Once a Carni... Always a Carni

The other night we went to Cirque du Soliel's Alegria show.

I have two words: Incredible and Depressing.

Don't get me wrong; that's not to be mistaken with 'incredibly depressing'

May I expound...

Incredible:

This was my first ever Cirque du Soleil experience; and that's exactly what it was... a complete experience. My mind was blown.

They were doing things up there that:

      A. I wouldn't do even if I had a safety net beneath me.
      B. My body probably couldn't  do even if I wanted to try.
      C. Gave me anxiety just watching.

So, I learned that in order to actually be in Cirque du Soleil you must:

1. Have impeccable balance. You must be able to balance all of your body weight upside down while on one hand and moving your legs from side to side making it seem like it is easiest thing to come along since the hot pocket.
   
   
2. Have a nineteen pack. Yeah, you heard me. These people were frighteningly in shape.
   
   
3. Be able to do acrobatic moves on the ground and in the air without running into the person who coincidentally is headed straight for you also flipping and turning while somehow knowing exactly whats in front of them. Unnatural. Unnerving.

Depressing:

When you walk away from the show, this is what you realize:

1. I count it a success and a good balance day when I don't accidentally run into a wall; or when I'm walking next to someone and they don't ask me to walk at least two feet away from them so I don't keep bumping into them.
   
   
2. I may be in shape; but where on earth do you get a nineteen pack?! Do you have to apply for one?
   
   
3. My gymnast friend Jacob once tried to teach me how to do flips in the air... the only thing stopping me however was the fact that my fluidity and coordination is akin to that of seahorse in the middle of the Mojave Desert. Lots of room for improvement. So as a break from the big stuff he tried to teach me how to do a ninja flip (a cartwheel with no hands [I'm well aware that this maneuver has a real name, but 'ninja flip' sounds a lot more butch... so I'm sticking with it]).
   
   So there I was in the middle of the air executing the stealthy (yet deadly) ninja flip when I hear a alamingly loud riiiiiiippppp ....pppppp ...ppp ..pppppp ....ipipipip ...ppppp ...... thud! Only to have landed on the ground (side first) becoming fully aware that not only have I completely failed my ninja kick attempt but have simultaneously blown out the crotch of my pants. A continual tare that starts at the zipper and continues about 6-8 inches on both sides of each pant leg.
   
   As a result I spent the rest of the time hiding my fair to moderately breezy pants behind a giant potted plant until everyone was ready to leave. Rest assured, my friends milked that one for all it was worth.

Morals of Post:

• Needless to say I wont be joining the Cirque du Soleil touring troupe any time soon.
  
  
• Hate to kick a dead horse, but nineteen pack?! Really?! How the..?!
  
  
• Word to the wise; never attempt anything that may look ninja-ish in your jeans. You will severely regret your decision. You have been warned.

Bra Secrets

Today Shannee covered herself in salsa while wearing a new white shirt. This is inevitable. She is the saddest/messiest eater I have ever known. This girl might as well put the food on her before she attempts to eat it, just to get that step out of the way. It truly is an incredible talent she possesses.

After the salsa incident...

Shannee: Dah, I'm going to invent one of those Tide Stain Remover stick thingies that you can hide in your bra...

[Silence as she stares down at her shirt.]

Shannee: (more agitated) for messy girls like me...

[Silence as she stares down at her shirt.]

Shannee: (louder and angrier) agh, this is  such b.s.

[Silence as she stares down at her shirt.]

Shannee: (defeated) Why does this always happen to me?! I AM A GOOD PERSON.

Morals of Post:

• Dear Shannee,
                            Maybe you're not.
  
  
•  I am perplexed at this 'hidden Tide stain removing pen in the bra' concept... Is this not the sole purpose of why girls have purses in the first place?! What are the qualifications for things being hidden in a bra as opposed to things which are demoted to being carried around in a regular ol' purse?
  
  Confused. Yet, intrigued.

Creepin' on the Freeway

So I'm a little ashamed to admit that I watched Aladdin tonight...

Don't get me wrong; I'm not ashamed that the movie was Aladdin - but more so ashamed of the fact that I watched it through the glass of an SUV on the freeway for about 30 minutes on my way home tonight.

There was a ton of construction on the freeway and as I was passing this SUV I noticed there was a movie playing in the backseat. When I got to the side of it I realized it was Aladdin, and if you are going to be stuck in construction traffic you might as well have something to keep you entertained; am I right or am I right?! So naturally, I pulled back and started following them.

The movie was great. Also, riddle me this... since when did they start installing HD televisions in cars?! Pretty sure that thing had a clearer picture than my TV at home. I was tempted to pull to the side and ask them to roll down the windows and turn up the sound so I could at least hear what was going on, but then I thought beggars can't be choosers so respectfully declined that urge. Instead, I played a little game... see what songs on my cd would match what was happening on the screen. I had a lot of misses until the fight seen with Aladdin and Jafar and Kids with Guns by the Gorillaz came on. I counted it as a moderate success...

