sobering up on the red line

Eminem's mom was carjacked.

It probably doesn't say much for my moral fiber that I giggled my unholy ass off when I read this useless tidbit of "entertainment news", but I did.

I just imagined some poor whitetrash kid in his flannel and his doo rag thinking how proud old Em was going to be when he smacked up that pill-popping bitch of a mom of his.

Then I laughed. I laughed at Eminem's mama's bad eighties hair, I laughed at Eminem in general, I laughed at the foibles of most criminal rappers including Lil' Kim, I laughed when I remembered Diana Ross grabbing Lil' Kim's boob during the Grammys that one year, and I will probably still be laughing when I leave work today.

Thank God for useless entertainment news. If I had to rely on real news I would not be such a buoyant and pleasant person.

I have an unquenchable urge to rush out of this office and run wildly down the street, arms flailing.

I may plan an event for next Monday. I will call it Take Back The Day. All downtrodden office people will leave their cubes and corners at precisely nine-thirty, toss their jackets aside, and dance through the streets of Chicago gleefully while singing and drinking beer. It will be like St. Patrick's Day for the non-Irish.

Let me know if you're interested. Maybe we can form a conga line down Michigan Avenue or something.

This guy that lunches at Jimmy Johns at the same time I do is so unbelievably fine that I just can't stand it. He wears sharp suits with very styling shoes, his hair is always perfect, and to the best of my knowledge he is not a homosexual.

He drinks Pepsi and eats Doritos and is most decidedly not a vegetarian but none of this matters to me because he has beautiful eyes and such perfect teeth that I wonder if he has DaVinci veneers like those people on Extreme Makeover.

I find it hard to refrain from staring at him like some ignorant little fourteen year old girl who is in the throes of a crush on some N-Sync lookalike. I want to run up and attack him like Pepe LePew with appropriate kissy noises.

There is no protocol I can follow in this situation. I cannot approach a man who has his hand in his Dorito bag and say, "Excuse me my name is Miller and I have been admiring you whilst eating my veggie sandwich for several weeks now. I know you don't know me from a hole in the ground but do you think that we could possibly merge our respective Jimmy John's experiences?" I would turn several shades of crimson before running out the door, after which I would bang my head repeatedly into a parking meter.

I wish I was suave. I really, really do.

"Nobody wants to see dead people on their television screens."

Apparently George W. does not check his movie listings very often. Hellboy? The Passion Of Christ? Dawn of the Dead?

People love that shit.

I went to the Marshall Fields MAC counter in hopes of finding some kicky red lipstick and noticed that the saleswhore was giving me a bit of a stinky look.

I gave her a look letting her know that I knew she was giving me a stinky look and inquiring why she was giving me a stinky look and she asked me whether I used any undereye "treatment". I don't.

She then held up a magnifying mirror in order to show me the error of my ways and show me my saggy baggy eyes. Now my eyes don't really look all that bad in a normal mirror but this goddamn mirror made me look like Blanche from the fucking Golden Girls. I wanted to lay my head down on the glass countertop and cry.

She also informed me that I shouldn't wear any dark lipstick because it drew attention to my "undereye circles".

After she was through working me over I ran to the Starbux and inhaled a sugary coffee because I needed anything to make me feel warm and young again.

Bitch. May she make minimum wage forever more. I am thirty and I don't look half bad and I'll be damned if I will let some little twenty year old heifer with garish eyeshadow tell me that I look old because she wants me to buy some expensive eye cream made from mineral water and frog semen.

I don't quite understand why Bob Dylan is in the Victoria's Secret commercial.

I mean I understand it from the Dylan point of view because it certainly can't hurt him to have his giant head floating next to an underfed supermodel, but is it good for the supermodel?

And while we're at it, what is up with that tiny little Craig David goatee that Dylan has going on? It looks weird.

I think he should float his giant head into another commercial that would suit him better like maybe Cadillac or GapOld or Fender HippieCaster.

I was checking out some handbags on Ebay today (during my lunch break of course, because I would never never never surf ebay on company time) because I am a Bag Addict, and I came across a Hermes (Ermezzzzz) bag that could have been mine for the low low price of twenty-six thousand dollars.

Think about that for a second. Twenty-six thousand dollars.

I cannot even imagine what it must be like to have twenty-six thousand dollars all in one place, ready to pay off my student loans or purchase a nice vehicle. To spend twenty-six thousand dollars on a somewhat ugly black crocodile bag is just sick and wrong.

And if one had twenty-six thousand dollars to spend on a bag, would one buy it on Ebay? I don't think I would feel very comfortable throwing down that kind of coin online.

I often wonder what it must be like to be sickeningly rich. I think I'd get used to it really quickly. I wouldn't stick to my humble roots and keep getting my herrr did by the same girl. I'd start going to a salon with people named Muffy and Binky and I'd have pedicures while discussing the latest offerings of Prada and Dior.

I would buy really swanky wine and pretend that I knew something about it. I might even stop drinking cheap beer and change the name of this site to "sobering up in the back of my Rolls".

I would move to the Gold Coast where even the homeless people have Gucci shoes and I would have really kickass dinner parties with live entertainment and hot waiters and food that I couldn't pronounce correctly.

Sigh.

No one has bid on the Hermes bag, so I guess I'm not alone.

I have recently discovered Sex and the City and I am smitten. I haven't seen women talk so frankly and obsessively about sex since I was a clubrat in my early twenties. I find it refreshing. My friends never talk about sex anymore since most of them are married or trying desperately to be married and this makes our conversations about men desperately dull. God knows I'm not having any sex.

I miss talking about the guy with the crooked dick or the guy that made me have seven orgasms in a row.

I miss sleeping with that last guy, too, come to think of it.

Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" has been going through my head all day.

Help.

Ten trends or otherwise popular phenomena I really don't understand.

10. Norah Jones. Am I missing something here? I think she is OK but not the soul-blowing amazement that she is touted as.
9. Outkast. Outkast are really, really fun and I own their album. But album of the year? Come on.
8. The resurgence of Dr. Scholls. They are ugly and made of wood. Shoes that are ugly and made of wood have no business coming back into style unless one lives in rural Holland.
7. Three-minute ring tones. I don't think I need to explain that.
6. The "metrosexual". I am all for men discovering that hygiene is a good thing, but if you spend more time on your hair than I do we will have a problem.
5. Survivor. Can someone tell me what the appeal is? I watched it once and was bored to tears.
4. Kids' shoes with no laces. I never see kids with laces anymore. Are we as a society so busy that we can't teach kids to tie their shoes?
3. Low-carb craziness. Every aisle at the Jewel is punctuated with several hundred low-carb products. The carb is not evil. The idea that one can eat twenty pounds of food per day is evil.
2. Rotten-ass kids. Have you noticed that kids today (oh yes, I am thirty) have no fucking manners at all and don't even pretend to? In my day at least we pretended until adults were out of earshot.
1. Fake titties with no shame. Not only are many women getting fake breasts, but they are not even attempting to hide the fact that they are fake. I have had at least three people in my office ask if I wanted to cop a feel. They're like an accessory to these women.

Again I am certainly not the most with-it person in the city of Chicago but I like to think that I am at least partially hip. Still, these things elude me.

I am starting to have the very worst vacation jones I've ever had in my life.

I'm sure this in no way coincides with the fact that my company has hired a new person who has the most obnoxious laugh in history.

It's like this: "HRUH HRUH HRUH HRAAAH!"

How close is this individual to my desk? Guess.

My boss asked me whether I could stay late tonight, and I widened my eyes before screaming, "STAY? What do you mean STAY? What's going on?? What aren't you telling us??? I can't stay here! My wife is a week overdue! What's happening??"

I guess my boss doesn't watch 24. He didn't get it.

If you don't watch 24, you didn't get it either.

True story. In Merrilville, Indiana the public high school has banned the color pink. Apparently too many students were rocking the rosy threads and the administration assumed that pink was the hot new gang color rather than the hot new trend.

Somehow I just don't see a gang of street thugs wearing pink satin jackets unless they are of the drag queen persuasion.

A gang of bitter drag queens would be wonderful, I think. It would be worth getting mugged for.

"Honey give me that tacky wallet and while you're at it I'd like that lip gloss, too."

That would be great. A bunch of little drag queens in their platform heels and bouffant hairdos, trolling the city for money so that they can have their nails done and maintain control over Boystown.

Perhaps Indiana street thugs are a different breed and are more fashion conscious, but I find it hard to believe that most gangbangers are reading Vogue while planning their evil deeds.

"Yo, blood, check out this fly Galliano shit!"
"Daaaamn. You know I need me some new Kate Spade in which to put my gat."
"On the real - these pants make my ass look fat?"
"That's "phat" with a P, my brotha."
"Word."

Do people still say "word"? Probably not. I fear I may be out of the loop.

I am one of those crazy homeless people/drunk magnets. The crazy homeless drunk people love me like they love the Boone's Farm. This makes for interesting experiences on the public transportation tip, but I don't mind as long as I'm not being flashed or groped.

I had a conversation this morning on the train that was atypical of my usual crazy people exchange, though, and I would like to share it. A man sat down next to me on the red line and bore all the marks of a train crazy or a drunk - dirty coat, Kramer-esque hair, slightly dazed look.

Crazy Guy: "Hey there."
Miller: "Hey."
Crazy Guy: "How you doin'?"
Miller: "Good."
Crazy Guy: "Whatcha readin'?"
Miller: "David Sedaris."
Crazy Guy: "Isn't he great?? I think he's so great. I rarely get a chance to read much, but I think he's so great."

We chatted for a few more minutes, and I found out that the guy was a doctor. Underneath that scruffy exterior was a guy that went to college for at least eight years.

Never underestimate the crazy homeless people. They might not be so crazy after all.