Sweaty Buddies and Obnoxious Housewives

Today was the hottest day in Dallas in two years and it's been over one hundred degrees for almost an entire month. I have to wash my bras after one wear and haven't sweated so much since ziplining in Costa Rica during the summer or perhaps driving to High School with Val in Tucson in August in my brown 1980 K car with no A/C. We knicknamed ourselves "Sweaty Buddies," a term we still use and for some reason think is hysterical.

Each night after work I attempt to bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan for DW, however sometimes I just have to face plant on the couch and partake in my two new latest guilty pleasures: "Jersey Shore" and "Real Housewives of New Jersey"

Much like I ask myself how in the world did that doucebag Rod Blagovich not get convicted, I wonder how someone named "The Situation" becomes a household name, or a couple who has a family income of 12k a month gets 11 million in debt.  Hence my fascination with Teresa and her sausage-sized Guido husband. The size of her miniature forehead may be in relation to her ignorance of her family's severe financial hole. Her husband can't tell her "No" yet is clearly not happy with her spending sprees. Their super-tacky onyx and marble McMansion makes Liberace look like a a tee pee-dwelling hippie. Some of Teresa's highlights include a christening she has for her fourth daughter complete with a huge cross ice sculpture and waitresses dressed as Marie Antoinette. On a trip to Italy,  she dressed her 4 girls dress in matching outfits each day including fur coats and berets. After recently declaring bankruptcy she spent 60k on furniture from money made from her cook book. Hopefully the Carmella Soprano furniture store asked her for cash in advance.

Don't even get me started the skeletor-freakaziod-stage-mother-mafia-princess wannabe Danielle. When she met with Caroline at a private table to discuss that ridiculous never-ending hair pulling feud, she came complete with a pistol-carrying driver/bodyguard. Is it Al Pacino and Marlon Brando or Danielle and Caroline? Naturally,  like the famous godfather saying, "I tried to get out and they pulled me back in." Sadly I won't miss a minute of the reunion show on Monday. Bravo had me at the first hair pull.

Dios Mio!

The other day, Parker sent me a text asking me if I'd heard about the trapped miners in Chile. I'm usually up to date on current events, but I hadn't yet heard about the 30 or so miners who are trapped underground and probably will be for the next 4 months. Naturally (because of our horrible sense of humor) we joked about how if someone shouted down to us on a megaphone that we would be living in a dark cave, probably until Christmas, we would shout back the following demands:

• Pillow and sheets (preferably 600 thread count)
• And endless amount of Vueve Cliquot champagne and red wine (with Reidel glassware to drink it in).
• Pomme Frites (i.e french fries from a fancy French restaurant) and some red wine vinager to pour over them
• A television with cable (preferably one w/ VHI, Bravo and Fox. Maybe HBO or On Demand too).
• Parker's eyeliner and my under eye stick (along with a mirror and several flashlights). 
• Some Origins grapefruit skin cream.

You get the idea. Meanwhile, those poor guys are going to come out in 4 months looking like Tom Hanks in Castaway (they already kind of do), having probably had sex with each other at least once, smelling like Joaquin Phoenix during his "crazy phase" and dying for a Burger King Whopper with extra cheese and a side of onion rings.

What amazes me most however (now I'm actually being serious) is how humble and grateful they are just to be alive. The fact that they are down there thanking people for trying to save their asses (as opposed to most Americans who would have a labor lawyer on speed dial on their cell phones and screaming "get me the F*&K out of here"). For crying out loud, they even end the grainy video by singing the Chilean national anthem. Sure, they will probably not be as cheerful in a few weeks, but for now those guys are my heroes. 

What Happens in Vegas...Isn't always that exciting

I've never been a big fan of Las Vegas - but I just got back from a family vacation where I learned just how much Vegas I can actually take before I am headed down to the "Pawn Stars" store to trade in a flash of my boobies for a pistol so that I can threaten all those tourists to walk faster or die.  I used to go to Vegas in college, back when I had disposable income and Vegas only had about 11 hotels on the strip. Nowadays you can't get from point A to point B without getting stuck behind the slowest, fattest person wearing jean shorts, fanny-pack and a giant Vegas cocktail bong, wielding a Kodak disposable camera and walking at at the pace of a sloth on Valium.

Here are a few highlights from my family trip to Vegas:

• Day One:
•  Have spent $470 on 4 "Beatles Love" tickets. The show was AMAZING and well worth the price. However, before I saw the show I considered myself to be a pretty flexible, but after seeing a 90 lb girl spinning from a bungie cord with one leg behind her head, I realized that I am about as flexible as Buzz Aldrin during his stint on "Dancing with the Stars." Seriously I had my mouth wide open during most of it thinking "How the F*&;k can they do that and not land on their face? As soon as the show was over, my son and I looked at each other and simultaneously said, "Sorry about the lack of talent."
• Later that night, my 12 year old daughter dropped her new iPhone 4 in the toilet at the Bellagio hotel. She had been saving up for 2 years to get that new phone and naturally it took all of 4 days to completely destroy it in a commode. When she dropped it - she let out a mutated sound not unlike a coyote, dying a slow death in he desert. I'm pretty sure she would have been less upset if someone had hacked off her arm with a chain saw or if her family were all killed in an airline crash. We tried everything to fix it-but that phone is toast. 
• Day Two: 
• Take kids to traveling "Titanic Museum." For $90 - I was half expecting that I would at least be escorted through the exhibit by Leo DiCaprio himself. That didn't happen but I did see some amazing artifacts including articles of clothing, letters, jewelry and a giant chunk of the actual ship on display. I also got in trouble by the 80-year-old museum worker/Titanic Sheriff who busted me on the faux promenade deck while I was talking on my Blackberry (this shit doesn't go over well when you are at a past-timey exhibit). Also shelled out $4 for a family pic of me and the kids posing on the famous titanic staircase (again - not even a hologram of Leo Dicaprio's ghost floating in the background for posterity). Shelled out an additional $20 for a dime-sized chunk of coal recovered from the ship. My daughter was excited at the time, but I'm pretty sure it will end up in the bottom of a closet in about 3 days. You can expect to see that Titanic Coal for sale on EBay in early 2011 with a starting bid at $1.
• Head over to Hard Rock Hotel to check out some music memorabilia with my son. Saw a few cool things, like a broken Pete Townsend guitar and Sid Vicious' chain and lock necklace. Most odd were some of the costumes worn by Micheal Jackson, David Bowie and Prince. Michael and David Bowie had some amazingly bad 80's-ere costumes that looked like they had been made to fit Lara Flynn Boyle. Those men were a size "00" before there even was a "00". Don't even get me started on Prince's costume. Had I actually tried on Prince's outfit, I'm pretty sure that every ounce of muscle and fat would have shot thru that garment so fast it would have probably spontaneously combusted. I must admit though, that I could probably carry off Madonna's bustier and girdle that she wore the the 1996 Cannes Film Festival.
•  Head back to hotel to order room service. We enjoy a plethora of delicious treats from the Room Service menu. As a consciousness traveler I decided to help by rolling out the dirty room service out the door when we were done. Naturally the table hit a bump and slid at a 40 degree angle, while dish after dish slowly crashed below on the marble floor. I not only killed about 6 plates, 3 glasses, a soup bowl, 3 Ketchup bottles and pepper shaker  - I also made sure to spill the French onion soup so that it landed in every tight crevice along the wallpaper and cracks in the floor, insuring room 3207 will forever smell like really bad breath or one of Shrek's farts. 
• Day Three:
• I wasn't aware there was a place called "M&M World" until my daughter insisted that this was the hotspot we needed to be at. M&M World was clearly designed by some greedy mad bastard whose genius concept of a 4-story shop filled with every color of M&M known to man (for a good deal at $12.99 per pound) along with 4,0000 other M&M gadgets including dispensaries, hats, book, cards and the ever-popular "Nascar inspired"M&M floor. Because nothing says you are devoted to a race team like a vinyl Nascar jacket with the Red and Blue M&M guys holding wrenches. But what I really learned when you go to a place called "M&M World" is that you don't want to show up there unless you have an electric shocking device (a taser might work) to get the shufflers out of your way. Las Vegas is overgrown with "Shufflers": they have the whole day to kill, a $20 burning a whole in their pocket and are ready to shuffle thru M&M World like the floor was made of quicksand. Even my daughter looked over at me and said she was close to actually murdering one or 2 people in M&M world if they didn't get out of her freaking way. I concurred. 
• After M & M world. I felt I needed a little culture and headed back to the Bellagio hotel pool for some sunning (I mean searing). After being confronted with having to watch a 14 year old boy making out with a possibly 10 or 11 year old girl in the pool, I started to feel icky. Turns out they were Europeon, which I guess means making out at age 10 in a hotel pool is a rite of passage. My other concern was whether or not they were brother or sister....I guess I'll never know.

Sure, there was a time not that long ago where the Casinos would have wooed me in with the "Sex in the City" slot machines or the ever-hot 'John Wayne Video Poker Machine', but as I get older I tend to like to keep my money in my pockets and keep a good 3 feet distance from anyone with a fannypack smoking a Marlboro. I guess what I'm saying is What Happens in Vegas can just stay there....next time I'll be in Hawaii.

My Coolness is Waning (big time)

I've always thought as myself as the "cool mom" - and by simply saying that, it probably makes me the most uncool Mom on the planet. But I promised to take my son and his friend to the Van's Warped Tour in San Diego on Tuesday - where I learned just how completely uncool I am.

We arrived at 1:00 pm. The Vans Warped Tour is a compilation of about 40 bands playing on like 7 different stages and they are all screaming their freaking heads off. When I arrived I felt older than Carol Channing. And, for some strange reason I just assumed that a musical festival this big would have a special tent for parents, with a flat screen and ample seating. Instead I found a lone canopy with scattered folding chairs near the entrance. This will have to do, I thought. But first I bought myself a $7.00 hot dog with a $6.00 bottle of water. I was tempted to visit the margarita booth - but since I was with children, I thought it best to stay sober. Besides the beer was $12, so I figured they'd probably charge upward of $20 for a cold margarita (and and additional $3 for salt on the rim?).

As much as I enjoyed sitting on a folding chair alone for 4 hours, my favorite part of the day had to have been listening to a nearby band sing one of the most beautiful songs ever written. I didn't get the name of the band or the song, but I did manage to remember a few of the lyrics:

"You're a fu*&ing asshole
Suck my dick
You're a fu*%king whore
Cha ch cha"

Hmmm, romantic. Wasn't that originally a Lou Rawls' song? Although the festival lasted until 9 pm, by 5:00 I was miserable (and broke). My son and his friend were crushed and begged me to stay until one of their favorite bands played at 7:15, but I simply could not do it. I would rather spend a day lost in the circles of Hell than continue to sit there. Let's face it - I practically was in the circle of Hell. Proof once again that I am getting old and loosing my "coolness".