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Most of these were taken by my friend Anthony, who I want to be when I grow up. He took more than 1000 photos during the trip, if that’s any indication of what a good time we had. The pictures of us playing drunken Cranium (which I don’t even like) for five hours every night have been omitted. As have the pictures of me crying for another five hours after I fell down Rollerblading.
As you’re reading this, I’m on my way to spend the next four days with eleven of my closest friends in THE HAMPTONS!
The apparent view from our back deck
Our house has a pool! And I’m bringing my new Rollerblades so my friend Christine can attempt to teach me to skate on the boardwalk and fail miserably! And we’re going to have “Top Chef”-style cooking competitions! And my friend Chantee says she wants to be on my team because she “trusts my palate more than most Food Network stars’”! And hopefully we’ll escape the weekend without anyone getting alcohol poisoning or accidentally sleeping together!
It’ll be my first time there, and just the idea of it makes me feel all snobby and pretentious. I love that.
My favouritest German intern of all time, Jessica, recently came back into town after being back home in Düsseldorf for nine months. In honor of her visit–and because she bugs me about it at least once a week–here are the greatest photos from the night we said goodbye:
I like how Beth apparently had no idea that this was supposed to be a funny picture
and not a try-out for “America’s Next Top Model”.
These are funny because I’m, like, the not-drunk-est person everyone knows.
Please notice Anthony’s face in the background.
I don’t remember why this was being done, but I do know it was offensive.
We all rode the bull. It cost $15. Someone paid for me, because that’s how I roll.
I broke my thumbnail on it.
Sonya puts this much feeling into literally everything she sings. This was probably “Barbie Girl”, Jessica’s absolute favourite song to do at karaoke. She likes to sing the boy part even though she’s the girliest girl you’ll ever meet.
One of my office’s gamblin’ German interns, Niko, finished up the extreeeeemely important work he was doing for us and moved back home on Monday, so nine of us went to Atlantic City two weekends ago to give him a proper sendoff involving a motel with a pamphlet of instructions on how to store your gun, scuffles over moist towelettes, and the finest rear ends I’ve ever seen on a lady.
Emily, Niko, Beth, and Jeff outside the Trump Taj Mahal
The first time I went to Atlantic City last month, my trip was paid for, and I thought it was maybe only fun because I didn’t spend any of my own money. But no! It turns out that I really do like cheesy theme casinos and their atrocious carpet.
Beth cuts a rug. (Get it?!)
Jeff drove Beth and me to Atlantic City on Saturday afternoon, and it was just as exciting the second time seeing the strip and all of its bright lights come into view. We checked into our cheap (but clean!) motel and then immediately went to the Virginia City Buffet in Bally’s to meet the others. We were already standing in line when everyone walked up, and one of the guys tried to get Niko to notice us by pointing to a sign on the wall that we were standing directly underneath. I started jumping up and down to get his attention, but he evidently had real interest in the sign. When he finally did spot us, hugs and laughs were exchanged, and Niko was genuinely surprised, because he’d been told that everyone already had plans for the weekend and couldn’t come to AC. Delightful!
We went back to our rooms after dinner, cleaned up real pretty, and took a cab from the strip to the Borgata for some dancin’. The casino was a totally different experience from the others I’d been in, as it was full of young sluts in formal wear instead of old people in sweatpants. Although maybe that had something to do with it being midnight instead of 2 p.m. Beth had suavely gotten us on the guestlist at Mixx, which meant we got to skip the line to get in but still had to pay $20. And I should mention that there wasn’t actually a line to get in. But still!
The club was actually really fun, and the DJ played a mixx of hip-hop that I’d of course never heard in my life and 80s alternative that I did a lot of happy screaming about. (Sorry, Beth and Jeff.) Beth and I are pretty much the whitest people you know, but we still thought we were really tearing up the dancefloor after a couple of drinks. Jeff disagreed. Still, we stayed until 3 a.m., and he danced with us the entire time, so I’m going to continue to open up the curtains in Kamran’s apartment and shake it for the neighbors every night.
The next day, we met for a fairly awesome brunch buffet at the Marriott across the street from our cheap (but clean!) motel and then went to the Taj to watch the guys in our group lose all of their money at the poker tables. Beth, Jeff, and I stuck to the slots, and I won $20 on one, while Jeff won . . .
yes, that says one penny.
I talked Beth into trying a machine called Kitty Glitter because of its ridiculous name, and she immediately lost half of the $5 she put in. Then she immediately won back a few dollars, so I started telling her, “Cash out! Cash out!”, because I come from the walk-away-as-soon-as-you’ve-made-any-amount-of-money school of gambling. But she refused and lost all of her winnings again, so I basically washed my hands of her. And that’s when she won $36. I was PUMPED. She of course continued playing until she lost $4 of that, but whatever.
Look at them kitties.
The three of us spent the rest of the afternoon walking along the boardwalk with Emily and Niko, eating Rita’s Italian Ice and Nathan’s hot dogs and caramel-covered marshmallows. It was the first time the sun had shone all winter, and we were so unaccustomed to it that we had to take off our coats and relearn how to sweat.
It was getting late by the time we made it to the opposite end of the Boardwalk, so Jeff stopped this guy who was pushing a cart and asked him to take us back to our hotel. I was under the impression that these guys were food vendors of some sort who just hadn’t stocked up their carts yet, but no, it turns out that their whole function is to push lazy people around. Here’s a video of our ride, though I assure you it’s not worth watching except to hear my extremely sexy, unusually high-pitched voice:
I do not care about the Super Bowl. Aside from backyard basketball games involving the word horse, I think sports are pretty stupid. Especially professional ones.
I went to a Super Bowl party last night, though, and I went all the way to Jersey for it. And by “all the way”, I mean that I took a bus 15 minutes to my friend Jeff’s apartment, but I couldn’t use my MetroCard to pay the bus fare, so it seemed like a big deal. I did watch the game, unexpectedly, and I casually cheered for the Colts simply because Indianapolis is much closer to my hometown in Ohio than New Orleans is.
