My Hagman's Keeper

EFF! Eff for two solid reasons:

1.) Tonight is the release party. Which is a good thing. But still, eff. Here are the answers to some frequently asked release party-related questions!

Q: Where is the party?

A: The Big Hunt. 1345 Connecticut Avenue, NW. It's next to Cafe Citron and...something else that I can't remember. Which is odd, considering how much I'm there. Is it next to something else? I feel like it's next to that random non-profit that's always playing a PSA outside the building and never doesn't scare the shit out of me when I walk by it late at night. Seriously, I don't know who you people are or what you do, but get a Twitter account. It does the exact same thing but doesn't make me think I'm about to get raped.

Q: So I just walk in the bar and you'll be right there?

A: No, I will be in the bathroom snorting a line of Xanax off of Chris's tittays. Slash our party isn't in the main bar area. Go in through the main door, walk past the bar, and take an immediate left. If you hit the kitchen, you've gone too far. If you're upstairs, you've gone too vertical. If you're on the roof deck, you're not listening to me at all, so maybe you deserve to stay up there and think about what you did.

Q: Will you be selling books at the party?

A: No.

Q: Why not?

A: Because we'd have to front the money to buy them from the warehouse and that's not an option right now. I'm currently drinking seltzer for dinner and not because I'm watching my girlish figure, if you know what I mean.

Q: Tell me more about the free shit you've promised.

A: Our publisher, Adams Media, was kind enough to send like, 15ish awesome books to give away to the first 15ish people who show up. I'd give you a concrete number, but the books are on the table across from my bed and I'd have to do a slight crunch to see over my chair and count them.

Q: Meg...I want to be on your side, but it's just genuinely difficult when you say things like that.

A: FINE. Nineteen. Nineteen books for the first nineteen people who show up and are not related to me and/or in my immediate circle of friends. Also, there are four copies of our book in that count, so if you didn't have time to buy a copy, come early and you might get one for ~fReE~! I'll throw in another one from my personal collection to make it five. Alex will be waiting for you when you walk in with a few Trader Joe's bags full of books. First-come, first-serve. 

Q: Can I take one of the bags when you run out of books?

A: No. I use them to do my grocery shopping.

Q: You don't buy groceries.

A: Well, I use them to buy wine and hummus when I'm feeling sassy.

Q: Can I take Alex?

A: As long as I get my bags back...

Q: So the party starts at 7:30?

A: Yes.

Q: When does the reading start?

A: The hilarious Tim Miller is going to "get the party started" (<--- God I hate myself) at 8:15, and then we'll hop on the mic, say thank you, do a quick reading, and then sign books.

Q: What will you be reading?

A: BONUS MATERIAL!!!1! We'll be reading a scenario from the original manuscript that got cut because it was too risqué.

Q: Risqué?

A: Well, less risqué and more flat-out offensive, but risqué sounds sexier.

Q: What's the dress code?

A: Super casual.

Q: What will you be wearing?

A: Fuck if I know.

Q: How's your unibrow zit?

A: HORRIBLE, obviously. And I went to Sephora yesterday to buy like, burn victim grade cover-up and got it one shade too light, which is un-fucking-fathomable.

Q: Is the book available on Kindle yet?

A: No, but it will be.

Q: When?

A: I'm not sure. I keep emailing our editor about it, but he doesn't know either and I get the impression that he's irritated by the entire situation too. So I'm sure me emailing him five times a day to be like "MATT!!! WHEN'S THE KINDLE COMING OUT?! MATT!!! CAN I HAVE MORE MONEY?! MATT!!! WHY WON'T YOU LET ME USE THIS ABORTION JOKE?!" isn't helping. But, you know, that's just my way of saying "I like you".

Q: So who's coming to the party?

A: EVERYONE.

Q: Really?

A: Well, everyone I know.

Q: So I should go?

A: Totally. Take Friday off. Get blackout drunk. Make out with one of my friends. Say hi to me and watch me ramble at you for fifteen minutes because when I get nervous I ramble.

