Tag Archives: boyfriends

Dear Seattle Start-Up Guy

4 Aug

Dear Seattle Start-Up Guy,

Hey.  How’s it going.  Nice facial hair.  I keep seeing you here at the Greenlake Zoka (like seriously, every single time I’m in here), so I figured it was time to drop you a line and get acquainted.  Plus you’re kind of cute.

But before we get too cozy, I’ve got some burning questions I’m hoping you can answer.  I like your style– those jeans fit you well, that t-shirt is retro cool maybe— but, well, I can’t tell if it’s vintage, new distressed, or out of your middle-school closet?  And if that’s the case, why can you afford designer jeans but not a new t-shirt?

You pulled up in an old station wagon.  So you’re environmental, making good use of a hand-me-down vehicle?  Or too cheap to buy a car?   Er…do you live with your grandmother?  If you buy her groceries, watch Jeopardy and then take off for the night, have your own space, we’re a go.  If you’re mooching off an old lady and the whole place smells like cats, tell me now.

And I see that you’re typing very quickly on your computer (Apple) and texting constantly on your phone (iPhone) (check, check).  But what I want to know is: are you filling out job applications, facebooking, and making mid-day drinking plans with your old high school buddies?  Or are you returning emails, designing apps, expanding your market, and scheduling lunch meetings?

See, you meet the checklist for that not-so-rare but still highly-desirable Seattle start-up guy— ambitious, flexible work hours and vacation time, interesting, full of ideas, up on the news, recycles, probably bicycles for that matter, quite possibly really into theme parties and always down to dance— maybe this is impolite to ask, but I’ve just got to know, quick yes or no before we proceed—

are you unemployed (good luck, see you around) or highly successful (my phone number’s on the back of this note)?

Best,

MM

Dear New Moon

7 Dec

Dear New Moon,

Let’s do some quick math. There are approximately 8 young men among your characters. Five in the wolfpack, Emmett the vampire, and of course of course the eminently prominent Jacob* and Edward (aka RobPat**). Of those, 7 at one point or another remove their shirts.

Your running time is 2 hrs 1 min, or 121 min. Divided by 7, divided by total time spent by each of those boys on screen, minus the extreme lowness of RobPat’s pants during that one scene (I mean seriously, I wasn’t sure he was wearing pants for a while– do they let him film in the nude in order to get him on set?), plus the amount of time K.Stew spent biting her own lip while looking at the shirtless boys, multiplied by the slope of Taylor Lautner’s neck muscles…

…equals about 92.3% shirtless boy time out of total movie time.

This isn’t a complaint.

WHO AM I KIDDING? I LOVED THIS MOVIE. I laughed and sighed and said, “OH HIGH SCHOOL” more than once. I totally know what it feels like to have a best friend you don’t want to lose who feels more strongly about you than you do him. I totally know what it feels like to wear ugly sweaters and giant raincoats to math class (grew up in Seattle, people. Not that far from Forks). I totally know what it feels like to have go dashing off to Rome at a moment’s notice to save my vampire boyfriend from committing suicide, effectively choosing him over my wolf boyfriend who was finally trying to kiss me and hopefully will not transfigure too close to my face or I will die, and of course they are natural enemies but they both love me even though I am a basically lame girl who is supposedly not that pretty (probably designated as so due to the fact that I have brown hair) and who has no personality whatsoever. I TOTALLY GET IT.

[Ok, on a side note, I actually have heard of grown women leaving their husbands after reading Twilight. Because their marriages didn't measure up to the standard of love presented . (Which is what? The "I would die for you but I can't because I'm immortal" standard? Yeah. That one.) As one trained mental health specialist put it, "I would say they have larger issues than Twilight. I would also question this designation of them as 'grown.'"]

But seriously. Pure trashy fun. Perfect after you have turned in your final, revised poetry portfolios for your first semester in an MFA program***. Entertaining to the ninth degree. And did I mention the shirtlessness?

Yeah. That.

