This weekend, my improv group, Dumpster Tequila, went on a road trip. And I have to say, it was just magical. In improv, there’s a thing called “group mind,” which is when everyone in the group is so linked in their collective consciousness, they instinctively know what moves the others are going to make. Well, it’s like Providence and Dumpster Tequila had developed some sort of group mind. We knew where to go, and it knew where to take us.

After enjoying a delicious breakfast in NYC, we hopped on the bus to Providence (after the Aaron Carter dance party in line, of course). Many rounds of Scrabble and road trip games ensued, and of course we got yelled at for being too loud. Sorry ‘bout it. Anyway, it quickly came to my attention that, though I was the one who brought it up in the planning of the trip, I hadn’t brought my bathing suit, while mostly everyone else had. You guys, I love swimming. I was devastated. But wouldn’t you know it, there was a mall within walking distance of our hotel (Providence!).

Everyone knows bathing suit shopping sucks balls. And this was no exception. There was barely anything for me to try on. At the second store I went to, I was about to settle for an ugly, too-expensive mom bathing suit, when I saw it. Right by the register, shining like a blue beacon. An adorable suit in my size that was ten dollars cheaper. After a quick trip to the dressing room, where it obviously fit, I bought it, only to find out it was on sale (Providence!).

After a delicious dinner in a fun bar with a weirdo painting of dead musical legends in a Last Supper-like pose (a smiling Kurt Cobain next to John Lennon with Biggie standing nearby), we took our swim. Later that night, we had a great show, but little did we know, the best was yet to come. As we came out of the beautiful theatre, we heard music. Not just any music, but…a marching band? Sure enough, we rounded the corner and saw a huge group of people spilling into the street being lead by a brass band. We quickly followed them into a park and were treated to an amazing impromptu encore by a band (we later found out) called What Cheer? Brigade. We stuck around dancing (though not as joyously as the band’s fans) until the cops came. It was maybe one of the coolest things I’ve been a part of (Providence!).

Sunday, after a delicious brunch, we stumbled upon an amazing art project done by a group called Tape Art for the 375th anniversary of the city. They are making a mural inside an outdoor ice rink out of tape and plywood. We took lots of pictures and talked to the artists. They work on their pieces for weeks, but once complete, they’re only up for twenty-four hours. This will be done tomorrow and gone by Thursday. How lucky we got to see it (Providence!).

And after walking around seeing all the old houses, Brown University (No, Emma Watson doesn’t go there anymore), and the State House, our perfect road trip had to come to a perfect end. And even the most perfect road trip isn’t without its setbacks. Our three and a half hour bus trip home? It took five and a half hours. Thanks, Providence!

I have been bad. It’s been almost two weeks since my last post.  Fail.  Sorry, dudes.  I’ve experienced so much pop culture since then, I’m going to give you the highlights.  As I sit here listening to the Christmas music channel on digital cable (why do I always forget about those music channels?!), let’s look back on the past two weeks, shall we?

When last we talked, it was about Prince William’s engagement.  Well, he tried to steal the thunder of another Brit, but he was unsuccessful: HP7: Part 1 opened on the 19th, and I went to a midnight showing.  You know, I just realized how annoying it is that the movies aren’t numerically symmetrical with the books, what with seven being the most magical number.  Right, Jo?  That being said, I liked the movie.  The action sequences were good.  Though, the first movie didn’t quite make the case that a split was necessary.  It was a little too slow, so for it to be worth it for me, the second movie better not leave out any detail.  Again, though, I did enjoy it.  Especially Godric’s Hollow and Malfoy Manor.  Okay, HP geeking out is over now.

The second pop culture event I took part in was seeing the Broadway musical Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.  I’ll try to refrain from fagging out here (there will be plenty of time for that later), but the cast of this hot mess is amazing.  Patti LuPone, Sherie Rene Scott, Laura Benanti, Brian Stokes Mitchell…  If those names mean nothing to you, you should be ashamed.  This one should be familiar though: Justin Guarini!  Yep, that curly-haired moptop from season one of American Idol.  Anyway, if you love crazy trainwrecks, see this show.  It’s amazing.

