Is it just me or...

Recently, I've been watching more America's Best Dance Crew than should be considered healthy, and have noticed that Lil Mama (singer of my favorite song about lip gloss) is secretly 80 years old.

Exhibit A: Lil Mama's crazy color-coordinated and bedazzled outfits.
Lil Mama is definitely receiving some divine inspiration from a grandma somewhere down in Florida. Or maybe she's just a fan of Maxine from Shoebox cards. Whatever the source, it's clear that Lil Mama likes rhinestones on everything from her baseball cap to her track jacket.

Exhibit B: Lil Mama's often incoherent judgements.
This verbatim judgement is from a recent episode. I assure you that, even in context, this quote is highly incomprehensible.

Um uh I definitely feel that you guys need to rehearse different types of sway. Because um you're opening was great, and that's something that you're used to you know what I mean. Uh wavey fingers and stuff like that -- I don't know what you call it. It was cute. And then and then y'all went into the bounce. You know what I mean. And the bounce was kinda off then y'all caught it. Ya know what I mean? The bounce was really fast and then it went slow. Ya know what I mean? You gotta learn how to bounce in and out of music. [Throws to a slow mo clip of a dancer doing a wind mill] This is what makes you guys so great. When you can have one person doing this, while the rest of you guys are occupying the audience you know what I mean and keeping us entertained. Just make sure that you put that extra stab in the heart of the chicken. You feel me? Do y'all thang.

Exhibit C: She's called Lil Mama, which sounds like a grandma's nickname.

Ladies and gentleman, I rest my case.

A belated president's day experiment

As some of you may know, or have been able to deduce by now, I don't always say the appropriate thing. An example of this would be the now infamous “No one has ever told me I sing well…” incident. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just trust me it was bad, and maybe the next time I see you I’ll tell you, but I’m not ready to commit this story to print) Well it was a lifetime of incidents like that that led me to spend $10 on a pack of conversation starter cards. Maybe they could help me?... At the very least this pack of cards can provide me with a bloggable topic whenever I don't have time to rage against something I saw on TV.

So to begin this grand experiment, I pulled a card from this deck of 52 cards; I found this appropriate President's day gem:

"If you had one week to show George Washington the country today, what would want to show him?"


Day 1 I welcome George to the 21st century with a huge bright smile -- he instantly feels ill at ease as he only has crappy wooden teeth. Next, I make him take a bath since he smells bad. I try to get him to change into jeans but he prefers his tights, which I try to explain to him is a little less than manly but he doesn't buy it. He gets scared when I listen to the radio and watch TV, and accuses me of being a witch, which I thought was just a Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure myth, but now I know better.

Day 2 Feeling bad about the whole TV-witch debacle, I try to slow things down a bit for George. We chat over tea about his feelings on the other founding fathers (John Adams was impotent and Jefferson was a pompous douche bag -- his words not mine). I ask him about Martha, though I don't ask him what I really want to know: is she really as ugly as she looked in all her portraits?? I take this day to share with him all the best things that the future has to offer, like velour sweat suits, space foam beds, plastic surgery, Gore-Tex fabrics, hot showers, instant pudding, and non stick pans. His favorite inventions? beer in aluminum cans and tennis shoes.

Day 3 After showing Georgie (he says it's okay to call him that) an updated map of the country, I ask him what he wants to see. After the fifth time he refers to people who don't live in the original colonies as heathens, I figure it's best if we just stick to the East Coast. Besides, I couldn't afford airfare to Washington, which unsurprisingly was the state he wanted to see most. So I book us a flight to New York City in an attempt at getting him to marvel at all the tall buildings a la Paul Hogan in Crocodile Dundee. Georgie ends up getting tazed by the air marshall after he pitches a fit right before take off because "it is impossible for a metal bird to fly." I take this time to introduce Georgie to another 21st century gem: sedatives.

Day 4 Georgie and I wander the streets of NYC. By this time, he's already getting on my nerves, what with all his inappropriate gawking at everything (freed slaves?! women out of the home?! chinamen?!) and making me explain every little thing (so the inside is like a tootsie roll, but it's also a lolly pop??). He's kind of like a 6-foot-plus-wig-and-tight-wearing toddler because he doesn't know how anything works and just keeps asking about every damn thing. And all his dumb questions about "horseless carriages" and "switchable candles" are asked in a weird, affected, 18th-century way. The hotel staff gets pretty pissed too, since he overflowed the hotel room toilet four times by overflushing. As we're in the elevator to go to the top of the Empire State building he asks me about the magic lifting box we're in, I lose it and tell him how much I wish that Jefferson had come to visit instead of him. We don't speak the rest of the day.

Day 5 After a quick trip to a book store to pick up a kid's book on how things work, me and Georgie are getting along a lot better. We return to DC on this day, and we take the train back since that seems slightly less scary than the plane. We bond over how ugly the view of New Jersey is from the train and George tells me all about crossing the Delaware river -- which I have to feign interest in since it seems to mean so much to him. The entire time he's talking I can't stop staring at his wooden dentures.

