Clareified

THE WORD THEY’RE LOOKING FOR HERE IS: ‘FATHER’

“Star magazine reports that 18-year-old Sydney Simpson is enrolling at Boston College against the wishes of her mother, Nicole’s, alleged murderer. O.J. Simpson, the mag reports, wanted Sydney to stay close to home in Coral Gables, Fla. “It took a lot of heated arguments before Sydney was able to win her dad over,” the mag quotes a family friend as saying.”

Just sayin’.

In other news from the Simpson family, Sydney has been arrested.

MMMM…CROW

At the not-at-all-conservative-blogger party, Ken Wheaton said that he had been roped into a charity Hold ‘Em tournament. Given that this is the guy that was too scared to play Hold ‘Em with the girls for $5, my advice to him was basically just try not to be the first one out. In true Cajun style, he replied that he’d prefer an early exit because then he could hit the open bar for the rest of the night.

Well…

He won!

Well played old man, well played.

DAWN SUMMERS’ RELOCATION GUIDE

Alaska, Colorado, District of Columbia, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, or Wyoming.

ASK AND YOU SHALL RECEIVE

So, I asked for a fun game of Hold ‘Em with no smoking and no animals, last night I got it.

Unfortunately, I forgot to specify that it be a cash money game, so that once I doubled up, I could scoop all my chips in my hands and get the heck outta dodge.

The game was a tournament of mostly corporate lawyers who had been playing together for about a year. One other girl, who had never played Hold ‘Em before and I were the newbies around the table. About twenty minutes before game time, Karol decided she wanted to play and brought along “sweet-faced” Lisa the shark.

All started out well, when with A4h I flopped a 2h 3c 8h. I called the bet of the other guy in the pot. The turn was 5s. We both checked and then the Jh came on the river. He checked. I bet 300 and he called. I took down the first pot of the night with an Ace high flush. He didn’t show his cards. (I hate that, by the way. I thought the rule was if you pay, you see the cards. I paid, I wanted to see.) Anyway, I remember the hand pretty well because it was the last winning hand I had for an hour and half. Lisa the Shark began to dominate the table, getting deadly river and turn cards.
“The thing with Lisa,” Karol would say to the table, “is that she could have anything in the world.”

I watched significant numbers of my chips make their way over to her growing stack, until I decided to stop playing if she was in the pot.

That strategy had its limitations as I got blinded down and finally busted out (thankfully Karol busted out first, lessening the humiliation of a rebuy.)

With my second set of chips, I decided to play more aggressively, I bluffed quite a few pots, including a monster hand against the Shark.

However, once we entered hour two of the tournament, I was exhausted. I had made quite a bit over my two rebuys, and wanted to cash out and go home. However, evidently, I was required to stay until I had lost all my money — which I did shortly before the start of hour three.

Sigh.

Tournaments are a lot harder than they seem on TV and I think the strategies for playing them are different from cash games — but I can’t tell yet how to adjust. Should I play cards more aggressively than in cash games? Bet more agressively? It seemed like after the second hour, people would just go all-in with anything and I couldn’t figure out what they had, so I was laying down low pocket pairs and even QJ,A10 because I couldn’t put them on a hand.

Were they just going all-in so no one would call or did they really think they could double up? The uncertainty crippled my game, I was folding hands that I would have won and going all-in on craziness hoping I could scare others, the way I had been scared away. It no happen and I busted out on A9d facing Big Slick. He hit the king on the flop.

Waa.

“That’s poker.”

