4/28/05
Hmm, I took issue with majority of Lucky editors big head/little body appearances the other day, but I must admit that agree with the sentiments of their editor in chief (who does have a big head/little body) who was quoted in a recent NY Times article, No Sleep Till Brooklyn. “’People have their ambivalences about moving there,’ said Kim France, the editor in chief of Lucky, who last fall returned to lower Fifth Avenue after four years in Carroll Gardens. She had grown tired of Brooklyn's smug arrogance and stroller derby scene…like everything else these days that was once considered not worth making a fuss about and is now the topic of endless hype - coffee, exercise, having children.” I like having my opinions validated so I don’t look like some curmudgeonly wack job. Enough with the words, but to TV topics. I’m starting to see the beauty of Tivo, or recording devices more sophisticated than a VCR (which I don’t personally own anyway). There’s too much simultaneity, this upcoming Sunday in particular. How do you decide between Deadwood (it soothes me to hear TV characters using cunt and cocksucker with wild abandon. I also appreciate their new variation on cocksucker, “Those who doubt me suck cock by choice.”) and Riding the Bus with My Sister?! As you might already know I have a big fondness for tards, both run of the mill and famous. My friend Jane gave me this book a few Christmases back, but I couldn’t get through the whole thing (and felt weird reading it on the subway). It’s a touching tale about a busy, big city career woman (is there any other type?) who learns a lot about life from her M.R. sister who rides public transportation as a hobby. I absolutely cannot wait to see Rosie O’Donnell playing a tard, the casting is brilliant. I would have a viewing party if that was the social sort of thing I did. Ok, I was irked a month or so ago because everyone on Lost was getting flashback episodes except Hurley. Then they finally gave in and gave the chunk a show, and like a retard I missed it. I figured it’d be ok because Lost has become really lame and shows reruns more than new episodes (and last night’s narrated recap thing was plain stupid. Didn’t they do something like that with Desperate Housewives [a show I don’t watch] last Sunday? Like ABC wants big numbers for the final four episodes of each of these shows so they need to get irregular viewers up to speed quickly). The past couple of Wednesdays they’ve been replaying shows, and I’m pretty sure last night would’ve been Hurley’s episode, but instead they ran that horrible recap thing. I totally take back my saying that ABC isn’t racist and fatist. All they’re giving me are photos from his episode. I want to see him win the lottery and drive around a Hummer, not see that kidnapped then returned with amnesia girl’s baby being born (I swear the Hipster Hobbit was totally eyeing the placenta to make some creepy soup out of) for like the millionth time. The freak I truly miss is that scary, craggy faced Ethan who kidnapped the baby mommy for nefarious purposes. Too bad the Hobster shot him. The best part about Ethan (besides trying to kill the two most annoying characters on the show) is that he’s Tom Cruise’s cousin in real life (duh, Tom isn’t on Lost). Speaking of, I had no idea that he and Katie Holmes even traveled in the same circles. Creepy.

4/26/05
Maybe I was just tired, but last night I got the premiere issue of Domino, and it was way too complicated, it made my head hurt. I was trying to flip through it while watching TV and it was demanding too much concentration, raised my anxiety level, and the parts I did read kind of weirded me out. I know magazines about shopping, a.k.a. magalogs are ridiculous, but I’ve always kind of enjoyed the original, Lucky, even though like 85% of the stuff in it is useless to me either because it’s out of my price range ( I mean, I finally have a full time job and am not crazy poverty stricken as I have been, but I’m still not in the $100+ per shirt/skirt/pants league) or doesn’t exist in my size (maybe when I get really bored and particularly bitter I’ll calculate the percent of items they feature that come bigger than a 12 or a generic Large, which is what—a 10/12? 