Hi, I'm Molly, and I'm addicted to frosting

There were cupcakes at work on Wednesday.

Three giant boxes randomly arrived from Sprinkles just as I was about to go on my break, which means it was destiny.  I don't know why we were gifted with them, but I'm not going to question it.  Cupcakes - well ok, pretty much all baked goods - are generally the excuse for the "lazy" part of my lazy veganism.  If it has sugar in it, I'm probably going to eat it.

I've only had a Sprinkles cupcake one other time in my life and I don't remember it having as much frosting as this one.  I think a good frosting-to-cake ratio on a cupcake should be 1:2 - as in one part frosting and two parts cake (that's how ratios work, right??) - and this cupcake nailed it.  Meaning I bit into it and was like "holyshitsomuchfrostiiiiiiing."

I always separate cupcakes by breaking them in half horizontally so I can eat the cake part first and the frosting part second - best for last.  I was a good part of the way into the frosting half when I had to stop and consider. 

My 29-year-old brain thought "This is a SHIT TON of sugar.  Do I actually want to eat this whole thing?  And at 11:15am?"  And then my 9-year-old brain took over and was like "Hahahahahaahaaaaa DUH."  So I did.

And then my next two hours were spent dancing around and smiling a little too enthusiastically at customers while I embraced my heart palpitations.  I swear that at one point I was even singing that song from the The Wizard of Oz when Dorothy wakes up from the poppy nap.

And then four hours later I was cranky and ready for a nap... or another cupcake.  Sugar is a hell of a drug.

I sure wish this was my 4th of July today, instead of going to work and then hiding out in a bar.  Yaaaaay America.

BALLLLLLLLLLLLLLIN!!!

OK: let's acknowledge the fact that I've been so lazy about this blog that I've let a good two months breeze by without a peep about my (not at all exciting) life - to the extent that I even forgot my blogiversary AGAIN.  I don't even have cupcakes laying around that I can pretend I baked in celebration (but daaaamn I wish I did.)  Well, OK, here's a photo of some cupcakes I baked four months ago because I was being a fatty and really wanted peanut butter cake with chocolate icing:

Yay fatty blog!  But what is there to say about six years anyway?  I mean, I was a pretty rad six-year-old (braid-ponytails-on-the-side and sparkly sweaters, whatwhat!), but in the grand scheme of life it's like, meh... six.  Maybe I'm just feeling cynical.  And still lazy.

(Oh, an aside about the word "lazy": I'm determined to reclaim it as a cool thing.  Remember when phones weren't smartphones and were just "cell phones?"  I know, those were crazy times, right?  And some people still have them!  Anyway: one of the best precursors to auto-correct was the T9 word function, where you would just furiously type away on the number pad and the phone would "know" which letters you meant to type.  My old phone was the best at this because every time I tried to type the word "lazy" it would default to "jazz" - resulting in sentences like "I'm too jazz to get off the couch" and "stop being such a jazz ass."  So much cooler, right?  So don't be lazy, be JAZZ.)

But let's get back to my life.  Yesterday was a crazy day: I had to work at 7am, there was a minor earthquake that got all of NYC's panties in a twist, AND - thanks to Kottke - I discovered this amazing website.   It's a collection of stories by Questlove, sorted by name, in which he recalls encounters with different celebrities, as requested by other readers.  What makes them so amazing is not just the way they are written (which is as if he typed directly from a dictation of himself), but the kind of crazy celebrity shenanigans he gets into.  And I'm not talking like, action movie buddy cop craziness, but over-the-top displays of money that must just seem totally normal once you hit a certain level on the star meter.  The story about Will Smith's leather-floored mansion tops everything, but rollerskating Prince (part of the Eddie Murphy story) is a close runner up.  I mean.... GOD. DAMN.

Questlove: please come to a Moth StorySlam.  It would be the best six minutes of everyone's life.

PS: As a bonus, I discovered this site linked to the Questlove one: The 90s Rap Name Generator!  Mine's "Big M Da' Slim Pimp" - but you probably already knew that.

I probably have AIDS now

Here is an example of just how broke I've been feeling lately:

I went for a run this morning in my balmy, 77 degree neighborhood and as I passed a gas station, I saw a dollar bill on the ground.  So naturally I picked it up and tucked it into my sports bra.

A ONE.  DOLLAR.  BILL.

