Review

The Young Man is a die-hard Type-O Negative fan. While I wouldn't consider myself fanatical, I did like them very much back in the day. I certainly liked lead singer Peter Steele, both with and without clothes (Not safe for work, but certainly impressive. Homeboy's 6'8" and quite proportional.), so I happily agreed to go see their Halloween show at Irving Plaza last night.

The crowd was about what you'd expect. Staten Island, Long Island and New Jersey were well represented. Every girl had red hair, thick black eyeliner and was clad in head-to-toe black. I fit right in wearing this.

The opening band was Liverpool's Twin Method, with two lead singers, and they may or may not be the official spokespeople for Manic Panic. Metal fans are a tough crowd, and TYM and I are no exception. We hated them immediately. Then, much like when we listen to Linkin Park, we found ourselves grooving to the music and ultimately enjoying it despite our best efforts not to. I also forgave them for their look when I found out they were British. Not because Brits are inherently lame or anything -- I'm just willing to admit that metal might look a little different across the pond than it does here, and maybe looking like Green Day circa 1994 is cool where they're from. It's possible.

Next up: LORDI! They don't officially spell the name in all caps, but I added it because I was so very excited to see them. I'd describe them as GWAR-lite -- they're Finnish, they won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2006, they dress like monsters and play songs that are more pop-rock anthems than doom metal dirges. They know they're over-the-top ridiculous, and work it in impressive fashion. I loved every minute of it and would gladly see them again and again and again.

Then it was time for Type-O Negative. Peter Steele came out dressed like a priest, and despite the fact that he turns 46 in January, he is still one sexy motherfucker. He drank a bottle of wine, told the crowd to shut the fuck up, and gave one hell of a performance. The rest of the band did, too, but it's hard to pay attention to anyone else when a band has such a charismatic frontman.

It's been awhile since I've been to a metal show. I used to go to so many, in fact, that I'd just say "show" and the "metal" part would be a given. And in my younger, pluckier days, I didn't take too kindly to being shoved around by alpha males. It would usually go something like this:

Alpha male, eager to get to the pit, shoves me out of the way. I shove him back with all of my (admittedly not much) might.

Alpha male: What's your problem?

Me: You shoving me is my problem.

Alpha male: It's a metal show.

Me: Yeah, and you can shove whoever the fuck you want when you get to the pit. I stand here because I don't want your fucking elbow in my back.

Alpha male: Bitch.

Last night, I just rolled my eyes and shot dirty looks. I'm either mellowing out in my old age, or becoming more of a pussy. I'm also deaf today, but it was totally worth it. I need more metal shows in my life, and possibly some earplugs.

Sports Talk With Jess and Curly

Curly: I will be avoiding all sports-related headlines today. And for the foreseeable future.

Me: As will I.

Curly: I can't believe the fucking Red Sox won the World Series. Again. Assholes.

Me: Word and word.

Curly: Douches. I hate them.

Curly: You realize that it's seething jealousy that causes me to say this, yes? They won because they have a bunch of fresh rookies, not old clunkers like Clemens and Giambi.

Me: Yep.

Curly: Maybe the Yankees will pay attention. And good riddance to A-Rod. I'm not sad about that.

Me: I'm not, either. He ditches the Yankees after the first season he ever actually earns his overinflated paycheck. What a waste of fucking money that whiny bastard was.

Curly: We sound like guys.

Me: Ha! We do!

Curly: Ugh.

Me: Fucking Red Sox.

10 minutes later, after an in-depth discussion of how best to poach salmon:

Curly: Okay, I think we just got our vaginas back.

Suck It, MTA

You know what's awesome? When you have to be at class at 9:15 a.m. on Saturdays, and the only subway that you have access to is skipping, not only the stop where you live, but also the one where your school is.

Actually, come to think of it, that's not awesome at all. That's actually going to be a giant pain in the ass. Thanks, MTA! Hope that fare hike goes through -- y'all really deserve it.

Preparation Ache

As I've mentioned previously, I have sensitive skin. And when I say "sensitive," I mean my skin is allergic to damn near everything. After many trials, many errors and many, many rashes, I finally have a skin care regime that works. It involves a lot of Neutrogena products and copious amounts of aloe vera gel.

Sometimes, though, I forget that I'm not like normal people in the epidermis department. In college, for example, I'd find myself in Bath & Body Works with my old roommate and former best friend, smelling something that carried the chemical-laden scent of fruit, and wanting to purchase it so I could wash my body with it and also smell like chemical-laden fruit.

"No," she'd say sternly, taking the bottle of shower gel, or lotion, out of my hand. "You know you're allergic to that. It will make you all itchy."

