Quelle Dommage: The Worst Morning Ever Story

So I woke up this morning with a hankering for an iced hazelnut coffee. Luckily for me, I had hazelnut coffee in my freezer so I decided I would brew a big ol' full pot of coffee, which I would then transfer into a handy-dandy glass pitcher and keep it in my fridge to enjoy iced coffee throughout the week. I am not fancy about my coffee, nor am I snobbish about its freshness, to be sure. I just want caffeine, preferably with fake sugar and fiber-enriched soy milk. Now, I hadn't made coffee in my coffeemaker for many, many months. Ever since my stummy became sick, I sort of don't drink so much coffee, and when I do, it's usually iced and purchased en route to work or during work or some such. When I caffienate in the morning, my drug of choice is Yerba Mate because it doesn't really frak with my stummy and it also provides a pleasant pick-me-up.

But! This morning was not like all other mornings. I poured the water tank full of water from my Pur (I'm a Pur girl, not a Brita girl) pitcher and scooped the coffee into the coffee filter and hit the "on" button and then went on my merry way to take a shower and shave my legs and exfoliate and do all the things that ladies do in the shower while listening to 101.1 CBS FM in the mornings. While I was showering, I heard a tremendous noise, but there are almost always loud noises in the morning in and around my building, since I live above a subway and on a very busy thoroughfare and there are people who live near me who apparently torture their children during the day (judging by the sounds of it) and they are also re-paving the streets so there's lots of heavy machinery making lots of rumblings all the time.

So I wrapped myself in a towel and padded through the living room to get some coffee before I got dressed and ... ruh-roh. The kitchen looked like a scene from Apocalypse Now, if Apocalypse Now took place in a white kitchen in which an entire pot full of hazelnut coffee had apparently exploded. It was a hazelnut disaster. The walls were spattered, and there were 12 cups of coffee dripping down the fridge and the pantry, all over my (white) kitchen table and my (white) kitchen counters and my (white) appliances. And there was broken glass everywhere (people pissing on the stairs, you know they just don't care) (not really, I was just making a Grandmaster Flash reference for you) so I put on my flipflops and grabbed a roll of paper towels and three different spray cleaners and I cleaned the kitchen and coated myself in a fine sheen of hazelnut coffee and dyed my towel hazelnut coffee colored. So I took another shower.

I can only imagine there was some sort of crack or something in the coffeepot, and since I haven't made coffee in months and months and months, I didn't notice. Note to self: always check for cracks and/or explosives in one's coffeepot before brewing 12 cups of hazelnut coffee!

And then I got dressed and put my hair into pigtails and put on some heels and realized I should really take out the trash, because my trash can was, by now, filled with an entire roll of hazelnut-coffee-soaked paper towels. So I grabbed my gym bag and my purse and pulled the trash bag out of the trash can and set off down the stairs. And halfway down, I slipped and fell down a full flight of stairs and landed on my butt. And somehow when I slipped and fell I managed to toss the trash bag up into the air, and I watched it tumble down, in slow motion, spilling its contents all over the stairs and all over me.

So I went back to my apartment, got another roll of paper towels (I buy them in bulk) and cleaned up the trash from the stairs, getting rotting vegetable matter all over me in the process. So then I had to go upstairs and take another shower. And put on fresh clothes. And put my hair back into pigtails.

It was really tremendously amazing.

And now my butt is bruised and hurts like a motherfrakker.

Awesome.

No Milk Today

So I was happily fumbling through dreamland, all cozied up in my bedding, as snug as a bug in a rug. I sleep all curled up into a nautilus/fetal sort of position, with my panda under my arm (I know. Seriously, I know. But he's such a tragic panda! ) And I was having this really vivid dream about being in a sort of industrial kitchen and preparing such tasty victuals as the most awesome grilled soy-cheese sandwich in the world, along with a delicious and refreshing Soy Russian (like a white Russian, but with soy, like duh) and in my dream it was very hot in the industrial kitchen and I was just drenched in sweat and commented about it in the dream and then suddenly lurched into awakeness and realized that I was actually drenched in sweat because I'd managed to burrow into a little nest under my quilt and my den of pillows, and it was sort of weird. But the weirdest part was that I woke up singing Cyndi Lauper's song "Lactose Intolerant" which she sang on Letterman in 1995, just around the time the first Starbucks opened in a neighboring town and I had my first frappacino and paid the consequences dearly. And then I went to get some water (must rehydrate) and looked it up on youtube and it's there. So, it must be a sign from the Universe to share it with you:


Lyrics:
I lack the enzymes to
Properly digest lactose
I can't drink cow's milk
I can't drink milk from a goat
Yogurt, cottage cheese...make me throw up
Please no cream in my cup
My stomach is swelling
I am lactose...intolerant
My throat is constricting
I am lactose...intolerant

And so, for whatever reason, I'm glad you could all experience the awesomeness of Cyndi Lauper singing about an affliction that affects oh-so-many of the Jews and apparently 100% of the Native Americans, according to wiki. Word.

