dXe | pay us mind - point counter point

stay-at-home mom vs. party o'clock

2005-03-10T14:30:00.000-05:00

stay at home!

by sb

let me say off the bat that i admire teeter's party skills; twenty minutes in a bar and she has the whole room speaking her language, buying whatever product she's pushing, and chanting her name as if she were donna martin, hoping to graduate. moi, if i were to make it went minutes in a bar, i'd be in a corner, sitting down, surrounded by a small gal pal phalanx, waiting to go home. it's not a superiority complex, because really, i hardly know these people, let alone find myself able to judge the quality of their character or party abilities. i just honestly would rather spent my night at home with pita grill delivery, tivo, and my dog, crochet project optional. if you think i am yay close to exclusively wearing hooded sweatshirts and sending mail bombs to academics, you'd only be half-wrong (hoodies yes, explosives no).
again, i'm not saying i stay home sos i can read tolstoy's complete works or finish writing that goddamned novel, unless of course tolstoy writes for us weekly and finishing that novel is a euphemism for pounding a six pack of strawberry jello. honestly, i just hate leaving my own house, especially when it means being in a room full of people i don't know. not drinking doesn't help, but hey, i don't drink because i'm a hermit, not the other way around. if i wanted to bro down with a cluster of misc humanity, i would gladly down a few zimas and let the good times roll, but i don't. i'd really rather just be narc-y and stay at home by myself.
being a hermit, at least on my terms, doesn't mean you can't have friends; in fact, you have a good number of friends with which you do low key things, like make nutritious dinner or watch movies or buy footwear neither one of you needs. the thing is tho, i've had many of my friends for 5+ years, some for 10+ years, and frankly, there is very little room left at the friendship inn. besides, we all know that more often than not, when you go to yr friend's birthday at the current brooklyn bar that always hosts birthdays, aka hipster chuckie cheese, and you meet some dude or lady you know yr never gonna see again, you can lay on the bullshit as much as you want, maybe have some giggles. in the end you're only mildly satisfied, stinky, and wishing you had spent that time flat out on the couch instead of barking back and forth with a stranger, hearing all about their shitty roommate, complimenting their haircut, especially since you can't remember that stranger's name, their relation to the birthday boy/girl, and/or pick their face out of a line-up if you tried, sober or not.
if all of this makes me look like a dick, i apologize, but hey, odds are, you'll never have to deal with me because i'll probably be safely stowed away in my apartment while you're out on the town, being charmed by my counter-pointer. for those people out there who feel my agoraphobic pain, know, brothers and sisters, that you are not really alone. and tonight, when i watch tivo'd bull durham for the 9938934th time over my chicken rice bowl, i will lift my fork to you in appreciation of the fact we never have to meet.

teeter gets her groove back

pro-party o'clock

by ts

for many dark years, ts had a small, abusive bf who was straightedge, which rendered her straightedge out of some sort of dysfunctional, flawed logic style default. during this slow season, 'big' evenings consisted of marathoning underground Japanese torture films against her will, watching him read luxury gangster automobile quarterlies, chowing on low rent all-you-can-eat-sushi in that shoppette on long island with his parents, or making iron on shirts in the basement of his childhood and present home with each others names on them. to ts, in retrospect, this time was considered her "stay-at-home-mom" phase.
once released from the vice-like deathgrip of said toxic association, and ts's taking of an emotional meltdown mom and dad's caretaking style hiatus in surburban dirty jerz, both parties began a seperate but equally active social life. his consisted primarily of scooby snax, painkillers, meth-amphetamines, special k, xanex, horse tranquilizers, and grass. thankfully, hers was more of a light and airy Guiness, Captain Morgan's and Ginger Ale, and attempting to death-smooch lowdmowth cute rockers caliber. on the move in motion, this phase was deemed "party o'clock" and ts was totes loving it like jt loves mcdonald's and cameron, or, like, the memory of his pre wt boo, brit - not so much cry me a rive style.
sb and crew have always been hardline stay-at-home-mom's - due to the gravitational pull of tivo, and by tivo ts means 'project runway,' and 'gilmore girls', google image search, and nyc's diverse-n-delicious-n-excessive ordering in choice factor. this is an x-cellent way to spend one night a week, in-effin-deed, but for the other 7 nights a week, 'party o'clock' is ever so clearly where it's at, cause repeated use of this mellow, lame-azing type of powerchill can turn into a total snoozefest. literally. last week during the second to lastest project runway round-up, ts fell asleep under the coffee table using king buzzo as a body pillow. no offense to my girls, who i love more than incessant thrift ninja-ing, but ts's fat ass needz more butt-out, far-flung, full-boar style so wasted shimmy fests and more fair game, non weezer chatroom related forums fer cold mackin' on underserving, jobless emo dudes.
the shonanza behind 'party o'clock' often times means the following: tears, fighting, puking in ones own hair, mortifying drunk dial-ery, repeated make out with said looser emo dudes, peeing behind dumpsterz, falafel face-stuffing btwn 4 and 6 am, puking in ones own mouth, firepoops the following morning, 'tuding off to guido bouncers, hair pulling, sassy outfit mangling and/or staining, fights, sex-making with an ugly person, and puking in ones own hand. rolling out like this SO SO never gets old and makes fer endless stories to mega impress yr next days tell-all crew.
while respectfully respecting the 'stay-at-home-moms' ts needz to pull out all the wiley lindsay lohan style stops while she's only marginally busted and marginally fat - before the days of having to be a grown ass, grocery shopping, lunchables packing, parents nite attending, entertainment industry stage mom/ professional show runner for her cheshire cat mr. whiskers, while living in a darien, conneticut mcmansion.
long live reigned in hi-jinx and tomfoolery and the 212-216 imaginary lingusitics junior wordsmifs crew. in summing up, stay-at-home is totally boring.

