GUEST BLOGGER TIME! WOO! Emily Schmidt's "Awkward Times"

.....5, 6, 7 8! IT'S GUEST BLOGGER TIME! WOO!

EMILY SCHMIDT is...

*an improviser

*a smarty-pants

*an NYU grad (ooo la la)

 *a super funny lady

*my friend...jealous?

I'm super pumped to welcome Ms. Emily Schmidt to my blog today! You must think I'm a lazypants and don't like writing my own blog, but fear not, Judgey McJudgersocks...I just think Emily is super funny. Here's what's great about Emily, she actually went to college and got a degree in writing-related stuff. I ain't got no edumacation in that written word thang. No sireeeeee.

So please do me a favor and give a round of applause from your laptop for....EMILY SCHMIDT!

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Awkward is playing dress-up in kindergarten and having feet too big to fit in your friend’s mom’s heels. Awkward is a fifth grader forced to listen to her elderly teacher talk about her miscarriage. Awkward is your freshman roommate trying to burn you with a lighter in the dorm elevator as a “joke” and so “you can know what it feels like.”


“Awkward” became a part of our everyday vernacular again some years ago, like those stupid tiny-heeled boots that make me look like a circus monkey. Everyone and everything was suddenly awkward. For those of us really and truly cursed with the inability to make correct social decisions, this is still painful. That was our word, really all we could cling to in the middle of the night - that, and our mismatched bedsheets.

Suddenly, it was perfectly acceptable for my genetically-favored classmates to apply the wrong shade of lip gloss and, “OMG it was SOO awkward!!” Is it? Is it really that awkward when I have to walk around un-showered and wearing a garbage bag for Newspaper hazing? Do you understand how greasy my hair gets if I don’t wash it every morning? Yeah. Let’s rethink.

Being awkward became hip, and that’s when events in my life got a little bit out of control. Hispters made things complicated when they introduced the everyday personal application of irony. Suddenly, I could buy a Betty White t-shirt instead of having to make my own with iron-on Google images. What was cool? What was weird? How is anyone who is normally socially disadvantaged supposed to navigate the irony?

What happened was that people started rewarding me for finding myself in awkward situations and it became funny - a novelty, like kids gathering around a fireplace to listen to their decrepit grandpa tell stories about the war (this never happened to anyone, ever).

My interior flow chart is permanently effed. Instead of appropriately avoiding bad situations, I head straight for them, as if they were free Jimmy Fallon mustache rides. Where everyone else would take a sharp left, back to start, I follow the arrows around the contorted map until even my therapist has no words for me.

It’s subconscious. If someone doesn’t want to be friends with me, due to whatever circumstance, it becomes my personal goal to make that person my best friend. I will go out of my way to say hi, invite them to events and generally create various uncomfortable situations. I don’t even realize I’m doing it until it’s too late. These, of course, make for funny stories but at what price? My dignity? Well...that’s long gone.

Really, it’s no one’s fault but my own. I was born this way, consistently taller and lurkier than all of my peers and ready with the most inappropriate comment possible. Maybe I should be thanking hipsters for making me and my actions more acceptable to society. Instead of being shunned, I’m now part of an elite group that will unwillingly sacrifice themselves for a truly awkward story.

So, I guess the next time you find yourself surrounded by TOO MANY attractive and interesting boys, all vying for your attention, be more delicate when choosing to describe the circumstance. That, my lady friend, is not awkward. Leave this word to those of us who, if ever in that situation, would accidentally bring up our periods with food in our teeth and find a way to deeply offend at least two of them. And then fall down while trying to get off the bar stool gracefully. That is the correct application of the word.

"Dating is like a dance..." GUEST BLOGGER: LAURA BUCHHOLZ

Well, it looks like I'm growing up as a human being. No longer am I selfish, not only have I removed the giant picture of my face from the front page of my blog, but I'm sharing the spotlight now too!

My Guest Blogger today is the beautiful Ms. Laura Buchholz. Laura ranks in my top 5 fave peeps..ever. She writes a lot of funny stuff for a lot of funny people. Sometimes we do improv together...so that's fun.

I typed Laura's name into Google...and this is what I found.  What an awesome picture of her to share with you! Doesn't she look fun? Read on...

"Dating Is Like a Dance..."

By Laura Buchholz.

They say that dating is like a dance, and maybe the reason we all have so many problems with dating now is because dancing has changed.

I think when people liken dating to a dance, they have a very specific kind of dancing in mind:  namely, couples dancing of the sort that is just not done anymore, except in the slow-dance portion of the prom, which isn’t really dancing anyway, just an extended hug accompanied by music. 

If you go back to, say, the 40s, dancing was facilitated by two things, both of them initiated by the man.  Here is the series of events:

A)   Man asks a woman to dance.

B)   Man leads.

Easy, right? 

Yeah.

So fast forward to today.

Dancing is hip hop and house and the man and woman are equal, mainly because nobody initiates, everybody is just sort of there jumping around in front of each other but not touching.  Most of the motions are sort of violent, fist-pumping, jerking around, moving from side to side.   In fact, there is not a huge difference between what happens in the dances of today vs. what might happen in a step aerobic studio, (if that even happens anymore) with the lights off.  Instead of dancing WITH each other, people now just dance NEAR each other and we get a pretty good workout and then we get in our separate cars and go home. 

There’s a problem of initiation, and a problem of follow-through.  If we apply the old-timey dance model to dating, here is a simple model of how an ask-out might have happened in the past:*

A.   Would you like to go to the Stag Supper Club on Saturday at 8?  With me?

B.    Yes.

A.   Okay, I’ll pick you up at 7:30.

B.    Sounds great!

Easy, right?

Okay but here is the modern equivalent, and can you just hear the thumping bass in the background?

A.   I’m not doing anything Saturday night.

B.    Oh cool, me either.

A.   I’m off work at 7.

B.    That’s great.  I’m off work at 8.

A.   So.

B.    Yeah.

A.   I was thinking about going to the Stag Supper Club.

B.    Oh yeah?  I’ve heard good things about that place.

A.   Me too but I’ve never been there.

B.    You haven’t?  Huh.

A.   No. Have you?

B.    No I haven’t.  My sister has though.  She said she liked it.

A.   Oh.  I didn’t know you had a sister.

B.    Yep.  She lives in Arkansas.

A.   Hot there isn’t it?

B.    Yes, pretty hot.  Winters aren’t bad though.

A.   There’s a prime rib at the Stag Supper Club I’d like to try.

B.    Me too.  I’ve heard about it.

A.   That’s awesome.  Maybe someday we’ll go together.

B.    Sure, maybe someday.  Like Saturday?

A.   Oh wait I just remembered I had something else going on on Saturday.

B.    Oh, great.    See you later then.

A.  Take it easy.

Are you sweating?  Because I am.  And nothing has even happened yet.  Can someone just turn on the slow music so we can just stand here and hug for a while?  Thanks.

(KEY:  A = man, B = woman)