Smokelore

With more cigarette taxes coming into full effect next week and my ever lying mouth talking about how I plan on quitting all of the time, the extra money that I could be spending on beer may be the thing that will have me stop putting my nicotine where my mouth is.

I have had some weak success in the past of going a few months without smoking here and there, generally it is replaced by a sucker and running addiction, but paired together, those can't be all that bad right? Unless I trip and fall while running with the sucker in my mouth, that may not be too pretty.

I purchased an e-cigarette awhile back, convinced that it would be the perfect replacement partner for my life, but much to my disappointment, it compares to someone getting dumped and replacing their past partner with a blow-up doll.

For those of you not up to par with your vice technology, e-cigarettes are not some little avatar that you watch smoke online, they are little electronic cigarettes that you screw a nicotine cartridge into and inhale your precious, precious nicotine that way. The unfortunate downside of this method is that even though I am expelling a non-harmful to those of you who pride yourselves on your lung capacity when I expel my vapor into the air, I would never dare hang out at my desk at work and puff away on one. I fear the looks that that electronic red fake burning tip and vapor smoke would draw over to my very private desk corner. The less people that know I exist here, the better, trust me.

So you are forced out with the other smokers on break who then start eyeing you as though you are the Terminator coming in to warn them of real cigarette destruction. Then comes the slew of questions that follow about it, and before you know it you are an unintentional spokesmam for the e-cigarette, which let me tell you is much less cool looking than being the Marlboro Man. I am pretty sure I saw the real Marlboro Man in a cowboy hat and boots at the gas station yesterday purchasing a 24 pack of Bud and a carton of Marlboros. He drove away in his white pickup truck and I thought, “Damnit I want to hang out with him, I bet he won’t ever smoke e-cigarettes.”

See, way cooler than the E-cigarette Man, who is probably sporting a small track jacket faux-hawk and too tight jeans with Converse on who only wants to talk politics to me and about what shitty taste I have in music, all while smelling perfectly cologned without a trace of the nostalgic smell of burnt tobacco on him.

I think I will give that cursed e-thing another whirl though before I have to start paying exorbitant amounts of money on 20 measly cigarettes that I will more than likely finish in a day and a half, and on and on and more than likely finish the whole pack once I am a few shots of whiskey and beers down in just mere hours over the weekend.

Huffing and puffing on that contraption in my room I call an elliptical machine has been a silent shame that I've been harboring over the last month. I bet if I took my wheezing ass to the gym to show the public what I have become, I may humiliate myself into stopping right then and there. The more likely end to that scenario is the usual one though; me lighting up right outside the gym doors after a rousing and heart pounding workout. Nothing tastes better than a cigarette burning in your mouth after some calories have been burned in your body.

The things I can justify not missing from smoking are few and far between because come on, I am a junkie for it, and I have to rationalize as much as I can when I think about all the benefits I reap from this life consuming habit.

I think back to all the social aspects of it, the wonderful people I have been able to drunkenly interact with while sitting outside having a cigarette, and of course in my younger years all the dreamy boys that I have laid eyes upon all while sitting outside smoking.

Well, I am hitched now, so there is no need for the "maybe if I light up outside that hot coffee cart dude will come out" hopeful moments, and I am not 17 so I don't have the vigor and energy that my once supple lungs supported, and I suppose I could stand outside the bar drunkenly meeting new friends while irritatingly explaining to them what my e-cigarette is and then drunkenly asking them for one of their cigarettes because I want a real one and don't want to spend the $7 on a pack, therefore bankrupting a nation of drunk smoking people over the next 15 years.

Or I could just keep talking about how I am going to finally quit and probably never do it, as per always, I mean why not? Talking about stuff is fun.

Let's Talk About Sex (& The City)

I know that I am probably going to catch about ten piles of hell for this, but I can no longer be consumed with this secret that I have been harboring for ten long years inside of me: I hate Sex & The City.