MM

*aka Boy Taylor who is dating Girl Taylor– Swift, that is. We don’t even have to come up with a stupid nickname for them ala Bennifer or Brangelina. They come with it built-in. No batteries necessary.

**aka international heartthrob of girls who like pasty white boys, aka boy who may or may not be dating/doing Kristen Stewart but sweet hell don’t ask the insensitivity of you people always asking questions like she’s a celebrity and this is an interview or something.

***Hello. My name is Margaret Michelle. I am currently getting my MFA in poetry. I also like Twilight. [The views presented here are not condoned by and not in any way shape or form representative of the management, the network, my employers, my professors, my classmates, my friends, my parents, my books, and/or anything that I ever may have touched or spoken to.]

Dear Nerdy Girls

22 Oct

Dear Nerdy Girls,

As a shout-out, I would just like to recount a conversation I heard today. I will call the girls Jane and Anne. I don’t have any friends named Jane and Anne, do I?

Jane: I didn’t seduce him even though it would have been easy and I totally wanted to. So I follow my own advice like 60%.

Anne: Good for you….How do you seduce people???

Jane: I think you have to start off by touching them casually throughout the night…then I think there’s a scary part where you have to kiss them.

Anne: The blind leading the blind…some seductress.

Jane: I kissed John! It was scary! I feel sorry for boys.

Anne: But we’re talking seduction here not middle school!

Jane: But once you kiss it kind of all follows.

Anne: Or you can be really bold and make them kiss you but that might involve lingerie.

Jane: I don’t even own lingerie! Is that bad?

Anne: Yes. You will die a virgin.

I think this last part was hyperbole. Given the nature of the discussion.

Thank you for allowing me to share that with you. I think I will start following my own advice like 60%. Sounds like a good number, don’t you think?

xoxo,

MM

PS– Good thing Tina Fey is hot right now. Giving us nerdy girls everywhere a hand up the social ladder.

PPS– As an end note, I would just like to say: despite the seeming shyness of the above conversation: don’t underestimate us.

Dear Dancing With The Stars

13 May

Dear Dancing With The Stars,

I’ll admit it, I was reluctant at first to join your fans. I stand by the fact that I don’t like reality TV. (Oh, except for Project Runway. And Top Chef. And What Not To Wear. And Say Yes to the Dress. And Ace of Cakes, and Iron Chef… And DWTS. But those don’t count, right?)

But I watched one episode this season and fell madly in love. First off, as a child who grew up watching musicals and thinks it’s near criminal that my boyfriend G has never seen The Sound of Music (Come on! He know the songs but not where they’re from??? Or the immensity of their emotional impact. According to wikipedia, “During the Cold War, the BBC planned to broadcast The Sound of Music on radio in the event of a nuclear strike on the United Kingdom. The broadcast would be part of an emergency timetable of programs designed to “reassure” the public in the aftermath of the attack” Now that’s a musical that’s part of the zeitgeist). Like I was saying, as someone who cannot not watch a musical when it airs on TV, DWTS has a few crucial things that make me pre-programmed to love it: music and dance. Combined. And people who have dreams…don’t we all…and a lot of glitter and not very much actual dress.

Which, in a way, made me sad to see Edyta go. Even though it was high time Lawrence Taylor high-tailed it out of there. And after Julianne and Chuck’s repeated attempts to get down and dirty on the dance floor (some more successful than others, some more…distasteful than others), I was ready for him to take his pretty face back on tour. Eventually, my point being, I believe, that I think the right person has gone home throughout the season. Way to be, America.

