Adulthood is Hard. I Assume.

I’m not an adult yet, but I do hand wash my delicate clothing items, which makes me feel like I have some authority to speak on maturity.  But—what even is adulthood?  When will I be considered a “grown-up?”  Will it be when my parents stop paying my cell phone bill?  Or when I stop doing fun things because I don’t want to deal with parking?

I like to think of myself as a highly functioning, responsible human being.  And yet, I am still in college, I primarily subsist on Lean Cuisines, and I always feel oddly proud whenever I complete basic adult activities.  When I go to the bank and talk to the stranger that works there, or ship a package at UPS, I am immediately filled with this elation like, “Look at me, I’m a machine of production!!  Next, I’ll Swiffer the floor and google how to fix my garbage disposal!”  But then, the exhaustion sets in.  The disheartenment.  The knowledge that I’m going to have to complete such tasks for the rest of my life, and no one is going to give me a lollipop, or take me out to ice cream, or pat me on the head and praise me for a job well done.  Knowing how to call Time Warner Cable doesn’t make me special.  

Last weekend, as I was walking along the Venice Beach boardwalk, I saw a small baby pug dog wrapped in a bright red T-shirt.  It was like a tiny, fuzzy little E.T., with a perfect wrinkly face and a permanently forlorn expression.  “I yam selling eet!” announced a woman wearing a babushka, thrusting the miniature creature into my welcoming arms.  I could feel it shivering as it attempted to burrow its face into my hands.  As I kissed the top of its head, it raised its eyes to meet my loving gaze.  And it looked at me like I had just killed its entire family.

The happiest I've ever been

"Life isn't worth it anymore."

At that moment, something inside of me--some dam of crazy, insane-person emotion--spontaneously collapsed.  I yielded the small E.T. into its owner's arms, and whipped out my cell phone to call my mom.

“MOMMY I MET A PUPPY AND IT IS SO LITTLE AND SAD CAN I SAVE IT?” I stammered into the receiver, without greeting or introduction.  To be clear, I don’t live with my parents anymore.  I’m not sure why I wanted my mom’s permission, when my roommates, or my 112-year-old landlord named “Bill,” might have had more to say on the subject.  But as someone who receives an allowance and often only feeds herself with a continually replenished supply of Torero Dining Dollars, I felt I needed her blessing, or at least her cold, objective reason to appeal to my irrational mind.  I needed her to remind me how to exercise restraint.  But it was too late—and in the middle of the crowded boardwalk, I began to convulsively cry.  “It looked at me!  And it didn’t know I loved it!  It didn’t know that anybody loved it!  I just want it to know that I care!” I breathlessly blubbered.  I imagined adopting “E.T.” and bringing him home to dress him in a cute little hoodie.  I envisioned myself attaching a basket to my bike and carting him around.  And then, I imagined “E.T.” and I traveling the world, on a mission to give one million tiny pugs one million tiny hugs.  On the other end of the phone, my mother was speechless.  I think we both realized that I was not yet an adult.

In my imagination, I am a strong, confident, intimidating boss-lady who knows how to command respect.  In reality, I am a person who cries in public when she sees a baby pug.  But does that mean that I’m immature?  Or does it just mean that I have a tender heart, and perhaps some deeply seeded emotional issues I’ve never dealt with?  

I don’t know.  I’m not sure I want to be an adult.  A reliable career, economic independence, putting posters in frames and keeping potted plants alive… these are things I look forward to.  But please: grant me these four months until graduation to cry about pug dogs.  I was always so eager to grow up—to have long hair, to read chapter books, to wear deodorant.  But sometimes it’s all too much, and I find myself wishing life would just slow down.  I want to go to my parents’ house and order Netflix and indulge in their fully stocked pantry.  I want to eat home-cooked dinners and be continually reminded to get a haircut.  And at night, I want to lie in my old bedroom, the shrine to my 14-year-old self, and google image after image of baby pugs.

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The 7 Things I Would Do if I Were Really Famous

Once when I was in high school, a gawky theatre kid in a cape told me that when she became famous, her imaginary Star Trek-themed home would be featured on “Cribs.”  I was already a hardened and cynical youth who didn’t hold stock in dreams, so I judged her pretty harshly.  I believed—and I still believe—that no one’s goal in life should simply be to become a star.  People should aspire to be the best in their field, and then maybe, with hard work and good luck, they will become famous.

