ask me if I'm a pineapple

2003-01-19T22:19:00.000-08:00

But wait! This just in. After writing about the demise of TheSleaze I checked it and it's up again! But not with the same voluminous entries, and I'm wondering if it's even the same girl. Nice to know anyway, though...

2003-01-19T21:22:00.000-08:00

I remember several years ago I used to religiously read this website called TheSleaze.com. It was a gossip site written by this chick who seemed to have this amazing ability to get backstage and get completely trashed and hook up with just about everyone you'd want to read salacious stories about. Anyway, I read it every week for like a year or two and then one day she just stopped posting. It was so upsetting- I *still* go back to that site and check. But no. Anyway, I always like to think there are a couple of people checking my site for signs of life.

Fluff is on the brain tonight as I just finished watching the Golden Globes. Who I love: Tony Shalhoub winning for his OCD-detective show that I think is hilarious but always worry will be cancelled because it doesn't seem like anyone else watches it. What I'm wondering: how has U2 managed to brainwash the entire world into thinking they are a great band? What I'm regretting: the 2,000 chips with guacamole consumed over the course of the evening. What I'm resenting: the fact that I have to work tomorrow when nobody else does.

2002-12-11T12:54:00.000-08:00

Due to overwhelming demand (OK, one person) I'm gonna start writing this again despite the fact that anyone who did read it has probably stopped checking it as I never update it. We'll start off with today's burning issue: sweaters. Why the hell can't stores make nice soft comfortable sweaters not made of stuff that makes me sneeze? When did cotton become such an outlaw? Shivering in my three-quarter sleeves, I went out to purchase something big and fluffy at lunchtime - even arm warmers would have sufficed - and found only turtlenecks that felt like hairshirts, and cardigans made of bunny hair that made my eyes start watering when I came within a couple of feet of them. Hence, still freezing at 4. Bring back the uniform, I say. Bring back formal office wear. Minus the pantyhose rule. There's nothing worse than pantyhose. Except maybe the word "sandalfoot."

2002-11-16T17:23:00.000-08:00

OK, I've been shamefully neglecting the weblog, I admit... life circumstances have been such that I've been all busy to the point of not even having time to write anything here... but I'll be back soon! I swear I will. Keep checking. In the meantime, entertain yourself with this, unless you have loud speakers and are at a job where people don't like hearing swear words.

2002-10-21T21:35:00.000-07:00

So I'm just back from a whirlwind trip to the 18th annual Chicago Pinball Expo under the guise of journalistic investigation (a great excuse to play endless games of Pinbot and Black Knight 2000 and hang out with a bunch of people who make you feel relatively un-obsessed - and, I might add, wildly untalented). Although I had resolved not to leave the confines of the Ramada O'Hare for the entire weekend, there was one brief trip out into the world, with a carful of World Champions, as we searched in vain for a Red Lobster (but settled for strip-mall Mexican). Sunday's tournament was fierce, with the grand prize (a pinball machine, natch) going to Lyman, the front-runner with the jockey-like stance, though I had been rooting for Paul, the unflappable underdog with the mullet. A weekend well spent- though now I have way too much material to write a little article, and not nearly enough to write a big one. More research is definitely necessary.

2002-10-11T07:14:00.000-07:00

Dear rest of the world,
Just wanted to let you know, for the record, that there are really quite a few of us over here who can't fucking believe what our supposedly democratic president is up to these days. We tried really hard to keep him out of the White House, but he had connections. Now he's probably going to get a bunch of us killed even though most of us think the whole Iraq thing is bullshit. So we just wanted to make sure you knew that, before all this shit goes down. We had nothing to do with it.

(Now all I have to do is get major world leaders reading my blog. I mean, if they don't already.)

2002-09-30T21:02:00.000-07:00

OK, I know I have been terribly bad about keeping up the blog. I've been all distracted lately, and was thinking of just putting Pineapple on hiatus, but then there are those random moments that bear retelling here, and it would be a shame if my own self-imposed hiatus made it impossible. So please just bear with me in my distractedness, and hopefully it will subside soon....

anyway, here's the thing that happened today: I got my pupils dilated to see if I had glaucoma (I don't) and then had to make my way down to Tribeca to have drinks before going to see an adorable young band at the Knitting Factory, and I stumbled out onto the street from the eye doctor looking like possessed Willow from "Buffy" with my eyes all black, and couldn't read anything, and put on my sunglasses even though it was 6 in the evening and it looked stupid, and the five-minute walk to the subway felt like quite an adventure, what with me trying not to walk into people and vampirically shrinking from bright lights, and the effect of the whole thing was that it really made me nostalgic for drugs. Is this as kicky as my adventures are going to get from now on? Dilated pupils in midtown? Good god, I hope not.

