Author Archives: plumpdumpling

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.