From the Beautiful Mind of Nicole

It’s late. It’s really, really late. I know I should be asleep. I know that. But I’m not. I am what you would call a “night owl” (well, that’s what my grandma calls it anyway. Do people still say “night owl” these days or is it sort of an old-timey kind of phrase? Has it gone the way of “gee golly” and “good heavens”? I don’t know.). If it were up to me, I would get all my crap done at night then sleep during the day. This is especially true in the summer. It’s way too hot here to do anything productive during the day. I mean, your makeup is bound to sweat off, and that’s shortly followed by the frizzing of the perfectly flat-ironed hair, and let’s face it, once the look is gone, there’s really no point in trying to get anything else done. Don’t look at me like that, you know it’s true.

The weird thing is, I’m not really all that productive at night either. I get a little ADD during the insomniac hours. I read a lot of books, and that’s usually because at this time of the night, one can’t hold my interest for more than a couple chapters, so I have to switch to another one. If books don’t keep me occupied, I usually surf the Internets, but there’s not a whole lot of rhyme or reason there (a look at last night’s web activity shows this bizarro trail: Perez Hilton to Amazon to Wikipedia to WebMD to BabelFish Translator to MapQuest. If you can find a straight line from beginning to end in that mess, I’ll give you all the money in my wallet. Which may or may not be $3.17. Minus $.41 for shipping.).

Some nights neither the books nor the web are enough to keep me busy until sheer exhaustion takes over and I finally fall asleep. These are the nights when a lot of thoughts (some deep, most nonsensical) are floating around inside my head. I read once that you’re supposed to write down the thoughts to get them out of your mind, and by doing so you’re ridding yourself of the turmoil they’re causing you, which of course leads to deep inner relaxation and, ultimately, sleep. Honestly, I always thought that doing that exercise was a little fruity and would never work, but I have to be up early tomorrow, and I need to snooze. So here’s my attempt to relax my mind and throw out all the weirdness that’s mucking it up so that I can get to sleep:


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You know those soft-baked sugar cookies with that really intensely sweet frosting and those waxy/fantastic sprinkles? I want one of those right now. One, psssh. Better make it ten eleven a baker's dozen.


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I think I had my first alcohol buzz the other day. I think. Is it hard to tell if you have a buzz on? I don’t know. My cousin Denise always says that a good way to know for sure whether or not you’re on the road to Drunktown is to lift your arms and try to sense if they feel any heavier than they did before you started drinking. The only problem with that is that the weird, tentatively suspended arms have a tendency to give the appearance of drunkenness. Or the appearance of signaling to the waiter for another round. I’m pretty sure you’ll end up getting another Cosmopolitan either way.


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I hate the word "facetious." I feel like people who say "facetious" are trying way too hard to sound smart. Show me someone who genuinely loves the word "facetious" and I will show you an intellectual poseur. An unlikely upside to hating "facetious": If and when I get to be a guest on James Lipton's "Inside the Actor's Studio" and he gives me that quiz at the end and asks what my least favorite word is, I'll have the answer all locked and loaded and ready to go.


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If I see one more commercial for eharmony.com – just one more! – I think I might lose my mind. It’s not that I have anything against eharmony. It’s online dating. Whatever. Some people choose to go that route, and who am I to judge them? They know what they want, and they’re going for it. I respect that, even if it’s not a road I ever see myself taking. You’d think that kindly, tolerant attitude would earn me some kind of karmic relief from the bombardment of ads from Dr. Neil Warren and Co. Yeah, not so much.


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Where are Flemish people from?


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Sometimes I feel like there are needles poking into my eyeballs. It happens for maybe two seconds, during which I blink like a crazy person, and then it’s over. Similarly, I often feel like my two front teeth are being plied out of my mouth. The sensation is, again, momentary, but it’s uncomfortable nonetheless. Does anyone else ever feel that?


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I would give anything in the world to not have to put the sheets on my bed right now. They’ve just been lying there for hours, and I’ve been finding creative ways to lie around them while reading The Scapegoat by Daphne DuMaurier. It's times like this that make me wish I had a maid. Or a butler who would agree to put sheets on my bed even though butlers typically don’t do that kind of thing. Or do women not have butlers? Are they like ladies-in-waiting or something? I can't say that I know for sure.


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Wondering if it should be “laying”/“lay” instead of “lying”/“lie.” Wondering if I’m coherent enough at this hour to figure that out. Wondering if I care about the difference between the two even when I'm completely lucid.


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Who was that chick that got eliminated on Top Chef this week? I swear I’ve never seen her on the show before, and we’re like four weeks in. She must have been pretty flavorless to garner zero screen time until she got ousted. Flavorless, teehee…


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If I had to say definitively right now which prince I liked best, Prince William or Prince Harry, I would without a doubt go with Harry. Because he seems nasty.


