almost literary

5 Months Late And What Do You Get?

2011-09-14T15:35:00.005-05:00

Now that I've been gone for months and months, and have likely lost all readership, this is going back to my grassroots little musings. So here's what I've been doing.

-Joined a kickball league full of nice people and even nice hipsters. Drank beer. Slid into base. Got a lot of bruises.

-Went to London to see my old friend and ended up spending time with an old flame whom I love.

-Went to Mexico with my new best friend and was asked to be her maid of honor.

-Was dropped by my old best friend with no explanation after being her maid of honor (was it my speech?). No idea what happened but I miss her.

- Got back together with my ex boyfriend as horrible friends with benefits and cried my eyes out. Shut. The. Door. On. That. Detox talking to him for 60 days at the very least.

- Am weeks away from finally finishing the first book. Only took me five years but here we are.

- Went to a crazy, crazy Montreal woods festival and caused a national scandal when a singer and I decided we wanted to hang out...a lot. There was also a haunted summer camp.

- Am still working my butt off as a journalist even though I am only a fiction writer, learned how to modern dance, made some amazing new girlfriends.

- Working on a crazy magazine event that has ruined my life for the past three months. Will be over by Monday. Send massages, flowers and klonapin my way.

- Went to the beach. Danced on the boardwalk a lot. There were tacos. Went to some dance block parties. Went to some dance backyard parties. Am a little tired of dancing but I can't stop doing it.

- Got tan.

- Lost tan

- Shaved #swag and then BLING into the side of my head. It looked cool but not pretty. Will try to be pretty from now on.

- Started to plan my annual cupcake and champagne all-girls birthday party.

- Got nominated for a writing award but won't know until December.

- Submitted the novel to a new agent. Won't know for 6 weeks.

- Got some new eyeliner.

- Debated moving to San Francisco, again. Would like a new start even though I have nothing to run from.

- Mourned the loss of my dog.

- Did a lot of yoga.

- Slept in my bed and on my couch.

- Never stopped dreaming.

I'm Doing A Cleanse

2011-03-27T14:04:00.002-05:00

Having some perspective...nearly four weeks without talking to the ex, seeing the end of the book, wondering what to do when the lease ends, thinking about taking a 2 month jaunt to Southeast Asia before I turn 30, and all that...I went and did something stupid.

I'm always doing something stupid. It's part of being an enthusiast.

This time the dumb idea is I'm doing a juice cleans. Juice, no food, no alcohol, no caffeine, no anything for three-five days, vegan leading up and vegan leading out. I've been going to yoga a lot more now, and I'm starting to buy into some of this yoga-ness. Eating vegan was a change that made things interesting, and it's cool to see my discipline as other people are eating delicious things in front of me, like cookies and lobster sandwiches.

Apparently you reach spiritual clarity by day three. I think that you are delirious from not eating by then and start to think the meaning of life is moon beams. That will certainly be the fun part.

I'm at 3 PM on day two, and I'm feeling neutral. People have headaches and irritability and runny noses on this, but I don't at all...except I just feel a little bored. I didn't realize how many of my weekend plans were around food and drink consumption. Brunch plans, coffee plans, drink plans. It's been an interesting and mildly boring weekend all at once. I didn't want to cleanse during the week and be confused at work, and then exhausted when I worked out, so I figured the weekend was good.

Turns out any time for a cleanse blows.

Luckily I've got magazines, movies, errands, and lots of texting. Drinking water when at bars. Watching hours of Top Chef and wondering what everything tastes like. Googling pictures of bacon. No biggie.

It's too cold to do what I want that doesn't relate to food, which is walk to Greenpoint to the bike store and see if that Surly is still there. Or even drop by the coffee shop and order water and sit there and read my Southeast Asia On A Budget Book and flirt with the barista with the neck tattoo.

So I'm stuck in my apartment, and food's on my brain.

Like I'm missing the act of chewing. Even thinking about it now is getting me riled up. Chewing! When has that excited anyone?

I don't want to write, I don't want to clean.

I want to go have a hamburger with a friend. No, actually, scratch the friend. If I ate in front of them the way that I want to eat right now, they would no longer want to be my friend.

Vegan in, vegan out. Spiritual clarity. Delirium.

Peace and love to all mankind.

And bacon to those who wait.

What The Psychic Said...

2011-02-18T14:53:00.002-06:00

Today we had a half day at work, and instead of catching up on my homework, I went to a psychic. Here's what she said:

I will live a long and healthy life.

The last two years have been difficult and I am entering a pattern of change. (Indeed, the breakup.)

I am very creative, and I work in music. (WHAT! How'd she know this?)

Many men love me but I don't love any of them as I am unsettled. (Tee hee. Really?)

My friends are talking about me behind my back. (Yikes.)

I will be married once. I will have to decide between two new men soon. (What? New ones?)

I will do a lot of traveling soon. (Hooray!)

I will always have success in work, but I need to zero in on what I need and just do it when it comes to work. (The book?)

Though money will come, and money will go, I will always be financially sound. (Stealing?)

I need to focus on work and success to get it, and then I will, I need to do nothing about my love life or work at that, it's in the bag. (Wish this were the opposite way.)

I should definitely not move to California, there are too many opportunities here. (Say what?)

There you have it. Kind of interesting. How did she know this stuff!

Recovery Sunday

2011-02-06T15:27:00.004-06:00

Here's the recipe to recover from a very tough week:

1. Sleep until noon. If you wake up earlier, pad into the kitchen to get ice water, and then go back to sleep. Make sure the velvet curtains are closed but the bedroom door is open so sunlight comes in but never touches the pillow. Feel free to drool and to sleep, smack-middle in the bed and kick the covers to and fro.

2. After waking properly, open the windows to let in the chilly pre-Superbowl air, and turn up the heat so it all co-mingles while you...

3. Scrub the bathroom and then take a long, hot shower. Slather on three different lotions and put on a soft new nightshirt and slippers. Dance around a little and then turn off the heat and close the windows. Consider donning a robe.

4. Put on trashy television on low (thank the God of small things for Law & Order SVU marathons and Bravo) and stack up earmarked magazines and local papers with shops, restaurants, films, dance performances and concerts for the week you'd like to pounce upon. Put the writing theory books within sight so that technically, you aren't ignoring them. Position a fleecy blanket close.

5. Re-water the wildflower arrangement that holds fragrant sweet pea, royal purple poppies, egg-yolk orange and white daffodils, strange antique rust roses, and bursts of hardened small berries, stalks tied together and thrust into a mason jar. Call the senders to say thank you for being great friends. Position them on the crystal stands on top of the coffee table that doubles as a fountain because your parents are just as crazy and full of too many ideas as you are.

6. Light four different fat candles and put those on the stands, too. Even better if they are Jo Malone and Archipelago, white and cream colored, smelling of linen and lemon and deep spice.

7. Microwave three mini-cinnamon rolls until they're gooey and have to be eaten with a spoon. Smash together with said spoon until the texture resembles mashed potatoes. Amazing, sweet, sticky, dessert mashed potatoes. Serve with a glass of red wine and more ice water.

8. Brush hair for a half-minute before deciding it can't be tamed today. Make lists of to-do for the week, allocate time to writing, sleeping, talking, walking, texting, cooking. Clean up kitchen. Put wine back in the fridge because the TV doesn't count as another person to socially drink with. Not yet, anyhow.

9. Blog. Take vitamins. Finish that wine anyhow (it was only a third of a bottle and someone is coming over soon anyway, say this aloud to make yourself feel better). Make the bed. Decide to buy more candles.

10. Answer the door when Annabella arrives, bearing gifts. Consider Superbowl picks and two different pools in the office and then realize you haven't even planned to watch the bowl at all. If Annabella doesn't say anything about changing Law & Order, then blame it on her when you both miss it because you're too busy gossiping.

Sundays are for rest, aren't they? No one can ever accuse me of not knowing how to rest...that's for sure.

Hope you are having a wonderful Sunday too.

You're The One That I Want

2011-02-02T11:27:00.003-06:00

Pizza for lunch instead of coffee

A shoulder-rub after dance class

Structure work for both novels to be done

A movie marathon this Saturday in an apartment lit by Restoration Hardware fake candles

The heat to equalize

A clean desk, or just a desk with a working lamp

An extra thousand bucks a month without having to write for it

New books, new pens, new journals, five new playlists for the iPod that someone else curates

Another website to frequent during breaks that isn't gossip, news or music

A day without ice and wind

The guy with the neck tattoos at the coffeeshop who held both my hands as he gave me change and winked to be there every time I buy tea

A ride to Connecticut that isn't MTA Metro North

Pajamas, proper pajamas

The MFA program in San Francisco to give me more time to decide if I want to move there than March 4

A cheap plane ticket to LA, Barcelona, and France

More vegetables, and more Gatorade

To win my Superbowl pools, and to finally get around to making Superbowl plans

A fast and speedy recovery for anything

To keep dreaming, I like where this is going...

Jamaica

2011-02-01T12:30:00.005-06:00

Girlfriend Getaway

2011-01-20T18:37:00.003-06:00

We had an article in the magazine about Girlfriend Getaways. We made fun of it loudly and then found ourselves furtively stealing glances.

Girlfriend Getaway...a vacation just for girls. No boys. No couples allowed. Sun and drinks and dinner and massages and flirting with bartenders...

The more we said it, the better it sounded. So we picked up, and we went. Sunsets, cliff dives, oxtail stew.

Netting on the bed, the villa overlooking water that glittered a hundred shades of blue.

The hot sun beating down on us, in January no less. Pineapple drinks. Rum, rum, rum.

Bikinis and wet sundresses. Extra fries, rice and peas. The white-sand beach, the waves crashing on the bluffs. Flowers on the bed.

The shower? Outside.

Bare feet. Fashion photographers who asked us to party, waitstaff who asked us to dance. We said no and kept on in our pack, headed to the next piece of fruit, wave, snack and magazine. We laughed until we cried. We have a new nickname for everyone we know.

Ten new inside jokes, three new playlists, and hundreds of future plans now.

We did it. We went to Jamaica. It was phenomenal. Pics are a-coming, and I'm going to ice down my sunburn so it will turn into a tan.

What Will You Be Doing With This Snowstorm?

2011-01-07T14:06:00.002-06:00

It's snowtime in New York again, and I'm looking at the flakes falling fat, through the four-inch glass windows at work.

I had lots of fun things planned this weekend: a listening party with some music kids tonight, a weekend playdate with two different sets of friends that I never, ever get to see, and some sort of sitting around my fake fire snorefest with someone else. It was packed. It would have been fabulous.

Because of some freak circumstances, I suffered a terrific accident last night and my face looks like I was in a car accident. Fat lip, cuts all over the inside of my mouth, crazy bruising and lesions on my mouth and cheek. I look insane, and I feel even worse.

So, no fun things for me this weekend. Staying in, ordering tea, and watching a hundred movies in a row it is. I'm the girl without a face and I should not be seen by anyone unless it's a dramatic theater-less interpretation of The Phantom Of The Opera.

#sadface

Let this be a lesson to all of you, be safe out there! In your cars, public transport and beyond. When I come back, I hope to be on the mend. Because next weekend is Annabella's wedding, and then I go to Jamaica, and looking like bruised hell is apparently not allowed at either.

Dear Ex Boyfriends,

2011-01-04T17:17:00.005-06:00

If you're reading this blog and you know who I am, you are likely an ex-boyfriend of mine.

Welcome! Pull up a chair. Can I get you a drink? If I'm not mistaken, you like (insert your favorite drink). Yeah, I remembered. How? Cause I was the best thang you evah dated, that's how.

I kid.

Long time, no talk. Surely. Because if we are exes, we don't talk, not really. Maybe we have had errant texts here and there. Maybe you have been asking for a kiss, a date, a drink, me to die, or sharing pictures of your recent camping adventures. Whatever it's been, I wanted to acknowledge it. You and me. It happened. It was awesome. Now it's awful, because when relationships end, it is the worst. Plagues are better. Breakups are to sunshine and puppy dogs as chainsaws are to sunshine and puppy dogs. You, me, it is sooo over. It was my fault, I know that you think so.

How does that make you feel?

If you're anything like me (and if we dated, you are), it's going to make you feel weird. Conflicted and weird. Should we have broken up? Should we some day get back together? Are we actually friends now or fake friends? Will you email me that I wrote this and it was obnoxious? I wonder these things. Other things I wonder: how you are, what makes you laugh, if I can still also make you laugh, and if you heard this recent song that I heard, because it makes me think of you, and I still think of you. Of course I do. I still laugh at the things we laughed at. It's funny how the bad stuff expires but the good stuff never does.

That thing you said. I remember. That thing that you did. I wish I could see you doing it now. My heart? Never whole again. Cause of you. You have that power over me. You probably always will.

Even if I act like I don't, as I said today, that's just my avatar. I use her to get to the next planet. I remember. Of course I do. I'm not a monster, as much as that would make this easier for you.

I've been thinking. I've been missing some things.

Do you miss me? If so, you should tell me. There needs to be more love in this world. we can share love without it being weird, can't we? I mean, we shared everything else. Even if we can't remember. Also I am very vain. If we dated, you already knew this, but I think it bears repeating. I am really vain. And I like to feel special. Don't you? If you say something nice to me, I will say something nice back to you. You deserve it. You are something. You own a piece of me, and that is amazing. I can say that, I can always say that. I will never keep from you the things that made me fall in love with you. No matter who either of us are with, no matter how either of us feel, I will tell you. Just ask.

Will you ask? Or will you be angry? Will you pretend that we are buddies when we aren't. Will you ask me one thing and then change it in the next breath? Will you stay away for months and then call me out of the blue? Will you wish that I will go to hell and stay there? Will you ever wish for me to be happy?

I hope you do. I wish that for you. I wish a lot of things for you. All good. Even if I hate you. Which I do. We're exes after all. Aren't we?

Well whoever you are, and whoever you are with, I hope you're doing well. And I don't expect us to talk, or be normal. I never was very normal to begin with. I hope when we talk it will be civil. I hope it will be kind. I hope you can say something nice to me because I will say something nice to you. I hope we can talk about that thing we laughed about for hours, in your (insert car), at the (insert place we went to), when the sky was (blue/gray/littered with stars). I hope that I don't inspire you to light many fires and I sincerely hope that you will not kill me. That would be very uncool (Brian, I am looking at you, you sick bastard. Ah, I'm kidding again. I never dated a Brian. Did I?).

Also exes, I'm single again. So be gentle if you are. And be very, very gentle if you are not. Cause ruminating on you today is kind of making me dizzy. For what it's worth. Which is, you know, nothing I suppose. Not worth the paper I printed this on, or something along those lines.

Love/Hate/Neutrally,
K

Joyeuex Nouvel An

2011-01-02T18:10:00.002-06:00

Happy New Year!

I am ringing it in with jetlag and new blankets, faux fur pillows and apple struesel snack bars, bottled water and good lighting, a to-do list I've only crossed one item off of, a bitter cold day half-slept away and many hours of TV I've missed.

I got in last night and haven't left my apartment since. I have lots of unpacking to do, reading to do, emails to catch up on, and working out to do. But it didn't happen today. Luckily I have tomorrow off and have an article to write by 10 AM, coffee with Annabella, a drive to Morningside Heights, a lofty plan to stop by a design store to buy more suede blankets (can't stop buying these), cash checks, read the rest of that awful Lincoln historical fiction novel for class, sign up at the gym finally, reschedule a dance class, and go to a music meeting. So, I feel okay that I got nothing done today. Busy people get things done, and tomorrow I'm busy.

Today, I'm listening to the wind and lighting the candles and sleeping as I watch or read.

It's going to be a good year.

South of France Listsicle of Love

2010-12-28T17:14:00.004-06:00

Things to sit beside: the ancient fireplace, the whitewashed stonework, the wraparound leather couch, flannel sheets, heated ceramic floors, stacks of wood, pages of other people's novels that once I read for homework I throw into the fire

Plans each day that are the townie equivalent of a socialite's calendar: Christmas champagne here, chocolate there, painting crafts with the girls in the bookstore, walking the tiny dog on cobbled streets as people prepare their dinners and the aromas waft out the shutters and into the ether, Boxing Day lunch on a lazy suzan, thirteen people for a place setting for caramelized chicken studded with sesames, pots of crispy potatoes loaded with ham and cream, strong and dark coffee and neverending wine

Things to watch: low-hanging sunsets, the fleeting green and white expanses of the fields, farmers and their families piling the pruned grapevines to burn, my parents at the center of this circle with loads and loads of stylish friends and making jokes that even my brother and I find funny (are we getting old? are the children of all the townspeople and expats who set up little shops and bookstores who have retired from a life of fashion magazines and film careers ever going to rival their parents?), that tiny dog again running through the snow on his tiny paws and sigh to yourself though you said you would never, ever love a little dog, and now you kind of do

Things to do: be happily dragged from place to place, eat, drink, and be merry, watch movies good and bad, check email just once a day, stare at your darkened phone that will never work here (no Droids in France), walk that tiny dog and stop at every child who wants to pet him, heat up pizzas in the stove, pour Orangina over ice, dress for formal parties, dress for informal parties, try to use the tiny hairdryer (not as cute as the tiny dog), run out of clothes to dress in and start wearing flannels to lunch, etch cardboard squares with Japanese cartoons and magenta swirls, have long talks with everyone, read without writing, make French friends, Dutch friends, and several Brits, jokingly flirt with engaged men (they started it), and hey, flirt with the old men too (they appreciate it the most), wonder how I'll ever date someone for real again because I have turned into a massive flirt and all my old boyfriends always hated how I flirted before, which was already alot, let's face it.

Things to want: more days, and nothing more

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

2010-12-26T15:46:00.004-06:00

I left for France on Tuesday.

I did not arrive at my destination until late Thursday.

Don't. Ever. Travel. During. Holidays.

Also not with my brother. What a doofus. He brought 4 enormous suitcases. Which we had to get on the first plane, haul through customs and pick up after, run through the airport with them to the next connection, throw them all on an airport shuttle, then when we missed our connection because of said enormous bags, take all with us to the ticketing office. When we were told there were no flights at all until the following day whilst at Orly in Paris, we then dragged them back on the bus to the train station, pulled them over to the ticketing office there, and after waiting for an hour to speak with someone were told that the trains were all booked up, I took a moment to wipe a tear of frustration out of my eye and to buy cigarettes and coffee to wake me up, we waited for 30 minutes in the freezing rain to go BACK TO THE AIRPORT. There I got us on a shuttle for a hotel. once there, we split up because i was about to lunge at my brother, who while we were on the bus, whined "You'll have to carry everything now. I'm not sure I can do this any more. I think I have to stay on the bus for a while cause I need to sit."

Pardone?

I was the one talking in broken French with everyone. I was the one figuring everything out and I was the one carrying half his shit plus mine while he whined and moaned and got in the way and stood there with his mouth open, complaining that he hadn't had any sleep and he was tired. Indeed, I felt all these things too. But could I feel any of them? Being in charge of us both and all that stuff? Could I just give up because my credit card was not working and I had no money? Or that our phones were all screwy? Or that the airlines didn't want to even book us on anything and asked us to repay because of a problem in the system?

My brother swears Satan himself flew up from my throat and came out of my mouth in a cloud of black smoke. Because I didn't yell, I didn't swear, but I absolutely hissed in a Walt Disney-worthy villan's baritone:

"Give me a reason to leave you behind."

So we checked into (the) Paris Hilton. As I joked, it's about as clean as you'd expect but there were a surprising amount of Albanians in there. Zing! Zang!

Anyway, we are at the hotel and bro immediately goes to sleep. The moment I do, the phone rings. Our flight the next day has been cancelled too. All flights have. Seems a snow storm was coming. All the trains were booked as well.

My mother finally secured us a reservation on a different train at a very far away station. I stayed awake the entire night because there was so much to do the next day. I had been away for 42 hours. I had slept maybe a total of three hours. This will bring madness. Don't try it. I may never be the same again.

So we get to the train station by 4:30. There was no way in hell I was going to miss this train. We camped out in front of the ticket office for the next two hours until it opened. Like they were Superbowl tickets or something. Well, they were. When I got to the woman, who could not understand my sleepy, strung-out, awful, awful French and did not have our reservation and finally, after seeing me pull out my greatest asset, my ability to look like a third world child who is about to die, let us buy the last tickets on the train, I nearly leaped over the partition and squeezed her in my arms. J'taime mademoiselle! J'taime!

