HELP....

me give a new title to my blog.

That's right. Once again I've decided that it's time that I started blogging again and I don't really feel the need to go through the process of setting up a whole new blog when I have a perfectly wonderful one right here. I could not have come up with a worse title. So I need help coming up with a title...at least an interim title that is.

The problem is I don't really know what this blog is going to be about. We can all guess that I'll do the occasional rant on something ridiculous that makes me angry and there will be lots of talk of pop culture particularly television but that alone does not a blog make. At least I don't think so.

So until I come up with the exact niche of my blog, I  need an interim title. Thoughts? Suggestions?

Throw'em at me!!

B

How does pain always make me think about being on Survivor?

Every person that I know is aware of the fact that I want to be on Survivor. This is not a passing whim. I REALLY want to be on Survivor. I have sent in tapes. I have gone to open casting calls. I cannot even get a call back. I don't think that I'm enough of a lunatic to be on reality television. That doesn't mean I am ever going to stop trying. Never. I want to go to Tribal Council. I want to vote people off the island. I want to form alliances, backstab. Outwit. Outlast. Outplay. You get the point.

Being on Survivor crosses my mind a lot, but it always moves up to the forefront when I am in pain. I like to tell myself if I can't get through whatever hardship I'm enduring, then how am I going to get through 39 days of constant discomfort.(and yes I said 39 days because I plan on being there the entire time, you may not believe it but when they finally make the smart decision to cast me onto the show, I will win.) This weekend, I went skiing. I've skied for years but it has been years since I've skied. I spent the morning doing pretty well but the fear of losing control as I sped down the mountain kept creeping into my brain.

After lunch we decided to go to the top of the mountain. It was a gorgeous run down but my legs started to bother me. They went quickly from uncomfortable to straight up cramping. Both legs. It is very possibly the most painful thing that I have experienced. There were points I thought that I might throw up from the pain but I kept going. Pain or not, there wasn't any other way down the mountain. What did I tell myself to get me down the mountain: It's practice for Survivor.

Frozen: A Movie That NO ONE should ever watch

Sitting in my apartment with Selda and Sarah on the eve of our ski trip, we thought it would be a great idea to watch movies about skiing. Perusing netflix on my apple TV we found, Frozen, a horror movie about a ski trip. What a stroke of luck! It wasn't. It was a descent into horror and 93 minutes of my life that I will never get back.

Was it horrifying because it made me think of all the things that could go wrong while skiing? Nope. It doesn't make me scared to ski. Everything that happens to these morons in this movie is their own damn fault and has nothing to do with the fact that they were skiing. These three idiots(Emma Bell, Shawn Ashmore-ironically, he plays Iceman in the X-men movies, and Kevin Zegers, Damian on Gossip Girl. He probably would have been better off staying on the UES).

These three jackasses bribed the ski life operator into letting them ride without paying for three lift tickets. It doesn't really explain why they are trying to pull off this particular con. They spend most of the day on the bunny slope because Emma Bell is not a very good skier, but Iceman needs one "real run" before the mountain closes. It is night time. Pitch black with no lighting on the mountain as far as the viewer can tell but they want to go back up for one last run. The shady lift operator tells them it's closed because of a storm that is rolling in. A STORM IS ROLLING IN YOU IDIOTS! They continue to argue with him for just one more run down. It is the dead of night and there is basically no one on the mountain. Do you really need to go on one more run? Previously, Iceman mentioned that he came up to the mountain every weekend. If you come up to the God damn mountain every weekend, why do you need to go on one more run? I'm sorry Emma Bell is not a good skier so you had to spend the day on the bunny trail. That is not an excuse for stupidity. WAIT TILL NEXT WEEKEND!

But they get on the lift. About three different employees cycle into running the lift. None of them are paying attention. None of them are keeping track of the people that went up to the mountain. It doesn't give me a whole lot of faith in the people who operate ski lifts. At the same time I'm not dumb enough to try to get up there one last time in the dead of night. It's dark. It's cold. Go home and watch the latest episode of The Vampire Diaries. The night would have been so much better. What happens next? You guessed it....they turn the ski lift off because with all the turn over in the span of 5 minutes, no one realizes these kids are up there. They get scared. Of course. They think the shut down is a mistake. It isn't. As panic sets in and they realize they are not going anywhere, Emma Bell decides that she needs a cigarette. Yup...a cigarette on the ski lift. She takes off her glove, and drops it. Great idea. Gossip Girl dude decides that someone has to jump down. Being the big man that he is, he decides it's going to be him. Guess what? He breaks his legs. Not only does he break his legs but the bones are sticking out. Soon are greeted with a whole slew of new characters...a pack of wolves. I didn't see that twist coming. Poor gossip girl guy wasn't going to be returning to the upper east side because the pack of wolves ate him as his best friend and girlfriend watched.