I may or may not have gotten a little too invested in the movie because when we got out of the construction zone and everyone else was speeding up and passing by; I lagged behind the SUV clearly disobeying the 3 second distance rule to what some might call a creepy degree.

I upheld my creeper status as I would speed up when they would speed up and change lanes following them when they were obviously trying to loose me. I would have given a friendly flash of my brights to tell them gently to knock it off and let me enjoy my movie, had the memory of that urban legend of if you bright someone they come after you and run you off the road not popped into my head - I don't think it was paranoia - just playing it safe.

It was almost the end of the movie when Jafar is a Genie and by now I was completely into this thing... unfortunately the SUV made its way over to the exit lane and I had an internal conflict whether to follow them or not. I figured by this point the family had 9 and 1 already punched into their cellphone and were just waiting to see if I was going to follow them off the off-ramp before pressing the other 1. Since I have already maxed my ticket/pull over quota for the year, I reluctantly let them slip out of sight and into the darkness.

I still don't know if I made the right decision.

Morals of the Post:

• If you are going to distract everyone on the road with a clearly visible motion picture in your vehicle then don't be all creeped out when people get all up in your grill to get a good seat. Quit being selfish.

• I swear I don't know how a Gorillaz song got on my cd; so stop judging me.

How to Grow Old in Style

I saw this the other night; after searching high and low, I finally found it so I could share it with ya'll. (And yes, it paused at a really awkward frame... so just push play already.)



Is it just me or is silver streamer somewhat anti-climatic after having an elf spring at you going top speeds?! I think they digressed a little on that one.

I beleive there are a whole lot of other things that they could have launched to make Betty White flinch for sure. You know what I think they should have shot out of that cannon... Justin Bieber.  Really.  I think they could have killed two birds with one stone had they gone that route (moderate pun intended) - but hey, that's just me. 

Morals of Post:

• Betty White makes getting old seem bearable.  I have a legitimate fear of growing old but I figure if I can somehow end up on commercials, movies, TV shows, and making A LOT of money while I'm at it when I get that old... I will be just fine.
  
  
• If anyone was offended by the Bieber comment, maybe you should be shot out of the cannon next. Just sayin.
  
  
• If anyone knows how to adopt this woman as a grandma please contact me.

Series of Unfortunate Events

I went to a dinner party last night at Addison's where Amy, Addi's childhood friend from Minnesota, started telling us about her 16th birthday party. It was a Fear Factor themed party. She had invited her closest friends to her birthday party to compete in a series of challenges Fear Factor style. The winner would be awarded 50 bucks, "and when you are sixteen, 50 bucks is like a million dollars!" so everyone was in it to win it.

So here is a run down of the events:

The first challenge - Peep Madness! Each person had a minute to eat as many marshmallow peeps as they possibly could without water. Mostly everyone could only handle 11 or 12 peeps but the winner somehow downed 25 peeps - Meanwhile, Amy's friend Cassie turned to her and dramatically told her that she would never eat another peep again....   5 minutes later (and throughout the rest of the night) Cassie could be found popping down all the left over peeps like they were Tic Tacs or skittles.

After a series of other Fear Factor challenges and running around doing obstacle courses, the final challenge was to eat a piece of cold boiled pig's brain on a saltine cracker. Whoever could do it would be the the new proud owner of 50 bones.

Beforehand, Amy and Addi hatched some horrible plan to not eat anything before or at the party so they wouldn't get too full. Their logic, "The peeps are going to expand in our stomachs so we can't eat anything or else we'll be too full to eat for the other challenges."

So it is Amy's turn to eat the pig brain, who mind you, has been running around all day long doing obstacle courses and jumping on the trampoline with nothing more than a few shots of soda and about 12 peeps in her system. Needless to say Amy's logic ended up being her demise as she threw up a saltine cracker and pig brains all over the table in front of 45 of her closest friends.

Now if you thought that was a good story,  you are in for a treat -  That was just the intro! Our real story is about Cassie; and follows her home from the party.

When Cassie got home that night from the party she was struggling with cramps and popped a Midol to try and get rid of the pain. A little while later she still hurt really bad and took a couple Tylenol. She still didn't feel any better and took a few Ibuprofen, a while later - two more of something else. It was at this point that she actually started feeling a lot worse and realized that she may have actually just overdosed. So she told her parents about the situation and her dad rushed her to the emergency room where they had to pump her stomach.

