David Blaine actually DOES sell the cookware.
Randy, Chris and I went to the Home and Garden Show on Sunday. Randy went out of habit, Chris went because it's part of his industry, and I went because I enjoy avoiding eye contact with hot tub and pool table salesmen.
Chris and I were discussing how expensive it would be for either one of us to actually sit through a
waterless cookware demonstration front to back, when suddenly we stumbled upon the drunken prom queen of the Home Show circuit: the
Sham Wow guy.
"SHAM WOW!" I think I actually screamed it. I couldn't help myself; I compare it to seeing The Beatles perform for the first time if The Beatles were bright orange and ridiculously absorbent.
Sham Wow Guy nodded. Sham Wow Guy started his Sham Wow presentation. Sham Wow Guy was the only dude at the entire outdoor show wearing sleeves past his wrists because Sham Wow Guy has a thing for tattoos. And, if the top of his left hand is to be believed, a thing for Andrea.
I watched our buttoned-down crusader soak a carpet square with water and lay a folded Sham Wow absorbent cloth on top, and with my own eyes I saw the spilled water suddenly turn tail and run. When he picked up the carpet to reveal the shiny, dry counter beneath it, I knew Randy was about to be down twenty bucks. It was like watching David Blaine.
No. It wasn't like watching David Blaine. But it was good enough to sell me five squares of processed German rayon, you're damn straight, and it was good enough to sell Chris five squares of processed German rayon, too.
The rest of the show was kind of a waste; all we did was talk about the various uses for Sham Wows and who was going to spill what as soon as we got home. Randy suggested I fashion a bikini top from a Sham Wow so I could jump into a swimming pool and instantly absorb it. Seconds later he came to the conclusion I'd be too waterlogged to climb out of the pool so he officially recounted that suggestion. On our way to the car we ran into a woman Randy used to live with and I was actually too busy daydreaming about a Sham Wow raincoat to get all needy and weird about it,
that's how serious I am about the Sham Wow.
When we got home, Chris left to go spill some shit on his floor and I whipped out a Sham Wow and a big plastic tumbler to show off for Chelsea. I told her about David Blaine and the carpet trick and she wanted to see a demonstration.
"Are you ready?" I asked. And then I unceremoniously dumped forty-two ounces of water onto my kitchen counter, followed quickly by a sturdy virgin Sham Wow. But instead of sucking the water into its countless magical fibers, my Sham Wow just lied there in the middle of an enormous growing puddle. Impotent, indifferent... it just sat there, damply mocking me. It was like trying to clean up a spill with Andy Rooney's carcass.
Chelsea understandably thought it was hilarious. I swept the flood into the sink using the Sham Wow as a dam and asked her to hand me the dog's full water bowl.
This was the part where I was going to submerge the Sham Wow into a half-gallon of liquid and end up with an empty bowl and a heavy, sturdy piece of blue cloth, right, only strangely enough it didn't turn out that way. Over and over again I plunged the Sham Wow into the bowl, and over and over again I wrung it out into the sink. Chelsea was in hysterics. I think my hand actually absorbed more water than the Sham Wow. I quietly refilled the water bowl and mopped the kitchen, shoving all five Sham Wows into the pantry. I talked to Chris yesterday, too, and evidently he had much the same experience I had: hard emphasis on the SHAM, seriously lacking in the WOW.
I'm a little surprised Randy hasn't given me more shit about the whole episode, frankly, but then again he's probably thinking that twenty bucks thrown away on five soggy cloths was a damn cheap way to avoid the usual fifteen-hour ex-girlfriend Q & A. And he's right. Kind of makes me wish I'd made a move for the cookware.
Dude.
Whenever I go back and scan over my archives, I'm always pissed at myself for starting blog posts with "I'm sorry I haven't updated", but whatever. I'm always pissed at myself for running over the giant blue recycle can with my car, too, but I keep doing
that. The can always manages to basically bounce back into a can shape so fuck it, really, no harm done.
Several months ago, a room full of overly accomplished, excited, motivated people paid me a lot of money to write a book about a certain dude, but evidently no one asked the dude in question if he actually
wanted a book written about him, right, so now that book is slowly and terrifyingly turning into a 180-page tome about canals. It's like watching a train wreck from
inside the train. And I can see Dude In Question just outside my smudged 2
nd-class passenger window; he's tipping his $700 hat at me and covering the tracks in brass belt buckles and cattle skull bolo ties.
