Carlin, Like George.

I’m down to two days until I start school. Acting programs are a bit of a double-edged sword: you’re working every muscle of your body and brain to be at your most emotionally present, which is great if you’re an actor. BUT, if you’re me, this balance, and presence, and heightened sensitivity, and inevitably, lack of sleep makes you start to cry ALL the fucking time.

Last time I did an intensive, it was only six weeks, but I could have sold jars, plural, of Carlin tears. Also, my therapist was way too into me being in touch with my emotions (for the first time in the 5 years we had worked together at that point…I’m a thinker, not a feeler). Also, also, I was going through an ish break up that at the time felt monumental and made me a hot fucking mess.

This return to form is a problem, because over twenty-some years, I’ve been conditioned into a deflecter: if something upsets me, I use humor to lessen the blow. If my feelings are hurt, I’m passive aggressive for like, five minutes, or just pop a Xanax. I tried to come up with a list of close friends in New York who have seen me cry, while not on a stage or with a camera in front of my face…and I can’t.

I was a really sensitive kid. I cried at school. I cried on the playground. I cried before tests. I cried when I received bad news. I cried when anything got sentimental. No one would ever dare say it to my face, probably out of fear that I’d burst into tears, but I’m pretty sure that most of my contemporaries thought I was a total crybaby through the late 90’s.

High school wasn’t that much better. I kept it together for while, for the sake of being a new kid at a new school, but I cried every day after school for the first month of ninth grade, and was often too nauseous from crying in the morning to eat breakfast before getting on the bus, where making friends felt awkward and impossible (years later, my parents found the compassion to drive my siblings to school when they were the new kids). The irony is I was probably crying from the discomfort of being at a school where my grade, which had tripled in size, didn’t already know I was a total crybaby.

I can’t blame them. It was embarrassing.  I started bottling it up, because suppressing it was easier than feeling myriad pairs of eyes on me as my face burned.

Nowadays, there are few situations in which I am worse than seeing another person cry. You can bleed, you can complain (I will eventually tune you out), you can throw up, you can even have sex with someone I have had feelings for, and I’ll behave like a rational, level headed, helpful human being. Start snot fauceting, and I’ll start making awful jokes because I feel emotionally paralyzed.

I don’t think this fear of vulnerability – arguably the deepest level of intimacy with another person, romantic or platonic – is terribly rare. But in striving for a career in the spotlight, and having a creative hunger to be the center of attention, you have to acquiesce to an authentic vulnerability, which boggles my mind-hole.

So over the next nine months I’d expect one of three things:
1. Blog posts are going to turn into novella versions of The Notebook
2. You are going to get more farting and queefing and dicks than you are going to know what to deal with.
3. You will get both, and mistake me for bipolar. I’m not. I’m an actress.

I start school in four days. Four days.

I didn’t think I would freak out. I mean, it’s not a master’s. I didn’t have to move. It’s not like I’m in class every day with the same 9 people from 8 am til 10 pm, for three years.

But I am freaking out, big time. My hands keep sweating. I have had every anxiety dream that I get – confrontations with my ex-best friend and her entourage from child hood, not being ready for the exam, sleeping through school for weeks at a time and having my parents give up on me, the sex dreams I’ve had for the last 6 months or so that deal with my shit-where-I-eat-problems, needing to run really fast but my feet are like lead, and then only being able to fly by hovering like, three feet above the ground… all in strong rotation, plus the added bonus of Jon Stewart sleeping over, and Rihanna stopping by to give me some gluten-free bread she picked up on her way over. Also, a bunch of drug addicted baby seals kept breaking into my cabin for wafers. And I’m really horny, which only happens to this degree when I’m uncomfortable.

But in all seriousness, I’m freaking out. Tuesday is my first full day, and, because I’m doing little to compromise my other projects, I realized my schedule will be as follows:

6:00 am: Soul Cycle
9:00 am: Class
2:30 pm: Nap/Eat
3:00 pm: Memorize lines for The Charlie’s Semi Final Performance on Friday and any homework I get
6:00 pm: Improv
8:30 pm: Charlie’s Dress Rehearsal
11:00 pm: Get home.

Like, shit.

Because then I have to be in class at 9 am every day, for a school year. I took a 9:00 am class in 2008. I never went. I got a C- and had to petition for it to count towards my major, citing the pre-med curve that ruined me (the truth comes out).