And also because I thought all of the pregame crap about how much a win would mean to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina–which happened five years ago, people–was unnecessarily sentimental and trying to make a story arc where one wasn’t needed. It’s a football game, and its outcome has nothing to rebuilding a city and everything to do with giving the kind of people who stand behind on-air newscasters and scream and show off their replica team jerseys an excuse to get drunk and light things on fire.
Anyway. I found the bidet in Jeff’s roommmate’s bathroom about a hundred times more interesting than most of the Super Bowl commercials, but there was one that really pulled at my heartstrings, and no, it wasn’t the Budweiser one with the Clydesdale and the cow. It was, oddly, a promo for the NFL itself, telling its fans how much better they are than are than NHL and MLS fans:
Funny what a little well-placed Arcade Fire song can do.
This is all that’s left of Halloween, but it sure was good while it lasted. Kamran and I spent Friday night watching horror movies instead of, you know, piecing together a simple costume so as to not disrespect our friend Anthony’s party the next night.
To make us feel extra bad, Anthony seriously went all-out for this thing. As if we weren’t impressed enough to actually know someone who owns a house and can therefore have a legitimate house party (even if it was out on Long Island), he had the place covered in cobwebs and bathed in creepy lighting with awesome additions like strings of razorblades hanging in the doorway to the dining room. His friends all had elaborate costumes, and he went around the party in an H1N1 emergency response team uniform, drinking what he said was germ-ridden waste.
I ended up wearing a pink tank top with a black shirt covered in stars over it and said I was aurora borealis, while Kamran wore a striped sweater and said he was Freddie Kreuger had he gone straight, stopped murdering kids, and gotten his PhD. No one was impressed, but we brought a box of thirty assorted candy bars with us, so we didn’t get egged.
Of course, we ended up eating at least half of those thirty candy bars ourselves and stuffing more in our pockets for the long ride home on the Long Island Railroad, but no one was sober enough to notice.
My office had a going-away party recently for one of our co-workers who moved to one of our locations in Singapore mostly to have better access to prostitutes. Here are my favourite photos from the night, most of which involve us inexplicably sticking out our tongues:
The next day, people kept congratulating me on being a happy drunk, which I suppose is something worth congratulating someone on. My boyfriend was not one of these people, as he was the one receiving texts from me hours after I told him I’d be home that said things like, “i don kno if i can maeuke it!”
When he texted me back, worried and ready to come pick me up wherever I was, he found out that I was thirty feet from his apartment building. Hilarious to me. Not so much to him.
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:
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.
b) An old man waiting for his wife and grown daughter outside of a store called The Pleasure Chest. He looked so awkward standing outside the door and so relieved when his family came through it with their purchases. Or at least I assume it was his wife and daughter. I guess it could’ve been his two prostitutes, picking up supplies for their evening at his behest.
Bridgette’s party was pretty amazing, because
a) it included my three favourite co-workers from my software company who no longer work there:
Bridgette, Beth, me, and LaChantee
b) there was a maple duck confit quesadilla with goat cheese and a fig spread on the menu that LaChantee and I wanted to split, but there was a $5 sharing fee that we were not about to pay, so we just didn’t tell our server about it and felt veeeeeeeeery subversive:
c) I took this picture of Chantee looking like she has a red tumor growing inside of her nose:
d) Bridgette’s friend Sarah and I totally became BFFs. And by that, I mean that I dropped a fork on the ground before she got there and actually told her before she used it to eat her dinner.
This post is entirely for me and not at all for you, so just scroll through the pictures quietly and don’t even think of complaining about how long it is.
Okay, I’m just going to get it out of the way and say that my sister’s wedding was the best wedding ever. In history. And that there’s no reason for anyone else to get married, because all weddings will pale in comparison and will only serve to make every bride and groom from here on out reconsider whether marriage was the right choice for them what with all of their imperfections being brought to light before all of their family and friends. AND GOD.
So as I was leaving work at 12:30 last Tuesday for the airport, my best friend Tracey texted me to say that her fiancé would be picking me up due to the forthcoming snow and freezing rain. I called her immediately and was like, “Bitch, no. You are a whining asshole baby, and you WILL be at the airport at 5:30.” And she was.
So were about 42 inches of snow, along with ice that coated all the trees, cars, and cats in sight:
We braved the weather long enough to pick up my dark red strapless bridesmaid’s dress at David’s Bridal–that’s right! mere days before the wedding, having not tried it on since November!–and then settled in for the evening at her apartment, where we ended up being snowbound for the next two days.
The drive from Ohio to Kentucky with my parents was three hours of blurry, icy trees
which led to four hours of nonstop fun at the rehearsal at the groom’s parents’ church. It was the most perfect setting for a wedding, with a huge cross cut out in glass at the front, giant ceilings, pews that were interestingly bright blue, and a glass door in the back for the bride and groom to walk through:
The afternoon started out joyous enough
but after an hour of making decisions about when the boys were walking in, when the girls were walking in, and which candelabra was getting lit when, Joanie the Bride was ready to get it all over with:
Luckily, there were her five stunning bridesmaids
From left: her incredible sister Katie, her friends Miranda and Kayla,
the bride herself, her best friend Jessica, and her friend Cindy
posing for dirty pictures on the piano
and her future husband staring at her boobs
to cheer her up. And so the rehearsal started:
My favourite part is when the minister asks who’s giving the bride away
and our dad answers, “Her mother and I,” before realizing that hey,
her mother’s dead, and maybe she doesn’t want our stepmom being called
her mother, but no, we love our stepmom and consider her the best
stand-in possible, and a good laugh is shared by all later.
