It's Not All About Rob... And He Knows It.

My Twilight obsession is about so much more than just Rob.

And as much as I adore the man, my husband just doesn’t ‘get it’ when I tell him that fact. Somehow I need to find a way to convince him. I need to paint him a picture of why I’ve allowed this fandom, this phenomenon as pop media is so enamored with calling it, to become such an integral part of my day-to-day life.

Hubs goes through the motions of accepting my Twilight insanity ‘cause he says it makes me happy. And lucky for me, he’s a great guy and wants me to be happy. (Of course I suspect the real root of his begrudging acceptance may also be linked to the fact that fanfiction has *cough* had an impact on our sex life that he full endorses.)

But, in the back of his mind, I suspect he silently cheers when Twitter is over capacity and prays nightly that this ‘hobby’ of mine will die out long before the last installment of Breaking Dawn finally hits theatres 568 days and 11 hours from now.

A little over a month ago, he actually posted his own musing under the name ‘TwiWidow’ where he ranted a bit about the robporn folder on my harddrive and the lack of clean undies in his drawer since the day I first shed my goodgirl image and became the h00r better known as twopeas1pod. His posting was only up for 10 minutes – long enough for me to start crying and my besties to rapid fire RT me with a couple “OoO!”

The problem is hubs doesn’t see past the surface of the sparkle peen. You see he’s a lurker (wave hello @MisterPea) and all he focuses on are the UNF tweets over The Pretty. He thinks I’m just completely obsessed with Rob’s fuckhawtness and spend all day dreaming of him walking through our front door to whisk me away.

Ummmm. No.

Sadly, there are a few whack jobs in this fandom who really do have that notion, but I assure you I am not one of them. In fact, if were up to me we’d get a better bouncer to stand outside the entrance of this club and we’d throw their delusional asses right on out, along with anyone who has ever posted hate toward Kristen.

I have told MisterPea repeatedly I don’t want Rob whisking me away.

Not. At. All.

I want Rob to buy a front door to walk through with Kristen so he has a place to whisk her off to make some beautiful bronze haired, green eyed babies. I know many of you drink the same brand of Kool-Aid as me and understand this completely, but convincing hubs I feel this way is a challenge.

Don’t misunderstand me. Rob appeared in the tux on that big screen in WFE last Friday night and I wanted to jump up and shout, ‘Sweet Baby Jesus this man is hawt!’ I’m not gonna lie and say I don’t find him nice to gander at.

Daily. For hours on end.

But thruthfully, that alone is not why I’m here.

This whole thing is so much more than the sum of its parts. Yes, I adore Rob and all his adorkableness. Yes, I admire Kristen and all her nervous fierceness. Yes, I love Stephenie’s books and feel they relate to my own life experience. Those three things are what drew me to this fandom. But standing alone they are not what holds me here.

Daily. For hours on end.

At some point in-between watching biels’ Robsten vids, snot-crying while reading EP, planning a H00rTour with my besties and trying to find new abbreviations to squelch my wordiassness into 140 characters, I fell hard for this little family of ours. It completes me in strange ways that are just so hard to describe to ‘outsiders’.

I approach this, as many of you do, as a woman who walks through the world ‘wearing many hats’. I am mom. I am ‘honey’. I am a contributing member of my community. I am a daughter. I am head chef and chamber maid too. With the exception of that last one, I love all these roles I play. I have a happy, wonderfully blessed life. But at some point in the last 10 years, I started spending so much time changing my hats all damn day, I forgot perhaps the most crucial one in my wardrobe. Myself.

I’d become so many things to so many other people, I started to lose ‘me’.

And as corny and cliché as it sounds (queue the fucking Celine Dion music here), this fandom has helped me find out who I am again. And it’s a totally new and improved version. Version 2.0 is what hubs refers to me now… she knows LOTS more about life and living… and sex toys.

My twitter time is ‘me time’. And, while I feel tremendously guilty some days for wanting this ‘place’ to call my own, having it unlocks the happy inside me. People think we’re nutcases cause we adore this ‘crap’. To them ‘Twihards’ (Dear God I fucking HATE that name) are just the next crop of Trekkies. But it’s somehow so much more than that. It’s a connection to each other and to ourselves that was missing before. It’s ‘fun time’ that we lost somewhere between work and diaper changes and paying the bills.

