And happy birthday to Ryan Lochte. Remember how I said I don’t care about the Olympics? Well I still don’t, but I’ve semi-jumped on the Lochte band wagon. Congratulations on becoming famous before 28, Ryan (a feat I, too, hope to accomplish). And congratulations on those bedazzled green sneakers.
I’ve been lacking in posts lately because I’ve been feeling very uninspired and lazy – probably because it’s summer and I’d rather be on the beach.
Anyway, I had my first full Boston weekend in a long time this week. I’ve been doing one-night trips lately, but in summer tradition, I had to dedicate a full 2 days to the lesser of this area’s two great cities (just saying). It’s also tradition that I write about these weekends, so here it is. Boston weekend round-up:
“I can ride on mi pone.”
Nasty Pony. A very important part of my trip this weekend, was a little guy named Pone. I’m not saying you HAVE to buy an inflatable unicorn/anteater in order to have fun in Boston; I’m just saying that you should.
Clubs and gay friends. When I think Boston, I think Irish pubs (among other things), but a good thing to do is go to a club with a couple gay guys because this makes you fabulous. You will probably meet mostly unattractive people, but the flashing lights and faux snow/glitter make everyone look better. If you get overwhelmed, you can go on an adventure to the bar next door, but it will probably not be fun. You will also meet a lot of foreigners at a club because, after all, those Euros love clubbing. And this brings me to my next point…
My late-night Chinese boyfriend.
Australians. Boston in the summer is crawling with Irishman and Australians, so it’s in your best interest to befriend at least one because, if you don’t, you may need to wait a whole year for them to come back. Last year, I ate mac and cheese on the curb in front on 7-11 with a couple Irishman. This year, I chose late-night Chinese food with an Australian. All I can tell you about him is that he ordered sesame chicken and he has never seen a kangaroo. Upon learning this, I decided he was not a very good Australian so I finished my dumplings and went home.
Emerald Lounge
Tacky lounge. Sometimes you find yourself sans entourage, but as long as you have one lady on your side, adventures await. On a night like this, you should just go into somewhere you’ve never been; choose the first place that catches your eye. Naturally, the first place that caught our eye was the one that was glowing green: Emerald Lounge. This ended up being a brand new Wizard-of-Oz-themed 50s/80s/Pulp-Fiction-esque bar and lounge with a patio that you could only sit on if you ordered an olive plate. The martini glasses were embellished with emeralds and they offered you your check in a light-up book. Unfortunately, we were not able to soak in all the kitsch (as my mom would say) decor because we were verbally accosted by men and had to move on.
Lobster. If you 
want to be classy, you have to eat lobster twice in one night. Surprisingly, lobster BLTs are delicious and you can get one at 2am for only $7. It’s a great way to come full circle on a night that started with a lobster dinner.
Tip: On a semi-unrelated note, if your feet hurt in your heels, you can get free Band-Aids from the pharmacist at CVS. I think this goes for any city, but I could be wrong.
I have a love/hate relationship with Rihanna. On the one hand, she has a lot of great dance songs and she’s kind of bad-ass and hot. On the other hand, though, she’s always trying to seem “so hard,” she does musical collaborations with a man who beat her and it would be a stretch to say she has a singing voice.
But at the moment, I am in a “love” stage in our relationship and I will allow her to bring me into the weekend.
I would like to pitch an idea to Andy Cohen and all his peeps at Bravo: The Real Housewives of Great Island Ocean Club
- Raj and son and the golf cart -
I spent labor day weekend at my friend’s house in Cape Cod. She and her family have a beach house in a small “gated” community called the Great Island Ocean Club. This isn’t the first long weekend I have spent there, and in my time at the GIOC I have caught a little glimpse into the golf-cart and pot-luck dinner lives of the families I now refer to as the Real Housewives of Great Island Ocean Club – RHOGIOC if you will.
Mostly these four families just vacation together, take their kids out to prime-rib lunches, fawn over the wonders of fra diavolo sauce, drink too much and then set flaming Chinese lanterns into trees, and occasionally play card games that involve the neighbors asking awkward sexual questions to each other’s children. But once in a while there’s big drama in the GIOC. This weekend I was lucky enough to find myself right in the middle of GIOC-Gate 2011 – the biggest scandal involving a gate Cape Cod has ever seen.
