Oh, Maaaan!

1. Scared Straight: Swiper The Fox At Corcoran
2. Don’t Call Me The ‘Little Green One!: Brobie Uncovered, A Barbara Walters Interview Special
3. Extreme Makeover: From Dora The Explorer to Dora And The Explorer Girls
4. Wuzzleberries Are Not The Only Fruit: An After-School Special Starring Widget From Wow Wow Wubbzy!
5. Intervention: Sportacus From Lazy Town And His Journey To Kick Meth
6. Home Alone 5,423: A Neighbor Calls CPS On Max & Ruby and Their Absentee Parents
7. Iconoclasts: Olivia And Quentin Tarrantino Paint The Town Red
8. Extreme Home Makeover Target: Sponge Bob’s Pineapple Under the Sea
9. Blind Date: YeYe And Alice The Great hit P.F. Changs
10. HoHo, Just Admit It: A Condemned Monkey’s Effort To Clear His Conscience
11. Boots’ Queer (Monkey) Eye For The Straight Guy: Victim: Steve From Blues Clues

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4. Tim at Safer By Choice
5. Gretchen at Second Blooming

"11 Rejected Ideas for Full-Length Nickelodeon Specials” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on November 09, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

Pirate keyboard via CrunchGear

“I should go out tonight, because I’d really like to get laid.”
“Tanya, it’s pirate party.”
“I know.”
“So?”
“So what?”
“Phi Delt, Tanya.”
“Yeah …”
“The water polo team.”
“Isn’t pirate party a date party?”
“Technically.”

“Well, how are we going to get in?”
“Renshaw.”
“How do you know? Besides, everyone will have dates.”
“Haven’t you heard? There’s no dating at Stanford.”
“When did you see Renshaw?”
“Narrative Technique.”
“You went to class?!”
“I resent your tone.”
“Well, who is Renshaw taking?”
“Nobody. That’s what I’m saying. Technically it’s a date party. Really, it’s just a party. With a guest list. That we’re on.”
“OK … it has been so long since I got laid.”
“It’s been three weeks, Tanya.”

You knew everything about Tanya’s sexual escapades, whether you wanted to or not, and you questioned how much of it was performed for the benefit of … someone? You had never met a woman who talked — thought — this way about sex, and you did not believe it. You did not trust that a woman would authentically start to track her sexual partners in this way, lining them up literally as notches on her bedpost, whose partners already numbered beyond her age in years. It was an act, you thought, but maybe there was part of you that allowed for error, since just because you could not understand did not make it automatically false. And so you went along with it, like you did with all of Tanya’s absurdities, because with all of them there were just as many fascinating things, strange tidbits that hinted at a past and experience beyond what you would ever know.

Tanya was the kind of person that nobody back home would ever meet, much less know like you did. Nobody from where you came from would be friends with this kind of a person, or be able to teach themselves her language, as you had. And that was what made it all worth the effort.

Getting Tanya out of her dorm on party nights had become a giant pain in the ass of late. As far as you could tell, Tanya’s reluctance to leave her room was connected to her exaggerated pre-party beauty ritual. Perhaps it was because she was anosmic, but Tanya seemed to feel it was crucial to stay in the shower for upwards of an hour at a time in order to truly get clean, a fact which had annoyed and frustrated you more than another person’s personal maintenance routine ever should be able to do. You had explained, rather rationally, to Tanya that soap merely needed to be afforded a brief opportunity in which to bond with dirt on skin and hair, perhaps scrubbed a bit, and then rinsed off. That more than, say, twenty minutes — tops! — was just superfluous time wasting and skin drying tomfoolery! To no avail. Tanya was convinced her routine was essential, and if she did not start it by 7pm, the likelihood of her ever making it out was very low.