Joanie’s friends are so much fun that we couldn’t stop laughing all night, and despite mean looks from both the minister and Joanie every time we made a scene, we knew the bride was secretly on our team. She made it not-so-secret when the minister practiced presenting her and Josh to the audience for the first time as Mr. and Mrs., “Everlasting Love” played over the church speakers, and Joanie couldn’t help but dance down the aisle. Every single time they did it. I couldn’t have been happier that my sister had chosen such a non-traditional ceremony.
Dinner was in the kitchen of the church and was perfectly wonderful until Joanie decided to pass out our bridesmaid jewelry and Kayla caught her tissue paper on fire. Unsure of how to handle it, she exclaimed to Josh the Groom, “You’re a man! Do something!” And so Caffeine Free Diet Coke was poured onto the table, leaving quite an unsightly aftermath:
Joanie and Josh had decided against a DJ and had instead rented a DJ-in-a-Box, which lets you program your own playlists but can also basically be used as a jukebox where guests can search for a song they want to hear. So instead of, say, resting on the night before her wedding, Joanie stayed up late with our cousin Bethany, our friend Michelle, and me, doing karaoke and teaching us the Cupid Shuffle for use at her reception:
The next morning, Bethany, Michelle, and I went over early to the reception hall with Josh to decorate
and admire the cakes, one of which was classy with pearls and ribbon
and one of which was meant for BOYS (and Bethany):
We went back to Josh and Joanie’s house to shower, and then Joanie drove me to the church, where we met her photographer and her bridesmaids to apply our makeup
and to flatten and hairspray my hair into what looked like a helmet. We sequestered ourselves in the church’s kitchen to dress ourselves, to each take a turn touching Joanie’s boobs
and to convince Joanie that snow boots weren’t proper footwear for a wedding day (even though I was obviously wearing Crocs):
However, it was later decided that strappy sandals weren’t exactly proper, either, when the photographer had us venture outside to take pictures in the snow. I didn’t bring my camera out with me stupidly, so you’ll just have to imagine how totally beautiful my little sister was standing in the middle of a field, surrounded by nothing but whiteness. Half of the time she was wearing her cream-colored pea coat, and half of the time we bridesmaids were all cuddling around her to keep her warm. And then the photographer posed her in the gazebo behind the church with icicles falling all over it. Miranda was wearing open-toed shoes, and Cindy actually had to take her heels off and walk barefoot in the snow to keep from slipping on the ice, but all of the hypothermia in the world would’ve been worth it for those shots.
We went back inside for more photos before the guests arrived, and of course I couldn’t allow any of them to turn out decently:
but I wasn’t the only one having a good time:
Look at her little socks!
I sorta want to get married just for the pictures.
Dad was incredibly happy before the ceremony
but then pretty much cried nonstop from the moment he stepped into the church, and for good reason. Joanie chose the music of “Edelweiss” for her walk down the aisle with Dad, for God’s sake. And Josh’s dad sang “Can’t Help Falling in Love“. And they took all of the crappy misogynist Bible stuff out of the minister’s monologues and just left the pretty Bible stuff. And Joanie and Josh just looked so happy that for half a second, I thought, Marriage is so wonderful! I want to get married! But then I realized that no, weddings are wonderful, and marriage still sucks.
I smiled literally throughout the entire ceremony, though. Especially when our parents sang “It’s Your Love“, which made my eyes well up from my dad’s first yeeeeeeeah-aaaaah-aaaaah-aah. But I wouldn’t let myself cry, because I was wearing a hell of a lot of eyeliner, and let’s not kid ourselves about my priorities.
I was impressed with how well Josh held up during his vows, but Joanie only made it about two words in before her voice cracked, and the rest of her vows were adorably barely audible. Co-maid-of-honor Jessica later told me that when Joanie reached back to hand her bouquet over so she could hold Josh’s hands and exchange their rings, the tissue she had been holding was completely soaked from sweat. So charming!
After Joanie re-did her makeup on the one eye that she’d wiped too much during the ceremony and we took pictures with various family members who would’ve disowned us had we not included them, I rode with Joanie and Josh to the reception hall. Cousin Bethany was waiting by the DJ-in-a-Box to press the button that played “Sandstorm” and announced to the crowd that the bride and groom had arrived. It was totally cheesy and totally awesome.
What I loved about their reception is that it was completely informal. There were no seating assignments, no one releasing the tables to the buffet at specific intervals, no ridiculous groom pulling the garter off the bride’s leg with his teeth. Josh’s family made all of the food, so it was exactly what they wanted, and they basically just sat back at the head table and let people shower money on them.
After all of the cured meats and mini cheesecakes had been devoured, Josh pushed a button on the DJ-in-a-Box and grabbed Joanie for their first dance, which was to Ben Folds’ “The Luckiest“:
Then it was time to cut the classy cake, which didn’t involve smearing icing all over anyone’s face, much to my chagrin:
Hours later, most of our family had gone back to their hotel for a cannonball contest in the pool, and most of our friends had gone back to their homes in Kentucky or Ohio, but Dad wanted to get his line dance on, so we headed back to Joanie’s house to change into our best country and western duds and then went to have a few drinks at a barn/bar full of college kids. Which led to Cousin Bethany thinking she could bull ride:
So that’s it, a wedding so good it made me almost rethink marriage. And in closing, I offer you this, the picture that pretty much sums up my relationship with my sister perfectly:
I’m saying, “Yay! Whee! I love you!”, and she’s like, “Hold on, bitch. I’m fixing my hair.”
Saturday night began innocently enough, with five friends meeting for dinner at Mexico Lindo in the Murray Hill section of Manhattan to celebrate an impending birthday.
The friends, in order, are me (managing to look extra-crazed because I specifically tried to look normal), Sonya (in her authentic American Indian headdress), Jack (who is not as perverted as he appears), Beth (the birthday girl and owner of many granny sweaters), and Emily (who arrived twenty minutes late due to hair-straightening needs, which was generally deemed very worthwhile).
