My dad and two of my sibs (Aleksander, 13 and Kat, 20) came to hang out this past weekend! They drove all the way from Ohio, listening to my brother play Ramblin' Man on his phone practically the entire time and finding funny names of towns on the GPS (the favorite was Manunka Chunk, NJ. if you live there, marry me).

I showed them the office, ran them all over town (we walked almost 7 miles on Saturday) and when there was downtime, we took funny pictures.


I made Aleksander try rugelach and black and whites, both of which he found delicious...but that meant he ended up eating the latter during what would otherwise have been a lovely family picture.


hello lovelies


I feel like I should shoop da whoop Aleksander in this picture


my dad hung out with Vincent at MoMA


Basically, Kat and I decided that we were going to ask the FAO Schwarz guy for a picture and then make disgusting faces in the picture so hilarity would ensue. But I chickened out and vaguely smiled so we have, L-R, me making a messed up smile, the soldier dude with his eyes shut and Kat making a weird face. THIS PICTURE IS SO FULL OF WIN.

oh families

The boyf and I were talking about Michael Jackson last night. I had experienced relative fits of incredulity as I sat on ONTD and TMZ and hit F5, F5, F5 as the reports on MJ's condition worsened and it seemed a very real possibility that the king of pop would be dead by the end of the day, if not the hour. And he was.

Last night, he brought up the question as to whether or not there would ever be another Michael Jackson and asserted that he didn't think it was possible to have a pop star of such international magnitude and intrigue. I maintain that there will be - wherever there are beats and pretty girls, pop will live forever - but one is hard-pressed to find someone, aside from Madonna (and he argued Radiohead; I cited Britney), that has been able to reach cult status, reinvent himself and land success all over the world.

Chuck Klosterman writes about shared experience in IV, his pop culture manifesto, and how because we have 600 channels and bootlegs and even the internet, where niche markets are so overserved but inevitably separated, he doesn't think we'll ever have a true experience that EVERYONE has seen. He says in his book that Johnny Carson's last episode was the last time we'd have something that everyone in the world has seen. Back then it was the radio and cassettes; now it's iPods and niche radios. It's so personalized that the chance of having everyone see one event simultaneously is slim to none.

That being said, the market is so segregated that it's nearly impossible to have someone conquer the charts once, let alone thirteen times like Michael did. Billboard charts everything from Top 40 to ringtone sales; how is anyone supposed to keep up with all of it? Half the time, when you read the list of Grammy nominations, you don't know who half the people are. Best Bossa Nova compilation? Huh? Having success in one particular category means nothing to the average person.

And that was who MJ appealed to - from today's pop stars to your neighbor down the street who whistled Beat It while he went out to get the paper from the end of the driveway. You could hang out in your kitchen with socks on and try to moonwalk or put on one mitten and you WERE him, even if for a brief second. His personal life made him even more bizarre; you wanted to figure him out, to see why he was the way he was. Maybe it was because he started in the Jackson 5 when he was eight - who's ready to be in the spotlight before hitting double digits? Nobody. Maybe it was because he had an odd affinity for chimpanzees and clinging to the childhood he never got to have. He was weird, but you always wanted to know more.

So while pop tarts and their respective hits come and go and celebrities express their love for vodka and Red Bull or eating pizza in bathtubs and posting it on Twitter, there will be a gaping hole where MJ was - keeping us confused, intrigued and dancing in our armchairs.

This weekend, I helped out at a two-day dance recital-a-thon. The place where I used to do gymnastics (all my sibs and even my dad have taken classes there and my mom used to teach) has four shows in June over the course of two days and I wanted to go.

We have kids from the age of 4 to 57 and need to get their hair braided, makeup on and shoes ready; then they go upstairs to watch the show, come down when it's their turn to dance, they dance (tra la la la la la la) and go back upstairs until the end of the show when their parents pick them up. The show is around three hours with all the kids that have to dance.

Anyway, for all that to go on, we had minimal crises. One girl forgot her headpiece to go with her outfit. One got so nervous she had an accident in her tutu. We have had barfers in the past.

