Category Archives: why i’m better than everyone else

The Two Kinds of People Who Visit NYC and My Bitterness Toward Both of Them

Posted by katie ett on February 19, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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When you live in Ohio, people don’t assume they know anything about what it’s like to be you. Maybe they have some vague idea that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland, maybe they’ve read that the Cincinnati Zoo is so good it can breed rocks, maybe they’ve heard of Jeni’s ice cream–or maybe, like the majority of my co-workers, they think Ohio is considered part of the South and is solely responsible for producing all of the existing mullets in the United States.

When you live in NYC, people like to think they know eeeeeverything about your life. They assume you love Broadway shows, eat every meal at either Serendipity or Shake Shack, have Magnolia cupcakes after every weekend brunch with your girlfriends, wear nothing but stilettos, and date men in finance with slicked-back hair who take cabs everywhere. A lot of people have a lot of experience with NYC, either because they visited once for their friend’s bachelorette party, watched Big as a kid, or listen to a lot of Alicia Keys. In my experience, these people fall into two categories:

1) They’re glamoured by the city but don’t think they could live here. They’re pumped to see the Empire State Building and to walk down 5th Avenue, have read up on the tricks to getting cheap show tickets, want to take high tea at the Ritz, and have brought special clothes that they think will help them fit in here. But they’re shocked at how much everything costs, won’t feel like they’ve accomplished anything if they don’t live in a detached house with a yard, and can’t imagine having to sit side-by-side with strangers on a train.

To these people, I want to say: my life is just like your life but better. Sure, it’s expensive here, but I make a zillion more dollars doing what I do here than I would in Ohio. Sure, I don’t have a detached house, but I feel so safe encased in a big apartment building with a doorman to keep out the crazies. Sure, I don’t have a car, but I can take a cab when I need to, and I wouldn’t trade anything for being able to read on my way to work and to never have to park again. Sometimes I go out for fancy dinners, but sometimes I just want some boxed mac & cheese. Sometimes I get dressed up and go to a “club” with my “crew”, but sometimes I just want to sit at home and watch “Shark Tank”. Sometimes I go to the Empire State Building, but I usually just go to Rockefeller Center, because that’s where my boyfriend works. Every day. And it’s totally normal.

2) They feel like they’re supposed to live here. They already did all of the touristy stuff long ago, so now their visits are comprised of sunbathing in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park instead of Central Park, eating at the restaurants of the lesser-known “Top Chef” contestants, and going to SoulCycle classes “like all of the celebrities”. They claim that they just look so naturally New-Yorky that whenever they visit, people stop them on the streets to ask for directions. They spend all day combing job sites to find a reason to move here and don’t know anything about the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville but are excited that apartments look affordable there.

To these people, I want to say: MY LIFE IS NOTHING LIKE YOUR LIFE, AND YOU COULD NEVER CUT IT HERE. Sure, apartments look affordable in some of the outlying neighborhoods, but that is because YOU WILL DIE THERE. Sure, I feel so safe encased in a big apartment building with a doorman to keep out the crazies, but I will never ever ever have a place big enough to suit more than a five-pound dog. Sure, I wouldn’t trade anything for not having to own a car, but it’s rough having to haul everything around on my back all of the time because I can’t just throw it in my car until I need it. I hope you don’t like cooking, because your apartment probably doesn’t have an oven. I hope you don’t like holidays, because there’s not a chance you have a place to store your Christmas tree. I hope you don’t like your friends, because they will all move away to buy detached houses with yards to raise their children in.

Yesterday, Kamran told me, “You know what makes me feel bleh? When Facebook friends of mine from other parts of the country post pics of themselves visiting NYC.” I asked, “Because you want them to try to meet up with you?” He said, “Well no, no, I don’t. But I want them to want to try to meet up with me. It’s especially weird when those friends post pics of themselves in front of landmarks. It’s like, yea, good for you. I pass that every day and don’t even bother to notice. And then I feel petty and bitter.”