Tanya’s three-hour pre-party beauty regimen annoyed you because it often meant the difference between (over-)drinking alone or (over-)drinking with company. Because for you, the niceties of beauty routines ought rightfully be cut-cornered to the greater good of going out and drinking in a socially acceptable context. Perhaps Tanya’s alcoholism was not yet so pronounced. Or perhaps it was the fact that Tanya at that time had appetites that ranked higher in priority than drugs and alcohol ever could have, and it was to accommodate those appetites that she felt the regimen was necessary. So you went through this ritual of your own, carting over a 6 pack of Sierra Nevada in the early evening, and camping out on Tanya’s futon until she agreed to go to the shower. And checking in on her progress, periodically, in the hours that followed.

“Water polo, Tanya. Eyes on the prize.” You poked your head into the women’s bathroom at the end of the hall, and went back to drinking and hanging out with Cate and Linda, and talking about the evening to come. Time would pass, and Tanya would still not be ready, and after eseveral more attempts at gettin gher moving, you agreed to meet her at the party, and somewhere inbetween the brownish haze that descended after that pack of Sierra Nevada was gone and scrounging around for Old Smuggler in the back of Andy’s liquor cabinet at the end of the night, you remember seeing Tanya at the pirate party, talking to a guy named Brant that you had seen before but never spoken too. And thinking, what an odd choice, and going for more alcohol, and then everything went blurry again.

You would sleep on Cate’s floor, too drunk to drive, and in the morning attempt to piece together the disparate parts of the evening, to reconstruct the narrative that you had certainly been a part of but could not wholly claim subjectivity for. And as you and Cate were chatting, in came Tanya to the two-room double they shared that year, her black leather biker’s jacket and eyelash curler still intact, her hair looking only slightly worse for the wear. She headed over to her bedpost and carved in another line.

“Who?” you asked, never surprised by the circumstances of the notch, always curious to hear the notchee.
“Some pirate.”
“Right.”
“No, really, he was a pirate.”
“Dressed as a pirate, yeah. Brant, then?”

“Was that his name?”
“That’s who I saw you with.”
“Well, the only way we’ll know for sure is to examine him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I was calling him Captain Hook. For a reason.”

“He was missing a hand? Strange.”

“No, it was more of a reference to the shape of a crucial piece of his anatomy.”
“Oh Tanya.”
“Captain Hook! AAAAAR!”

With that, she put her hand over her eye and chased you down the hall, and the two of you were off to the sunporch where you could further deconstruct the evening, unfortunate references to the shape of people’s penises and all. And if Tanya’s insistence upon the casual insignificance of it all still seemed forced, well at least there was some intimacy forged there, in spite of it all. Because at the heart of all the destruction and hazy recollections, was laughter, and the precious bond of two lost souls clinging to each other, and clawing back to themselves, one shared cigarette at a time.

"Tanya: Captain Hook” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on November 06, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

So I was tooling around the West side yesterday, just trying to kill some time while my geriatric cat was having tests done, and at some point I found myself on the third floor of Nordstrom. After a pointless perusal of TBD, I took a right at Individualist and was just about to board the down escalator and check out the cosmetics department when HOLY FUCKING HELL was that a vampire I just saw in Brass Plum?

Hey, he looks just like that kid who played Cedric Diggory in the fourth Harry Potter.

Now granted, the lighting isn’t all that great at the WSP Nordstrom, but it still seemed pretty bright for a vampire to just be walking around like that. And there was definitely some early afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows at the edges of the store, but dude was NOT sparkling for shit. Not at ALL. He was just standing there. Big let down.

Of course, then I realized that there wasn’t just a vampire there. There was also a really stupid-looking werewolf.

But, you’re right, you don’t really want your dogs to be SMART. You want them to be obedient.

I mean, there are some smart dogs, but it’s not like the species as a whole is known for being intelligent. Still, I feel like this looks like a really stupid breed of dog. I could be wrong. I didn’t talk to him or ask him to fetch anything. Also, sometimes you don’t want a smart dog, right? You want your dog to be obedient, and friendly. That’s why golden retrievers are more popular than poodles. Also, the fact that golden retrievers are way cuter. What was I talking about?

Oh yeah. So all this talk of vampires and werewolves, and I started wondering what I would look like, if I were Bella, tragically torn between two supernatural beings that wanted to devour me. I’m not sure, but I think I’d probably wear a lot of flannel, and be like 40–50 pounds lighter than I am right now, and bite my lip a lot. I can almost picture it.

