Category Archives: Personal stories

by

You won’t want to miss this

Tonight, some of the best DC area comedians will perform at the Velvet Lounge.  They include:

Emily Ruskowski – will also host
Valerie Paschall
Mariya Alexander
Tyler Richardson
Alyson Chadwick
Pete Bergen

You won’t get to see this much talent for $10 any other time.  Seriously.

The Velvet Lounge is at 915 U Street, NW — across from the U Street Metro.  This starts early (at 7) but probably won’t start on time so if you can come but will be late, no worries.

The money is going to a good cause, you can read about that here: http://www.facebook.com/events/367174039967984/

by

Things I do on purpose

speaking at CPAC in Washington D.C. on Februar...

Image via Wikipedia

Most of my closest friends can tell you that my actions don’t always make the most sense.  Not to them or even to me.  I don’t spend as much time as I do on the treadmill for my health (really) or even to lose weight, though those are both good things.  I do it because I like to.  And once on, I cannot stop until Morning Joe is over but that is a topic for a different therapy session.

There are a few things that I love to do that I can explain, however, and they include writing and working in politics.  I connect the two because of a piece I read today about Rick Santorum‘s ad guy in the Daily Beast.  The article about John Brabender has a quote from a friend of his that says he “didn’t care if [a client] were Democrat or Republican. They could have been communists, just as long as they were able to pay the bills.”  It continues to say that Brabender is motivated more by a hatred of bad, political ads rather than a commitment to an ideology.   Both sentiments bother me but the latter got me thinking about my recent post about grammar.  I don’t write because I hate bad writing, I write because I love self expression. (And I could go on a tangent about I feel about people who define themselves by what they oppose but that is also a subject for another day.)

A few months ago, I went with a friend to see The Ides of March.  Normally, I avoid political fiction of all kinds because I like to escape my reality every now and again (it’s the reason I never liked West Wing — though I am glad I saw it because I liked it).  Once I got past my nit-pickyness about the particulars of presidential campaigns and the world of politics, I had only one real issue with the film: I felt like a prostitute when I left.  Presidential primaries are a lot like family squabbles, they may get nasty but everyone ends up on the same side at the end.  That’s always been my experience — I didn’t start the 2004 campaign working for John Kerry, for instance, but that’s where I ended up.

Campaigns are not like other employers or clients.  They consume your life for the duration.  At least that has always been my experience.  These are not 9-5, 40 hour a week jobs.  They are 24/7,” you’re on when we need you on” jobs.  I love them but the idea of working for someone that I couldn’t vote for, well it wouldn’t happen.  For the record, I know that money does motivate some people more than it does me (and that’s NOT me saying it shouldn’t).  I worked briefly at a PR firm and they wanted me to work on a project that I had serious problems with.  After a half a day of this, I ground my teeth so badly in my sleep that I broke a back molar and it had to be pulled.  I never had it replaced to remind me of how badly that job made me feel — I also quit the day after.

And I think I know what you are thinking; that I feel this way about Santorum’s “message guru” because I don’t like Santorum.  Well, I don’t like Santorum.  I think his social views are beyond extreme and his fiscal policy is absurd.  I think going to college is a good thing.  And no, I don’t think Satan is lurking behind every corner.  But I also think most people who go into politics do so because they want to make the world a better place. Read any of my pleas for civility in politics and you’ll see I make that point as often as possible.

Truthfully, reading about Brabender gives me the same feeling The Ides of March did and that’s why I don’t like him.

by

Farewell, Capitol Hill

Politics brought me to Washington, DC.  As I have told countless people, and National Public Radio (story here), I worked on my first campaign when I was eight.  I went door-to-door for a local NY Assemblyman who was running for Congress.  On election night, we went to the campaign headquarters to watch the results come in.  When the areas I canvassed had a huge turnout for my candidate, I thought it was because of my hard work (Who can resist a cute, little girl with red hair and freckles?  The mean woman at the end of the street with the mean and large German Shepard, that’s who.  She had her dog chase me from her property.) and was hooked.

My first job after college was on Capitol Hill — for Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Ca).   I have lived here most of my time in Washington, DC.  I am obsessed with Congress and the legislative process.   Will always believe that the Senate is like grad school where the House is kindergarten.  And if you have never gotten into watching C-Span coverage of the House of Representatives, well, it can be like a good tennis match.  Rafa Nadal v. Roger Federer good.

