Category Archives: Life

Humor, Life, Rambles

RIPPED UNDERWEAR AND THE UNCOMFORTABLY BREEZY DERRIERE

Today I was at the gym and I full-on ripped my underwear. Like SpongeBob SquarePants-style. Like Contact-rip in the space/time continuum-style.

Let me set the scene. The place: Planet Fitness. The muscle group: legs and abs. The perpetrator: a pair of navy-blue boxers from GAP. The victim: me, and my butt.

I walked into the gym and went to the back section where the weights/douchebags are and grabbed a dumbbell. I managed to finish one exercise—lunges, because I want that tush—when I readjust my stance and frame my feet to begin squats.

Literally, I square off my feet and dip into the first squat when my underwear busts open like a jack-in-the-box with an audible pop! noise. I have headphones in and I’m listening to a podcast, but the force of the tear is so visceral that it startles me. I get out of the squat and turn slowly, praying feverishly that the tear was my boxers and not my shorts. My butt rounds the corner and I can see that, for now, the tear has been restricted to my underwear.

With a new, uncomfortably breezy derriere, I try to finish at least the first set of squats, but after four quick dips, it’s becoming abundantly clear that unless I want to do a strip-tease for the elderly and housewives who are with me at Planet Fitness on a Monday at 11 a.m., I should move on to something else.

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Source: Bust.com/ From my FAVORITE (FAVOURITE??) podcast Throwing Shade

There are certain pivotal moments in a person’s life. The first time they fall in love (with a person/inanimate object/food). The first time they drive a car (successfully—which for me was not the first time as “drive a car”). The first time they shit on the side of a mountain while on a six-mile hike (Done and done). And the first time that their butt proves to be too much for inferior underwear and rips in a public place.

With this newest life-marker, I realized several things. One, that clothing is nothing more than a consumerist façade. Two, that clothing is nothing more than a consumerist façade and without that consumer façade, you feel super-duper nakey. Three, that even though no one can tell that you just ripped your underwear from taint-to-waistband, you’ll walk around for the next half hour being extremely paranoid that everyone totally can.

I also had the intense internal debate of whether or not I should leave the gym that moment and properly deal with my shame. Here’s how that situation went down.

***

ME (leggy auburn millennial with 6/10 skin and an ass that won’t quit): (does single squat and causes a seismic rip that will affect ecosystems for years to come)

SHAME: You need to get out of here, quick.

ME: What?

SHAME: You just ripped your underwear, you freak. You’re basically streaking rn.

ME: No but I just got here. I need to werk out my body.

SHAME: Just say “work.” Don’t add the “e.” it’s juvenile.

ME: I didn’t add the “e.”

SHAME: Yes you did. Sharon, can you go back in the transcript?

SHARON (court stenographer): “I need to werk out my body.”

SHAME (rightfully vindicated): No “e”, huh? You’re disgusting.

ME (shamed for the “e”): I drove all the way over here.

SHAME: Why are you doing this to us? Your underwear is ripped; this isn’t a gay 1990s porno. This is To Catch A Predator. Why are you Jim Henson-ing yourself?

ME: The creator of the Muppets?

SHAME: Who?

ME: Jim Henson, the creator of the Muppets.

SHAME: Who am I thinking of then? Sharon, who am I thinking of?

SHARON (Googles it but she’s on a BlackBerry, so it takes forever): Chris Hansen?

SHAME: Chris Hansen, yes. You’re Chris Hansen-ing yourself.

ME: I can’t take you seriously if you can’t tell apart Chris Hansen and Jim Henson. We’re done here.

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Source: Rebloggy

Fin.

Fun fact: there is a “Jim Hansen” who is a professor at Columbia University, researcher in climatology and a climate activist for mitigating the effects of global warming. Well, I guess it’s more of a “fact” than a “fun fact.”

There’s not a grosser, more awkwardly slutty feeling than working out with ripped underwear. I imagine that there are people who completely get off on stuff like that, but I’m as pure and virginal as the driven snow and I just dealt with greater-than-normal swampass.

In other news, I just finished watching the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones. I almost thought about doing a recap, but GoT is literally so confusing that I have no idea what’s happening/what has happened/who anyone is, so it would be a lot of me going, “And then Red Beard guy, omg what is his name, bite the throat of that other guy—is he new or should I have known who he is?—and Jon Snow basically got a deep-tissue charcoal scrub, but instead of charcoal it was mud and the blood of his enemies.” Wait, that sounds fun. Not the mud and blood part, but the recap. Regardless, it’s not happening. But I’ve been watching that, and reading. A. ton.

You know you’ve become a complete lost cause when you’re staying up late requesting books from your library. I’ve fallen so far.

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Life, Rambles

YIPS-EE KI-YAY, M*THAF*CKA

Alternately titled “YIP, YIP, HOORAY!”

I have the yips. And if we’re being honest, I’ve had them for a while.

Side bar: “Yips” sounds like an STD (a STD?), but something particularly embarrassing. Something Tiger Woods would’ve gotten from one of his 15 prostitutes. I really don’t know why I’m starting this post by talking about El Tigre.

I’ve had the yips ever since I wrote the post about suicide and depression. It got so many views (roughly twelve times more than I’m used to) and the resulting feeling was a deer in headlights. But that doesn’t feel quite right. More like when you disturb a rock and the beetle that’s been making its home underneath freezes, suddenly aware of the vastness above it. I’m the beetle in this metaphor.

And since I’ve been made aware of the vast curve above me, I’ve realized that people might actually be reading what I write—a concept that had not been fully concretized in my head—and having opinions about my writing, and that’s led to the yips.

I do much better when no one’s watching—actually I do much better when people are actively rooting against me. In my freshman year of high school, my track coach knocked me back one running group. We would run in heats, so Group A would start their sprinting lap, then ten seconds later, Group B would start, and so on and so on.

