THIS IDIOT RATES OSCAR FASHIONS

Yes, THIS IDIOT

In this wedding photobooth (the red carpet of the real world) picture, I'm sporting a thrifty plastic safari hat, unidentified magenta tutu-esque piece of fabric, and a completely clashing bright red dress and lipstick. I was 80% sober here, which means I had entirely too many mental and physical faculties for this to be acceptable.

Go back in time with me, if you will, to 1987. It's Halloween. Your parents don't want to spend a ton of money on a costume. They realize, brilliantly, that a giant black Hefty bag doubles as a California Raisin costume, which was a pretty hip thing to be that year. You cut leg holes and arm holes in your garbage bag, tie it at the neck, and voila, you're a California Raisin!

I assume this is the homage Kate Winslet is going for here.

 

Alright, Alicia Vikander. I have no idea who you are. I don't get to see too many movies since my friends with Oscar screeners have *AHEM* moved to Asia. Either way your dress is trying very hard. I like the light yellow, because bright yellow is harsh, and the sparklies are not bad. I'm just a little turned off by the fact that it looks like you went to the bathroom and tucked most of your dress into your panties without noticing that there's a slight breeze.

 

 

This chick had a really weird name that I have already forgotten in the time it took to find the photo of me wearing a similar (yet slightly more modest neckline) dress to prom in 1998. I was so ahead of my time.

Oh Amy. You are so funny. I'm not entirely sure where you found this costume, but suffice it to say you must be busy writing, acting and performing your duties as the official royal fortune teller at the imperial palace during the Qing Dynasty. 

 

Ok, Mr. Weeknd, let's have a little chat. Not about your tux,  you look fine. Well, except your hair. Whatever you did, please don't ever do it again. We need to have a chat about your name. First of all, you're ONE GUY. You can't have a "the" in your name if you're ONE GUY, unless you're THE president or THE Queen of England. That's just the way shit works. Even Beyoncé isn't THE BEYONCE, and we all know she's the baseline against whom all entertainers measure themselves. Sure, if you want to be all cutesy and spell "weekend" wrong, whatever. But to me, you're just "Weeknd." Always. Forever. No "the." Step down off that tall horse of yours and sit down on that small goat that is your career.

 

Aww, it was so nice of Pharrell's wife to bring Little Timmy to his first Oscars. I hope you packed some snacks in that tiny purse of yours because Timmy's already looking mischievous. And make sure he stays in his seat, kids do the darndest things!

 

Rooney Mara, you are pale. It's okay, I too am pale. But we've gotta work with what we're given. Of all the rainbow of colors in the world, you chose to wear the same color as both your skin and the background. LITERALLY ANY COLOR WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. And I might even forgive the fact that the material looks like Lizzie Borden's bedspread if I could tell where it ended and your skin began. And don't get me started on gratuitous cut-outs. I kind of wish your dress was fur so that PETA could have livened it up a bit with some bright paint splashes.

 

Kerry Washington, you are beautiful and your skin is like flawless silk. You don't look bad in anything. You really even don't look bad in this, but that's not saying anything for the dress itself. I can't tell if it's a vague homage to Star Wars or Xena the Warrior Princess, but I'm confused and upset. Being Kerry Washington's stylist isn't an invitation to throw anything on her to see if she can make it not look ridiculous, that's just rude. Dress her like the goddess she is.

 

I call my latest modern art piece "Unicorn Vomit Frozen in Time Avec Les Fleurs"

 

A LINK TO THE PAST

Thumbs up if you get the super nerdy title reference.

Now that my second iteration of the bar is over, I can come back to other things, such as writing about what rich people wore to an awards ceremony I didn't watch. Trust me, I've already reviewed my material and there's a good deal I have to say, but that will be later in the week. But first, my return to WORK.

In the fantasy world that I call my job, which I've only had for about two months, I have two "bosses" who are super fun and nice, close to my age, and like listening to KDAY at work. AND they think I'm smart and useful and have good ideas. I'm still looking for the hidden unicorn in the office to prove to me that this is all a dream and there's no way I could have a job I enjoy with people I like who ALSO appreciate me and tell me so. That kind of job doesn't exist. It's the same kind of job that where, when I'd been there a week and turned in one Summary Judgment Opposition, they decided to show me they liked my work and that they intended to keep me around by buying me a gigantic monitor so I didn't have to look at my laptop screen all day.

