I Do Already

http://www.randomhouse.com/book/222129/fifty-shades-of-grey-by-e-l-james

He Said: Not too long ago, She Said and I took a shot at writing our own erotica based on the sex lives of us, a happily married, but tired couple.  We called it Worn-Porn.   For some reason, it just never took off.

She Said: Yeah, kind of a bummer.  We were gonna write multiple volumes.  It would’ve been known as the “I Think it’s Been Almost Two Weeks” saga. 

He Said: It’s probably for the best.  Seems there’s this other series of books that might’ve usurped us.

She Said:  Usurped us?  More like forced us to the bed, ripped our clothes off and made mad passionate love - all while discussing tangy penis popsicles.

He Said:  Obviously, we’re talking about 50 Shades of Grey.  Written by E.L. James, it explores the sexual awakening of a young virgin as she enters the world of erotic masochism.

She Said:  If you haven’t heard about this New York Times best-selling phenomenon, then you must be living under a rock.  Or be my mom, who took a solemn vow never to learn anything in pop culture that didn’t have the initials N.C.I. or S. in it.

He Said:  Let’s check out some passages, shall we?

50 Shades of Grey:  “Suddenly, he sits up and tugs my panties off and throws them on the floor. Pulling off his boxer briefs, his erection springs free. Holy cow! … He kneels up and pulls a condom onto his considerable length. Oh no … Will it? How?”

She Said:  Christian Grey’s a bajillionaire and still throws underwear on the floor.  Does he also clutch them with his toes and kick them into the hamper?  Also, if anyone says “Holy cow!” at the sight of your dick, as the hilariously named Anastasia Steele says about 47 times, you are a pedophile because that person would be 12.  

He Said: I’m just impressed he was able to put a condom on “his considerable length” so quickly.  I put one on my “inconsiderable length” with the ease of a blind man trying to dress a boneless chicken in a mini-wetsuit.

50 Shades of Grey: “I want you to become well acquainted, on first name terms if you will, with my favorite and most cherished part of my body.  I’m very attached to this.”

She Said:  Well, you’ve said that.  About your gut, but still.  

50 Shades of Grey:  “My inner goddess is doing the merengue with some salsa moves.”

She Said:  Anastasia is 21, but her inner goddess is a sassy retiree who clips coupons and takes zumba class.

50 Shades of Grey:  “My subconscious purses her lips and mouths the word ‘ho’.”

He Said:  At least her subconscious didn’t spell it “hoe” like people who start Twitter Trending Topics: #YouKnowShesaHoeWhen.  

She Said:  You Know She’s a Hoe When she agitates the surface of the soil around plants, creating narrow furrows and shallow trenches.  

50 Shades of Grey:  Christian squirts baby oil into his hand and then rubs my behind with careful tenderness—from makeup remover to soothing balm for a spanked ass, who would have thought it was such a versatile liquid.

She Said:  Makeup remover, yes!  You know what else baby oil is good for?  Untangling a necklace chain: massage a dab of oil onto the tangled area, then use a straight pin to carefully pull apart the knot.

He Said:  As for spanking ass, don’t be too loud.  All we need is the Knickerbockers complaining about us breaking the Quiet Time After 10:00pm rule.  I still think they’re the ones who wrote the Home Owners Association about our “unsanctioned door mat.”  

50 Shades of Grey:  Christian asks, “Why do some people like cheese and other people hate it?  Do you like cheese?”

He Said:  Okay, now that’s hot.

She Said:  True.  You often make me recreate that scene between Marge and Homer where she asks, “Homer, have you been up all night eating cheese?”  The answer is yes.  It’s always yes.

Anyway, go ahead and pick up 50 Shades of Grey.  It might spark something inside that you didn’t even know you had. (Crabs)

http://www.amazon.com/Fifty-Shades-Grey-Book-Trilogy/dp/0345803485

He Said:  Until then, check out this awesome parody from Saturday Night Live… or I’ll spank your bum.  Man, I am really not getting the hang of this.

Saturday Night Live - Fifty Shades of Grey by BigBlueBruiser

(SOURCE: http://www.ratestogo.com/blog/heart-attack-grill/)

She Sees:  Multi-layered lard.

He Sees:  What I wish our wedding cake would’ve been.

(SOURCE: www.aetv.com/)

He Sees:  STORAGE WARS!!  A brilliantly crafted reality series about a group of modern day treasure hunters searching for the dream find.

She Sees:  Some show starring Tanning Mom’s friends and relatives that seems to play on continuous loop in our home.

(SOURCE: www.eonline.com)

She Sees:  Further proof, to quote Liz Lemon, of “Channing Tatum’s meteoric rise” and what’ll probably be my next Girls Night Out.  Unless I see it alone and get dragged out of the theater for a Pee Wee Herman misdemeanor…

He Sees:  A sad display of reverse sexism that no thinking woman would be caught dead at.

