Demanding Drug Dealer

I'm starting to think it would be easier to be a meth addict as hard street drugs are generally sold by dealers requiring no more than a bundle of cash from their prospective buyers and a seedly location for the transaction to occur. My drug of choice, endorphins, come at a much higher price from a demanding dealer: the anterior pituitary gland. That particular part of the gland, which secretes hormones controlling everything from tissue growth to sex hormone production, gets a massive ego rub whenever someone requests something of it.

The posterior pituitary, the siamese twin of the anterior, boasts a far less bloated ego on account of only being responsible for anti-diuretic hormone and oxytocin (though that is important for couples gettin' it on- I suppose if they feel like going the personification-of-glands route, ladies can claim that they had to fake because their posterior pituitary simply refused to dole out the oxy). If the kidney asks for some anti-diuretic hormone, posterior pituitary happily obliges, or decides to be a jerk and gives you diabetes insipidus (which makes you pee everything out, basically).

Yet Mr. Anterior Pituitary, as I mentioned, is not the kindest gland in the body for a variety of reasons. If you rub him the wrong way at all, there's no telling what he will do (I don't know why the anterior pituitary is a guy in my mind- the image of a woman is not the first thing that jumps into my mind when I think of a seedy drug dealer). Well, actually there is: he can screw you over and give you gigantism or pituitary dwarfism by bombarding you with or withholding growth hormone, mess with your estrogen or testosterone levels via secretion of luteinizing hormone, make you fat, crazy, anxious, and depressed via hypo or hypersecretion of thyroid-stimulating hormone, give you Cushing's disease from unleashing too much adrenocorticotropic hormone, fatten you up by holding back on lipotropins... the list goes on. And that list is ridiculously long as it is. I have just educated you all on the endocrine system, you're welcome.

I shove those dreadful evils of which Anterior Pituitary is capable, however, on the back burner when I remember my favorite hormone he stashes away in a glass case on the top shelf- endorphins. Anyone who has watched Legally Blonde has heard of endorphins from the famous line: "exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people don't shoot their husbands- they just don't!" Well, Elle Woods is right.

Endorphin highs morph crotchety Scrooges into hippie life lovers who, let's face it, drive those who haven't just run five miles insane. When you realize the demands of Anterior Pituitary to convince him to release that addictive hormone, it's easy to see why people turn to crack/meth/insert street drug of choice here as opposed to giving in to his absurd demands. Our encounters go something like this:

Me: yo man, I'm jonesing... I need my fix. I just need a tiny dose of endorphins to get me through the next couple of hours!
Anterior Pituitary: you know I can't just go givin' handouts, dawg (he talks like a dealer, too). You gonna have to earn it (because drug dealers have notoriously bad grammar).
Me: anything you want, man, I'll do it!
AP: I need you to go do a killer workout- none of this sissy stuff. You ain't gettin' the goods til you're sweating and about to collapse with a racing heart after at least an hour of cardio. Get yo desperate ass to that point, come see me, and we'll talk. (What a jerk, he just called me desperate!)

That anterior pituitary is the bane of my existence! He's such a self-righous jerk! I want to give him a piece of my mind (even though that's exactly what he is...)! Maybe I'll just give meth a chance instead. I've always wanted to partake in a drug deal in the parking garage of a seedy motel (if it's one that even has a parking garage). Okay, maybe not...

I WISH it were this easy....

My Deformed, Broken, Strong, Flexible, Beautiful Spine

Deformed, flexible, to-may-toe, tom-ah-toe. People both complimented and berated my spine in the past few weeks, causing me to whip out my glass-half-full optimistic attitude by electing to ignore the insults and bask only in the compliments. Prior to attending the Boulder Creek Festival where I first decided to dabble in the chiropractic world (a Boulder chiropractor who will not be named [Voldemort style] was offering free adjustments at his booth), I never gave much thought to my spine. I gave about as much thought to my spine as the aloof hipster at the bar gives to the nerdy girl in the corner considering hitting on him. Shame on you, hipster guy! But now, the roles are reversed and I have become the nerdy girl and my spine the hipster.

