Blowing By

Every weekend after is like an explosion hangover, a detox needed from so much more than the general overconsumption I usually succumb to, but lately it’s been like I can’t catch a moment. On paper it all sounds great, in application, it’s sort of upsetting. There is too much to do. Far too much. And when any of it is done, a handful of other items of equal importance or more fall by the wayside.

Case in point—This weekend I:

1. Went to the Black Kids, Kid Sister concert in the Planetariumand Kayne just showed up in the middle to play some songs. In a word: radical. He was within sweating distance. And sweat he did, as he was wearing some sort of monstrous fur coat. A kid in line offered me a Percocet because my friend was able to buy an extra ticket. The evening’s events capped with a Space Show where a bunch of argyle and neon-clad concertgoers cheered when the Earth did not get blown up by a chunk of burning sun. Robert Redford’s voice narrated and at the end told us that we were all “safe…for now” and the crowd went berserk.

2. Afterwards went to a club (insert grimace) where I was harassed by several men with accents from far and exotic places like Staten Island who wanted to pet my head because I had a really ridiculous fake-fur hunting hat with graffiti on it and for some reason thought I should wear it in a club where girls in bikinis were dancing.

3. Met up with some still-in-college kids and actually had a good time. You would have thought I learned my (cougar) lesson by now, but you know, they just keep coming up to me!* And then I have to be like shaking my head all world-weary and look into the distance like the Marlboro Man, weathered and smoky and say, “I’m fifty seven years old, kiddo, just keep on walkin’.” But for some reason it doesn’t detract anyone. Mrs. Robinson should be a reference on my resume.

4. Made a huge mess in my room and in my own head with piles and piles of dresses that I just can’t fit inside a closet.

5. Worked myself into a circle.

6. Had a revelation about how to structure the novel.

7. Did not write down any of said revelation. Then wished I was one of those really dramatic types who could fall down to their knees and shout, “Noooooooo!” instead of whimpering.

8. Overpromised.

9. Underdelivered.

10. Slept too little, ate too much sushi, vowed to keep Sundays sacred and after a misstep or two, kept that promise anyway.

*Incidentally, I was also at an unbelievable Upper East Side apartment (and I thought I had seen Upper East Side apartments, this one was at least 15 rooms not counting the bathrooms) where I ended up hanging out with a five year old the whole time (he gave me a circular “tour” that lasted almost two hours and kept going into the kitchen for chocolate ice cream). Babies and children love me for some reason. I think they think I’m one of them. They always giggle and run up to me. The same with nineteen-year-old students in New York. I can’t explain it, but it’s horribly amazing.

Quote of the Weekend

“Want to have a dance party?”

“Er, it’s five in the morning.”

“Want to have a dance party?”

(Beat)

“Okay!”


**Note to self: do not, under any circumstances, believe that just because something seems like a great idea, that it is, and that those who are sleeping at five in the morning, namely your roommates, will appreciate it.

Guy-a-tus

(Pronounced “GUY-aye-tuss”; rhymes with “hiatus”. Definition: a celibate and purposeful period devoid of dating intended to open up time and energy for other projects like career, friends, family obligations and general mental health).

Last night began my advanced novel writing class to finally get this beast done by Spring.*

And so my writing teacher-slash-mentor-slash-friend told the group—for some reason all girls and for some reason all older than me (again!)—that she was going on a “guyatus”.

What this meant was she was sick of dating for now, was tired of the maintenance of getting her nails did and her wax on and tired of the time-sucking and though she thought it was perfectly pleasant to have someone, say, hanging around on the weekends, said person never really left, and pages of her new book never really got written.

No offense to guys, and this is by no means intended to go on a chick-lit bent, but I was so enamored of this idea that it really got me thinking…and not just to steal the idea myself and pitch it to Cosmo. Well, there was that, too.

This isn’t to say I don’t like dating. I like it a lot—maybe too much. But there’s the issue of not seeing your friends because you’ve got this other person (or people) taking up all this time, you go out too much, you drink too much, you’re high on infatuation fumes and so you giggle at your desk instead of working or working out, or put off that charity work you’ve been planning because you’re trying to catch up on sleep because you were on the phone until 3 AM laughing about a joke that, let’s face it, in two months will not be funny in the slightest.

