“You have to work for it. no one’s just going to hand you a pair of five hundred dollar shoes and say congratulations. If they do, well then you didn’t deserve them.”

There’s much to be said about a young woman whose artistic existence is based on pop songs with  sugary shake-it-til-you-break-it beats that strive to have a much deeper message such as kissing girls and enjoying it or dreaming like teenagers whatever that means. Katy Perry has not only mastered the art of the top 40 pop song, she owns the persona of a pop artist. Ms. Perry has branded herself, intentionally or unintentionally, the queen of bedazzled fashionz. With a “z” not an “s” because things that can be replicated at, or were replicated from, the board game Candyland do not fall into the category of fashion. 

Honestly, what is happening here? Why is perfectly good whipped cream being WASTED?!

What can I credit Katy for? Well, she owns the crap out of wearing it loud and proud and not apologizing for it and I guess I can appreciate that. What she should be apologizing for is her consistent inability to sing well in a live arena. Her performance on SNL was roughly three minutes of my life that I can’t get back. Why did you keep watching, you ask? Because just as you don’t look away when you see vagrants fighting in the park, when someone is shattering the last shred of any sort of respect you had for them on national television, you don’t change the channel to Iron Chef, you keep watching.

Her music is essentially the mexican hot dog of many folks’ mental musical dictionary- fun to partake of in groups, but sad and borderline disturbing to enjoy alone. Perry’s music is laced with the kind of audial crack that forces your hand in a poltergeist-type manner to turn your car radio up, because that is the only place you can listen to her music without judgment, and start to let your body involuntarily jerk to the beat because that’s the only way you can accept that you do in fact, enjoy dancing to her music.

Of all of the songs that have been irresponsibly unleashed onto the airwaves, I find California Girls the single most emotionally polarizing song to have pummeled the delicate structure of my ear canal. I hate it yet, here I am shimmying my shoulders and doing that side to side head dance in which your neck stays stationary. You’ve done it, so don’t scoff at my confession as if you haven’t been caught doing the same thing at a stoplight during your afternoon commute.

Why does it grate my nerves so much to hear Katy singing about drinking gin and juice on the beach, getting your stilettos sandy, and wearing jorts disguised as underroos? I’m not quite sure. It’s hard to be irritated at a song that is so full of bubble that it bursts with confidence at every chorus: California girls are undeniable. They’re fine. They’re fresh. They’re fierce. They’ve got it on fucking lock. But. Katy isn’t talking about all California girls. She’s talking about the ones who live south of the 661 area code and west of the San Andreas fault. Have you been to a beach north of San Luis Obispo? The bottle bleach blonde girl per capita drops significantly north of Santa Barbara. So does beach partying and driving Jeeps with the top down which is almost exclusively a thing to do in Southern California anyway. It’s fucking cold in Northern California, so people wear more clothes out of necessity. The beaches up there make for more of a “127 Hours” type experience than say, “Gidget”. Sure, folks up there are running on the beach….but not because they’re running towards someone who’s just arrive to the party with a cooler of Boone’s Farm. 

Like any good pop song, legitimization comes in the form of a hip hop legend looking to mix it up with what he calls good business but what I see as somewhat of a mid-life crisis. Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. (or Snoop Dogg as you peasants refer to him), your kids could go to college on the royalties from this song, but how are we supposed to reconcile you singing about tankinis and martinis? It can’t be done! To his credit though, I don’t think Snoop has ever really taken himself seriously enough to not jazz hands it up with the likes of someone like Perry.

Not to say that Northern California isn’t fun-they have wine country! More importantly in wine country there are not one but two Thomas Keller restaurants. But Northern California isn’t really represented in the song and the inhabitants would sooner burn down Cal Berkeley than lay claim to the bimbos Perry has immortalized in the mother of all summer anthems. 

Yet.

I can’t help but sing. And dance. Not just dancing, but actually taking my hands off of the steering wheel to do the Carlton dance, risking the lives of drivers around me by diverting their attention from traffic and into my car. When no one is looking, that song is my JAM. I don’t just know the lyrics, I know them and can even fumble my way through the Snoop bits. And should someone catch me, I quickly change the channel to NPR and pretend I’m understanding anything Terry Gross is saying. 

I have, in the past few years developed a disgust for radio. More specifically, top 40 radio. Anything that is not satellite, or public radio (NPR, can I get an amen?), bastardizes the music industry and I hate it. I hate it more than I hate knock-off bags. More than I hate a messy kitchen countertop. Even more than I hate the sound of any of the Kardashians’ voices. Popular radio is a black eye on the music industry and a sad reflection of a simple truth: people don’t want to hear good music. They want something easy to listen to that doesn’t challenge anything they know about music.