12/14 at Walmart, unsurprisingly). I didn’t renew my subscription (interestingly, there’s a current Salon article about these magazines and it mentions how Lucky used to be cooler, and that’s true it did, I think that’s why I initially subscribed and am now at a loss as to what happened. And while I’m on Lucky, I find those photos of their editors interspersed in their “What I Want Now!” pages to be really grotesque. They all have inhumanly scrawny upper arms and old giant heads. I wasn’t so acquainted with this phenomena before moving to NYC. There are all these figure fixated, self absorbed women who manage to whittle down to a 0 or 2 or whatever, but their faces are monstrous. You know, the ol’ “butter face,” as in “she’s got a great body, but her face…” Think Lizzie Grubman. Like if they were truly concerned and/or rich why wouldn’t they get plastic surgery? My theory is that this is their post-op look and that they were even more heinous to begin with. ). I So, I figured Domino would be equally fluffy, but centered objects rather than clothing, so I could deal with it more. But I can’t. I wasn’t expecting Budget Living or Readymade, but reading it made me realize how rare those two publications are. I don’t know why I’m shocked that Domino is merely the equivalent of a fashion shopping magazine for the home. Prices are high, sure, but what weirded me out the most was how they assume you’re incompetent with zero handy skills. Or rather they assume you’re a New Yorker, or merely affluent and wouldn’t actually do things like paint tables (I realize this isn’t a thrifty magazine, but spending $2500 to have an old table professionally lacquered seems like sheer folly) , wall mount TVs and glue gun doo dads on upholstery yourself. You pay professionals for that stuff. Jeez, even Martha Stewart (or her minions) can handle projects from scratch. This month’s feature assumes you wouldn’t have a problem taking a bookcase and adding crown molding, platform bases, and painting the thing moleskin gray. Calling in a professional is never mentioned. Ok, enough about high quality reading material. I have to mention that night’s 24 was completely insane. The final scene with my favorite character ever, Chloe (as a character she’s pure librarian, very unsocialized and inappropriate. She’s an analyst, which is really the CTU equivalent. And the bastards don’t even give her profile on the 24 website, no love for the maladjusted. As an actress, I like Mary Lynn Rajskub too. She caught my attention in Punch Drunk Love because she had a face that reminds me of actresses from ‘60s British “kitchen sink realism” films. Like Rita Tushingham or Topsy Jane [I can’t find a photo of her to save my life, she didn’t really do much beyond Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.] She’s a little blonder and thinner in this season of 24, but she still has that quality. Kind of plain and beat-up, downtrodden, but in an unassuming charming way. Like if I was a guy I’d have a weird fetish for this type of female. However, I’m not sure what I think of her on that Kelsey Grammer Sketch Show [has that already been cancelled?] I can’t wait to see if her painting website ever actually launches. I mean, a Chloe painting--can you imagine? ) was over the top. You knew that when they forced her from behind her safe computer into the field, something bad would happen, but I didn’t expect the show ending with Chloe blowing away a terrorist with a machine gun. For better or worse, the show is getting campier by the episode.

4/25/05
Damn, I’m just going to miss the opening of the Hong Kong Disneyland by three days. Not that I have much love for Disney, but you know it’s going to be all insane. I love the descriptions of all the dining concepts. They’re very specific about the styles of food like “Comet Café where you'll find a selection of BBQ, noodles and wok fried foods from the Jiang Nan region in China.” I must plead ignorance on Jiang Nan cuisine, maybe it’s like saying Kansas City style bbq, like people would know what that means. There was an article about today about all the feng shui done on it. I cancelled a dr. appt. for this afternoon because it was just to get test results and I find it irritating to fork over a $20 copay to wait for twenty minutes to be told in less than five minutes that your cells aren’t abnormal enough to warrant any immediate action, which is good, but not worth an office visit. Just come back in six months for a pap smear so we can repeat this whole bad pap/biopsy/not cancerous (yet) cycle again. I said that all I wanted was test results, so they put me through to the nurse answering machine, and like an hour the appt. person called back saying I wasn’t allowed to get results over the phone I have to make an appt. I don’t really see why. If I’m going to have to take off work early and pay $20, then I’d better be cancer-ridden, I swear.

