Blame CANADAAAAA

So after getting reprimanded via bbm this morning by a dear friend/mouthy Canadian about my lack of blog sauce this past month, I decided to be uncharacteristically obedient and revisit the nonsense that is this website. Calling it a website from now on, not a blog. Being that I am one of the ten tallest women in the country now (according to my new coworkers who insist that I stand up and “SHOW THEM!” upon introductions to who I presume are important *cough, short* people within the entertainment industry), I’m practically famous and therefore deserving of a website…again, not a blog. Jennifer, if you are reading this, I love you and I’m super stoked that you pointed out that I have graduated to the top ten…of anything… in my life. Ever.

So, mouthy Canadians are really bossy and I’ve been put on the spot here.** I could write about tired current events and take a juicy pick from the swine flu, Balloon Boy or how Twitter is going to be the next President (@cassysalyer – I tweet sometimes). None of this really feist-i-fies me though, so I will just be self absorbed and write about me…that’s why you’re all here, right? Because you like reading my diary?

Creeps.

To update you all on the parking pig from my last blog that I wrote centuries ago, I submitted the note to www.passiveaggressivenotes.com in hopes that whoever he/she/it is has his/her/its five minutes of fame courtesy of yours truly and will thank me someday…I always wanted to be published. Maybe I should take up writing overly aggressive anonymous letters to people. Since then, miraculously, we have only received one windshield love letter, this time on my car (oops) and much less AGGRESSIVE!!!! than the last, leading me to believe it was left by a different person and of course to the conclusion that either we really are hogging parking spaces with our massive vehicles or all of our neighbors are psychos who carry notepads. I vote for the latter. I was just happy that the note wasn’t another parking ticket that I seem to be collecting for parking on my own street and forgetting to put my pass on my rear-view mirror…each of those bad boys is $61 and doubles if you pay them late. Living up here is going to do wonders for my scatter-brainedness and purposeful procrastination in opening mail that appears to have come from money-collecting devils. Which leads me nicely into my next paragraph – learned how to do that in fifth grade. See below.

A couple weeks ago, I took it upon myself to demonstrate to all of Beverly Hills exactly what NOT to do while driving. One, definitely don’t ever run red lights! Yeah…that must not have been on my pass-by-one-point written driving test that I had to re-take last year to get a valid license in this blasted state. Two, don’t run red lights on city blocks that have huge posted signs that say “PHOTO ENFORCED.” My name is Cassy and I like to flirt with photo enforcement. Just a little bit, just the tip. But when the tip ends up halfway in the intersection .85 seconds after the light tells you NO, you have one of two choices; you can either back up and pretend like nothing happened or you can go all the way through and hope you get away with it. I didn’t get away with it. What I did get was some personalized unscented mail from the Beverly Hills PD asking me nicely for $445 and to take traffic school courses that cost something in the neighborhood of $65. There go my 2009 Fryes. As if. What the fock is the fine for people who leave mean notes on people’s cars or actually, intentionally, consciously, purposely perform asstastic maneuvers when behind the wheel? This is LA…I have seen FAR WORSE. I have actually honked at people up here. I am so not a honker. Oh, I forgot rule #3. When the state changes the law to read that one cannot/should not/ but probably still will use handheld mobile devices while operating a moving vehicle, do not exercise the “but probably still will” part…while running PHOTO ENFORCED red lights. In Beverly Hills.

In defense of my stupidity and in desperate support of my bank account, just curious…have any of you ever driven west at 5:30 pm? Any shot in hell I can fight this? I know our golden hour here in California is totally neat and radical and perfect for seduction purposes and all that, but I can’t see anything on my drive home. I even snapped some pictures through my windshield as evidence (while driving). But seriously, I hunch over my steering wheel squinting to see beneath my visor going 20 MPH in a car that I most certainly should be shot for driving in LA. Isn’t the sun at fault here?

Unfortunately at the end of the day, none of this matters…judges don’t like people who are friends with mouthy Canadians.