I know there are a lot of women out there and maybe even a man or two that are diehard fans, but I do not fall into that demographic. Many times I have sat quietly as I do when listening to men talk about sports, while female friends and acquaintances discussed episodes and their passion for it. I never said anything because one: I was outnumbered and didn't want to risk the sharp point of a stiletto meeting my eye when bringing up my feelings on this subject matter, and two: if they were my friends and they liked this show so much, I still wanted to keep them as my friends and I was too frightened of losing them over not enjoying all of the same things.

I am still scared of strangers, and I am pretty sure that my friends still like me the way I am, even if I can't sit down for an hour in front of Carrie typing away at her computer trite stories of falling in love with the least attractive people in New York City while wearing questionable outfits that probably would cost 6 months of my paychecks.

Admittedly when I would work a lot of overtime at home, while flipping through channels I would catch and episode here and there, but it was more background noise than anything. I found myself detesting the ever so breathlessly speaking Samantha (get an inhaler already) talk about all the younger dudes she was banging and was just happy to be that way. She should have just called it quits after Mannequin and Big Trouble In Little China, because that is the way that I wish to remember her.

Okay, and I draw a blank on the rest of their names. I promise. And I am too lazy to look them up. I think the uptight prudy one is Charlotte, and all she cares about is being a Stepford wife, and her friends find that very endearing, while I find it very appalling.

The red-headed one with the freakishly tiny head that perches atop a freakishly long neck disturbs me in all her cold rationale and unwillingness to forgive. I would imagine that would be one of those marriages that you get suckered into because you knocked her up and now you are stuck sucking on ice for the rest of your life. Which is what happened in the show.

And then there is our beloved SJP, who smokes cigarettes in her apartment longing for a man named Big, who is this hoity toity rich executive type but they can never quite seem to get it together to work. Did I mention all the dudes on this show are ugly? If we are going this far with the self-indulgent materialistic attitude of glamming up New York City, at least give me something to fantasize after.

Well. I did something bad, and I rented the movie from Netflix. Because I wanted to see what all the hype was about. I wanted to see if maybe my brushes with the T.V. show were just not enough, and that perhaps I would get some sort of better understanding out of this if I got it in a condensed version. Condensed was gratuitous 2 hours and 24 minutes by the way. The only time I want a movie that long and potentially crappy is if stuff is going to be blowing up A LOT. (See 2012)

Unfortunately within the first 20 minutes in of watching the movie, I came to the realization that nothing was going to blow up, but I was on my elliptical, and I still had another 30 minutes to kill. The movie starts out by catching you up on what all the ladies are doing now, which is pretty much nothing different except for being married, two have kids, and Samantha is still a whore but a Hollywood one now, because she probably wiped out a population in New York by infesting most of the males with STDs, and Carrie is now marrying Big, the man of her dreams.

There is a lot of extravagance going on, fancy parties, looking through old clothes as Carrie rushes to move out of her apartment and into the walk in closet as big as my house that Big has built for her, complete with a "girl power" music session that is as banal and predictable as any chick flick could offer. After 30 minutes, I came to the conclusion that I had never, ever, once in my life apologized to myself or anyone around me for a movie that I had rented from Netflix. That had just changed, and the amount shame I was feeling started to wash over me in great waves. Is there a way to erase the record of a movie being rented from Netflix?

These women were supposed to be 40+ years old, but the soundtrack to the movie was built for a 14 year-old girl. They characters were so materialistic and shallow, fraught with one-liners so cheesy and terrible that it made them completely unrelateable on any level. One scene depicts them all at lunch together with Charlotte's adopted three year-old daughter where they attempt to discuss sex, but need to use a different term so as not to scar the kid. They decide to ask each other how often they color with their significant others.

Carrie responds, "All I can say is when Big colors, he does it outside the lines." Followed by a series of high pitched ooooooohhhhhs! (must be the female equivalent of a high five in this movie)

And Samantha, dead set to get this ring at an auction with her money that she has earned in Hollywood, stops bidding at $40k. For a ring. That was her limit. I am supposed to be like "You go girl!!" To something like that? Don't worry, she gets home and is on the phone with her friend when her boy toy shows up, something large protruding from the crotch of his tight bathing suit when she breathlessly gasps into the phone, "I have to go....SOMETHING just came up!" Good one. He then pulls the ring out, which he paid 60k for because he wanted to get it for her. Before being happy and accepting one 1/3rd of what my house cost, she wants to make sure it is just a ring and not an engagement ring before she can show any sort of excitement for receiving it.

