Yo

Sorry to keep you all waiting. Where was I? Oh yes - nowhere. Anyways, I've somehow managed to get all "busy" in the last week with assignments. Not quite sure how it happened, because being "busy" goes against everything I stand for. Especially being "busy" with "work." But alas, rent is due tomorrow and reading Pink Is The New Blog has yet to prove profitable.

I'm at my parent's house in Los Angeles for the next week-and-a-half. Returning to your old stomping ground usually means partying it up with high school homies, but I'm more of a stay-at-home-with-the-rents-and-watch-So-You-Think-You-Can-Dance kinda gal. My sister and I traded iTunes songs tonight, which felt a bit like debauchery. I also dropped a glass of water 'cause I'm craaaazy like that...

Time to go to bed. I'm interviewing the college roommate of Alice Waters (California Cuisine Goddess) tomorrow morning and can't think of anything to ask her besides "So did Alice like local and organic produce thirty years ago also?" Should go well...

Some Like It Hot...

Me? Not so much.

It's true - I always complain about the everlasting gloom that is San Francisco weather, and shake my head disappointedly while donning mittens in the summer. It seems to me the city, which just...can't...find...a way to shake off that morning fog, has its finger on the snooze button.

But these past few days, SF has been running a fever. Yesterday, it was 89 degrees. I woke up, checked the forecast, slathered on the Banana Boat and headed out for an imagined day of snow cones and broken fire hydrants.

As it turns out, 89 degrees is unpleasantly hot. The kind of hot where the back of your knees start to sweat. And I couldn't find any snow cones so I bought a Diet Coke (not as exciting as it sounds.) I had laid out in the park with the hopes that this would be the day I'd finally tan. It wasn't, and instead I'm left with a scorched chest that inspires "Oh dear god" and not the "Nice color!" I was hoping for.

I'd consider standing in front of the open refrigerator to cool myself off like some damsel in a Hitchcock movie, but my eco-obsessed boyfriend would then have to kill me. (Haha...cutie...just joking...wouldn't think of it. Ha.) And so I'm left to bathe in Aloe Vera and pray that my sunburn heals before I visit home next week.

Ya see, my sister and I were sunburn scratchers. We would creep up on each other, and with our nails, dig deep the wounds of sisterhood. I think those days are past, but the scars remain.**

**Don't actually have scars, but wasn't sure "Sunburn in a Park" counted as good story-telling...

Muggsy jumps in a cake


Happy Birthday to Christina and Leslie!!! We can all be jealous of them because Christina's turning 25 and has her life figured out - please see engagement ring and condo down-payment - and Leslie's turning 23 and that's obscene. (And to be clear, Leslie graduated with the Class of 2004...at the age of 20...much to the horror of her friends.)

Oh, and I've posted the above video as a tip of my party hat to these wonderful, wonderful girls who add so much to my life. And as an homage to cats, because they too add so much to my life. Not as much as Christina and Leslie. But almost.

The Burden of Blood

So I recently signed up for this SiteMeter thingy ("thingy" being the technical term) which lets me see when people are looking at my blog, how long they're looking at it, which parts they're looking at, etc, etc. An excellent use of my time, really, because it compels me to ask important questions like "Why didn't viewer #6 look at post #10?????" and "Who's been reading my blog for 48 minutes???" (The answer was me.)

However, what began as a pleasant distraction has evolved into a disturbing evaluation of my popularity. For example, my "numbers" were a bit low last Friday. As of noon, approximately three people had checked my blog. Quite uninspiring. "How could this be," I wondered. And then it hit me: my entire extended family was on the 101 driving up north for my sister's graduation. Which seemed to indicate that all the "dozens of people" flocking to my site each day were none other than my nuclear family refreshing the blog at 20 minute-intervals. Which is perhaps the tech-age equivalent of your mother telling you you're pretty and that "the boys just don't know what they're missing."