He called out my name—well actually, he thought my name was “Murphy” so he called out “Murphy”—“Go to Group Six.” Group Six was the slowest runners—I had previously been Group Five, which was the mingled remains of runners who were not quite slow but not quite fast (Groups One to Three were largely interchangeable in speed, Group Four was always vying for the chance to jump ahead, and Five was largely content to swim in its own pond). Six was the asthmatics and the fatties.

Instead of being shamed into embarrassment, the demotion kick-started dogged stubbornness, and I roiled internally.

Group Five would go into their lap. Ten seconds. Group Six, me poised at the very edge of the line, would go. I sprinted, pumping limbs, and caught up with Group Five. The next round, I would pass the slowest member of Group Five. Then the next slowest. After every lap, I would stand, gasping, and make direct, combative eye contact with my coach. He didn’t notice, but I knew that I had made my point.

Group Five.

This anecdote tells us a few things. One, I might not know when to quit. Two, I’m very aggressive. Three, I succeed with flying colors when no one has any possible expectations of me. The minute people expect something, I deflate like a bouncy castle at the close of a middle schooler’s birthday party.

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Source: Imgur

And it sucks, because I don’t want to have the yips. I want to use my blog for what it’s meant for—complaining about boys, writing veiled personal essays to catch certain people’s attentions, and cutting up pop culture for general consumption.

So I’m officially casting off all expectations. Most people have very low ones of me already, but shed those too. Because mama’s back, and there’s some good shit we need to discuss.

I don’t know if I should talk about them here….or….?

…

See, I started writing this on Tuesday and now it’s Thursday and I was going to write more but I was apparently distracted—probably by, like, a butterfly or I went to get something to eat. Regardless, I did not finish this post, but I want to. I think I’m going to go back to my roots and start forcing myself to write biweekly posts, yips be damned.

Side bar: I’m writing this having just woken up from a nap. I was reading Kim Barker’s book The Taliban Shuffle (which became the movie Whiskey Tango Foxtrot with Tina Fey) and that is one book you don’t want to be reading when you fall asleep because all my dreams were about the Taliban and me wanting to go to the mall.

I’M BACK.

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Source: PopSugar

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Inspirational, Life, Rambles

BAD DIVING BOARD METAPHOR

(Written in front of Tatte Bakery while shivering violently and pretending that I’m not)

Today in the last British Literature class I’ll ever (hopefully) take, my professor asked us if we write in journals. He did, and he said how fun it was to look back on journals from years ago and read what he thought. I had to bite my tongue to avoid plugging my blog (because not even I’m that obnoxious to do a shameless plug in British Literature)—

I should point out, legally, that I have actually put my Twitter/Instagram handle on the blackboard in this class; but that’s less of a shameless plug and more of a public service to my classmates. @dnnymccrthy on Instagram and Twitter.

—and thought back on when I had my old, horrific teenage blog—The Amazing Unicorn Files—where literally all I did was talk about boys I had a crush on, Honey Boo Boo (she was big in 2012), and vaguely offensive satiric “articles.” I have since shoved a stake into that blog’s heart and started this wonderful old broad. And this Elaine Stritch of a blog—shocking, funny, elderly—has morphed to be greater than TAUF. I get to write about politics and pop culture and what’s happening in my world.

But when I look back on this blog in a week, or a month, or a decade, I don’t think I’ll care about Donald Trump—unless he’s Il Duce Trump by then—or Lemonade or what queen went home on that week’s RuPaul’s Drag Race. I’ll still care about the Kardashians obviously, but that’s because I’ll be curious to see how Kris Jenner manages to outlive everyone else in her family.

I’ll care about what I felt, and what was happening in my life. What boys I liked, and what friends I had made, and how good I looked that day. I plan on getting extensive plastic surgery when I turn 40, so it’ll be nice to be able to look back on that youthful boy that I’m desperately trying to recreate.

So I just finished the last day of classes in my junior year. I still have finals and papers to write and loose ends to tie up, but that’s next week and an eternity away. Right now I’m sitting in front of a very chic café, watching cars go alongside my table and shivering from what I’ll say is the cold but might just be the coffee that I’m sucking down but don’t want to acknowledge because coffee shouldn’t make me spasm like a dying fish.

I’ve just finished my junior year of college and the long slab of summer lies ahead of me, but it’s weird, right? It’s odd. Suddenly, I’m about to reach this huge milestone—21, senior year of college, the world beyond—and it feels like it’s all happening too soon. I’m a kid. I don’t know how to get a job. I just figured out how people get cake pops to stick together. I can’t provide for myself. I can barely provide a hilarious one-liner response to cute cashiers.

I have friends who are graduating in a few days. I have friends who are engaged, or are in relationships that could blossom into long-term situations. I can see people going into jobs that lead to careers that lead to the rest of their lives. I can see it all, and it’s making me want to break a table. Because my life is one big sexy, messy black hole.

I feel like I’m always referencing my Brit Lit class, but bear with me. we read Gerard Manly Hopkins this week, and his poetry stuck in my brain like a half-remembered song. He writes like I write, adjectival and messy and complicated and complex. It’s a structure compounded words and thoughts, weaving together to create a parts-of-the-whole thing. And that made me flutter. Because here was someone who did what I want to do. Who was a writer and successful (I mean, he died at 45 of typhoid or something, and all of his poems were published posthumously, so I don’t want to do exactly what he did, also he was a priest which is so not my MO, but still) and loved what he did.

I can’t see my future and I can’t see what the next step should be, but I know what I want my narrative to be. I want to be able to get a job where I can be weird and funny and write in my voice. I want a cool life. I want to not find love right away and be able to have one of those twenties where I can have a shit ton of content off being a twentysomething. I want to live somewhere warm. I want to laugh until I cry, and choke on food and cackle-scream. I cackle-scream now, but I want to keep cackle-screaming.

(I had to move inside because I was cold and can’t pull off that “artist suffering for their work” mentality.)

I want all of these things and it’s weird that they’re beginning to be possible. That in a year, maybe less, I’ll have to start making big-boy-out-of-Pampers decisions. What a horrific image. Maybe I can pull a Lisa Rinna and make my money off adult diapers. That must be my rock bottom, but no one says you can’t make bank on the bottom (insert filthy joke here).