(SOURCE: http://icafewomanmoderne.blogspot.com)

He Sees:  Interesting use of light and shadow to create a sweet photo of some Chinese kid.

She Sees:  A baby I’d risk going to prison for to kidnap. 

(SOURCE: http://www.eatmedaily.com/)

He Sees:  A source for valuable tips on how you could be a better homemaker.

She Sees:  A book of spells written by a convicted criminal.

She Said:  In your mind, you’re tearing up the pool like a medal-less Michael Phelps, the ladies on the lanai cheering you on in their chic Chicos ensembles.

But as you splash a path from end-to-fifteen-feet-away-end, the truth is… you look more like this.  

He Said:  In this week’s post, we do our own Rorschach test to see what the other one sees when presented with a series of images.

She Said:  We know one thing - if the image is a road map, you won’t know what the hell you’re looking at.

He Sees:  An elite athlete with amazing mobility.  The unsung hero who protects the quarterback.

She Sees:  What I imagine you’ll look like in a couple years.

(SOURCE: http://www.rooshvforum.com/attachment.php?aid=3)

He Sees:  A fun-loving woman who is secure in her hot body!

She Sees:  Some poor lost soul who was never loved enough by her father.

(SOURCE: NBC.com)

She Sees:  The greatest guilty pleasure of all time.  A show that’s so bad yet fun, I can’t stop talking about it.

He Sees:  The show that when you start talking about it, I fake listen and make sure to say “Wow… Who?  Ellis?  Huh, ” every once and awhile.

He Sees:  Oh yeah… that’s that guy from Friday Night Lights.  Great show.  Really captured football well.  Good stories.  I teared up a couple times.  Is it me or does it look like he has roll of fat?

She Sees:  Can’t think of anything to say… must go away… will be back soon.

She Sees:  Looks like you just made your lunch.

He Sees: You know, I actually can’t see anything.

Yay!  It’s the same couple from “Knocked Up”.  This looks great…

He Said: You know, I always saw myself as a “Paul Rudd” type.

She Said: Yeah, in “Our Idiot Brother”.

He Said:  When it comes to detecting odors, my wife is a freak of nature. She has an amazing olfactory system. A humming bird can fart in the lanai, and two seconds later she’ll look at me and say, “Was that you”?

She Said: It is some cruel joke that I have the better sense of smell and you’re the one who usually stinks.

He Said:  More incredible than her keen gift of detecting all that is malodorous is the specificity for which she defines that offending aroma.  “This drawer smells like a rubber band that was around broccoli too long and went bad.”  “This smoothie smells like strawberries that were kept next to garlic…  I also detect a soupcon of cardamom.” 

She Said:  Hey, if my pillowcase smells like our cleaner’s cologne mixed with caramel and BO, I’m going to mention it.

He Said:  I know you’re going to mention it.  You always mention.  I doubt there has ever been a time when you thought, “this closet has a smell of pickles and baby powder” and then just sprayed it with Febreze® without ever saying a word.

(SOURCE: http://weknowmemes.com/2011/11/febreze-all-the-things)

She Said:  I love Febreze!  I sometimes think of spraying you with it while you sleep.

He Said:  And this is why we came up with a bet.  If my wife could go ONE DAY without saying something stinks, I’d give her $100.  My winnings if she blew it, well let’s just say she’d have to “blow it”.

She Said:  Why is your bet always oral sex?  It’s not like I never do it on my own.  There are times I want something from you.

He Said:  Get to the bet!

She Said:  Yes, the bet.  I started off well.  I woke up, the bedroom stunk like a post-orgy circus tent, yet I said nothing.  At my desk, it smelled like bad hotel shampoo that an angry child had peed in.  Still, I kept my mouth shut.

He Said:  I was getting worried.  It was only a few more hours until bedtime.  Maybe she’d be able to do this thing.  I wondered if I farted in bed during The Daily Show and she talked, would that count?  Then I got lucky.

She Said:  I still believe he set me up.  For dinner he made a wonderful fish dish with a side of… green beans.  They took up half the plate.

He Said:   According to Men’s Health, vegetables are supposed to take up half the plate.  And they were green beans sauteed in sesame oil, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds!

She Said:  Whatever.  After dinner, while you decided to watch hockey and scream at the referees, I retired to the bedroom.  I should have retired to an open, outdoor tent with fans blowing and oxygen masks because I did some major damage.  However, I thought I might get away with the fort fart I’d built, undetected.

He Said:  It was between periods so I decided to check in on my beautiful bride.

She Said:  I could hear him clomping toward me.  “Don’t come in here!!  It smells like  Death held in a fart for all of Time and just let loose.”

