Subway Ad Alteration on my Examiner blog
Food Porn #1 on my food blog
Monthly Archives: April 2009
Two Other Things of Note
Subway Ad Alteration on my Examiner blog
Warm-Weather Weekend
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, living in new york is neat, par-tay
Tagged as all of my friends are prettier than i am, east village, living in new york is neat, par-tay
Tagged as all of my friends are prettier than i am, east village, living in new york is neat, par-tay
Last weekend felt like the greatest of the winter to spring transitionings ever. I’m not one for sunburns and sweat, but without the burden of twenty pounds of winter coat, walking outdoors suddenly seemed like a joy. After three months of holing up with Kamran in his apartment and dreading every social invitation, I realized that I don’t actually hate my friends. Incredible!
On Saturday night, I first met up with Jessica-the-German-intern and Erika-who-moved-from-Boston-specifically-to-work-for-my-company-a-month-before-they-laid-her-off for dinner at Cucina di Pesce, which we chose because it supposedly had outdoor seating and giant plates of delicious food for tiny prices. But no! My meal was four pieces of toasted raviolo for $2 each. And you know I’m a growing girl. But luckily, the fresh air made up for it, as did the intense debate about whether or not the craigslist killer is hot.
After that, I took the ladies to my favourite freaky sour frozen yogurt place (which is, just so you know, NOT PINKBERRY), where we loaded up on toppings so intense I’ll only be able to tell you about them when I review it in donuts4dinner.com. Look how yogurt-filled and glowing Jessica and I are:
Then we met up with our friend Sonya for her boyfriend, Adam’s, birthday party at ACE Bar, where she was busy wearing a romper, showing off her side tattoos, and basically making out with innocent drunk girls:
Despite the fact that ACE has skeeball, darts, pool, animal-shooting games, and frat boys, Jessica and I were sort of sticking to the vinyl seats and having about this much fun:
So we gathered our friend Beth, ditched the Asians, and went to an outdoor bar down the street for an all white girl party with frozen margaritas and lots of talk about how we should all move to Paris, the white girl dream capital of the world.
I’d planned to meet up with Sonya to continue the Adam-related festivities at Beauty Bar, but then Beth offered me a ride home in her Alfa Romeo, which is a convertible, and convertible trumps claustrophobic bar. So we drove through the streets, wind in our very short hair, lights blurring, people yelling at us from their balconies, “Nice car!”, us waving back:
And that was only the beginning.
Melodramaticism in Downtown New York
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as battery park, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as battery park, living in new york sucks so hard
Things that are great about working in downtown New York City:
The view from your boss’ corner office, which you secretly consider your own,
watching the Staten Island Ferry roll in and out from the conference room
as you take the afternoon off to play your Nintendo DS
Statue-of-Liberty-gazing in Battery Park,
pretending you’re Patrick Bateman in American Psycho at Harry’s Steakhouse,
watching tourists cup the bull’s balls near Wall Street,
and so on and so on.
Things that are not great about working in downtown New York City:
Giant planes flying two millimeters from your office building and your security department coming over the loudspeakers to tell you that lots of other nearby buildings are evacuating but that you should sit tight and hope to not get smashed into.
Even not greater is that you happened to be downstairs at the building’s Starbucks getting your expensive iced coffees when the announcement was made, and you didn’t understand why all of these businesspeople were crowding the sidewalks until you came back upstairs to mass hysteria.
Also: your company’s facilities department is ordering facemasks and hand sanitizer for everyone in the office due to the swine flu outbreak. You’re trying to keep it a secret that you both were raised on a pig farm and had pork for dinner last night.
With Advanced Age Brings Advanced Baby-Lovin’
I was complaining to Dr. Boyfriend last Thursday morning that being one of the very few women in my office meant that I was going to be expected to care about the annual Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work Day and all of the tiny visitors it would bring. (And by all of, I mean all of two, because no one in my office is an adult.)
As a woman, I’m supposed to automatically care about and want to interact with children. Which I don’t. When I used to work at the children’s science center during college, I was always so envious of the one old guy in my department who had a bunch of stock questions he’d ask kids: “What did you have for breakfast?”, “How many years before you get to go to kindergarten?”, “Which is your favourite animal at the zoo?”