ps - this is my worstest point/counterpoint ever because sb has imposed such a super tite deadline one me but i have to crap my gutz and then get my hair cut in order to look like clay aiken. mom says if i wear my 3 tier punk rock belt i look like a lesbian.

jason mraz vs. john mayer

2005-02-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

jason mraz:

ts's argument has been constructed using the following easy to digest pointz system:

point a - indie elitists reign supreme always: if the photos and text on jason mraz's official website are truly extensions of his own personal vision and not the sordid workings of some alt alt alt maje labe stylist/publicist, than we can for defs rest assured he is personally aware of/ a fan of the following: grandaddy, the flaming lips, cut chemist, air, and belle and sebastian. do you think one can safely assume that the same indie-xcellent leanings exist within john yr-nasty-body-is-a-wonderland mayer? i raise my hand to the tune of no! bonus pointz awarded to mraz for going the x-tra mile to appear like he's down wiff the underground, even if, as you will see in the following paragraph, he is not. (10 pointz fer recognizing that appearances are everything)

point 2 - paradoxical personal aesthetic vs. steez of musicianship: one meaningless, surface-level observation that initially (plutonically, natch!) attracted me to jason mraz was that his fashion sense made him appear to be, for better or worse, my indie brethren. (that is; converse lo-topz, nostalgic graphic tee's, perfectly weathered denims, played-to-the max-mesh back trucker cap). upon closer inspection though, in so much as listening to his jams, it becomes painfully apparent that he is stuck in this hippie/nothippie melodic musical netherworld. clearly, it's out-of-sync with his look - which, on any given day, is all-williamsburg, brooklyn, all-pabst-blue-ribbon, all-the-time. a few meager headscratcher pointz will be awarded to him, though, for artfully maintaining appearances that lean one way: (pavement!) only to blindside the onlooker by delivering something that is, sonically speaking, world's apart: (dave matthew's band!)

upsetting development within point 2: one quick look at his bio shows that his roots are in the san diego coffee house jamming scene (sdchjs), and that my friends, no matter how you slice it, is totally not cool. in summing up for this here paragraph, we will opt to not even touch on the fact that he wears man flip-flops. (-5 points fer looking like an indie rocker but coming from questionable hippie rootz)

point d - the cute/not cute paradigm: in certain photos, jason mraz can look so cute that you want to make out all over him. (don't do it! don't ever even do it!) in other photos, though, you can see his multiple starting-at-the-face-n-cascading-down-the-neck ginormo moles (gm's) and it'll straight make you wanna barf up yr chuck e. cheeze square pizza. personally, i am a super fan of this consistent inconsistency cause it makes him seem more real and less like a maje labe art department façade.
(15 pointz fer keeping it real by being occasionally ugly in photos)

point 7 - compact vs. akwardly tall - whereas john mayer is awkwardly tall and yanks his pants up to his armpits, jason mraz appears to be, for all intents and purposes, a compact little dude who lets his expensive denims sit comfortably just below his groin dipz. lord knows, if you have to waste yr dayz thinking about, watching on tv, or spending actual physical time with any kind of dude, compact ones reign supreme over awkwardly tall ones. (10 points fer being natchurally little)

point 9 - credibility loss due to being linked wiff a supermodel -john mayer started off as an unknown (worst word ever) yet now passes time with the always mesmerizing (no, i am not gay!) heidi klum (-even though both of their "reps" adamantly deny a relationship.) jason mraz also started off as an unknown but as of yet, has avoided (at least publicly) delving into the vacuous world of aligning himself wiff people who coast by in life based solely on their sharp looks. clearly, when a former unknown feels known enuff to pass time with a famous face, they've lost perspective on just how to keep it real. if john mayer was keen on not faking the funk, he'd be dating a regular jane or sally. big ups to jmraz for not (yet) being out and about with some broke-ass hollywood ho. (15 points awarded by the street cred police for not having a trophy girlfriend. truer words were never spoken: "i don't put your girlfriend in my foyer, so please don't bring your coatrack to my show!")