Companies that set up booths offering deals are just fishing for suckers like me to take the bait. The bait being, in this case, a free initial consultation and follow-up appointment. Well, I attacked that deal like a fat kid attacks birthday cake and ignored the nagging premonition that I would come to regret it.

At my first appointment, Dr. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named (man, he needs a different pseudonym) took pictures from different angles of me standing, and with every click of the camera made a face that would suggest he was about to diagnose me with an increasingly worse stage of brain cancer. Yet I still left feeling chipper about my posture, as it was not until my follow-up that he informed me, to continue with the brain cancer metaphor, that I was advanced stage 3 and may as well say goodbye to my loved ones within the hour. Basically, he showed me the developed pictures and warned me that despite my crippled, deformed spine being in dire need of repair, he could fix it for the low, low price of $4,000 a year if I agreed to come in three plus times a week. By the time I walked out of the building I felt like the mutant offspring resulting from the inter-species breeding of the Hunchback of Notre Dame and a two-humped camel. The Hulk Theme song, The Lonely Man, should have been playing in the background as I shamefully wandered back to my car.

The whole afternoon following that second appointment, I wanted to throw in the towel and embrace my new life as a recently diagnosed spinal cripple. It won't be all bad, I thought; I can just spend it in a back brace like JFK and eventually be assassinated as a result from wearing it (it kept him upright after the first bullet hit him, allowing the second one to end his life). Or, I could just lay down and never get up again. Both totally valid options in my mind at the time.

After sharing the ordeal with my parents, they referred me to their chiropractor to obtain a second opinion. I love second opinions- eventually, if you see enough people, you are bound to get the opinion you want, right? I told chiropractor number two about the ordeal which left her in gut wrenching laughter about the absurdity of chiropractor number one and his desperate treatment of chiropractic care as if it were a Wall Street biz. She assured me that my spine was fine- yes, my posture could be improved but whose couldn't, really? She gave me some useful exercises to do at home to make my shoulders feel more relaxed and gave me a good adjustment complete with popping and cracking sounds as she yanked my head into positions I hardly thought it capable of being in. End scene.

Walking out of her office, I felt less like the daughter of the hunchback but still like my spine could use a whole lot more lovin'. Flash forward another two weeks (warp speed, Sulu! [or is Spock in charge of warp speed? Trekies? Anyone??]). Now we are in hot yoga class, and going into camel pose. Ever since I started doing yoga, I never felt challenged by camel. As yoga instructors say, we all have our "hang-out posture," and that one happens to be mine. This particular class, however, the instructor came over to me and asked if I felt challenged or like I wanted a more advanced posture. I said I wanted to go for it, and the next thing I knew he had me looking like this:

Instead of my usual:

I felt like a badass. After class, he told me my spine is flexible and beautiful and that it was incredible I could do advanced camel. I'm thinking that yoga teacher should consider becoming a chiropractor. Take that, chiropractor number one! My spine knocks it out of the park!

Coppola's Cautionary Tale

Sofia Coppola's most recent silver screen release, Bling Ring, offers more golden nuggets of wisdom than the Dali Lama. A list of the most striking life lessons will follow this brief plot summary, so stay tuned.

Bling Ring follows stereotypical Los Angeles teenagers Nicki (Emma Watson), Chloe (Claire Julien), Sam (Taissa Farmiga), and Marc (Israel Broussard) as they and their "ring leader" Rebecca (Katie Chang) engage in a year-long spree burglarizing celebrity homes, namely that of Paris Hilton. The tale is based on the 2008-2009 burglaries of celebrity homes in the Hollywood Hills by a group of rebellious teenagers who stole more than $3 million in goods from the homes of Paris Hilton, Audrina Patridge, Rachel Bilson, Orlando Bloom and Lindsay Lohan among others. Normally I might feel sad for the "victims," but their closets overflowing with jewelry worth hundreds of thousands of dollars somehow give a comical vibe to the story. I have to applaud their selection of celebrities to screw over- seeing their exorbitant amount of belongings recreated on screen made me ever-so-slightly nauseous. Naturally, they could only evade the authorities and the justice system for so long, and I don't consider it a spoiler that they all eventually get caught.