High-heeled feet are super flattering.

I’m going to have to work on the lip-biting emo stuff. But I’ll get there.

"Vampire In Brass Plum” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on November 04, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

Twitter bird by Luc Latulippe. Snark by me.

1. “Just pay the parking ticket. Don’t be so outraged. You’re not a freedom fighter in the civil rights movement. You double parked.” (By @shitmydadsays)
2. The only way I could be less interested in today is if Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker were in it. (By @adamjleach)
3. Clearly, Jeremy was not a harmless little fuck. (By @themuskrat)
4. @abdpbt Crusade all you want. Ban blogger booze and my new biz model’s selling bootleg and kitchensink Oxy. #monetizetheprohibition (By @debontherox)
5. Wait we’re the red ones on the map?! (By @FakeSarahPalin)
6. What do sexy nurses wear for Halloween? (By @sween)
7. Dear kazillion lego pieces: You’ve won! I give up! cc: Pokemon cards (By @MarinkaNYC)
8. Today we’re going to a polo match with Jim’s republican friends. I love cliches! (By @k8iedid)
9. My faux memoir about drugs, death and redemption at Ikea shall be called ‘A Thousand Tiny Pencils’. (By @textism)
10. Oldest says bassinet needs a seatbelt so he can push baby in it down the hill on our driveway. This is why I’m afraid to take a shower. (By @mommiedaze)
11. I’m less offended by David Letterman banging his staff members than I am by Jay Leno’s continued employment. (By @gordonshumway)
12. Who’s a big boy in his stroller? You are! You’re a big boy in a stroller! Yes you are! Yes you are! Fine. “Wheelchair”. (By @sween)
13. “Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.” (By @Shitmydadsays, again)
14. Seriously, Tom. We get it: you’re old. Just eat the fucking peach already. (@hotdogsladies)
15. On second thought, fuck that. Not enough bourbon in the world to make that okay. I’m gonna listen to some Interpol and cry myself to sleep.(By @crusaderjon)
16. Haha. When you set your GPS to British accent, he pronounces it “Titto’s Tackos”. Still damn good tackos though, Constable Garmin. (By @lonelysandwich)
17. Almost 20 years after the Soviet collapse, Russia finds its economic foothold in the production of malicious javascript. Будем здоровы!…(By @textism)
18. The easiest way to change the world is to be generous. #broadsummit09 (By @parenthacks)

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1. 7 Photo Editing Tools For People Who Don’t Have Photoshop | ABDPBT Tech
2. 6 Cool Products For Kids (Or Adults Who Are Young At Heart) | ABDPBT Commodity Fetishism
3. 100 16 Ways To Make The Holidays Cheaper & Easier That Don’t Involve Giving Your Friends and Family Gifts They Will Immediately Throw Away — Revised And Expanded For 2009 | ABDPBT Personal Finance
4. Marinka at Motherhood in NYC
5. Tim at Safer By Choice
6. Kerry at ClueWagon
7. Deborah at Fashion Plate: Hungry For Style
8. Elizabeth at Half Baked, Twice As Good
9. Ginger at Ramble Ramble

"18 Funny Tweets Made By People Other Than Myself. Because If Twitter Is Going To Rip Off My Lists, Then I’m Going To Rip Off Their Favorites” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on November 02, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

Lego Sushi via Ffffound!

Each week, in addition to the links you can see by spying on my Google Reader, I compile a list of posts that interested me and post them here on Saturday. You can check out the ABDPBT Personal Finance, ABDPBT Tech, and ABDPBT Commodity Fetishism versions at your leisure as well. If you have any posts that were great that I missed, please send me an email and I’ll check it out before next week.

• Please look at these doughnut sandwiches. Now, which do you feel like doing more — vomiting or salivating? It’s a tie? Me too!
• Fans of Project Runway will appreciate this: “Tim Gunn Is Tired Of Your Bullshit.” Hilarious.
• Penelope Trunk is getting married and moving to a farm! Also, she may or may not be writing sponsored posts for the flower industry. Wow.
• Deb On The Rocks exposes the terminal stupidity of not-famous Christian pop stars. And their assistants.

