Now, I know I am weird, but a few of these shortcuts really distract me. These are the things most TV characters do almost universally that pull me out of the reality of a show:

1.  A group orders Chinese food, then does not eat it family style. Instead, each person eats one dish out of the container.

Who does that? Does anyone eat four servings of chow mein for dinner? What about rice? This is the American food equivalent of a four-person group having one person order mashed potatoes, another order chicken, another order rolls, and another order green beans–and then all eating that one thing by themselves out of a to-go container! Even when I order Chinese food alone, I get at least two dishes and eat them at the same time. They just do this so that they don’t have to show the food. I bet those containers always have, like, one piece of cold broccoli in it.

2. A woman takes a pregnancy test and then acts like it’s not a stick she just peed on.

Hey, everyone! I will take this piece of plastic I just urinated on and shove it in your face. “Hurray,” you’ll say, “We’re pregnant!” Instead of saying, “Ew! That is a pee stick!” (Sometimes they are not happy about the result, but never are they grossed out about someone handing them a pee stick.)

3. People are slutty.

Whole episodes can center around someone being in a slump of having gone a whole week without sleeping with a stranger. None of my friends has ever complained to me that they had three dates with someone they just met and they couldn’t believe they hadn’t had sex yet. And I’m talking about characters who are supposed to be average or even a little prude. So this would be Ted on “How I Met Your Mother,” not Barney. (I also don’t know anyone who goes out with a new person every 3 months, but this is a little more believable to me.)

4. Yet people seem to wear their underwear during intercourse.

I get that you can’t show naked people on network TV and that even cable has to dole out the naked carefully sometimes. The covering-up-with-a-sheet thing is awkward, but we’re all used to it. No, what is truly distracting is when the couple just finished having sex and then, when one or both of them stands up, they are wearing underwear already. Did they leave it on during, which though technically possible is highly unlikely? Is there a midget under the sheets helping with the underpants? Answer me that, Hollywood?

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones that launch me into internal arguments when I see them. Any additions?

A recent example: On last week’s episode of Modern Family, two characters go to Target. In case you couldn’t tell they were in a Target, they say things like “Let’s go to Target” and “They have everything here at Target.” And then one of them puts on a Target uniform shirt as part of the plot. It felt like they were in Target for a year and Target logos were humping in the background making little baby Target logos. The lighting was so different there than the rest of the show, that it was like a florescent sign that shouted YOU ARE WATCHING AN AD! The show is already 22 minutes long so that they can show ads when it is aired on TV and streamed places like Hulu. Take out the Target-fest, and you have a solid 11 minutes of situational comedy.

This one hurt a lot because I love Modern Family and Target. And this is what allows both of them to push the boundaries so far. I’m not going to stop watching that show or going to that store. So how are they supposed to know that it is not OK to ruin television like that? This worries me. I didn’t even want to mention it specifically, because that is a form of spreading an advertisement I didn’t like.

I am waiting for TV dialogue like this (interspersed with just enough good dialogue, so people continue to watch the show):

Mother: Let’s hop in our Ford Focus and go to Wal-Mart and buy you some Tampax. Oh, and of course Advil with fast-acting crampinex.

Daughter: Mooooom, don’t forget the Lindt chocolate with …

In unison: California almonds in it!

In the real world, we buy things with brand names and go to chain stores. So I actually don’t mind when product placement and verisimilitude intersect. Get paid, bitches! I’m certainly not paying for TV. Go ahead and use that Apple computer and wear those NHL T-shirts, cast of Up All Night!

But I’m pretty sure that the way we are ending up with so many ham-fisted product placements turned full-blown ads is like so: The writers are told, “You have to put Home Depot in this episode.” So then they come up with a B plot about characters fixing a toilet. And then Home Depot’s ad team sees the script and says, “They didn’t actually say the name of our store. Let’s add that in. And can we also have them visit the lighting fixtures aisle? Because one of our Q4 goals is to boost sales of lighting fixtures with women 29-34. Would it hurt to have the logo in the background of that part where she does a spit take?” Most people get bossy when they are paying for something. And most people get conciliatory when they are being paid.

That is NOT how you create something good. And I don’t know what to do about it. (Hint: Don’t look to the way the internet is dealing with the problem as an example.)

Winner of the Most Frequent Sloppy Product Placement Award: Psych (See note about how irony doesn’t make it all better.)