Q: I'm excited!

A: I'm a cunt hair away from a bleeding ulcer, but I'm also excited.

Q: Welp, see you tonight.

A: Yay!

2.) I would like to apologize to everyone for being too far up my own asshole buying cover-up and researching today's weather forecast to realize that yesterday was Larry Hagman's birthday, a.k.a. the holy holiday of HAGMAS. I'm mortified. Just mortified. Thanks to readers Charles and John for reminding me. God. I'm seriously pissed at myself because I could have done a really good birthday post Tuesday night. Instead, I wrote this:

OK, OK, OK, wait a minute...Instagram shares your photos? With random people?? Is the world aware of this?! Because I sure as shit wasn't. Thank God I didn't take a bunch of MySpace photos of myself from extremely flattering angles with my breasts tumbling out of my blouse because Lord knows it was tempting. REAL tempting.

Then fell asleep, woke up at 3:45am having a panic attack, watched season one of Breaking Bad to calm down, subsequently convinced myself I had lung cancer, fell back asleep at 8, woke up at 1 and was late to meet Alex for lunch. So, at least I achieved that. I'm sorry, Larry. I'm sorry I let you down, I'm sorry I let my readers down, I'm sorry I let Patrick Duffy down, but most of all, I'm sorry I let myself down. I hope you had an excellent 80th birthday. (80!!!!!!!!! Please just let me hold you in my arms...)

In conclusion: Merry Hagmas to all, and to all a good night!

We'll shut up about the writing the book, I swear. But first...

That's an excellent question. Answer: Chris and I can produce really funny content really, really fast. So you should hire us and/or agent us 'n shit. Because I'm sick of doing soft-shoe in front of various metro stations to afford all the eyebrow and upper-lip threading I require to look like a halfway normal human being. So...tell a friend. If your friend is an agent, that is. If not, please don't tell your friends that I can't afford hair maintenance. BECAUSE I CAN. It just takes some shufflin'.

Speaking of our "career", I was telling my dad about an article I read on Jezebel today about how Jon Stewart's writing staff only has two women and Conan's only has one, and it prompted this conversation:

Meg: I want in, Dad. I want in, and I want in bad.

Dad: Well, write a letter to Jon Stewart.

Meg: 'Eh...that sounds like a whole...thing. But I did tweet that I'm free and Chris is gay, so we'd be 2 birds, 1 diversity hire.

Dad: PLUS EVIE IS KIND OF ASIAN!!1!

That last comment is never not the funniest thing I've ever heard for the following three reasons:

1.) I appreciate that my dad is so desperate for me to get a job, he's actually willing to throw his cat into the mix if it makes me even slightly more hireable.

2.) I'm completely in love with the mental image of us kicking in the door to Jon Stewart's office, slamming our hands down on his desk and being like, "Alright, Stewart, here's the deal: I'm a lady, [points to Chris] that kid's gay, and our intern is a five-year-old Tonkinese cat from Jersey with a serious attitude problem. We're a learning disability and a pint of Cherokee blood away from a full ride to Sarah Lawrence—you hiring us or what?" And then security comes in, escorts us out of the building, and bans us for life. Like most of my fantasies, sexual or otherwise, it's bittersweet and takes a sharp left turn at the end.

3.) I also really like imagining of the three of us as the Planeteers, except instead of summoning Captain Planet when we put our rings together, we make a funny, gay Asian woman. So, Margaret Cho, I guess.

And now I leave you with my Ten Photos That Summarize the Past Four Weeks, à la Chris' post yesterday.

Week #1:

Week #2:

Week #3:

Week #4:

This was also the week that constantly doing the Tim Gunn deep-in-thought hand gesture

and the head-in-hands-why-am-I-such-a-fuck-up? motion

finally caught up with me and I developed a pimple above my lip in the exact location of a "Monroe" piercing and one between my eyebrows that was so big, it actually cast a shadow, thereby making it look like I have a unibrow. Composite photography shows I looked something like this:

The unibrow zit is obviously still lingering because it wouldn't be an official 2birds1blog event if I wasn't sweating profusely and/or breaking out in some sort of heinous fashion. I don't have "snake bite" piercings or a chest tattoo, but we've got two more days until the big show. It's still anybody's game.

