Author Archives: katie ett

You Can’t Handle How New York City I Am

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Posted by katie ett on May 18, 2012 – 4:00 pm
Filed under bigtime celebrity, living in new york is neat
Tagged as ,

Sometimes I feel like I don’t live New-Yorkily enough. Every time I go straight home after work to catch up on “Law & Order”, a part of me thinks about all of the girls my age who are sitting at swank bars with their swank friends trying to get boys to buy them whatever cocktail matches their swank dress. Every time I go to sleep before midnight because I have to wake up early to go to the gym and then take a shower and then watch the morning news like some geriatric, a part of me thinks of all of the girls my age at the Neon Indian or the Beach House show, staying out until 4 a.m. and then rolling out of bed again a few hours later in the same clothes to go to their start-up jobs in SoHo or DUMBO.

But I realized a minute ago that:

• tonight, I’m going with Kamran and our good friends to a second meal with a pedigreed chef who hosts secret dinners in his home

• tomorrow, I’m going to be an extra in a movie, and it’s not even the first time I’ve done that, either

• the next day, I’m going to the best restaurant in New York City for the third time with Kamran to celebrate his many accomplishments

I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying this to tell you that I will not be made to feel bad about my life, so quit expecting me to be Carrie Bradshaw. Or Miranda Hobbes. You expect me to be the lesbian, don’t you? DON’T YOU?

You Push Down Everyone Around You

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Posted by katie ett on May 17, 2012 – 1:00 pm
Filed under good times at everyone else's expense, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as ,

Sometimes I feel more powerful than most women. Sometimes I feel like I’m more capable, that I’m stronger and better able to handle myself in tough situations. That I’m quicker-witted and slower to get used or walked on. Sometimes I think that being sharper, better at arguing, funnier is the most important thing. Sometimes, when I look at really snarky, dry, biting women like Gena or Sandy or Ellie, I think about how lucky the world is that all women aren’t cutesy. They’re not all “girl power”, unshaven-armpits-exposed-as-they-sway-their-arms-back-and-forth-over-their-heads-at-Lilith-Fair, either. And these women are intimidating. They require “keeping up” with and “being on” with; you don’t just leave any old comment on their Facebook posts, because their cleverer other friends have already said cleverer things than you were going to. I’d be scared to date either of the Mean Kims, as much as I love both of them. And if I feel that way, how must nice, normal girls feel about them?

Sometimes I feel much less powerful than most women. Sometimes I feel like I’m so busy being sharper, better at arguing, stronger and better able to handle myself that I forget to just be nice. There’s a moment in “Friday Night Lights” where Coach Taylor says to Jason Street, “You lift up everyone around you.” That line hit me so hard in the place in me that was raised by the sweetest, kindest mother who never said a bad word about anyone and was still considered by everyone to be hilarious. She never said anything shocking. She never cursed. She never made fun of someone just to get a laugh. (Mrs. Bachelor Girl reminds me of her in that way.) I know that people respond better to positivity and cute pictures and women in frilly lace dresses with shining hair and winning smiles than to uppercuts to the vagina, but I don’t know how not to point and jab! And I worry that the alternative to snarkiness for me is lameness.

I have a friend who has approximately 2.6 million friends on Facebook and never says anything remotely interesting but is “spunky” and “full of life”. If she’s not posting a motivational quote, she’s posting a motivational typographical image. And people eat. that. shit. up. I post mean things about Jason Segel? I lose a Like on my Unapologetically Mundane Facebook Page. She posts the picture of the cat on the rope with “hang in there!” written on the bottom? She gets 200 Likes and an award for Krazy Kool Friend or something.

I want to die.

But in a way that will lift up everyone around me.

Adventure Time with Kat and Kam: The New York Public Library’s Main Branch

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Posted by katie ett on May 9, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under adventure time, just pictures, living in new york is neat, readin' and writin'
Tagged as , , , , ,

Adventure Time

The Main Library of the New York Public Library system is located approximately 3.5 steps from Kamran’s front door. A door that he has lived behind for approximately six years. And yet up until a couple of weeks ago, he’d never been there. Truth be told, I’d only been there once to pick something up, was confounded by the long empty marble hallways, ended up in the children’s section in the basement somewhere, ran away, and decided to go back to being illiterate.