DAWN’S NIGHT OUT: THE FINAL CHAPTER

Since the weekend’s not over until I go back to work, it looks like I am the last one to blog about the party, which is probably fitting because I was also the last one to show up at the party.
C graciously allowed a whole cadre of bloggers to descend upon her birthday party location for the annual Candace visit.
Ruby’s was dark, loud and crowded, and guarded by a huge, burly bouncer.
The rebel, smoker bloggers were hanging outside — in 12 degree weather - when asphnxma and I got there shortly after midnight.
Ari and Funnya were deep in conversation, so I said hi to blog-tease Yaron and introduced him to asphnxma.
“This is the guy who posted about quitting blogging, only to start blogging more than he had ever blogged before. He’s worse than Jordan with all the comebacks.”
“IDs!” the Burly man asked.
I handed him my driver’s license, hoping he wouldn’t notice that I was merely 16.
Whew, cleared!
“HEY, LET’S GO OVER HERE” I said to asphnxma who had been right behind me.
“WHAT?” replied some guy I had never seen before.
“OOPS, SORRY.”
Next I saw, MKID, also known as dead money at the weekly Karol Hold ‘Em games.
“HEY! Donde esta Karol?”
Why I thought Spanish would overcome the loud dance music, I’ll never know.
“She’s around, somewhere.”
Ah.
I ran into Ivan, who decided to leave the party moments after I showed up.
“What? You can’t share space with a liberal?”
“You insult me,” he deadpanned. At least, I think that’s what he said, by now Britney’s ‘Slave 4 U’ was blaring.
Asphnxma went off to get drinks and I continued the search for the redhead.
Along the way I said ‘hi’ to Esther, ’so’s your face’d Ken and zapped Jessica and Lisa with my freezing cold hands.
Then…finally, finally I met Ginger!
A little starstruck, I stammered something about the long trip from New Jersey (stupid, stupid Dawn, this is why you’re not invited anywhere), and prattled on about how nice it was to finally meet her. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Candace drunken dancing on the bar.
“So, looks like your co-blogger’s having a good time!”
Ginger smiled and I went over to say hi to Miss Candace, safely assuming that she was too drunk to make good on her promise to punch me in the face.
“Dawn!”
“Brunette, Candace! This is my friend asphnxma, he has a poker blog,” and then I unwittingly made a critical error. “He speaks Russian.”
Since I don’t speak Russian, I have no idea what transpired next, but I assure you candiedginger are not kidding when they conclude “despite the conspicuous lack of dancing and Candace’s inclination to yell in Russian at everybody who she thought might understand her, we did have a great time.”While they were yelling in Russian, I went over to talk to Paul.
“So, why are you hanging out over here by yourself?’
“It’s cool. I’m like a lone wolf.”
Ah, yes. Very sexy.
I joined him in the sexy, lone-wolf wall lean and noticed three holes in the ceiling.
What the hell?
Are those bullet-holes? No sooner had I turned to ask Paul, who as a cop, was probably better qualified to determine the source of the holes, that I saw the assasin again!
Holy crap. This guy is either after asphnxma or…wait, I did tell those Asian women I didn’t see anything, as I dashed away from their door, right?
I decided to go find Karol. She was sitting at the bar with her good friend, SMVP.
“You’ll never believe what happened to me.”
“What?” she asked.
“So, you know the woman from Urban Grind?”
“Yeah”
“Well, I was talking to her and I say, ’so what’s the name of your blog’? And she’s like, Urban Grind. So I say: ‘Oh. What do you write about? I don’t think I’ve ever read it.’ She kinda gives me a look and says ‘Yes, you have. You’ve left comments.’
D’oh.”
“Yeah, you know Zelda”
“Oh, the hawk girl? She said a different name. How was I supposed to know?”
“Dawn, this is why we don’t invite you anywhere.”
Heeeeeeey!
At this point, Candace had moved from bar dancing to lap dancing. As she shimmied up and down Karol’s lap, under the watchful eye of all the men in a drink spilling distance, I wondered how on earth she had that much energy.
“I’m 21,” she beamed, eyeing my lap
Mmm…21…they should bottle 21 and sell it on the street, but just to be safe I stood up and rejoined Paul at the wall.
The DJ started to play something by Culture Club and as if on cue, the party broke up.
Now, what happens next, I am still not clear on, but everyone tumbled out of the bar and gathered on the corner.
“Ok, let’s go back to Karol’s,” Jessica said.
“And falafels,” Lisa added.
“And cards,” someone from the crowd shouted.
Ok.
Asphnxma hailed a couple of cabs and Karol, SMVP and I hopped in.
“OK, see you back at Karol’s. Lisa, get in. They only have three people.”
Lisa got in and we were off.
Instead of going to Karol’s or even for falafels, we all ended up in this brightly lit pizza chain on Second Avenue, where we paid like $12 for a slice of plain cheese pizza.
Lisa then waved goodbye, SMVP hopped in a cab and Karol and I walked back to her apartment alone.
“Um…where are the people? I thought the people were coming back here?”
“Nope,” Karol murmered as we entered the elevator.
“But, Jessica said: ‘everybody back to Karol’s to play cards.’”
“Nope, never happened,” Karol said, kicking off her shoes in the foyer.
I took off my shoes and looked around at the empty living room.
“But…cards…and…people…”
“No! One more word about people and you’re getting the cat sheets to sleep on.”
I was quiet, but still fairly certain that any minute now, throngs of card playing, falafel eaters would be ringing the bell.
It didn’t happen.
“Karol, but what about MKID and Jessica…”
But the night was over.
And now I had to sleep on the cat sheets.
And had a nightmare about a devil in a bearsuit.
The rest, is history.