::Climbing down from my soapbox::

Since the violating theft of my late 90s model vehicle which included a non-functional iPod adapter and a CD case full of digital purchases and irreplaceable mixes made by friends, my morning and afternoon commutes have been littered with the trash that is the Billboard top 40 (hip-hop, alternative and popular music editions). By proxy I’ve learned the lyrics to most Ke$ha and Katy Perry songs and have not changed the channel on a Nicki Minaj “tune” more than once. The music is bad. The artist is worse. And at one point or other, we’ve all found ourselves listening to some of this audio diarrhea, if you will, thinking “how did this make it into he speakers of my car and how would I explain my knowledge of all the lyrics of this song to anyone who caught me singing it?”

So I humble myself and present the first installment of “Songs you love to hate and hate to love”.

  Anything by LMFAO

Every time I hear one of their songs, I am transported back to a day when I was 40 pounds thinner, dancing under the seizure-inducing lights of a club and consuming mass quantities of whiskey gave me energy as opposed to acting like a sedative. LMFAO is best listened to under these conditions, preferably with access to designer narcotics and a limitless selection of expensive liquor that will come in handy when the song starts to command that you pound that liquor like you didn’t pay for it. Which you probably didn’t. Because if you’re smart, you played your cards right and went to the club with a friend who has a tried and true strategy of getting invited to tables, drinking more than you were invited to and casually disappearing when one of the table occupants has noticed all of their liquor is gone.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), for those who have grown out of, or have been ungraciously pushed out of, the club scene, we have the luxury to hear anyone of LMFAO’s top 40 hits in the privacy (and if you have those new soundproof windows, secrecy) of our cars and home. LMFAO’s songs are easily identifiable with the following questions: 

- Do your speakers rattle at any point during the song even though the volume is on the next to lowest setting?

- Do you feel the urge to turn up the volume to a level that not only makes your speakers rattle more but also makes your fillings loose and fall out of your mouth?

- Are more than two brands of expensive liquors named in the song?

- Are you encouraged to binge on said liquors?

- At some point in the song are you instructed to dance or shout something in that order or together?

- Does the singer(s) (you’re not sure if it’s one or two dudes yet) state more than seven times how amazing they are?

If you answered yes to most of those questions, you are listening to an LMFAO song. And you’re liking it. These two guys have capitalized on literal party anthems (they even wrote a song about it)-songs that give you confidence to dance! Let me backtrack: they’re songs that make you think that you’re dancing but everyone else sees you performing what appears to be a full body dry heave/reason to call 9-1-1. But you can only dance after you have had the commanded number of shots that will likely cause you to die of kidney failure immediately. But who cares? Because when LMFAO tells you to do it, you do it!

bbook:

In case y’all don’t know, Ben Schwartz won an Emmy…for the Oscars. Do we have questions?

Jean-Ralphio. Tom Haverford. Need I say more?

First things first: I want you to try saying the title of this entry five times fast.

Newsflash: it’s ok to be single. IT’S. O. KAAAAAY. The “issue” of being wedding band-less AND not dating without any prospects should be given some credit because the issue is, there is no issue. As much as it feels like sometimes, being single isn’t a social death sentence. Or a personal one.

I feel like there are two distinctive perspectives when it comes to the outlook and perception of being a single lady of a certain age. Exhibit A: The “Yay! Good for you sistah! Get your single on girlfriend!” single girl. These women don’t wear the “single and ready to mingle shirts” for irony’s sake. They wear it because they have a faux sense of empowerment by their singleness and ready to mingleness. What’s hiding behind that phony self-cheerleading is a lot of unhappiness. And insecurity. And discomfort with the forced mingling. And a daily truckload of uppers.

Exhibit B: “I’m NEVER going to get married. I’m going to die single!” Marriage and the fear of dying alone in a single bedroom apartment in one of the less reputable senior communities consume these women. If you’re feeling stressed about being single, you probably want to be in a relationship for the wrong reasons. 

I’m going to stop right there because I don’t want this to turn into one of those tacky “Shine! on Yahoo!” articles where the author solicits unwarranted and often very offensive relationship advice. I’m in no position to give relationship advice. Commitment isn’t something I’m familiar with. I can barely commit to this blog. (I could barely commit to this post.)  Any advice I do give is often very practical and won’t be the cotton candy boost you think you need to feel better.

Why am I giving you single girls, a series of single girl suggestions (not advice!)? Because there are too many of us out there obsessing over not being a “we” and not enjoying being a “me” and making ourselves feel bad about it. There is a happy middle to being delusionally single and miserably single. I promise. Stop putting yourself on one end of the spectrum and put your focus somewhere productive: yourself.

This won’t be a series of useless advice. These are suggestions. I’m not here to make you feel good. Being single doesn’t always feel great. It isn’t always fun, sexy times shoe-shopping with Carrie and the girls. Sometimes it’s just plain shitty for no reason and every reason. And for those of us who are from time to time stubbornly independent to the point of stupidity because we don’t know any better, admitting that being single isn’t always great almost seems like a betrayal to yourself.

