Treasure Hunt: Your Favorite Restaurant

I have a lot of jobs. One is to tell my roommates when the cable bill is due. My dentist says another one is to floss. In the office I have to pitch ideas about tech, style and perishable gifts, or write copy about Hawaii, or jiggle the coffee machine to get it working, or fashion a meal out of skim milk and errant M&Ms.

Oh right, and I have listsicle jobs too, like writing up places for other places, and other such vagueries.

Also, I review restaurants, about one a week. And I need ideas, people! Now most of the traditionally *best* restaurants have already been reviewed or have people far more adept than I already assigned to them, but I'm not talking about those. Who cares about what's so trendy, so over the top, so anything? I want to know what's good.

What you dream about as your last meal.

Your favorite haunt, hangout, place to get a snack or pizza or burger or even a nice meal that you've loved forever or maybe just discovered recently?

East Village and LES outposts always welcome (as they are walking distance from my apartment), but moreover, if you have lived in NY , visited the boroughs or just remember something great that you ate here (anywhere here!) and can tell me where, please let me know! If the magazine that shall not be named hasn't covered it, or their review of it is outdated, I'll suggest it to my editor.

And if you're not in NY, I want to know where you're eating anyway! What's the greatest stuff around you? If a friend was visiting your city, where would you tell them to go?

Have a great weekend, and cook up some ideas for me, won't you?

Jib and Jibber Jabber

Sometimes my life can feel like a movie--an absurdist indie flick, a bombastic drama, the last, crawling hour of Solaris. Last week it was all fish-in-the-city moments that don't usually belong to me. Climaxing with a night of blonde girls and distinguishing patrons, a boating captain in white shoes, crudites and bottles upon bottles.

First a private book party at Cipriani Downtown (Upstairs) where one of my friends, mentors and perennial girl-crushes flitted around in Chloe, champagne-soaked conversing to the crowd gathered to welcome her new novel home. She was the lone jewel in that first writing class, she's told me not to sell myself short and to keep reaching for that brass ring and is testament to taking ones own advice to the fullest: and here's the shameless plug to check her out.

And then, after meeting some wonderful people whose numbers were not exchanged because I am terrible at planning, I had to leave the party early, her goodie bag in my hot little hand, to meet again with a different, albeit no less shimmering blonde, who has read half my book and--gasp--likes it and has told me that when I am ready, so is she, to introduce me to a few of her favorite agents and invite them to take a look as well. She chartered a boat to sail along the West side shores, as white and red was poured and the whispered jokes turned into yells, the cityscape white lights in black puddles, the passengers all holding each other close and laughing too loudly, the captain inviting us all to the fantastic yacht in the middle of the river where "Julian" promises an unforgettable time past midnight and me bowing out, all jib and jibber jabbered out.

I had to go home and finally sleep, because there had been so much consecutive newness already and so much to think about. The stunning sushi at the newly-opened Blue Ribbon uptown, the ride home on that Japanese motorcycle, the sharing of manuscripts. The sharing of playlists. The fall-planning and next summer's Thai dreams await.

The sky gone gray and that cold honing in, it was the brightest flash of the end of summer. And the film reel has since flipped, I have a cough and a pile of work on my cluttered desk, office workers around me grumble, and sure it's Monday and we have no time and we have no more long days to warm us, but I've got my unexpected memories and the hopes to create a whole lot more to watch in the upcoming months...

The Shortlist

I've got to clean out my "bookmark" folder, the one that sits atop my browser with all the sites that I go to and check when I should be writing a masterpiece. I have to think it was easier to be a genius and an influencer in the 1800s when there were little internet distractions and more incidents of scabies to keep down the population of other writers.

Anywhoozle.

This is what I've got on repeat in my browser, because I don't link to things on the side of my blog. If you have some great suggestions, please leave them here!

Music
For discussion, trends and general theory, I'm of the mind that there are so many blogs and so little time. Because I am a dork with no musical talent but too many ipods, I like this one for hip hop culture discussion-y stuff because it's got a really charismatic host who talks about theory and 'kids today' and generally does a great and interesting job. Also it is Sasha Frere-Jones sanctioned, and I am a big nerd for the so-called Best Music Critic in New York. I mean, I just really want to be as well-versed in this stuff someday...