He Said:  I entered the room.  Our eyes met.  Well, I assume they met.  Mine were watering too much to really tell.

She Said:  And I knew I had lost our bet.  Done in by my own stench.

He Said:  I haven’t claimed my “prize” yet, but I’m going to shower before bed because the last thing I need to hear is, “You smell like vanilla extract and Clearasil.”

She Said:  I wouldn’t worry.  When it comes to that, you only smell of one thing.  Desperation.

He Said:  My wife has a breakfast ritual that has caused a divide in our marriage. A rift.  A twitch-inducing, teeth-grinding breach…

Every morning, she makes herself a bowl of healthy cereal, chock full of fresh berries, organic bananas and soy milk.  To me, it seems like a whole lot of work considering we have a McDonald’s up the street that would eagerly serve her the far tastier McGriddle.

She Said:  As much as I appreciate the suggestion, I’d prefer to get my heart pounding and sweat pouring through exercise, and not by downing some cardiac arrest on a muffin.

He Said:  Excuse me, but the McGriddle is, perhaps, the most well-crafted, artificial breakfast sandwich ever created.  And for the record, the glorious carb that holds this magnificent morning treat together is a syrup-infused pancake, not a muffin!  Do you know nothing?

She Said:  I know I’m going to live longer than you.

He Said:  Anyway, the divide I’m talking about is not about her aggressively healthy breakfast, but the bowl in which she eats it.

She Said:  What’s wrong with my big, yellow bowl?  I love it!

He Said:  What’s wrong with it, is that it was designed so when your spoon hits the concave ceramic vessel, it makes a sound that echoes throughout our home and drives me insane.

She Said:  I have no idea what you’re talking about.

He Said:  Of course you don’t!  That’s because you’re too busy slurping away on your soy milk to hear how annoying it is.  Clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink…

It never ends!  It’s like some wedding reception from the depths of hell where a demented guest clinks his glass for the newlyweds to kiss.  Only they never will because they’ve been DEAD SINCE 1962!  Clink-clink-clink-clink-clink-clink!!!

She Said:  It’s not that bad.

He Said:  Really?  Then why, when I was 20 feet from our home, did I know you were eating cereal!  The clarion sound of your jerkspoon clanging against that hateful bowl could be heard from the patio.

She Said:  What do you suggest?  I get a Nerf bowl?

He Said:  Perfect.  No noise, and as a bonus, you’ll be able to sop up the milk and squeeze it into your mouth!

She Said:  Gross.  But I love that bowl, so you’re going to have to live with it.

He Said:  Fine, but you are not allowed to eat cereal on the couch beside me while we’re watching TV ever again.  You ruined the season return of Mad Man.  All I know is the next day, when everyone was singing Zou Bisou Bisou, I tried to join in, but kept adding random CLANKS.  You’re not helping me make friends, babe.  

She Said:  Fair enough.  Then you can’t eat a McGriddle in our house any more.  I’m still trying to get the infused stench of artificial maple syrup out of the furniture.

She Said:  I love how Jon Stewart mocks CNN’s obsession with wannabe Minority Report computer screens and cheesy Princess Leia holographs.  In the hours when they have nothing to report, they stick up a glowy bunch of colors and numbers and smile at the camera.

He Said:  We found this low tech image of how guys and girls communicate.  It seems pretty accurate and you don’t need to risk on-air humiliation trying to expand or minimize it:

(SOURCE: http://theberry.com/)

She Said:  I love this.  Other than the fact it says “A awesome story” instead of “An awesome story” under the boys’ table, it pretty much nails it.  Women complain that guys don’t listen, but if the topic’s right - basically none of the things being discussed at table #2 - they’re all ears.

He Said:  When it’s one on one - one guy and one girl—

She Said: — a couple, not just any guy and girl…

He Said:  The image looks more like this.  Well, if it’s you and me, it looks exactly like this:

She Said:  Nice “graph.”  At least Wolf Blitzer would have no trouble getting it to work.

He Said:  You invented the concept of barely getting a word in edgewise.  

She Said:  Really.  Then I guess you invented exaggeration.

He Said:  That’s the craziest thing anyone’s ever said in the history of time.

She Said:  Wives like to share things with their husbands.  Why is that so bad?

He Said:  It’s not - it’s just about balance.  And timing.  Let’s leave it with Chris Rock, shall we?

He Said: Hey, gang, recently I Do Already took the show on the road.

She Said:  We were asked to do a piece at Lit UP - it’s a really cool thing with stand-ups, musicians and writers, and each month, they give you a theme.  Ours was “Bizarre Love Triangle.” 

He Said:  Here’s an excerpt from that performance. Feel free to give us a standing ovation at the end.  We got one the night we did the piece.

She Said:  That was people leaving.  We were on last.

