Big Girl (in a) Small City

Just to clear the rumors, I don’t need any more friends. Okay? I have plenty of friends. More friends than I even want, thank you. 

But after cleaning out my cell phone yesterday (please refer to the previous blog entry), I think I have finally generated the space for a few (just a few) new buddies.

I like a demographic balance. My Cali friends have the surf and yoga scenes nailed and my Iowa friends are always good for a reality check. College homies from ChiTown are stationed all over the globe, so my Facebook is blowing up with scenes of peeps lunching on the Seine or getting eaten by lions in Kenya - you know, yuppie shit!

The one demographic noticeably underrepresented in my phone is ‘People Who Have RIDICULOUS Old Money.’ I mean, I know some rich people, sure, but I’m talking Rockefeller cheese, you feel me? A want to hang out with a dude who has a boat named after him. I want a girlfriend whose number of Louis bags is outnumbered only by the times she’s gone into the city for a covert abortion after drunkenly hooking up with a hip hop mogul who Daddy doesn’t approve of. I want to hang out with people who have real servants, not Mexicans, but English people with accents who wear actual uniforms and believe that brewing iced tea is an all-day process.

But mostly, I want that house. You know what I’m talking about. The summer home. Some examples:

Don’t worry, I will be a classy freeloader. I will wear the appropriate balance of pearls and seersucker. I will bring an appropriate bottle of Pinot Gris and express appropriate options on Mitt Romney… until I get drunk, at which point I will hook up with your cousin on your parent’s bed. 

Don’t worry about accommodating me. I’ll bring my own croquet mallet and I am super-adept at setting place cards on dining tables and rearranging rose stems- you know, doing fake chores of utterly no significance just to make myself feel important.

I know I will get on SPLENDIDLY with your family! And if I don’t, I will just pour arsenic in their Tom Collinses and take off with the hand-carved chess boards.

Let’s be friends, hopelessly rich kids. Send me an e-mail… mackenziehorras@gmail.com and this will be the best summer of our lives!

It’s about time. That number just sat in my phone, among hundreds of other forgotten numbers belonging to men who propositioned me one time at a concert or bar. Men who were “in town on business.” Men with girlfriends back home in Baltimore or Tucson or down the street in Culver City (because that claim of being from out of town was an elaborate backstory created to fulfill a bet at his cousin’s bachelor party).

Ladies know how it goes down. You’re up in the club looking good. You put on your Spanx and everything. Some guido comes dancing up on you and spills his beer all over your cleavage like it’s an accident. He offers to clean it up. You decline, politely. On garlic breath, he drops a line that he heard on Mystery’s Lounge and then asks for your number. “Call me when you find a good dry cleaner!” he snorts as you notice his patchy chest hair. Resisting the urge to barf all over his man cleavage (not because you don’t want to ruin his horrible tattoo print shit, but because the joint spillage would be too ironic as to ignite a continued conversation concerning your mutual lack of coordination and/or hygiene so as to render you “similar” and “compatible” in such a way to imply continued relations which you will have no part in), you suggest, instead, that YOU take HIS number. A classic move - and a smart one - because it gives the suggestion that you are interested in the guy, while at the same time taking away all of his power. And you never. Ever. Call him.

The numbers mount in your contact list. Soon the contact list takes on an interesting quality… “Pimply John” … “Ben Says He’s From Canada”… “George BAD NAILBEDS” The contacts remain in neverland - never to be called, never to be considered, beyond their perversely humorous backstories - until one day, perhaps even five years later, they are throw out unceremoniously during a phone purge (the casualities of which also include former hairstylists and the landlord who tried to evict your roommate when she got drunk and set the patio table on fire).

Upon deleting the dudes, a part of you will miss reading over the snarky, descriptive names you have endowed these sad saps. They are the consistent reminder that you, a young female, are sexually desirable, and capable of rejecting men on a daily basis. You might feel a pang of guilt. But not for long. We’re just Spring Cleaning, after all!