For general and new indie-type stuff, straight up reviews and recs or listings, I think I like the Deerhunter blog (soon to be replaced by the No Age blog for cute band-watching where you can hear the next big thing from the last big thing's mouth?) and adore Music for Robots. Of course the usual fare of Brooklyn Vegan, Pitchfork and the rest are always good for me too, but unless I have something specific I'm looking for, I try not to troll them too much. It gets overwhelming and I'll read about a show that happened three years ago and bemoan that I didn't see it. And that's for losers. And you know. I'm a winner. Damnit! A WINNER! (said while looking into the mirror holding a glass of scotch that I then smash, spider-webbing the entire thing really artfully).

Design
I think it doesn't get better than Yatzer, and this is the blog that Kanye West's blog is always ripping off. So I say, go to the source.

Fashion
Colette hands down has been my favorite for almost two years now. A year ago I bought a really cool pair of Nikes at the Paris store that were high-tops and bright blue and had a peacock design on them and then two months later they were in New York magazine. So I felt cool. And then when I saw what the price was in New York, I felt way stupider.

Also, Refinery29 does a nice job, with lots of updates and stuff all about New York. Hey, this is what being a girl means. We look at clothes the way boys look at boobs.

Comedy
I've been cheating for over a year by posting stuff by these guys when I want to get a blog post out but don't want to write, because I just can't get enough of them. I think their earlier stuff was way better, but what are you gonna do. Now they are pretty popular and have gotten kind of over the top. Scroll down to New Web Design for the recent best, or search for my personal favorites like Lunch Meeting, Sunglasses and "Canada".

Any episode of this is pretty much guaranteed to make me laugh until I have tears in my eyes. Oh the Michael Cera one is pretty darn good.

Photography and Other Art
I'm way late to the party but Tim Barber of Tiny Vices Tiny Vices is my latest art-crush. Though honestly the site is pretty hard to navigate if you are looking at it for the first time.

The Best Photography Ever Seen By The Art World

At brunch yesterday, my friend shared with me the following pictures of her sister-in-law, who is a really talented and innovative photographer but who has been forced into a mall portrait job because of a school situation at the moment. These are the pictures she takes in between screaming little kids.

They are amazing.

Me, My Fatal Flaw

My best friend and I are full of revelations, she says to me our good qualities all come with a bad side, she said she put me as the person who inspires her most when pressed and it was good that she said so over the phone, because my mouth hung open and I didn’t want to get bleary-eyed in front of her, and then she told me more.

She said she never knew anyone in the world who was a both a dreamer and a doer until me, that we’ll have a conversation so outlandish that it will of course just be for fun, and then all of a sudden I’ve emailed the publisher of a magazine I want to write for, solicited an agent, had that difficult conversation, bought a plane ticket to Thailand or learned how to paint with oils. She says it astounds her sometimes, inspires her always. But the downside to this, and the downside to me cuts deeply.

Her anecdote was this. She said when we were at the zoo in Argentina last April, that even though we were exhausted and not feeling well and did not have the time, I insisted we keep walking, even did it without her, leaving her at the side of the path, because there was an exhibit of cheetahs that I had seen many times elsewhere in the world, but never in this place, and I had to see it here, in Argentina. Even if the cheetahs were sleeping, out of sight, even if it was too crowded. Even if the exhibit itself was closed. She said I made sense to her then.

Because she finally understood, she said, that I could never, would never, leave a stone unturned. I could never be in and out with the greatest hits, the top ten lists, the recommendation without the exhaustive research and the hours and hours of brain power, thinking, ruminating, running hard until there was no more light and no more breath in my lungs. She said my fatal flaw is that I have no fear but one: that I am deep down quite afraid that I will not have squeezed out every last ounce in my life upon my death, that I will not experience everything that I dream to hold and this is what may paralyze me if I ever slow down long enough to let it creep up. This is what keeps me successful at some things, intriguing to people, infuriating and bouncing off the walls to others, and keeps me from sleeping because I will not miss a minute of my life.

My fatal flaw is essentially who I am and what makes my brain and my soul shaped as they are. My fatal flaw is my unrelenting fire, the knots in my neck, the list scrawled on my hand, the worn out soles of my flapping Converse and my empty stomach and my red eyes and my ideas that could fly off the pages if I stare at them long enough.

My fatal flaw is me. I don’t regret it yet. And I never want to.

Belle Laide

He showed up ostensibly to just say hi, in the middle of the evening, the lamp dim, the air full blast cold, our feet bare and barely clean.