Life on the Hill has been a great experience.  This is like a small town in a, well, my frame of reference is New York so, in a small city.  People here really look out for each other.  Case in point, back when I had a landline, I returned from work to get the following messages:

  1. This is your neighborhood watch, we think we saw some suspicious people outside of your place.  Please be careful when you come home.
  2. There are definitely two people outside your apartment and we think there may be a third in the bushes.
  3. We went by again and there are the three people – it looks like they are waiting to rob you, or anyone else, when you get home.  We’re calling the police to report it.
  4. We called the police and they chased everyone away from your place.  They are also keeping a car on the block for the next few hours so you should be fine coming in.  Hope you have a nice night.

I remain relieved that I didn’t get home at anytime before message number four and it could be my inherent, dark personality but that whole exchange left me feeling like my neighbors had my back.  Another time, right after I was mugged, one of my neighbors (this happened right in front of my apartment) made it a point to keep his pitbull, “Precious,” outside in his yard around the time when I usually came home.  People would cross the street to not walk by that dog.

The community feel extends beyond my safety, of course.  When the best dive in the world, the Tune Inn, had a fire last summer, a bunch of us came out and helped clean the place.  We painstakingly took each item from the walls and cleaned it.  Yes, I enjoy my Jameson and like to have it there but that’s not what inspired me to help out.  This really does feel like a community and it was heartwarming to see so many people come out to help each other, that is the point of things, right?  If you go in, make sure you look at the Guy Fieri plaque in the front window.  Then look at the plaque just below it.  You may notice a familiar name. (Thank you, Lisa and Thomas.  I feel like I will always be a part of the Hill.)

So, from the feeling that my drinking water is infused with political knowledge to the fabric of neighbors helping each other and looking out for each other that makes this such a special place.  I make a point to be as impressed as possible when I look up at the Capitol Building because it is a beautiful thing.  This place brings out the Mr. Smith in me (I know you know this but I am referring to Mr. Smith Goes to Washington).

So, it was not without a heavy heart that I am moving from this magical place on the hill.  I need a change of scenery for personal reasons that I am sure I will explain in excruciating detail at some point and hope this will force me to do the big things I want to do this year but I love this place and the people who inhabit it.

Thank you, Capitol Hill.  I am not leaving, I am just going part-time!

by

Confessions of a grammar freak

Few things in my life have more succinctly summed up my personality than this cartoon.  Several friends can attest to the stress I had before getting a tattoo on my shoulder recently, should there or should there not be a comma in there?  This debate took longer than picking the tattoo itself and ended up including the guy who ran the tattoo place, all of his employees and everyone who had the misfortune of walking in while I was there.  At least I was entertaining.

This got me thinking.  Why do I care so much about grammar?  I mean, when I was on that business trip to Albuquerque did I really have to boycott a perfectly good restaurant because “unless there is a woman there named Margarita and she’s having a personal special, I cannot walk in” ???  Couldn’t I have just asked them to change their sign? (Truthfully, this was several years ago and that option just occurred to me yesterday. D’Oh!)

I tell myself that poor grammar and punctuation habits mark a devolution in our ability to use our language skills and therefore will lead to an inability to communicate.  I will add that in an era when we need to communicate more rather than less if we are going to survive — the GOP does not have a monopoly on apocalyptic ideas — we need to pay closer attention to this.  You see, it’s not a mere pet peeve, it’s my concern for humanity.

Or I blame others.  I blame my sixth grade teacher for making us diagram sentences for weeks on end. (Side note: he was a mean bastard for sure but the rumor that he once threw me out a window is not true.)  I blame my college roommate, Marsha not Ali, who was a English major whose grammar was so bad it made me sick back then.  She asked me to correct her whenever she made a mistake and I like to think that started all this craziness.

The bottom line is that I will never know what sparked my obsession with apostrophe usage, action verbs and adverb hatred.

I will end with one last idea.  Dear US journalists:  When you add “ing” to a verb, it becomes a noun.  That’s called the gerund.  Unless you are writing a headline, stop doing this and use a goddamn verb.  Does everyone else feel better?  I know that I do.

by

My David Duchovny story

I know everyone has one so I am boring.  I have also noticed my more personal posts, even ones where I am not torturing readers with tales of my wonderful childhood (ps. I really didn’t mean to torture anyone, sorry), get more hits than my brilliant political analysis so I am going to write more.  Plus the more I write, the more I want to write (in terms of variety) so that’s a win-win for me and my stalled screenplay/sitcom pilot.