Not pictured: Bridgette, who stopped by for twenty minutes before returning to her GMAT studying and who DID sit beside me, lest you judge me uncool for having an empty seat next to me in the photo above.
Dinner, which was scheduled to last two hours to lead up to a showing of The Reader at the theatre across the street, actually lasted four hours due to extensive talk of how best to hide your tampon on your way to the public restroom at work (up the sleeve was eventually decided upon), whether it’s okay or not to pile trash on your friend when he falls asleep during karaoke (perfectly okay), and why Emily’s sister-in-law would buy her a shirt with a scoopneck that shows off ¾ of her boobs (because those things deserve to be enjoyed by all). The waitress brought out a giant bowl full of flambéed pears with a candle on top for Beth to blow out, but the pears were actually the dessert I ordered, because of course restaurants in New York City don’t give you anything complimentary on your birthday. Beth drank her coffee in silence as I licked every last flaming inch of the bowl myself.
After Sonya took it upon herself to explain what Two Girls One Cup is to me and we debated the feces’ similarity to chocolate softserve, the four of us girls piled into the back seat of a cab
and made Jack sit up front while we unabashedly discussed how you have to consciously remind yourself to look at the penises instead of the faces at Naked Boys Singing because you’re trained to be a good girl, and how totally hilarious it would be to hand over a tampon right out of your vagina when your friend asks to borrow one. “It’s only been in there an hour; it should be good as new!” Sonya said.
Having missed the movie, we got a private room at our favourite karaoke spot instead and spent the hours leading up until 3 a.m. enduring Sonya’s renditions of O-Town and the Spice Girls, Jack pretending like he was badass enough to know the lyrics to KISS’s Love Gun, and sadly realizing that only listening to male-fronted bands all my life means that I don’t actually know any songs in my vocal range as I really let Weezer down with my Say It Ain’t So.
Luckily, Emily and Sonya more than made up for it with some super-sexy Melissa-Etheridge-inspired lesbian dealings that would’ve been much sexier had they been in focus
and Beth–literally the whitest person I know–sang not one not two but THREE rap songs. One of which involved saying the word nigger over and over again, causing crowds of people to peek in the window into our room to see whose ass they should kick.
Luckily, tomorrow night is my dance-a-thon fake-birthday party with all of my co-workers, and I’m pumped to see someone get down in a way so awful we’ll all still remember it come Monday morning. And I’m expecting that that person to be me.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, my friend Sonya and I are off to buy some gold lamé tights for the occasion.
My friend Emily wanted to celebrate her birthday by forcing us to hang out with her allllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll day the Saturday before last, so my boyfriend Kamran and I picked up three vats of rainbow sherbet and a pack of rainbow Twizzlers and took the bus down to Tompkins Square Park for a noontime picnic. When we found the party, it consisted of Emily, who was in a birthday tiara, lest you forget who to pay all your attention to
and a handful of our other friends lounging on a blanket with an open jar of peanut butter in the middle of the circle. Kamran and I had come hungry, expecting a potluck, so I immediately thought, “Oh, shit, this is going to be the worst picnic ever,” and proceeded to eat all the paper party favors I could get my hands on.
Luckily, though, Emily’s sister-in-law, Lauren, came back from the dog run with the cutest puppy in the entire world, Penny,
and loads of food came out of hiding, including the beaniest bean salad, two whole chickens, pounds of lunch meat and mayonnaise, an entire German chocolate cake from Magnolia Bakery, and chopped fruits galore.
Emily had asked me to bring ice cream specifically to go with the cake and was a little upset at first that I’d forgotten and gone with sherbet instead, but then her brother, Nathan, thought to put the sherbet in the gallons of spiked lemonade that had gotten warm in the sun, and so we all drank it cold through rainbow Twizzler straws.
Which led to Emily’s mom getting drunk and hilarious and walking through the park with a party hat on
and everyone else generally having a great time, including me
but not including Kamran.
Naw, I’m just kidding. Kamran was a party animal
and didn’t even cut me when this happened:
Hey, Tracey, look at my bracelet!
Here’s a bad picture of Adam and Sonya just to prove they were there for posterity:
The only thing that sucked was all the poor people who felt like it was cool to step on our blankets and ask for our food in the midst of our being rich and merry. Now, I’m generally a pretty giving person, and I genuinely feel for people who have to sleep on the streets (although I firmly believe that if you can sit on a sidewalk with a pathetic give-me-money sign all day, you can stand behind a retail counter making money, too), but the first guy who approached us actually had the nerve to be MEAN about it. Here, I’ll recreate the conversation for you:
Asshole Poor Guy in Cargo Shorts with Backpack Who was Likely Totally Privileged and Had Annoying Well-Groomed Hair: Hey, can I have some of that food?
(Everyone shifts uncomfortably.)
Emily’s Sister-in-Law, Lauren: Sure, let me make a heaping plate for you, because I care about you, even though you’re an asshole and don’t deserve it.
(Lauren piles a paper plate high with bean salad, the most nutritious, delicious, and filling thing we have.)
Asshole Poor Guy: How ’bout some of that bread? I shouldn’t even have to ask, you know.
Me: Beggars can’t be choosers!
(The crowd falls silent, except for Chris, who says, “Ohhhhhhh, shit!” and wins my favor.)
Lauren: Absolutely no problem, sir. Here, take two slices.
The other ten thousand people who approached us were much cooler and much more appreciative, but they sure are lucky Emily’s family was there to be kind, ’cause I would’ve sent their asses packing had it been my birthday. And that concludes my right-wing conservative rant.
In honor of my very first New York City friend moving back to NYC for the summer after leaving us for grad school in Santa Barbara last year, I bring you . . .
An Entry I Meant to Post Months Ago but Totally Forgot About Yaaaaaaay!