Six more hours on a train. The inevitable transfer and running up and down stairs and squeezing on to the new train with all those bags. Another few hours. Still no sleep. And we finally arrived in Cahoors, about an hour away from Bordeaux.

My dad met us. I haven't been so excited to see my dad since I was four years old and picked up at the babysitter's house (it smelled like the inside of a pumpkin and they had no good games).

Everything since being here has been fabulous: snow and chapel, Boxing day lunch, bookstore champagne parties, glittering blue Christmas lights, roast potatoes and the puppy and a beautiful bed. My bedroom here has shutters which give it total darkness. I have never slept so hard in my life. Each night I have been sleeping with a vengance. The fireplaces are always burning and Orangina is always close at hand. I was even invited by some incredibly stylish English girls all wearing over-the-knee Chanel boots, to spend the afternoon with them letterpressing stationary or whatever the big trend is here in Europe. I am also apparently, supposed to discuss my ideas for a magazine that is only available in application form--no print, no website, just an app, with a Dutchman who may or may not think that I am much smarter than I am.

I shall keep you in the loop on how that goes.

In the meantime it is the day after Christmas and everyone is in bed, even the dog, and I am left on the leather couch with all the suede pillows and the sinfully plush cashmere blankets (whether the couch is meant to be styled like it is in Versailles remains to be seen: I suspect Mom bought a bunch of luxe add-ons after hearing Satan leap out of my throat and into the phone after our seventh or so missed plane and train.)

So I'm left to the fire and the films, which are piled up next to the television as we have no channels yet. Planes, Trains and Automobiles is one of our family's favorite movies to watch during the holidays. Steve Martin. John Candy. They can't get home for the holidays. Everything goes wrong. They practically die about four times. Their planes, trains and automobiles fail them at every turn. It's usually hilarious.

Well, it was. Now, I can't bring myself to watch it. I'd sooner put escargots up my nose. I may never watch the movie again. Or travel again. But then, it is so nice here. Quiet and twinkling and lovely. I will enjoy it for a while before I have to venture back on the 2nd. Let's not think about that for now.

Off To The South

2010-12-19T18:19:00.004-06:00

On Tuesday I'm leaving for southern France. My parents--looney birds, elders, and inspirations to us all--have bought a house there. The bro and I are heading over to join them for the holiday. I'm taking off of work early, I'm letting my friend and her fiance stay in my apartment (and cleaning insanely beforehand), and I'm packing up the presents, a million papers, my computer, other reading materials and the work I have to continue to do for my jobs while I'm gone. It's a lot of work to get there but nothing else could be worth it, I think.

I will read. I will sleep. I will eat cheese. I will try to do some situps. I will blog most days in detail about the cold, the view, the food, the dog yipping at my feet, the absence of television. I will try not to check my email too much. I will attend a Christmas eve party where I am the only one born in the 80s (or 90s for that matter), because only old villagers and my family will be there. I hope to write a good deal. I'm not sure of the internet situation. I hope not too bad, I do need to use the computer...I didn't take a leave from my music writing job. We aren't really allowed...but I do hope I can duck out for a day or two here and there.

I'm leaving behind my ex, who doesn't know I'm leaving and it doesn't seem right to call him to tell him. It will be his 30th birthday tomorrow or the next day I think. I can't remember. He wanted to go out for it. I said okay, he never followed up. He tried again, I said okay, he never followed up. Texting keeps relationships going that should have gone a long time ago. Still, I miss having a boyfriend and I miss having a best friend. I know I will have another one that encompasses both eventually. But I do wish I'd hurry up and have it already.

A holiday is for family and friends. This year I've only got family, but I'm certainly glad to have one. Excited to see where they've decided to spend their time. Excited for an overnight plane ride (I actually kind of like these). Excited to let my voicemail pile up. Excited to be unavailable for real. It's kind of thrilling to do. And I'm always available.

Putting many, many books on the Kindle that I'm giving my mom and hope to sneakily read them all first before I get over there. Doing laundry. Wishing to be missed and hoping not to miss anyone too much.

Thinking that sadly (or testament to how funny the other stuff could be?), Liz Lemon is now the unfunniest thing about 30 Rock. What's with the constant psycho-sexual stuff? It's getting old. More Lutz, more Jenna, more Jack. Less Liz, less Colleen (she's strangely far too old and annoying), less Avery.

Thinking that I haven't actually been outside today except when I hung out on my terrace.

Resolutions that I can enact starting now: stop having incredibly inactive days on weekends and far too active nights. Work out less crazily, but more regularly. Stop eating things that come in boxes and start eating things that will spoil after a few days. Stop reading things on computer screens. Sleep longer. Sleep less. More popsicles, less emotion. More calls, less text. Fewer dates, more important hang outs. Less talking, more listening. Go away to France and have a good time, turn on the out of office and let it go.

Winter List

2010-12-07T06:44:00.003-06:00

- Eat pie for breakfast for four days after Thanksgiving
- Turn up the heat in the apartment to eighty degrees and keep 'er there
- When in doubt for writing, do structure work, because writing seems easy by comparison
- Borrow someone else's dog for a walk
- Blast a lot of dutty rap to turn dusting into dancing
- Buy a new coat instead of fixing the tear and lost buttons on the old one
- Arrange every date/meeting/edit catch-up so hot chocolate is involved
- Spend Saturdays in bed with flannel sheets
- Go out to synthpop concerts on Mondays and drink red wine on Sundays
- Overbook, constantly and apologize immensely
- Wear many, many pairs of tights, scarves, and sweaters without sleeves
- Mass text for plans/saying hello/and telling everyone you just painted a mantle all by yourself
- Try to use the following words every day: electric, blango, blast, soar, cheers, and most of all, yes
- Budget, make lists, and book a trip to Jamaica anyway
- Pick up the phone every time someone calls, but call no one
- Have good lighting that you never use
- Smile at everyone who walks by, even if they don't deserve it
- Get all your exercise by jumping
- Wear snowboots when there is no chance of snow, because you're an optimist

If that's the checklist, I'm doing pretty good so far...

Slow Justice Is No Justice

2010-11-15T19:06:00.004-06:00

This was on a movie poster I saw in the subway. Yes, it was referring to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, but it's apt.

So a week ago I declared that I was in love with someone and not telling that someone was enough for now. Don't. Be. Remiss.

Caring for someone, anyone, is the worst. I don't know why we do it, I don't know why we have no control over it, but I hate love. I have been in it at least half a dozen times and it has done nothing good for me. People have loved me, and I haven't loved them back. That was horrible for everyone involved. And I was on the good end. I would rather never date anyone again than be on the other end.

We saw each other. It was great. Too great. Why couldn't it have sucked more? Then I could go on thinking that I could handle this. Soooo...we are not together. I haven't asked for us to be. I try to keep that to myself. Because if this is a game of chicken, I'm going to win. Texting should be banned between the sexes. He read something in my texts to him on Saturday night that weren't there. He said I was being "weird." He asked to come over at 2:30 in the morning, I was asleep. He doesn't believe me. He thinks I'm lying, that I was out with musicians again. I'm never out with guys in bands! Why is he obsessed with me shacking up with a dude with a guitar just because I work in music? And so I'm getting punished for someone else's assumption. By him pretending he's too busy to talk to me. And by the way? He hadn't contacted me in days before we had this total, utter misunderstanding. So what if I had been with anyone?

There is a reason people break up.

Why why why can't I just not like boys. This one or any of them? They are so annoying! They are so confusing! They say one thing and then act like another. They change their minds all the time. I can't tell you how many have said the following, in this order: they love me, will I be with them forever, they can't be around me because I make them insane, never talk to them again, and please, please, talk to them now, visit them, pick up the phone, they miss me. There needs to be a law against saying all those things to the same person. After the "I love you" mark, you shouldn't be able to change your mind. It would be better, biologically, if we worked that way. I'd love to get a shot that stabilized my emotions for a year, that acted as an immunization against falling for people. A flu shot. Fast and quick and lasts a few months.

Much better than this slow burn. This slow justice for him to torture me because he thinks I tortured him, didn't take care enough of him, relied too much on him, brought him into my world and left him there alone. How many times can a person say sorry? How many times can a person keep trying to rebuild something out of sand?

Well, here's the thing. I've been running from this thing for months on months. I'll never outrun the forces pulling us together, I've got to lay down, out of its sight, and just let it pass.

I'm doing that with these feelings. It will. Just so another feeling about another person can come along. Bah. I'm not contacting him. But you know if he calls, I won't have the heart not to pick up. Will he? Who even cares. It's the same either way, we keep doing this junk until one of us has the means to leave this nonsense and go hurt...er, love...someone else.

You know what's good today? At least? I think I'm changing the pacing of my book. I'm going to start in the middle and run two storylines together in different times of the book. I know it sounds a little gimmicky, but I'm sure this will fix the problem I have with the book being boring for the first 70 pages. This way, I can cut them.

Coming up with a maybe solution for a 4 year book problem? If that's the result from keeping my phone off all day and not reaching out to him, then maybe this is the right thing after all...

How To Be In Love?

2010-11-07T16:51:00.003-06:00

I'm in love.

Both of us were in love with each other. Both of us fell out. We broke up. Lots of things happened in between. New apartments, other relationships, jobs. Now I am gainfully employed, enrolled in UCLA's Master Class Writing Program, slicing away at my novel, furiously writing the second one, prancing around my new apartment that he doesn't know, reading books, eating trail mix bars and planning my best friend's bachelorette party (molecular gastronomy, pedis and champagne, pole dancing party just the girls, big night out, delicious drunken brunch the next day).

I am busy.

Working extra hours at my magazine job. Working late in my music job. Going to dance classes. Weekends away. Catching up on doctor appointments, picking out recipes for dinner parties, planning concerts, still organizing my newish dwelling and exploring the bars and restaurants of my new hood. Reconnecting with old friends, finding new ones wherever I go. I have stopped dating for sport because I don't have time. Somehow, who knows how, I still get asked out on a semi-regular basis. But I've been saying no and soft-shoeing.

I don't want to date.

My books are my boyfriend. For the first time in my life, I really do not have a man and it feels very exhilarating. I sleep when I want, I go home when I want, I wear dresses and sweatshirts together as I lounge around my apartment, order extra dessert and a glass of wine, work out at odd times, wake up at 8 AM to read, take Sunday naps, have my girlfriends sleep over, talk on the phone all night long, write letters to family, send flowers to my aunt, twist up the comforter and use all the pillows with the space heater firmly pointed towards me and me alone while the window is open letting the wintry chill come blowing in.

And yet, I am in love.

I am in love with my ex and it feels great. I have no idea if we will get back together. There was a time when I thought definitely not. But now, somehow, without my permission, I am in love with him. Maybe it will pass. Maybe it will not. But for now, I get so excited when I see a text from him, think about seeing him, hear his voice. I'm not going to tell him. I couldn't possibly. We didn't end all that well and he has a lot of pain and so do I. Well, I think I've let go of mine. In the meantime, I check my phone and jump up and down like a Jack In The Box when he contacts me. I walk around singing the tunes in my iPod. We don't have plans, we don't have a date, we don't have anything. I'm still absolutely and utterly in love with him.

I'm not really sure how this works. In new, fluttering infatuation and love? With an I-never-care-to-see-you-again-ex? Who I'm not even dating at the moment? All very confusing. Only a crazy person like me would find herself in this position. I figure there's no point in doing anything about it. My life is perfect, just the way it is, without him really being in it too much. If it's meant to be I will just have to have faith. Perhaps he will come to me. Maybe he will be ready to someday. Maybe the shimmer that has come over me is so great, is so powerful, that I can aim it on him from afar and blow it in a big whoosh and have it whip him in the face. And perhaps then he will ask me out again. If he does, I will say yes immediately.

Until then? I don't know how to be in love. It's confusing as all hell. But it feels good, and so, I won't be rocking this (I am totally bananas) boat.

I'll keep you updated should anything change. For now, I'm off to look at old pictures of us while taking up all the room possible in my bed, just the way I like it, which is leaving no room for him in there at all.

Hmmmm...

I'm Having A Dinner Party...

2010-11-02T22:52:00.003-05:00

I hosted a cupcake and champagne party that went smashingly. Now I have a real dinner party and the last time I did that I made a crazy amazing bouef bourgignon.

These are the same kids invited this time, I can't make that twice.

I did like how there was a lot of different stuff in one bowl, and it was rich and very winter-friendly. There was a whole bottle of wine poured in and it steeped the meat until it fell away from the fork. You could cut it with a spoon and the carrots were juicy, the potatoes sopped up with rich, buttery, runoff from the meat and vegetables and wine. Oh man, it was gooooood.

I'm thinking beef again (filet? rubbed with butter and salt and pepper and roasted?) or lamb (loin? marinated? crusted?) this time, with lots of stuff--I dunno, olives or sage or tons of garlic and lemon and crispy potatoes. But I'm not sure what I should make, and what would be big, hearty and delicious and not overpower whatever anyone else will bring. But still be the showpiece...

Any suggestions? I would be so excited to hear your crowd-pleasing dinner party mains!

I'd Rather Be Watching Freaks and Geeks

2010-11-01T18:58:00.001-05:00

That post below about the break-up? They're back together. Screaming, crying, one obsessed with the other while the other is just obsessed with himself, back together. Le sigh. I did all that I could. I was a good friend. But there is no telling anyone, especially two anyones who have no damn business in the world being together, that they might want to take a break from one another so they can breathe and rest their throats sore from wailing.

I think I have decided that I am not dating right now. It was halfway between the second and third 4-page letter I read for two different sets of 'break-up no wait fake-up' friends. It was between getting a text of "hey baby" and not realizing who it was from, from two different numbers not saved in my phone this weekend. It was between my London crush coming to visit and wanting to hang out with the sole purpose of making out and seeing nothing wrong when I was put-off and then going back to his adorably flirty emails once he was home, between the boy who lives with his girlfriend who begged to have a sleepover with me, the guy who's asked me out four times and I've canceled every time last minute, the date who told me I had a nice "tushie," the date who ended up having a kid, the guy I thought I could love after two dates who then got deported. I don't date online, I don't blind date, I don't get set up. But I meet a lot of good-looking weirdos. And I have a lot of friends who wade through a lot of relationship crap.

I kind of don't want to be around it this winter. I want to eat whoopie pies and go to yoga, I want to lie on the couch drinking pink lemonade all Sunday, I want to shop for boots all Saturday, I want to go out every night and have none of them be a date, I want to pay for my own drink, I want to split an appetizer with three girlfriends, I want to go to a concert and not get hit on, I want to not wear something low-cut, I want to read, I want to write, I want to dance in my underwear in my apartment.

Someday I might do those things with someone else. For now I've got my favorite sweater and my exes sweet messages once in a while and two jobs and school and dance class and a whole lot of Freaks and Geeks on television.

Not bad for a Monday. A non-dating Monday, and without a prospect in sight. It feels kind of amazing. Next up: a cooking class, re-organizing my closet, trapeze lessons, a trip to France, painting, drawing, singing, or anything else...

The Break-Up

2010-10-03T19:26:00.002-05:00

There was a huge fight. Dozens of hours of crying. Awful words exchanged. Now Sunday night, all parties are exhausted. Plans were made and canceled. Doors slammed. Things thrown.

I've cleaned my apartment, done laundry, fluffed pillows, ordered a ton of Thai food and have the mindless television on full blast. The nice, warm lights are on, my comfy sweater is wrapped around me, and I sit on the couch waiting for the phone to buzz.

It's called a break-up. And for once it's not mine. Anabella is coming over for a sleepover, and a cryfest, and I am here for her in this horrible time. I love her, she loves him, and this is what happens sometimes. I'm the one saying the words of wisdom this time. We will see if when I say it to her it's more helpful than when she said it to me.

Wish us luck...

The Writing Sanctuary

2010-09-24T16:27:00.001-05:00

"Today we begin Session One, Class One of our MASTER NOVEL class. This is a writing sanctuary. A safe place to try new things, to make mistakes, to get our hands dirty with revisions, and to cheer each other on. We're here for the supreme and delicious goal of getting your novels into publication shape -- no small thing. And we're up to it.

Here's how I picture our sanctuary -- and feel free to add details and images of your own. Even share them on the board, if you like.
Right now there is a little twisty road in the country. We come to it at night, early on a winter's evening, just as darkness falls. At the end of the road is a cozy almost storybook house with arched doorways, stained glass windows, and a light burning in the study window.

You run up six brick and tile steps, aware, though all you can see are shadows, that you on the grounds of a rather elegant estate. You have a key to the arched front door, and you put your coat on the coat rack in the hallway, and grab up your portfolio of pages, because you hear voices from the study to your left.
This is where we meet. There's a fire going in the hearth, lots of worn leather chairs and love seats where you can curl up. You have a favorite place. Set your papers on your chair, and help yourself to wine, or tea or coffee -- or even a glass of champagne if you can keep your thoughts focused. Curl up in your chair -- there's a small table there for your drink. And now we begin..."

I like UCLA's 9 Month Master Class Program already...off to read...have a wonderful weekend...

Dessert Party Planning

2010-09-23T14:18:00.003-05:00

As my new apartment is shaping up--the chandeliers with dimmer bulbs and industrial steel shelves in the bathrooms to house a collection of pretty perfumes and swirled compacts I never use, a tiny gold statue of Buddha I got in Japan, a vase, Sephora bags and sweet-smelling soaps, the leather seats on the brushed nickel stools, the pump to turn the coffee table into a fountain--I have finally decided how I am going to celebrate my birthday. The second birthday since I've had boyfriends where I have no boyfriend.

I'm having a dessert party, and I mean great desserts. I want red velvet, I want cheesecake, I want double fudge, I want apple pie. I'm going to buy it all--cupcakes, cream frosting, chocolate chips and most of all, champagne. Bottles and bottles of champagne and I'm only inviting girls over. It will be a Friday night and it will be girls and desserts and bubbly and I will light candles and wear a party dress and the world will be right.

Now I just need to figure out where to get all this stuff without breaking the bank. Am I allowed to bake a frozen Sara Lee dessert if I throw away the box?

Excuses.

2010-09-20T11:48:00.003-05:00

I did it again. I overextended. I have dance class Mondays (6-8) and Tuesdays (8-10) and my young adult fiction class Thursdays (6:30-10) as well as my two jobs every day (9-6 and then a few hours here and there after work), and I just was re-accepted (I bailed last year) to UCLA's Low Residency Master Class for the novel I now loathe.

It is very expensive and time consuming but I must take it, I think. It's for nine months and it's the closest thing I can have to working and being in school at the same time. Except I am finding that now I can never do anything during the week with anyone. I don't think this is bad as it pushes plans to the weekend which I always like filled and eliminates having too many drinks on a Tuesday, for Wednesday morning at work. But it has begun to be the case that someone will want to get together and my answer all the time is "I can't during the week." Whether it's a friend or a date, I just can't do it. I don't want to. Wednesday is my day to do anything, and I like to just come home and grocery shop and clean (or think of these things while watching T.V. in my underwear, split the difference). I am being kind of selfish with my time, but I suppose you have to be when you're writing two books and trying to stay in shape and trying to save money and trying to do a good job at your jobs.

Now the question. I am truly busy. And there is someone who wants to hang out with me. A set-up actually. I have been set up once before and it was wildly good, we actually ended up dating for five years. I remember looking through our college look book and there were two gentlemen with the name of my to-be date for the formal. There was one who was hot and there was one who wasn't. Somehow luck shined on me and I got the hot one. We started dating that night.

So, the set-up. I have seen his picture and just think "eh." I have seen his texts and they just aren't my style. I want to like him, but I already know this isn't going anywhere. And I actually am busy. Even if there was a guy that I liked I don't think I could slot him in any time that isn't the weekend. And now that I have this schedule, it seems weird to set up weekend plans with someone who I know it won't go any further with. A waste of my time and his. People tell me just to go, but I don't wanna. I don't want a free meal or drink. I don't need to "get back out there." I've had my share of flings since my break up and believe I got that mess out of my system. Now it's fall and I have a new apartment and a million new classes and a crazy schedule and I want to see my friends or take time to breathe on my own. I'm not interested in dating unless it falls in my lap. This set-up was done without me doing anything, and it fell in my lap for sure. But I am not feeling it.