I never had those questions ready, so I was always fumbling around for something to talk about and ended up asking things like, “Have you ever accidentally seen Daddy kissing someone else’s mommy?” I was never first on the list when annual raise time came, as you can imagine.
But for as much as I had prepared myself to totally ignore the kids in our office on Thursday, I hadn’t prepared myself for this:
Come on! Baby Owen in multi-pocketed shirt AND pants, playing with Tim’s BlackBerry pouch, that totally squeezable belly hanging out of them? It almost makes me want to take this back.
I Didn’t See Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant Filming Their New Movie
Filed under bigtime celebrity, living in new york is neat, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as bigtime celebrity, columbus circle, living in new york is neat, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as bigtime celebrity, columbus circle, living in new york is neat, there's a difference between films and movies
I forgot to tell you that a couple of weeks ago, I was picking Dr. Boyfriend up from law school, and after a stop at the Whole Foods in Columbus Circle for dinner at the hot bar, we exited the Time Warner Center to find a movie being filmed.
We obviously think celebrity is lame, but we couldn’t help trying to get a look at the actors to see what the fuss was all about. The whole sidewalk was roped off, stage lights were set up all around, and limos were pulled up to every curb. It turned out that Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant were filming some new movie called Did You Hear About the Morgans?. Greeeeeat title, huh?
Of course, Sarah Jessica and Hugh weren’t actually anywhere in sight. It was merely their stand-ins rehearsing the scene while they likely sat in their limos–Sarah Jessica calling home to Ohio, Hugh wondering how he was going to get past kissing Sarah Jessica’s horsey face without losing his lunch. But the crowd, of course, was still totally enthralled.
I doubt I’ll add their stand-ins to my list of famous people I’ve seen while living in NYC, but if Kamran keeps running into Keanu Reeves and Eliot Spitzer, I might get desperate for something to talk about.
Please Don’t Feed the Animals
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am
Tagged as all of my friends are prettier than i am, union square
Tagged as all of my friends are prettier than i am, union square
Going through pictures from last summer, I found reason #4,593,821 why I love my best friend, Tracey and me:
Also: a post about the bacon candy bar that everyone but Aaron foolishly ignored.
4 Realz, Go Look at My New Blog
I just made my first update to donuts4dinner.com!
Which is my new food blog, in case you missed it.
I promise not to tell you every time I update the thing, but you know, a girl has to give herself a little traffic to start.
There’s a Reason That Train Car is Empty
Filed under fun times on the subway, good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as fun times on the subway, good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as fun times on the subway, good times at everyone else's expense, living in new york sucks so hard
I love riding the R train because of the complete lack of other people using it. Even though it’s one of the slowest lines with some of the oldest trains, its frequent stops and guaranteed room for sitting make it perfect for playing some New Super Mario Bros. on my Nintendo DS on the way home.
Yesterday afternoon made me question my love, though. When I stepped into a car near the end, I was met with the overpowering stench of excrement. Terrible smells are par for the course in New York, so I tried not to overreact and took a seat. But the odor was SO BAD. I looked around me and noticed people covering their noses with their hands, burying their faces in their coat lapels, so I knew it wasn’t just me.
Then I looked around some more and noticed that everyone was crowded at one end of the train car. Some boys had rushed by me in a hurry to get to the opposite end of the car as I’d taken my seat, but I didn’t think anything about it until I realized that literally everyone but me and a man across the aisle were huddled together against the door leading to the next car. I craned my neck to see what they’d all run from and realized that a person, a man, was lying down on one of the sets of seats at the far end of the car. Evidently his stench was so overwhelming that it’d filled the entire place.
I like to consider myself an understanding and nonjudgemental person, so I decided I would stay planted where I was, showing the world that I accept homeless people and know that they can’t help the lot they were given. If fat people can take up two seats, by God, filthy people can stink up entire cars! But then I started thinking about the canvas bag full of clean clothes I had with me and how all of them were going to be soaked through with the worst smell imaginable by the time I got off at Union Square.
So at the next stop, I hustled out of the car, onto the platform, and into the next car with everyone else. I yelled to a man who was entering the foul car, “DON’T GO IN THERE!”, and he scampered along with the rest of us. From there, it was as if we had all survived a natural disaster and were brought closer together because of it. People were being polite and actually laughing with each other, and the boys who had rushed by me in the smelly car now stood in the aisle of this clean car and watched people at every stop as they entered the realm of the rankness, scrunched up their noses, and ran back out onto the platform.