She was right, of course. Sometimes I listened. Sometimes I didn't, but I'd always wish I had.

I didn't sleep very well Thursday night. When I woke Friday morning, my eyes were red and puffy. I remembered that tip I'd read a thousand times -- Preparation H applied under the eyes to reduce swelling and dark circles. I headed out to the drugstore and procured myself some of the vile-smelling ointment. And it worked!

Sometimes, when I go out late, I commit the most cardinal of beauty sins -- not washing my makeup off before bed. I woke Saturday morning with burning eyes. I looked in the mirror. I had two swollen, red welts that looked like the beginning of two black eyes. I interrogated The Young Man, and he assured me that no, he did not in fact punch me in both eyes while I slumbered.

It hurt too much to cover up with makeup, so I walked around all weekend with red, stinging undereyes. And it's STILL red. And it STILL hurts like a motherfucker.

It did work, though. If you don't have sensitive skin, you might want to give it a try. To be on the safe side, though, I'd say don't keep it on for a full 24 hours.

Perceptions

If you know me well, then you know I'm a big spaz. I'm a high-strung, nervous worrier, basically. In fact, Zero told me once that he'd never met anyone who matched my complete and utter inability to relax. That was quite some time ago, though, and I have actually gotten somewhat better, but I still have a long way to go.

Imagine my surprise then, when Ed and Terry from my cooking class were helping me make guacamole for my housewarming party, and by "helping" I mean "doing everything while I freaked out about how much wasn't yet done for the party." I made some comment about how stressed the whole getting-ready-for-the-party-process had made me.

"You're stressed?" Ed asked. "You don't seem stressed." Terry agreed, and Ed continued. "You never seem stressed. You're like the chillest person in our class." Again, Terry agreed.

I was floored. I am always in a state of half-panic while in class. I laughed, and assured them that chill is possibly the most inaccurate description of me, ever. I stuck my head into the living and repeated what Ed and Terry had said to The Young Man, and was met with a look of disbelief, and if I remember correctly, another laugh.

Last night we did salads. Our group of three had four salads to prepare, and I thought, "No big deal, we have two hours. It's just salad. Well, when it became obvious that my wild rice salad with a citrus vinaigrette was not only going to take the entire time, but might even take longer, I started to panic.

"Oh my God," I said to Ed, who was doing two salads at once and who actually does deserve the chillest person in the class award, "I can't remember the last time I was this stressed in a class."

"I don't get it," Ed said. "Seriously. You seem totally calm."

I always say that people don't really change, ever. They just develop workarounds for bad patterns with time, and better ways to hide their flaws. So while I may never learn how to calm the fuck down, at least I'm getting better at keeping my spazzitude below the radar. Unless, you know me really well, of course. Then you're pretty much screwed.

Bummer of the Day

You know what bums me out? When someone puts up an honest, harrowing post about her experience(s) with sexual assault and is then bomabarded with comments telling her she deserved it.

Like, Gag Me With a Spoon

Saturday was our shellfish class. I was apprehensive about this class because shellfish and I don't always get along. Shrimp is lovely -- I have no quarrel with shrimp. I've spent many a Christmas Eve peeling and deveining shrimp. Same thing goes for lobster. But oysters, clams, mussels and the like freak me the fuck out.

I find them hard to swallow, literally, even when they're cooked, and the idea of consuming them raw gives me the heebie jeebies. Julie and I spent two weeks traipsing around Spain back in the day, and I picked everything that lived inside a shell off of every plate of paella that was put in front of me.

When Chef Barbara asked the requisite questions: "Do we have any vegans? Vegetarians? Is there anyone who doesn't feel comfortable handling raw shellfish? Is there anyone who would like to leave when I brutally murder the lobster?" she also asked if there was anyone who had never tried raw oysters before. I raised my hand.

"Will you try one today?" she asked.

"Maybe," I replied.

And I did. And I found the texture gross but the taste delightful. I'm conflicted. I even ate cooked clams and mussels, but still found them kind of nasty.

That wasn't the grossest part of my day, though. Neither was the lobster murder. The most disturbing part was when we each had to grab a handful of squid and prep them for cooking.



Here's how you dismantle a squid. You grip the tentacles right near the eyes, where they start, and yank. This pulls the innards out of the body cavity. There's a spiny thing that feels like plastic that also slides right out. Sometimes you need to go back into the body cavity and pull out some stuff that got left behind. Then you squeeze around the tentacles to push the mouth back into its head, and cut right at the base of the tentacles (if you don't do the squeeze, you'll end up with the mouth, which is inedible). The hollow body cavity is what gets sliced up into rings to make friend calamari, and the tentacles are what freaks you out when you see them on your plate of fried calamari.

