Elyse finds the essence of true love

Today, while searching Flickr’s Creative Commons to find free, public images that could illustrate an article about taking engagement photos, I stumbled upon this couple. Here are a few of my favorites:

Nothing fishy about this engagement photo.

Aw, it’s the first gutter they woke up in together.

A delivery that is scarier than anthrax.

Classy ladies cross their legs.

Want an open relationship? Reach a compromise

Nothing says true love like motor boating.

Elyse creates Twiggy Tumblr

Real conversation on Facebook:

Friend from college: Hey, how are you? 

Me: Good. Just hanging out with friends, working, writing, nothing too momentous to note, but I'm happy 
FFC: I was just curious. You post a lot of dog pics, but I never see much more of you on my news feed. 
Me: Yeah, I need to stop with the dog postings. Makes me feel like a spinster. 
FFC: Nothing wrong with the dog postings other than the fact you have a weird looking dog 
Me: Haha, it's technically not even mine it's my roommate’s 
FFC: lol, that's even worse. 

It’s true, I do post a lot of pictures of my roommate’s dog — a strange, tiny, Italian greyhound named Twiggy who lives to eat chicken and sniff dirty panties. It’s because I created a Tumblr page for her and annoying the 300 (I’m so lying, it’s more like 10) friends I have on Facebook is my best marketing strategy because I really hate promoting myself. It makes me feel dirty and cheap and I only like to feel that way when I’m grilling and eating American cheese off of a skillet at 4 am after a one-night stand in Bushwick.

 Anyway, enough about me, check out Twiggy’s Tumblr “Chicken & Panties!” Here’s a little taste of what you can see on a weekly basis:

Hello, world. My name is Twiggy. I’m a 7-lb. Italian greyhound who lives in Brooklyn, New York with my very tall, human mother. I enjoy all things chicken, panties, pink, and smelly. I also love riding the subway to my big job in fashion! Licking myself is quite a delight as is sitting on laps. I hate the wind, because a big gust could easily blow me away. My farts smell awful.

Hi, I poop in a box.

Twiggy in the City: Will she ever find love? Probably not. Because she’s a total Samantha.

The cutest butthole you’ll ever see

I will eat your soul.

Does this Snuggie make me look fat?

Princess Twiggy

So, you’re a Libra and a vegetarian? You learn so much from sniffing butt.

Solemnly preparing for Shabbat tomorrow. Oy vey, I love being a Jew.

The species, “the Twiggy,” bares a coat that allows it to blend into its natural habitat, the couch.

Elyse has shoe issues OR (alternative headline: Elyse has ‘Jimny Choo’ issues, har de har har … not really … I’m sleepy)

Hahhaahahah, I can’t afford you, pretty lady.

Every time I go shoe shopping, I end up making a “shoe buddy” in hopes that this total stranger will help me decide between two pairs of shoes. The end result always seems to be that we convince each other that we both really need two new pairs of shoes.

Elyse’s mom schools her on emoticons

c/o alex-alvarez.tumblr.com

Me in an email to my mom: Things are getting better! :P
Mom: “:P” ? That’s a new one.
Me: That's a face with the tongue sticking out.
Mom: That’s what I thought. The Miley.

Elyse doesn’t understand why Rosa Parks needs to have pushed-up cleavage

I recently saw David Trumble’s “Woman You Should Know,” an art project that depicts female role models like Hillary Clinton, Rosa Parks, and Anne Frank as Disney princesses. The renditions were inspired by Disney taking its most un-princessy of its princess stock, Merida in “Brave,” and re purposing her into a sexy Halloween costume version of herself. Thus, taking away the only alternative princess company has ever offered little girls (which isn’t necessarily true, Pocahontas, anyone?).

Personally, my gut reaction was nausea. I like that he’s calling Disney out for its BS, but he’s doing it at the cost of using women who are way more significant than his message to make a fairly obvious point. And essentially, while doing it, he’s stripping these women of their power.

An image of Gloria Steinem and reading a phrase like “This space is intentionally left blank” on a piece of paper simply makes me chuckle. It doesn’t provoke deep thought of shift my world views.

 I remember my dad driving me to preschool every day as a kid, and every day I would ask him to tell me a story.

“About a princess,” I would demand. “Who has blonde hair, blue eyes, and talks to horses.”

Thing was, I wasn’t a princess kind of girl. I enjoyed making weird dolphin noises, pulling the heads off of all my Barbies, and hunting garden snakes with my next-door neighbor, Adam.

Yet, I couldn’t escape the spell cast on me by watching “Sleeping Beauty” about three dozen times.

