If I believed in New Year’s Resolutions, mine would be to somehow look that awesome (see above) all year. That’s a relic from August ‘07. My friends — The Team — and I were in Michigan for New Buffalo’s illustrious Ship ‘n’ Shore Festival (holla!). A somewhat drunken but TOTALLY CHILL dance party to a playlist I’d created called “It Couldn’t Be Lamer: Dance Hits from the Mid-to-Late ’90s” ensued. We’d already eaten our weight in cheeseburgers, but dancing is tough, and being the motherly provider I am, I decided to root around in the laundry room fridge for something — anything — to replenish our calorie count. By some miraculous intervention a.k.a. “Dee Barrett being awesome,” there happened to be a spare cherry pie just sitting in there on a dish towel. Heavens!

Anyway, I could never do it on this blog because my name’s all the F over it and I would never want people to think I’m even slightly self-absorbed (ha!), but I kind of want someone to do a “Looking Great in ‘08″ series. It’d just be a pic of that person every day and then she’d scathingly critique her own appearance because half the time she’d be unshowered in a college hoodie. It’s only January 2nd and therefore still doable. She’d just have to fake a photo and say it happened yesterday. Maybe I should start an anonymous blog and just go for it. Hmm. Look for this anonymous blog around May when PopWatch mysteriously links to it. You think I’m kidding.

Really. So many of the photographic documentation of my summer has taken place at the Jersey Sub Shop, which is obviously located in New Buffalo, Michigan. The cookies are decorated by a crackhead, there are random Shreks and cows out front, and worst of all, the sandwiches aren’t even that great. So why is such a large percentage of my digipic options to throw on DR JSS-related? No clue, but I find it hilarious. So here are some more. The JSS is totally my “beat” for the summer. I’m such a journalist.

JERSEY SUB SHOP UPDATES, AUGUST 2007

Once a valiant standing figure, here is where Shrek sits, crumpled up, today.

The cookies have received a major facelift from last month, but still don’t look like anything anyone would ever choose to eat. (They don’t know what they’re missing!)

Contrary to what you’d expect from the lawn outside, the JSS is not actually a dairy. It’s just very supportive of the lactose community. Also, my friend and fellow Show Choir alum Kristers makes her DR debut, in just about the most flattering shot imaginable.

My mom, Dee, and I got this cookie last week at the Jersey Sub Shop, which is obviously located in Michigan.

The JSS is amazing on all levels including “has giant Shrek outside for no reason” (see much less ambitious post, below). But come on. WHAT is this design?

We didn’t quite grasp the extent of its mind-numbing quandary when we first ordered it. At point of sale, it was basically like “We need to get a big-ass cookie, end of story.” Then we got home and, post-subs, just kept staring at the cookie for entire minutes. We checked out different angles, adjusted the lighting… at one point I deliberately walked off in a huff, like “I’ve HAD it with that cookie” and then of course walked right back to see if a whiplashed, fake-first impression would do the trick. It totally did not.

We flat-out refused to eat the cookie until we figured out what was supposed to be on top of it, then gave up and ate it anyway. Among our guesses: Snowflake (all me), [confused look] (Dee), simulation of Spirograph (all me), [exasperated look] (Dee), variation on the Burger King crown featuring squiggly lines representative of what happens inside after you eat Burger King (all me). I thought snowflake was pretty spot-on, but Dee gave a final [ENRAGED LOOK] that ran a close second.

You will note that this cookie is roughly four times the circumference of a modestly sized glass of Diet Dr. Pepper. I’m all about the SCALE these days.

I had one more guess and basically nothing to do for the rest of the day, so I drove back to the JSS to confront the guy at the counter head-on about the puzzling design. It was weird.

ANNIE: Hi.

DECORATOR: Oh, hello!

ANNIE: (awkwardly, unnecessarily) I’m back!

DECORATOR: [blank stare]

ANNIE: Did you, like, decorate those cookies? [points at others]

DECORATOR: Yeah! I decided to give it a shot today.

ANNIE: Was the usual decorator not around?

DECORATOR: Right.

ANNIE: Oh, that’s really cool of you. [?!] I have to ask. What exactly were you going for, here? My mom and I have been debating it for half an hour. We’re so confused. I mean, I’m all about artistic expression and doing your own thing [?!], and since this is clearly “your own thing,” [air quotes] I love it just for being itself and… existing. But… what did you have in mind when you set out to do these? TELL ME YOUR FUCKING VISION, MAN.

DECORATOR: [thinks for a long time]

ANNIE: [thinks about leaving because this is SO AWFUL]

DECORATOR: You know what? I have no idea.

ANNIE: I think I know what it was. [gingerly extends a printout of the following image]

ANNIE: It was Queen Frostine’s wand from Candy Land. It’s been on your mind for decades and you’re just now coming to terms with it.

DECORATOR: Holy shit.

ANNIE: [smirks]

DECORATOR: I think you’re RIGHT!

ANNIE: You… like… Candy Land?

STEVE HOLT: No. … I LOVE it!

—

True or false: The above did not actually happen, because I’m way too lazy to re-leave the house.

It did not stop me.

At least I’m updating!

I made it to Stray Dime Island. How pretty is it?!

No, I’m at the Barrett Family Compound (BFC, which also stands for big fucking cabin) in New Buffalo, MI, hard at work in the fields of eating, drinking, and developing skin cancer. This is my first official “vacation” all year! I plan on using it to avoid any houeshold duty whatsoever. My dad’ll be like, “Yo, A, how ’bout a refill on ice water?” and I’ll wince and shake my head, “Sorry,” even though I’ll be standing at the sink, spitting cherry pits that don’t belong in the sink into the sink. Or Dee will cry out, “Annie! Cut yourself a phat slice of raspberry-almond danish!” and I’ll glare at her from my perch on the couch, then point to myself with both index fingers with a powerful smirk that clearly conveys: “ON VACATION.” She will then serve it to me with a fork, and I will laugh and laugh, but not hard enough to make my stomach muscles exert themselves, because that’d be like… working.

Click here to watch possibly the greatest thing to ever occur in the Great Lake State, and that’s including Dee Barrett’s summer ‘05 purchase of this cake in the shape of a hot dog.

The one thing that makes it truly awesome is that while most of the stupid, mindless, “funny” viral videos I have to watch for work daily are contrived to the point of being completely fake and pointless, this dispatch is actually real. I can’t see how one could screen-write anything better. WHY DO WE EVEN TRY.

I also dig the giant pot leaf emblazoned onto the transcript. Stay classy, Michigan!

Here I am in Michigan, not updating DR:

Can you believe it? The sun is setting.

My hand reminds me of medieval Christian paintings, when baby Jesus or whoever the hell else was in those scenes would hold up certain fingers to boast their holiness. That wasn’t really what I was going for here.

Right now I’m in Chicago, frolicking joyfully in a wavepool of WiFi signals. I’ll mostly be staying in New Buffalo, MI for the next few weeks. Yes! Vacation!

I originally envisioned updating my blog from the beach a la Sandra Bullock in The Net, except she was conducting some sort of official business and I’d be attempting to better describe how it feels to eat a particularly sandy potato chip. (Great!)

Anyway, I thought Internet wouldn’t be a problem up there, but for this specific DR-based computer, it is. Sandra could explain why. I can’t.

Meanwhile, I’m heading up to the non-Internet area again, for two weeks. I’ll try to figure it out and update with important reports on chili con queso and the Michigan City, Indiana Steak n Shake, but can’t make any promises.

I’m aware that I suck. I should be Auf’d!

muse-like friend has suggested I pen a collection of essays about my time here in New Buffalo, MI and title it “Cooler by the Lake.” The cover would be a picture of me or someone hotter, maybe a stock model with more beach-appropriate feet, sprawled out on the sand next to a cooler teeming with beer and snacks. Love the title, love the cover, but the essays themselves might lack substance. Here’s a rundown of a few potential segments:

Annie wakes up before 11 and congratulates herself profusely.

Annie makes a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and eats it on the deck.

Annie then congratulates herself profusely. (It was awesome!)

Annie willingly watches shows that she usually gets paid to grudgingly view, like “Clean Sweep,” “While You Were Out,” “In a Fix,” or any other program on TLC. She doesn’t get why, but is increasingly suspicious that they are all, in fact, the same show.

Annie watches “The Real World,” makes an “I just saw naked Wes butt” face and then sits silently for three hours while writing about it. To reward herself, she eats three-quarters of a Kirschbaum’s cherry pie.

Annie swipes her sister’s giant ice water, which happened to be mixed with three heaping tablespoons of tasteless digestive aid MiraLax. 12 minutes later, Annie receives payback in the form of [you don’t even want to know]. The photo at right does not relate to the incident, but Meghan’s all-knowing smirk does make it sort of fit.

Annie pretends to take her car out “to go running” but ends up just driving around.

Dee force-feeds Annie a Vienna Beef hot dog, Chicago-style minus the long pickle, which Annie’s just not that into. (On the side, though, it would have been great. How weird is that? This could be one of the discussion questions at the end of the chapter!)

After three hours of trying, Annie kills an innocent white moth that was actually sort of pretty.

Annie wears the same “Miller High Life” t-shirt for five days straight.

Annie finally showers. It’s a little scary.

But then she puts the shirt back on. All is well.

I think this could be a bestseller, guys!

I’m sitting outside on the deck at the lakehouse in the middle of a storm with no rain. The thunder is outrageous and I keep seeing lightning out on the lake. It’s awesome. But where’s the rain? I need to know. I’m freaking out that even one raindrop will get on my lovely tank of a computer. I’m very nervous right now. After each of these words I type, I glance up, as if I might have missed the first drop. It’s really annoying that I’m doing that.

(One hour passes.)

Okay, the downpour is over. I got inside fine, before any water hit the deck. I chickened out after envisioning the destroyed Mac floating in a pool of what just killed it. Why did I need to take it that far? I even started imagining different and more awful scenarios. One involved me running inside on a sunny day to do something, probably get a large snack, and leaving the Mac outside during a sudden downpour. In this vision, I didn’t even think “I have to run out there and save my computer.” I just went about the snack and let it sit there, forgetting. Hours later, when I remembered what I had been doing hours ago (because that’s what I do) I went outside, realized what had happened, and began to weep. In my mind I pressed the pause button and watched myself bawl in slow motion. I recall there being snot involved, which would make sense because right now I have a cold. Then I called Apple in tears and Apple laughed and called me a moron, which made me cry even harder and since I coulldn’t see, I ran smack into a table, hit my head, and never woke up. Keep in mind none of this actually happened. This was me sitting safely indoors with the Mac, willingly plunging into a nightmare.

I do this a lot — get a freakish pleasure out of imagining really sad scenarios. I remember trying to convince my dad of something once during Annie Barrett: The Teenage Years and him looking at me with this “you’re crazier than I thought” look. I told him I’d want to throw my childhood doll, Carwie, off a speeding boat. If anyone knew me back then, you know that despite my “teen” status, I was still obsessed with this doll to the point where we all considered her a member of the family. (Her birthday is October 2nd and she is always just turning two. I still believe this.) It actually became quite comical within the family. I don’t think anyone else would get it so don’t even go there. Anyway, I adored her. So there’s no reason I should have wanted to throw her off a moving boat.

I tried, and failed, to explain the thrill I sought. I wanted to fling her in wildly into the air, and then sort of stop time (pause button!) so that she’d never hit the water. I just wanted the momentary feeling of doing something that treacherous and reckless, but I didn’t want to have to deal with the trauma of the aftermath. (Friends tell me this is also a common attitude towards sex.) I tried to explain that it could be like a still frame in a movie, when something in motion stops suddenly right before the credits roll. I’d be standing at the edge of the boat, post-fling, mouth wide open and screaming, the doll on the upwards portion of her arc, still smiling. That’s it. It would have to stop there.

This sort of reminds me of the scene in Love Actually in which Colin Firth loses his manuscript. The Portuguese indentured servant accidentally picked up the coffee mug that was holding the typed pages down, and they all blew away into a pond. I want to do that! For some reason I’d find it thrilling to have a stack of my own meaningful, irreplacable typed pages fly away and be gone forever. Or if not, I’d at least like feeling like I had the power to make it happen. I’d sit there, nudging the paperweight, toying with the idea until it completely freaked me out and I couldn’t take it anymore; then I’d probably chicken out and run inside… just like I did with the computer. This post is getting so meta.

Come to think of it, the losing-the-writing thing is pretty common. It happened in Anne of Green Gables with the handsome father figure Morgan’s work, and I’m pretty sure it happened in a Parker Posey movie. I forget the movie. It’s a male writer on the top level of some sort of fancy boat (meta!) and he throws away the novel he’s just completed on a whim, because he knows it’s a piece of shit. How writerly of him. No wonder I can relate. What damn movie is this? Why am I thinking Celebrity? Was Parker Posey even in that? That has to be wrong. I’d google all of this, but no wireless out here and it’s more fun to torture myself like this. Even though going inside would be a terrific idea now that a Shania Twain song just came on, about 40 notches higher in volume than all of the other songs. Two good reasons to visit the stereo. WTF? The neighbors hate me.

Anyway, now I’m back outside, and I’m even charging my computer. That was an effort. I knew there was an outlet somewhere along the side of the house but couldn’t find it for the longest time because Bill managed to cover it with something the exact same color as the faded gray wood. Bill the Builder never fails to impress.

Everything’s still wet, so I laid towels from the outlet to here so that the cord wouldn’t be resting on water. Was that necessary? I don’t really understand how electrocution works. I’m aware that using a hairdryer in the rain would kill me, but what if water just started pouring while I was using a plugged-in computer? I highly doubt I’d die from that.

And yes, if you were wondering, I am sitting here envisioning myself just on the precipice of turning on a hairdryer in the middle of a storm. I’d just have my finger on the button! I wouldn’t actually do it! Nothing would happen!

Okay, this is becoming scary. Suddenly I’m recalling a moment during my drive here that I found a tad worrisome but nothing major. During the Cars song “Hello Again,” there’s the line “You just want to fly!” at the end of a verse. It’s the kind of line that gets you really revved up for the next few seconds, a line you’d sing even if you didn’t know the rest of them, because it sounds more passionate than the rest of the lines.

But instead of “fly,” I sang “You just want to die!” I was certain that was correct. Strangely, I’d made the same mistake many other times in the past. I guess I just never fixed the glitch. Or maybe this is my way of telling myself that I want to die. But probably not. Pretty sure there would be  warning signs other than mistaken Cars lyrics.

Maybe being all alone in a big house (family’s coming up tomorrow) is making me crazy. I live alone in New York, but it’s different being alone here, in a place where a step in any given direction doesn’t require the artful dodging of mountains of crap. This place has (gasp) multiple rooms. I feel like I should spend an hour in each one, just to appreciate the space. Yeah, let’s try it.

Not updating this website is addictive. I bet you didn’t know that the absence of something, literally a non-activity, could have addictive qualities. But it can. It’s not the same as being addicted to a substance or activity, like drugs or doing drugs. I don’t go around thinking about my next “fix” of “doing anything else except writing in this space” but I do sit there motionlessly (”going around” sounds a little too active for me) and think to myself “You know what I feel like doing right now? Not updating my website.” Which at least means something — that I’m thinking about the website instead of thinking about nothing — but what ends up happening has nothing to do with the website at all. Namely, that I end up doing nothing that has to do with the website and nothing that doesn’t, either. I just got lost myself too, don’t worry. You see, not updating the website means that it’s that many more days until I can remember how to form coherent sentences again. And realize when it’s time to end an atrocity of a paragraph.

Here is proof that I had a reason to keep basking in the not updating:

See? I was at the lake (Michigan, where they don’t even have computers yet), looking nasty and acting smug in front of the camera for no reason. Who am I kidding with my hand on my hip and the no-teeth smile here? It’s like I’m saying “Yeah dude, check out my lake. Made it all by myself. Whoosh! Lake.” Gross.

Yes, my shirt does say “Western Springs Recreation Girls Youth Basketball.” It’s making my chest look disfigured, but that’s probably due to the bathing suit underneath. Bet I could sell that tee to a downtown thrift store for $16, which I would promptly carry to and deposit at Chipotle.

I’ve been getting 2-3 Slurpees per day at NYC’s first-ever 7-Eleven. I now excrete sugary syrup from my pores without even trying. Whoosh! It’s lovely.

Four days in Michigan and the only thing I take pictures of is the fruit market. Oh well. Here we go:

Joe Jackson’s “Famous” New Buffalo fruit stand.

Mmmmm. There are always bigger portions in the Midwest!

This is Paul, our new camera-friendly friend. He’s a manager. (2006 update: Paul now has his own fruit store down the road and it kicks Joe Jackson’s ass!)

WTF are these? You go, Joe.

Looking plump and jolly behind a large watermelon display. This is also the first visible documentation that I really am a student at NYU. I swear! I am!

Meggers is excited to be in the fruit market.

How sad. The CRV still has two volleyball stickers on it (one of which says “Just Spike It!”) as well as an LTHS West Field 1999 parking pass. It’s always good to be prepared.

I make a confused gesture to Meghan’s Italian peace (gay pride?) flag.

Homemade bruschetta (prounounced with a k)! Bill seems to be more impressed with the vino.

Two words. Obsessed.