4/24/05
Last week Fox news kept teasing about an upcoming segment that would shock you. They were hinting about how your privacy was at risk because of a search engine, and I was like Fox 5 is so nutty and alarmist and off the mark they must be talking about Zaba Search because it’s been getting a lot of mentions lately. Honestly, I don’t get the big deal. All I get from searching on myself is my birthday (big whoop, no secret), my last two addresses (not my current one), my phone number (which is listed in the white pages) and a link to search other various websites using my name as keyword. You can pay to supposedly find things like criminal records, credit checks, etc. but you’ve always been able to do that for a fee. So, I was like please Fox, tell me something I don’t know. But then they totally blew me away by doing an entire segment on Google and how if you search on people’s names you can find personal information on them. Oh my god, I was totally shocked, hurt, then outraged. Um, did we just warp into 1999? Or whenever it was that Googling someone became a verb. Part of it stems from my being nosy, part of it from being a librarian (it’s a chicken or the egg thing—did I become a librarian because I love researching or does being a librarian make me a crazy researcher. Technically my title is Research Specialist, not librarian, so whatever), but I can’t not look things up. I don’t know how people functioned pre-internet (actually, I do. I spent teenage summers in the library poring through old Coles Directories, piecing together everyplace my stalkee’s family had lived in Portland since the ‘60s.). Even so, I have this naïve idea that only I this. I know it’s false. It’s funny because I’ve been working on this piece about the Red Hook soccer fields and food vendors and contacted the organizer who’s a very helpful dedicated guy, to give me the scoop. Today a friend, Jessica, and I headed down and had a good time eating lots of ceviche, huraches, pupusas, and assorted goodies. My Spanish is very poor so it was nice to have this guy show us around, translate, and introduce us. But back to the funny part. It turns out he’d totally Googled me. I shouldn’t be surprised, but it’s kind of hilarious to be a serious reporter when your subject knows all the silly things you’ve done. (Hi Cesar, he might be reading this very entry.) Ha, he brought up all my Lone Star Thomas stuff, and how much he enjoyed reading it, which in a way was great. I love that era of my life. Really, I wear my heart on my web sleeve, for good or bad. I can’t help it. And sometimes I fear that I come across as this nasty hate filled person just because maybe 85% of humanity (mostly New Yorkers) go against my grain and they wear me down, break my spirit, make me bitter. But I’m not. It’s just really tough for the goodness to bubble up, there aren’t many opportunities, that’s all. Ok, here’s something that makes me warm and fuzzy. A while ago I tracked down that ad I’d mentioned around the end of last year with the creepy babymaking OnStar dad (I need to look into who does their ads. Even further back they used on of my much liked bands PAS/CAL as background music, which kind of tainted the song for me. Same goes for The Concretes in the new Target ads. Whenever “Say Something New” comes on my mp3 player [ha, I was tempted to say Walkman, I always say Walkman when I mean mp3 player because I’m elderly like people who refer to computers as machines or the internet as internets. I can’t say iPod because it’s not an iPod. That wouldn’t be right.] I think it’s a Target ad.) Despite being an advertising librarian (this is a frequent request—“I need to find such and such ad”, I can’t seem to find it anywhere online. The thing is so damn priceless (and disturbing) I figured I’d just scan it for your viewing pleasure/horror. Don’t say I never did anything nice for you.

4/20/05
Ok, the world is temporarily good. Being overweight is now optimally healthy, James bought my Cathay Air Pass as an early birthday present so now the $1100 I was piecing together can be spent on things I was abstaining from like a haircut, spring/summer shoes and clothing that I don’t really need because I already have plenty, a wine class so I can speak in a more authoritative and snobbish manner, and maybe an ice cream maker (now that my large B.M.I. is a sign of longevity), and I’m working on a story for the NY Post (nobody better dog the Post--"Moo Goo Guy Ran"=total genius). However, I’m still weirded out by the general public’s domesticity/baby making fetish. Not an earworm, but a brainworm I can’t get out of my head. At least I’m not from a family who gives you shit over wanting grandchildren (or over what you eat. I’m always seeing women’s magazines with articles about how to deal with critical moms, like Cosmo yesterday at the gym with a dumb illustration of a scrawny Upper East Side looking woman telling a skinny Cosmo editor looking woman “a moment on your lips, forever on the hips.” I’d like to hear my meat and potatoes mom say something like that to me, just for shits and giggles. “More cushion for the pushin’” is more like it but my mom is neither sassy nor vulgar.) Last night I was having an exciting Tuesday evening, turkey burger and Miller Lite (I don’t intentionally drink light beer, but we have a bunch of party leftovers that need to get used up) in hand, House on TV (Tuesday TV viewing is difficult because now at 9:30pm The Office is on and so I have to flip back and forth the last half of House , and at 9:20pm NY1 has Frank Bruni on previewing his Wednesday NY Times restaurant review and that’s amusing in a lame way. Speaking of The Office, I’ve been trying to get my mom to watch it, not that it’s completely hilarious or comparable to the original, but because it’s totally her life. The insurance company she works for has been talking about downsizing, though nothing is concrete yet. To boost morale they keep having these