What is the appropriate thing to do in this situation? See him once and then tell him no more? It seems unusually cruel not to at least see him. But I can't see him during the week. And weekend nights are so precious, why should I waste my time and his scheduling a Saturday night dinner when I know (and sometimes you just know, don't you?) that we aren't going to date...

Etiquette question today that needs advice...

I Just Said Goodbye

2010-09-11T10:14:00.003-05:00

I am a person who usually cannot say goodbye to people. I feel too much, I miss too much, I love too much, I believe, deep down, that I have the unspoken power to crush someone with all this emotion, like I am a giant child, grabbing tight and holding long, I can't feel someone beneath me push away until they are gone.

I don't know where I got this from. It takes a long time for someone to get my affection, but when they have it, they pretty much have it forever.

I feel this way about my ex. I love him. I miss him. We are not right for one another, this is clear. But I feel so strongly about him, and he does about me (so he says). But we are who we are. People do not change, not really. We can't get to a new place. We've been officially broken up for nearly six months, but we are still going through it, all the time. It's the longest I've ever been semi-single, and I have enjoyed much of it and been undeniably broken for some of it. We are still texting, still calling, still say that we love one another, still make plans, still break plans, but we are not together, and we are with other people much, much more than we are ever with each other. This, friends, is brutal.

I can't do it any more, it's not me being single properly, it's not me moving forward. It's a new season, a new apartment, and unless he wants to try to fix things and does something remarkably different instead of continuing to prey upon the fact that he knows I love him deeply and simply dip his foot in when he wants to and takes it out when he wants to, I've got to say a real goodbye.

I just sent the email, it was three lines long. It said I loved him too much to keep doing this halfway, so please do not contact me any more. And it said bye. Now I'm going to clean my room and go be in a wedding and not care that I don't have a date.

I'm me, and that will have to be enough this time.

Why Be Normal?

2010-09-07T17:53:00.004-05:00

I haven't been on this blog in a month. I haven't been writing. This is an awful shame. Where does the creativity go if you don't pour it from your fingers and let it slip down and hit the page? It gets re-absorbed by the body, perhaps. It is lost forever, maybe. I don't believe it makes me a better writer the next time. It makes me worse. I become stiff, regular, normal. It is bad to be normal. When I was eight years old, I went to sleepaway camp and I had a bumper sticker above my bed (I had the top bunk). It said, Why Be Normal? I looked at it, staring into the pink and white of it before I would go to sleep as the girls slept soundly around me. It bled into my brain. It was the best mantra, the only mantra that always rang true.

So I'll ask this of you today, why be normal? Usual, the same? Any time you get too comfortable, jump to something uncomfortable. I'm not saying I do a good job all the time or even most of the time at this, I'm not saying there isn't something to be said for routine, I thrive on discipline in spurts. But I am a binge person. I binge on being movable. Stillness is not a move. Not for you, not for me. No moss. No cobwebs. Keep it moving. On to the next.

I've been off being weird, making moves. I have been neglecting things here though, and that's going to change right now. Where the heck have I been? I look out the window and down at a rumpled pile of clothes, a sunburnt nose, an empty wallet, ticket stubs, stick sandals, handprints on the wall, and I'm not sure I know. I don't know where I am right now. I don't know where I've been or where I'm going. I'm not a tourist though, I am an observer. I am a collector. I collect lives and try them on to see which one will fit for me. I have feet that work, half a mind, a nickel in my pocket and all the rest.

I am holding this summer until it fades like colored paper, until it becomes light and brittle in my hands and eventually, only dust like all the rest. This summer was hot and cold, bright and dark, thrilling and lonely, alone and surrounded by too many people, expensive, draining, invigorating, inspirational, scary, but never dull. That is something. There is always something.

Filled with flings and things, packing, leaving my beautiful, comfortable, nested, lived-in apartment for one brimming with light and bare walls, full of promise and too much white, too much sun, too much heat, much too much but then I am binging again and when you binge, too much is never enough.

I don't know why I did it. It isn't cheaper. There aren't trees. I guess I needed a change. I always need a change. I am a banana, I am an avocado, I get squishy when left in the same place for more than a few days. I am fruit salad. I am perfect in three hour increments. I am not everyone's taste but I am pleasing enough. I am palatable. I am watermelon. Fill me with vodka once in a while. I'm still good, I swear.

I was in the Catskills this weekend and I went to a square dance. I heard my friends have sex all night. It was so cold I could see my breath as I shivered under the blankets. There was a lot of steak. The morning brought an even colder snap and the sun reflected onto the glassy expanse of water until it looked like the end of the earth, this blue-gray expanse, it seemed all the problems were absorbed by the wind. I thought but did not say out loud, I want to be the ocean. Change, churn, slosh forward and retreat only after going fast and far. Twist around bends. Take the shape of anything, a tub, a glass, a straw, I will move like liquid if I can, wherever I can. I will be weird. I hope I can be weird forever.

Under-depressed

2010-08-02T15:14:00.004-05:00

I haven't felt sad in days. What's the matter with me?

Purpose, purpose, purpose. I'm working and I have a schedule and with lines and notes and post-its, I am comforted as though wrapped in a blanket. Things have their place. Even me, at least for August. That's not to say it can't be changed, but it feels good to know what I'm to do at different intervals. Go here. Go there. Sleep. Work out. Smile. Nod. Argue. Laugh. Be quiet.

I've always been this strange mix between planner and dreamer, idiotically spontaneous and soul-crushing logical. I have not seen this breed before, even in me I confuse myself often. But if I don't keep me on my toes, who will? I am responsible for a moment, two jobs, moving apartments, keeping out of tangles with the ex (metaphorically speaking, mindfully speaking), talking on the phone, seeing my friends, even realizing I have more than I thought. This whole time I thought I needed more, but perhaps I need less. Of everything.

So after fleeing the country on a short jaunt, and just saying to hell with it, why not go to the Hamptons, Connecticut, Chicago for no reason at all, during the work week I am oddly calm, I don't feel thirsty or hungry all day, I sit in front of a computer and I get on the phone and I get some work done and I make notes and I take notes. It feels as good as being barefoot, which I also do, underneath my desk.

I am moving forward, the only direction as Jay-Z says (why does his rap always sound like he's about to burst into tears?). Today turns into tomorrow turns into next week turns into the end of the season and a clean house. Tidy, tidy, tidy, I am a little, story-book rodent with small hands arranging files and papers and folding blankets with satisfaction. Frog and Toad, Peter Rabbit, they had shirts and no pants and they did what they did. Rinse and repeat. I am that weird. I am that happy being neutral. To be disinterested, oh how I would love that, to not swing so wildly, to take a week and not live it like it's my last. I have opposite problems, I do not need to shake things up, I am shook up all the time, I need the wind to temper, I need the air to be still. I need to not need. I want to not want. I am meditating while typing, spilling a coffee, overturning cups of pens and papers. I can do this. If my heart can beat while I sleep, then I can write while invoking Om, damnit.

Someone crazy once told me the secret to happiness was taking it one day at a time, not thinking about the future for a moment. Nuh-uh. Lists and curlicues and status updates, a clean hand, a dirty mind, these are the things that keep me on track, I think...

I sure do think a lot. Could I turn off my brain if I tried very hard? I could, perhaps. Someone said I had a lot of energy, someone else said they couldn't be around me because I have too many ideas, someone else said they were with me to be 'along for the ride.' People say mean things. They sure do say them a lot.

I like to be alone now. This is something new. Something wonderful. Sitting in your underwear watching bad TV and eating three popsicles for dinner isn't something you can do with a boyfriend, I have realized. Bully for boyfriends, hooray for Gatorade.

And now, just move, a little ahead, bend and be flexible, get it done, tap it up, drink it in, go insane and do it again. That's all right, that's okay. Tomorrow is then, but this is today...

I'm a loon today...what else is new?

What A Difference A Lay Makes

2010-07-28T17:34:00.002-05:00

Kidding! I had that plenty here. Kidding again! Joking about sex is not really my bag so I don't know how to do it right. The joking part.

But it is nice to go somewhere else and be surrounded by European men who tell you that you are lovely and beautiful and lie to you that your American accent is charming and don't even wince when you trip or sneeze on their arm, they just keep nodding along to your stories about camp or that time your fish was stolen (yes, it was, I swear) and ordering you more jack and gingers and smiling and walking you home at the end of the night and asking to see you again.

Europe was fun. Of course it was! It was most fun to get away from my beautiful life, which I didn't know was beautiful, or meaningful, or worthwhile for a while. Big mistake. While I was away the resounding chorus, in London, in Bruges, in Amsterdam (cough) was, how lucky I was to live in New York! Lucky?, I repeated, balancing a coffee and a cigarette and my bag on top of a bike as I wove in and out of small cars with fierce drivers, mothers with no shame cursing, delivery men with razor sharp spokes, and dum dum pedestrians digging in their backpacks for God knows what.

Lucky, me? But I'm just a writer...who lives a small life that is honest but perhaps nothing more.

Oh, what a brat I've been.

Self, readers, world, will you forgive me? I'm too old to be acting so childish, but it's in my nature.

Running away is medicine, more than laughter, more than chocolate milk and summer Fridays and mixtapes and grass fields and thrusting your feet into a fountain on a hot afternoon. It is all of that, it is more than the sum. You are with people, you are alone, no one complains. You fear leaving will make you less than, you will miss something monumental at home.

And then you get home. And you know what? The only thing that's been missed is you. Everyone wants to see you, everyone wants to talk to you, everyone is smiling. Work is tough but you realized you're needed. Your apartment feels like a palace. Your shower is ecstasy. Your phone is a magic controller. Your morning commute is different again, your head is higher, your step is lighter, you feel like this morning, this moment, could be played out anywhere instead of being the usual drudgery that you had made it earlier.

But you appreciate it all now. The light. The noise. The still and the not so still.

You have been away, in cobblestones, in open-air concerts, rolling greenery of parks. You have sat, quiet and read. You read all there was to read, you listened to all there was to listen, you sang to yourself and you skipped on your rented bike, in the unfamiliar train, hooked arms with unfamiliar people, danced all night, walked all day, rested only by sitting on a bench and watching a new breed of people trot by.

It was good and it was all yours and there was no reason for it, you just wanted it. Sometimes, maybe all the time, you should have what you truly want. Because it's good for you, and good for the world.

I took a vacation alone. Shouldn't you?

(Yes, you should.)

Stories to come...

Only The Lonely

2010-07-12T09:07:00.002-05:00

I am undeniably, awesomely, hugely lonely.

I said it.

It's like an incredible force of nature I can't stop, I'll be walking along and it will hit me--if I were to simply vanish, having never made a mark on this earth at all, who would miss me, and for how long?

It's not good to think about these things, but whenever you try not to think of something you can only think of that: over and over again. There was a time where I had a bounty of non-loneliness. That ship has sailed. My best friends have moved away or gotten married, my boyfriend went off the deep end and got into two car crashes, his therapist said he ended our relationship from the trauma of the accident, and now drinks 65 drinks a week and has no job and says he's happy (huh? I never thought I'd say this, but um, how do I be more like you? I mean in the happiness part) and tries to make out with me bi-weekly. But work on our relationship? Nope. Tell me what a harpy I am and how I made him into a shell of a man and was always going to leave him for a British musician (who never appeared, btw)? Oh yes. That happens.

This was the person I was going to settle down with? Ugh, my head hurts from hitting itself into a brick wall.

So...no man. No best friend. A handful of decent friends scattered across the country. A lot of moping. A total block in writing since our breakup (hmm more of a break down). Some reading. More moping. I went to a therapist. He said I wasn't depressed enough for drugs. But for expensive long term therapy where I talk about my childhood? Oh yeah, I'm a candidate for that. I don't want to talk about my childhood! I don't want to solve the issue of losing my teddy bear! I want to feel better about my life and I want to feel better right now! Give me a life coach, not this shlock. I'm a planner. I want an action plan. I said this to him and he looked on blankly. No, wait. He said something.

He said, "How does that make you feel?"

He said it a hundred times. I said, "Can you please help me figure out how to not have anxiety or be lonely? Maybe some suggestions of some things to do? Meditation? A vacation? Dating for sport? Joining a knitting club? How to start writing again?"

He said, "Sounds like you'd like to solve your problems. And that you'd like some tools. How does that make you feel?"

The only tool in the room was him.

That's it. I'm doing the only thing that ever works. I'm fleeing to Europe. I bought my ticket, I'm crashing on sort-of-friends-of-friends couches and I'm going to London and stopping somewhere (who knows!) on a train before I hit Amsterdam. It's done. I leave Thursday after work.

Flee therapy to cure loneliness. Let's see if it works. At least I'll have some really good stories and pictures. And it's my first crash vacation totally alone. Who will I meet? Maybe someone fun. Maybe many someones fun.

Bye bye loneliness, I'm leaving you in New York for a while. We need some space. It's not me, it's you. You be lonely for a while and see how it feels. When I'm back, we'll talk.

Of course trips mean much blogging. And writing. They always do...

Remembering: Summer State of Mind

2010-07-05T07:17:00.000-05:00

When I was smaller, I regarded the Fourth of July as a benchmark. A hard and fast entity, that, while always promised the sizzle of the grill, wet feet slopping drops from the pool to patio, and the fireworks at Limerock, first and foremost, the holiday meant one thing.

Half of summer gone.

I’m still small. In stature and in mind. Because even with the advent of Summer Fridays, the unrelenting pour of rain (that really shouldn’t tally, as it cuts back on useable warm days), and a vacation planned in August, before this moment, I’ve suffered from the idea that summer is a marked man.

An unshakeable feeling that his death is near.

Perhaps my gloominess is not entirely unfounded, just misdirected. It could very well be that the end of summer for me is pending, looming. Though not exactly because it’s Independence Day Eve. Maybe it’s because my summer job is actually my real job, trading the contraband crème brulees and cigarette breaks of a bus girl for the matching accessories and fountain pen of a worker bee.

No longer do I ride my bike to the little grill in town, I take the subway to a monstrous building cookie-cut from the mold of so many others.

No longer am I paid in cash, wrinkled bills stuffed into a maroon apron without counting, then shoved into a drawer, retrieved only for dime store lip-gloss and the cost of entry to a kegger. A paycheck arrives, already deposited into a bank account, full of columns and numbers and taxable subtractions. Depending on the week, it goes straight away to rent.

My parents say that they really don’t have a summer any more. Each day of the season cannot be distinguished from the last, save for the humid weather and weekend barbeques.

I find that heartbreakingly depressing. I refuse to become an adult about this. I see the error in my maturation and need to stop it. Not to remain young at heart, but because I know, deep down, I just will never be able to fully give it up. The memories of summers cascade through me.

Sleepovers, cooking fireside, mosquito bites, the community pool.

Swim lessons, day camp, packed lunches, pickles, juice boxes, shorts and scabbed knees, my bike, the sky, the porch, the burst of sparklers, Frisbee with my dogs, the ice cream truck, playing dodge ball in the dead-end street after dinner, the walk to the sticker store, the passenger’s seat of my parent’s car.

Field parties, his parent’s house when they’re in Europe, the drive between, the trampoline, red cups of beer, the backyard, Tiki torches, tank tops, popsicles, the sundeck, the evening.

Now glasses of white burgundy, the shore, beach towns, weddings, parties, walks around the block in search of gelato, counting the handful of stars visible in the city, taking those days off of work, ice coffee, her homemade desserts, his friends and their cigars, the garden in the back of the bar, the rooftop, paper lanterns, votive candles, the exclusive pool somehow within reach, Coney island for the concerts and hotdogs, the parade, shifts and linen.

Summer does alter as we age. But not in a bad way. Maybe it’s that summer does change tunes, but never quality.

For me, I just won’t let it. This has always been my most beloved time of year. And this year, I’m regarding the Fourth of July as the beginning of summer, not the middle, because I haven’t noticed it until now, haven’t slowed down with a belly-breath and a Sno-cone until now. Because now that I'm older, what I've lost in freedom, I've gained in choice.

So this year, I choose summer. Summer as a state of mind.

And it’s only just begun.

Quote of the Day

2010-06-22T15:25:00.003-05:00

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
- Marilyn Monroe

Been thinking about this one today...could it be that it's not about what I deserve but what deserves me? That I am deserving of everything I want, that I am good as I am and as good as I should be already?

Kind of radical thinking...

On to the next one.

Getting Loopy

2010-06-08T11:34:00.003-05:00

Uh oh, the warm weather is setting in and I'm getting a little...you know. Full of ideas. This class, that trip, this boy, that party, this job, that book, this style, that mindfulness, this idiocy, that carelessness.

The other day I was feeling moody, bratty and alone. I have so much and still I was being such a little jerk about it, wanting more without giving more, staring at my phone and bemoaning why it wasn't ringing when really, I hadn't rung anyone. Mad at a boy for not calling and another for calling.

I peeled myself off the chaise, grabbed the book I'm supposed to be reading for my own book to fix the first fifty pages, and took the subway out of my neighborhood. I also put on some eyeliner and a new necklace, because...I don't know. I had some romantic notion I would end somewhere romantic or interesting.

To be interesting, you must be interested. I was not interested and therefore not interesting. I wasn't interested in myself or the world. I was just curled up in a blanket.

So I took the subway to a neighborhood I never go to. I took my book. I took my pen. I was going to get some good dialogue out of it at least, I hoped. One or two great lines would make the process of bringing the notebook worthwhile.

I went into get a coffee and left on a seven hour date. There was an insane art exhibit with sound hard-wiring. There was gourmet pizza. There was a crazy dance party and a hilariously shaped luge for people to take shots. There was a farm. There were hipsters. I danced really hard. I left and when I came home, he'd emailed already that what had happened was rather wonderful.

It actually was.

I'm still pissy about a few things. But not about deciding not to be pissy. Not about deciding instead to be grateful, and get the hell up, and go somewhere and say hi to someone and make a joke and to say yes, just say yes, when someone, anyone remotely worthwhile invites you anywhere remotely worthwhile.

Because then you are remotely worthwhile. Even more than that some might say.

And because I am getting loopy with possibility and less numb to joy, and more numb to say, meanness or bad form or what-have-you, and more inclined to just ask if I can come or to just show up and if anyone wants me there declare it a victory. If not, I can go home, to where I already was. But no one has asked me to go home yet. If you do the same for them, I think they ask you to stay. I want to stay interesting. I want to stay interested. I want to say yes. I will say yes. I do say yes.

And I will quote, I will blather. It feels good. Do what feels good and don't do what feels bad if you can, whenever you can. I think. I think that is enough today. That, and a quote. Always a quote.

“I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”— Sir Isaac Newton

Quote of the Day

2010-06-07T11:04:00.001-05:00

Be strong, saith my heart.

I am a solider; I have seen sights worse than this.

-Homer, The Illiad

It's A Beautiful Day and I'm Going To Hate It If I Want To

2010-06-04T08:33:00.003-05:00

It truly is amazing to have summer and be in love.

I've got summer. And work to do on my book that I can't seem to get motivated to do. I thought I had love, got a hold of myself and stopped talking to him for three weeks. Of course that's when he wants back in my life. And not asking nicely back, demanding, and telling me how horrible I was and how right our breakup was, demanding back.

Then there is the new crush that I thought I had...Well it turns out that crush was less than. Patience. Is. A. Virtue. I will not turn into one of "those" women. Will I?

No. I will not turn into one of "those" people who doesn't believe in fate and love and purpose and light and cream cheese and kittens and joy. I will just believe that those things don't come to me right now.

That is okay (grits teeth).

In the meantime, it is the weekend, and if I want to spend it stomping around my nice apartment and being generally ungrateful for the fact that I have no plans and no good attitude allowed?

Maybe I can go watch Reality Bites and eat some crackers after coming home from work instead of going out.

Also, note to self: stop skipping yoga. Lots of yoga last week = happy mood. No exercise at all this week = terrible mood. Coincidence? I think not.

This Is A Post I Like To Read

2010-05-27T12:21:00.000-05:00

"Walking up sun-dappled Joralemon Street this morning after a long swim in the floating pool, I was hit by a cold breeze and then a pang of nostalgia so sharp it took my breath away. In the pool, I’d swum a few laps and then abandoned myself to the kind of mermaid games I used to entertain myself with for hours as a child, after swim team season was over and I was finally allowed to wear a two-piece suit, my brown legs and arms contrasting oddly with the vulnerable white of my stomach. I flipped and dove and sunk to the bottom to look up at the bubbles I made and the blindingly blue sky above me, the sky the same color as the cool blue water, and I could have been any age, fifteen again, milking the last weekend of summer at West Hillandale Swim Club (go Dolphins!). Back then, I would linger in the pool every day because every day felt like the last, and I wanted to memorize the feel of the water and the sun on my skin to keep it with me through the chilly fall and the cold winter, when I’d be slicing laps through the murky, tepid water of indoor pools, their blue a blurry imitation blue.

