Friends Archives
Sandy ego
2:31 am | 5 | Blog | Friends, Reading
First, you should go to Eyeshot and read this wonderful short story by my friend, Megan Tria Andrews.
I haven’t seen Megan in, what, six years, but she lives in San Diego and that is where I will be for the next five days. I hope I can see her. I have many friends and family in California but most of them are far away from San Diego.
I am going to San Diego to attend Tiki Oasis. I am going because I have thousands of frequent flier miles to use and friends to see and also I need to find some way to burn up the four weeks between right now and my reunion with my husband in Germany.
I’ve never been to San Diego, or that far in south in California before. I am planning to eat at taco trucks for every meal. The weather there is supposed to be 75 degrees every day. That astounds and confuses me. It’s been so hot in Houston for so long that I have no idea what 75 degrees feels like. I have no idea what to pack (and I’m supposed to be leaving in seven hours. I should be sleeping). Seventy-five degrees sounds awfully cold to me. Seventy-five degrees sounds like winter!
Summertime
Summertime from Brittanie on Vimeo.
Races, wrecks and wheelies
12:11 pm | 2 | Photo Album, Video | Friends, Two Wheels
Friday is my birthday and I am unnaturally excited about making my way down to Gruene and New Braunfels, TX, for the recently resuscitated Texas United River Rally. There will be scooting! And tubing! I have never been to the Guadalupe River. I am entering the last two years of my 20s! I am camping alone in my tent but will be surrounded by friends old and new.
Here is a collection of silly videos from the last rally that had no place to live, so I mashed them into one great movie instead.
Sandblast II from Brittanie on Vimeo.
Skull and bones
10:03 pm | 1 | Photo Album | Friends, Houston
Photo by Grind Slut
The Rule household has been hashing and camping with friends in the woods of Southeast Texas all weekend. We are currently recovering from fresh thorny-vine lacerations, sunburns and a two-week-old case of poison ivy.
What have you been up to?
Miscellaneous
6:46 pm | 5 | Blog | Friends, Ha!
Awe. Some.
The thing that totally made my day today? The thing that I found sitting on my editor’s desk, and then stole when she left her office to go to the bathroom? The thing that makes up for me not having been kissed by my fiancé, the most wonderful man in the world, for the past 19 days now? It’s this.
But wait, there’s more
A few hours later, feeling guilty that maybe she needed that piece of paper and I shouldn’t have been such a sneaky wench and just taken it without asking, I confessed to my editor. Which totally paid off, because she turned away from me and said, “Oh, that guy sends me stuff all the time.” She then dug through piles and piles of junk on her filing cabinet and produced not one, not two, but FIVE! full-length, home-burned Jesse Aron cds. With “Jesse Aron” written on them in black Sharpie.
What’s with…
Okay, I’m all about the token black man. But lately, I’ve been seeing all these commercials featuring not just a token black man, but a goofy token black man featuring the token black man hairdo — an afro. First 7 Up, then Office Depot, and now Best Buy. I’ve had enough.
A new woman
I got my haircut this week and now I’m totally rocking a new hairdo. Do you think it works for me? It’s kind of got a Jane-Fonda-as-a-Vietnam-War-protestor vibe.
Also, sometimes I like to move my wedding ring from my left hand to my right hand, because it makes it look like a totally different and new ring.
Longest intro ever
I had an awesome dream the other night where I was hanging out with Green Day (lame, I know, but stay with me here) and I hummed the first few notes of “Green Eyed Lady” by Sugarloaf, and Billie Joe Armstrong turned to me and asked what song it was, and then I broke out into the whole song, including the super-long musical interlude, and it totally won me street cred with aging punk rock hipsters who used to be my teen idols.
I have no idea what promoted that song, which, if you didn’t know, is one of the best songs ever, to make a guest appearance in my subconscious, since I haven’t heard it in forever. But I’m really glad it did, because it’s been stuck in my head since yesterday morning, and that, compared with a really bad Elvis impersonator, has made for a pretty awesome day. I may consider adding “Green Eyed Lady” to my karaoke repertoire.
Rain
It’s the time of the year for freak thunderstorms. I experienced this head-on last weekend when Steven, Julie and I were at a cafe having lunch. A spring storm started to roll in, making all sorts of loud noises and flashes to announce its presence, but we continued to hang out, since Steven only lived about a mile away. Well, we pushed our luck, and ended up having to ride our scooters home in the driving, pounding, vertical rain. The drops were so big and the wind so strong that it hurt. Bad. I had on just jeans, a thin t-shirt and my helmet. When we got to Steven’s house, everyone took off their wet clothes, Julie put on some of Steven’s karate pants, and the three of us fell asleep on his bed. I love my friends.