Whoa things just got too deep. Did you feel like you have accidentally stumbled upon someone’s Lisa Frank journal? Sorry, I like to keep these posts vapid and mean-moving on!

Here begins my series of non-judgmental single girl suggestions. Being single isn’t always fun and it isn’t always easy. But like life, it is what you make of it. And if you’re trying so hard to cook up romantical times, you’re going to miss out on what can be some valuable time to preserve yourself and your sanity, things that are willingly sacrificed when the right opportunity comes along. (Whoa I’m sorry, that Lisa Frank journal just fell open again!)

This is about getting out of your own head and enjoying a rare opportunity to be selfish without much judgment. Because one day you’re going to wake up and kick yourself for not taking advantage of those prime selfish years (do not panic-yes, I said YEARS!). And then you’re going to realize that it’s not you kicking yourself, it’s your kid.

Here are some things that this series will not include (for the most part): unwarranted man-bashing, unwarranted couples bashing, hand-holding and telling you that everything is going to be ok. Sometimes things are not ok. And when they aren’t, that is when you have full license to invest in a fifth of your liquor of choice and not put on pants.

Here are some things that this series will include: some healthy perspective on real life.

Single Girl Suggestion #1: Solo Movie Dates

“You went to the movies by yourself? On date night?!” ~Charlotte York.   

Wake up June Cleaver and unravel those apron strings from around your neck.  It is 2011 and girls have been going on solo dates since I don’t know when, but it’s been happening. And the ladies are loving it almost as much as they love licking the inside of a bag of finished kettle corn when no one’s looking. The solo date night: movie edition is the easiest of all dates in the solo date genre because going to the movies isn’t an organically social activity to begin with. The point of going to the movies is to sit, watch and listen while Tom Hanks runs across continental United States twelve times.  Going with a friend or a group is either going to work for you or against you and after you start taking yourself on solo dates to the movies you’ll find that it’s the latter. There are so many components to the actual group activity that is encompassed in seeing movies with 1+ people (dates/friends showing up offensively late, someone chewing on ice with the force of a gravel mixer during a monologue, leaving during the credits which by the way is just fucking rude) that the actual watching of the movie sometimes gets ruined.

Going to the movies by yourself isn’t just fun, but it’s kind of liberating! Not bra-burning liberating. More like drinking before 3PM liberating. Timing is important though because Charlotte was right in that it’s kind of a weirdo move to go see a movie alone on date night (Friday and Saturday, but sometimes Thursday in cities like LA and New York where the weekend starts on Wednesday). Unless you like being on 85 other couples’ dates (some of them very awkward first ones!), don’t pick a movie that just opened and see it on date night by yourself.  Unless you plan on bringing a flask and buying popcorn for the sole purpose of throwing it at people (in that case, call me), don’t choose an opening weekend movie to see on solo date night.

The best solo movie dates are reserved for weeknights. To see movies that were released two months ago. It’s a nice way to wind down a workday and if there’s a bar near the movie theater, well then bonus! Class up your evening with a happy hour priced glass of wine before popping over to see the next big Spielberg flick. If there’s a bar in the movie theater, you shouldn’t be going to any other movie theaters.

Sunday afternoons are another great time for solo movie dates. Again, follow the opening weekend rule and see something that was released at least three weeks ago. If it was a real flop, you’ll be lucky to have the theater to yourself. Sunday afternoons are great because it’s generally a lazy day, so says the Bible-not exactly in those words, but I’m sure some interpretation translates it that way. And if people aren’t at church they’re finishing up brunch or recovering from a hangover. In my experience, not a lot of people are going to the movies on Sunday afternoons, so abide by the singleton code and use it to your advantage.

I started taking myself on solo movie dates in college because I was tired of waiting for the schedules of my friends to line up, so we could see something together and because there were a lot of movies I wanted to see that no one else wanted to see. Why should I have to wait? It also went the other way: I almost never, ever want to see a romantic comedy. If I never saw another RomCom again, it would be too soon as this often poorly written and poorly acted genre has ruined many a movie going experience for me. 

The first movie I saw alone was Little Miss Sunshine-I laughed, I cried, I wanted to adopt Abigail Breslin and then I wanted Steve Carrell to adopt us both. I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t borderline paranoid about ordering one ticket, walking into the theater alone and sitting alone. Everywhere I looked at the theater, everyone was coupled up or in a group. When it occurred to me that I didn’t have to check with anyone on where they preferred to sit (because in all honesty, if you have 20/20 vision, where you want to sit is irrelevant) OR offer any of my snacks, I got really excited. Almost, too excited. I sprinted up the theater stairs, past a couple who was playing the “no you hang up!” game but instead determining where they wanted to sit, and got the middle seat in the middle row of the theater. BINGO. I determined I was probably never going to ask anyone to join me to see a movie ever again.

