Inanimate Subjects

Club Giggles

When I’m low on money and reach my acceptance of staying home on a Saturday night, only 2 texts can get me out of bed…

1) “Wanna go to Yogurtland?”

or

2) “Wanna go dancing?”

This is a story about #2.

My friend Tina asked me to go dancing and without any specifics, I accepted due to the aforementioned financial issues and loads of stress I’ve been dealing with lately. I figured Tina, who is pretty wholesome and loves dancing, would deliver a good time. It was her friend’s birthday and we were meeting her at a place in Glendale.

We approached Club Giggles and quickly saw it was a Latino dance club. I don’t panic, because I’ve frequently been asked if I was Hispanic in the past, so I figured I was cool. Once stepping into Giggles, I realized being mistaken for Hispanic in a white suburb of New Jersey is waaaaaaaaaaay different than in Southern California.

Although it was early in the night, it was definitely not early enough for the dance floor to be unoccupied, so my innocent and wholesome friend Tina mentions that her and I should start “representing America on the dance floor”. I reminded her that we are all American (well, most… probably). So, unaware of the Latino dance floor etiquette, we sideline it until someone more appropriate initiates. Then, here comes Carlos.

I think of every excuse in the book to not go dance (“I’m not drunk enough yet, I’m not a good dancer”, “I’m too white”, “I’m scared”) but he didn’t seem to care. He pulled me onto the dance floor and started pulling veteran salsa moves. While Carlos dances, I try to start awkward, nervous small talk. Finally he informs me that he doesn’t speak good English. “Great!” I yell. He asked if I speak Spanish. I was going to tell him about how I only know the word ‘mantequilla’ but only because of my experience at Carrabbas and always having to ask the Mexican line cooks for a side of butter, but I figured he wouldn’t find it amusing. So we danced.

Eventually the dance floor filled and Tina and I got our groove on with her friend and her group of adorable mamacitas. I didn’t recognize or understand a lick of the music that was playing, but it was damn catchy. I went along with the creepy line of men on the sidelines that were drooling at all the women and taking pictures on their phones, but for some reason at Club Giggles, it was acceptable.

When the girls asked if we wanted to go downstairs to Hip Hop, I felt overwhelmed with joy and relief. Thank God! Someone give me some Jay-Z, LMFAO, Rihanna, anything. But no. It was the exact same music as upstairs. The DJ could’ve been yelling “All the white people here have herpes!” and I WOOed in agreement.

Overall, it was a fun, and much needed, night out for me. I learned that no matter what race or ethnicity, we can all get together and dance like no ones watching.

Ew. Kidding. I learned a few things actually…

- I’ve never in my life gotten hit on by a white guy like I do with black or Hispanic men.

- Latino women drink very colorful cocktails and look at you funny when you ask for whiskey.

- Shakira is still pretty prominent in that community.

- At least we didn’t stand out as much as that chubby, Asian girl wearing cuffed capris dancing alone in the corner.

Firenze

When most people go camping, they are usually mentally prepared and do it voluntarily. When most broke college students search for hostels in a foreign country, they look at the fine print and do follow up research on said hostel. Me and my travel companion did none of the above, thus landing in a campground in Florence.

This alleged hostel on top of the Campo d’Michaelangelo in Florence, Italy was said to have amazing views of the city (true), a great atmosphere for young travelers (true) and private spaces with beds (whatever, I guess technically true). After climbing up a huge hill to get to what we thought was going to be a big, beautifully constructed cathedral-turned-hostel, we arrived upon a campground. A legit campground.

The only buildings present were the lobby/internet room and the bathhouse. Young teenagers and 20-somethings were walking around in bathing suits with no shoes on, blasting music. It was basically Italian Woodstock for Americans.

The “concierge” directed us towards our “space” - a tent with 2 cots and a fake hardwood floor platform. Since we figured we’d be sightseeing and exploring all day, we weren’t too concerned with our amenities. But after a long day of walking and stuffing our faces with vino and pasta, we returned to our tent (musica still blasting) exhausted.

