Eurovision 2020

As you may remember (who the fuck even was I in 2010? Was that dude real?), one of my favorite things in the whole Goddamn world is the Eurovision Song Contest. For the uninitiated, every year since 1955 an assorted group of European countries (and intermittent guest stars like Russia*, Israel, and Australia) come together and sing pop songs of wildly varying quality at each other’s populations, who then vote on which is the best. 

* I know we pretend it’s a European country, but MOST of it is in Asia and it’s like making a big deal about being 1/16 Cherokee.

A lot of countries send boring-ass man ballads – because what the world needs now, or ever, is a tiny ethereal SadBoi™ from Zurich cooing about the pain of first love. (You think getting broken up with at 19 hurts, missy, you wait until your ass looks like you left it in the car and it melted and you’re rummaging through the discount bin of remaining men. PRICED TO MOVE.) But thanks okay, because that gives you something to fast-forward through on your way to WEIRD SHIT OTHER COUNTRIES DID. Even though the big contest for 2020 was cancelled, I present a selection of the wackiest shit we would have gotten in Rotterdam this spring.

RUSSIA

I hate, hate when Russia does well at Eurovision because they’re such shits to queers generally and Eurovision is the gayest thing since… I don’t know, make your joke, Leslie Jordan having a nervous breakdown at a chiffon warehouse. That said, this is wonderful. (This bank also has songs called “Big Dick” and “Fucking Asshole.”)

AZERBAIJAN

Every country east of Albania or so includes that weird Middle Eastern horn in their song, which would be a cheap “exotic” gimmick if it didn’t sound so cool. Also, wait for the fucking breakdown here. Also, I want that car. 

GREECE

This song is not off the “chain,” as they say, but the video is funny simply because most teenagers I have known would NOT have used their powers for good. Tell me that if you had gotten powers in the tenth grade you would not have made the cutest boy love you and then reigned from a throne of skulls for a thousand years (or until puberty ended and you calmed down).

Corona Log: Day 30

Man, what a difference a week and a pair of properly-fitting pants can make, am I right?

The day I left New York (WHICH WAS ONE CHRISTIAN MONTH AGO TODAY, LOLOL) was busy and stressful, and all I took with me was two hastily-packed duffel bags: one full of skin care products, the other full of too-big sheer t-shirts and exclusively too-small yoga pants. It was an unfortunate decision that led to an uncomfortable number of weeks. I eventually got tired of slinking around my sister's house feeling like one of those snake toys full of neon-colored water that slips out of your hand if you let it roll down too far and ordered three pairs of gloriously high-waisted, emotionally supportive, judgement-free yoga pants off Amazon. A fact I'm hesitant to admit publicly, as Chris recently referred people who still buy things on Amazon as "goddamn nazis" and I know this is going to jeopardize the high I'm still riding from being better at self-isolating. And it gets worse.

Because I accidentally shipped all three pairs to my New York apartment. 

Which I didn't realize until I was like DERRR THIS DONE EMAIL SAYS IT WAS DELIVERED, MA. WHERE'S MY STUFFS I AIN'T SEEN IT AT THE FRONT DERR???, and couldn't cancel in time.

Then I had to weigh the moral ramifications of risking essential workers' lives because I'm too fat for my pants for the second time, and you know new pants won. I wish they hadn't, but they did. That said, my mood has noticeable improved since I started to wear pants that actually fit me, and now that I've simmered down slightly, I've entered the phase of quarantine where I'm so bored I downloaded Tinder.*

*Downloaded Tinder again. I have a Tinder account I used in New York twice with mixed results:

Wave 1: APPROX Spring '14. Met a great guy but things felt like they were moving too fast. I had just gotten out of a serious long-distance relationship, and this new guy lived in Stamford, Connecticut (a.k.a. my parents' mutual hometown where they met at Stamford High and went on their first date on April 16, a.k.a. MY BIRTHDAYYYYY), and Connecticut felt too long-distance at the time. I broke up with him over sushi and it was awful. I brutally misjudged how long it would take for the check to come and there was so much uncomfortable silence over orange slices and check tray mints. He was the only partner I've told about my vulvodynia and was so cool about it. We'd do it gently and binge watch Twin Peakes. He lives in San Francisco now and has a girlfriend, which is unfortunate because now that I'm finally ready to settle down, I realize I may have fucked that one up. But what am I supposed to do with that knowledge?

