Last Days of 2006

They say that deaths happen in threes but what they really mean is that celebrity deaths happen in threes because, um, there are lots and lots of people dying every minute of the day. I mention this because two famous people died recently – James Brown on Christmas Day and Gerald Ford on the day after. So who’s the third? If I were a really old or really sick celebrity, I’d be taking all of my vitamins and looking twice before I crossed the street.

Which makes me wonder: is there a time limit for that three thing? Like, is it three in a week or in two weeks or a month or what? And do the celebrities have to be on the same level, like A-listers or B-movie actors? Would James Brown and President Ford be on the same celebrity level? Famous singer, sort of famous president. I didn’t actually remember Ford, I have to admit. He was president years before I was born and we barely studied him in American History. Something to do with Nixon or whatever. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s cool to be president regardless of how you got there but did people like Ford or Johnson feel like frauds, only having become president because some resigned or died? (Yikes!)

Anyway, I don’t want to think that there’s a third person getting ready to kick the bucket just because James Brown and Gerald Ford did but we’ll see if that saying is true. If it happens before the end of the year, I’ll be pretty impressed.

At the end of every year, newspapers and magazines run lists of people who passed away. Music, books, politics, and so on. It reminds me of the Oscars when they show pictures of people who died the year before and everyone in the audience claps or cheers or goes “awww…” Some people get lots of applause and other people get whispers of “who’s that?” I think, to be fair to everyone, the host should say something like, “Could you please hold your applause until the conclusion of the segment?” That way family and friends of the unpopular dead people are not offended.

Just my opinion.

So with all of this talk of death and dying, here is my final list for 2006:

Top 3.5 Trends I’d Like to See Die

1. Clothes: Dresses Over Jeans
2. Movies: Torture as Entertainment
3. Food: Cheese on Everything
3.5 Culture: Celebrities in Rehab

I never did get the whole dress over jeans thing. Can’t you decide what to wear? Did you run out of tights or pantyhose? Did you think that was a long shirt when you pulled it from the closet while you were dressing in the dark? I tried this look exactly once: a flowered sun dress with cap sleeves over a pair of Lucie’s low-rider Levi’s. My hips looked a mile wide and my stomach pooched out below my belly button. It was not a good look for me – or for most people. Please let this style expire on December 31.

And speaking of expiration…take the torture movies like “Saw” and “Hostel” and “Turistas” and “Texas Chainsaw Massacre: the Beginning of the End of Civilization as We Know It.” It’s not fun seeing someone’s toe clipped off with hedge trimmers or watching someone crawl through their own blood after their Achilles tendons are severed. It’s just gross. And it doesn’t make me feel sorry for these people. I just think they’re stupid for wandering into the beach resort/hostel/backwoods, looking for cheap sex and drugs. Don’t rent these movies. Instead, put “The Break-Up” on your Netflix queue – the most underrated movie of 2006.

The country is clearly mired in cheese – pop culturally and food-wise. Cheese is on everything these days – not just on top of pizza but between the layers of meat and inside the crust and in bits of fried dough and hey! Stop frying everything! Fried vegetables at all those TGI McBennigan’s…I mean, come on! Leave the poor veggies alone.

And last, but not least, and certainly I don’t think it will ever happen which is why it only gets honorable mention, but could we please keep the celebrities from blaming all the nasty things they do on drugs or booze or extreme fatigue (Miss Lohan, my finger is pointed at you!)? Celebrities all claim they’re not role models but that only worked in like, Charlie Chaplin’s days before 400 channels of entertainment news and a million gossip blogs and hundreds of glossies at the checkout counter. Don’t tell me you don’t know people will do what you do – isn’t that what drew you to the business anyway? I know people have problems and they should take care of them but this sort of behavior trickles down to regular people and their regular kids and well, pretty soon, the country is just making excuses for itself.

I guess that’s all I have to say for 2006. It seems kind of negative to end the year like that and gosh, I am totally not a negative person but I think it’s important to want to make changes in the future.

Knowing we can effect change is what gives us hope. Happy New Year!

B- is For Blog

The grades are in. And (drumroll, please)…

Mega Girl gets a B-!

Evelyn told me she liked my lists and my blog topics because they aren’t typical. Plus, only a small space was dedicated to shopping, she said, and even that was just talk ABOUT shopping, the concept of shopping, not the purchasing of things itself.

Well, all right.

There was room for improvement, of course. My posts are too long and too infrequent. I need to post shorter and more often.

Yeah, see, did she NOT read the first couple of posts? How can I blog more than once a week? I don’t have a computer. Erg. I guess I’m going to have to spend more time at the computer lab or at Reggie’s if I want to do that.

Okay. I’ll try. For second semester, I will try.

In the meantime, I leave you with a special Christmas Meta List:

Top 3.5 Ornaments on My Christmas Tree

1. Flight Attendant Barbie
2. Homer Simpson
3. Origami Stars
3.5 Gold-Colored Macaroni Angel

When I was six, I asked Lucie for a Barbie doll (remember, she had told me there was no Santa the year before) and this is what I got: a mini-Barbie ornament that I couldn’t do anything with. I couldn’t swap her clothes or change her shoes or braid her hair. Plus she was a flight attendant which meant that her hands were forever in that two-fingered salute they do when they show people where the exits are before the plane takes off (not that I would know from personal experience, since I have never been on a plane – yes, it’s true!). Sounds like a stupid present, right? Well, it was for years but when I was about 10, Lucie accidentally crushed the star we had so I put Barbie on top instead. She looked awesome! Now, she is on the top of the tree every year. She looks especially good because our tree is always of the Charlie Brown variety.

My second favorite ornament is Homer. You press a button under his butt and he says “D’oh!” Some of my favorite television shows are Simpsons episodes. I wish Itchy and Scratchy was a real show, that’s how much I love the Simpsons. I read about the real Simpsons house which is, I think, near Vegas or something. A full-scale house with all the furnishings and landscaping and backyard. I can’t remember if it had a pink car but that would be pretty amazing. I wonder if anyone lives in it. I think it was a prize for a contest. I don’t know. I guess I didn’t read that article very closely, did I?

The origami stars are a set of 3 white paper stars Lucie and I got in Chinatown a couple of summers ago when we were bored and Lucie decided she wanted to try “real” Chinese food. I was like, um, I don’t think this is any different than the Chinese place at the Supercuts strip mall but whatever, it was kind of a fun trip. We had lo mein and wonton soup which was way spicier than our place makes it. The wontons were really fat and chewy and there were little strips of fried pork floating in it. We stuffed ourselves for practically no money, which meant we had a few bucks left over for a souvenir so we got the origami stars. I don’t think they are meant to be Christmas ornaments because aren’t the Chinese Buddhists? I mean, do they celebrate Christmas? I don’t think so. But the stars were so pretty, all folded like that and hung on little gold strings. We knew they would be perfect for the tree. We usually put them right under Barbie.

Honorable mention goes to the macaroni angel I made in first grade. Does every person in the entire world make one of these? I swear to god they do. For the two people who have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s what you do: cut a sheet of construction paper into the shape of an angel. Punch a hole in the top. Glue pieces of pasta on it – different shapes work well for different parts of the angel. Then spray paint it gold. Do this part outside or else you might get a headache from the vapors. When it’s dry, string a piece of yarn or ribbon through the hole. Voila! Macaroni angel. I have no idea why Lucie keeps this old thing. It’s not like I couldn’t make something better now. But it gets a place on the list because of Lucie.

So that’s the Christmas list. I hope everyone out in the ether has a great holiday and really, that’s just you, Reggie, since you’re probably the only one reading this.

Merry Christmas.

I Wish I Had a Pony

At this time of year, it seems like everyone’s making lists. There’s all the end of the year lists like Best Musical Comedies of 2006, Worst Movies Starring Colin Ferrell and Jamie Foxx, Stupidest Political Moments, and so on.

And then there are wish lists. Little kids are writing to Santa. Bigger kids are writing to Grandma. Boys tell their girlfriends. Girls tell everyone. I have known, for example, for two months that Reggie wants a video iPod for Christmas. She already has a regular one but she has to have one with video.

It’s not that I have anything against lists (Hello? I’m Mega Girl, the list queen). It’s the wishing part of it. Maybe I just never felt like whatever I put on a list I’d actually get. And not for nothing, but I’m pretty sure I knew Santa was a phony way before I turned five. Honest. It’s one of the perks of having an older sister. I knew a lot about a lot way earlier than other kids my age.

Certainly some of my lists could be construed as wish lists of sorts. My travel list, for instance, and my date list, for another. But again, I don’t seriously believe I will get to go to any of those places or date any of those guys. Reggie, on the other hand, will probably get her video iPod and she knows it.

What is the purpose of a wish list? Does having one make you feel like if you say your prayers every night and you do the right things, you will magically get those things? Or is it a reminder of goals you have set for yourself? Or is it to make you feel bad because you don't have those things and are unlikely to get them? If it’s the last, I say forget it. Keep your wishes to yourself. Don’t write them down and don’t tell anyone about them. I mean, who needs to be reminded of things you can never have?

As I look around the blogosphere and I listen to people at school, I have concluded wish lists fall into these categories:

Top 3.5 Wish Lists

1. Consumer Goods I’d Like to Have
2. People I’d Like to Date or Marry
3. People I’d Like to Look Like
3.5 Cars I’d Like to Own

Consumer goods are obvious: clothes, electronics, music, DVD’s, jewelry. I heard one kid wish for a George Foreman grill but that was kind of an unusual request. Not a lot of kids at my school are wishing for kitchen appliances.

People I’d Like to Date…self-explanatory. In fact, I talked about this last week.