ridiculous promotions like Dip Fest and Potato Bar and rent movies like The Incredibles. All staff has to go to mandatory grief counseling and if you say you’re not fazed about being unemployed, like my mom—career minded means nothing in my family, a paycheck’s a paycheck, grunt work is interchangeable—you’re told you’re in denial. Funny stuff. Then House got all sentimental with two storylines about birth and babies. I would’ve barfed and turned the channel, but caved when I saw that Michael Goorjian was playing one of the dads. He’s come a long way since Newsies. Oh damn, I just noticed he’s in that Showtime Reefer Madness Musical. You know, TV characters aren’t all gross about family, and television is totally real if you didn’t know. Well, the characters I watch—lord knows about Raymond, George Lopez, Bernie Mac and all them. Take House, he’s a bitter, nasty prick, he doesn’t have a wife and kids and if he did they would’ve left him, and he’s fine, a successful doctor who could get chicks if he wanted—oh, I just saw that Sela Ward will be playing his ex on an upcoming episode, so yeah his marriage went bad. Jack Bauer had a family until his wife that he was separated from was killed by the CTU double agent he’d been sleeping with [both women have had roles on House]. His daughter’s a retard, I can’t talk about Kim though I did love the unresolved storyline about her boyfriend, another CTU agent, having some secret lovechild. Jack’s not obsessed with settling down and making more babies, he’s got bigger fish to fry like um, saving the Western World and all that is right, good and free. While full of morals, he still hooked up with a Mexican drug dealer’s wife and is now seeing the Secretary of Defense’s daughter even though she’s not divorced yet. Jack Bauer could never be contained in the suburbs. And Deadwood? So not about family values. The only wife and kids on that show surfaced because the sheriff’s brother was killed and I guess according to convention of the time men would take on deceased sibling’s families. I’m still not 100% sure about that, I’ll have to research the veracity. And not just for financial support, a few episodes back the sheriff and his new wife removed the bundling board. Ooh, dirty. And now that’s he’s doing the right thing by his brother it appears that he has knocked up the rich widow he’d been humping before the new women arrived. Too bad for her, he’s not throwing his wild west lifestyle away to move somewhere respectable like Chicago and take care of her and his baby. She doesn’t need him anyway because she’s smart and can take care of herself with dead husband’s gold claim. Everybody at work thinks I watch too much TV, but I swear I don’t, just a few key shows.) while James was whooping it up at Peter Luger with old college friends celebrating a birthday. Well, it wasn’t all fun like that. I’ve previously mentioned his friend Pat, and I use that term loosely because they’re not terribly close, I don’t think James has seen the guy in over a year. And that comes to my point, we haven’t seen him because he did this strange instant family thing and thinks he’s all mature and responsible now. What he did was impregnate a coworker he’d been dating maybe a month or two. So, he did the logical thing in this modern day and age and married her and moved to Connecticut because that’s where she wanted to live (she was living her parents, recently divorced because her husband didn’t want kids yet). She quit her job and now he’s supporting a family and they’re planning their second baby. Initially, she wouldn’t even date him because she didn’t want mixed race babies (why on earth pregnancy was even being discussed at this stage is beyond me). And like James and I are the only ones who seem to think this is a bizarre situation. Bottom line, Pat is happy, at least he thinks he is, so who cares. This stuff happens all the time, no biggie. I think a majority of marriages and births are merely happenstance, that’s why divorce is rampant and kids are messed up, duh. But I can’t tolerate dumbness. I guess I just have issues with families equaling salvation. Like this guy is pretty typical, he moved to NYC from a smaller city, had a decent paying but dull job, had a nice apt. but really didn’t have anything going on in his life, like no hobbies, interests, passions. It used to be that guys who had no ambition or direction went into the military to shape up, they came back men. But apparently there are others ways of becoming complete—by finding someone who needs you. Both Pat and another friend who was at this dinner, Andrew, were all fixated on getting girls when they moved here a few years back, like that was what was lacking in their lives. Women get all the flack, but men are the desperate needy ones. Pat finally found someone to fill his empty time and now thinks he’s some exemplary model of manhood. Andrew got back together with a girl who used to date, but originally broke up with because she wanted to settle down. They are now married and expecting a child. And it’s because something, anything is better than nothing, and this is what scares me about the mid-late 30s (they’re a touch older than me). I’m don’t know either of these guys particularly well, but I’m still disturbed by their complacency. Are we really all alive just so we can get married and procreate? That’s true redemption. No need for striving, ambition, creativity, hopes, dreams, a fascinating future—why bother when you already have it all? I’m trying to understand the motivations because in my immediate circle this thinking is nonexistent. For instance, when Pat was trying to find his way in the world he briefly dated a friend of mine. She’s smart, independent, actually does cool things like travel to Peru and Malaysia, making documentaries on bugs and geology for the American Museum of Natural History, lives on her own like normal single women do, doesn’t beg to have her eggs fertilized, and was told by this guy while breaking up “you’re not the one.” Uh, no shit. And thus began his baby mommy mission. It’s the circle of life, dude. Or my favorite Pat comment on becoming a father “Part of you dies, but another part wakes up.” That will be in the next edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