I knew I couldn’t actually make the feeling last, that I would forget about it as soon as it was gone and not remember again until the next summer, but I always tried. And though this summer has been scary and unfamiliar and wrenching and sad at times, I miss it already, I think because despite the sadness, there was real happiness too.

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been trying with a degree of success that’s surprised me not to think of Jake at all. And when I do, I usually make myself think of negative things. There certainly are plenty to choose from: the pathetic, cowardly way he broke it off with me, the charming words that, in retrospect, echo as lies. The enduring suspicion that he never really cared for me at all.

But as I was walking home from the pool today, in the blinding sun with just a hint of chill in the air, I let myself remember the innocence and happiness of our first kisses, him ardent as a teenager, me trembling with uncertainty and excitement. And then the stolen kisses in alleyways, the thrill of those furtive weeks. And then the fulfilled promise of his charm, that handful of charming evenings: the night we ate like animals at a restaurant, staring at each other constantly, laughing hard every few minutes, taking a cab ten blocks afterwards because we couldn’t have waited any longer.

It was so good when it was good, and the reasons why it was good, while more apparent now, don’t matter so much. Who cares that his appeal was artificially enhanced, the same way a stale Balthazar croissant becomes the world’s most delicious treat if you eat it after a morning of hard swimming? The satisfaction, in the moment, is the same.

And though I wish I could have that satisfaction now, I know I’ll never be able to have it again, at least, not with him. It’s like (Susan, I know, I’m beating this one into the ground) right now, I’m very hungry, but not for just anything, just for this one specific food. But now I know it to be poison. And even if the poison food was available to me now, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy eating it, knowing it was poison. So I’ll starve, I suppose, at least for a while, and the discomfort of starving will teach me to be hungry for something more wholesome. Something that will give me satisfaction that lasts."

Sometimes Emily Gould just nails it, doesn't she?

Catastrophic Date #1

2010-05-26T09:31:00.002-05:00

A Scene in Texts...

Me: Want to still have dinner tonight?

Him: Yes, I really want to. But I can't. Family emergency. My uncle died.

Me: Oh My God! I'm so sorry. I hope you and your family are doing as well as can possibly be expected during this truly tough time. Please, if there is anything that a stranger like me can do, let me do it.

Him: Sorry to be a buzzkill.

Me: No! Please! Not at all. If you want to get together, whenever that may be, I'd like to. Or not. Whatever you are feeling.

Him: No, I'm being a buzzkill.

Me: Er, okay, well again, I'm really sorry about your uncle.

Him: It's OK. I'll be seeing him again real soon.

(Pause)

Me: Aaaaaah! What! Dude!

Man-Snatching Etiquette

2010-05-24T15:24:00.006-05:00

TK for now, just in case big brother is watching...

I've Made A Decision

2010-05-18T22:31:00.003-05:00

I deferred the Cali schools; I'm taking chances on the NY waitlists, I'm working on my books (in theory), I am painting (in practice), I have a good paying job and I am working on being happy.

It feels good. It feels right.

And you know what? My apartment, which I love, which is warm and cool all at once, and in a garden and feels like a nice house? It's all mine right now. Which means I work when I want, I play when I want, and I sleep in my bed alone. I take up all the covers, I sleep askew, I wake when I want to, when I'm supposed to, and while I don't yet know how to dream, maybe I know a little bit more how to be.

It's Tuesday, and it's raining but lovely, and I'm no longer counting the days, I guess I'm just living them.

It may not be a corner turned, but it's a pretty good start.

Also, lots and lots of Crystal Light Lemonade and bare feet and brunches have helped. That and I stopped going on all dates that I thought I should.

Well one guy had a five year old child and works at the airport. I think the airport was worse than the rest.

I don't know how long I will be alone, but there is something to be said for being alone, and not having to reason why. No one demands my time, except me. It's kind of wonderful.

There's oil paint on my clothes and no one is complaining. When you're alone, no one complains at all. That, I think, is a plus.

Adventures in Singlehood

2010-05-15T15:17:00.003-05:00

Things I heard myself saying while interacting with those of the opposite sex:

"Wait, you're an art-school dropout who lives in Williamsburg? Wait, hold on, let me get my camera, my grandkids are never gonna believe this."

Waits a beat as would-be suitor stomps off.

"So you don't want to buy me a drink anymore?"

I am good at dating, people. Really good. One of these days I'm going to do it.

Happy Friday

2010-05-14T09:21:00.002-05:00

Things are looking up...

Have an amazing one and I will do the same.

The Joy of Work

2010-05-10T15:13:00.004-05:00

On vacation I had time to think. Too much time. I thought myself into all sorts of stress. Why was a certain thing happening? Why wasn't something else happening? Why did they need me at work so much that they had to interrupt me? Why did others need me so little in my personal life did no one miss me? Why was I obsessed with everyone else in the world?

I took a long bike ride. The winding kind. The lake was blue and the trees were green. It was hot and my bike bumped over broken asphalt on the edge of town, all the roads were white and they went on a long time, up into hills and around slivers of water. It wasn't an hour of the day, it was sun or it was rain, I was hungry or I was asleep, I was running, I was always early and quiet, quiet, quiet.

People talked to me, I talked back. People didn't talk to me, and I didn't say anything either. I read very much. I wrote very little. I thought about what I wanted in this life and I wished it. If it didn't come true right away, I kept wishing.

I'm back at work today and things feel safe. Everything is gray and it goes on a long time. I miss certain people in my life, I miss certain things. But I can't wait for them to miss me, because I have a long way to go, and I have to keep going.

I Am Going On Vacation Alone

2010-05-02T19:57:00.002-05:00

This is frightening. No?

I have never gone on vacation without a friend or boyfriend. I can make fake friends easily, if this were a hostel situation, or a beach situation, but this is truly a no-alcohol, cell-phone-free, limited contact with the outside world vacation.

I hope to write around 30 pages of the new book. I also hope to get a massage every day. I think all they feed us is gruel. Gruel and barley. I will not obsess about work, school or my ex while I am gone. I will kiss no one. I will not stay up all night long watching "Breaking Bad." I will not bum cigarettes, I will not eat beef, I will not wear heels, I will not wear makeup, I will swim in the pool and I will read literature and I will go to sleep by ten PM.

I will paint in my mind, I will not read Gawker, I will not text rando people, I will not do what I will not do.

I will be me, I will be alone. I hope. I make it. I will be here. Wish me luck.

Quote of the Day

2010-04-30T17:36:00.001-05:00

"Time to treat yourself to a new pair of Chucks, kid."

-My dental hygienist upon seeing my blood and paint-stained sneakers

Bless This Mess

2010-04-26T06:32:00.002-05:00

I have been awake since six AM.

I do not believe my body knows what is best for me, I do not believe that it takes care of itself. If this were true in any way, why would I have woken up and not been able to continue sleeping? Why would I be watching and re-watching Breaking Bad while it's still dark out?

I think I have anxiety. I'm not..sure what that means. It means that when I'm on a plane and it hits a patch of turbulence, I finally feel at ease. Because when my chest seizes up, it is finally justified. This is not easy to admit. This is, in fact, very difficult. To feel like your mind is unraveling for reasons unseen. To feel as if you can't trust your emotions (I have found this to be particularly true, I have never, ever been able to trust my emotions, they always have led me to histrionics, have always led me astray, they are figments of imagination and not kernels of truth).

It's raining this morning. I used to sleep best when it rained. This might have been before my dad got sick. Before I was consumed by writing. Before when I was careless, young, my concerns were ridiculous to me now. I'm not sure what my concerns are now, but they seem less ridiculous. They seem to need more concern. I painted a portrait I really liked recently. I could tell the model wanted it. He kept looking at it, commenting on it, smiling at me. Maybe he was trying to pick me up but I don't think that was it. I rarely think that is it any more, and it means nothing more than it doesn't register on me at this time. I am on some sort of strike. A romantic strike. I refuse to believe anyone would want to be with anyone, let alone me. But, back to this portrait. It's oil and my teacher says it's the best one I've ever done in her class. It finally shows the light. I squinted until it was all blurry and I only painted the light parts. I left the dark alone. When I was done the model talked to me, he smiled at me. At another point I would have liked to talk back to him, but not really now.

The paint was wet and it got on my hands. I could tell he wanted something from me, when people do, and they almost always do, they can never keep it a secret, can they? Maybe the painting, maybe a conversation. It was all I could do to smile politely. He wanted something, sure. Something I had. But I wasn't going to give it up, because sometimes I think we all feel we have so little. Happiness is finite, perhaps, we hold on to what we're able to. He kept grinning and I packed up.

I thanked him and went on my way.

Quote of the Day

2010-04-22T13:34:00.004-05:00

Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm (misspelled). The sea is the sea. The old man is an old man. The boy is a boy and the fish is a fish. The shark are all sharks no better and no worse. All the symbolism that people say is shit. What goes beyond is what you see beyond what you know.

-Ernest Hemingway, 1952

I Left My Heart in San Francisco...Figuratively Speaking

2010-04-19T19:06:00.003-05:00

Well, you were right, it was incredibly beautiful and amazing! It was like a big Brooklyn on the beach. It was spitting rain and the waves were crashing, everything was like a green jewel shot through with gray. It was incredibly romantic. And I was alone.

There was a grown-up's BBQ, an awkward glass of wine, laughing around the grill.

There was a crashing on a couch, sharing of playlists, shouting at the T.V. as we waited for the clouds to clear.

There was the hours spent with my second love, the first person I thought I'd marry, and the cold ocean between us. I thought of another life, the one I missed, could I, would I ever reclaim it? He is the only, and I mean only, friend I have in the area. And he. Is. Not. A. Friend.

At best we are neutral, are we? I wondered if he had changed and then he told me, as he reached finally for his ever-buzzing phone, that I needed to be quiet. That he had lied to his current girlfriend and I was his friend "Matt" visiting from out of town. She sounded happy on the other line, trusting. A false happiness. I know it well. That's when I stopped wondering if he had changed.

I walked around alone, had coffee by myself, jittery and with nothing to do, thumbing through the local newspaper, mentally circling all those things I would not, could not do. I was leaving in mere hours and I had done everything I could do in the time allotted. I had met new friends haphazardly, just by trying on a dress, we had been out all night, dancing in a circle, they had already called me. "Move here!" They urged. "We can see you in San Francisco."

I laughed, "You don't even know me!"

"Sure we do, why do we have to know you any more than this, we can tell."

I missed them as soon as I said goodbye. My ride to the airport was a friend in trouble, she and I do know each other and know it well, but she will have moved away by the time I arrive.

Am I running to something, or am I running away?

I got a new job this week. They will pay for 80% of my tuition if I stay in NYC. I got into three schools in California. My ex boyfriend is in California.

I got waitlisted at three schools in New York. My ex boyfriend is in New York. I love them both, want to be near them both, and dually want to be so far away, want to be alone.

Be alone at home, or somewhere all together new? Experience home like I never have, with the perfect job and finally have money and save for a year and then go out to San Francisco, when I'm an inch closer to knowing who I am, when my head is clear, when I've had one more year to work on both my novels, to finish art school once and for all, to write unencumbered?

Or give up the new job, the NY connections and my beautiful apartment and get another roommate, learn how to drive a car again (this is no small feat), and go immediately into debt?

I know, I know, I wanted so badly to go to school. But I want so badly to move with someone. Not that I can't do it alone, I just don't know if I'm quite ready. It's so fun to be single in Brooklyn, it's so comforting. I write instead of go out and I do a good job during the day and I go to the gym and I feel monastic even. I am full of indecision, as always. I could defer and work here until December and then go for a six month backpacking trip. I could.

When you're alone, you can do anything...

Lots to think about today...

Quote of the Day

2010-04-14T13:51:00.001-05:00

Girl: I've got a thing for a drummer who looks like an Alaskan lesbian and I can't tell from his emails if he's asking me out.

Boy: That should be the name of the new LCD Soundsystem album or something.

HA!

School Update A Billion And Two

2010-04-01T19:31:00.003-05:00

Waitlisted at Columbia!

Again, the waitlist queen strikes again...

That's waitlisted at all the NY schools: Columbia, NYU, Brooklyn College

In at: San Fran State and University of San Francisco

Heading to the home stretch now...go with the San Fran Schools or wait it out for my one true love, Brooklyn College?

Visiting San Fran the city (for the first time) next weekend. If I fall in love then maaaaaybe.

No clue what to do. But feeling pretty darn awesome because the superfancy magazine I work for asked me to stay on full-time for enough money that would allow me to quit all my other freelance jobs and do all my writing on my books instead as I prepare for school. AND work ends at 6 unlike all other jobs that keep going on at 1 am on a Tuesday.

Lots of things to think about today...

WTF: Scarface School Play

2010-03-31T14:08:00.001-05:00

Whatever this viral video is selling, I will so buy ten. All is right (wrong?) in the world after seeing this!!

I am a Music Journalist, Not a Groupie

2010-03-27T09:09:00.003-05:00

I am this close to giving up on music for good. Last night I was chilling with a really great band and their decent-enough manager and I left to check out another band downstairs.

I came back up, the guys who I had been talking to were off somewhere else, and someone in the entourage who has already been rude to me told me as soon as I sat down that I needed to go, that he and the other non-band members in the room wanted privacy. What was I supposed to do? Stand outside with the other girls hoping to catch a glimpse of the band as they came back in and sleep with them? I was there to GET A QUOTE. I am trying to sell an article on these people! And this dude who has nothing to do with them (or if he does, he's not doing his job right because he thinks I'm there to make out with them?!) unceremoniously kicked me out like I was going to stand in the hallway until they were done doing whatever it was they were doing. Until he DEIGNED to let me back in. Well screw that. I got my coat and split.

He said it really rudely. I skipped the afterparty that the band had invited me to and left without saying goodbye to the band or the manager because of this jerk.

And for a long time I thought this was just bunk, but now in music, I know it's true. This never, ever would have happened if I were a fat guy with a notepad instead of a girl in heels. I wasn't taken seriously for a minute. It really, really bummed me out, and I am really close to giving up on music, because this is the second time in as many months that I have been treated like a groupie instead of a journalist by PR people or band-handlers or DJs. And it really hurts my feelings, and it really hurts my articles and this kind of shit DOES NOT HAPPEN WHEN I WRITE ABOUT FOOD.

I hate music today, and maybe for a long time. Last night was a total bust and I went to the show without a friend in sight and left without a friend in sight and I really thought that I was okay with that, but some days, I don't think I'm okay at all.

I was just treated like a piece of meat. And it's starting to wear on me that I have to put on a happy face and act like it's okay, and that I have to bow down to have the opportunity to hang out with a band. They have the opportunity to talk to me! I'm the one writing about them. Sheesh. I have to tee hee and xo my way through yet another email thanking everyone for letting me even meet them. As if I'm going to finish the article now! As if I'm going to spend one more minute pitching them to magazines who don't really care. Why should I put my neck on the line for any of these people when they can't even be cordial? When they act like they are doing me a favor by letting me fawn over them and make them poetic?!

Makes me wish I'd written their manager something nasty. But then you know, I'd be the dumb bitch who couldn't handle it! It's really driving me crazy right now. Really, really crazy.

Unbelievable and Truly Offensive Quote of the Day

2010-03-24T12:50:00.002-05:00

Courtesy of my best friend from boarding school...her husband's name is Greg.

Warning: You will most likely be offended if you are a human being.

------
"One of Greg's coworkers has a mentally disabled 20 year old cousin. One day he called his mom at work and told her he had caught a troll. Statements like this were pretty typical, so she told him that she would check it out when she got home. He called again a few hours later still excited about the troll he had caught, and she again said he could show her when she came home. So, she came home and immediately he told her he had the troll in his closet. He took her to his room and there was a chair jammed under the closet handle. He opened up the closet and he had a midget Jehovah's witness in there. I could not stop laughing when Greg told me this. I think this is the funniest true story I have ever heard."

I know I can't laugh at this, but I can't stop.

School Update #45,347

2010-03-22T22:18:00.002-05:00

On the waitlist at NYU.

I am the waitlist queen! Come on, someone drop off the waitlist of a NYC school and give it to me. Otherwise I am off to San Francisco where I know just about no one (my lovely bf from college in Seattle barely counts as my driving is so terrible she will have to come down to see me every single time, and I will make her!)

In the interim I am contemplating two very loaded questions:

1. Is it ever okay to date one of your ex's friends? Like if the friend was never that good a friend of theirs and you never had any inclination until you just recently saw each other again and you thought, well I liked his friend...why not this? It seems icky, but I think I am running out of people that I like enough to date. I am impossible!!

2. Sex with an ex is always a terrible idea right? Even if you can emotionally handle it? Even if you think one day you might get back together, or not get back together, as long as you're clear and they are clear and it's just fun.

Okay I know the answers to both of these is NO NO NO. But just wanted to ask. With my latest best friend in Chicago and no boyfriend/best friend to speak of in the close vicinity, I start to ask these crazy questions to myself. That's where you, the awesomely un-crazy, come in. Help me guys!

School Update

2010-03-16T12:06:00.001-05:00

Gah! On the WAITLIST of my number one choice, Brooklyn College.

Will have to sit here biting my nails for a while, but the program rocks and even a waitlist is a bit of validation that maybe, someday, I might rock, too.

(Fingers crossed....)

Relationship Advice

2010-03-14T21:27:00.003-05:00

Not that I'm in one any more! But it came up that the boy, the last one, let's call him Boy, could not deal with the existence of other boys, lets keep them lowercase, because they were no threat to Boy, who stays capitalized because he WAS capitalized, in my life anyhow.

So Boy hates boys. I can understand how he would, as some of those boys used to be capitalized themselves (I dated them), but now they are just errant friends who I may run into once in a while or who text me once in a while, which enrages Boy who thinks that at any given moment I will run off into the sunset with other boys. I absolutely would not, but any communication with them, even if unprovoked, was thought to be very disrespectful to him. Which I get, and I'm sorry for, but in a world when you're 28 and you've had love in your life before, is it really fair to pretend like no one else ever existed? And can't you ever just be friends with someone? Or can't you ever just harmlessly flirt with someone? I find myself doing this all the time. I flirted with the mail-lady the other day. It's just my way. But it really hurt Boy, and I could never really understand why. I kind of dug it when other girls liked Boy. It made me proud.

Didn't make Boy proud. He hated it. Thought I was somehow doing it just to make him look bad.

Plus some of these boys I work with (never dated them), and Boy thought any communication with them would eventually turn into flirting or someone would get a crush on someone. But Boy spent so much time worrying about it when it wasn't true. And I would try to get him to get over it, but it just didn't happen. In a world filled with boys, how could Boy feel like number one? In the end, he just couldn't feel that way, which leads me to ask, if you are dating someone and that person is insecure about it, but you love them, is it ever okay just to stop talking to several people in your life?

And if that person you dated is no longer in your life, is it okay to go back to talking to those people? Or does the very act that you waited to maintain friendships or flirtships or even harmless text-buddy status until you were single prove that you were doing wrong in the first place by having any boys who were mildly attractive in your life?

Notice Boy is never jealous of unattractive boys.

Harumph.

First Acceptance

2010-03-08T23:53:00.001-06:00

In at San Fran State for a Fiction MFA!

And with the possibility of getting a big fat scholarship IF I say yes by end of week.

But I have 9 more schools to hear from?! And want to stay in New York I thought...(Brooklyn, I'm talking to you).

Here's hoping I know more by the end of the week.

Woo hoo finally some good news!

Inspired Quote of The Day

2010-03-08T14:08:00.001-06:00

"A future full of certain constant rejection doesn't mean that those feelings of hurt and inadequacy have to be stuffed and denied. We're all nervous and are finding comfort in commiseration. I think it's been said before on this board that we lose too many artists to finding their desperately needed comfort elsewhere--drugs, suicide, retail jobs. Here is community--take it or leave it. We hope you'll take it."

-Courtney, on the MFA Acceptance Blog, as we all cry ourselves sick about getting in or not getting in to school.

Pretty good quote about life too, now that I think of it...

