Are Brain Farts Hereditary?

I had a stupid Macee moment this week. Which reminded me of the embarrassingly stupid Macee moment I had a couple of years ago. Which reminded me of the worlds all time stupidest Macee moment that I experienced during college. Which reminded me that my stupid Macee moments are inherited from my mother, Jana. Now let me explain...

I do, in general, consider myself to be a smart person. I mean, I’m no brain surgeon or anything, but I did figure out how to write this blog, and I have managed to survive the past 20-some-odd years without accidentally maiming myself to the point of death. That being said, sometimes I do something so incredibly dumb and moronic that my friends are left screaming "DAMN IT MACEE," and thus having a “Macee moment" was born. A Macee moment is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as a moment of pure idiocracy that is so heinously dumb that said act can only be committed by the one-and-only Macee Lee Binns.

For instance, I was talking to a guy on OkCupid this past week who just so happens to be an Emmy award winning filmmaker, and after chatting on the app for a while, I eventually gave him my phone number so that we could arrange to meet in person. He texted me shortly after saying, "Hey Macee, this is (insert name here____.) How's your Saturday going?" To which I respond, "Hi. Is that your real name?" Because the name he texted me, in the "insert name here” blank above, was the same name that he used for his OkCupid profile. So I stupidly thought he must have texted me his profile name, so that I would know who he was. Logical thus far, right?

Anyway...so the guy responds with "lol yeah. It's Persian." To which I reply, "Well hi Persian! I'm glad you texted. What are you doing?" Then my oh-so-dyslexic-self, read the word “Persian” as “Pierson” and saved that name in my phone. Fast forward to a few days later, and I've told my friends that I'm going out on a date with “Pierson” this weekend. So Fernanda decides to check him out on Instagram for me, to make extra sure that he isn't a psycho like most of the guys I've dated in the past. A few minutes later, Fernanda looks over at me and says, "Why do you keep calling this guy Pierson? His name is clearly (insert name here_____)" as she points to the name on his Instagram profile. So I’m all like, “Yeah I thought that was weird too, but that's not his name. Look he texted me his name when he first messaged me and it's Pierson." So I hand her my phone and confidently show her the original text he sent me. Then two seconds later Fernanda yells, “YOU IDIOT!” and informs me that the guy is clearly telling me that he is of Persian descent, as you can clearly see in our original text exchange.

So I frantically scrolled back though all of the messages that I sent to this guy, and realized that although I saved his name as Pierson in my phone, for dyslexic reasons that I will never understand, I have actually been texting him the word “Persian” repeatedly…so so repeatedly…as though Persian is his name. "Good morning Persian." "How's your day going Persian?" Yep, this kid was accidentally extremely raciest to an Emmy winner for the better part of a week, and the guy was too nice to correct me. Now this might not sound overly insulting at first glance, but replace the word Persian with the words "Mexican" or "Black Person" in the texts above and you will get the gist of what a complete idiot raciest, I actually am. (Accidentally, of course.) I mean, “Goodnight Mexican” just sounds offensive anyway you try to spin it. Damn dyslexia! So that stupid "Macee moment" got me thinking about a similarly dumb "Macee moment" that I had on set a couple of years ago. One that still haunts me to this day…

A few years ago, I booked a co-star role on the sitcom 2 Broke Girls, where I played a slutty elf at the Macy's department store (ironic, I know) that Santa hits on during their Christmas episode. When I arrived for my first day of the shoot, I saw that one of my all time favorite actors, Lily Tomlin, was on set. I was super stoked be filming a scene with her, so I immediately texted all of my friends and fam to share this amazing news. When it was time to shoot our scene, not wanting to appear like the star struck amateur that I was, I decided to play it cool and introduce myself to her all nonchalant like by saying, "Hi Lily, I'm Macee. It's a pleasure to work with you."

During our week on set, I was all...Lily this and Lily that...feeling like to total pro having been cast in a scene opposite the amazing Lily Tomlin. I rode this high for weeks, until the episode finally aired, and I discovered while watching the opening credits scroll across the screen that I had actually spent a week filming with Mindy Sterling- and NOT LILY TOMLIN. Not Lily Tomlin at all, as I had so stupidly believed and called her for the entire week that we were on set. In my defense, Mindy Serling and Lily Tomlin do actually look a lot alike. There is even a website dedicated to the two of them being doppelgangers.