In 2008, I took myself on a date to see the sexiest movie of the year, There Will Be Blood (Daniel Day-Lewis, call me!) and took a bucket of chicken wings with me to the theater in my purse. I ate the whole thing. {This is where the audience applauses} Right out of the bucket. I dipped those euphoria-inducing meat lollipops in ranch, wiped my hands on my Free People sweatshirt and let the greasy crumbs sit on my face until the house lights came back on. You’re probably thinking “Gross! What is WRONG with this girl? Someone call Maury!” But if you saw the movie you’re probably as relieved as I was that I didn’t make a milkshake my choice of dessert. If you’ve ever eaten a bucket of anything in the dark of a movie theater you would agree with me that it’s very liberating, yes? If you’ve done this before, we should talk because I’d love to discuss what other meals you’ve snuck into the movie theater before, how it worked out for you and what concealing strategies you use.

I think my favorite element of seeing movies alone is not having to share my food. There’s no skirting around the fact that I’m stingy when it comes to food. And I don’t trust that you washed your hands well enough to be molesting my chicken wings and ranch. Sometimes you just want to make a meal out of something that’s so outrageous that you would never tell anyone. Like a bucket of chicken wings for example. At the movie theater on your solo date, no one has to know that you just ate a week’s worth of calories with your hands and you liked it. And you would do it again.

If you’re at the movie alone, no one can judge your food choices. Want to sneak in a bottle of wine AND half a rack of ribs? Who’s going to stop you? Besides the attendant tearing tickets who questions the delightfully smoky, saucy smells coming from your suitcase purse. Don’t worry they can be paid off with an Applebee’s coupon or swig out of your wine bottle. Who are you kidding, you’re not sharing your wine, give them the coupon. This is an “If a tree falls in the forest….” situation. If no one saw it, it didn’t happen, so scoot on into the theater with your Famous Daves+liquor store combo dinner, stretch out across four seats and do not curse the fact that you’re alone. Relish it. You don’t have to share your wine and you get to see a movie just the way it’s meant to be seen.

Still feeling stressed about being seen in public going to the movies alone even though I just made a very convincing argument and intensified my carpal tunnel syndrome while doing so? First, you’re welcome. Second, like you would with a two-people date: make wise decisions.

1.   Go to a theater you’ve been to before, dum dum. Just like a first date-stay in your comfort zone. 

2. Worried about what the tween with Hannah Montana brand extensions selling tickets is going to think about you saying “One for Hilarious RomCom not starring Katherine Heigl”? Then Fandango it and print your ticket at a human free kiosk at the theater. (Note: You should never see a Katherine Heigl movie period, but if you just can’t resist her pseudo-charm then trick someone else into going with you and blame them for the 90 minutes of your life that you lost. Because if you go by yourself, you have no one to blame but you!)

3. If someone sits near you in the theater, it’s ok to move. If you’re already feeling uncomfortable, don’t let the presence of aloof complete strangers make you feel even more uncomfortable.

4. Take advantage and see a movie everyone else has already seen or see something you couldn’t get anyone to see with you. It’s much easier to sit through the Academy Awards if you go and see all those films that no one is interested in until someone is crying on a stage about it 6 months later. And when everyone’s rushing out to see it right after, you can put on your “been there, done that” pants and stay your ass at home and catch 8 hours of a Law&Order: SVU marathon (a singleton staple). 

Ultimately, enjoying a solo movie date comes down to this: get out of your own head. No one is looking at you, you self-centered prude. If they are looking, why do you care? Ask yourself that and then this: why should you wait to do anything just because you’re afraid that you’re going to have to do it by yourself? The only person who is concerned with you being at a movie by yourself is you. So burn your metaphorical bra, get your ticket to the next 20 million dollar blockbuster four weeks after it’s released and DON’T feel weird about it. 

Well here I am folks. It’s been, months. And I’m sorry (not really!). I have no excuse. Well I do, but it’s a terrible one. I’m incredibly lazy. There, I said it! And since no one’s paying me to write about how much people and things annoy the shit out of me, the motivation train hits the skids quite often. 

So with no logical segue, I give you, the Nanny Diaries: my study in child terrorism and poor parenting Fall 2003.  

Without giving too much away, I went to a private college in a gorgeous beach town about an hour outside of LA (go ahead, Google it now) that cost about 1/16 of Mark Zuckerberg’s net worth to attend. I was awarded scholarship and signed my firstborn over to Lord Voldemort by taking out several student loans, but this wasn’t enough to cover what became an environmentally-sustained spending problem and the loans I was granted certainly were not adjusted to the cost of living in said fancy beach town.  

To support my spending habits, I had options of on-campus work (registrar’s office assistant, looking up academic files of the water polo team which were just as disappointing as I’d imagined) or off-campus options. I dabbled in both, but the gig that gave me the most flexibility with decent pay was being a nanny. There are only two places in the continental US where nanny is a legit job: LA and New York. There is only one place in the continental US where it’s a legit profession: fancy beach town where I went to college. 