Once all of New York gets word of Carrie getting married, they are on it like flies and poo. They put her on Vogue magazine where she tries on dresses, and it leads to a 15 minute scene which could have been all together cut of her just namedropping off designer names that she loves. If I want to know who all the designers in this world are, I don't need a movie for that, please just keep giving me what little plot there is, I will go Wikipedia it somewhere.

She gets the dress of her dreams, she gets the wedding of her dreams, apparently price does not matter in this film, everyone is just dripping with money, I am sure at some point there is a scene where Samantha wipes her ass with $100 bills.

Now I am adding the spoiler alert, and I probably shouldn't even forewarn because the point of all of this is to deter you from watching the movie, but when Carrie gets to the place to get married, with an overly large peacock feather sticking out of her head that just looks uncomfortable and awkward, (I could be wrong it may have been an full peacock,) she is wondering where Big is. Well, Big has been trying to call her, but Charlotte's three year-old has placed Carrie's cell phone in her purse! And in a world where there are only two cell phones they have to make a third cell-phone so Carrie can call Big to find out where he was!

He tried calling her 20 times he said. She doesn't know where her phone is she says. He says he doesn't thing he can go through with this, and SLOOOOOW MOTION, you see the cell-phone drop to the floor as Carrie clutches her heart. Is she having a heart attack? She can't breathe! Oh wait, they ask if she is okay and she says, "He's...not....coming." as the girls start to surround her she screams "GET ME OUT OF HEEEERE!!!!!!" like she just found out she was standing barefoot on a pile of hot lava.

They drive away and Big in his car says, "What the hell am I doing? Turn around DRIVER" Driver says he "I can't, it's a one way street!" Big yells, "If we go around the whole block she will be gone by then!!!" Once again, where are all the cell phones in the world; are they being held up somewhere?

He turns the car around when who does he run into but Carrie's limo! He gets out apologizing, he tells her he is sorry, and that he wants to go through with it, but that is not enough! She walks up to him and starts beating him over the head with flowers.....in front of a crowd. He says "Wait!!" trying to explain his little brain fart, but in Sex & The City land they are too self-absorbed for a moment of rationale, and Charlotte, screaming at him with a red rimmed cold look of anger in her eyes, they type of look you would give someone had you just found out they murdered your beloved simply screams, "DON'T!!!" as Carrie melts into her friends who bring her back to the limo.

Seriously? A little dramatic right?

At this point Carrie is drunk and Samantha still wants to party so they decide to take Carrie's honeymoon to Mexico. Where I left off.

I make it a point to finish all bad books and movies that I start, even the crappy ones by Gus Van Sant, but I am not sure if I am going to be able to trudge through the next 1.5 hours of slop that I have left that is in this movie. I am not a hardcore feminist by the way, but this has reduced women to shopping, whoring freaks who can only find solace in thinking that the only thing worth living for in life is love, but being so broken inside that they cannot figure out why they are incapable of meeting and keeping men.

When I see movies like this based in New York it makes me never ever want to live there, and it makes me pray that these are indeed fictional characters and that nobody ever tries to model themselves after them. I understand that some people are into the show for the good fun times, but the fun I was watching in this seems to fall a little flat for me, barren of much creativity when coming to the silly quirks and trials and tribulations that these people are supposed to be going through.

Did I mention there is a sequel coming out?

Ugh.

Latte Dawdy Who Likes to Coffee

Coffee has been a staple in my life since the age of 15. For those of you that remember angst ridden youth in 1995 and watched a lot of Singles and Reality Bites, you knew that if you were at a coffee shop, you were in the place where all the stuff happened. What stuff you ask? I don't know. Underage cigarette smoking indoors (for those of you that remember that too) acoustic guy with dreads on guitar, poetry guy that would be sitting in the corner rabidly scrawling down his feelings because we didn't have laptops yet, ready to get up and share those deep and intricate thoughts with all twenty people that were in there, and pointless fast hyper caffeinated conversational hours to waste away with friends.