And I’m not sure if it was a result of dating boys that viewed me as an accomplishment, being denied promotions as an adult, or just waiting in way too many hour-long lines at Disney World that severed my devotion to Aurora (who, by the way, is the most anti-feminist princess of the lot – she makes none of her own decisions, passively sleeps for most of the movie, and needs to be saved by a man) but it eventually happened. My penchant for princesses faded and I became my own person; a woman, who frankly, thinks princesses suck.

And I’m pretty sure I’m not the first woman who has come to this conclusion without the help of silly visual aids.

I do appreciate that this artist is trying to make a statement about the ridiculousness of taking a powerful woman and having to gloss her over to make her more appealing to society, but is an image of Anne Frank in a glittery gown really doing that? Is it fair to call something like that “art?”

One thing I do know for certain is that last thing Anne Frank would have wanted to be when hiding from Nazis was sparkly.

Elyse finishes someone else’s rhyme

My rendition delivered in Ludacris flow.

I’ve been feeling kind of easy-droppy lately and stopped plugging my ear holes with ear buds during my walks to and from work. I’ve overheard a few nuggets of funny recently and today I was intrigued by a kid free styling to himself as he passed me on the street:

 Democrat, nope. I sell dope.

Then he was gone. Yet much like a fart in the wind, the essence of the fleeting moment that was him clung to me. All I could think was – what could the next few lines possibly be?

 I thought for a moment and then the words came to me:

I’m conservative, playa’. G-O-P! All my profits belong to me.

That had to be it, right?

Elyse’s blindness gets her bloody

Point Break Live!

Due to my love for all things Gary Busey (see monkey above), I went to see “Point Break Live!” a theatrical parody of the epic 1991 surfer thriller, “Point Break,” in which he co-stars as a FBI agent. It was being performed at Littlefield, a small but well-stocked (with booze, that is) venue in Gowanus, a few blocks from my apartment. So my strange-event-loving friend and I decided to get there early, so that my blind ass could have the pick of the theater in regards to plastic, folding seats. I chose the aisle seats in the front row and we patiently waited for the show to begin, three feet from the stage. I thought that I totally scored.

Once the show started, it began with a bang to the brain, being that a girl got up on stage and started screeching at the audience through a bullhorn. She screamed through the mouthpiece like she didn’t understand that her voice would be amplified and that we were in a relatively small venue (it could seat about 50, though there were 100 people there). After I regained a little bit of my hearing, it seemed as if she was playing the role of casting director, or director, or something that involved rupturing eardrums and wearing tiny shorts and a loose fitting tank top that revealed her mid-drift. She made the throaty announcement that Keanu Reeves did not show up to casting that day and they needed a member of the audience to play Johnny Utah, the ex-football star turned FBI agent turned undercover surfer bank robber. A gaggle of graduates from the Keanu Reeves School of Acting jumped on stage, emptied their minds, and delivered lines like “You gonna jump or jerk off?” with all the head-jerky, monotone, male bimbo swagger they could muster. # Selection of Johnny Utah was based on applause and the Keanu replacement that was chosen for my show ended up being a cute meaty guy who barely fit into the wet suit the cast made him sport the entire show. Beefy had won the coveted role not because of his Keanu Reeves impersonation, but because his large group of friends that had most likely coaxed him on stage were really loud.

The show began and the cast literally acted out the whole movie, scene by scene, with the aid of really bad bleach blonde synthetic wigs and surf boards. When the characters would surf, cast members would run around the audience squirting people with Super Soakers for pure surfing authenticity. Thankfully they provided the audience with hooded ponchos that covered everything but your shoes.

Fake Keanu in his awkward shyness was entertaining enough, especially during the skydiving scene where the cast forced him into a harness so he could be hung from the rafters like he was actually free-falling and all the poor guy could mutter was “Don’t make me do this, I have a weight problem,” over and over again. But the true stars of the show were – of course – the actor who played Gary Busey who did a flawless impersonation and a tiny girl who played Reeves’ stunt double.

The stunt double whose function was showing fake Keanu cue cards with his lines on it throughout the performance and then jumping in during action scenes to kung-fu battle shirtless surfers in plastic US President masks was adorably funny.

Then there was the scene where everyone dies at the end in a bloody shoot out and the cast felt it necessary to pop a ton of balloons filled with fake blood and splatter is all over the audience. Sure, we were wearing ponchos, but we were also wearing shoes and hair. I didn’t have the hood of my poncho up, thinking the worse I would get was sprayed with some water, and had corn syrup in my hair for days.

And since I was sitting in the front, my friend and I got it bad.

I apologized to my roommate for being blind after the show was over, and we immediately went home. I stayed in on a Friday night when I originally had intentions of going out. Much like a lady’s holiday, the blood put a damper on our nights.

So, if you plan to go to this show, don’t be blind, and sit far back. And if you plan on being Keanu, don’t have a weight problem.