It was during this time in my life that I convinced myself that I liked children.  This denial was in the name of a paycheck which begat grocery money, lots of C&C tank tops and a first name basis relationship with the sales team at Sephora. My campus was a breeding ground for future nannies and ripe with stars of future episodes of Nanny 911 or whatever they’re calling the “my offspring is so bad I have to hire a stranger to handle this situation instead of using the God given right of corporal punishment” show.  

What a lousy bitch this one is, you say to yourself. How can you not like children? Do we really want to go there right now? I do, but I’m way too tired to prove some very valid points.

Of all the families I nannied for or screened to nanny for (yes, there was a screening process and they thought they were screening me but really I was screening them), only two were on the balanced side of sanity. I walked away from those families with peace that those kids were not going to face parental-induced substance abuse problems and praying that if I were to ever procreate my kids would turn out half as smart and for the most part well-behaved as them.  

Two of the families, and I use the term family loosely, I worked for served as a warning for the value of birth control and corporal punishment. It also confirmed my belief that I had a wonderful gift for attracting and identifying weirdos. I’m not good at a lot of things, but I’m very good at pinpointing a fucking weirdo. It goes beyond being socially awkward-it’s about identifying someone who has something intrinsically wrong with the core of their being. I may not be able to identify what that something wrong is (because who are we  kidding, do I want to stick around and find out?), but all I know is that there is something repulsive about this person that everyone else doesn’t see until he’s caught peeing on cars in broad daylight. One of those fucking weirdos was Val. 

My school had an online service in which nannies could find families and vice versa. I took my cue from the actual Nanny Diairies book and wrote what I found to be a very charming listing for myself-not too many exclamation points, not too many personal details about myself-just enough for a parent to look at my listing and say “Yes, this girl can string together a sentence and her sentence structure does not indicate that she is a serial killer. Sold!” 

During my freshman year, the first family I worked for lived in what I believe they believed was technically in Malibu (whoops, just outed myself!), but was likely unclaimed land in the general vicinity of Malibu for which they did not have to pay taxes on. After playing an extensive game of phone tag, I connected with the mother, Val, and we set up an initial meet and greet. She gave me equally extensive directions to her “home in Malibu” that “isn’t far from the Country Mart” which isn’t a country mart at all. The Malibu Country mart is a luxury shopping center that is host to an expensive bakery/breakfast spot with so-so food and inundated with celebrities who liked being photographed by TMZ photogs, a Banana Republic where one of my friends once saw Halle Berry and a Mexican food joint where another friend saw Brandon Boyd from Incubus (who is one of the top two reasons, I chose fancy seaside resort/college). Her estimate of being 15 minutes from the Country Mart was one of many fibs this woman told me to con me into being under her employ. 

Following her instructions that led me through one of the less utilized canyons, I coached my 1991 Toyota Corolla up several winding one-way hills, with switchbacks that rival those on the scenic tour of Hana in Maui. Want to test the limits of your motion-sickness? Take that tour and try not losing your cheese Danish and coffee breakfast.

After 15 minutes of climbing up this mystery canyon, screaming at my car not to strand me on an unpaved and unmarked road and hoping a skilled Malibu driver (see: person who can drive through any canyon within a 10 mile radius of town with their eyes closed during mudslide season) in a Range Rover would not come roaring around one of those switchbacks and send my car flying off a cliff like an afterthought, I nearly passed my exit. My exit was a small unpaved driveway (what’s with rich people and unpaved roads? A burglar is not going to let a little gravel stop him, folks) to which I had to make a sharp right into and climb up another hill at what felt like a 30-degree angle. No wonder my car quit on me several months later. That thing was just waiting to take a dump on my sanity after forcing it through the auto-equivalent of a jaunt up Mt. Everest more than once. I’d be mad too.

After parking my car behind what appeared to be an abandoned shed, I got out and started searching for the entrance to the house. Had I made a wrong turn? There didn’t appear to be any other buildings besides the shed and beyond it was a large grassy area with the Rolls Royce of playhouses.  Made of wood, not that cheap ass Playskool plastic, two stories, a slide, swings. Probably bigger than my dorm room, which I had to share with someone (not at the time, but I had to share before!). Probably built by the hands of day laborers picked up at a Home Depot on a Monday afternoon.

I walked past the shed and saw nothing but foliage and the potential to get mauled by a wild animal. Was this one of those houses that you see on “The Fabulous Life of….” hidden behind expensive designer shrubbery with a front door controlled by a remote that opened up to an expansive mansion carved out of the side of this death cliff? No rock walls disguised as doors were motoring open, so I doubled back to my car to see if I could get a signal on my cell (as if) to call this goofy bitch and find out if I was at the right house or about to get rifled in the head for trespassing.

Before I made it to my trunk, I heard Val calling “Helloooooo! In heeeeeere!” I turned to see the outline of a human being in one of the dirty windows of the shed I’d parked behind. She was waving wildly and through the dirt-crusted window I could sense she was thrilled to see me.