point j - important note: indeed, all dudes are satan, but! if hard-pressed to choose one middle-of-the-road, narcissistic singer-songwriter over another, please cast yr vote for jason mraz. john mayer #0!!!

jmraz total pointz = 45. beat that, sb!

john mayer

aka what i did on my winter vacation,

by sb

let me preface this by saying i am not a fan of the music of john mayer. both musically and aesthetically, mr. mayer reminds me of the preppiest of assholes i attended high school with. those guys called me fat, i called them date rapists, and while we were both right, it wasn't exactly a goodhearted exchange. if rock falls on a scale between, say, amy grant (the blandest) and gg allin (the not-blandest), john mayer's music falls just far enough from the amy grant side to convince those white hat douche bags from back in the day that they're listening to something "interesting," when really, if we were still in high school, they'd be secretly content that their parents wouldn't complain if they played john mayer's cds during carpool in the explorer.

that said, it cannot be denied that mr mayer is cute in the face, because he just is, even if it's in that "i play the brooding one on a fox soap" sort of way. (any coincidence that he dated jennifer love hewitt, former start of a fox soap and its spin off? i think not). also, in interviews, he is surprisingly funny and smart, which makes me think that, if he was a white hat asshole, he was also the manager of the school paper who organized the big senior prank where they put a toilet on the hood of the principal's car. ie, he still would have been a jerk to me, but at least he wouldn't be getting drunk at keggers and then sloppily rubbing his erect penis with the foot of a nearby, passed out girl. he would be bland but be interesting somehow at the same time. which i guess puts him one rung above jason mraz.

see, jason mraz, god bless his vowel-needing last name, has no personality outside of his stupid hat. i think i read somewhere that he's a pothead, but hey, that gives him as much originality as the other set of assholes i went to high school with, the lacrosse players who followed phish in their saabs and called my friends fags. jason mraz's songs are so unabashedly adult alternative format that they do not pass go, they do not collect $200 from other aaa types like sheryl crow or sting, they go straight onto the radio station your mom listens to at the gym. jason mraz wouldn't pull pranks, nor would he molest girls at keggers; he'd be the guy who hangs around those guys, but is never really part of the group, and at the end of the year, he shares his yearbook page with no one.

you might be asking, for someone who doesn't like this music, why do you know so much about it? well, i'm also someone who spent a giant chunk of 2003 living alone in rural new hampshire, leaving me a lot of time to read every crappy periodical around. and it was during that time alone, sitting with my dog in front of the tv late at night, that i saw john mayer's video for "your body is a wonderland." even when i know i'm going to hate something, i usually sit through the video, just so i can call someone's bluff when they claim i don't know what i'm talking about when i rail against 5th wave emo band y or crunkified rapper x. and as i'm watching mr bee stung lips-owitz, john mayer himself, sing about some girl i can only image as straight out of the j crew catalog, the kind of girl who gets her asshole waxed, buys sex and the city dvd collections ,and once inadvertently gave a footjob to a drunk guy when she passed out at a kegger, i take all of this in and start to bawl like a small child.

keep in mind, at the point of weepage, i had spent at least 3 months living in the middle of nowhere, rarely seeing anyone, and those i did see were family. i kept the heat in my house low to save money, and so i was so used to be swaddled all day and night that my own body had become something of a hinterland that i hadn't seen since before the frost. so i see this nice young man on tv in clothes that are neither styled to oblivion (aka jason mraz's "hat") nor left to the fetid, seinfield-esque wasteland of men's clothing (barn jacket, light rinse jeans, etc-- see the dxeicon). he looks real enough to be the guy who rolled his eyes at my superchunk t-shirt in 11th grade, but pretty enough to make me tune into a shitty tv show on a weekly basis were he to star in it. add to that the fact he was genuinely emoting, and something just broke in my eyeballs. say what you will about the quality of the song or the artist involved, but one thing is clear-- no wacky hat-wearing, pot-smoking, vowel-needing loser would bring me to tears like john mayer did.

i don't know how ts is going to defend her jason mraz fetish, but i stand by my assertion that mr mayer is the lesser of these two mediocre evils. his music is negligible, but beyond his preppy exterior, there is something going on in that pretty head of his. a million idiot mall girls, jennifer love hewitt, and my tears cannot be wrong. i'd bet a footjob on it.

SB TOTALLY WINS. note: kitten heels, quad-boobs, hitler hair, and the entire "casual" aesthetic.