Kamran and I get a little too excited when we jinx:

And now I’m going to Ohio to see the 4th of July fireworks!, because inexplicably, New York fireworks suck. And these things matter.

In last week’s episode of “The Fashion Show“, there was a situation where the contestants were asked to use famous designers from the past as inspiration for a new piece of their own. Anna from Brooklyn had won the mini-challenge at the beginning of the episode and was given the opportunity to choose which contestant had to use each of the famous designers, and my favourite (and favourite to hate) designer, Reco, felt slighted by her choice for him. The following resulted:

I only tell you this so you’ll understand when this quote comes out of my mouth in every other sentence:

My pimp friend Mike Lowrey tells me this is old hat, but he did teach me another phrase, “out of pocket”. He says it means “out of control, which leads to a ho getting pimp slapped (a super backhand smack from a pimp usually done with the strength of Thor).”

You’re welcome.

You think you’re upset about Michael Jackson’s death?

Kamran’s the upset one. But he took a break from his rage long enough to think of the greatest newspaper headline for the situation: Jacko’s Cardiaco. OH! Score!

And now, in remembrance, a song that’s actually only great because of one of the other brothers’ solos:

I don’t know if I can fully express my love for beauty products. I’m, like, the least-girly of anyone I know–I have no idea how to apply foundation, and I couldn’t pluck my eyebrows if I tried–but there’s almost nothing I like more than buying lotion, lip gloss, and body wash. I like it to the point that I can try a product, totally hate it, break out in hives or contract HIV, and still buy it in another scent or flavor just in case.

Naturally, this means that I’m a sucker for anything new I see. Nevermind that being new likely means it’s not been tested on enough humans for everyone to find out that it causes cancer. Lately, I’ve been obsessed with the idea of the new Vaseline Cocoa Butter Vitalizing Gel Body Oil, but the thought of that gel inevitably hardening underneath my fingernails bothers me. But yesterday, while browsing the aisles of CVS, I found this, the CVS Continuous Spray Cocoa Butter Body Oil Dry-Touch:

I tried it for the first time this morning, and it’s amazing. It glides on as if it was hairspray, people. And it smells like cotton candy, according to Dr. Boyfriend. It is not, however, dry touch. Maybe I just used too much, but there’s still a wet ring of it around the base of my neck. Not that I’m complaining, because I keep messing with it and making everything on my desk smell like cotton candy.

Actually, come to think of it, this would be a great way to repel creepy men in the subway: the more I resemble an oil slick, the grosser it is to rub up against me.

Kevin Van Aelst is a New York/Pennsylvania/Connecticut artist who Kamran introduced me to last week. Kevin is a nerd, is not afraid to show it, and makes me very happy. To start your week off right, here are a few of my favourites:

One Heart Beat

Hawaii

Apple Globe

The Brain

And now you can go view the rest on your own and tell me your favourites.

If you’re like me, you obsess over the fact that Google Reader doesn’t update itself often enough to include your newest blog entries the moment you write them. I scoured the Innanet to find a solution but couldn’t see anything official. Here’s a great workaround, though:

1) If you’re using FeedBurner FeedFlares for things like displaying a link to comment on your feed (which you should be, OMG), you’ll want to make sure it’s aware of your latest post by pinging FeedBurner.

If you’re not using Feedburner (fool!), skip to step 3.

2) Give it anywhere between 10 seconds and 30 minutes, because pinging Feedburner only works about half of the time.

3) Bring your feed up on Google Reader and click the Refresh button right above your text.

Voila! Your feed will be updated for all to see, and you can go back to being obsessive-compulsive about something else.

Nearly every single restaurant in NYC delivers for free, which means that on Saturdays and Sundays, Dr. Boyfriend and I pretty much refuse to leave his apartment and secretly have disdain for friends who attempt to coax us out. So last weekend, we were heading downstairs to pick up our delivered Thai food in his building’s lobby when the elevator stopped at a lower floor. Just as the doors opened, the young Asian man waiting outside let out a very audible burp.

