The ##

A toast to George Plimpton (via The Paris Review).

(via)

Hello again gang, here at The ## we’ve been up to our knees in powder for a few days (snow this time, we swear)! The traditional ski trip dates back to the Viking warriors of old, when the Norse took some time off from conquering and pillaging to exercise their sweetness in ski chalets. With winter upon the greater part of the glorious North American continent, we figured that some valuable ski-trip advice would be prudent for readers venturing into the icy wilderness. Lesson 1: The real trip is off the slopes. After all, anyone can fall down a mountain, but it takes skills to rub elbows with the finest of Aspen’s cougar population. Here are the basics for ski trip “success:”

1- NEVER SKI: Whilst fun for some time, skiing requires exertion (a necessity for liberals) that will fatigue you. This will detract from your ability to party late into the night. If you absolutely MUST ski, then a cigarette should be smoked at all times, and a stop should be made at each lodge on the way down to order a beer. Better yet, carry a 6 pack with you constantly.

2- “Exercise” Frequently: One huge advantage of the ski trip is lots of free time. However, in the cold, it’s important to keep your body in top form for combat and bedding of cougars (see point 4). Still, exertion should only take the form of “the hottub martini” workout plan:

Begin at the crack of noon, stumbling out of your chalet into the pristine snow and drop immediately into a hot tub. Begin drinking the martini. After several minutes, you will begin to sweat. This is exertion, and makes you less fat and more beautiful. If you do find yourself exerted, simply grab some nearby snow and rub yourself with it to cool down. Once you have finished your first martini, send someone for more alcohol. Repeat until you become charming.

3- Proper Attire: The greatest athletes of ancient days trained in the buff. You should mimic their lifestyles, wearing ONLY a robe at all times. The robe should be extra plush, and should be donned for the duration of the ski trip, unless you decide to bed a woman during your stay. In this case, it may be untied or cinched at the waist for freedom of movement. This accomplishes two goals: (1) You don’t need to pack any clothes (2) It lets everyone know how sweet you are. Clothes? Fuck clothes. Know who else wore clothes? Peasants, that’s who. You’re too beautiful for them anyways.

4- Meeting Women (Cougars): Very rarely do you find ugly people at ski resorts. How do they keep the uggos out? Simple, they don’t let them in. Nowhere else in the world will you find a higher concentration of true cougars, with stunning volumes of “natural” beauty. If you decide to pick one up, we recommend starting by going to the bar and ordering something “distinguished” like a glass of bourbon or whiskey. If you’re a bit soft, a scotch on the rocks will do. Make eye contact with your target, and then proceed to finish the glass in one swig. Wink afterwards. She knows you’re fuckin’ sweet, and will now sex you.

5- Entertainment: People at ski resorts love country music. This stems primarily from the fact that all ski areas are deep in the woods, and that everyone there is drunk most of the time. In keeping with the Web 3.1 tradition, music on your computer from youtube should be played at maximum volume while you sit in the hotel lobby (wearing your robe). Your selections of songs should range from juvenile to offensive; we recommend alternating between Miley Cyrus (shwa!) and Project Bitch. If anyone asks you to “keep it down,” or says you’re “upsetting the other guests,” DO NOT ACQUIESCE TO THEIR REQUESTS. Simply respond by yelling “DON’T YOU KNOW WHO I AM?” Follow this by calling the “owner of the mountain” on your “cell phone.” This works equally well whether or not you actually know the owner.

Those are just the basics, but you should be able to pick up the rest. Saddle up and we’ll catch you on the slopes.

(via nydailynews.com)

Kid Sister’s second lesson on getting girls.

You are drunk. You walk into the bar - your nose is immediately filled with the smell of cheap vodka and your eyes sting from the smoke. The time is right. You approach the dance floor and the ladies are looking hot, or at least drunk/desperate. Time to get your swerve on. You start grinding on some chick and you like it. You want to take this to the next level. But what do you do?

