How I Live My Life

So, for the past decade or so, but especially the past couple of months, I've been suffering from hardcore mental anguish. Just struggling internally, like, all the time. These feelings were oppressive and relentless and I didn't know what I was going to do...until today when I bought Uno Mod, the sleek 21st century version of the classic multi-colored, Spanish-language card game.

You see, I used to have the crappy, archaic version of Uno but was always super depressed whenever I played the game or even just looked at/thought about the stack of cards. "This shit is not smooth as ice," I'd say to myself dejectedly. Those cards were totally incompatible with my way of life and it was stressing me out. But then I went to Target today, saw Uno Mod, and was like, "yes! Finally, there's a version of Uno that fits my lifestyle!" Already, my anxiety has melted away and I just can't stop thinking about how red hot this new Uno case is going to look on the living room table. Or maybe I'll buy a display case for it. I don't know, I haven't decided yet.

I wrote a book. A legit book. That you can, like, own. And read.

OK, so first, here's a picture of me relaxin' with a bunny. 

And second, I wrote a book. It's called Did I Do That? and it looks like this...

Part of the reason why I wasn't really blogging last year was because I was busy writing this book. It's about your favorite decade: the '90s! And if you have money you can buy it and read it and love it and then years and years from now be buried with it or pass it down to your great-grandchildren as a family heirloom (or "earloom," which is what I used to think people were saying when they said "heirloom").

One page of the book looks like this...

Another page looks like this...

And the book comes with an Urkel T-shirt transfer.

I don't want to hype it too much because I'm a humble person but it's the best book you'll ever read. Seriously, though, it's fun and if you like this blog then I'm sure you'll be into it. 

Click HERE if you're in a book-buying mood. But if you're broke, no hard feelings. I totally understand.

On a more sentimental note, it was through this blog that I found my writing voice and it was your thoughtful/hilarious/supportive comments that really gave me the confidence to continue to develop that voice. So, you, person reading this right now, played a huge role in the creation of this book. Thank you! 

OG Brooklyn Hipsters: The Fashion of Ghostwriter

Ghostwriter aired on PBS from 1992 to 1995. It was an educational show that taught kids the importance of reading, writing, vigilante justice, and communicating with ghosts.

Every week, the multi-ethnic, middle-school-age crew would traipse around the streets of Brooklyn unsupervised (not unlike the kids from Nickelodeon's Hey Arnold), sticking their little Ghostwriter noses in everyone's business and killing it with their cutting edge outfits. 

Jamal, the leader of the group, loved his Cross Colours. But even when he wasn't wearing "post hip hop nation academic hard wear" he stuck to the brand's green-yellow-red-black color scheme and urban aesthetic. Sometimes he'd put on a Malcolm X shirt or some chunky ethnic beads because he was in touch with his heritage. Other times he'd carry around a baseball glove because he was in touch with his boyness. His flattop was high enough to be fly but not so high as to be unsophisticated. 

Jamal also had some kind of futuristic word processing program that turned his computer screen totally blue.

Latchkey kid Lenni Frazier was not only the most fashion forward girl in Fort Greene but was by far the most fashion forward kid of the '90s. (Clarissa Darling wished she looked this fresh.)

She was a budding musician and had that kind of bold, artsy, singer-songwriter, I-live-above-a-bodega style. Lenni, who was definitely the coolest member of the group, owned the sickest green Dr. Martens.

If I ever stop being poor, I'm going to buy a pair of these, for sure. Just look at the reaction they get from the fellas!

Humunuh, humunuh, humunuh boner!

Alex (or Alejandro) usually just threw on some over-sized tee and called it a day but from time to time he'd dip into his silk, printed button-down collection. Once he wore one of these super classy numbers while sitting in an incredibly natural position and decoding a message written on blue paper. (Blue paper and blue computer screens were all the rage among preteen detective necromancers.)

I can't even begin to explain how much I loved this kid. He was cute, tall, wore a gold chain--basically, he had everything I wanted in a boyfriend when I was 9 years old.

Gaby was Alex's little sister and, of all the Ghostwriter kids, her style was most in line with the kind of stuff I was wearing to elementary school back in the day. For Gaby--and also for me--1992 was all about gigantic shirts and spandex. She, however, rocked her spandex with a lot more panache than I did. What I appreciate most about Gaby's style is that there wasn't anything pretentious about it--she was a genuine around-the-way-girl. I also really appreciate her enormous, backwards sleep shirt.

 I'm thinking about wearing one of these out and about. IT LOOKS THAT GOOD!

Tina, Gaby's BFF and Alex's crush, dressed liked a Cosby kid. If I could raid the closet of any member of the Ghostwriter team it'd be Tina's--her button-downs are the stuff of dreams. Oh, and these shoes...

yeah, I used to have, like, 15 pairs of these.

Rob, the sensitive transfer student, wrote poetry and palled around with homeless peeps. The bandannas that he loved so dearly covered a gorgeous '90s-boy-center-part.

If we don't count the time Jamal wore this wonderful ensemble...

Rob was probably the best dressed guy on the show.

Ghostwriter Season 1 fashion highlights

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Vintage Amber: The AT&T commercial that bore absolutely no resemblance to life as I knew it in the mid to late 90s

This was one of my favorite commercials when I was in high school because it depicted my romantic ideal as well as my technological ideal. 

