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.
Classy.
Move back soon, mama.
The other night, my friend Meredith and I were walking through Williamsburg, our neighborhood in Brooklyn, and when we turned a corner near the BQE, we were met face-to-face with this:
We of course each took photos of it, because we’re country girls who thrive on the destruction of modern-day conveniences.
But what surprised me was how many people came out of nowhere to stand and stare at this thing. Plop a couple thousand movie stars down in the city, and everyone pretends they’re too busy to care. But burning rubber is hipster perfume.
You already know that if you were to ask me what my two favourite things in the world are, I’d answer:
1) karaoke
2) jerking off
So when my friend Emily told me that a bar in our neighborhood was doing Karaoke Chatroulette on Monday nights and that I was destined to see lots of heaving wangs, I was sold. In Legion‘s back room, you’ll walk in to find a young tight-jeaned male or female singing on stage and a projection screen behind him or her showing the performance, our Chatroulette chat partner, and the chat screen.
While our brave friend belts out “Pour Some Sugar on Me”, another girl in a heart-patterned 80s-era sweater types “sup dad” to the old man we’ve randomly been assigned to chat with. When he just stares at us, we next him and see a teenage girl and her boyfriend sitting in bed together, smiling and waving; they ask us to sing some Talking Heads and bounce around every time we say “burning down the house”. We next them and end up with a Ben Gibbard look-alike who plays his guitar along with the karaoker ruining Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”.
It was all really PG-rated for the first half-hour I was there, and I was really upset. Emily had promised me girls pleasuring themselves with giant dildos and then pausing to type to us! But then we saw one guy jerking off, and then we saw another and another and another and another AND ANOTHER AND ANOTHER!!
Legion
790 Metropolitan Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11211 (map)
When I was growing up in Ohio, our little farmhouse had an outhouse. We didn’t use it, of course, but we would paint it when it started chipping, knock the wasp’s nests off of it when they began to show up in the summers, and peer curiously into its butt-size seat hole when we’d use it for concealment in games of Hide & Seek.
My mom used to tell my sister and me about the days just after she and my dad got married in the 70s, before they built a bathroom onto our house. The two of them actually did use the outhouse as if it was a normal toilet back then and would just drive up the road to my grandparents’ house to shower every morning. Sometimes when my mom would have a hard time pushing her poop out–and I can tell you this because she’s dead now and likely won’t be able to do anything about it–my dad would bring a glass of hot water or milk to the outhouse in the middle of the night to help her out.
Can you imagine this? It’s the dead of winter, the ground is covered in snow, and you have to trek out across the yard in your parka to get to the bathroom. And once you’re there, you have to sit in this unheated little wooden room, shivering and still half-asleep.
AMAZING! And, you know, my parents only did it for a year, I think, which is crazy enough. But I wondered to myself today: who lived in our farmhouse before us, and what the hell were they doing without a bathroom?
The first time I saw Kamran’s apartment building, I’ll admit I was wooed. It looked like a castle on the outside and was filled with fresh flowers and gleaming chandeliers on the inside. One my friends recently said it seems like Harry Potter would live there.
After more than three years of visiting it, though, I’ve gotten used to it and its doormen, porters, and nice-men-who-pick-up-the-recycling-from-the-trash-room. Which is why I thought it was a pretty big deal when Kamran got an e-mail from the building saying they were going on strike if their union didn’t reach an agreement with the local apartment building owners.
But they did, and they didn’t go on strike, and I was a little offended by the piece in the New York Times about it:
A strike would have disrupted the daily routines of hundreds of thousands of middle-class residents from upper Broadway to Brownsville, as well as affluent owners of Park Avenue penthouses. Along with picket lines in front of many of their homes, they would be confronted with the loss of the people who sign for their packages, carry their luggage and let the pizza deliverers and dog walkers into the building.
I’m totally not wrong in thinking that’s written facetiously, right? MY DINNER AND PACKAGES ARE IMPORTANT!! Not the dogs, though.
