Don't do it.

For anyone planning on proposing to their sweetheart, may I make a teensy suggestion:

Please don't go to a nice restaurant and have some poor server write "Will You Marry Me?" in chocolate icing. You will be the laughing stock of the entire restaurant staff. They will discuss, during smoke breaks and in the dry storage, nooks, and the walk-in refrigerator, how horribly tacky table eight is for popping the question on a freaking chocolate mousse plate.

Bad Kissing

The worst kiss I’ve had was with the most attractive boy I’ve ever kissed. He was tall with a solid build, luxurious brown hair and dark blue eyes. He looked like a young Tom Cruise but hotter and I would come to find out during our date that he lived in new York City for a few years and worked as a model. The whole package was impressive and I was excited about the prospects until his tongue lolled out of his mouth and licked my face by way of introduction.

We were driving to a restaurant for dinner and we were paused at a stop sign. He leaned over the small console dividing the truck’s bench seat in half and gazed at me with his blue eyes. At that moment, with the light from the setting sun filling the cab and framing the former model, the image of the Beast’s face after his transformation back to human form in the Disney movie popped into my head.

“Would it be okay if I kissed you?” he asked as we sat at a stop sign. “Wow,” I thought. Nobody had ever asked for my permission before.
“Sure,” I said.

After a sopping pink sponge scrubbed the inside of my mouth clean in three seconds flat, I realized that I should have said no. I thanked the Lord that we were only temporarily stopped instead of parked on Lover’s Lane. I would have been stranded then and would have had to resort to white lies or a crazy scenario that involved me climbing into another vehicle and begging the driver to take me away, far away and quickly, from the make out marauder.

I don’t remember how I got through the rest of the date without kissing him. Without the force field emanating from the intimidation factor of the “first kiss,” my mouth was vulnerable to his unwelcome advances. However, I’d like to think that I was perfectly nice to him during the rest of the evening. I smiled and laughed and pacified him by holding his hand. I didn’t lead him on. Rather, I didn’t want to ruin his day by telling him what a horrible kisser he really is. I’ll leave that chore for someone else.

“A bad kiss is bad, but a good kiss is great,” my friend Vanita said.

I couldn’t agree more. Concerning the model, I decided that the women he’s ever been in a comfortable relationship with were too struck by his physical perfection to critique his romantic mastications, and I decided after the date was over that I wasn’t going to waste my breath because there will only be just the one kiss.

But I remain optimistic. Somewhere out there, there’s a man whose kisses I’d hold up traffic for.

Grammy Awards

• Was Bono wearing guyliner?
• JT’s “general store” joke was delivered badly but damn that white boy can sing! (Matt, you did give him my number right?)
• You would think that Coldplay could afford to buy clothes without holes. Sheesh.
• Carrie Underwood, lay off the bronzer. You look like you’re wearing Hooters pantyhose and, your mic needed to be turned up. Your back-up singers were louder than you were.
• The best part about Kid Rock’s performance was that he wasn’t wearing a wife beater though according to Judy, “he still looks like one.”
• Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift are best friends?
• “Isn’t it great to see Stevie Wonder and Jonas Brothers together again?” - Mark Hoppus, Blink 182
• I think it’s great that Blink 182 are together again.
• I’m sorry. Just because you’re one of the few bands who sold a discernible amount of records (read: made profit), doesn’t mean you deserve to win Rock Album of the Year.
• Katy Perry looked like a bedazzled fruit bowl.
• Morgan Freeman and Kenny Chesney are best friends?
• Diddy….nice lilac bomber jacket.
• Dave Grohl!!!! Behind the drum set again!!!!
• RC, you’re wrong. Thom Yorke is definitely in Top 10 Best Rock & Roll vocalists.
• Best performance: TI and JT collaboration.
• Yes We Can…have a Secretary of the Arts?
• Did y’all see Lil’ Wayne jump and click his sneaks together? Adorable.
• “And Album of the Year goes to Ra-ising Sand, Alison Krauss & Robert Plant.” (Not Radiohead like I had wanted).

Try A Little Tenderness

Last spring, a boy wrote me a love letter. It’s my first, and currently, the only love letter I’ve had the honor of receiving. I said “honored,” not because it led to a great relationship, but because I feel like I did something, or was enough of something, to warrant such a ballsy move.

So for the first of my favorite love songs, here’s “Try A Little Tenderness” by Three Dog Night.



Oh she may be weary
young girls they do get wearied
wearing that same old miniskirt dress
but when she gets weary
try a little tenderness….

Now it might be a little bit sentimental,
but she has her grieves and cares
but the soft words they are spoke so gentle
it makes it easier to bear.
Oh she won’t regret it,
them young girls they don’t forget it,
love is their whole happiness.
But it’s all so easy
all you got to do is try
try a little tenderness

Thank you, Rose, for your letter.

This just in: "Let The Right One In" is not, I repeat, NOT, a German film

But in fact, Swedish.

That's all folks.

Thanks RC. Lemme know if you wanna be my intern. I'll pay you in pesos leftover from my last trip to the mother land.

There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch

Ray Stone opened the door to Pete’s Café and walked directly to the register to order some lunch to go. Before stopping at the diner in Farmers Branch, Stone tried to go to Denny’s in Addison to cash in on their Grand Slam campaign that was aired during a commercial break on Superbowl Sunday. He didn’t get very far. “I didn’t go in,” Stone said. “There were so many people there. It was at least an hour wait.” A FedEx salesman, Stone drove down the street to Pete’s Café because he doesn’t have time to take a leisurely lunch. He waited ten minutes before he was served. His bill was $6.77, including tax.

Big corporations—like Denny’s—are trying to lure new and old customers with drastic promotions and price cuts. It’s a risk but they have the capital to absorb a small loss. A Dallas radio station reported that one store ordered a week’s worth of food in anticipation of the rush fueled by the promotion. But what about smaller, local businesses like Pete’s Cafe?

“I can afford to go one day without any sales,” Judy Lamb, co-owner of Pete’s Café said, “but it wouldn’t benefit me in the long run. I would get some new business but I would venture to say that I would know 90% of the people that walked in that front door by their first name.”

During peak hours at Pete’s Cafe, waitresses are taking orders, serving food, and patrolling the walkways with coffee pots and ice tea pitchers. Customers can see cooks flipping pancakes and scrambling eggs through the small window. A throng of people waiting to be seated normally blocks the center aisle. Now that North Texas is starting to feel the recession, the path is noticeably clearer.

This summer, Lamb, raised prices to accommodate for rising food costs. However, her total sales for January 2009 is almost even with last year’s, even with the price increase. “That’s bad,” Lamb said, with a worried look in her eye. “Very bad.”