Easter Traditions: Cheap Alcohol

This recipe is embarrassingly belated. But, like... how much fun was the last month and a half, everyone?! Great, now let's get disastrous: 

Ingredients
Before you begin, be aware that you must prepare these ingredients are listed in timeline order. However, achieving them all in one day may prove deadly. 

• 1 6am flight from New York to Cleveland
• (immediately followed by) A 2-hour nap
• 2 visits to Kohl's
• $2 Beer Retail Night. In which bottles are $2. American cash.
• 1 game of Cards Against Humanity with your father and high school drama director
• < $20 for a haircut ("yo, I'm like")
• 1 free yoga class where you are the youngest in attendance by at least 20 years (which is a feat no matter how old you are)
• 60+ Easter baskets at the St. Joseph's Easter Basket Blessing 
• 2 bottles of fine Ohio wine served to you and your mom by one of your best friends in the middle of a corn field
• This sign: 
  
  *Oh. I'm sorry: For those who can't read the finite print, that says $5 for a shot & beer on a Saturday night. And for those of you who can't read minds, this bar exists in downtown Oberlin, OH, which, for those of you who don't know, is the home of Oberlin College. So, for those of you who haven't yet done the math, that's a REAL cheap combo for an EXTREMELY liberally COLLEGE town surrounded by not much else than farmland and strip malls. Where there are apparently alcohol specials on Sundays, dagnabit! Probs cuz we still have the Sunday liquor law.
• 1 John Candy movie for "culture"
• 5 hours to kill (after the early-as-all-heck 8am Easter mass), during which you must include the most festive religious entertainment possible: 
  1. The Rugrats Passover episode; and then,
  2. The Comedy Central Roast of Justin Beiber
• 50+ pieces of assorted dark chocolates in 1 box. Forced, yes, forced upon you.
• 2 Easters. Of course.

Instructions

I want you to tell me which of the above have to do with being in Ohio and which of the above are simply about having a good effing time. If I could cram every 4-day period of my life with $2 craft beer bottles, $20 haircuts, $25 in Kohl's cash, $5 beer+shot deals, free yoga classes, and all of the free meals my parents might offer, then... Oh, wait. This is all about the money. Ohio = suddenly affordable = this is what the rich feel like!

Alright, well. What else do the above have in common... Alcohol! That's gotta be your link to this recipe's disaster. Let's keep it disastrous, people: $2 bottles on retail night at a local bar on Main Street named Stubby's? Somethin' bad's gonna happen! Or, bare minimum, you'll end up buying someone's beer because you're like, "well, I have a $5 bill out and let's be honest it's just $5-- a normal beer'd be that much-- so lemme get that for you," but then you don't realize that your super easy gesture, fueled mainly by convenience and your initial plan to spend $5 anyways-- might send that person a mixed message, and now all of a sudden there's someone thinkin' you expect somethin' outta him, or maybe he expects somethin' outta you, and you're like, "woahhhp, nope, I merely didn't want to wait--" and before you can even explain that you simply had no time to wait for the bartender to fork over your few bucks in change, BAM someone's pregnant.

That's unlikely.

That's more likely to happen at The Feve, the college bar in Oberlin, OH, where the $5 beer+shot deal *exists. 

*Since beginning this post over a month ago, I have indeed found multiple locations in NYC that also covet this $5 beer+shot phenomenon, and I don't know how it's not yet illegal.

Hm. I know! All of the above have to do Easter. Let's see, we've got Rugrats Passover, candy, John Candy... Just kidding, I know what Easter is truly about: Justin Beiber! OK, OK, in all seriousness, it was so lovely to finally be able to honor my favorite holiday (besides Halloween, obvs) with the tradition I haven't been around to celebrate since high school. The Traditional Catholic Easter Basket Blessing (*caps mine, I believe) is, honestly, like, the coolest thing. I love it. No one's ever heard of it-- throwback to another Eastern European Catholic tradition, hell yes! Packzis and Easter Baskets, that's about as Polish as I get. Here's what we cool kids put in our Catholic Easter Baskets:

• Paska: the sweet Easter Bread (basically challah)
• Ham, and other meats
• Eggs, decorated (This year my mother decorated them by herself without telling us, even though I was actually in town. Bad move.)
• Horseradish (Pretty sure just because it tastes right with ham... You can look up the real symbolic meaning yourself.)
• Egg cheese: exactly what it sounds like
• Lamb butter: not really what it sounds like: butter shaped like a lamb
  

  

  GOOGLING LAMB BUTTER, I REALIZE: THEY CREEPY
• Salt
• Wine
• Wine
• We put candy in ours. Because we eat candy.
  

  

  Don't ask me what the can of Dole is for.

And then ya tie it all up in a bow, bring it to a special Saturday service, stick it on the altar, and spend the next half an hour drooling over the smell of 60+ Easter baskets, filled with Easter fare, accumulating in the church. They all get blessed by the priest and then you go home and DON'T eat it. It's very hard sometimes. 

Hey, I have a different definition of fun, OK?!

Yes: Easter to me means flying into Ohio from wherever I'm living at the asscrack of dawn, sleeping immediately upon my arrival, taking advantage of sickeningly sweet deals of the Midwest, inhaling the smell of ham as a priest prays over food I won't eat that day, and voluntarily marathoning Bieber and other weird TV with my 25-year-old sister. Oh, and eating 2 Easter meals to the point of ER-worthy bloating with each of my 2 families. Of course.

I'm not ashamed to celebrate Easter, and I'm not ashamed of how! Take advantage of every holiday you love, whether you're spending it with family, friends, co-workers (here's looking at you, Christmas 2014!), or a cat (ohp, yep, still looking at you, Christmas 2014!). Because you never know when that $2 beer retail night will screw you up.

Me and the cat, lookin' crazy pre-Midnight Mass Christmas Eve '14
Goin' in the scrapbook

Very Bland Food Mood

Ingredients

• 1 hella cheap friend date with lots of cheese
• 1 tired yet worth-it self date with lots of laughs
• 1 delicious multi-employee date with lots of carbs
• 1 proud fellow college graduate group date with lots of piano titling
• 1 folksy show date with a lotta blood and harmony
• 1 Saturday night Facetime date with a +44 number

Instructions

Hi. Welcome to Boredom. Those ingredients all sound lovely-- very anti-Recipes for Disaster-- but let it be known that: There are 2 dates with yourself above. There are 0 dates that are actual dates. There are 9 episodes of Freaks and Geeks and 1 entire season of Garfunkle and Oats that you watched surrounding those dates (OK, in the last 2 days) and that's barely alright. And these were some of the most exciting things that happened to you in the past two weeks. But guess what your +44 London friend told you via Facetime today, as you both spent your Saturdays lounging in sweatshirts? 

"You need the boring times so you can really notice when the exciting stuff happens."

Right, right right! Cool, so it's like, what would that list above look like if your life weren't so boring? Probably something like:

• Using your 40% employee discount at the new restaurant in your restaurant group with your buddy who you saw twice already this week
• Buying a ticket for a 10:30pm UCB improv show online before your work shift to force yourself to go after work, even though you had horrible stomach cramps and were alone
• Finally getting a few of your fellow hosts to agree on a date and time to get your restaurant's burger, plus some tasty but let's be honest really buttery extras sent from the kitchen, and stuffing your face into a coma right before your afternoon improv class
• Volunteering to help out at this year's Northwestern Acting & Musical Theatre Showcase, even though it meant you had to take the closing shift at work, and switch an audition time, leaving you with one-a-dem 14 hour days
• Paying $15 at the door instead of the $10 online that you'd planned on paying to see your friend's show, thanks to poor planning, though the $4 cup of wine (yes, cup) was a great addition to enjoying this new folk rock musical loose adaptation of Antigone... which very well could've been bad, but was thankfully really frickin' awesome
• Talking with one of your best friends who you never get to see because she's at school in London for the next year and a half, but sometimes she interrupts your day with surprise Facetimes and sometimes you can answer and this is one of those times

Ughk. Those sound so bland, some horrible. I mean, they did actually happen to me and are true, but when you put them that way... they don't seem exciting at all. Some even seem mildly unpleasant-- like most of my recipe ingredients! If I'm in this flat, daily humdrum drudge, I guess it's better to look at the even remotely positive occurrences as exciting and awesome, which, apparently to me, translates to various hot dates. I don't know why. That's how I typed them.

You deleted Hinge, Anna, you are happier now, don't go back.

Aw, come on now-- did we really need to bring back Bitchy Emma Stone? She used that GIF last week!

