I'm Salutin' Putin

When I got home from work yesterday I was feeling kinda blue, not to mention super rumbly in my tumbly. So I started hunting and gathering (more gathering than hunting) for sustenance in our gourmet kitchen . . . .

only to discover that all we've got are some stupid Ritz crackers and cold(war)cuts. Which begs the question:

If you're blue and you don't know where to go to

Why don't you go where fashion sits . . . . . . (wait for it people)

Putin on the Ritz.

Different types who wear a day coat, pants with stripes

And cutaway coat, perfect fits . . . . (everybody with me now)

Putin on the Ritz!

I gotta say while they tasted kinda oligarchy, they weren't that Vlad! See what I did there? 'Cause his name is Vladimir Pu . . . . . never mind.

And, because I couldn't resist

A Boot Scootin Putin . . . . . .ZIIIIIIIING!

P.S. How awesome could this all be if I actually KNEW how to photoshop?

Answer: very

I'm having a hard time coming up with something to post so I give you this:

Yes, friends, it is a rainbow puking up rainbows into a toilet. You'll never guess where I found that picture that so aptly reflects my Wednesday mood. I was doing a Google search for Marc Summers from that Nickelodeon game show of yore called Double Dare and Mr. Barf Rainbow popped up . . . . don't you just lurve the interweb? Can anyone explain to me how people with blogs highlight a certain word in their blog and then when you click on that word it takes you to a link? Also, how do you attach actual YouTube videos to blogs? DIGAME!! No tengo patience to finger this out on my own. Okgreatthanks.

U-G-L-Y You Ain't Got No Alibi

Remember when you were a kid and braces were the epitome of cool? Braces were the ultimate sign of extreme teenagerness in my preteen world. I used to take paperclips, unhinge them and walk around with them in my mouth as pseudo braces. So when I found out I actually needed braces, my 10 year old world was rocked. Not only did I get full on brace-face, I was also fitted for headgear.

Little did I know that there is a very fine line between braces and headgear and their respective acceptance in elementary school. I was told that I only had to wear my headgear at night, but in my mind I thought all things orthodontia would sky rocket my lukewarm popularity into oblivion. So why wouldn't I bring out the big guns for all my classmates to fawn over? Imagine my utter shock and dismay when I waltzed into to school wearing this . . .

and nobody wanted to sit next to me. I also got the distinct impression that people were laughing at me, not with me. Couldn't they understand I was ALMOST A TEENAGER with all this metal in my face? Why couldn't they just see that!??! At first recess I wore my headgear on the monkey bars and whilst doing a lemon drop, I bonked the side of my head against one of the bars causing my headgear to jam up inside my mouth so that I didn't even have the choice of removing it because it was all stuck in my jaw! I remember seeing my childhood crush (Todd Emblem who was 2 years older than I was and one of my brother's best friends) playing kickball and he wouldn't even make eye contact with me. That stupid day was the longest school day everrrrr. After school I had to go see my creepy orthodontist, Dr. Watson, just to get that stupid thing off my freaking face.

Things didn't get much better once puberty set in.

Mock turtleneck - Check

High waisted culottes - Cheque

Ridiculous perm - Checkers

Cocker Spaniel-esque bangs - Checkmate

80's white super cinched belt - Checkedy Check Check

"You're not fat, you're just chunky" can-do attitude - Check-oslovakia

(Let's go in for a close-up, shall we?)

Seriously, could I cinch those culottes up any higher?

And ever heard of the T-Zone Leslie? Maybe look into it pronto.

This is seriously awesome . . . . .

Read article here.
How would you like to be a child at that "children's home" with poo breaking in through your windows? AWESOME. And what exactly is a children's home? Is that like a retirement home for really really really really really really really young retirees?

Floor Four . . . going down

Since I'm half German . . . . . .

(mi madre was born in the land of the Deutsche) my family celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve. This used be so cool when I was a kid because we'd get all our presents the night before Christmas when all the other non-Germans had to endure sleepless nights awaiting the break of dawn to open up all their shizz. As a result, Christmas Day was no big dealy-doo in our household and rather anti-climactic. We'd usually end up riding our bikes out in front of our house waiting for our next-door-neighbors to finish their Christmas celebration so they could come outside and compare and contrast their loot with ours. When I was 12 years old, my parents decided to do something different on Christmas Day. Instead of lounging around our house, my parents decided to take us to downtown San Diego to the Food Bank and volunteer our services to the needy. My brother Chris and I were rather nonplussed because who wants to hang out in ghetto-fab downtown San Diego on Christmas Day? Not to mention we were the only stinkin' kids there. Anywho. . . . . The San Diego Food Bank was in this big old warehouse with all these different floors to it and all the volunteers were supposed to get organized into groups to help out on each floor. Nobody really knew where they were supposed to go and what they were supposed to do, so finally this priest got on stage with a microphone to explain the whole process to us. So I'm standing there between my mom and dad and the priest goes:

"Thank you all for coming today. You have all been assigned a floor to work on. The homeless will visit each floor and you will assist them with whatever is taking place on your particular floor. Floor One is storage and cots where they can leave their stuff in a secure place and later sleep. Floor Two is the cafeteria for food. Floor Three is showers. Floor Four is blowjobs. Floor Five is clothes exchange."

Immediately after stating the purpose of Floor Four, a cumulative gasp went through the crowd and I whispered under my breath, "I am NOT working on Floor Four." My mom shot me her dagger eyes look that burned straight through my very soul.

Someone next to the priest whispered something in his ear and he immediately made a little nervous cough and said "I meant, Floor Four is where the homeless can blow dry their hair". I felt really weird for the rest of the day knowing my mom knew that I knew what a blowjob was . . . and on GD Christmas Day for Christ's sake!!

Leslie's "Coming Out Party" . . . . as an idiot

Over the weekend Axel and I tried to watch the Olympics, but no dice. First of all, we don't have cable . . . why you ask? (dramatic eye roll) because we prefer to READ . . . duh! And by 'read', I mean watch Mexican television since those are the only channels we get . . . . (we don't even know how to read, silly!) No, but seriously, the reason is we are cheap and haven't bitten the proverbial televisual bullet and gotten it installed. I promised Axel that it wouldn't be a problem because we could just watch the Olympics online . . . . but that proved to be a problem as well since we have a Mac and were unable to install whatever was necessary to watch it online. So brilliant Leslie goes, "Let's watch whatever is posted on Youtube! I'm sure the opening ceremony is on Youtube". I do a search for 2008 Olympics Beijing on Youtube and Axel and I watch . . . and it actually made me cry. Those guys were AMAZING. I seriously don't know why I cried, but I was moved Goddammit!
I come into the office today and Yedi asks me if I saw the opening ceremonies and I told him "I was moved to tears Yedi, those gold guys, while a bit homoerotic, were nonetheless INCREDIBLE!!" and Yedi goes "What gold guys?" I say "THE GOLD GUYS! The opening ceremony!! COME ON! They were THE BEST!!" Yedi goes "Were you watching the Special Olympics?" so I send him this:


Welllllllllll . . . . that pretty much got me laughed out of the office, as that was NOT the opening ceremony for the 2008 Olympics after all. Why am I so S-L-O-W!?

Sidenote: We've been catching up on some of the games here at work and the commentators keep saying "This is China's coming out party" . . . . who knew China was gay? HEYO!!

Mystic (not the tan or the pizza)

I've been extreeeeeeeeemely busy at work lately and was going through the drawers of my desk only to discover yo tengo muchisimo crapola en mi escritorio. Here is a list of some things currently in my desk drawers:

A Cha-Cha Chia Pet Alarm Clock

A homemade check my boss's 8-year old daughter made for me with a rainbow on it (someone knows I'm hard up for cash-o-la)

A bottle of Ziacam Cough Mist Max expiration 08/2007. (VOM. . . who even uses this stuff and how did it get in my desk?)

A Snapple cap with the following "Snapple Real Fact" on it:
Squids can have eyes the size of a volleyball
Side note: how awesome a fact is that? I would LOVE to see some volleyball squid eyes. . . . name the time and place and I AM SO THERE!

A Sewing Kit that I've puff painted the words "Sew . . . a needle pulling thread" on the lid, yet have never used.

A Flashlight

A Keychain (that I find jocular to the nth degree) that I made with my office laminator (click to enlarge and therefore join me in the hilarity. . . or not, since I'm the only one who finds this amusing)