And you let your novel go for six months collecting dust and seeming more trite by the day because you have a crush, and you should stop having crushes, and stop having plans on Monday night--just because it’s Manhattan and you can eat dinner at 11 PM doesn’t mean you should,--because what you should be doing is working on your mind, finishing your fine arts half-degree and your book, and being there more for your family to help them out and drawing more art to put on your walls because all the charcoal drawings from last semester somehow ended up all being of really big butts because you never stood in a different spot in class and the models were zaftig and splayed out in a position where their butts were kind of in your face and you laughed about it but the teacher looked at you like you shouldn’t so you forced down giggles and just drew a bunch of asses all semester.

Maybe that’s just me.

I’m used to having a boyfriend, or even just a guy in heavy rotation. But I shouldn’t be. I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings on either side, but sometimes I think it’s too hard to manage both, you and someone else or you and a million dates. It’s fun, it’s the stuff of Sex and the City, and while we don’t want to admit we sort of want to grow up that way, we kind of do. It looks fun. It is fun.

Hey, let us not forget that I’m a girl. And as girls, I’ll go out on a limb and say we like to feel wanted, we like to feel hot. I hate to admit this, but it’s true. And let me speak for only part of the population of intelligent, strong, independent women out there. But validation sometimes comes in the form of boys. We like to feel like they like us. We’ve been hearing it our whole lives—who hasn’t complimented a little girl in a dress by saying she looks so “pretty”? It’s not wrong, it just is. But the completion of ourselves by filling our lives with the quest for love…it’s the stuff of novels, sure. But not of novel writing.

Perhaps it’s just a matter of time-management or the city or thinking we all deserve the world. Self-esteem and scared of aging and not being desired. Procrastination. The tides. But this guyatus thing really is starting to sound a little brilliant. Maybe because some people think dating sucks. Maybe because some people think dating is so good that it's starting to trump everything else.

I want to pose the question now:

Have any of you sworn off the opposite sex for a while? What happened? Did you build a house, plant a tree, or just watch a ton of VH1?


*And by Spring I mean April because I have an issue with March, as it always tricks me into thinking it’s not Winter, but really, it is, it snows half the time and is freezing and I’m always the idiot with the icicle hair (when wet hair from the shower freezes on the walk to the subway in those really sexy-looking scraggle-dreads) whose warm coats are in an attic in Connecticut because storing them seemed like such a great idea.

Work-A-Day Quote of the Day

“One of the employees just quit. On a post-it.”

“What? What did it say?”

“It said ‘Thanks for everything. It’s just not a good fit.’”

“So she just cleared out her desk?”

“Well she had only been here two weeks.”

“Oh. So all she had were post-its? Now I see.”

Heath Ledger is Dead. And it's Business as Usual.

Anyone else oddly emotionally affected by Heath Ledger’s death?

I’m no New Yorker and far from a talking head. I can’t shed any light on anything--never have been able to. I’ve lived here for four and a half years but still have no idea what direction is where, only that I can live a long and fruitful life never going back to Dorian’s, I’m not in-the-know or particularly fashionable or worldly, I’m not yet jaded, I oscillate between bouts of unexpected sensitivity and absolute lack of feeling and yet for some reason this week has put all of that up in sharp relief. Happening here, so close to places we all frequent, by a man who seemed to be one of those guys we just sort of saw and admired his normalcy, his Brooklynite life that we ascribe to is just the strangest feeling. This may be the dumbest statement I may ever make: but I am scared and saddened by death—how easy it is, how common it is, how inevitable it is, all the time, and so surprised when it dawns on me for the umpteenth time, and I don’t know if I ever will not be. I don’t know how people aren’t. I didn’t know Heath Ledger and of course I never would have, and my heart is breaking a little. And it has no right to.

Maybe because celebrities live here too, and we see them sometimes, and they seem like extensions of us—a little richer, a little more glamorous, and so we think, a little happier. And why shouldn’t they be? They live the life outside of cubicles, they get to walk outside at 1 PM if they want and they always will. Sure, they pay the price by being followed, but who can say that we haven’t thought they deserve it just a little, for getting to be immortal and unusually immune to the drudgery that pervades the rest of us?

Or maybe because I can’t shake the idea of a universal force that allows us to feel other people’s pain or something just as touchy feely—but it hurts that we’re not supposed to care about this kind of thing, that we feel like we’re owed something, that we secretly want the body bag to be open just a little because we can’t believe that people just up and expire, because of accidents or because they hate themselves or because people hate them or whatever else it may be. I remember when I cried for days when Kurt Cobain died because I was in the throes of SUCH IMPORTANT pre-teen feelings and he had SPOKEN to me, and I see now how silly that was, and maybe how sad, just like I do now, being so much closer in age to the next wave of celebrity deaths, knowing that a lot of us get to live a long time and accomplish nothing, a short time and accomplish something, even if just by punctuating said accomplishments by having a short time.

