Beer and Ecstasy

SO: the biggest benefit of my husband’s participation in the weekly contest So You Think You Can Drag at The Midnight Shift is the fact that he keeps winning gift vouchers for spray tans and handing them off to me. (It sure as shit isn’t the weekly hangover I have on Wednesdays. Christ, I drink a lot at that party.) Spray tanning is not frowned upon at the Madison offices, and because I’ve always had really weird issues with my skin tone—I think I’m too pale, always, which is really just an outgrowth of my embarrassment over my always-pale, hairless thighs—I gladly join in the roundelay by trying to get one every few weeks.

I got one today at noon. The woman who sprayed me asked if I wanted it to look ‘natural’ or ‘super brown.’ What the fuck, I thought, let’s go super brown!

Four hours later, I now appear to be a close relative of Sambo. All the girls in the office keep laughing at me, ‘but in a good way!’ they insist. Our editor, a spray-tan addict who keeps a loose-fitting smock on the back door of her office for those afternoons when she has one, is whimpering about wanting to go get one. NOW. And she also scolded me for wearing too-tight jeans and sitting at my desk like a fool in an effort to avoid rubbing too much of the body paint onto their insides. “You need to change into trackies!”

So, here I am, typin’ at you from the office, chompin’ on an apple, drinkin’ a Diet Coke. I’m wearing a t-shirt, track pants, and socks with holes in them. I reek of spray tan. And I’m the color of a Skor bar. If I don’t epitomize glamour circa 2010, then what hope does glamour have?

Today I had to ask our workies (that’s what they call interns in Australia) to “please find me some Karl Lagerfeld quotes where he defends using super-skinny models on the runway. The meaner and nastier, the better!” No really it’s for a sidebar!

—A split of rose

—Condoms

—Three pairs of false eyelashes

—Nipple tassels

It’s my firm belief that everybody—male or female—should have a small compact mirror at their desk. You never know what might have stayed in your mouth after you ate that grilled chicken salad at lunch, now do you?

I had a compact mirror in my desk at EW pretty much from day one. I now have one at Madison. Someone chucked it at me on my second day here. It’s embossed with Swarovski crystals, people!!!

I’m editing a story about the blowout that was the Michael Hutchence/Paula Yates affair (we call these a ‘retro read’ at Madison, oh yes we do!) and I had to look up some information on Helena Christensen (zzzz…), and I found this quote:

“Whenever my head is like a maze, I turn to the easy things in life, the things that mean the most to me: Sex and cheese. These things are connected. Truth be told, I love all cheese: French cheese, Italian cheese, even British cheese, but Danish cheese is the greatest. I get my best nightmares after I eat Danish cheese. Actually I’ve seriously thought about getting a cheese tattoo. A nice Edam on my shoulder, maybe.”

Look, lady. I like cheese too, but did you REALLY say that? You’re embarrassing yourself.