Being asked to write a guest post for someone whose blog you love is probably the most nerve-wracking thing you can be asked to do. Well, short of “go over there and sunbathe next to Jessica Biel,” of course. But when you’re asked to write a guest post, all of a sudden you forget how to be funny. You forget how to be witty and cool. Hell, you forget how to write.
(Oh, you thought I was writing this? Ha! Think again! I’ve actually employed my largest cat Charlie to tap away at the keyboard for me while I dictate to him from this comfortable fainting couch here. More tea, Charlie! More sandwiches! And slice the cucumber thinner this time! No opposable thumbs? Don’t give me that!)
Anyway, hi. I’m Holly. I write over at Nothing But Bonfires, where I talk frequently about living amongst the crack whores in San Francisco with my impossibly cute graphic designer boyfriend, Sean. Just to clarify, we don’t live with the crack whores, just near them—two blocks away from where it starts to get slightly sleazy and where men with wild eyes and matted beards will come up to you and say things like THE SPINACH OF YESTERYEAR IS FAR SUPERIOR TO THE SPINACH OF TODAY. (Oh, they’re not hardcore vegans. They’re just crazy. I think most of them never came down from The Great Acid Trip Of 1967. And likely haven’t showered since then either.)
We’re learning to quite like it, actually, and have really sort of settled in. The other day, in fact, as we walked out of our apartment building (in broad daylight, I might add), Sean pointed at a woman standing on the corner and said “that woman is a whore.” And I said “Sean! You don’t even know her! What has she ever done to you? Don’t insult her for no reason!” And he said “no, she really is a whore. She’s a prostitute. I see her on that corner all the time.” So apparently we now have, as well as a neighborhood dry cleaner and a neighborhood grocery store, a neighborhood prostitute. Should I bake her some cookies as a welcome, do you think? Ask her how business is going? Suggest a slightly more modest skirt on account of the fact that I really don’t need to see anyone’s knickers before noon on a Saturday, and especially not before I’ve had any coffee?
(Oh yes, I did. I just said “knickers.” I may have forgotten to mention it, but I’m British.)
But anyway! This post isn’t about me, it’s about Y—lovely, glorious, hilarious Y, whose blog I can’t even remember how I found, although I feel sure it had something to do with Amalah. I think perhaps Y left a funny comment on Amalah’s site, and I thought “damn, this woman should be my best friend immediately. She could make me laugh to the point of vomiting! What other criteria is there when looking for a friend?” And so I clicked on over to Y’s blog—following the premise of there’s more where that came from!—and damn, if she didn’t have me at “aerobic dancing.”
My god, I love aerobic dancing. Not that I’ve actually done it since, ooh, 1997, of course, but I just love the idea of it, all that choreography and synchronicity, the fact that you’re really just dancing the way you dance in your bedroom when the Violent Femmes come on the radio and no-one else is around. I frequently challenge Y to a dance-off, in fact—I’m all “bring it, yo! I will get you with these jazz hands!” And she’s all “oh, please, bitch—have you seen me do The Worm?” And I’m all “pah! The Worm? Ever heard of a little thing I like to call…the Grapevine?” And this, of course, is all over e-mail, which makes it doubly nerdy. In fact, when Y created a Typepad account for me so I could log in and write this post, she made the password “danceoff.” This is why, even though we have never met, I frequently feel the urge to hug her. Tightly.
But anyway! My post wasn’t going to be about crack whores and hugging, it was going to be about Y, and all the things that are not as cool as Y. And so I hereby present you with a special list, a list of things that may begin with the letter Y, and yet pale in comparison to the real Y, the one who, by the way, I could totally take in a dance-off.
For example: yaks. Is there anything special about yaks? I think not. Apart from the fact that they are found in Tibet, of course—which always gives ordinary things a certain sort of cachet, does it not? I mean, I bet even the telemarketers in Tibet are kind of awesome—yaks are sort of pedestrian, don’t you think? You know, as long-haired humped domestic bovines go. (I totally had to look that up on Wikipedia. Don’t worry.)
Also, there is yogurt. Yogurt is not as cool as Y because there is always a sense of ambiguity surrounding the way it should be pronounced. I, for example, say “yogg-urt.” But recently—inexplicably!—I have found myself saying “yoge-urt,” mostly to be understood by Americans. And also to fit in, because, you know, one’s self-esteem does take a terrible knock when one is asked “what? what? what? I don’t understand what you’re saying!” four hundred times by the employees in the dairy aisle at Safeway. This is how I started pronouncing “basil” the American way. It just became easier in the end.
Then there are yams, which, eh, whatever, they’re pretty much just sweet potatoes. And yellow fever, which also obviously sucks. And yodeling, which is nowhere near as cool as aerobic dancing as far as dorky hobbies go, and yo-yos, which always get tangled within the first two hours of being received in a Christmas stocking. Yachting I don’t particularly care for, nor am I a great fan of Yonkers, yuppies, yawning, or the YMCA song.
Which I guess just makes it official: Y—our very own Y!—is, quite simply, the new Y. Any questions?