Clean (sober?)

So I'm cleaning the house today - Rachel's coming to visit with Clementine! Had to clean the hardwood and tile floors which have been swept, but not properly cleaned in a while. First of all let me say that I'm not really a messy person- I clean up after myself, I can't sleep if there's dirty dishes, and 'Martha Stewart's Book of Housekeeping,' which has everything in it from how to store photo albums to a daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly checklist of cleaning duties and how to clean each iota in the house, well, that's my Bible. Sorry, ultra-conservative brother, I have false idols, and thy name be Martha.

That being said, OH MY GOD I never saw a terry cloth floor mop become black so quickly. I don't know what kind of dirt infested dumping ground I've been sloshing through, but I dragged it all in and cleaned the bottom of my shoes on the floor, apparently. Oh wait, I know where I've been - Manhattan. Plus, since I have my windows open year round, as it's 132 DEGREES in here!, I guess Manhattan billows through. I love the city, but it's an effluvial sump, to quote Tom Wolfe (sound smart, ain't I?). And does a mop HAVE to be white? I guess it makes it easy to see the dirt being lifted, but I'm not sure I really want to see what a pig I am. How 'bout a baby blue? Or chartreuse - it would complement my walls.

So while I'm chipping the caked-on mud off my floor, as it would seem, I have the TV on. I leave it on Bravo channel, just so I'm not getting the noise of the lowest of low brow entertainment, soap operas. And today they decide to class it up with reruns of 'Hey Paula,' the reality show where they follow Paula Abdul around so she can prove she's not a mess. But the show's taping happens to coincide with the time she's plugging 'American Idol' on the morning shows, and she is drunker than... well, she's very drunk (I don't know the proper analogy). OH! She's drunker than me at the office Christmas party! They said it was because she was very tired and had simultaneous conversations in her headphones. But I've been tired before, and I have had several people talking at me at once, but I have never giggled and slurred my words and made non-sequiturs as a result. Maybe she's just too special, and I can't wrap my non-special brain around the magnitude of how she can only react. Or maybe it was altitude sickness - like Mars. Or altitude sickness - like high.

But I digress. The point is that she is a horrible, horrible person. She couldn't renovate her house because the place she was going to rent for TWO MONTHS wasn't decorated to her liking (I think she wanted like pink heart pillows and flowy lace and stuff, but she got tasteful instead), she cried and cried and cried because there was a snow storm and the flights were delayed so that she couldn't get her hair stylist AND her publicist to NY in time for her David Letterman appearance (just comb your own fucking hair!), she fractured her hip tripping over her dog (yeah, right - she tripped like 8 times in one episode alone, and there weren't no dog near her then), etc. And then, interspersed throughout this fascinating documentary of Paula Abdul's life, there were cuts of associates and co-workers, all repeating the same chant about what a great person she is, and how hard-working she is, and how she perseveres through all this personal turmoil and all this other spoon fed load of crap. But there is something I did learn that I found interesting: did you know she's white? Or at least her parents are. I guess we can't really be too sure that there wasn't a black mailman or milkman making deliveries nine months before she was born, but it seems she thinks that that's her real dad. That's probably why she's stoned out her gourd most of the time.

And today at the gym, I'm taking a shower, and this other guy in another stall decides to start a conversation. Which is a little odd in and of itself - guys in the shower don't tend to acknowledge other guys in the shower (unless you're in a gym in Chelsea, which is where I was. But this guy was stereotypically straight). But he says this: "I'M SHO'NUFF GLAD I GOTS ME A MEMBERSHIP TO ALL THE BALLY'S GYMS!" And he's screaming this really loud, I mean really really loud, like he's gonna have a sore throat after. And then he looks at me for a response. (pause) I don't know how to respond to to that. What was I supposed to say? So I just nod or something and say, 'hmmm,' and then he says, "BUT THIS BALLY'S DON'T GOT NO SAUNA." Which it doesn't, so again I don't know what to say. But he's still looking at me, so I say, "Well, we just turn the water on really hot and pretend." And then he laughs. Loud. Five minutes. I got out of there pretty quick after that, lest my eardrums implode.

See 'Slumdog Millionaire.' Amazing.

p.s. When you write a blog entry, at the bottom of the screen it gives you the option of labeling the post, and it gives you examples. Here's the text verbatum:

Labels for this post:e.g. scooters, vacation, fall

Now why do you think out of the tens of options they had for examples they chose 'scooters?' My posts aren't labeled - labeled as what?