Dear Mr. City Councilman,
When you’re tying to compliment me by telling me that you regularly read my column (it’s an article by the way. Columns require absolutely no research, thankyouverymuch) it helps to A) know my name, and B) be able to remember what publication I actually work for.
Rest on your laurels much?
A new restaurant is coming to town, called, inexplicably, “Raising Canes.” They’re based out of Baton Rouge, La., and their press materials state the following: (I swear I’m not making any of this up.)
“They bring a high-class environment that promotes family dining and a fun atmosphere. Their menu is compiled of freshly cooked chicken fingers, and chicken fingers only. They perfected the recipe for this item and have valued that as there trademark.”
Okay, first of all, it’s “their,” not “there.”
Second, nothing says high-class environment like fried fast-food chicken.
Thirdly, can we not come up with a better name than “chicken fingers.” Ugh. All I can think about when I hear that term is fourth-grade science class, when Mr. Scott, who was also the boys’ wrestling coach, would take an old dry chicken’s foot and pull on the tendon to make the chicken’s claw open and close. Nasty.
We love to fly, and it shows
About two years ago, when I first moved to Houston, I was desperate for a real job, and so I got online and applied for a position as a flight attendant at Southwest Airlines. Well, they send me an e-mail yesterday saying my resume had made it through the first round of inspections and I’m invited to reapply for a position. Umm, okay. Do you fly to Okpo?
Names with backbones
NPR commentator David Chartrand can just suck it. I didn’t ask to be named Brittanie, and it doesn’t define who I am, and I most definitely was never popular in high school. Like David is any more original than Lindsey or Thomas or Marcus is.
Question?
I have never wanted to have a traditional wedding, and even before I met my soon-to-be husband I knew I wouldn’t follow status quo. So, I’ve had a difficult time finding a wedding dress. I wanted something very “West Side Story” — a 1950s-style party gown, preferably with a big tulle knee length skirt. I found a great Betsey Johnson dress that is seafoam green, is strapless with a big tulle skirt, and has a turquoise chiffon waistband. I love it, but I also feel like I should be wearing white. So I also found a very simple ball gown that can be cut shorter so that the tulle skirt sticks out the bottom a bit. But it has no personality. Is it acceptable to wear seafoam green to your first (and presumably only) wedding?
Shock of the day
When returning from lunch with some older women from advertising, Sara, my bikini waxer called me to return an appointment request. When I got off the phone, one of my coworkers, Margaret, a 50-something single, conservative-looking woman, asked, “Do you wax your whole twat?” I almost swerved off the road.
Someone thinks I’m funny
Which is pretty much the easiest way to win me over. Because, you know, I think I’m HI-LARIOUS, but corroboration makes it even better. Gentle reader Morgan also wrote in to say she hasn’t been kissed since last August, which makes me sound like a whiny little brat. “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” she asked.
Confidential to Morgan
It’s okay to be forward with guys. I was totally the first one to hit on C. And it took like three tries for him to get the picture, because I kept saying things like, “Yeah, all of our friends are going out to this event,” and then when he showed up, I’d be the only on there. Some men take a little coaching, but hey! I’m getting an awesome husband out of it!
Contest!
But what’s better than me making myself laugh is when other people make me laugh. So just for kicks, I’m going to have a little contest. You in? Okay. The first person to make me laugh out loud will win an illustrious Jesse Aron CD. You can tell a joke, a story or just string some silly-sounding words together — whatever rocks your boat. Or you can just utter the word twat in the voice of a 50-year-old spinster. Oh, and put your submissions in the comments, that way everyone else can get a kick out of them too.
LanceSpace
1:33 pm | Comments Off | Blog | Friends
I met Lance last night for dinner at Niko Niko. The place was packed at 6:30 p.m., when we met, and we both had to park on the street around the corner AND sit outside in the cruel and very un-Houston like 45-degree weather.
Just yesterday I was reading an article about how Yahoo! plans to create some wonder-software that combines both blogging and social networking. I usually read any story I can find about blogging, the future of blogging, how blogging is so passé, mommy blogs, daddy blogs, baby blogs, home improvement blogs, political blogs. So far they have not yet created a category for 20-something pseudo-feminists who are about to move to demilitarized zones blogs, thankfully.