He came to check in, up and down, and though I’ve been tired and on my own sort of weak-hearted bender, really I’d like to think it might have been to see if I still looked the same, had the same lilt, smelled like flowers, felt soft to the touch and still had a bony back, whatever it is that boys think of girls that they lose. And I had that new mix, all that old French rap, and clean sheets and he had cloudy sky slits for eyes and I missed him even as he was there, a whisper ghost with longish hair, longer than it should have been in a week’s time and the same familiar shirt, and I feel perennially as though I will wade through water instead of air forever if I have to, because I don’t know what I want but I do, I don’t know how to help those who also don’t know, and it struck me that there are so many people out there to love, so many people who are right in some ways and completely wrong in others and it never stops any of us from fusing with them anyway.

And it was one of those rushes that keeps pushing, to a thumping soundtrack and to a barely babbling conversation, brain and brook, we had these needs, and only if we had screwed up more, for real, could we be mad, could we take it all away. Tough enough as it is, and it’s all our own undoing. We knew it. We did it anyway. We anticipated the end as soon as we heard the starting shot and just leapt. Shit. It was stupid. It was ugly. As belle laide as Marc Jacobs aims.

Because you can’t start over when you never really began. You can’t heal when the wound was imparted by your own thoughtless hand. We wanted to conduct. We wanted to gesticulate and scream, talk nonsense, skip over cars, laugh too loud. We did that. We did it too much and to little end. Let’s play, we thought. But playing isn’t real. In context yes, but in the rest of this mess, play is escape, and there is no escape from New York.

Quote of the Day

Deputy Editor: Listen to this band, and tell me what you think. There are no right or wrong answers.

(Shuffling of keys and iPod earbuds)

Me: Huh. I think I need to listen to them more to really get it, but I like the second track better.

(Pause)

Me: I feel like I'm watching the The Dark Crystal for the first time.

(Pause)

Me: This is like the soundtrack to all those 80s cartoons where ponies lived on barren moons or something.

Deputy Editor: You just got hired to write the piece if you want it. Seriously.

I. Love. This. Magazine.

Motherf*cking Fashion Week

So there's that restaurant assigned incredibly late that's due tomorrow, my bankcard's been lost and I'm living off of credit, the jagged yet nebulous state with an offending friend, that soft and safe relationship to get over, waiting on a final no from a job answer that's months in the making so that I can finally say yes to the other opportunity that wants to pay me money (but then I'll be locked in), too much partying, too much sleep, not enough food, not enough gym, and above all, not trying to jump from one comfort to another, just to be comforted.

And on top of that it's m-f*cking Fashion Week and I just got my assignment schedule.

Right now, I miss Guatemala...

It's That Time Again

Fall, all faded pictures and new beginnings, makeups and breakups, chills, stacks of papers, sweater weather and a feeling of anticipation. Something is inherently sad about becoming new. Something is inherently cliche about being sad.

Inevitable as it is.

Only red and orange leaves, falling over in a pumpkin patch and jugs of cider can help me now...

The mood waxes and wanes more than a lunar cycle, I've got these concert tickets in hand, I've got a lightness now on my shoulders but the heart's a little heavier and I wonder, even if it was fun, fantastic, are experiences just wastes of time when they don't particularly pan out, a few months have gone by and you haven't really changed, you loved, you didn't lose, you just were.

And you still are you.

New York is a Playground

Where else can you stay up until 7 in the morning on a Sunday? Walk through Brooklyn and see jaunty, quintessential fashion plates who truly believe what they are wearing is street-appropriate and--surprising of all--new? Order delivery of drugs and Thai food twenty four hours a day? Date someone 20 years your senior or junior and not have anyone bat an eye? Have a party celebrating an "idea" for a gallery that has not even truly been conceptualized yet?

I stayed up way too late last night and this post is barely formed, but something, it's something enough to start. It's Disney-esque around here. It's Never-Never Land, and we don't exactly have any adults telling us we've got to grow up. And then someone says we're the adults, we're supposed to be telling each other or at least ourselves on this very fact, but that someone is a little voice in our head which we are able to quash with another cocktail and glittering party, and all of a sudden you wake up and you're 25, 35, and you don't understand what anyone around you is saying because they're speaking in pwning and apparently there are bands that are hugely popular wearing shirts of times you actually remember the first time they were in style and you shake your head and go, this is the fountain of youth in many respects. But to what end?

New York is the fountain of youth. We can bathe in it, drink it (and I bet it tastes like chocolate milk, right?) and splash each other with it, as another summer comes to pass, and the grind is what it is, and those bar, flesh, name-dropping distractions from the grind turn into the bigger grind itself, I wonder, why do we want to stay young and in a playground? I am too big for the monkey bars, I can fly by them way faster than the other kids, but that's because I'm not a kid, not like that any more. Of course it's easy for me, it's not challenging, and therefore it's boring. I don't want to wait for the other kids to figure out that you have to pump and swing to get across. You can tell them all that you have to offer, but they have to fall off and tear their skinny jeans and their palms to understand it for themselves first.