Bye, boys. :)

It’s called “Vision Board.” I think it’s pretty funny. Check it out! (Link below.)

The following is the transcript from an actual conversation had between me and Conan O’Brien today. It is 100 percent true.

CONAN: How are you doing?

ME: I’m hanging in there.

CONAN: Rough day?

ME: No. It’s more about last night. I had a scary dream where I was a character in an American Psycho-esque movie. I screamed and no one could hear me. And then I died.

CONAN: You couldn’t have slept well after that.

ME: Nope. The upside is that I woke up in a warm cocoon that I created myself by rolling over many times in my sleep. I was fully clothed.

CONAN: Interesting. Well, if you need to talk, you can come and sit with me and Liza. We are good for that.

ME: Thank you.

“It can’t be done,” you say. “If I could create time, I would be able to accomplish everything I want (and need) to accomplish in life. I could sleep in every day, take a long walk on the beach, run my own business, spend several hours volunteering for those less fortunate, read an actual book - and top it all off with a 10 course dinner and a Woody Allen marathon!”

Living a 50-hour day like this isn’t possible, obviously. Time is limited. Very, very limited.

And isn’t funny how the faster communication becomes, the more efficient our lives become, the less and less time we all seem to have. Maybe the world is literally spinning faster. Or maybe, with increasing efficiency, are simply driven to accomplish more. To squeeze as many stupid but “relevant” YouTube videos into our downtime at the office. To scan all of the articles on the Facebook Social Reader. To attempt as many Food Network recipes as the local farmer’s market allows, then review the outcome and post it on Twitter. Consume, connect, connect, consume. Do. More. Do. EVERYTHING.

Our world is more efficient than it has ever been at any point in history. How ironic, then, that the only relationship I truly value has crumbled under the pressure of time. I was seeing this guy, a guy who I like very much and who I still consider to be an amazing individual. This man is busy, as many people are. He is probably busier than 70% of the general population but by no means the busiest person on the planet. Nevertheless, this man literally disappeared (with warning) when his work life veered ever so slightly into the fast lane. “I’m going into work mode,” he said. “When I’m in regular mode it’s different. I can have fun. But when I’m in work mode, I can’t think about anything else.”

A relationship expert might say that this man is “just not that into me” - that, if he cared enough, he would find time in his life for me. And that may be true. But I don’t think it’s the case here. (I still get phone calls from this guy every day.) The problem is that there is a culture of people nowadays who view their entire life/career (they are one in the same, apparently) as an Internet startup or a one time rocket ship operation that has to be executed quickly and brazenly so as to maximize exposure and connections and money and blah blah blah my publicist called, now I’m off to a dinner!

It’s all good. A person can live like a rocket ship. Or a person can live like a person. But guess which is harder…

To live like a person requires - oh my God - introspection. And bravery. It takes bravery to sit oneself down and say “I am going to put a hour a day aside from my business and my ambition and I am going to take care of my emotional needs and, perhaps, the emotional needs of another human being. And I am doing this without promise of a kickback or a reward… because I need to feed my spirit as well as my ego.”

Or you could just die alone.

First off, I have to say a big thank you to Kovas for giving me the opportunity to do the artwork for his new single, Deed It Main. The song is AWESOME. I’m really excited to be a part of the creative package. Check it out on iTunes!

A link to my design portfolio is below. I would love to work on more projects like this, as well as actor tear sheets, event promotions, etc. Please let me know if you have the interest or need (mackenzie@mackenziehorras.com).

mackenziehorrasdesign.tumblr.com

And Happy Valentine’s Day… 

i fail often on these points. but i try. we all do. keep striving. never give up.

“The Awakening” (from Franco Accordero’s GENIUS book of passionate postcards) definitely has me all hot and bothered, but there is nothing sexy about the pirate ship in the background. The apocalyptic red glow only exacerbates the fear factor. File this under #ApocalypseSex. And that, my friends, is awesome.

You can find the whole book, “Unbridled Passion,” on Amazon.

The whole thing is pretty dope.