Four more to go...

I'd like to say I didn't download instagram for the sole purpose of taking that artsy photograph of a Sue Grafton novel, toilet paper, and Pepto-Bismol, but why lie? The app was free and it summarizes a time in my life so perfectly. Stress-induced diarrhea and solvin' mysteries on the terlet: September 2011. Amen.

The Past Month in Photos, by Tulane Chris

Editor's Note: Chris wrote this blog post at 7 o'clock in the morning yesterday while I coded the finished (!!!!1!) manuscript. About an hour later, he emailed it to me and asked what I thought.

Chris: So, what do you think of the post? I'm especially proud of the last one. I matched all the fonts to the pictures and picked out colors that really 'em pop. I felt like I was getting a small glimpse into the Meghan C. Rowland experience.

Meg: Yeah...Chris, If I'm being completely honest, I don't understand about 99% of the jokes in these pictures. At all.

[Long, uncomfortably silent pause in which I didn't know if Chris was getting ready to hit me, tell me to go fuck myself, or gently curl up in my breasts and weep.]

Chris: Yeah. Neither do I. I think the moral of the story is I'm incredibly cracked out and I want to be Hota Katob when I grow up. OK, BYE!

Then he stood up, calmly collected his things, walked out, got on a train and went back to Philadelphia and we haven't talked since. I don't know if he still wants me to go ahead with this, but it prominently features the Groovie Ghoulies and Jeremy Piven, so...full steam ahead!

Everything explained.

Q: Chris, did you enjoy writing the last book?

A: No.

Q: Did you find it stressful?

A: Yes.

Q: Did this project ruin your looks, such as they were, and rob you of what sanity you had left?

A: Kinda.

Q: If you were to express your feelings by downloading ten images from the internet and captioning them in Microsoft paint, what would that look like?

A: Oh, like this, more or less:

Q: I find that in poor taste.

A:

Q: Should we all follow Hoda Kotb of daytime TV fame on Twitter?

A: She doesn’t really put a lot of effort into it but it’s cool to see she’s a real person.

Q: Any last words?

A: ROLL TIDE.

In good company...

HODA!!! LOLOLOLOLZ!!!!!!!!!

Truth be told, we did find our book in Barnes and Noble today, but it was not on the noteworthy paperbacks table next to Hoda Kotb, Drew Brees and Whoopi Goldberg (or "The Dream Team", as I call us). It was on a bottom shelf in the humor section all the way in the back of the store by the shitters, sandwiched between a book called Kama Pootra and Undateable. (Seems about right.) We took it upon ourselves to discreetly move it to a more prominent location, then immediately negated our discreetness by obnoxiously taking pictures of ourselves pointing to the table and giggling like school girls. I apologize to Barnes and Noble booksellers everywhere, slash heavily encourage you to do the same. Move our book to a more prominent location, that is. Not take obnoxious photos of yourselves pointing at it. Although shit, if you feel moved to do so, you go right on ahead. It's nice getting emails from people who aren't Bank of America or a Victoria's Secret catalog every now and then.

Speaking of helping us out, I made our release party an event on Facebook and can't figure out how to invite fans of 2birds1blog because I'm a girl and don't get technology or math or parking. So, here's the link. I think it's open...and anyone can RSVP? So RSVP? If that's an option? I don't know. Someone help me figure this out because I invited some ex-boyfriends and as of right now there are only 23 RSVPs and I feel like a fucking loser.

In other publicity news, congratulations to Chris on his awesome interview in the Philadelphia Gay News yesterday. And congratulations to me on an interview I did over a year ago on washingtonpost.com where I drunkenly ramble about Biergarten Haus and forget to say the name of our blog. THE 2BIRDS1BLOG PR MACHINE: SHE'S A MIGHTY BEAST...