The next big event (commence fagging out) was a midnight showing of Burlesque in Chelsea!  Oh.  My.  God.  That movie was amazing.  I don’t know if it was bad enough to be of Showgirls calibur, but it was pretty terrible.  And also fabulous.  The production numbers!  Cher!  Xtina!  And the fact that there was only one true burlesque number performed!  The rest were just girls doing hip-hop/jazz hybrid dances in underwear.  The audience applauded after each one, and laughed at the terrible writing/acting, which one woman got very upset about.  She kept asking her boyfriend (?), “What is so funny?  I’m not getting it.  Am I missing something?”  Brilliant.

Then there came Thanksgiving.  I spent the morning baking and watching my friends from Memphis perform in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (I hate the lip-syncing that happens during that parade).  I spent the afternoon/evening with my sister, sister-in-law, nephew, our Brooklyn family, and Emily.  That is a day to be thankful for.  Here are my pies:

Saturday, we went to the Christmas tree farm, and picked out two beautiful trees: one for me and one for my sister’s family.  My nephew was absolutely enamored with everything Christmas: Santa, snowmen, reindeer, etc.  And yesterday, I spent all day watching Fa La La La Lifetime movies (A Diva’s Christmas Carol?  Yes, please!) and decorating my tree.  As with last year, my tree is decorated with some cheap 99¢ store ornaments, but mostly handmade ones cut out from my Entertainment Weeklys, with Ellen Degeneres serving as my angel (as she is everyone’s).  This year, there were some new additions joining last year’s Tina Fey, Bones and Booth, Heidi Montag, Lady Gaga, and others.  My tree is proud to name these amongst its occupants: the Gilmore Girls, Cher, Justin Bieber, RuPaul, and Melissa and Joey.  ‘Tis the season!  Here’s a pic:

Well, it has begun: the holiday season.  For me, it starts with Halloween and goes straight through New Year’s.  Yep, about two months worth.  I’ve already caught flack for the fact that I start listening to Christmas music November 1st (more on that later), but I don’t care.  This is my celebration.  And if my Halloween was any indication of how awesome this year’s festivities will be, things are looking good! 

I had a great weekend of parties and costumes and babies.  As I’ve previously stated in this blog, I love Halloween costumes.  This year, I had a pretty amazing costume, and I’ve never been happier that ugly clothes are back in fashion.  You see, I was Clarissa Darling, that early ’90s Nickelodeon star who would explain it all.  She wore bright colors and lots of obnoxious jewelry.  And I spent about $55 at Kmart and Claire’s Accessories finding the perfect elements to make my costume.  The only thing I was missing were combat boots, which I own, but are at my parents’ house in Chicago.  If only I would have thought of it sooner…  Ah, well.  I went to a great party Friday and got delightfully (I think…I don’t recall slapping anyone) drunk.  The rest of the weekend was spent with adorable babies in costume and handing out candy to trick-or-treaters.  How fantastic.  Anyway, here’s my costume along with its inspiration:

So, onto the next holiday of the season, which you are correct to say is Thanksgiving.  But in my world, Thanksgiving may as well be Christmas Eve.  Don’t get me wrong; I love Thanksgiving.  To me, Thanksgiving is about sharing a meal with people you love and being with my New York family.  Now, I’m lucky enough to have a sister nearby, who is, obviously, my actual family.  But I’ve also been welcomed into this glorious chosen family of hers.  And every year since I’ve moved here, we’ve all had Thanksgiving together.  But I know that some year, were she not to be around for Thanksgiving, I would be welcome at numerous other tables of those in New York who I love and who love me.  Oh, the holidays do make me sentimental, don’t they?  On a lighter note, I also love Thanksgiving for the pie.