But rather than lament my newfound unpopularity, I've decided to work with what the blog-gods gave me. I've since forwarded this site to grandparents, aunts, uncles, step-sisters, cousins once-removed, et al. If my hilarious posts can't woo an audience, then perhaps familial guilt will. Right Fafi? (Note that Fafi is the figure on the left holding yours truly as a mere babe.) I'm so cute it almost makes you want to comment, huh?

They Grow Up So Fast...

Sorry I disappeared for the weekend, my dear and loyal readers (4 and counting!!!). My younger sister Chloe graduated from college yesterday - cue assaultive blowhorn! - which meant the family got to spend two hours in the Santa Cruz sun shrieking our hearts out and waving madly at the tiny person in the distance we guessed to be her.

In honor of my sister's big day, I'm putting up two photos. The first is one of 5,000 posed pictures from yesterday's ceremony which proves that Chloe did in fact graduate because that's her yellow tassel on the left, and the second features her and a pal on what appears to be either Halloween or a Saturday night. Oh college... a time for gratuitously hot costumes (no holiday required), back-to-back posing, and out-of-frame-but- implied-red-cups! How you'll be missed!

Congrats again Yosi! Coming soon: TrippingOnMyFuture...

A New Name

So I've just been approached by my editors at CAFE magazine to write both of two special features for the upcoming issue. Very cool - my barren cupboards will be happy. Only catch is they're a bit self-conscious having the same writer byline both articles, and so rather than push my editors into the arms of another journalist, I've decided to take a pen name.

So what, oh what, shall I be called? At first I was thinking Penny-Something sounded catchy... kinda investigative-reporter-from-the-70's. But then my roommate wisely pointed out that Penny-Something belongs more to the realm of adult entertainment, and that perhaps I was confusing pen name with porn name. Which led me to where I am now - a place far, far away from anything that matters - playing the "porn name game" (big around the McGibbon family dinner table) where you take your first pet'’s name and the name of the street you grew up on, but that leaves me with Elvis Malcolm, which just sounds like I didn't understand the game and chose two famous monikers.

But back to my nom de plume. When I suggested to Florian that maybe I'd try on a man's name, he said, "But you write like a woman." And when I asked what that meant, he shrugged lazily (who's fitting gender stereotypes now, biotch?). I should've come back at him with a zinger like "Oh yeah, well you walk like a woman!!" but such winning retorts only occur to you after the fact.

So any suggestions? And to anticipate your question - yes, I'll use some part of your name if you pay me. And yes, $100 is a perfectly acceptable starting bid.

Bye,
Amalia McGibbon, but not for long...

Stay Tuned...

So, I actually have crap to do today (and by crap, I mean serious journalism) but here are a few random television clips that should keep you entertained while I'm off changing lives. The truth is, these are much funnier than I am, and my return tomorrow will come as a disappointment.

Without further ado, some Comedy Central moments:

Daily Show Clip #1
(Back from when Steve Carell was still with the Daily Show. Kinda fuzzy, but hilarious.)

Daily Show Clip #2


Daily Show Clip #3

Lez Talk about Earth, baby...

Just saw "An Inconvenient Truth" - the documentary that trails Al Gore as he moves about the country, giving his slideshow on global warming. I had read all these reviews that marveled at the documentary-maker's ability to make Al Gore not boring. Um, so he's definitely still boring BUT he makes a good point (y'know, that whole "try-to-give-a-damn" thing) and I'd recommend seeing it.

But I spent the entire movie trying to watch it through a skeptic's eyes - because that's whose mind it needed to change, right? - and I do have a few bones to pick. First off, there are leagues of substantial evidence in favor of global warming so when you're using colorful graphs with lots of dramatic-looking upswings and no clearly marked x- and y- axes, you're doing the argument a disservice. And when you choose to splice in a 15-second cartoon short of Mr. Polar Bear swimming aimlessly through the arctic waters looking for a non-existence piece of ice to hoist his tired body on, I can't help but pause my sniveling for a moment to mumble "cheap trick." There's no need for critter animation - the reality is angering enough!