Wave #2: I re-downloaded on a whim six months ago. Sensible bob emoji shrug 🤷‍♀️ Nothing came of it and I ended up deleting my account again. I did, however, re-connect with my friend Ian, which led to me temporarily take in his delightful tuxedo cat for two months until the coronavirus got real and I was like HERE'S YOUR CAT, TAKE YOUR CAT, I HAVE A DUFFEL BAG FULL OF TINY YOGA PANTS AND SERUMS AND WE'RE ALL GOING TO NORTHERN VIRGINIA, THIS IS YOUR CAT.

Now, 30 days later, I've moved on from a state of being constantly terrified to a state of being constantly terrified and bored, and that puts a girl in the mood for some good old-fashioned flirting. I re-re-downloaded Tinder on Friday night and put up some circa 2016 unrealistically attractive photos of myself, which I feel like is whatever because we're quarantined and I don't live here. What—are we going to date when this is all over? And fall in love? And I'll break my lease? And we'll move into your apartment? And I'll be close to my friends and family again? And we'll take my parents' house when the time comes? And we'll start a happy little Maryland family together, just like the one I had? Full of local tradition and whimsy? (I will have lost weight by this point, so we cool.)

We have two Coronabaes in the mix. One is from Orlando and has two photos of shockingly disparate levels of attractiveness but is clearly the same person, and the other is a personal trainer in Arlington who just revealed he might be bi and loves big black cock porn (BBC). Which is fine in and of itself, but this schlong talk kind of came out of nowhere and the field has been covered in red flags ever since. I don't mean any of that in a sex-negative way, mind you. Because good for him. It's just that he described himself in his bio as a sweetheart 200-lb golden retriever and I think it's only fair to be slightly disappointed when your golden retriever asks you to peg him with a giant black dildo.

Although any promise of eventual contact does sound nice right about now. It's at the very least something to think about.

Gay Kickball

In retrospect, I should have known I was going to hate gay kickball, but I was lonely. Dating in your thirties in, the, er, lower middle class of human beauty isn’t as fun as soap commercials make it seem. An additional problem with dating gay men in their thirties and forties is that we’re going off-warranty at this point; I didn’t feel old enough to be ghosted by someone with a CPAP machine, and yet…

Meg and I have talked occasionally about the burden of having a “big personality” – you can feel a pressure to be wacky and fun when really all you want to do it to take a break from yourself, to enter a beige-and-taupe waiting room of the mind and spend six hours not doing a Goddamn bit. This pressure – are you being fun enough? Are you interesting enough? NO ONE WILL LOVE YOU IF YOU’RE NOT ZANY – has occasionally led me to do shit I knew I would hate because it was BoNKeRz and “the kind of ting a fun-loving person would do.”

So because I wanted to meet men and pretend to be a slightly different kind of goofball, I joined a gay sports league. With my friend Greg, whom I had relatively recently broken up with, and who did substantially better with his post-break-up tomcatting around than I had, which really set me up for emotional success. We initially started with trivia, which was terrible in a boring way – the bar was too loud and too many of the questions were about identifying images of celebrities – but our team came in third place and won a $75 voucher at a mid-level pizza joint across town. Getting a pizza party for being smart-but-not-too-smart was too much of an elementary-school flashback (and did I mention all the way across town), so I blew it off, but decided to sign up for gay kickball.

Doesn’t gay kickball, divorced from any actual experience you’ve had with it, sound fun? Glitter, squealing, “go long, Mary,” slutty uniforms, A League of Their Own jokes?

Lol.

First of all – we had to download a chat app to stay in touch with our team. Maybe I’m the asshole (I’m certainly AN asshole), but fuck you and go away, I don’t want to be summonable. Stay in your lane and don’t like, be part of my life that hard, stranger who is also gay and planning to run around a field.

Second of all – we got notified (via the cHaT ApP) that we were to attend a scrimmage before the actual season began. We were supposed to meet our team at a particular spot in a particular bar to meet each other an hour before. WELL, THEM BITCHES DIDN’T ARRIVE, so at like 2:04 Greg and I left to get high and watch Maude because we both had work travel the next week and because we wanted to get high and watch Maude. (We passed a clutch of people on the way out that 1) I think was them 2) DEFINITELY included someone named “Big Gay Dan” I had gone to college with, but fuck you, I GOT ON THE CHAT APP, don’t just go MEET SOMEWHERE ELSE, and did you know there’s an episode of Maude where she talks about having stress diarrhea?)