He didn’t excuse himself or anything, so I said, “We heard that!” Because, you know, it’s not like I could pretend it didn’t happen. He just continued to stare at the door and didn’t acknowledge me in any way.

When he rushed out at the ground floor, Kamran held me back for a moment and asked me incredulously, “How could you embarrass me like that?!” I was shocked. Embarrass him? He wasn’t the one to hardcore burp and then just casually slip into the elevator like the reeking fumes of his body gas weren’t surrounding us all.

I thought that acknowledging the burp would actually lighten the mood. When someone calls you out on something, it gives you a chance to turn the joke back around on yourself, right? And it’s not like we caught him raping a cat or something here. It was a burp!

So who’s right here–Kamran or me?

Here are my two favourite things in the world right now:

1) My latest Examiner article, which begins:

In my experience, there are two kinds of subway riders: everyone else and me. Everyone else does this cute little thing–since they somehow believe it more important for them to get to work than it is for me–where they squeeze into the only available square inch of space in front of me on the subway platform–neverminding the fact that there’s a good chance the train is going to swipe off their ties and/or faces–just to be at the front of the jumble of waiting people. Instead of standing off to the sides of the doors to keep traffic flowing, they wiggle into the space clearly marked on the floor as the area to keep clear for exiting passengers. They insist on being first into the car, even if they’re getting off at the next stop and will therefore have to push past everyone they ran on ahead of in order to exit.

Now go read the rest and earn me my penny.

2) This LiveJournal entry by topsyturvytown, which made me laugh so much that I insisted she unlock it so non-LJ people could enjoy it as heartily. If you don’t find yourself linking several of the pictures to your friends, I don’t understand how we could know each other.

Hey, whoa, I actually just posted on donuts4dinner.com.

It’s the tale of my trip to the Big Apple Barbecue Block Party this weekend and includes some super-sexy mid-eat photos. Mmmmmm.

Yesterday, Dr. Boyfriend and I were walking around 2nd Ave. between 23rd and 34th Streets, delighting ourselves with the culinary wonders of the weekend street fair (warning: jankiest website ever), when we spotted a pickle vendor. Neither of us have sampled many of New York’s pickle offerings other than the full sour and the half-sour, so I suggested we try something new, but as we approached the tent, we were dismayed to see that they were only being sold by the pint.

We passed by pickleless then but found ourselves standing outside a bakery stationed directly behind the vendor later just as one of the sellers lobbed off the bottom half of a pickle and attempted to land the top half in a trashcan. He didn’t watch to make sure it actually landed in the garbage, though, so Kamran and I were the only ones to see it bounce off the rim and roll onto the sidewalk at our feet.

And thus, an addition to my abandoned food page was born.

Our friend Emily introduced my friend Beth and me to the Renegade Craft Fair last year, but I had absolutely no money at the time and bought only a $2.50 ice cream cone (which is what ice cream should cost) and an $8 plastic strawberry necklace (that broke on me after the second wear, but nevermind that).

This year, though, I brought stacks of cash with me and was ready to do all of my Christmas shopping like Emily does. But instead I bought only things for myself.

A pair of houndstooth button earrings for $5 from Cherry Red Boutique that I happen to be wearing today.

An Abe Lincoln pendant from traveling rhinos for $25 that I thought was pretty much the greatest thing at the fair and told the guy at the booth. He agreed and said he couldn’t believe it wasn’t the first thing sold.

A pair of silver hot dog earrings marked down from $12 to $7 also from traveling rhinos, because I’m always buying hot-dog-related items for Tracey and decided it was my turn.

And this amazing, amazing wallet from 31 Corn Lane that lists for $25 on their site but sold for $10 at the fair. It has a life-changing amount of pockets, and I’m sad I didn’t buy one for everyone I know.

Everything was so cheap, right? But that’s because I didn’t buy a $90 sterling silver deer necklace like Beth did or a $110 hat like Emily did. But the hats were pretty cute, right?