Ohp, nope, now she's crying. It's OK, nooo no it's OK, Emma: Adele's "Someone Like You" doesn't really make everyone cry. It's simply an SNL sketch's worldview that your character has agreed to. Listen, dear: Once you agree to a truly boring life, very little can make you cry like that. Plus, every teeny little, seemingly usual activity will rock your world like a party hurricane, and the only tears you'll be crying are tears of joy for all the fun you're having! I mean, let's get real here: You have delicious ice cream in your hands and in your belly. You're spooning Turkey Hill by the spatula-ful and honestly missing your mouth. Could you ask for a better time?!

(Potentially yes, and that would be the time you spend discovering the dark comedy mecca that is "Freaks and Geeks", good sweet Lord on high where has this been all my life. Everyone-- everyone-- was on this show. I am and will be pained now and for every minute of my life that this show was canceled after 1 season. The acting is superb, the writing is courageous, the depiction of Michigan is spot on depressing.)

Anyways, I'm so glad Emma can always help me out in dissecting the minutiae of life.

You may feel bummed that nothing very exciting is going on in your life, but, at the end of the day, look how many hot dates you had up there. That's a lot of cheese, laughter, decadent Michelin-Star-rated carbs, constant piano accompaniment to bright young talent, a damn fine show, and London all wrapped in a bow just for you. Theoretical Boredom Fake Dates rock!

Oh, shut up, Emma.

Crazy Stupid Ice Cream, for Actors

Ingredients

• 9 episodes of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt" in 1 sitting
• $420 spent on 2 acting classes
• 40 7th-grade girls in a musical about a 24-year-old half fairy man-- fairy above the waist and mortal from the waist down-- whose highly desirable shepherdess girlfriend catches him kissing his fairy mother who looks like she's 17
• Starting Improv 201 the day after you finish Improv 101
• Deciding to watch "The Last 5 Years" right before you leave on a first date
• The sentence "I've started watching a bunch of TV, though, and that's been fun." in response to someone asking what is new in your life

Instructions

The sexual undertones in a story about a man who is fairy from the waist up, mortal from the waist down, who is accused of cheating on his fiancee with a much younger woman whom he claims to be his mother are STRONG. I love drama teachers who have such confidence in their student actors. Only in an esteemed all-girl private school in New York City, am I right?

Watching my not-so-little-anymore 12-year-old friend (slash child I used to babysit), while sitting next to my super supportive, ultra sophisticated late-30's friend (slash her mother and my ex-boss), laughing at this rarely produced Gilbert and Sullivan musical performed by girls cross dressing with commitment and singing their hearts out about subject matters beyond their years, I was... I was... 

Hmm, you're waiting for me to say "inspired," aren't you? See, I was so happy watching them: fully entertained, engaged, appreciating their comedic interpretations along with their naive ignorance of the play's wry political wit. However, after I hugged my favorite cross dresser goodbye, leaving her with her new fan club (she played the male half-fairy lead and murdered that Upper East Side auditorium), chatty hyper girlfriends, and sincerely adoring parents, I walked down Lexington Ave. with a sudden stupid sadness. I'd spent less than 2 short hours in a bubble: I was with a real family who introduced me to their parent-friends as a part of that family; I partook in an elite Park Ave. community, with women in pearls and children in Ralph Lauren; I was surrounded by beaming (& the usual few bored) parents and their giggling gangly children with their wiggling wangly friends, hugging and smiling and begging to walk home alone after the cast party. But when I stepped through that utopian school door, I was me again. I was the 23-year-old who, before getting on the train, stops at CVS to buy a quart of sugar-free slow churned vanilla ice cream because I know it's on sale and that quart will accompany me back to my empty apartment like the boyfriend I don't have. 

It's not about the boyfriend, sheesh! Good goodness, I miss my family! Or do I miss being a kid? Or do I miss school, structure, guaranteed productions? Folks congratulating me on my portrayal of a boring ingenue or my handbell solo? Or do I just want to cross dress and sing Gilbert & Sullivan?

You know, probs all of the above. I think I'm going insane. This is the longest I've ever been in NYC without leaving, and let me tell you, I cannot stand STILL anymore. You want to know how long it's been? 3.5 months. 