NOT TO MENTION: SLAYAGE, BIG BAD AND FIVE BY FIVE

Buffy has introduced new slang terms and phrases in nearly every episode, many of them formed in the usual ways, some of them at the crest of new formative tendencies. The show incorporates familiar slang, too; the familiar and newly coined slayer slang together compose a particularly vivid snapshot of current American teen slang. Undoubtedly, most slayer slang will prove ephemeral, not that there’s anything wrong with that; indeed, short-lived terms and tendencies are often significant in their time and can influence the course of American English, though once they disappear, we may not see the connections between them and what follows them. Some items of slayer slang, however, steadily intrude on everyday speech and may be here to stay, not only as slang, but as standard American English.

PBS Explores the Language of Buffy. You heard me, PBS.

WOO HOO, I’M SIXTEEN, NOT FIFTEEN

So’s your face.
via Big Orange Michael

Dawn’s Night Out - Part I

(All events occur in real-time, except to the extent that they do not.)

Overuse of airquotes, excessive Jennifer Garner butt-crackage, assasins, and full body bar dancing, if I never left the house again I’d still be telling stories about Saturday night. So, we have our first attempt at serializing a story since I unsuccessfully attempted to serialize my Arizona trip.

First, Karol asked me to pick her up from her parent’s house. Well, it turns out she lives in an alternate universe through a portal that can only be reached by circling Brooklyn three times counterclockwise. Having finally reached Narnia (hours after I began the quest) and picked up her majesty of the too long bangs, we headed for Manhattan where I was meeting the former Buffy watching crew for dinner and a bad movie – as is traditional and then planning to attend the highly popular blogger party.
“Take the tunnel.”
“No, I don’t like merging on the left side.” (I never explain this phobia when talking to passengers in my car – but when sliding into a stream of oncoming traffic I prefer more than just the driver’s side door for protection. You know, like the passenger side door and…well…the passenger…)
“Well, we’re at the entrance of the Expressway, so tunnel it is.”
She was right, I could turn across three lanes of traffic or…
“OH! I’ll get on the Expressway and get off on the first exit.”
“No, you’re not exiting. I’ll help you merge. Geez.”
Fine, but if I die, I’m coming back for you.
Luckily, early Saturday evening traffic was rather light. I waited at the mouth of the fork for two cars to speed by and then turned sharply into the lane. The final merge to get into the lane for the tunnel was even easier since the two lanes were empty. As soon as I was safely in the tunnel lane, fireworks exploded over the Battery Tunnel.
“Hey! They’re rewarding me for merging! I guess there must be cameras on the expressway.”
“Yeah, I bet that’s it.”
“Shut up.”
I decided to garage the car on the Upper Eastside and stay with Karol, rather than circling Downtown in vain for 90 minutes looking for street parking.
On our way to the garage, Karol called Peter to get the number for her building’s manicurist. (In addition to parking at meters for free, and having a post office in the basement, upper east side residents have on-site salons (and, I suspect, on-site brothels, but that’s another post.))