It was about 1:45 Sunday morning when my ladies and I arrived back at the GIOC with our cab driver Mony-Mony. We had just a wild and classy night in Downtown Hyannis so we didn’t really think twice about the fact that the stick that goes up and down when you punch the secret code in/the “gate” was missing. Little did we know, it wasn’t just gone – it had been tampered with.
The next morning Real Househusband Rodge (Raj) – a favorite amongst the little housewives and husbands in training because he takes them for golf cart rides and lets them play manhunt, and a favorite of mine because if he mocks the GIOC scandals but secretly loves it – came bursting into the house with a smile that screamed “I have juicy news.” There had been a security breach at the GIOC. Someone in a white SUV had deliberately broken the “gate” so they could enter the exclusive community uninvited. Now luckily the security camera was able to narrow down the color and size of the vehicle as well as detect a bumper sticker, but the image was too blurry to read the license plate – that wouldn’t have helped anyway.
- Police reinforcemnet was needed -
The neighborhood was buzzing with gossip for the rest of the day. As we left to go buy some necessary loofahs at the Christmas Tree Shop, we saw the toothless security guard tending to the concerned baseball-capped ladies who had waited all summer for something to investigate on their morning walk. We later ran into Housewife Terry on the way to the beach who explained his lack of teeth. Turns out “sometimes he wears his dentures, sometimes he doesn’t.”
By the time we got back a couple hours later, they were all still there because, well nothing more exciting had happened yet. But the mystery had been mostly solved. The culprit was a renter family (eew). They had forgotten the code, and apparently thought it appropriate to break the gate because that’s what they do in their own gated community…. Luckily, the stop sign Toothless had set up on a lawn chair was keeping out most civilians.
- That stop sign did the trick -
Later that night at the Housewife dinner of steak, corn, chowdah, and of course sea food fra diavolo, Housewife Terry summed up the risk involved with living in the GIOC.
“We live in a semi-gated community, Sometimes it’s gated, and sometimes it’s not. But mostly it’s not.”
- Hey, where's the fra? -
In other Housewife news, Gia Giudice has a Twitter account.
– House in Fairfield, CT after Irene (CTPost) –
Luckily, Irene didn’t turn out to be as bad as expected over by me. Towns along the Connecticut coast (like that poor house in Fairfield) got it the worst, but Manhattan is not under water, and I still have a roof – no power since yesterday morning, but the roof’s still there. However, I still had a pretty lame weekend.
It all started with rolling my ankle in a ditch Friday night and landing on what was apparently a razor sharp grate. I love ending my Friday nights in the emergency room. At least I experienced something new – stitches. Hate ’em.
– TGIF –
Anyway, I guess it wasn’t the worst weekend to be an invalid seeing as the whole world stayed in Saturday night waiting for the rage and destruction of Irene. It ended up just being an awful, rainy, boring Saturday. Due to my injury, though, I did get out of hurricane preparation. I also watched a movie I hadn’t seen: Going the Distance with Drew Barrymore and Justin Long. Don’t watch it. I don’t particularly like Drew Barrymore ever, but I’ve never hated her more than in her role of a pathetic 31-year-old newspaper intern who lives with her sister and has cake fights with her boyfriend in the kitchen. That’s not cute – grow up.
Then I woke up the next morning completely disconnected from the world with no power or cell phone service. Luckily we have a faulty generator at the house so we were able to shower and watch news reporters struggle to milk every last drop out of Irene. “‘I’m here reporting live from Coney Island – Sir, why are you out here today?’ ‘Because I wanted to get out of my bedroom.'” Riveting coverage. Then they went on to movie recommendations: “Well I think Beauty and the Beast is best for a rainy day.”
No Taco Bell for you…
Candlewood Lake looking pretty on Sunday
I still have no power at my house, but thank God there’s power at the office, wouldn’t ever want to have to miss work…
Hopefully my celebrity-meeting streak (and by streak I mean I met one celebrity) continues and I will have a photo of me with Pitbull to post on Monday! Until then, I’m getting excited for his concert on Saturday! Here’s a little something for those of you who will not be partying it up with Mr. 305 this weekend…enjoy!
– Words of wisdom from John lax bro of Katonah (of all places). He writes poetry with drawings and does “lots of things.”
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I’m back at work in gloomy, rainy, cold CT wishing I was hungover by the pool in Dallas forcing bread down my throat in hopes that it will soak up last night’s tequila shot. But those (2) days are gone, so I will relive my glorious weekend by sharing some Dallas, TX truisms that I learned during my short stay.
- the classiest of t-shirts -
1. Texans are better than we are. It’s so true what they say about North-easterners being total bitches and d-bags; we are. People in Texas are super nice and friendly. They will always be happy to talk to you, and you should be happy to talk to them because their accent will make you fall in love. Even the people working at the airport are nice! I thought it was required that you have a bad attitude if you want to work at an airport. Also, percentage-wise, Texans are significantly better looking than people over here.
2. Texas is huge. I know, obviously, but it didn’t really hit me until I was flying over San Antonio and still had an hour left until we got to Dallas.
3. Cab drivers get super sassy when you pay with a credit card. This is because they don’t have card swipers in their cabs so they literally have to make carbon copies of your credit card. Get with the program Dallas, the world almost ended this weekend and you still haven’t gotten around to credit card swipers?
4. Cab drivers get super sassy when you say you are in Dallas for pleasure not business. “Where is the pleasure in Dallas?” Way to sell the city…and p.s. cabbie, there is plenty o’ pleasure in Dallas.
- child-size hats don't fit ally -
5. After a night out, you will get an inexplicable urge to run up broken escalators in high heels and vandalize the displays in your hotel. You will also call the bar you just left and leave a voice mail in a thick Texas accent and think it was flawless.
6. You will struggle with the concept of “push vs. pull.” This is somewhat understandable given that red means ‘cold,’ and blue means ‘hot’ in the shower…?
7. Now this is solely going off of my one trip to Dallas, but based on the evidence I have collected there is a 100% chance that there will be a cheerleading competition happening in your hotel.
8. They ride mechanical bulls.
9. People wear cowboy hats and belt buckles with eagles on them, and say “ya’ll” A LOT – they are not joking about it.
10. You can go to the mall, go ice skating, eat dinner, swim in a pool and be an accountant all in the same building.
11. Drinks in Texas have magical hang over powers – as in you WILL be hung over.
12. It’s hot.
13. There is a one-hour time difference.
- they do fit me -
14. You will be excited to meet cowboys, and you will. But you will also meet someone from a lame-ass town near where you are from. Even in Texas, the world is way too small.
15. You can choose between a bolo tie with a boot or a lone star.
16. If someone accidentally steals your camera, they will walk the city streets until they find you and safely return the camera to its rightful owner. They will be disappointed when they don’t get a kiss.
17. People frequently eat off plates in cabs.
18. “There is nothing ‘high school’ about college football.”
19. More often than not, people in Texas are celebrity look-a-likes. I met Michael Cera, Cee Lo Green, and Notorious B.I.G.
20. People actually think it’s exciting that you are from Connecticut.
21. They don’t know Alanis Morissette songs.
22. Again, this is only based on one trip, but there is a 100% chance that you will pay $18.00 for a cup of coffee.
23. But there is a 0% chance that you will not have fun.
It’s Friday, which means bar night. Now I have boozed it up in many a location and while drink prices, level of creepiness of the 
crowd and overall atmosphere change from bar-to-bar and city-to-city, one thing remains relatively consistant – the trashy white girl mix.
This is a name I have given to the block of songs that is pretty much a staple in any dj’s playlist. Let me set the scene – you’re dancing to the standard top 40/hip hop dance mix and when you least expect it, they hit you with some classic rock. But it’s not good classic rock; it’s very bad, very cheesy, very hair-whip inducing classic rock.
I give you the Trashy White Girl Mix (allow for some variation): Pour Some Sugar On Me, Livin’ On a Prayer, You Shook Me All Night Long, Don’t Stop Believing
Is it unwritten dj law that they are obligated to play this mix at some point in the night? I don’t know, but it has gone on long enough. As if Bon Jovi didn’t make me gag enough before, now I can’t hear one of their songs without the taste of vodka-soda-cranberry creeping into my throat. It’s time for a change. Let’s boycott the trashy white girl mix and switch it out for something new and exciting.
Since I started driving an hour-plus each way to work, I have discovered new radio stations – my new greatest love being Latino radio stations. There are 2 reasons for this: one, Spanglish is hilarious and two, the music is awesome.
- Omega -
So, I propose the Trashy Latina Mix: Danza Kuduro, Dandole, La Despedida, No Te Veo, Que Tengo Que Hacer
Let’s make this happen.
Mid-day Margarita 