I remember because my older friends tried to tell me. But no, I knew it all, I was the smartest person in the world, I was deep, man, and I could handle it. Right. Only after a few scars did I really get it.

I want a roller coaster where you have to be "this tall" to ride, "this age" to ride.

That's what I want, not Disneyland, I want Universal Studios, please.

Underinsured Drivers, Have I Got a Pleasant Surprise For You

My friend, who rides a Kawasaki, was on his way back to school when a European motorist in a rental car rammed into him, sending him flying into an intersection.

My friend sat stunned in veering cars for about 10 seconds. He proceeded to pick himself, his ripped shorts, his skidded Nikes and his cracked, damaged bike up and wheeled them all to the side. He continued his text conversation with me without devolving to hysterics, calmly filled out an accident report only because the motorist insisted, and then, with three layers of skin left smeared on the pavement, limped away.

No legalities, no excess of claims, no whining that he was scarred for life. Even though it was the other guy's fault. Even though 2% of his body will be forever affixed to the street outside the cornerstone building of the Tribeca Film Festival.

My friend is a badass. But is it wrong to wish, and I mean really wish, that the next time I have a fender bender, I hit him?

Quote of the Day

Me: Well, that's the craziest story from Guatemala. Pretty insane and scary right? You ever had anything like that happen to you?

Enormous trainer, lifting his shirt, showing a scar: I got shot when I was fifteen and lost a kidney.

Me: Fine, you win.

Get Busy Being Busy

Why is it that when I had nothing to do at work, I would spend fifteen minutes with my mouth open, staring at the wall, dreaming about candy, or whatever the hell it is I think about, instead of paying bills, managing my calendar or returning emails? Even though any normal person would think that would be a perfect time to do such a thing, to go on writing the new book or managing the management of the old one, or even go down a floor and say hi to my old boss to let them know I didn't perish in Nicaragua, didn't even get dysentery?

Some times in life, there are no answers to questions. There is no answer appropriate to explain why I, at 26 years old, cannot do anything unless I explicitly have a prominent kick in the butt to do it. I sleep with papers on my bed because there is enough room to do so after I'm reading at night. I will drink coffee all day instead of picking up the phone to order actual food. I will write if I have a schedule and someone to answer to. Work out if there is an actual goal, not just the process of maintenance. Doing things just to do them, or because I should, even though there is no end in sight feels all too A Wrinkle In Time to me. Bouncing a ball because I don't want to fall out of line with the others. It's like when my parents forced me to do Kumon Math and there was a choice: do fifteen minutes a day of math problems OR leave them all to the last day of the week and spend over an hour doing them.

I let them sit until the end every time. I hate math. But I like an equation in which I am under a certain amount of stress and then must perform. I like pressure. It's...weird.

It's a strange thing, not doing work unless I have some imposing deadlines, and then suddenly I'm that much more productive. Banging out work-related projects, personal writing projects and scheduling a dentist appointment is so much easier when you've got a deadline on at least part of that to-do list. At least for me. Otherwise you're in this nebulous state. You could or you couldn't. No one would know either way. You yourself would know, but that's never really pushed me. I'm not that great of a self-coach. I can critique myself but not come up with any sort of constructive way to improve. Also, I have bursts of manic productivity and then stretches of extreme laziness. And I'm kind of getting used to it.

I decided this weekend I was going to have a busy week. I actually have a lot to do. I'm going to try to do it. Give myself some pressure. Because after the trip, I feel like so much of this is self-imposed. I thought the hamster wheel I was on was necessary, but really as I look at my piles of unopened mail and crushing in-box I see that it wasn't. But I liked it, deep down. I like feeling a little crazed. Otherwise I'll spend all my time staring and thinking. And if I'm going to fund my next trip, this time to Southeast Asia I think, I need to have both.

Because no one is going to pay me for ruminations. Not yet.

Context

On the subway this morning I sported wet hair, taped-together headphones and a truly embarrassing pair of sandals, the others having been ripped seam to seam in Costa Rica after the ATV incident where I smashed against a cliff rock, and I was a few minutes off my normal schedule and fumbling more than usual when I entered the F train.