Meredith was throwing a dance party at her friend Jordan’s apartment and asked us to bring a mix CD, because Jordan had been robbed twice in one week and was re-building her music collection. Boyfriend Kamran and I were on a huge Phil Collins kick at the time (and at all times), so we thought we were being soooooooooo hilarious by bringing a CD full of our Philfavorites. But they ended up using an iPod dock instead of the mix CDs and only people we didn’t know showed up, so after making all the film-related conversation we could with one of her friends, we started to feel a little like this:
For posterity’s sake, I tried to make it look like I was a part of the group and having a great time
but eventually we gave up on pretending and secluded ourselves in one corner with the iPod and plastic cups full of straight Malibu rum, and things took a turn for the better. Especially when we discovered a cabinet full of delights such as
and
and then decided that if no one else was going get down, we’d have to make up for it:
Worst video ever? But I love when I say “really get into it!” and then continue the same totally lame dancing.
Meredith finally took notice of our awesomeness after that and had to come over for some scintillating conversation
but then we left, because we didn’t want to be around when Jordan’s apartment got broken into for the third time.
Last Friday night, a couple of my friends wanted to get together for happy hour, so we scoured drinkdeal.com and came up with Benny’s Burritos, because we pretty much want to drink giant margaritas all the time. And giant margaritas we had.
For $3, they’ll give you a tumbler of margarita. For $6, you get a Collins glass. And for $9? The biggest beer mug you can imagine. My friends Beth and Charles and I arrived early to take advantage of the deal, which is only offered at the bar, and by the time I finished my coconut-flavored margarita mug, I was giddy. Poor Boyfriend Kamran showed up all professional-like in his button-down and slacks to find me howling and slapping the table at everything Beth and Charles said.
Despite the fact that they live together, Adam has a hard time letting on that he actually likes Sonya.
This is Charles and Kamran’s attempt to look like badasses. SUCCESS!
Fake smile!
Everyone else really sucks at taking non-flash pictures on my camera. Why didn’t I become the steady-handed brain surgeon I planned to be?
And that concludes the Requisite Pictures of People Having Fun portion of this entry.
Not to make this a restaurant review or anything, but I have to mention that our food was pretty great. I’m on a corn kick right now and made Kamran share the corn fritters appetizer with me, which was a plate of little fried balls that resembled hush puppies. And the consistency of their filling was pretty hush-puppy-ish, too, only with CORN added. Best thing you can imagine? I thought so. The burritos were mission-style, so they were huge and full of the stuff you usually see as side dishes. I had the Grilled Mango Burrito, which came with enough mango salsa to douse the thing, and Kamran got the Chicken Chipotle Burrito, which was spice-AY.
Adam was in the mood for foosball, so we walked toward B-Side on surprise! Avenue B. Halfway there, Kamran brought up Luca Lounge, the bar he took me to on our first date lo those many months ago, where we admitted to the embarrassing bands we liked and I made a joke about his timing me while I went to the restroom before remembering that old cellphone commercial where the guy who asks the girl if she wants to time him on the toilet was supposedly a douchebag. Kamran described the red velvet Victorian couches, the backyard garden, the whoa-clean restrooms, and our friends were hooked. And then we got there and found THIS:
Sadly, no!
It was CLOSED! Like, for GOOD! Just then, my best friend Tracey called from Ohio, and when I told her about our bad luck, she reminded me that she and her last boyfriend went back to their first date restaurant on their fourth anniversary, found it had closed, and broke up soon after. NOOOOOOOOOOO! But she’s engaged to someone way awesomer now, so it’s cool. Kamran and I agreed that if this means the end of the line for us, it’s been a good run, and we’ll part without tears and bitterness. Plus, their menu was still lit up outside, and that has to mean something.
We returned to the original plan of B-Side, where we opted for the $5 PBR-and-a-shot-of-the-cheapest-most-painful-going-down-whiskey-you-can-imagine deal. We went to the back room, which was twelve to sixteen hundred degrees but made up for it by having a hugely huge wraparound couch with no apparent rat damage and concert posters for rad bands on the wall. We chugged our whiskey as a group (OR SO WE THOUGHT, UNTIL SOMEONE FOUND A FULL SHOT GLASS LOLLYGAGGING ON OUR TABLE LATER) and then played several thousand rounds of foosball, all of which resulted in outrageous wins for Adam, because he has a foosball table in his office and is a bastard. My camera battery had almost completely died at this point, so I kept turning the thing on for a second and snapping a picture as fast as I could, which resulted in a lot of shots like this:
Yes, Charles is indeed wearing an entire suit. And Beth looks like a mannequin.
Sonya and Adam knew I was starting to get a little sleepy and grumpy, so they dragged us to Le Royale for Robot Rock, ’cause I loooove dancing to some electronic indie whatnot. We ended up having to wait in line for 20 minutes or so, during which time the same guy walked by twice with his girlfriend and said mocking things to us like, “Did you get in yet?” and “I heard this place really sucks.” And when we got to the front of the line, they were trying to charge us $10 to get in. And even though Kamran was going to pay my $10 like the gentleman he is, I refused. WE DO NOT PAY TO GET INTO BARS!
Except when the bar is fat cat, which charges a mere $3 for hours and hours of entertainment. Sonya has tried to get me to go there a million times before, but I’ve always denied her because she’s way too excitable about these sorts of things, and I figured it’d turn out to be super-lame. But there’s pool! And ping-pong! And chess! And Scrabble! And live jazz! And a bunch of dorky hipsters everywhere! It’s a massive (at least by NYC standards) basement with a bunch of tables and chairs for drinkin’ and gamin’, individual netted rooms for ping-pong, and the sort of music that makes you feel like wearing a flapper dress and smoking from an obnoxiously long cigarette holder. It helps that I totally killed Kamran at ping-pong manymany times in a row, but that’s neither here nor there. So I started out my fat cat visit feeling miserable and wanting to leave immediately and ended it by being the last one to want to go.