But here’s the thing: I am never going to be a star, despite all my skills, like being able to eat a basket of tortilla chips in under 35 seconds.  Fame is not something I’m actively pursuing.  But why not fantasize about it?  What if Brangelina adopted me?  What if I was scouted to be a not-quite-plus-sized model?  So here they are,

THE 7 THINGS I WOULD DO IF I WERE REALLY FAMOUS:

1.  Change my name

I’ve always loved my name, but recently, as I was checking my email on my phone, “ahalligan” autocorrected to “phallic.”  It was deeply disturbing, and I now plan on changing my last name to “O’Brien,” so that people will mistake me for Conan’s younger, significantly tanner sister.  (I then plan on exploiting the heck out of that connection.)

2.  Date a famous person

…who used to date Taylor Swift.  Then maybe she would write a song about me!

“I thought that we would marry someday

But some dirty bloggin’ annamal just swept you away…”

It would be super catchy, and I could bop to it while driving.

3.  Endorse a product

Something useful, like recyclable plastic cutlery.  In the commercials I would be wearing all white, laughing, and spinning around in slow motion, to show just how much fun recyclable plastic cutlery can be.

4.  Release a clothing line

…inspired by manatees.  It would be called “Hugh Manatee,” and a portion of the proceeds would go to saving the cows of the sea.

5.  Appear in a fashion magazine

This one is absolutely vital.  I want to either A) Look super badass holding a guitar that I don’t know how to play, or B) Sit in an English garden surrounded by fuzzy animals.  The final decision is up to my publicist.

6.  Make a cameo in a movie

This would be done only as a personal favor for my good friend Will Ferrell.  I’d be visiting him on set, and he’d be like, “Pleeeease play my ex-wife’s younger lesbian girlfriend spotted at the bowling alley?”  And I’d be like, “Okayyyy.”

7.   Create a perfume

It would be called “Midnight Binge,” in honor of my late night trips to the pantry, and it would smell like Ryan Gosling on a spring morning.  The ad would show me seductively eating a pudding cup while using my own belly as a plate.  “Midnight Binge” would be particularly popular with crazy cat ladies and ironic teens.

I know it says "Face in Hole.com," but this picture is actually totally real.

At the end of all of this, I would write an epic autobiography that would be mostly true, but perhaps a bit too personally flattering.  In it, I would say things like, “My greatest flaw is that I care too much,” and reviews would call it “Quirky… yet condescending.”  I would feel pretty bad about it, but it wouldn’t matter, because Taylor Swift’s ex-boyfriend would love me anyway.  Then, we would buy a Star Trek-themed home together and have it featured on “Cribs.”

PS:  Congratulations to Fannamal Anna Territo, the lucky WINNER of the Annamal Crackers Annaversary Giveaway!!  She will be receiving her $25 gift card and personalized box of animal crackers in the mail.  Thank you to everyone else who participated!

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Happy 1-Year Annaversary, Annamal Crackers!

Today marks the 1-YEAR ANNAVERSARY of Annamal Crackers' founding!!  I am so proud and grateful for the support of new and old fannamals alike!!

To show my thanks, I am holding a giveaway: 1 lucky fannamal will receive a $25 VISA gift card and a SIGNED (holy cow!) box of animal crackers!!!  All you have to do is share my blog on a social network of your choice, or "like" the Annamal Crackers Facebook page if you haven't already:  https://www.facebook.com/AnnamalCrackersBlog

After you share the link to THIS page, be sure to let me know on Facebook or in a comment below, and I'll make sure your name is entered in the giveaway drawing!!  You have until MIDNIGHT January 3rd.  May the odds be ever in your favor!

First Love: Confessions of a Peter Pan Fangirl

When I was a wee young thing, before I became the very reasonable, perpetually serious adult I am today, I used to stay up at night and wait for Peter Pan.  Any minute, I remember believing, the magical boy with the mischievous shadow would fly through my window, and off to Neverland we’d go.

It sounds all very whimsical and imaginative, but I took this dream very seriously.  I was a lot like Wendy Moira Angela Darling, with an adventurous spirit and an affinity for long antiquated nightgowns.  Who better to be a mother to the Lost Boys?  Nevertheless, there was one night when I realized Peter Pan wasn’t coming for me.  “If Peter wanted to be with you,” I told myself, “he would have come for you by now.”  I was relationship-wise even before He’s Just Not That Into You debuted.  I closed my eyes and went to sleep.