But either way, it was a major "DAMN IT, MACEE" moment that will go down in history as one of the most embarrassing moments of my life. Not THE MOST embarrassing- but one of. My mother was actually a co-conspirator for the WORST "Macee Moment" of all time, and this moment of pure unadulterated stupidity will never be topped for as long as I live.

During my final year of college, one of my mom's best friends, Bev, lost her long fought battle to cancer. Bev had been part of our family for many years, so my mom and I were distraught as we made the hour long drive to her funeral in a town close by. Arriving fashionably late as always, we sprinted into the chapel for the visitation as soon as our car squealed into the church parking lot. When we walked in the door we were surprised that we didn't see anyone else around, but we signed the guest book and made our way through the empty pews to the front of the church where Bev’s coffin was resting. My mom and I were nervously holding hands, unsure if we were prepared to see her like this, when Jana suddenly threw her arms in front of me in a soccer mom arm reach of fury and yelled, "Stop! Macee, don't look! I don't want you to remember Bev this way!" But curiosity got the best of me and before I headed to the pew, I quickly glanced inside the coffin, and noticed that Bev was holding a rosary. Mom stayed by Bev for a few minutes weeping uncontrollably before I approached her and said, "Mom, Bev’s not Catholic. Why is holding a rosary?" Jana brushed me off by saying, "That's just something people do at funerals, I guess." So I let it go momentarily, while she plopped herself down in the front row pew, and proceeded to have a full blown conversation with dead Bev.

For as long as I can remember Bev always wore her hair in a short blond bob with bangs, but as I peered over at her coffin, I noticed that she was sporting an extra short permed hairdo that's most commonly worn by old blue-haired-women in their 90's. Jana rambled on to Bev for a quite sometime before I interrupted by asking, "Why did they do her hair like that?" And my mom responded, "Oh you know that Freddie (her husband) and Cody (her son) don't know anything about styling hair." And she went on talking to Bev until she randomly turned to me and said, "God, she really doesn't look like herself does she?" And then burst into tears.

After about 20 minutes we started feeling weird, being the only people in the chapel, so we decided to look around the church to see if we could find anyone we knew. We turned right down this long hallway and found a group of people waiting to pay their respects to her family, and jumped in line. When we reached Bev's husband Freddie, he told us to go take a seat with the family in the front of the church, and just as we were about to head that away Freddie asked us if we had seen Bev. My mom and I told him that we had, and he stated that he thought she looked really good. We cut sideways glances towards one another as Freddy went on to say, "I didn't think she looked like herself until we put her glasses on her." As we walked away confused I whispered to Jana, "Bev wasn't wearing glasses" and my mom was like, "I know! Can you believe it?! Some bastard must have stolen her glasses!" So we get in line to take our seats with the rest of the guests, and as we began to approach the chapel my mom suddenly points and screams out in her thick southern accent, "Oh my god that's Bev!!" Everyone in the church turned to stair at us, and as our eyes met we both horrifically realized that we had been to the wrong funeral. We tried to continue on to our pew, but we both got a bad case of the church giggles. (The uncontrollable kind I used to get when I was a kid, and my grandma would pinch me to make me stop.) So we dashed for the nearest bathroom as my mom grabbed onto my arm squealing, "I'm peeing myself! I'm peeing!" We locked the bathroom door behind us and collapsed onto the floor, hysterically laughing until tears streamed down our faces and my moms dress was soaked in urine.

While I was attempting to dry her pee-stained dress under the hand dryer, I asked her how we could possibly be this stupid, and Jana's response was "I don't know! I've never seen a dead body before! I just thought that's how you looked!" After the funeral we went back to Cody and Freddie's house and told them what happened, and that's when they informed us that we had attended the visitation of Mrs. Cordsmeyer, an 87-year-old woman who looked nothing like my mom’s 50-year-old friend.

When we got home from the funeral that night, we told my grandpa what we had done and he completely lost it, shaking his head as he said, “I don’t know how the two of you could possibly be so stupid!” Then my grandma reminded him that just the week before he sat through an entire graveside service for the wrong person, and didn’t realize it until he looked at the program after he got in the car. Proving that moments of stupidity like these are in fact inherited!

Dear Mrs. Cordsmeyer,

I hope you had a great life. Even though the only thing I know about you is that you like perms and you're presumably Catholic, or at least someone in your family is. Anyway, you seemed like a nice lady, and I will cherish the time we spent together always.

Sincerely,

The idiots that crashed your funeral.

I dedicate this post to the late great Beverly Hill. Bev, you are missed and if you were able to see the scene we caused at your send-off, then I'm sure you were laughing!