Speaking of being jealous of Chris because he's been asked to do 7,489 interviews about the book, whereas the highlight of my publicity experience has been being asked to sign a copy for my aunt's assistant (OH HEY, CAITLIN!!1!), check this shit out:

Chris got a tweetback from Garry Shandling. And you know what? That's bullshit. Because not four days earlier, I sent a tweet to Garry Shandling that I feel like was way more deserving of a tip of the Shandling. Because mine, like, rhymed.

COME ON!!!! That's funny!!! I mean, it's not winning the Mark Twain Prize anytime soon, but it's still funnier than Chris' tweet. Yet what did I get back from Shandling? Crickets. And I'm completely aware that Chris and I are a "team" and we need to work "together" and I sound like his jealous little sister right now, but at the same time, you have to understand how high the stakes are. Because this is Garry fucking Shandling we're talking about, OK? Not Victoria Jackson. We love Garry Shandling. I may go as far as saying that we're (healthily) obsessed with Gary Shandling. (SPOILER ALERT: we dedicated our second book to him.) (So, maybe not healthily.) Would I let Garry Emmanuel Shandling to unspeakable things to me? Yes. Yes, I would. Have I sent him nude photographs of myself emptying the dishwasher to convey as much? No. But that's only because my kitchen has shitty lighting. A tweetback from Garry Shandling would mean everything and Chris got it and not me, and everyone wants to interview Chris and not me, and yesterday my mom yelled at me for leaving the freezer door open and spoiling all her Jenny Craig meals and I took the wrap for it even though Chris did it when he made taquitos AND IT'S NOT FAIR!!!!!!1! Quoth the Dre: I started this gangster shit, and this is the motherfucking thanks I get?

Also, this has nothing to do with jealousy, but Chris shouted "GOOD LUCK!" at me when I excused myself from the table to take a shit at T.G.I. Friday's yesterday and he blogged on Tuesday about how he's seen "every single one of my private parts" over the last few weeks. Which is valid. I had no idea wearing sheer v-neck shirts and playing with my own breasts were such important parts of my creative process until recently, but STILL. It's embarrassing. So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I DECLARE WAR ON MY "PARTNER" CHRISTOPHER TURNER-NEIL.

I'm not really sure what kind of war. I kind of crudely photoshopped that image together instead of fully thinking out my declaration, but it's uploaded, so I feel like I have to commit. A war to see who can have sex with Garry Shandling first feels kind of ambitious. Although I'm the one who's single and likes road trips, so bring it the eff on. 

In summation: RSVP to our release party so three people will regret dumping me, fuck Barnes and Noble's layout, fuck Chris, fuck Garry Shandling (literally), and I should stop writing blog posts after we've been writing for 12 hours.

Have a swell weekend.

UH, 7:41AM UPDATE:

Really, Chris? Flashin' your shit at Garry Shandling again? I mean, you've already tongue-kissed him in front of me at my own bat mitzvah—that not enough for you? Gotta go back for seconds? Sloppy.

I miss Philadelphia.

And this is why. 

I’m still holed up in Olney writing with Meg. I have accidentally seen every single one of her private parts over the past two weeks, which I wouldn’t characterize as “unpleasant” but which has taken our collaboration to the next level.

A new slang term for you kids: because we’re under stress, I’m naturally crapping incessantly visiting the little gentlemen’s room with regularity. I keep a Sue Grafton novel in there so I don’t get bored, so taking a crap is now “going to talk to Sue.” Let it color your language.

Love,
Chris

> 140

If you listen to only one piece of my advice, may it be this little pearl of wisdom: put a few drops of Clear Eyes Cooling Comfort in your eyes, chew a piece of Dentyne Ice, apply a thick coat of Burt's Bees to your lips, and run down a hallway really, really fast.