Beth Looking Very 1920s

We were walking around with these giant margaritas, and about halfway through them, Emily and I agreed that they must not be very strong, but by the time we finished them, we were able to talk each other into buying anything. I even bought something for Tracey that was more expensive than anything I bought for myself and everyone agreed didn’t even make sense. And then, of course, there was the mad dash to the restroom area, followed by the mad hunt to find a porta-potty that still had toilet paper:

The craft fair was about 100 times better this year than last, because it was in McCarren Park rather than in McCarren Park Pool. In the pool, all of the booths were lined up perfectly, and the sun was beating down on the concrete, and we were generally miserable. In the park, the booths were sort of willy-nilly, and we got to walk on grass, and everyone was generally delighted.

Ever since the great Mac-out of February ‘09, I’ve been thinking about having a second computer just in case my Mac ever truly dies on me. I didn’t want to spend the money on a new Apple when I barely spend any time on my laptop, and I didn’t want to own some clunky ten-pounder that would be too much of an eyesore to enjoy using.

And then I found this:

The Dell Mini, a 10″ beauty with a faster processor, more RAM, and more hard drive space than I have on my 12″ Mac. And this envelope case, which tells the world how much I love letter-writing despite my 3000+ unread Gmail messages.

It’s so tiny that I can carry it everywhere and so self-important that it won’t notice when the big laptops make fun of it every afternoon at Starbucks. I haven’t actually, you know, turned it on yet or anything since receiving it on Saturday, but I know I love it just from its glittery finish.

I was forced to see “Drag Me to Hell” on Saturday night because my friend Beth and my dear boyfriend both wanted to see it, and I couldn’t very well allow them to go without me and risk Beth pretending to be scared and jumping into Kamran’s lap at the first sight of some old lady puking embalming fluid into Alison Lohman’s mouth or something.

I, to say the very least, don’t choose to see horror movies. I was talked into seeing “The Mothman Prophecies” in college and still hear voices coming out of the sink. I was talked into seeing “The Strangers” last year and, um, basically can no longer function as a normal human being. And yet my last two boyfriends have been major horror freaks. Only the last one was kind enough to watch his movies while I was away at work, while the current one seems to delight in forcing me to watch “House of 1000 Corpses” over and over again.

So naturally, I spent most of “Drag Me to Hell” with my chin tucked into my chest to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally see something horrific with my peripheral vision. After the opening scene in which I actually jumped and then laughed for five minutes straight out of nervousness, I thought it best for the other patrons that I not look during, say, the entire parking garage bit. The great thing for me–but maybe not for people who actually like to be scared–is that the music in the movie totally lets you know when something terrifying’s going to happen. And the one or two times when it doesn’t let you know, you’re left applauding the director for fooling you. And I was glad for those few times in the end, too, because it meant that I had to watch at least a little of the gore. When I did, I realized that the movie was mostly just shocking, gross, and over-the-top rather than pee-your-pants scary. I didn’t think the plot was bad at all, either, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

There’s also a lot to be said for the theatre where we saw the movie, Village East Cinema. It seemed to be fairly modern from the outside, but there were old-fashioned box seats on the sides like you’d see in an opera house, and this was on the ceiling:

Now if only ticket prices could harken back to that era.

One of my writing professors (and a member of my senior thesis panel), Michelle Herman, wrote this really excellent book called The Middle of Everything that’s supposed to be about motherhood but is actually about best friends and how terrible life is when you don’t have one. It’s been years since I read it, but I thought about it last weekend while I was home in Ohio visiting my family and my best friend, Tracey.

When I moved away to New York without really so much as asking her what she thought of the idea, she should’ve given me up. If I’d been the one left behind for some stupid city she’d visited only twice where she only knew one person and didn’t have a job waiting for her, I first would’ve cried my eyes out and second would’ve deleted her number from my cellphone. Instead, Tracey sent me postcards and packages and called me and let me call her eight times a day all through that first year when I was so poor I could only visit, like, once.

