12.28.2005

Playing concierge
Sarah's coming! Sarah's coming! Only four more days until Sarah comes! I was compiling a list of options of things the two of us could do during her stay, and I decided to try to entice more friends to come visit by including the list here. Come visit! You know you want to!

+ Lounge in the heated spa, sipping Knock-You-Naked Margaritas.
+ Take Bandit on a walk to the neighborhood coffee shop where we will sit outside by the "lake" drinking chai lattes and mochas, while solving the world's problems.
+ Repeat coffee-drinking and world-solving at the Willow House in the hip Willo District "gay-borhood" (as Pat would say).
+ Go on a rigorous hike up Camelback or Squaw Peak.
+ Take advantage of hip second-hand bookstore Changing Hands' new year's day book sale, wandering the aisles of books and discovering new treasures.
+ Wander around cute Old Town Scottsdale and then...
+ Head out for a night of drinking and dancing at Devil's Martini or...
+ Have dinner at Malee's Thai restaurant and get our auras read (cue Twilight Zone theme).
+ Do the girlie thing and get our nails done at Amsterdam on Martini and Manicures Mondays.
+ Wander around the remaining big holiday light displays: ZooLights or Glendale Glitters.
+ Check out open mic night at Alice Cooper'stown.
+ Go wine-tasting at Red Kangaroo Wines
+ Get cultured at the Phoenix Art Museum (current special exhibits: photography by well-known artists like Dorthea Lange and Richard Avedon; and the history of lingerie)
[EDIT] + There's also a roller skating rink by my house where I've been wanting to relive my elementary school days of roller skate parties. Do you remember those? Oh, so much fun!

12.25.2005

Berry Chridmad
I woke up yesterday to find the annual Christmas cold/sinus infection had performed a sneak attack and captured me in the middle of the night. My esophagus felt like it had shrunk to the size of a Q-tip® shaft, my throat glands had swollen to the size of jawbreakers, and my head felt like a helium balloon was pushing against my sinuses and making my head float up and a little to the right of the rest of my body. At the Christmas Eve service at Dayspring (best church ever), I put the "silent" in "Silent Night" as I mouthed the words to the traditional service-closer. The throat feels much better today, thankyouverymuch.

A very Brooksy Christmas



The pic that accompanied the annual Brooks family Christmas card. Bandit could totally be a Purina dog chow model, doncha think?

Peace, yo
I hope you've had the chance to celebrate the birth of a truly wise man today.

12.14.2005

Kicks I've been on lately, Holiday Christmas version
+ Tuning into 99.9 KEZ, the Holiday Station.
+ Starbucks' Chai Eggnog Latte (Chai-nog!)
+ Yelling at Bandit to get out from under the Christmas tree
+ My mom's raspberry liquour-laced chocolate truffles
+ Holiday party-going with other people's friends
+ Wearing my toasty warm slippers in the car ride to work, then changing into flip flops for the rest of the day
+ Singing Un Flambeau, Jeanette, Isabelle in my head and totally mangling the French lyrics
+ Bailey's ice cream from Häagen-Dazs® (It's only out between now and February. Time to stock up!)
+ Not going to the gym (no time, no time!)
+ Soliciting mailing addresses from (not too) long-lost friends (send me yours if you want some Christmas cheer)

12.03.2005

WARNING: This blog post is rated PG-13
Some All content not appropriate for children under the age of 13

Last night I went with nine other girls (only one of which I'd ever met before) to see the Chippendales from Vegas, who were to put on a show that was "a series of disarmingly sexy yet tasteful routines...the show artistically encapsulates a wide range of female fantasies to provide a sensuous and fast-paced performance that offers the perfect blend of music, hot dance moves, and sensual theatrics." I was a bit disappointed. I expected a better performance from the ultimate of the male stripper career path. Apparently "tasteful" is a relative term. So are "dance moves" and "artistically." These guys were not 'N Sync. Neither were they in sync, though most of their "dance moves" were half-heartedly stolen from 'N Sync and Backstreet Boys music videos, circa 2002. I felt like I was watching a fraternity performance at RAMS. Only one of them could actually move to a beat (he was the Black one, of course, proving once again that white guys can't dance), and two of them had paunches! If the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have to be big-boobed and flat-stomached, I want my Chippendales to be washboard-abbed. I'm talking about gender equality here! There was one routine that had three guys dressed up in white Marine officer outfits and they spent the whole "I Can Be Your Hero, Baby" song walking around the stage and saluting before stripping down to stars and stripes boxer briefs. *Yawn*

The guy who was kinda the leader/MC was so slimy with his Fabio-wannabe long, stringy blond hair. Classic line from the night: "...And I want to thank the bar tenders in the back. They're the ones responsible for keeping you WET all night! [piss-drunk female crowd screams in ecstasy]" I think they count on the women being so wasted that their beer goggles are in full force, and all they can see is a speedo-covered schlong bouncing around on the stage. It was really very pathetic, yet quite amusing, to watch the women (and the one gay man in the front row) clammoring after these guys. Oh, a few of them were pretty good-looking; one guy with glasses was quite attractive. Whewy! And there was one guy whose profile looked so much like George from Desperate Housewives that it nearly sent me over the edge laughing imagining George doing a snap-leg tuxedo strip tease for Bree.

So my verdict on the Chippendales: An amusing way to spend an evening with the girls if you want some laughter, but no need to shell out $24 to see it ever again. The girls I met were fun, though! None of them were the patheticly wasted women falling out of their sequined tops trying to fight their way through the rows to slip $1 in the sweaty Daisy Duke shorts of one of the grease-bombs to massage his greasy bum. They just might be some keepers.


Question of the week:
Who came first: Chip 'N Dale? Or the Chippendales?