For those of you unfamiliar with the standard stomach pump procedure; they are required to sort through content and list it all on a form. So while Cassie and her dad were waiting in one of the rooms the doctor came in and turned to Cassie's dad and told him she would be okay but he wanted to make the father aware of stomach content that he had discovered,

"Well, it looks like there were about 4 slices of pizza, 48 peeps, and... " The doctor turned to Cassie,

"...was that cow's brain?!"  - Wide-eyed, the dad turned to Cassie and asked, "W-h-a-t  were you doing at the Wilson's?!"

The kicker of the whole episode was that Cassie went home with a pamphlet that the doctor gave her about the dangers of Mad Cow Disease...

I would have paid good money to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation.  I can only imagine the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that peeps now play in Cassie's life.  She must have a fairly large bottle of Xanax just to get through Easter.

Poor thing.

Morals of the Post:

• Reason number 4,395 why I will never eat a peep.
  
  
• Themed birthday parties are nothing short of incredible. Why do we not have more of them!? I guess this gives me 352 days to plan my next one... Reality TV themes (as proven above) are GOLDEN...
  
  So I think my next party will be a Bachelor/SYTYCD/Biggest Loser/Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew/From G's to Gents/Hell's Kitchen/Survivor/Project Runway/ and Dancing With the Stars themed extravaganza with a dash of Jersey Shore...
  
  Granted, I would have to actually watch an episode of any of these shows to know anything of whats going on... so the details of how to pull it all together are a little hazy; but rest assured there is one thing I can say with confidence - It will be epic.
  
  You are all invited.

Cobra Upgrade

At work I had a ton of letters to open and I couldn't find the letter opener that I always use (correction: the letter opener was just out of reach and I was too lazy to get up and walk clear over to the other side of the counter to get it...) So, I looked around and found a new letter opener and thought I would just use that instead - thank you universe.

3 minutes pass...

If you put an envelope between a starved bear on meth and fresh salmon, I think that is a fairly accurate depiction of what the envelope and letter looked like when I was finished with it.

Jenn:   What are you doing?!
Me:      Do yo know how to use this letter opener? I can't figure it out.
Jenn:   [ look of disbelief ]
            Hawk, that's a staple remover.
       
... painful, painful silence


Last time I checked, staple removers looked like giant snapping cobra teeth not letter openers.

Dear staple remover manufacturers,
          I would like to subscribe to your newsletter; so that when you make such a radical (and unnecessary) change I wont feel like such an idiot when I'm apparently the only one unaware of the new design; and you can stop embarrassing me in front of my friends.

Morals of Post:

• Kids, stick with things you are good at. If you try new things you will most likely fail, be humiliated, and get laughed at. Simultaneously.
  
  
• "Laziness is a secret ingredient that goes into failure. But it’s only kept a secret from the person who fails.”
  –Robert Half
  Shut up, Rob.
  
  
• "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that wont work."
  - Thomas Edison
  I knew I liked him for a reason...

F Is For Full Frontal... And Friends

I am NOT a morning person...

In fact, that is an understatement - right when I wake up in the morning pretty much all I want to do is kill unicorns and suck the color out of rainbows until there is nothing left but cold gray arched carcasses...

I wish I were being dramatic.

I don't get it - every single morning it is the same routine; I wake up all sorts of confused and I have no idea where my body is; meanwhile, I am simultaneously faced with the panicked feeling of being slammed back into reality. Completely unable to tell what was part of my dream I just got ripped out of and what is real life. Bad news bears.

So, in an act to try and counterbalance morning me, the first thing I do is grab my phone, turn on some 'You Make My Dreams' by Hall and Oates music and search all my apps for something that will put me in a good mood.

Well ladies and gents, today I found the jackpot; finally a remedy for extreme morning anger... I may or may not have watched this 17 1/2 times before I even got out of bed this morning.



I don't know if it is:

• the inspiring message of hope and counsel for future generations
  
• the ultra feminine bass voice
  
• the mad dance break between I and J
• the neon alphabet ever-present in the background
  
• that dress
  
• the successful transplant of Mr. Ed's teeth into a human being
• the fact that 'sexy' is also similar to crouching down to scare someone, shoveling, or a beginners pilates stance.
  
• the realization that yes, x truly is mysterious
  
• the special way that claustrophobia gets her hands to dance
  
• or those sexy skeleton legs that just don't quit...
  

I think graphics were just being invented around this time so I really appreciate the effort of the floating/scrolling letters.

Also, I'm fairly certain that 1:30 - 2:00 is pretty much what it looks like right before the Grim Reaper comes to take you away...

I hope this changes lives. I know it has mine.

Morals of the Post:

• Naturally M is for me and N is for NEVER AGAIN!

• It is about quality not quantity, isn't it.

• If we learn anything from the 70's let it be that if you get tired in the middle of your music video... go ahead, lie down - you can shimmy just as well on the ground as you can standing up. Thank you Amanda Lear. Thank you.