So I go on this long work trip all around North Louisiana and I don’t check my gay kickball chat app. Well, IN MY ABSENCE, there’s a summons to practice – PRACTICE – at like, 5 pm on a work day, and also I’m in Shreveport. There are then catty messages about how they CANNOT hold practice with only five people, are you taking this seriously, this is important!

So naturally this fills me with… emotions about the first game of the “season” the next Saturday, but because I don’t want to feel like a quitter I plan to go. 20-ish minutes before we get there, the same woman who had been fussing everyone about practice on the chat app beams through a fresh nag about how important it is to participate fully because the social aspect is just as important. So before she had met me, this stranger had scolded me twice.

I am pleased to report that the scoldy lady looked EXACTLY like you want her to – sporty, bottle-blond pony pulled severely back, exquisitely curated rainbow sweatband on her wrist, prim little smile. She looked like one of those elementary school teachers who hates children but likes being obeyed. Her co-ringleader of this ORGANIZED FUN ZONE was a hyper little whippet gay with adult braces. We proceed to be given: THE RULES.

1) Come to the games, come to the practices, come to the CRAFT NIGHTS.

Girl whut. That’s three nights a week. I’m a grown person with a job and other friends and a limited interest in being good at kickball or making things related to kickball. Also, I explicitly signed up for the “for fun” league, not the “I’m good at kickball” league.

2) We have chosen the theme for Spirit Week and it is Space Jam and we will be making costumes and planning a routine.

Girl no. I’m fun ON MY OWN, I don’t need a stranger instructing me to dress like Marvin the Martian. I’ve never seen Space Jam ON PURPOSE because the mean kids in sixth grade liked it and I didn’t want to be like them.

3) T-shirt modifications and decorations are encouraged, but you must ensure the logos remain readable and uncovered.

Girl LOL, this isn’t Formula One and I bought this T-shirt, you’re dumb and an asshole.

4) GET ON THE CHAT WE’RE ALL FAMILY THIS IS FUN IT’S LIKE FAMILY WE HANG OUT ALL THE TIME AND TALK SHIT IT’S LIKE FAMILY

I will never forgive myself for not saying “If this is my family, who’s got the crippling benzodiazepine addiction and who is merely enabling it?”

There’s more, but it blurs together in haze of perfect ponytails and annotated lists. We snuck away the instant orientation was over – Greg threw his T-shirt away in a bar bathroom, which I admired, and then I had to give him mine when he fell into a cactus. We deleted the chat app, blocked everyone’s phone numbers, marked the emails as spam, and spent the next year making “the social aspect is just as important memes.”

I met a nice guy recently. He left an Icy Hot patch in my bed, but he’s never told me which cartoon character to dress as.

And now, the HBO docuseries, McMillions

I just finished the last episode of McMillions—a six-part HBO docuseries about a con man who scammed the McDonald's Monopoly game from 1989-2001—and I've decided that this is the most confusing documentary I have ever seen in my entire life.

- First and foremost, every single person in this documentary is named Jerry. And "Uncle Jerry," the most 🍝👌 name of them all, isn't even the mobster Jerry! That's Jerry Colombo. Then there's Jerry Dan. Jerry Stan. Jerry Tyler Moore. Jerry Delano Roosevelt. All this documentary is is a group of Italian-American men named Jerry sitting around their kitchens talking in vague generalities about things that happened in the '90s while manic G-men pop in and out to explain the math. So much math. Too much math. Not for me.

- I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's back up. Because the opening title sequence was also entirely too long. I don't understand; just because Netflix invented the Skip Intro feature, that means every other streaming service has to put their fingers in their ears and—LA-LA-LA WE CAN'T HEAR YOU—pretend that this technology doesn't exist? Do you need me to open-apple page source this for you, HBO? Because Skip Intro is an important part of how I consume streaming media now. All my attention span can handle these days is a hot guitar riff and a single title card, at best. Derry Girls gets it. Fleabag gets it. McBillions does not.