It's also the kind of job where they're like, "Oh, yeah, don't come in the week before the bar, we really want you to study." I didn't even ASK for time off, but OKAY. And I appreciated it greatly. So today when I came to the office for the first time in two weeks, the guy at the front desk told me they'd moved offices (they'd been trying to get a bigger one since they hired me and the one they had barely fit two small children, let alone three adults with desks). He walked me to a (comparatively) huge office with SO MUCH SPACE and I had a BIG GIANT DESK and could back my chair up without hitting the open door. Okay, I guess that's not like the corner office at the Empire State Building but having a mini-desk behind the door makes you appreciate the small things. Or bigger things.

They were excited to have me back (what? they noticed I was gone?) and I set up my computer and began working. I don't mind being there. It's super weird. They're also terrifyingly confident in my ability to pass the bar this time. It actually does scare me...

When I got home today I opened up my "work box" to find things to take to my big girl desk at my big girl job, since it's SO HUGE that I need to decorate it or the only things that will adorn my desk are food particles and empty Starbucks cups. My work box is exactly how I left it 6 years ago, when I packed up my desk at the DA's office in Missouri, never to return.

The first thing I saw upon opening the box was a large desk calendar for 2010. January was filled with dockets, hearings, my final (winning!) trial, and highlighter cross-outs for every day that passed up until January 15th. That was the day that my boss came into my already-closed office and sat down, an almost sad look on his face, where he told me that he thought I was a wonderful person, but not necessarily the type of person that needed to do this job. I surprised him when I straight up agreed with him. I had been looking for jobs (at home) for the past month or so, with no success. I'd begun isolating myself at this job too, just like the last one. My office was on the opposite side of the space from the others, which didn't really bother me, but even that shelter hadn't been enough in past months. My door remained closed and I was avoiding everyone again.

That was when I decided to leave law. I'd made the decision before, but that was the day it took effect. I cried, not because I was sad, but because I was relieved. That, and I pretty much cried about everything between 2008 and 2013.

Today, despite having started my job in January, I felt was my real return to law. After six years of confusion, school, unsuccessful job hunting, "finding myself," a master's degree, undiagnosed PTSD, living across the world for two months and finally DIAGNOSED PTSD (the difference is staggering, I assure you), I opened the box and took some items from my past to put back into my present. Just a few, but enough. There's a part of me that will always be a DA. That part of me saw hearings scheduled into April in that calendar that was never used, hearings for cases I remember and ultimately worry about the outcome. I hope the more difficult ones weren't dismissed because people didn't believe in the sex crimes cases like I did. I hope some of those people are still in jail.

I credit the last year for getting me back "on track" in life, i.e. having a paying job as well as hobbies and friends, to starting improv. I gained my confidence back. I became happy again. I started making a concerted effort to use the skills I had to do what I knew I was good at so that I could make money to support what I love to do. And today was the beginning of something great.

Thank god I still look like I'm 28 because starting over at 34 isn't easy. But I did need those 6 years to get to this point.

Okay enough with this gooey sh...show of emotion. Let's do this.

MY TAKE ON THE BACHELOR

I've been watching the Bachelor since the beginning of this season. I can't stop. It's like a train wreck. I'd never really watched it before, with the exception a few episodes here and there over the course of the entire tenure of the show, but I had no idea how addicting it could be.

I can't decide if I would be terrible on the show or the one the producers keep around because I provide endless entertainment. It's come to my attention that either these girls don't curse, or they just cut all of that out, because there are no bleeps. Who doesn't curse? That's very suspect. I don't trust people who don't curse. But then again, I don't really trust people who go on a TV show to actually legitimately find love. Also I don't have long brown/blonde ombre hair with loose waves that always looks the same, so I'd stand out immediately.