What the crap was I thinking?  That my boob sweat would transform it into a ten by the time I got home??  I'm disgusting.  And I had this thought as I continued to run with it plastered against me but what was I going to do then?  Throw it back on the ground?  NO.  I ran that wet little piece of paper all the way home to my wallet.  And then showered before touching my mouth.

Good god I need an extra job.  Or a new job altogether.  On the plus side though: my iced coffee today will probably cost only 89 cents.  Woo!

Sunday

I magically had today off.  It was awesome: I had afternoon beers, pizza, and cake (in that order), I bought new running shoes, then came home and drank whiskey and made pretentious art and listened to pretentious music.

Happy June!

Cameo Blue

I told myself I was going to compile a list of good film and theatre monologues so I could stop making excuses for avoiding auditions.  I ripped a piece of paper from a notepad, literally wrote "Monologues?" at the top, and set it on my desk.

I have since then been using it as a surface on which to paint my nails and protect my desk.

Yeah... that about sums up my life right now.

Here's what I never want to forget

I think I found the cure for my working-on-Memorial-Day blues:



Yep, just gonna watch that on repeat.

That, and I found out I get paid time and a half for working today.  Shazam!

It's OK - just keep making crap!

Thank you, Ira Glass, for making me feel much better about my perpetual creative frustration:


(via Kottke)

OK, well, guess I'm off to finish those four beginnings-of-sketches I've been grimacing at...

Widget and Sassoon: London adventure times!

I know, I know - I had that burst of energetic blogging and now I've stopped.  I'm gonna get back on the wagon though, I swear... soon.  For now I'm just popping in to say HOLY CRAP ANDREA AND I ARE IN LONDON.  We're in the midst of all sorts of shenanigans right now (canned cocktails, Jammie Dodgers, hot tunes, heart-print tights, pants-less dancing, etc.) so I'll have to post a full report when I get home and I'm all sad and broke.  Here's a sneak peak though:

My pocket's eatin' cheese cake!

Let's procrastinate!

Looking for a great way to put off doing something productive and possibly expand your never-ending Netflix queue?  Watch 50 awesome opening title sequences!  This IFC list is proving to be a very effective way to avoid rewriting sketches right now.  I'm still working my way through, but so far #50 holds the most nostalgic place in my heart:



Makes me feel a little weird to know that Patricia Quinn was essentially in black face though. 

Please, please - hold your applause

 
OH HI.  Nice to see you again.

I've been trying to write a post for weeks now but couldn't seem to finish anything until tonight.  I know: how hard is it for me to blather some self-indulgent nonsense and hit publish?  Really not that hard.  I'm going to skip all the bullshit excuses though - sometimes I'm just uninspired and need a break.  Cool?  Cool.  So let's get back to things:

Here's what you need to know about my life since my last post:

- I actually got to see Jens Lekman!

I got a ticket at the last minute and it was so beautiful that I maybe got teary-eyed with joy.  OK, I was sleepy and full of Dayquil, but still - the show was in such an intimate space that I was only about ten feet away from Jens AND he played "Kanske är jag kär i dig," which is perhaps the best song in the world.  You should check out this Brooklyn Vegan post about the show because there are more great photos and I should cut down on the amount of Jens-obsessing I do here.

(Oh: but OF COURSE I bought one of these key necklaces.)
 
- I'm working a lot... although still not enough to stop me stealing money from my savings.  I'm either going to need to get a second part time job or quit the whole shebang and get another full time job.  Or I need to track down a rich philanthropist who wants to pay me to ghostwrite his/her blog while funding my European travels (fingers crossed for that one!).

- I'm writing and performing sketch comedy with my new group The Fantashticks.  Maybe someday we'll get our shit together and have a website!

- I celebrated Christmas by working nine hours on minimal sleep, somberly smoking a joint alone out my window, and then getting wasted on whiskey and cider.  Thanks, Santa, for the gift of reality!  Really though: it wasn't all that bad.  Andrea came to town (and got snowbound in my apartment) and a super awesome someone gave me a turntable(!!).

- My hair's getting pretty damn long.  I can't wait until it's long enough to recreate the gigantic side ponytail I had in my kindergarten class photo.

- I've been watching lots of Mr. Show.  Pit-Pat!

- I think Enter The Void was the best movie I saw in all of 2010.  Take THAT Black Swan! (Although... uh... I still haven't seen Black Swan.)  If you can still catch it somewhere on the big screen, do it, but schedule time for a long walk and a stiff drink after.