Just ReDiscovered My Old Faves

2010-03-07T16:47:00.001-06:00

Remember how much I used to post about these guys? I totally forgot about them for two years. Now I can't believe I stayed away so long.

PS. Don't watch whilst eating.

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Uh Oh, planning my next great escape

2010-03-07T15:19:00.003-06:00

When trauma happens...I leave.

Am anxiously awaiting hearing positive word from agents and schools (don't worry, I'll tell you when I hear anything good and won't tell you if I hear anything bad) and the waiting is K-I-L-L-I-N-G me. Doesn't help that I'm bearing this burden alone this time as the boy, well...that's a very tricky situation. There's just a girl. Me. And I am crawling the walls.

I think I want to go away on another epic adventure. One where I write a lot, one where I meet a lot of people, one where I come away having a lot to say. Right now I'm silenced by the silence. Best friends have moved away, boys have broken down because of the economy, big beautiful apartment all to myself. Which would be great if I were the kind of person who liked to be still. I'll be plenty still when I'm dead.

Must. Stop. Looking. At. Southeast. Asian. Airfare.

And instead look at an empty email inbox? No, that can't be the answer either.

Le sigh.

I'm In Miami, B*tch

2010-02-28T21:57:00.006-06:00

That's the only song still playing everywhere in South Beach and YES my friend Annabelle and I just bought matching shirts that said so after burning our noses whilst laying out at the ritziest hotel pool in Miami.

We snuck in. We can afford a trashy shirt that says we're here, but we can't be here, really.

It's okay. We've got the proof. Uneven tan lines, neon shirts and empty wallets as we trudge through the sludge on our way back home.

Mind's in Miami. Body's back in NYC. Pics to come, after the mountain of work emails is hacked in half. Okay by 10% at least...

The Ritz Carlton: Brooklyn Edition

2010-02-22T22:13:00.002-06:00

I am in love...with my apartment. It's the groundfloor of a brownstone and has a patio and an office and a sub-zero fridge and wood floors and is littered with antiques because my parents are letting me borrow them. Swirled wood, speckled marble, granite tops and soft lighting. Crisp starched linens and plush oriental rugs. Even the bathroom is fun to be in. If it weren't so weird, I might hang out in there. Blog in there. Write in there. Sleep in the tub.

And I have a fireplace (that works!). I would use it if it wouldn't melt the flat-screen mounted above, so I've got something fake in there with a warm glow that throws off heat and crackles. It's so fun being here, sometimes I forget to leave. All day Sunday was spent in the house after my incredibly exhausting weekend that I brought upon myself: cooking a boef daube for a dinner party, then scrubbing my house from top to bottom, then trying on a hundred outfits, then proceeding to down 6 bottles of wine with my workmates who I am still semi-nervous around because they are all serious music writers and I am a serious writer but not a serious music writer per se and they are a bunch of boys who might be called hipsters (not to their faces)...and at one point I had to ward off the advances of one of them by burying my face in a bag of salt and vinegar chips in an effort to disgust him out of advancing towards me (try it! sometimes it works!). It was a potluck, it was all boys and me, and of course it was my suggestion to throw it for some "family bonding."

Sometimes you never see these things coming. We are closer, and now it's awkward. Oh well.

They had a good time, I awoke with a horrible cough, and all the wonderful smells of the night before clung to the air--the crackling fried chicken and silken fennel sauce, the wine-braised beef stew, the salty cauliflower with raisins, the gooey mustard carrots, warm apple-raspberry pie and plum wine. It was an absolute disaster to see this in the morning, something that was so pure the night before, before we all started eating it. In the cold harsh light of morning, it was all made worse by the fact that my boyfriend was lying on the floor, sleeping in his underwear (he wasn't even part of the party, he arrived afterwards to help me "clean"--yeah right!). No glasses were broken and no one punched eachother, I think this finally qualifies as an actual adult party.

I would say that someone should have vomited to make it a good time, but my boyfriend actually did. Again, he did not come to the party. He vomited smelling the food after it'd been served and sitting in crusty pots for a half hour. I didn't take offense. I was already facedown on the bed in not my underwear, but my entire outfit, including my shoes.

This is not how you treat the Ritz-Carlton. We did anyway.

If You Thought Your Valentine's Day Sucked

2010-02-15T17:06:00.002-06:00

Read on the terrible tale that won some bragging rights on Gawker and maybe a Valium...

" On February 12 of 2001, the mother of my then- boyfriend passed away at the young age of 42 due to drug use, malnourishment and a complete inability to take care of herself despite all the help offered and all the hospital stays/surgeries paid for by the state. In general she had led a nasty, repulsive life from which many, MANY people including myself tirelessly attempted to rescue her through the years. There's no way to sugarcoat this- even without the drug issues, all of her other behaviors made her the epitome of white trash. (Curiously, one such white trash episode- I kid you not- involved water with HAM a la J-WOWW years before J-WOWW was a household name.) I should mention here that not long after this woman's death her son, my first love with whom I had been with for SEVEN years and helped put through college, turned out to be a cheating, lying thief who was selling drugs out of our attic. (I know....shocking! But I was young, naive and had the type of Messiah complex that only comes with first love.)

Also, I should mention that a week before his mom passing, a female "friend" of his died at 26 from an undetected cancer and we had made the 4 1/2 hour drive to his hometown of Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania (a town renowned for its lone gay bar repeatedly being burned down and then reopened under new ownership. Over and over and over again. Burn, reopen, burn, reopen which should give you the idea of the area's general mentality). The viewing for that friend of his caused many people to throw up in the alley behind the funeral home because whoever did the deceased's make up hadn't covered her autopsy scars. And yes, in retrospect I figured out that this "friend" I helped him mourn was another girl with whom he had been cheating on me at some point. But I digress.

So his mom kicks the bucket. I have the awful job of driving to his work to tell him.and then pack all our stuff up and leave to make the 4 1/2 hour drive to Bumblefuck. Again. We don't leave until midnight. I wind up driving the whole way because even though this was expected and he truly wasn't close to her, he is sort of lost in thought and not able to concentrate plus I'm not a bitch- who is going to make someone drive that just lost their mom even if they weren't close to her at all? Not I. The snow comes down. I almost hit a deer. Trying to stay awake on the frozen, winding mountain roads is nearly impossible. We get to his maternal grandparents' house which is where we always stayed because his mom was such a mess. I should mention here that his father was a career petty criminal who was out of the picture since my boyfriend was a baby. Oh, and his step-grandfather? He was both a cop and a perv who through the years would constantly sexually harass me. (Each time I confronted him/scolded/yelled ...etc. etc. etc. but he seemed to have some sort of dirty old man asshole amnesia and kept on doing it.)

With hardly any sleep, I wake up on February 13th to learn that the funeral arrangements had been made without even consulting my boyfriend, her only son and oldest child. Much to my horror I learn that his mom will be getting the cheapest package possible which is literally being placed in a cardboard box. Which would be one thing if she was going to be cremated immediately, but no, a viewing for immediate family was scheduled for the next day which of course was Valentine's Day. As if that wasn't horrid enough, I learned that his mother didn't so much as own one decent dress or suit in which to be buried. This troubled me greatly and I quietly offered to go purchase something nice for her. I was told NO, they would "make do" with what she had.

It was at that point that Pervy Cop Grandpa told us that he had made sure he ran an obituary in the town paper so that maybe if her ex-husband, my boyfriend's father, the career petty criminal who apparently had several warrants out saw it, he might show up at the funeral home out of guilt or just curiosity. Only instead of allowing him to pay his respects, there would be a sting operation to arrest him on his outstanding theft warrants. Which of course was not the time or place but despite my urgings, was still the outcome for which Pervy Cop Grandpa hoped, even going so far as to wring his pervy cop hands in gleeful anticipation.

Which brings us to Valentine's Day- the day of the actual viewing. After an hour trying to convince my boyfriend's 16 year-old single mom sister that perhaps wearing denim overalls and a matching T-shirt emblazoned with Winnie the Pooh was not the best choice of attire for her mother's viewing, I gave up and we all piled in the car- myself, my boyfriend, Disney Overalls, her baby, Pervy Cop Grandpa and my boyfriend's grandmother who had spent the better part of her life trying to keep her daughter safe from the demons that plagued her and was genuinely mourning her loss but in a very, non-showy way but also seemed relieved that she was gone.

It should be noted here that my boyfriend was wearing a suit which caused each of his relatives-even the Grandma in mourning- to exclaim, "Why are you so dressed up?" while Pervy Cop Grandpa took a keen interest in "how different my body looked in dress pants and a nice blouse." Fucking ewwwww.

We get to the funeral home and I am BRACING myself for the spectacle I know awaits me- i.e. the sight of the deceased in the aforementioned cardboard box presumably clad in her standard outfit of acid washed jeans and any one of the Camel cigarette T-shirts she got for free with all the Camel points she accumulated. But alas, as it turns out that would have been a welcome sight. Yes, she was in the cardboard coffin but in lieu of jeans and a t-shirt (and with the COMPLETE ABSENCE OF MAKE-UP OR EMBALMING FLUID ...."Why spend the money?" I was told) she was clad in a nightgown purchased from the Salvation Army that can only be described as a cast-off from the wardrobe department on the set of the original "Night of the Living Dead." (They're coming to get yoooou, Bah-bar-ah.) Flannel, high frilly neckline, floral pattern- it was as if we stumbled upon the original character inspiration for the cryptkeeper from HBO's "Tales from the Crypt." The sickly, gaunt, white-as-a-sheet, stiff-as-a-board drug-ridden corpse who was to be perpetually ready for a long night's slumber lying in a giant cardboard box was a ghoul incarnate. (To this day, I have nightmares about this shit.)

Of course despite my shock at the scene before me, I doted on my boyfriend, trying to portray the perfect balance of warmth and support without being clingy or patronizing- this was not an easy feat but somehow I managed to pull it off.

And so they bid their farewells while I concentrated on not throwing up. No one cried or showed any emotion which given the sort of person the deceased was, was no surprise though it was still... unsettling. They all just stared at the body- not even with reverence- more like no one could take their eyes off the macabre, physical results of the "cheapest package" purchased at the funeral home. I imagine the way I felt was the same way hostages must feel when they are being held at gunpoint against their will- trying desperately not to believe that what is happening before them is really happening but knowing it is and being helpless to stop it. Meanwhile, much to Pervy Cop Grandpa's pervy cop dismay, his sting operation did not go down and thus his dreams of landing in Bumblefuck's Policemen Hall of Fame were shot in the non-blink of a zombie's eye.

Following this nightmarish display of non-mourning at which no one, not even some ashen-faced, lurchy funeral director officiated in any way or offered so much as a Unitarian prayer or the tossing of a dead carnation on the cardboard box while yelling "Hey! Good luck in the Afterlife, lady!" we were ushered back to the grandparents' house for a repass of day-old lunch meats, raisin bread, beets and Cheetos.

But alas, it was *still* Valentine's Day! And in the spirit of that, the grieving Grandma gifted me a stuffed animal, which when pressed issued robotic, comical sayings about love and romance. Given that death, horror and and the complete distortion of respect and etiquette still loomed in the air like a fart in an airplane bathroom, when the little plush frog or penguin clutching a heart-or whatever the fuck animal he was- said ANYTHING, it sounded eerie, ominous. menacing and serial killer-like. He was a souvenir of my despair and quite frankly scared the crap out of me. So off he went to live in a dumpster behind a deli. Which I suppose was par for the course and at that point, the least of my worries.

As if my mental state and any semblance of being ok wasn't obliterated enough it was decided that we would all immediately go "clean" out the apartment of the deceased, i.e. pillage all her shit in the hopes of finding some treasure she forgot she owned and thus hadn't been able to pawn for smack before going to meet her maker. Off we went!

Now this was in the day before text messaging, blackberries and iPhones were de rigueur. Lucky for me, before making the drive, I had alerted 2 friends of mine- my "top gays" at the time about what had happened. (I believe we were supposed to visit that weekend and not knowing when we would return, I wanted to let them know about the change in plans.)

I don't know if it was the tone of my voice on the voicemail I left them (and just think- this was before I became aware that I was unwittingly co-starring in the real life equivalent of a David Lynch film) or just the kindness of their hearts but without even telling us, they made the 4 1/2 hour trip out there which took longer because of snow.

They used an old-school pay phone to call Information and get the number of the police station. Since they knew about Pervy Cop Grandpa they called the police station and no doubt weaving some supernatural gay magic, they were able to get the home phone number for Pervy Cop Grandpa's house where we were staying and then contact Pervy Cop Grandpa who gave them the address of the dead mom's apartment.

Sans GPS as this was long before such technology was available, they tracked us down for the sole purpose of....taking us out for Valentine's Day dinner to help alleviate us from our weariness and overall distress. That's right- the gays descended through snow (on the day they should have been giving each other back-rubs in front of their roaring fire while arguing who loved who more as their 6 Boston Terriers fought for the best cuddle spot on the couch and witnessed them exchanging cashmere sweaters from Barney's) into the same town where the lone gay bar was routinely torched and re-opened, tracked us down and fed us a proper hot meal. God/Buddha/Allah/Liza Minnelli love them. If that isn't friendship, I don't know what is.

Of course, the only restaurants in Bumblefuck are all of the chain variety but I can assure you, never was I was so thrilled to eat boneless buffalo wings and mozzarella sticks on Valentine's Day in my life, which was the form in which they offered us their condolences and I happily accepted.

The contrast of the shiny, red foil decorations everywhere in the restaurant was striking and almost startling compared to the grim setting in which we had spent the day. We raised our over-sized, over-priced sugary cocktails and my beloved gays in shining armor toasted to Love. That was it. A toast to Love, the single word with no elaboration, context or explanation. My heart sang with the sort of joy a girl can only get from being rescued from a nightmare-inducing fate by two dashing gays in a snowstorm offering comfort and salty, fried carbs.

And for all we had been through in the last 48 hours, considering all the nurturing and love I had given my boyfriend despite the grotesque, petrifying circumstances in which I had found myself, he didn't so much as utter a thank-you much less whisper an "I love you" - not even when one of the hero gays went to pay the bill while the other went to clear the snow off the car. He had never really been in in shock or truly mourning since he was not close to his mom and by this time his mood could even be described as jovial - he merrily had taken over the pillaging of his mom's home and then had become the life of the party during our Applebees double date. Granted, I still didn't expect anything remotely Valentine's-like from him in terms of a gift or really any attention paid to it, but a quick kiss or thank-you would have been nice as I was tirelessly hauling out Hefty Bag #26 filled with cigarette butts, liquor and prescription bottles, mysteriously stained bits of unidentified material and every copy of The National Enquirer since 1982.

A few weeks later, my boyfriend made the trip back to Bumblefuck to retrieve his mother's ashes (I was none too happy that her urn would soon reside in my living room.) Creepily enough, the ashes had been divided into two urns- one for him and one for Disney Overalls.

A couple months after that but before the cheating, thievery and drug factory was discovered (again- I was verrry young, naive and in love) I came home one night to find my boyfriend had opened the urn. And for reasons I still don't know in a scene that still makes me shudder when I think about it, he was quietly running his fingers through his mother's ashes. We never spoke of it, but from that twisted moment on, having opened Pandora's box of evil dust, the feng shui of our home became totally fucked up and our relationship crumbled at a record-setting pace. I soon discovered his indiscretions and criminal behavior and kicked him out.

At the end of the painful, raw moving out process, I came home one day and as I opened the door I could sense that the apartment was...changed. The sunlight from the windows was filtering through the curtains differently and there was a feeling of general calm, relief and happiness that had been missing for months. I immediately knew why. The urn that held half a ghoul minus the particles that I'm sure had gotten lodged underneath my ex's fingernails was gone. Happy days were here again!

Needless to say, I vacuumed like a woman possessed and then made a pitcher of margaritas and invited my top gays to come celebrate. They happily obliged and we all cried laughing while recalling The St. Valentine's Massacre of Good Taste and Decorum while toasting my future. That was a most excellent evening though Valentine's Day has never quite been the same for me. And Christ on a cracker, how could it possibly ever be?"

What's the policy on...

2010-02-08T16:14:00.002-06:00

Being a writer is so weird and difficult and strange. Being a freelancer even more so. I've spent the better part of a week gently harassing a magazine that I pitched an idea to in DECEMBER. They said yes and it would run in March. Since then I went ahead, did the interview, wrote the draft, re-pitched as a blanket email went out for pitches and cc:ed everyone else important in case someone else would get back to me. I called the editor who said we'd do it. I emailed. I emailed someone else. And then I emailed all three together and said, hey what's going on with this pitch?

I haven't heard anything back. My friend says go sell it elsewhere. It was my idea and I did all the work. But it feels sleazy to sell it elsewhere. That said, the aforementioned magazine just hasn't gotten back to me, and I think I've been pretty cool about it. I mean, it's over 2 months without a hard deadline and contract. They said they'd make it work but I haven't heard anything for a while. I dunno why they won't get back to me--maybe they want a "more capable" writer to write a longer piece. I don't think it's the content because it's about a topic that is time-sensitive and about a band people really want to read about (plus their album drops right around when the issue would). So I guess I go elsewhere? I mean do I have to tell the first people? And I know this is not important, but why oh why don't people just say "no" in the first place? It would have felt much better to hear a "we're not into your style these days" instead of waiting around like a jackass and promising it to this band and having to call and email and beg for someone just to give me a deadline.

Writing sucks and rejection is involved at every turn. Why I chose it, I'll never know.

Quote of the Day: You Just Got Fresh Princed

2010-02-01T20:04:00.000-06:00

For The Record, I Think The Smell of Axe Deodorant is Hot

2010-01-30T16:15:00.002-06:00

I know. I know. But it smells like Drakkar Noir or something, and when I was 12 I thought that hot older guys wore that. That and Cool Water. I'm sorry world. I really think it smells great. Can we not be a civilized people and admit that when we were all tweens, we were drawn to trashy things because they seemed adult, and we had no idea what the hell that was?

Before you rush to judge (okay you already have), check the following article on Jezebel today, about how we navigate deodorant from teens to now. Ladies, if you hate Axe, then you hate someone just because of their deodorant choice. That's mean. Understandable, but mean. Article below...Malibu Musk mention...holla! Oh I thought it smelled soooo good and if I wore it I would be immediately 17 and in the passenger's seat of a red convertible, driving out of Connecticut and into Beverly Hills...(this can still happen right?)
----
"I was approximately 12 years old when my mother bought me my first stick of deodorant. She gave it to me right before I entered sixth grade, and it was, at the time, the most grown-up product I'd ever owned.

Looking back, I realize that my mother probably tossed a stick of deodorant my way because puberty had brought the joys of b.o. to my life and she didn't want me entering sixth grade as "that girl who stinks," but at the time I thought it was her way of acknowledging that I wasn't a little kid anymore; I was a lady, who needed lady things, you see, like deodorant and a training bra and face wash and such. It didn't matter that I had no breasts or zits to speak of: it was the ownership of these products, the physical reminders that I was entering the realm of the grown-up world, that really mattered.

In today's New York Times, Jan Hoffman explores the world of the youngest Axe deodorant wearers—tween boys—and notes that the deodorant really represents "masculinity in a can," a way for boys to assert their manhood through the smells their female classmates have come to associate with older men. It's not a new phenomenon by any means; when I was in middle school, the stench of Drakkar Noir, often swiped from an older brother's bedroom, wafted down the hallways, and for the most part, we all thought it was totally dreamy until we grew up to associate it with, well, those dudes who still wear Drakkar Noir.

It's easy to scorn Axe deodorant and it's dumbass depictions of masculinity—I do it nearly every weekend, for crying out loud—but there's one line in Hoffman's piece that really broke my heart: when asked by a teacher why he had to wear the scent, a junior high student replied: "I have to have it, Ms. G., because I don't have the money to dress the right way. This is all I can afford." As a can of Axe costs less than $10, it's a way for young men to fit in and give the girls something they supposedly like without breaking the bank.

One of my New Year's resolutions is to be kinder to teenagers: it's way too easy to mock them without taking the two seconds necessary to remember how terrible and scary and complicated life was at that age, not only because of the effects of puberty, but because adults are constantly pointing out how much you have to learn and how far you have to go without really giving you an opportunity to actually learn and or go before they start yelling at you for doing it wrong. My instant reaction to this article was to just write "Teenage Boys Attempt To Stop Smelling Bad By Smelling Worse," which is a bit jerky and rather unfair, and doesn't really take into account the fact that many of us, myself included, doused ourselves in Debbie Gibson-inspired perfumes in order to feel more grown up at the age when being a kid or being an adult both seem somehow impossible.