1) If you are 17 and unemployed, don't post pictures of yourself holding fanned out $100 bills to Facebook. I hoped that one was a no-brainer, but I guess not.

Not Intelligent

Better Choice of Bills

2) Don't leave your wallet loaded with cash in your car with the doors unlocked in front of your house. May as well put a neon sign above it saying "ROB ME"

3) Don't leave your keys under your welcome mat, Paris Hilton.

4) In general, doing a bunch of cocaine and robbing homes is not the best idea.

See? Chalk full of advice!

Seriously this Time, it's the Apocalypse

Never in my life did I imagine a Seth Rogen movie would cause me to leave the theater desiring to lead a more Christian lifestyle. But when it was revealed to me that The Backstreet Boys and Segway rides await those entering Heaven, how could anyone not instantly opt to uphold the teachings of Christianity on the spot?

This is the End initially comes off as yet another of the countless apocalyptic plots involving zombies, vampires, or in this case, demons, that Hollywood has been cranking out at an exponential rate. And with identical plot lines coming at them from all directions like Cicadas emerging after 17 years underground, it's no surprise that moviegoers are increasingly skeptical to on-screen insights as to just what will finally take humanity out (my money is on the unstoppable spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria [there's an underdone cinematic plot for you]). Admittedly, I was one of those skeptics, yet as usual, Rotten Tomatoes certifying This is the End as "fresh" calmed my nerves like a good ol' Gin & Tonic after a 12-hour-shift.

I generally describe myself as the way-too-easily-annoyed audience member who unnecessarily glares at those laughing too loud during movies in a cynical attempt to bring them down to my level of not having such a good time. When did I turn green and try to steal Christmas from Who-ville? Anyways, during This is the End, it was my laugh attracting the begrudging stares. How's that for some good ol' fashioned irony? The plot is simple: a group of actors comprised of Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Jay Baruchel and Craig Robinson among others find themselves stuck together in a fight for survival during the apocalypse in which those of Good Will were beamed up to Heaven leaving them behind. There's brotherhood, angry British chicks accompanied by Harry Potter jokes, cannibalism, flying heads and demons appearing to have familial ties to Godzilla. What more could you want? Oh, right, a cameo by The Backstreet Boys. Yes, that's in there too.

Worth seeing in theaters? If you can get a student discount with an expired I.D. like me or if you can get to a matinee. Kid friendly? If you want to give them worse language than a heroin-dealing sailor and start asking what certain sexual terms mean, by all means.

Star Trek Triumphs

I've discovered the key to enjoying every movie you see in the theaters: lower your expectations. I mean REALLY lower the bar, to the point where even Thumbelina would get stuck trying to limbo under it. Before going to see the latest addition to the Star Trek family, I lowered my expectations to just such a point- I prematurely expected myself to be miserable and trying to inconspicuously check the time on my cell phone without everyone in my immediate vicinity noticing. I could not have been so pleasantly surprised.

I see it as a Hollywood cop-out when film companies recycle material and it seldom works to their advantage. The new Star Wars series, for example. But this latest Star Trek broke this moldy cliche. The script was smart and sassy, with witty humor and hardly any gag-reflex-inducing one liners. The plot moved right along and never felt too draggy, which is an applaudable accomplishment given the two-hour-plus running time. As is inevitable in today's sensationalist cinema, the amount of action on the screen was enough to induce an epileptic seizure. The main issue with the film for me was simply a technical fault of the theater itself- the volume was cranked to the point where the screeching noises could easily have shattered a glass or two.

The plot wove together elements from a garden variety of the previous Star Trek episodes and movies. No offense to actor Benedict Cumberbatch, but his slightly snake-like eyes, stark-black hair and pasty complexion perfectly equip him to play the ultimate villain. I mean, this guy creeped me out more than a pack of clowns on Halloween. Juxtapose that with eye candy Chris Pine as Captain Kirk, and you really can't go wrong. I am indifferent about the guy who plays Spock, to the point where I am not going to bother looking him up. The way I see it, if you take any expressionless, pale, black-haired male and give him uppity eyebrows and a Beatle's haircut, you have created Spock. Oh, I guess he has to be able to make that Vulcan salute, which is actually a challenge for some.

I hate movie review conclusions. Just go see it.

I am Vegan, Hear Me Roar Obnoxiously Loud for All to Hear

Here's a joke:
How do you know a vegan is a vegan?
They'll TELL you.

Perfect example: a particularly obnoxious vegan in my life frequents the coffee shop where I work and without fail proclaims her dairy-free diet to the world. She orders the EXACT same drink every single time: a hemp-milk latte with one pump of sugar-free hazelnut. Even typing the name of that drink makes me cringe. It seems she doesn't feel her dreadlocks scream "notice me" enough, so she uses the dairy-free thing to compensate and soak up excess attention. The standard conversation with her plays out a bit like this:

Dreadlock girl: Hey, I'd like a medium hemp milk latte with one pump of sugar-free hazelnut
Me/whoever is unfortunate enough to be standing at the register: alright, anything else?
Dreadlock girl: that'll do it, but did I mention the hemp milk? It's really important.
Me/whoever: Yeah, got it.
Dreadlock girl: okay, because I just really can't do dairy!
What I would like to say but have to suppress: Wait, do you wanted whole milk in that right? Because your system just loves lactose?

Today she threw my coworker a curveball, however:

Dreadlock girl: hey can I get a horchata freeze but with hemp milk?
Coworker: sure, but the horchata powder has dairy, if that's a problem.
Dreadlock girl looking like someone whacked her in the face with a frying pan: Ohhh.... yeah, that's DEFINITELY a problem, I just CAN'T have dairy... which of the powders don't have dairy? Because I just CAN'T have it.

At that point, it was in everyone's best interest that I remove myself from the room and go hide in the back. Otherwise, the urge to make her a beverage with whole milk easily would have trumped my reason. Nothing would make me happier than to see obnoxious hemp milk dreadlock hippie chick bloating up like a balloon. Why on God's green earth would she ever think people would have the slightest interest in her dairy-free diet? I could list a good 5,000 plus things I care about more. Angelina Jolie's favorite breakfast food far surpasses the amount of interest I have in her God-forsaken hemp milk latte.

At least meat eaters don't go preaching their meat-eating diets to everyone. "Um, are you SURE this sandwich has bacon?!"

I'm not sure who ground my gears more over the past few days- her, or iguana man.
Nice transition Marisa!

Life lesson learned the other day: never volunteer for something if the job description is not clearly stated in the volunteer post. Otherwise you will end up the only person above age 16 among a sea of juvenile delinquents court-ordered to serve the community. For three hours of my life, I stood on a curb in a neon orange vest ensuring that only handicapped individuals parked in a specific lot for the Boulder Creek Festival. "Um, sorry miss, that leg doesn't look broken to me..."

Better yet, the charming 16-year-old delinquent began feeling a bit chatty and left his parking lot where he was stationed to come pass the time with me. It was hard to decide which was his most striking feature: his massive, neon green spike earring or the enormous iguana perched on his shoulder. Yeah, I'd go with the latter too. In about 30 minutes, I was lucky enough to learn about each reptile living in his basement along with their lifespans, dietary requirements and cost per week to maintain. As is characteristic of 16-year-old rebellious males, his diction was sprinkled with profanities. Nice way to spend a Sunday morning. Eventually, I just peaced out of there. Never again.