I’ve tried before to describe twitter to my husband as one big ladies locker room. We can talk opening and honestly about anything. We talk Rob and Kristen and Twilight of course. But that is just the link that brought us all into the circle. Between our sqeees, virtual bewbie gropes, robporn exchanges and tweet-2-tweet battles with the Nonstens, we are sharing our lives and escaping our lives all at the same time.

Everyone needs an escape. Everyone. This Twilight fandom is mine.

My Timeline at any given moment is scientific proof of our eclectic hat collections:
Screencaps of Rob and Kristen; We are fangirls.

Jokes about our husbands or boyfriends; We are wives and significant others.

Celebrations over a lost tooth or a good grade on a spelling test; We are mothers.

Laments about our latest class assignment; We are students.

Giggles about sex toys because the last fanfiction we read inspired us; We are lovers.

Discussions about tragedies to which we should donate; We are benefactors

Complaints or compliments about bosses or co-workers; We are employees.

Love and empathy for one another; We are friends.

A friend of mine recently wrote a paper about Twitter relationships for her Master’s program. In it she ponders whether the relationships we build on Twitter are real. I think my husband and perhaps the rest of the free world, thinks they are not. When talking to one another we even use the expression ‘RL friends’ to talk about those with which we share ‘eye-to-eye’ relationships.

But I care about the people I know here. I enjoy their company. Isn’t that the definition of a friendship? (*Running to google it. Seriously, try it yourself. The Wikipedia definition of friendship made me actually want to go queue up that Celine Dion and happy-weep a little.*)

Perhaps my husband doesn’t get all this because I think women have a need for camaraderie with one another that men don’t seem to have. We need to feel that bond. We like being part of the group. For a long time I had lost that. I have a gaggle of those ‘RL friends’. Some of whom I’ve known since I was a child. But in recent years all our conversations have become sidetracked by all those damn hats.

We talk about our husbands and our kids and our jobs and our latest home improvement projects. We’ve stopped talking about ourselves. It’s like we all suddenly decided we had to be ‘grown ups’ and stop divulging our inner musings and goofy girlish dreams. I let myself think I was too old to have those things anymore. I missed that connection. But this fandom has brought it back to me.

What’s epically ironic is I actually think Rob might be the one man on this planet who gets all this.

Right around the time I morphed into twopeas, Oprah was busy asking the Holy Trinity why they think this ‘thing’ has taken hold of us all. Rob responded that he thinks we all like just spending time with one another doing ‘Twilight related things’. I remember him saying it – but at the time I didn’t understand it myself. Back then I thought, ‘Um, no Rob I just like the books and I think you and Kristen are adorable together.’

But, now it’s crystal clear to me what he was trying to say. And he’s right. Rob knows that this isn’t all about him. God bless his overly cerebral, down-to-earth ass for ‘getting it’ long before I did.

So Rob, honey, I know you’re a wee bit busy right now, but could you pop over and explain all this to my husband?

I don’t want you to whisk me away. I promise. 

Will She or Won't She. Stewie @ the WFE Premiere

So the question of the day is will she or won’t she? It’s a big coming out party for her boy. Will she come out for Team Jacob or will she stay back and take care of Bear?

All week I’ve been telling people I would lay down on the ground and throw a little hissy fit if my girl doesn’t show tonight to support her man. I don’t really care if she walks the red carpet. I can’t let myself ever imagine a world where Stewie voluntarily walks hand-in-hand with him under the glare of flashing cameras. I just don’t think that’s gonna happen. If I thought about it too much I'd have to breath into a paper bag.

I don’t need the shots of them suffering through a red carpet preen together tonight (although bejesus another shot of her gripping the back of his suit jacket at the BD premiere would be much appreciated). Of course, I’d love to see her rocking some obscenely hot mini and ridiculously high heels as much as the next fan. But honestly, I am one of those delusionally happy robsten supporters who would be sufficiently blissed out just knowing she snuck in a back door and sat next to him to hold his sweaty hand and bump his leg every now and then with her own nervous leg thumping.

Actually, the thought of them sitting in the dark leg thumping together makes me giddy. I don’t need to see it; I can imagine it just fine. Yep. Delusionally weird, I know. I need a 12 step program of some kind. My friends are all looking into it.

But, as I sit here glued to my twitter feed wondering how those brave ladies stood through all that rain last night, a thought has dawned on me.

We know the glitz and glamour isn’t her scene. We know it sounds as if she was working right through last night. Girlfriend is probably pretty goddamn tired. And really could we blame her if she wanted to stay home tonight and snuggle up with Bear, smoke a pack of cigarettes, cook herself some recipe from the Food Network and just sext her man all night while he leg thumps on his own in the dark?

Kristen is a ninja. She can outwit, outsmart and outlast us. I have to remind myself of this constantly. Did she really jet across the country with him this morning and plan to doll it up tonight? Or will she sneak herself across the pond and show up going through a back door in Berlin or London or Paris? Hell, she could probably back-door it at one of those shows and we’d never even know. She’d pop up in some European airport a day later and we’d all kick ourselves cause she’s managed to best our CIA-like snooping abilities yet again.

So I’ve decided to put my big girl panties on and not throw a fit no matter what happens tonight. Part of my endearment to this woman is she doesn’t feed off the flashbulbs like the rest of them. She knows what she has with him is worth protecting – even if she has to be labeled a bitch by all the haters for doing everything ninja-style.

So cheers to you Stewie. Part of me hopes now that BD filming is over you say ‘fuck it I’m going and I’m gonna rock it and all those bitches can be jealous’. But I’m gonna be understanding if you just say ‘fuck it’ and don’t show up at all.

I hope wherever you are tonight – stilettos on 54th street or sweats on the couch – you are happy knowing your boy is about to showcase to the world just what he can do when you let him shed the malicious contacts and pasty white makeup. I know you’re the captain of Team Rob and I don’t necessarily need to see you holding pom-poms to believe it.

Welcome to the Chris Weitz School of Twittering. Aka: why he might be the smartest person in Hollywood

Several weeks ago one of my twitter ‘besties’ asked me if I had heard the news that Chris Weitz had opened a twitter account. I think this announcement may have been met with me leaping off the couch and giggling like a 13 year old. Seriously. I think my husband thought I’d lost my mind.

Since the day I watched the New Moon documentary, complete with socks pulled up over pants while toting around a big stick, I have been a fangirl of this man. He is passionate about his work, yet he has an amazing, lighthearted sense of humor. Ok, I fess up, in my mind, he also kinda looked like he belonged as part of the Cullen family. And the speaking in all the languages… damn, what chick doesn’t think a man speaking Italian is hot?

That first night he was on, I had a rumble on twitter with a new follower of mine who started spewing shit about how all Chris wanted to do was promote his new movie. To which I said, ‘Yeah?? What’s your point?’

Why do you think people in Hollywood sign themselves up to join our looney bin? Do you think they actually want to tell us what they ate for lunch? Or where they’re heading to hang out with their friends? Ummm… No.

So that brings me to the point of this musing. Twitter can be a marketing executive’s wet dream OR a publicist’s nightmare. In my mind ‘Celebrities’ (I kinda hate that word, but what the hell else should I call them? ‘The Beautiful People’? No, that sucks even more) use twitter in one of three ways.

First, of course, is the category I’ll refer to as the ‘Idiots.’ These are the Charlie Sheen’s of the world who use twitter to spew their own nonsense or just basically make asses out of themselves. This category should also include ‘The B-listers’ who use the Tweetybird to name drop or to let paps know where they’ll be in hopes of getting enough shots of themselves on the internet that the ‘powers that be’ promote them up the food chain to ‘A-list’ status. These are the folks who keep their publicists and PR teams up all night.

Then there are the ‘Uber-Celebs’. These are the luminaries of tinsel town who ‘float above us’. They have twitter accounts they use to randomly send snipets of happiness out into the world. They try to touch their fans on a wide scale. Kinda imagine throwing handfuls of confetti into the air and hoping it lands on someone and makes them joyful they caught a lil piece. This is the category of relatively harmless tweets we get from the majority of the twi-cast. The Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz and PFach tweeters of the world if you will.

This is a safe, happy way to use twitter – but honestly, it’s just not all that exciting. (I mean I was sorry Ashley’s dog got attacked, but really my world would have gone on turning if I didn’t know about it.) I will note it is very admirable that this category of folks frequently use twitter to steer people toward charitable causes they believe in…

So take or it leave it – the problem with the first two categories is they don’t really move me. I am not likely to change the way I feel about someone because they are insane and ‘WINNING’ (insert 2^nd mention of Charlie Sheen here…) or because they tweet that they are hard at work on the set in the forest. Don’t misunderstand me, it entertains me for 30 seconds, but then that feeling is gone.

And obviously that sentiment is shared by the Marketing Guy. I doubt either of the first two categories really make the Marketing Guy cream him pants.

So I bring you to the third option. I’ll call this ‘Smart Baby Kissers.’ To me, these are the Chris Weitzs of the world. THESE are the fucking GENIUSES who have brains and actually ‘get it’! If used properly, Twitter can be the ultimate tool in grass roots promotion.

When politicians campaign, they don’t just go on national television and talk to magazine reporters for 5 page exposes.

They go town to town. Sometimes they even go door to door.

They shake hands and smile face to face with voters and even kiss their babies. Why do they bother? Because being ‘in the trenches’ garners them a sense of loyalty in voters that isn’t won by staring at the masses from the 42” glass on their HD flat screens.

Twitter can be that handshake. A virtual kissing of the baby. It can be used to touch individual fans. And by touching one – the image of that handshake is captured and spun across Timelines around the world. That one simple grasping of hands is seen by other fans and marveled upon.

Twitter is one gigantic chain reaction. Or to continue with my ridiculous analogy – it’s like one big town hall meeting. You kiss a couple babies and smile at a couple of people and the sentiment passes around the room to everyone in the crowd. Shaking the hand of my neighbor is almost as good as shaking my hand. Twitter just adds to this scenario the layer of 13 year old squealing I mentioned earlier.

Chris Weitz has been smiling and shaking hands and ‘kissing babies’ in such a magnificently smart way that I want to stand up and declare him the smartest man in Hollywood.

Do I think that bitch-follower (who’s now been unfollowed, because I don’t ‘do’ twitter drama) was totally off the mark in thinking he’s hanging out with us to help promote his movie? No. (A Better Life – in theatres June 24th – you h00rs better go see it.) I think she’s probably right. Do I think the way he’s doing it is fucking awesome?? Yes. Does he have my fangirl loyalty for life now. Yes to that too.

So listen up Hollywood – it’s time to enroll in the Chris Weitz School of Twittering.

He’s not just giving us tiny soundbites of pre-fabbed nonsense. He’s being real. He’s being himself. His use of Q&A is nothing short of brilliant. It allows him to have contact with individual fans. (Who among us thinks they wouldn’t *jumpy clap* like an idiot seeing their Twitter ID and avi reteweeted by him?) It allow us to ask him the stuff we really want to know. (Vamp Bella running in the forest scene! I loved his answer!) And his ability to answer honestly, with great humor and sometimes humility, is amazing.

Within the confines of the 140 character jail, he shares small pieces of personal information that make him ‘real’: calling his son ‘Noodle’ (I call mine ‘Bug’), sharing insecurities (he really thinks we would love him if it weren’t for the people he hangs out with? Ummm. No. It might have helped me find him – but I still would have laughed at his jokes regardless), talking about his love for his wife (admit it, you’ve said Awwwww)… These are all things we never would have garnered from some two-dimensional interview on the glossy pages of a magazine.

The brilliance of Chris is that he gives us ‘just enough’ information without ever crossing ‘the line.’ He hasn’t shied away from answering things about the people he’s worked with – but he’s kept his answers ‘classy.’ He’s not out to make enemies or divulge information that should remain in confidence. (Nice try to the girl who directly asked him about Rob and Kristen. His answer was perfect. Again, humorous and tasteful.)

I’m not sure how long Chris will hang out with us. But what a fantastic ride this is we’re all enjoying right now. There has been no one else in this ‘franchise’ who has ever taken this kind of time with the fans. No one. And that is where my loyalty is won. If he is willing to spend his valuable time and energy answering our relentless (and often repeated) questions – I am willing to spend my valuable time and money on anything he endeavors. (Insert Marketing Guy creaming his pants here.)

Once you feel a connection to a person – albeit their fragmented internet version of self – you want them to succeed. I want Chris to succeed now more than ever. And here’s me holding my hands out to my ‘chain’ of followers and hoping that the good feeling is passed on.

Hold up your babies up while you can people. And go see A Better Life on June 24th.

Love you Chris. As a fan I thank you for sharing with us your talent and your time.

Face Time With Twitter Girls

Spending time with twitter h00rs is important. Really important.

For the last four days my mind has been waxing poetic about this very thought, but I’ve found all my flowery contemplations boil down to that one simple statement. I had the chance to reflect last weekend, while finally melding my twitter life and real life for 36 hours, and I have come to the conclusion that despite what our family and friends might think of us, building friendships with bat shit crazy twilight women over the internet is important. And getting to meet them face-to-face is nothing but ‘win’.

Way back in November, when I was a relative twitter-virgin and was still standing out on the virtual street corner in fishnets begging for people to join my list of 23 followers, I met a girl named twidazzled81 (she has since changed her name to firecracker03, apparently she lost her dazzle, got fired up instead and then subtracted 78 from herself). She and I hit it off by talking about a little known brit boy who was handy with a guitar and had a song that some people wanted badly to believe was written by another well-known brit boy. We both had bothered to listen to the rest of his music being pimped on MySpace and had found that amidst the rumors and innuendo, the boy could actually sing. Quite well.

So a few weeks into our virtual friendship, she asked if I would be willing to drive to Durham to see him play at her house when he tours the US in the spring. Of course I said ‘yes’ – because clearly ‘this is a pipe dream and is never gonna happen’. Brit boys do not fly across the pond with their guitars to play in the kitchens of random North Carolina girls.

Well. Apparently they do.

The weekend was a leap of faith for many. Including my husband who was sure I was either going to be engaged in some kind of brit-boy/twitter-girl orgy or was going to be hacked to pieces by serial killers who portray themselves as twilight fans on the internet in order to stalk their unsuspecting prey. I for one was nervous as hell going into it.

My persona as twopeas is vastly different than the one I live everyday as Nicole. Nicole is a fairly average suburban soccer mom with a tad bit of snarky humor and a love of high heels. Twopeas is pretty much a potty mouthed bitch who doesn’t mind discussing anything from the state of popculture to sex toys and would probably live her life in thigh high leather boots. She’s snarky too, but that’s about the only thing she and Nicole have in common. So what would happen when twopeas had to play Nicole or Nicole had to play twopeas? *insert gasp from Nicole and middle finger from twopeas*.

What I found this weekend, somewhere in between drinking too much Friday night and getting sick and having an epic text argument with my husband (who was still convinced it was an orgy) on Saturday, was being with all the twitter ladies was easy. WAY easier than I thought it would be.

And that brings me to the first reason spending face time with twitter h00rs is important – you get to be yourself. Not the ‘self’ that includes all the baggage and past history that your real life friends know about. You get to come out of your own skin and simply be who you are inside your own head without any predetermining factors.

I’ll give you two examples. When the beloved Petegirlsmom (aka Nekol) showed up in her Momma Mobile Friday night, I rushed to the front porch to greet her. ‘Bitch you better get in here and fix me a drink! You’re late! I’ve had to pour my own already!’ When Carrie and I were endeavoring to drive all of Durham while crisscrossing between every Hilton owned hotel in the Triangle, we came upon some douche in a jacked up red pickup. “Small penis??” is the first thing out of my mouth. These are things Nicole might think in her head, but if they came out of her mouth, her real life friends would scrunch up their foreheads and ask, ‘did you just say that??’ Being with h00rs gives you the freedom to let these things out. How is that not a ‘win’?

The second reason face time with h00rs is important is even more beautiful than the first. It opens up your world.

The scene in Carrie’s kitchen Friday night made me realize just how unlikely it would be for me to meet anyone there in real life. We all come from different places. Our careers range from working with abused women to running our own IT companies to manhandling small snot-nosed children all day long. We represented just about every culture there is. Our ages probably spanned close to one and a half decades.

In a real life world, we would meet and spend hours making small talk and trying to search in between the lines to find commonalities. We would look at each other from the outside and maybe never spend enough time to look all the way in. Even if we try hard not to – in the real world our minds are already consumed by first impressions long before the person we are speaking to opens their mouth. But our twitter experience forces the opposite. We get to know each other from the inside out. Where else in the world can you do that?? When do you get to know a person without any bias or preconceived notions?

In Carrie’s kitchen we giggled and hugged as introductions began to match twitter names to real life faces. We had too much to talk about. We needed 10 more hours to fit it all in. We stood there like idiots with our phones in our hands, wanting to include all the ‘sisters’ who couldn’t be there in person. Why? Because we’re a little nuts? Yes. Because somewhere along the way this whole bat shit crazy thing became a little virtual family? Yes to that too.

I kept standing back and trying to observe the scene from the eyes of the brit boys who were there. Clearly they thought we were all insane. Who wouldn’t? We were a group of grown women, all wearing stilettoes and slightly tarted up, who are devoutly in love with fictional characters, slightly obsessed with the people who portray them and linked to one another through databases of made-up fan-fiction and online social media.

If you had described a group like that to me two years ago, I would have said you must have gotten lost in a nerd horde at a Star Trek convention and hopefully you got out with your life. I’m pretty sure that’s probably what the boys felt standing in that kitchen. (Add to all that they are 3000 miles and across an ocean from the place they call home – I’m not sure how they didn’t run from the place in fear or in boredom.) But they stuck it out.

The ‘boy called Kevin’ was gentlemanly enough to introduce me to Southern Comfort (crap, is that what made me sick the whole next day? And why does his mum call him Keef on Facebook?). ‘Rob with no last name’ (we do know his last name, it’s just funny to call him this), was such a sweetheart everyone there wanted to talk to him. (But did anyone else notice he seemed to like talking to a certain New Yorker?) I’m not sure if poor Lee had a chance to meet up to the expectations that months and months of twitter giggling about his meat and his requests for redneck liquor had unknowingly heaped upon him. It was kind of a heart break to me to learn that he actually dislikes twitter (I know, *gasp*.) But in hindsight, after what I’m sure was a long and stressful first week of touring and finding his way in a strange land, it was probably a welcome relief for him to find the flowery one among us. So good for him I guess. (Let’s just hope ‘the boyfriend’ didn’t mind!)

The weekend didn’t go exactly as I had planned. If I could call a mulligan there are a few things I would change. I would have stopped to eat an actual meal at some point during the day on Friday so consuming liquor for 6 hours didn’t make me want to keel over all day on Saturday! (Have I mentioned that Nicole has never EVER gotten sick after a night of drinking in her life??? Because Nicole knows to carb-up beforehand. Damn twopeas has a nervous stomach and can’t hold her liquor apparently.) I would not have missed the opportunity to be in the Adam & Eve store with Nekol – where picture taking opportunities with vibrating panty displays were so obviously missed! I would have gone to the concert at the pub on Saturday because I went all that way and never heard Lee sing my favorite song. I would have called my worried husband more so he wouldn’t start an epic text war with me effectively ending my weekend early.

But most importantly, I would have remembered to hug each one of the girls in that kitchen. And would have told them what a positive impact they’ve had on my life. I was scared going into this weekend, but hanging with h00rs is an experience I’ll never forget.

If I can help talk them all into coming to DC to watch BD with Nekol and me next fall – I will make sure of several things. I will bring some loaves of bread, some Zantac, some more mother fucking hot heels, and an armful of hugs for each one of them.

-twopeas1pod, aka Nicole

*Enough good things cannot be said about Carrie, aka twidazzled81, aka firecracker03. She opened her wallet and her home to give us this chance to meet. I’m so happy to call her a friend. *

*In case any of my twitter sisters, you know who you are, are reading this. I would flove to meet you in person. I think we would spend the first 6 hours squealing and hugging. Someday ladies…. Someday….#H00rTour lives on in my heart. *

*My favorite part of the entire weekend remains: “Now boys you gotta’ think ‘bout how they’d look up on your shoulders!!!” – Nekol. I love you momma!!*