People I’d Like to Look Like…now this is an interesting category. I can’t tell you how many people wish they looked like someone else. Usually someone famous, like Nicole Kidman or Jessica Simpson or Jennifer Lopez. I’m always hearing girls wishing they had so-and-so’s hair, so-and-so’s legs or butt or boobs. (Personally, I wouldn’t mind looking like Jennifer Aniston but that’s me…)

Cars get honorable mention because, while they are consumer goods, they seem to have their own subset of wishing, especially with boys. Or Reggie, who just put a 2007 Mustang on her wish list. (Keep wishing, babe. Sylvie told me you’re getting a Jetta when you turn 16. No sports cars.)

Bottom line: leave the wish lists to your little sister. And don’t tell her Santa isn’t real. Wait ‘til she hears about it herself. Let her be a kid for a little while longer.

Is He The One?

I’ve been thinking about the Britney-K. Fed divorce (I know, I know…aren’t there worthier issues to be thinking about, like world peace and the war in Iraq and poverty?) and it occurred to me that a lot of women like Britney don’t understand a fundamental difference between the men you date and the men you marry. Kevin Federline was so obviously a man you date. He was a backup dancer with two kids already and he never married his baby-mama. What does that tell you?

And it’s not just celebrities who don’t get it. Regular women are just as bad. They get sucked in by the fun, good-looking guys who want to fool around and instead, they fool themselves into thinking that they can change these guys. They think they can turn the date guys into marriage men. Hello? You can’t change them because they don’t want to be changed. If you were a guy being chased by women, why would you settle down? I’ve never been in that situation, honestly, but I can imagine it.

My sister Lucie falls into this category. I don’t know how many guys she’s thought were “the one.” They never are. They don’t want to be. I wasn’t even dating them and I could see that. It was like Lucie was blind or something. And no matter how many times I tried to help her by pointing out certain guys just wanted to fool around, she wouldn’t listen.

So for all the women like Britney and my sister, here are two separate lists to help you out: men who you date and men who you marry. Pay attention, Lucie!

Top 3.5 Movie Stars I’d Like to Date

1. Orlando Bloom
2. Leo DiCaprio
3. Jude Law
3.5 Vince Vaughn

Top 3.5 Movie Stars I’d Like to Marry

1. Ashton Kutcher
2. Matt Damon
3. Will Smith
3.5 Jack Black

See the difference? The first list is a bunch of guys who travel all over the world, who are constantly being hit on by women. They probably get invited to parties and hotel rooms by women they never met – and they go! They’re fun and some of them are funny and they drink a lot and party until the sun comes up and who are you to tell them to stop? These are not the men who settle down.

The second list are the men who have settled down. They actually married their girlfriends when they got them pregnant. This list is actually very long. I could add Seal and Heath Ledger and Ben Affleck – all great-looking guys who did the right thing for the women they loved. And now they’re happy dads. I don’t actually understand the whole Ashton-Demi thing but good for them. I hope they last forever.

I’m not perfect, okay, and it’s entirely likely I will have a boyfriend at some point that I think is THE ONE for me but who will turn out to be completely wrong. I just hope I don’t do anything stupid with him before I figure that out.

More on this later.

Winter Wish

It’s snowing in the Midwest and lots of flights have been canceled. That’s what you get when you have December in other parts of the country. Not here in SoCal.

I wish I could see real snow, the falling-down kind, the kind where it melts in your hair and sticks to your jacket. I have visited snow: Lucie and I went to Big Bear a few years ago when she was dating this guy (for like a minute and a half) who was a ski instructor at a resort there. They have both real snow and man-made so there’s plenty for skiing but I kept waiting for it to snow for reals. I wanted to see it come down from the sky and land on the ground. But it never did during the whole two days were there. And we didn’t ski, either. Well, I tried but I couldn’t get my knees to stay straight so I kept wobbling over. The snow isn’t as soft and fluffy as it looks like it would be when you fall face down into it. But Lucie didn’t even try. She wanted to sit inside and drink hot chocolate and watch television, which they didn’t even have at this resort where we stayed. I think that’s the reason Lucie and that guy broke up. Not because Lucie didn’t even attempt skiing (which would have pissed me off if I were him) but because he worked at a place that didn’t have TV.

I’m sure we could never actually live in snow – that would be too much, I think. Lucie can barely drive when it rains; I would hate to be in another car if she had to navigate through a snowstorm. Or ice. You can’t have snow without ice. And freezing. You can’t have snow or ice without freezing cold. I wonder what that would be like. Cold for us is when it’s in the 50s. Freezing for us is when it’s 40. It rarely ever gets below that. If it did, we would have no beautiful flowers in the wintertime like we do and people would have to stop wearing shorts and flip-flops, which you would think would not happen in December or January or February but it totally does. That’s SoCal for you. People are definitely unique that way.

Let me end this with a new list for the week:

Top 3.5 Cold Places I Want to Visit Before I Die

1. Denver, Colorado
2. Alaska
3. Mt. Everest
3.5 Canada

There are probably way more places in the world that are even colder, like Antarctica and the North Pole and Moscow, but come on, what are the odds I’m going to get there?