As I stated earlier, I caused a bit of an angry convo on facebook when I updated my status that I was listening to Christmas music.  That’s my rule: November 1st.  And that rule isn’t to make me start celebrating early, it’s to keep me from celebrating even sooner!  Christmas means all things winter to me, and winter is my most favorite season.  No joke, I love when the wind is so cold it stings your face.  And once you enter a warm building, you can still feel that sting on your face.  And you can just tell your cheeks and nose are red.  And snow!  Don’t get me started on snow.  In the words of Lorelai Gilmore, fellow snow-lover, “The world changes when it snows.  It gets quiet.  Everything softens.”  Now, I get why it annoys people that stores start putting out one holiday’s items before another holiday has even happened, but I can’t help it.  Sometimes, in the middle of the summer, I’ll just get this Christmasy feeling out of nowhere and wish it were December.  So you don’t have to break out your *NSYNC Home for Christmas CD, but I’m gonna go load it on my iPod.  Don’t begrudge me that.

I understand how reality TV works.  Really.  I get that it’s not really real.  You have some people who are putting on an act, and even those who aren’t are acting only as “real” as they can in an abnormal situation.  And there are the editors, who are the real storytellers, taking hours of footage and turning out storylines of compelling melodrama or just silliness.  And I also know, thanks to Laguna Beach, The Hills, etc., that there are those kind of “reenactment” reality TV shows.  But I never watched those shows; I just wasn’t interested.  Well, now that fake sort of reality TV is infiltrating one of my favorite reality TV genres: food shows.

It started with Cupcake Wars.  I didn’t question the validity of this show at first.  Perhaps I was too dazzled by the delicious looking cupcakes.  Or too annoyed by the condescending way the host informs the contestants of the passing time with ridiculous statements. (Don’t forget to include time in your recipe! You have ten minutes!)  Or perhaps I was just happy to see the actor/carpenter have a place on TV again (Trading Spaces, anyone?).  But the more I watched the show, the more things seemed suspect.  The premise is that four cupcake bakers battle it out in three rounds with one winning the chance to have their 1,000 cupcakes served on their specially made display at some sort of event immediately following the show.  Now, sometimes I noticed the cupcakes served at the events were minis, not the full-sized cupcakes they made during the show.  Not to mention, the more I thought about it, the less it seemed likely an event would be cool with serving 1,000 cupcakes made hastily in a TV studio kitchen.  There has to be days between the show and the event.  I’m not buying it.  Plus, what do they do with the losing teams cupcakes?!

Then today (which prompted this blog post), I was watching Amazing Wedding Cakes on one of those lady channels.  On this show, they usually show the cake’s journey from consultation to execution and delivery.  You get to see the couple with the cake on their wedding day.  That seems like a lot of set-up if it’s just a reenactment.  On an episode I watched today, though, something caught my eye.  I knew one of the couples!  We’re just acquaintances, and I knew they were together, but not that they were getting married.  I called one of our mutual friends, and he said he didn’t know they were getting married.  A quick facebook search revealed they were not married, not on facebook anyway.  Amazing Wedding Cakes, how could you?!  Sure enough, they showed a consultation with the couple, and they made the cake, but it was never delivered.  There was no cake-cutting moment because there was no wedding!  So beware if you’re watching this show and there’s no happy bride and groom shown.  It’s all lies!

The worst of these shows, however, is DC Cupcakes.  And not because it tries to trick you into thinking it’s reality.  Because it thinks you’re so much of a moron, you’ll believe it’s reality.  It’s one thing to do a reality show that consists of realistic reenactments.  I mean, if I hadn’t known that couple on Amazing Wedding Cakes, I might not have realized some of it was fake.  But the people on DC Cupcakes are so obviously acting, it’s impossible to suspend your belief for even a second.  And yet…it’s so bad, I can’t really stop watching it.  They’re such terrible actors, and the reenactments are so contrived, it really is riveting to watch.  I find myself laughing out loud at the sheer silliness of it.  One time, the sisters who own the bakery had aday to finish a big display of cupcakes.  Cut to a shot of them waking up underneath a table, where they had fallen asleep on broken down pink pastry boxes.  They stretched and yawned like cartoon characters and exclaimed, “Oh my gosh!  We fell asleep!”  Brilliant.  When it’s this bad, I’m totally okay with the lie.