When I got off at 14th Street, I walked past the cars and saw that all but one of them were being filled like normal by commuters. And there in the seat where I had originally sat was one lonely woman, mired in the stench, looking as if she was about to pass out.
(x-posted to my Examiner)
I have (another) new blog!
RSS Feed: if you want to see me in your feed reader
LiveJournal Feed: if you want to see me on your LJ Friends page
It’s perfect for those of you who only care about my food-related ramblings and doubly perfect for those of you who hate when this blog is clogged with whole posts about how much I love mayonnaise.
I wanted to quote The Ting Tings here, but “Great DJ” doesn’t actually have any quotable lyrics whatsoever.
Filed under living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend
Tagged as living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend, west village
Tagged as living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend, west village
I went to Le Royale Saturday night with some trepidation to celebrate my friend Sonya’s birthday. See, we like to go to Le Royale on Friday nights for Robot Rock, where we can be sure to hear 80s new wave and current indie music. However, Sonya had to go and be born on April 11th instead of April 10th, so we had to go to what Le Royale was calling Grand Buffet Saturday. Not appealing, right? Unless you’re into Ponderosa and cheap Chinese food, I guess. (Which you are.)
But it turned out to be the best night ever! The DJ, I later learned, was named Vikas Sapra, and he’s now my favourite DJ ever. I’m the sort of person who has a reeeeeeeeeeally great time when the DJ’s playing a song I like and an inversely more horrible time when he’s playing something I don’t like/know. It’s definitely one of my more intolerable personality traits and something I feel bad for subjecting my poor friends to, but there it is all the same, and not even two fistfuls of vodka can make it any better.
Luckily, this Sapra fellow is a master of mixes. One second he’s playing “Kids” by MGMT and I’m going crazy, the next he’s playing some shitty hip-hop song that makes me want to kill myself, but then he’s playing Bowie’s “Modern Love” and everything’s great again. And he only plays the best 30 seconds of each song, which sucks for the songs I love but is perfect for the times I’ve reached for my razorblade.
My friend Beth and I spent the night right in front of the DJ booth in order to have enough room to flail our arms wildly like white girls dancing do and to look approvingly at Vikas when he played Blur and Nirvana and not-so-approvingly when he played One Republic (who I originally called New Republic until I just had the foresight to Google their name to be sure). Now my weekend schedule will officially consist of karaoke on Fridays, Le Royale on Saturdays, and “Celebrity Apprentice” on Sundays.
Nostalgia About the Early Days of the Internet
Filed under i used to be so cool, super furry animals
Tagged as i used to be so cool, super furry animals
Tagged as i used to be so cool, super furry animals
Remember how much more important the Internet seemed in its youth? How we didn’t rely on it for everything and didn’t entirely take it for granted?
I don’t remember how I knew what it was exactly, but I do remember the first time I ever used it. My best friend Tracey and I were going to a Men’s Glee Club concert at THE Ohio State University one day in our early years of high school, and we stopped by her older brother’s campus apartment beforehand to waste time and use his computer, which included what must have been the slowest modem ever made.
As I remember, it turned out that we’d left our tickets to the concert in her parents’ car, so we spent the entire afternoon looking up song lyrics and pictures of our favourite bands of the time: silverchair, Megadeth, Bush, and Nirvana. Recently, we had spent an entire Friday night at her house watching, pausing, watching, and pausing Bush’s performance of “Insect Kin” on “Saturday Night Live” that my mom had taped for us so we could figure out all of the lyrics. Which took hours. So yeah, the Internet and all of its tricks seemed AMAZING to us at the time.
I bring this up because my co-worker Nik was hovering over my desk this morning, swinging the laces on the hood of his hoodie back and forth over my monitor like windshield wipers, and somehow, it reminded me of the eSheep I had back in high school.
This little Sheepy would hang out above the taskbar at the bottom of your screen, walking, running, sleeping, and occasionally getting bug-eyed and dying. You could pick him up with your pointer and drop him, causing him to bounce, but that’s literally all he did. AND I THOUGHT IT WAS AWESOME.
Still do, to be honest. And thankfully, there’s a 4-minute+ video on YouTube to help me relive its glory.