2002-09-23T20:27:00.000-07:00

Talk about story intros that just write themselves....

2002-09-16T20:51:00.000-07:00

So I worked until pretty late last week one night and then I went to the bar afterward to have a well-deserved drink and there, amongst several co-workers, was the Big Cheese, the editor in chief, to whom I was introduced by a rather inebriated friend, and who seemed, himself, to be somewhat toasted, and then someone asked me where I was, and I wittily replied, "working - unlike all of you," which, in retrospect, seems like something one might not want to say upon first meeting the person who signs your paychecks. Yes. In any case, he went on to invite me to dig into his plate of calimari, so I suppose all was not lost. But still. Still.

2002-09-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

Commemorated the day by seeing "Manhattan" in a giant, packed theater. Amazing to watch with a crowd of emotional New Yorkers. If I ever get my dachshund, I will name him Waffles in homage.

2002-09-10T18:27:00.000-07:00

The ride home on the subway was pretty creepy. I was just reading my book for a while - well, doing my usual half-reading, half-daydreaming thing - and I noticed the person next to me reading the newspaper full of awful 9/11 photos and then remembered all the dire warnings on the news today and looked around and everyone was all silent and looking around, too, and I think we were all partly mulling over that tiny, tiny possibility that our subway car might get blown up (or is it just me and my vivid catastrophe-centric imagination?) and partly thinking that this time last year we were all unsuspectingly having our last nice carefree fall evening.

Which, I might add, I am going to try my utmost to re-create with the help of a hot tub, cold Rolling Rocks, and friends. Orange alert, my ass.

2002-09-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

Wow, a whole week of no updates. My tiny readership may well dwindle to none. What can I say? I've been out soaking up the last drops of summer. On Sunday, put aside my compulsion to a) exercise, b) work or c) at least make some sort of overture toward cleaning the bathroom, and did absolutely nothing of any productivity whatsoever. Drank midday cocktails, and watched "Mad Max," which I was surprised to discover is not the same as "Road Warrior" - that, it turns out, is the sequel, and "Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome" is the third in the series, not the second. Who knew? At any rate, I'm not sure Mad Max is really worth the time. Too many shots of Mel as not-yet-mad Max with his adoring wife, before she gets run over by the motorcycle gang and things get more interesting. Also, tonight found myself wondering when English Muffins got smaller - or did I just get bigger? There was a time when one of them would constitute breakfast. Now, not so much. I really think they're making them smaller, though.

2002-09-01T11:21:00.000-07:00

Went dancing last night - showed up a little on the early side at midnight, but it got packed by one and we were all happily sandwiched in the midst of a crowd on the dance floor. Then, all of a sudden, a drag queen was up on stage introducing the evening's headliner, some live band dressed all in white with sunglasses and looking extremely bored, who proceeded to bring us all to a dead stop with their leaden attempt at Devo-emulation, accompanied by a small white guy who kept yelling such original things as "awwwww yeah" and "aaaight?". In ten minutes most of us were slinking away to drink beer and stand around annoyedly waiting for them to be done already. One of my friends noted, somewhat optimistically I thought, that "avant-garde culture is *supposed* to be alienating." Yeah, but isn't it also supposed to be artistic or original or something? We stayed, but the buzz kill lingered. When we finally left, we happened upon a large, brown silicone penis in the middle of the road. Which, in an incredibly immature gesture, we placed on someone's windshield.

2002-08-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

Borderline chilly wind blowing in my window this evening... fall cannot possibly be approaching. But if it is, it brings with it the demands of new fall clothes, a prospect that is even chillier. I need a mother-type (not my mother, who is so not typically motherly this way) to march in here, grab my hand and tell me we're going shopping for clothes and we're not coming home until I have a new pair of pants, new shoes, and a couple of pretty new dresses. And maybe a Trapper Keeper.

2002-08-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

For the second time in a row, I wore a strapless dress to a Jewish wedding. Obviously it didn't get drilled into my head the first time around that when you've got people grabbing your hands and then you're all running/dancing around the room in a line swinging your hands up and down wildly, you don't want to be wearing something that's tenuously attached to your upper body. Way too many close calls. On the bright side, there was a mashed potato bar.

2002-08-20T21:34:00.000-07:00

Here is the song I can't stop humming to myself.... unfortunately the lyrics don't lend themselves to bursting into song in the office....