4/18/05
Do you ever have an epiphany/sudden burst of insight and then can’t see things otherwise? I don’t necessarily mean in a earth shattering, life changing way where all of a sudden you’re calm and happy because you’ve figured out what you should be doing with yourself. Quite the opposite, I usually just pinpoint an dull annoyance that was previously bubbling under the surface and become consumed by its now acute irksomeness. Like Friday, all of a sudden I realized that I should not be living in Brooklyn, that Brooklyn is a totally hideous place not made for people like me and that I’ve been so insanely oblivious to this for the last seven years and maybe that’s why I’m chronically miserable and irritated (though not likely). I cannot live here anymore, it’s crushing my soul. It’s now crystal clear that James must buy in Manhattan (which he has been insisting all along) not Brooklyn like I’d been naively proselytizing, and of course allow me to tagalong. I’ve always been down on Brooklyn-bashers, but it really depends on the source. My annoyance came from the stereotypical, outdated notion that Manhattan is New York City and that Brooklyn is scary, dirty, inconvenient, quaint, backwards, etc. I couldn’t believe Sex in the City perpetuated the tired cliché like a year ago, and then there was the recent flap over the New Yorker cover banishing Adam and Eve to Brooklyn. Dumb. Yes, there are plenty of broken down, busted scary ass blocks left in Brooklyn, but much of the borough is bland and homogonous. I never got all the outrage over the mallification of NYC (i.e. Manhattan). Who gives a shit if Times Square isn’t Taxi Driver era creepy anymore and the East Village is an NYU playground. A little Red Lobster never hurt anyone. And except for the oldschoolers, born and bred Brooklynites (who’d likely eat at an Outback Steakhouse if given the chance) the borough is populated with people who think they’re above all that, keeping it real, living the life. They fall primarily into two camps: the post-college crowd who think the city should be turned into a replica of wherever they came from. It’s probably just smarter to stay in Austin, Oakland/Berekely/Baltimore/Portland, OR&ME where you might actually be able to afford the free time to be creative rather than attempting to recreate a scene here. They’re young, they can’t be blamed too much. The contingent that’s starting to make me feel violent (some might argue for a third demographic, the Indie-Yuppie, the lines all blur) is the baby/dog/SUV crew that easily makes up 89% of my neighborhood. The bourgeois bohemians, urgh Bobos, which I never would say because that’s gross. If an acronym were a must I’d have to go for SuBaDo (SUV, baby dog people), but I wouldn’t go there. This is a middlebrow category that I always associated with like 38+ years old, more of the fortysomething first time mom bunch, but it’s not and that’s a little scary. Folks my age and younger who’ve adopted this lifestyle baffle and sicken me a bit. What used to be aggressive disinterest is becoming uncontrollable contempt. The thing is, these people aren’t harmless (James insists they’re all Republicans and that’s the dichotomy, but I don’t think so). They come across as open minded, save the earth, buy organic, love thy neighbor, children are our future, you can’t hug them with nuclear arms people, but they are cunts inside. They are nasty and selfish and competitive (why else choose to settle in NYC instead of living simply in Vermont or New Hampshire or some shit). I can recognize nasty people because I’m a nasty person, though I’m no hypocrite. I need to get away from these people because anger isn’t attractive or healthy. The catalyst was two Fridays ago when I was coming home from the gym after work and the mid-late -20s couple that I don’t really know who have a newish baby and live on the third floor were coming down the stairs. I was all sweaty and fast walking, my mp3 player was up loud, I passed by in a hurry. They had bricks in both the main front door that doesn’t lock and the inner door that does lock. I’m not fussy about the doors, but our apt. door is about 10ft. from the locked door that no one every shuts all the way and it makes James nuts. People always leave without shutting either door (this was a big issue when our apt. door’s lock was broken for a number of months). I paused and wondered if they were coming back or if they were just leaving the doors wide open for no good reason. I popped my head back outside to see if they were loading anything, but they were gone. So I took the brick out of the door that locks and left the front one ajar. Maybe ten minutes pass and I can hear ranting and raving in the little foyer, the 10 ft. between our door and the front door. It’s the woman upstairs screaming about the brick being removed. My kneejerk reaction was to open the door and ask what her fucking problem was, but then chose to be adult and wait it out. She continued yelling about how I was rude, always rude to her (I’m not joking, just a few days before James had mentioned running into her and she was talking about the vacant apt. upstairs and how it smelled and there was food all over the place. Which one, made me wonder how she knew this, why did she have access to the apt. and two, more importantly, I was struck by how I never ever see this girl, maybe twice in the year I’ve lived there.) and never said hi and then began screaming how I was a bitch until her boyfriend/husband who was carrying the baby shushed her. I absolutely will not engage in this childishness. I was pretty neutral on her before her hysterical