Yes, I blog, but one thing I don’t do is social networking. Uhg, I even hate the way that sounds. I mean, look at my blogroll — six names. I prefer real-life friends, thankyouverymuch.
First there was Friendster. I remember reading a story one year ago in Rolling Stone about Freindster and how it was going to “change the face of the Internet.” Umm, okay, where is it now?
Now there is MySpace, and two of my friends, god love ‘em, are OBSESSED WITH THIS THING. It doesn’t hurt that they are both in their 30s and are routinely meeting jailbait through the Interwebs.
At dinner, Lance was telling me about all the fake profiles he’s created on MySpace. He’s been operating under the guise of Osama Bin Ladin for several months now — which is actually really funny — and he recently created a profile for a “average guy” named Gene, who likes to hang out at Home Depot and eat at The Outback Steakhouse. In just a few days, “Gene” has received tons of requests to befriend teenage girls. “Gene” and “Osama” are also on each other’s buddy lists, and Lance routinely amuses himself by going back and forth between his many MySpace characters, trying to see who gets the best reaction. Recently, a woman named “Miss Raven” who is obsessed with serial killers joined his buddy network.
“I’m becoming tangled in a web of my own lies,” he said to me at dinner last night.
After we left the restaurant, we walked out to our cars which were parked on a public street right beside the building, and when I got to my door, there were two pink Post-it notes on my window.
“PLEASE DON”T PARK…
IN MY DRIVEWAY!”
“What!?” I said to Lance. “I’m not parked in anyone’s driveway!”
I was, however, parked RIGHT NEXT to a driveway that had a small truck parked in it. A truck with a Phish sticker on it, nonetheless. The truck hadn’t been there before, so the driver obviously had plenty of room to pull in while I was in the restaurant.
“I’m gonna write them a note,” I said. So I got my pen out of my purse and scrawled on it, “It’s not a driveway — it’s a public street!”
As I walked up to the truck to slap the note back on their window, Lance said. “Whoa! I’m getting out of here. Someone’s going to pull a shotgun out on you. Let me know if you get killed!”
This coming from someone with a MySpace profile for Osama Bin Ladin.
Brushes with greatness
11:46 am | Comments Off | Blog | Friends, Listening
While cleaning house the other night, Christopher and I were listening to the only radio station in Houston worth listening to, and we heard two — count ‘em — TWO! songs in a row featuring friends of ours. The show was a collection of Houston-area musicians only, and we heard “Two Ways to Get Down” by Japanic, our friend Steven’s former band, and “Shrunken Head” by Clouseaux, featuring backing vocals by the lovely Miss Formica Dinette. Too cool.
Silent but deadly
4:30 pm | 2 | Internerd | Friends
It has recently been brought to my attention that several lurkers have been visiting this site without making their presence known — namely James, my own fiancé and a couple of others.
Um, HELLO!? How’m I supposed to know you’re here if you don’t comment?
My friends are funnier than I am
11:41 am | Comments Off | Blog | Conversations, Friends, Houston
My friend Lance will be having the very first public showing of his photography starting this weekend. He sent me this e-mail about it the other day:
“yo im putting ten or twelve photos on display at the king bizkit bar and grill on white oak, rich people hang out there so hopefully ill sell something… im hanging them friday afternoon, they gave me good space behind the bar with spotlights. congrats on the impending nuptuals, if jesus doesnt call me home to glory before then ill take the photos. that will be my gift (no refunds). its unreal, all of the things that are happening to you and C. if you told me you had been chosen to be the first blonde on Pluto i wouldnt blink.”
Lance doesn’t really spell that horribly. He does take awesome pictures, though, and I’m more than honored to have him memorialize the only wedding I’ll ever have. Lance and a handful of other people make up the group that I like to refer to as my Houston family, a family that is just as dysfunctional and crazy as my real family, but I love them anyway. Often, when we’re intoxicated and it’s Christmas Eve and the world seems full of possibilities, Lance and I talk about working on a book together – him taking the photos and me writing the text.
So basically this is a shameless plug for anybody who can to go see Lance’s artwork. He even plans to put a photo he took of me in New Orleans on display. I may go, if I have time, but I have to pack my bags and get ready for my upcoming trip to Pluto.