Now, this story is only cute and sweet because I was about four years old.  And I really, really, wish it had ended there.  But the way I felt about Peter Pan resurrected itself when I was in middle school, and the P.J. Hogan film of Peter Pan came out, starring Jeremy Sumpter:

Look at that face!  I was 13, overly dramatic, and in the middle of an awkward phase.  He was perfectly beautiful and sparkly, but not in a creepy Edward Cullen way.  This, to me, was love.

One of the side effects of being in love with Jeremy Sumpter was drastic mood swings.  “Sometimes I’m so happy, because he exists, but other times I’m sad, because we’re not together!” I bemoaned to my mother, who struggled to keep a straight face.  My sister mocked me mercilessly, but I didn’t mind.  “Someday you’ll be in love, too,” I’d say, “and then you will know how it feels.”  She would run away screaming with laughter, and I would shake my head mournfully.  She was so innocent and naïve.

Aside from my immediate family, however, I kept this love a secret.  I was afraid of it being dismissed as a crush, which, of course, was trivializing and absurd.  I refused to have a deep and true love like ours tarnished by nonbelievers.  I knew we would get married one day.  And thus, I began to prepare.

This is where things start to get embarrassing.  (Start?  Because they weren’t before?)  I scoured every Jeremy Sumpter fan website known to preteens.  I learned pool and basketball, just because those were his hobbies.  I still remember that his dog was named “Bear,” and that his favorite athlete was Barry Bonds.  I had no idea who Barry Bonds was at the time, but I clung to every bit of information I could find; it would all just serve to bring me closer to him.

I also wrote Jeremy Sumpter a fan letter.  To be clear, it was not a love letter; I knew he would find that incredibly creepy, so I was like, “I really respect your work.  Also, I live in LA, so maybe I’ll see you at the grocery store sometime!”  Ah, the classic grocery store line.  Works every time.

Apparently, however, I wasn’t destined to meet Jeremy Sumpter.  That was my father’s fate.  It was at a golf tournament, and my dad was following Tiger Woods.  He heard a familiar voice behind him: “Dad!  Can you believe that drive?!  He’s amazing!”  It was the voice of a young boy with the slightest of speech impediments.  …Could it be?  He turned around.  It was. 

When I got home from school that fateful day, my dad handed me the guide to the Target World Challenge, 2004.  I pretended to think it was cool, until my dad told me to open it up and look inside.  I found this, and promptly fell apart emotionally:

I wish I could tell you that I was so incredibly happy that, with a little fairy dust, I could have flown off the floor.  Instead, I became hysterical, convinced that my father was mocking my love.  I threw myself on the couch, choking on my sobs and screeching in adolescent agony.  How could I live with a family that refused to take their future son-in-law seriously?!?  Didn’t they know that in my dreams, Jeremy and I were already in the hand-holding stage of our relationship?!? 

Of course, by the end of the evening, I had been told the whole story, and I knew the autograph was real.  I slept with it under my pillow that night, and for many nights thereafter, imagining it to be the sole link between soul mates.  Did Jeremy ever think about me, too?  Did an odd, anonymous girl in Abercrombie and Fitch sweatpants wander into his dreams at night?

I’m not sure if I ever made the conscious decision to get over Jeremy Sumpter.  I just Googled him, however, and learned that he has a girlfriend.  I’m strangely not affected by this would-be tragic news.  I suppose that, somewhere along the line, I flew away from my fantasy of romantic Neverland love and decided to grow up, just like Wendy.  I am left only with a sincerely sentimental attachment to a golf tournament guide, and a severely embarrassing story that I never should have chosen to share.  Oh, well.  Second star to the right, and straight on ‘til morning!  

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The Party Don't Start till Christopher Walken

I made these, because drawing punny pictures of Christopher Walken seemed like a much better idea than actually doing my work.  Walken roll!

Special thanks to Jenny Halligan, who probably thought of most of your favorite puns.

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Batman and Jesus: The Dark Knight Rises Again

I was kneeling on the pavement in a long white robe, cradling a small, frail stranger against my linen-clad breast.

She gazed up at my face, her eyes filled with trust.  I said a little prayer that she wouldn’t die or throw up on me, and then begrudgingly acknowledged that my ambitions for Halloween had gone too far.

I take costumes seriously, and this Halloween, I decided to dress up as Jesus.  I looked like this:

And may have been drinking a little bit of this:

(It's a miracle!)

Around 10PM at night, however, I walked to a local bar and happened upon a lanky female Batman drunkenly sprawled upon the ground.  Except for the shambly revelers stepping over her to get in line, she seemed entirely alone.  I decided to help the little lamb—I’m kind of a Method actor—so while my friends took her phone and started calling her friends, I made it my mission to hold her upright.