When I was packing my crap yesterday, and it is all just so much crap, I found my X-Files watch.  Yep, I was one of those people.  Now, I was not a follower from day one, nor did I refuse to go out on nights it was on (even back then we had ways to record shows when we weren’t at home).  I really actually got into it after my first presidential campaign — Clinton/Gore ’96.  Indeed, the Crypt Keeper and I are twins.  In my months of stressed-out unemployment before I went to work for RCA Victor, I stayed up late into the evening watching Fox Mulder and Dana Scully trapse around the country looking for aliens and whatnot.  It’s a good thing I am a fiscal liberal because in hindsight, that does seem like a wasteful government program if ever there was one.

It is true that I found the subject matter interesting.  It is also true that my roommate came home one afternoon and told me had his hair cut like Duchovny.  There is no connection between the two.  Just felt it should be said.  It is equally true that I had a major crush on David Duchovny.  If you have not heard the Bree Sharp song, I highly recommend it.  Now, this is partly because I read a quote of his about how his parents’ divorce impacted his view of love.  Without looking it up, I believe he said something to the effect of “It introduced the idea that love can leave and changed the way I view it.”  Now, if there was a more succinct way for me to explain my commitment phobia better, I haven’t found it.  But this isn’t about that. At the end of the day, however, I just thought he was hot.

The next year, I found myself working in NYC at RCA Victor as a publicist.  One night, I went out with some friends and played some pool and drank some beer (not a ton but enough) and when I got home, Saturday Night Live, was on.  David Duchovny was hosting.  For the record, I am no stalker and have had issues with people stalking me so  I take that very seriously but… I thought it was silly for him to be in NYC and me to be in NYC and for us to not meet.  I mean, really!  So, I pulled out a phone number for SNL that Darrell Hammond had given me (story for another day) and called it.  Darrell, they said, was on stage “saying goodnight” (it was on TV, I knew they weren’t lying) — why didn’t I just pop into the cast party?  Where is it?  I asked.  They told me.  And it was on.

My pool playing clothes weren’t gonna cut it.  Threw on a tight dress, did my hair and makeup, called a car service and I was on my way.  While the lovely woman at the entrance went to check if my name was on the guest list, two security guards asked Why are you on that side of the desk and we’re on this side?  To which I said, You tell me.   I was in.

Before 30 seconds, I saw there was a VIP area.  Of course there was.  What to do, what to do… I walked over and talked to the person there. Listen, one of my clients is in there and I just need them to know I didn’t leave without letting them know.  I am super tired and just want to go home — can you give them my card and tell them I will call on Monday?    To this day, I have no idea where that lie came from.  The woman told me she could not leave the desk and wasn’t sure she could let me in but she clearly believed me.  Lucky thing number two happened just then.  Jim Brewer was in the VIP area and he said, Don’t worry, I know her, she’s fine.  That part wasn’t a lie, we had met at several record company things in the months before this.

To recap:  In under and hour I went from a bar in Brooklyn to the VIP part of a SNL cast party.  This was clearly as far as this Icarus was going to make it.  I was fine with that so I did a few shots of what, I’ll never know.  That was a bad idea because that’s when I met David Duchovny.  Standing there, feeling Ke$ha tipsy, I felt a tap on my shoulder and a man extended his hand to shake mine:

“Hi, my name is David.”

“I believe you.”  Then I turned brain dead and went into auto-pilot.  I always have some canned response for when I meet a famous person so I can avoid saying things like, nice tie.  Instead I went with, “There are four people on earth who make me starstruck and you are one of them.”
“Who are the other three?” (For some reason, Fight Club dialogue seems appropriate here, we have just lost cabin pressure…)“Uhhh…. President Clinton, VP Gore and Hillary Clinton….” EPIC FAIL.

The conversation didn’t last too much longer than that.  I went home with my tail between my legs and couldn’t look at his picture for at least six months without wanting to vomit.  The only upside was I did tell myself that I had been an idiot in front of the one famous person I really had a crush on and the sun still managed to rise the next day, thereby giving me licence to be stupid in front of all sorts of new and exciting people.

And now, it’s just a fun story I tell.  Hope you enjoyed it.