SO.  Yes.  Things are pretty swell right now.  I mean, sure: I'm dreading waking up at 6am tomorrow to go work for the man for nine hours and I'm also thinking it was probably a bad idea to drink that beer and then eat that ice cream and then do sit-ups right before bed but still... things have been worse.  I'm even working on a wintery iTunes playlist that's not full of Joy Division and Interpol!

Happy February, lovers.  It's good to be back.

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: dreams do come true

On days when I am feeling directionless and questioning my life choices, I like to try and remember how far I've come.  Sure, I'm slowly eating through my savings account, spending late nights watching cartoons and drinking whiskey, and my bedroom is covered in piles of mail and clothing BUT at least I'm not still job searching, right??

And I'm thinking positively for Andrea, too.  Sure, it sucks that she spends most days hanging out with a toddler and her closet doesn't hold all of her clothes BUT at least she has an iPhone!  See?  Things aren't so bad, people!  Unless you're reading this over someone's shoulder in a Starbucks because you're homeless.  That is bad.

me:i'm pretty sure i'm not getting that BAM job and it's killing my spirit

andrea: why? did the interview go badly?

 me: not terribly, but i haven't heard a peep from them and the interview was last monday

 i have a feeling they think i'm underqualified

 andrea: underqualified?

  that's boo hockey

 me: ha! boo hockey!

  yeah, i guess, but i keep thinking of other things i could have thrown into the interview that i didn't

  poo

 i'm sure they're interviewing a ton of people though

 andrea: yeah, a week ago is not that long

 did they give you a time frame for hiring at all?

 me: they said as soon as possible

  and the original ad said mid-august :(

 andrea: lame

 everyone's lame

  were the two best people for everything and noone wants to help us

  everyone's a JERK

 me: i KNOW!

 jerkface america!

 andrea: jerkface WORLD

  i just want a place to LIVE

  I want a JOB

  i want the world to stop making me TYPE IN CAPS

me: HATE IT!andrea: ugh. i just want an iphone and some new boots

Actually, Andrea probably does still want some new boots.

Good news/bad news

I'll jump right to it:

Good news: I got a job!!  This will be me in about a month:

That's right, I'm gonna work at the 5th Avenue Apple Store!  As... a part time... cashier!  I know, retail, but it's APPLE.  If that's not gonna eventually force me into an iPhone, I don't know what will.  I have to wait a month because their training schedule doesn't match up with mine very easily (who knew unemployment would make me even busier than before??), but I should be able to start training on 12/11.  Yay discount!

The bad news: I did not get Jens Lekman tickets.  :( :( :(

There are not enough sad emoticons to fully express how I feel.  He even added a second show and it sold out in roughly TWO MINUTES!  I know because they were released at noon, I clicked the link at 12:01, it turned out to be the wrong link so I scrambled back to the right one at 12:02, and then they were sold out.  CURSESSSSS!!!!

If anyone reading this has a spare ticket to sell me, you can be the first to abuse my Apple discount.  Sweet deal, right??

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: hip-unemployed-ster

See what I did there?  I stuck "unemployed" in the middle of the word "hipster"!  Get it?  "Hip-unemployed-ster"??  It's the caption for this hot photo:

I was originally posting it as an example of what my life has become now that I am officially, for real real, no joke, DONE with CAP21.  I declared on October 28 that I wasn't coming back and I have upheld the promise.  Now I'm spending lots of time hanging out in a big sweater that keeps my neck warm and drinking cheap beer.  But then I uploaded that photo and scoffed at myself.  Really, Molly?  A striped seventies mom sweater?  Bangs all up in your eyes?  Visible (albeit backwards) Jukebox the Ghost poster in the background?  PBR??  You hipster fuck.  (However: can we acknowledge how awesome that nail polish is?  It matches the can!!)

So... yeah.  Oops.  I'm keeping it there so you can scoff at what my life has become right along with me.  Let's consider it a caption contest.  If you can think of something better than "hip-unemployed-ster," you win a prize.  Probably something lazily homemade.

Maybe I'm just bitter because I never had a proper going-away party...

me: drunk

  at

  work

 andrea: You devil

 How are you getting drunk at work?

me: we just signed the lease for moving onto the 5th floor and had cake and champys

  and i pretended it was my going away party

 andrea: HAHAHAHAHAHA

  yes.

 me: so of course it was GREAT

PS: I still have all the office keys, CAP21.  If I return them can I get my soul back?

Yay for quitters!

This article about quitting is making me feel a little better about taking the leap from my secure-yet-boring job.  If only I knew what it is I'm supposed to be independently creating.

