Did your heart break enough this time?

I am not an emotional person by any means. I don't crave danger, I don't like crying, and I am pretty much completely emotionally inept when it comes to relationships. For most of my life, this has been a problem for me. I can't give good relationship advice ("Oh, you have a crush on him? Really? Okay, good. I'll be back in an hour.") and I have never had a boyfriend who lasted more than three months.

This past fall, I met a guy. For the first time, I really connected with someone. He was, by all accounts, really cute. We shared likes and dislikes (Likes: Chopin and SNL digital shorts. Dislikes: Prop 8 yard signs and the slutty scene girls who seemed to constantly request him on Myspace.) and even had a few of the same problems (which I won't go into here). We nursed a mutual crush on each other for a couple months, cuddled at Disneyland in what I'm sure was the most obnoxious way our other friends had ever seen, and finally had a big romantic moment backstage during our one shared bit of downtime during the play we were starring in. He kissed me, whispered "Will you be my girlfriend?" I said yes. He ran onstage and I could see tiny bits of glitter from my makeup clinging to his skin (I was playing a really glittery character, okay?). My best friend was in the audience that night, and after the show I told her what had happened. We squealed and flapped our hands together and had a rather teenage girlish moment. I was really, really happy. But after that night, things were awkward, and I couldn't quite place my finger on the reason why.

There's glitter in my hair
from when you said you loved me
For all of my playing hard-to-want
you still saw something in me

I can't let myself fall for you and prove my mother right.
I don't do heartbreak, I take precautions.
I may have wanted you before
but now I can't stop picking you apart.

You're too loud,
You're a mess, just like me.
You're not so eloquent and you're far too gullible.

Part of me wants to want you, but I can't.

I have closure.

We went on a few dates after the show closed, but we just couldn't make it work. I don't mean to say it was entirely his fault - although it partially was. I had to make an effort just to get him to talk to me. One day, while jogging, a guy came off his porch and mentioned that he had seen me run by every day and always thought that I was cute, and was I single? It was a little creepy, and when I posted a Facebook status update laughing about it, I got an immediate text from the boyfriendish: "Movies tonight? :)" It was confusing, and frankly, a little exhausting.

We fell apart around December, and while he found another girl to post endless ambiguous "OMG I LIKE HER SO MUCH" song lyrics about quite quickly, I didn't have the luxury of moving on to a new crush so quickly. I didn't dwell on him - but I still can't think of one guy I would honestly date right now. According to a couple people, I constantly hide behind a wall of cold emotionless-ness, in order to keep from getting hurt. They're probably right, but I don't see what's so wrong with that.

Throughout the past few weeks, it seems like every couple I know has broken up, with only one notable exception. People who've been together for years, and people who've been together for a couple months. Seeing all the tears and anger and hurt flowing from my friends, I'm reminded of why I'm so glad that I seal my heart off. In so many cases, a relationship is just not worth the trouble. I'm not saying that I never want to fall in love, because that would be swell, but as of now, I'm so glad that I'm not a romantic. It's much easier to live in reality than to dream about finding a movie-quality love.

For Linda:

"Jack and Kate went up the hill, Kate came down with Sawyer because she's promiscuous."

Beautiful.

Some Recent Findings

DRINK: Diet Coke over crushy ice
OMELET: Patys (Cheddar cheese, tomatos, avocado, bacon)
MOVIE: Confessons of a Shopaholic (can I please be Isla Fisher now?)
WORKOUT: Stage combat classes (a pain in the ass... literally... but I love 'em)
PLACE TO JOG: Griffith Park
SAD FAREWELL: Late Night with Conan O'Brien
JOYFUL FAREWELL: This hangnail I've been nursing for a week
MANTRA: Stay out of it. It's not your business.
SONG: "Congratulations" by Blue October (recommended by my friend Beth... spectacular)
TV COUNTDOWN: Parks and Recreation
BOOK: Mock Stars, by Jon Wenzel
FASHION INSPIRATION: 60s girl bands
FEELING: Hope... deep hope

Our only friend is chaos.

So I saw the Groundlings show Enter the Sunday on, uh, Sunday night, and can I just say... HILARIOUS. The Sunday company is technically a step down from the official Groundlings company, but honestly, these guys were great anyway. There were some really amazing sketches (a couple of them would've easily fit right into any SNL lineup - "The Re-Enactors," which was about these two dudes cast in an E! True Hollywood Story reenactment clip of Charles in Charge, "Audition," which flawlessly combined abysmal tap-dancing and ill-fitting metallic spandex, "Snacks," which featured this really hot, hilarious guy and was about this really hot hilarious guy attempting to steal snacks at a company meeting (way funnier than it sounds, trust me), and "Anomalies of the Unknown," which absolutely defies description so I will leave you with these two choice phrases: SASQUATCH! and DEFALCO BROTHERS DISCOUNT CAR STEREOS! - among them). Big kudos to Nick Paonessa, Taran Killam, and Jennifer Smedley, all of whom made me laugh like a crazy person.