I’d found a rhythm this summer of simple pleasures: seeing a movie in the middle of the day, by myself, or going to McQueen, or reading quietly on my roof, or sleeping in a little, and getting to Soul Cycle by 12. Having casual Charlies meetings where we’d start at a diner, read over some scripts and then meander over for a midnight show at UCB for Channel 101, on a Wednesday, but it didn’t really matter, because I could just sleep in, and head to spin again at noon.

It’s this strange transition into responsibility that makes me unfathomably nauseous.

I haven’t planned a first day of school outfit. Or purchased school supplies. Or looked up members of my class on facebook so I know what I’m in for. Oh my god, I can’t watch the Daily Show at 11 anymore, because I’ll wake up cranky. And ugly. Maybe that’s what that dream was about.

Let’s face it: names kind of do matter. It’s the very first impression. We all know that girls whose names end in ‘i’ where there is usually a ‘y’ are considered stripper-slutty (examples: Jami, Ashli, Mandi), certain biblical names make us uncomfortable because of their origins (Judas? You wouldn’t let him take you out to dinner), and cool, unusual names immediately makes the owner of it cool and unusual (example: ME).

But then there are hot names. Names that just inherently make you a hotter person. I started this with the Adam Theory, but there is way, way more where that came from. Just remember: even if you name isn’t on here, it doesn’t mean you yourself are not a hot person; maybe you make your name hot. There are also Hot Clauses. Is it a Jewish Alex ? This factor actually completely changes the equation.

Just spit balling here – a couple of classic examples: Roxanne, and Naomi (Note: this is both biblical and ends in an i, but it exudes sexual appeal)
Adam
Andrew, Drew, but not necessarily “Andy”
Alex (male)
Austen – not Austin.
Ben, but not Benj or Benjy
Colin – in an elusive, broody way
Dan – This is one where you have to be careful: you either end up hot, or you are THE WORST. I really need to be careful about what I say on this one, because my brother is a Daniel, my sister is dating a Dan, and I’ve hooked up with a couple of Dans. Not Dannys.
Dean
Doug
Eli (again. Biblical and ends with an I. Badass.)
Esteban. Pure Telemundo.
Evan – typically hotter if not accompanied by a Semitic last name.
Jack
Jake – not Jacob.
Jason
Jen – one N
Jesse
Jonathan – in full.
Josh
Kiley – spelling specific.
Matt – The name Matt either gets you someone hot, or a total weirdo with a shirt from the Nature Company and a fanny pack. And not ironically.
Mike, not Michael.
Michelle
Monica
Natalie
Scott
Vanessa
Will
Zach. Only that spelling.
WASPy sounding last names that end in “N” or “M.” Example: Curran. Tatum. Not hot: Steinberggoldblattstein.

If you’re on here, congratulations: your parents gave you a hot name.

A hot guy named Adam recently moved into my building. He had an air of familiarity to him, which I assumed was just neurons firing at the hot-person-type I go for, and evidence to my theory that I am attracted to guys named Adam.

Then I felt the air of a pre-disaster: it was a split second as we passed one another and I noticed his gym shorts.

He went to Penn. My eyes instinctively lit up and we knew in that millisecond of eye contact as I readjusted my bra strap that we both went there, and he simultaneously tried to place me (clearer still, he was on his cell phone, and these split-second eye contact exchanges were quite routine on Locust Walk around noon, Monday through Friday; almost as routine as utilizing your phone to avoid saying hi to people you knew, but didn’t feel like stopping for).

While he looks familiar, I can’t figure out what year he is, what frat he was in, and whether or not he was an asshole. It certainly doesn’t help that nearly everyone who attended Penn was named Adam or Andrew.

But I have the sneaking suspicion that he used to attend my house’s parties and hooked up with one of my roommates. But in a house of 8 very different girls, that doesn’t narrow down who he is, at all.

So far I’ve concluded he graduated between 2008 and 2010, may or may not have hung out with Beta, Pi Kapp, Theos, Kappa Sig, but probably Beta or Pi Kapp, but was not necessarily in either of those frats, and was not in TEP or AEPi. Unless he deactivated AEPi.

There are a couple of ways to go about figuring this one out:

1. Go on a rampage and mass facebook search Adams with about 5-40 mutual friends, predominantly from Penn.
2. Wear my one article of Penn clothing in and out of my building, as well as when retrieving mail, doing laundry, and taking out the trash. (Side note: I definitely forgot to wear shoes the first time I left my apartment today).
3. Call old roommates to backtrack their hookups.

The first problem here: I definitely lie when I backtrack, especially when it comes to the 2007-2008 semesters (there were some rough patches and poor choices), so why wouldn’t they?

The second problem: he might not be on facebook. Also, I kind of don’t care to be crazy enough to search my 1,476 friends for Adams.

The third problem: Eh. My t-shirt is pretty comfortable. That’s realistically what I’ll likely end up doing.

Does anyone from Penn know tall hot Adams who live in my building?

There was once an episode of How I Met Your Mother in which Ted introduces a new love interest to his group of friends (surprise!); the catch, this time around, at least, was that she had this profoundly annoying quality to her that Ted failed to notice until all of his friends burst his bubble. This led to an entertaining slew of events in which each of the friends burst each others’ bubbles when it came to perceiving one another: Lily was an unfathomably loud chewer. Robin misused the word “literally” ad nauseum. I don’t remember the other character flaws, but you get the point of the episode: when you love someone, your brain overcompensates for their annoying characteristics with a lovely, shadowy veil.

Til someone bursts your bubble.

This episode rings true to life: I have had many honeymoon phases with new friends and love interests, even pets, until someone bursts my bubble – dirty fingernails, complaining, rat feet, and I’m repulsed, in my best behaved way possible…not.

But what do you do when the bubble bursts and you’re left with that Platonic view outside the Cave…and it’s yourself you’re seeing for the first time?

I had a first this weekend: I burst my own bubble, and suddenly, I’m left in the rubble of my own annoying qualities. That inadvertently rhymed.

All of a sudden, I’m profoundly annoyed with myself: the volume of my voice. The way I say incredibly offensive things without even thinking, because I’m showing off. The ease with which I gossip, because I believe I was a Victim as a middle schooler. How quickly I decide I like a guy, and have to talk about it until my friends’ ears bleed.

I could go on but I’d risk losing traffic…because I have so much of it.

The difference with this particular bubble is that I don’t get a break from me. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere. Unless I’m sleeping, then I have trippy dreams in which my family is a clan of vampires, and I over sexualize everyone I know, and I’m basically me, on steroids. This is technically something within my control: do I start chewing 30 times before swallowing, on the side of my mouth closest to the door? Do I look up the dictionary definition of “literally,” as well as the synonyms? Do I alleviate whatever other flaws Barney, Marshall, and Ted had? Truth be told, Ted and I probably have the same problem: we’re both needy, dramatic, and always single, because our love interests last less than half a season. We’re also both half Jewish, quasi-mid-westerners with O-letter states, and oldest children (I’m counting myself as half-Jewish, because  I like the rule of threes in comedy when it comes to listing commonalities).

For now I’ll watch my volume. I’ll also count to three before I talk: just know I’m not lacking synapses.

I love untying knots. I tend to throw my jewelry into a careless blob and am always shocked when I want to wear my longest necklace and have to untangle it from about 5 others, each with a very differently textured, annoyingly elaborate chain.

But I love it: it’s soothing, and rewarding. Who needs puzzles?

It makes me feel like I’m Maniac Magee and I’m single handedly (well, double handedly, technically) solving the racial tensions of the elusive, slightly rural Philadelphia suburb. Anyone who read that book should know what I’m talking about. More importantly, back in elementary school, I thought I was like, this child prodigy for figuring out this symbolism in the book’s impending climax, but then I read it again for a children’s education course in college and was so disappointed by the staunch relationship between race tensions and the cathartic release of the knot being untied quite literally on the border of the two sides of town, which may have even been called ‘Black town’ and ‘White town.’

But Maniac saw through it all. And I totally believe that I do too as I fumble through my chain that has the Kabbalah saying I’d understand if I were spiritual (read: patient) enough to observe Kabbalah, and the electric guitar necklace that has a clock in it with the incorrect time, and the Eiffel Tower chain my best friend and I got together after our trip to Paris in college, and the ghetto-chic necklace that happens to have my zodiac in rhinestone, and the Gilt purchased high brow zodiac chain I received as a graduation gift.

See? I have a lot of different conflicting sides to my personality, and untangling them is soothing and grounding. Get it? Get it?

It was just a few days ago that my family was completely blind sided: we were only hours into our vacation in Colorado Springs for my grandmother’s birthday when we found out that our nearly 12-year-old vizsla, Sid, had died in his sleep.

I have to say “vizsla,” and not “dog,” and I struggle to refer to Sid in the past tense, because he wasn’t just a dog. I’d had a dog before him, and Sandy really was a dog. I loved her, yes: but she ate sunglasses, and caused an all-school ban on pets  after one particularly colorful “Sharing” in kindergarten.

We knew he was getting up there; we had noticed him slowing down, and accepted that the epilepsy medication he’d been on for the majority of his life would indeed shorten it, but we expected a couple of years – to watch the machinery slow down to a stop; to suffer the pain so many life-long owners have to go through when they make the decision to put their best friend down.

But two days before, he was crawling into my mom’s suitcase, goosing me up my skirt; we even split a piece of chicken. My family really didn’t see it coming.

Sid came into our home on the first night of Hannukah, 1999, when he was 12 weeks old. Daniel fought for him: the woman who owned his mother did not want to give him up. But they really did connect, instantly, two little fuzzy heads with enormous blue-grey eyes, and hours later, we had the paperwork: he was ours. There could not have been three happier children, a more energetic father, and a more nostalgic and nurturing mother (my mom had a vizsla, Brick, when she was a child): a family friend, upon meeting him, said he looked like our family, and we really, really wanted that addition. The quintessential holiday present.

Even as a puppy, before he was potty trained, he’d go out of the way to pee on the newspaper around his crate, and not on the rug. He knew when people were terrified of dogs, and would effortlessly win them over, in a gentle, patient approach.

Just days before my bat mitzvah (11 years, to the day, before his death), the photographer came over to snap the official service pictures. As my family piled onto my bed for a “casual” portrait, Sid, now nine months old, jumped up, perfect posture, and looked directly at the camera, ready. He was in every family picture after that…and occasionally a group shot when sports teams or the a cappella group came over.

It’s like he was a nobleman in a past life. I truly didn’t believe in reincarnation until I met him.

He stuck by you, sometimes up until it was time for his meds and bed time, when you wept. He’d sit vigil when I had boys over – he was an effective cock block, and in truth, he made a lot of great calls.

I have for years struggled with going home – I have more unhappy memories than happy ones at the surface, not because of my family, but because of school, boyfriends, friend drama. Sid was the constant. He’d read my mind when I wanted to go for a walk, and joyfully keep pace – even check up on me when he was ahead -  when I needed to burst into a run. He’d rest at the foot of my bed first thing in the morning, and stay until I was ready to go downstairs for breakfast. He shared my passions: I swear to god, he’d laugh at South Park with me, and any time I sat down at the piano and sang, he’d lay down next to the piano, all ears; polite enough to not interrupt unless the mail man came. And that’s really important.

When we heard the news, I bawled, immediately. Leah collapsed. Daniel dropped everything he was holding. We weren’t there. Maybe he did it on purpose: we didn’t have to see him at his most vulnerable – he’d had his goodbyes. Selfless, from the beginning, to the end. All I know is that I’ve experienced my first real heart break. And it feels good to hurt this much.

Great dog. Greater friend. September 29, 1999 - June 17, 2011

Rest in peace, old friend.

I realized that my schedule has changed, drastically, since I last posted my upcoming shows: so you probably should ignore that. Instead, here is a more accurate list of happenings:

June 14th: Canceled. Grease Monkeys. Sketch Comedy Show. This is now going to be seen online, as the entire thing is to be shot. I will send out the link when it is released.

June 15/16th: Canceled. Improv Nation. 7 pm. e-garage in Long Island City. Others are subbing in for me, as I will be in Colorado.

June 29th: UCB. Improv. 6:30

Also June 29th: Alley Cats @ the Gutter in Williamsburg. 8 pm. Story telling, possibility of my sketch group, The Charlies first live show.

June 30th: Improv Nation. 7 pm. e-garage in Long Island City.

And, coming up, more info to follow:

July 7th: Improv @ e-garage.

July 14th: Improv @ e-garage.

July 27th: Story Telling @ the Gutter. Potential appearance by The Charlies

July 28th: Improv @ e-garage.

Last week I had to run an errand at 1 o’clock on a Wednesday in midtown. It was a scorcher, but even as the sweat beaded down my back (sexy.), I was far more focused on the swarms of people leaving their respective office buildings, uneasy in their conservative work clothes in the summer heat as they perused the limited number of overpriced bodegas they could go to for lunch. Indeed, we’ve reached the time of year again of the Unpaid Intern.

It made me nostalgic. I vividly remember my first unpaid internship in Manhattan: utilizing dorm space many thanks to Bed Bath and Beyond on 6th, the 8-10 week challenge of never repeating an outfit for my own entertainment, starting conservative and earnest for first impression purposes, and quickly evolving into jeans and Anthropologie’s best (I have always worked in production and development…you wear a suit, you are a prick). Excitedly taking lunch breaks with people you don’t really know, but they are your work best friends. Running shitty errands in the smoldering heat, fervently googling hopstop with the comfort of your ipod as you run the Beta tapes across town. Best of all, happy hours at Bar None, or Blue Fin if we felt classy, or anything, really in the Union Square or Murray Hill vicinity. The glamor of roof tops on a Friday night. The novelty of Meatpacking. The thrill of my fake ID getting the OK everywhere I went, because it was awesome, and I can fake a mean Texas accent.

That was five summers ago. Five. Every year I am shocked at the discovery that I actually kind of hate summers in New York. Clothes stick to your back. Subways are always delayed no matter how early you’re running, and then clothes stick to your back. The streets smell like rotting garbage. Rats are ballsy. There are so many fucking interns. All while your freshly showered self is sticky, again.

I was alarmed when I discovered that my summer months are largely already accounted for. I don’t have the flexibility and whim of finding a roof top happy hour, or jovially going to New York Sports Club with my intern friends before going out for sushi. Because I’m not even in Manhattan for 60% of the remaining summer days, and if I am, I have meetings, or classes, or shows.

Suddenly it’s like I’m working double time trying to figure out what special things I must get done during the summer: what movies do I have to see? Am I getting into a McQueen Monday at the Met? Will my dad please drop the money on decent Book of Mormon tickets so that I’m not in the nose bleeds as I excitedly hum to myself “Shut Your Fucking Face, Uncle Fucker,” in anticipation? How many Sundays am I willing to stand in line for the 9 pm Assscat, hoping Amy Poehler will show up this time? How many times is it appropriate to go to Sleep No More, because I’ve already told like, 8 different people about it, and promised to go with all of them.

I guess the good news is that it’s not even 2, and I wrote this blog post in a towel. Point not unpaid intern.

I don’t know if it’s just me, or just me, as a woman, but I have on more than one occasion convinced myself that I am pregnant.

What’s strange about this is that I have practiced safe sex since I was sixteen, I have been on birth control pills for a third of my life, and I don’t have sex.

But it’s a pretty standard protocol: I feel sick, and start questioning whether my last period was actually just “spotting,” eliminate all other scenarios and immediately call my doctor.

And we go over my symptoms: have you thrown up? Yes, exactly 8 weeks, to the day.

Have you taken a pregnancy test? Not in the mood.

Have you been having unprotected sex? No.

When was your last period? Five days ago.

Did you ever learn how babies were made? Definitely, but what if I had like, triplets, and just miscarried two of them over the last couple of months?

I have to go, Carlin. You’re not pregnant.

Okay, thanks, Grandpa.

I then start coming up with creative scenarios for how I could have conceived: like the bike seat at spin. Or in a cab. On a boat. In a log. Then it starts sounding like Dr. Seuss until I remember that I once had a man ejaculate onto my back on the 2 during rush hour, so for all I know, I could have like, crazy AIDS (don’t worry guys: I lysoled the shit out of my personal belongings, and my body for a week).

I have also caught myself on more than one occasion walking down the street and I’ll see a really cool-looking pregnant woman. I have this weird visceral response, like, I want to be like her. But usually they’re petite and Asian and I solemnly swear, I am not going to have that body type when I actually get knocked up.

I think I have heat stroke. Welcome back to the blog, everybody.