U're kidding, right?

Alright. I'm just sittin' on the john at my friend Shawn's house (don't worry, not as I type), waiting to get rid of that medium sausage and mushroom I got last night from Papa John's (no relation to the toilet), and I start reading the back of the lotion bottle for, well, shits and grins. Everything is going swimmingly... the ingredients in the lotion include Water, Fragrance, Triethariolamine, Magnesium Aluminum Silicate, Urea, Methylparaben...

ERRRRRRRRRR! I'm sorry. Wait. Can you go back one for a second?

Oh, you mean to UREA*?

Yeah, that.

Wickety-wickety-wickety-what? I don't want piss in my lotion!

If I wanted to rub piss all over my skin, I'd date one of these guys:



Besides, I learned one of the most important rules to live by from my father, who used to say:

"It's better to be pissed off than pissed on."

So true, Dad. So true. Unless you have dry skin, apparently.

*Okay, I guess Urea is not exactly Urine, but still. Do ureally want it in your Target knock-off Vaseline Intensive Care? I think not.

Piraro Bizarro Marciuliano

My friend - perhaps more accurately described as my friend's boyfriend - but what the fuck, I feel emotionally tied to garbage cans if they have really cool graffiti on them... my friend Ces is a comic strip artist. Amazing, right? He writes the popular strip Sally Forth, has his own hilarious, ennui-filled series called Medium-Large and is subbing this week for Dan Piraro of Bizarro, in print, nationally syndicated. Wa-hoo! So funny. He makes me wish I could draw.

What I love most about Ces' comics is that so many of them revolve around children's themes. As a parent who has now watched waaaay too many hours of PBS Kids, I delight in illustrations like this:



I mean, it's like he has kids, himself! (Check into that shit, Sara. Long Italian name... sounds mafia to me... could have another life... another wife... I'd try Jersey.)

Save the Date!

Guess what I did today?

I'm the black girl on the left.

Saving Mindy

Dear friends,

Please read as Mindy Raf opines on the TNT program Saving Grace. She and her future spawn thank you, as do I.

Regards,
Carolyn

But I digress...

RIP, Estelle! You are the bomb.

Spammetry

This beautiful poem came up in a Google search. Enjoy:

"This is a carolyn castiglia on two levels. Like most carolyn castiglia programs, it does prison your movements, but it properly microprocessors skepticism."

That's pretty much exactly what most carolyn castiglia programs do.
100% satisfaction guaranteed or your money back!*

*You may not get your movements back, however.

Girl Talk (we weren't) Drunk (cuz we were in the park) Brunch

THANK YOU for holding it down, bitches! Also a shout to Katina and Sara who somehow escaped the camera's lens.

Clockwise: Michelle "From the Waist Down" Buteau, Livia "Chicken Nugget" Scott, Laura "Assault and Battery" Mannino and Margot "Ch-aw-clate" Leitman.

Clockwise: Eliza "Shameless Panda" Skinner, Diana "Ball Sac" Saez, Mara "Hippie Prez" Herron and Kambri "Love, Daddy" Crews.

Clockwise: Jenny "The Rube" Rubin, Anya "Photo By" Garrett, Paquita Borgito Borgato Chorizo Jimenez the chihuahua extraordinaire! "Play Dead" Dog and Marianne "Knows The" Ways.

Clockwise: Ridiculous tomfoolery brought to you by CKC and 2 bikinis. I got a great tan under my jeans. Almost as good as Diana under her sweatshirt.

AH LOVE YA'S! EACH AND EVERY ONE OF YA FACKERS.

Let this not end without it being said that these enchanting photos were all taken by the heroic Anya Garrett, except for the solo shots of Anya and Laura, taken by me! Nice.

Crazy Ates

Fun!  I was quoted in a New York Times Post article about food by Steve Cuozzo, whose column "Free Range" most recently centered on everyone's favorite eight-legged friends, spiders.  Just kidding - I mean octopus.  People don't eat spiders!  Not on purpose, anyway.  They say one crawls down your throat while you're sleeping every 7 years or something to that effect.  So, you can probably expect some high-end New York eatery to charge for spiders soon enough.

You can read the entire article here.

Yum!

p.s. - That's a true story.  (Thank you, April.)  The part he didn't print was that my friend Cecilia took a bite of the same dish and said, "Oh my God!  Octopus?  I haven't had this since I was a kid in Taiwan!  Delicious!  Thank you so much!  What a treat!"  And that April, my high-school prankster friend, is now the Chef at the Edible School Yard in New Orleans.  Guess all that octopus paid off!

Automatronic

I wanted to get some pizza last night for my boy Gabe and I to nosh, but it proved harder than I thought.  If you've called Domino'sTM lately, you know what I mean.  Their fancy new automated system is not exactly what I'd call customer service.  Here's how my order went down:

Automatron: Thank you for calling Domino'sTM.  Are you calling to place an order?  Para espanol marke el numero 3.

CKC: Uh, yes.

Automatron: Great.  Let's see.  We have your address as [my old address in East Harlem].  Is that correct?

CKC:  Uh, no.  But how did you get my address?

Automatron: You eat a lot of pizza.  No worries, we'll get your new address later.  Here are our top three specials.  Take a listen and press the correlated number to order.

Number 1: The Gotham City pizza.  Our classic hand-tossed crust with tomato sauce and black olives smeared on your pie to look like the Joker's psychotic face.  One large for only $9.99. Comes with free nightmare.

Number 2: Three medium one-topping pizzas for $5.55 each, plus applicable taxes and fees for a total of $29.95 plus delivery for a grand total of $45.90.  Comes with a napkin.

Number 3: One large Gotham City pizza plus any order of bread, meat, meat wrapped in bread, cheese, bread wrapped in cheese, cheese and meat with bread on it or Cinnasticks for only $19.95.  FREE DELIVERY.