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My cousin Stacie told me today that she and her friends Joe and Bart once wrote a pilot script for a TV comedy about eight people working in a mall. I really don’t know what to do with that information. My only real thought is that I need to work on finding a copy of that sucker ASAP. Perhaps get it performed by a local theater troupe. Or tweak it so that it could be done as a one-woman show with me as the star. I better get on that.


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Pete Yorn has a new song, "Shampoo” (go on, click the link and snag it. You know you want to.). He posted it on his message board as his “new favorite song to break up to” or something like that. That’s all fine and good, but I want to know who the backup vocalist is, because it’s a lady, and I’m inclined to think that Pete is probably dating whomever that lady is. And this makes me upset because shouldn’t Pete be saving himself for me? I’m saving myself for him. Or, you know, Dave Lieberman. Whoever I meet first.


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I got gas today. When you pay at the little island kiosk, it tells you that if you use your ATM card, a transaction fee of $.45 is added onto your total. By an amazing stroke of luck, I bought exactly $39.55 worth of gas, which means my overall total was $40 on the nose. How often does that happen? Almost never! Ah, little victories.


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Huh. I don’t feel any more tired now than I was before. I don’t feel any more relaxed either, especially since now I’m really worried that I chose the wrong prince and that somehow that decision will come back to haunt me one day. Blurgh. I feel a massive Excedrin PM shot coming in five...four...three...two...

From Me to You: An Independence Day Gift

Today is Wednesday, July 4th. It’s widely accepted that the headlining event of the Fourth of July should be the celebration of Independence Day. For the most part, I agree with that assessment. After all, for a while there, Independence Day was my number one most favorite holiday (even beating out Christmas, and that is hard to do). I still look forward to it because on our street, it means a gigantic block party and tons of fireworks. Everyone’s house is open, everyone serves food and drinks (alcoholic ones too! Huzzah.), everyone’s family and friends come and hang out all day, flags are hung up everywhere, there’s music, one of those bouncy houses invariably shows up on someone’s lawn, and there’s almost always some kind of game going on (for the past two years, it’s been volleyball. Not as fun as the football/baseball/foosball hybrid we had a while back, but fun nonetheless. Plus, there's less crying, less rib bruising, and the rules are way clearer, so I guess it's superior in almost every way...). It’s a total idyllic scene, like something straight out of Mayberry, except, you know, without the eccentric sheriff’s deputy. Also, I have an Aunt Dee, not an Aunt Bea. And our theme song is way more rockin' - none of that whistling business for us. Whatever, all that stuff is besides the point, which is this: With all that goodness going on, how could Independence Day not be the highlight of the Fourth of July? 1) Thanks for asking, and 2) I’ll tell you how: Independence Day happens to fall on a Wednesday this year. And what else falls on Wednesdays? That’s right, a new episode of Clark and Michael. This, of course, trumps all else, even free-flowing margaritas and borderline illegal fireworks.

If you don’t know anything about Clark and Michael, well, hold on to your hat, because it is…what is the word…oh yes: legendary. To quickly summarize, Clark and Michael is a series of online shorts written by and starring Clark Duke and Michael Cera (of Arrested Development fame - that’s one of my absolute most favorite shows of all time, by the way) as two friends who live together and have written a script for a TV show which they are tying to sell to a network. The concept is that they’ve hired a film crew (at their own expense) to document what they believe will be their road to stardom, and the result is the most hilarious display of idiocy and camaraderie amongst goons that I’ve seen in a really long time. I love that, ostensibly, the show is about how much hard work it takes to achieve even a modicum of success in Hollywood, yet you rarely see the guys actually working to improve or promote their script. Instead, they’re going to the gym (because their bodies are their “tombs” – I think they may have going for “temples” there…), picking up movies at Vidiot (where they’re pissed because no one carries Touched By An Angel), dancing while drunk (self-explanatory), awkwardly hitting on women (Michael, to a woman who just told him she had a child when she was 16: “Did you breastfeed her?”), and fighting and making up (wrestling, hugging, and ablutionary trips to the local mini-golf course ensue). A new episode is posted on their website every Wednesday, and for the last six weeks, each one has left me cracking up and zealously awaiting the next installment. See for yourself, peep the trailer:



How could you not love a show like that? Seriously, go on over there, take an hour, and watch the show in its entirety. It might not be the most productive thing you do on Independence Day, but it will definitely brighten your day. Though I guess fireworks do that too… Eh, the margaritas are clouding my ability (and desire) to ponder such things. Just go watch the show. Do it because it's the patriotic thing to do. Not reason enough? Then do it because it's what our forefathers would have wanted you to do. Still no? Wow, you people are a hard sell. How about you do it because it's free? Aha, there it is.


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Happy Fourth of July!