Now I can shoot a gun to kill my lunch and I don't have to love or think too much!

Semi-Embarrassing Factoids About Me Collide In A Convenient If Not Particularly Meaningful Way:

I have always spent an outrageous amount of time interviewing myself. If I'm not obviously doing something else, rest assured that I am secretly in a room somewhere, sweating pools of pancake makeup into my lap under the studio lights and laughing it up for the cameras. I've got a billion prepared answers for every question that no reputable host would ever ask me. I practice telling interesting anecdotes and nice-sounding sort of truths that will allow the public to both feel closer to me and understand my worldview. I've made guest appearances on every show I've ever watched, usually popping in to take the place of some unfortunate dullard who just keeps giving one word answers and talking about their shitty new single. I don't even know what it is that I've done to be interviewed so often by so many talk show hosts; maybe I'm in a hip new band or I wrote one of those self-help books for middle-aged men. Maybe I was on The Real World: Saskatchewan! Who cares? Everyone knows that what you do is totally irrelevant to your level of celebrity anyway. The point is that I'm on TV, and in effect, everyone cares about what I have to say for roughly five minutes. I generally try to make it count by talking about important social issues, but of course I take the occasional break to make potshots at, say, Kid Rock and my arch-nemesis, Bono. I have been doing this for years and no one has ever caught on.

And then the other night I'm in the bathroom on Never Mind The Buzzcocks. I like to stand in front of the mirror sometimes just to make sure that my eyes don't look too funny when I laugh and to see how engaged the viewers at home will be with my expressions and mannerisms. I'm practicing this gutbustingly hilarious^[1] scenestealing sort of-monologue when my mother knocks on the door.
"Hey, are you done yet? What are you doing in there?"
I'm immediately reminded of every sitcom ever. You know, teenage boy has been locked in the bathroom for way too long. Mom knocks on the door. There's a strangled yelp and you can hear him scrambling around to pick his pants up so he can walk out and pretend he hasn't been masturbating feverishly for the last hour or so. How did I become that teenage boy? Suddenly, I'm acutely aware of the fact that I'm standing two feet away from a litter box talking to myself like a nut. It's not a situation I can easily explain away with a soundbite. "Oh, nothing! Just masturbating my ego, you know!" So I scramble around to make it look as if I've been messing around with my hair all this time and walk out. "Just brushing, combing, styling, etc.," I say, hoping she doesn't notice that my hair looks like crap. I go back to my room, but I can't get back in the moment. For the billionth time, I decide to really look into ending this ridiculous extended adolescence lifestyle I've got going on. How will I ever advance in the biz if my rehearsals are constantly interrupted??

The next day I'm waiting in the car outside a Chinese restaurant. The car is parked illegally, but Mother's just walking in to get an order of fried rice, so who cares? I'm on the set of some local coffee talk program talking about my childhood and what a crapshoot that whole thing was, when this little kid walks by singing "Hot N Cold"  by Katy Perry. I go into another shame spiral! I used to find it so easy to hate Katy Perry. I mean, "I Kissed A Girl" was so incredibly un-catchy I couldn't even be won over by the video. "Oh, ha ha, you're petting a pussy cat. You subversive minx, you!" And her penchant for wearing sparkly granny panties and bustiers in an attempt to get people to confuse her with some classy '50s pin-up? Embarrassing! So I'm finding it really hard to deal with the fact that I love "Hot N Cold." I don't even know how it happened. Like, it's four in the morning and as usual, I'm watching MTV Hits and listening to other music and before I know it, the cool music^[2] is off and I've turned up the volume and am totally sucked into this crappy Katy Perry video. I disregarded it as early morning mindsickness at first, but when I woke up that afternoon, it was still in my head. I tried not to download it, I really did!

In an attempt to prevent something like that from ever happening again, I decided to skip the TV last night and just go to bed. By five AM, it was apparent I would never get to sleep. After six, I was sick of parsing out my hilarious and totally correct unreligious beliefs on Ellen, so I rolled over and flipped on the TV. I forgot to put "digital cable" on my most recent public list of things that don't make me want to kill myself, so consider this an official addition, okay? Because without digital cable, I would have never noticed that BILL FUCKING NYE THE SCIENCE GUY^[3] has a new show on Planet Green! It's called "Stuff Happens," and it's basically about how every imaginable aspect of my life contributes to polar bear death and the oppression of slave laborers in developing nations. I know it sounds like a downer, but having good ol' Bill Nye The Science Guy be the one to break the news helps a little bit. Sure, I just happened to eat some chocolates that were made from cacao beans harvested by oppressed and exploited people in the Côte d'Ivoire, but hey! Bill Nye's going to tell me to buy fair trade chocolate in a goofy voice! That makes me want to barf them all back up a little less!
But anyway, Bill Nye The Science Guy is the greatest. I have fond memories of watching his show in grade school. And yeah, maybe the only thing about his show that really stuck with me was the theme song. Isn't that enough?

^[1]I know this sounds really conceited on my part, but I'm counting on the fact that anything can be gutbustingly hilarious in the right environment. If I'm with a group of people, I'll laugh at anything and they'll laugh at anything right back at me. Just imagine the comedic ground I could cover with a studio audience!
^[2]Latest cool music: MGMT. I know, you're going, "THEY ARE NOT COOL ANYMORE. Their latest album came out in 2007! Way to be the last person to jump on the bandwagon!" And...yeah. I can't help it, though. I am notoriously late on liking anything. When I first heard everyone gushing over them, I thought, "Hip hip hooray! Another bland, derivative British hipster band that everyone will have to pretend to like until something wackier comes along!" I got curious enough to download it, however, and found out that even though they're bland and derivative, I like them! Also, I guess they're from Brooklyn.
^[3]Did you know that Bill Nye The Science Guy "has danced Lindy Hop for several years"? AMAZING.

Comments

[Storytime Megan]

Honestly!  Every entry you write is like something I would write if I could write!  I too used to practice interviews, but mostly I liked writing my own intros for the talk show host, and imagining the clip I would bring.  Like, (voiceover) "Tonight on the show we have child prodigy and world-famous cutie pie, Megan!!" [insert crowd roariness] over a clip of me doing my best jump rope skills, or umbrella dance.

[Kate]

You know, I never do intros! I never know how to begin things, so I like to just jump right in and pretend everyone else knows what's going on.

And "umbrella dance"? Like, to "Singin' In The Rain" or to "It's Raining Men"? That's amazing. You strike me as more of a hula hooper, though.

[Storytime Megan]

An umbrella dance is a dance you do when you're outside playing in the rain.  It's balletesque.

I never had enough coordination to hula hoop as a child.  I could get it going for a few rounds, but inevitably, my body would forget what I needed to do to keep it moving.  Maybe now I could do it though!

[Percival Rome]

[this is good] Idea good, I support.