- Per the 14-hour Unwrapped title sequence, it's worth noting that Mark Wahlberg produced this. I want to like Mark Wahlberg because he's handsome and in movies I enjoy, but he also beat a Vietnamese guy so hard his one good eyeball exploded. So, that's always distracting.

- This has nothing to do with the quality of the show, but can anyone confirm or deny if the small dog next to Uncle Jerry's wife throughout the series is dead or alive? She spends most of her interview in a wide-shot nervously rubbing her fingers together on top of what looks like a small terrier in a sweatshirt, but it never moves. Six episodes, and it never twitches an ear, never sighs, never moves a muscle. If this woman has a hyperrealistic adult plush comfort animal, that's fine. She's earned it. But much like the Mark Wahlberg thing, I just think it should plainly acknowledge before the episode.

- It's distractingly weak that the FBI named this mission "Operation: Final Answer" just because McDonald's happened to be running a Who Wants to be a Millionaire? promotion at the time. THAT'S NOT EVERGREEN BRANDING, SIR! They just left so much good hamburger-related material on the table. Operation: Hamburgler. Operation: CONald McDonald. Operation: Well Done. It just really makes you appreciate the subtle genius of "Operation: Varsity Blues."

- Do you or do you not think Special Agent Doug Mathews and McDonald's senior director of global marketing Amy Murray had sex? Because in the movie version I just cast in my head starring a young Matthew McConaughey and Elizabeth Banks...they do!

- Final summation: I am decidedly not smart enough to launder money, and I think that's fine. I can barely do my own taxes and I'm a single human with one W2 and a subscription to TaxAct. I have no business laundering money. I watched this show over the course of a coronaweek with my sister, and we had to pause, without exaggeration, every 15-minutes so she could explain to me what was going on. And it's not like the show doesn't have helpful graphics—it does. Mark thought of everything. There are just too many people involved, and everybody took a different percent of a different percent of a different percent of money, and I still have no clue how they're all connected. Like how in the name of god did Mormon John Goodman and his country-singing friend get involved? And how are they connected to the guy who lives in Florida and did amyl nitrate with best-selling author Harold Robbins? Please comment again. Not for eNgAgeMeNt mArKeTinG reasons, but because I miss the community and as Becca pointed out, you guys are smart and funny. Xplain 2 me thnx.

Hunca Munca Funka

I have a mouse, which is so exhausting.

- First of all, I don’t want a new activity. I’m already just as baseline eternally worried about my weight/money/death, and now it’s the end of the world and I’m also doing a drag workshop and attempting to remain employed and I just started dating someone and mademoiselle’s planner is full to the very brim. I don’t want to pencil in rodent management.

- There is no lazy way to do this. Remember how some problems you can half-ass away by “not getting an HIV test” and “pretending your anxiety levels are normal” and “not looking directly AT your credit card balance” and “refusing to purchase a blood pressure monitor” and and AND? (Don’t @ me, I eventually addressed all these except the blood pressure cuff.) This bold little fucker looked at me. In the daytime.

- And I can’t just throw something at it like it’s a man. Because if I hit an entire mouse with a hand weight it will SPLAT, or I’ll miss and break something (and I love my things). And if I throw something light at it “to send a message,” well, at a certain point I’m a 35-year-old (lol) man (LOL) throwing binder clips at a mouse, and that’s not the kind of behavior that passes a wellness check.

- I am aware that mice fuck and that if I put this off I will have MOUSES and then MICE and then A HORDE OF MICE.

- Mice carry disease and can you imagine, can you not just see the headline, if I died of the “wrong” pathogen during a pandemic? “Endearing Buffoon Fucks Up Once More on Way Out.” “Goddammit Chris, Quit Trying to Be Different (I Guess You Did But You Know What I Mean).” “Area Man Follows Different Drummer, Virus.”

- SHOPPING FROM AMAZON IS MORALLY BANKRUPT AND SO IS LEAVING THE HOUSE FOR NO GOOD REASON, I CAN’T JUST LIKE MAKE A MOUSETRAP FROM YARD BAMBOO AND IRE

- Trapping it under a glass is 1) improbable at my level of dexterity 2) just a new Goddamn problem, because then I have “a glass of mouse” and I still have to kill it or let it go outside and pretend it’s a new mouse when it comes back in forty-five minutes later.