This thought is all over the place. It’s weird, it’s rambling, it makes no sense. I just keep having one salient conclusion about any of this. I remember when I read Rosencrantz & Guildenstern and I felt something reading it then, turning the pages slowly, when they die on stage, in these sort of bursting fits, they die quite well and they’re told to stop; because that’s not what death is. It’s not dramatic and epic and climactic in its own right, it has no power over us even remotely in the way we have grown up to believe. It’s the lack of living and that is all it is. Not banners flying and singing praises of victory, or honor for dying for a movement. It’s no movement. It’s one day being seen and then never again, not dramatic at all, just fading, memories living on until they don’t, because they’re under our own control and then, very very slowly, they aren’t.

I'm...I'm...Mikey...I...I....I rock

The neverending music explosion is one I can bearly stop subscribing to. My own obsessesive quest for something different. How it informs our fashion, neighborhoods, eyewear, blank faces, whatnot. The globalization has made people cool, genre-spawn has made us all hotter. What's bad is good for bad's sake, and vice versa. Backlash to the backlash until we're not sure who we're supposed to support any more. What we like? But we like lame stuff like that one Kylie Minogue song that played that whole summer in Australia. Oh that was some sugarpill I could't swallow even without Victoria Bitters.

I'm getting my wisdom teeth yanked. At my old age. I'm a baby about it. Not for the pain, but because I'm going to miss these Cool Kids performances.

First at Studio B, then at the Museum of Natural History? What could be better?

For just a taste of this low-fi pixie dust, here's the track that's been haunting me all week. Repetition as invention and I'm behind it.

Kid Sister, the other (better) half of Chicago wave, hand dancing finger choreography by Kanye not included.

*Vintage* Alert: Check out this Cool Kids track: nailing bringing back "88".

Spun

This morning I’m recovering from the 2008 Spin Year in Music Party in bright red Super Sunnies and friends, it is not pretty. Last time I went to this thing, The Spinto Band played as I ran away from a Vanity Fair contributor with a chillum who was a good two inches shorter than me in flats.

Yes, John Norris was there and almost as blonde as his very young Brooklynite companion. And it was my first foray into the Highline Ballroom, which I really liked.

We missed most of Brother Ali, but Ted Leo and the Pharmacists was one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen. Not only because they’re just an incredibly charismatic group; but also because they’re so inconsistently stylistically so as a whole. For instance, the frontman/namesake would be jumping around like he was on the Vans tour with these split-chicken-kicks (and they were, in a word, rawsome) while the heavily bearded drummer with day-glo teeth would be pounding away on the skins, looking blankly in the air as though he was solving an SAT math problem. I could almost hear his thoughts, “The train leaves at thirty miles per hour from DeButte, now let’s see here…carry the four…and…” while he was just drumming his arms out. And what’s more, their disconnect completely worked. I really have warmed up to their new album. It’s just as frenetic as their performance—oscillating between this 90s neo-pop-punkish high school rock and twangy little beachblast numbers.

But even the free-flowing alcohol and smashed green glass on the floor as rubberband hipsters slipped and fell because they wouldn’t take off their cardboard sunglasses could not prepare me for the Eagles of Deathmetal. These guys are throwbacks to the part of the seventies I always forget: swampmarsh ‘staches, mutton chops, Aviators, patriotic tats and knocked-kneed hambone dancing with really big round electric guitars. These guys brought the house down so much, it was the first genuine mosh pit I’ve seen since since eighth grade (when I moved away from another town in Connecticut, my friends threw a party and some punk bands played and my dad*—there because the venue would not let us be there without someone over eighteen—stood watching as my friends, my boyfriend and his idiot posse all accidentally stabbed each other with Hot Topic spiked wristbands.) It was like some backwater revival by the end, with everyone split between yelling “Freebird!” and squinting at the stage with a slow and horrible realization of, “Uncle Rick….is….is that you? Get the hell off the stage and stop being so cool!” Because if these guys weren’t the spitting image of my twice-removed cousins from Normal, Illinois, I owe some dude a drink.