It’s that time again: October baseball!  Now, neither of my teams are still in it.  The White Sox started slowly, had a strong mid-season, and petered out at the end.  And the Mets…well, I told you guys Jerry Manuel sucks.  But, I still love the Postseason.  Okay, non-baseball fans, that’s all the sports talk you’ll have to endure.  Because the real point is that I happen to be cat-sitting at my sister’s and I have the game on.  But if I were at my house, I wouldn’t be able to watch it.  Fox and Cablevision are fighting, and millions of people, including me, are the ones losing out.  If my sister didn’t have Time Warner, I wouldn’t know that the Giants have a rookie named Buster Posey.  Buster Posey!  You’re welcome for that gem, fellow Cablevision customers.

Now, I don’t know if it’s a New York thing, or a digital cable thing, but, in my youth, I don’t ever remember channels being turned off because two rich companies were arguing over which company would get richer.  And it’s certainly not a coincidence that this is happening now.  Cablevision, you’re not fooling me.  Fox is losing out on big ratings; why would they be cool with cutting off service unless you were trying to screw them over?  And with the Rocky Horror Glee episode airing next week, Fox must really be hoping this is resolved.  And pretty damn quickly.  Cablevision also happened to get into a dispute with ABC right before the Ocsars were to air.  Interesting, huh?  ABC was suddenly missing from all of our TVs on the day of the Oscars, only to return to the air about 15 minutes into the ceremony.  Of course, we had all made alternate viewing plans.  My friends had to relocate a party they had been planning.

In fact, in the year I’ve been a Cablevision customer, there have been three (three!) interruptions of service.  I’m sure the networks and channels’ parent companies are as much to blame in the situation, but all I have helping me judge is a condescending message that is read by a calming female voice whenever I turn on my TV.  Well, you know what, Cablevision?  I don’t care who’s to blame.  All I care about is getting the services I pay (a lot) of money for.  And I care that I wasn’t able to see my friend Rachel on her Food Network reality show when it began airing.  You took Food Network from me?!  How could you?!  I had to watch it online.  So let that be a warning to get your shit together, cable companies, because the Internet is reading this post right now, laughing it’s streaming-content ass off.

BTW, here’s Buster Posey:

It’s always best to be cautious when welcoming in a new season. Those first couple of weeks are dicey — you never know if it’s going to be t-shirt warm or jacket cold. In fact, I’m outside, and it went from one to the other as I sat here. But I’m not afraid to say it: I’m so glad it’s finally fall! In my rankings of the seasons, fall comes in at two, behind winter and ahead of spring, with summer bringing up the rear. Weather-wise, I think fall and spring might tie, but in activities and treats, fall takes the (pumpkin-flavored) cake.

Perhaps my favorite thing about the fall is Halloween. Oh man, do I love Halloween. I love getting dressed up. I’m totally going to be that mom who still wears a full costume to hand out candy. And if you’ve read this blog, you know my stance on Halloween candy — maybe this year, trick-or-treaters! I pride myself on never having repeated a costume (at least once I started choosing them myself), and can tell you what I’ve been every year since kindergarten. Some highlights: 3rd grade: The Statue of Liberty, 5th grade: a Stop Sign, 9th grade: Pippi Longstocking, 11th grade: a Newsie (duh), 12th grade: Daria, Soph year of college: Kelly Osbourne, last year: a Walk of Shame. I also have this (apparently annoying) habit of keeping my costumes a surprise. It’s not because I think they’re super amazing, but just because I think it’s fun for everyone to show up to work or school or wherever and all be surprised. So, I do have an idea of what I’m going to be this year, but I’m certainly not going to tell you!