Also, ricocheting offa that, can I rant for a moment?

People who dismiss comedy and comedy fans as being "unintelligent" or "dumb" and who cling to films like, IDK, Atonement or Garden State, are getting on my last nerve. Friggin' a, you guys. I find that so sincerely irritating. For one thing, I'm of the opinion that it's way harder to write great comedy than great drama (and this is coming from someone who has attempted both). There are so many ways to tell a story about love and war and death and tuberculosis, though not all of them work very well (I'm looking at you, Moulin Rouge - a movie which I will always dislike, no matter how many moony teenage girls tell me I should revere it), but within comedy, you're kinda limited - not by the boundaries of reality, like with most dramas, but by what people before you have done. It's okay for a filmmaker to blatantly rip off Shakespeare or Chaucer or Proust, but if something you're writing veers too close to a Monty Python or Mr. Show piece, it just looks transparent rather than artsy.

I don't begrudge great dramatic writers or performers (I would pay $10 plus popcorn to watch Laura Linney eat a cheese sandwich on film - get Daniel Day-Lewis in there with a piece of pizza and I'd probably see it twice), but enjoying dramas doesn't make one any more intelligent than someone who really just loves comedy! Ugh. This is all really in response to an argument I had the other day (which prompted me to go watch Season 1 of UCB, peppered with some Arrested Development and Human Giant just for good measure) with this really pretentious girl who was talking about how comedies are all so "low-brow" and how she "doesn't even like to watch films that are set before 1900," which I just find so obnoxious... but that's another story. Yeah, comedy can be gloriously low-brow, but you really have to be smart to excel at writing it. Thank you, Dane Cook and Larry the Cable Guy, for perpetuating the stereotype that all comedians are boorish d-bags. Y'all make people like Tina and the guys from Stella and all the marvelous people who've come out of Second City and UCB and Groundlings and iO look super lame.

So in conclusion: Films that are willfully obtuse to the point of just seeming silly, i.e. Synedoche, New York, and movies that attempt to be highbrow for Middle America, like The Other Boleyn Girl, sorta prove that drama =/= class; also, while Judd Apatow and Ben Stiller may not have mantels stacked three-deep with Oscars, you know what they do have? Money. Gobs and gobs of it. (I want to make a pun about Will Arnett also having Gobs of money, but my brain isn't really in top form at the moment, so fill in your own here: ________________________.) People like to laugh, and there's more to creating good comedy than meets the eye. Also, I'm a mega-nerd. Geez. I swear I'm more fun than this in real life, I just needed to get this rant off my chest.

Incredibad!

Yeah. Brown. It's temporary and weird.

In other news, The Lonely Island's new album has been in heavy rotation on my iPod for the past few days (along with Congratulations by Blue October - possibly one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.) and it is G-E-N-I-U-S. I think we've all heard Dick in a Box, Lazy Sunday, and Jizz in my Pants by now, but Punch You in the Jeans and Sax Man? Pure brilliance. Also, I'm On A Boat. The end.

Yeah, no real content to this blog, just a photo and some fangirling. More later...

When Bruce Willis was dead at the end of Sixth Sense, I....

So check out those sunglasses. Look familiar? No?

Go here. Watch the video. Now do they look familiar? These are the same glasses Andy Samberg is wearing. I'm such a dork, but when I first saw that video, I had to have those. My friend Mandy found them online, and now we're glasses twins! Fabulous!

(Top: Ella Moss. Cardigan: Target. Jeans: Calvin Klein. Shoes: You can't see 'em, but strappy Steve Madden sandals. Glasses: 80spurple.)

Something else worth sharing: Seth Meyers on Late Night with Conan O'Brien! Now, for those of you who don't know me, I have a huge crush on this dude. Massive. I don't know what it is - the disarming smile, the fact that he's not only hilarious on Weekend Update but is also the head writer of the show, all of his travel stories that he tells on talk shows, the fact that he can wear a baseball cap without looking like a tool (which, as a pretty faithful Dodgers fan, is sort of a must for any potential boyfriend of mine. Granted, Seth prefers the Red Sox, but I can deal with that.) - but I have found myself totally crushing on him over the past few months. This interview last night, however, took the adoration to massive levels:



I swear, I think I was meant to be Amy Poehler in another life - he and Will Arnett are constantly fighting for the position of my #1 celebrity crush.