The walk to the toilets, sinks and baths was a good 15 minute walk up a dirt path. Then of course, like any tourist attraction, there was an obnoxious line. My pee dance reached new levels that day. Finally, we get back to the tent and realize there is no electricity. Since I forgot my candle lantern, I was stuck with just a tiny, tiny, tiny book light as my only source of light for the rest of the night. Also, to add insult to injury, I didn’t sleep because it was summer so it was humid as hell and bugs everywhere. 2 nights. We lived like savages in Florence.

Do I recommend this “hostel” to anyone? I do because then you’d have a really great story to come home with. However, bring the following toiletries: bug spray, a candle and/or a lantern, a battery powered AM/FM radio, a bed pan, some sort of fan or portable air conditioning unit and good sneakers that you never plan on wearing again.

Babysitter’s Club

Today while I was walking with 2 coworkers to get lunch, a little kid jumped in front of us on the sidewalk and growled/screamed/snarled. Who knows. While my coworkers laughed at the adorable boy with curly blonde hair, I rolled my eyes and wanted to tell it to get out of my way. This prompted me to think about my experiences with children and why I’m not a kid person.

I assume my natural maternal instincts and basic human desire to reproduce will pop up eventually, but apparently not today. I’m not very good with kids and I never have been. I feel the same excitement and awe over a puppy as normal people do over babies. Adults who speak “baby talk” to babies make me want to vomit. Surprisingly, I used to babysit. Not surprisingly (and gratefully), I only babysat twice.

My short lived babysitting career was in 7th grade. The first family I babysat for lived down the street from me. They had an infant and a 5 year old. I was 13. Let me just say I would never put my infant in the hands of a 13 year old. Anyway, after school I would mosey on over to this family’s house. The mother would feed me first, then let me watch TV for a little. Babysitting was awesome!

Me and the 5 year old would play games. Me - very unenthusiastically and her - too enthusiastically. Kids had all the energy in the world and I was over it. Not that I didn’t have a crazy imagination or didn’t like to play pretend, I just liked doing that in my own world, like where I was the 6th Spice Girl (Zazzy Spice) or owned my own nail salon.

This gig ended coincidentally the day after I accidentally poked the infant in the eye and while it was crying I told it to “shhhh”. I think they had a nanny cam.

My second and last babysitting job was at a neighbors Christmas party. The adults had their party upstairs, and I had to watch 7 rowdy children in the basement. I figured it’d be easy. They could all keep each other company.

No. These kids were monsters. Running up and down the stairs and climbing on furniture. They screamed for about an hour about wanting to watch a movie and by the time I got the “Toy Story” opening credits rolling, they got up and started running around again. For the rest of the night, I just sat on the couch, defeated and pissed off while they all chanted in unison, “No more babysitter!”

It was then that I decided to retire from babysitting. I figured I’d give the up and coming, more eager future babysitters a shot. That summer I got my first real job at a chocolate store. Now that was something I could find enthusiasm for.

Pops

Recently my father informed me that he has discovered my blog. Great! Now he knows where I live on the interweb. Since I’ve dedicated a couple posts in the past to my darling mother, I figured I’d share a particularly interesting story about good old dad. Dad, reach into your memory and come along on this journey with me…

My father and I spent a majority of the last 6 or 7 years going to weekly Yankee games. One Sunday, we decided to take the very reliable NJ Transit into New York. Most regular passengers know as rule of thumb 2 things: if you’re buying tickets on the train, it costs more money and you cannot pay with a bill higher than $20. To this day, I’m not sure if my dad just ignored these facts, or honestly wasn’t aware, but this is where our day went wrong.

The conductor came up to us and asked for our money. My dad tried to pay with a $50 and was denied. We then scavenged what money we had in our pockets to come up with our fare, but $1 short. My dad tried to barter and bargain his way into the sweet conductor’s heart by letting us slide with 1 less dollar than we owed, but apparently she too was having a lousy day.  As you can assume, this is the part where we got kicked off the train just 1 stop past our station. We called my mom to save us, and we had to start the journey over again.

The car ride was great though. My dad was yelling about the conductor, my mom was yelling at my dad, and I was yelling, “BUT ARE WE STILL GOING TO THE GAME?!”