Winner of the the Worst Product Placement of the Year: New Girl (So close to doing it right, only to have an entire scene take place in front of a store logo)

Winner of the “Wow, you know, they should have been paid for that and it was an awesome joke” Award: The Office (When Erin asks for “Cola, Kirkland if you have it” it was not only totally in character, but also most people recognize the Costco version of generic)

After figuring out that Chemistry.com was not for me, I signed up for three months of Match.com. And I hate it! If it were a person, I would punch it in the balls. My membership is up next month, and right before it ends I am going to change my profile to be a bunch of stuff that amuses me.

Here is where I need your help: What is the funniest thing I could say in a Match.com profile? I will actually use the one I think is the funniest!

The only rule: Don’t be mean–so nothing that is intended to trick people into contacting me and nothing that interferes with other people’s sincere use of the site. Here are some of my ideas:

• I am an accidental time traveler from 1924. (“I’m looking for a swell fella and that ain’t no baloney! I’m tired of Palookas and ragamuffins. I’m a real bearcat. Let’s grab some giggle water and get a wiggle on. Gonna take me to a juice joint? Now you’re on the trolley!”)
• I am worried about being swindled. (“Please don’t tell me you need my bank account number so you can wire me the money for my cab fare to our first date. I’ve heard that line before!”)
• I am a robot. (“My programming indicates it is time for me to complete the mating sequence. Desired mate is humanoid. I am bilingual. 00111100000111100001111010.”)
• I am a breeding myself like a horse or doggie. (“I am looking for someone with a mild temperament and a good sense of smell who can run very fast in short bursts. No familial history of diabetes or heart disease, please.”)
• I can only communicate through the lyrics of Jewel songs. (“My hands are small I know. But they’re not yours, they are my own. Put on my PJs and hop into bed. I’m half alive but I feel mostly dead. Who will save your soul after all the lies that you told, boy?”)

What do you think I should say? Hm, the prize for winning the contest is …. a dollar?

Cocktail geeks have been going nuts for orgeat (pronounced “or-zsa,” like Zsa Zsa Gabor) for ages, but there’s a reason you don’t see it in many home bars: the good stuff is hard to find. But making your own high-quality orgeat with all-natural ingredients takes 15 minutes work and costs about $6.

Check it out: DIY vs. Buy, Orgeat Edition at Serious Eats

Also, now there is an internet place about my book. You should look there a lot: DIY Cocktails, the sexy online version that is sexy!

I love Thanksgiving. I’m practically obsessed with it. I call it at night and hang up on it just to hear its juicy, fattening voice before bed.

People who are particular about Thanksgiving food seem to have a weird attachment to canned and boxed ingredients. My mom is adamant that I not make cranberry sauce from scratch ever … even if she is not going to be there to eat it. Under the guise of wanting to save me time, she keeps insisting that I just use the canned stuff. After I say it’s no trouble (all you have to do to make cranberry sauce is boil some stuff), she usually drops it or goes and buys a can anyway if it’s for a meal at her house. It came up again and she finally said that the canned stuff was THE ONLY KIND that anyone should eat ever and would I stop talking about making it. I think I saw a tear. Lots of people have told me that eating a cranberry-flavored sculpture of a can is part of what makes Thanksgiving great.

I’ve almost convinced my mom to let me make gravy from scratch, but I’m pretty sure this was a compromise. (“If I say it’s OK to make gravy, maybe Marcia will stop with that homemade cranberry sauce nonsense.”) But she really would like me to just give up and go with some good old Franco American gravy in a can, from the makers of Spaghetti-Os. As far as I can tell, she is alone in this. But maybe not! People hate for Thanksgiving food to be homemade, apparently. She thinks I am a great cook, so this isn’t some passive-aggressive way to avoid eating my food. (I mean, she asks me to cook for her all the time, even at holidays when several other relatives have already volunteered to be chef.) In every non-Thanksgiving meal, she opts for fresh ingredients and home-cooked food. But Thanksgiving just brings out her desire for things in a can!

Stove Top boxed stuffing seems to engender similar devotion. I’ve heard people get ANGRY when there is homemade stuffing at a Thanksgiving meal. And I’m talking good stuffing and not some mushy bread or dry, crumbly mess. On TV and in movies about Thanksgiving, urban blue-collar, Midwestern and New England families have arguments about elaborate stuffing recipes passed down from generation to generation. Shenanigans, I say! The only stuffing-related kerfuffles I’ve witnessed have been someone complaining about not getting Stove Top stuffing. Maybe this is a West Coast thing, as for some reason TV Thanksgivings never take place in California.

I’ve heard some mumbles about that green bean/mushroom soup/canned onions jive or the whole yams/marshmallows/brown sugar deal or some kind of Jell-O thing involving fruit. But no one talks about these things with the same passion as they do CRANBERRY SAUCE SHAPED LIKE A CAN! and STOVE TOP STUFFING!