- What would I EVEN kill a mouse in a glass with. I have a new weapon for keeping by the bed because the illusion of being able to confront an intruder is important, but it’s a length of pipe I found on the ground two weeks ago and christened “Amy Klobberchar.” This is Too Much for a mouse, plus we’re back to the Gallagher factor.

- I can’t burn the house down because I have a roommate I like and all my beloved things are here.

- I can’t pretend it’s a pet because I recently went on a public tirade about how I refuse to live with an exotic pet ever again, because they smell bad or escape or die or have to be kept moist or have to be fed motherfucking crickets or have to be EXPLAINED and (you knew Mom would show up in this) my mother used to TAKE HER IGUANA ON A LEASH TO THE MALL and can’t I just get a RESCUE BOSTON TERRIER LIKE AN AGING HOMO, I DON’T WANT A WEIRD PET, LIZARD PEOPLE SELL METH. (Don’t @ me.)

- I have EXTREME “unwanted animals in the bedroom” trauma from having bedbugs in 2015, which is the ONLY bad thing that’s ever happened to me that I’m totally unable to joke about.

- Besides I found a mouse turd on the bar cart and I’m not willing to forgive that, it’s from Target but I assembled it myself on the second try.

So I guess I’m just going to Amazon some mousetraps like a Goddamn Nazi and then write you all the story of when I tried to join a gay kickball league. (Spoiler alert: I hated it!) Stay tuned.

♬ I just can't sleep ♬

In the past week, I have fully convinced myself of the following:

1. I'm finishing a project this week at work (and by "project" I mean I've been asked to haphazardly do three months of work in four weeks, the fourth of which we're now in—YOU KNOW, THE WEEK THAT'S SUPPOSED TO BE THE NEW PEARL HARBOR, OR THE NEW 9/11. JUST A REAL LOW-STAKES, DOG-DANGLIN' KIND OF WEEK.), and I think I'm going to get laid off at the end of it. My bowels are not OK. Nobody asked, but I've been completely constipated for weeks, I cry at everything, and all I want to do is yell "fuck" at the top of my lungs into a pillowcase for 45 consecutive minutes in a government clean room.

2. I'm going to get COVID-19 and die. Much like how I convinced myself that I was going to die after 9/11 and started to wear my retainer again so I wouldn't go to hell, I'm now sure that I'm going to get the coronavirus, and my fat fucking stoner lungs are going to hit the snooze button one too many times and crap out on me, and I'm going to die. Like, I believe this. To quote the very serious lawyer in the very whimsical polka dot tie from Tiger King, "There is a god, her name is karma, and she has a sick sense of humor." 



I feel like my COVID death would be karma for how I've kind of put my life on cruise control for the past couple of years. I've wasted time, so now I'm going to lose it. Or not. I could live through this. But I probably won't. I don't know. My dad thinks I'll be OK. He also thought Hilary Clinton would win and doesn't know how to defrost meat. These are the things I think about.

Even though I'm half-joking about most some of this, it's brought me some kind of weird peace to think about my death plan. My mom had to make some very traumatic decisions when my aunt passed a few years ago, and it would suck for anyone to have to do that again. I'm not trying to be weird, I'm not trying to be a downer, I'm just saying it's worth thinking about. Food for thought:

Meghan C. Rowland's Official Death Plan 2020 Corona Get-Down©

I am OK with being put on life support, as long as it's a short-term solution and I'm not Terry Schiavo-ing all over the place. Not like any hospitals have time for that, I realize. Tick, tock.

Ideally, I would like to die in Maryland. When I pass, I would like NYC hero nurse/CRNA Eileen Meyer to pull the plug, if possible, while The Eagles' Greatest Hits plays. I would like to be cremated. I would like an elegant scoop of my ashes to go to my parents, an elegant scoop go to my sister, an elegant scoop go to Chris, an elegant scoop go to Eileen, and an elegant scoop to go to Alex. The rest I would like scattered in the Potomac River at Mount Vernon. (Or 50-feet away from Mount Vernon, per the Department of the Interior, National Parks Service, and www.novacremate.com.) I would like this to be followed by a boozy Bloody Mary brunch.

.........................My death wish sort of seems like a dark place to leave this post, so I leave you instead with an old friend: