So I saw Katy Perry in Concert... (ended up deceiving a child, clearly)

So my friend Sam informs me that she has

(des

pite her understandable reservations about the quality) secured tickets to see Katy Perry at Nokia.

We had VIP pit passes so we didn't have to mingle with lowly commoners!

I saw Demi Lovato enter in the door just before us.

Then Sam's friend's co-worker reluctantly gave us drink tickets, which when added to the carafe of Sake from Katsuya = GAME ON.

Two amazing things happened this night.

1.) I saw Noah Cyrus.

Google her if you don't know (you should see as many pictures as possible) but TLDR, she's Miley's 10 year old sister.

I tap her gently on the shoulder and ask for a photo.

THIS BITCH DON'T EVEN FLINCH.

Then one of her friends (clearly she doesn't have adult supervision, clearly) says in what you imagine to be the most blase teenage disinterest/attitude and multiply it by the celebrity/child star trickle down dickery. Amazing.

Shut down by the KID SISTER of a Disney Star.

Amazing item #2)

So I wore an outfit very Katy inspired (photos as evidence) and I was walking to the restroom when a girl around 8 or so years old stops me and with DETERMINED eyes asks,

"OMG are you Katy Perry?"

She has another little friend and they're both looking up at me, so very hopeful.

I kinda go, UHHHHH... and I'm about to let them know that it's not quite the case when one of their Dads goes

"YEAH, YEAH YOU ARE!"

Then obviously following the lying parent's suit, I confirm that I, Erin the IIIrd esquire, am Katy Perry.

She asks for a picture and being the most gracious celebrity, I oblige.

Then I went along my merry way to running up the stairs to hide in the bathroom, because I saw one start to follow me.

I lied to a kid and it was the best thing I've ever done.

Another scene from my life as an inappropriate child

I am and always have been a rule follower*

I am, snicker if you will, a good girl at heart.

Student Council, church camp, the whole nine.

Now, picture me in 2nd grade (yes, I was that cute and no I am not suddenly "less asian"...that phenom was based on what my interior decorator Andy told me. They're called Mongolian Eyelids thankyouverymuch).

There I am in class, minding my own business, when an announcement comes on over the PA.

ERIN TO THE VICE PRINCIPAL'S OFFICE.

I am quaking in my saddle shoes but I head to the VP's office.

Also, who gets called to the VICE principal's office?

Anyways, I head in and the VP, Mr. Wales, sits at his desk looking furtively at me for a moment.

He then speaks.

"So I hear you do a Mae West impression"

1.) if you don't know who/what Mae West was then google accordingly watch some clips (cliffsnotes: brassy balls-y entendre-wielding hourglass old time-y comedy star)

2.) Do you really call a child into your office to force them to do comedy?

And first off, yes, OF COURSE I did a Mae West impression.

I did two of Mae's signature lines, he laughed and basically sent me on my way.

That's a cute story, sure, BUT the real issue is why the FUCK DID A 2ND GRADER HAVE A MAE WEST IMPRESSION?????

We all know I am not, nor was I ever, cool. So the fact that I did old-timey impressions doesn't really come as a shock.

It's really the fact that I was called into the office of a 40-something year old man and said the following two quotes:

"Why don't you come up and see me sometime" (obviously implying sex)

and here's the kicker

"Is that a banana in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

I ASKED IF A 40 YEAR OLD DUDE HAD A BONER FOR ME, A 2ND GRADE CHILD.

Did I even have parents?

*it doesn't count if the rule is utter bullshit and the authority the rule was based on is one I do not respect.

Your mission if you choose to accept it: Adventures at a Hollywood Premiere

I went with my parents one time to the premiere of Mission Impossible II.

I was roughly 14/15 years old.

*Important piece of background info: When I was little my parents never really made it a priority for me to remember their friends/coworkers name, so I had to pretend to know a lot of people at one time or another. This still happens but since I'm not a kid anymore, it just makes me a dick.