This had to be some kind of prank. Had this woman really lured me into her shed off the beaten path of some obscure canyon trail to watch her offspring? She was waving and pointing around the front of the shed to what I assumed was the door. I followed her arm motions and sure enough a door to the shed opened up and there she stood, with a child on her hip with the body shape of a lollipop. Large, bobble head and small toddler body. I already did not like this child based on looks alone.

“How could you say that?” one might ask. I don’t know, but I just did. I don’t have to justify not liking a child based on looks just like you don’t have to justify secretly hating the obese person on the scooter who’s not doing anything but sweeping Funyuns off the shelf at a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market with one arm.

Val waved me into her humiliating abode and I was formally introduced to my match in slobbery. The shed was essentially a studio apartment without the luxury of being anywhere near a Target or possibly running water. There was stuff. Everywhere. Baby stuff. Leftover breakfast stuff. Baby stuff. Husband’s work stuff. Clothes stuff. Shoes stuff. Everything stuff. Every. Where.

My roommate and I didn’t let anyone but our suitemates into our rooms (only to watch The OC really) for fear of getting the same disgusted look that I was giving Val’s canyon chic studio apartment. She offered me a seat on her stuff covered couch and as I lowered myself cautiously down onto a couch I was afraid to sit on, a cat appeared out of nowhere (from under the stuff) and flew across the room, claws out with a kamikaze-like “meow”. I screamed and tripped over one of those baby scooter things-you know the things you put babies in who are learning to walk, but really you’re just kind of lazy and know the baby can’t follow you as fast in that thing as they would trying to crawl. Plus it has built in entertainment, so by the time you put the baby in there, it’s already forgotten that you’ve abandoned it to go brush your teeth and savor the three minutes of sanity you need to get you through the rest of the day. I’m not a parent. But I imagine parenthood is just that: savoring sanity minutes throughout the day so that you can go back to taking care of your child in such a way that they will not want to put you in a home in 40 years.

Val scooped up the cat with her other free arm and said “Oh that’s just Fatty. You just scared him. Go away Fatty.” And away Fatty went into one of the stuff-filled rooms. I scared him? Aren’t you supposed to tell me there’s a homicidal cat hiding in the never-ending quilt on your couch?

We sat down and while Val thought she was interviewing me, I was interviewing her. She was your typical Malibu mom-a former executive-type who moved out to “the country” to get away from it all and stopped ignoring her biological clock just long enough to pop out a child who would have to grow up in a house full of stuff. She was early 40s and based on the short time I’d spent with them, her child, a 26-month old named Kay was giving her more of a challenge than her corporate life had ever given her. Why don’t parents just say their kids are one-and-a-half years old or two years old? Why the months? Do you want to know how many minutes I was on my period this month? Probably not. 

When I say Val was your typical Malibu mom, I mean that she fit the basic profile-almost old (practically facelift age), educated, had worked at some point at her life. She was a mom in Malibu but she was no Malibu mom. She was nothing to look at and I don’t even think she had a Rachel Leigh Cook in She’s All That appeal to her. Val was old and tired looking, which I guess comes with being the mother of a toddler in your early 40s. She wore large glasses that made her look like an owl with glasses and her hair was an unfortunate dull shade of brown in terrible need of a wash and cut. In fact, I’d say her hair looked much like her house. Full of…..stuff. For our meeting she wore a pair of store brand sweats and a ratty sweater that she likely got in a clearance bin at a Dress Barn some years ago. Not to say she should’ve busted out her Academy Awards standby dress to meet me (don’t you know every mom in Malibu has one of those?), but she could’ve dressed with some dignity upon meeting a complete stranger. She was the only Malibu mom I met who did not seem to care one iota about her physical appearance. There’s a difference between taking pride in your appearance and being vain about it. She practiced neither and the former would’ve done her schlubby appearance some good.

Nothing about Val said that she knew anything about interviewing nannies in Malibu however I don’t believe I was the first nanny to cross the threshold of her home.

After she gave me her background, I gave her mine, all the while trying not to concentrate on spotting any large spiders crawling up the walls of her one car garage turned three bedroom house. “Grew up in ____, blah blah….I picked _____University because blah blah…I love kids! Blah blah. I’m telling you everything you want to hear! Blah blah!”

After this initial meet, Val determined I was not only not a serial killer but possibly insane enough to come to her house weekly and watch Kay. While she had determined I was not a raving lunatic, I was not so sure about her. Something about Val was off. The executive background. The granola lifestyle. The house that in retrospect should have been reported to CPS and a producer from A&E. I mean imagine if I had a hand in co-creating Hoarders!

Something was not ok here. But I needed to cut my teeth in this market and take my nanny skills to the next level before I moved onto what I perceived to be less crazy families, the CEO of Warner Brothers’ family for instance. Ok not really, but I did drop another one of the kids I looked after off at his house. I imagine it’s like what most people feel like when they arrive at Epcot center-magical!

