Shoeless households

Increasingly, when I enter someone's home, I’m shoehorned into a foyer lined with shoes and instructed to add mine to the pile.

Um, I came for a party, not for a pedicure.

I get that folks don’t want their hardwoods scratched and scuffed by my stilettos. I understand that paranoid parents are afraid of the germs that I’m tracking in on the soles of my shoes.

Call me a heel, but I don’t want to walk around in my socks or bare feet. My shoes deserve to be seen as God and Manolo Blahnik intended: on my foot. And without the boost of the heel I am never without, my jeans sweep the floor. From my POV, this has only one bright side: My friends’ floors never need to be mopped. My pant legs and socks do it for them.

If people keep demanding that I kick off rather than kick up my heels, I am going to kick them in the face—right after I shuffle around their house with 80-grade sandpaper taped to my feet.

(photo: flickr.com/photos/26714560@N00/84600731/)

Katie Couric’s eyelashes

If eyes are the window to the soul, then Katie’s eyelashes are big-ass vertical blinds. She has so much mascara gooped on them that it looks as if she has three black-brown spikes over each eye, which makes it impossible for Sarah Palin or anyone else to see eye-to-eye with this anc-her.

Comb your hair, please, even if it’s the sparse ones over your peepers. Those clumps make me want to lash out, and perhaps give you another kind of black eye. I like you, Katie, I really do, but your eyelashes, which were once a Today No, are now a CBMess.

Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Ghost Whisperer fake lashes are on deck.

(Photo: cartoonstock.com)

Group e-mail forwards

Tis the season…to forward e-mails. Therefore, it’s also the season that makes me want to punch my computer screen in the face.

Apparently I belong to a lot of folks’ e-mail groups. And apparently those folks suck, because they hex me with chain letters I don’t forward to 10 people (I actually like my friends), clog my in-box with e-mails that dance and twinkle with snowman and heavenly images of Christ our lord and savior, push their political agendas, and otherwise shower me with cyber presents I have no interest in regifting.

I’m as hopeful as the next person but please don’t send me an e-mail telling me that I’ll win a Macy’s gift card or an iPod by filling out a survey. I’m pretty confident I’ll see a unicorn before I see one of these mythical gifts. The best gift you could give me would be to remove me from all e-mail groups. Like Groucho Marx said, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member."

What's the most irksome e-mail forward you've received lately?

(Phot0: girl-woman-beauty-brains-blog.com)

Paper cuts

Matt Damon did some damage with a magazine in one of those Bourne movies. No shit. Paper can kill, yo, or at least slice through your fingers. Seemingly innocuous, this sneaky pulp affliction is evil. Much like Ray Romano, come to think of it. It sneaks into your house and then lies in wait for a chance to strike. Unlike Ray Romano, you can’t kick paper out of the house by simply turning off the TV. It’s everywhere.

And it’s out to get us.

Call me crazy but I think the move to a paperless society is seriously pissing it off. The ream of paper on my shelf is giving me stinkeye and my new roll of wrapping paper is spoiling for a fight and looking for a reason to slice my index finger. I think a certain brown paper grocery bag might try to go for the jugular.

The best thing to do is make paper feel wanted, necessary in this crazy, mixed-up world. I know what you’re thinking—paper needs to grow a pair and suck it up. It’s not like paper is the only thing out of a job these days. You may be right. Nevertheless, let’s try to show a little compassion during this holiday season. A little ego stroking goes a long way. Just make sure to avoid the edges.

(Photo: flickr.com/photos/agriffith/355462419/)

Kids’ songs

“Baaaaackpack, backpack!”

“Hot dog! I’ve got the rhythm in my head.” 


“There were ten in the bed and the little one said, ‘Roll over, roll over.’”

Clearly, there are many problems with the above scenario (TEN in the bed? Are we in a Dickens’ novel?); however, the biggest beef I have is that I can’t get the mother-lovin’ song out of my head.

As much as I tried to sing “Doncha wish your baby was hot like me?” to my goddaughter, it’s the wheels on the bus that go round and round in my head. A friend once instructed me to hum the Entertainment Tonight theme whenever I got stuck in an endless loop of song suckage. Happily, this worked for wrong songs from Sisqó, the Baha Men, and a musician ex-boyfriend, but kids’ songs are more insidious. They appear innocent on the surface, which makes them all the more sinister (think of what happened to baby-faced Anakin Skywalker if you need a cautionary tale).

This will not do.

Since shouting some 2 Live Crew or other material offensive to Tipper Gore’s ears might stunt a toddler’s growth, I propose that for every one Wiggles or Little Einstein song we have to jazz hands our way through, they get to suffer the decidedly non-hummable sounds of early American Idol auditions. That’s some aural poop that will never get stuck in anyone’s cerebral sandbox.

Concert ticket prices


I’m looking into seeing some Jovi. Things aren’t looking good. Sure, you live for the fight when it’s all that you’ve got. What I don’t got is the 75 clams for a shitbox seat behind the stage that should come with an oxygen tank. Oh, I could get better seats…if I coughed up $670. Maybe I could cough up a lung and sell my organs to pay for a ticket.

I have loved JBJ ever since I saw him and his tousled hair swing over me in Cobo Arena during the Slippery When Wet tour. The last time I saw Bon Jovi (the Crush tour), I prolly forked over $100 or so for my ticket, when all was said and done. But I don’t know if JBJ and the boys are worth two months of health insurance, which I’ll need after I harvest my organs. If I actually plunk down my card for the ticket and 83 miscellaneous service and handling fees, I will be kicking my uninsured dumbass from here to Key Arena, which isn’t a MENSA-worthy idea. So I’ll pass and turn up my iPod instead, because, truth be told, I’m a little sick of livin’ on a prayer.

What’s the most you’ve ever shelled out for a concert? Was it worth it?

Black Friday

I realize today has been called Black Friday for a few years but I don’t remember stores marketing the hell out of it like they have this holiday season. "Black Friday" evokes some sort of horrific tragedy, such as a massacre or deadly plague or the end of days. And yet, people are risking exposure to H1N1 and women who will cut you with their coupon if given a chance. Just for the sake of an extra 15-percent off.

Am I the only one who thinks this scenario is absoloonly nuts?

My friend Charyn calls this excruciating day “retail S&M.” If I want a little slap and tickle, I sure as shit am not going to look for it in the aisles of Wal-Mart on Whack Friday. Have you seen what’s lurking there? God invented the Internet so we can avoid hot strip-mall messes and crowded parking lots in favor of leftovers and online shopping. Duh.

While surfing the web, check out one of the websites devoted to Black Buyday and think about all the chumps who are breathing in stale air at the mall.

(Photo: walkwithlight.wordpress.com)