GIRLS AREN'T FUNNY.

Because in real life, sex can be boring…

***

INT. OF DIMLY LIT RESTAURANT, NIGHT. An attractive woman in her 40s stands up and bursts into tears as she sees a man walk towards her table. 

KELLY: I can’t believe you came! Twenty years I’ve waited. There was never anyone but you, Ryan. You’re the one! You’ve always been the one!

RYAN: Oh man, I totally forgot about that. I just get takeout from here sometimes. Sorry, it’s Rhonda, right? Try the salmon teriyaki.

***

EXT. DAY, NEW YORK CITY. A couple in their early 20s sits on a park bench.

GERT: I didn’t think you’d call.

JOE: Actually, I didn’t plan to, but I was hoping you’d loan me $10 so I can get back to Park Slope.

GERT: I’d invite you back to my place, but my roommate has a “no overnight guests policy,” and well, we have bedbugs again.

JOE: Hey, it’s cool. I’d rather get back home. When we met at the bar last night, the light was dimmer, and I didn’t realize your face was like that.

Gert gets up and walks away crying. She doesn’t look back, because that angle gives her a double chin. 

***

INT. OF TRENDY BAR, NIGHT. A man approaches a woman sitting at the bar. 

MAN: Waiting for someone?

WOMAN: No, I just saw Samantha do this on Sex and the City, so I’ve sat at this bar every night since 2009, waiting for men to talk to me.

MAN: Cool. Excuse me while I pretend to take a call even though I lost my iPhone yesterday in a cab.

***

INT. SHABBY LIVING ROOM, DAY. Roommates COLIN and JANET sit in their Astoria apartment.

JANET: You know what they say, true love’s always just under your nose. Come on, let’s go out to a beautiful romantic spot in the West Village so I can take off my glasses and you can realize how beautiful I am.

COLIN: That’s like an hour on the N train! And why spend 12 bucks on a drink? Let’s just look under the futon mattress for change and get beer.

JANET: Whatever, I have to work at two of my three jobs tomorrow. I’m going to bed.

Janet walks to her room and goes to slam the door, until she remembers it’s only a curtain partitioning off the living room.

***

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Craigslist is unfiltered potential. It’s criteria gone crazy. In a single day, you can get ripped off, score free kittens, uncover the silent majority of our population who haven’t figured out the meaning of “platonic,” and buy a stolen bike. It’s the ugly common experience to which we’re forced to return, like the DMV. So we may as well take it to the limits of its utility and chip away at the social barriers that keep us apart. Thus Craigslist can become the perfect resource for a despairing bro who finds himself lost in his old scene:

I’m a socially-ambitious twenty-three year old straight male seeking a gang of girl best friends to tack onto. Currently, my posse of besties has been undermined by some boy drama, and I’m uncertain about the sustainability of our best-friendsmanship. Hence, I’m looking for three girls who are BEST FRIENDS.

- Must have formed a bond that is concretely traceable from at least high school onwards (middle school bonds are preferred). This friendship must be everlasting.

- Each girl must have her own fully-formed identity and idiosyncrasies that first appeared when separated from her friends during her early college years and significantly blossomed by her junior year, becoming fully-formed personality traits and life-choices by graduation.

- I’d prefer that there was one (1) quirky, quiet type girl, one (1) hetero-normative, career-driven girl who is logical and gets “business drunk” all day, and one (1) super chiller who maybe considered getting dreadlocks once and is named “Sarah.” These are just ideal examples—no need to fit these roles perfectly. However, all three besties must be lactose intolerance tolerant, be able to pull her own weight (literally no girls who can’t hold themselves up for a ten-second keg stand), and be down to use the acronym “BFF” at least biweekly.

- Cell phone plans with unlimited text messaging are an obvious must. I need to be able to mass text you the spontaneously humorous things that I endure alone and feel comforted by your prompt and supportive “LOL” responses. 

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Meet Felicity!

After the 2770 Rebellion of the Virginias, all of America (including American Swaziland) is controlled by the reanimated head of Senator Robert C. Byrd. Felicity thinks this is wrong, but how can she maintain her convictions when her grandpa, a political crony of Byrd’s, and her white supremacist friend Emily think differently? It’s up to Felicity to find a way to hold both love and loyalty in her heart–to do this, she’ll need a crossbow with a cyanide tip.

Felicity Starter Package: Felicity Doll, Robert C. Byrd head (container sold separately), Felicity’s Pet Ape, Brokaw….$69.95

Accessories: Felicity’s Crossbow, Boots, Gamma Ray-Resistant Helmet….$39.95

***

Meet Kirsten!