The movie then ranges from completely and utterly boring to disgusting. Emma Bell wets her pants, gets her hand frozen on the ski lift(she manages to rip it off in a scene that I had to cover my ears and yell so as not to have to live the horror). We are forced to endure Emma Bell and Iceman talking about how bad it felt when his girlfriend from freshmen year was making fun of him in the cafeteria or something. I guess when faced with your own mortality you want to talk about weird things. I could not believe that this movie was still going on. I was only still watching it because I had to see how it would end. I mean, really? Where is this movie going? Is it turning into a romance with these two trapped up on the ski lift? Nothing says romance like watching your respective boyfriend and roommate get eaten by a pack of wolves. I figured with how stupid these characters are that they would go down this route. Thankfully, they did not.

The bonding had to end sometime so Iceman decided that he was going to try to climb to another car on the ski lift. Quick note, this is the second time that he has tried this. We learned that no one thought that he could do it because he couldn't even do a pull up. Fascinating tid bit. He cut up his hands the first time, and had to go back to the car with Emma Bell, but after hours on the lift he decided that he needed to try it again. He made it to the next car on the lift and cut up his hands some more. Also, there were screws lose on the ski lift. With the geniuses they seem to have working there, this didn't surprise me. Of course, the wolves needed some more screen time so while getting to the second car the pack returned and watched Iceman dangle from above. After some rest, Iceman decided it was time to climb to the next car(the final destination being one of the poles holding everything up that had a ladder he could climb to the ground on.....to the waiting pack of wolves). He made it to the ladder, and had the prerequisite slip and catch myself on the next leg of the ladder. He goes back to climbing down without even a glance towards the wolves. Once he reaches the ground, the wolves pounce. Trying to use a ski pole as a weapon, he got a nice chomp in his arm from one of the wolves. The pack circles but he fends them off with the ski pole. But wait...as he gets on his snowboard to slide down the mountain, the wolves are in hot pursuit leaving Emma Bell to wait there all by her lonesome and hope that Iceman is not eaten alive by the wolves. Day turns into ANOTHER NIGHT which turns into ANOTHER DAY and this movie refuses to end. Iceman has not returned and Emma Bell is somehow still alive with her one glove. Now it's time for real despair and to get another look at the screw about to fall out of the ski lift.

WHY WON'T THIS MOVIE END?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

Emma Bell decides to start thinking about jumping from the lift. I just don't care, but I can't stop watching. She gingerly stands up and the screw falls off, the lift falls halfway. She makes her first smart decision and jumps before the car completely falls. She makes it to he ground, the car falls on her leg leaving her unable to walk. She decides to slide down the hill on her stomach. I guess as I am watching her slide down the hill I am supposed to feel uplifted by her ingenuity. I'm not. Soon she comes upon Iceman's corpse which has been eaten by the wolves. Guess who else is back???? The wolf pack but because they are too focused on eating Iceman's corpse they don't even notice her. She continues down the mountain on her stomach, attempting to stand every now and again. I hate this movie.

Never watch this move. Emma Bell does make it to a road. A road that seems to be a major highway. She then crawls to the middle of said major highway and puts her head down. Seriously? You couldn't have done that on the side of the road? Lucky for her a car stops and she is rescued. The end of this complete piece of garbage.

Snow, snow go away.....

Growing up in upstate New York, I used to live for the snow. Whenever there was a hint of a potential snow storm brewing that sense of excitement for a snow day was palpable in the hallways of my school.The tantalizing possibility of a snow day always came at the exact right moment: the day before a big test or a night that I needed extra time to work on a paper. The problem was that it was like a game of Russian Roulette. Do you risk not doing the work and then waking up to find that the "blizzard of the century" that they predicted amounted to a few flurries. There were probably nights I didn't study as hard as I should or math problems I saved for homeroom just in case there wasn't a snow day. Often, the blizzard came. Other times, the threat of the blizzard was so great that they cancelled school the night before only to find that there was not even a flake of snow. The most memorable of those days was the "non" snow day I went to see Good Will Hunting with two friends in the 11th grade and ran into my 7th grade math teacher. She was probably younger then I am now, and her boyfriend was HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT! That might be the reason that I don't really remember Good Will Hunting.

Guess what, though? I'm not in school anymore. I live in a city where all you do is walk. Sometimes during the threat of a really big snow storm there is the knee jerk reaction of excitement because that is what I have been conditioned to feel, but NYC never closes when you're an adult. If you live on the island of Manhattan, there is very rarely a reason you can't get to work. Adults who don't drive are expected to venture out in the blizzard to get wherever they need to go. Is that reasonable? Of course. Do I hate it? Yes.

It's for that reason that I have no use for snow. Unless there is going to be the blizzard of the century that brings everything to a standstill for two days, I don't want the snow. In these small amounts it is nothing but an annoyance. So to the storm that is thinking of bringing 6 to 10 inches to NYC tonight I have this to say to you: Either DOUBLE that or please just bypass us. Your invitation has been revoked. The storm has been cancelled. I'm sure that there are lots of other cities that would welcome your brand of fun. Thanks.