(SOURCE: http://www.last.fm)

He Said:  My wife and I have been married six years, and the idea that we’d ever step out on our marriage seems foreign to us.  I could never cheat.  I feel guilty if I use my Trader Joe’s shopping bags at Ralph’s.

She Said:  And I’m too old to listen to another guy apologize to me in bed.

He Said:  That’s why I was shocked when we became involved in a bizarre love triangle.  Though I have to say, I have only myself to blame…

She Said:  Maybe you should tell people who the third party is in our love triangle…

He Said:  Twitter.

She Said:  That’s right.  My husband was jealous of my Twitter account.

(SOURCE: http://www.last.fm)

He Said:  It started simple enough.  I was on Twitter long first and doing modestly well with a few hundred followers.  This was the early days of Twitter - when it was just a place to list what you ate for lunch.  NOW, it’s a place where sweaty, nervous shut-ins can chat with women whose avatars are giant cleavage.  It’s also a place to write jokes, puns and simple observations.

She Said:  I remember the day I heard you chuckling softly in your office.  My first thought was, “they make funny porn?”

He Said:  I don’t watch porn… I just seem to get a lot of unexplained pop-ups when you use my computer.

She Said:  I said, “what’s so funny?”  You said…

He Said:  “Patton Oswalt.  I just started following him on Twitter.”

(SOURCE: https://twitter.com/#!/pattonoswalt)

She Said:  I thought, “I love Patton Oswalt.  I wanna laugh at stuff he says too,” and that was it, I was hooked.

He Said:  At first, I didn’t mind.  She was new to LA.  She needed something to keep her occupied while I closed my pop-ups.  Besides, I had way more followers than she did, I wore the Twitter pants in the relationship… what could go wrong?

She Said:  And then came July of 2010…

He Said:  The tweet heard round the world.

She Said:  It referenced a global phenomenon that’s hated and loved with equal fervor: Twilight.  This is the tweet: “Dear Confused Teen Girls: someone who sparkles and won’t have sex with you isn’t a vampire; it’s a gay guy.”

He Said:  It started slow.  A few retweets here, a few favs there.

She Said:  “It started slow?”  It snowballed!  Within an hour I had 100 new passionate followers who loved me Bridget Jones style: just as I am.  By the end of three days, it had been RT’d over 10,000 times and I gained 800 followers.

He Said:  Women often do better on Twitter because they get away with being raunchier. Twitter is the slutty Halloween costume of social networking.

(SOURCE: http://www.fanpop.com/)

She Said:  Twitter likes it when I talk dirty.

He Said: I should have known something was up when she’d find ways to drop Twitter’s name into casual conversation - “You would not believe what Twitter said today.  We should have Twitter over for dinner.  Twitter said he liked my hair!” 

She Said: I had to admit that I had a problem.  I’d run home from a day out with Brent to see who had mentioned me on Twitter.  I’d even sneak away from a dinner date to compose a tweet.  The thought I might get caught just added to the thrill.  Sometimes I’d have to shower after a tweet so he wouldn’t know what I’d been up to. 

He Said:  The sad thing is, I think I always knew.  So I did the only thing I could: I unfollowed her.

She Said:  I soon wondered why he wasn’t calling out from his office, “That’s a funny one, baby!”  Why wasn’t he laughing at my tweets?  Where were his @ replies?  He’d become distant and phony - like a Facebook friend.

He Said:  She confronted me, tears in her eyes, cereal in her teeth.  “Did you unfollow me?!  What happened to us?  Do I have something in my teeth?” 

She Said:  I realized that Twitter and all its weird, wonderful people I’d probably never meet were no match for the weirdest one of all: the tweeter in my own home. 

He Said:I gained a new appreciation for her jokes and always made sure I read them first.

She Said: Here’s one: “If cats had boobs, there’d only be one website on the Internet.”

He Said:  What about this one of mine?  “Seeing “The Hunger Games” in a theater packed with teenagers, makes you wish there was such thing as the Hunger Games.”  

She Said:  Hilarious!  What about this: “Since International Women’s Day falls on Fat Tuesday, how ‘bout we call it Great Personality Tuesday instead?”

He Said:  Nice.  Remember this one I did?  “Saw a woman with breasts so fake, they said they wanted to be my friend, then talked about me behind my back.” 

She Said:  I realize that at times, Twitter gets in the way of our marriage.  Do we really want to be this couple, typing dumb jokes in different rooms, when we can make each other laugh in person?  What happened to conversation?  Romance?  The ability to communicate in more than 140 characters?  This is the man I love.

He Said:  And this is the only woman I have ever wanted to marry.  Well, except for my first wife which doesn’t count because I was completely drunk.  What I actually said was, “Will you carry me?”

She Said:  I love you. #IReallyMeanit

He Said:  I love you too. #AtleastWe’reNotonMySpace