Month: January 2008

I have to take a break from the  oh so riveting posts about interviewing to bring you a special announcement. I  have chosen this public forum to tell Sixes and Sevens  something she doesn’t know.

Sixes and Sevens officially ruined another hot, perfectly  heterosexual man.

Do you remember Hot Neighbor? The one who  spewed his spunk all over Sixes and Seven’s face?  Well, he  sent me a text on Sunday morning. The volley went something like this. Actually, it went exactly like this:

Hot Neighbor: I had a threesome last night.
Velvet: Oh. My. God. Two girls?
Hot Neighbor: No. Another guy and a girl. Are you going to be home today?
Velvet: Other than a run, I’ll be here. (Not the runs, a run. I have to clarify for I66 because he likes to make fun.)
Hot Neighbor: I’ll come over and tell you about it.

The  events that ensued were a blur of a drunken evening, with a woman at a bar in Adam’s Morgan (a variation: Adam’s Whoregan) and a triple kiss starring Hot Neighbor, this woman with very loose morals (Sixes and Sevens, she trumps even you) and a man who happens to be engaged…to another man.

The unlikely threesome moved off to the woman’s house, where, much like an episode of Bugs Bunny, each chased the other into and out of rooms.

Heh. That’s my favorite episode of Bugs Bunny. The Monster with his sneakers. I have several Monster stuffed animals, and once had a Monster glass but it broke…oh…wait, this post is not about me. Sorry.

Eventually the unlikely  three end up in the same bed where the Gay Man has real, live, heterosexual intercourse with the woman while she blows Hot Neighbor, who admittedly fucked her mouth very hard as he discovered the  ecstasy of a finger in his ass, attached to the arm attached to the body of a gay man.

Wow. Need a cheat sheet? A diagram? Yeah, me too.

Okay, so if you followed that visual, then you are ready for more.  The three finish off, not before the gay man tossed the salad of one Hot Neighbor who then spanked the woman’s ass raw then came all over her. They finally fell asleep. Hot Neighbor  woke up a few hours later and tried to stealthily creep out of her house, until she woke up and asked him  what his name was for his number. He put it in her phone, but he’s since only heard from the gay man.

Great job Sixes and Sevens. Fucking Great. I had a perfectly hot, straight neighbor in this building and he’s now bi.  I blame you, because YOU are the one who threatened to fuck him with a strap-on! Once you opened up that box, Pandora, it was all over.

I’m off to see Sixes and Sevens this weekend in the hinterlands where she will be spanked for her sins. We plan on shopping at Wal-Mart and going to a redneck bar or four. If you end up in a podunk town in Pennsyltuckey and see two black-haired witches in a pickup truck, don’t worry. That’s just us.

Okay okay, some of you asked about the interviewing. It’s no secret I’m in real estate. Sadly, my beloved homebuilding company folded like a house of cards would if someone excavated and built it under Oprah’s ass. It’s okay though, because I got a really nice severance package. Cough. And then some. Cough cough. Anyway, interviewing is a tedious and yet oddly hilarious phenomenon. Allow me to take you on a journey of my brushes with the stupidest of the stupidest in Washington D.C.’s hiring arena. I’ll have to do this in several parts because some of my gems are from the past and we all know how I can tell a long winded story.

1) Time Won’t Give Me Time
If I’m kept waiting for longer than 15 minutes, this is a deal breaker. When I worked at Nine West, I went to interview in that stupid Calvin Klein division. The potential new boss kept me waiting 2 1/2 hours before she would deign to speak to me. Even her assistant was embarrassed. I could hear new boss in her office cooing the entire time, “The heel on this is so fresh…” Yeah, that meeting was groundbreaking. So glad you kept me waiting on a fucking SATURDAY while you solved the world’s problems. I should have RUN. But, I stupidly took the job anyway because I was a 23 year old idiot. I didn’t realize that I learned something important at the interview: These people would never respect my time. And they didn’t.

My new boss would fly in at 1 p.m., park her broomstick in the corner, call her boyfriend and send out Christmas and Valentines Day Cards until 4 p.m. and then expect everyone to stay late with her until 10 at night. The martyr parade was sickening in the morning. “Oh, poor Karla, she was here until after 10!” That, coupled with Calvin Klein’s “everything must be black” rule encouraged me to leave rather quickly. Do you know how infuriating it is to only be allowed to have black file folders and black pens to label them with? I couldn’t see which file I had marked “Burn down 205 W. 39th St.” I lasted just a few months.

More recently, I was kept waiting for an interview while I could hear the guy in his office calling around to remind people about the duck hunting excursion the next day. Oh, where do I start with that one? The fact that you kept me waiting for that shit or that you use guns to kill animals when my own dog has 11 bullets in her leg from someone like you and it’s costing me seven grand? I didn’t have to see his face to know I would not be working for him.