The morning of the start of my 24-hourculture marathon, Kamran asked me the names of the other two winners of the Time Out New York contest and the reporter who would accompany us on our outing and then kept singing “white people having a good time” to describe the events involving a group of people called Katie, Colin, Brian, and Meghan. My friends had encouraged me to “wear something cute that’s comfortable but also formal enough to fit in at a club, just in case” but I had rejected all of their advice and gone for Chucks, dark jeans, a very apropos baby blue t-shirt of Kamran’s with a drawing of a writer at a desk with his head in his hands, a black cardigan, and my dogbed-looking cape. I wanted to make sure that at all costs, it didn’t look like I was trying.
I rode the bus down to 7th St. in the East Village to Abraço, which is literally a coffee bar: there’s a counter for ordering on one side, and another counter for standing and drinking along the window that makes up the storefront. Wanting to keep my public restroom use to a minimum, I opted out of a drink and just stood at the window, replying to excited well-wishing texts my friends had left me the night before. A steady stream of people stopped in with their dogs and made familiar conversation with the owner, who had the greatest curly gray hair that flopped in his eyes as he brewed each cup individually from fresh ground beans. Had I been a coffee drinker, I would’ve been in heaven.
A little after 8:30, a tall blond guy with the sort of look that immediately strikes you as that of someone who’d never tell you a lie came in and boomed, “Are any of you here with Time Out?” The girl standing against the wall behind me and I both turned and introduced ourselves to him. He was Colin, the reporter, and she was Meghan, the other female winner. I had kind of expected her to be like me–a little less mainstream, a little more geeky–but she was a normal girl. Like, with regular girl straight long hair and regular girl make-up and regular girl boots and a pretty navy blue coat that any regular girl would own. I usually find these girls uninteresting, and they usually find me weird, but I wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, since we were about to spend 24 hours together. But then the first words out of her mouth were, “We’d better not be going to the Panty Party, ’cause I’m not wearing any panties!” And you can imagine how hard my eyes rolled.
Luckily, the guys were great. Colin had the best room-filling laugh and was one of those people who makes friends with everyone he meets, and Brian–who turned out to be Asian, completely wrecking the “white people having a good time” theme–was wearing a homemade shirt to advertise his blog (which I will also advertise here–peasandnuts.com–despite the fact that he refers to me as “another girl” in the sidebar) and planned to Twitter all of our activities for his friends. Our photographer, Jeff, had gone to school at the University of Michigan, which has the biggest and best rivalry in college football history with my school, THE Ohio State University, and had typical twentysomething good looks but was super-nerdy about how much he loved taking pictures and was therefore likeable.
Colin informed us that our outing was actually a contest to see who could go all 24 hours and that there were plenty of activities planned that were intended to tire us out and get us eliminated, so I got all nervous that we were going to swim the Hudson or participate in a 5k run. But it turned out that our first activity was very much the opposite of that–a sit in the sauna at the Russian & Turkish Baths in the East Village, where hairy old European men in tiny swimsuits barked at us to stop taking pictures and close the door so the heat wouldn’t escape.
I wasn’t totally down with being beaten with oak leaf brushes and starting the day all sweaty, so I kept my sweater on and stayed in the sauna for just a moment, which I’m sure resulted in odd photos, but a girl has to have her priorities, you know, and mine was assuring that my hair didn’t get frizzy. Plus, the place was a little shady-looking
and there was a sign that read, “YOU MUST SHOWER BEFORE ENTERING POOL! Persons with sore of inflamed eyes, a cold, nasal drip, discharges, cuts, boils, or any other evident skin or bodily infections may not enter! No urination, discharge of fecal matter, or blowing nose in the pool!” I didn’t want to take my chances on the discharge of fecal matter part. Colin couldn’t handle the heat, and Jeff didn’t want to wreck his camera equipment, so we sat around the café area talking about music and reading articles hanging on the wall about how upset the men were when women started being allowed into the baths a few years ago and they could no longer walk around naked.
Next we went for dim sum at Jing Fong, which was one of my picks. It’s a huge banquet hall with outrageously flamboyant decor that you can only get to after what seems like a two-mile escalator ride upstairs, and there are stages along every wall filled with high-backed chairs that look like they’re meant to be used when the king is visiting. I’m used to pointing and grabbing when the food carts roll around, but as luck would have it, Brian spoke Cantonese to the waitresses and got us all sorts of weird treats like shark fin dumplings, chicken wings in rice rolls, and almond “pudding” that had the consistency of Jell-o but was strangely delicious.
Colin, Meghan, and Brian, for your reference
We tried our hand at ping-pong next at the New York Table Tennis Foundation, which was in the basement of an ordinary office building and was impossible to find if you weren’t looking for it. Three-quarters of the room was filled with kids getting lessons from really intense teachers, so we stuck to our one table and batted the ball back and forth for an hour,
the guys keeping their skillz in check so we girls could keep up. Because while I was ping-pong champion of my 4th grade 4-H camp, I haven’t really kept up my game since then. And Brian made sure I remembered that with this super-intimidating look:
Meghan was wearing this ultra low-cut shirt that wholly exposed her cleavage, and although she kept it covered with a long scarf for most of the day, she took it off for ping-pong and showed everyone that her bra just couldn’t keep those things wrangled. They were hanging down and falling out, and every time she lunged for the ball, all you could hear was the click-click-click of the photographer’s camera down her shirt. I felt a little embarrassed for her, but she seemed to be fully aware of what was going on, so I assumed that she’s one of those “all press is good press” types and applauded her lack of shame.
Next we went uptown to the Morgan Library, where Colin used all of his journalistic savvy to get us access to a closed event with Ian McEwan, who wasn’t talking about how Atonement the book is way better than Atonement the movie but was having a conversation about conversation with a Harvard professor in which they argued that so much of what we say in the English language is insinuated rather than explicitly spoken. Everyone thought it was cool except Meghan, who also accused me of falling asleep during it.
We took the subway fourteen million stops to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the Sakura Matsuri, or Cherry Blossom Festival, which was also one of my picks and was more beautiful than I could have imagined.
