Dreading My Tofurkey Purchase

Originally published on Funny or Die.com

It’s that time of year again. I will buy my Tofurkey at Trader Joe’s. I’m a vegetarian. I don’t want to get into it. Please, don’t make fun of me. I’ve heard it all before. “You know plants are technically alive…” You might think it’s sad that I lug a log of fake turkey to the host’s house but I try to do it quietly and without attention being drawn to me. It usually works out.

The problems began for me last year when I rolled up to the register at Trader Joe’s. The cashier rang up my items and it was uneventful at first. And then he spotted my box of Tofurkey. He grabbed it and said, “I’m not ringing this up. You can’t eat turkey just one day of the year?”

I then had the world’s most boring conversation about being a vegetarian for 20 years and if I did cheat one day – why would I risk having digestion problems on Thanksgiving? I’m already going to have a hangover the next day. That’s enough excitment for one long weekend.

He opened my box of Tofurkey and said “Heads up!” to the cashier next to him and tossed my loaf like a football. The other cashier fumbled and my Tofurkey was on the floor. We stood over the dead tofu and he said, “I used to be a vegetarian. I had a girlfriend who was one and she convinced me to be one. Then we broke up. And I got a new girlfriend. A meat-eater.”

On the word meat eater – he flexed his bicep. He said, “She was good in bed. So I started eating meat again. I had forgotten what I was missing.”

Then he mimed sex with his arms and hips. You know the move.

The manager came over and said, “Can I get you another one?” I wanted to tell on this cashier who told me about his meat-eating sex life but before I could – the manager said, “You tell her you used to be a vegetarian?” The cashier laughed, “Yeah. I told her the story.”

What manager sees that their cashier dismantled a Thanksgiving dinner, talked about his sex life and acts like the only abnormal thing is the vegetarian who is just trying to get the hell out of there?

Everytime I go to Trader Joe’s something like this, but not as bad happens. The cashiers are too friendly and nosey. I’m met with question after question. One time I was interrogated about why I don’t have an outdoor BBQ grill. Another time I was told by an older cashier that I looked too young to be buying wine. Then he proceeded to tell me that I must have good genes to be 34 but appear to be in my 20’s. He told me his ex-wife had good genes but her mother had better ones and he still wants to take his ex-mother-in-law on a date because she is beautiful for her age, but she won’t return his phone calls.

I’m not saying people should ring up my order in silence but do we have to talk about meat or sex? I’m glad the employees only have to wear Hawaiian print nametags as opposed to shirts but let’s keep progressing, and maybe we’ll get to the point where cashiers can just go back to talking about the weather, or else I’m taking my complaint to Trader Joe himself. He’ll probably rape me.

The Other Great TV Shows

Originally published on Pop-Rock Candy Mountain

Thanks for hanging in there with me, through all the ups and downs of my blogging career. I know I got kind of annoying there for a while with my paranoia (justified but still…) that the 2008 election would be subverted by the Karl Rove-bots and we’d be left with the covertly ambitious Sarah Palin as our VP.

I raced home from work to begin my relaxing night of watching election returns. I got in my pajamas and made myself a hot toddy (I had a cold.) Just as I was settling in for a long night, Chris Matthews announced that he had an announcement to make. And then it happened…my DVR switched the channel and started recording a repeat of Entourage. (This is my fiancée’s fault. He tapes the show. But I own the Sex & the City movie so, we’re both equally terrible.)

I furiously scrambled with the remote control and my DVR was insistent that I watch Entourage. After what seemed like five hours but was really sixty seconds, I got my TV back to MSNBC. I saw crowds literally dancing in the streets of New York City. For a moment I thought I had entered a time warp and it was New Years Eve. Nope. It was just America celebrating the election of our first black President and our first Democratic president in eight years. I was watching the credits of Entourage while the rest of the world had that moment – that one moment in time that I’ll never get back. I began yelling, “Entourage? The results of the most historic election in American history and I miss it because of freaking Entourage?” My neighbors yelled, “Shut up!” They must be either fans of Entourage or fans of celebrating Obama’s wine without my whining.

Now that I’m not watching pundit predictions 24/7 I’m adding a few more flakes of flavor into my TV-watching stew. And I want to tell you about some of my favorite shows on TV. I know that 30 Rock and The Daily Show and Real Time and all the other great shows are the best shows on TV. But I’m talking about the other best shows on TV. And here they are.

Ruby, Sundays at 8pm on The Style Network.

Ruby is a four-hundred-something pound woman who is putting her struggle to lose weight with a new training and diet program on TV. Ruby is constantly joking around about how she can’t sit without her ankles filling up with fluid, her sleep apnea, her inability to stand for too long. My husband-to-be covers his eyes and groans when I watch this show because he can’t stand her flip attitude towards her possible early death due to obesity. But I find her fascinating to watch. If you log on to the show’s message boards the average viewer seems to take Ruby’s sense of humor at face value. They log on and thank her for laughing through all of this. Not to knock my fellow-Ruby watchers but if you have a little more intellectual curiosity than your average message-boarder, you can see that Ruby is in serious emotional pain and her constant joking is a huge way for her to distract herself and whoever she’s talking to from really getting close to her sadness.

And the best part of the show is her nephew Jim. I can’t tell if he’s gay or just Southern. If I were a betting woman, I’d peg him as gay. In the first episode he explains, very quickly and with a strange smile on his face that he lives with Ruby. His parents can’t have him living at home because….he’s allergic to their cat. And I’m supposed to accept immediately that it’s normal for parents to choose a cat over their teenage boy who is now being left to be homeschooled by Ruby and her (seemingly gay) other male roommate, her childhood friend. I hope she loses the weight and I hope that Jim moves to New York City and gets a spin-off reality show called Gay Southern Guy in The Big Apple.