As I've mentioned before, (non homeless/non elderly) guys didn't show any interest in me until I was in my 20s, so the back and forth between Larisa Oleynik and her romeo--with his perfect '90s-boy center-part--was totally foreign and almost unfathomable to me. I didn't get the internet or a halfway decent computer until I was a sophomore in high school, so all of the technology in this commercial seemed very futuristic and confusing. Though I now have a boyfriend and a pretty sweet MacBook, I still have some trouble relating to/understanding this commercial.

So maybe things are different when you're younger (or super cute), but as an adult, if I were to send a guy an "I miss you soooo much" email right after seeing him not only would he not email me back but he would never talk to me again. Also, this font is soooo large. Is this what all emails looked like in the '90s? 

I like that their font choice correlates to their gender. Hers is cursivey and girly while his is bold and masculine. I'm glad that we've made so much progress when it comes to fonts and gender roles.  

I don't think I could pull this off. Wait, let me try.

I was wrong. Nailed it.

 Is this a scanner? A fax machine? Do fax machines work like scanners? I actually think this commercial would be very erotic if they were just faxing each other all night long.  

What is this face? I think that he thought that he was going to get a naked pic. I do remember hearing that email in the olden days was primarily used for sending naked pics.

Did computer screens used to go black right after you sent an email (by pressing the "send email" key)? 

So this is what guys like. I'm starting to understand why I failed so horribly with the opposite sex. 

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Best picture ever?

Former U.S. prez Bill Clinton and former U.S. vice prez Al Gore are like the patron saints of Democrats. Remember that time Clinton went to North Korea and got American journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling out of prison by serenading Kim Jong-il with some smooth, jazzy sax playing? Or what about the time that Al Gore told us about global warming and we were all like, "whoa, Al, that's a really inconvenient truth, thanks for sharing your wisdom with us"? Clinton and Gore are also a couple of dreamboats. If there's a picture on the internet more provocative than this, I certainly haven't seen it. After staring at Clinton's thighs for 45 minutes, I understand why Monica Lewinsky couldn't resist him. 


Billy, billy, billy, can't you see? Sometimes your thighs just hypnotize me. And I just love your flashy ways. I guess that's why they broke and you're so paid. 

(photo)

To: Paul Reiser. Re: The Fact That I Hate You.

Paul,
I am a bit of a 90s connoisseur, so I think I can say with some authority that you, with your wry observations about upper-middle class relationships, are as quintessentially of that decade as Ethan Hawke's hair in Reality Bites or using the phrase, "It's the 90s" to denote a social paradigm shift. During the 90s you were practically meta-90s (See Bye, Bye Love; Mad About You; the light wash of your high-waisted, slim-fit, tapered-leg jeans). Having said this, I hate you. I love the 90s but hate you. How is this possible? After spending many long seconds puzzling over this paradox I've finally arrived at an answer: You're lame. 


OK, so I'll give you My Two Dads, a show that made me want to (a) live in a loft, (b) have a family court judge at my beck and call, and of course, (c) be the precocious daughter of two dads who are polar opposites--one neurotic, one with an acid wash jean jacket. 

But you lose any cred that you may have garnered there with this:

The cover of your book Babyhood (the follow-up to Couplehood and harbinger of Familyhood) is the single creepiest and most baffling thing I've seen all day. What is that baby gripping your ear supposed to symbolize? Or maybe it isn't supposed to symbolize anything. Maybe a large bulk of being a parent is literally just sitting around with your head slightly tilted to the right as a baby holds onto your ear with one of its hands and offers sweet consolation with the other.

You, Paul Reiser, are my least favorite 90s artifact. I hope this doesn't offend you. It's just the simple truth. 

Mad about you in the sense that I hate you and not in the sense that I'm crazy for you,

Amber

Bummer #1: My Girl

(I'm introducing a new feature about Hollywood's sick fascination with traumatizing youngsters and the toll that this personally took on me throughout my adolescence and now as an adult. I'm looking to post something new every Monday. What better way to kick things off than with the Godzilla of soul-crushing family films: My Girl.)

Heartwrenching films usually move toward a single grim climax. At which point, we, the audience, tear up, feeling either genuinely moved or emotionally manipulated. The structure of these movies and our reactions to them really just follow that basic plot chart from high school English.

My Girl's structure, however, looks like something you might see on a seismograph.

(click to make bigguh)
My Girl is relentless and it's that lack of emotional respite that makes it so heart-shattering. You watch this movie and you feel like you really went through some shiz.

It's brutal! Every time I sit through My Girl, I spend the last fifteen minutes of the movie crying. 

When I was younger, that crying was just straightforward sobbing. These days, though, it's more about me trying and failing to rage against the inevitable tears--the end result being a lot of gulping, hiccuping, and an overwhelming feeling of lunacy. My Girl just hits me on this incredibly visceral level; the government should seriously look into somehow weaponizing it.

Thomas J.'s death is disturbing. Clearly. And when you're ten years old, even if you have a firm grasp on the concept of death, the last person that you expect to see die in a movie is a kid. Especially, a kid with glasses.

Like going to prom or accidentally calling your teacher "mom," crying at the end of My Girl is a rite of passage. I honestly love this movie but I've gotten to the point where I don't need to watch it anymore because (a) life is already depressing enough, I don't need to deliberately inject any tragedy into it and (b) I can't believe or accept how easily Vada gets over her BFF's death. I mean, it was kind of her fault that he died, right?

He was looking for her mood ring when those bees stung him.

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