Monthly Archives: January 2010

My Incredible Blog Celebrity Pays Off with a Chance to Gamble Away My Life Savings

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 29, 2010 – 10:00 am
Filed under bigtime celebrity, funner times on the bus
Tagged as ,

I know you thought my blogs were totally useless, but because of one of these Internet gems, Greyhound has invited me (and a guest!) to take a trip to Atlantic City today to try out their new fleet of buses equipped with amenities like wi-fi, electrical outlets, and additional legroom that I’ll fill with many bags full of family-sized shampoo bottles and other things I couldn’t bring if I was on a plane.

They’re putting us up in one of the casinos, slathering us in spa services, and hosting a meet-and-greet with other bloggers that they’re calling “Top of the Trop” and which I will hopefully endure the entirety of by tippling champagne with Kamran in a corner. I’m extremely excited, as this will only be the second time I’ve been to a hotel with him in the three and a half years we’ve been dating, if you don’t count all of those initial months when we were meeting up at the Four Seasons every weekend for illicit activities.

Kidding.

Anyway, Greyhound will be taking a look at my Twitter tomorrow to see what sort of nonsense I tweet about my trip (pretty awesome that I broke down and signed up for that jazz a week ago, right?), just to warn you, it may contain nothing but

1) lyrics to “The Wheels on the Bus”,
2) pictures of stupid vanity license plates, and
3) mentions of Kamran accidentally letting out a little pee every time we go over a pothole.

How Do You Deal with Jerks on the Train?

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 28, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as , ,

When I got on the train this morning, I walked past the jerk standing in the doorway and moved to the center of the car like good girls do. I immediately regretted it, because immediately behind me was a woman about my age with an obnoxiously puffy coat and a cellphone loudly playing music. It’s a favorite pastime of New Yorkers to select their new ringtone while on the very public train, so I figured at first that she was scanning through all of her possibilities, but I quickly realized she was just plain listening to a song. One of those annoying hip-hop ballads, at that. And not on a cellphone with good speakers.

At first, I thought, “Who does that?! Signs all around the subway cars clearly state there’s to be no smoking, no littering, and no radio-playing! If we give this one inconsiderate person a pass, anarchy will erupt!”

Then I thought, “Actually, a little music in the subway in the mornings would be nice.”

Then I thought, “No! 90% of this train probably hates this song, too, and if this woman wants to listen to it, she can put on headphones just like everyone else.”

Just then, another woman sitting near her must have asked/told her to turn it off, because she spat back, “I can do what I want.”

Read the rest here.

The Public Nature of Grieving in the City

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 26, 2010 – 1:00 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as ,

The other day, my friend Nik told me the story of a crying woman on the 4/5 train who, it became apparent as she sobbed to a friend, was on her way downtown to identify the body of a loved one who had overdosed. It seemed that she had found out the bad news that morning and looked as if she had been crying nonstop since. Her friend comforted her as far as Union Square and then left the train, reminding her that she should call him and his wife if she needed anything.

The woman continued to sob alone until another woman excused herself from the mass of other passengers the train and asked if she could pray with the crying woman. They bowed heads and quietly murmured healing words to one another until other people from other parts of the train car came to rub her back, lay a hand on her shoulder, and whisper encouragement.

Read the rest here.

I wanted Kim to put a Boston-Irish beatdown on him, but then I remembered she’s Jewish.

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 20, 2010 – 10:00 am
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as

I hate to post my own crap when I haven’t read anyone else’s blog in, like, a week, but I have to tell you this ridiculous story:

My friend Kim was in town from Boston this weekend and took me to the Fashion District on the west side of Midtown to meet another friend on Saturday afternoon. I was wearing a red and black plaid wool cape that might be a little bright for some people’s tastes, but as we walked down 37th Street, we saw store after store selling the gaudiest, most rhinestoned, way-more-over-the-top-than-my-cape-type dresses you’ve ever seen. They were only fit for something like a Miss America pageant–definitely not opening night of the Met nor singing a bluesy number on top of a piano at a lounge–so we were discussing how not one but a whole block of them could possibly stay in business. Out of nowhere, and certainly not prompted by anything we said or did, a man spoke to us. He was probably 40 and sat in his car along the curb, smoking a cigarette. Not missing his front teeth or anything but trashy enough that I could imagine him alone at a stripclub in Jersey on a weeknight. I didn’t understand what he’d said at first and didn’t have time to properly react, but two steps later, I realized that he’d called from his car, “Plaid is totally out this season! Don’t you read Vogue?“

Materialistic and Proud of It

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 14, 2010 – 2:00 pm
Filed under holidays don't suck for me, narcissism, stuff i like
Tagged as , ,

You know when you get gifts from people that prove they really, really know you? And not only know you but actually get you and possibly even don’t mind you? Here are a few that I received at the end of the year that made me go, “Oh, crap, you actually pay attention to me when I talk to you, don’t you?”