Rocking the 201

For those of you who don't live in Bergen County, New Jersey, odds are really good that you don't receive "201 Magazine" -- the "Best of Bergen". I am honored to be featured in their July edition as one of the "Rising Stars" from Bergen County (alongside no less than the Jonas Brothers - squeee!) And I know you're all like, "Damn, I would so very much like to read that full-page article about you and gaze in rapture upon the photo that was taken but moments after you broke your big toe into many pieces!" Ka-blam: luckily for you, my dad is super tech-savvy (He's an engineer, doncha know) (not, however, the kind of engineer who wears a striped hat and drives a train - believe me, i was confused for much of my early childhood) and he scanned the article AND transcribed it (to send to my fambly members who do the email thing, I think) and I am mooching off of his good will to share it with you. Avec vous. Yes, indeed.

So, behold: this is me, on my way to becoming mildly somewhat almost recognizable amongst denizens of the affluent sections of Bergen County who have a 201 area code:


(photo by Ted Axlerod, who gamely lugged lights up four flights of stairs to my apartment and photographed me in my kitchen. Yes, my kitchen is bright red. You'd love it).

(you can clickity click on that photo to see it larger, I think).

And here is the accompanying text, by Ian Spelling, who's totally rad.

FUNNY FACE
Bex Schwartz is a writer, director, commedianne, singer, host, commentator, blogger, and familiar face to VH-1 and MSNBC viewers, but at the end of the day, she sums it all up thusly:
"I am" the 29-year-old Glen Rock native explains, "a comediator."
Come again? Comediator?
"It's an official term," Schwartz insists. "The whole thing about what we do on VH-1, or that I do on the news channels is, I'm being a comedian and a commentator. So I think the logical intersection is 'comediator'. I can hardly believe it's my job," she enthuses. "I mostly don't get paid for my on-air stuff, but we can pretend I do! I do it for the love of being on television. There's so much pop culture gossip out there, and I like deconstructing in a comedic way - and hopefully, in a more intellectual way."
Growing up in Glen Rock, Schwartz thought of herself as satirical, rather than ha-ha funny. She focused on directing after college and gravitated toward avant garde/post-modern theater and performance art. "I was very earnest," she says, "and I was going to change the world through art." Later, unprepared for a show in Manhattan, Schwartz improvised by sounding off about her family and life - and the audience cracked up. That paved the way to stand-up opportunities and later, her current day job as a senior writer-producer-director of on-air promos for VH-1. Nowadays, the lines between her day and night gigs are, she explains, "blurred beyond recognition."
Of course, there's always the danger that Schwartz could become so hot and so famous, she'll be the butt of exactly the kind of pop-culture skewering at which she excels. Not that that scares her. "I think that's the ultimate goal for anyone trying to make it in the entertainment industry," Schwartz says, "that random people like me end up making fun of you on television."

It's such a nice piece that I will forgive Ian for putting a hyphen into "VH1" (no hyphen, people! you could get fired for such an offense!) and I think he was calling me "Funny Face" in a nice way, not implying that I have a funny face, although, of course, I do have a rather funny face.

Anyway! 201 Magazine! On Newsstands in Bergen County now! You can say you knew me when! (bwa ha!)

"Somebody's Dad is Waving Right There"

Finally ... FIIINALLY ... FIIIIIIINAAAAALLLYYYYYY someone has taken the time to decipher, transcribe, and illustrate Joe Cocker's "A Little Help From My Friends" performance at Woodstock. I truly had no idea that Joe Cocker was a poet of such tremendous impact. This is the most enlightening experience I've had in months and months.

Reality Show SCANDALS

You guys. My all-time favorite television appearance re-aired last night on "Showbiz Tonight" so I wanted to share it with you. Seriously. All-time-fave-rave-talking-head appearance EVER.



PS: So I've been drowning in Rock Honors: The Who (Thursday, July 17th at 9/8c, only on vh1!) and then I went to Costa Rica and then I was an interfaith ministrix/Reverend SuperJew for the best wedding ever so I have been mega-lax on the updates. Whoopsies.