I was riding the M15 up from the East Village after a Friday night of karaoke classics at my favorite place to watch my friends make fools of themselves, Sing-Sing, when at a stop near 34th Street, a man stood up from his seat and began yelling at the person behind him, seemingly out of nowhere. This is precisely what I heard:
“You want to step out?! You want to step out?! You’re not so clean! Your butt is dirty! Asshole!”
He was a stubby guy with a backpack and the leftovers of an Asian accent, and his victim was a white-haired, cane-holding black gentleman who didn’t seem to notice that he’d just been given a verbal beat-down. Now to be fair, I was in the back of the bus behind a guy who was inexplicably grunting at ten-second intervals, but I’m positive that’s what the yeller yelled. How he knew anything about his fellow rider’s butt I’m less sure of.
He strutted off the bus with an air of accomplishment, and we were all left to wonder what the old man could’ve possibly said to rile him up.
(Posted on Examiner, which pays me for your visits (hint, hint))
And because I can’t resist:
Steven and Emily singing (or, you know, not singing in this photo) a romantic duet
of Paula Abdul’s “Opposites Attract”
Nik and Charles enjoying Jeff’s rendition of “Stayin’ Alive”
Roxanne showing her Jamaican roots with some Bob Marley, which earned her the eye
of the one other Jamaican dude who sings karaoke in NYC.
Adam unabashedly doing the robot while Steven gets DOWN.
Hi. Can anyone tell me what the hell is on my lens? And furthermore, how the hell I get it off? I can’t seem to physically rub it off the outside, which leads me to believe that something has infested the inside of my camera.
Don’t let the look on my cupcake face fool you. I am not a happy lady.
Before I get into all the to-do surrounding my best friend Tracey’s wedding, allow me to showcase the other awesomeness that occurred during my five-day trip back home to Ohio.
After picking me up at the airport on Tuesday night as is tradition, Tracey whisked me back to her apartment to see if three months of working out every day and eating only half as many quesadillas as I would’ve liked made me lose the FIVE INCHES I needed to in order to fit into the lovely black satin and tulle bridesmaid’s dress she’d purchased for me.
Finding that I still needed at least a half an inch less flesh to get the thing zipped, we drove down the street to Walmart (yes, Walmart) and bought two body-shaping corset things. But it turns out that they’re not like getting liposuction at all. Even the one that was so tight I had to bend over and hold on to the dining room table while Tracey attempted to snap it closed didn’t work. Tracey calmly told me that maybe we should’ve just had the dress altered back in December when I first found out I’d had her buy it way too small, but I appreciated the motivation, and hey, I did manage to lose at least four inches. So suck it, Tracey.
The next afternoon, after a trip to the fabric store, she drove me down to our hometown to visit our old neighbor, who happens to make wedding gowns for a living. Her scrapbook full of bridesmaid’s dresses from the 80s with puffy sleeves made out of what looked like floral-print carpet were a real treat, but the best part of the day was chasing her six pet chickens around the yard, where they freely roam:
SO COUNTRY!
That evening, I went over to visit my friends Katie and Nick, who are married and have a home and a baby and cook dinner and seem totally weird to me:
I’ve been friends with Katie since we were in the womb and met Nick in college while working at the science museum in Columbus where Tracey would have her wedding, and since I set them up, I take particular interest in their relationship and pretty much claim their kid as my own, because 10-month-old Baby Maria is sort of the cutest thing ever:
Even my dad agrees that a baby has never been cuter, and as my father, he’s not technically allowed to say that.
Visiting them makes me feel like living in our hometown wouldn’t be the worst idea possible, because they have things like a finished basement with a bar!:
Where they have things like creme de menthe on hand at all times!:
And where they teach their children to be lushes!:
Ohio is HEAVEN, I tell you! Listening to David Bowie on vinyl, drinking homemade cocktails, and tossing balls at a baby on a pool table:
The next morning, I went with my dad to get the tires changed on his truck, which turned out to be an hour of standing around, listening to men talk about how hard it must be for stock car racers in an economy like this with the cost of tires so high. My dad is an enviable small-talker, so I busied myself with Chubby, the garage dog who eats nuts, bolts, and scrap rubber:
You can’t tell, but Chubby is chewing on a hex wrench here.
But the best part of the garage were these words stenciled all over the floor, not that I’m elitist or judgemental:
I’m going to Ohio tonight, because Tracey and Dan are getting married on Saturday! Even though we both agree that societal conventions like marriage are ridiculous! And Tracey’s going to take his last name to boot! I’m using exclamation points sarcastically to voice my displeasure!