And though I do find the Axe-ification of masculinity to be troubling, I'd guess that most of these tweens will move past their deodorant obsessions as they mature. Probably. Maybe. Most of us have moved on from our days of Baby Soft and Electric Youth and Malibu Musk, no? I don't think every 11-year-old boy who Axe-ifies is instantly transformed into a misogynistic douche, just as I don't think every 11-year-old girl who puts on a bit of eyeshadow is booking a ticket to Tramp Town. Adolescence is a strange and smelly time: sometimes, you just want the assurance that whenever adulthood does arrive, you'll at least be somewhat prepared. And that you won't be "that girl who stinks." Thanks, Mom."

For Tween Boys, Masculinity In A Spray Can [NYTimes]

The Best Craigslist Ad Ever

2010-01-24T21:39:00.003-06:00

Sometimes I troll them when I'm bored, looking for free trampolines or drum-circle classes or knitting groups or used books for sale.

And sometimes I love to look at the "missed connections" site, not because I ever have any myself, but I hope to witness one happening someday. A boy looks at a girl. A girl smiles at boy. Their eyes meet, but the subway stops and one has to leave. It's so hard to meet someone, and now we have to deal with the effin 2/3 train.

And ladies and gentleman, I present to you the best Missed Connections Ad I've ever seen.

"You Heard Me Fart....m4w - 35 (North)"

Yesterday was the most embarassing day of my life. I am so ashamed.
I had no idea that you were sitting at your desk when I unleashed a nasty Taco Bell fart that I was holding back all day.
I just could not keep that dirty old man in my stomach any longer.
And to make matters worse I yelled out, " La Cucaracha !"

When I passed your cubicle and saw you sitting there, I died a thousand deaths. But you just kept reading.
How considerate.
When I had the courage to return, I noticed that two of the windows were open.

I have always thought that you were a hottie and dreamed of taking you out to dinner. But that will never happen now.
Now you know that I am just a slyme ball. A creature with no consideraion for people.

I was told that you called out today.
I hope you are well.

Ahahahhaha!

Corporate Awkwardness - Making Friends With The Cube Next Door

2010-01-11T17:15:00.003-06:00

Hey friends, I'm back in a corporate office for the time being (look, the unemployment benefits runneth dry and ye old writerly jobs pay squat) and therefore subject to office culture and excel spreadsheets once more. Huh huh, I said "spread."

So for some reason I have the only non-creative job in a creative department, as I am filling in for my lovely friend who is out on maternity leave. Someone remind me to block her on facebook for this.

So the work is somehow both boring AND hard. I didn't think something could be capable of both things at once, but hey, here we are. Kind of like when Bart Simpson said he didn't think it was physically possible for something to simultaneously suck AND blow.

But, I sit next to the art department! And they are cool (of course, has anyone ever been in the art department of anything who wasn't totally hilarious and amazing?)! And I want to be friends with them because they blast songs like Eddie Murphy "Boogie In Your Butt" and sing along and have Christmas lights and sometimes include me in their jokes (it just happened as I was writing this) even though I don't yet know their names.

Anyway, I am trying to make friends with them. If you have a suggestion better than me going over there and asking if they want to be friends with me, I'd love to hear it. I'm only here for three months, I have to expedite bonding immediately!

This Truth Is Making My Life As A Music Writer Quite Hard

2010-01-10T14:51:00.002-06:00

Best summation about why one of my jobs is so impossible, made in the comments of Gawker:

"The best thing about the current state of "indie" is that starting about the time The Strokes and The White Stripes and all those bands hit the scene, the universe starting folding in on itself. It was no longer a scene of consisting of a handful of bands at any given moment. Suddenly they were popping up left and right on a weekly timetable. As pointed out above, "indie" means nothing anymore. Just about any genre of music you can imagine can be classified as such. And, best of all, the waves of backlash now come so quickly that you can't even tell if something is hip or if it's already passé before it even began. While this seems like a horrifying thing to happen, it's really the most liberating of all possible occurrences. It's harder and harder for people to define their "coolness" by the music they listen to because no matter who you like, somebody even cooler (or less cool?) than you will mock you for liking it. So now we're stuck with just listening to what we genuinely enjoy. Which is how it's supposed to be. And the timing couldn't be better. There are more interesting bands out there today than at any given moment in pop music history. If this were the 80's or the 90's I would probably be forced to love Vampire Weekend because there would really only be a few bands even remotely possible to like. But now there are hundreds. I can just admit I don't care about them much and move on, and know that there are so many fantastic options to try and always something new to explore. And Vampire Weekend will work for a lot of people, and I'm happy for those people."

NSFW: Oh My God

2010-01-07T22:08:00.001-06:00

The best part is the couple talking and dying of laughter.

On A Break-Up : Quote of the Year

2010-01-06T22:54:00.001-06:00

"You want to stay? That’s staying out of convenience. Because if you stay, and for as long as you stay in this home, my home, then all the things you said will be just that. What you said. But when you leave, they will immediately become what you did. And you will have forever done it."

Aaaaand We're Back

2010-01-05T16:16:00.003-06:00

A little jumbled static today.

Happy New Decade, and many days late! I will now be updating this blog much more because I have an office job in addition to my music jobs and book writing jobs and rainbow-kitten-catching jobs (an idiot can dream!).

See, the office begets blog-writing. That's when I was all over this thang (check my archives from 2006--they RULED). And blogs and gossip and music and websites are what I like to read while sipping overpriced Asian noodle soup on my lunch hour in front of this blasted screen (this is my treat, my trade for taking a full-time, temporary magazine job in Midtown. I will eat soup, and I will eat it A LOT. You know, I'm really seeing why old people like soup. I'm on the wrong side of twenty-five, three years on the wrong side of it (did you also think you'd be dead by now when you were teenaged and knew EVERYTHING there was to know?), and man oh man how it soothes my bones. I can see why oldies eat soup and toast and complain. Because it's awesome, that's why.)

So what's new with you, dear diary, dear readers? Unfulfilled January wishes? Me too!

Here's the listsicle, here's what I want/here's what's going on:

1. I want to talk to you about my relationships like besties, like we used to. No, not my professional relationships or my sense of self, the dirt with the boy(s). I have gone through some good ones in our time together, yours and mine. And while the greatest of you have never met me, ALL THOSE BOYS READ THIS BLOG. Damn them! The crushes, the heartbreakers, the heartbroken, they all know. So I'd like to talk about my hopes, and dreams, and fears and my insanely moody feelings about all of them, past and current, and yet I cannot. Time to bring back "Annabella," a conglomerate of girls and myself who I spoke of on ye old Almost Literary back in the Aughts. Anabella has some stories to tell, about international DJs and crazy tattoos, about her live-in perfect boyfriend, about her affair with an older celebrity, and she has some quotes of the day. Good ones. We will discuss.

2. I want an agent for my book. It's good, I swear. If you have an agent who is taking clients, or work in the lit biz and would like to read what I've got, please let me know and leave a comment here!

3. All of my friends have abandoned me. Okay, they've abandoned New York. I am making new ones and that means more girl date stories. Why don't they make an e-harmony for girlfriends?! I would pay dearly for this service. Yeah, I'd pay for friends, want to fight about it?

4. I am starting to be offered some full-time jobs (kinda, sorta). After cobbling together freelance work for over a year, I'm kind of into the working at midnight on Sunday routine. It also lets me keep taking my art classes. But until I hear about where I did and didn't get into schools in April (and if anything does or does not happen with my book until then, I also need money). Stay a free bum or a caged suit? I never really fit in with either...

I have more...but I will have to think...

The Last Essay I Ever Wrote For Applications

2009-12-23T15:24:00.002-06:00

When you go do it like this, they know you're spent. 13 down, no more to go, sorry Columbia, for this:

Dear Columbia University

When I started my critical paper for entrance to your program, I began to cheat. I had in my possession a gently-worn copy of The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel. It’s edged in red and white, and still bears the purchase sticker from where I bought it (Borders on the Upper West Side, a steal at fifteen dollars plus tax). I adore it. But more, it was published in the past ten years, and in my genre—fiction! I told this to myself as I happily re-read on the lurching subway, fingering the pages, trying to be stoic when I felt the pangs her sentences invoked. I formulated grand plans. And then I re-read your clearly printed instructions on what we were to write.

Alas, the stories in the first three quarters of the book were not published in the last ten years, never mind written then, and so they could not count. What she wrote which I thought most spoke to me was what she wrote when she was my age, and I had a response to it all right. How she changed, and how she changed me. What it all meant. It would have made a great critical essay, in my mind.

But it’s The Dog of The Marriage that qualifies, and it is that which is pertinent to this essay, and now I realize, most pertinent to me. How to begin? With the depiction of rapes, the fear every day at being a woman, with the long shores of shuttered lake houses? With the seasons that followed, the dogs that arrived, with the husbands that left? There is endless departure, departures without permission, pervasive in her stories. Each loss flows lyrically into the next, as if each were a chapter in a well-crafted novel. A novel of loss—of love, life, youth, beauty, summer. There is sexual violence, both terrifying and thrilling. The narrator—whoever she is, Hempel, a collection of facets, her friends and my imagination—speaks the same language no matter where she arrives.

She is surrounded by people, by animals, by machines, and she is alone, with a trowel, in a man’s shirt. She is alone even in the arms of her lover as she invents a lifetime of sexual fantasies for a man who will not love in “Offertory.” She is alone as she watches the revolving door of suitors in her widowed father’s life, and when she and he argue, without words, on what time means in “The Afterlife.” She is alone as she dips the pregnancy wick into the crystal scotch glass as she recalls her favorite film and confuses who is the ghost in the movie and in her own life in “The Uninvited.” Sometimes she is irate when alone, as she is when penning the parking ticket rebuttal in “Reference #388475848-5.” Sometimes she is quiet when alone, when she remembers her mother’s death and looks upon her x-ray in the doctor’s office in “What Are The White Things?” She is on the wrong side of fifty at each moment alone. There are pets that nuzzle and boxed turtles that die on nets spread over strawberries, there are men who float in and those who she will not love. She is a competent driver, and she drives into and out of every situation, not a single one unfolds without her specific self-aware presence, and oftentimes, her actual car. She has the sensibility of a poet. There is a quiet suspension of disbelief here, those who are not the narrator speak in near-couplets (and she often turns a phrase on its head) and time is fluid—we never seem to start at the beginning. Often we’re at the end as in the title story, or in the middle in “Jesus is Waiting.” In “Memoir,” we begin nowhere, in void. And of course, that is precisely the point. Hempel may not have invented the mantra “every word counts,” but she is the gold standard in this collection. White space frightens some writers. Others must see the page the way a sculptor sees marble, and carve out from one block of it. If roughness, incompleteness remains, that is part of the whole. It’s tempting to point towards greater metaphor here, naturally, about life, but for respect for Hempel, and your time, I won’t try to make it. The Dog of The Marriage, however blunt, does not make me, the reader, scared of this inevitable time in a woman’s life. I sigh when reading it. Sometimes I want more than anything to be old and full of stories, which is a strange thing perhaps. Something that is rare, and that this work does.

As for how she does it, I understand that is the point of a proper critical essay. Also, not to use “I”. I was taught the critical essay should read, “The writer’s purpose is to do X through Y and accomplishes it using Z. Here are the number of ways in which it is done. Here is the symbolism. Here is God. Here is greed.” But, when speaking of Hempel, how can one do this in an ordinary way? In Rick Moody’s introduction he asserts, “Who gives a shit how long the book takes,” and now, here I am, cursing in my essay. It’s entirely wrong. But it is my response, my honest one. Hempel writes tightly—her characters are so compelling it’s as if the words aren’t even there, and yet, it’s all about the words, too. The sentences, as Moody says. She repeats, how she repeats so many things! And yet, it’s all over in a flash, a novel in stories, and it was short and it was all about longing. It was masterful, and it was heartbreaking. I had the idea that while writing this I’d somehow emulate her style. I’d write, critiquing Amy Hempel is like…and I would say something multi-layered and clever and just end there. Without the summation in words. But she does what I cannot. I don’t know how she does it. I realize that she does, and I see where and when. How to do it myself, I hope to learn in your program. So I’ll end my response with her words. The last in the collection, on the last page. “Unimprovable,” he says.

If only the same could be said for this essay.

BEST SONG EVER

2009-12-18T12:46:00.001-06:00

Insanely hilariously good video re-posted by the good folks at You Ain't No Picasso.

To wit: 'I said it on twitter and I’ll say it here: if this had come out this year, I’d pick it for song of the year.

Boing Boing posted this video of a song written by an Italian composer in a gibberish language that is his imitation of what he thought English sounded like. It’s a great 70s funk track that incorporates killer riffs, great dance moves and manages to answer the old question “what does English sound like to foreigners?”'

What I will prepare for Christmas Lunch

2009-12-17T23:09:00.005-06:00

As I am lady this year (damnit!) I am cooking for the family and will be making a filet of beef (slice it up to get the mignon) with gorgonzola cream sauce. Roasted rosemary potato wedge fries and roasted cherry tomatoes. Thinking about the balsamic onions too. But the whole thing is so damn pricey!

Asking the boy to pick up a Venerio's cheesecake and Mom and Pop to bring the wine. What to serve as bar snacks as I'm preparing? Olives in orange juice? Spiced nuts? I made a pretty great trail mix for a company party last week consisting of white chocolate chips, cranberries, chopped walnuts, almonds and milk chocolate chips. It was a big hit, but we all ended up eating that instead of some amazing baked brie in pastry, homemade butternut squash lasagna, artichoke and olive pasta salad, some incredible rillettes, and all sorts of pate (which I will no longer eat after reading a few articles). Sadly, I might give up duck as well. I love their quacking too much.

Details on the other party I went to, at the gorgeous home of the nicest editor of the best food magazine still on the market (lush mac and cheese, sliced pork, cranberry mayo) to come. As well as how this endeavor, courtesy of Goddess Ina Garten to come...

Grinchin' It

2009-12-12T10:34:00.003-06:00

So it's cold, work goes late, you're skipping the gym, and every holiday party is designed to cram as much duckfat and sub-par Shiraz into your gullet as possible.

I'm trying to take this weekend, this freezing cold weekend, and make some hot chocolate and put some presents under the first tree I've ever had on my own! Okay, the boy brought it in, but it was me who reached my scrawny arms into the thick of the needles to wrap the lights as he looked onward with a dim realization that if he stood there long enough doing it shoddily I would do it myself, it was me who broke the borrowed ornaments and then stepped on shards of purple glass with my idiotic barefeet, me who turned the temperature up to 80 degrees despite how much I'll pay for the bill because in my parent's house you have to wear a coat at all times or risk death (my father, upon hearing even the rush of air from my brother turning the thermostat up from 60--yes SIXTY degrees at night--to 62 has roused him from his bed to chastise us) because I wanted to decorate the tree in a warm room, me who lopsidedly hung the beads and me who climbed on top of a chair nearly falling into the tree to top it with the star. Yes, I am an adult! Sort of.

And now the invites pour in. For this concert and this party and this literary event. All fabulous, and I am almost fabulous enough to deserve to be invited (so the invites state). But it is COLD. And there are too many! And I am a brat to complain of being invited. And I get a little egg nog in me and I start telling everyone they're not the boss of me. And then no one gets the joke.* And the fabulous invites don't come in April. There is no blow out bash, no spreading of cheer. That's when I want to be popular. April! Not now, not December, when my face is all red and my hair is all blown from the wind, when I've been ingesting nothing all day just to take three, count 'em, three miniburgers from The Standard at the last literary event I attended (a BBC documentary on the real Mad Men). And three glasses of champagne. That's how I roll these days. Adult, maybe. Tasteful, not on your life.

Friends, I will have holiday cheer as soon as I get rid of one or two of my jobs to pay for the holiday cheer I have to spread. As soon as I figure out how to make this interview I did on spec with this adorable musician who has no hook into a story, as soon as I turn down the heat in here to 60 and put on my coat to sit on my couch and look at my tree with no presents underneath. As soon as I complete four more applications. I have done nine. I have four more. I have cheer. It is coming.

I hope you are spreading some and can wrap yourselves in enough to go get some brunch, go to a museum, get thee to yoga, because that's what I want for Christmas, as soon as I can.

*To all the funny people out there, don't you hate it when other people don't think you're funny? You are! This is what I must cling to. Give me this lie and nothing else and I will be happy.

Kittens bring Joy, another application bites the dust

2009-12-03T19:00:00.003-06:00

AH! I cannot get enough of this!

Also sent in UT-Austin today, that's 4 down, and maybe NYU will be done this week too (here's hoping) and San Fran State after...but if I get them all done by Monday, that will be a miracle, and the only way to keep on track...

One Holiday and Three Applications Down

2009-11-30T14:25:00.003-06:00

The turkey, parsnip puree and cranberry mojitos were flowing but it all passed in a joyful blur for me as I arrived bedraggled and zombie-d out, hair a mess, sweater covered in lint, my jeans sagging and my posture slumped. When I got to Connecticut to join in on the holiday festivities (which were marvelous but it took me the entire time to unhunch my shoulders), I had just completed a killer week, ending with the fact that I had essentially completed three applications for grad school! Provided that they weren't lost in the mail (my greatest fear) or that I wrote across the front "BOOGER" in my complete-the-application madness.

But still...

Three down! Only NINE more to go! But the first ones are the hardest ones--now my personal statement is as perfect as it's going to get, and my essays are all sketched out (except for one for Columbia that I can see myself completing badly at the last minute). The writing sample itself, which is 90% of the application's worth (so I hear) will not change another line, word or even comma. If it does, I might just die.

So I sent in the completed MFA and or Fellowship applications to:

UC-San Diego
UC-Irvine
and Stanford--which I looked at one last time AFTER I handed it in and saw a typo on the personal statement. Noooo! Can't change it now. All are due tomorrow so they were done last week. Next round is due December 15th, but I hope to have a few due beyond that out by then.

In the meantime I will be squirreling away in the recesses of my cozy apartment and using the cubes at work to furiously download PDFs on a faster computer than my own (after work hours of course!) and if all goes well, I will submit three applications per week until the week of Christmas. Then I will be done. And on to perfecting my query letter and getting my completed novel out there, starting a new but pretty hard temporary magazine job, and continuing my music writing. Oh, and writing that new book too. *Sigh*

Are you a person who needs to be busy or feels like you are wasting your life? I am. Sometimes it's fun, but on a rainy day like today it's a little exhausting. Perhaps it's that leftover turkey, or perhaps because I had two assignments due over the weekend so have not officially taken a day completely off from work in months, or that I'm working on my next round of applications now, but I am sleepy and wish for my cloud-like bed and a cup of cocoa instead of this lukewarm bitter coffee and piles upon piles of paper.

Sending good vibes out to you on this Monday, hoping to get some back. Boy, do I need it!

I laughed aloud while reading this

2009-11-23T10:01:00.003-06:00

On Gawker today, on the endless and boorish topic that New York is over. Don't only over the hill people say that about cities? Because New York in the 70s wasn't cooler per se, it was cool to you because you were 20 and everything was interesting to you? And everything is cool when you are 20 and over when you are 50? Including cities? The world wasn't better then, you were just more excited about it! When you stop getting excited about it, you have to start thinking that it's not the world that is so different, but it's you, you who does not stay out until 4 AM, you who does not blow off your job to follow your favorite band, you who are not going on a wild roadtrip with a band of merry pranksters and artists?

Anyway, the article in its entirety, courtesy of Foster Kamer. I was laughing and cringing. Are we really arguing about our cities now?
---------

Oh, hello there, Stephanie Marsh of the Sunday Times. When you write an essay called "New York has lost its edge," and you live here, it's okay. When you're writing from London...

The question presents itself: What the shit do you think you're talking about, lady?

Her two big examples are the John Varvatos store at CBGBs, and the Whole Foods on the Bowery (which is the articles kicker). Great. She mentioned two places within three blocks from one another. Yeah, it sucks that CBGBs is dead, but that place sucked when it was dying and hey, at least Varvatos kept some of the original walls. It could be another Chase Bank, but, whatever.

Here's her thesis:

"The problem for those who would like to see a return in New York to its edgy past is that Manhattan, as more than one New York-based blogger has claimed, is still "a gated community for the rich". The cultural critic Julian Brash has complained that under Bloomberg the citizens of New York have been turned into consumers - it is a place where everything is about what can be bought and what can be sold."