Until last week, when as much as I’m glad Ty Murray made it through until then, it was time he hit the trail. Lil’ Kim really deserved to go to the semi-finals. And yes, yes, Ty gets Most Improved and Hardest Worker and yada yada yada. But he sucks! He’s endearing, and man he can hold a frame– but as he’s said and others, That’s what he does! Hold on! And it’s all he does. He’s still chasing Chelsie around the dance floor like– well, like she’s the bull and he fell off and is trying to get back on. But as Ty himself said in one of his greatest moments of dirty-straightface-campfire talk, “If more bulls looked like that, there’d be more bullriders.” You can almost believe he doesn’t know what he just said…

But Lil’ Kim! As my sister said, perhaps correctly, “I was thinking about it, and maybe Lil’ Kim doesn’t actually have that many fans anymore.” …Fair. But she was fabulous on DWTS. She was fun to watch and fun on the dance floor and it was really fun to try to guess each week why her torso looks so out of proportion to the rest of her. (Has she had ribs taken out? Is it really just her exercise ball butt and boobs? Maybe she no longer has a stomach…) And she inspired fabulous moments from uptight Lynn as even he couldn’t resist commenting on her “bionic booty.” (A phrase DWTS now needs to put to rest. Overuse, people! It kills things!) Plus, Derek Hough is a joy to watch and I hope he gets the part in Footloose, which I totally saw mentioned in an above-website banner that I refused to click on because I refuse to click on those things.

Anyway, my favorites throughout the season remain Gilles Mirini’s Argentine Tango (so hot my sister and her boyfriend immediately signed up for dance class and by golly, I did my best to join them but ultimately failed to convince my dance partner) and Shawn Johnson’s Cha Cha to P.Y.T. And lest we forget, nice choreography from the professionals. I keep those two episodes on my DVR and watch them occasionally. I mean…I love football. And G can protest all he wants, I can’t turn on DWTS without him sitting down on the couch. Usually with a newspaper in his hand, but it’s quickly forgotten. That’s right. I said it.

And Melissa, I admit the way you handle yourself, and good on you for behaving well in a bad situation. And how many women have been told after a bad break-up, throughout the entire history of modern society and possibly back into cave-time I just don’t have the proof, go take a class?  (I still don’t really want you to win.  Then again, I don’t like The Bachelor, and all this girl next door stuff is nonsense.  You do have a great smile though, and I want your stomach for beach season.  Though not enough to start doing sit-ups.)

At any rate, Melissa, Gilles and Shawn were the final three from the get-go, and this is now an embarrassingly long letter to DWTS. What can I say?

Best of luck,

MM

Dear Holding Hands at the Mall

30 Apr

Dear Holding Hands at the Mall,

I can’t do it.

Maybe I still secretly feel like a middle schooler, a tiny bit embarrassed to be in a public place with this person next to me who is my “boyfriend” (not that he is fake or imaginary or not really my boyfriend). (It’s just that word, boyfriend. When I was younger I thought at some point I would reach an age at which having a boyfriend seemed appropriate rather than farcical. Now it seems that I will probably skip from feeling too young to have a boyfriend to too old to have a boyfriend.) (Italics in the sense of, “Ooooh, is that your boyfriend? Which, by the way, my two female bosses did the other night when I happened to see them in a public place. And I had my boyfriend with me. We were not holding hands. We were also not at the mall.)

When I was in middle school, and I did have a boyfriend for about 2 1/2 days, we did hold hands sometimes. That was about it. But even then, when at the mall, I was not into holding hands. Perhaps it was because I was oh-so-aware of the adults around and the looks they were giving my friends (not me, obviously, the looks did not apply to me). (To be fair, I was not knocking things over or screaming “Don’t touch my boob!” in a tone that obviously implied if it ever “accidentally” happened again, I would ummmm squeal and giggle some more.)

To be accurate as well as fair, I was not that into holding hands at school either, because of the looks teachers gave, or at my house because of my parents. Let’s just say I was a self-conscious middle schooler and an even more self-conscious middle school girlfriend. When all the pressure got to be too much I broke up with him.

At any rate, when my boyfriend (hello! have a good day!) reached for my hand at the mall the other day, I got kind of jumpy and may have ended up approximately three feet away from him. “No holding hands at the mall!” I blurted without thinking about how very very 1990s I would sound.

Even though he’s my boyfriend that does not make certain activities okay in certain public places.

Cheers,

MM

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