“Where do you go to school, Batman?” I asked, supposing that if I could get her to speak, maybe she wouldn’t die as quickly.

“Poit Schloma Nazzzarine Unifershity,” she said. 

“Nazareth?  I’m familiar with it!”  I was pleased with my poorly timed joke, but apparently she wasn’t, because she became entirely unresponsive, and we decided to call 911.

By this time, lo! we had started to attract some attention.

“Get your shit together, Jesus!” bellowed one drunken reveler.  “Take your friend home!”  Someone else started making fun of Batman, and in not very WWJD moment, I actually flipped him off.  He immediately repented: “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize she was so sick… BLESS YOU!”  I forgave him, and he went off to say fifty Hail Marys.

When the paramedics and firemen finally arrived, they found Jesus huddled on the ground, cradling Batman.  They told me I could step away before she puked on me, and I agreed; I didn’t need to be more of a martyr than I already was. 

“ARE YOU A REAL FIREMAN?  THAT’S A GREAT COSTUME,” a zombie exclaimed.  “You are the real Jesus,” a wide-eyed blonde whispered to me earnestly before I anxiously eased away.
The paramedics told me that Batman’s heart rate and blood pressure were stable, but she was still drunk and alone, so they had to take her away.   I assume she made it back to Nazareth just fine.  And it was good.

The rest of the night was less eventful.  A boy asked to take a picture with me to send to his mom because, in his words, “She LOVES Jesus!”  A few men hit on me, so I’m now convinced that Biblical fetishes are a real thing.

Nevertheless, I can’t stop wondering how Batman is doing.  Now, a week later, I wonder if she might still be hungover.  And I wonder if, somewhere in her swampy blackened memory of Halloween, she remembers looking up at Jesus embracing her feeble body.  I wonder if she thinks she had a miraculous spiritual encounter with God.

Either way, she was saved.

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Sex and the Seamen: A Tale of a Famous Dick

I've been reading Moby Dick.  And know that when I say I've been "reading" Moby Dick, what I actually mean is that I've been sleeping with Moby Dick.

Over the past few weeks of this less than exciting Melville English class, my roommates have gotten used to not seeing me in the evenings.

"What are you doing tonight?" they ask.
"GETTING DICK!" I bellow obnoxiously, thumping up the stairs to my bedroom with an 8-pound book under my arm.  I am always very ladylike and mature.

But most of the time I don't "get dick."  My honeymoon phase with Moby is quite over, and most of the time I end up just going to sleep.

To that one guest-lecturer who looked like Bryan Cranston and cried with passion while discussing Chapter 42: I'm sorry.  I'm sorry if my dirty mind and blasé attitude seem to desecrate this Great Work of maritime fiction.  But I'm not the only one with a dirty mind when it comes to Moby Dick.  Nineteenth-century American novelist Hermann Melville, I'm looking at you.

For those of you who have never read it, Moby Dick is about a bunch of SEAMEN hunting for a SPERM whale.  (Children, stop reading this.)  These seamen run around with long harpoons they like to poke in people and things.  They are constantly on the lookout for spouting blowholes and, according to Melville, they "ejaculate" words of surprise whenever they see one.

Here's some more hard evidence:

 

I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but from what I gather, somebody's pole went down after they had filled several tubs with (fragrant?) sperm.  Then something queer happened, and some guy lost his grasp on the tackles suspending the head, and it was all very oozy.

Want to know what happens next?  No?  You're throwing up?  I'll tell you anyway.

Next, one of the seamen falls into a GIANT HOLE inside the head of a dead whale.  The men watch it happen: "Looking over the side, they saw the before lifeless head throbbing and heaving just below the surface of the sea" (Melville, 1159).

This is Fifty Shades of Grey shit.  How are we allowed to read this in school?

The plot continues to thicken.  Lots of boring-ass paintings are described, Melville claims that whales are fish, and a crazy guy with one leg yells a lot.  Then this happens:

Sorry for giving away all the good parts.

I have to write a paper on this novel, but somehow, I don't think my "Moby Dick is an allegory for gay sex" thesis will go over well.  Because for several weeks now, I have sat inside a dreary little classroom listening to men in scarves talk about Melville's manipulation of language through metaphor.  I entertain myself by doodling whales, giggling at the word "sperm," and imagining Melville looking down from heaven and mocking us.  He wrote this Great Work of American Homoerotic Fiction, and nobody gets it.

Melville, I get you.  Squeeze those oozy tackles and do yo' thang.

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