Sorry dude, I just don't share your passion for iguanas 

The Things They Can Do With Soy These Days!

It truly is astonishing. Soy ink on compostable cups, food for people and animals, a renewable source of energy... pretty soon the world will be entirely free of waste all because of a little bean! Dream on, Marisa... anyways, even more of a wow-factor than the whole soy ink thing (though I know you are all mind-blown by that) is the striking resemblance it can have to meat. I mean, like the taste or not, there's no denying that bologna and Tofurky look as similar as Katy Perry and Zooey Deschanel.

There is more to this post than comparing the similar textures and appearances of lunch meat and their faux counterparts. My inability to tell real meat from my dear friend soy-based meat got me into quite a bind the other day. So memorize these pictures well if you are a vegetarian so you can avoid a similar distasteful (get it? It's a pun...disTASTEful... man I'm witty) situation.

Tofurkey or bologna??

Tofurkey or bologna? Maybe they are both bologna... you'll never know!

Katy or Zooey??

So back in North Carolina where BBQ reigns supreme, the amount of vegetarian and even vegan options came as a surprise. Not a surprise like when you wake up and find that your roommate shaved your head (which I hear immature college freshmen do to each other- maybe it's better to be a loner as a male in that stage of life), but the kind when you find a crisp twenty-dollar-bill you had no clue existed in your coat pocket. Ok, back to the story...

My friend and I popped into a restaurant serving empanadas when hunger pains struck after attending an art festival. I had a crisp twenty surprise when I spotted the "vegan chorizo" empanada at the bottom of the list. Bam. Decision made. That has always been an easy aspect of following a dairy-free vegetarian diet- menu decision-making tends to be a heck of a lot easier than those that will chow down anything that is placed in front of them. Just thinking of that vegan chorizo initiated a very unladylike waterfall of drool out of the corner of my mouth and caused my stomach grumble unpleasantly to the point where I would be embarrassed had it been a date. "Um... yeah... indigestion...awkward...sorry..." (you don't get asked out again after that). But it wasn't a date so I just let my stomach do its thang. 

Finally the crisp empanada shrouded in an inviting aroma arrived on a ceramic plate bearing its name: vegan chorizo. I cut into it and was greeted by another surprise (not quite to the level of a crisp twenty: maybe a crisp five). The soy meat looked amazingly, almost incredulously, authentic. "Wow, I can't believe how much soy can look like meat!" I wondered aloud (I can't believe I just used that phrase- wondered aloud. That always used to drive me crazy). I took a bite. "Wow...I can't believe how much this tastes like meat..." Crap. The crisp five surprise quickly morphed into a roommate-shaving-my-head-surprise. This was pork. I handed a forkful to my friend to verify, and she immediately broke down laughing. "Yeah, Marisa, that is pork."

I was horrified, and not even horrified where I could assure myself that this would be funny later. Simply horrified. I rushed my plate urgently to the waitress, holding it as if it were an envelope full of anthrax. I could barely spit out a complete sentence- "This... not... vegan?!" She looked almost as horrified as I felt. "Oh no... are you a vegetarian?!" she asked, and all I could do was nod in desperation in response. Her face went from zero to pale in two seconds as she quickly uttered an awkward apology and assured me I would be brought the proper empanada. She probably thought I was going to sue. When I returned to my table still bearing the expression of a helpless, lost child, my friend was still crippled in her seat cackling. Real mature. 

In a few minutes, the waitress returned with empanada in hand and store manager at her side. He walked up to me with one of those intense walks that signifies the walker is headed somewhere VERY important. Like a missile silo. Or a conference about missile silos that the President plans on attending.

"Are you the vegetarian who ate the meat?" (What an oxymoron). I nodded and probably looked like I was going to cry. Now future Marisa looks back at past Marisa and laughs in her face because it really is a comical story (future Marisa tends to bully past Marisa... we are trying to initiate an intervention). Anyways, in the end I won because they paid for my entire meal. Score!