I've never done heroin on top of a mountain while climaxing before, but I'd imagine it feels a little something like that. You're welcome.

Just pull the trigger, Meg.

YEP. The release party for our first book, The Misanthrope's Guide to Life, is officially on the calendar! And it's equal parts terrifying, exciting, stressful, and erotic. Well, mostly terrifying and erotic. I've been BM-ing like a champ, though, so when God closes a door...

To reiterate what our jaunty little flier says, we're having a release party/book signing/book reading/poetry slam/key party/just kidding/but maybe not?/I don't know/the night is young and I can't get HPV/so there's that on Thursday, September 22nd at my beloved Big Hunt in Dupont Circle. The hilarious Tim Miller will emcee and Chris and I will be signing books, shaking hands, kissing babies, and stress vomiting into our purses from 7:30-11:30pm. (The good stuff starts at 8:15, so be on time.) (Please.) The bar will have $3 Bad Ass Amber, Big Ass Wheat, Light Ass, and Hipster Ass (aka PBR). (I 100% stole that PBR joke from Big Hunt general manager Dave Coleman.) (Dave also wrote 60% of the book and designed the cover art.) The first ten people to show up will also get a FREE gift compliments of Adams Media. I mean, what more could you want? To meet my parents? Oh, they'll be there. A copy of the book? Hop on Amazon and buy yours today!

I just really think you should come. I don't know if this helps, but pretty much every single person I know hooked up at our last party. It's an exciting precedent. Well, I didn't hook up. I got dumped, drank too much, and passed out fully clothed next to Co-Blogger Chris and his tighty whitties on a particularly uncomfortable corner of my bed. True fucking story. So I say this year, everyone I know gets laid, I step on a nail, have to get a Tetanus shot, and end my night giving Tulane Chris a fleet enema in the alley behind my apartment. YEAH?!?!11 Yeah. Good. It's a date.

So as I've obnoxiously hinted to on Twitter without offering any clarification whatsoever, Chris and I have been hired to write a third book for Adams Media. Theoretically it's a humor book about the butterfly effect, but mostly we just talk about ghosts and titties. We're hustling to get it done before the September 18th deadline (may God have mercy on our souls), which means that we have less than two weeks to throw a party, promote a book, write a book, stop being so fucking fat, and not mess everything up in the process. While this would be hard enough for two adults, it's especially hard for us because all signs point to the fact that we are somehow 16-years-old.

We wrote the first two books in Chris's apartment in Philadelphia, but we've decided to write this one holed up in my parent's basement in Maryland. As we were listening to the early 00's pop-rock compilation CD "Buzz Cuts" today en route to get ice cream, Red Bull, and candy before our 4:45 curfew, Chris took stock of our situation and we realized that we've essentially regressed back to early high school:

- We spend a good portion of every day listening to the ICP and waiting for our Ritalin to kick in

- My mom gave us her bank card to go to the Giant

- We totally lied to my parent's about where we took their car the other day. (I'd like to say we went out to huff Windex and give each other hand jobs, but we just really wanted soft-serve and were too embarrassed to tell my parents because we just ate lunch.)

- My mom gave us $20 to order a pizza tonight because she and my dad were going out

- We had to haul ass to get the Jeep home by 4:45 today because my parent's needed it and I'm not allowed to drive the Lexus

- We keep sneaking out at night. (To take long walks and clear our minds, but, still.) (And yes, you need to occasionally clear your mind when writing an anthology of ghost/tittie/pube jokes. An art form is an art form is an art form, thank you.)

- We laugh a lot at each other's farts, if I'm going to be perfectly honest.

- We talk about how dreamy Jeremy Piven is. A lot.

So there we are. And here we'll be. In my parent's basement, eating Necco Wafers, listening to ICP and writing a humor book. It's not the worst E! True Hollywood Story every told, but it's pretty damn close. (God bless you, Family Affair: The Anissa Jones Story.)

Can't wait to see you on the 22nd!!!!1!