Needless to say that after all this I’m crawling back into a hooded sweater. There cannot be play like this and productive job-searching together, can there?


*(And let it be known that my father stood there in a MICKEY MOUSE sweater made by Ralph Lauren for golfing so that everyone would know that he was the dad. Like they wouldn’t? Oh, I’ve been mortified many times since then, but that was my first taste.)

Bye Bye Corporate?

My post-graduate life has been, for all intents and purposes, exceptionally corporate. HR departments, high heels, repurposed computers and repurposed personal mission statements.

And in the search for the next phase, the truly freelance one, the one with no healthcare, the one where the paychecks can run as high as $500 for a month’s work, I’m privy to an entirely new world, one where kids blast music, putting out the cool magazines, in their sneakers, doodling on walls, and I have to keep to myself the following two thoughts:

1. How the hell do I get you to like me enough to hire me?

2. Where are the adults, do they know what you’re doing at so-called work, and please tell me they’re never coming back?

So, the search continues. I think I give a good first impression, but after that it’s all downhill. Off to work on an edit test for a job which pays less than half of what I made last year. Starving. Artist. Indeed.

I’ll leave you with a quote-of-the-morning for a fun job I just got where I won’t be paid in money per se, but instead in their drawing an illustration of me. Isn’t that payment enough, to become a cartoon? I’ll be creating a ridiculous persona who reviews the finest things the city has to offer (like an upcoming event where really rich older women are paired with poor but incredibly hot younger men—yes this is real).

Dude : So…we’re thinking pill popping, disordered eating, blowing lines of Xanax, social climbing, serial dating, well-bred and ill-behaved?

Me: Hmm. That sounds about right.

Stumbler

I have just been introduced to the most amazing website ever after my blog was added by an enterprising Australian (this time, not my Grandpa). It's called stumpleupon.com and every website I click on is incredible in its own way, be it genius, crackpot architects touting zero carbon houses to swarm theory which claims to inform the next phase of military robot intelligence.

And then, there were these, which have brought me to the edge of hilarity, reason and wonder.

The Worst Albums covers of all time. I dare you to look at each of these at work and not get fired for outbursts of hysterical laughter.


Cats in sinks. You know I've wasted hours playing Kitten War. Well now here's the next generation. What slays me about this is all in the descriptors. "What are we?" "Cats in Sinks." "What's that?" "Well, it's about cats. In sinks. And some basins."


Ice. Aptly titled.

Sidewalk chalk art that you have to see to believe.

Please tell me what you find, this is my new addiction...

I don't trust people who claim to like greek yogurt, and other observations...

-You know, the ones that say they like it as a snack. As if they prefer it over things like ice cream. I...I just don't believe you. I don't care if you're adding honey, or, as you insist on calling it, "nature's candy" (that's your first problem), if you prefer it over real candy then I mean...I'm just saying...you're probably a communist. That's all. Nothing wrong with it. I mean, it works on paper. Really,*

-One bird in the thing is worth two things in the stuff.

-The flannel shirt I am wearing at this moment retails for $158 at Steven Alan. This seems so wrong and also like poetic justice for all the sins I've committed in my life. Including buying the shirt in the first place (oh how I love it).

-People who say they don't care what other people think of them are probably not well liked.

- I am not scared of my next life phase, in which we will all turn to yuppies. Whole Foods, Barnes and Noble, and my fervent insistence to two separate groups of bearded youngsters this weekend that "when I was your age, Pluto was a planet" has all prepared me for just this.

-Airborne and Zicam do not work, as much as we'd all like them to. I base this on a highly scientific study I've conducted in my bed just now.

-Mothers are always at least half-right.

- The people that act all crazy because they're "artists" and "creative types" and think they don't have to adhere to the common rules of social normalcy and put their heads in their hands when everyone's just trying to have dinner together or vigorously rub their eyes in an affected way of "I'm just trying to control my rage that you don't understand my brilliance" are usually the same people that insist on punching a wall when they're angry and then insist that they don't even feel the shards of plaster embedded in their bloody knuckles and should be avoided at all costs.

-Being mean will get you ahead with all the wrong people.

-Mypod addiction is worse, so so much worse than Blackberry smoking. I almost just based a computer purchase on whether or not I could transfer my songs from one device to another (Mac vs. PC) and afterwards had to go home and sit in a corner and think about what I'd done. You win again, Mac. I need the illusion of being creative, and getting a notebook in black really matches with that ideal, and by that ideal, I mean the aforementioned $158 flannel shirt.