It’s 3000, and everyone is scrambling to live on the last part of the North American continent that’s not submerged underwater: New York State. Kirsten and her family are at the head of the pioneer trail, but they’ve got a lot of obstacles to endure along the way: Guatemalan pirates who, having lost all semblance of humanity after their food supply ran out, now resort to devouring all but the eyes and teeth of the men in any traveling party while leaving the women and children to die in the climatologically bizarre SuperCold; a rabid wolf whose disturbing image mysteriously travels the world, haunting the remaining members of the human race by reminding them of their hubris; a motorcycle gang of inveterate rapists who try to seduce Kirsten’s mother and then encourage Kirsten’s whole family to live on their “famine-resistant” commune; and Kirsten’s emaciated and raving grandfather, whom the family took for dead 25 years ago. It’s up to Kirsten to be brave and discover the true meaning of home while avoiding the deadly strain of a rapidly spreading virus.

Kirsten Starter Package: Kirsten Doll, Blind Junky-Prophet Who Foretells Planetary Rebirth Doll, Rusted Family Chevy…$79.95

Accessories: Kirsten’s Heat Vision Goggles, Kirsten’s Global Climate Change Emergency Raft….$49.95

***

Meet Addy, Josefina, and Kaya!

In 3300, all of the Learn-and-Share-and-Grow Ethnic Minority American Girl Dolls™ are packaged together to streamline liberal guilt on behalf of American Girl’s largely white consumer populace. Learn-and-Share-and-Grow Ethnic Minority American Girl Dolls™ can only be purchased all at once and must be played with all at once. Recommended rôles of play:

Scenario 1:

Addy: Doctor.
Josefina: Doctor.
Kaya: Doctor.

Addy is curing Josefina of a disease she contracted while fighting for Kaya’s employment rights–including a higher salary and the right to invoke Ancient Native American Spirits® in the workplace–at an Equality Now™ rally in New-New York.

Scenario 2:

Addy: Successful and Visionary Painter.
Josefina: World-Renowned Geneticist.
Kaya: Stay-at-Home Mother.

Kaya has elected to abandon her dual careers of Hyper-Botanist and iPhone Touch-Screen Developer to stay home with her Mixed-Race Child®. When Kaya realizes her Mixed-Race Child® has the mumps, she consults Josefina, who ethically engineers a disease-free embryo and implants it in Kaya. When the disease-free child is born, the Mixed-Race Child® has a new and healthy friend, which inspires the Mixed-Race Child® to get healthy herself. The New-New York Times publishes an article on the whole thing, and Addy paints what she feels about it. Addy gets a $10,000,000 commission from a wealthy Sotheby’s patron to paint more.

Scenario 3:

Addy: Open-Minded Coed.
Josefina: Kaya’s Lesbian Lover.
Kaya: Josefina’s Lesbian Lover.

Kaya and Josefina, an Aged Lesbian Couple™, teach Addy how to be a militant feminist.

Addy, Josefina, and Kaya Starter Package: Addy Doll, Josefina Doll, Kaya Doll, Changes of Clothes….$69.95

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Dear Writer (although we both know I’m being wildly generous with that title),

Certainly you are aware that Haughty is the largest magazine in the world, so we must assume that your submission was a mistake. Yes, we at Haughty are magnanimously assuming your submission was a mere slip of the finger, a twitch you really should get checked out.

You see, and don’t take this personally, you are nothing but a crumb on our plates; you are lint in our intern’s belly-buttons; you are a stranger’s hair clung to this season’s Michael Kors pea coats, extant only because of the torments of static electricity in winter months. But, in the laughable unlikelihood that you in fact intended to contact us in regards to your humorous essay, wistfully and preposterously expecting us to consider it, I’m here to inform you, and then reiterate, that Haughty is the largest magazine in the world. Not large. Or larger. But largest. Capiche? Excuse me, Italian isn’t sophisticated enough of a language for us here at Haughty. Allow me to rephrase: Comprenez-vous? Ugh, excuse me again: that was the formal conjugation, but there’s no need for such linguistic respect on my part given that I hold the coveted position of Staff Member at Haughty magazine and you are a–forgive the assumption–high-school dropout who will never see her name reflected in Haughty’s glossy pages so, one last time: tu comprends?