Anyways, we see the movie (rad, duh) then head to the party.

These were usually pretty boring for me as it's really just BnS (boozing and schmoozing) so I'm kinda standing behind my mom as she is talking to someone. My dad is off somewhere else in the party.

I'm bored when some guy comes up to me (*it factors in here) and starts to talk to me.

Normal chit chat with what I assume is my parent's friend.

Then he asks me a question

"Why aren't you dancing?

(there was at least a dancefloor FYI)

me: um well you know I'm not much of a dancer.

him: oh yeah you don't want to get all sweaty...

RED FLAG ALERT

yeah so here's where I go. Holy shit, I have ZERO idea who this dude is.

He then says something else like creeper-ish (for the sake of this post, I wish I could remember but I just HAD to take the SAT's and remember shit for that)

I am pulling the hand of my mother, whose conversation has just wrapped up.

At this point, I think the dude caught wind that something was "off" and peaced out.

I was 14 he was 30ish, Courtney Stodden eat your heart out.

Rick Dees

I used to listen to KIIS-FM every morning before I got ready to go to school.

The DJ at the time was Rick Dees. Yes, the man behind "Disco Duck."

This man might be older than water.

He babysat Casey Casem.

Anyways, you get it.

So Rick announces that he is going to play a short clip of a song run backwards.

Identify the song and win a prize.

I called in on a lark (I would occasionally but after the 2nd busy tone, apathy set in) and it starts to ring.

An operator answers and asks me name date etc and tells me that I'm going to be on air.

I hold for a few moments. My heart is racing as clearly this is my debut into stardom.

Rick gets on the line and asks a couple quick questions, then we get down to brass tacks.

He plays the song.

I make my guess.

Incorrect.

BUT he says that since I've been such a good sport and that since I sound so sexy (this is where I start to think things are going south) I'm going to get a prize anyways.

He tells me that I'm the proud new owner of a g-string.

As I was about to alert him to his Pedobear status, I was "disconnected."

Thank you Rick Dees for that moment.

Coulda gotten a g-string.

Summer Camp: The saga continues...

When we last left our hero, she was still in Valencia but the full body rash was subsiding....

Paintball Camp

Yes, you read that right. I decided, as a person who hadn’t ever so much seen a paintball, to sign up for a week filled with nothing but combat simulations with a group of 50 thirteen-year-olds.

50 kids. 2 girls.

I do NOT like those numbers.

Here's where the fun sexual harassment element comes into play.

Exhibit A: Every time I was not facing the throng of furious spotty masturbators they would do jerkoff motions.

Exhibit B: They would calculate the number of dudes I could take on based on the number of orifices.

Honestly, I think that should be enough exhibits.

Every morning, my councilor who I was FORCED to call Jellybean (I asked her real name and she said something about camp policy. You best believe I used to shake some salt her way when I said her name.) would wake me up.

I would roll up from having slid into the corner of my broken cot and kindly remind her that I wasn't in her JetSkiing group and that she had once again woken me up a full hour earlier than I needed to be up.

After each morning's rather rude awakening I would head to the vans to be driven to a paintball ranch(?). The first day wasn't too bad.

Sure, Old Navy jeans and a vintage T-shirt from the now defunct 80's cabler, SelectTV, don't exactly constitute appropriate protective gear per se but I trudged along for the day and aside from the rampant mooning (still their best angle), I was almost having fun.

Day 2 happens and I find out that war is cruel as I hit my instructor on his helmet but because he couldn't feel the hit he stood above me as I was lying on the ground and shot point blank into my torso.

That was basically the end of the paintballing. I spent most days sitting in a van with no A/C with one of the three following songs on rotation:

1. She's So High by Tal Bachman
2. I Need to Know by Marc Anthony
3. Pay My Bills by Destiny's Child

It was a good time.

A brief moment away from the narrative to showcase the camp's high moral standards.

There was an 18 yr-old Japanese kid who didn't speak a lick of English. There was no one at the camp that spoke ANY Japanese. Somehow this did not constitute a cause for concern.

He ran away and was gone for a full day and a half.

Did they call anyone? ANYONE?

Clearly not.

He did come back and if he was traumatized, no one was any the wiser.

Alls well that ends well (if the person can't tell you they have PTSD).

Back to the story.

So basically this camp has become sexual harassment/wait in van in 100+ degree weather adventure camp. Which is great, because clearly as a child that was what I was really looking for.

One of the mob had taken an interest in me (again the 24 to 1 ratio was probably at work here) and he and his an even more midget version of Stephen Dorff ass proposed "making out."

As I was pretty self actualized as a kid, I said then, what I would say now...

"Ew" (maybe I threw in a no there too but I could have kept it simple, who KNOWS?)

Then he moved onto one of the "Watersports" girls (typical) and I went about being sexually harassed by 47, instead of 48 "youngsters."

One camp councilor, whose chosen name was "Tinman," decided to share with me a story.

He pulled me aside and told me about how he wanted to be a Marine. He went to apply but he had a hearing issue that kept him out. He told me that he can only hear higher registers and has a hard time hearing low noises. At this point he looks at me and says,

"So, I can't really understand what you are saying"

An adult male pulled aside a 12-year-old girl, who had been trying to communicate to him for the better part of a week, that her Barry White bass-down-low voice renders her essentially mute to him.

Just grand.

As in the previous week, they gave out awards to each camper. This week, due to the paintball theme, they gave out a trophy made for a shooting competition. A man in aviators and a ballcap holding a shotgun (or rifle...aren't you glad I don't know the difference?) stands atop a pedestal with a small plaque on the base that stated...

"Most Sarcastic"

Another moment for the highlight reel.

And now for the crowning moment of my camp career.

The final day, we're all saying our goodbyes and this one fellow, Kihei (a very white person I'll have you know) pulled me aside and told me that he thought I was a really special person. A ton of fun and I had great things in my future. He then wrote his number on my camp provided duffel bag and said that he would love to meet up.

Minor hitch in the plans.

He was 19 years old and one of the councilors.

Nothing like an appearance by Pedobear to really wrap up a sexual harassment camp story.

Needless to say, I never returned to that trailer park, nor did I ever attend camp again.

I moved on to the glory of playing men of all kinds in musical theater and the rest is history.

I should probably seek professional help but do you know how many shoes therapy money gets you?

I'm finding that out every day.

Thank you for your time

-From the Desk of Bronson Pinchot-

The things people say to me: senior class bonding edition

On our compulsory senior trip to bond over the previous 10 years of forced bonding, we were broken into groups to participate in team building activities.

During one such an activity (I believe it was an Orienteering course...because those compasses are pretty tricky), one of my fellow classmates decided to walk up to me and share his thoughts.

Let me give you some background on this fellow.

Andy was the kid who inherited all of this one guy's goth clothes (when we got into designer labels natch).

He was the kid who worked at Starbucks (and you avoided that Starbucks).

He was the kid who drew his own Hentai (if you don't know, Google, but beware it's NSFW).

So this very Andy strolls up to me and looks me in the eye and says,

"You know, I just don't like you."

I squint in his general direction.

"Well I thought that the fact that we never talk to one another was evidence of that, but good to know anyways."

He then walked away.

Another successful peer interaction.

No wonder I'm so well adjusted today.

For the record. I don't recall ever telling anyone to their face "I just don't like you" so at least I've moved back one place in the line to Hell.

Summer Camp: A saga in two parts (hint: no, it didn't go well)

I wasn’t ever a social child. I know you are simply shocked at this revelation. I used to go to day camp but every year I would head off to one camp but always felt like I missed out on the "classic" camp experience. Mostly as seen in DCOMs (Disney Channel Original Movies, what’s up Ryan Merriman how’s the SMART HOUSE? Luck of the Irish still paying off?) and other teen movies.

In 1999, I decided to attend a sleep away camp. It was associated with a high school in Pacific Palisades so I figure that’s pretty legit. It was an "adventure" camp, meaning that each week you would pick a theme such as watersports (Ray J, HAND DOWN).

For the first week, I chose Scuba Certification. I thought, hey that's some James Bond shit right there.

I arrive at the pick up location, my parents wave me goodbye and I get into a van and off into the horizon...

One hour later, I find myself in a trailer park in Valencia. (yes, the home of Six Flags)

The tents and cots were all army surplus. I snagged one that had springs! (nevermind that one corner of the springs were detached and that I would slowly sink into that hole through the night.)

In the whole camp there were 50 kids per "program." For the first week, I selected to train to be scuba certified. I am going to break this into two separate sagas as each really had a different "vibe" to it. (Spoiler alert: one vibe is "sexual harassment")

Scuba Camp

So I show up with all my enthusiasm to experience what I kept seeing in movies (I realize later that my expectations based on previous film viewing is what makes me basically The Cable Guy). Aside from the less than posh digs, the camp was alright. We did classroom and in pool training. Almost had an international incident because there was a group of French campers that we had to share the shower facilities with. I very clearly heard them say repeatedly something to the tune of “the American pigs can go fuck themselves” so I gently urged the councilors and campers to avoid them. It is this reason that I own a plaque with a scuba diver etched onto it with the words “Most Likely to Become a French Citizen” on it.

I did develop a crush on a fellow camper named Luke. The climax of that relationship was when one night, we were lying on top of picnic benches watching the stars. Overhead, I see a shooting star and point it out to him. He pauses. Then he says “Sorry, I farted” then proceeds to go into detail about why white swimsuits are the best kind. I really should have taken this as some sort of sign of things to come.

We finish our pool training and it’s time to head out into the ocean for the final hours to get the certification. We head to Catalina.

First issue, they accidentally took all the luggage to the camping site instead of straight to the docs where we had to dive that day in order to get the correct amount of hours. We were given a choice.

a) You could dive in your underwear and camp provided wetsuit.

b) You could dive in just the camp provided wetsuit.

c) Or you could not be certified.

Obviously “I don’t know where that’s been” was my guiding philosophy and I went in my skivvs. Most of the rest of the campers (10 girls, 40 boys approx.) decided with a resounding “FREEBALL.”

It should also be mentioned that said wetsuits were basically one size fits all and the way they would ensure the suit would “fit all” was to line the inside with Palmolive and just shake you in there.

Here’s a little something I learned.

Poorly fiting wetsuit + dish soap + salt water = full body rash.

Oh, sweet hindsight. Those freeballers never had a chance. I made it out alive and with my swimsuit region (then and now, thankyouverymuch) rash free.

This was also the first event that marked me being objectively cool (aka slow mo hallway walk to Imperial Teen’s Yoo Hoo…for reference see the seminal film, Jawbreaker, which you should do anyways).

There was one moment where I figured it out. It was the dinner after the fateful “freeball dive” and I was walking to my table where I was going to sit with a new object of my affection, Matt when the “cool table” asked me to join. More than that they were voicing their surprise that I would sit anywhere else. I, in typical Erin fashion, sat with the nerdy crush kid.

Once I sat, he looked at me and said “I can recite Green Eggs and Ham by memory.” Then proved it.

Choice well made, Erin.

Intermission!

Aka the weekend optional trip I should have opted out of.

Long story short (yes, we all know it’s too late for that) I spent the whole weekend with my hood up trying to ignore the fact that the 6 male campers and 2 male councilors were just sizing up the “talent.” A charming weekend but it was also the one where I convinced a group of teens to see an IMAX Shark movie instead of American Pie. (Not just because of the awesomeness of sharks but I ultimately felt that American Pie would be inappropriate. For your reference, I was called Alex P. Keaton by my mother throughout adolescence.)

I, having already been through so much, had to face the next day knowing that there was a week of non-refundable camp fun ahead of me….

The saga continues…