Noodles...noodles...noodles.....

Last night after many vodka sodas(and a couple of glasses of champagne-YIKES!), Sara(who did not have nearly as much to drink as I had) decided that we wanted noodles. The first place we tried was closed. There was an upstairs all night karaoke bar that had tapas but what exactly are Asian tapas. When I think Tapas I think sangria and Spanish inspired food. I'm not thinking platters of sushi.

I'm not saying it was early. It was probably around 1am, but it's New York City on a Saturday night. We should have been able to find noodles. We went to every Thai restaurant between 53rd street and 42nd Street(and there are a lot, if one were to come to New York City from a far away land you might think that all anyone in this city ever ate was Thai food). All of the Yum Yum Bangkoks(1, 2, and 3!) were closed. Every other Asian inspired establishment was closed. We double backed and decided to go to Vynl because at least we could get some pad Thai there. Nope. Out of luck. They had nothing. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

We wound up getting french fries, zucchini sticks,and turkey sandwiches. Those were all delicious, but they weren't ramen noodles.

Here I go again...

The title of the blog is actually a bit misleading, because I think that there is a whole lot of what to realizing that 30 is all of a sudden a soon to be reality. I've been talking about returning to my blogging a lot. It's always in some way referenced to my TV viewing habits and there will be mention of the many television shows I watch but that is not where the inspiration for this ever so eloquent social commentary came from. The impetus was a conversation I had the other night. It went a little something like this:

"Dating anyone?"

"No" I casually answer.

"You know...you're 29."

I, in fact, do know that I am almost 29. No grand revelation has been bestowed upon me by the uttering of those words.

"Any prospects? Any body on the horizon? Any crushes?"

If you're going to imply that me being 29 means I should have a husband lined front then you shouldn't throw the word "crush" in there. I have a crush on someone every twenty minutes, but in the context of this conversation crushes are not what you want me to have. Crushes are people that you see on the street or that guy who stands next to you getting coffee every morning. The guy standing next to you getting coffee every morning could be a viable option if you stopped averting making eye contact with him, but that's a topic for another day.

"No."

"You should start thinking about it."

The conversation ended there. Does anyone really think that I have not given some thought to the fact that I am 29 and single. Of course I have. Does it make me want to leap off a building? Of course it doesn't. I have thought about it a lot and I've come to the conclusion.......

That I would drive a boyfriend CRAZY! Honestly, after 29 years I am so set in my ways that I can't imagine having to factor into another person into this. I have a tendency to.....overbook is the wrong word, but some days the only time I leave free is the time that it takes me to travel from one place to another. I like being busy. I like running around. I like going to three birthday parties in one night after having worked for 10 hours. I'd rather do that then sit at home. I'm sure that there is someone out there just like me who thinks the same way, but how could we ever date each other? We'd see each other on October 15th, February 4th, and August 31st.

The thing that really makes me scared of a boyfriend has nothing to do with committment. It's my DVR. My DVR is very full. I watch a lot of TV. Even I don't know when I find to watch all the TV that I do, but somehow I squeeze it in. I check the DVR every morning before I leave the house to make sure that everything is scheduled to be recorded. I like knowing that the DVR is in my bedroom and no one is going to turn on the TV, or accidentally turn off the cable box. There is nothing that makes me more annoyed then coming home to find something that I wanted to watch did not record. Believe it or not, when there was no such thing as DVRs and everything had to be taped on a VCR I led the same sort of life and watched the same amount of TV. I get irrationally angry at myself when something doesn't record. If someone else was subject to that they would break up with me in a hot second. I'd break up with me based on my reactions to a malfunctioning DVR. It's not a pretty sight.

There are times I think it might be nice to come home and spend the night with my boyfriend, but then I realize I'd have to share the remote or that I couldn't make last minute plans with someone because I had a boyfriend to go home to. I say all this from a really uneducated point of view. I think that it's important to keep in mind that the longest relationship I've ever had was 8 months and that was when I was 21 years old. The day that I shed that we and put back on me was a good day.

Where does that leave me? I have no idea. I'm a bundle of contradictions? More often then not I want nothing more then to be single, but sometimes I think to myself it would be nice to actually have that special someone but then I realize that at the age of 29 I have no idea how to be in a relationship. My entire frame of reference is every romantic comedy that has been made since 1983 and while that makes for a wonderful DVD collection, it doesn't really help you navigate the waters of dating in reality. Unfortunately, those particular waters have been rocky. I should be abandoning that particular ship because every dating choice I make just puts more holes in it. Just ask anyone close to me. I've been told that I should not be allowed to pick my own dates. I think that's right.

And after all that hemming and hawing and me sometimes going around saying I want to be single forever the truth of the matter is I want the complete opposite. I want a boyfriend...until I get one and then I'll want to be single.