Monthly Archives: June 2009

Renegade Craft Fair 2009

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 11, 2009 – 10:38 am
Filed under living in new york is neat
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Our friend Emily introduced my friend Beth and me to the Renegade Craft Fair last year, but I had absolutely no money at the time and bought only a $2.50 ice cream cone (which is what ice cream should cost) and an $8 plastic strawberry necklace (that broke on me after the second wear, but nevermind that).

This year, though, I brought stacks of cash with me and was ready to do all of my Christmas shopping like Emily does. But instead I bought only things for myself.


A pair of houndstooth button earrings for $5 from Cherry Red Boutique that I happen to be wearing today.


An Abe Lincoln pendant from traveling rhinos for $25 that I thought was pretty much the greatest thing at the fair and told the guy at the booth. He agreed and said he couldn’t believe it wasn’t the first thing sold.


A pair of silver hot dog earrings marked down from $12 to $7 also from traveling rhinos, because I’m always buying hot-dog-related items for Tracey and decided it was my turn.


And this amazing, amazing wallet from 31 Corn Lane that lists for $25 on their site but sold for $10 at the fair. It has a life-changing amount of pockets, and I’m sad I didn’t buy one for everyone I know.

Everything was so cheap, right? But that’s because I didn’t buy a $90 sterling silver deer necklace like Beth did or a $110 hat like Emily did. But the hats were pretty cute, right?


Beth Looking Very 1920s

We were walking around with these giant margaritas, and about halfway through them, Emily and I agreed that they must not be very strong, but by the time we finished them, we were able to talk each other into buying anything. I even bought something for Tracey that was more expensive than anything I bought for myself and everyone agreed didn’t even make sense. And then, of course, there was the mad dash to the restroom area, followed by the mad hunt to find a porta-potty that still had toilet paper:

The craft fair was about 100 times better this year than last, because it was in McCarren Park rather than in McCarren Park Pool. In the pool, all of the booths were lined up perfectly, and the sun was beating down on the concrete, and we were generally miserable. In the park, the booths were sort of willy-nilly, and we got to walk on grass, and everyone was generally delighted.

Don’t Call It a Netbook

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 9, 2009 – 1:54 pm
Filed under narcissism
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Ever since the great Mac-out of February ’09, I’ve been thinking about having a second computer just in case my Mac ever truly dies on me. I didn’t want to spend the money on a new Apple when I barely spend any time on my laptop, and I didn’t want to own some clunky ten-pounder that would be too much of an eyesore to enjoy using.

And then I found this:

The Dell Mini, a 10″ beauty with a faster processor, more RAM, and more hard drive space than I have on my 12″ Mac. And this envelope case, which tells the world how much I love letter-writing despite my 3000+ unread Gmail messages.

It’s so tiny that I can carry it everywhere and so self-important that it won’t notice when the big laptops make fun of it every afternoon at Starbucks. I haven’t actually, you know, turned it on yet or anything since receiving it on Saturday, but I know I love it just from its glittery finish.

I Got Dragged to Drag Me to Hell

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 8, 2009 – 2:52 pm
Filed under there's a difference between films and movies
Tagged as ,

I was forced to see “Drag Me to Hell” on Saturday night because my friend Beth and my dear boyfriend both wanted to see it, and I couldn’t very well allow them to go without me and risk Beth pretending to be scared and jumping into Kamran’s lap at the first sight of some old lady puking embalming fluid into Alison Lohman’s mouth or something.

I, to say the very least, don’t choose to see horror movies. I was talked into seeing “The Mothman Prophecies” in college and still hear voices coming out of the sink. I was talked into seeing “The Strangers” last year and, um, basically can no longer function as a normal human being. And yet my last two boyfriends have been major horror freaks. Only the last one was kind enough to watch his movies while I was away at work, while the current one seems to delight in forcing me to watch “House of 1000 Corpses” over and over again.

So naturally, I spent most of “Drag Me to Hell” with my chin tucked into my chest to ensure that I wouldn’t accidentally see something horrific with my peripheral vision. After the opening scene in which I actually jumped and then laughed for five minutes straight out of nervousness, I thought it best for the other patrons that I not look during, say, the entire parking garage bit. The great thing for me–but maybe not for people who actually like to be scared–is that the music in the movie totally lets you know when something terrifying’s going to happen. And the one or two times when it doesn’t let you know, you’re left applauding the director for fooling you. And I was glad for those few times in the end, too, because it meant that I had to watch at least a little of the gore. When I did, I realized that the movie was mostly just shocking, gross, and over-the-top rather than pee-your-pants scary. I didn’t think the plot was bad at all, either, and there’s a lot to be said for that.

There’s also a lot to be said for the theatre where we saw the movie, Village East Cinema. It seemed to be fairly modern from the outside, but there were old-fashioned box seats on the sides like you’d see in an opera house, and this was on the ceiling:

Now if only ticket prices could harken back to that era.

BFFs in o-HI-o

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 5, 2009 – 2:12 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, no i really do love ohio
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One of my writing professors (and a member of my senior thesis panel), Michelle Herman, wrote this really excellent book called The Middle of Everything that’s supposed to be about motherhood but is actually about best friends and how terrible life is when you don’t have one. It’s been years since I read it, but I thought about it last weekend while I was home in Ohio visiting my family and my best friend, Tracey.

When I moved away to New York without really so much as asking her what she thought of the idea, she should’ve given me up. If I’d been the one left behind for some stupid city she’d visited only twice where she only knew one person and didn’t have a job waiting for her, I first would’ve cried my eyes out and second would’ve deleted her number from my cellphone. Instead, Tracey sent me postcards and packages and called me and let me call her eight times a day all through that first year when I was so poor I could only visit, like, once.

Now that I’m toooootally rich and visit all the time, we pretty much spend all of our minutes together playing with her cats, watching TV marathons, visiting the one high school friend we still care about (inflammatory!), and eating all of the chain restaurant food you can’t get in NYC. Which is how it should be with best friends.

Highlights from my very short trip this weekend include trying on the tiniest purple fur vest at Forever 21 on our way into the premiere of Up:

and making this video that will only be awesome to us and our friend Eric Leath:

Imagine life without that.

When Adult Diapers Come in Handy

Posted by plumpdumpling on June 4, 2009 – 2:13 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, good times at everyone else's expense
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Having been raised on a Midwestern farm, wanting to be polite is a natural part of my personality that I have to really fight sometimes in order to keep myself from getting mugged, raped, and murdered. So when I saw a man about to sit on a puddle of water in the bus today, I couldn’t help but stop him. And the woman after him. And another man after him.

I suppose the window had been left open all night, and a spot of water about the diameter of a baseball had gathered in the butt groove of the seat in front of me. The cloudy sky kept light from bouncing off of it, so it took the unnatural obsession with not sitting in gum, body fluids, and spilled coffee of someone like me to look hard enough to see it.

At the next stop, more people filed in, and as the bus was starting to fill up, the empty row in front of me became too enticing, and a middle-aged man in a casual business ensemble practically dove to plop down in it. I winced at having not been able to say anything about the water and waited for him to notice that his rear end was soaking and to jump back up. I felt all of the people I’d warned not to sit there watching him from behind me.

But he just settled in with his newspaper to enjoy the ride. Sadly, I had to get off the bus before he did, so I didn’t even get to enjoy watching him stand up later, pants dripping.

(also posted to Examiner, Facebook, my Gmail chat status message, anywhere you are likely to be driven insane by it)