Trees were literally falling onto the pathway with blooms, and petals floated down from every direction, especially when helped along by children with environment-hating parents.
Lots of Japanese girls were dressed in slutty Harajuku costumes, but my favourite girl was dressed as what reminded me of Little Bo Peep.
And now, to complain more about Meghan–she and I had walked together to the ping-pong place, and I learned that she’s from Laguna Beach, where Kamran’s from. I was telling her that he’s Persian and says that Orange County is full of these really slick, greasy Persians who are very much not like him, and she said that she’s also dating a Persian guy from the area. Even though I assumed that he was one of the greasy ones because she struck me as sort of a greaseball herself, I let it go without a word. She and Colin and I had talked about the dynamics of our respective relationships on the subway to the Garden, and I felt like we had a little more in common than I’d originally imagined, but by the time we were leaving the festival, I was done with her. I’m one of those people who generally thinks it’s polite to make conversation when you’re alone with an acquaintance, but she evidently viewed any time when the guys weren’t around as an opportunity to look at her BlackBerry. And while I’m one of those people who at least offers a smile–maybe even a gurgle of a response–when someone says something to me, she’s one of those people who’ll pretend as if you don’t exist. She paid plenty of attention to the reporter and photographer, though, so I expected the article to be entirely about her. But then it wasn’t. Which makes me think that Colin saw right through her.
We needed to catch a cab to Williamsburg, but there were too many people at the Garden and too few taxis on duty at 4 p.m. on a Saturday, so Colin made fun of Brooklyn and everyone else backed him up, since they all lived in Manhattan. It was so weird being with four people who weren’t at all impressed that I live in Williamsburg, which is a source of awe to pretty much everyone else I know. My location defines my personality, apparently.
Once we got to the bar where we were going to watch the Kentucky Derby–Pete’s Candy Store, where we play trivia on Wednesday nights–we found the place was overpacked with hipsters in wide-brimmed hats and southern-belle-type dresses, so we went instead to Rosemary’s Greenpoint Tavern, which only had a handful of old men inside. I put my fake money on Big Brown just because of his ridiculous name, but one of the guys had actually bet what was apparently a large sum of real money and was practically crying when his horse fell behind. Good times.
We headed back into the city to the Upright Citizens Brigade for an improv show, where we had some comfy velvet seats courtesy of Colin’s string-pulling, and where Colin laughed in my ear SO HARD.
I talked to Colin’s girlfriend all about being from the Midwest–she was from Michigan–and living in New York and how each of us reacts to going home for a week while we wasted time at a bar next door until a spot opened up at El Maguey y La Tuna, where I had what was either the best mole of my life or what tasted like it after a few margaritas, though it looks like chunky death in this photo:
Colin got into the Cinco de Mayo festivities with a sombrero,
but there was only a little cowgirl hat left by the time the waitress got to Brian, and he refused. The staff at the place kept emphasizing to Colin that they were the best Mexican in the Lower East Side, and I sort of believe it, because I also had this crazy jalapeño popper that was the most delicious thing I could imagine (until I got to the shrimp hiding in one end of it, I mean). Kamran doesn’t know that we’re eating every single meal there from now on.
The first of the sleep-inducing activities was a midnight showing of Alien at the Sunshine, but I loaded up on Mountain Dew and two different types of chocolate, so coupled with the fact that I’d never seen the movie before, I had no problem staying awake. Meghan knocked herself out of the competition by leaving for a while for a friend’s birthday party, and Brian kept putting his head in his hands but shielding his eyes so none of us could see them, so I tell myself that he totally fell asleep and that I won the contest.
Next we went to Cake Shop for their 3rd anniversary party, and it was PACKED. I was pumped to listen to cool music, eat some cupcakes, and relax among all the pretty people, but it was so crowded upstairs and down that we ended up losing each other, and I couldn’t see the band, and no one was dancing, and it just felt lame. So I texted Colin with, “I’m not having fun,” and went outside to call Kamran in hopes that he’d tell me to leave early. But he encouraged me to stick it out, and I’m glad I did, because next was
KARAOKE!
at Sing Sing, which was also my pick. Colin had a bunch of the guys at the bar mancrushing on him for his boyband ballads and his 90s raps, and I got a round of applause for one of my renditions. Even Meghan-who-hated-me returned to the group from her party and stood beside me so she could put her ear to my vocal cords. Which made me like her just a little, but purely in a superior way. A bunch of my friends were at a club down the street and joined us for the last hour or so, which was so awesome, and I tried to convince them to join us for the rest of the marathon, but they had been awake since noon and thought that was a big deal.
I did manage to get my friend/former co-worker Beth to come to Veselka for blintzes and macaroni and cheese, but only because she was visiting from California for the weekend and didn’t want to waste any time sleeping. Just as we ordered, though, our friend who she was staying with called and said that she had locked her keys in her apartment and that Beth had the only extra set. With her gone and with Meghan having left even before breakfast, we decided to skip the morning church service and Staten Island Ferry ride that were supposed to have been enough to put even Brian with his “I stay awake for 24 hours every Saturday” touts to sleep and call it a day.
I took the bus back to Kamran’s and arrived just as the sun was starting to crawl up over Brooklyn and the East River
and then I enjoyed a much-deserved hour of sleep before heading off to brunch. Because I am invincible.And also famous.
The greatest fun in living in a city where the majority of restaurants are tiny, unreplicable, and authentic is choosing to eat at a chain, which is exactly what we did for my friend Sonya’s quarter-century birthday the weekend before last. She’d been craving teppanyaki for weeks but hadn’t wanted to spend the money, and her birthday gave her the perfect opportunity to make her boyfriend Adam pick up the tab at Benihana. And we felt okay about it, you know, because the very first Benihana was in NYC. So shut up.
