Image Source: http://www.wearitoutloud.org
As I get older, I find I’m less spontaneous than I used to be. Mainly because I’m generally exhausted, but also because I no longer have spontaneous friends who call and propose something fun, last-minute.
So I’m pretty proud that this week I seized on two different opportunities — one was a last-minute dinner at Indique with my friend Betsy, who texted me on her bus ride home, proposing dinner. Awesome. The other was last night… as I was leaving yoga at 7pm my friend Seth texted. I called him and we agreed to meet up an hour later for dinner at my place. Double awesome.
Since I’d just exited yoga, it was a bit of a whirlwind — I walked to Homemade Pizza to pick up a pizza and salad, getting home all of 20 minutes before Seth and Johnny were slated to arrive. I did a quick clean-up of my place, tossed a bottle of bubbles in the fridge, then changed clothes and put on a touch of make-up so I wouldn’t frighten them.
Up until this point, you’re probably pretty impressed with my ability to host on a moment’s notice. I know I was. Where I think I need some help is what to do when my guests arrive. Because while we had a great time catching up, I’m going to guess there are a few parts of the evening that the boys would rather not repeat.
Like when I decided it was absolutely appropriate to get out my laptop and use visual aids during our discussion of the Royal Wedding. Among the things we googled so I could illustrate my points:
- Cross-eyed flower girl (Still burning in hell for this — though apparently I’m not the only one because I’ve had over two dozen people find my blog in the last 24 hours using that search string)
- James Middleton (Interestingly, the page we landed on indicated that there was a more popular search string – “James Middleton gay.” And also surprising: in all the images of him online, he looks utterly dorky, not at all the hottie that appeared for the reading yesterday.
- Ugly hats (Which, as expected, helped us find a picture of the Wicked Step Sisters – Beatrice & Eugenie – which prompted Seth to commet, “That one could eat an apple through a fence. And she’s tan? Because England is known for its sun?”)
So maybe you’re thinking this isn’t a bad thing to have done during dinner, pulling out some visual references for our critique of the Royal Wedding. And you might not think it was horrible that I surfed over the YouTube and made them watch the old Sarah Silverman/Jimmy Kimmel video of “I’m F*ckin Matt Damon” and its response, “I’m F*cking Ben Affleck.”
Well, if you don’t yet think I was a bad hostess, let me assure you I was. I mean, who invites people over then makes them watch YouTube videos of a) someone squeezing a gigantic boil, and b) someone removing a botfly larva from her scalp? Seriously, I did this.
Reflecting on last night, I can’t erase the image of Seth recoiling in horror while Johnny commented, “It’s like he’s peeing puss out his neck!”
Sigh. Definitely not a chapter in the “How to Make Friends and Influence People” book.
Next time, I think I’ll just stick to the Honey Badger video.
pithypants 
please provide a link to the boil video. I’ve seen the botfly one.
Um. It might require you to log in to YouTube because it can’t be viewed by people under 18. I guess just because it’s nasty: http://tinyurl.com/3lt83j7. And as a side note, I think it’s funny that the girl doing the squeezing is named Alicia. 🙂
And I just watched the Jimmy Kimmel video. Wow. Had missed that whole thing. How connected is he to get all those people in one room together? Like his League of Handsome Gentlement…
Right? I watch this about once a month and marvel at the sheer awesomeness of it. (It’s worth noting that this was filmed during the SAG/writers’ strike a few years ago, when virtually all production was halted, so I think a lot of people were bored and willing to participate.) If you haven’t, you should go watch the full Sarah Silverman video. It’s hilarious in its own right and was amazing, until Jimmy buried her with his more-involved rebuttal.