outburst (though had mild suspicions she was stealing my magazines since I get my Time Out NY like once a month and it’s a weekly. After all, she is the only person in the building who doesn’t work [yes, I know being a mommy is a full time job] hence has access to the mail before everyone else gets home) but now that it’s clear she’s a banshee beast, I will do everything possible to make her feel alienated and bad about herself. Under absolutely no circumstance will she ever be said hi to. She will definitely be looked at, scrutinized, stared at but her presence will never be acknowledged by me. And of course, this couple that we never see, has crossed our paths three times in the last week (once getting into an SUV, which I never knew they owned and only furthered my bad impression of them. It also makes me wonder what the hell the guy must do for a living. I can’t imagine being like 26 and able to afford a car, $2500 rent, a baby and support a wife with an NYC cost of living ) Classic. James feels compelled to say hi to the guy, fine, but I will continue my you don’t exist in my world approach until the girl loses her shit, and believe me, she will. This physically ill-making couple pretty much sums up all that is wrong with Brooklyn. I’m going to have to pull the reality TV diva bitch mantra “I’m not here to make friends.” No sir, I’m not. I am willfully un-neighborly. Well, sort of. I’ve started being nice to the semi-difficult woman on the top floor. James actually started that gambit by helping her carry her laundry yesterday and we stated our intention to garden the front space, which endeared her towards us. Now the mommy will see that I’m not all around mean, I just hate her. The wild card will be who’ll move in to the vacant but still not empty apt. above us. I never go to brunch, but yesterday I did and you can’t even walk into a restaurant because there are like five strollers in the entryway. Everyone (mostly the men I’ve noticed, they also seem to be the designated stroller pushers and playground accompaniers, very open minded and liberal) was holding babies and/or was pregnant. I’m not exaggerating for effect, the neighborhood is thick with babies, dogs and SUVs, and to be fair, I could take each item case by case (well, probably not the SUV, especially in NYC). Of course I know fine people who are parents or who have a fondness for canines, but the whole two-three punch and in such concentration is sensory overload. Me, I’m more of a cat, Ka, tubal ligation kind of girl. I’m naturally a bit agoraphobic, and I’m afraid I’m going to end up a housebound freak because I’m horrified every time I leave the house. After an unrelaxing brunch (why order items with Hollandaise only to request they be served sans sauce or on the side? Order an omelet or something and leave the benedicts and Florentines alone) and a refreshing side trip to Chinatown, I had to force myself back out into the sunlight and to the gym. It’s only eight blocks, but a trudge when you can’t make down a single street segment without running into at least one of the SuBaDo components. Thank god the upscale bohemians love nature because it means an empty gym for me when the weather’s nice (by contrast, my Bay Ridge coworker was complaining how her gym was getting more crowded now that it’s warm. Guidos aren’t outdoorsy). But I hadn’t thought to bring something to read and 50 min. is goddamn boring when there’s nothing to look at except CNN and Punk’d on TV. The magazine rack was sparse, I was saved by a current week’s Star, but was sent into a tizzy over Farm Animal Voice and Geographical (I’d never heard of them either). So rich, magazines for people who eat meat and pollute to high heaven but make them feel good about humane practices, the environment, and themselves. Every now and then someone asks me why I moved to New York and I never have a proper answer (jesus, just last Monday I was having my millionth colposcopy/biopsy and was totally freaking out even though you’d think I’d be used to the procedure by now and the dr. was trying to make small talk to distract me. “Where are you from? Why did you come to New York?” Fuck if I know, not to get samples snipped from my cervix). It wasn’t for a job, which is typical, or a guy, also plausible. I was just sick to death of Portland, young homebuyers, gardens, dogs, microbrews, hiking, Tevas with socks. It wasn’t for me at 25. The cosmopolitan version of all that is not for me at 32 either. I was trying to escape a dangerous lifestyle. Now I feel like infringed upon again. But I’m better poised for decision-making than I was seven years ago. It’s not like I’m so cool and radical that I must defy convention like a teenager acting out, but I refuse to be middlebrow. I’m genetically lowbrow. Middlebrow is the worst--there really needs to be a more contemporary version of Paul Fussell’s Class. I love that book, it reminds me of my friend Todd who gave it to me a couple years ago. It also reminds me of the time I brought homemade sticky buns to work and had them foil wrapped in my bag and wouldn’t Todd have one while in a coffee shop across from the library. He couldn’t believe that I just wouldn’t let him eat one in the café. I was like “that’s rude.” I’m weird about following rules. He started calling me “Bougie.” Caring about what others think and keeping up appearances is bourgeois, I suppose. Ha, the other end of the spectrum unfolded when James and I went to the Port Authority bar (yes, there’s a bar and bowling alley inside, scary too) carrying leftovers from Chevy’s (it was a Time’s Square extravaganza) and the security guard had to come over to make sure we knew we couldn’t eat our food in the bar. Like it would even occur to either of us. Port Authority is clearly not bourgeois. So, I need to find a solution. Where can a lowbrow, antisocial misanthrope live in peace (while still being near good restaurants—I can’t live isolated as the Unabomber)?