It only occurred to me years later why we never asked a fellow passenger to lend us a dollar, or ask 4 passengers for a quarter, and so on. My dad might have been too proud. And I get that. Even so, none of the other passengers on the train (who undoubtedly were listening to our dispute) kindly offered a dollar to a man and his daughter, obviously heading to a Yankee game.

Moral of the story? NJ Transit passengers are A-Holes (you’re welcome for the censorship, dad)

Liberty Science Center

If you’re not familiar with North Jersey, you don’t know of the coolest place on the planet for children and science nerds. It’s called the Liberty Science Center. It’s an amazing place with a touch tunnel (which I’ve only just realized how much creepy shit probably went down in there), an observation deck, an IMAX theatre, and a whole bunch of other science projects that no 8-year-old will understand how it works, but it will keep your attention and that’s really all you need if you’re an adult.

Growing up in North Jersey, I was a frequent member of the LSC and went there about 3 times a month. If you’re wondering why I didn’t grow up to love science, I couldn’t tell you. I loved this place - until I decided to host a birthday party there.

Apparently the party planners at LSC were either a) lazy, b) sick fucks, c) complete idiots, or d) all of the above. Because when you contact LSC to have a birthday party for your young child and her “friends” (classmates) they think it’s a good idea to take a whole dead fish and have the children paint it and imprint that pattern onto a piece of construction paper. This is literally what happened at one of my LSC birthday parties.

Me, a couple of cousins and about 10 of my classmates were sent to the top floor of LSC to eat cake, and paint dead fish. I will remember every part of this birthday for the rest of my life for the sheer fact that even at my ripe young age,  I thought it was fucked. I can’t imagine what my parents were thinking, or the parents of the kids who were at the party. I definitely lost some friends after this moment. But we all painted the dead fish, without any question, as if it were normal. I’m pretty sure all my classmates were scared shitless, my cousins were busy throwing the fish across the room, and my crazy Uncle kept saying “When do the kissing games start?” If you’re wondering how I grew up to be semi-normal, I couldn’t tell you that either.

Bella Roma

Youth Hostels are really cheap, sometimes sketchy, but always fun places to stay when you’re young and traveling abroad. While studying abroad 3 years ago with my “then-boyfriend” (sounds more sophisticated than “ex”), we traveled to Rome, Italy. And the story begins…

We booked our beds at a semi-well reviewed Hostel in Rome. We arrived and walked to our hostel, exploring the beautiful landscape.

Footnote: besides the ancient landmarks and tourist attractions, Rome kind of looks like Newark, NJ.

We arrive at the address of said Hostel (I think it was called “Gold Star Rome” or something tacky). It was just a door. A door in the middle of a wall. Doorbell. Buzzed in without even verifying if I’m a serial killer or child rapist, or worse - young American travelers.

On the 3rd floor of a building was the allegedly named “Gold Star Rome” Hostel, with your host, some Italian guy with capris on. I forget his name, but he was short, bald and a little bit rude. Crazy, right?! For reference, we’ll call him Mike. So Mike shows us to our spacious room which held 2 beds, a TV and a dresser. It was all we really needed. We were happy. The entire 3rd floor consisted of this Hostel, and this entire Hostel consisted of 3 rooms. Ours, another room, and the owner’s room (which was actually an entire apartment squished into a tiny room). All over the place there were very threatening “No Smoking” signs. Both of us being non-smokers, we were pleased that this was the one place in all of Europe we didn’t have to smell cigarette smoke. But because it’s me and this story is on my blog, this no-smoking rule wasn’t the case. Mike chain smoked. All night and all day. Everywhere in the damn hostel. Apparently the sign should’ve read “No Smoking unless you own this hostel, BIATCH!!”

The first night was a breeze. We slept well, kept to ourselves, and there weren’t any other guests to be bothered by.

The second night was a different story. After a long day of looking at buildings that were falling down, we headed back to home sweet hostel around 11 p.m. I opened the door and there was a man in my bed (and not in a cool way). Um?!?!

We find a note from Mike that says (verbatim): “I MUST YOU MOVE TO ENOTHER ROOM!”