So tell me: what did you love about Web 1.0?
NYC Pillow Fight 2009!
I celebrated World Pillow Fight Day on Saturday by attending the fight on Wall Street. You’ll note that I said I celebrated and not my loyal and faithful friends and I celebrated, because while I’m generally regarded as the flaky one of the group, I was the only one who actually showed up. Boo-yah and a thousand points for me.
I didn’t actually bring a pillow with me, because you know I wasn’t going to risk mussing my hair, but the train downtown was loaded with children with animal-shaped pillows, hipster girls with pillows in handmade cases, and middle-aged couples with pillows they’d seemingly owned their whole lives. This young German-speaking couple got on the train at Union Square and bumped into me without a word of apology, so I set about hating them in my mind and then set about laughing at them in my mind when they got all confused at City Hall when the 6 line terminated and they didn’t know which train to take to continue down to the Wall Street stop. Superiority!
When I got off the train by Trinity Church, masses of people had stopped on the sidewalks to see where all the pillow-carriers were going. The street I had planned to take to the intersection of Broad and Wall was barricaded by the police, so I tried another street, which was also barricaded, and then another street, which was also barricaded. I ended up stopped behind a construction project a good two blocks away from the action, cursing the NYPD for ruining anything remotely community-forming and hopeful, and taking lame pictures like this with my tiny zoom:
The sidewalk opposite me was open almost to Broad Street, so people were crowding in and trying to burst through the barricades, but the police kept pushing them back and yelling through their bullhorns. Everyone looked so dejected coming back toward my intersection, and I was already feeling sort of down about being alone, so I decided just to call it a day and spread the word about how lame the event turned out to be.
But just then, someone slapped someone else with a pillow right beside me. And then someone else slapped someone else. And then it was all-out war, with people streaming down the sidewalk to join in the impromptu fight.
Pillow innards filled the sky as cases ripped open against heads and shoulders, and I was so glad that absolutely no one had heeded the organizers’ rule against feathers:
The police tried to break things up, but the fighters’ will would not bend, and the cops finally settled for merely separating the crowd when cars and bulldozers came through:
Pillows were thrown at windshields, but it was all good-natured fun. My favourite part of the day was when a limo rolled up to the intersection, the throng obediently separated, and just before the car could pass through, a guy unexpectedly ran along the line of people and smacked every one of them with his pillow:
THAT, my friends, is the spirit of New York City.
No More Hiding Behind Tinted Windows
When I turned 16 years old, my dad told me I could have any car I wanted. I told him I wanted a black truck, because
a) I was a farmgirl living in Ohio, but more importantly,
b) the boy I had a crush on had a black truck, and clearly creepily buying a twin vehicle is the way to any man’s heart.
A few days later, I owned a black ’86 Chevy Blazer with a grey stripe along each side that a family friend’s son was selling. Although it wasn’t exactly the shiny new Dodge Ram I’d imagined, I couldn’t have been happier with the way I could pretty much back into everything in sight and not inflict a bit of damage to my precious bumper with the inherited “Fast Boys Dirt Toys” sticker on it. It was only when my dad made the same offer to my little sister a year later and she ended up with a ’98 Ford Mustang that I reconsidered my ride.
I thought that moving to New York City would rid me of my constant worry that everyone pulling up beside me at red lights was judging my poor Blazer. I thought that without a nonfunctioning rear windshield wiper to hinder me, I’d have no insecurities. What I didn’t realize is that public transportation is ten times worse.
. . . And you can click here to read the rest on my Examiner page. OHHHHH! BURN!
Haute Butt
Do you spend all sorts of money on totally useless crap but feel unwilling to pay basically nothing for necessities?
I ask, because I was wearing a pair of really comfortable underwear yesterday, and whilst admiring their fabric and construction on the toilet, I realized that they belong to my best friend, Tracey. My first thought was, “I have to get these back to her!” Because really great underwear are not something I have in abundance, and I assume that’s true for everyone else, too.
But as I thought more about it, I realized that normal people probably don’t think of underwear like I do. My absolute favourite pairs, for instance, are from American Eagle. I don’t normally shop at that store and would have never thought to buy underwear from it, but my non-wicked stepmother took me there to return some of my step-siblings’ jeans after Christmas ’07 and forced me to pick out some for myself. I was generally skeptical despite the super-cute polka-dot and sailboat patterns, but I soon discovered that they’re the best underwear in life–soft, thick, durable, and generally not skanky.