CKC: But I don't want any of those...

Automatron: I'm sorry, I didn't understand you.  What do you mean you don't want a Gotham City pizza?  Don't you know there's a movie called "Batman: The Dark Knight" out right now and that Heath Ledger DIED ostensibly from making this film?  Are you so callous that you are unwilling to support "Batman: The Dark Knight" with your Domino'sTM pizza purchase today? Even if that means you're completely dishonoring Heath and his family and all that is good and true about our nation (and Australia where we also have stores in Sidney, Melbourne and Perth, home of Heath Ledger, star of "Batman: The Dark Knight")?

CKC: Uh...

Automatron:  Okay.  Let's start from scratch.  What would you like?

CKC: Pizza.

Automatron: I'm sorry.  I didn't understand you.  Start by saying the number of and then the item(s) that you'd like, jackass.  I'm not a real person, you know.

CKC: One. Pizza.

Automatron: Okay, great.  You want one pizza.  What type of crust would you like?  Our classic hand-tossed, flatbread, or for $1.59 more, deep dish?

CKC: Why is deep dish $1.59 more?

Automatron: Okay, deep dish.

CKC: No, I don't want deep dish.  I'm just curious about why it costs more.

Automatron: I'm sorry.  I didn't understand you.  Let's start again.

CKC: Hand-tossed!

Automatron: There's no need to shout.  I'm not deaf, you know.

CKC: Sorry.

Automatron: It's fine.  Now, what toppings would you like?

CKC: Pepperoni and extra cheese.

Automatron: Do you mean extra cheese and pepperoni?

CKC: Yes.

Automatron:  Then why didn't you say it that way?  I bet you're one of those people who goes into Starbucks and asks for a Venti No-Whip Low-Fat Mocha when it's supposed to be a Venti Low-Fat No-Whip Mocha.

CKC: No, actually, I like whipped cream.

Automatron: Okay.  One medium hand-tossed pizza with extra cheese, pepperoni and whipped cream.  Is this for pickup or delivery?

CKC: Delivery.

Automatron: Great.  So we'll send that to [my old address in East Harlem].

CKC: No!  I don't live there anymore.  Can I just speak to a person?

Automatron: You want to speak to someone?

CKC: Yes.

Automatron: Then why didn't you come into the store?

~ Fin ~

The moral of the story is: If you want to engage with real humans in this ever-increasingly "convenient" yet totally impersonal society, don't sit at home and wait for food to magically be delivered to you.  Develop a relationship with a farmer who offers you fresh, unprocessed foods in exchange for doing some handiwork around the farm that doubles as good exercise for you.  Eat food.  Not too much.  Mostly plants.  And go see "Batman: The Dark Knight," in theatres now.

Fire Island

I went to Fire Island yesterday [insert your own fire/flaming homo joke here]. It's one of those New York places I've aways heard a lot about but never seen for myself, so my friend Gabe and I decided to take a quick, spur-of-the-moment trip out there. We only spent about an hour and a half on the island, but it was a great excuse to take a lovely, leisurely, long-ish boat ride. I highly recommend the excursion, even if you only have half a day. But don't let my meager words convince you! See for yourself:

The waves were enormous on the beach and they kept crashing all the way up the shore to the dunes. Every time we found a place to sit it got all washed up! Hilarious. The water looked like a layer of glass on the sand - it was thick, but transparent, kind of like one of those display tables, or maybe one of those toilet seats with the seashells glued into the plastic? Whoever invented that look is super-psyched I just compared this to the actual ocean:



In closing, some pictures just take themselves. I wanted to take a serious and sentimental picture of Gabe staring off into the horizon, but then the water streamed up onto his toes and he winced like a little kid.



Priceless.

Back!

Had a fun 4th of July vacay. Got a bit of a tan and tons of bug bites. But guess what? I'm getting off the computer and going back outside! You should try it! I'll post something tomorrow. Maybe.

XO,
ckc

Independence Day

In honor of the birth of our nation, I present you with the top 5 renditions by pop stars of The Star Spangled Banner in ranking order according to me, musical idiot savant, Miss CKC.

Number Five... Mariah Carey. Not cuz I actually like her version, but because she's so awesomely ridiculous. Oh, and she's the BIGGEST SELLING FEMALE RECORDING ARTIST IN HISTORY. I know, cuz it's in her intro:



Plus, she's perhaps the only person who has ever stretched the word "glare" out into 10 syllables.

At Number Four... Faith Hill. I feel pretty blandly about Faith's work in general, but she does a good job on this one, really making it her own. Plus, the interpretive sign language by the color guard makes it priceless:



At Number Three... Alanis Morrissette. Perhaps the worst/best public performance of this song ever. I think at certain points she was actually getting booed. I love that she sings the entire song like it's an angry grrl jam, but then at the end she pulls out the old standby R&B "br-a-a-ave."



However - her performance of "Oh, Canada" at the Stanley Cup finals moved me to tears. Those Canuks really know how to throw a party. And they always have lots of ice on hand.



Number Two! CARRIE UNDERWOOD. And the only reason it's not number one is because it's a capella. If she had an orchestra behind her my head would probably have popped off:



And NUMBER ONE... Whitney Houston! Whitney is of course still the best singer of all time, and her crack face is eternally amazing. She could twist her cheeks up like a squirrel before she ever put an ounce of rock in her system. How else could you get that kind of sound out?



Miss Congeniality goes to... BEYONCE KNOWLES for her exquisite showmanship. Her voice is not nearly as powerful as the rest, despite its beauty. What she does better than anyone though is put on a show wherever she goes. This arrangement is fantastic and the football players are totally feelin' it:

Upstate New York

Louis CK's take on my home country: