JZ, I have to at least clean enough to not be embarassed when you walk in.

Perkins, have you ever seen my apartment?

Seriously. Unless the entire place is hip-deep in dirty underpants, your cats have upended their litter box all over the couch, and the Lutherans in your kitchen are building cathedrals, I am impervious to messy-apartment embarrassment.

ummmm

JZ, you can come and decorate my apartment. I'm not embarrassed in the least how messy it is!

Hip-deep. Knee-deep, I won't even notice.

Yay!

::books ticket for NYC::

Well, eventually, anyway. Hells yeah!

Perkins I keep telling you that boxes are an acceptable decorating choice! Silly girl! Yeah, you may not want to take any decorating advice from me as we live on a boat and really don't have anything to decorate.

boxes are an acceptable decorating choice!

Almost as good as milk crates!

I keep telling you that boxes are an acceptable decorating choice!

HA! When I first moved in here, I didn't have a lot of furniture. (I was coming from an apartment about 1/4 the size.) My first coffee table was two moving boxes with large picture frames placed on top.

Of course, I did get all crafty about it and bought wood-grain contact paper to cover the boxes.

Good times, man. Good times.

I got rid of all the boxes. Had to, to make room for the cat hair.

Almost as good as milk crates!

Nuh and uh. Tom Scola is a grown-up person who owns good books and other pleasing possessions, and he has spent the last few years slogging through some unbelievably difficult shit to become better and stronger and happier (or, possibly, to become happier by realizing how good and how strong he already is, whether or not he believes it), and a good kind strong grown-up person like that deserves to come home at night to a place with real, grown-up shelves displaying his books and action figures and Buffista boy tiara and photos and things, not milk crates.

Somebody stop me before I Queer Eye the poor lad.