Yet I’ve never owned any past those three pairs, appalled at the idea of spending $7.50 on something no one but Kamran will ever see. (Or, if my dad’s reading this, something NO ONE BUT ME will ever see.) I’m absolutely aware of the fact that these underwear are now two years old and are in perfect condition, yet $7.50 still seems crazy somehow. Even when I’ll drop $7.50 on a Chipotle burrito–something I’ll enjoy for a maximum of an hour, if you don’t count the four days’ worth of black bean burps–without a second thought.
So I went crazy on Friday and used a Visa giftcard from my work to buy 11 pairs of underwear online. I felt like such a badass money-waster. Even though I bought them on clearance, of course.
Do It Again!
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am
Tagged as all of my friends are prettier than i am
Tagged as all of my friends are prettier than i am
My friend Emily likes to tease me about the photos I take for this here blog. She says the number one thing out of my mouth on an outing is:
“You know that really awesome thing you just did? Do it again so I can take a picture of it.”
Which is entirely true. So in honor of all of my spontaneously hilarious friends who so obligingly re-pose for me, here are my favourite of the “do that again” photos of recent history:
Kamran about to bite the head off a prawn at a yakitori joint.
Adam sleeping while he was supposed to be teaching a training class of customers at work.
Emily looking so completely badass with some graffiti.
Sad LaChantee after being told that she wasn’t allowed to sleep under my desk at work.
Meredith looking innocent on our outing where we saw the rotating meat.
Kamran flapping the wings of our poor Cornish game hen on our first Thanksgiving together.
Bethany and Tracey “biting” into the pizza-themed glass cutting board my parents gave me for Christmas to mock my cooking skillz.
Sonya wishfully thinking.
Kamran being EATEN IN THE FACE by a monkey at Dave & Buster’s.
Katie being EATEN IN THE FACE by Nick’s alligator head at Evolution.
Oliver, WHO WAS MY BOSS, trying to get me to do GOD KNOWS WHAT by offering
a dollar up to me through the glass on a rainy night at a bar on a work trip in New Orleans.
Joanie and Tracey figure skating in a Kohl’s in Kentucky.
Dominique telling the obnoxious wallpaper in her apartment building to pipe down.
Mike and Jessica, the vegetarians, clearly craving some meats.
Sonya pretending to actually love Adam for more than just his hair.
Kamran casually eating his frozen yogurt after totally dropping a big brown splotch on his shirt.
The one time someone actually did the “do it again” to me.
Thanks, friends!
Bellies Full of Cheeses, Faces Full of Spleen
I’m leaving work early today to go to one of a long line of scholarship receptions for Dr. Boyfriend. Because even though the law firm where he’s a patent agent is paying for him to go to law school, he’s a genius and can’t avoid getting money thrown at him.
For some reason, I get all excited about these receptions. I just think it’s so neat that he works full-time and somehow still manages to be at the top of his class (mostly by staying home and reading cases when he should be taking his lady out dancing) that I feel sort of like a proud mother when the invitations come in the mail. I think about how the dean of the school will fawn over him, and how I’ll embarrass myself trying to make everyone laugh, and how we’ll fill up on cured meats and cookies.
But what I never remember is that by the end of them, this always happens:
Gimme Some Money
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as living in new york sucks so hard, midtown east
Tagged as living in new york sucks so hard, midtown east
It’s a funny thing, being an intensely poor lady who spends all of her time in her boyfriend’s richie-rich, circa-1920, hand-carved Italian stone apartment building with its own gym, laundry, and convenience store. Walking out of the lobby this morning, I followed through the revolving doors an older, classier woman with a Blanc de Chine shopping bag. And not, like, the paper bag they give you at DKNY or even the vinyl bag they give you at Scoop but a legitimate canvas bag that can be treasured and flaunted for years and years to come.
Now, that name wouldn’t have meant anything to me a few years ago, but you may remember back in 2007, when I hardcore coveted this Blanc de Chine cape that cost over $1600:
but instead bought this cape, which cost me $9:
I’m telling myself there’s no way that woman bought anything but a pair of cashmere socks, but I don’t think they hand out canvas bags for that.