That whole process may have been gross for you to read, but it was actually pretty fun to do. When I started working through my pile, I noticed one of my squid was rather large. My brain told me not to think about it, to just save it for last. I quickly dismantled the rest of my squid, though, and was forced to turn my attention toward the big guy.

I knew why he was so big, and I could not deal with it at all. I grabbed onto the tentacles to get ready for pulling, and when I gripped the body cavity, I felt it -- a fish that the squid had swallowed right before being caught. And he was stuck. I tugged a few more times and then started to feel a bit faint.

"I can't deal with this," I said, finally, putting my knife down. My classmate, Terry, offered to remove the fish. I owe her big time. Meanwhile, at the other table, Kat was also trying to wrangle not one, but three fish out of the belly of her squid. I did not offer to help, but I did suggest she use, and procure, a spoon, which did the trick and I wished I'd thought of it ten minutes earlier.

Later, I found out that breading and deep frying squid is much more enjoyable than finding partially-digested fish in their raw bodies. And eating it was the best part -- I even got over my squeamishness and chowed down on the tentacles. Yum.

Math for Beginners

So TYM has a business trip in Paris next month, and naturally I'm tagging along. We've decided to hang out for a couple of days in Paris once he's done with all of his Important Big Tobacco Business, and then hop on the train and go elsewhere. I've been looking into flights to and from everywhere, and I've decided that airline pricing makes no sense whatsoever.

Riddle me this:
New York City to Paris (One-Way): $1,500
New York City to Paris, plus Geneva back to New York City: $535

The hell?

An Open Letter to My Cat

Dear asshole John Brown:

I'm sure I forgot to tell you this, asshole John Brown, but last night I had my first practical exam at culinary school. You probably heard me discussing it on the phone with The Young Man when I got home, actually. I was so nervous! Well, I didn't do all that bad -- I got an 84 on the basic cooking technique part and a 90 on the knife skills part. I made some stupid mistakes, like under seasoning my crudite and not cutting my red pepper dice small enough, but still, I'm pleased overall.

What made me especially happy, asshole John Brown, was that when we got done with this harrowing four-hour exam, we got to taste some gravlax we'd made last weekend for our fish class (it has to cure for three days). It was delicious! I packed up a bunch and was happily plotting the fancy breakfast I was going to make myself the next morning.

See, I rarely eat dinner on Wednesdays. I leave too early for class and come home too late. And as I'm sure you must have noticed, the only thing I want to do when I get home from class is plop my weary body on the couch and watch Gossip Girl, preferably with a glass of wine in my hand. So I wake up pretty hungry on Thursdays, is what I'm saying, asshole John Brown.

Imagine my surprise when I awoke this morning, eager to make myself a breakfast fit for a lumberjack, with some of that oh-so-delicious gravlax featured prominently on my plate, only to find that you had not only managed to open the refrigerator door, but you had also climbed up to the very top shelf, stolen said gravlax, and had your own fancy breakfast. My surprise, asshole John Brown. And my horror.

I get it, asshole John Brown. Now that you've settled into the new apartment, you're ready to start your old shenanigans. Like peeing on the futon. And breaking into the refrigerator. But this time you've gone too far. You ruined my breakfast, dude, and for that, you will pay. I'm not sure how yet, but you will.

And should you eat my gravlax next time I make it at home, asshole John Brown, should you take even one bite of it, plan on my eating what's left with a side of fried kitty fritters.

Love,
Mom

As It Turns Out, I'm Only a Little Crazy

My relationship with sleep is a long and tortured one. I've tried meditation, therapy, and relaxation tapes, to name a few, but nothing ever really works consistently. It's the whole cycle of not being able to sleep, then worrying about how I'm going to function if I don't get to sleep, then calculating how much I'd get if I fell asleep RIGHT NOW, which so obviously isn't going to happen because it's two in the morning and I'm doing math for Christ's sake.

My routine is this: a few nights of insomnia, followed by exhaustion, followed by a Tylenol PM, and then I start the cycle all over again. It's not the end of the world -- I can function on not much sleep if alcohol isn't factored into the equation.

The thing about sleep aids is that they often result in weird dreams. A couple of weeks ago, while passed out on the couch in the middle of Dexter, I heard a woman's voice fill the apartment.

"Battery low," she said in a robot voice. I assumed I had been dreaming and woken up, and fell back asleep.

"Battery low," came the voice again. In my Tylenol PM haze, I was too zonked to get up and again, assumed it was all in my head.

