that made me seriously consider switching. I've never felt a feeling like that before. It was like something sparked inside me, it was exciting and new. A passion I have never known. I've managed to stifle it thus far and forget about this life-changing commercial and remember all the good times Verizon has been there for me and for those close to me.


My latest issue is with Twitter. Maybe some of you don't understand my very deep bond with Facebook, but as Grace Adler says in the series finale of Will & Grace about the bond between Jews and chicken, "It's deep and it's real". Facebook has seen me through some crazy times. Since I did not go to an Ivy League school, I had to get Facebook sometime during sophomore year, with the rest of the Facebook runner-up schools. But once I was in, there was no turning back. I can't even remember now what the old Facebook looked like.

Recently I was talking with friends about how Facebook has changed through the years and my friend Evan said, "Remember the old sign-in screen?" I can't remember what my boss asked me to do 5 seconds ago, so no, I do not remember the old sign-in screen. And that is when I came up with the million-dollar-idea (still to-be executed): A montage of Facebook lay-outs. Once I do this I am going to: A. Be a millionaire B. Go on millionaire matchmaker and 3. Be so transfixed on this montage and my own genius that I'm going to fall into a daze, staring at the montage for months on end, completely mesmerized, and like Narcissus before me, fall into my computer screen and drown.

One time when I was studying for finals, senior year of college, I obviously started procrastinating by going on Facebook. Well I started just clicking on random people that showed up and on their friends and on their friends and looking at people’s pictures. I was in a total trance. And when I finally looked up, it was 6 hours later. I wish I was kidding. I was nauseous and confused and disoriented. It’s like when people fall in love/lust and lock themselves in a bedroom together for 24 hours… but I prefer to have my love affairs with a social networking website, thanks.

But a new website has made it's way into the game, and it's called Twitter. As of this moment, I have never been to the Twitter homepage. I know what it is. I get the concept. But really? I don't read Perez or follow celebrity gossip (even though I know all of it anyway because my friend makes sure to e-mail all stories I might be interested in), I don't enjoy reading other people's statuses on Facebook (even though I do it anyway, thanks to the redesigned homepage, UGH), and lastly, this point should be an obvious one if you know me at all: DON'T CARE. If I wanted to see what other people were doing, or tell other people what I was doing, I would have signed into AIM or ichat in the last year, but I don't and I haven't. Or I would put up a Facebook status. But I never have and I never will. Or I go on Gchat to talk to the precious few (or twenty) people who are blessed enough to be in my inner-circle.

I'm actually excited to see how long I can hold out on Twitter-mania. I'm sure Tina Fey does have a very funny Twitter, as I've heard. But I guess I'll just have to get my fill of Tine Fey via SNL repeats and 30 Rock... and through our telepathic/mental bond, I know she feels it too.

Another thing that bothers me about Twitter- Why is the action of Twittering now called "Tweeting" or "Tweet" or "Tweeted"? No. Just... No. It's Twittering. Lets do some word play here…

Do - Doing
Make - Making
Shop - Shopping
Read - Reading
Fuck - Fucking

And now with proper nouns (is that even right?)…

E-mail - Emailing
G-chat - Gchatting
IM - IMing
Google - Googling
Facebook - Facebooking

TWITTER - TWITTERING

Get off your high horse, Twitter. Just because you're the website du jour doesn't mean you're going to last forever. Something new will come and wipe you out in due time, you just wait.

But I'll probably end up joining Twitter like tomorrow.

Spotted...

How could I have forgotten!? I had a great brush with fame this weekend. As I arrived at Extra Virgin in the West Village for my friend Julie's birthday dinner, I saw, the one, the only... DEAN WINTERS!!!!1 Who the fuck is Dean Winters??? Good question. I did not know him by name until Friday night when I saw him and immediately imdb-ed him on my phone. Most recently, Dean Winter's is best known for his role on 30 Rock as Dennis Duffy - Liz Lemon(Tina Fey)'s ex-boyfriend who refers to her as "dummy", fucked her best friend, diagnosed himself via webMD with a sex addiction, and whose latest investment venture is a coffee vending machine in a basement of a Wal-Mart. I'm sorry, that's just genius.


And here's a side note for everyone/anyone who has ever said a bad thing about 30 Rock and/or Tina Fey - Telling me you don't like Tina Fey is like telling me you think George Bush was a good President. A. You're just wrong. B. I like you significantly less than I did the second before you said that to me, regardless of how much i liked or disliked you before. and C. Get a life and/or sense of humor.