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Source: riffsy.com

I don’t want this to turn into one of those fucking annoying feel-good posts, or one of those “Don’t make me adult” travesties. I want to adult. But it feels a little like being a kid at my grandma’s pool club. There was this huge dive—literally massive when you’re six—and one day, I decided to conquer it. Obviously this is a metaphor—pay attention.

I was—am—a total chickenshit, so I don’t know what made me think I could confidently pull this off, but maybe even then, I was trying to self-destruct. I climb up, and I’m eager. I want to be at the top; I want to make the jump. And suddenly, I’m at the top, and the breeze is stronger up here than it was on the ground, and everyone looks tiny, and that water looks like it’s going to hurt an awful lot from this high up. And so I’m torn, because I want to jump, but suddenly I’m thinking about the very concrete logistics. What will I look like as I fall? Should I tuck my arms in? Fling them out? How deep into the water will I go? Should I scream?

Then the lifeguard and my sister hovering on the top of the ladder are letting me know that I’m holding up everyone and I have to jump. I have to disregard all the questions and queries and potential situations. And so I curl my toes over the edge as the diving board wobbles underneath my weight. And almost before my brain can become okay with it, my feet make my decision for me and step off the edge.

The way down is as ungraceful as I feared, and the primitive instinct within me is making me flap my wings but if I’m a bird, I’m Big Bird, and I’m plummeting to the earth with the help of vengeful gravity. And I hit the water like a cannon, and shoot deep into the depths. My palms sear from the impact, but I float upwards without thinking and start swimming.

I’m hoping that life after college will start like that. That my body will move ahead of my over-agonizing mind and my palms will sear from the pain but that I can rely on muscle memory and start swimming towards something, anything.

I just had a really good conversation with a friend—let’s call her Libby—and she basically said that after college you just look at what the next best decision is, and you take it like that. Step. Step. Step. Evaluate. Step. Step. And if that’s not exactly what you meant, Libby, frankly take that up with my lawyers. Creative license. I’ll have my day in court.

I’m on that diving board and the wind is picking up. It’s fucking terrifying, but I’ve seen all my friends jump, so I have to assume that there’s something spectacular in the deep end. At the very least, there’s got to be something spectacular in the fall. And maybe that’s all that we can be promised at this point as soon-to-be functioning people. The fall is fun and shit-scary and your palms with sear with the impact but you’ll start swimming.

That seems like enough metaphors for today. This was fun. This was right.

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Source: Giphy

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Life, Rambles

MEMORY CANNIBAL, also known as THE TONYA HARDING STORY

As a writer, you’re constantly handling the balance of how much of your personal life to divulge to your audience. As a comedy person, you’re constantly balancing how much of the painful details to twist into a funny anecdote. So when you’re a comedy writer, you’re basically playing the game of “Which horrific moment of my life can be a funny essay without me completely selling my soul to the Devil, Faustus-style?”

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Source: thatslutinthearmchair.tumblr.com via Giphy. Caveat: I’ve been watching a lot of Happy Endings recently and all of the gifs will come from there. You’re welcome.

I’m not a comedy writer, or a comedy person, or a writer. I’m not even legally a human. But as a professional Ina Garten drag impersonator and someone who operates a blog, I find that more and more, I’m running into that issue. When nothing was happening in my personal life, it was easy to write about it. But as I grow and evolve, and the issues in my life grow and evolve, I am beginning to notice a line in the sand that is harder and harder to cross.

And it’s only until things actually started happening in my life that I realized that the “life” that I was writing about was literally nothing. But now my life is actually starting to roll, and not just in the same sense as the Gloucester Cheese Roll Competition. Because that’s funny.

There is an intense impulse to publish for writers. My journalism professor talks about that impulse all the time, or at least I’m assuming he does, because I spend most of my time in that class reading RuPaul’s Drag Race recaps. But when something happens to me, like that time I fell down the stairs or the time I sat on a plate of quesadillas or any time I make a fool of myself in front of a boy, my first instinct is to share it, Tweet it, or blog it. And that instinct is more than just the desire to share something that happens. It’s the desire to take back control of the situation.

Blogging incapsulates your life, packaging it into palatable, hilarious little morsels. The tale of me getting hurt by the first boy I cared about becomes a funny essay. A bad date becomes fodder for griping. The various aches and pains of existing as a real-life scarecrow—my brand—translates into rubbery antics. Writing takes the sting out of embarrassment and hurt and pain, and turns it into comedy. And on one hand, it’s extremely cathartic. It provides me the distance to process and dissect something, to take myself out of the equation.

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Source: jparx.tumblr.com via Giphy

Recently things have been happening to me. Some are amazing. Some are terrible. And my first instinct has always been to blog about them. But for the wrong reasons. I want to take myself out of these moments, but I’m also afraid to. I’m afraid to talk about the crazy, shitty things that are monumental in my life because then I relinquish control of them. They cease being intimate to me. They become content, public domain. They are no longer mine. And that’s been hard to come to terms with. That some things could easily be sting-less and funny and palatable, but that would mean losing my place in them. It would be accepting them as past and renaming them as something meant to be consumed.

My wanting to blog them is my wanting to stop them from hurting. Things have been rough lately, and that kneejerk reaction to make the bad thing stop is very much in play. But sometimes things have to hurt. I can’t—I shouldn’t—blog my way out of this. I’m trying not to make it into a joke or a punchline or a laugh. I’m trying to give it gravity. It’s really fucking hard, and lousy and frustrating. Because my instinct, as a writer and a former dork and a wannabe cool kid, is to cannibalize, produce and de-sting all the awkard’s and ew’s and damn’s of my life.

I’m a memory cannibal, and that’s not always a bad thing. A lot of amazing things come out of shitty situations, but I’m in this weird position of realizing that if I mean to take this writing thing seriously, there are lines in the sand that I have to respect. One of my favorite writers, Ryan O’Connell, wrote about the same kind of experience. And as he got older, he realized that he couldn’t just write about every drug trip, bad sexual experience, and “Ouch-funny” moment that happened. That knowing the difference is the divide between “writing” and “being a writer.”