In order of appearance in my life:

1) From Tracey, a pirated copy of The Peanut Butter Solution, which is probably my favourite childhood movie aside from Labyrinth. I don’t know why my mom would’ve taped it off of TV, but she did, and I must have watched that thing 700 times as a kid. It scared me to death, but it likely also cultivated my extreme taste for peanut butter as an adult. Having it back in my life feels like regaining a lost limb.

2) Also from Tracey, Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds Barbie. I don’t, like, collect Barbies or anything, I need you to know, but I do love the film, and I love that someone at Mattel is weird enough to suggest they make a doll WHO IS BEING ATTACKED BY PLASTIC BIRDS. I think she’s crazy-beautiful.

3) An owl locket ring from Kamran. Not two days before this arrived in the mail, we were discussing the steampunk movement on the way to work, and I told him that steampunk isn’t really my style. What I meant was that I like the aesthetics of it but that I’m too lazy to outfit my computer keyboard with typewriter keys and too conservative to wear goggles ‘round my neck every day. Having searched Etsy for the word steampunk to find the ring, he was worried I wouldn’t like it, but umm . . . it’s an owl on a locket with scrollwork on the band. There is nothing about this that is not me.

4) OMG, a vintage mink stole. Like, for real. It was fate, too, because mere hours before it arrived in the mail, Kamran and I saw this girl in the elevator wearing a fur, and I was like, “Why does she have that and I don’t?” And he totally goaded me into talking for ten minutes about why I love fur so much with absolutely no regard to animal life, knowing that I’d be getting one from him later in the day. It has a giant minky button in the front over the closure, and it’s so soft I no longer care to think about–let alone touch–kittens and bunnies.

My dad also got me a copy of Glenn Beck’s Arguing with Idiots: How to Stop Small Minds and Big Government for Christmas, but I prefer not to discuss that.

wd-50: Proof That All Great Meals Need Not Involve Bacon

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 13, 2010 – 2:15 pm
Filed under administrative
Tagged as

Not to toot my own horn or anything, but Wylie’s cooking and my camera make a pretty good team on donuts4dinner.

Check it out if you like food that looks nothing like it does in nature, food that costs more than your monthly rent, or chefs made famous by being “Top Chef” judges.

I Might Have Been Wrong About Twitter

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 12, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under administrative
Tagged as

So, this Twitter thing is sort of over, huh? After talking about it for weeks, my best friend, Tracey, convinced me to join last week so we won’t become those old ladies who wear Winnie the Pooh t-shirts, still listen to Poison, and are afraid of the Internet.

I added the 36 suggested people from my Gmail contacts, and 17 of them have added me back. SEVENTEEN! The other 20 of them haven’t logged into Twitter since August.

The problem is that I think I really like Twitter now. I didn’t see the point of it before, what with my writing dissertation-length diatribes here and all, but now I see that Twitter challenges me to be a better writer by forcing me to cram all of my brilliant thoughts into 140 characters. Or to be willing to separate them into twenty different tweets of 140 characters each. Doesn’t that sound great?!

Plus, I like the interface, and I like that I have so many fewer friends on there than on Facebook that I have some interest in keeping up. At this point, I actually care what my Twitter friends are saying, notice when they say something about me, and care to reply to them. Some of them are actually clever enough that I want to retweet their tweets! I was so busy being annoyed that CNN and Ashton Kutcher thought anyone cared what they said that I totally missed the boat. Sort of like the way I might someday actually watch any of the Star Wars movies and find out they’re not lame.

So follow me on Twitter! And also follow Tracey, because she doesn’t just spout feminist propaganda on there, unlike on her blog!