I remember back then (in ye olde days) that in order to go to a coffee shop for me, it required sneaking out of the house. It wasn't approved of at all, so I always felt like I was doing something ultra cool when I made it out. I was hanging out with the older crowd, full of wit and conversation that I didn't quite have a grasp on, but so badly wanted to be a part of. When you are a kid, people that are a mere three years older than yourself seem to know a lot more about what's going on than you would ever imagine comprehending. But this was right on the cusp of adulthood, before jaded and jagged had set their little talons into your brain. Coffee just exacerbated that energy that was already flowing through my active and passionate about life and wonderment little soul that was still kicking around inside of me.

I never thought of caffeine as a necessity, maybe it was like Cocaine for wussies in those days, (for the record I have never tried cocaine) making it so that you could amplify those hormones.

Later in life, as the necessity to get up early and have a job, pay bills, learn to exist on no sleep, and getting old kicked in, it has become something that I cannot live without because it is what keeps me level. I don't go to coffee shops to hang out now. I go because I want to get in line, get that latte, and get the hell out as fast as possible. Gone are the days of the acoustic dude and the poetry writing guy, and here are the days of the people smoking their cigarette and stubbing it out before they get in the door, opening a laptop and placing it on a table in the Starbucks so that they can get some work done.

Over the years, I have become impervious to most things energy enhancing. I used to drink Red Bull because I liked the taste. It had no other job but to continue being delicious and I would consume it. Rock Stars were just a bigger version of that for me. I pick up Zing Tea Energy drinks every once in awhile and will sit on the couch watching a movie at 11:00 at night sipping away on one, and then heading to bed at 1:00 and slumbering away. I am at the fatigued point in my life that the only thing that coffees, teas, and energy drinks do for me is keep me that one step away from not falling into a coma. I just feel there, not more alert, not more tired. Just there.

I remember when Five Hour Energy Drink first came out, it was touted by many of my reputable friends (shady friends you know who you are) that it was the best thing ever. No caffeine shakes and just a natural sense of alertness. I went into the gas station and picked up my vial of potential savior and brought it home, cradling my little guy in my hand. At first I proceeded haltingly, taking down only half the bottle in case I couldn't handle the high charged happy rush that was bound to warm my body. I waited 20 minutes. Nothing. I downed the rest of the bottle thinking that maybe I just had to do it all in order to get the full effect. I went and sat on the couch. And proceeded to take a 2 hour nap.

So for the most part I gave up on the calorie laden energy drinks, and the calorie-less shots of hope and promise and stuck with my dear friend coffee and tea. Over the years I have gotten pickier with what I put in my body though, because when you are bound to a beverage for life, it is time to start researching everything you can about it in order to make sure you are getting the full benefit of your vice. I used to drink Folgers every day, but I bet if I had a cup now I would start crying while my unsatisfied taste buds rejected it. . I can only stomach breakfast blend coffee in any brand plain ol' black at this point, or a latte is my staple drink. I love Christmas time because I get the delicious egg nog/gingerbread concoction sugar in a cup mix.

Teas used to come in $3 a box green form, but now that I have discovered the wonderment of loose leaf all flavors under the rainbow stuff that in your bag and steep it type, I cannot get enough. I scour the tea shops and internets constantly looking for the next best rose or lavender or violet flavored teas. I have an affinity for consuming all sorts of plant life now.

I recall two weeks ago (I know it is amazing I can even think back that far anymore) going a week with only one cup of coffee and one cup of tea, and the narcolepsy that followed along with the pounding headachy feeling and weakly saying "Dim the lights!" every time I came near a fluorescent bulb, and began to wonder if this was an acceptable addiction that I was harboring.

I have come to the conclusion that as long as I still refuse to say things like "Caramelito Frappalatte Skinny Frozen Chickychita Blended With Cream on the Side and a dash of lemonita scabies Soy Milk Cicle" large please,” I am in the clear.