But with Kamran in tow, I tried again, because I needed to renew my library card in order to be allowed to download ebooks from the library website so that I can not only continue being cheap and not buying books but also so I can continue being lazy and doing everything from my computer.

In short, Kamran was astounded at how beautiful and interesting the place was, and I was astounded that I don’t own a piece of artwork with a pooping donkey on it.

NYC Main Library
one of the long, empty, echoing, marble hallways

NYC Main Library
the map room, haunted by the reflection from my camera’s UV filter

NYC Main Library

NYC Main Library
eerily glowing LEGO lion

NYC Main Library
Kamran, the bronzed glamour boy

NYC Main Library

NYC Main Library

NYC Main Library
NERDS!

NYC Main Library
reminds me of something out of “Boardwalk Empire”

NYC Main Library
pooping donkey artwork!

NYC Main Library
Kamran, thinking he was really cheesing it up for the camera but basically looking like normal person

NYC Main Library
Kamran’s usual facial expression

Summers in NYC are so stifling (I know it’s bad wherever you are, but we don’t have air-conditioned cars, so can it) that we sometimes find ourselves just wanting to stay indoors for five solid months. Now that we know we love the library, we’re going to spend all of August with our cheeks pressed to the cold marble floor, copies of Don Juan and Dandelion Wine splayed out beside us.

At the Moment

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Posted by katie ett on May 7, 2012 – 10:30 am
Filed under bigtime celebrity
Tagged as

My favourite things of the moment are featured in a beautiful layout by Lisa of Elembee today! Here’s a little taste:

See me talk about things I’m “crushing on” and what’s on my “bucket list” and other words only Lisa could coax me into using.

Do You See?

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Posted by katie ett on May 2, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality
Tagged as ,

This morning, a woman ambled out of the bus and onto the sidewalk in front of me without checking to make sure she wasn’t cutting anyone off. I wasn’t in a hurry, but she was walking so-o-o-o-o-o slowly that I couldn’t bear to match her snailish pace. She walked in the middle of the sidewalk, though, not leaving room to pass her on either side. Just as I was stepping off the sidewalk and into the street to get around her, she decided to cross right in the middle of the street, cutting me off again. I was like, “Ohhhhh, no,” and excused myself as I sped around her, hoping she’d notice what a dick she was being but realizing she probably wouldn’t.

And I realized then that that’s the thing I really hate about New York. I can deal with tiny apartments that cost twice what whole houses do elsewhere, and it’s worth it to have to brave subway altercations to not have to drive anywhere, and I’ve learned to cope with having to shop at three different grocery stores because a single one isn’t big enough to carry everything I need.

But I can’t stand feeling like I’m invisible. When that woman stepped in front of me not once but twice, I wanted to yell at her, “DO YOU SEE ME?” When I’m crossing in front of someone and she’s crossing in front of me, and I hang back a second and let her go ahead because she’s wearing some five-inch heels and I realize that my life is much better than hers, and she doesn’t acknowledge me, I want to yell at her, “DO YOU SEE ME?” Or when everyone is waiting in a line to go up the stairs from the subway platform, and one guy comes from the back and cuts right in front of me, I want to tap him on the shoulder and yell at him, “DO YOU SEE ME?”

It’s like the episode of “South Park”, a riff on the movie Manhunter, where the killer ties Cartman to a chair, Clockwork Orange style, and shows the boy a projector slideshow so Cartman can see “all the things he has done”. You think the killer means all of the murders he’s committed, but the slides are all of the man at the Grand Canyon, at Niagara Falls. “DO YOU SEE?” the killer asks as each slide is displayed.

South Park, Cartman's Incredible Gift

Because my being invisible has to be the reason for these crimes against humanity, right? The only other explanation is that these people somehow think they’re more important than I am, that they have somewhere more pressing to be. And maybe this is why people get mean living here. How many times can someone step in front of you just as the train arrives before you start doing it back?