"Of Note This Week” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on October 31, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

Uggh. I need to vacuum, don’t I?

Sometimes if it’s cold in the mornings, Mr. Right-Click will put long tube socks on Mini and pull them up really high, like how old skool basketball players would wear them. If it’s really, really cold (like, say 60), he’ll pull the socks up on the outside of Mini’s sweatpants, making them go all the way up to his knee with the sweatpants tucked in. Then he’ll bring him in to me, and he’ll say, “Mini, did you tell Mommy that you’re ready to stroll the yards at Corcoran State Prison?”

I don’t know — maybe there are other convicts who stroll the yards with grilled cheese and sippy cups. What do I know?

Usually, Mini will ignore this, or say “No?” as a question, like, “Is this one of those instances where it doesn’t matter if I understand what you’re talking about?” And then he’ll ask to watch “the show.”

So, this morning Mini comes into the bedroom and he’s got on a choice strolling-the-yards outfit. The only things that would make it more complete would be a hairnet and a flannel shirt with just the top button buttoned. And Mr. Right-Click says, “Your son is a gangster.” And I say, “Mini, you’re in a gang?” and he says, “Yeah.” And then Mr. Right-Click says, “He’s ready to stroll the yards at Corcoran.” This is pretty much business as usual at our house. Except for after that, Mr. Right-Click asks Mini if he wants a bite of this breakfast bar thing that he’s got, and I guess this must be secret toddler jailhouse slang for something, because Mini yells, “NO!” and keeps repeating, “Nonononononono!”

And then, things got really weird.

Mini runs over to the corner of the bedroom and stands there, butt to the wall, and I’m thinking, “Now where the fuck did he learn that?” So I say, “Mini, have they been trying to get you to drop the soap over at preschool? Or something?” While I’m busy doing this, Mr. Right-Click grabs a banana, and he’s coming at Mini with it in his left hand like a shank, and is saying things like, “I’m coming after you, punk!” and then Mini says, “RAWR!” and Mr. Right-Click runs away screaming. Then Mr. Right-Click picks up Bruin Bear and Lamby Lamb, and he says, “We’re coming after you in numbers, dude!” But somehow Mini manages to win Bruin Bear and Lamby Lamb over into his gang, and then it’s just Buzz and Mr. Right-Click standing alone. And before I know it, Mini is forcing Mr. Right-Click to brew jailhouse wine and give him all of his cigarettes.

And I’m back at the part where Mini knows that the corner boasts the best and safest view in the circumstance of a jailhouse riot.

"Strolling The Yards At Corcoran” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on October 30, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

I don’t know what’s going on with my expression in this picture.

I share the same hairstylist as the actress Jaime Pressly. This happy coincidence is far less glamorous than it seems, because in Los Angeles, the odds are that this kind of thing will happen. I am telling you this because it is my roundabout way of introducing a really unscientific case study of weight loss and maintenance of weight loss that I’ve been running in my head. That scientific study has as its hypothesis that the only good reason to appear on television regularly, that I can think of, is that it gives you consistent motivation to get and/or stay thin.

It is difficult to locate full length pictures of myself from this period.

See, Jaime Pressly has a son who is almost exactly the same age as Mini. I know this because when I was pregnant, I would go get my hair cut, and Sean would give me updates about how Jaime Pressly’s pregnancy was progressing. So not only did I learn that Jaime Pressly ate a lot of food from McDonald’s whilst pregnant, I also learned when she was about to give birth, and as such she served as kind of a checks and balances system on my own pregnancy weight gain. Because even though Jaime Pressly was supposedly eating McDonald’s, I would see her on TV and she would look much better than I did, even when you allow for the fact that she’s breathtakingly beautiful to begin with and all of the necessary discrepancies in our respective appearances this causes. Jaime Pressly gaining less weight than I did when pregnant was annoying enough, but it was much worse once we had both given birth; this was in April, and by August, she had lost all of the baby weight and was back on My Name Is Earl, where she was using *a prosthetic pregnancy belly* because her character on the show was still pregnant, and she had lost all her weight. [Bitch.]

