The Slovenly One

The Black One

The Sort of Funky Substitute for The Black One Because, Come On…

The Chosen One

The One that Tweenage Girls Are Likely To Ignore, But Has Excellent Drug Connections

The Heteroflexible One

The Bow-legged One

The Curmudgeony One

The One Least Likely to Go Into AOL Chat Rooms in Search of Other Japanese Nose Fetish Porn Appreciators or So One Would Think After First Meeting Him

The One with Adult-Onset Asthma

[ALLIE is at her desk; drinking coffee with a dash of Almond Breeze – Original, Sweetened. Carton can be in frame, in the event of Almond Breeze sponsorship. NICK crosses her door.]

ALLIE
Nick, wait — did you know Polyface[FN1] does tours now?

NICK
(returning to her doorway) Really?

ALLIE
Yeah, like, apparently for fifteen bucks, Joel Salatin[FN2] takes you around the farm on a hayride and shows you everything.

NICK
A hayride? What? (chuckles) That’s awesome.

ALLIE
I know, right? There’s like two every month. Wanna go?

NICK
Yeah, definitely. I’ll be back from San Francisco in August, so–

ALLIE
(reading from website) August 18. Saturday, ten til noon.

NICK
Do it!

ALLIE
I’m doing it. Literally, buying them right now.

NICK
Oh man, a hayride?

ALLIE
I know! With Joel? And like, all the animals?

NICK
Ok, so, we’ll rent a car, and – one sec (exits to his room; sits down at computer; ALLIE enters her credit card number into PayPal[FN3]) So, we’d have to leave at 6:30, because well – just to be safe.

ALLIE
I’ll do it. I don’t care.

NICK
I mean it’ll be a really pretty drive too.

ALLIE
Let’s just make a weekend of it.

NICK
Yeah, we can camp on the way!

ALLIE
YES!

NICK
We’ll split it up, and drive like 2 hours Friday; camp, s’mores; then go in the morning.

ALLIE
S’mores!

NICK
Oh man… We’re gonna come back with so much stuff.

ALLIE
I know! I – I might even eat meat there.

NICK
You should. That’d be the place to do it.

ALLIE
Yeah, exactly. I would totally eat his meat.

NICK
Such a sustainable model.

ALLIE
Totally.

(two minutes later)

NICK
(from his bedroom) I’m so excited.

ALLIE
(from her bedroom) Oh my god, me too!

NICK
The city’s gonna be so gross in August.

ALLIE
I wish we were going next weekend.

(fifteen minutes later)

ALLIE
(rushing to the kitchen) Oh fuck, I forgot I had apples and parsnips in the oven.[FN4] Too much excitement!
(beat — sounds of oven opening, metallic clanging) Nick? Can I borrow your organic cinnamon?

END SCENE

1. Polyface Farms: widely though to be the foremost model of a  sustainable agriculture system in the country; food hippie Mecca; apparently gives hayrides.

2. Joel Salatin: a sustainable agriculture rock god, if that is even a thing.

3. From memory too! A dangerous sequence of numbers to learn for the erstwhile[FN5] impulse buyer.

4. Potatoes and parsnips, roasted at 375 with salt and olive oil, tossed with baked Fuji apple sprinkled with cinnamon.

5. I just learned that “erstwhile” means “former,” and that’s not actually what I meant. I just liked the sound of the word.

For that twee-ish girl on Tumblr who you have a major crush on, but you secretly wish she’d stop reblogging so much Doctor Who stuff because, ugh, it just has so many seasons and if you were really going to commit to being with this girl, you should probably just suck it up and watch them all, but I mean, who has time for that these days?:

“A Pretty Girl Is Like…” – The Magnetic Fields
“This Love (Will Be Your Downfall)” – Ellie Goulding
“The Nicest Thing” – Kate Nash
“Digital Get Down” – N*SYNC
“Suspended from Class” – Camera Obscura
“Undone (Sweater Song)” – Weezer

For fuckbuddies anywhere between 3 to 7 on the “Feelings” scale:

“A Little Bit of Feel Good” – Jamie Lidell
“Tightrope” – Janelle Monae
“Kanske är Jag Kär I Dig” – Jens Lekman
“Spend the Night” – Deer Tick
“Highway to the Danger Zone” – Kenny Loggins
“The Party’s Crashing Us Now” – Of Montreal