I have a bunch of shit to write about: updated wedding plans, that time I went to New York and almost got arrested on a B and E, that other time I loaded my elderly grandmother into the back of a Chevy Suburban with a faulty oxygen tank and a really ridiculously complicated catheter and drove her eight hours to South Carolina, and some other random shit about my dog and maybe something I accidentally saw on 20/20. So I'm a little behind. Most succinctly evidenced by the fact that my grandmother passed away like three months ago. Yeah, and thanks for bringing that up, you guys suck.
So I guess Blogger has this new feature where people can sign up to "follow" your blog. I don't actually know what this means because my continued refusal to upgrade to the only version of Blogger compatible with the 21
st century is steadfast (albeit largely unfounded and based primarily on the whispered suggestions of liquor) and unwavering. But I can tell you I have three "followers": Amber (who immediately stopped following me so I'll take that hint),
Brandi, and
Lisa. We need a Candy, a Bambi, and a Crystal and we'll have one hell of a sorority. Or a strip club. I vote the latter, personally, but only because I've already got all these forged W-9s lying around.
If that's insulting, I apologize. I'm not quite myself these days. Frankly, I think wide-scale 20
th century arid irrigation is just a bad, bad influence.
Stacey's coming over tonight so we can take care of some Etsy business and she's bringing her little boy. Thus giving me the green light to run out and buy a literal
mound of caramel apple making supplies. I guess the thought of having a kid around validates my constant consuming desire to dip apples in caramel and chocolate and coconut and walnut pieces. Watch, he'll show up and be all, "Sorry, I'm allergic to apples." Well, roll up your sleeves and starting dipping your hands in, then, hope you aren't allergic to third degree burns.
Sorry, Stacey.
I'm listening to The Waterfall station on XM radio right now. Yeah. It's contemporary jazz. I think I like it because it reminds me of all the great parties my parents used to throw in the late-eighties when we still lived in Florida. I could probably ramble on for paragraphs here, faking some sentimental nostalgic dissection of what it is exactly I loved about those parties and thus why it is that I'm tolerating an all-saxophone rendition of Michael Jackson's "Human Nature", but since I've already pinpointed it I'll spare us the bullshit: I loved the unlimited cheese.
My parents blasted Wynton Marsalis whilst neglecting to monitor my late-night baked gouda intake when I was a child and as a Pavlovian result I now have the musical taste of an unmarried retired masseuse.
Or... the musical taste of my parents.
Sorry, parents.
Randy’s lined up to get a colonoscopy first thing tomorrow morning.
As hard as I’ve been pushing for this procedure, you’d think I would have been a trifle more on the ball in regard to managing the preparations. What with my being out of town last week, as an example, Randy had no choice but to immediately ball up the pre-procedural instruction sheet and throw it away in a Burger King bag, an act he then chased with a palm full of aspirin.
I read the newly faxed instruction sheet aloud last night, trying my best to convey the fact that he wouldn’t be able to eat anything at all today. I felt like a parent attempting to casually acclimate a three-year-old to the concept of a plane ride; if I talked about it enough beforehand, maybe I could lessen the blow of the actual event.
“So you know tomorrow you can’t eat anything.”
So you know tomorrow we’re going to get on an airplane to go see Grandma.“And I mean all day tomorrow, the whole day. You can’t eat anything at all. No food.”
You see airplanes up in the sky all the time; we’ll be inside one of those!“You can have clear liquids, so I’ll make you some chicken broth and get some Gatorade.”
And I’ll be there and Daddy will be there and you’ll have a bunch of toys and gummy bears and it’s still going to suck and you’re going to freak out all over the place and here’s a hundred dollars.Randy got up early this morning so he could put in a few hours at the office before his noon laxative.
“No food,” I mumbled from bed.
“Just a little piece of pita bread,” he whispered back.
It’s 11:13 now and he’s not answering his phone. I can just picture him out there somewhere, alone and preoccupied, filling up on unpasteurized cheese and borscht.
And god, those legs.
I know I'll have a lot more to say about the
Cringe book party and the amazing trip to New York in general, but for now I'm just going to post this video that
Danielle took of me reading my own sexual fanfic at the Cringe party. I'm so glad she took this because five minutes offstage and my subconscious was already trying to convince me I hadn't actually read my diary in front of a room full of people. But you can't repress video proof so take
that, brain.