Celebrity Rehab, Thursdays at 10pm on VH1

Lots of people ask me how I can love this show when really isn’t it just D-list actors exploiting themselves? No. Where else are you going to hear Rodney King’s side of the L.A. beating story? Who else is going to give Gary Busey a platform for his Busey-isms? – like FAITH – Fabulous-Adventures-In-Trusting-Him. Where else can I learn that Tawny Kitaen’s real name is Julie? The failed reality TV show, Sons of Hollywood didn’t showcase Rod Stewart’s son as anything but a tail-chasing jerk. On Celebrity Rehab we see him calling his fellow rehab-mates “beautiful” and giving many same-sex back massages.

And don’t get me started on Dr. Drew. Not only does he have surprisingly great biceps but he’s brilliant. He’s no Dr. Phil. When Drew nods and looks concerned for you – he means it. And he doesn’t yell at anyone with a catch phrase like “What were you thinking?”

The show definitely does not glamorize drug use but it does make me want to live in a communal place where every morning I’m woken up for morning exercises and group therapy. How cleansing to bawl before 9 a.m. with a group of new acquaintances and cozy chenille blankets.

Admittedly, it’s hard to watch Jeff Conaway contemplate suicide and walk around bent at the waist with a cane. I was so in love with him when he was Bobby on Taxi. I’m wondering if someone in that rehab center could just show him my favorite episode of Taxi where he loses a role on a soap opera but decides to remain a struggling actor anyway. Would Jeff come back to life if he could see a DVD of his once-feathered hair and tight jeans? It might be something for Dr. Drew to consider if Jeff tries to leave again.

And finally,
The Pick-up Artist, Sundays at 10pm on VH1
My friends ask me, how can a loudmouth feminist like you, like this show? I don’t think there is anything wrong with picking up women at bars. Have you met women who go to bars to hook up? That’s what they want. No one is there to discuss Tolstoy. Sure, the methods are a little cookie-cutter and it seems as though the message is that if you are a little fresh to a woman and dazzle her with a few magic tricks that she’s putty in your arms, but, um, these women on the show…respond that way and it’s fascinating to watch.

Being a comedian, I’m often around nerdy dudes and I’ve had a few hit on me. The painful part is when a shy guy is hitting on you but he’s somehow doing it so badly that the girl ends up doing all the work and wanting to leave at the same time. Painfully nerdy guys need to learn how to talk to girls so that at least the girls are entertained while being put in an awkward position. And if wearing a feather boa, and black nail polish and starting conversations with a group of girls with lines like, “Did you know Elvis dyed his hair?” works for these loveable geeks, great.

Okay, now I’m going to obsessively flip between the cable news networks until someone tells me if Hillary Clinton accepted the Secretary of State position or not!

I Am Not On Fire

Dear East Coast,

I am fine. I am not in the fires in California. I think it’s very nice of you, my friends and family, to email me and check in to see if I am safe or if I’m burning up like a dried leaf. I do want to point out, and I hope this doesn’t sound too critical, but for my friends and family who have visited my apartment in West Hollywood, California, do you remember a forest in my neighborhood? There isn’t one. There is a Starbucks and an Urban Outfitters in my neck of the woods (shout out to Al Roker!) and although I imagine paper holiday coffee cups and extra long scarves are quite flammable – I think should those buildings go up in smoke it would be relatively contained.

I don’t mean to make fun of you. I know when the news reports that “California Wildfires are raging,” the natural assumption is that my cement front stoop is on fire. (Which, it could be. My neighbor tosses her cigarette butts on the third step.) But a quick Google search will let you know that the fires are raging in some Santa Barbara counties as well as Orange County. I am many, many, many miles and several highways away from these areas. I’m also about $10 million short of being able to afford living in these areas as well.

Do I ask you folks in Massachusetts if you got caught in the crossfire at Lexington and Concord? What, that was 1776-ish? Oh, I didn’t know. I heard something went down in Massachusetts and I just assumed that you were directly involved.

I’m flattered that when you think “house” with “acres of land” near where Oprah Winfrey has a mansion that you think of me. I suppose it would be rude to not ask me if I’m okay. But if I was on fire – I’m probably not at home responding to emails.

I will say this. I have been affected by the fires. It is very hot in Los Angeles right now but it’s not the normal hot that summer or Global Warming brings. I went to Kmart today. Let me tell you, it’s freaky to be terribly hot while you watch animated reindeer covered in Christmas lights nodding their heads to “The Little Drummer Boy.” It feels like I’m in an episode of Amazing Stories (remember that show?) I feel like I’m the only one who notices the Apocalypse and everyone else is acting like its normal for an animatronic reindeer to be moving around under a pink sky and oppressive heat.

I do think the air quality is challenged and while it’s not bad enough to activate my asthma it is bad enough to make me cranky. I treated myself to a pedicure today and I had no patience for the up selling-in-broken-English that pervaded my relaxing afternoon. “You want deluxe?” No, I don’t. I’m ticklish. I want to get out of here. “You want neck massage?” No. I don’t want a neck massage. I’m trying to read Bill Clinton’s book, Giving. I don’t want to be touched. I want to read about the culture of giving globally and I reserve the right to be distant and rude while doing it. Los Angeles (County) is burning and I’m cranky, damn it.