Exactly, Emma. It's not long. At all. But I'm a baby! I fly for free! I live an hour-and-a-half flight away in Ohio where all the Midwestern families grow-- plus I was on tour for 3.5 months last year, plus I had my broken-foot-homestay last summer, plus I took trips to Costa Rica and South Carolina. I don't stay here, that's not my thing. So, yes, I'm getting antsy over here. Though I fly for free, my financial "situation" doesn't allow for me to simply jet pack around the world, missing work and begging my fellow broke actor friends to join me. No, no, when I have the courage and religious reasoning to ask for a few days off of work, where am I headed?

Amherst, Ohio, baby.

Too many people get down on me for not taking advantage of my free standby flying privileges, and-- trust me-- I get it. I should fly to Spain tomorrow because it's my day off, I've never been there, and that's exactly how this works. But when Easter knocks on my door, there's nowhere I'd rather be than the Sandstone Capital of the World. 

Any other time, though?... I know that, as excited as I am to go home, I will miss New York all too quickly once I'm back in that suburb of a suburb. Though I clearly miss my family, as shown in the solace found in a CVS ice cream sale, I do not want to spend quality time in Ohio. That's right, just like Anna Kendrick's character Cathy in the new movie/old musical "The Last 5 Years." As a wee tot of 15, I used to belt those lyrics, "I'll get on my knees, and pray I can state in my next bio, 'I'm never gonna go back to Ohio!'" in the shower like I was someone who knew how to belt. 

Please, by ALL means, bring my family to me or wherever I may travel to! Just not Ohio. As I reminded when I was crippled and confined in my mother's living room for a month this summer, I left Ohio for a reason. That's right, just like Anna Kendrick's character Cathy sings in the movie you can rent instantly on Amazon Prime, "When we get to my house, take a look at that town, take a look at far I've gone-- I will never go back, never look back anymore."

This insane, antsy feeling I have has more to do with wanting to flee the city. For those of us who haven't reached their goal here in the Big Apple-- or Chi-Town (as no one calls it) or the City of Angels-- and reach instead for all the improv classes and ice cream deals this city has to offer, those lyrics HIT us in the FEELS. A lot of actors have escaped their hometowns or homestates for anywhere else. Though we complain about our shitty rent and how often the 7 train shuts down, we are so grateful to smell the shit. Call us masochists or idiots... both are true.

So what if watching TV has become my new favorite pastime? It's for my career! What's it to you if I use Forever 21 as my personal auditions closet because their only return policy is store credit? "Baggy clothes" and "Peter Pan sweater set" auditions deem it necessary! To the outside world, actors are crazy. I never find these things weird until someone else judges them, though; I am proud to work night shifts for my Forever 21 Closet cash. I deem to no longer fill other voids of my life (social, romantic, escapism) when what's actually missing is the crux of why I'm here: a job that I want. The other day, it hit me: Reflecting on Saturday night's solo date with Netflix, I asked myself, "Ugh, Anna, if you had a boyfriend, would that solve the current stage of the 'New York City Lost' drudge you're in? Would it?" NO. No? No. NO! It wouldn't! But what would?

Boom. Acting.

Thanks, Ryan. But it's true, no matter how corny it sounds: I'm not going to be satisfied until I'm doing what I have dedicated my short life to doing. (Am I talking about my height, or not?) I can escape home or even to Spain all I want, but the real adventure I'm looking for is in my career. Which brings me one step closer to being in a movie with you, Ryan. You're welcome, Ryan.

So, sure: I may blubber alone on my futon at 4pm on a Wednesday while watching a little movie called "The Last 5 Years" (you may have heard of it); I may hold back a sniffle in a CVS after leaving the joy of other families; and I may be staying afloat solely due to my large tax return, because I spend all that's not rent on improv and acting classes. BUT: I got to play a sassy murdered prostitute living inside the head of a troubled detective this past Saturday. Because that's the character a casting director assigned me for our class. No innocent teenager or quiet ingenue... A complex dead whore. New York City, we're movin' on up. See you soon, Ryan and Anna K. 

Love,
Crazy Stupid Love

The movie.

Those GIFs. Are from the movie. 

PS: That's Movie #2 I'm forcing you to watch for full completion of this recipe, as well as all 13 episodes of "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt."

*Note: TL5Y should only be watched by yourself in the comfort of your own home, and finish the whole Kimmy season before deciding whether or not to tell the whole world that it's outright offensive. THERE GOES YOUR WEEKEND.