There’s also Bachelor Girl! And Noel! And Tessa! And Aaron! And Serial Monogamist! And Nat! And those are the only people I’ll imagine you’ll know, but you should add them all, because I want all of my friends to be friends with all of my other friends.

Only in NYC

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 11, 2010 – 12:30 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard
Tagged as ,

Only in NYC would I need my friend Beth to pick me up after work last Friday and drive me to my apartment with my new TV that should have been small enough to carry but would’ve taken up an entire subway car with all of its packaging. Only in NYC would I know approximately three people who own a car and would the one who drives an Alfa Romeo convertible agree to haul my new flatscreen around.

And only in NYC, after a second viewing of An Education (OMG, just as good the second time) with said Alfa-Romeo-convertible-driving friend, would I return to my boyfriend’s apartment to find a Christmas tree simply pushed out the front door into the hallway when its duty is done. And a full two weeks after Christmas, no less.

It’s kind of neat, and it’s kind of awful.

Even in New York City, People are Nice to You When You Vomit

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 7, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, too much information
Tagged as ,

Two days ago, I was on the green line express to Grand Central on my way home from work, leaning against the doorway as I meticulously typed a blog post about my newfound (and belated) love for Band of Horses on my BlackBerry, when a woman a foot away from me screamed, “Oh, my god!” and pushed everyone around her back toward the opposite end of the car. I looked up from my writing to see that the man sitting on the seat closest to me was vomiting all over the train floor, quietly but forcefully.

Read the rest here IF YOU DARE.

An Education, and Why I’m Sad to Be a Grownup

Posted by plumpdumpling on January 5, 2010 – 12:00 pm
Filed under i used to be so cool, there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as ,

Maybe it’s inappropriate to start off the new year with ruminations on pedophilia, but while I was in Ohio for Christmas, my best friend, Tracey, and her friend Kim were in the midst of seeing all of this year’s potentially-Oscar-nominated films, and I tagged along to see An Education with them almost as an afterthought. It’s mostly plotless–a sheltered 17-year-old girl loses more than her virginity to an older man when she’s dazzled by his worldliness–and it’s not for everyone, but it was entirely for me.

It was a great story and all, but for days afterward, it was still consuming my thoughts in a way that I didn’t think it should have. I found myself feeling detached from everything I did, because all I wanted to be doing was watching that film again. I finally decided it was because the girl in the film, Jenny, reminded me so much of myself. Growing up in smalltown Ohio, I wasn’t at all interested in most of the boys I went to school with, because I was way too smart for them, and I don’t mean that to sound narcissistic. Even the ones who could hold a conversation with me didn’t seem to appreciate me in the way I thought my awesomeness merited. I didn’t find things much different in college, so I “dated” first a 35-year-old and then a 41-year-old and just didn’t think anything wrong with it. Brains and humor have always made people more attractive to me than classic good looks alone, and men twice my age seemed so thoughtful and funny. They got why I was so interested in literature, and they listened to the right kinds of music, only they knew bands and read books I’d only heard of. They were so serious about politics, unlike the boys at school who were only Republicans because their parents were. And they both lived somewhere other than Ohio, which was really the most important thing.

The sad thing I realized after watching An Education is that the main reason I wanted to date older men no longer applies. Somewhere between 18 and now, I figured out that the guys I thought were so wise back then had really just accumulated the sort of life experience you do when you’ve had a job, had a wife, had some birthdays. They knew bands I’d only heard of because they’d been my age when those bands were making music, just like I know more bands than someone half my age does. My best friends now are just as literate, just as politically-conscious, and just as funny as any of those guys were. In fact, my current boyfriend, who’s only a couple of years older than I am, is smarter and funnier than probably anyone I know. It wasn’t that boys my age were necessarily not good enough for me but just that I hadn’t met the right one. Not that I regret any of it.

My even sadder realization is that I probably already ended my tenure as pedophile bait without even realizing it, and despite being wise enough now to recognize that older isn’t always better, I’m still going to miss the attention. Sure, I can date 80-year-old men for their money in my late 20s, but no one’s going to question that guy’s morals or mental health. If I’m not attractive simply for my ability to get someone arrested for touching me, what do I have to live for? What’s the point of being seen with an old codger if it doesn’t garner him disapproving glares and me worried glances? What’s the point if I’m not being taken advantage of?