Oh, really, Mike? No shit. I’m not shacking up with some hairy, snoring man. If I wanted to do that, I’d call up another “then-boyfriend”.

Mike comes out and explains to us in his broken English that we must, in fact, move to another room, with nothing but 3 beds and yet ANOTHER snoring, hairy man. God dammit, Mike!

That night I slept in the top bunk, Snorey McSnorerson on the bottom bunk, and my travel buddy in another bed in the room. Excuse me, but where were all the fun American college kids who reviewed this place on hostels.com?! This place might have been a sick joke, but nevertheless it was certainly an adventure. The next day we packed up our duffles and peaced Roma without even looking back.

Next stop was Florence. Stay tuned for that one - because it’s a doozy.

Devin

One of the loveliest things about living in California is wine. Last weekend, a couple of my friends and I traveled up to Santa Barbara to go wine tasting (drink ourselves silly). And we did. We relaxed and drank the bottles of wine we (like high schoolers) kinda of snuck into the winery. At 5pm on the dot, the employees kicked us out like it was last call at a hoppin bar on a Saturday night. This is when we decided to go into town and get ice cream.

Imagine running around an old Dutch town with 3 drunk, blithering idiots………. this is probably how my roommate felt. We did find the ice cream place we were searching for and ate it in between more wine.

On the way home, we decided to stop by the beach and stick our feet in the water before getting home to LA. We ended up in a really small, sketchy campground about the size of a cul de sac and packed with RVs, picnic tables and people drinking a lot of beer. I was home. We picked a vacant parking spot with a picnic table and a fire pit and we sat ourselves down with our last bottle of wine and pretended like we belonged there. A few minutes passed and an RV drove up, asking us to move over for him. We told him we’d leave, seeing as we weren’t paying members of this campground, but he just told us to scoot over so he can fit. So we did, and he backed his RV dangerously close to me. But I trusted him. He got out and introduced himself as Daniel. He was only wearing his swim trunks, sunglasses and the slight remnants of a mullet. Almost like Kenny Powers, but skinny.

Anyway, my fellow wine loving friend and I decided to go over and introduce ourselves to our new friends. It was Daniel, his son Devin, and his wife, whose name I don’t remember and wanted NOTHING to do with us judging by how long it took for her to shake my hand with not a hint of a smile on her face.

This was the point that I decided I wanted to light a fire in our fire pit. I have never been a Girl Scout, and I’ve never built a fire, but for some reason I was more confident than ever in my life that I would like a fire effortlessly. I put two completely burnt pieces of fire wood together, stuck some extra copies of my roommate’s resume in between and lit a match (from the matchbook I always have in my purse for such instances). Nothing was happening, and that’s where Devin comes in.

Devin was a 19-year-old hippie with long, black hair, multiple lanyard bracelets and no shoes. He was a dweller of the Earth if I’ve ever seen one. He took it upon himself to help me out with this fire. His father yelled something in Spanish to another family with an RV, and within minutes we had firewood. Strangers were bringing them to my fire pit as if I actually belonged at this place and I was okay with it. So after me and Devin finally got a fire going, this dialogue ensued:

Devin: Whoaa this fire dude. This is a good fire.

Ashley: Devin, what are you high on?

Devin: I’m just high on life man.

Devin giggles.

Ashley: Devin, come on. It’s me. Tell me the truth. You’re not high on life.

Devin: Okay I smoked a little mari-jew-ana before.

Ashley: That sounds about right.

Devin: So, there’s showers over there you know.

Ashley gives Devin a blank stare.

Devin: We can go over there if you want.

Ashley: How old do you think I am, Devin?

Devin: I don’t know, 20?

Ashley: I’m 42.

Devin: That’s alright.

Ashley calls to her friends that it’s time to leave.

That’s when we got out of there like a bat out of hell.

Thanks, Mom

My mother is darling. She is the best mom ever and always looks out for me. Though, I often look back on parts of my life where I would both question her judgment and applaud it. Here’s a list of times where my mother would not allow me to do something, and I was super pissed about it at the time, but now I’m kind of glad she did it…

- When I was 13 years old, I wanted to go to Harlem, unsupervised, to see a taping of BET’s “106 & Park” with my 2 friends. My mom would not allow it, and I cried over it saying it wasn’t fair. My 2 other friends went without me and survived, but if I did end up going, I would’ve arrived in Harlem, stood in the middle of the street, cried and gotten kidnapped. Thanks, Mom.

