show i love: "dating in the dark"

3 guys, 3 girls. a dark room. dates in a dark room! awkward face-touching! "dating in the dark" would basically be my preferred approach to dating if i looked like a swimsuit model and lived in southern california.

you see, as much as i hate to admit it, i have a bad tendency to be superficial and/or write guys off too quickly (a psychoanalyst - or anyone that knows me - would cite this as the reason for my single status). BUT...i love good conversation and getting to know someone in a casual setting without that snap judgment. not that an ABC reality show is necessarily a "casual setting", but you get the idea. sure, there's the chance for that pang of disappointment when the big reveal comes at the end...but there would be all of that chemistry and personality to back it up, at least...right?! problem solved. i mean, unless they're a complete ogre, there could probably be potential. maybe.

also, the great thing about the show is that no one gets "kicked off" and there's no prize - just the opportunity for a relationship to develop from it. kudos! and if ABC can do it, why can't i? curtaining off a function room at panera for the first-ever "north shore date in the dark" may not have the glitz and glam of hollywood, but it's SO doable.

viva las vegas

venus pool club at caesars palace

for those of you that know me, you probably know that vegas is one of my favorite places in the entire world (thus far). it's truly a 24/7 playground for adults, complete with delicious buffets, world-class entertainment and neon lights/glitter, and pretty much anything can (and does) happen there. so when my dear friend and bride-to-be emily invited 6 of us gals on a bachelorette weekend there, i didn't even have to think about my answer. as expected, it was a blast! though after 2.5 days, 3 nights, and another 12 hours stuck in the vegas airport, we were spent - vegas is fun, but exhausting!

some highlights of the whirlwind trip:

-getting dressed up and drinking for FREE every night.

i mean, i knew vegas loved big groups of girls, but this was out of control. we were practically assaulted by club promoters everywhere we went, offering us VIP tables and free bottle service every night. our answer: "why not?" i officially switched out of my whiskey sour phase and into a cranberry vodka phase that weekend. plus, if we wore half of the things out in boston that we wore there, we'd be publicly ostracized fo' sho'. but in vegas? anything goes. fabulous.

-making new friends.

another great thing about sin city is that almost no one you meet is actually from there! perfect. the first night, we hung with a bachelor party from the jersey shore (the actual place, not show), the next day, we met a fantastic group of southern gentlemen from north carolina at the caesars palace pool that invited us to hang in their cabana for the afternoon, and to their rooftop table at pure (nightclub) that night. everyone's ready to party/dance/talk/have some fun, and that's all that really matters. right?

-showtime.

arguably the best part of the trip was seeing LOVE, the beatles cirque du soleil show, at the mirage. after a yummy dinner at todd english's italian restaurant onda, we got psyched up for the show and i can safely say my expectations were far exceeded. i'm just now getting over my overwhelming post-show desire to be a cirque performer. the music, the dancing, the acrobatics, the costumes....all incredible and i can't recommend it highly enough (MUCH better than zumanity, which i saw last time). though i think my favorite part was at the end of the show - as the cast was rotating around while the audience clapped, a particularly hunky and muscular blonde performer took stock of our group - we were in the front row mezzanine - and started whispering to his fellow cast member, smirking, and mouthing "call me" complete with phone-to-ear gesture. le sigh!

so, i say that one raucous, crazy vegas trip a year would be just about perfect. who's with me?!

HAVE MERCY!

if you were following the news at all last week, you may have heard rumblings about an extortion case involving the one, the only, uncle jesse a.k.a. john stamos. now, the story was that a 17 year-old girl met UJ in florida on a guys "cheer-up" trip when he was down 'n' out over ms. romijn, and brought her back to his hotel room (coincidentally, according to the girl, filled with coke & strippers - not cliche at all) and offered to, um, pay her some lip service, if you catch my drift. she refused, and along with her bum boyfriend, is now trying to get almost $700,000 along because she claims to have incriminating photos. 

now, stamos admits he did ask this chicky for "hot" pictures via email after their first encounter - he says she told him she was over 18 - by saying possibly the best thing i've ever heard: "show me some wild pictures if you're so wild, wild child"...10 points for john stamos. but continually denies that any sketchy pics existed when he started getting threatening emails from a random girl claiming to have them. 

blah, blah, blah...the moral of this story is that the girl's case can be completely debunked after hearing that she REFUSED TO GET DOWN WITH JOHN STAMOS. i'm sorry, but girrrrl, that just doesn't happen. the man is epic. the hair is practically the 8th wonder of the world. and you know he wouldn't disappoint. scientifically provable. just sayin'.