I also thought the movie spent too long arguing the existence of global warming, and never really outlined some of the steps we can take to fix things. I'm guessing that most people going to see this flick already care about the issue and don't need it re-explained; what we do need is for someone to spell out the ways in which we can adjust our current lifestyle to make a difference. Don't you think our problem is that we can't fathom the solutions? Not that we can't fathom the problem?

All that criticism aside, I do give Mr. Gore and the filmmakers big props for paying attention to this incredibly big, serious, scary problem that has been forgotten on Capitol Hill in the flurry of debates over gay marriage and other such valid, ethical things.

Okay, it's time for me to go. The sarcasm is building and things will only get less funny and more angry from here on out. For tips on what YOU can do to right our wrongs, visit http://climatecrisis.org/. (Oh no, I've turned into a public service announcement...)

What to do...what to do...

So, in case the below posts on Fedex and sharks hadn't made it clear, I've got some time to kill. My first year out of college was spent working two jobs and then I scaled back A LOT and now find myself working, uh, probably less than one. (Not really, mom, I'm just saying that for this post. Haha.)

Actually, Claire once took it upon herself to scribble down all my various freelance assignments and the time they should (operative word is "should") take me, and, well, let's just say - the resulting pie chart wasn't pretty (both because of the truth it revealed, and because Claire is astonishingly bad at pie charts. Astonishingly.)

Bottom line is I spend too much time reading celebrity gossip websites and watching Real World repeats, and I need to find a, how-do-you-say, "extracurricular."

So here are a few things I'm considering. I welcome any and all suggestions:

1) Drum lessons. So I took a year of piano and a year of flute as a child. I had thought I took a year of violin but apparently that was my sister and I'm just trying to appropriate her accomplishments. But why drums, you ask with great interest? Weeelll...I know I'm not a singer, and playing guitar hurts my fingers. So really drums are the only thing I haven't learned I can't do.

I stumbled upon the idea a few weeks ago, while listening to some song. I think it was T.I.'s "What You Know" (yeah, I'm down like that - sup?) and I caught myself doing a rather awful fake-drum-on-my-fake-drumset performance. Most people tap their fingers and think "good song"...I tap my fingers and think "undiscovered talent."

So that's my first idea. I have many more, but will leave those for another post. Content is sparce these days...

Dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun......

So here's the deal. I'm really really REALLY scared of great white sharks. Like...I can't go into the ocean. And I've had problems in a pool. (Roll your eyes. Go ahead. Get it over with.) As far as my psyche goes, paddling legs = hungry shark. It's a 1-2 step.

This fear might be traceable to an early-childhood viewing of Jaws (damn you, motor-operated shark double!!!), but my father and sister experience a similar phobia and so I've tried to argue it's genetic. Yes? No? No. Okay.

Nevertheless, I was recently saying to Florian (mr. boytoy) that I think I would hate having to die at the hands of a great white shark more than he would, which he found ridiculous because he believed that at the brink of death, all manners are equally terrifying and the victims equally terrified. To which I shook my head and maintained that I would find death-by-shark a bit more awful than he.

I tell you of this inane debate (which is probably no more interesting now than it was then) because it just goes to show how truly and utterly petrified I am of these aquatic terrorists.

There are those who ask, how have I let this fear cripple me? And to them I respond, how have you not? And I ask that while posting this picture:


















Have fun in your pools/shark tanks,

Ama"ruining summer vacations one post at a time..."lia

Let's try this again...

So I feel the need to better introduce myself.

My dear friends Lara and Claire have this blog TrippingOnWords in which they plan to chronicle their year of traveling 'round the world. Their blog is extremely funny and already popular, and so I decided to hitch my wagon to theirs. Basically, I named my blog something that could only make sense in conjunction with their title, hereby guilting the girls into mentioning me. Because as Lara pointed out, if they refuse to acknowledge our connection - then I'm just some girl who apparently does drugs on her sofa.

So anyways, while Lara and Claire are gallivanting about faraway lands, I'm really just sitting tight here in San Francisco. Mainly on my couch. Cue the title.

