Two "Real" Men and a Sex Doll

I don't go a week without my Modern Family fix. I honestly have spent time pondering how I could somehow squeeze my way into Mitchell and Cam's relationship. I adore them. I even love Jay, who I always refer to as "the Al Bundy guy." But I have mixed feelings about Phil. He's an idiot. A lovable, well-intentioned idiot, but an idiot nonetheless. His wife Claire has to constantly fix the messes he gets himself and their kids in. He does have his redeeming qualities, but unfortunately his idiocy plays in to a widely-held media notion that men (specifically husbands) are clueless oafs who mean well, but really can't do anything right when it comes to their home and family. Case in point: In the pilot, Phil gets his son an air soft gun on the condition that if he shoots anyone with it (even accidentally), he'll shoot him as punishment. This made for some great comedy, but really? Later, Phil jumps the gun and punishes the kids by cancelling Christmas on Christmas Eve morning. Phil's blunders are always made up for by his wife's intervention or his own good-nature, but that doesn't change the fact that he's a husband and father who is stumbling around in the dark, a figure of pity, and a creator of cringe-worthy moments.

I would write this off as just one funny, idiotic, lovable character, but how many times have we seen this character repeated in films and television? Raymond? Tim Taylor? Even advertisers are playing on this theme. Sarah Haskins, brilliant lampooner of female-centered marketing, created this amazing montage celebrating the doofy husbands we love to pat on the head and say, "Oh isn't that cute...he sure tried!"

This leads me to the title of the post (isn't it great?) and one of my favorite movies. Lars and the Real Girl is about a lonely man in his twenties who falls in love with a life-size anatomically correct doll he bought online. And I love it. Lars has a mental illness and the respect and love his family and friends give him while he works through his issues is nothing but exemplary. Every time I watch I'm struck by a different character and her or his importance in helping Lars heal. Recently that character has been Gus, Lars' older brother. Gus and his wife live in the old family house while Lars (of his own choosing) lives in the garage. Even though it's been a few months since I saw it last, I still can't get over the brilliance of this particular scene. (sorry it's such a huge clip, the actual scene starts at 3:13 and ends at 6:24)

Lars comes to Gus and asks him how he knows if he's become a man yet. Gus usually doesn't have much to say, and has the hardest time of everyone accepting Lars' delusion. You can tell he's uncomfortable with the conversation, and he starts off shaky, but eventually he opens up. In his own straightforward terms, he talks to Lars like an equal. In the end he admits some of his own possible guilt in contributing to Lars' problems and apologizes, taking his own advice and acting "like a man." For the conversation alone the scene is great, but add to that the context. What is Gus doing as he explains to his little brother what it means to be a man--he's chopping vegetables for dinner. Then the buzzer sounds so they move down to the basement where he starts folding towels fresh from the dryer. "Macho", "manly", hesitant-to-talk-about-feelings Gus, amazingly, is capable of helping around the house and willingly does so. He also says the right words to help Lars start overcoming his demons and risk real relationships. Gus takes all of the good intentions embodied by characters like Phil and puts them into action.

I dislike the idea of there being "real men"--as in "real men don't eat quiche", the first suggestion google gave me--and "other kinds of men". But if I bought into that idea, I'd say something like, "Real men fold towels and empathize with people who are struggling."

I should put that on a t-shirt.

Adventures in Celibacy

I seldom watch videos that people post on their blogs, especially if they're over a minute long. That's mostly because I'm a snob and rarely trust other people's tastes. You pretty much need to guarantee that the video will either 1-make me snort-laugh; 2- make me feel much smarter than everyone else around me; 3- wow me into silence; or 4- cause me to swoon, drool, and basically lose my shit.

This video is the epitome of option 4. I have yet to see a better screen kiss. Were I feeling super nerdy (don't worry, I got most of my nerd out already by playing online Settlers of Catan), I'd elaborate ad nauseam as to why this is the best. kiss. ever and how my expectations are now so unrealistically high I'll never be satisfied and spend the rest of my life bitter and unfulfilled.

Oh crap. This is Mormon girl p*rn.

And I just can't stop.

Shirts and Skins

Best compliment I've ever received:

"You are beautiful and nice also non naked."

Basically, Spain finds me attractive and kind whether I have clothes on or not.