As she started to lay out the terms of my nannyployment, I started to estimate how many weeks I’d have to work for her without spending any of my pay before I could bounce with a decent chunk of change and a good reference. Every family expects something different of the nanny they hire. Some just want you to watch their kids once or twice a week so they can grocery shop in peace or go to yoga. Some need you to pick up their kids from school and take them to their after school activities. Some insist that you live in the guesthouse and become interweaved in the innerworkings of their family and give you fat holiday bonuses. Some just need someone to do the cooking and cleaning while they’re recovering from a trip to the “spa” (see: rehab, cosmetic procedures). Every family has different needs and your perception of these needs is irrelevant because you’re on the receiving end of the check. 

Val wanted to hire me for the sole purpose of having “me time”. She would not be going anywhere while I was there monitoring her child. She would just be “hanging out” (i.e. wallowing in her own filth and occasionally brushing her greasy, brown, granola hair) and teaching Kay how to “be away from me”. She wanted me and Kay to be seen and not heard so that she could have “me time”. I get it, as a parent you need that. As a human being you NEED that. But if you’re paying someone to come over to your home and watch your child who is clearly suffering severe-separation anxiety issues with the intention of teaching her to be separated from you, wouldn’t it be in the best interest of both of you to head down the mountain into town to the Coffee Bean and go make friends with John Cusack?

I don’t think Kay had been unleashed out into the world away from her mom when I met them. I believed that she literally hadn’t spent a moment away from her mother since falling out of her uterus unceremoniously. Her social skills for a toddler, even a spoiled one, were subpar and the defining action of her social retardation came when Kay announced in her incoherent toddler speak (only understandable by Val of course) that she was famished. Without blinking an eye or making an announcement to translate what Kay had just requested, Val whipped out a boob that had seen better days.  Faster than you could say “come and get it” Kay had planted her face into Val’s chest and created the most awkward interview I’ve had to date. The action was so fluid that I don’t doubt she not only had done this in other interviews but likely did it in places more public than her Deliverance house.

I couldn’t stop staring. This child had teeth. Goddamn teeth. And she knew that part of her daily nourishment came from one of the saddlebags hanging off of her mother’s chest. She did not opt for Cheerios or blueberries or other toddler-friendly snacks. She went for the single-handedly most polarizing snack amongst the toddler community: the boob. When it comes to parenting you belong to one of three schools: 1. Breastfeeding is ok…until there are teeth. 2. Breastfeeding is ok….always. 3. Breastfeeding? Fuck that. That’s what formula’s for!

Val was a proponent for school number 2 and I was simply horrified that our interviewed had been marked with the appearance of a very sad and tired looking breast. As you can understand, I don’t remember much of the rest of the interview. We took a quick tour of the compound she lived on-there was more land than there was house- and agreed I’d come back the following week for my first day.

I made my way back down Malibu’s Mt. Everest with a cool $20 in my pocket for gas money and I would never, ever say it was the easiest money I ever made-I was unwillingly exposed to the Frankenstein of breasts! I considered calling Val a little later to tell her I’d been diagnosed with Legionnaire’s disease and probably shouldn’t be watching her kid who had not been exposed to basic elements since birth, but I wanted that money. I wanted that reference. I needed a pair of $90 sweatpants with an obscene word tagged on the ass for God’s sake! Priorities!

I remember calling my mom that day and telling her that I had been tricked into being interviewed in someone’s garage.

“What do you mean it was a garage?” She asked
“She said it was her house. But it definitely used to be a garage. Or an outhouse.”
I could hear snickering on the other end of the line. So glad my mom thought my efforts to make an honest living in the world were so hilarious.

For nearly two months, on and off depending on my level of tolerance that week, I pep talked my car into a treacherous white-knuckle drive to the shed in the canyon, to a job that easily could’ve become a summer blockbuster horror movie that gives Michael Bay a run for his money. In that time, I “monitored” Kay per Val’s instructions, never disciplining her because this was a “naked house”-literally (snack time) and figuratively (naked house=no rules house). Of course she didn’t call it a naked house, but I know what a naked house is when I see one. I was never allowed to tell Kay to do anything or give her any kind of directive because Val was a granola mom in a naked house. A mom who doesn’t want to make her kids mad and wants them to flourish in an “open” environment. A mom who doesn’t say no. A mom who sets no boundaries. A mom who overlooks the bag of coke in the shoebox. The kids of these parents are the kids that put those parents in a home in 40 years and don’t feel bad about it.

“Just see where the day takes you!” Val told me once when I hinted that I didn’t quite understand what I was doing there to begin with. She insisted I take Kay on “nature walks” on their expansive property and suggested I let the child roam free on the property because she “likes to explore”. There was no need to tell Kay to do something because if she was going to fall out of that tree and crack her skull open then goddamnit it was going to be a learning experience!