p.s. apparently the couple was found guilty today of extortion. boo-YAH. keep on rockin' in the free world, uncle jesse. we love you.

oh constantine, how far you've come...

last month, i randomly decided that i wanted to take a 4th of july weekend trip to new york city. of course, one of my NYC musts is to see a show of some sort while i'm there - otherwise, it just doesn't feel right. now, i'm not a HUGE fan of musicals in general - mainly because i'm not into the showtunes. however, i did love the pop-rock ditties of RENT so much that i saw it 3 times (twice on broadway, one on the farewell tour in boston). so this time, when i was struggling to think of what to see, i remembered seeing performances from "rock of ages", a show featuring 80s hair band covers and silly american idol alum constantine maroulis,  on the today show and macy's parade and being pretty impressed. it was decided! i took my spot in line at the half-price TKTS booth on saturday morning which was conveniently right across from my hotel (shoutout to the doubletree!) and was pleasantly surprised when i snagged a pair of 7th row orchestra tickets for that day's matinee performance. scoooore. 

my friend gleni joined me, as i know she would likely appreciate this type of thing as much as i. we took our seats, gleeful about the rock 'n' roll lighters - er, little flashlights that looked like lighters - that we were given upon entering the theatre. the show began with a pre-curtain voiceover speech by david coverdale from whitesnake and i immediately knew it was love. for the next 2.5 hours, i was the happiest girl in the rockin' world. styx! warrant! poison! it was like a huge amazing 80s party, complete with lot of glitter and lots of hair. and a strange thing happened....i developed a little crush on constantine. which even frightened me. but his singing was so legit, guys. he was definitely meant for the broadway stage and not for theme weeks on idol. but i digress. i also highly enjoyed the bret michaels-inspired frontman character, "stacee jaxx", who fell into drunken stupors and did a lot of pelvic thrusts. thankfully, the show is just about to start a national tour (featuring constantine!) so i urge you, if you want to have your face melted, you gotta see this, man - totally going again in boston. i found a little clip from last year's tony's that gives you the gist: 

I WANNA ROCK! 

it's a situation

when i sat down one fateful night last year to watch some reality show called "jersey shore", i wasn't expecting much. guidos and guidettes, uber tans and jagerbombs...i see as much on the north shore every weekend. little prepared me for the attachment i would soon develop to snooki, vinny, ronnie, sammie, jwoww, pauly d, and my favorite...a man that called himself "the situation". one of his opening lines was, "everybody loves the situation. and if you don't love the situation, i'm gonna make you love the situation." pure poetry. he then continued to woo me with gems like "pauly immediately fled the scene and left me in harm's way. i was takin' heavy fire", and when he referred to an unfortunate-looking bimbo as a "grenade" and her heavy-set friend as a "grenade launcher" i knew it was the beginning of a beautiful thing.

as luck would have it, my ever-so-fabulous hairdresser mentioned earlier in the spring that my favorite reality star would be appearing at some point in the area in june. turns out it was at rain, my new favorite nightclub attached to a bowling alley in malden, approximately 3 miles from my house. naturally, this was a priority. i brought along kari, my dear former roommate from my freshman year of  college, who loves the situation as much as i. while it was a long wait (staked out at 9pm, he didn't show up til after 12 - that's dedication) the fantastic pictures were oh-so-worth it. 

he shook hands with us (twice!), fist-pumped, drank what looked like a screwdriver, and even flashed his abs for the squealing girls in the crowd. it was, to put it mildly, a situation and a half. when the night was over, i gleefully speculated that someday, i'll fondly tell my grandchildren about meeting the man, the myth....the situation. 

from the dating trenches...

as the only young & single member of my department at work, my slightly older, engaged/married/otherwise attached colleagues get endless entertainment from the horror stories that make up my dating life. i've regaled them with tales of dates with pirates (more accurately: a guy that texted me the day before our first meeting with "ahoyy", then invited me to meet for a drink at a nice restaurant at 6pm and proceeded to say he "wasn't hungry". but i digress), a gorgeous man with a gorgeous name who stood me up and then misdirected a text meant for a friend to me - saying "totally stood up"), and embarrassingly AWFUL match.com emails like the one i'm about to present you with.

unfortunately - or maybe fortunately for me - many of these numbskulls have no clue who they're dealing with when they send a lame-o email or use pirate-speak in casual conversation. i'll blog about yo' ass. and now, i give you...perhaps the worst online dating email of all time.

I'm _____.

It'd be nice to talk to you and see whats up ? 

I play guitar adn play out at times here n there . I write , I cook and travel, even if its on ly a couple towns away to walk around. I am working on a blue print on a music and arts resturant. I Work in collections at the moment but I‘m a Cook and a Musician... But watch your sears ,credit one or walmart credit if you have them lol i might have to call one day. I talk to all kinds of people around the states . I'm all over the place with music ,art and historic places. 

I 'm very comfortable with myself and my thoughts and i'm openminded. I drive, skate, ride, make and play music. Never really thought to much about the online dating thing.. but im outgoing,extremely driven and looking to have fun and live life w/ someone and see where it leads us . ttyl ____


IS THIS REAL LIFE? a few things here stood out to me, atrocious spelling and grammar aside: 

• I play guitar adn play out at times here n there. shows? in the park? at the stop and shop on wednesdays? 
  
• dude, i love to travel too, but let's not kid ourselves: driving to downtown salem and wandering doesn't really fit the bill.
• what is a "music and arts restaurant"? french fries shaped like treble clefs? 
• sears and wal-mart credit cards, LOOK OUT! thanks for reminding me that i'm delinquent on my payments for those 12-packs of sam's choice cola.
• I'm all over the place with music ,art and historic places.  i can't even.
• bonus points for the random capitalization. did you know that "Work", Cook", and "Musician" are all proper nouns, and wal-mart and sears are not?! the more you know...

feel free to share your own horror stories. i can't be the only one. 

backstreet's back, alright!

summer 1999. i could be found crying in my room at some point because i didn't win tickets to the backstreet boys' sold-out millennium tour on jam'n 94.5. i stayed up day and night to win those tickets; i was a woman possessed. but after being brutally shafted as caller 24 when they were looking for 25, i gave up hope. didn't the pop gods understand how crucial this was to my formative tweenage years? backstreet, o-town, LFO. this was my boy band trifecta (note the omission of hanson....NOT a boy band). frick 'n' frack, the backstreet boys all access video, "the heart and soul of nick carter"...i was intimately familiar with all of these bsb-isms. but i never did see them in concert.

as fate would have it, i would get my chance over 11 (!!!) years later when a pal asked me if i wanted to go see them on their "this is us" tour at mohegan sun in connecticut. as far as i knew, they hadn't released anything since 2005's "never gone", but had apparently churned out two more albums since then. oops! 

regardless, i obviously jumped at the chance to ogle nick carter and mimic the "larger than life" dance that i may or may not still know by heart. and it was a BLAST...minus the absence of dearly departed kevin. i was INCREDIBLY impressed with their singing/dancing skills...i mean, i didn't even think they could sing this well when i was 13, for god sakes. they played stuff that had been buried in the recesses of my brain for god knows how long, but i still knew allll the words: "i'll never break your heart"?! WHOA. but maybe my favorite and most amusing moment came during their new r&b jaaaaam "undone" when nick - lookin' sexy as haaaale - looked like he might be preparing to pass out due to his stylish but impractical scarf and struggled to take it off/awkwardly danced with it. thank god someone captured this...and had a better view than me. not gonna lie...kind of diggin' the song, too.

i'm livin' life right now, mang

my god, how have i gone this long without blogging about my dear drake/aubrey/wheelchair jimmy?! as many who are close to me know and have witnessed, i have a tendency to randomly interrupt IM/gchat conversations with a drake lyric outburst - "drake tourette's", as i've dubbed it, and i ponder philosophical questions like "would wheelchair jimmy listen to drake?"

let's rewind and pause. for those not in the know, the rapper we all know and love as drake- real name aubrey graham- spent his formative years playing basketball player jimmy on the teen melodrama degrassi. the wheelchair part came when terri's abusive boyfriend rick shot him, but we'll deal with that later (not really). 

the point is that not once during his lengthy degrassi stint did i ever find him remotely attractive. but have him drop a few raunchy lines, drop his first name and pair him up with weezy, and i'm salivating. crazy. now i've got a full-blown drake addiction. combine that with the fact that a new video of something funny happening to him onstage hits youtube seemingly every day (drake falling! drake being flashed and forgetting the words! drake accidentally catching some crazy chick's underwear!) it's really endless entertainment. 

bache-whaaaaa?

i have many addictions that i'm neither proud nor ashamed of. fast food, american idol, men who look like adrien brody....and the bachelor/bachelorette. it is what it is, okay? so i like to plop down on a monday night, chow down on some ben & jerry's and make fun of the inevitably ditzy bachelorette and the clowns that fawn over her. so what? who cares?

this year's chick is bachelor pilot jake's reject (i notoriously loved the much-hated vienna, who he chose instead) and i dislike her as much on her own show as i did on the bachelor. yet i still watch. why? WELL...