As a creative person, you’ve been given the ability to build things from nothing by way of hard work over long periods of time. Creation is a deeply personal and rewarding activity, which means that your Work should also be deeply personal and rewarding. If it’s not, then something is amiss.

Creation is entirely dependent on ownership.

Ownership not as a percentage of equity, but as a measure of your ability to change things for the better. To build and grow and fail and learn. This is no small thing. Creativity is the manifestation of lateral thinking, and without tangible results, it becomes stunted. We have to see the fruits of our labors, good or bad, or there’s no motivation to proceed, nothing to learn from to inform the next decision. States of approval and decisions-by-committee and constant compromises are third-party interruptions of an internal dialog that needs to come to its own conclusions.

Read the whole thing here.

(Discovered by way of Kottke.)

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: dreams and cocaine and egg sandwiches

I just started reading Carl Jung's Man and His Symbols and it's set me off on a kick of trying to dig into my subconscious.  I know, it sounds pretentious, but I had originally bought the book for some religion or sociology class in college and randomly rediscovered it a few days ago.  It's actually fairly easy to read and digest and I'm getting that nerdy rush of excitement that I haven't felt in awhile - LEARNING! (Excuse me while I push my glasses further up my nose and use my inhaler.)

Mr. Jung is teaching me that the symbols planted in our unconscious can arise in many forms other than dream forms, but I think dreams are still great examples of the crazy shit going on in my head.  This one is almost as good as Andrea's:

andrea: oh the day

  i just want to eat an egg sandwich and bake a bread

me: i am actually feeling an urge to write and paint and such, which i haven't felt for a long time

 i had an epic dream last night that i lived in an apartment building that was attached to a bar

  which was awesome until the landlord/bar owner made us sell cocaine from the bar in order to keep our apartments

  i was bad at it and someone tried to give me a ladle instead of money

 andrea: its like an episode of an hbo show

  i almost typed "hobo show"

 me: and i was all "hey! no! you owe me $40!"

  it was cheap coke

 andrea: that's right you big coke dealer, you GET your money

 me: i was bad at it

Maybe it's time to get back in the habit of writing down my dreams every morning.  If anything, it will help me rule out some bad career choices.

Maybe I CAN draw

I recently unearthed an old flash drive and found a couple gems that I can't resist shoving in your faces.

A long long time ago (late summer 2007, perhaps?), I had to go to an all-day payroll system training with my boss.  It was the kind of corporate drudgery that I hope I never again have to go through for any job.  I eventually took over the task of processing the weekly payroll, but it's amazing that I learned anything that day.  Not only did we have a nice beer lunch, but I spent most of the training session making Microsoft Paint drawings:

The first one especially is a nerdy, inside joke to other ADP PayExpert users, but hopefully you can at least appreciate my fine art skills.

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: deal with it

I'm fighting a cold and bitter that I still have to go into CAP21 tomorrow.  Someday I'll post about the actual fun stuff that Andrea and I did this weekend, but right now it's grouchy time only.

me: dang theatre people  andrea: ugh. i have no patience left

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: oh yeah that happened

Remember when Andrea had two houses?  And I had two jobs?  And pom poms went on necklaces?  And... dancing and cats?  Ummm, I don't know what I'm talking about.  This happened a long time ago:

andrea: boo

 me: boo HOOOO

  boo WHO?

  boo YOU

 andrea: boo me~

  i meant!

  what are you up to?

  if you were here we'd be dancing

 me: totally

  i'm at work

  work #2

 andrea: ugh

  i'm at home

 home #2

 me: ha, which one is #2?

 andrea: yellow

  le sigh

 me: ah yes

 andrea: i'm making a totally sweet pom pom necklace though

me: hotness

  like literally, it will keep you warm

andrea: yes!

yes! done!

  it's my fave

  its like a fancy cat toy that you wear

  !

 me: you should lace it with catnip

andrea: no no no

The Weekly Widget and Sassoon: carrier pigeons are the new hover boards

If I had remembered it was Monday, I would have written this hours ago.  But instead I slept until 2:45pm, did some irresponsible shopping, and then got drunk on red wine and watched My Cousin Vinny.  Have I mentioned I'm pretty much unemployed?

andrea: oh my GAWD, go get me a sandwich

  PLEASE

 me: ok it's on it's way

  but i'm poor so i had to send it via carrier pigeon

  so... it might be soggy

  or.... eaten by the pigeon

 andrea: crappers