How to Instantly Improve Your Mental Health for Just $120!! (plus the cost of food)

(Prologue: I write this post as its subject is moping outside. He's being punished for threatening Dumbo...again. This might impair the treaclyness of my writing.)

My friends call me Debby. Debby Downer. Actually, they don't. But I do, and if I'm not my own friend, then we've got big trouble.

So this past year has not been my best year, mentally healthily speaking. Something about grad school sucking the living soul out of me, quarter life crises, a severe lack of money and budgeting skills--really, who knows what's caused it? I think it's healthiest to blame all the single men in southern California.

At this low time in my life, I did what any self-respecting single 25 year old Mormon girl does. I adopted a dog. Yes. I'm dirt poor, depressed, shoulder-deep in student loans, and have very little soul left. This is the perfect time to become solely responsible for the care and maintenance of a living creature.

I've always always always wanted a dog. When I was a kid, my siblings and I got to the Sunday paper before Mom and Dad one week and drew cat and dog faces on all the people in it. We were pet-starved children. I told myself that as soon as I was able, I'd adopt a dog. I can't tell you how many hours Dan and I have spent looking at adorable pictures of puppies online and FREAKING out. All sorts of freaking over the adorableness. We spent our two week vacation to Europe talking about how I was going to name my dog "Bay-bee Dawwg" (insert awful voice here) and giggled the whole way through at least five countries.

In June, I decided to move into a house with some friends. This is the perfect house for a dog. It has a huge yard, front and back, that's completely enclosed. The house itself is pretty big, so he'd have plenty of room inside as well. I knew it was time.

So I started my search for the perfect dog. He had to be just the right size, have short, soft fur, floppy ears, and a goofy face. I researched breeds, visited animal shelters, spent hours online on craig's list and shelter websites. I thought I found one in July. He was adorable--just the right size, beautiful color, seemed very sweet. But something just didn't feel right. Later, at the end of August, I was considering two others at another shelter. They were all right, but again, I just didn't feel like either of them would be the best fit. Was I being too picky? Yes. But I figured, if I'm going to have this dog for the rest of its life, I want to get it right.

The end of September came and I was starting to think I'd just have to pick one and be okay with it. I really wanted to adopt before I went home the first weekend in October so that my family (aka Mom and Dad) could meet him and be okay with him coming home for a longer stay over Christmas break. The Saturday before I was supposed to leave, I had a few dogs in mind that I had seen online, but they were spread out all over and I would probably only have time to make it to one shelter. Frustrated, I headed to the shelter where I already had an approved application, even though I wasn't especially thrilled about what I saw online. The dog I most wanted to see there had kennel cough and couldn't be shown. They showed me another dog who was okay, but probably a little yappy. Then they brought him in.

(Warning! Because of high cheese levels, the remainder of this post not recommended for the lactose intolerant!)

He had the cutest little wrinkled eyebrows, the fuzziest little floppy ears ever, and had the softest, most beautiful, brownish reddish coat. This guy was a total lover. He just came right over and plopped himself down next to me and let me pet him to both our hearts' content. The shelter assistant knew it. I knew it. This was my dog. I finished the rest of the paperwork, worked out a schedule for him to be neutered and then turned over to me, and left the shelter nervous and excited. I called my roommate and told her what was going on.

(You were warned! The cheese is off the charts here! Stay away!)

You know how when you say something, and all the sudden it hits you that what you're saying is the complete truth? Well, when I told my roommate that I had found my dog, it hit me like that. I'm not saying it's destiny, or divine intervention, or anything like that. I just knew that I really had found my dog.

So, nearly two months later, what's happened to our depressed, crisis-riddled, soulless, dimeless heroine? I'm still pulling myself out of this depression, still questioning the direction my life is headed, still getting the soul sucked out of me, and still in horrendous debt. But I'll be okay. I wouldn't credit all of that to my dog, but there's no denying it. Life is just better when this little guy settles in to keep my feet warm at night.


(Epilogue: What do you know? Treaclyness unimpaired by subject's naughtiness! Subject has done his penance and is now licking peanut butter off my fingers. I submit there's nothing better than a keyboard covered in peanut butter and dog drool. Wait. What am I saying? That's sick.)

Conversation With My Sister

Sister: You won't even give conservative guys the time of day!

Me: Not true! If I met an open-minded, intelligent, thoughtful conservative guy, I'd definitely give him a fighting chance...

...I just haven't met any of those yet.

Sister: You are never going to have sex.


THIS is why families are great.

Relieved

Last night I dreamed I watched the Atlantis space shuttle launch.The shuttle was shaped like a gigantic R2D2, and after it rose off the launch pad and I was starting to think everything was going to be okay, the top lifted off like it was on a hinge, it flipped over, and crashed back into the earth, creating a debris storm and shockwaves that knocked out an entire city.

I'm glad that didn't really happen.

Stories I Like To Tell

*Names have not been changed in order to incriminate the guilty.

I anticipated experiencing many different things my first year of college. Waking up on a Saturday morning alone on my English professor's basement floor was not one of them.

Despite that rather scandalous introduction, this story suffers from a severe lack of hanky-panky and a serious overabundance of Disney movies. Let's start at the beginning.

I went to a very small private college in rural Virginia. My first year there I was one of only 4oo students, and we were a tight-knit community. My roommates were friends with one of the English professor's sons, who was also a student. Let's call him Jared. I knew him somewhat through our interactions in choir and because of our mutual friends. At the end of the school year, Jared invited everyone (literally, everyone) to a party at his parents' house to watch Disney movies all night long. (Yes, we're all very Mormon.) After assisting us in dropping brownies off (in a very co-ed Mormon way) at the doorstep of a house full of cute boys, my friend (let's call him Luke) had given me and a few other friends a ride to the party where we met the rest of the group, including my roommate (let's call her Bethany).

The house was full of reveling Mormon college students looking for some post-semester stress relief. The Sprite and hormones flowed freely. My friends and I grabbed handfuls of chips and fun-size candy bars and headed down into the basement, hoping to nab some prime real-estate next to one of SVU's few eligible bachelors. I don't think I was successful in cuddling with the aforementioned Luke (who I definitely had my eye on), since he was at the time making overtures at another girl (who shall remain nameless because she didn't leave me alone on the basement floor). Despite the sad lack of passionate freshman cuddling, I did my best to enjoy the night, sandwiched among my good friends on bean bag chairs and pillows watching Disney movies to our hearts' content. Somewhere around 3 or 4 in the morning, just as The Fox and the Hound was coming to its heartbreaking conclusion, I began to fall asleep, sure in the knowledge that surely either my dear roommate or the gentlemanly boy who gave me a ride would wake me when it was time to leave. Surrounded by a basement-full of friends and acquaintances, many of whom were also dozing, I drifted into a world-famous deep Lauren sleep.

The next thing I heard was a strange hissing noise. Peeling my eyes open, I realized that the room was markedly lighter than it had been when I'd fallen asleep. I also noticed that my limbs had their full-range of motion--I was no longer shmooshed between thousands of sleeping college students. I heard the noise again and lifted my head to the stairs. Jared stood, perched over the railing, halfway down the staircase. "Hey, girl. Girl! Wake up," I now realized he had been saying/hissing. I was very much alone. On the basement floor. "Where'deverybodygowhattimeisit?" I sat up and squawked groggily. "Almost nine, and I don't know," he said, stifling a laugh. Apparently, sometime during the night he stumbled up to his room to sleep, which happened around the same time my friends LEFT me ALONE on the basement floor. When the respected English professor awoke and strolled down to his basement, he received quite the shock upon seeing my awkwardly sleeping form, ALONE on his basement floor. He woke his son, saying, "Jared, there's a girl in the basement."

Jared offered to give me a ride back to campus as I was still quite visibly confused as to what the hell just happened to me. I grabbed my jacket and tried to rub the nasty gunk out from the corners of my eyes and followed him up the stairs. The respected English professor's family sat cozily at the kitchen table, enjoying their Saturday morning breakfast, and respected English professor's wife graciously invited me to join them. Still trying to regain my normal person voice, I squawked out what I hope was a polite "nothankyou," scrambled out the door and into the car, and thus endured one of the most awkward five minute car rides of my life.

Properly deposited in front of my dorm, I climbed the stairs to the third floor (C-3 what what), promptly woke the offending abandoners, and demanded an explanation. I don't remember their excuses, which surely means they were pathetic and not worth remembering, but each of them found it OHSOFUNNY that I spent the night alone on the respected English professor's basement floor.

Who's laughing now, offending abandoners??!