An old journal I never really used, that has the following written on the last page:
Greetings,
To know someone here or there with whom there is a feeling of understanding;
In spite of thoughts or distances, unexpressed,
That can make of this Earth a Garden!
MYSTIC.
Which brings back this ridiculous encounter that happened to me when I first moved to the Bay Area and was living in the Oakland hills with my brother. I didn't have a full-time job yet and was substitute teaching at the French-American School in Berkeley (though I speak zilch French . . .shocking right? Since I'm such an experienced linguist at, how do you say, La Espanola, shabadoo). In the afternoons I would sometimes go to this cafe by UC Berkeley and get a coffee and then sit and read in the sun on the small grassy knoll near the tennis courts. So I'm sitting there reading and this guy with dreads

who must have been 45? 50? 59? who knows, comes saddling up to me and stands there blocking my sun, watching me read . . . . which is a weird feeling. . . . being the reader being watched (as apposed to the readee?) Movingon.org, so I look up and the guy says something like "Can I see the book you're reading?" and I oblige, and he reads the back of it and acts all super enthused and tells me that he's read it before, which I found skeptical considering it was some total chick book like You and Your Uterus. Then he asks me if I'd like to check out some film called Rabbit Proof Fence that was showing in the next 30 mins. I don't know what is wrong with me and why I'm always afraid of hurting people's feelings and can't simply say "Thank you, NO", but I can't. On top of that, I'm a really bad liar and came up with some stupid excuse that I had to go do something in exactly 30 mins. So the guy then asks if I have something to write on and I hand him my blank journal and he writes that total cheeseball pseudo poem in it. . . After reading it I go,"Ummmm thanks . . . . Mystic . . .?" Then Mr. Can't Get A Hint Magillicutty asks for my phone number. Idiota numero uno, once again couldn't just tell him no and/or give him a fake phone number, and like the total tard that I am I give him my actual phone number thinking he won't call and if he does, he'll get the point that yo no soy interesante when I don't call him back. Well, that didn't exactly transpire. He called me every day for the next week and each voice mail message got more and more intense a la "Hey Leslie, I know you wouldn't give someone your number just to try TO AVOID THEM!" Oh Mystic, you know me TOO WELL. Finally I had to get my brother to call Mystic for me and ask him to leave me the chingao alone.

OMG ANTM WTF CYJDA?! (Couldn't You Just Die Already)

Doodle . . . . America's Next Top Model premiers Sept. 3. I'm trying not to get my hopes up about this season, but if you could see me now, you'd notice that I'm totally smiling with my eyes (if you know what I mean).

If I told you you were beautiful, would you page me on the regular

Axel the P and I went to Mendocino this weekend and it was totes fab. We drove up the 101 to Mendo, drove through Fort Bragg and then drove south along the coast to the tiniest picolino town of all called Elk. We had reservations at this uber cute inn called the Greenwood Pier Inn on the cliffs overlooking the coast. Seriously so cute I could barf. They obvs were pet friendly, so we checked-in and left Potsey in the room for all of 8 minutes while we walked to the restaurant to get a glass of wine and watch the sunset. Whilst in the restaurant I heard what sounded like an elderly woman being stabbed to death in her room . . . . and that elderly woman turned out to be one Potsey Lydia Maguillicutty Donaldson.

(Dapper, unless left alone in hotel rooms)

He totally freaked out due to his 'abandonment anxiety' and was making these ridiculous screeching sounds that could be heard all over the hotel grounds. We made a mad-dash back to the room and picked his pathetic ass up and he joined us for a romantical sunset. We had dinner at this faux french restaurant called Le Petite Rive that got great reviews on Yelp yet was not that great. They tried way too hard to be all shmancy with their food by like providing a peach sorbet in the middle of the meal to 'cleanse the pallet' . . . . yet my pallet wasn't that dirty after the first course salad, so it was kinda weird. After din din Axel and I decided to take it to a whole new level of cheese and drove back to Elk blaring Justin Timberlake's 'My Love' (how does Axel know all the words to that one?) and decided to go down to the beach. We were told where to hike and when we came to the cliffs we noticed a rope line to the beach below. Mind you, I had 3 glasses of wine in me, so I thought it was a brazilliant idea to descend down this cliff at 8:00 in the PM. The first half of the climb was pretty steep and then we came to a 2nd rope which took us to the very bottom. So we scale this cliff and then hang out on the beach (Leslie went into the ocean whilst Axel looked out for sharks). Then we decided to go back up the cliff seeing as it was getting dark. So I'm scaling this wall on the first rope and get the 2nd rope only to realize that someone has either untied it (POTSEY!??!) or it came loose from its holding and I'm stuck on the side of this cliff with one end of the rope in my hand! It was a carbuncular debacle the to nth degree. Luckily, I was drunk enough to have no fear, yet sober enough to not totally spazz out and crept up the side of the cliff on my hands and knees with Axel in tow. Here is an artist's rendering of the experience.

This will come as a complete shock to you, but that whole idea of not eating in exchange for not going to the gym yesterday didn't quite work out. Not only did I not not eat, I ate my weight (if I weighed 1 delicious little pint) in chocolate gelato last night. Why do I do this? Por que yo tengo idiota con mucho gusto por su puesto chingaou!