Now that I’m toooootally rich and visit all the time, we pretty much spend all of our minutes together playing with her cats, watching TV marathons, visiting the one high school friend we still care about (inflammatory!), and eating all of the chain restaurant food you can’t get in NYC. Which is how it should be with best friends.

Highlights from my very short trip this weekend include trying on the tiniest purple fur vest at Forever 21 on our way into the premiere of Up:

and making this video that will only be awesome to us and our friend Eric Leath:

Imagine life without that.

Having been raised on a Midwestern farm, wanting to be polite is a natural part of my personality that I have to really fight sometimes in order to keep myself from getting mugged, raped, and murdered. So when I saw a man about to sit on a puddle of water in the bus today, I couldn’t help but stop him. And the woman after him. And another man after him.

I suppose the window had been left open all night, and a spot of water about the diameter of a baseball had gathered in the butt groove of the seat in front of me. The cloudy sky kept light from bouncing off of it, so it took the unnatural obsession with not sitting in gum, body fluids, and spilled coffee of someone like me to look hard enough to see it.

At the next stop, more people filed in, and as the bus was starting to fill up, the empty row in front of me became too enticing, and a middle-aged man in a casual business ensemble practically dove to plop down in it. I winced at having not been able to say anything about the water and waited for him to notice that his rear end was soaking and to jump back up. I felt all of the people I’d warned not to sit there watching him from behind me.

But he just settled in with his newspaper to enjoy the ride. Sadly, I had to get off the bus before he did, so I didn’t even get to enjoy watching him stand up later, pants dripping.

(also posted to Examiner, Facebook, my Gmail chat status message, anywhere you are likely to be driven insane by it)

When my company decided about a month ago that my boss–the president until we were acquired by a larger company–wasn’t needed any longer, I offered my immense catalog of services to our marketing department. Mostly so I could attend marketing seminars and steal all of the SEO info for my blog but also because I’m a supremely motivated individual. Who didn’t want to lose her job because no one could figure out what she did anymore without the president around.

In this time, the marketing department has allowed me to use my writing skillz to send out a couple of branded e-mails to our customers, inviting them to events and reminding them that the best place to spend money in this time of economic disaster is on luxury software. And in this time, I’ve also found out that bigtime executives who don’t care about my invites and reminders do this fun little thing called unsubscribing.

Which is something I’ve never even considered in my many years of Interneting. I buy all sorts of things online and inadvertently get signed up for every mailing list in existence, but I’ve always figured that’s what junk e-mail addresses are for. The other day, though, I signed into my junk mail address and unsubscribed from all of the mass mailings I get. All of the offers on my favourite underwear from American Eagle, all of the daily temptations from Amazon.com, all of the NRA propaganda my dad signed me up for and laughed about later.

And it feels amazing. I like unsubscribing so much that I’ve started unsubscribing on my work e-mail, too. I’m starting to become one of those super-indignant people who’s like, “Bitch, did I not send you an unsubscribe request yesterday?! GET ME OFF YOUR LIST!” My former life with a spam-filled inbox just seems so childish. I really feel now as if I have the power.

And now I’m off to tell FreshDirect to take their 10% off e-mails and shove them.

I’ll admit that it was well after midnight when I spotted this sign in the Union Square train station, but even if my brain had been functioning at normal daytime levels, I’m pretty sure my first thought would’ve been the same.

I imagine there’s some sort of equipment behind the door that can’t get wet, but all I can picture is so many homeless people inexplicably bathing themselves outside of this particular door that the MTA had to put a sign up to discourage it.

(also posted to Examiner)

My friend, co-worker, and neighbor Steven is your typical Brooklyner: unwashed hair, ironic t-shirts, indie rock collection, random facial hair, the works. The only time we won the weekly Pete’s Candy Store Quizz-Off trivia competition, it was because he and his brother were there. You can count on him to show up to every social activity and to make it better with amazing karaoke and drinking skillz. You can also count on him to perform your wedding.