Lesson: They must respect your time from the very first moment.

2) Is This a Lateral Move?
How stupid does a company have to be to look for someone to fill a position with the EXACT skill set they need? Why don’t they consider that if they find that person, and the person takes what is in essence, a lateral move, they won’t be happy for very long, having already burned out elsewhere. They should be looking for the candidate for whom this will be a promotion. Every time I take a job, I do so with the idealistic mentality that I will be there for a long time, so I want it to be a “promotion” and a challenge from the last job I had.

Lesson: The job must have challenge. Don’t take a lateral move or you’ll be bored, and don’t allow the company to coerce you into a lateral move with that “get your foot in the door bullshit.”

Time Out For A Disclaimer: I have taken lateral moves in the past. When I’ve done this, it was always a band-aid to a situation gone awry. Incompetent people, sexual harassment litigation and a boss stealing money and slapping my name all over his papertrail have foiled my plans of longevity and forced me to jump ship, taking anything that came my way. It happened several times in my 20’s when I worked for a record-breaking THREE alcoholic cokeheads in a row. I bookended that run with born again Christians. My luck was Vegas-style back then.

Sub-Lesson: Sometimes life fucks you and you don’t have a choice.

3) Ocean’s Thirteen
I always ask “How many people are you interviewing for this job?” The question kills me. People give the stupidest answers. The duck hunter said, “Well, we’ve interviewed about 8 already and have another 3 to go after you.” Twelve people? You are interviewing 12 fucking people for this job? You couldn’t narrow it down any more than that? I bet even the UPS guy could narrow it down to 3 or 4 by resume alone, and the Head Cheerleader Human Resources dipshit can knock another one off the list by a phone interview. If you are interviewing 12 people and we’re not talking a CEO level, then yes, you are a fucking moron.

I can’t work for morons. I can only work for people who are smarter than I am or who I want to have sex with. Preferably both. Mmm…ex bosses who I want to have sex with…hold on for a second while I plug this in…

Okay. I’m back.

Wait, I’m gone again. Mmmm…..

Okay, back, and sufficiently relaxed.

Lesson: Don’t work for morons. There’s more but clearly I’m post fantasy and orgasm so you’ll have to figure it out on your own. It’s good practice for you though. I mean, come on people. Two and a half years of this blog, the least you can do is help me out a little.

4) Don’t Go Away Mad, Just Go Away
Ask why the person doing the job now is leaving. Ask it, and RESIST the urge to talk. If you stay silent, people like to fill that silence with something they love – the sound of their own voice. Let them. This is where you will learn that 10 people have quit in the last 4 years because they can’t stand playing solitaire for 8 months while periodically hounding someone to answer an inconsequential question (“Red or Pink Gum Balls in the Vending Machine, Sir?”) that somehow hinges any and all productivity for the next two years.

I also like to find out where the people who are leaving are actually going. One guy was opening up a Five Guys Chain. Another went to work for the Red Cross. Okay, so they would rather flip burgers and work with contaminated bodily fluids than work here? Not good.

Lesson: Why do people leave? Where do they go? If these answers don’t pass the sniff test, something stinks.

5) You Know I Never, I Never Seen Ya Look So Good
I went to a well known Developer / Builder for an interview. Typical office structure – offices on the perimeter of the floor and cubicles in the middle. Men in suits and ties filled the offices and perfectly groomed size zero supermodels filled the cubicles. Needle off the record. What??? I had to look twice. My eyes did not deceive me. Could your gender discrimination scream any louder? There is a pervading theme in real estate that women don’t belong in management positions. This is a hard thing to overcome, especially when I’m indoctrinated to working alongside the type of men who asked me if I would sit on their face during a conference call or threatened to rip my dress off in the hallway for not yielding to their path.

I worked for a builder who didn’t care what we wore to work. The CEO said, “We’re the suit and tie guys, we have to suck up to Wall Street. You guys are building houses. Go build. Wear what you want.” That is the right attitude. We were lucky they had the foresight to enact this rule because it was a lot safer for our construction guys to help the firemen when that house got struck by lightening and burned to the ground because they were in rubber soled shoes.

Lesson: Companies that spend too much time dictating what you can and can’t wear to work are too hung up on appearance and are probably hiding other inadequacies in their business. Tread lightly.

Working on the next part. I know you can’t wait.

Tomorrow I have two interviews and my time this evening would have been better invested doing some company research. But, no. Instead I glued myself to Project Runway, not for just the first showing, but the encore too. And then while it was showing the third time, I was on the phone conducting some armchair psychology for the man I’m so positively enamored with for some guy but I had one eye on the tellie anyway.

Anyway, I never do the TV recaps because I usually only watch Forensic Files and I don’t think any of you really care where a body was found and how one piece of lint traced the killer to a New Mexico Adult Education Ceramics teacher. But to me, that stuff is just fascinating. So, some Project Runway thoughts…

I think it is obvious that Rami and Jillian are going to have sex, if they haven’t already. When she had her breakdown at the sewing machine and said she was getting blood on everything (eau people from her finger!) he ran right over and put his arm around her. I would rather Rami put his arm around me, however, for two reasons. First of all, I’m a sure thing. Second, I have the same hair as Jillian but I know what a STYLING PRODUCT is. And I use them. Many of them. So that my hair doesn’t look like that. Come on Jillian. Get some Curls Rock and use it!!

Chris is so underrated as a designer. His prom dress should have won two weeks ago. They didn’t even discuss it, they just dismissed him off the runway as happily mediocre.

One of my dogs keeps farting and I don’t know which one it is but if I figure it out I’m going to throw the little asshole on the balcony. It’s times like this I wish I had a yard and not some common space with eight generations of rats living in it.

Sweet P cries too much and she’s just way too indecisive. She changes her mind every time the wind blows. The tears, jesus woman, get it together. Women shouldn’t cry at work. And if they do, they are viewed as weak and lose major points in both respect and potential for advancement so cut that shit out.

Heidi Klum has some sort of speech impediment and I think she skips over entire syllables when she’s talking. She definitely can’t say her r’s. Next, on Pwoject Wunway!

Nina Garcia. Oy. I feel like she’s a stand-in for Weekend at Bernies. She NEVER MOVES. She sits in that chair with her legs tightly crossed, holds her judging card in front of her face as if someone is going to cheat off of her like my friend Gina Jenovatti did off my SAT’s. Please, if I was going to cheat off someone in that room it wouldn’t be Nina Garcia. I’m not even sure it would be any of those judges. When Nina’s talking, she turns her head side to side, and does a lot of Rachael-Ray-ish hand gesturing, but she never moves in her seat. She’s permanently stuck in the chair. I wonder if she leaves when they wrap filming for the day. She looks like a bobble head with an eating disorder. Something about her screams “bulimic.” Last night she clearly only went to the “makeup” part of “hair and makeup” because no one took a brush to that mop. While I’m bashing her I would also like to point out that her clothing looks like it is 20 years too young for her and it came from Forever 21. And she’s a judge? Yikes.

So, I won’t ruin the rest in case you haven’t seen it, and the end was sort of unremarkable anyway even though I cheered at who got booted. My prediction for the final three is Rami, Jillian and Christian. While I hoped Chris would pull through to the end, he keeps punctuating two good products with one horrid and I don’t know if he’ll make it. Besides, there is obviously some weight discrimination going on. Leave it to Queen Kors, the Bulimic Wonder and Cindy Brady over there to not give him the credit he deserves.

Speaking of binging and purging, several people have told me that my little dog Sammy is looking very plump these days. Sausage, muffin top and liposuction are just some of the terms I’m hearing. I am not doing anything different, but he does have an eating disorder. He likes the binge, but he’s not so good at the purge. A friend just said, “Didn’t you notice he was getting fat?” I said, “No, but I did wake up the other night to the sounds of a really loud old man snore and I wondered who the fuck was in my house until I realized it was Sammy.” So after making Sixes and Sevens presentable for her work gala, that’s my other side project to work on. Get my dog on a diet.

The fun never stops here in Dupont.

I’m so over the whole debates / who will be our next great leader thing. They all suck. It’s no secret I love Giuliani, but oy, that wife. And for any of you who stupidly think Hillary Clinton doesn’t have her OWN personal agenda that she will enact if she wins, might I remind you of the very self-serving, Pardongate? Those two are out for themselves, and only themselves. Don’t forget it. And don’t come crying to me when you vote for her, and she wins (please no, please!) and then she switches our economy to Communism with all the money we make somehow funneling straight to her and her ugly man-suit collection.

Now, let’s do a little voting where you actually CAN make a difference.

I’ve been tasked with the mother of all tasks. Sixes and Sevens has a formal event to attend for work. While we all hope she can clean her act up enough to impress the people at this event, my part is to direct her in finding a dress for her size 6, lacks an ounce of fat, perfectly toned arms, pert little B-cups, perfect little “I never lift a finger to work out but miraculously I can hold a tractor up with one hand because someone used the jack to stir the sweet tea and change the flat with my other hand” frame. She wants black or deep merlot red and formal. Here are the options I’ve sent her so far. Because some of us are label whores, cough, me, cough, I’ll tell you the maker but not the price. I don’t want the money to sway anyone because let’s face it, money should not be the deciding factor when you have to find something tasteful and it’s not our money anyway. This is an important purchase – it is not easy to make Sixes and Sevens look serious and not the type of girl who would ever, oh, let a guy spooch on her face.

Notes are below each dress. Remember – perfect body. There is nothing she can’t wear. Yeah yeah, I hate her too. Now, please vote!

Dress 1; Nicole Miller. As of right now, they do not have Sixes & Seven’s size, but I’m hoping someone will return one perfect, unworn size 6 shortly to Bluefly.

Dress 2; Nicole Miller. They have a size 6.

Dress 3; Tadashi.

Dress 4; Elie Tahari. They also only have a size 8, but a 6 could be returned shortly allowing Sixes to snap it up.

Dress 5; A.B.S. Also available in black. Available in both sizes, both colors.

Dress 6; Tadashi. They don’t have a size 6, but they have a 4 and she might fit into that. Or someone could return a 6. People like me do that at Bluefly all the time.

Dress 7; Vera Wang.

Dress 8; A.B.S.

Dress 9; A.B.S.

Dress 10; JS Boutique. Yeah, I’ve never heard of them either.

Dress 11; Calvin Klein.

Dress 12: Tadashi. It’s brown. Still waiting for her to respond if she’ll accept brown in the lineup, so don’t get too attached to this one.

When I was about 5 or 6, I spent my Saturday mornings in one of two ways. The first Showcase Showdown involved our parents packing my brothers and I into the wood paneled wagon and driving us down to the Bowery in New York City. Same routine every week, wave the bum off at the Gaseteria in the Bronx by the Third Avenue Bridge, double park on Canal, and run wild in the streets while waiting for a parking spot. There was some reason we took our show on the road weekly and bi-weekly in some cases, but that was none of my concern. It was my self-appointed job to collect every business card of every jeweler in that warehouse, then to run around outside in the throngs of people absorbing soot into my lungs. Showcase Showdown number two involved staying home to destroy the house.

Often I would begin those delightful Saturdays at home by sleeping late. Then, when I got my wind (sometime around 10:30 or 11:00, much like today) I would get into a sleeping bag on my stomach and perch at the top of the stairs until one of my brothers pushed me down. This was a very delicate operation and we had to time it right because it would start a thumping on each stair resulting in a subsequent scream from my mother. “YOU’RE WEARING OUT THE CARPET YOU KIDS!!!”

After we met the wrath of Gloom and Doom (that’s Mom and Dad in case you forgot,) we would congregate on the houndstooth couch and watch American Bandstand. At 5, I was 13 years shy of the legal drinking age of 1978 and unable to access Studio 54, much to my dismay. Oh, believe me, I knew what it was and I knew it was going on, just down the street from my house. American Bandstand was my own little Studio 54 in my parent’s living room, just without the coke. Sadly. Also sadly, without the Halston – greatest fashion designer ever.

Well, here I am, 28 years later. Halston is dead. Steve Rubell is dead. Studio 54 is no mas. But, I found a way to reclaim my youth on Saturday nights at 2 a.m. and it doesn’t involve me having to leave my bed!

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…SOUL TRAIN! No, wait, The BEST of SOUL TRAIN airs on this channel, one I would never watch for its proximity to E! and Court TV is just so painfully far. On a good day, it’s still within 30 channels of the low-hovering A&E, where I might flip that low during the commercials of Intervention (a show that makes me cry every time) or Cold Case Files. But, I need a snack and a nap on the way from Court TV down to this channel.

But one night, after I realized I had seen the currently airing reruns of Real Housewives of Orange County and E! News and there were no more Forensic Files / Cold Case / Arrest & Trial / Dominick Dunne / Murder By the Book / The Investigators / The First 48 / Dark Heart Iron Hands to be watched, I flipped dangerously low in the numbers.

Anyway, I’m in love. I tried to find an interview Don Cornelius did with Cheryl Lynn before she lip synched this performance, but they cut out the best part. If you know me, I’ll do it for you in person as you are no doubt aware of my uncanny ability to impersonate virtually anyone within seconds. And if you don’t have the pleasure of knowing me, nor have you heard me repeat this exchange non-stop for the past week, I’ll recant it for you:

Don Cornelius: Look at you. You’re a whole lotta woman.
Cheryl Lynn: I know, that’s my problem.
Don Cornelius: Yerrrrr. Soooooooooooooo. Beauuuuuuuuuutiful.

Me, screaming at the tellie: WHY DON’T YOU JUST RIP HER DRESS OFF AND FUCK HER DON? HUH?

So this is the best addition to my life since, well, Thora and Sammy. No one ask me to leave the house on Saturday night ever again!

Anyway, more Soul Train Clips.

Why?

Because they ROCK!

One last one from the “Rimshots.” (Please, I’ve already done all the iterations in my disgusting little mind, no need to make your jokes.)