The Blogger Beat: 2Birds 1Blog

2Birds 1Blog’s Meg—who likes to keep her last name under wraps—founded her blog almost two years ago with Caitlin, a friend from college. The pair were on opposite sides of the country and used the blog as a way to stay in touch with each other and their friends and family. Caitlin made her exit from the blogosphere last summer when she started graduate school—“She’s a productive member of society,” Meg says—but Meg continued to pen 2Birds solo for several months. “I had just quit my job and moved home with my parents,” says the Olney native. “I had nothing better to do than blog. Everyday.”

In March, Meg recruited her friend Chris to become the blog’s second bird. Together, the two write and rant about anything and everything on their minds—pop culture, fashion, the Snuggie, politics, Metro etiquette, sex, Meghan McCain. 2Birds’s readership now extends well past their immediate circles, and in December the site received a Blog of the Day award from Famous Blogs.

We recently caught up with Meg to pick her brain on everything from her favorite movie set in Washington to her top reasons to love and hate DC. Check out her side-splitting answers.

Five words to describe your blog:
“Awkward. Five days a week.”

Five words to describe yourself:
“Basically, I’m under-qualified and over-medicated.”

Three reasons to love DC:
“1) Free museums; 2) any town where the minority is the majority is my kind of town; and 3) Washington is absolutely gorgeous. Argue with that, Meghan McCain.”

Three reasons to hate DC:
“1) I absolutely despise the humidity. It’s only June, and I’m already over this ‘summer’ jazz. I painstakingly blow-dry and straighten my hair every morning, and the second I step outside I look like Art Garfunkel. 2) The Metro at rush hour is hell on earth. Hell. On. Earth. How hard is it to move to the center of the car when boarding a train, people? There are signs literally everywhere and a mild-mannered woman accompanied by xylophones telling you to do so. It’s like people lose all common sense below ground level. 3) It’s dangerously close to Virginia. (Oh, snap!)”

Favorite Washington neighborhood for people watching:
“DC’s Dupont Circle. It’s the perfect storm of working professionals, homeless people, junkies, and tourists. To which I say: yes and please.”

Most endearing and annoying qualities of Washingtonians:
“It’s easy to categorize all Washingtonians as badge-flashing, khaki-loving, J. Crew-wearing, boat-shoe-walking, kickball-kicking (for lack of a better word) douchebags. Because there are a lot of them here. But you know what? They mean no harm. They’re nice people looking to make a difference in the world who just so happen to be wearing pants with lobsters on them. Can we really fault them for that? Yes, of course we can. But luckily these people constitute only a very small percentage of Washingtonians. I’d like to think Washingtonians are actually a pretty diverse, unique, and interesting group of people.”

Favorite movie set in Washington:
“First Kid. It added the phrase, ‘We need some PGC up in here’ to my daily vernacular.”

Favorite place for an alcoholic pick-me-up:
“Big Hunt is my Cheers. Except nobody knows my name, and the waitstaff is surly and pissed off all the time.”

Favorite spot for a late-night snack:
“Amsterdam Falafel. I’d live there if I could.”

Washington’s fashion sense in a nutshell:
“Alright, look. Washington’s fashion scene gets a bad rap, but I maintain that it’s not our fault. This city is not very conducive for being fashionable. More government jobs means more offices with a strict dress code. It’s incredibly limiting. Then there’s the plethora of sidewalks with uneven brick or cobblestones. I used to vehemently refuse to wear ‘commuter shoes’ until I walked out of my stilettos and directly into a pile of mud when one of my heels became wedged in uneven pavement. It turns out that walking down Pennsylvania Avenue shrieking, ‘We have a mud situation!’ while your friends speed up and pretend not to know you is nowhere near as bad as wearing sensible shoes. And need I mention the humidity? At a certain point it just doesn’t make sense to waste time on your hair. It’s just going to curl and frizz six ways to the weekend anyway. You might as well just throw it up in a clip. I don’t care how fashionable you think you are—this city will break you like a wild horse.”

Pick a Washington-based reality show: The Real World or Real Housewives?
“Real Housewives. The Real World hasn’t been good since Stephen slapped Irene on the pier. Being filmed at Wonderland isn’t going to change that.”

Most embarrassing thing you’ve ever done to impress a boy:
“Last winter, my therapist in New York convinced me that I should join his weekly group therapy for young twentysomethings. I begrudgingly went to the first session and instantly developed a giant crush on one of my groupmates. Going to therapy twice a week was a little too neurotic, even for me, so I decided to drop out after a few weeks. Unfortunately, my therapy crush wasn’t at my last session, so I never got a chance to ask for his number. It drove me crazy (no pun intended), and a month later I rejoined for the sole purpose of asking for his number. And then I promptly quit again. If that’s not impressive dedication to hit on someone, I don’t know what is.”

Most embarrassing thing you’ve done, period:
“Last summer 2Birds 1Blog co-blogger, Chris, and I ended up being in the Art Parade in New York City. The Art Parade is a very hip, very avant-garde parade of performance artists and musicians accompanied by bizarre floats that goes through SoHo once a year. A friend of mine who works for the gallery that puts it on asked if we could go up and lend a hand. We assumed we’d be registering people or handing out flyers—we assumed wrong. We ended up being the leaders of a float. But not just any float. Ours was of a giant transvestite choking on a microphone. Chris and I were in no way edgy enough to be in this parade, and we felt like we stuck out like sore thumbs. To make matters worse, before the parade started, a car went down one of the roads that had been blocked off. The performance group going in front of us (a group of people covered in fur and fake blood with electrical tape covering their nipples) got angry at the car and started whipping their bottles of fake blood around screaming, ‘This street is for art, not gasoline! Art!’ In doing so, they drenched me from the waist down in fake blood. Oh, and this was right before the parade started. So I’d have to say that leading a giant tranny balloon through SoHo surrounded by photographers looking like I just got my period would have to the most embarrassing thing I’ve done.”

Where we might find you on a Sunday afternoon:
“I’m tempted to give you a fabulously cosmopolitan answer, but the truth is I’m probably on my couch watching Bridezillas and eating a Subway sandwich.”

Where you’d live, if not Washington:
“New York. I’d love to move back eventually. I’ve got Washington’s back til the day I die, but there’s no other city quite as wonderful as New York.”

Favorite local blog besides your own:
“The Fashion Void that is DC. An Asian chick posting pictures of herself in outrageous outfits is something I can get behind.”

Earlier:
Rockstar Diaries
The 42
All Blogger Beat interviews

Have a favorite local blogger you’d like to hear from? Send suggestions to eleaman@washingtonian.com.

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