Jonna from The Real World Cancun was always thin. But she showed up for the reunion show about ten to fifteen pounds lighter.

It was about that time that I started thinking that TV appearances are the best way to lose weight and stay thin. Even being a movie star would not be more effective: movie stars have breaks between their projects, and stretches of time when they’re not being filmed every day. It’s easy for pounds to creep on during those periods — just look at Kate Winslet. She’ll be thin in a movie and then gain a little bit of weight, and then she’ll have to lose it before the next project. That’s fine, but I’d like to just maintain the constant, outside motivation that only regular appearances on national TV can provide. This is a humiliation that has made hundreds of actresses stay thin for decades at a time, even when they didn’t want to — take Kirsty Alley (fought off weight until after Cheers), Jennifer Anniston (always thin, but lost about 20 pounds over the course of the Friends run), Courtney Cox (also always thin, and has been on network TV for most of her adult life), and just about any reality TV show female character.

Which brings me to Kate Gosselin.

I don’t want to look like Kate Gosselin, mind you. But you have got to say that this is a pretty convincing argument for why being on TV regularly is a good diet plan.

I am not sure which one is worse, now that I think about it.

Do you think she’s going to be able to stay thin now that the show’s been cancelled?

"The Only Reason I Would Want To Be On TV Regularly Is To Get And Stay Thin” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on October 28, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

Photo by frixedairewave at deviantART

1. Infant Phlebotomist
2. Brand Enthusiast, Acai Berry Diet Pill
3. Dealer, International Black Market for Human Organs
4. Judge, Project Runway
5. Infant Sleep Trainer
6. Lactation Consultant
7. Admissions Officer, Yale Law School
8. Masseuse at Bacara Resort, Santa Barbara
9. Strategist, Health Insurance Claims Rejections
10. Health Plan Pharmaceutical Coverage Policy Designer
11. Toddler Vegetable-Eating Enforcer
12. Customer Service Representative, DreamHost
13. Consultant, Characterization of Protagonists, Premium Cable Television Shows
14. Inspiration, Characterization of Protagonists, Premium Cable Television Shows
15. Personal Trainer
16. Standard Poodle Hairstylist
17. Stand-In For Simon Cowell
18. Cameraman for Survivor, Jon and Kate Plus Eight, or The Biggest Loser
19. Infant Ear Piercer
20. Telemarketer
21. Junk Mailer
22. Stand-In for Jillian Michaels
23. Stand-In for Kate Gosselin
24. Disc Jockey, Techno Club
25. My Mailman
26. Person at the Post Office Who Decides When/If To Open Another Window
27. Person Who Stands Outside Barnes & Noble, the Apple Store, or Pavillions And Asks Me For Money And/Or To Sign A Petition, Whether Or Not They Are Affiliated With A Legitimate Charity

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1. 3 Things Every Blogger Should Know About CSS Sprites | ABDPBT Tech
2. 5 Hostess Gifts That Don’t Suck, Die, Or Contain Alcohol | ABDPBT Commodity Fetishism
3. 6 Recent Print Media Headlines That Suck | ABDPBT Personal Finance
4. Tim at Safer By Choice
5. Kerry at ClueWagon
6. Alexis at the Well-Read Mom

"27 Underexplored Career Paths For Sociopaths” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on October 26, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.

In honor of the new season of Dexter, I’ve got a cartoon strip for you today. I know this is a little late, but I’ve been a little distracted lately from my popular culture parody hobbies. So at long last, may I present Detective Angel Batista in “Wabbit Seasoning,” with special thanks to Mr. Right-Click for his help in constructing Batista Fudd.

To Be Continued …

"Wabbit Seasoning” was written by Anna Viele for ABDPBT and was originally posted on October 23, 2009. Copyright ®2009 Anna Viele for ABDPBT, Inc. and licensed for reuse under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 3.00. All other rights reserved.