This past weekend - among a million other weekends - I watched dudes fail at hooking up with girls on the dance floor - or the D-floor make out, if you will. Let’s walk through this. You find a girl, you start dancing. You slowly turn her around (if thats the kind of dancing you do- slut) and make eye contact. This is “the moment.” You gaze into each others eyes and realize you don’t even know each others names. This doesn’t matter. But at this moment you know each other. You know everything about each other. Oh man, the L-word. This isn’t love, it’s lust. Maybe the most important L word of all.

Key points:

• the D-floor hookup is always initiated by the guy - always.
• EYE CONTACT. Once this happens, game over.

That’s all you need. I don’t know how many times I have seen people fuck up this easy maneuver. It’s all about the eye contact. If you try an do anything before that- you should probably just give up now.

Lesson 2 Complete. Good Luck.

(Lesson 1, if you missed it)

In the second episode of the second season of The O.C., Kirsten Cohen, the shiksa matriarch of the Cohen family, walks into the kitchen, where she finds Sandy, her very Jewish husband who has a very un-Jewish head of thick hair and a very un-Jewish hobby of surfing. He is a lawyer, but he spurned a corporate job to work pro-bono, and he went to Berkeley. Kirsten is the daughter of Newport Beach’s biggest, baddest businessman, Caleb Nichol, who is also not Jewish and who probably made anti-semitic comments when Sandy wooed Kirsten. He was not a nice man; he died when he had a heart attack and sank to the bottom of an infinity pool, which was ironic and all, because his second wife, the gold-digger with a pure heart, Julie Cooper-Nichol, was planning to kill him that very night.

“Sandy?”

“Honey,” he says. “I’m mid-schmear.”

In any Jewish household, bagels are that essential. Growing up, every Sunday, we had bagels for brunch. I also ate a bagel every morning for breakfast, and some afternoons for lunch, but on Sundays, it wasn’t just a bagel with cream cheese with a glass of orange juice; there was lox, tomatoes, cheese, marble cake. My father went to the bagel store in his pajamas and waited for 30 minutes with every other dad in town sporting the same casual garb. Weekends are for sports, and they are for food. Couples enjoy date nights on Saturday nights, and families bring in bagels on Sunday morning.

*

Go to the bagel store. Frozen bagels suffice about as well as insta-coffee passes for a mug of the real stuff. Choose a bagel flavor depending on the mood. I usually go with sesame for taste, and also because as the seeds slip off the bagel, it’s satisfying to wipe the plate and collect the fallen, like sprinkles on soft-serve. On occasion, I’ve also been prone to fads of everything and cinnamon-raisin, and a plain bagel is always a surefire option.

Go home.

Take the bagel from the brown bag — it must be a brown bag — and, with the biggest knife in the kitchen, fracture it through its side, holding it vertically. Slicers are for cheaters. Place the bagel in the toaster, open side up. Twist the heating knob about 75 percent to the right. The toast is done when the bagel’s edges are somewhere between tan and black. Burnt bagels are not good, and cold bagels are not as good as warm bagels.

As the toaster begins to glow, walk to the refrigerator and grab the tub of Philly’s or the clear container of store-bought cream cheese, which always tastes better and spreads smoother. Do not take a stick of butter or vat of margarine. I love bagels with butter, especially when the melted butter oozes. But butter is not schmear. Also, use plain cream cheese. None of that vegetable cream cheese. None of that strawberry cream cheese. And none of that shit with chives. Don’t be a yuppie.

The toaster will pop. Make sure the bagel is thoroughly toasted — brown and hot, not black and smoky. Flip the bagel onto the plate; if it’s an oven-style toaster, use the schmear knife as tongs.

With the knife, scoop a wad of cream cheese, moving the wrist from left to right. The last motion is upward. Spread the cream cheese on the bagel. There is a fine line between a coat and an excess; find it.

Bagels with butter are best open-faced, but the two sides of a bagel with schmear should be slapped together. There will be cream cheese in the hole. With a bigger knife — one that could chop a finger, if misused — cut down the middle, starting the knife at the top of the bagel and moving toward your stomach.

If it is Sunday, add lox and a tomato.

*

Jimmy Cooper, Kirsten Cohen’s high school paramour and Julie Cooper-Nichol’s first husband, is also not a Jew. He sails. He lives on a yacht. He fathered Marissa Cooper. In the first season of The O.C., he is investigated by the SEC and ultimately arrested by the FBI for stealing money from his clients. In the second season, after a failed relationship with Kirsten’s sister, Hailey Nichol, he rekindles something between love and lust with Julie Cooper-Nichol, who, again, is married to Caleb Nichol, Kirsten and Hailey’s father. Soon, the Newport Beach community — or at least, the Nichols and Cohens — find out about the affair, and Jimmy is shamed into sailing off to Maui, all to avoid messing up the status quo.

He spends his last night in California with Marissa on the beach, huddled on a pier, and the next morning, having stayed up all night, she walks next door to the Cohen household. Presumably, it’s Sunday.

“I’m sorry,” Sandy says, staring at Marissa, distraught in her oversized USC hoodie.

“I brought bagels,” she offers, reversing the mood.

“Well, that’s the secret password into the Cohen house,” he says. “Come on in.”

The Cohens already had bagels, because it’s Sunday. They see Marissa’s brown bag, and they throw their bagels in the trash.

Sandy pledges to teach Marissa how to shmear a bagel, and Kirsten endorses her husband’s shmearing, dubbing him an “artist with cream cheese,” emphasizing the second word instead of the first, just for Josh Schwartz to remind us that Kirsten is not, in fact, Jewish, just in case everything else about her wasn’t already a tip.

“You gonna be OK?” Seth asks Marissa.

“Of course,” Ryan says. “We have bagels.”

Go to a gas station and buy a fucking pack of cigarettes. No, you wont get lung cancer. Lung Cancer is a false societal construct. Get a lighter, too. Ask for the one with the American flag on it. If they’re already out of those, the only appropriate colors are red or blue. Got it? And buy Marlboros.  No foreign shit. That’s not real cigarettes. Camels? They’re from Egypt or something, so they’re for terrorists. Parliaments? Come on!? Does AMERICA have a fucking Parliament!? Maybe if they were called “Senates” or “House of Representatives” you could smoke them. But they’re not. They’re called Parliaments and they’re for commies. So you have your pack of Marlboro Reds. Note: you should be drinking a Budweiser while you’re doing this. Not a Bud Light, a Bud Fucking Heavy. What? You’re in a gas station? Open it in the fucking gas station. No one’s gonna bother you, because you just bought a pack of Marlboro Reds and you’re a bad ass mothafucka. Oh, and it should be a tall boy. So, you have your cigarettes. Pack it, and sorta look around like you don’t give a fuck BECAUSE YOU DON’T. Then pull the plastic wrap off, pull out the silver tab from inside, and drop it on the ground. Don’t you go putting it in the trash. You litter because littering is fuckin’ awesome. And don’t even THINK about recycling it. Recycling is for people who give a shit and you fucking don’t. Take out a cigarette and put it in your mouth. Notice the smell of that wonderful North Carolina tobacco. It smells like AMERICA doesn’t it? Yes it does. What? You’re in a gas station? Where smoking is illegal, not to mention insanely dangerous because of the high possibility that there’s flammable gas around you? Man up and smoke your cigarette. So spark up that lighter, put it near the end of your cigarette, and inhale for a second or two. Now exhale over your shoulder, not looking at anyone. This is when you come to the realization that you look FUCKIN SWEET and that everyone around wants to bang you/be you. Enjoy it. It feels good, doesn’t it? Yeah, it does.