Okay, fine. Manhattan's really expensive, blah blah blah. Bankers run everything, blah blah blah. Everything in New York can be bought. And? This city was built by hyper-capitalists, it's why there's so much goddamn money here. Old hat. Certain things about New York absolutely suck and will always keep sucking worse and worse. And let's get one thing straight: people have been saying things about New York sucking for as long as New York's been around. If you read Monocle magazine, which this essay is basically ripped out of, this is like, every issue. This has long been the party line of travel press types—especially ones from abroad—for at least three years. I mean, if you really want to go back, I believe Rolling Stone called New York the Hot Dead Zone in their inaugural Hot List issue. In 1998. Saying New York is no longer edgy hasn't been edgy in forever.

The sequel to this piece is when she inevitably says that Berlin is starting to get really, really hip these days too. Pretty much anybody who went through Ellis Island and didn't stay probably had some sentiment along the lines of "this place sucks." According to the Daily News, one of our presidents basically told us to stick this city up our collective asses (look where he is, now: dead).

But—and I'm sure others have their reasons—I live here because, quite frankly (A) there's still nowhere else in America like it, and like many other people here, I have some sick/awesome compulsion that makes this grind of living here that much more attractive to me than anywhere else and (B) it's still got better stuff than everywhere else in America. Yeah, fuckin' stuff. Awesome stuff.

Now.

Can we quickly go over the reasons London—a nice city, sure—sucks compared to New York? Great:

* Your food sucks. It all tastes like ass until American chefs take two months to do better what you've spent hundreds of years sucking at.

* The service in your restaurants sucks, because you have to instruct people how to tip by putting a mandatory charge on their tab, like many other countries that do this. Which is the wrong way of doing this, which is why every server you will every have in London will probably be an asshole.

* Your theater sucks. War Horse—no, really, War Horse—is the best thing you have up right now. Anything good you have on the West End came from us. And don't bring up fucking Billy Elliot.

* Your nightlife is just stupid. Pubs close at 11, our bars don't close until four. Who goes to bed at 11? Are you serious? So you guys open up clubs that close at 2AM that have two kinds of people in them: the kind who get unceremoniously drunk and piss on everything, or the places Prince Harry goes. And who wants to go there? Also, you only play American music. You think Kings of Leon are the Second Coming of Christ. The Kings of Leon play our bar mitzvahs, goddamnit. By the way: most of those rappers you guys play on repeat (and not even the good ones...50 Cent?!) still live in New York. Our clubs and nightlife might have their issues, but they blow yours out of the water. You guys wouldn't know what to do with The Beatrice Inn if it crawled up your nose in a $100 bill.

* Nobody knows where anything is in London. Seriously. It's like the worst parts of the West Village for an entire city. Everything is higgly-piggly or whatever dumb word you have for it. We live on a grid. A grid. You guys have the dumbest civic planning this side of kids eating Legos.

* OH. Don't get me wrong. Our subways suck, for sure. But at least they're supposed to work after midnight, and don't cost half our income to ride. Also, an Oystercard? That just sounds stupid. Who's running your design schemes, Lewis Carroll? Stupid. Oh, and, you wanna talk about EDGY? How about our D-Trains getting stabby again, edgy? Exactly.

* You guys have never had a nice day of weather in the history of the universe. Seriously. The only person Madonna has to compete with for causing a scene is the fucking sun. It's yellow, it's in the sky, sometimes, it...nevermind. Have you even been here in September? It's like Central Park is trying to get in your pants and get you off, the weather's so goddamned nice.

* Oh, and the pound is stupid-expensive. Like everything else in your city.

* Your tabloid newspapers make the New York Post look like The Paris Review.

* And Whole Foods on the Bowery, sure, Whole Foods sucks. But it's in a pretty great location, and, fuck that, you know what sucks worse? Sainsbury's. Sainsbury's suuuuuuuucks. Which goes back to your food sucking.

* Do you have Brooklyn? Do you even know what a Brooklyn is? No, not David Beckham's son. You're stupid, shut up. [Quiet Moment: The article didn't mention Brooklyn once, but didn't refer to Manhattan exclusively. Go figure.]

* London's celebrities are all on Big Brother and fucking suck. They're mouthbreathing idiots. They make Tinsley Mortimer look like Jackie Kennedy.

* You guys have soccer—yeah, I called it soccer, goddamnit—teams. Multiple ones. Great. We have two baseball teams (including the 2009 World Series Champions), football teams (Including the 2008 Super Bowl Champions), hockey teams (I'm sure they Won Something Great recently), and a basketball team. All of them except for the Knicks could smash every London soccer player. Nothing else, just "smash" them.

* There is one—and only one—good song about Foggy London Town. There are as many songs about New York as there are New Yorkers, and most of them are awesome.

Anything else? Oh, yeah, did Samuel Motherfucking Jackson just buy an apartment next to your boss? No? Exactly.

Shut up. New York is awesome.

Send an email to Foster Kamer, the author of this post, at foster@gawker.com.

Baby Shower-- Your advice!

2009-11-16T13:37:00.004-06:00

Dear readers, I am throwing yet another baby shower! And I sadly have to admit, this time, now that I've done it before and am organizing it in my city instead of Philadelphia, I'm doing a much better job. I'm on the phone with the baker, the tea staff, the party staff, I'm on top of invoices and meetings. It's going to be a good time for those who had nothing to do with organizing it!

This one is in Alice's Tea Cup in the Upper East Side. Everyone will be getting the Mad Hatter tea service with sandwiches, scones, and luscious baked goods. I have sent the invites, sent all the shower registry information, fielded questions and those who want to drop out, drop in, called guests to talk them out of bringing their own food.

It's close.

I've pre-paid for mint green and white latex balloons, handpainted royal-frosted monogrammed cookies and sashays of specialty teas for the guests, and a mint-green chocolate ganache cake (why are cakes the most expensive things ever!). I have also picked up a beautiful baby book for all the guests to sign, and have emailed them to check in with me to sign as soon as they arrive, and also to bring one crazy looking gift bow so that we may trashily deck out the baby book box while keeping everything else an elegant affair.

The mom-to-be will NOT wear a silly hat or play games. Any other suggestions on what I can do/bring/ask others to bring? Any ideas on something fun? Or lay back and just let it happen (remember here, I am now nearly broke after all this, even though I'm having lots of help paying for the space and the party itself, as I keep adding on extras).

And the sleaziest question yet...should I buy an additional gift? I do have the baby book which I bought, but everything else is a surprise or edible or really only is a gift to the party. The last shower I threw I brought an expensive gift that I spent a lot of time thinking about and hauled it to Philadelphia from Austin (where I bought it). But this time...I don't know if I can do that? Is there something with baby showers the same thing with weddings that I have a year to give it ;)

Remembering: Night Habits

2009-11-10T19:34:00.000-06:00

Things only people who have seen me in my underwear know.*

I like the room freezing cold. Air-blasting, fetal-position-inducing, take-all-the-blanket-fighting, freezing cold. And lots of quilts on the bed. It reminds me of my artic 19th century childhood home in which you seriously had to decide whether a trip to the bathroom in January was worth the likely possibility that, upon touching your toe to the old pine boards, your veins would turn to ice and you’d shatter into a million pieces. Compounded by my father, whose vehement insistence of responsible consumerism I imagine will surely, upon his deathbed, possess him to reach out a hand, pull me close and whisper, “I pass my legacy to you. Promise me you will not let your mother turn the thermostat past 61 degrees in the winter. Promise me this! Oil is too expensive! God damnit!”

I sleep in dresses. Dresses that I wear nowhere else but in bed. Hey, I’d walk around work in a penoir if I could (that’s a dressing robe which is explicitly meant for combing your hair in).

I write to blasting music. Like techno. Or obscene rap. It is really weird.

My friends that are boys in the neighborhood sometimes come say hi at night when I’m writing. And my doorman thinks because of this, I am running a low-class one-woman prostitution ring in a headband and yoga pants.

I dance to no music in the kitchen. And do a lot of jumping.

I wake up early sometimes and am mad about it. I want to sleep longer but sometimes am too anxious or on deadline to.

I get a little crazy right before sleep. Like all riled up and giggly, like if you threw a tennis ball at a dog and jangled your keys and shouted, “Wanna go to the park? Huh? Wanna go to the park!” riled up and giggly.

There is a green wooden armadillo hanging upside down on the ceiling in my room and a million sketches.

I don’t know how to be lonely any more.

Sometimes I wait for people to get home and it makes me happy to see them. Yes, again like a dog.

I could spend the day in bed if I have a really good book.

I have a lot of wacky ideas and half the time I actually do them. This led to me applying to grad school in Hawaii, backpacking through Australia, writing a book, and saying very inappropriate things to upper management with the thought that I’ll be liberally excused because I am a “creative”. Note: “creative” is just a euphemism for “quirkily unprofessional” at best and “not quite all there” at worst.

I am always thirsty but I hardly ever drink anything.

There is someone in my phone listed as "Not Sure."

I think being interesting is a gift and one day I hope to have it. For now I’m okay with being interested.

I think I feel alive and amazed more than is the norm. Like the wind will blow someone’s hair into a pattern and I’ll stop or I will think about the domestication of animals and think, whoa, who was the first person to see a horse and be like, you know what, I’m gonna jump on that thing’s back, what the hell. Let alone a camel! Or that if an alien landed on this planet and saw an elephant, it would freak the hell out and fly away…

* That includes my roommates, mom and best friend, and anyone else who has seen me sleep or woken me up.

Quote of the Day

2009-11-09T16:24:00.003-06:00

Music editor #1: Did you read that sure-to-be-obnoxious piece in NY Mag about Brooklyn music called...'Brooklyn Calling?'

Music editor #2: I tried...but I had to keep stopping.

Music editor #1: Why's that?

Music editor #2: Well, the problem wasn't that I kept rolling my eyes, it was when I brought them back down to the page, I'd invariably keep losing my place.

What came first: The Book or the MFA?

2009-11-09T16:12:00.002-06:00

Story Editor is done reading the book, and has given me her notes, and they (and she) are amazing! They are all super-positive and wonderful and really insightful, and it's really cool to see what complicated ideas I've pulled off and which ones have...well, thrown me off.

She has pointed out what I've known all along, the first chapter needs to be different. The good thing is that I have all the first chapter material just chopped up in the current first chapter and framed differently. So it's a rewrite of the first 25 pages or so, which at one point in my life seemed like such a long and difficult thing to do (oh the days of 15 page papers, I would take you back in a second!), but now is no problem. If only I could get my priorities straight...whip the book into final perfection (it's SO CLOSE) and get it to the agents...or work on my MFA applications, which also have due dates, and their own considerations.

So paralyzed was I by which one to focus on, that today I did the unthinkable, and instead focused on work for money (boo, hiss!) and then skipped the gym (double hiss! but I'm still sore from Friday's killer workout). Bad dog.

But tomorrow I will have a sit-down about my personal statement, and the good Samaritan who is looking over my writing samples with fresh eyes to ensure I didn't write "COCK" in huge letters on it somewhere (hmmm...maybe I should do that anyway, and call it "experimental writing" and send it to Brown..zing!) And if this good Samaritan has done what he was asked not to, which is to say anything about making it longer or shorter after I crafted every single word so that it fit the maximum length of the minimum requirement for every single school (this was so hard), I will rise our of the ashes and fly screaming for the blood of his young. If not, he gets a card. (Do the right one, Dave!)

Anyway, going a little insane over here. That's a good thing for "creatives", right? RIGHT?

Babies, more and more babies

2009-11-05T15:10:00.002-06:00

Not mine!

Check out Theo, he is the newest baby friend of mine. I'm not a freak! These are my friends' babies. Theo updates his blog more often than I do (courtesy of my bf from high school, Selly).

The Editor's Note: Quote of the Day

2009-11-04T11:25:00.005-06:00

The line-editing is just about done, and now the story/character/big-picture editor is looking at the book.

She usually takes three weeks (which is incredibly fast) and said so for my 331 page novel. But now that she's reading it, I'm different. She got it last Friday, and she thinks she'll be done next Monday. That's just over a week! I'm tearing my hair out (she is an award-winning novelist and is always right on point) in anticipation of her notes.

But then...she emailed me a quick update and it was this:

"Just so you know, I'm reading and it's wonderful."

Be still my beating heart...

Let's not get too excited yet, she's still got over 200 pages to go...but if she likes that, then I'll make tweaks with her suggestion, and then...actually start submitting it to agents. My God!

8 Simple Rules for Helping Me With My Applications

2009-10-28T21:12:00.003-05:00

8. Don't say that my writing sample is "too smart" and you "don't get it" to get out of talking about my writing sample because it's actually boring. I wasn't born yesterday! (Offender: Boyfriend. -5 points)

7. Don't ask why I'm applying to schools. I don't know anymore, and I have too many things due to have to explain it again, and yes I know that you can be a writer without this degree, but I'm into it deep. And I still want to be a better writer, hence I want the degree. So have a heart and shut it! (Offender: Old Boss. -10 points)

6. Do say I'll get through it...somehow. It's nice, it's not too aspirational, and it's just inevitable. (Angel: Best Friend. + 20 points)

5. Do offer to make a big cup of green tea when I'm surrounded by papers and broken ink cartridges at 11 at night on a Friday as I stay in to edit while you get to go out drinking. (Angel: Boyfriend. +10 points)

4. Don't remind me that I did this once and failed miserably, only getting into mediocre programs. (Offender: Self. -5 points)

3. Do be amazing and think every stupid idea I have is worthwhile, like this one. (Angels: Mom and Dad +100 points)

2. Don't interrupt me every five minutes with an email about a lost detergent cap in the laundry room. I'm trying to work here! (Offender: Landlord. -15 points)

1. Don't give up on me. (Angels: maybe you guys? +100 points)

Things I want to talk about now that I live alone

2009-10-26T21:17:00.002-05:00

Well I live alone, without any girls now. It's great! I watch what I want to watch, have my slovenly boyfriend over all the time, cook whatever I like, clean obsessively but let books and papers pile up as I write and rewrite and plan other friends' baby showers...

But I never had sisters. And I was always jealous of those who had. And my best girlfriends now all live in other cities. And well, sometimes you just need another girl to bounce an idea off of, or else you're crazy.

Here's what I want to say to the girls, wherever they may be, on this blog, in my mind, wherever you are!

1. How often do I really have to have a pedicure in the wintertime? It's been over a month...and I feel like I can go longer. This feeling is unsubstantiated now that I am alone most of the time.

2. Is it OK for me to watch Jon and Kate plus 8? I am strangely drawn to it. Please help.

3. What can I make for dinner on Sunday nights instead of ordering? I love to cook, I just hate to shop for cooking. Buying a chicken breast and lemons and herbs and then salad greens? Ugh, all I want is Thai! Also do I have to eat organically? I like Gatorade.

4. What websites are good these days? Gawker is getting a little...and Jezebel is also kind of...you know.

5. I'm kind of done with Oprah magazine. Used to love it, but now I don't. What can I read that is part trash, part stimulating?

6. Is it okay that I don't want to have a baby yet? Or even a pet? That I like to come home and have everything left just the way it was, even though I'm...gasp...twenty eight?

7. Is it okay to be twenty-eight and not even thinking seriously about getting married until I get my book published, which might be NEVER?

That's it! All I had to do was ask, and I feel better. Also, should I take back up knitting, where can I get the best sportsbra, I hate earrings again, I'm not interested in Halloween this year, I wear the same three dresses all weekend long and I don't want to change, and I'm applying to school and am scared I won't get in anywhere or worse, get in and not get funding.

That feels better, okay, back to work.

You've got to be kidding

2009-10-14T11:20:00.003-05:00

This is what it's come to. My brother leaves the nest for college and my parents go and buy the smallest dog they can find. Trading one animal for another! Hey, it's pretty cute.

Gourmet is Dead...and so I'm eating Ego Waffles.

2009-10-08T13:15:00.003-05:00

Gourmet's been dead since Monday and the slew of internet opinions on the subject have been a lot of fun to read. Today my favorite is this one, and I encourage you to go read it while I try to write a personal statement*.

*How does anyone write these things without sounding like a total self-centered jerk? Anyway, I work for a food magazine (sometimes) and the Gourmet news is HUGE to us so that's all I can really think about, so let's see how this whole personal statement thing shakes out.

Here's my favorite comment from the reader section:

"I love Cook's Illustrated, and I have begrudging respect for Christopher Kimball (I always deduct points for bowties unless you're Chuck Bass). And while I agree that the Internet has created a whole new class of pseudo experts -- which kind of makes me wish I hadn't closed down my blog for fear that I was a fraud -- I think he's willfully ignoring the good things that have resulted from this tiny revolution.

The web, along with the countless home-cook shows that have sprung up on cable channels, has demystified and de-elited the world of cooking for many of us. A lot of people don't take risks and don't try to advance their skills in the kitchen because of low self-confidence and the fear that some obnoxious chef will swoop in and declare that they will never be chefs, only mere cooks. I won't bother defending Rachael Ray's personality or credentials, but Anthony Bourdain's dismissal of her left a sour taste in my mouth because it wasn't just a cruel thing to say, it was a dig at all of us who love food but for any number of reasons haven't received formal training. (Incidentally, it's why I adore Mark Bittman and Julia Child. No pretensions and no "beginners need not apply" declarations; only real love for food and cooking.)

I've learned how to truss a chicken, deglaze a pan, make flavorful sauces, roast a rib-eye to perfection and make compound butter because of no-name food bloggers. Those tasks are all actually quite easy, but what learning how to do them did for me was to give me the confidence to adjust recipes as I cooked, come up with my own ideas and serve my creations without the nervous disclaimers that usually accompanied even the most basic meals I used to make.

Gourmet was a beautiful magazine, one I read cover to cover for the past few years. But like Vogue, it was only a practical resource for the wealthy and cultured. For everyone else, it was pure fantasy: Isn't that beautiful? I want a farmhouse so I can serve a six-course meal to 10 people and we can all wear handknitted sweaters and drink brandy out of snifters while someone plays a mandolin. Maybe one day I'll be able to afford truffle oil and specialty herbs and those adorable organic baby vegetables and handcrafted cheese instead of whatever's on sale at the grocery store.

I'm not saying there isn't a place for that, or that people with the resources and time to craft such elegant meals don't deserve to have a publication that serves their needs. But if there were actually as many people like that as Conde Nast thought there were, Gourmet wouldn't have gone out of business."

Wednesday at The Frick

2009-09-30T22:13:00.003-05:00

I'm back in class and that means more stories, more searches for color, more drawings that I'll upload for comments, more running around with grubby hands, snatching gallery guides so I can troll the streets searching for openings, art, but perhaps most of all, free glasses of wine.

In the Frick, we spread out, armed with our sketchbooks and assignment--three drawings, and mix it up this time--and we have an hour and forty-five minutes. Spend it wisely.

Don't stand in the gift shop like me and marvel at what is around you: the walls lined with postcards and black and white prints, enormous books against the shelves: the jackets in the boring muted tones run together. Hotel buffet salmon-pink, sea-scum green. Silk-screened totes and wide pine floor boards.

Shake it off, clutch your book and keep moving, past the crowds of slow-moving patrons, the arguing Russians, the surly staff who by now must find no beauty in what they do, protecting priceless things from us--loud-mouthed tourists we all are in this room where we ooh and ahh.

Grab your pens, scratch and the pad and scowl as you desperately try to sketch this relief of Mary, find yourself shouting out the name of her son as you slip and screw it up. Compose yourself, keep going, scratch scratch scratch for twenty minutes, leaving scars in the paper where you've gone too deep, and then, a 70 year old woman who is shouting out everything that comes up on her audioguide, leans over and tells you "that's kind of good," and you can't help but stand a little straighter and scratch a little louder as if someone will see.

Next up get the pencils, look in the dog-eared pages of the book and choose the next page--do you dare to draw on the back of a good drawing at the risk of affixing something mediocre to something you'd be proud of, knowing full well that if you do, someone could always flip the page and all that they thought of you could be erased in an instant.

Say to hell with it, go on and do it, retreat to the dining room and draw the chandeliers, feel all right about it, then draw the door and irretrievably screw it up and again mutter the name of Mary's son and then look at your cell phone and see that time is up, and you must show what you've done, which is not much.

