Announcing...TIWTPITF: The Book

From today's Publishers Marketplace: Jennifer Worick's THINGS I WANT TO PUNCH IN THE FACE, an irreverent compendium of pet peeves, mundane activities, and batty behavior, to Colleen Dune Bates at Prospect Park Media, by Joy Tutela at the David Black Literary Agency.

It goes without saying but I'm tickled pink. And as you know, that is as rare as a unicorn sighting! Look for a compendium of the most punch-worthy people, places, and things in online and brick-and-mortar stores everywhere this fall. It will make an excellent gift for you and your snarkiest friends!

Let me know which posts you think must be included in the book, as I'm putting the manuscript together now. Mwah, all you dear malcontents.

Panel vans

Is it just me, or does everyone steer clear of panel work vans?

Okay, it's just me.

My ability to park properly is dangerously hampered, as images of dismembered body parts dance before my eyes (and not in a kitschy, zombie party kind of way).

And if I spot a loner white male sporting a cast and attempting to load a sofa into the back of the van, I stay in the car, back not-so-slowly away, using my hands-free headset to call the local police department so it can run the numbers on the mud-caked license plate. If you are the owner of one of these psychopathfinders, please do me a solid and paint your phone number on the windowless sliding door. It will make tracking you down much, much easier.

(photo: carsignspro.com)

Cake pops

They’re cute, sure. Adorable, in fact.

However.

The Zooey Deschanel of desserts, this twee treat gives me a toothache just thinking about its sweetness. Generally made of boxed (i.e. processed) cake mix and sugar, lots of sugar, these pops are more precious than playful. They are edible craft projects. When a recipe calls for an edible ink pen, the dessert becomes a fondon’t in my cookbook.

All this could perhaps be forgiven if the cake pop actually tasted amazeballs. It doesn’t. Sorry to skewer this treat trend, but I’d rather be knee-deep in a piece of pie.

(photo: bakerella.com)

Gwyneth Paltrow’s un-selfconsciousness

Darling girl of the flatironed hair and the clothes-hanger frame, I’ve defended you. I’ve often quite liked you as a person and an actress. I, for one, wasn’t happy to see your head gifted to Morgan Freeman in Seven. I think you are talented, chic, in tune. You even look good in a jumpsuit.

However.

No longer are you the Apple of my eye, a sartorial Moses leading us to the promised land where we vacation with Valentino, cook with Batali, and rock out with Beyoncé. What you are is delusional. You don’t have delusions of grandeur; rather, you—of the famous parents, even more famous godfather, and Spence pedigree—think you’re just like us plebs.

If only.

It started with goop, your unctuous, ooky website and e-newsletter that offers up your picks for a fabulous soup-to-nuts lifestyle. It continued with your self-congratulatory cookbook My Father’s Daughter. “We've got a wood-burning pizza oven in the garden—a luxury, I know, but it's one of the best investments I've ever made.” Fuck you and your macrobiotic, organic, Michael Pollan-approved diet. Now, you’ve launched goop city, an app of twee drawings and footage of you Julie McCoying it—in stilettos, no less—all over Manhattan.

Groucho Marx reputedly said, “I don't care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.” Well, Gwynnie, you already assume you’re a card-carrying member of Average Joe middle America. And I think you and I both know that a woman who sleeps with a rock star in her bed and an Oscar on the mantle is not exactly a mere mortal. Go back to Mount Olympus and leave us be with our Cheez Whiz.

People who stop at the top of escalators

Um, excuse me. You there at the top of the escalator. No, not you. That guy. The completely unaware yambag checking his watch, looking at a map, looking anywhere but behind him. EXCUSE ME! I’m about to rear-end you, and not in a good way. Where the fuck do you think I and the rest of moving humanity queued up behind you are going to go?

Up your ass, that’s where. Escalators don’t break for boobs, Einstein, and neither does my ire. I’m going to create my own moving walkway and I’m going to call it “Your Back.” Are you listening now?

(photo: perezsolomon.com)

Themed Christmas trees

’Tis the season to be jolly…not to coordinate your tree with your great room décor.

A Christmas tree should be a joyous jumble of handmade ornaments, crude garlands, and twinkling lights.

What is should not be: an accessory. It should not be tricked out to match your couch or your carpet or your paint color. It shouldn’t be tastefully, blandly monochromatic. And it shouldn’t look like it belongs on the floor of your local Pottery Barn or Joann Fabrics. When my parents split, my mom left behind the handmade ornaments our family had made and accumulated over the years. Instead of ornaments made out of glitter and a green metal ashtray from McDonalds (remember those?), we had a fake flocked tree adorned with blue plaid bows and little white seagulls perched in wooden napkin rings. Color me Ebenezer, but this didn’t exactly read Christmas to me. It screamed “aisle 4 in Michaels Crafts,” not a place where I wanted to spend much time during the holidays, for fear of stabbing my eyes out with florist’s wire.

Please pull out all of your ornaments—the wonky handmade ones, the corny gifts, the big-ass, almost-to-scale Santa you bought on an ill-advised trip to a Christmas Shoppe—and lather up your tree the way God and the Von Trapp family intended.

(photo: barefootfloor.com)

Inexplicable bruises

I’m clumsy. That’s no surprise to anyone who knows about my inner ear imbalance. But riddle me Alzheimer’s: when exactly did I drive the back of my calf into a wall, causing it to look like a bruised pear? Did I fall on the inside of my forearm in the last 48 hours? And why exactly is my index finger puffed up?

I like things rough as much as the next gal, but it seems to me that I actually have to make contact with someone or something in order to sport a little friendly bruising. When a mysterious mark on my right earlobe appears, I think it’s time to install some motion-censor cameras because the only logical answer is paranormal activity.

(photo: prettyfeathers.com)