Okay, gotta run. Adios, y'all!

Failboat, Captain Alex!

Okay, two posts in one day? Crazy. What is this. Consider yourselves veeeeery lucky.

Anyway, this is not an outfit post, though it looks like one. It does, however, have to do with the outfit I wore today:



So I need to do laundry. As I was telling Tori the other day, I love those accidents where you put on whatever you have that's clean and end up looking more stylish than usual. I pulled out this outfit this morning and while I wasn't really bowled over by it, I left the house feeling kinda cute. The cardigan, the blouse, the belt - I hadn't worn any of them in a while, and it was just cool enough outside to warrant said cardigan. The blouse, I might add, is kinda see-through. Not completely transparent, but take off the cardigan and it looks a tad immodest.

So. Uh. I don't know what the weather's like where y'all live, but in LA, it can get a little warm during February, a fact which I conveniently forgot about while getting dressed this morning. So by mid-morning, I was kinda hot. Let's imagine this as a game show question, shall we?

You're in a stats lecture and you find yourself starting to get immoderately hot due to your two layers of clothing and your professor's constant need to have the heat running even when it's in the high 70s outside. Do you:

A) Remove your cardigan and reveal to the classroom that your shirt is kinda see-through, or
B) Continue to sweat like a racehorse?

If you answered A, you're a bolder girl than I. By the time I got home and could change, I felt like I had a fever of 110. It was kind of terrible.

You know... I'm just classy like that.

Blouse: Anthropologie
Cardigan: Thrifted
Jeans: Macy's? Nordstrom? I got them in ninth grade, I don't remember...
Shoes: I HAVE NO IDEA
Belt: Target

25 Things About Me.

Because this has been going around Facebook like the bubonic plague (if Facebook were the Dark Ages), here are 25 supposedly "random" facts about me. This list is almost completely different from the one I posted on my own Facebook, but that's cool too. Enjoy.


1. I am irrationally terrified of elevators. I would honestly rather take ten flights of stairs than a 30-second elevator ride. My palms get sweaty and my stomach hurts if a character in a TV show or movie I'm watching gets into an elevator. I'm considering actually getting therapy for this.

2. I give really good high-fives. Do not high-five me unless you want your palm to tingle for the next two minutes.

3. I have never broken a bone, which I find unbelievable. I am a complete klutz and I don't know how I have managed to stay unbroken this long. I think it's all the milk I drink. My bones must be made out of steel by now.

4. I don't like the phone. It makes me nervous because I communicate more with my body than with my voice. I also pick up cues from other people more accurately with body language than verbal language.

5. I would love to play Giselle from Enchanted at Disneyland. I count her as a legit princess. "That's How You Know" was my ringtone for the better part of '08.

6. When I was little, I was scared to sing the line "the old man is snoring" in the "It's raining, it's pouring" song. I would only sing that song if I could change that line to "the raccoons are snoring." Also, from the time I was 6 to my 10th birthday, I really really wanted to be an mortician. Not joking.

7. Spring is my favorite season. I wish it could be spring all year round - I love it so much I don't even think I would need the other seasons to help me realize (or remember) how much I love it. Should heaven exist, and should I go there, it will be springtime in southern California, always.

8. My theme song is "A Better Son/Daughter" by Rilo Kiley. It was bestowed on me by my buddy Ally and I have yet to find another song on the planet that is more perfect in describing who I am.

9. In second grade, I got a concussion from swinging around on the metal bars at my school's playground. The checkups and medical care that resulted from this is what made my parents realize I had terrible eyesight and really, really needed glasses.

10. My biggest pet peeve is when people use the phrase "chai tea." "Chai" means tea in Russian, so you're basically just saying "Tea tea," which is thoroughly redundant and ANNOYING. Lesson for the day, y'all!

11. When I grow up, I hope to become the charismatic embodiment of Tina Fey, possess about 1/100th of the acting chops that Laura Linney houses, be as graceful and all-around lovely as Jackie Kennedy once was, have Bette Midler play my mother in what will be the eventual Lifetime original movie based on my life, and one day own an apartment as cool as Mary Richards's. THIS WILL HAPPEN.

12. I think socks are an invention of the retail industry that should be done away with. I would rather live in a world without socks.

13. Also, I have been known to go out wearing two different flip-flops because I can never seem to find a matching pair. A little sad? Perhaps.