- At about 11 years old, I thought watching MTV was something totally hip that I wanted to be apart of. One day I was watching TRL, Carson Daly style, when my mom walked in and demanded I do not watch MTV anymore. WHAT?! It seems silly, but I was an incredibly impressionable kid, and the Spice Girls were already God in my eyes, so it’s better off that I wasn’t exposed to any more of what MTV in 1999 had to offer. Thanks, Mom.

- There was a brief time in Middle School where wearing pajama pants to school was the trend, and I obviously needed to be apart of that. But no. My mother would not have me leaving the house with my awesome red plaid pajama pants, drooping down my legs, dragging on the ground and doing absolutely nothing for my figure. Every morning I tried, but when I stepped out of my bedroom she made me turn right around and put on normal clothes. Ugh. Wearing jeans was so uncool. Looking back, the kids at school whose parents let them get away with this looked incredibly ridiculous so… thanks, mom.

But for every great motherly decision, good old J-Zazz did have her times where I wonder where her head was, and here are some of those instances…

- Letting me go to a Jay-Z concert when I was 15. My 2 best friends and I scored sweeeeeeeeeet tickets to the “Sprite Liquid Mix Tour!” featuring, N.E.R.D., Nappy Roots, Incubus, Hoobastank and Jigga Man. It was an amazing show on all accounts, and we managed to get our way into the 5th row because some idiot left after Hoobastank and gave us their seats for Jay-Z. We were 15 and completely alone at this concert, wearing stupid outfits and throwing up the Roc-a-fella signs like we knew what we were doing. It coulda been a gang sign for all we knew. Also, I was wearing Adidas swooshie pants and a Roc-a-wear shirt. What. the. Hell. Thanks, Mom.

- If you couldn’t tell from this post so far, I went through a little bit of a “ghetto” phase, as I like to call it. It began in late 7th grade and lasted until about 10th grade. I listened to a lot rap music and wore Roc-a-wear and Baby Phat clothing. So lame, right? Trust me I know. But by far the most absurd trend I took on during this time in my life was the 6 straight months that I insisted on having horrendous fake nail tips with airbrushed patterns. One time I got black and silver zebra print patterns. My mom didn’t really protest it. Thanks, Mom.

- Leaving me home alone on any weekend night during Middle School…. cause I had crazyyyy partieeesss!!!!!………… that consisted of my friends getting dropped off by their parents at 7 p.m. and us hanging around my room watching tv. No booze, nothing cool. Just chatting. Sometimes making out. They were picked up by 10 p.m. Awesome. Thanks, Mom.

Love you, Mom

NJ Transit

One day during high school, my best friend and I were taking an NJ Transit train into NY to see a Knicks game. We were obnoxiously taking up a 4 person seat for the 2 of us with our legs up on the seats. At Rahway, an older woman with a big fur coat and about 3 purses comes onto the train and chooses to sit directly next to me. The fuck did this bitch think she was sitting with us? I didn’t say it out loud, but I thought it, and I’m certain my friend did too.

So since it’s me and my life is bizarre, a dialogue obviously happened between me and the lady. I noticed her fidgetting with something by her ear. She turns to me and said, “I can’t get my earring in. Will you help me?” Talk about invading personal space, lady. Thankfully, I didn’t have my ears pierced so I quickly used that as an excuse to say no. I looked over at my friend who had her sunglasses on, hair in her face and head down at her cell phone. Thanks for the help!

After the older woman figured out her earring debacle, she begins telling me about a party for teenagers somewhere in Linden that I should go to. “Oh sure” I say, trying to dismiss her. But then she starts telling me about the details. This woman was persistent. She was GETTING me to this mysterious party like she was GETTING that earring in her lobe. How we didn’t get up and move seats by this point, I still don’t understand to this day. So she was telling me that this party was in Linden at an abandoned building that they converted to a space for teenagers to go to “party safely”. “Take down the address” she says. “No it’s okay I’ll remember it,” I insist. “No. Write it down.”