So in true self-absorbed writer fashion, I’m writing about writing about something. Maybe one day in the future, when I have enough money to hire a defense lawyer, I’ll tell some of the stories that I’m keeping in the vault. They’ll be good then, and I’ll have distance. And in my tell-all book, Telling It All—The Tonya Harding Story (Just Kidding, It’s Me, Danny), I’ll reference this blog post, and people will go to their antique Macs and pull up the article while sitting in their hover-houses with their pleasure-robots (I hope).

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Humor, Life, Rambles

I’M CHRYSALIS-ING

Do you ever do that thing where you let yourself get as unkempt and scraggly as possible, and then when you finally take care of yourself, you get to treat yourself to a The Princess Diaries movie montage makeup transformation? That’s what I’m doing now.

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Source: hercampus.com. A) How weird is this gif? B) I am more befores and none of the after.

I haven’t shaved since last Wednesday (it’s Sunday). Normally I shave every other day, but I’ve been putting it off because I want to Princess Diaries myself. Also, apparently, despite shaving for five (nearly six) years, I still have no f*cking clue what I’m doing because I’m constantly dealing with razor burn. And lately it’s been particularly bad, so maybe I’m shaving even more wrong?

In addition, I’ve been having a Prison Break-out of acne and I have not been feeling cute.

Side bar: I just Googled Prison Break and saw that Wentworth Miller was in it, and I always, for some reason, thought that he was in that other prison show, Oz, which I always thought was ironic because he’s gay. And Oz…Never mind, I might’ve just hate-crimed myself.

Side bar side bar: Once my mom and I were talking about Wentworth Miller—I’m not sure why/how—and she was all like, “Oh he’s so handsome,” and I told her he was gay, and she just sighed, like she hadn’t been married to my dad for almost thirty years. Also, it was one of the first moments where we actually talked about the gay thing, without skirting around it.

Side bar side bar side bar: Now my parents are convinced I have gaydar. They think that David Muir from ABC is gay and that he’s dating Gio Benitez because someone told my dad and my dad told my mom and then my mom asked me for confirmation. Apparently Gio Benitez just got married to his boyfriend, so I texted my mother to let her know and all she responded with was, “I think he was too young for David Muir,” as if we know anything.

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Source: Danny McCarthy

Side bar side bar side bar fun fact: Gio Benitez and his boyfriend (husband, whatever) met via Instagram, which is the gayest/most millennial thing ever, and this was reported in The New York Times.

Side bar conclusion: I think David Muir is hot.

However, I recently got in a fresh batch of acne medication—you know, sometimes I think my life is boring, and then I write blog posts where I say things like “my mom asked me if David Muir is gay” and “fresh batch of medication” and I know that actually my life is the most interesting ever—and I’ve been giving my skin a break from constant chafing…from shaving, not something weird.

In nature (I almost put that in quotes, like it was contested), the caterpillar goes through the strenuous process of becoming a butterfly by wrapping itself in a cocoon of silk. That cocoon is called the chrysalis, and that’s what I feel like. I feel like I’ve wrapped myself in a cocoon of reddish stubble and acne cream, and I’m patiently baking—I’m mixing metaphors, but who cares—and soon—probably tomorrow—I’ll shave and slap on a fresh coat of aftershave and I’ll emerge from my chrysalis as a sexy, sexy butterfly.

Or I’ll turn out like Heimlich the butterfly from A Bug’s Life and emerge from my chrysalis just as fat and busted as before, but with a pair of ineffectual wings.

Side bar: I chose to call it “chrysalis-ing” as opposed to “caterpillar-ing” or “cocoon-ing” because “chrysalis” is a prettier word.

I was so worried this would be a sparse blog—the subject matter can only go so far—but I should’ve known that my rampant tangents would fill space. My inability to really focus on anything truly serves me well when I’m writing a blog, but shoots me in the kneecaps when I’m trying to write a paper. Technically, you could consider this entire blog post a rampant tangent from the paper that I should be writing. But where is the fun is writing without an impending deadline and a cartload of stress?

Side bar: Do you think anyone in this library suspects that I’ve written an entire blog post about chrysalis-ing, or that I’ve made two Twitter polls in the last two minutes?

BYE.

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Celebrity Sunday, Life, pop culture, Rambles

WHAT’S BEEN HAPPENING: KYLIE JENNER HAS HER GRIP ON THE THROAT OF POP CULTURE AND NO ONE CAN DO ANYTHING TO STOP IT

Did you miss these? You didn’t care? That’s fine. I didn’t care either. I didn’t even THINK ABOUT IT, DEREK. Just kidding, I thought of you all the time. I wrote you every day for a year. That’s from The Notebook, right? That seems like a lot of work. Also, did you not get the hint when a year went by without a response? Take a hint: either she’s dead, illiterate, or over you.

I ate like complete garbage this weekend, and my body is sorely paying me back for the abuse I’ve put it through. I’ll try to be better, body. Although the other day, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and just thought that my body looked snatched. In a good way; not in a “snatched as in Taken” kind of way.

Anyway, anyway—let’s dive into some good, old-fashioned, Wunderkindof-prime, grade A beef.

WHAT’S HAPPENING RN:

1). Kylie Jenner released her new line of glosses: If you didn’t get that tidbit from her gloss-release video, that’s fine. That video was more confusing than watching an old Italian movie sans subtitles. It basically involves Kylie lounging in a Rolls Royce while three girls—the embodiment of her glosses “Like,” “Literally,” and “So Cute”—serve us some Breaking Bad–Nikita realness.

It’s smart of Kylie to branch out into something other than the Lip Kit, and the release of the glosses prove me right when I predicted that the change of her Instagram name from “lipkitbykylie” to “kyliecosmetics” means that she’s going to be a make-up mogul. If she releases a line of jungle-themed cosmetics, then she might be a make-up Mowgli. Ah? Ah? No? That’s fine.

The addition of “Like,” “Literally,” and “So Cute” up her lipcare products to eleven, and cement her dainty, Cartier Love bracelet grip on the throat of pop culture.

2). Beyoncé released a clothing line called Ivy Park: Everyone is jumping on this athleisure train and Beyoncé is leading as conductor, which would actually be a fitting sequel to “Telephone.” It’s a lot of black and gray and white, with “IVY PARK” branded everywhere—which is…chic, let’s be honest. But is it weird that I’m a tiny bit over it already? Maybe it’s the fact that everywhere we look we have celebrity products—let us all take a moment for Yeezy Season Threezy—but I want to be wowed. I’ll be wowed by the Formation album, but let me know when Beyoncé drops a line of affordable menswear capes.

3). Trump stuck in his foot in his mouth and somehow this time managed to screw up: Donald Trump said, when pushed by MSBNC town hall host Chris Matthews, that women who receive abortions should be punished. This then set off a whirling dervish of statements, reversals, and redactions, which proves that Trump neither has no idea what he’s saying and really doesn’t actually care. I’m glad that people are starting to hold him accountable, and force him to take a stance, rather than allow him to hide behind bluffing, waffling, and running out the clock. I wrote an entire article about it for The Odyssey Online, which I’ll link here when it comes out, because I don’t feel like repeating myself.

4). I started watching The Real O’Neals and Difficult People and both made me only mildly uncomfortable: Because I spent most of this weekend trying to lure people to my apartment—friends, not lovers or strangers—I ended up watching a lot of Hulu. I used to hate Hulu because it’s kind of the fucking worst, but it has some good shows on it. I found The Real O’Neals which is both unrealistic on a Catholic level and on a homosexual level, but it makes me feel slightly better about being a gay from a private Catholic school background, and also slightly worse because why can my skin have been that flawless while I was in high school? Then Difficult People makes me feel both slightly better about being mean to people and infinitely worse about wanting to make people laugh at/like me a profession.

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Source: Giphy

5). Will I ever not read into cute boys following me on Instagram?: Survey says…probably not.

6). I dressed in blacks and grays today, and did a Mary-Kate Olsen mouth: Which is neither a cry for help nor a victory, but somehow both and neither. This weekend I actively tried to be lazy. I succeeded, and somehow that didn’t make me feel better. It didn’t make me feel worse though, so I guess that’s a success.

7). Can I rant for a second: So I was sitting at Pavement, a coffeehouse on campus because sometimes I can’t help but be insufferably stereotypical—I also stare out of windows when it’s raining, so get those stones ready—and my laptop was dying because it’s old and the free Internet was about to run out. I stand up, start putting my stuff into my bag and before I could say “Beetlejuice” three times, someone was already standing right next to me.

“Are you leaving?” she asked. “Oh, yeah, I am,” I said, brightly. Then she starts dumping her stuff onto the table, nearly crushing my new J.Crew sunglasses. Now, I can hover with the best of them when it comes to securing coffeehouse tables, but there are rules, as typical to any civilized society. One: don’t move in before I’m ready. Two: don’t mess with my stuff. Three: back off, bitch, you’ll get your table.

I wanted to pinch her so hard, but I needed coffee more, and even though I was in a coffee shop, I walked four minutes away to the nearest Starbucks because my mom gave me a gift card and I’m skint.

8). What is the acceptable amount of time to absent-mindedly stare at someone before it gets weird: I was on the street the other day, and I read a text from a friend who had seen me walking on the street, commented on my outfit, leading me to absently stare around, looking for him. I then realize, when a person started walking toward me, that I had been staring accidentally at an acquaintance and she thought I was non-absently looking at her.

It wasn’t a horrible interaction, but I keep getting caught doing things like this—staring at people accidentally, or smiling at them when I don’t mean to but that small desire to be liked wins out. I thought I had an unlikable face—in fact, I was kind of banking on it—but the world refuses to acknowledge that, and everyone thinks that I want to be their best friend. Truth update: I have one best friend, and her name is Ina Garten and she doesn’t know I exist. There’s no other room in my world for extraneous people. Cue the mantra: “Don’t be extra-nice to extraneous.” In my head, that kind of worked.

*****

I only got mildly misanthropic in this blog post, so it’s a win. But then again, I managed to turn a “what’s happening in the world” post into a “what’s currently wrong in the seventh-grade science fair experiment that is my life” so let’s call today an Even-Stevens.

On a side note, I can’t wait to be 37 and bitter. Being 20 and bitter is exhausting, and—frankly—not great for my skin.

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Life, pop culture, television

AVOIDING SPOILERS IS THE BIGGEST FIRST-WORLD MILLENNIAL PROBLEM

It’s Monday night. RuPaul’s Drag Race is airing the second episode of its eighth season, which is critically acclaimed by me, because I claim everything critically.

Side bar: Why don’t we use “disclaim” like we use “acclaim”? Or do we?

However, I don’t have a TV, and my “friends” with a “TV” are in “classes” or have “homework” so instead, we make a plan to watch RuPaul tomorrow, Tuesday, online.

Monday night, I’m already antsy. It’s officially past 10 p.m., so it’s officially past the airing of the episode, which means that all of my social media—Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and Tumblr—are potentially flooded with spoilers (my social media accounts are extremely gay). So, like a monk, I take a vow of celibacy and instead read my book. every time I go to open the Twitter app—likely because there is a devil inside me—I flinch and avert my eyes, exiting the app before anything can be spoiled. I can’t scroll through Twitter. I can’t peruse Instagram. I can’t even watch YouTube in case I see any spoiler. It’s literally hell. I actually went on Tinder and started talking to boys because that was one place I was relatively certain I wouldn’t stumble upon a RPDR spoiler—unless, of course, you’re talking to a gay devil who loves spoiling TV shows.

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Source: Reaction.Club

Side bar: I’m talking to a guy who knows a hot gay that I know, so he’s probably out of my league.

Tuesday, it’s almost 8 o’clock when I’m writing this, and I haven’t yet had anything spoiled. All I have is one more meeting, and then I’m going over to Marco and Mitchell’s and we can watch the episode and I can escape this circle of hell that not even f*cking Dante could cook up.

And during my twenty-four hours of self-induced celibacy—celebritacy?—I have learned something. The whole notion of “spoilers” is completely the trappings of a first-world 21st century millennial. Do you think our parents had to worry about spoilers? My parents had, like, ten channels and one house-phone. They didn’t have to worry about sh*t.

Even in the early ‘00s, when spoilers first started emerging, you didn’t have to worry in the same way. If you missed the last episode of Friends, all you had to do was avoid the water cooler at work. I’m not entirely sure, but I’m assuming the Internet wasn’t, like, a thing-thing in Friends’ hey-day. Now, if I want to avoid a TV spoiler, I have to avoid at least four people and six different social media, not to mention “recap” shows like The People’s Couch (wow, that’s my second mention of that show in as many posts).

I find it so fascinating that our generation can have such unique issues that no one else really had to deal with. Abstaining from social media to avoid spoilers is right up there next to having to change your Facebook profile picture but not having any solid choices, or trying to explain what a hashtag is to your mother while in a Panera Bread. We—the first-world millennials—are growing up in a unique bubble of child and adult.

The other day, I referred to the habit of watching television shows week-to-week, as opposed to binging on Netflix, as “the old way.” I have brainstorming sessions and poll focus groups before changing my social media handles—I’m now @dnnymccrthy on Instagram and Twitter if you want to follow me (dropping the a’s made it seem minimalist and Tumblr-y). I follow an Ina Garten parody account on Twitter. These are not things that have ever existed as problems before.

A more connected world is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because I can be across the Atlantic and still be annoyed by my family. It’s a curse because there are, at any given point, at least two ugly photos of me from the seventh grade circulating the Internet. It’s, like, a Catch-22—jk I’m not old enough to get/make that reference.

We’re more educated, more opinionated, and more babied. That’s resulted in an entire generation of weird f*cking people. Today I discussed the rhetoric of Donald Trump on his campaign in class and Ubered from Trader Joe’s because it was raining. We’re giant babies.

I’m okay with that though. Or, more truthfully, I’ll be okay with that if I can make it to tonight without some demon spoiling anything for me. Pray for me, guys.

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Humor, Life

HOT IN A PATRICK BATEMAN KIND OF WAY

Wednesday, March 2nd

After I spent two hours writing vaguely pornographic essays about film theory—spoiler alert, everything is about manipulation and penis envy—I unfurled my pen-holding claw. The entire side of my hand was stained deep, sheeny cobalt from my pen. I had just used the word “edging” in an essay—yes, in that context—and couldn’t shake the feeling that I had either passed with flying colors as a pervert or failed miserably as a prude. Either way, I was proud of myself for refraining from using “blue balls” while discussing the culture industry. Small victories.

It was the kind of final where you are so unprepared that you’re almost excited to start it, where the only apt response you have to its eventual arrival is, “Alright, let’s see what you got! Hit me, bitch!” It was one of those.

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Source: Gifrific.com

I don’t know what it is, but I always feel the need to call my mom immediately after getting out of a big final or a test. I don’t think it’s because I think she cares; I think it’s just I have this deep desire to be like “Hi look at what I’m doing with the small fortune you’re spending on me! I’m taking tests!” And she’s like, “Good! You’re not squandering everything!”

After I finished having a conversation with my mother—which was five minutes of talking and five minutes of going, “Huh? What? No, I didn’t say anything.”—I met up with Shelby at Starbucks before my next class.

I’ve been slowly building up a relationship with the barista. She’s not always there, but she’s almost always there when I have my five-hour block of class. Sometimes I’ll go before the block. Sometimes I’ll go in the middle. We crack jokes, and I subtly push the limits and going right to the edge without actually asking, “So do I have to pay?” I know that I do, but I always have to test that boundary.

We’re so close that she already began to write up my order before I even got to the register. Granted, it was on a cup for iced coffee, when I only order hot coffee, but still the thought was there. Frankly, she’s one latte away from being my emergency contact.

Our relationship is exactly the amount of intimacy that I want. We don’t know each other’s names—we exchanged them once, but they didn’t stick—and she’s learning my coffee order and I break up the monotony of her day. After I got my latte and put an unhealthy amount of sugar into and settled back down into a conversation with Shelby, who was drinking Dunkin Donuts in a Holy Place, I realized that Barista had written “Friend” on my cup. Babe!

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Source: Tumblr

I didn’t write a post on Tuesday. I don’t feel bad. I was completely drained of ideas, and I had gone from gym to class to interview to editing and uploading that interview to library to event to home at 10. So I forwent—forwent doesn’t seem like it should be a word—writing a post. But now, two days later, I feel a little guilty. Not majorly guilty. It’s on par with what I imagine the guilt of a mother who accidentally leaves her kid at a WalMart but realizes before he does because he’s engrossed in looking at toys. A silent, niggling, not-really-there guilt. But still, a little guilt.

Now I’m on a train going home for spring break. Midterm week was so crazy-hectic and gross, that I’m so excited to be a vegetable floating for a week. I’m currently sitting alone in the “Quiet” car—my seatmate left at Providence—and I’m praying to whatever god I haven’t offended yet to let my solitude last all the way to New York. With my luck, it won’t happen. But I’m manspreading and keeping my fingers crossed. Every time someone passes by me, I involuntarily clench up.

I worked out three times this week instead of five—gasp—but every single time I was at the gym, I saw the same guy. Okay, so I, like, “know” him but he definitely wouldn’t know me. I’m the friend of his (ex?)-girlfriend’s costar and I saw them all in a play once. He’s hot in a skinny, straight, Patrick Bateman kind of way—which is to say that he’s hot but I could totally see him skinning someone and wearing it as a cape. Is that weird? Anyway, he’s strong, but wiry, but has a head of hair that’s very “hottest kid in Calculus in 1998.” Which—if you know me at all—isn’t not my aesthetic.

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Source: Rebloggy.com

We seem to be on the same cycle when it comes to working out, so whatever I’m doing, he’s doing, but because I’m lazy, he’s usually doing it with more intensity and a higher weight. So not only am I at the gym, but now I’m at the gym and being intimidated by hot scarecrows.

Anyway, in my Wednesday night class, I was sitting waiting for everything to begin—and by “sitting waiting for everything to begin” I mean “screenshotting Kris Jenner’s Instagram”—and suddenly Patrick Bateman walked into class.

“Is there a class in here?” he asked me, and I just stared at his sexy mouth. Time stretched into taffy, and then it snapped back together.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“And there’s not any extra computers?”

And I said, “No…” because I was like, ‘Scuse?

He gave a half-smirk that I later described to my friend Mitchell as “the half-smirk, half-smile, half-laugh that is born out of a confidence where you have never had to worry about discrimination” because he was a straight, white male. It’s the kind of confidence that only straight white males and cats seem to possess—pure, unadulterated confidence that the world was built exclusively for you. Patrick Bateman left the class, and I immediately told Mitchell about it.

And so on this train, I’m trying to recuperate from a week of pyschotties, pervy film theory, and the struggle of trying to word something that I’ve already said slightly differently to beef up my word count. I overpacked for spring break. I know that I’ll be wearing exactly the same outfit every day—lethargy and track pants—but somehow I’ve crammed an entire Fashion Week into one small suitcase. I’m ¼ into a book that I Amazon Primed this week, but forced myself to abstain from until the work was done. Usually that doesn’t work—usually I’m super-shitty at restraining myself. I have poor impulse control and a knack for rationalizing a lifestyle of “Netflix now and stress later.” But I managed to do it and now I’m reading it. It’s I’m Special (And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves) by Ryan O’Connell who is sort of my writing role model. But it’s actually kind of dark because he’s talking about “getting a job” and maybe it’s the millennial in me, but I’ve just always kind of run on the assumption that I’m hot shit and everyone will want me to write pieces about stalking hot boys in CVS and pay me handsomely.

So I decided to take a break and write a blog post. I was going to give myself some time off, but then I remembered that death is inevitable and I might as well write before arthritis sets in from chronic knuckle-cracking (my mother swears it’s going to happen to me). The train is either still in Rhode Island or Connecticut, but either way it’s way depressing. Once, going home for Thanksgiving, the train broke down in the backwoods of Connecticut and I swear to God I thought we were going to be Walking Dead-ed. Gilmore Girls taught me that Connecticut was charming and winsome, and being white taught me that Rhode Island was the chic, New England equivalent to the Hamptons. But three years of riding back and forth and all I’ve gathered is that they seem like prime locales for dropping a body sans questions or making citizen arrests.

Byee!

Also this gif was too real not to include.

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Inspirational, Life, Love & Romance

YOU’RE NEVER REALLY UNLOVABLE AND YOU’RE NEVER REALLY THAT UGLY

Friday, February 26

“Also, I was fat this week, and that really sucks.”

It’s minute 42 on what should have been a thirty-minute meeting with my psychiatrist, where we would ideally—like, idk—talk about my medication and stress levels. Instead, with the blind ambition of Donald Trump, I barreled on through a hefty dissection of what had happened to me in the two weeks since we last met.

I’m a relatively busy person—I write for this old whore of a blog, I contribute to an online publication, I’m an editor for a campus magazine, I work out five times a week, I am taking classes, I have a job, and I try to find time to watch Netflix because god knows I’m still only human. So, all in all, that really does actually take up quite a lot of time to relay.

I’ve been taking meetings this week with a couple of new writers for my section, which requires me to meet them and talk about what we “do” and what I’m “expecting” from them, and I’m not sure if it’s the stress getting to me, or if I’m actually turning to wax, but my mouth kept doing this odd, robotic twitching—almost a lock-jaw—because I was so hyper-aware of how I was talking. So with my weird mouth and my penchant for talking, the roof of my mouth has become that sick mixture of too dry but also too saliva-y after yammering on for 42 minutes.

And at the end of a long diatribe about housing for next year, I decide to tack on the sentence about feeling fat.

An acute dislike for my body—body “issues”—has always been a facet of my personality, long before I realized that it wasn’t normal to hate your body and think that you look like a troll baby. Apparently I’m dumb as rocks, because it also took me 18 years to realize that being super depressed and constantly bottling up one long scream isn’t normal either. But there’s a learning curve. And with my psychiatrist, the ideas of dating and body are always intertwined.

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Source: Imgur

And because I felt fat, I felt undeserving of even thinking about other guys. There was this guy at the gym who is a total LA beach Ken-doll twink (not exactly my type but I’m mesmerized by his bleach-blond tips) and I was like, “Who do you think you are, you Joey Fatone, looking at him?” Which is absolutely the most fucked up thing that I think. Because I’m not nearly as judgmental of other people as I am of myself. And even the guy that I’ve liked the most, even though he was so cute—omg, you guys would dieeee—it was his humor and how smart he was and his ambition that made me interested.

And I went to lunch with a friend after the meeting—well, first, I went to the gym—and I ate a salad. I hate eating salads. I like salads with attitude, with panache—a little smattering of caramelized pecans or a slab of goat cheese or a sick dressing—but dining hall salads only serve to make me feel like I’m gnawing on a piece of Astro-Turf. And so when I was thinking of stuff to cook for dinner, I was kicking myself for not defrosting a chicken. And I thought to myself, “Well you can’t have pasta, you little tubby Howard Taft” and then I got mad at myself and said, “Fuck that,” and I ate pasta.

(Actually, hold on, I’m going to defrost a chicken cutlet right now.)

Literal minutes go by.

(I put it in the refrigerator to defrost; the cutlets were all frozen together so I had to 127 Hours one away from the rest.)

I think that this casual disdain I have for my body is almost as negative as me outright protesting against it. Because this way, this subtle “fuck you” thinking, sinks into my skin and my brain and my way of processing. And I want to get to a place where I can eat pasta and work out and not feel guilty or stressed or vile for having done one and not the other.