"Battery low," she said a third time. I thought hard about where the sound could be coming from. It was too loud to be from my landlord's apartment upstairs. To my knowledge, I had not purchased anything that runs on batteries and talks to me. Maybe the smoke alarm? It looked pretty ancient. I fell back to sleep while I was trying to figure it out, and the woman's voice stopped. That or I slept through it.

The next morning, I assumed it had been a pill-induced dream state and forgot about it. The cats didn't seem disturbed, so obviously it had happened within the confines of my own head. Or that's what I thought. Until today.

"Battery low," I heard as I was trying to haul my ass out of bed at 7:00 to work on Cosmo. I jumped out of bed and ran toward the sound. Nothing. Then I heard a beep. Then another beep. I followed the beeps, and found a high-tech fire alarm that hadn't as yet been hung anywhere. I picked it up.

"Fire!" it said. "Fire! Fire!" I sniffed the air. No fire. I assumed that since her "low battery" cries had gone unanswered, she was pulling out the big guns. I removed the batteries. John Brown hid under the dining room table and stayed there for the better part of the morning. He believed her when she said "fire," I think.

The good news is, once I get new batteries for it and hang it up, it might just save my life. No way am I going to sleep through some lady robot screaming "Fire!" at me, Tylenol PM or no Tylenol PM.

Gimme More Video

So we have this thing called the Internets now, which means that things get leaked all up in here, which means we don't have to wait for next week's TRL or pay to watch things on iTunes. Here's Britney's first music video from the upcoming album. Initial thoughts: As I've mentioned before, I dig the song. I think she looks fantastic. All in all, though, the video's kind of boring. Enjoy:

Who's An Official Top Chef Tipster?

That would be me. Never let it be said that I don't give back enough.

Something in Common

I'm pretty sure this guy used to live in my apartment. I'd add "dragging dead bodies" to the list, though.

FYI, I'm Fat

So I'm always fascinated by BMI calculators and height/weight tables, because they really never take into consideration the fact that people have different frames and are different shapes and whatnot. Like me, for instance. I'm short. I have a thin upper body and an ass that should be in a rap video. I have legs as long as my friend who is three inches taller than me, and a torso that looks like someone squished me. I usually wear a size 6 (although sometimes a 4 and sometimes an 8), and have a fairly small frame.

So first I took a look at one of those height/weight charts. I'm 11 pounds overweight. Then I looked at a BMI calculator. I'm within the "normal" range, but I'm dangerously close to "overweight."

Here's my body:



Sorry, the naked one is on my other site, and you need to pay for that. My point, and I do have one, is that I'm not skinny, sure, but I'm not 11 pounds overweight, either. And I'm not saying that obesity isn't a huge problem in this country, because it is, but I'm just wondering how they're measuring the obesity.

The reason this post came about is because I saw this Flickr sideshow from Kate Harding today, which lists men and women's BMIs next to pictures of them, and I found it pretty fascinating.

Via Jezebel

Random Thoughts

Okay, I'm better. I had a couple of panic attacks. I slept a lot. I took an hour-long ride on the F-train and cried the entire time, staring at the ads up top so as not to make eye contact with anyone. Luckily I have good friends who do things like dropping little bags of painkillers in my mailbox, which I'm saving for a rainy day (Thanks, Former Roommate!). I also have a boyfriend who's pretty great at balancing tough love with being supportive, which helped immensely. I think the whole working-from-home thing makes it really hard to get out of my own head sometimes, because I can go whole days without interacting with anyone face-to-face.

ANYWAY, have you heard that Britney lost the kids? Yeah, I'm sad for her. I hope this is a wake up call for her to get her shit together. I really don't think I can watch Britney become the new Anna Nicole Smith.

And on a lighter note, anyone who has the misfortune of being on my buddy list knows just how deep my love for I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? is. Well, if you haven't seen lolsecretz, it's a cross between I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? and PostSecret. It's pretty much my favorite thing ever. Behold:



It's sick and wrong, I know, but it made me guffaw.

So hey, are you watching Gossip Girl? It's quite delicious. It's like Dynasty, but with teenagers. Lots of pretty people scheming and doing drugs and sleeping with each others' boyfriends and being bitchy. I love love love it. I also discovered Dexter last week, on one of the free In Demand channels, and watched the entire first season just in time to start the second season. And I never thought I'd say this back in the day when he was David on Six Feet Under, but Michael C. Hall is HOT. Maybe I just have a thing for vigilante serial killers.

I was watching 30-Minute Meals last night, as I like to do because I enjoy getting myself all riled up. Rachael Ray made fish stick parm, with fish sticks from a box. First of all, ew. And second, of all, can someone please explain to me why this woman is a cooking celebrity?

That's all I got for now.