**Taking requests for next blog.

Dear Asshole

Dear Asshole,
Did someone pee on your waffle yesterday morning? How did you rationalize this in your head? Did you break a nail writing it? Being an asshole comes as easy to you as breathing and picking your nose on the 405. You DEFINITELY pick your nose on the 405, don't you? And probably at the dinner table on a first date. I was seriously half hoping my new neighbors would be vampires who tell scary stories about how they torment assholes with parking issues. But no...my neighbors are the assholes with parking issues. Street parking...figure it out. And PIG? I will SLAP you. Hard. I mean holy shit, I am seriously contemplating taking this note to a shrink that can help me better understand how someone is so mentally outraged by...wait for it...a parking space...to leave a note like that. I dig that you write in all caps though -- I have always wanted to try that. But that's not my point...my point is you are an asshole. Are you one of those people who keys cars that are bigger than yours in shopping mall parking lots? Do you leave them notes? Like..."HEY JERKWAD! Your tire is touching the painted line in my space. I'm calling my cool friend Britney Spears at the FBI and reporting you to immigration." Do you carry a yellow legal pad with you at all times? I hope so. I wouldn't want you to have to go out of your way to find some paper to write asshole notes on because clearly the world is a better place so long as you avoid inconveniencing yourself in any way -- like, for instance, walking more than 10 steps from your car to your front door. Hey did you know that in Santa Monica street parking sucks? Maybe go leave a letter on the mayor's doorstep saying "HEY MR. MAYOR PIG!* I need reserved parking wherever I go because I'm an ASSHOLE." Make sure you say "Mr." when addressing the mayor...I'm sure you don't want to offend anyone. I don't know you...but I certainly don't ever want to. I wasn't kidding. I'll slap you. If you ever leave another note on my boyfriend's car...if I so much as hear a piece of paper being ripped from a notepad in the stillness of the night, I will have Officer Sanchez put you in the electric chair. He will take my side because I guarantee I'm immeasurably hotter than you.

Love,
Cassy

*That was a hypothetical quote...I was not calling the mayor a P*g. Because that would make me an asshole.

Silence is Golden

I had to demo how to hit slides yesterday in front of 40 giggly girls with really high expectations. My oversized self hasn’t left the ground in at least 3 months – and the last time I jumped (3 months ago) was the first time then that I had jumped in probably 3 months. You see a pattern developing, I imagine. I think I pulled an ab. And crushed the high hopes of those innocent young campers while I was at it. I swear to heaven I used to be able to do it…really.


Funny how things change.


SPEAKING OF CHANGE…the reason I took a sabbatical from my pet blog was to change. I moved from beautiful Laguna Beach to Santa Monica to start my new job (a job I have wanted since back when I could hit slides without pulling an ab). I have yet to decide if I think it’s beautiful up here. And should I find Santa Monica and LA to be beautiful, it will be in a weird artsy way that finds graffiti to be thought provoking and car horns to be melodic.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that although I have been in LA for 2 weeks now, I still have not unpacked much of anything that hasn’t been worn in the past two weeks. Tonight. Promise. But then again, tonight is the season premier of Gossip Girl. XoXo. I haven’t followed Gossip Girl religiously since I lived in Greece and streamed each episode on my computer while eating obscene amounts of stove popped popcorn in an attempt to feel less on-another-continent. I may give it a go tonight and see if the show has any redeeming entertainment value that doesn’t revolve around petty bullshit…I doubt it, so I will probably just stick to The Vampire Diaries.

I so hope vampires really do exist. If they do, I bet you they live in Santa Monica. As fate would have it, they’re probably my new neighbors. Maybe I’ll bake a pie tonight.

SPEAKING OF VAMPIRES…New Moon comes out November 20th (Googled it, I swear – AND made Google $4, for those of you who pay attention). I hope they made it a bit darker and a little less Disney than Twilight. That would make it so much easier to defend to my friends that hold me on a pedestal for being a badass. Dakota Fanning is in this one though, so I’m not holding my breath...although she does sport red eyeballs in New Moon. Last I saw Dakota Fanning was in The Secret Life of Bees and when she kissed a boy in the movie I felt this really weird cognitive dissonance like she was way too young to be locking lips with anything besides the back of her own hand wrapped around an imaginary boyfriend tree. It’s kind of like watching ET and then having to deal with the fact that little Drew Barrymore started smoking cigs at 9. Or like watching me play volleyball in 2003 and six years later having to cope with the fact that spandex don’t make your butt jiggle less (trying to bring this full circle..???) Not that Dakota smokes or has a jiggly ass but…anyway…I hope she at least like kills someone in this movie.

Anyone have any good pie recipes?

Meet Me at the Moxie

There’s always an imposing sense of nostalgia this time of year when school is about to start. I always loved going back to school and though the countdown to summer usually began about two weeks later, it was always exciting. Over the years, brand new Lisa Frank cardboard pencil boxes became new Doc Martens that weighed 10 pounds each, which became a new hot pink Jansport backpack (until you realized every other girl in school had the same one), which became a plane ticket back to the east coast, which became another brand new pair of Nike shoes and stark white kneepads that didn’t smell like someone had died in them, which became your last opportunity to bring your freshman year 2.5 GPA up two points even if you got a 4.0 on the semester and bought shots of Patron for your professor every Monday at lunch.

College students across the country know exactly what I’m talking about. Every class started out with its own designated spiral notebook, filled with blank pages and the very best of intentions. Come December you had either misplaced said notebooks, transformed them into coasters for pitchers of Natty Light, filled them with to-do lists that really only served the purpose of appearing organized to God or sold them to naïve freshmen who actually believed you had been to class more than twice since August.

Spring syllabus week was my favorite. The parties were raging and assuming we didn’t shit ourselves on national TV in the last match of the fall season, we usually had a couple weeks to be normal students. It also helped that it was 9 degrees outside on a warm day and you could blame newly added holiday/beer girth on the fact that you were wearing three pairs of sweatpants. Sometimes if you hadn’t done laundry since first semester you could get away with wearing sweats that belonged to someone on the men’s wrestling or soccer teams without too much outside inquisition. Sometimes.

Fall was a slightly different story, which is the main reason I even thought of writing about this. My heart goes out right now to the girls in South Gym who are no doubt sweating their balls off, covered in blood and getting kicked in the face by volleyballs. Preseason. The beauty and beast of Penn State volleyball.

The third day of my freshman preseason I contemplated quitting and hitch-hiking back to Colorado with all my beautiful, empty notebooks. It’s funny now, especially considering that I would give anything to be in South Gym, even on Tuesdays (defense day…yeah girls, I said it), but that day…that day it was NOT funny. Coach and I sat on the back of an empty truck that transported the football team’s dirty laundry to and from their dirty bodies and he convinced me that I should probably just stop being a baby. He was smoking a cigar and I was almost in tears. Not his first rodeo. To make matters worse, he had ordered spandex with a SEVEN inch inseam that ran a couple sizes small and the leg seams were cutting off my circulation. I had four butt cheeks. Luckily some of the quadzilla seniors who had been leg-pressing army tanks already for three years eventually donated some used lycra to the Cassy’s Ass is BIG Foundation.

It didn’t take long for me to snap out of my preseason crisis. Right about the time I accepted that I wasn’t going to be able to feel my legs for a few weeks and that really…seriously…in all seriousness…there was a good chance I wouldn’t LITERALLY die, I sacked up and made friends with my new life. The best part about preseason - other than the end of it – is this unexpected crossroads in the middle where you lose your mind. Everything is funny…really funny. You have been with the same group of people non-stop for however many days and in that time you have experienced the full gamut of human emotion. It has poured rain. It has been 100 degrees with 7,000% humidity. Coach has made you puke and he has made you laugh. You have had the worst practice of your life and followed it with the best. You have choked on Gatorade and joked about playing power hour with Pedialyte at night. You actually have played power hour with Pedialyte…multiple times. You have slept on the locker room floor using socks as a pillow. You have listened to the previous year’s warm-up tape a total of 918 times and changed the lyrics of every song to fit the mood of the day. Every person on the team has acquired at least two solid and potentially lifelong nicknames. You have stood alone in the middle of main gym at Rec Hall and felt blessed. You have tried every possible ice cream + topping combination at the dining hall. You have iced every part of your body except your eyeballs. You have asked yourself if it was over yet and at some point, you start hoping it never ends.

Now I’m sitting in an office on the other side of the country in California…detached. It’s funny to think about the past and know that someone else is living it at the very same time you miss it. Special. There’s a bunch of girls laughing over dinner in a Penn State dining hall right now with racing minds, sore bodies and a lot to look forward to. Like tonight’s practice…probably the third of the day. And then bed. And then tomorrow…and that’s how it goes, one day at a time.