No, no, I kid. I mean, come on, look how cute they are together!:
And my other friend for life, Katie, who no longer has a pregnant belly for me to gnaw on!:
But it’s really all about this one!:
Best friends montage!:
These are the times when living away from my friends-since-we-were-babies especially sucks. One of Tracey’s other bridesmaids had to plan her shower, and I just got to fly in back in January and enjoy it. And Tracey somehow feels like she has to make up for me having to buy a plane ticket in for the wedding, even though I’m the one who moved away. And when she and Dan should be enjoying their last moments of unwedded freedom, I’m going to be tagging along to their romantic dinners and forcing Dan to entertain himself otherwise while I play hours and hours of Scene It? with Tracey. Ahhhhh, the life I lead.
Kamran: I got salad, but I got too much.
1.5 lbs worth.
Defeats the healthy point a little. me: Dang! Kamran: I know, right? me: Well, you’re a growing boy. Kamran: Yea. I’m growing a strong gravitational field with all the mass I’m accumulating. me: You keep pulling me into you. Kamran: I got you in my orbit. me: Along with a bunch of dust and metal. Kamran: You’re my favorite orbital debris.
I was actually in a non-salty mood for the first Friday in ages, so I convinced some of my ladyfriends (and Steven) to go out for another round of karaoke to make up for our last sad, sad display. This time we went back to our usual spot, Sing-Sing Karaoke, which was introduced to us by Emily ages ago and which I’m going to argue is the best karaoke in New York City in terms of song offerings and awesomeness of facilities, though their private rooms get snatched up too quickly because of how great they are.
We went straight from work, which meant that we were the first ones there and got to take advantage of their $5 per person/hour private room happy hour rate and half-priced drinks. The drinks being the reason you will not see any photos of me in the following collection.
The drinks also being the reason Steven looks like he’s soooooooo into this beautiful ballad until you notice that the words on the screen are “till you holler for more”:
and the reason Jessica looks like she’s never enjoyed a tortilla chip from Chipotle more than she’s enjoying this one:
and the reason Melvin has five chins:
and the reason Jenny and Jessica actually sang a song without being threatened into it (and why Jenny may be throwing up here):
and the reason Emily is singing “867-5309/Jenny” for the second time that night in honor of Jenny with her hand in her crotch:
Okay, no, I’m kidding; we each had, like, one drink. But there’s really no other explanation for this stuff.
I mean, not to be creepy or anything, but OMG, photos of Anoop as a baby:
I mean, not as cute as my actual boyfriend (as opposed to Anoop, who is merely my future boyfriend)
but still.
And also, while I realize that Anoop looks really awkward in this way-too-cool jacket that he’d obviously never choose for himself, I still think he was totally NOT bad last night:
My Iranian (pronounced ih-RON-ee-an) boyfriend informs me that tonight is the Persian festival Chaharshanbe Suri! YES! My absolute favourite Persian holiday!!!
No, I didn’t know what it was, either, so Kamran sent me the Wikipedia link, and here’s the best part:
The tradition includes people going into the streets and alleys to make fires, and jump over them while singing the traditional song, Sorkhi-ye to az man; Zardi-ye man az to. The literal translation is, Your fiery red color is mine, and my sickly yellow paleness is yours.
This is a face that’s never seen yellow paleness, am I right?
This past weekend, I brought home treats from the co-best cupcake shop in the world, Crumbs Bake Shop. (I say co-best, because while Magnolia cupcakes are widely regarded as the most intensely wonderful foodstuff to ever be whipped up in a bowl, Crumbs’ certainly have their own charm.) Kamran and I consumed each of the following by cutting them in half, because there was absolutely no way either of us could go on living without tasting all of them:
Kamran on this animation: “It’s like one good thing after another,
and you don’t know where it’s going or for how long.”
Yet today, two people have told me that I look thinner. Even though it’s obviously a total misperception, it’s excellent to hear, since I now have exactly ten days before I need to have lost all five inches to fit into this dress for my best friend, Tracey’s wedding:
Not this dress exactly, though, you know. Mine is black. And still a larger size, despite the five inches. But don’t you just love to watch her swing* around like that? What a great job, right? Put on a pretty dress, fake a smile, and dance around a little.
Which is exactly what I’ll be doing at Tracey’s wedding next week.
Kidding!
*If she doesn’t swing for you, right-click on her and press Play. You won’t regret it.
Things aren’t as joyous around here as I’m used to. I’m blaming the winter. I’m hoping it’s the winter.