As we walked up the stairs toward the elevator bank, she knocked twice on an apartment door. An Asian woman opened the door and looked at me, then at Karol.
“Closed”
“I know, but is —“
“Hello!” exclaimed another Asian woman in the back upon recognizing Karol.
“Hi. Do you think you could…it’ll just take 10 minutes.”
“10 minutes?” the new woman looked at me.
“Oh, it’ll just be me,” Karol said, walking into the apartment. The door closed behind her.
Ok…um…I’ll just head on up to your apartment….
Peter opened the door when I got there.
“Where’s Karol?”
Search me.
I called Kaz to find out where dinner was going to be.
“We’re going to meet at Joe’s Burger. It’s on 18th between 5th and Park. It’s a block from the theater.”
I noticed Peter still standing by the door.
“Ok, so I’ll meet you guys there at 9.”
“Cool. The naughty little vixen and Alceste said they would be there at 9.”
Peter was now looking out the peephole.
“Ok, I’ll see you then.”
I hung up the phone.
“So, where’s Karol?” Peter asked again.
“Don’t know.”
“Did you kill her?”
I smiled.
“You just spoke to her.”
“Yeah, but you could have been impersonating her voice.”
Somebody’s been watching too much TV.
I left my bags and hat in the foyer and headed for the door.
“Wait, where’s Karol?”
This is funny.
“Stop worrying so much, you can swing the rent on this place by yourself.”
But-
Poor, poor Peter.
I left the apartment and took the elevator downstairs. I knocked on the magic door that had swallowed Karol.
The first Asian woman opened the door a crack.
“Hi…is Karol there?”
“Who?
“Um…the girl?”
“She leave.”
Oh, ok, bye. I didn’t see anything by the way…you take care.
I stepped out of the doorway and dashed out into the street.
So cold.
Very, very cold.
I ran for the bus to the Eastside subway.
I didn’t catch it.
I then spent the next fifteen-minute, uphill trudge across two avenues cursing Karol and her brothel…er manicurist stop.
When I got down to the subway trains, a young woman was screaming at the top of her lungs.
“You’re a punk ass bitch cop. MOTHA-FUCKA. You’re nothing but a phony and a punk. You think you can call a teenage girl a bitch and then flash your badge? FUCK YOU. Why don’t you go home and call your mom a bitch, call your wife a bitch, call your daughters and future daughters bitches. Don’t be all up in here calling me a bitch. I will fuck you up.”
Dear Lord.
Her boyfriend kept apologizing to the police officer – who I assumed was the pudgy black man in the sweat suit nervously pacing and covering his face.
“L.A.P.D., N.Y.P.D. nothing but pigs, y’all nothing but fat fucking pigs.”
“I’m sorry, man. Look, she don’t mean nothing. I’m sorry man.”
Pace, pace. He was starting to sweat.
The platform was crowded with people because all the trains were running local – and there were significant delays on the line.
“Fucking pig.”
The cop, who must have acted inappropriately to calmly take all this abuse, leaned over the platform to see if a train was coming.
Nothing.
The abuse continued. Whatever he did to piss this girl off, she was relentless.

Ten minutes, 1200 paces, 95 profanities, and 37 apologies later, the 5 train finally barreled into the station.

DAWN’S NIGHT OUT -PART DOS
Why does everyone use the french word for ‘two’ all the time, I say “Viva el espanol.”

I took the train to Union Square, exiting at 14th street.
I hiked North through Union Square Park.
Yah. One block my ass, Kaz.
Joe’s Burger has a bar downstairs, with eat-in seating up a lengthy flight of stairs on the second floor.
I looked around the bar when I got there and saw Alceste on his cell phone in the back.
We walked upstairs to find the place mostly empty except for two women sitting at a huge table in the middle, a few people in a booth and a couple making out on the back wall.
“Guess we’re the first ones here.”
“Yeah, let’s wait downstairs so we can see people when they come in.”
We started back down the stairs, when I realized I had no desire to climb them again in a few minutes when the others arrived.
“Ummm…you know, I have no desire to climb these stairs again.”
So, I take a seat at the top of the staircase and see ‘the naughty little vixen’, who we’ll call “Scarlet” in a fit of free association, coming up the stairs.
“Hey, happy almost birthday.”
A few moments later Kaz and JCN arrive and after I assure JCN that I’m not the only one there, he decides it’s worth the walk up the stairs.
The booth that Scarlet and I were in wasn’t big enough for all five of us.
I attempted the convince JCN to use his surliness to scare the women away from the big table in the middle.
“Go. Be really surly. They’ll leave.”
“No,” he replied with a great deal of surliness as he reminds me that I am not to address him directly.
“Sorry sir,” I reply to no one in particular.
The waitress fashions a table for six, by pushing two tables together and scattering the chairs.
By the time Alceste’s girlfriend arrived, we had menus and drinks and were chatting merrily about how bad we thought the movie would be.
Kaz’s cell phone rang and I can only assume it was Lee Stevens calling to say he was on his way up the stairs to find us because she bolted out of her chair and went scrambling to find another chair to pull over.
“Quick, he’s got to think we were waiting for him!”
Seconds later, Lee arrived and Kaz had just pushed his chair to the head of the table.
“Hey, here’s your chair, Lee.”
“Yes, and I assure you it was there all along,” I added, for that extra credibility that an out of breath Kaz gripping the back of a slightly askew chair simply lacked.
Lee has made his mark by, among other things, orchestrating these grand movie outings to see comic-books-turned-film in the theater on the opening weekend. And like everyone suffering from a compulsion, I always detect a look of regret in his eye, once the ungrateful rabble is assembled.
“Didn’t I learn my lesson after the great Spy Kids disaster of 2001?” he seems to say.
Saturday’s feature selection: Elektra.
“I heard it sucks.”
“Is Ben Affleck in it?”
“No, it doesn’t suck that bad.”
Ooh, I can do I scene.
“Dying’s not so bad.”/How do you know?/ I died once.” And scene. (Insert bow and applause)
Asphnxma was the last of the Buffy watching crew to arrive, so I did the scene again to make sure nobody missed out.
Lee evidently had heard enough.
“Dawn, Please stop. No need to ruin the movie further,” he said like the stern father of ten 29-year-olds.
Heh, that was just 12 seconds, you think you’re going to make it through 97 minutes, tough guy?
I think he eyed his water glass.*
The waitress came to take our orders.
“I’d like the chili.”
“A bowl, right?” the waitress asks very casually as if this were the normal size of chili people order.
“Yeah, sure,” I reply assuming this must be the normal size of chili people order.
Everyone ordered quickly because we have to get to the theater in time ‘to get seats as far away from the screen as possible.”
Scarlet brings over a bottle of olive oil from an adjourning table.
“Dawn, this should tide you over until our meal comes.”
Grrr.
You think olive oil is soup, one time, and they never let you forget it.
Changing the subject I asked Lee, what he was up to.
“I was in Atlanta on business.”
Without skipping a beat, Kaz and I say suuure, “business,” complete with rabbit ear air quotes
“Can you get a jinx on simultaneous hand gestures?”
With pearatty lost to the West Coast, there was no one to answer.
Scarlet, however decided that she liked the airquotes.
A lot.
Sorry “a lot.” I mean “Sorry” “a lot”
“So” “you” “were” “in” “Atlanta?”
Stop it.
“What” “you” “don’t” “like” “airquotes?”
You just can’t airquote airquotes, it’s not right.
“Why?”
DAMN YOU.
“I” “bet” “this” “is” “going” “to “be” “on” “the” “blog.”
But before Scarlet could pump her pair of rabbit ears anymore, our food arrived.
Lee got a hot dog platter.
Kaz got a burger platter.
I,however, received a bucket of chili and a spoon.
Umm. What the hell —
Why is there so much? I just wanted like a cup of this stuff.
“Well, you ordered a bowl,” JCN pointed out.
Well, I assumed that a bowl would be normal sized, not enough for a week’s worth of nachos.
I put my spoon in, and the concoction of beans and ground beef swallowed it whole, pinching the tips of my fingers in the process.
Ow.
I’m a little scared of my dinner.
“Um does anyone want a ladle of chili? I’ve got plenty.”
“I’ve” “got” “plenty”
Cut that out.. My chili likes fingers, and I’m not afraid to use it offensively.
At the end of dinner, the last of our merry band of movie watchers arrived.
Now, have you ever met someone for the first time who was just so wasted that you decided that you could pretty much say anything to him or her and they would never remember it?
So that’s what you do and then seven months later they show up for dinner and you realize, oh crap, I told that girl I wrote obituaries for the New York Times, I hope she doesn’t remember that?
No?
Well “me neither.”
Luckily, I don’t think she remembered. At the end of the night she said “nice meeting you,” even though I had specifically avoided any and all contact with her until the requisite goodbye at the end of the night.
Go figure.
The lobby of the theater was crowded, so there were some doubts about whether Alceste and Dawn 2 would be able to purchase tickets.
HAHAHAHAHAHA, sorry, it’s just suddenly funny that we thought Elektra would be sold out. HAHAHAHAHAHA
Anyway, everyone got tickets. Lee, visibly happy that he avoided being in charge of buying everyone’s ticket beforehand and the inevitable task of trying to find last minute replacements and/or eating the $2 loss of people who never remember ticketmaster charges a fee to buy tickets over the phone, was all smiles at the scrambling in the lobby.
The ticket buying job fell to JCN, who don’t take no guff from no one, so he had no problem, and I think this might be a direct quote, “collecting either the money or the kneecaps.”
Oh, speaking of which I have an original ticket stub that was purchased and held in the wallet of JCN – I am loathe to part with it, but I will consider any reasonable offers to purchase it.
Our movie was showing on the seventh floor, in a theater off the side of the popcorn stand.
We took four escalators up and on each ride I noticed a solemn Asian man, in nondescript black clothing (seriously, ‘black’ is not a description. I’m looking at you 11 o’clock news people.) staring at Asphnxma.
Asphnxma was wearing his Borgata “I’m a real poker player and the rest of you are poseurs” hat.
“What did you do in AC, dude? That guy is clearly following you…I think he’s an assassin.”
Ok, maybe two people have been watching too much TV.
We got seats toward the back of the theater and I lost sight of the assasin.
Asphnxma does a pretty fair job of reviewing Elektra, but in case you think he’s exaggerating, here’s my take.
Not only does Elektra borrow the with minor gender changes, the Daredevil back story, but it also has the brilliant dialogue skills of Star Wars Episode II. Plus, the black bad guy is the first one killed, and that just ain’t cool.
For those of you into that kind of thing, there is girl-on-girl lip locking, and skimpy ‘Me Tarzan, You Jane’ outfits.
But you will pay a heavy, heavy price for both. Including the cheesiest post make-out lines since…well ever. I believe asphnxma audibly booed.
You will laugh. Probably not where the director wants you to, though.
It is the weirdest four hours I ever spent in a Fantasy movie – however, still better than the 19 hours I spent watching Lord of the Rings Part I.
Alceste declared “Showgirls is no longer the worst movie I saw in the theater.” Why did he see Showgirls in the theater you ask?
Well, maybe he’ll blog about it “one day. ”
Asphnxma tried to get everyone to come over to Ruby’s with the very enticing “so do you all want to come to a party with a bunch of crazy conservative bloggers.”
Quick! Get Donnie Deutsch on the phone. I’ve found advertising’s next big thing.
“They’re not all…crazy,” I added.
“I don’t want to go to a “blogging party.” The next day it’ll all be, so I met this girl, let’s call her “Scarlet….”
“Well, it’s not a blogging party. There will be no presentations on posting or template styling (although I probably could use a crash course on inserting a read more tag…)
Still no other takers.
So asphnxma and I hopped in cab on the way to Alphabet City.

*In an incident four and a half years ago Lee poured water on me, I am not holding a grudge and never think of it.

CASTING SUGGESTION

Wanda Sykes should get a recurring role on ‘Arrested Development.’