4/13/05
I don’t know what’s going on, but I totally haven’t had the proper down time at work to babble my usual inanity here. Working at work? It’s too much. I’m only able to squeeze in a few notable/hate-able things from recent history. Good: Stephan Britt. This is my new favorite illustrator ever. I love this kid. I guess it’s retro, but not all cutesy ‘50s/’60s , it’s more 70s gag greeting card, educational style. How could you not like these? This is the kind of stuff I would draw if I could draw. Well, I can render. Like if you put me in front of an actual object I could draw a pretty realistic rendition, but if someone said, “hey, draw a smoking cat in a helmet” I totally couldn’t. That’s why I’m envious of those who can. It’s like fiction vs. nonfiction. I can’t make things up but I can write all about things that are real. What a boring brain. Good: tard blog being resurrected. Oh my god, I’d forgotten how sad and funny these stories are. So-so: Kohl’s. I’m a sucker for chain stores that are new to me. I keep seeing Kohl’s ads on TV and in the paper and wanted to know what it was all about. So, Sunday we checked out the second nearest one in Fresh Meadows (after eating crispy pata a.k.a. pig knuckle at a Filipino place in Jackson Heights. It was definitely good, not so-so, even though I had to twist James’s arm because he’s down on Filipino anything.) and it was pretty unremarkable. Like an East Coast Mervyn’s, which I have weird fondness for and old credit card from stashed somewhere in a box. Bad: baby commercials. I was a little freaked out by Quizno’s Baby Bob, but the Carl’s Jr. fetus completely takes the cake. I was only made aware of it recently from reading advertising trades since there aren’t any Carl’s Jr. joints out here (we also don’t get Hardee’s, hence their grotesque Monster Thick Burger is something I can’t try. Thankfully, I can also beef up my caloric intake from BK’s Enormous Omelet Sandwich). Talking fetuses are kind of creepy on their own, but this one is particular gross because he’s all bratty and threatening to pull his mom’s insides out with him. So wrong. If this is what fetuses are really like I’d totally smoke and drink during my pregnancy. Next I want to see zygotes shilling for something, maybe Subway—Jared’s gotten a little played out. Zygotes love sandwiches with less than six grams of fat. Bad: Williamsburg residents protesting every-freakin-thing. Sure, in a perfect world all neighborhoods would be filled with green space and cars wouldn’t be revving around hitting and running people. But this is a cramped city and vehicles are also important to commerce and public transportation. You can’t really just cordon off streets to play in (though there used to be perpetual block parties all over my old neighborhood and somehow they were able to barricade streets to sit in lawn chairs and eat crappy food and flood the streets with open fire hydrants). But that hasn’t stopped the Carfree Bedford campaign. I strongly doubt the MTA would reroute buses to accommodate this urban campus, but everyone has a right to their dreams, I suppose. I always refer to Williamsburg as The Shire, so it’s only right they have a town square. It’ll certainly attract street performers (maybe those zany tall bikes will show up). Maybe vendors will set up stalls with tofu dogs and crocheted iPod covers and onesies with ironic slogans (ok, “my mama drinks because I cry” is kind of funny). But car-free space is not enough. The condos are coming (and have been for quite some time) and they’re too darn tall. The character of the neighborhood is totally going to being ruined by all the newcomers. All of a sudden everyone’s interested in rezoning laws like The Williamsburg Warriors (scroll to bottom and note Warrior’s vehicle ownership—how will they ever reconcile with the no car guy?). Yeah, yeah, big buildings are ugly and will displace residents. I’m totally for affordable housing. Being priced out of your neighborhood sucks. Maybe if thousands of hipsters didn’t populate Williamsburg in the last decade there still would be reasonably priced apartments. Duh, why did rents go up in the first place? How do you think the long time residents felt in the early ‘90s about their neighborhood’s character changing? You can’t gentrify until you’re