The very last show is Show D, which was moving incredibly smoothly and had us scheduled to end the show after about two and a half hours - yahtzee! That is, until the fire alarm went off.

I'm up in the balcony with four other late-teenage/early twentysomething girls and twenty-five rows of kids while the lights are up, the alarm is going EEER. EER. EER. EER. Kids are crying and saying they want their mommies, I looked over at the girl with the headset who could get directions from downstairs and she mouthed I HAVE NO IDEA and one of the girls dancing to Fabulous had the face crumple parents know all too well - things are fine, then the face crumples and then she'll cry for ten minutes. We can't have that.

We all split up and picked out the kids that looked the most upset. We picked up a couple and held them - some of them just wanted us to cover their ears for them - and my favorite Fabulouses settled down enough to go brr-brr-MAAA! and keep themselves busy.

We heard a couple theories as to why the alarm went off. I heard that the school did a test of the emergency alarm system on Sundays, which is true, but apparently it was turned off. I heard a very questionable rumor that a dad who wanted to get the hell out of the show pulled it to end it early...and I speculated that it was my mom's revenge. It turns out that a mommy had left the auditorium with a baby and the delightful tot pulled it (helena: THAT BABY IS A CRIMINAL! SEND IT TO JAIL).

The show was over at 9:20. I went out with my friends to Steak and Shake and promptly crashed afterward.

What did you do this weekend?

I need a new voicemail message. Just like away messages, I obsess over my voicemail and feel obligated to change the outgoing message all too frequently. I've had a bunch:

As recorded by my sister Kat:

WHAT UP, THIS IS SETH'S PHONE. um. It's not being answered right now, so um, leave a message and I'll get back to you later. peace.

That one confused some people. Most messages would start, like, "um, I'm calling for Natalia..."

When I was getting calls about internships and had to be super-professional at all times:

You've reached Natalia Lastname at 614-mynumber. I can't come to the phone right now, but if you'll leave your name, number and a brief message I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Thanks! Bye!

Barf.

As recorded by me, Matt and Andy and to be performed in a sort of round and then holding the note out to create a barbershop quartet-esque chord:

THIS IS NATALIA'S PHONE LEAVE A MESSAGE
THIS IS NATALIA'S PHONE LEAVE A MESSAGE
THIS IS NATALIA'S [laughter]

CALL ME BACK!

We had been drinking.

As recorded by Kat, sung to the tune of the Three's Company theme song (can't really explain the S Club in that video, sorry):

Come and knock on our door! This is Natalia's phone! And I'mnotpickingitUPrightNOWbut if you leavemeamessage then I'll call you back! da-da-da-da. That would be so dapple...

So for now, mine is the kids I babysit and I saying "hey girl hey" and then the standard "leave a message...kbye!"

I am open to suggestions. Also, what does your voicemail message say right now?

I was born a Windows girl; I will die a Windows girl.

Just like the hokey commercials spoof, my boyf is a Mac and I'm a PC. This is something we continually (jokingly, but not without standing up for our OSes) argue about.

He says he likes to be able to find his things right away without having to look for them; I say I like the challenge of finding my stuff (and sometimes, you want to hide files, amirite).

He also says he never gets viruses because he has a Mac. While this is true, anyone who has successfully killed spyware knows the sheer joy and the ohyesIdidjustslaythatgarbage feeling of eradicating harmful files from your computadora. Honestly, I like the feeling of knowing I can control how things work and occasionally totally screwing things up. I'll hit the "advanced user" button on the install because I know what I'm doing. Sometimes I download stuff by accident and it gets ugly. But I can handle it.

Last, he says he can do more artsy stuff on his computer, which is admittedly accurate. My artsy stuff is limited to making stick people drawings on Paint, making awesome MIDI arrangements of pop songs on NoteWorthy Composer (that was what I spent the better part of high school doing) and making ringtones with Sound Forge.

I think of Macs as being like

typety type apple iLoveMyMac blah blah blah iMovie Garage Band omg

and PCs being like

!!!!!!!!! yeah pwned!!!!!!1 and stuff

You nerds know what I mean.

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