(Disclosure: I once may or may not have applied to be on the Bachelor, shortly off a bad breakup and just for amusement. I'm not sure if I was rejected because my job title was "attorney" and not "cosmetologist" or "twin," or some other reason, but I'm pretty sure that what got me on Wipeout was exactly the thing that made the Bachelor not interested. I was kind of relieved when they didn't call me.)

Now that I've actually watched most of a season of the show, I know I would be a hilarious disaster. Assuming someone as dull as Ben would keep me around this long, which is highly unlikely as I tend to terrify people who have very little personality, my reactions to these dates and questions would be SIGNIFICANTLY different.

In last night's episode, that I watch a day late on Hulu solely to spite Time Warner Cable, Boring Ben takes the remaining ladies to his hometown of Warsaw, Indiana. The girls think it's adorable how much he loves this tiny town, but I find it absolutely terrifying. Sure, the trees are pretty and fall-colored, and I assume it would be a pleasant place to stay for a  night on a road trip, but to live there? Sweet mother of god, no.

The first "date" he took the girl on a tour of his town, talking about his high school and how he was quarterback, blah blah blah. Oh great, a guy who's still living the high school hometown dream? My absolute nightmare. High school wasn't bad, but for the love of god, grow up and have some adult accomplishments.

"And that's my church."
"Ohhhhh, yeah, this probably isn't going to work out..."

After the tour that showed you how boring your life would be if you moved "home" with Ben after the show, he took the girl to a gym FILLED with children. Like 50 of them. Hold up, I think you made some mistake, we're supposed to be on a date and you've taken me to a fucking day care. I think I'm going to go take a nice walk among the fall trees that I'll never see again since I'm obviously not marrying someone who wants to hang out with a small army of children.

"I really loved working here with the kids in the after school program, it made me really love working with children."

NOPE. NOPE NOPE NOPE. Not only do I not want to have YOUR kid, I sure as hell don't want to hang out with an entire school full of them for no monetary compensation. I don't even want to do it FOR money, but that's likely the only way to persuade me. Well, maybe for that giant plush donut Ben won at the "town fair" later in the show. I would freakin love a giant plush donut.

Also WHY DO ALL THESE PEOPLE KNOW HIM? How can a town be that small?? And how creepy is it that everywhere he takes girls on dates there are at least 20 people he knows that are watching him like a hawk both because a) he's the most "famous" person they've ever seen and b) because they're trying to get on national TV?  GO AWAY. YOU'RE CREEPING ME OUT.

It's also concerning that most of these girls are under 25. There's a VERY small percentage of my friends who married before 25 that are still married. The Bachelor is basically where relatively attractive, uninteresting people can have a "starter marriage." Also, he's NEVER seen them without PROFESSIONAL hair and makeup. He doesn't even know if they can put on their own makeup without looking like a drag queen. Or maybe they always wear sweatpants. THE WHOLE THING IS A LIE.

But I think we all knew that. Except maybe the people on the show. If nothing else, they're all equally boring, so neither Ben nor his first wife will be disappointed in their (lack of) conversation. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go read my Winston Churchill biography so I can gain back all the brain cells I just lost.

AND THE KITTENS WERE GONE!

Don't worry, nothing actually happened to any kittens, that's just what my friends would say when I started telling a story and got off-topic and rambled for 45 minutes. It is basically the last line from a story which, if I'm being honest, was one of the LEAST ridiculously long tangents I've gone on while attempting to tell a story.

If you've ever attempted to have a conversation with me, you'll know that I lose my train of thought about 50 times during the course of any attempt at speaking and generally end up completely forgetting what I was initially talking about. I am in no way concise. When I write, however, I am quite concise. I get to the point and I'm done.

I have a confession to make. If you hadn't already figured it out from my complete radio silence following my countdown to the bar exam, I did not pass. However, I was in the majority, since only 46% of people taking the California bar this past July passed. I was actually so shocked that I didn't pass that I entered my registration number into the box FIVE TIMES to make sure I typed it correctly, and was then still somewhat convinced that there was a mistake. That's what I get for being too cocky - the "I've already passed two different bar exams on the first try, this one will be cake" attorney who was convinced that having practiced in real life would make my answers better.