14. I save things I need to remember in text messages under the "drafts" section of my phone. It's pretty handy, especially because I almost always tend to forget things 3 seconds or less after they enter my brain.

15. There is nothing I love more than reading through a big stack of play scripts. The Samuel French bookshops are mecca for me. I try to make regular pilgrimages.

16. I hate - beyond hate - math and science, and I would much rather sit through English class than be subjected to the torture of solving math problems, or balancing equations and doing experiments, even though I'm fairly good at both.

17. Whole Foods' turkey-bacon-spinach sandwich with sundried tomato spread, a pomegranate Izze, and a lemon bar = my meal of choice. I try to eat at least one on a weekly basis.

18. I had a prolonged, very nasty feud with my junior high art teacher. I hated her and she hated me, but I was very, very good at drawing and painting and writing (wish I hadn't let art go) so she had to keep me in her advanced art class, as well as on the newspaper and yearbook staffs. At the end of eighth grade, she conveniently "forgot" to enter this really nice painting I had done in the county fair, despite the fact that it was the best thing I had ever done. I could not stand that woman and still have bad memories of her class.

19. I can't go outside in the daytime without sunglasses. Haven't done so since I was 11 (my glasses back then had Transitions lenses, and when I got contacts, my optometrist told me to wear sunglasses home that day... I just never stopped.) I always have at least one pair of sunglasses with me when I leave the house.

20. I saw Mamma Mia five times in theaters. One of these was the sing-a-long version. I've seen the Broadway show twice. I pop in the DVD every time I'm having a bad day. I have no shame in admitting any of this. Deal with it.

21. Every human being that I'm related to in the world lives within a two hour radius of either Los Angeles, California, or St. Petersburg, Russia.

22. I have a strange love for commercials. When I was little I used to run in front of the TV when they would come on, sit about a foot away from the screen, sing along to the jingles and then go play again when the television program would come back on. Because of DVR, I don't watch them as much. And that makes me sad.

23. I will only go on Haunted Mansion at Disneyland when it is the holiday version. I don't mind the version they have the rest of the year, but it's not worth the line wait time for me. Haunted Mansion Holiday is. Go figure.

24. I was president of the student council in eighth grade. I won the election by getting the entire student body to stand up, sit down, stand back up, and sit back down, after which I pointed out that I had just taken command of the whole school in under 30 seconds, so imagine what I could do with a whole year. It was pretty cool.

25. I am love. I am light. I am abundance. And so are you, you gorgeous creatures!

well, let's try this again.

'Kay, so everyone I know is making one of these. Frankly, I am a Livejournal purist and can never keep up a blog outside of there (I tried here twice in 2008), but why not?

Anyway, for those who don't know me, I'm Alex. In many ways, I'm pretty boring, but I sometimes do interesting stuff that is usually related to the acting industry and showbiz as a whole. You'll read more about that in coming posts. Maybe. If I don't get bored with this first. Essentially, I'm just your average latte-drinking hybrid-driving J. Crew-wearing Blackberry-owning Obama-supporting LA kid. I'm Russian and redheaded and a fan of improv & sketch comedy and the people who excel at it. I love Seth Meyers and Will Arnett and Lee Pace and Jon Hamm and Tina Fey and Amy Poehler and Jenny Lewis and Cate Blanchett. I don't love vapid TV (which means there will probably not be any gushy Gossip Girl recap posts, sorry) and cold weather and people who are pretentious but uninformed and Sarah Palin. Like I said, pretty average.

I don't consider myself a fashionista or even very adventurous with the clothing I wear (although I would love to dress like Chuck from Pushing Daisies every day, let's face it, this is southern California and it just kinda looks weird and overdone to be so constantly put-together, so I usually end up looking like an amalgam of Stacy London and Amy Poehler), so I probably won't make very many outfit posts, but I do like to occasionally gush about a sweet purchase. Actually, I just ordered these amazing sunglasses today. I look forward to receiving, photographing, and then proceeding to rock them for you all. Also, I watch a lot of TV, so you'll probably see lots of posts about that... more specifically, a lot of posts about 30 Rock interspersed with a few other rhapsodical "If only [insert title of show here] hadn't been prematurely canceled..." ramblings. Oh, and I love MSNBC, particularly Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, though I will occasionally switch it up with CNN since I have a bangin' newscrush on Anderson Cooper. Hooray for the liberal media elite, y/y? Yes.

All right. I'd love to talk more about myself (har har) but there are burgers on the grill and I am starving. Lemon out.