there's jesse, the rugged contractor that used a jigsaw to make ali some kind of heart pin-thing...SHUCKS! just adorable. and then...

chris, the WASPy landscaper from the cape. he's not really my type, but he makes me think of summer homes and barbeques and sundresses and wicker chairs, so bonus points for that.

this season's crop is certainly more interesting than most, so i'll be excited to see the trainwreck that will inevitably occur. but first, let's take a moment and rejoice that the two dudes with the creepiest hair are gone:

can i get an amen?!

i'm an old woman (aka why i love medium)

boy, do i love my crime dramas. at one point, my old roommate and i had a tradition of "crime drama sundays" and it got to the point where we would recognize guest stars on "criminal minds" that had been on "svu" the previous week. things got pretty scary. but i digress.

i also like semi-spooky stuff involving ghosts and/or premonitions. so when the two combine in any form, it usually gets my vote. medium's been on since about 2005, but i never really started watching it until a few years ago. it moved to friday nights on CBS last year, which has occasionally made it hard to catch (thank god for ondemand) but it's really worth a watch if you haven't seen it before. 

the show is based off of an actual psychic, allison dubois, who helps the police solve murder cases based on dreams she has, though none of the episodes of the show are based in truth. this season has actually been the best yet in my opinion, and the plotlines are actually pretty unpredictable and exciting. plus, the dad (played by jake weber) is a total DILFy fox. reow! for a network show, it does a pretty good job of giving me some serious heeby-jeebies. so check it!

 

bewitched! well, almost.

those who know me know that kitsch is practically my middle name. i live at smelly vintage stores, die over retro tchotchkes, and appreciate nostalgia more than many. so when my good friend emily told me about coven, a funky new bakery and cafe opening in salem, ma (yes, the "spooky" one), i was totally psyched. they did a "soft open" this wednesday, so naturally our cupcake-loving selves could not wait until the grand opening at the end of the month and went the very next day. while the concept is undoubtedly AWESOME, let's just say i'm not completely lovin' coven just yet.

we wander in shortly before 7pm and notice a bunch of unique/gourmet groceries on our way to the counter. cool! but as we approach to take in the cafe offerings, we're met with a wimpy wasteland of goods that looked like they hadn't been restocked since the place opened this morning. i completely understand that these first few weeks were meant as a "preview"- no full menu, etc. - and that's fine. but you'd think that if the place is open until 9pm, there would be a decent selection of fresh food throughout the day, so as to create a positive first impression. the girl who served us was nice enough, albeit a little out of it, and seemed a bit flustered when we started ordering for some reason.

but the thing that killed us....KILLED US! was the fact that there were no cupcakes. we had been dreaming about delicious frosting-topped cupcakes all day, but apparently they were "cleaned out" this morning. and no more were made?! for shaaaaame. we cut our losses, ordered a slice each of tomato-fontina-bacon quiche (decent) and a dessert bar (me, oreo; emily, lemon...okay, but no cupcake).

the atmosphere has major potential - we took seats at one of the hi-tops pictured and chowed down, surrounded by classic scooby-doo episodes on the tvs and a shelf full of board games. also pictured is the crazy-cool cereal wall, where you can pour a bowl of your choice. if i lived closer, i could totally see myself coming in on a lazy weekend morning, snagging some cocoa krispies and playing some scrabble.

we definitely plan to be back in a few months after the grand opening to see if they've worked out the kinks, but i was a little let down by my first taste of coven.

i'm with youuuu

talk about a major fail. never mind the fact that the motherf*ckin' princess and bruce jenner's spawn are dating, but they also decided to get matching rib tattoos this weekend, proclaiming, quite simply, the f-dash-dash-dash word. have we learned nothing from pamela anderson's "tommy" to "mommy" incident or johnny depp's "wino forever" snafu? welp, at least this ink's message is pretty much guaranteed to reflect avril & brody's sentiments 2 years from now whenever they see their tats!

band to watch: taylor locke & the roughs

as a long-time rooney fangirl, i've had my eye on lead guitarist taylor locke for quite a while now. lord knows he can wail on the guitar, but i must say it came as a pretty big surprise to me when i saw that he had started his own side project, taylor locke and the roughs, with charlotte froom of the like, mike mccormack of everybody else and chris price of the price brothers (all part of an LA circle of bands i happen to follow fairly closely). i was even happier when i got hold of their debut, grain and grape, and immediately loved it. the record harkens back to the straight-up singalong swagger of 70s rock, but still takes enough twists & turns to keep things interesting. i have a feeling these guys just might blow up real big real soon. check 'em out!