Actually, that's what I get for being TOO CONCISE. Those were exactly the words my legal writing teacher (may she rot in hell) wrote on my first memo in law school. What, you're mad that I didn't REPEAT MYSELF UNNECESSARILY?  You're mad that I stayed on topic? You wanted me to explain things to you as detailed and dumbed down as one would to a six-year-old?

Apparently yes.

Let's put this in perspective. I received my answer packet from the bar showing what I wrote (with no notes, thanks for the help guys) and today I compared it to the "good" answer for the same question that they posted on the internet. I got each of the questions RIGHT, and came to the conclusions in the same way as the sample answer, but there was a marked difference:

My answer took up four pages. The sample answer took THIRTEEN PAGES.  I'm just going to let that sink in here for a second.

Basically, it was my answer with every single thing defined. While mine would say something to the effect of "the court correctly denied Bob's motion for summary judgment because blah blah blah," the sample answer was more like "Bob, who was born on a farm in 1914, lived a long, hard life picking weeds from his neighbor's yard...he had type A blood, an unnatural interest in the mating habits of pigs, and saw his first grey hair when he was 20 years old. When Bob filed the motion for summary judgment, he drove there in his 1994 Honda Accord that was purchased via quitclaim deed from his sister, Sue, who inherited it from her father through his holographic will that was also videotaped, notarized, and performed via interpretive dance The judge who denied Bob's motion had just filed for divorce from his wife and was in the 7392 day waiting period between filing and actual dissolution of the marriage, therefore his state of mind was relevant to the proceedings and should be taken into account when the case is brought up on appeal, as well as the fact that the judge's brother just found oil on the judge's property and should the judge or his brother have the rights to the oil if the land used to belong to Barbara Streisand but now the judge is renting it from Charlie Sheen and is violating his lease by having a dog?"

Whoa, hold up, I think I'm going to use that answer next time...

ASPIRING IDIOT

Seeing as New Years is, well, right now, I felt the urge to get off my ass theoretically (which requires me to be physically on my ass, since typing standing up is weird) and write some shit.  You can't expect to make a dent in "being a writer" if you don't actually write.

My recent excuse is that my life is not particularly interesting right now - which is quite true, if you ask me what I did all day.  But if I look deeper, I can find the funny.

For Christmas I got a Fitbit, which turned many of my close friends and now my mother into raging lunatics who walk in circles in the kitchen so a computer will know they took 10,000 steps a day and send them a congratulatory email or an emoji of a happy donut.  I'm hoping that it will turn me into some sort of insane person who moves more than I do, because currently my life pace is that of "sloth," and not the cute kind you see in Facebook videos.

I knew it was working when the first day I got it, the Fitbit told me I had walked about 3,000 steps and slept 10.3 hours.  At least I knew I didn't have to send it back and now believe in the scientific accuracy of its abilities, since that was exactly what I did on Christmas day.  My parents kept asking me why I slept all the time when I was home, but they didn't seem to notice that my room is about as bright as coffin and my bed is as comfy as the dead people make coffins look.

One of the myriad problems with being a single female living in a studio apartment with two cats, aside from the obvious ones, is finding someone to look after them when I go out of town. I don't get out much, as one would imagine, so the times I go out of town are exactly the same times others do.  Yes, cats are self-sufficient, but I'm more worried about them somehow setting my apartment on fire than dying of starvation while I'm gone.  Seriously, it's happened before.

This time, I had a friend who wasn't leaving until Christmas Eve, and I was returning on the 26th, so I thought that those twoish days would be no problem for my animals that sleep even more than I do, but I've been wrong before. Like the time I came home and found that Rudy (the fat one) had managed to TURN ON THE GAS STOVE, complete with flame, while I was gone TO WORK for EIGHT HOURS. My apartment was 90 degrees inside in the dead of winter when I arrived home to the "tick tick tick" of the burner lighter that had likely been on nearly the entire day.

He has also managed to cause a sequence of events that started with knocking over golf clubs and ended with my lantern being ripped from the ceiling by its cord (during a weekend away) and locking himself IN the room with the litter box while consequently locking the other cat OUT, resulting in an odd-but-explainable cat shit in the bathtub drain.

This time, after arriving 45 minutes late to LAX around 1am and watching Charlie Sheen smoke with an airport cop while waiting for my Super Shuttle, I wasn't quite prepared for what awaited me.  I walked into my apartment and it looked like someone had sprinkled the entire place with cat litter, like some sort of fucked up fairy dust, my Hello Kitty stuffed animal was across the room from where she belonged, one of the cats (Rudy, no doubt) had taken it upon himself to scrape litter out of the box and onto the floor in front of the box thereupon making a second makeshift litter box on the floor that confused the other cat into using the floor instead of the actual box, and multiple unimportant things were on the floor instead of on counters or shelves where they belonged.

This all happened in TWO DAYS.  It's like leaving a fucking teenager alone with the liquor cabinet for the weekend. I'm not sure how they punted a large stuffed animal across the room or how the coverage of cat litter was both thorough and evenly distributed across the apartment, but it took me about an hour or vacuuming to feel as though I wasn't living in a zoo cage with monkeys that throw shit at you.  And I KNOW if Rudy had opposable thumbs that bastard would throw shit at me and then want to come cuddle.

Happy New Year, me.

THIS ISN'T FUNNY.

Tonight I was waiting in the subway station as I do nearly every day when I have to work downtown (yes, I still live in LA, for those of you who are questioning my riding a subway). I like taking the train because it's fast and I can avoid traffic. I hate taking the train because of the people on the train. There are 50 different varieties of homeless people, from the ones that sleep across two seats and smell like piss to the ones that decide to make the captive audience their personal donation fund, walking back and forth spouting the same bullshit about needing change.

There are elderly Asian women and teenagers of all races, tourists and locals, people like me who have jobs downtown and people who were just given a Metro card on their way out of the county jail. Despite the cast of characters, I've never once felt like my personal safety was in jeopardy or that I was likely to be robbed. However, there are plenty of people, both crazy and "normal," who try to talk to me. I don't like this. Usually I put my headphones in with the cord attached to nothing inside my purse just so it looks like I'm listening to something so people won't talk to me.

I left my headphones at work today. It was a deliberate decision, not an accident - I thought "why roll them up and put them back in my purse when I won't use them until I am at work again tomorrow?" This was a bad decision.

It was 8:30pm and the metro station wasn't full like it is in rush hour. I walked down the stairs and stood waiting for the train as I played Candy Crush on my phone. There was a homeless dude sleeping on the bench, a group of mid-twenties black kids with skateboards and big headphones, and an older woman who may or may not have been homeless but was wearing a knit cap on top of a hood, which was just weird.

I'm going to address this because it exists and it's relevant to the story: I am not racist. I'm not "scared" of black people. I don't pull my purse closer to me when I see a group of black kids. I take all my cues from the way people act, regardless of race, and base my actions on that. In fact, the woman with the double head-warmer had a sketchy look in her eyes and kept getting close to me so I decided to avoid what I feared might be a potential pickpocket and moved away from her to stand near the group of black guys because they were simply talking amongst themselves like normal people.

I'm playing Candy Crush for about two minutes when one of the guys approaches me. I look up, and he says something I can't hear because a train is coming through. I ask him to repeat it. It was something along the lines of "You look pretty." I politely thanked him and went back to my game. But he kept talking. Telling me how nice I looked, how he thought I was just super cute, how he loved my hair. I thanked him again, because I do honestly think he was being sincere and I didn't feel threatened by him - just uncomfortable to be singled out.

It, to me, was the same as someone whistling at me on the sidewalk, or catcalling me as I walk by. I shouldn't have to justify what I was wearing, but for the record it was jeans, a long-sleeved striped shirt with a high collar, and a gigantic shawl/scarf wrapped around me for warmth. It was possibly the least slutty thing I could've worn. While he wasn't being vulgar at all, he was only talking about my looks, over and over again. Then he went a little further and started full on talking about how we should hang out, how I should take his number, how he wanted to touch my hair. Other than the hair touching part, nothing he said was really over the line. I think he just honestly thought that was how you get a girl to go out with you.

Now here's the caveat - had this guy been a white guy, I would have shut him down with snark in a hot second. If you're bothering me and making me uncomfortable, I have no problem walking away and being a bitch. This goes for people on the street, on the train or in a bar. However, I felt like I needed to be nicer because he was black. I didn't want him to think I was racist, or that I was rejecting him because he was black. I have witnessed friends who were either hit on in a vulgar way or catcalled by a black guy and when they ignored him (because his comments were inappropriate and warranted no response) they'd yell "Oh it's cause I'm black, huh?" as we walked away.

I was rejecting him because he made me uncomfortable. Because I have no interest in meeting a potential date in a subway station.  Because he treated me like I was just something to look at. Because my polite refusal to give him my number didn't deter him. Because I have severe social anxiety and don't like to talk to ANY STRANGERS. Because he either couldn't see or ignored the fact that I was getting progressively more uncomfortable. Because he would not leave me alone.

When the train came, I got on a different car than he did, and he yelled "You want me to come sit with you?" I shook my head no and quickly found a seat next to an older woman. I felt so vulnerable because I let it go on so long. I was angry at myself that I let race factor into my decision not to stand up for myself in the likely bitchy way I wanted to. And because of that, the comments started to make me feel like less of a person. Not a 3-degree-holding attorney, but a delicate flower that exists only for the amusement of men.

I almost had a panic attack on the train. I felt like I wanted to cry and throw up at the same time. It was tough to hold the tears til I got to my car 10 stops away. Was I weak? Was I racist? Why am I so uncomfortable with people? Why did he choose to talk to the one person in the train station that had crippling social anxiety? Why do I look approachable?

I've been catcalled and I hate it, but this was like catcalling a captive. I couldn't escape. I was trapped.

Why do men think this is okay? How can you not tell you're making me uncomfortable? Why do you keep going until I want to scream "GO AWAY"? Why do you then think it's okay to get angry with me?

Is there somewhere other than Asia where this is not a thing? Because Asia's awfully far away. Maybe I need to get back in the courtroom in my suit and fuck some shit up.  I don't know, but something needs to change.

THE 7 TYPES OF FACEBOOK STALKING

We all Facebook stalk. It's just a thing we do. But Facebook stalking isn't just for that guy or girl you're hoping to date - there's a whole slew of different reasons to stalk:

1. The classic "I have a crush on you so I'm going to look at every photo of you from today back to when Facebook began even if it takes all damn night"

2. The "you look like you got plastic surgery and I'm going to go back through your photos to find out when the drastic change occurred and how long you've successfully hidden it" - the best is when you find conclusive proof and show your friends how great you are at sleuthing.

3. Everybody's favorite "who the hell is that girl/guy in your photo and are you dating them?" Why do you have no relationship status up? She's not in your profile pic, she can't be that important. Maybe she's just a coworker but I'll be damned if I don't find out more.

4. "Are you pregnant or have you just gained weight?" The key for this one is looking for alcohol in photos - is she the only one without wine in that girl's night photo? Bottle of water at a music fest when everyone else has beers? Preggo, for sure.

5. "You blatantly photoshop every picture you post of yourself so I'm going to find one you're tagged in by someone else and figure out what you REALLY look like." Inches off the waist? Hair longer? Eyes that are a cartoonish color of blue? I haven't seen you in years but I'm going to find out what you're hiding.

6. The "very subtle name change (i.e. from Sally Jones to Sally Marie with no last name) and many recent pictures alone that seem to indicate you got divorced" - of course you have to go see if they still have their wedding album in their photos, that's the key.

7. "We just started dating and I want to see if you're a complete psychopath/who my competition is/if you're a raging alcoholic/etc"  Hmm, so you dated that girl in 2009, she's only a 6. How come every pic of you has beer in it? Why do you have a beer in your hand at a baby shower? Maybe that's a red flag, combined with the picture of you passed out with a penis drawn on your face and the one where you can see how nasty your apartment is in the background...