Haughty does not consider itself a starting point for writers or those just learning how to read. No, Haughty considers itself the pinnacle of a writer’s career; we are a snowcapped apex glittering at sunset. We are the starving artist’s Everest, which is why our unofficial motto is, “It’s all downhill from Haughty.” When a reader opens Haughty, she expects the pages to radiate with esteemed names such as Dior, Prada, and E. L. James. She doesn’t expect, well … you.

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One woman’s search for everything across India, Iran, and Iceland… excerpts from my extraordinary upcoming novel of self-discovery:

Prologue

It was fall in Como, Italy. The leaves were changing. The peasants smelled of freshly baked bread. The spaghetti was in season. I was married to a handsome and generous man whose salt and pepper chest hair reminded me of salt and pepper. Every evening he would take me walking by the pond he had filled with geese for me because the Canadian goose is my spirit animal. He was kind, and tall and very good at riding motorcycles and acting. And I was miserable.

And so I found myself night after night lying on the expensive marble floors of the villa we occupied, weeping into a towel made of imported orphan-baby hair that we had, years before, lovingly registered for in a secret section of Bloomingdales where you can still get Nazi gold and dodo birds.

See, the thing was this: I did not want to be married anymore.

The realization had come to me months before when I was on assignment in Oaxaca forBlimp magazine, exploring the primitive dirigibles of the Mayans. Before I had left, something happened that made me think that my husband wanted us to have a child and that I was not ready. He said:

“I want to put a baby inside of you.”

And then I threw up on his face.

I told a wise man in Oaxaca what happened, and he said to me:

“You are not meant to have a baby with this man. Instead, you will go on a journey around the world for free, and then write about it.”

His words came back to me as I lay on the bathroom floor. Sure, he was a stranger, and probably the drunkest person I had ever met. But still, he had told me what I wanted to hear, and who was I not to listen?

And so I called the maid to lift me up off the bathroom floor and then, with my own feet, I walked all the way down the hall to the bedroom I shared with my husband. I walked past the portrait of us in Richard Branson’s invisible space yacht. I walked past the monkey butler. I walked past the robot that does my hair.

I pushed open the platinum doors to our bedchamber and grabbed the porcelain waking stick. I poked my husband gently in his perfect buttocks and I said to him:

“George. George Clooney. I want a divorce.”

Part One: An Idea

If you have been married to George Clooney, you know what he can be like. Very petty and jealous and conniving. He tried everything to stop me from leaving. He cried. He pleaded. He trapped me in an electrical cage. He put a snake in my wig. As our divorce dragged on, and I became more devastated, my friends noticed my decline. They all had ideas about why I was depressed. They advised me to see a therapist, to become a vegan, to “just shut the fuck up.” But nothing could stir me from my funk.

I realized I needed to go away. I remembered what the drunken man in Oaxaca had told me, that I was meant to go around the world. I thought to myself, that man was probably born onto Earth for the sole purpose of telling me how not to be depressed about George Clooney anymore, and so that’s what I did.

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The infamous “She” of the “That’s What She Said” jokes has released a new tell-all book making shocking claims about the joke’s validity.

“No, I did not say that,” She [her real name is totally irrelevant] writes on the book’s cover and throughout the nine-hundred page point-by-point refutation of things She’s never said. “The joke takes a normal situation and makes it uncomfortable and juvenile for the sake of comedy. But jokes, like condoms, have a shelf life.”

For a closer look at life in the Slander Lane, we sat down with the eponymous She.

Magazine: It’s been a busy couple of years for you! Or so we hear…

She: Mostly likely I didn’t say anything about that. Please just start the interview.

Magazine: It says in your book that you are not actually the original “She.” Can you explain this?

She: When the joke started with Wayne’s World in the eighties it was in reference to my mother, who actually was a prostitute. After she gave birth to my twin sister and me, she cleaned up her act and loaned her name instead to the newly launched “Yo Mama” line. But being at the center of a pervasive joke that just won’t quit no matter how old it becomes was different with two kids to take care of, and she ended up taking her own life in an attempt to stop the jokes. Truly a tragic end.

Magazine: But the joke just wouldn’t go into the grave, would it? It kept coming in and out and in and out.

She: Right, my sister got pregnant in high school so the “Yo Mama” joke passed on to her in its modernized “Your Mom” form, e.g.”That’s the sound Your Mom made last night,” etc. I got left with “That’s What She Said.” There was a falloff in interest for both jokes around the turn of the millennium, so it wasn’t so bad for awhile. But then The Office happened.

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Dad,

Thanks so much for your most recent email! It’s been awhile since we’ve last spoken (no hard feelings, it was White Sox season, I know), so I can hardly express how great it was to see your name in my inbox, especially once I saw the subject line.