-Boys are all just one hot girl away from cheating on their girlfriends.

-Vitamins smell so terrible, it's just unacceptable. It's like sniffing a condensed foot pellet every time I try to gag one of those horsepills down. Why is there not a patch for vitamins? I would consider thinking about buying that if it were offered at Duane Reade and on sale.

-Give up, never down, at work.

-Not wanting to hang out with someone almost always guarantees that they will always want to, and try repeatedly, to hang out with you. This works both ways.

-Our healthcare system is inherently complicated, most likely because there is a governmental conspiracy to use my wisdom teeth as rogue agents who cannot be extracted from my mouth or else the terrorists will win.

-First all the bands I liked had "wolf" in their name, then "deer" and now it's"bear". I really hope the next round of popular bands is as follows: super glitter merkins, merkin manor, and merkin vs. gherkin (the final showdown for world domination). Pitchfork, are you listening? Make it so.

*Other people I do not trust may or may not include the following: those that wear socks to bed, those that love Monday mornings, those that do not say hello to their doorman, those who speak more than three languages (you might be a robot), those that think any Back to the Future was better than Part II (you might be the devil).

Interview Quote of the Day

Media mogul: What are your thoughts on…sex…using it to get ahead?

Me (reflexively crossing my legs and pulling on the dress I wore): Uh. You mean like performing, uh, ‘sex acts’ (making air quotes) to get hired?

Media mogul (pensively): Hmm, I guess I wasn’t thinking that far out.

Me (uncrossing my legs): Thank God I don’t have to do that again! (Elbowing him) Hey-o!


--------
Not surprisingly, he hasn’t called me in for a second round. Did this joke not translate at ten in the morning or something?

Cover Letter

Dear Sir/Madam/a slack-jawed intern who will not finish reading the rest of this,

I am writing to apply for your open editor/freelancer/tightrope walker position at whatever you sell/publish/print, of which I am an avid consumer/reader/lemming. I am currently a editor/freelancer/aging wanna-be hipster at a luxury magazine/design house/LES apartment where I fix troubled copy/manically attempt to dazzle with brilliant turns of phrase like “after mashing arguably the most important caipirinha of his life”/cry myself to sleep on a daily basis.

While my most recent work has been in food/travel/fashion/music/citing Simpsons episodes aloud to the janitorial staff, I also have experience in listing work/marketing/chatting up silver foxes/figuratively whoring myself out to get free wine and/or crudités. I’ve lived in the city since graduating from the school I went to/a better one/the one I heard you went to and I am very familiar with the thing that you are looking for/thing I think you’re really looking for even though you won’t tell me, damn you with your head games/thing that you aren’t looking for at all. I know the value of hard work/kissing ass/a dollar and feel that I lead the lifestyle of/embody the delusional ideals of /buy enough stuff that you would approve of to exhibit my dedication to {insert your brand}. God bless {your brand}. I would have been drinking Pepsi/taken that year off to travel/be dead in a ditch long ago had it not been for {your brand}.*

I have attached my clips/resume/a threatening letter from my lawyer for your consideration.

I look forward to hearing from you/obsessively checking my email twelve times an hour only to never hear back/fielding your inopportune phone call because you insist on ringing my cell when I’m still in the cube I occupy. I hope that we will meet soon/you will find me talented enough to hire/you, upon finding that I am not talented enough to hire, at least find me attractive enough to hire anyway.

Best regards/Cherry Cordially/Happy Kwanza,

K

*If {your brand} is aimed at a youngish demographic, then {your brand} is hott. So, so hott. Your brand is like a first edition kaffiyeh. But way less inflammatory. But like, just as relevant.

If {your brand} is not, then {your brand} raised me with decent morals and a can-do attitude. {Your brand} is storied. {Your brand} is more classic than Dockers. I’d really like to be part of {your brand} at this exciting time because {your brand} is about to be ushered into whatever you want it to/whatever your boss wants it to/the nineteenth century and I have the wherewithal/googling capabilities/family connections to become an integral part of your team.

Ideas, people?

Here’s the thing about fancying yourself “creative”. As long as you have some sort of prohibitive factor in your life (say, your full-time job, your full-time relationship, your charity work with learning-disabled orphans that you'll really commit yourself to once your schedule clears) you can pretend that, and that alone, is the reason for your lack of fame, or worse, lack of daily greatness. I mean, it’s been working for me for over a quarter-century now.

But when you’re given the opportunity to showcase what it is, as the kids say, what you’re made of, and you can’t exactly produce it, this is where the trouble begins.

My full-time job, however glamorous and full of wine, has an end in sight. I knew this. We all did. But like the inevitable end of Titanic, didn’t you just hope there would be a Hail Mary pass that changed the outcome of history? I did. And that magic day, dear friends, has yet to come.

So there comes then that opportunity we were talking about, you and I, that free-as-a-bird, show-me-how-you think dare. From someone damn important. And you have forty other deadlines to meet. And your (my) brain freezes. It’s not used to being addressed to directly.*

So you shoot off a thought and you see if it sticks, and if it doesn’t, well, then it’s back to the drawing board to wonder why it's so hard to capture creative flow.

--------

*Would-be employers, can’t you mar up this request by adding that I need to make a thousand copies? My best thoughts come to me during the abysmal tedium of everyday entry life, I swear!

Christmas means...

The packed train ride there, lugging fifty pounds of books to distribute, falling asleep and waking up in a semi-panic that I’ve missed my stop.

Cocktail hour starting at four PM.

Tripping over the cat—who refuses to move from in front of the tree all day, but has no qualms about stepping on my face to traverse across the bed at night.

Sitting in the backseat of the car again.

Hours spent in the warmest room of the house and never letting the fire die.

My annual tour of duty as the official wrapper of all gifts (which I have since embraced, even wrapping gifts to me or gifts that I accidentally bought for me while shopping for other people—like Amy Hempel’s collected works).

Motown Christmas tunes.

Sidestepping the obstacle course that is the attic to procure said wrapping paper in the first place. And finding wrapped presents up there with no dates and three layers of dust, which I momentarily consider just putting under the tree and then handing to my parents.

Cranberry walnut pie for breakfast.

Scaring the bejesus out of the dog by shouting his name through the empty wrapping paper roll right in his ear.

The streets paved with lines of glowing luminaria,

The un-seen mantle covered with shots of us on Santa’s lap each year, from me at four, grimacing in a short-sleeved purple dress in Miami to the regrettable B.U.M. equipment T-shirt and holiday troll earrings of 1990 (did I mention I was also wearing a jingle bell necklace?).

My dad with a video camera which must have been the newest model in 1989.

The ornaments that hold the most special of places in our hearts: the bright green pickles (how we have two of these is beyond me), my first stocking now yellowed and strung with a hook, my brother’s dilapidated pinecone monstrosity from kindergarten, my first-grade ceramic self-portrait (depicting what only can be described as that disease from the movie Mask—you know, the one with Cher), the clay boot from Texas.

Ten phonecalls before noon.

Loudly cursing out my brother’s computer for balking in the middle of the thirtieth NPR All Songs Considered podcast I’ve downloaded.

The Godfather trilogy.

Having our true holiday meal the day before—having no turkey but plenty of shrimp kabobs, friends and wine—and then spending Christmas Eve in our favorite Indian restaurant trying to out-best each other with preposterous dream vacation fantasies (Helsinki vs. Lake Como).

Trying to fit a Santa hat on the dog.

Me, wearing a dress and someone’s big blue pullover fleece, bare legs and my mother’s socks all day long while I switch from the Yule Log channel to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

As many blankets as I can carry, spread out in every direction.

Alternating between a historical history of the spice trade and an old issue of Vanity Fair.

Nearly breaking the washing machine by overturning a gallon of detergent into a load.

Coming back to the city, wishing I could have taken the entire week off instead of just a day, handing in the story research and daydreaming about next week, next year, and everything else unrelated to right now.

Being very, very grateful.

Hope you’ve had/are having a wonderful holiday…

Oh yes, there will be blood

I have never been afraid of the dentist.* That is until this lovely experience. Why don’t I just change offices you ask? Why, that would be too easy! Instead I hid from the fearless hygienist for a year and a half, cowering in a fetal position in the bathtub until I was forced to go back for a cleaning since the end of 2007 also marks the end of all my health insurance and a full-time job.

So here’s what went down:

Small Jamaican woman who might be the devil incarnate: Sit down!

Me: Y-y-y-yes, ma’am.