comfortable, then cap the neighborhood for followers. A desirable neighborhood can’t be contained, hot property in motion will stay in motion, it’s a law of physics or something. Good: fake celebrity blogs. Kirstie Alley’s parody of Rosie O’Donnell’s blog is a little too clever to actually have been penned by the fat actress. Case in point: this is funny, this isn’t. But I’m amused that they deemed Noah Hathaway worth parodying. I forgot how sexy child stars are. I used to get funny feelings in my stomach watching Boxy and his pet daggit (I just learned that there was a chimp in that costume). Bad: That the new Battlestar Galactica won’t be back on until July (I can’t believe I got hooked on a stupid Sci Fi series. At least it’s not BeastMaster, alright?).

4/6/05
Yesterday I got excited about the found Chinese deliveryman story, but got all caught up with Brooklyn-Queens borders and condos that I forgot to say anything. Friday I got kind of depressed when the guy went missing. I suppose I feel kind of bad for all murder victims, but there’s something about immigrants with crappy jobs being killed for really dumb reasons (but heck, if they deserved it, that’s another story) that’s disheartening. And amusingly, after being found the NY Post had already printed a piece about Chen possibly being harmed by smugglers, but today they rectified that with “Deliverance”. I usually prefer the Post’s headlines, but the NY Daily News’s “Hell-evator” totally trumps it. It’s too bad he was on his way down, not up because then at least he’d have some take out (curry shrimp and fried rice to be precise) to eat, bad or not. I’ve always wondered what Chinese workers in those ubiquitous holes in the wall eat (most newcomers are Fujian like this elevator guy and their cuisine is like this--Aromatic Sliced Snails with a Faint Smell of Distillers' Grains, anyone?). I can’t imagine they are actually into things like General Tso chicken or chicken wings, chicken fried rice and french fries (sometimes plantains) to be more accurate of the city’s taste. I love stereotyping, but I’m not even exaggerating about the “gimme chicken wing and chicken fried rice” crowd. A certain NYC breed that’s nasty and bossy to service workers despite (or perhaps because of) likely being or having been in that position themselves. They want to see the food first, pick out certain pieces, “no, not that one, gimme a good one” like everyone is trying to put something over on you, even the guy cooking your stupid all-fried $3.99 combo special. When I got my cat spayed a while ago, James and I stopped into a take out place—I can’t remember the name--around 7th Ave. and 11th St. (which weirdly was the only menu that’d ever get stuck under my door in Sunset Park, despite being about 25 blocks away in a different neighborhood. Everyone complains about irritating delivery menus cluttering up lobbies, but I was desperate for them, Sunset Park was all fast food or places so non-English and/or cheap that they didn’t even have food flyers. Even now, blocks from Brooklyn’s “restaurant row” Smith St. we don’t get many menus. I actually like looking at menus, even if I don’t ever plan on ordering from the place. I’ll walk the five blocks home from the subway and see new menus stuffed into the front gates of all the houses along the route, but then they abruptly stop at Henry St. like why bother. Heather, a Super Bowl party guest told me that when she asked an old neighbor lady how to get to our address that she was warned not to go down Henry St. because it was dangerous. What the fuck? There’s nothing rough about Henry St. I want menus, dammit! ) and this creepy couple was harassing the counter woman, not intentionally, they just weren’t very smart and aggressively so. The woman kept demanding “chicken ring” which after being repeated enough started weirding me out. Did she really mean wing and she had a speech impediment, did she think Chinese would understand ring better than wing or was she a fan of White Castle and assumed all restaurants, including Chinese ones, serve their trademark chicken rings? But at least being in the company of that kind of clientele makes me feel less guilty about ordering trashy things like crab rangoon (which I did). Oh no, now I’m totally craving greasy egg rolls and sweet and sour anything.