Um. Okay at this point I would’ve just done anything to get her demon eyes off me and to avoid any more contact, so I take out an old receipt from my bag and a pen and scribble on the paper so she thinks I’m actually going to take this strange invite to some massacre seriously. All this time, my friend is still assuming the position like she knows neither of us and would seemingly stay that way if this woman took out a knife and threatened me with it. Then, between a mixture of pure fear and a sense of how incredibly funny the situation was, I begin to laugh uncontrollably, trying but failing miserably at hiding it. A couple stops later, the woman gets off and says with a smile “I’m looking forward to seeing you.” I gave her the thumbs up.

The scary thing is, a more stupid human being might have taken her invite and gone to this abandoned building party. There were no missing persons reported in Linden that week. I checked.

Archaeology Camp

God Bless my parents for letting me try every hobby you could possibly imagine. I tried everything to only learn I sucked at it all. So I went to so many kinds of camps: dance camp, basketball camp, horse riding camp, but best of all, archaeology camp.

What happens at archaeology camp? Basically what you would assume - digging. But what we archaeology campers  hated was the misconception that we dug for fossils. No. We searched for artifacts. We learned about munsel colors, sifting, different shovels and the like. At lunchtime we watched Indiana Jones. I remember never wanting to watch it because I thought it was for nerds, meanwhile I was the one at archaeology camp. To this day, the Indiana Jones theme song haunts me.

One day, the counselors told us we could dig through the outhouse that was in the back (I guess they were running out of ground to dig due to the growing demand of aspiring archaeology campers). And for some sick reason we were all stoked to dig through the outhouse. When they told us we were all like “COOOOOOOLL!!!!!!”

At the end of the summer we got archaeology camp t-shirts with shovels all over the back. In school that year, I rocked the shit out of that shirt like it was cool.

Just in case you’re wondering whether this story is 100% true or not, I found this lovely little blurb while reminiscing on my time at camp: http://newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2004-06-16/Bulletin_Board/016.html

Please note the ridiculous amount of money my mother spent on this. Also, the year was 2004… it wasn’t that long ago.

Friends Across the USA

Today I was looking through my phone contacts and noticed 3 names I completely forgot about:

- Tom Pitt

- Timothy SD

- Tony NO

And it reminded me that these were some friends my sister and I made during our various adventures around the country and I couldn’t stop laughing. Here’s a little story about each of these fellows. Note: All of these names coincidentally start with ‘T’ and are followed by the city where we met them. Let’s begin…

- Tom Pitt: When we visited Pittsburgh last fall (only the very loyal followers to this blog will recall the post about Pittsburgh, so that makes… none of you), we went to a popular strip of bars. We noticed a Jekyll and Hyde themed bar crawl happening so we tagged along late in the trail (in true freeloader fashion). We met a boy named Tom, a local from Pittsburgh, who, like everyone else who lived there, did not understand why the hell we would venture there voluntarily. He was a very nice dude who offered to show us some local spots off the beaten track. He gave us great insight on what it’s like to live in Pittsburgh (apparently it’s boring). We had a lovely connection, but I didn’t see him after that night. Sigh.

- Timothy SD: Timothy (not Tim) was a fellow East Coaster we met at a bar one night in San Diego. He was a great judge of character as he quickly described Deja and I as “hustlers” since we were from Jersey (???).  He wore a fedora and bought us drinks, so he was A-Okay in my book (mostly because of the fedora). He was no Tom Pitt, but he was a gentleman, and offered to take us out for burritos at 3 a.m.

- Tony NO: During our time in New Orleans (aka the drunken stupor we experienced known better as Mardi Gras), we took a break from drinking hurricanes to stop in at a restaurant to eat… and keep drinking hurricanes. Tony was our very charismatic waiter who treated us like we’ve known each other for years. He invited us to his party tent the next morning at 8 a.m. to watch the Mardi Gras parade. Little did we know at the time that we would be entirely too hungover to wake up at 8 in the freakin morning. Tony, we apologize for standing you up.