I'm BaaAAAAAAAACCKK....On Oprah

Set your DVRs...my Oprah episode re-airs Thursday, February 19th at 4pm on ABC. The show promises to be even more ridiculous the second time around - more exaggerated reactions, more cursing on national tv, more insane facial expressions. Once is never enough.

There Goes the Neighborhood

And I want
And I need
And I lust
Animal

-Def Leppard, "Animal"

Speaking of things that are out to destroy me, I would like to point out that since I have moved into this apartment, two stores have opened up directly across the street from me. One of these stores is a Magnolia-spinoff cupcake shop, and the others of these is a chocolate store which literally sells chocolate exclusively. That means every time I walk Perry, which is about 85 times a day, I step out of my apartment and am immediately confronted with two of the most delicious items known to mankind, namely buttercream cupcakes and very delicious chocolate. At first I thought it was some sort of 20/20 hidden camera experiment where they watched to see how many times I would go to the two stores and then surreptitiously weighed me when I stepped on a particular piece of the sidewalk that looked like concrete but was actually a scale.

However, I very soon realized that the cupcake store was pulling the same crap that Mrs. Fields and Cinnabon does at the mall, which is that the items themselves don't taste all that great, but they get people to eat their shit by spraying cookie and cinnabun scented perfume into powerful fans that are programmed to blast in peoples faces from 100 feet away and lure them into the store. The cupcake store has similarly been pumping cupcake perfume into my apartment, but once I realized this dastardly trick I was able to withstand the intoxicating perfume of cupcakes in the same way as Odysseus was able to withstand the song of the Sirens, by closing my window and holding my nose while walking by the store. I have been able to withstand the chocolate shop because I once got a peanut butter brownie there and let's just say the outcome was not ideal.

My Upstairs Neighbors

The lengths that people who live upstairs will go to wake me up before 12pm on Sunday is actually outrageous. Take this morning, for instance. Annoyed that I was once again sleeping in, my neighbors started up with their usual antics of moving all their furniture out of their apartment and then back in and rearrange it several times. Next up was a reenactment of Jack and the Beanstalk where everyone imitated the giant fee fi fo fuming up and down the stairs for an hour. When this failed to rouse me, they lined their apartment with tin garbage can covers, put on wooden clogs and performed the show stoppers from Stomp immediately above my head. They then got on their phones and screamed at each other and then took turns going downstairs to the buzzer and yelling at each other to buzz them up. Sensing their defeat, they resorted to lifting up and then throwing their piano down the stairs seven times and vacuuming the doormat in front of my apartment for 30 minutes, which finally, FINALLY got me out of bed. Well they may have won today's battle, but this war is not over yet.

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time

Perry's lingerie fetish

Yes, I'm aware I previously titled a post "The Curious Incident of the Lactaid in the Night-time" but this post actually DOES have to do with Perry's extremely bizarre nighttime ritual. Every night when I put on my long nightcap and shuffle around my apartment with a candle on a plate yelling "Perry, bedtime!" Perry gathers all of his dead chipmunk AKC toys in a pile in the living room and then proceeds to hide each toy, one by one in various places around my apartment. He grabs a chipmunk by the mouth, attempts to squeak it to make sure the squeaker is broken and then surveys the apartment for the ultimate hiding space so as to secure the chipmunk for the night and make sure thieves do not steal them from him under cover of darkness.

You would think this process takes like 3 minutes - like grab a chipmunk, hide it under a cushion and be done with it, but unfortunately, each of his 3 chipmunks takes about a half hour to hide, because sometimes Perry deems the original hiding space not safe enough. For instance, Perry typically initially hides the chipmunk under some pillows on my floor but minutes later he's moving the chipmunk to underneath the bed because under the pillows was too obvious, or because I spotted him hiding the chipmunk and therefore ruined everything. Seriously, when I interrupt his hiding rituals, he has to UNHIDE the chipmunks and then REHIDE them somewhere else because while by day I'm Dr. Jekyll, taking him out to pee or taking him to the vet, turn off the lights and put me in a room with some stuffed chipmunks I just lose all reason and cram them all in my mouth and confiscate them.

