nail polish

nail salons would be abb if they provided a special "custom color-matching" service, where their "color consultants" would determine the best nail color for each "client" based on hair color, complexion, wardrobe palette, and that particular evening's activity. these appropriately paid professionals would instill in the client a much-needed confidence, who would leave confident that there is not a more perfect color of polish in existence.

instead, when i asked kim if "marshmallow white" was right for me, she smiled patiently and politely nodded yes, which is also exactly what she did when i asked about "electric orange." needless to say, she was wrong about both (or maybe she misunderstood the question?). now i will have to remove that vile orange paint from my freshly buffed digits to apply a fresh coat of "ballet slipper," my safe, stand-by pale pink. tg for acetone.

boyfriends

"cancer makes us all grumpy and the men in our lives can't make it better."

but life would be abb if boyfriends could cure cancer, if the power of their love was so strong they could will it away.

sobriety, squids, & black cows

this should have been posted yesterday (if we're keeping in time with our once-a-week post ratio suggested by fellow bloggers and friends) but i delayed because i knew last night would reveal a whole bunch of bit-betters...

life is a bit better when you're sober-- or at least it is for our dear friend ns. last night, we celebrated his 2-year anniversary of going sober, which as it probably happens for most, was more accurately the 2-year anniversary of the last time he was pissdrunk, which would actually make today the true 2-year anniversary of his sobriety. congrats, ns! we're all real proud of you!

we were supposed to surprise ns at pho 75, but ab, always seeking out the bit-betters, suggested we throw a hitch in the party plans and sneak over to the lovely nam phuong, which is more than a bit better than pho 75 (though not nearly as fancy or colonial-fusion as its website would like you to believe).

10 of us ate papaya&tofu salad; salt&pepper squids (a bit better than calamari); spring and summer rolls; crispy, pan-fried, cellophane, vermicelli, and egg noodles with eggplant, tofu, chicken, and beef in black bean, fish, and lemongrass sauces; and an enormous vegetarian crepe with unknown ingredients. and we proudly cleared most plates.

jonathan made a toast to ns, who is a bit better than most recovering alcoholics because he will never deny a small sip of your beer, just for the taste-- always the connoisseuer. and it turns out his friends like him a bit better now that he's sober.

a whittled-down party of 5 went back to sh's house for ice cream sodas, where it was determined that the coke float is a bit better than its traditional brother, the root beer float, aka, the black cow. both are genius in their simple construction: breyers vanilla ice cream (be not misled by ice creams by any other name) and the essential bendy straw. the coca-cola (sorry, pepsi drinkers, no substitutes) subverts the whole experience, throwing in an unexpected, unfamiliar, but delicious interplay between the fakeness of the cola syrup and pureness of the vanilla ice cream. divine.

on a scale of 1-5 (1. nofun 2. somefun 3. abitfun 4. alottafun 5. toomuchfun) ns rated his party somewhere between a 3 and a 4. well, maybe a couple of martinis would have tipped the scales.

Eff to the C

It would be more than a bit better if our friends were healthy all the time. Tiny Muse, we love you very much and all that jazz.

m. night in shyamalan armor

dedication:
i promised this post weeks ago to my friends, wesley and joanna. i know it's really late but still an accomplishment because it marks the first substantive (???) post since abb's inception.

preface:
all blogs would be a bit better if they were shorter, with quick, almost subliminal exposure, allowing the viewer mindless absorption and almost immediate freedom with which to view the next blog. and since this particular post pertains to a topic about which i can prattle on and on, i thought it best to divide it into separate sections, the following comprising part i...

part i:
i love m. night shyamalan. he is my cinematic hero. he is my m. night in shining armor (tee hee). one time, i even got to sit next to him and his bee-yoo-tee-full wife at a reading at the library! it was magical. m. night is to me what the phillies are to a 700 level fan. i know he will disappoint me again and again but i refuse to give up hope that, by some miracle or long-unanswered prayer, he will pull through and perform in way only a true fan ever imagined.

he's one of the few true visionaries of our time (along with al gore, salman rushdie, thom yorke, and a few others, i guess). i loved the sixth sense. in fact, shamefully, it may have had something to do with the reason i misled myself into signing a lease for a tiny, crummy, stale apartment without any closets and only 2 windows on a semi-ghetto little street called st. albans. i still get chills thinking about the final scene in unbreakable (genius!). of course i saw signs, and although i didn't really understand it, i stood by him. the village redeemed-- no, no, exalted-- him entirely and still stands among one of my top 5 favorite movies ever, in which bdh delivers the performance of a lifetime, which, by a cruel and ironic twist of fate, turned out to bite m. night who recast her as "story" (a daryl hannah wanna-be) in lady in the water, which just flopped completely, which, coming from my position of adoration, says a lot, though, unlike the other 3 people in the movie theater, wesley and i sat through the entire thing-- now that's a true fan (just like my dad sticks it out at citizens bank park when the phils are down 5 runs and their third-string pitcher is looking worn-out at the bottom of the 7th inning. my dad is a trooper and a believer, which are two of the three inherent and essential qualities of fanaticism; the third is delusional).

so, i guess i'm admitting to the same delusions of grandeur in my perception of m. night, which was fine b/c wesley was on the boat with me. but after seeing the happening last week, wesley finally cast himself ashore to join the rest of the forsakers, which has left me to rig, jib, and hoist all alone.

more later, when i have finally recovered from this harsh and desolate reality (and after someone gives me a tutorial on how to post photos from the internet to make this a little less dry of a read)...

a co-queen's quibble

i know, i know, abb would be a bit better if we posted more than once a week. but i have no idea what kind of readership we'll have-- if any at all. actually, sometimes i don't even think my co-queen, ab, is reading this. which reminds me...

our blog would be a bit better if ab ever got around to posting. as it is, she mostly spends her downtime twiddling away at her fancy desk in her fancy office in front of her computer drooling over advances in communications technology, searching websites that offer personal shopping services, or sending me another irreverent but unbelievably relevant ecard. all this aside, i think we'd all benefit from a debut post (ha! bjork's first two lps!) from ab, so let's encourage her to loosen her tie and conjure her creative spirit so we can finally get some fruit from that old crabapple tree, or something like that.