Despite my enthusiasm for Thanksgiving, I actually have very few rules about what makes a good Thanksgiving meal. I prefer a good homemade dish to the instant stuff, but I can get down with a box of Stove Top like nobody’s business, too.

This isn’t to say that I am super-breezy about the whole affair. There are rules.

Thanksgiving Rules

• No early bird special! It’s Thanksgiving dinner, so I don’t want to eat at noon or 2:00 or any other time that is not a dinner time.
• No naps! Why would you have a bunch of people over and then all nap like a bunch of preschoolers? Rude! Stop using tryptophan as an excuse. Turkey doesn’t make you that tired.
• No football! This is the most boring and slow sport in the world. It, and not turkey, is probably what is putting America to sleep on this holiday. Half the people at Thanksgiving probably aren’t interested in stupid old football anyway, so it’s also rude.
• No marshmallows! As long as there is turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, stuffing and a vegetable, I’m not picky about the specific preparations. But I am seriously confused about how the whole marshmallows on sweet potatoes thing got started. Gross.

Mom ain’t the only one: Bon Appetit panel prefers canned cranberry sauce

Photo by Ja-nelle

Here is why I quit that shit:

Most of my matches were outside my specified geographic area of no more than 50 miles away.

Ladies, if you’re looking to score with men ages 35-40, look no further than Fremont, California. Though it is about 70 miles away from me, a majority of my matches were from this large Silicon Valley suburb. Oh, and I wasn’t matched with people from there because we had anything in common. Fremont is the place for ladies looking for men whose hobbies include working out, fitness, going to the gym and physical activity. What they were not into was having hair or interests outside of exercise. For the record, I find all of these hobbies sexier than exercise: playing with model trains, collecting stamps, reading about milk and then drawing pictures of it, taking black-and-white photos of bridges, re-enacting the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837 and whittling.

Out of about 90 people Chemistry “chose” for me over three weeks, only two were actually appealing to me both in personality and appearance if I was relaxed about my criteria. (They were both from San Francisco and were not interested in me, for whatever reason.) If I take appearance out of the equation, that number goes up to three. I am not including the nice man from Oregon. So I suppose one of us could have driven 8 hours to meet for coffee or we could have met half way in a forest.

The ones I was completely uninterested in (aka most of what they sent me) included two severely disabled men (“I have a traumatic brain injury and speech problems, and I live with my parents.”), four who barely knew English well enough to write a profile (“Look for love femily”) and a whole bunch whose only interests were working out and being employed. In fact, the only thing Chemistry seemed to get right was the ages. (I put 31-40, in case you’re curious, and mostly they were 36-40.)

The geographic spread:

• 55% from Fremont, which is 70 miles away
• 25% from other Bay Area cities that are 60 or more miles away
• 15% from cities outside the Bay Area, 100 or more miles away (like Chico)
• 2% from San Francisco, which is 40 miles away
• 1% from Sonoma County, the county I live in
• 1% from Marin County, the neighboring county
• 1% from Oregon, which is 350 miles away

When I complained about the geography, the customer service rep said that was my fault for choosing “very important” on some of my match criteria and “not important at all” on some. Somehow this broke their ability to filter geography properly.

What I had to do to make their algorithm work, she said, was to have more preferences in the middle at “moderately important.” She adjusted all my preferences to the middle and promised that this would boost the importance of geography while still taking into account things that were important to me. You’ll just have to take my word that I was being reasonable. I don’t do well with algorithms. They are always wrong about me, and this was no exception.

What resulted were still mostly matches from Fremont and yet another from Oregon. The adjustment did add a handful of matches between 5-20 miles away. (Still no San Francisco, most likely because city people may not have cars and/or be willing to date people more than 5 miles away.) But almost 70% of these new matches in the right geography indeed had dealbreakers (aka the things I originally said were very important to me that my match NOT have, such as children who are still infants!). There was one guy who seemed promising and lived nearby. However, he mentioned at least four times how he doesn’t like reading or books. I don’t expect a bookworm, but that is just weird. Also, he probably would hate that I am a professional writer and editor. (I am not trying to date professional athletes, because I think what they do for a living is annoying.)

FAQ:

Why did you go with Chemistry instead of Match.com or e-Harmony?

I know it is my own neuroses, but to me Match.com feels like a giant bin of people who get picked through like a pile of sweaters on sale. (I deleted an extension of this sweater metaphor, so all you get to know is that I am a bright red cashmere cardigan.) I know several great people in happy marriages who met on Match, so this isn’t a dis about the quality of the people on there. It’s more about how being put in a searchable database makes me feel, which in a word is “bad.”

E-Harmony sounded appealing. I did their bazillion-hours-long test and got sent match previews. However, I didn’t check how much the cost was first. It’s expensive! Not only am I uncomfortable spending more than a negligible amount of money to meet people, but I also found that the price seemed to lead to an overwhelming number of users who were materialistic and too interested in money, based on the sample matches they provided me as a tease.

I will probably do Match now. Perhaps my profile headline should be: I hate money and exercise.

These abs are for illustrative purposes only and are not the abs in question.

For the first time ever in the history of the universe, I have signed up for an online dating site. I am approaching it sincerely and kindly, but I have to voice some  “what is the deal with ___” thoughts about it:

1) A nice-sounding man with a nice profile ruined it by including several shirtless pictures of himself showing off his movie-star abs. Is that a thing educated people over 30 do? I thought I was done looking at these kinds of photos now that MySpace isn’t fashionable. I am suspicious of anyone who has that many shirtless photos of himself, particularly when they are not in a swimming pool or ocean setting. And by “that many” I mean “more than one.” I know where abs like that come from and they don’t come from watching TV, going out to eat, reading books, or ANYTHING ELSE I LIKE TO DO. I was all like “gross!” When he puts on a shirt and takes off the sunglasses, he is a pleasant-looking man. I thought maybe I was mistaken about how gross it was. Then I noticed in one of the shirtless photos there is a lady’s arm around him. She is cropped out. Classy!

2) Some men REALLY WANT YOU TO KNOW THEY ARE ASIAN. As if the race check box and oh, I don’t know, PHOTO weren’t enough to make it known that they were Asian, a fair number of men like to constantly mention it throughout their profile for no reason. Like six times and in every other sentence. “I am an Asian man who enjoys golf” or “As an Asian man, I am looking for a good woman.” Is this code for something?

3) You know what else some people like to constantly mention? Exercise! I am not against exercise. But it is boring, so why would you mention it seven times in a 2,000 character paragraph. (OK, I kind of am against exercise.) I’m not talking about people saying they enjoy biking, canoeing, hiking or other exercisey things that are actual activities. I am talking about people who say their hobby is “fitness.” It is weird to constantly mention anything, but to me exercise is like pooping. You do it because it’s part of being a healthy person, and then you keep it to yourself. This one is a code I think I understand, and the message is: “Hey, potential date! Please don’t be fat. I’m not”

4) Hypothetically speaking, if you have a major disability and want to be upfront about that … good for you! However, here’s a tip: also talk about other things in your little paragraph besides the ways in which you are injured or impaired. I am kind of paranoid, so the following thoughts would occur to me upon seeing this profile (had I actually seen it, which I may not have since this is hypothetical): a) this is not a real profile (there are some silly photos that seemed like a joke) b) this is a real profile and this is some secret fetishist code I am not understanding c) I need to not tell anyone any of these thoughts ever.

Just to be fair, I will give myself the same treatment:

Hey, Marcia! Why are you looking sideways and up in 90% of your photos? It appears that you only have two facial expressions, and one of them is kind of smug. I noticed that you are also wearing the same shirt and necklace in three different photos yet they appear to be taken in different places. What is up with that? Also, you smell.

A shuttle bus came and shuttled my butt from the French Quarter into the swamp land near New Orleans. The tour people can’t guarantee you’ll see a gator out there, so they have one in cage just so you can go home and be all like “yeah, I saw a gator in Louisiana” even if the alligators all hide from you out in the swamp.

I wanted to ride an airboat out there and not a giant tour boat. I picked the small one so I could go really fast and shout things like “Gator up ahead!” without anyone hearing me because the fan is really loud and everyone wears headphones to protect themselves from the noise.

Well, I actually could not wear a headset because it was too big and kept slipping off. When we weren’t going slow to look at swamp things, the boat went 45-50 mph. That is not fast for a car. But it is very fast for a small open boat.

It was raining pretty hard for most of the ride, so a lot of my pictures of swamp land are blurry and crooked. But if you want to know what the swamp looks like, it looks like this. There are also orchids out there. When you try to take pictures of them, it rains even harder and you end up getting foggy pictures of green blurs. So take my word for it, swamp orchids are pretty.

Then I am sitting there and the guide is telling me about Spanish moss and the Lafitte family arguing about a fortune and I see an ALLIGATOR! So I yell “Look, there is an alligator. Everyone look! LOOOOOOK!” because I am five. The grown-ups all look and are impressed by it.