For that guy you slept with after a few dates and told your friends was “really really cool” until he didn’t text you back, so you decided that he had probably died in some weird accident until you passed him on the street a month later and he pretended not to see you:

“Somebody That I Used To Know” – Gotye feat. Kimbra
“Somebody That I Used To Know” – Pentatonix (Gotye cover)
“Somebody That I Used To Know” – Ingrid Michaelson (Gotye cover)
“Somebody That I Used To Know” – All those people playing one guitar
“Somebody That I Used To Know” – That one hip elementary school chorus
“Dancing Queen” – ABBA

While at the gym this morning (Yes, that’s actually a thing I do) I flipped past Fox News before settling on MTV’s “I Used to Be Fat” (Okay, yes– I do go to one of those gyms that have TV’s on all the cardio machines. It’s totally a worthwhile investment because I don’t get cable anymore. Stop interrupting me, internet-reader-I-am-imagining).

Anyway, Fox News told me one of my favorite things to hear: Women aren’t funny, and now there are studies to prove it. STUDIES!

What kind of studies? The kind where they make people fill in blank New Yorker cartoons, and then have other people rate how funny they are without knowing the writer’s gender. That kind of study. In the end, men outperformed women by a margin of  .11.

If you know me IRL (In Real Life) or even IMFIL (In My Fake Internet Life), you’ll know that reconceptualizing this “women aren’t funny” thing is sort of my First Lady pet project — much like Laura Bush and literacy, or Michelle Obama and showing up at schools and dancing. I firmly believe that there’s nothing inherent in women that gives us some sort of humor handicap. If anything, it’s much more to do with how girls are socialized to be kind and empathetic, which can give us qualms about the kind of rude and aggressive attitude that comedy requires. This kind of study, I would find interesting. This kind of study, as it were, would not involve filling in blank New Yorker cartoons because, let’s be honest, no one thinks they’re funny anyway.

If you’d like, you can now rebut my argument with, “But what about [girl I know who is painfully unfunny]?” to which I will respond with “Allow me to introduce to nearly all the men I go to school with” or alternatively “Please meet the last several guys I’ve casually dated who couldn’t keep up.”

I realize this is a strange issue to get fired up about, (like “Really? Mitt Romney wants to essentially abolish the pill, and THIS is your feminist issue?” Ugh, shut up, imaginary-reader. Stop being so aware of the current issues.) but that’s sort of the point of a First Lady pet project, right?

And beyond that, if I ever start using this as a platform to talk about real issues, I’m going to make myself slowly step away from the internet. I’m no Ted Danson. I need to earn my right to public advocacy by starring in my own long-running sitcom, and don’t worry, I totally will.

I’ve realized that I know SO many hilarious people.

It makes me want to sit around and be hilarious with them all day.

And get paid for it.

Meagerly.

But it would still be amazing.

Bonus website content (I have to distinguish this from my Tumblr somehow, right?): If I had a research assistant, I would have s/him look up something Tina Fey said that I remember reading in an interview or her book or something (being my research assistant would clearly be a terrible task).  Anyway, she said something to the effect of: I’m at my happiest anywhere between 2 seconds and 23 hours after telling a successful joke. Reading that was one of 872 moments where I was convinced that she is my biological mother and/or soul sister.

It sounds egocentric to frame it this way: “There’s nothing better than someone else thinking you’re funny,” so I’ll frame it this way instead: “There’s nothing better than making other people laugh.”

To be honest, creating this website was a way for my current-boring-law-school-self to acknowledge that there’ s the possibility of a future-exciting-professional-funny-person-self existing. Boring-law-school me has no need for a website (or really, boring-law-school-me should be staying far away from the internet. A potential employer might GOOGLE me!), but future-funny-person me wanted to have it set up, just in case.

Originally performed by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton

Memorably re-appropriated by Mya

Masterfully covered by Michael Scott & Jim Halpert, among others

P.S: I am fully aware of the irony that I’m singing both parts of a love duet. To add to it, in fact, I think I’ll dance to this song at my wedding reception after I marry myself (which will occur not because I’m self-obsessed, but because literally no one else will marry me.)

ENJOY!

By which I mean, “Look how cool the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is!”