And so I’m going to type this out because Lord fucking knows that I don’t believe it. But sometimes writing out positive things helps to balance out the Macarena of Negativity in my head—also that’s totally the next big dance craze. So I’ll say this: you’re never really, really, really that ugly. You’re never unworthy of talking to someone or looking at someone. And you’re 1000x harsher on yourself than you are on anyone else or than anyone else would be on you, aside from if you were a contestant in that beauty pageant in the “Pretty Hurts” music video. But regular life isn’t like that.

Like yourself even when you don’t love yourself. Find one positive thing to say about that old burlap sack of meat you call your body. And maybe start by not calling your body an “old burlap sack of meat.” Call it a “human clothes hanger” or “a moving mannequin” or something funny. Respect your body because it’s how you interact in this world. Acknowledge the fact that millions of years of evolution—yeah, I went there—have coalesced into a four-limbed, fragile, resilient human body with the capability for love and hate and passion and fear and bravery—respect that your body is the product of a billion years of test-drives until you arrived on the scene.

Don’t treat yourself like a test-drive or a crash course. Treat yourself like a Mercedes G-Wagon—beloved, cherished, and competitively stalked by me from the sidewalk.

And, I think, cherish things beyond your body. Because when you acknowledge how amazing you are—inside—it becomes easier to accept your outside. Think of yourself like how I thought of that boy—smart and clever and yeah, maybe his cuteness was an added bonus, but his substance was infinitely more enticing—and treat yourself like a g*ddamn queen.

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Inspirational, Life

THINGS I’M EXCITED ABOUT

So I’m stressed to impress right now. It’s a combination of lots of homework, the vague impending threat of midterms, personal ish, a lot of writing but little of me, and just the general state of the world. And usually when I’m stressed, it’s reflected in my writing. I focus on more negative topics, or I write about being stressed. Spoiler alert: that was going to be my topic for today. But I’m over feeling this way, and I know that if I write something negative, rather than have it be cathartic, it’ll just make me feel more stressed.

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Source: Tumblr

So I’m doing the opposite. Instead of focusing on the things in my life that could easily make me want to pull my hair out, I’ll focus on the good things; the things that I’m excited about.

 

Things I’m Completely Jazzed About:

 

1). RuPaul’s Drag Race: This season (season 8) will mark the second time I’ve watched a RPDR season while it’s current. I watched last season while it aired, and then caught up with seasons four, five and six over the summer. But there’s something I love about watching a show week-to-week. Bingeing is amazing, but it can’t account for the fun of counting down days or making time in a hectic schedule to sit down, unwind, and indulge for an hour.

2). Broad City: I love Broad City and the new season has aired. The premiere episode wasn’t, for me, something to write home about, but I can’t wait to see what they do with the rest of the season. Abbi and Ilana are so funny and sharp and clever, and I think that they’re going to completely add to the pop culture landscape this season.

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Source: Bustle.com

3). The Amazing Race: I’ve never watched The Amazing Race before, but this season is “Internet Influencers” and I love me some digital peeps. Again, I’m very into episodic TV-watching, and even though I hate waiting a week in between, it makes each episode more rewarding.

4). The spring: Usually, I find spring boring. It takes too long, and it’s unsatisfying, and it just feels like one long waiting game. Also I’ve never been completely secure with my body—actually I’m actively insecure about my body—so I normally hate any season where it means I have less fabric to wear. But I’ve become less and less in love with winter the older I get, so I’m actually looking forward to spring. Also, I’ve been getting more into fashion lately—like, actual fashion, and studying trends—and I want to implement what I’ve seen online in an actual springy reality. Also I want to wear shorts. And I want to be okay with my body. And I want to wear these really cute J.Crew olive green shorts with an oversized denim shirt and my sick white Stan Smiths. It’ll be so cute, with my hair (hopefully) grown back to a sweet swoop and some metallic sunnies.

5). Smoothies: Warmer weather makes me think of icy fruit smoothies after workouts with my sisters. I don’t really do smoothies at any other time of the year, but something about the summer, and the free time, and the indulgence of preparing a smoothie and enjoying makes me feel happy. And it’s relatively healthy. Plus most fruit skeeves me out, so I try to make up for that with smoothies.

6). This trash heap blog: It’s not really a trash heap. I just don’t know how to express affection. But I’ve really enjoyed experimenting with different styles and topics—did y’all notice how I talk about politics now??—and I think it’s help me to rebrand the blog, at least in my mind. But I think I want to reincorporate some personal essays like I used to. I’ve laid off a bit partially so that I could store up some life experience and partially because I wanted to try other things, like What Happening RN and such.

7). Finding new Spotify playlists: Spotify does a pretty decent job of coalescing artists I might like into those “Discover Weekly” playlists. I’m listening to one right now, and I don’t think there’s anything quite like discovering a song that you didn’t know but really loving it. I’ve also been branching out into different genres, specifically rap, which are excellent for working out to. Plus they’re insanely clever. Childish Gambino is wicked smart. And Kanye, for all his ego faults, knows his stuff. I would’ve said “s***” but I’m trying to curse less. It really puts me in a bad state; it primes me for negativity.

8). Not needing a number 8: I really like doing things in eights now; 10 is usually the number we strive for but I like the roundness of 8. So this number 8 is a non-number, because I want to have 8 points but I couldn’t think of an actual 8th thing. I have tricked you.

*****

This actually helped a little. Do you ever watch those YouTube gurus who do Q&A’s? they always get a question about how they stay so positive, and their answer is always, “It’s definitely work. But you just have to work at it.” And you’re gripping your screen, thinking, “What an asshole.” Because that’s actually the most unhelpful advice ever. But there is something to the madness. I didn’t give in to my stress and focused on the positives. And that made writing this post really fun. Because at the end of the day, this blog isn’t supposed to be work. It’s supposed to be pleasure and creative and my outlet. It shouldn’t feel like a job.

I want to thank Marco. For texting and being there; and I love you. This is our little can-and-string moment. 😉

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