I’m also a huge fan of all things food that come with fall. Pumpkin flavored everything. Apple cider, hot and cold. Thanksgiving-y and harvest-y foods. You know it’s fall when you walk into a Starbucks and see the Pumpkin Spice latte up on their specials board. I got one the other day! Not from Starbucks, but still… Food related activities are also super fun. When I was little, we always went apple picking every fall, an extremely country thing for our very suburban family to do. It was so much fun. And the pies that would be made! Oh, the pies! Two years ago, my mom, sisters, and little nieces came out in September, and we went apple picking. Well, they (and a zillion other relatives, including my dad and a nephew who hadn’t been born yet) are coming back in a few weeks, and apple picking is penciled in on the itinerary. Plus, there’s always the trip to the pumpkin patch! Now that I have a nephew in the city, Halloween is going to be even more fun!

As for fall entertainment, there’s obviously great TV to look forward to (as previously blogged about), and fall baseball! It’s one of the best times to go see a ball game (depending on how your team is doing). Hopefully my White Sox can “cinch it up, and hunker down” as Hawk Harrleson says, and end this season with a bang! The theatre season is also starting, and while many shows I’m excited for aren’t opening until 2011, there are some great shows opening this fall. Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, which I missed at The Public, is thankfully coming to Broadway. I’m also interested to see Elf and can’t wait for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, obvi (Patti! Sherie! Laura!) And don’t forget movies. The one I’m absolutely salivating over is The Social Network. Oh, man. It. Looks. Epic. Not to mention Part 1 of HP and The Deathly Hallows. All in all, I think this fall is shaping up to be pretty shamzing!

The most amazing thing happened to me the other day.  You know how you’ll be doing your laundry and you’ll find $20 you didn’t know you had in a pocket?  Well, it was kind of like that, but instead of finding $20 in my pocket, I found Bagel Bites in my freezer!  I have been trying (and failing) to be better at cooking for myself, but I’ve been so busy lately, my pantry and refrigerator are wastelands.  So, when I found these Bagel Bites (acquired in a fit of nostalgia for a girls’-night-in when my friend Susan was visiting), it was like manna from heaven.  And tonight, that manna is what I ate for dinner.

I wouldn’t immediately think of food as being a part of pop culture, but it totally is, especially if you’re a kid.  I mean, you have snacks and cola wars (Pepsi!), not to mention what goes into school lunches.  My elementary school and junior high didn’t have hot lunch, so it was all about what chips you brought and whether your mom got you Gushers or not (mine almost never did).  Those of you who had hot lunch will have to back The Baby-sitters Club up on this (as that’s where all my junior high hot lunch knowledge comes from), but bringing your own lunch under those circumstances was extremely uncool.  Then for your after-school activities, Bagel Bites and Totino’s Pizza Rolls (which we also bought, and consumed, on girls’-night-in) were status symbols.  If you had those when your friends came over, your parents got it.

There was also status attached to Halloween candy, not only in the size of the bars given out, but the quality of candy.  Tootsie Rolls are, to some, a Halloween classic.  To me, they are disgusting and a dime a dozen.  People who give out Tootsie Rolls on Halloween have no vision.  Same goes for Dum-Dums and Smarties.  You’d probably think I’d be all about full size candy bars, but they’re a little too ostentatious for my liking.  I don’t need to know you can afford to buy Hershey bars in bulk from Sam’s Club.  Just give me a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, and I’m happy.  The best way to go, in my opinion, is the assortment of Hershey’s Fun-Size candy bars.  We can all agree that Fun-Size is a bit of a misnomer, but still, they are the perfect Halloween candy.  And that’s what I buy.  Even though I live in an apartment building in Brooklyn.  And in four Halloweens living here, I’ve never had a trick-or-treater.  But I buy it anyway.  Just in case.  Because I know what’s up.