While this entire thing was hilarious to watch the first time around, it takes an HOUR AND A HALF every night for Perry to perform his OCD rituals and the entire time he is squeaking, jumping and digging and when I wake up in the morning the apartment looks like a crack den. When I tried to tell the Oprah people that half of the mess in my apartment wasn't mine, they were like, "You need to stop blaming your messiness on your dog" and I was like "No, it's true, I didn't do most of this, but yet I'm still getting blamed for it and Perry comes out looking like a victim" and then they told me to "grow up" and "take ownership" over things.

Now Officially Living in Narnia

God

Some of you may be wondering where I've been for the past two days. There is a very simple explanation. You see, yesterday morning at 8 am, my doorbell rang. I walked to the door, opened it and STANDING IN MY DOOR WAS OPRAH'S "CLEAN UP YOUR MESSY HOUSE TOUR," two hosts and like 5 cameras and a crew of like 40 people who proceeded to storm my apartment and clean up my messy apartment. Needless to say I COMPLETELY LOST MY SHIT, HAD THIRTY MILLION HEART ATTACKS, ASKED 10,000 TIMES IF THEY WERE JOKING ME, EXPLAINED THAT IT WAS COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL and after a while it was clear that they were not and that it was just in fact business as usual for people who live in Narnia on a full-time basis like myself. Oprah. OPRAH. OPRAH OPRAH OPRAH OPRAH OPRAH. THESE HAVE BEEN THE GREATEST DAYS OF MY LIFE AND I CAN NOW DIE HAPPY.

More details to follow - I'll let you know when the show airs. Thank you, Oprah. I really needed this. Seriously.

Craigslist Apartment Cipher

Because it is my fate in life to move reenact the Oregon Trail and move once a year, I have unfortunately become VERY well acquainted with the Craigslist apartment ads. Having looked at a total of something like 60 apartments, I am well-versed in the real meanings of certain descriptions of apartments that brokers put up in order to get you to see the apartment, and let me assure you that no apartment I have ever looked at was described in the ads as "repulsive dump on dangerous block." As a public service, below is a list of words and phrases used in Craiglist in order to describe apartments, along with their true meanings.

1. "Amazing Deal" = bedbugs
2. "Steps Away from Subway" = ground floor apartment with barred windows
3. "Sick Location...Sick Price" = illness will be due to lead paint and proximity to gas station
4. "Gem" = bathtub located in kitchen
5. "Marble Bath" = pack of marbles left by previous tenant
6. "Great Block" = ten blocks away from a decent block
7. "*Pictures may not be of actual apartment" = HAHHAHA
8. "No Fee" = no fee until you sign the brokers fee agreement form
9. "Cozy" = Murphy bed
10. "Bohemian Dream Come True" = painted by Helen Keller
11. "Lots of light" = directly across from Mamma Mia! sign in Times Square

Street "Fairs"

Yesterday I woke up and saw a small tent outside my window and immediately had a panic attack that they were having one of those goddamn street fairs on my street. After further investigation I confirmed that they were actually just filming some new sitcom with nobody famous on my street and the tent was a craft services tent, but explained to the production crew that they gave me a panic attack because I thought they were setting up a street fair right outside my apartment. One of the craft services guys asked me what my problem with street fairs was and I said that street fairs are amazing if you like irregular tube socks, olde tyme pretzels, "mozzarepas," corn on a stick, and small potted herbs and enjoy pretending you're in a cartoon where the scenery repeats itself every 50 feet. Street fairs are also key if you like street closures and cab rides that take an extra 15 minute and $12 extra because the cab driver didn't realize all of Murray Hill was blocked off from traffic so that people can buy Hard Rock Baja sweaters from 1990 and greasebag funnel cakes. Let me just say that if there is EVER a street fair on my street, I will be setting up my own stand that sells gyros, cotton candy, irregular underwear, pretzels, bajas and crystal vortexes and put all these other ridiculous stands out of business once and for all.