2002-08-19T20:34:00.000-07:00

The woman with the breast pumps in the bathroom at work (see earlier entry) is getting to be a regular fixture in my life. Go into bathroom around 7 p.m., apply lipstick, make small talk with woman with suction cups on her breasts. Speaking of which- babies, I mean, not breasts, though I know I wasn't directly speaking of them- I was totally into watching all these babies, well, more like toddlers on the beach the other day. Especially this one with a turquoise diaper (do they make them in colors, now?) who kept screaming at the top of his/her lungs. Like really happily. It looked like fun.

2002-08-18T20:15:00.000-07:00

The beach today had nice-sized waves and sparse people (thanks, totally inaccurate weather forecasters!). Would have been perfect but for the herds of jellyfish floating around everywhere. Where did they all come from? Sure, they're not the sting-y kind. But still - having little balls of that squishy, snot-like substance bumping up against you in the water... it's enough to keep you on dry land. Well, almost enough, anyway. I perservered despite being totally grossed out by the jellyfish, but then got my foot sliced by who knows what down there on the ocean floor, and my friend got pinched by something, and then a helicopter flew by just low enough to make me think it was scouting for sharks.... the combination of all those sent us out for a couple of hours. In retrospect, though, I suppose it's a good sign that there are actually living organisms in the water. I just wish they weren't so creepy.

2002-08-15T21:03:00.000-07:00

Best use of inappropriate quotation marks: deli at 62nd St. with a big sign outside inviting you to come in and Create "A" Salad.

2002-08-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

Went to see "Hairspray," the John Waters movie turned Broadway musical, tonight and was seated next to some old guy with a younger girl who, at intermission, was warmly greeted by Jeffrey Lyons and then by some woman who excitedly asked for his autograph, and I was so curious, but somehow didn't think it would be appropriate to tap him on the shoulder and ask "so who ARE you, anyhow?" So I guess I'll never know. But the show was great. Especially Harvey Fierstein (who for a little while I confused with Harvey Weinstein, and thought, what a nice little side project for him) in the Divine role.

2002-08-12T20:57:00.000-07:00

So I walk into the bathroom at work this evening and seated on the couch in the entryway is a woman with her shirt pulled up and breast pumps on. Breast pumps! Like these suction cup things attached to them and tubes going into this machine and it's making this machine-y noise. And I know I'm supposed to be OK with this because, I don't know, sisterhood and all, but yuck! I scooted out of there as quickly as humanly possible. And I can't help thinking, you know what, honey? If you're spending so much time at work that you are attaching suction cups to your tits instead of your INFANT, maybe it's time to take some maternity leave!

2002-08-11T20:45:00.000-07:00

OK- I promise this is the last I will say about it- but I saw XXX this weekend and it did not disappoint. High point for me was the scene in which Vin is clad in only a lavish fur coat, long john bottoms and combat boots. You must admit, not a combo most men could pull off. But this is perhaps a greater example of the Diesel effect: the entire audience - and this is a Saturday night Times Square 10:00 show crowd - was oddly well-behaved. I mean watching them file in you would have thought you wouldn't be able to hear anything but a chorus of cell phones, beepers and unclever retorts to the characters onscreen, but the movie was so loud and everyone was so rooting for XXX that I got through it without one time wondering if I was going to have to throw my popcorn at someone (a response I have yet to actually use, but spend an inordinate amount of movie time fantasizing about). We all cheered at all the right places- like when Vin para-snowboarded down the mountain and started an avalanche with a bomb and stayed just enough ahead of it so that he could leap onto a radio tower and cling to it while the snow obliterated his enemies. Awesome. (Obviously, I need to go inundate myself with Wim Wenders films or something to get my head screwed on straight again....)

2002-08-10T05:37:00.000-07:00

It seems I'm not the only one with a crush on Vin...

2002-08-07T08:06:00.000-07:00

This morning the Jesus-esque guy who's always walking around the park (see earlier blog entry) smiled at me as I rode by on my bike. I swear he did. It was just a split second. But I feel like this is a big step forward for our relationship.

2002-08-05T19:58:00.000-07:00

I never really understood the whole Russell Crowe phenomenon, but I have to admit something: I'm just crazy about that Vin Diesel. What a man! That giant bald head... those tree-trunk arms... the miles of tattoos.... I just want him to pick me up under his arm and carry me around. Kind of like that scene in the locker room in Sixteen Candles. How did I miss The Fast and the Furious? And that terrible sci-fi movie, Pitch Black I think it was? Nobody has ever exuded more testosterone than Vin. He is all action, no talk - or, well, sort of inarticulate talk anyway. He is a superhero without the dorky spandex outfit. He's dreamy.