Saturday, October 8, 2011

Parenting


Especially when you and your baby have apparently been knocking back the Chianti.

ETA: This sign was on a changing table in Bloomingdales.  That is all.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Message to Men on NYC Public Transportation

So this is just my random rave from having to commute daily on public transportation for the last three months. I was spoiled for the last nine years to drive in my car every day. Now I'm stuck riding buses and trains with all the NYC men who apparently have the largest penises in the universe. Now I'm saying this because I assume your need to take up more than one seat on all forms of public transit must be that you are soooo uncomfortable because you are just so Ginormous!! Wow it must be so difficult to be so well endowed. My heart goes out to your troubles...but seriously move the hell over and give people the right to sit down!!
Thank you.
KO

A Warning to all hipster parents- I'm watching you...

Okay look very closely- aww cute groundhogs, their little homes and now pan to the upper left hand corner..see some legs and a little bit of red??? Yep that is a child - a little obnoxious child. And what do you ask is he doing? Oh that's right..little "Joey" decided that it was his right to run through the groundhog exhibit. Oh and even better-- Joey's dad who decided he was too lazy and cool to run around and grab "Joey" out of the exhibit. Oh no-he decides to yell across the exhibit at his unruly child and say "you better not do that again 'Joey'". Seriously hipster parents..really???? I know if "Joey" had gotten bit by a groundhog that was pissed you stepped on his property or had broken his leg when falling through the groundhog labyrinth, "Joey's" dad would have sued faster than I said WTF when I saw Joey run though the exhibit. Literally the whole crowd just stared open mouthed at this debacle. And let me tell you Joey sat there until he decided he was good and ready to leave. So I leave you with this message- I'm watching and I can totally can tell you that your parenting methods don't work. First, he might kill a groundhog. Who knows what could be next?!!---Stop letting your kids run their own lives!!!! They're not in charge!

Monday, September 12, 2011

Inter-brain memo

INTER-BRAIN MEMO:

FROM: Ro
TO: The girl walking down Westchester Avenue with the shirt that reads "Yes, I AM the SHIT."

Don't be surprised when people look at you as if you smelled that way, too.


Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Would love to be a fly on the wall for this book club meeting...


Does this seem like an overly-specific genre to anyone else?  In the future, all courtship occurs on a spaceship.

I spotted this in a shop last summer when I was visiting my homegirl M in Kentucky.  I believe I bought a book there, but it wasn't from this shelf.

Monday, August 22, 2011

Time to get my eyes checked. Or sign up for a genetic study with mom.


So I just got back from a short trip with my mom.  We had a bitchin' time in sunny Montauk (actually, it rained half the time we were there, but who cares) and during the car trip realized that we had similar problems with sign-reading.  It seems our brains read a sign, but miss whole letters or words and re-interpret them to mean something COMPLETELY - and often, AWESOMELY - different.  Nature or nurture?  You decide.

Case 1:  This actually occurred right before our trip.  We were in the car together by the train station where a gridlock of buses sometimes occurs.  We saw an ad on the side of one bus for this new craptacular-looking show. I'm still new to blogging, so I'm not going to post the ad on this site, but if you follow the imdb link, you'll see pretty much what we saw, in bus-ad form.  The actual text is as follows:

"A lost twin.  A dark secret.  A deadly game."

And this is what my mother and I BOTH saw:

"A lost twit.  A dork secret.  A deadly gnome."

Now which show would you rather watch?  Yeah, thought so.  Just let your mind wander and wonder at the myriad plot-possibilities of the deadly gnome-twit running around and terrorizing the main character, who in a surprise role-reversal, is publicly a hot, hot girl but secretly a dork.  The gnome steals all of her hot-girl paraphernalia from her locker and replaces it with all the dork stuff she keeps at home so her dork secret will be revealed to all her mean-girl friends.  Gasp as she opens her locker and it spews forth a collection of 20-sided dice, grammar handbooks, and an autographed photo of Neil deGrasse Tyson!

My cursory exploration of internet literature on the actual show suggests it's an intense drama about family secrets that probably hypersexualizes 'tween girls whilst being overly-preachy and judgmental, since it's on ABC family.  Feel free to disagree with me; it'll be good prep for this coming school year when all my students praise it and fall all over themselves catching up on it in homeroom.  Whatever, ABC family - this plot is ripped right out of any V.C. Andrews novel, and they automatically win this contest because of their neat double covers that revealed pretty much everything you needed to know about the plot before buying the book.  Brilliant marketing, that was.  I miss the days of standing in Waldenbooks (or Rite Aid, now that I think about it) flipping open the first cover to gaze at the glossy inside artwork and think, ok, who's the secret brother that will father the secret baby?

Considering the title of this show is an allusion to The Crying Game (whether it knows it or not) I'm gonna guess that the dark secret about the lost twin is that it is REALLY A DUDE.  A dude gnome.

Case 2:  Driving out on Rt. 27 East leads one through quaint Bridgehampton, where there still seem to be mom and pop-style businesses.  (Read: It hasn't become East Hampton's main street, which is, in the immortal words of my mom, "57th street East.")  One such business is an old-timey looking ice cream parlour (you can tell it's old-timey by the way they spell "parlour."  Well, it's either old-timey or Canadian.)  The sign said this:

"Ice Cream Parlour and Eatery"

My brain read this:

"Ice Cream Parlour and FATery"

I thought, Damn, that's judgmental.  And probably more accurate.  But then I remembered we were entering the Hamptons and nobody there is fat.  It's a town ordinance.  Well, nobody except the Barefoot Contessa, which is why I trust her and her delicious recipes.

Case 3:  Out near Montauk harbor is a collection of motels, hotels, and rental cottages that cater to a mixture of vacationers and local fisherman.  Actually, now that I think about this case, it was driving out the previous week with co-blogger KO and our friend Sandy (yeah, I went to Montauk twice in August.  I'm a Montauk groupie.) and we passed a motel with this name:

"Tiny Underwood's Motel"

which I read as this:

"The Underworld Motel"

and I whipped my head around like, "What?! Who the hell would stay there?"

A deadly gnome, that's who.


Saturday, August 20, 2011

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Welcome to the Porkchop

Welcome to the Unsolicited Porkchop.  The title of this blog was suggested by my mother, in homage to a family legend (not really) about my grandmother always sending my great uncle home with food, whether he wanted it or not.  My dad remembers one instance in particular: The Unsolicited Porkchop.  It gets mentioned in my house very frequently.  If you know my family, this will make sense.  That's pretty much it.  My co-blogger in crime, KO, has been kind enough to let us name our blog after this ridiculous instance that is funny to nobody but me and my parents.


Actually, I think that picture is a lamb chop.  Whatever.

Anyway, as the blog description says, this will be the creative equivalent of a junk drawer.  But hey, sometimes when you're going through a junk drawer, you find something you like, value, or really need.  "Oh  look - a triple-A battery.  I needed that.  Thanks, junk drawer!"