Kamran stocked up for the evening all baller-like,
and then we met Sonya, Adam, and Adam’s co-workers/couple-friends Dave and Sarah at the restaurant,
Look at Adam’s tongue hanging out!
where Kamran immediately filled me up with some crazy blue liquor so I’d quit talking about how much he hated the green pleated shirt Sonya and I had bought for me to wear especially for the occasion the night before. Sonya told us that in other parts of the country, the chefs–though obviously not Japanese–are forced to adopt Asian-sounding names just for show. Our chef for the evening was very not-Japanese and had the not-Japanese name Romeo, which very well could have been made up, too, but he used it to his advantage and cooked us up this very romantic rice heart:
He slid his spatula under the middle section and pushed it up and down to make the heart look like it was beating, which made all the girls’ hearts flutter. He flipped shrimp into the top of his cap and threatened to flip some at me when he could see how grossed out I was by seafood, but I totally ate the ones that he grilled for us out of guilt. Kamran and I each had a Rocky’s Choice, which was hibachi steak and chicken with soup, salad, vegetables and this garlic butter chicken rice that could have been a meal within itself. Sonya got a bowl of birthday ice cream on the house and offered it up to everyone, but the four of them were all, “Oh, no, we’re waaaay too full for that.” Kamran and I, on the other hand, were like, “Excuse me, waitress, but our meals are supposed to come with ice cream, and we want to be as fat as possible, so please bring it to us double-time.”
We decided to head downtown to get Sonya drunker, and while we waited for the subway, various naughty things involving Kamran’s super-sharp umbrella took place, including but not limited to what Sonya refers to as “the pimp picture”,
and this, which should probably never be mentioned again:
We got to The Back Room at 11, and after taking an unmarked set of stairs down to a tunnel, walking through an alley, and taking another flight of stairs up again, we finally made it inside the place, which is shticky with Victorian speakeasy charm.
The idea is that it’s still the 1920s and Prohibition is in full effect, so drinks are served in teacups and brown paper bags,
and the Asian folks aren’t in internment camps yet, so everyone’s merry (except Adam):
The plan was to get Dave wasted enough that he wouldn’t mind going dancing, because he’s not so into grinding up against strangers for reasons that DON’T MAKE ANY SENSE TO ME. But of course it was Sonya and me who got there first, as evidenced by this
and this
AND THIS,
which we took with the bouncer who was guarding the secret bookshelf-disguised door to the back room where owner Tim Robbins and all of his famous friends hang out. This guy in a prep school sweater kept shaking hands with the bouncer and slipping him folded bills in unknown denominations, but the bouncer kept denying him, and we kept making snide comments about him until our teacups were empty.
We got to Ruff Club (no, seriously, that’s what it’s called . . . !!!) at midnight, and it was their second anniversary, so there were loads of people standing in line in fishnets and white shoes. We took our place at the end, and then a kid behind us asked, “Do you guys know what this place is like?” I said, “It’s worth the wait.” Even though I’d never been there before. We stood for maybe ten minutes in the rain, which resulted in this super-homosexual picture of Kamran protecting Adam’s glorious hair:
Sonya and I had been shopping all week so we could compete with this and this and this, but after that ten minutes, the bouncers started separating girls and boys into two different lines so the girls could go in first, and we didn’t want to leave our boyfriends behind, so we ended up going to another unmarked bar. And despite the inclusion of songs by the likes of The Notorious B.I.G. and Sophie B. Hawkins, we danced and danced and danced until the sun came up. Or, you know, until, like, 2 a.m.
When you’re a Persian, a Korean, and a German, you naturally spend your St. Patrick’s Day eating . . .
JAPANESE BARBEQUE!!!
My co-worker Sonya met Kamran and me for dinner on Monday night at Yakitori Torys for what has become our new favorite thing: random meats, skewered and dunked in sweet sauce for grilling. We’ve been going to a place in the East Village called Oh! Taisho regularly now since Sonya introduced us to it, but after knocking out all of the chicken gizzards and french-fries-dipped-in-cod-roe and other such nonesense there, we thought we were ready to try some softened chicken bones at Torys. That’s right; softened, grilled chicken bones. No meat. Just bones. Delish.
The place was full, so we got to sit at this table in the middle of the room that had a frame built around it and curtains covering it from all sides. We started off with a bowl of shredded chicken with bitter melon and fish flakes, and once I got past the fact that I was eating dried fish when I don’t even eat wet fish, I really enjoyed the saltiness that it added to the chicken. And after biting into the bitter melon, Kamran and I ruminated on the fact that even as twentysomethings, we can experience a taste that’s brand new to us. They were already sold out of a lot of the limited dishes, so unfortunately there were no chicken knees to be had, but we filled up on skewers and skewers of kobe beef tongue and pork with scallions and chicken with plum sauce and shishito peppers. Even better than all of those, though, were the steamed vegetables with wasabi mayonnaise and green tea salt. And my figurative hat is off to any restaurant that can make me like steamed anything. Kamran picked up our $100 tab, naturally, ’cause that’s just how he rolls.
There was a whole lot of carryin’-on in the streets that Sonya wouldn’t let us go home without adding to, so we stepped into a bar called the Pig n Whistle on 3rd for an Irish Car Bomb drank in time to a cheesy pop song, with me shouting slurred commands in the background:
I particularly love hearing myself saying, “Lefth guh! Lefth guh!” at the beginning. And, uh, I’d only had about two sips of my drink at that point. But at least I didn’t hold a squishface at the end of the video like Sonya did, thinking I was taking a picture rather than a video.
Here, Kamran and Sonya show the curdled remnants of their bombing
and then Sonya . . . gives me cheekwings? attempts to make me drink her curds? I have no idea.
Sonya shows off her green
and I show off my tongue
yet despite these shenanigans, Kamran thinks we need one more.
And then we spend the rest of the night trying to decide who’s drunker.
I win the contest when he finds me on my back in his bed, giggling and kicking the air. Hooray for fake holidays!