More about me: I'm currently making a "living" (my bank account would debate that term) as a freelance writer. Truth be told, things are going decently and I have enough regular assignments to justify this job choice. I write for a few different pubs - Gentry Magazine, SF Downtown, and CAFE Magazine. Mostly restaurant reviews, with the occasional "I'll take a tango class so you don't have to" piece. And there's a book, but we'll get into that later.

I've got some friends, a roommate, a lovely boyfriend - all of whom I'll be plugging in due time.

For the most part, though, I plan to use this blog as a stage for my endless ramblings (someone out there is knowingly nodding - or shaking!?!? - their head). At the very least, I'll entertain myself. And my mom. She's already visited this site 36 times in the past three days and has promised to respond to each one of my posts.

Hi mom.

Low Points

So today I was walking down the street and I passed a huddle of construction workers on their lunch break. Not one of them made a sound. No whistles. No mamacitas. Now I understand that perhaps I should be relieved at this brief respite from harassment, but all I can do is stare in the mirror and ask "why?" Was not my neckline sufficiently plunging? My jeans suggestively snug? And if the men willing to stare as I walk past can't muster the enthusiasm to compliment, who can I turn to? (My boyfriend doesn't count...he has to flatter me...I make him.)

So apparently, at some point in my development as a strong, self-respecting woman, I tripped and became a person who was not only fine with occasional objectification, but delighted in it.

I'm reminded of a special incident not too long ago, when I encountered a rather down-on-his luck fellow. As I passed him by, he said, "Can I just ask you one question?" Believing I could grant him this wish in lieu of spare change, I said yes, and he continued, "Where'd you get all that?" An imprecise question unless you know me, in which case you'd understand that "that" referred to my rather round derriere. (I think he was pointing too...always a useful communication device.) I mumbled "I'm not sure" and kept walking.

The saddest part of this little story is that I walked around with my chin a bit higher that day. A homeless man had complimented my butt and that made me feel good. No...no...actually, he had just inquired about my butt, and that made me feel good.

So for all those construction workers out there reading this blog (there must be a dozen of you or so), I'd really appreciate a few "pretty girl"s next time. I don't think it's asking too much. Or a few clucks of the tongue, if you're tired. It would mean so much to me and my ravenous ego.

So no...I'm not travelling NOW persay...but I've travelED, and I think that entitles me to post pretty pictures no matter their date. Coo as you like.

Critical Thinking by Amalia

So what's the deal with Fedex, UPS, etc. all delivering packages to your home while you're at work? This is what I'd call a "bad system" (and I call a lot of things that, so I hope you find the phrase a clever one.)

Now that I work from home, I no longer suffer through the futile 1st, 2nd, and 3rd "We Tried!" notices, but I can't understand the logic here. Don't most people leave their homes during the day? Isn't that an accepted practice? That whole "office" trend? And yet package delivery services continue to hope that people have maybe stopped doing that???

Isn't it time we implement a standard "Your package has arrived, so come get it now" practice, and stop wasting all the gas and paper slips because Fedex wants to look like it's holding up its end of the "delivery" bargain...

Hello. My Name is _____.

So this whole blog thing is a bit new, and I'm not quite sure what parts of my daily life will make the cut. All in all, I lead what most would call a glamorous life.

There's my early morning visit to YouTube where I rewatch old clips of American Idol's Elliot Yamin. Then a trip to the mailbox in hopes of a check. Then a few sentences more of my restaurant review (which sounds more impressive than the profile it is). Then back to Elliot. Then over to the T.V., where I watch reruns of the past evening's Daily Show and Colbert Robert (not because I missed them, but because they were THAT good and I'm THAT slothful.) I return to my review, toss in a few adjective (my favorite of the day is "rococo"), and call it a day.

Of course, this is the condensed daily timeline...the minute-by-minute packs a more electrifying punch. But I'll save that for another day. (I trust this post has secured your interest.)

June 1, 2006: Testing, testing...

Yes, this blog is going to be THAT interesting.