Today in NO!

We got Dad an Echo for his birthday in October, and he’s been delightedly asking it to play every song or musical group that’s ever occurred to him ever since.

Unfortunately, he’s run out of acceptable material to listen to, because he just asked Alexa to play an open-ended run of Ferrante & Teicher, and NO! We might as well install a Formica-paneled elevator in the living room and ride it in endless uncomfortable silence as the dulcet F&T song stylings play unsettlingly on low-fi speakers in the background.

In the time it took me to type this, we’ve endured “The Way You Look Tonight,” a samba-flavored reinterpretation of the theme from “A Summer Place” and, as we speak, something Alexa just informed me is called “African Echoes” on bongos and zithers and endless waves of profound cultural discomfort.

NO!

So ... burning man ...

Sometimes carefully laid plans for a weirdly cool Burning Man exhibit at the Renwick followed by a pilgrimage to see the Obama portraits at the National Portrait Gallery turn into a mostly-chatting-and-half-paying-attention-to-the-arty-stuff wander through the Renwick followed by three hours of catching up at (don’t laugh) TGI Friday’s (I SAID DON’T LAUGH) with a long-lost high-school friend who is now a hella-cool adult friend who will corroborate your story that your TGI Friday’s waitress was probably the shittiest waitress ever to work on a Friday or any other day and I seriously can’t remember the last time I’ve ever left a bad tip for anyone and I used to wait tables so I ALWAYS tip extremely generously and Gareth was my first-ever crush and I just had lunch with him but I’m burying this information deep in this blathery run-on sentence so you probably skipped over that part and saved us all a bottomless swamp of paralyzing awkwardness how ‘bout them Hawkeyes I’m on vacation puppies are cute THIS PART IS IN ALL CAPS anyway where was I oh yeah the Burning Man exhibit was truly cool and breathtaking and informative for those of us who until today had no earthly idea what the hell Burning Man is even about and I totally recommend it but we both heartily do NOT recommend the nearby TGI Friday’s (STOP IT WITH YOUR DERISIVE LAUGHING) especially the slimy booth that had a metal plate over the junction box where the sconce had mysteriously been removed Exhibit A: First Selfie and catching up with Gareth was truly an awesome way to end a truly awesome vacation even through we never got to the National Portrait Gallery but we did get a selfie in front of a nearby George Washington bust Exhibit B: Second Selfie don’t worry I told him a long time ago that he was my first-ever crush and his wife has reportedly come to terms with it and is totally not threatened by me OR IS SHE and he swears it’s not awkward anymore but let the record show HE WAS THE FIRST TO BRING IT UP TODAY BUT IT’S TOO LATE THAT SHIP HAS SAILED SO STOP MAKING IT WEIRD GARETH and the Obama portraits will have to wait until next summer but except for our gaspingly inept waitress today this trip has been pretty awesome.

Welp

It’s back again: that awkward 61-day stretch where I can never remember if the month is 8 or 9.

Pulling the rug out

I’m sorry to kick off Valentine’s Day with news of a failed relationship—especially a new one like this that held such beautiful promise—but the side rugs I bought for my bedroom just aren’t working out with the giant Oriental rug I already have. I thought the minimalist pattern of the side rugs would create charming opposites-attract interest, but the reds just aren’t compatible. They’re not even trying, in fact, and they fight so much that they can’t even be in the same room. So the side rugs are moving out before they’ve even really moved in.

The rugs have agreed to do everything they can to keep this from being awkward or upsetting for everyone. Please try to respect our privacy as we work through this difficult time.

Second day. More advanced.

So Mystery Secret Gym Boyfriend was at the gym again today with his Beguiling Masculine CalvesTM. I was with my trainer so it would have been weird to just walk away from my workout and abruptly introduce myself by saying something mortifying like “My name’s Jake. Are those your calves? I like bread.” Just like yesterday, he kept totally to himself during his workout, but my trainer had me doing legs and while I was on the quad extension machine he yelled from across the gym to ask if I was using the squat rack, which tells me three things: 1) He noticed I was doing legs. 2) He’s considerate and polite. 3) We should have a June wedding.

But there are three more things that have left me in a ponder: 1) I hadn’t been anywhere near the squat rack, which is so far from where I was doing quads that you need a passport and a Silkwood scrubdown to get to it. 2) There are two squat racks right next to each other and neither had weights loaded so his question had only one transparent purpose and that purpose was to ask me how many cats we should get when we move in together. 3) Maybe the wedding should be earlier than June. Like this Saturday.

Anyway, he was doing planks as I left the gym, and don’t nobody wanna have a conversation with a stranger while counting seconds during planks. So I’ll just have to wear a different marathon shirt to the gym tomorrow to impress him with my Total Jock JocknessTM. Which I totally didn’t spend time picking out this morning for that very purpose. That would just be bread.

What I learned tonight:

1. Those clothing anti-theft devices that say they’re full of dye aren’t lying.
2. Those clothing anti-theft devices that are full of dye can crack open right in the clothing-anti-theft-device removers that the clerks use at checkout.
3. They’re designed to explode when they crack.
4. (The devices, not the clerks.)
5. When they explode, the dye goes everywhere.
6. Everywhere.
7. The dye is blood-curdling red.
8. When a clerk splatters herself with exploded blood-curdling red dye all over her hands and her face and her front, she will apologize profusely to you.
9. You will not know how to respond to these incongruous apologies as this situation is chronically unaddressed in shopping-etiquette manuals.
10. But you’ll have to say SOMETHING in response to all that warrantless apologizing.
11. Even though you know absolutely zero injuries were sustained in the exploding-dye incident, your response instinct will be to say one thing and one thing only.
12. That one thing will be “I’m just glad you’re not hurt.”
13. This will serve only to make the situation somehow worse.
14. But it doesn’t end there.
15. Because when you leave the store with your purchases that WEREN’T ruined with blood-curdling red dye, you will also compulsively say “I hope you feel better.”

The dawn of a golden age of atheism

Ah, America's modern-day Kennedys: dynamic thinkers and style icons brimming with youthful idealism and the courtly-but-joyful appearance of domestic marital bliss. Melania keeps the world fashion dialogue in a perpetual state of abuzzment with her signature freshness and coy irony; she wears Armani to a soup kitchen and then the Old Navy Dowager CollectionTM to the Vatican. I think I could totally date her stylist. Ivanka gets points for versatility; her outfit goes effortlessly from afternoon beatings at her Amish sweatshop to a hamster funeral to the Vatican to her nut job (oops -- NIGHT job) as a chimney sweep, and then that corpse sneeze of a veil doubles smartly as a hairnet for her morning shift at the cafeteria in one of Jared's tenements. Donald -- impish, spirited Donald -- would show up to his own funeral (wouldn't THAT be fun?) looking this rakish and disheveled in a tie as crooked as his integrity, a (Saudi? the picture is too small to see for sure) flag pin, workingman's hands bruised from tireless hours perfecting his stroke (and not, as those poorly shot videos seem to imply, from being playfully swatted away by his third (and counting!) wife's bediamonded hands), and a grin as out of place as a shipment of pro-American-jobs hats made in China. We are truly in a golden age that spans the continents from the hotel rooms of Russia to the gilded towers of New York, and this royal family brings a level personal, human connection to everyone rich or poor or especially poorer like no one has ever seen.