Day 6 I take George to Mount Vernon to show him where I smushed raisins into his carpet as a child, and to freak out all the old ladies who give tours there. They go crazy and contact his family members and an impromptu party is held for George. With everyone ooh-ing and ahh-ing over him I can't stand George. He's all "Did I ever tell you about the time I won the war and started this country? Blah Blah Blah" and since no one else there has had to listen this crap for the last 5 days they're into it. The historian at Mount Vernon asks to host George for the night and I gladly agree since Georgie is beginning to smell again -- he hasn't bathed since Day 1.

Day 7 After a day with the historian, George is completely unbearable. He's so self-important and won't stop talking about himself. Whenever I try to change the topic of conversation he won't let me because my "face isn't on the dollar bill." Just because of that I don’t take him to see the Washington monument, which I tell him was a monument for Ben Franklin instead. After lunch I send him on his way -- a little earlier than expected but I couldn't handle one more comment about how it's not normal for a woman to wear pants.

Secrets to a long life

My great-grandmother just recently turned 90 years old this past weekend, which in case you didn't know is really super old. Considering her age, she's doing pretty well and I thought that I'd share some lessons on longevity that I've learned from her:

* Be ornery.
This is actually a direct quote from her to our waiter at lunch. It is also probably the most true thing she has ever said. Forget what people tell you about being positive and having a rosy disposition -- being hateful and spiteful angries up the blood and keeps you alive. Oh sure your life will be miserable, but it will also be long.

* Suffer, and do it loudly.
This primarily includes trying to out-do people in conversations when it comes to illness, bad luck, and general misfortune. Think of it as a contest, and whoever has the most upsetting story wins, and then turn every conversation into that contest. If you find yourself losing a contest, choose an old standby misery -- like your husband dying -- and then mention it and cry. Works everytime. Another good standby? Remind people what little time you have left: i.e. "Why do I need a ten year warranty? I won't be here that long!"

* Cook way too much food.
Any time one person comes over, you need to cook as if 10 people are coming over. Then you must force your guests to take all the left overs because you can't eat them by yourself. This has the benefit of reminding people how lonely you are (see above), and by letting people how much you do for them (see below). It also fattens up your grandchildren, while keeping you thin which probably has some sort of benefit though it's not obvious.

* Crochet.
I guess this has been covered pretty well by different sources who say that keeping an alert mind contributes to longevity. However, I would argue it's the actual act of crochet-ing itself. Maybe it's something about the needles -- maybe some sort of life-preserving mineral leaches into your skin from the metal? Or maybe it's just that if you're sitting for hours on end so you can crochet your reducing the amount of time you could be up and about and thus the amount of time you could spend falling. Either way I bet if you took the time to count the hundreds of afghans and potholders my grandmother has made you would find a direct correlation from potholder production to longevity.

* Equate money with love.
This is my favorite by far because if you are lucky enough to have a relative who thinks this then you get lots of presents. This basically includes constantly mentioning how much money you want to leave to each of your descendants in your will, talking about how much a present cost you, and noting how many presents you've given to people through out their lives. It's also helpful to keep a running tally in your mind of everything you've done for someone so that you can very easily remind them when they are indebted to you in one way or another. Example: My great-grandmother almost constantly mentions the money she spent to pay for my grandmother (her daughter-in-law) and my father (her first-born grandchild) to come to the US from the Phillipines and how my grandfather (her son) never paid her back. Write a letter to your son because he never paid you back from the instance 50 years ago when you helped pay to bring your first grandchild and your daughter-in-law to the US.

* Shop a lot.
Buy yourself lots of clothes and wind up knick-knacks even while complaining that you don't have enough money to pay for your medication. If there's ever a buy 3 cards get one wind-up dancing hamster deal at Hallmark. Take it. In fact, take three. Who cares that you buy yourself four new outfits a month and never even wear half of the stuff? The point is you are living longer because of it -- most probably because the credit card companies are somehow artificially prolonging your life so you can repay your debt to them.

*Be racist without realizing it.
This works best when you call African-Americans "colored" or make stereotypical statements about minority groups. Go for the gold by doing both in one fell swoop as my grandmother did once when we went out for lunch: "Those colored people think they can do whatever they want -- that's their problem!" So true, that is "their" problem.

*Be suspicious.
Don't make friends with your neighbors at the assisted living home (they're gossips) and don't trust your family (they don't appreciate you). However, you should be best friends with the sales girls at Peebles.

Just for the record, I know that I'm making a lot of fun of my great grandmother here, so I want it to be clear that though I do think she can be incredibly annoying and will complain about her to whoever wants to listen, I will miss her when she's gone. Who else will tell me about oozing sores and what's wrong with the African-American race?