On Saturday night, I went out for what was supposed to be a wild girls’ night involving all six of my closest NYC ladyfriends. One by one, though, they had to work or had delayed flights back from business trips or had to “pick something up in Brooklyn” (what?), so it ended up being just Emily, Sonya, and Jessica. We went to dinner at BonChon for chicken that is both “tasteful” and “nutritiously enriched”. I don’t know what either of those words mean, but it was a damned fine chicken wing they were serving. It was so weird, though–the place was on the second floor of an unmarked office building, yet it was crowded with greasy-fingered eaters. It’s funny how Asian people somehow convince white folk to sneak into secret rooms for designer knockoff purses and into elevators of seemingly empty offices for sesame-glazed drumsticks.
After not even finishing one plate of wings and rosemary French fries, we went to Karaoke Duet to sing our hearts out in a private room. Karaoke usually means Emily doing the humpty dance, Beth–the whitest person you know–somehow knowing all the words to every Kanye song, and me . . . okay, I always sing sad 90s songs. But this time, EVERYONE was singing sad 90s songs. We actually kept apologizing to each other for choosing them, but we couldn’t stop.
I stood up at one point to take a picture of the three of them leaning back against the mustard-colored vinyl couch, completely sullen, but as soon as they saw the camera, they all became totally fake-animated:
Look at this! Jessica went as far as pretending to sing into her closed fist.
The really depressing part of the night was that karaoke had been half price before 8 p.m., so we’d gone to dinner at 4 to give ourselves plenty of time to sing for cheap. Which meant that we were finished hanging out at 8:30. Sonya went off to see crappy Asian movies with her boyfriend, Jessica went to meet up with her similarly-German friends to eat some weiner schnitzel or something (wait, is that Austrian?), and Emily came back to Kamran’s with me to gel her hair before a hot date. I had really wanted to go dancing, but when we got to Kamran’s and found him already in bed with his pajamas on, I lost all energy.
On Saturday, we watched Brick, which I didn’t know was a neo-noir when I added it to my Netflix queue. Despite hearing good things, we were both set to hate it and had pretty well succeeded after ten minutes, but once the story started making sense, we found ourselves warming up. Halfway through, I said, “I don’t hate watching this movie,” and he agreed. And then we ended up liking it. I don’t quite think that Joseph Gordon-Levitt actually needed to impersonate Humphrey Bogart during the last ten minutes for us to get that it was supposed to be a noir, but the interesting–sometimes annoying, but always interesting–wordplay throughout the film made us forgive that. Still, total bummer.
On Sunday, we watched the John Cassavetes film A Woman Under the Influence, and I pretty much cried the entire way through it. I thought it weird when we paused it so Kamran could go to the bathroom and I found myself lying down on his couch and leaking a couple of tears into his red satin pillows, but by the time an hour had passed, I was in full-on sob mode and had to ask Kam to stop staring at me so I could concentrate on not killing myself. It was seriously the bleakest movie I’ve ever seen. It’s what Revolutionary Road was trying to be and totally failed at. You don’t know who to blame for everything that happens in it, and you want to give all of the characters a Valium. We debated abandoning it with thirty minutes lef but decided we had to know what happened. When we finished, I said, “Let’s watch it again with commentary!”, and Kamran said, “I’m not watching that again. EVER.”
On Monday afternoon, my Internet randomly went down at work–only mine, mind you–and that’s when I found out that my laptop had 13 viruses and had been banned from the network by my IT guy. I spent two entire days without access to my photos, my music, and my smut. I don’t check my blog visitor count every ten seconds like I used to, I don’t have the motivation to write for Examiner.com, and I find myself unable to listen to anything but super-poppy songs like this:
On the bright side, what had better be the last snow of the season just passed, and soon it’ll be warm enough for me to wear the PINK SATIN COAT my sister bought me for Christmas:
I’m going home later this month to be in my best friend Tracey’s wedding, and I decided that I might as well take advantage of all manner of cheap healthcare while I’m there, so I called up the ol’ family eye doctor the other day.
I’ve been going to this guy all my life and have been in love him almost as long, ’cause he used to put his hand on my knee and ask me how school was going back when all I knew was a bunch of boys who liked sports and listened to Ginuwine. And since I’ve been going to him all my life, I recognised his receptionist’s voice immediately when I called. Yet when she asked my name, I still spelled it out for her, as if everyone from my grandmother on down in my family doesn’t go there.
She asked, “Katie, what’s your license plate number?” I thought it must be a new way to identify patients in their computer system, so I thought for a second and then said, “Oh, wait, I don’t own a car anymore!” (I had to go on to mention that I now live in New York City, because this is obviously the only thing I have going for me.) She seemed disappointed and said, “My husband and I swore we were behind you the other day when we saw a license plate that said KTETTE.”
That’s right; my eye doctor’s receptionist thinks of me when she’s on the road. Don’t you love small towns?
I, I got you in my pocket
For when I get home
Keep you in my pocket
For when I get home
I keep you in my pocket
For when I get home
When I get home, when I get home