One stop and a seat opened up near two guys and I sat down between them, trying not to drop my bag, trying to keep open my eyes, adjusting my falling iPod and various other balancing acts and the guy to my left looked at me and so, I looked at him. His eyes were sad or confused, or maybe it was just me, but it struck me that he looked kind of familiar in the way that I had seen him around, in my neighborhood or in my office building or something, except he didn’t look like he normally did, he didn’t have a hat, bright sneakers. He was wearing something marginally office appropriate the way certain people under a certain age do, slightly off, still with that rebel shaggy hair or a skirt that is a little too downtown, uneven bangs, the posture still swaggering, the shoes flagrantly anti-establishment, anti-loafers. The way one shows the rest of the office that one still doesn’t belong on one's own volition, that this is all just eating time before that artistic endeavor pans out. And it didn’t fit him, maybe precisely because he didn’t want it to, maybe because he just didn’t look like he’d ever be right at home in a button-down, no matter what he did, because it wasn’t who he was underneath it, in the way you wonder if people become exactly what their genetics predispose—a skinny-pale misfit must then become a punk, a blonde boy from California, a surfer.

And he was reading a battered copy of Ulysses, one from the 70s with a hideous black font on the cover, yellowed pages, a broken spine. My own novel just got handed over for a pre-read, and when I started it I had nothing but Ulysses on the brain, I had wandering ideas about the entire thing, I had just gotten back from a journey of epic proportions myself and had all these new ideas about it and I thought, now is the time to say something, to reach out and connect with a stranger, because it would be the right thing to do, because this sort of thing doesn’t happen too often, and we all only intersect with about 20 people on a regular basis and how are we ever to meet anyone new unless we make an effort, without a beer in our hands, without wanting to make out, get a job, get directions.

Because in Nicaragua I made friends at the drop of a hat, wouldn’t hesitate to let whomever sit down next to me or comment about someone’s book on a bus, especially if I had been sure then, as I was at this moment, that I had seen this person before. That he had seen me. But now, on Wednesday morning in New York City, on the F train, even though I had something to say, even though it would have been too personal and maybe then it would have been memorable just because of that, I did absolutely nothing.

I didn’t even look back.

I turned my iPod up.

And then I got off the subway and while I was walking off, I knew that I had given up a small opportunity that would affect me for some reason, because it wasn’t just this kid, this moment, it was a symptom of an overlying disease of staid standards I just fell back into without even pursuing. It was natural to act this way, and because of that, it was wholly unnatural. I stole a glance as I got off, and the kid was staring at me, like he knew, I could have talked to him and didn’t. I just didn't.

It was all out of context—the situation, what we were wearing to go to work, the time of day, the day of week, it just didn’t make any sense. It was just another casualty of the city day, a million chances we have to make nice, to make friends, to make a connection and we just don’t.

I will figure out how to do this in NY, without alcohol, without sexuality, without an ulterior motive, I promise I will learn how to do this someday.

Quote of the Day

Enormous trainer at the gym: "Next up we're going to do Donkey Kicks."

Me, sniggering: "I was going to make a joke but, it's pretty inappropriate so I won't."

Enormous trainer at the gym: "No, go on."

Me, taking a deep breath. "Well, (pause), that's all fine and good but when are we going to do Donkey Punches?"

Linkies!

1994 was the best year of British comedy. The cobweb is freaking fantastic.

I've watched this about ten times today alone. And I still laugh out loud when he says, "I stand right behind this guy when he pees."

Utterly shameless promotion for some boys I know. Go on, try to explain it to me.

Last Batch

The Business of Keeping Them Out

There's been a lot of talk lately, that opinions these days are just aggregate sub-genres, that whatever we like turns to crap once other people are aware of it, that there is a fierce sense of loneliness that lines the pride we hold dear. If I hear it, if I see it, and you haven't, then it's mine, I own it, I have a personal connection with it, etc. If you, or the internet by proxy, zooms it to you, then all of a sudden a band that I thought spoke to ME is speaking to a thirteen year old in Ohio. Tastes used to be this thing that brought kindred people together, but mass-marketing and too many choices and meta upon meta has made it all different now. We like the same stuff, and yet, we are not the same. We are still splintered.

And it's not just style or politics, it's our sense of who we are, where we came from and even, where we've paid to belong. I read this old article in Guatemala while a stray kitten bit my feet and it made me cringe and smile. I'm thinking about this article and all its abstractions today, how it relates to being a New York kid or adult, being an American, being anything. I don't have anything interesting to add, but I would love to hear your thoughts on it...

Bah Hah Hah

I interrupt any revelations and beautiful pictures for a small dose of what I find to be incredibly hilarious.

Thank G*d for this.

Shots

Soon I'll start writing again, but by popular demand, here are more pictures instead...Nicaragua nights, Guatemalan pools, volcano climbs and freshwater lakes abound...