Got Shake Shack and went to see Iliza Shlesinger at the D.C. Improv. God, Iliza is in peak form. I thought Confirmed Kills was more of a manifesto than a “stand up” show, which is perfectly fine, but I wanted to laugh and was quietly praying her new material was more like War Paint, which it was. A perfect blend of reassurance from a cool babysister perspective and jokes about being a disgusting human being. I honestly wish I had bootlegged it, because as soon as I got home I wanted to listen to it again. I felt like if I listened to that act over and over again, like how some people meditate, I would be a more secure and happy person.

But I didn’t and her special won’t be taped until February. Despair it is.

My only, and truly only, gripe with Iliza was this offhand comment at the end of her show. “No girl’s gonna be like, hey baby, I’m getting ready for bed, I have a tasting flight of IPAs.”

BITCH PLEASE. If I had ANY money I would totally pour out a tasting flight of IPAs. The joke was about girls not liking beer. Except… girls do like beer. I’ll save you the rant, but this is what I hate when Amy Schumer goes on her “anti-cool girl” tear, she’s trying to (I’m assuming) stick up for who she views as “average/’real’ women” via the time honored tradition of calling everyone else a whore.

Real/average girls grow mustaches naturally, which they are both proud of and horrified by. They wear yoga pants because they’re comfortable. Everything about the real/average girl is about the balance of self-hatred and embrace of suppposedly all-powerful womanhood. Popular girls either have no flaws, or conceal them with wizard like skills, like David Blaine if his residence was Sephora and not a rape island. Cool girls pretend to like beer to trawl for dick. Yeah not troll, trawl, like a slow fucking boat skimming for whatever bottom feeding dick fish it can get.

EXCEPT PLENTY OF US LIKE FUCKING BEER. I have a friend who opened 3 bars. I have another friend who was a beer writer for a very popular magazine and is starting her own beer festival. CHICKS LIKE BEER. And sports. And Reddit. And are gross. Yeah average/real girls, we feel gross sometimes too. The idea every woman who likes what a guy likes must be sweating in the meat market waiting for her ticket to be called is a fucking joke. We’ve got better things to do.

 

Speaking of despair I watched 5 seasons of Bizarre E.R. and am hunting like a badger on PCP for the sixth total, fifth chronologically, season that is missing from Amazon. It is the greatest most self-descriptive show ever. It’s all English people who have maimed themselves and do not give a fuck. That keep calm and carry on shit is no joke. The best is the older folks who truly don’t give a fuck. There is an older woman who gets impaled on a keyhook at her bowling league match, and kept trying to bowl. Completely unphased by the giant hook with dangling key stuck through her hand, she’s sitting at the nurse’s station slapping the key back and forth like a fidget spinner. When they yank it out, she declares she’s celebrating with several drinks and a visit from her “fancy man” which Urban Dictionary tells me is either a slampiece or a literal hooker.

It’s just more than entertainment to me, I want to merge Bizarre E.R. into my personal philosophy. All the episodes are so happy and everyone copes so well and so healthily with personal obstacles. This man got gored by a bull (he was a cattle farmer) and adding insult to injury the bull then also escaped, and not only did he respond by pulling a full Margot Tenenbaum fuck reattaching my finger (spoiler: they managed to save it) of the bull he was just like “it will turn up eventually.” So in awe.

Also a kid ate a sparkler. He was fine, but WTF.

No transition: Thanksgiving

I love the motherfucking parade and the motherfucking dog show. There is really nothing to add besides I look forward to them every year and am filled with AMUUURRRICCA patriotism. We put giant balloons and dogs that win a fancy plate on television back-to-back. It’s beautiful. Make it a celebration of the harvest and breaking bread, I don’t care for glorifying colonialism, I just want to celebrate my branded balloons and my inbred dogs.

On the negative (personally) side of Thanksgiving, nothing channels my deep rooted feelings of inadequacy into a laser-beam of fraught hostessing ideals like the holidays. I love playing dress up, but am also desperately trying to reign in every shitty part of myself with a Kate Spade apron because I am trapped omfg.

I hate cooking and manage to get tired out by all the balloons and the dogs and then not want to do anything but then have to do something because it would be a moral failure if Thanksgiving didn’t look like Thanksgiving so I make a pie because what is the lynchpin of Thanksgiving, pie. Homemade obviously because I AM BETTER THAN EVERYONE (internal screaming). I gave myself fucking violent indigestion with my pie this year, everyone else was fine, but I spent the night burping cloves every five minutes and it was so uncomfortable and bizarre. I mean, the cloves were mixed in with like five other spices and the entire other contents of a pie, it did not taste clove-heavy. It was like my digestive system had some sort of filter and was straining out and rejecting only the clove, it tasted like I did the cinnamon challenge with cloves. I still don’t even understand how that’s possible.

I made drinks too, Seelbach cocktails, I had one at this restaurant with ties to the Civil War last year, (Happy Thanksgiving! Remember colonialism and the Civil War) it was so good and it tasted like Christmas. They’re bourbon, Cointreau, Angostura and Peychaud’s bitters, and champagne (I used cheap cava because holy fuck, I’m not mixing that much stuff into good champagne.) They’re fucking delicious, and basically a jungle juice of all my favorite alcohol, which probably doesn’t always work out, so I feel #blessed. I also got the recipe from Garden & Gun magazine, my new favorite publication. It seemed like if anyone had an accurate recipe for pre-Prohibition-era Southern cocktails, it’s Garden & Gun.

I put the Christmas lights up too, so that’s one less holiday bullet point to get through in my do I really enjoy this? will I experience unabating feelings of emptiness if I stop doing this? marathon. God I really do like the way Christmas lights look though. I mean, I like them at all times of the year. I really would like to live at a Hooter’s in some ways. The combination of tin roof and colored Christmas lights really comforts my soul.

Also, while I was putting the Christmas lights I witnessed two conversations which I hope to remember forever.

1. In the distance, a little girl, with a sincerity and enthusiasm I have never heard before yelling “I WONDER WHO INVENTED DOGS?” (and later “DID YOU KNOW IT COSTS MORE THAN $100 TO GO TO DISNEYWORLD?”)
2. I hear a bike and someone singing. I immediately consider going inside to avoid interaction with a day drunk during a tense family weekend. He gets closer. “I’M A DUDE YOU’RE A DUDE WE’RE ALL DUDES…YOU KNOW WHAT MOVIE THAT SONG IS FROM, BUDDY? WELCOME TO GOOD BURGER HOME OF THE GOOD BURGER CAN I TAKE YOUR ORDER.” There’s a guy in a hoodie, doing a wheelie, while singing a song from Good Burger to his kid, all while their fat, adorable, off leash Pit Bull chases alongside them. It was one of the greatest things I have ever seen. Who says millennials are self-absorbed? Millennials are clearly starting to make the best parents.