I'm cheating on Edward Cullen...

... with Damon Salvatore.

That's right. I'm stepping out on this:

For this:

I can't help it.

I DVR'd The Vampire Diaries but then I couldn't bring myself to watch it. I had commitment issues which can all be laid at the feet of Angst Goddess and her Wide Awake Twilight fan-fiction masterpiece/time-suck. I got hooked, read it like a starving person gobbles food, and then.... And then. She didn't post new chapters FOR. EVER. Days, weeks, months... purgatory!!! But I was in luuuuvvvvvv!

Since then I've been a little gun-shy about falling in love again. And you know how it goes with TV - you find a new series, you watch it, you fall in love, and then it gets cancelled. There's no closure - Hello, Southland, I'm talking to YOU.

Which brings us to The Vampire Diaries. I had 5 episodes piled up in the DVR queue, and last week I took the plunge and gorged on them. And I LOVE IT. Specifically, I love Damon Salvatore, played by Ian Somerhalder, aka The Hot Guy from Lost. He's the bad-boy vampire brother and he looks like he's having a blast playing a bad dude. It's fun to watch. And did I mention he's hot?

The Vampire Diaries also beats Twilight: The Epic Saga because you don't have to WAIT MONTHS for a NEW INSTALLMENT to come out, because there's a new episode EVERY WEEK. [Every Thursday night on the CW at 8 p.m./7 central, you don't even need a TV, you can watch it online here!] I highly recommend Episode 6, Lost Girls, because Ian Somerhalder dances around without a shirt. Or maybe he's wearing a shirt but it's unbuttoned. I was too distracted by his abs, which were NOT airbrushed on, to note his exact state of undress.

The Vampire Diaries beats Twilight in one other important way: Ian Somerhalder is THIRTY. Not twenty-three, or twenty-four, or, sweet Jesus, seventeen. Legality is not in question, and at thirty, there's a chance he knows how to take care of his business AND my business, which automatically qualifies him as hotter than those other infants.

No need to worry about getting arrested for this:

When you have this:

I know, I know - go to your happy place now, it's OK.

Sources - OK I'm not really good with sources, because Google Images is like crack for me. But in order of appearance from top to bottom the photos are from: Gawker, spoilersguide.com, fanpop.com, and lost.cz. And aren't the links self-explanatory?

I've Got an Important Date Coming Up - What To Wear?

So what is my important date? My ninth wedding anniversary? The birthday of my beloved child? Nopity nope – in 32 days, The Twilight Saga: New Moon opens, and I don’t know what to wear.

This is an extremely pressing issue. I’m 34 – will everyone be able to tell? Is it going to be me, Lost Rose, and our third Twitarded comrade, StresserMomWhoDoesn’tWantToBeCalledThatBecauseSheThinksShe’sCalm, surrounded by shrieking 12-year-olds? If I wear my skinny jeans and my Chucks, will I look like I’m trying too hard? Should I wear a hoodie? I’ve been wearing hoodies (we just called them sweatshirts) and Chucks since before these Twi-twerps were born, but I’m kinda bogarting their movie. Sure, it’s my movie too, but it’s not the same: I can’t watch it and dream of Taylor Lautner taking me to prom. OK, I could, but that would be disturbing and weird. [Lost Rose, put a lid on it; I love to drool over his shirtless pics, but I wouldn’t want to make out with him in the back of a rental limo. Not worth the prison sentence. Although by prom season, he will be legal…Hmmm…]

After we clear the hurdle of the fear of looking like a total impostor, we are faced with practicality. Lost Rose has advance-purchased our tickets, so the only line we have to worry about is the one to get into the actual movie theater. But it will be November, and even in San Diego at night in November, it does get cold. OK, fine - moderately cool. We’ll be sitting on concrete, eating some fabulous take-out grease for dinner – so I’m thinking jeans and a hoodie make sense. Plus some sneakers so we can sprint to the best seats, throwing little girls out of our way as we dash.

I’m not alone in my dilemma – among others, the Twitards have covered it. Their approach is more combat-related which I can appreciate, but with Lost Rose and Stresser Mom on my side, I have no fear of some pre-teen gang of Rob Pattinson fans.

But I want to look cute, too. It’s important. It’s a milestone. I’m super-excited!

'Cause that's just how we roll...

A few days ago I was at SeaWorld, a fish-related amusement park, with Bean, my friend Caroline, and her Bean-age daughter. There's stroller parking everywhere 'cause you can't take your stroller into a lot of the exhibits. We took the kids through the penguin habitat once... twice... OK, three times... and when we staggered back out into the morning sunshine, this is what we saw:

Why, yes, that IS a stroller with ice-cold metal bottles of Bud Light in the cup holders, at ten-thirty in the morning! Caroline and I inhaled sharply before whispering reverently: ".... these people are our heroes..." I thought I would be all sneaky and snap a surreptitious photo with my phone but was totally busted in the act by the stroller owner. Oddly enough - maybe because she was two beers down before it was even lunchtime - she was cool with it. I didn't exactly tell her I would be posting the photo on a blog... but whatevs.

I've only been to SeaWorld a few times, but part of its mystique is that, until recently, SeaWorld was a valued member of the Anheuser-Busch corporate family! Yay, beer! It made for some weird juxtapositions: beluga whales and Clydesdales... waffle cones and margaritas... but I decided I was totally on board with an amusement park that sold ice-cold Anheuser-Busch products at *every gift shop*. What a great idea!

So I'm glad they have a new owner and all, and they're building a new dolphin show, and now they'll have dough for 'improvements' but I gotta say one thing: ohmigod totally keep the beer.

Jackson Rathbone Wishes He Had Hair Like This.

Just kidding. That's Bean's hair, blowing in the breeze. I love him.

Riddle: How Do You Take One Good Lookin' Dude and Turn Him All Fugly?

How do we get from this:

To this?:

From this [try not to lick the screen... I know, it's tough, but you can do it]:

To this crime against humankind?:
From this:
To this double-threat of unfortunateness?:
And just to help heal your retinas a bit, I leave you with this [and yes I *can* hear your big sigh of relief all the way across the Internet]:

In case you can't tell, it's clear the answer is: Add a really fucking horrendous wig.

This has been bothering me for a while... OK, fine, for months. I may or may not have started a blog *just* to post about this. I can't help it.

Jackson Rathbone

[sincetwoofmythreereadersmightnotknow:heplaysJasperintheTwilightmovies]

is a cutie. I don't know if I think he's the hottest shit ever - in fact after seeing Twilight I was like, 'who's the constipated-looking guy they found to play Jasper? Seems like they could have done a little better... [sorry, Jackson, but it's true! I did!]' and then I saw photos of him in real life and knew that a great wrong had been perpetrated.

So here I go: Jackson's a good-looking man with a heart-melting smile and a naughty twinkle in his eye and that's enough for me. He deserves BETTER than the assholes in the Twilight Saga costume department! He does! It's just not right!

There's the basic injustice of it: turning a beautiful man into... into.. I don't know what but it ain't pretty. And then there's the Twilight factual fail part of it: the vampires are supposed to be SO BEAUTIFUL - one might say SUPERNATURALLY BEAUTIFUL. Costume assholes, you're going the wrong direction with this wig issue.

My hairstylist has a hell of a theory: she hypothesizes that it's in Robert Pattinson's contract that none of the other guys can be better looking than he is, so they had to ugly up poor Jackson to comply. *giggle*

One of my fave Twi-blogs (which I can't remember for the life of me right now, I thought it was Letters to Twilight but I couldn't find it on there and now I just don't know...) explained Jackson's recent hand injury as the result of a scuffle with the wig department - if he did indeed open up a can of whup-ass on the wiggy bastards, I salute you, dude. Perhaps by the FOURTH movie, Summit's budget will be big enough to buy you some new hair.

The Bean has awoken and is repeating "Mom.Mom.Mom.Mom" relentlessly, my cue to wrap this bitch up and post it. *Sigh* There's just not enough Twilight time in the day.

PS: I'm pretty sure that as a blogger for the forces of good, I am supposed to list photo sources, but I just googled Jackson Rathbone images and cherry-picked away. It was almost too easy. I can't remember which pic came from where, but sources included scifiwire.com, eclipsemovie.org, Twilighters Anonymous and sofeminine.co.uk. Plus the first pic is tagged so there you go.