“Interesting article,” eh? I’m still chuckling over that “Is Feminism Over?” op-ed you sent when I declared my Women’s Studies major as well as that piece on how many single women get murdered in New York City every year (answer: A lot!). I was especially touched by the Entertainment Weekly article you sent about America’s acceptance of gay characters on television; however, might I mention again, Dad, I am still not a lesbian.

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My boyfriend recently informed me that I might be approaching this “sexting” trend wrong. I’m not sure if I agree. See what you think:

SMS Message sent 5:18 PM
Just wanted to remind you that we have penciled in “maybe some sex” for later tonight. Get excited.

SMS Message sent 5:30 PM
Thought a sexy picture might get you in the mood.

SMS Message sent 5:32 PM
Sorry, that was actually a funny license plate I saw earlier. But did you see? It said “ROCK ON,” but on a crap Honda. I’ll try again.

SMS Message sent 5:37 PM
No, that was a picture of the back of my knee. Don’t you see my foot down in the corner?

SMS Message sent 5:38 PM
Well, I think the back of my knee is VERY sexy, and I don’t think the dimpled parts look “nipply.”

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Even though I’m Jewish, I never went to summer camp. A popular girl in the sixth grade called me “Pizza Legs,” because of my purple spider veins and red splotches and moles—bright, textured flaws that looked like pizza toppings on pale skin. During a pool party, I refused to get in a swimsuit, and a different popular girl called me a lesbian. What did a lesbian look like, I wondered. I guess they looked like me. I tried not to look like me.I’d now like to imagine what summer camp could have been if everything were different:

Shwayder Camp, Idaho Springs, 1997. This summer has been—without rival—the best summer of my life. Life, I am sure, will continue on this trajectory.

For one thing, I am really tan. For another, I’m super heterosexual.

I’m the most popular Jewish girl at Jewish sleep-away camp. The reasons I am popular can be broken down into simple math, which is good for me because I am a lady:

Number of cigarettes I’ve smoked this summer: 7!!!

Number of times I was told I looked hot in my two-piece swimsuit: about a million.

Number of boys who’ve loved me at camp: all.

Number of times I’ve Frenched: 0.

I’ve had a few boyfriends so far, but I haven’t gone to first base with any of them because my body is a temple like Temple Emmanuel.

It’s the last day of camp, and I’ve been waiting all summer for tonight. I’ve been waiting all summer to do the thing, to let the most special boy at camp French my face for the first time.

After I won the championship tennis-racket baseball game today, the girls from Bunk 7 and the boys from Bunk 5 built a celebratory fire, and we sat around eating the best s’mores, strumming guitars, smoking cigarettes, and nursing top-shelf Scotch. Yeah, we’re thirteen, but we’re all interested in becoming addicted to things.

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You! Rebecca Victoria O’Neal! I’ve just seen you trip on the sidewalk, confirming a long-held suspicion that you are a Bad Person with Whom I’d Never Hang Out.

You don’t know me, but 100% of our friends are mutual. In confidence, when people who meet rigorous criteria to which you will never be privy are present, it is often said how abnormal you are and that my life is greatly improved for never having had the misfortune of talking to you. I’ve extrapolated from your Facebook pictures, the viewing of which is considered a daring parlor game in fancy company, that you’d be uncoordinated and boring, but I’d not imagined just how upsetting I’d find your clumsiness. All my preconceived prejudices of you have been confirmed today.

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The other day while sounding out the words on a Web site called The Rumpus, I saw this article asking for women to submit more comedy pieces. So I put down my giant chocolate bar, stopped crying, and thought, yes, that is what I will do.

I will write a comedy piece. But just as I sat down in my bay window (filled with pillows that I knitted myself while waiting by the phone for potential husbands to call) and opened my pink Mac laptop, I happened to see a lady walking down the street with a baby of her very own.

So then I started crying again because I don’t have a baby. I cried big rolling tears that fell down onto my “Mrs. Stamos” T-shirt that I purchased off of eBay and photographed myself in for my eHarmony profile. I always say, “Dress for the job you want,” and the job I want is being Mrs. John Stamos! So, once my shirt was soaked, I had to go change it. I walked into my closet, which is gigantic because women love to wear lots of expensive clothes and shoes all the time, and I thought, “I know what will make me feel better! I will feel better if I try on all my clothes and shoes to the tune of an upbeat Motown song such as ‘My Girl.’”

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