But it's okay to do not much when you're surrounded by so much. It's okay, because you keep trying, because you think, with no sentiment at all, that you love this in a way. You love art even though you are no genius and you'll never be. And also, that love is a true one, because you are getting nothing back and still you do it because some day you believe you will.

Pictures to come...

Roman Polanski

2009-09-29T14:34:00.003-05:00

The debate about him is heating up, what with Whoopie calling the incident not real rape, not "rape-rape" (that set back humanity about 50 years) as if REAL rape has to have a person being beaten almost to death or something? Look, I don't know the facts and I certainly have a knee-jerk reaction to the debate on rape for reasons I don't understand (I'm a girl? I hate how every time a chick gets murdered in a film they seem to want to throw a rape in there first and linger on it, as if murder is no longer horrific enough? What IS THE POINT OF THIS!) but the original report has a 43 year old man drugging and sodomizing a 13 year old girl who yelled "no", so can we please not dispute what rape is and not act like these two were dating or in love or anything and just focus on the fact that he evaded the law and that's all that we are really dealing with here?

Ugh, it is so annoying that because the victim, 30 years later, is basically like "I don't want a trial, I want to move on with my life, please" that people want to rally around the man. As this article nicely points out--it is not up to the victim, the case is the people versus Roman Polanksi, not the victim, and he evaded a plea bargain deal for a long time and now has to deal with it?

Anyway. 43 year old weirdo drugging and assaulting a 13 year old is not what's up for discussion here. It happened. It was horrible, he admitted to a lesser charge so he wouldn't have to do harder time for raping a child. Then he bailed on the punishment for that. He's a piece of crap for that, and I don't care that he makes good movies, lots of pieces of crap are genius pieces of crap, it doesn't make them any less awful.

Anyway, sorry I came back to the blog with this, but it's been really bothering me.

On another note, Brooklyn is beautiful and gorgeous and I am thinking about joining a new gym here but it's kind of too expensive. Also I made brownies last night with a silicon bake sheet (have you tried this--amazing!) and saw Cape Fear (lame, in my opinion, and again with the rape rape rape, come on!) and have been reading a lot and working a lot and neglecting this blog a lot.

Application season is the worst.

Almost Published

2009-09-19T09:31:00.001-05:00

Well, at a fine literary magazine I am published, anyway.

Still working on that book, but in the meantime, check out the journal and let me know what you think!

Making a Home

2009-09-16T18:03:00.002-05:00

Now that I have a perfect place to live, how do I live like a perfect person? We scraped down cinnamon-wheat Ego waffles and split up, he ran to the art shop to buy materials for my new Parsons class and I got a neon yellow manicure. When it was done we trotted back, banging the pad back and forth as we rushed to avoid the rain. There are ideas floating around: runs in the park, enormous Sunday dinners, bi-weekly vacuuming, the bed made each morning, fresh flowers in the vase on top of my antique desk. Where are the curtains? How come I can't get myself to the YMCA to check out their classes? I'm too busy putting together my recommendation packets, tidying up my writing sample, sending my next 50 pages of the novel to the editor for edits, map out new novel, and send yet another friend packing--the third good friend to leave me and NYC behind in as many months...

Going to have to make this my home alone now, and a lot lies ahead.

Quote of the Day

2009-09-07T11:39:00.002-05:00

Waiting for the F train to come on a very hot platform on this Labor Day...next to me is a beautiful Russian mother with a great tan that I would kill for, and her four year old son who has bright blonde hair and a buzz cut and the largest ears I've ever seen.

After 20 minutes.

Son: Where's the F train? I hate the F train!

Beautiful mother trying to placate him: Maybe F stands for Fantasy, yes? Because the F train will not come. F stands for Fantasy!

Son: F stands for Poop!

Beautiful mother: No, that is a 'P'.

Son: F stands for Vomit!

Beautiful mother: No, that is a 'V'.

Son: Well F stands for something stupid.

Beautiful mother: F train stands for something else, maybe? Something that you're not supposed to say. Something that starts with an 'F' and is four letters long and is something your body does. Hmm?

Son: Fuck! It's the Fuck train!

(At this point I have to leave because I'm laughing so hard. But apparently she was trying to get him to say it was the "Fart Train".)

How to Make a House a Home

2009-09-06T10:02:00.002-05:00

I am now living by myself on a tree-lined, sun-dappled block in Park Slope. There are old houses and artisanal cafes and food coops and the park. At night, everything is still, cars drive by quietly, couples walk together, dogs wag and the air feels clean. Inside my section of the brownstone, it's 90% decorated--all with my mother's antiques: French ash buffet, Persian rugs, lamps made of stone urns, gilded frames and old flowered prints. A big soft blanket folded on the couch. My desk is a marble table top over an iron base, there are fluffy towels in the bathroom and outside, my patio has a rattan chaise with a big square suede-like pillow tossed on it. It looks over the little garden, the blueberry patch and the mint plants.

The kitchen is eat-in, the dining room table looks outside and my bedroom is a little cove, painted sage-green. Cream drapes fall from the windows, the bed is overstuffed with white linens and a stiff dust ruffle. My favorite white lamp draped with the beaded pearl necklace and a lambskin rug on the floor. It feels like sleeping in a layered wedding cake, an igloo made of fur, a room at a Vermont bed and breakfast. It's the first time I've lived alone, and I made the smallest room my bedroom so that my office and TV and everything is away. For so long my bed was my desk, my workspace, my entertainment center, even my breakfast nook where I sipped coffee.

Now the bed is sacred. And the apartment too. I find myself bouncing around, playing with the dimmers, cleaning the windows, sweeping the wooden planks endlessly. My clothes are in closets, not hanging over chairs, my papers are in folders instead of strewn across the floor. It feels like a beautiful home, my parents' maybe, my great-aunt's whose house is all white and spotless. Here the walls are pale yellow (except for the bedroom), the ancient fireplace irons flank the mantle, and not only does everything feel so adult, it feels full of possibility and promise.

I wanted a gorgeous place to be for so long, to work, to create. I didn't realize how much I wanted it, maybe even needed it, until I was blessed enough to get it. If I can't get my books published here, get into grad school here, flourish my freelance career here, then there is no hope for me at all.

But today I am positive. I just got here, but it feels like home. Only when I stop and really think does it occur to me it took 27 years for me to find it.

Last Night in The East Village...

2009-08-30T18:03:00.002-05:00

and I'm getting sniffy. Doing lots of drugs. Just kidding, I'm sad! All the dirtiness here has been good to me. Is it weird to join a knitting club to get new friends in Park Slope?

Don't answer that.

But seriously, without school or work, and without your friends introducing you, how do you make friends any more? I'm not sure I know. I made some through having roommates, but now that I will just be freelancing and wandering the streets, can I meet people? I never understood how people made friends and the library or coffee shop. Occasionally I have been asked out by a creepy guy this way, but can I somehow approach another girl for wanting to watch Project Runway with, without being a weird stalker? I know you know the answer to this people. I don't know how to do this!

Also me and my film friend are the last of us in the EV and we are getting together tonight and I am forcing cuban food on him. Not that I'm cooking. I will in the new place (love you Ina Garten). But the cuban place next to me, Cafe Cortadito, is amaaazing. It is one of my biggest regrets about leaving this building. Now by doorman who calls me "Stephanie" is a different story. Nice guy but, he has a really bushy mustache and somehow I don't trust him. It's always the mustaches, isn't it? Also I am gazing out at my patio while the boy snores off a hangover on the couch and thinking I'm going to miss the sage I planted, the sprinklers that come on in a rush exactly every night at 10 pm, even padding to the laundry room and all the hot air in there. Why? Because I didn't appreciate any of this while it was happening, that's why!

Am pretty excited for the dinner parties I'm going to throw in the new place though. No one will come because of karma, as I never went to Brooklyn before moving there. Well except for Song in Park Slope because it's the best Thai food EVER, but I don't think I've been to Williamsburg for two years. What am I rambling about? I think all the packing has got to me...better get out of the house while I still can.

Moving!

2009-08-29T09:23:00.004-05:00

I'm doing it! Moving to a beautiful brownstone in Park Slope with a fireplace, an office/library space, cherry cabinets, brush nickel fixtures, hardwood floors, Sub Zero fridge, counter to eat at the kitchen and a little patio. It's adorable and near Prospect Park (which Olmsted also designed, in addition to Central Park, and he always said Prospect Park was his favorite of the two). Still, I'm a little scared of Brooklyn. I can't explain it. The same way that we get irritated that the summer is full of rain. August is still August even though it rains every day...Brooklyn is still living in "the middle of it"...sure--it's not even 2 miles away! But then there is the obnoxious whiny part of you that is a child with everything who says, no there WAS no summer this year and Brooklyn might as well be in Ohio.

But then again, I'm not impressed by the bags of garbage and people shooting up on my East Village corner any more, or all the dog shit, or all the screaming. I've lived in so-so apartments in incredible neighborhoods for years and sort of just want a pretty place to be, especially since I'll be working from home these days, and applying for school, etc. And it's a place all to myself! I've lived with roommates my whole life (we're counting family right?) I just don't know who I am alone. Did I have to swing the pendulum the entire way to a quiet block in Park Slope? Maybe not. But there has been so much frenetic energy with my multiple jobs, courses, classes, roommates and everything else I kind of want to be for a while, get back into writing more (how lazy have I been about this blog), stop being so damn distracted.

Get a puppy.

My best friends have moved away save a few, and I felt like it was time, in my own small way, to move away too.

I'm getting old, for sure. But I'm kind of excited for it. I love the East Village, the Lower East side, the dirty bars populated with tattooed boys. But now that I'm in a relationship with one of them, we've decided we like to walk past the hipster meat market on any given day and head to the video store to rent old 80s thrillers--bad ones--(have you seen Consenting Adults? MY GOD) and drink wine instead. I'd like to do it in a new place, but I love New York to much to leave it now, so I'll jump across a bridge to Brooklyn and still have most everything I need to do and want to do in Manhattan proper. I am the only person without a family making the reverse jump. Well, I've always been a bit of a weirdo.

Pictures to come! And if you have recommendations for Park Slope, please leave them here! I have no idea what I'm doing...

Almost...Brooklyn?

2009-08-19T14:13:00.002-05:00

It's a beautiful townhouse in Park Slope? Dare I leave the East Village for the first time in 6 years? Can I exist in Brooklyn, working out of my apartment, or will I go insane? Will I take the 40 minute train ride to my gym here because I have the time and not the cash to cancel my gym membership as I am hanging on to a shred of "city living"? The answers to this...and more...are about to come.

My gosh a place of my own! No roommates...can I make a tree-lined block of Carroll street work?

Eep.

My new boss?

2009-08-14T10:23:00.004-05:00

In an effort to bolster my bank account so I may continue writing and apply to grad schools and sell my book, damnit, I am applying for part-time work. I sent a deluge of emails out recently for administrative jobs, or filing, or assistant work. I've done it before and I'm fairly capable and I won't be feeling the need to do anything but my job to its best (not wanting to try to get the boss's job I mean, I just want to be in a submissive role and have a steady paycheck and keep my nose clean).

So check out this email I just got back, in answer to my posting my resume. I have bolded my favorite parts. Spelling and spacing errors have been left as is.

Hello,

Thanks for applying for the post, I quite I appreciate it? I received and read your e-mail and it's reasonable and acceptable. So I will give this a go"
I'm looking for someone that can be trusted and reliable to work very well and good understanding person.
This position is home-based and flexible, working with me is basically about instructions and following them, my only fear is that I may come at you impromptu sometimes, so I need someone who can be able to meet up with my irregular timings. As my assistant, your activities amongst other things will include;*Running personal errands, supervisions and monitoring. Scheduling programmes, flights and keeping me up to date with them. Acting as an alternative telephone correspondence while I'm away. Making regular contacts and drop-offs on my behalf. Handling and monitoring some of my financial activities..
Basic wage is $500 a week . I'm sure you'll understand I tend to have a very busy schedule at t his point, as I am presently in Canada, I will be back in Three Weeks.

I think you're the right person for this post , Please note that this position is not office based for now because of my frequent travels and tight schedules, it's a part-time, work from home basis and the flexibility means that there will be busier weeks than others, so it's a little difficult judging the exact number of hours you'll be doing per week. If you can manage your time
properly, this job may even give you some extra while you do something else on the side. As I have said, I'd want us to get a head start with things as soon as possible. I do have a pile up of work and a number of unattended chores which you can immediately assist me with, I hope we can meet up with the workload eventually.

Permit me to use the coming week to test your efficiency and diligence towards all this, also to work out your time schedule and fit it to mine.. I really need to find the perfect person for this job, I'm confident you can take up the challenge and on the long run we should have a relatively sound working relationship between us.. I'm online most of the time as I am hard of hearing so
I prefer we contact each other through E-mails, but if there is need for me to call, I will be glad to do that. I am glad you are willing to work with me and i promise to be a good boss. I am also glad on the commitment in working. I have been checking my files and what i would want you to do for me this week is to run some errands out to some of the orphanage home, I do that every month. The fund s will be in form of Cashier Check/Money Order and it will be sent over to you from one of my clients and i have some list to email you once you received the funds,You will make some arrangements by buying some stuff for the kids in the nearest store around you so you can mail them out. I will get you more information on that, I will like you to get back to me with your
Contact Details such as.

Once I have received your contact information, I will get back to you with the task for this week,Understand you will also be paid as well as its important for me to

make the necessary steps
before i get back from my business trip back to the states. Hope I am clear with that.

Get back as soon as possible..

Quote of the Day

2009-08-13T15:57:00.003-05:00

"I need a vacation."

"Me, too."

"How about Europe?"

"Meh, it's over."

My best friend has moved away, the weather remains lame, the job market stinks. It's time for a vacation, right?

P.S. How can Europe be over??

Room Hates

2009-08-07T07:34:00.008-05:00

Perhaps roommate stuff is better, but I still want to live somewhere else like an adult...

Fish Camp

2009-08-02T12:59:00.004-05:00

We take the bike out on one of the few summer nights of this year, over the bridge with the blur of lights and long strands of cars. We move through them, back and forth, swerving and me screaming, my bag banging against us both and my dress flying in the wind.

In Brooklyn we go to the fish camp and despite the inexplicably dim staff (why don't they usually have the back patio open on nice days? Who can say?) and tremendous wait and flat glasses of beer and not enough homemade chips for the vinegary ceviche, we wait it out in a corner wooden table that needs to be wiped.

Our name is called and we get to go outside at the long wooden tables with the hanging lines of little lights and the air heavy with pot smoke from the kids who live next door. We get crab claws with parsley and lemon, thick chunks of lobster tail on split rolls, shoestring fries and striped bass with chickpeas, and more and more flat beer. And we laugh with the old folks next to us who are joking over strawberry and marscapone sundaes and decafs and we're all talking about the pot smoke while our charmingly bespeckled waitress keeps calling it "marijuana clouds". So we order the bread pudding even though we're going to be sick and it's high with whipped cream and caramel and it could be the best thing we've ever tasted. It's worth the stomachache. All of it. Just like it always is...

Drugs, Man

2009-07-29T10:12:00.006-05:00

I didn't think people still did heroin (mistakenly thought that all stopped in the 90's, which was just a reincarnation of the 70's) but apparently they do if they're in New York and fancy themselves artistes but actually just do a lot of drugs and film themselves having sex and spray newspapers with semen and glitter. Trust. This is what Dash Snow did (if you don't know the name, he was big in certain circles here for the last five years who was buddies with Ryan McGinley and Gavin McInnes of Vice) and he ended up offing himself a few weeks ago in my neighborhood with 13 glassine envelopes of heroin.

He was 27.

Before we start thinking this is in any way romantic, he committed this knowingly (called his girlfriend to tell her he loved her) and did so despite his two year old daughter. As cinematic as this all is, it's actually very sad, sure, but more so, very gross. We know better. Come on. It's not Woodstock and it's not Punk and it's not even Grunge, all the forward "I'm young and it's a revolution, damnit!" movements in music and art and writing and politics have kind of been made, or at least, because of those who have come before us, have been made way easier and therefore has made this time of shock-value rabble-rousing pretty damn extinct (in my assertion, all we have left is technology wars, which is actually very cool). So what's up with this ridiculous shit! Even hipsters are over, are people really still selfishly dying from heroin for God's sake? This is just another landmark for people who get older but refuse the next and better stages of their lives to still skulk around in Ramones T-Shirts and bemoan when New York MEANT SOMETHING and was all thriving and filthy and dirty and therefore better. But you know what? That's bunk, because people only say that about New York, or any place for that matter, because it was the world they lived in when they were 20-27 years old. When they were full of promise and hadn't done everything already and they had a zest for life and everything seemed new and exciting: love, money, substances.

New York wasn't cooler in the 70's. There were shooting galleries and garbage fires and general malaise and gang violence and all that. Just because CBGB's was home to a burgeoning scene doesn't mean that scene was worth all the rest of the crap that came along with it or even that the scene was that good. But, you know, people who say that it was were young then. And the thing about being young is....everything is good! It's like that phenomenon when a guy gets laid in, say Ottowa, and then later relates to his friends, "Dudes, Ottowa is awesome!" No, it's not. Anecdotal good times aren't evidence, and are colored by factors that have nothing at all to do with Ottowa. And that's what people are saying right now about New York in 2005.

I know, this is what's being said. I can't believe it either. Now that Dash Snow is dead, he's become an icon for the hipster movement and everywhere you go people are going on about how NY was SO MUCH COOLER in 2005. No it wasn't! You're just four years older and you're pissed, because you're immature. People who choose life beyond one-night stands and pukefests that seemed so awesome a few years back are not losers who've lost their edge. It's like this, you thought you kicked ass when you were 13 didn't you? Was life so much more awesome then? No it wasn't. But somehow when this very same notion is applied to the time when you were 21, it holds water. Maybe because you can have sex and drive and do drugs and buy things finally. So you don't romanticize 13, you romanticize 21 because it represents the years when you finally had access to everything in the world and still had the naivete to think it was brand new and you ruled.

The thing is, if you don't think you can kick ass at 30 or 40 or 50, you never kicked ass to begin with. Sorry Kurt Cobain, Sid Vicious, Dash Snow. I had nascent crushes on all of you but I hope I never, ever be so naive as to think that's cool of you.

Also, this is the best thing that I've read on the subject of us as aging kids in New York City. It's just very good if you're not easily offended.

Remembering: Girls' Night Out

2009-07-27T11:54:00.001-05:00

Girls’ night is becoming more and more the standard and these days it feels like summer camp without the shorts. Loose hair instead of barrettes, juice boxes tossed for aperitifs, ants on a log have vanished and frisee salads appear as replacements.

I race out of the office instead of my parents’ kitchen, still with my bag whapping my side and my flip flops sliding around, to meet them downtown in a flickering West Village bistro, arriving late and excited and relieved as though Tuesday was Friday.

We drink too many glasses of wine and divide too few crab cakes at Paris Commune, contemplating New York and LA, reviewing weekend plans and downloading each other on the latest gossip, work and play. Shore houses, summer romances, tennis lessons, promotions; we all have something to share and envy here. And it prompts a Robert Altman conversation pace, everything overlapping, nothing resolved, as our glasses grow dry, the louder we exclaim, “Wait, what are you guys talking about?”

An adult in charge needs to shush us, but our waitress only encourages (probably so that she can reap the benefits of our overtipping to match our over-ordering). For us, the best of the summer week is at night, past our bedtimes, snapping phone photos and comparing sunglasses, making plans and taking initiatives, being aspirational because it’s who we are.

Everything has to be explained more than once, especially since she’s in for a visit, an ex-pat now part of that other city, so we can’t stop our questions. How’s the pool in the apartment? Is just it like Melrose Place? How much is there really the prevalence of smog/collagen/silicone/a thong-clad Lindsay Lohan? Is June gloom anywhere close to the humidity of here? Are all the men blond “directors” with mustaches and vans? We know it’s all a cliché, but don’t clichés start from some point of truth?

I’ve wanted to start a life on the west coast ever since 90210 aired, and we talk about what it might be like next year, if I end up making the move. But now I’ve become such a fan of the pulsating vibrancy of here, I’m not so sure. It’s camp in the city all of the time, and it’s getting pretty hard to leave, particularly since there is no bus to pick me up and tear me away from my friends and paltry paycheck that I spend simply to be with them while we’re still sort of young, and sort of glamorous…at least to us.