OMG MO ROCCA IS MY BFF!!!

thursday night was THE GREATEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE!!!

okay, probably not, but it was very awesome. and let me tell you why -- my dear friend grant offered me his extra ticket to a taping of (drum roll!) WAIT WAIT... DON'T TELL ME! and if you know nothing about me, at least know this -- "wait wait" is my absolute favorite NPR program ever of all time!

and our tickets? in the second row! zomg! i had also had four whiskey sours (i only meant to have three, but the bartender at the byham theater couldn't find the sour mix and made one of the drinks with margarita mix, then he found the sour mix and he gave me a real whiskey sour, too)! and the panelists were tom bodett, roxanne roberts, and my favorite "wait wait" panelist ever of all time, mo rocca!!!

so, pretty much, i was happier than a pig in shit! it was a delight!!! oh! oh! and the celebrity guest for the "not my job" segment? governor ed rendell! i LOVE ed rendell! and his strange knowledge of madonna's movie career only deepens that love!

the show was fantastic and smart and hilarious and chock full of eliot spitzer jokes. we got all that fun extra stuff that only the live audience gets. i now know what the show's producers look like. but hold on, it gets better!

grant got the tickets because he's a sucker and gave too much money to local NPR station WDUQ during a pledge drive. in addition to the show tickets, he also received tickets to the reception after the show. and this is where the magic happened!

grant and i were awkwardly lurking about, wondering what to do with ourselves, i noticed that there was cake. i said, "grant, we should have some cake." so we got our cake, we're again standing about, and all of a sudden i heard grant say, "hello mr. rocca!" and i IMMEDIATELY turned into a bumbling nervous schoolgirl (much like i did when i met david foster wallace). but we totally hung out with mo rocca! with cake! we talked to mo rocca!!! we talked about pittsburgh, about how the show was terrific, i told mo that he looked a bit like an easter egg in his lime green jacket with blue tie. he said he was doing his part to usher in the spring. things seemed to be going well, so i said, "mo, this is corny, but could i get your autograph?" he said, "of course." i handed him my program to sign and i said, "i was going to ask if you'd be my best friend, but i thought that might be a bit much." he responded, "well, maybe if were going to be in town longer." when he handed me my program back, i glanced at it and i said, "DOES THAT SAY 'BFF'???" he said, "yes it does." and i said, in i guess what you would call a stage whisper, "i knew it!"

that's right, friends! that's how mo rocca became my new best friend! i called krista on my way home to break up with her. when she heard that she was being replaced by mo rocca, she understood. that's why she is, i mean, was my best friend.

and even though i didn't get a chance to meet carl kasell, i got to talk to the fantastic peter sagal, who cemented his position as emily's favorite NPR show host ever in the following exchange:

me: so peter, i have to ask you this. who would win in a fight? you or michael feldman?
ps: oh, i'd beat his scrawny ass!
me: i know you would. i know you would.

that's when i knew that i would follow peter sagal to the ends of the earth.

the thing that kinda sucks about not having had the internet all week is that last night i found peter sagal's blog and it makes me like him even more now. i wish i could have done a bit of pre-show research, alas, it wasn't to be. and it doesn't really take anything away from the evening, which was so freaking nerdy and wonderful!

so listen to the show, guys! you can download the podcast if you miss it on NPR. you might even hear me cheering and clapping! i was the drunk one in the second row.

i hate it when my last post is all whiny...

because you, loyal readers, deserve SO much better than that!

i just survived FOUR WHOLE DAYS without the internet! yes, yes, i'm okay now. it was brutal, almost painful, but i've made it. my lovely little macbook got sick, but a kind macnerd at the genius bar at my local apple store saved the day and now all is well. or, it will be soon, once i complete the process of transferring my files back.

i feel a little silly about being so dependent on this small computer. it's JUST the internet, right? maybe it wouldn't have been so bad if i had the internet at work. or if i weren't in the middle of a job search. or if hadn't become addicted to the "talk of the nation" podcast (i can't help it! i love that neal conan says "bye bye" when he ends the conversation with callers!). regardless, it made my week seem long and lonely. but now things are much better. and now i own an external hard drive to back up my files.

so, let this not be a complaint post! let this be a joyous, welcome-back-dear-macbook post! huzzah!

and as soon as i get my scanner connected again, boy do i have something to show you guys!!!

sign of things to come...

last night i was on the phone with my dad. everything was nice and normal until he happened to overhear me ordering my dinner -- a salad with chicken on it. and then things went like this:

dad: emily, it's a friday in lent. no meat.
me: oh dad, lent is for catholics.
dad: well then what are you? are you some kind of buddhist?!
me: we've had this conversation already, and i'm pretty sure you know where i stand.
dad: this is a conversation we will continue to have.
me: fine. we can talk about it all you want. but don't you dare start proselytizing, because it's going to be wasted on me.
dad: [silence]
me: you know, i'm not a bad person.
dad: i know that. i never said --
me: and it doesn't make me any less of a good person.
dad [long silence]
me: and if you think that it does make me less than what you think i should be, that's your hangup and a judgment you're passing and you're going to have to work through that.

and then i changed the subject. but we didn't talk for much longer after that. i realized that this is going to be a conversation that my father and i will likely have at points for the rest of our lives together.

hopefully, this will be the last angry rant for a while...

snowboarding fashion is truly stupid! every time carson and i have gone to seven springs this season, i've had to control my urge to point and laugh at the kids in their mismatched plaids and offensive prints, all complete with fur-lined collars. wha?!?! are THESE the people who loved "juno"???

i'm really glad "juno" didn't win best picture...

yeah, i know that i'm really behind on my pop culture blogging. but in a few months, will that really matter? of course not!

so, i didn't love "juno". the truth is that i didn't even really like it that much. krista and i went to see it because of dreamy jailbait michael cera. i also will admit that i might have had a not-appropriate-for-children dream about jason bateman a while back. but when we left the movie, k & i were both underwhelmed, and we've discussed in recent weeks that perhaps we saw a different version of the movie, like maybe some prankster theater employee sneaked in the outtake reel, because that would explain why we didn't get what the rest of the world was so, erm, goo goo ga ga about.

maybe i'm too old. maybe i'm too angry. maybe i'm just tragically unhip. but "juno" made me roll my eyes A LOT. remember how people used to complain about how the kids on "dawson's creek" talked in a way that was too big for their britches? well, dawson and joey and pacey ain't got nothin' on the quips of juno mcguff. folks, NO TEENAGER ON THE PLANET talks like that. it is antithetical to all teendom to be that clever and self-possessed. actually, i gag a little at even describing juno as "clever and self-possessed." because what i truly believe is that the character of juno is pretty much what some insecure hipster chick with a look-at-me exhibitionist streak wishes she could be now, let alone when she was a kid.

that's right, diablo cody -- i think you and your scenester, contrived, more-indie-than-indie made up name are totally lame.

in my googling while writing this post, i came across this, which pretty much sums it up. and this little excerpt:

I want Blood’s Daniel Plainview to barge into Ellen Page’s pre-Oscar interview with Barbara Walters and bellow: “I drink your Sunny D! I drink it up! Slurrrrrrrrrp!”

is a billionty times more fantastic than ANY of the writing in silly little "juno".

(btw, i thought "no country for old men" was goddamn haunting and amazing and knocked me on my ass! if you haven't seen it, GO SEE IT NOW!)

yes we can?

i have a new favorite website! www.barackobamaisyournewbicycle.com

it's simple, it's brilliant, it's freaking hilarious! and it's the best piece of obama backlash i've seen so far. and i'm probably going to get some serious shit for this, but i'm going on record as being sick and tired of barack obama. or, maybe it's not senator obama i'm tired of -- what makes me feel all icky inside is the hero worship, the golden boy status, the fawning and swooning that seems to happen all over the place every time his name is mentioned.

come on, guys -- he's not bobby kennedy; he's not jesus h. christ; he's not even howard dean! he's smart, he's charismatic, he's run one hell of a campaign, but he's basically proving that american voters are going to elect the person that they LIKE the most. why does leadership have to be so aligned with popularity?

also, nobody seems to have noticed that the democratic party isn't doing anything differently this time around. we've just gotten to a point where the republicans suck more, so the democrats look shinier and prettier by comparison. after the PA primary election (if the PA primary even matters after texas and ohio vote tomorrow), i'm changing my voter registration to "independent". i know, i know -- that's so awfully uncreative, but my options in PA are as follows: democrat, republican, libertarian, green, independent, and other. seriously. "other"??? yeah. that's me!

i wish i had the energy and the wherewithal to put my thoughts together in some intelligent way, but at this point it's almost 2:00 a.m. on a school night, and all i've got is the following:

1. representative john lewis of georgia, the superdelegate who switched his support from clinton to obama last week, confuses me greatly. he claims that he can't go against the voters in his district, who overwhelmingly support obama, but isn't the point of the "superdelegate" to provide a different sort of measure for the democrats than the voters? i mean, if the superdelegates are just gonna go with what the voters say, why do we need the superdelegates at all?

2. i appreciate how excited everybody is about this election. i've become pretty much obsessed with the drama and the spectacle, too. but i'm also a cynic, and a sometimes-realist. i don't actually expect that the next president will be able to, erm, change things any time soon. government has a glacial pace. all the hope in the world can't speed that up. so what's gonna happen when a year from now we have somebody new in the oval office and the economy is still messy and we still have way too many soldiers in iraq?

3. although i think that nader is a crazy old man with no ability to gauge how the public views him, i gotta give props to the principle behind the alternative candidate. i wish it were someone who actually stood a chance of being relevant, but maybe this means that someday we'll have a viable candidate who isn't a hack of one of the two major parties. maybe? is this my foolish hope for change? yeah?

4. sigh...

5. god, i miss john edwards...