(beat)

Me, taking a big breath of courage and cringing, remembering my last experience: Um…can I please ask to have a light cleaning? I think I have sensitive gums or something. (Code for, actually, my gums are fine, but I distinctly remember you giving the top of my mouth repeated, stabbing acupuncture with your little needle equipment because you were dancing to the radio blasting in the room as you scraped).

Small Jamaican woman who might be the devil incarnate: Wait just a minute. Let me look at your chart.

(beat, followed by furrowing of the brow)

Oh, it’s YOU. I remember you! I remember we had a lot of problems, didn’t we? Because you REFUSED to cooperate. Yes, lots and lots of problems here with your behavior.

Me, lower lip trembling and wondering if I can simultaneously get her in a sleeper hold and grab my chart, fleeing for the border, never to be seen again: I’m sorry. I’ll be good this time! I promise!

Small Jamaican woman who might be the devil incarnate: You said that I was hurting you! Why would you say that to me? Why? Why?

Me, looking at the ground: I don’t know. (Because you made me cry?)

Small Jamaican woman who might be the devil incarnate: Let’s not have a problem this time, okay? It doesn’t hurt!

The needle thing goes on. Good ole Stabby McStabs-A-Lot gets that familiar twinkle in her eye.

Cleaning commences with a whhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz! (noise from her various torture devices).

Cleaning ends.

Me, smiling like a maniac through a mouthful of blood: Mmmmmm! Mmmmmm! Please ma’am, may I have another?

Jamaican woman who might be the devil incarnate, looking a little freaked out: Okay, time to put your coat on.

Me: Muah-hah-hah! Victory is mine!

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*And never had to be, I think I got my first and only cavity my senior year of college. What a dorky accomplishment.

Please Don't Tell...

We have/had a favorite bar. And much like a favorite band, brand, movie, whatever, because we fancied we were one of the first to really have found it, we claim some sort of ridiculous man-on-the-moon-with-an-American-flag ownership. Sure, we know it existed for a while completely independent of us, we know it will exist afterwards; we know we are just a couple of dorks who stumbled upon it mere months before the rest of the city, but come on, we’re twenty six years old! What thrill of discovery can we come close to that doesn’t involve getting married and having a baby at this juncture?

So the tipping point has officially been hit at PDT, the not-so-secret speakeasy-cocktail mecca-strange family portrait and taxidermy-adorned alcove just beyond the riot grrrl waitresses at Crif Dog, coincidentally my other favorite place in the world. (If you have not eaten cheese tots and a bacon-wrapped hot dog here at four in the morning, then you have not vomited, er…lived, my friend. Horrible, sweet relief is the moment when they come back up minutes later and glorious is the next morning when you wake up alive. )

In any case, back to PDT, which we figure, as we are annoying implant New Yorkers who work in magazines and film, respectively, has a shelf life of about another two weeks on the “under the radar” and, as we all know, makes the place a “total sell-out” and “not worth visiting” anymore*.

Friday night found us excited to finally have a reservation at the un-un-godly hour of eleven. And yet, when we got there, we could not get in.

Because about eight armed policemen were in there “checking the liquor license”. Because it sure does make sense for that sort of search to happen at primetime on a weekend night. And utilize half a swat team. Sure.

So we sat in Crif Dog for about an hour and a half, nursing PBRs, in the bright glint and in sharp relief seeing what the place looked like to the virgin and un-inebriated. It wasn’t pretty. But we did start some camaraderie with the other misplaced patrons. We did start playing a game of guessing who was coming in to get a hot dog, and who was there to push open the door to their reservation-only table just feet away. And after a few beers and sheer boredom, this game began (alternating people who tried to get in, letting half discover for themselves that they couldn’t, and telling the other half).

Which created the following situation:

Guy with a sweet, sweet camel jacket, gelled hair, and his bored-looking girl of the evening approach…

Me, cramped by the door: “Oh hey guys, you can’t get in there.”

Guy puffing up in his button-down and staring at me with a Herculean strain of disdain and a “do-you-know-who-I-am?” face: “Um, no, WE can, WE have a RESERVATION”

Smug girlfriend sneers a smile.

Me, holding two beers, and sweeping my arms around the room at the five people we’ve been waiting with, bursting into a fit of giggles: “Ha! So do all of us! Ha-ha!”

Group of people now laughing with me at poor gelled guy and his girl.

Guy, pushing through anyway, only to be promptly turned away by the hostess. He and his lady friend scurry back to the place from whence they came. I’m guessing Murray Hill.