Kay never warmed up to me probably because she sensed I thought she was such an ugly child to begin with and because she had no interest in hanging out with anyone who was not her mom. When I would arrive, Kay would cry and scream because she knew that Val would go to her room, lock the door and nap or pick her nose or breastfeed Fatty while I attempted in vain to entertain her.

Nothing I did could stop her crying or curb the bratty attitude and after week two, I was resolved to the fact that me and this bulbous-headed toddler were never going to get along. Val, out of desperation I think, would not resolve herself to the fact that this wasn’t working. It was obvious I did not want to be there-I showed up late, sat on the grass in the shade of the playhouse while Kay screamed herself hoarse and snatched my pay out of her hands so fast when it was time to go that I nearly gave her a papercut.

While I was present, Val would wave Kay away like she was a fly trying to land in her coffee and this would infuriate Kay to no end. The more she screamed, the less Val seemed to hear her. If Val was trying to read a paper in the kitchen/living room/dining room and Kay attempted to make physical contact that didn’t involve breastfeeding, Val would go to her room and lock the door leaving Kay a sobbing mess on the floor. I’d given up on trying to comfort her after she tried to bite me. I just let her cry. In the house. Within earshot of Val and her LA Times. Val slowly started to become aware of how this situation was unraveling as she increasingly became just as excited to see me when I arrived as I was when she handed her screaming snot-faced child to me. I wanted my time there to be an intensified source of stress for her for the simple fact that she had no logical reason for me being there.

Towards the end of my time there, I met Val’s husband, who until that time was a phantom who I was starting to believe Val had made up. Meeting him was the second to last nail on the coffin of my stint there as he was incredibly rude, screamed at Val and Kay for the majority of the time I was there and walked around in his bathroom Tony Soprano style, exposing a chest that made me want to poke my eyes out with dull pencils. He had a job somewhere in the city and had taken time out of his busy schedule to stay at home and terrorize his family.

By the time, I had decided enough was enough and $10/hour wasn’t worth it, Val had either pow-wowed with other moms in the Malibu community or read a chapter out of the Nanny Diaries for perspective. On my last trip up there, I was halfway down the major road that led to Death Canyon when she called me and asked if I had left my dorm yet. Of course I had, I was supposed to be at her house in 30 seconds.

“Well I called your dorm and left you a message. I need you to get me a coffee, black and a dozen low-calorie, banana bran soy muffins from the Country Mart.” What? Since when did we agree that I’d be stopping to get you breakfast?

“I’m already on PCH-“ I began.

“Well I could really use some coffee. I’ll see you when you get here.”

It wasn’t a question or a request. It was a demand. She could give me directives, but couldn’t pay the same courtesy to her own offspring. I angrily made an illegal u-turn in the middle of a road already slicked with monsoon rain and headed back towards town for her coffee and bran muffins. When I arrived, she barely thanked me and per the usual, practically threw Kay at me and disappeared into her room.

When it was time to leave, I remember knowing that it would be my last visit to Granola Manor and I think that Val knew too. When I didn’t show up the following week, she didn’t call and I provided no explanation. It was a nice, unspoken understanding that this was no longer working and no one had to say why.

Naturally, I gained no reference due to our abrupt but mutual separation, but fortunately had received a few hits on my listing on the university’s craigslist. Unfortunately, my car took a shit on me as I headed back to school for spring semester of my freshman year and I was confined to a campus job that allowed me to rifle through the academic files of my peers.

One of the women I later babysat for, Lindsay, who lived in a beautiful custom Spanish style home in one of the fancier canyons, cancelled on me once because her baby fell out of her carrier that was perched on the kitchen counter onto the expensive tile of their kitchen floor. The baby had to be taken to the hospital for obvious reasons. Val never physically hurt Kay, intentionally or unintentionally, that I knew of, but if I had to draw an opinion based solely on Lindsay’s accident and an instance of Val picking the LA Times over Kay, I’d still say Lindsay was the better parent. And this woman dropped her baby. On its head. 

Let there be light.

And a glorious light it was. Mind grapes: blown.

I’ve never been to Chik-fil-A and I don’t even know if I just spelled it right. I don’t care.

“CHICK FIL A TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! …:D ….Chik? ….dunno …all kinds of misspellings in that name…”

There are standards to jewelry. Vintage: highest standard. Luxury (Van Cleef&Arpels, Harry Winston, Cartier, Tiffany-in that order): next highest standard. Everything else (Zales, Kay, Ben Bridge, Jared’s, Ricky’s Diamond Emporium, etc): unacceptable.

“Zales and the herps go hand in hand more than you would think…much like a ho, if you get around enough, you’ll get both…should say, if you’re enough of a ho, you’ll get both.”

Facts are facts: Harem pants are NEVER ok.
“who is really going to buy and wear silk harem pants?! in 2011?!Joan Crawford died awhile ago..the Olsens are probably already over it.”