And then, and then! The guide throws a marshmallow in the water to tempt the alligator to come closer to us.

And the alligator eats the marshmallow … just like on “True Blood.” This is the only similarity I found between the show and Lousiana, in my experience. I did not see werewolves, fairies, vampires, panther people, dog people or witches. No one was magical. In fact, very few people even had an accent.

Just in case you think I was zooming to make it look like I was close to the gator, here is the next gator I saw with a bit of the boat in the picture.

They have really long bodies!

Even though they are big and scary, they start out as little babies. The tour company wants to keep the gator population high, because people like me pay them to ride on a boat and go “gator! gator!” and get all excited. So they take the ones under 4 feet and raise them until they’re big enough not to get eaten by the other gators. AND THEY LET YOU HOLD THE LITTLE ONES!Oh, did I not mention that I wore a plastic bag the whole time because it was raining really hard? I did. I don’t care if this is an unflattering photo of a soggy me after a week of staying up late and waking up early. I AM HOLDING AN ALLIGATOR. The End. Or is it? Yes, it is.

1. Northern California hates signs, so you may get lost a lot. Perhaps the signs mar natural beauty. Perhaps signs encourage ne’er do wells from the southern part of the state to move up here. If people can’t find places, they won’t move to them. There is a dearth of signs. Half of the signs that do exist are confusing. North, South, East, West … why is that important to note on a freeway sign? Everyone knows which way Walnut Creek or Santa Rosa is unless they’re some kind of So Cal loser. And even if you know Oakland is east, you may not know that you have to go west before you can go east in certain circumstances but not all the time.
2. It is not warm at the beach. If you go there in shorts or a bathing suit, you will be so cold.
3. People have now heard of Orange County. Horrible TV shows that make people think you are possibly horrible have taught people that Orange County exists. So, if you’re from there, now instead of being able to say you’re from that place in between LA (“Boo!”) and San Diego (“I heard that is a nice place.”), you can say you are from Orange County. Awesome. The days of “Oh yeah, where Disneyland is” are over.
4. The plot of “Chinatown.”  Well, not the sister/mother/sister/mother part. Just the water stuff. You will hear a lot about how you come from a place that steals water.
5. Some people like rain. What? Yes. Weird, right? If you don’t like rain, don’t draw too much attention to that fact, because you’ll just have to talk about how if it rained more where you are from then they wouldn’t have to steal water.
6. There are gaps between a lot of the cities and there are fewer chain stores.  So you may have to drive for 20 minutes or more to get to Target or Petco or anything else that is a large chain. Overall, this is great because it means you’re not surrounded by giant stores and parking lots everywhere you go. But when you need to go to Best Buy specifically … for some reason … you will always feel like it’s three times farther away than it should be.
7. It is not common for people to wear Hawaiian-themed things. It’s not so much a thing in LA, but OC and San Diego people know what I’m talkin’ about. Everything’s comin’ up Hawaii in most of So Cal. Not so in the north. Hawaii is a nice place people sometimes go to for vacation. That’s all.
8. You will be disappointed by the Mexican food. Learn to like red sauce, because the Mexican food will be drowned in it. Or do as I do and rarely go out for Mexican food.
9. Expensive food is much better up here. Fancy places, French places and so on … kick ass in the Bay Area in particular.
10. You will have to wait for what feels like for-freakin’-ever to see certain new movies. Or you will have to drive farther than you’d like to.

1) I pet cats. I eat pigs. Wait. Is that the wrong answer? Are you offering me a starter guide and recipes for EATING CATS? Because I don’t want to eat cats. You are sick. Are those links to cat farms, you jerk?

2) I pet cats. I eat pigs. Is that the right answer? Are you offering me a starter guide and recipes for eating pigs? I already know how to eat pigs. But I guess I wouldn’t mind some recipes. Why did you mention cats? Who is eating cats? Now I am sad.

3) That cat and that pig are friends!

It’s not immediately clear what these websites are for, in the unlikely event that you want to look things up on the internet while viewing this billboard on the roadside. Something about farms? And America? Are they assuming that everyone is weird like me and will pull over, park and take a photo of the billboard?

If you are familiar with slogans of PETA and other such animal rights groups, of course you could guess it was for some sort of vegetarian/vegan/don’t hurt animals thing. Which one? Who knows! Now I have seen a picture of a cat and a pig and everything is different! PS – This must be the cheapest billboard in the area, because it consistently has bad ads. When will the real estate market pick up again so it will be ads for real estate agents again?