Me: “Oops. I don’t think he’s coming back. Was it something I said?”

My friend: “Let’s hold off on the beer for a minute, huh?”

Me: “You’re not the boss of me.”

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Anyone have any idea what went down at PDT on Friday?




*Okay not really, but you know what I mean, when you don’t really fit into the crowd any more and your aunt wants to go there, it’s just a tad less fun than it used to be.

Holiday Quote of the Day

You know when you find yourself at Marquee (this place is still open?) at 3 AM on a Wednesday (I’m still engaging in such tomfoolery at my advanced age?) at the after-after-after party, coined by the two remaining participants of the evening—namely you and the male intern you’ve been sexually harassing for the past two months (all in good fun, I promise?)—and he calls his “friend”(his anti-friend?) who, you are told, when the upstanding young citzen arrives, you have to stay inside the club alone while said intern rides around the block with him, you know you need to stop accepting all invitations that come your way.

“I like your (*terrorist*) scarf.”

“Thanks! I got it in (REDACTED) European city. So, you know, it’s super inflammatory.”

“Zing!” *(High fives)*

Snow Day

It’s holiday season time, and with the advent of eggnog and my constant joking about my/other people’s “hot toddies” comes all kinds of activity: ferocious shopping, office fetes, infiltration of a thousand santas, you know the drill.

But too comes something else,; tons and tons of Christmas music. And if you know me, if it isn’t on the only Christmas CD that matters, it might as well not exist.

So today, I’m listening, in, but not contained to, the holiday spirit, to the following hilarious playlist of predominantly European electropop music, what’s kept me dancing all 2007, in the hopes that though Paris is weeks behind me, the next time I’m there won’t be too far ahead at all, and that this year I can start a new tradition, of what exactly I’m not sure:

Tough Alliance “New Chance”

New Young Pony Club “The Get Go”

Crystal Castles vs. Health “Crimewave”

Krazy Baldhead “Applejuice”

Justice “DVNO”

Chromeo “Fancy Footwork” (Guns n Bombs remix)

Yelle “Je veux te voir”

Daft Punk “Music Sounds Better With You/One More Time “

Glass Candy “Rolling Down the Hills “

Bag Raiders “Nil by Mouth” (Reprise)

Rex the Dog “Circulate” (JBAG edit)

Alex Metric “Oh”

Faux Pas

Last night at Graydon Carter’s playground, The Waverly Inn, inches from tuna tartare, feet from Anne Hathaway and neck-deep in swirling literati:

Me: Wasn’t he your Pushcart boyfriend?

Her: Pushcart? No, no, he won the Pen/Faulkner.

Me (half mock embarrassment/half real): I cannot believe I just mistook the Pushcart for the Pen/Faulkner! How gauche! I hope no one from Vanity Fair heard!

Francois: They did. But just for that joke, we won’t kick you out.

Catching up with the mentor and finally, finally getting back on track with my novel. With bad jokes like these, there’s no choice but to pretend to be a writer again…right?

And on our way out, the paparazzi took our picture…must have been the slowest night this year.

Match Point

When the day arrives in which you come upon a holiday party, invited this time, a gathering of your superiors (not in work, but rather, in life) and half the men-and they are men this time-are in tuxedos, and the girls are all a-glitter in designer sparkles and crystal flutes are passed by a bedecked staff, and your friend has bailed, what else can be done but saying yes to small mugs of sundae-flavored liquer until the following conversation occurs?

Fancy neurosurgeon: “I’m a fancy neurosurgeon.”

Filter-less freelancer: “Does that mean you can drill me a bliss hole?”

Fancy neurosurgeon, now gulping down scotch: “Pardon?”

Filter-less freelancer, somehow emboldened by not knowing this person, and not for the first time feeling like saying the most ridiculous thing that comes to mind: “Surely you know of bliss holes! Like in that article ten years ago in Rolling Stone? Where people get tiny holes drilled in their skulls as some sort of medieval throwback to let out all the bad spirits. And they say they’re in a perpetual state of joy…pure bliss. Right?”

Fancy neurosurgeon, with a twinkle in his eye: “Right.”

Filter-less freelancer: “So how about it? Can you drill me a bliss hole?”

Fancy neurosurgeon: “Oh I’ll drill you a bliss hole all right. Why don’t you turn around?”

Record player scratches to a screeching end.

Filter-less freelancer: “Well played, sir. Well played.”

Have I finally met my inappropriate conversationalist match?