Steven became an ordained minister through the Universal Life Church a while back, but he just recently got his marriage officiant certification and can now join a man and a woman in holy matrimony. He’s unsure if he’s allowed to join a man and a man or a woman and a woman, but he’d certainly be glad to if he finds out it’s okay. As long as they’re in love, he says.

You’d trust this man with the most important day of your life, right?

Look at this fucking hipster is basically photos of all my neighbors in Brooklyn wearing their stupid 80s clothes and not brushing their stupid unwashed hair. As much as I love being a voyeur of it, I’m usually glad that I’ll never be featured on it, because that involves looking like this:

So rough and tumble!

and I look more like this:

So sweet and innocent!

But yesterday, the site posted this, which is basically the tattoo I’d get if I ever got a tattoo. Except that mine would include way cooler books, of course.

Yeah, I took honors English, and I want the world to know. My senior year, my honors English teacher told the whole class that I’d be the only one of us to score a perfect 5 on the AP exam. Boo-yah!

And then I got a 4 just like everyone else. But still!

All New Yorkers are assholes, and don’t let anyone tell you any different.

Case in point: on Monday afternoon, Dr. Boyfriend and I celebrated Memorial Day with an entire pitcher of sangria on the patio of Dos Caminos. Because sangria is from the Spanish meaning bloody, and there’s no better way to mourn the loss of all our fallen combat soldiers than to drink fruit-filled blood in remembrance of them. Or something.

So anyway, we left the restaurant and walked toward Rockefeller Center, where he was going to work for a couple of hours while I went shopping. On the way, we decided to stop at an ice cream truck and continue mourning the loss of all our fallen combat soldiers by eating . . . frozen milk. Whatever. At the intersection right outside of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, there were two trucks with identical markings parked across the street from one another, so we just sidled up to the first one without bothering to do any bargain comparisons.

A 30-ish, Israeli-ish, purposely-bald guy stepped up to the window inside the truck but went about not paying attention to us while he talked on his cellphone to someone about his gambling debts. At least that’s what Kamran tells me he was talking about. I, of course, was too busy trying to decide between cone and cup to notice. But long after I’d chosen, he was still on his phone. Had we been basically anyone else, we probably would’ve walked across the street to the other truck at that point, but it was a holiday, and we’re patient people.

Finally, the guy took my order: one scoop of vanilla in a cone with multicolored sprinkles for Kamran and one scoop of vanilla in a cup with multicolored sprinkles for me. He even showed me the cup to see if it was to my liking. He didn’t tell us how much it was but just waited for his money, so I handed him a $10 bill. (Kamran had paid for lunch, for those of you non-feminists who may be crying foul at this moment.) He took it, disappeared into the depths of the truck, and then came back and said, “That’s it. $6 for the cone, and $4 for the cup.” Bewildered, I said thank you and made way for the person behind me to order.

But two steps later, Kamran and I turned to each other to ask, “What the hell just happened?!” The cone he’d gotten was this kind, the soft serve kind, the kind you can get at McDonald’s for $1. The kind you can buy from any other ice cream truck, from even the most expensive truck at Coney Island on the hottest day of the year with all the sprinkles you could ever hope for, for no more than $2.50. And yet I’d just paid $6.

I was torn between being pissed off at him for thinking I was some tourist who doesn’t know how much ice cream costs and pissed off at myself for looking like some tourist who doesn’t know how much ice cream costs. I was pissed off that he had put black electrical tape over all of the prices on the side of his truck so he could charge whatever he wanted and was getting away with it. I wanted to march back to the truck and put on my mean New Yorker face and splatter my cup of vanilla all over his designer graphic t-shirt.

But I didn’t, because not only do I not have gambling debts to pay off like he apparently does, but it was also the best ice cream truck ice cream I’ve ever had. (And that includes the gourmet Van Leeuwen ice cream truck ice cream I had last summer.) Maybe it’s one of those things where paying more for it makes it taste better, but maybe it really was $10 ice cream.

What I’m left wondering, though, is: what would’ve happened had I handed him just $5 instead? Would he have demanded more, and what would I have done?