But back to Dean Winters. The mental scavenger hunt I had to go on to find Dean Winter's name on imdb was a good time. The first thing I remembered him from when I saw him was Sex and the City. I said that to the group of people I was with, who responded with blank stares. That's like one of the worst feelings ever. Not really the worst feeling as much as just the exact opposite of the feeling of extreme joy I get when someone else knows EXACTLY what I'm talking about. I clarified to the group by saying, "He plays Carrie's fuck buddy in the episode he's in...?" (the "...?" denotes my voice going up at the end of the sentence and my brows raising in hope that someone is going to catch on here!) More blank stares and also one fake gasp regarding my using the word "fuck" in front of Julie's parents. Trust me, I know which parents I can swear in front of and which ones I can't. I was fine with Marty and Joan.

First I thought my poor description was the reason no one else knew who he was -- no one else had seen him walk by because they were all faced towards me to greet me as I approached them on the street and he was walking towards me, so their backs were to him (all eyes on me in the center of a ring just like a ciirrrrcus?). But after I imdb-ed Sex and the City and realized (more like re-realized, since this has happened to me at least 4 times in the history of my life) that finding a random man that was a love-interest of one of the ladies on Sex an the City is WAY harder than finding a needle in a hay stack. There are just too many. Even if you know the title of the episode, which in this case, was in fact, "The Fuck Buddy", it's not easy enough to navigate imdb on a blackberry. And getting an iphone is certainly not an option, so on went the scavenger hunt...

I switched over to the next show I recognized him from: Law and Order: SVU (it should have been 30 Rock but I was thinking in terms of older shows and I didn't even remember he has been on 30 Rock multiple times until I read it on imdb). We're not talking about Benson and Stabler here people (although everyone everywhere should ALWAYS be talking about Benson and Stabler because they're the best detective tag-team-duo EVERRRRRR) we're talking the second-rate actors who played second-rate detectives that are in older eps. (Like a poor-man's Munch and Finn- a reference for the avid SVU watchers) Dean Winters was "Detective Cassidy" on SVU in the 1999-2000 season, which I believe was the inaugural season of SVU. Obviously finding the name "Dean Winters" only confused the people I was with even more, because they still had no clue who I was talking about and putting a name to the face when the name doesn't ring a bell was just a step backwards on this journey.

I then scrolled through Dean Winter's filmography on imdb, saying "Oh my god, I'm so stupid. You guys watch 30 Rock right?" More. Blank. Stares. He's also in "P.S. I Love You" which I didn't bring up to them because I still can't really remember who he was in that movie, maybe that's because when I saw that movie in theaters I spent it curled up in a ball in my movie chair, rocking back and forth and hysterically crying. What? Don't act like you've never done it. Very therapeutic and far less expensive than a therapist. The thing about crying in a movie is that once you're done, you cant just look back and be like, oh it's just a movie. I love crying in movies because of that and always prefer crying at the fake awful events of someone else's life as opposed to the hideous ones in my own. It would be too depressing. And even though the movie people's lives aren't real, the stuff that happens in them is usually way worse than what's gone down in mine so far. But it is a good reminder to be thankful for what you have because it could be worse... WHOA. TOOOOO SERIOUS!

Back to Dean Winters. At this point I had showed Julie, her sister, her boyfriend, her mom and her dad the picture of Dean Winters on my phone and still no one knew who he was. I had given up on them and decided I needed to share this with someone who would appreciate it as much as I did A-SAP. Step 1: bbm my roommate even though at this point I'm sitting at a dinner table (I'm rude). It took her a little while, I said "Detective Cassidy from old school SVU" to which she responded "The girl?" Easy mistake, she was obviously thinking of Detective Jefferies, the black female detective who was also a second rate back-up detective in old school SVU and was only on for the first two seasons. I responded "NO! The guy!!!!!!!!" and then she knew what I was talking about.

But then Saturday, when I was taking a leisurely walk with my good friend Dickie, I said "OMG! Did I tell you who I saw last night? Detective Cassidy from old school SVU... Tina Fey's ex-boyfriend on 30 Rock..." her response: "Oh! The guy from Sex and the City?" YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So THAT'S why we're best friends??!!