Good luck this season girls…don’t forget to go for every ball with two hands. And try to remember…everything.

Someone sent me a picture message and all I got was this lousy blog.

I got a picture message on my Blackberry today. Now for some unbeknownst (I like that word, don’t think I have ever used it) reason, whether it’s simply my technological inadequacy or my phone’s piece of shit-ness…I can’t view picture mail on my phone. So I have to go to the Verizon website to check the message and blah blah blah. Now this was not that big of a deal several months ago, back when having a Blackberry was considered socially “neat”…and since I only get picture mail maybe once every 7 weeks, I don’t have to go through the pains of this process that often. So I go to the website -- which has completely transformed each of the last two times I have used it -- and I am directed to a login landing page where I seemingly have to disclose my phone number, cup size, SSN, AmEx + expiration, date of last period and current Facebook status. Then I am told that a PIN number has been texted to my phone. That’s cool…sounds official…I’m important. So I wait…

When the PIN number finally comes through to my inbox, I can almost hear Verizon getting 10 cents richer. Tricky monkeys. The cryptic message includes details about how to purchase something for $9.99 a month, which I gracefully dodge…and a PIN number. (I just noticed that I have said PIN NUMBER every time I mention the…PIN NUMBER…and I fear that the N in PIN stands for number, so I am being redundant. Sorry.) Anyway, I enter the PIN NUMBER and at this point I have almost completely forgotten that I even have a picture message. At this point, I am just a Verizon puppet. Verizon: 1. Cassy: 0. The next page looks like it was designed by a third grader whose dad’s ex-girlfriend’s brother in law is a web designer who presented on career day (breath) and it says:

Activation success…if your browser doesn’t automatically redirect, click here.

Clearly it doesn’t redirect…why would it? That would be too easy.

So then after all that, I get another text message…on my phone – because clearly parallel universes communicate with one another and aliens not only exist but have cocktails every Friday with Santa Claus -- that says my handset does not support downloadable content. AWESOME assholes.

Had I even possessed enough patience to continue on with this mystery picture hunt, I probably would have ended up on a page with a laughing black skull/crossbones that said: “Sorry loser, your internet connection has gone fishing. We invite you to start over as soon as you get a new credit card number and a bigger cup size.”

So here I am…still wondering what the picture was and who sent it. With my luck, it was a message from God that includes hints to the winning lottery numbers for the next 87 years. No big whoop.

(If you sent me a picture today, can you maybe email me or poke me on Facebook or call my office line that I don’t answer or send a scanned version overnight via FedEx - but not through their website…don’t go there.)

All I am left with is the warming comfort that someone out there, over the rainbow, saw something that they wanted to share with me. Someone who actually has a camera phone…let’s not go there either. Thanks, whoever you are. I am truly touched.

The internet is taking over the world. Exhibit A: BLOGSPOT. These days you can do just about anything online…but first you have to jump through hoops and snort shards of glass. You can cyber-wink at strangers like a creep, you can chat with people in your underwear, you can shop with other people’s money, you can get a pedicure or even pet a tiger…radical stuff, the internet.

Google, for example, gets something like $4 in advertising revenue for every time you enter a search. FOUR DOLLARS. I search on Google like 9,876 times a day. For STUPID shit. Do I get a commission check? No. Makes me want to retire and pursue a career as a professional Googler. Someday, the richest man in the world is going to have that as a title…a Googler…a titty tickler…a wanker. And he will probably have a picture phone.

So, I guess the moral of my story is…don’t do drugs.

And whoever sent the picture, again, thank you.

No, I will NOT do my own laundry...

Last week I discovered Fluff and Fold laundry services. I can see my mom shaking her head in disappointment now. This could turn out to be a major defining moment in my life as it is quite possible (see also: probable) that I will never do my own laundry again. Ever. And don’t kid yourself – it’s not like I have done much of it to date anyway. I’m still psychologically stunned by the fact that I dumped six loads of laundry into the hands of an innocent, unexpecting fluff n’ folder to return two short hours later post-bronzing session at the beach to swipe my overly-used debit card for just over $28 in exchange for several neatly stacked, saran-wrapped piles of my clothing.

Seriously though, you should have seen how it was all folded. It would have taken me 18 hours minimum to fold one t-shirt like that and even then there’d only be a 50/50 chance that I turned it right side out first. I was afraid to break the seal on the plastic wrapping for fear of losing the immaculate shape and organization of it all. Pants all together, t-shirts, shorts, tank tops…all of it bunched in perfect little groups. And clean! I don’t remember the last time I had clean laundry that was folded…or folded laundry that was clean. It did take me a few minutes to find my “delicates” though, which were all modestly hidden in the middle of the tank top pile. The only thing they didn’t do was color-code everything, which is probably best seeing how I have spent a good percentage of my life making fun of my sister for having a color-coded closet. Now that I think about it…I was most likely just jealous that her clothes somehow made their way onto hangers at all. And she would always know if I had "borrowed" something because I had the audacity to return (dirty, duh) black tops to the middle of the white section, undoubtedly making her eyes bleed. Freak. (Just kidding Linds…kinda.)

I’m officially rebelling against the idea of domesticity. I can’t do it. Or won’t. Or don’t want to…or whatever. Please note that I still have not put said laundry away and that, just as expected, the piles erupted immediately upon breaking the seal. My room is like the Natural Museum of Thrifty Shit. It’s a massive collection of strewn crap in its natural state of un-elegance…in my mind, the way it belongs. I wouldn’t be able to find anything if I were organized, I’m sure of it. And I have tried turning over a new leaf, believe you me…I have spent as much money on unused laundry baskets as I have on the empty journals I mentioned in my first post. It’s embarrassing.

I think it’s important to point out that I haven’t had the luxury of laundry machines in my home since college, and even then I managed to turn my living space into a piercing cry for help. I did have a laundry…thing…while playing volleyball in Greece a couple years ago, though I’m not sure I ever knew how to use it correctly. There were like 15 different numbered slots for soap, softener, champagne…things of that sort, and I generally just picked at random which to use. There was a plastic tube connected to the side of the machine that you were supposed to place in the toilet – conveniently located next to the washer – to drain. But my machine, as fate would have it, used to start shaking so violently at times that the tube would displace itself and drain all over the bathroom and hallway…if it drained at all. Sometimes I would have sopping wet clothes hanging outside to dry in the dusty Athenian air for days and despite my admirable intentions using fabric softener (I think), my clothes would…harden…still stained and often come out in totally different colors altogether. There is nothing quite like wearing cardboard spandex. Nothing.

Me and laundry go together like me and cooking…a promised future tale that involves me, wine and very little cooking. As far my darks and whites go, for now I think it best that I take full advantage of my newfound friendly laundry service and save my quarters and sanity for more realistic investments…like gumball machines.

".............................."

I have always been fascinated with blogs...much like I was once fascinated with journals. Blank pages just waiting to be filled with brilliant, interesting, memorable, funny, sad...stuff. I have a beautiful collection of journals and I was in love with each of them for about five hours before feeling like I had absolutely nothing to say that was worth permanently recording on paper.

After careful selection of which color pen I wanted to use, whether or not I wanted to write in print or cursive or all capital letters like my dad did...I would try to begin writing on the first page of an overwhelmingly empty journal. I would write until I messed up or misspelled a word or became disenchanted with the topic...and I would tear it out.

Page two.

Maybe I'd switch to writing in cursive so it would look prettier, but then realize that my cursive was only pretty in fifth grade when I had a dotted guide down the middle of each line.

Page three.

Then I'd have nothing brilliant left to say and I would set aside my empty masterpiece for a later time.

I'm sad to say I never filled a journal cover to cover...hell, cover to page five. I never made something so untouchable and invaluable that someone generations from now could read and feel like they knew me.

I recently went home to Colorado and spent an entire day looking at pictures and things I wrote in grade school, from short stories and poems to letters or "journals" that were nothing more than recycled notebook paper bound with yarn. Ugly things. Terrible spelling written in crayon or colored pencils with certain places scribbled over. I never kept those...I'm so thankful my mom did. To read what I wrote when writing wasn't about being brilliant or clean or even sensible finally gave me the BALLS to start something I have been wanting to for so long. Luckily with blogs, I have neat "handwriting" and there's always the backspace button...just in case.

Life is beautifully imperfect and should be remembered that way.

So here's to the brilliant, interesting, memorable, funny, sad...stuff that I didn't know how to bring to life with words in ways that were as special as the stories themselves. Here's to imperfection...