And that’s exactly my experience living in NYC, too. People are coming here all of the time to visit, and only half of them are asking to see me, and I’m only actually seeing half of the ones who ask because I’m apparently SO BUSY with my BIG AND IMPORTANT LIFE. (And by that, I mean lazy and not at all interested in meeting you in some Times Square bar where we won’t even be able to hear each other talk.) But then I’ll see those people I didn’t bother to see or who didn’t want to see me post a picture of the Chrysler Building on Facebook, and I’ll be like, “Uh, YEAH, I pass that thing every single day. It’s not really a big deal. You should sort of be embarrassed about how you’re fangirling over that thing. Oh, you saw the Rockefeller Christmas tree? GREAT JOB. So did the half of Ohio who visited NYC for Christmas. Hope you enjoyed that visit to Serendipity and the frozen hot chocolate. I’ve been there, like, ten times and know the frozen hot chocolate is about the worst thing on the menu. WAY TO GO.”

Give me credit for living here, okay? I’m special and need to be recognized as such. Just ignore those other eight million people around me.

Pathetic on Pinterest

Posted by katie ett on January 25, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Filed under everyone's married but katie, good times at everyone else's expense, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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Can we agree that anyone who has a “wedding ideas” board on Pinterest and isn’t engaged is a desperate psychopath who should never be proposed to?

If you have a “someday wedding” board but had the good sense to make it private, I’ll grant you some leeway.

And actually, I’ll grant you all of the leeway if you pin stuff like this:

My BFF, Tracey, says that women have to hoard these ideas now because we’ll otherwise have forgetten the things we’ve liked about other people’s weddings by the time we actually get married. So I’m convinced that every wedding from now on is going to include the things that were popular when Pinterest began: mustaches-on-a-stick, everything chevron, and ombre cakes.

The best part is that I randomly chose those pins, and then discovered that these are the boards they’re from:

• My .:*eclectic bohemian inspired free-spirited color-filled fun-loving flower child*:. dream wedding board

• FINALLY- Wedding november 16, 2013

• Ideas I wish I’d had for my wedding

THAT’S RIGHT. The last person is already married and still has a wedding board. For her second wedding, I assume.

Sick and Lonely in NYC

Posted by katie ett on January 22, 2013 – 12:00 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, my uber-confrontational personality, why i'm better than everyone else
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I work for the one company in NYC that didn’t take yesterday off, so I was riding the bus home as usual last night. Across from me was an elderly Asian man who had loped onto the bus with heavy plastic grocery bags covered in Chinese writing hanging off of his arms, racing invisible passengers for the many seats that were available. He coughed continuously and unabashedly onto the back of the neck of the woman in front of him while I did my best to hold my breath for the entire trip.

In the East Village, the doors opened at one of the stops, and he turned, paused to make sure no one was coming in the door, and tossed a used tissue out onto the sidewalk. ANIMAL! I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised by this after almost eight years of seeing people throw their Doritos bags onto the subway floor, tuck their coffee cups into the space between the seat and the side of the bus, and aim their gum generally toward the trash can without any actual worry about whether it makes it in or not, but as a country girl raised to respect the environment, this stuff kills me.

The idea that this guy couldn’t just tuck his tissue into a pocket for the three stops burned me so much that I had to say, “Wooooow. Unbelievable.” He looked over to see who I was talking to, and I met his eyes and said, “You’re awful.”

Read the rest here!

An Otherwise Exceptional Existence

Posted by katie ett on December 17, 2012 – 2:15 pm
Filed under funner times on the bus, living in new york sucks so hard, why i'm better than everyone else
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I’m flying out of JFK for Christmas, which is a convenient $2.25 subway ride away from my apartment, so I needed to transport a duffel bag of clothes (read: beloved underwear) from Kamran’s apartment to mine this morning. In the normal world, this would involve tossing it in the back of my car along amidst the Big Mac wrappers and used Kleenex and forgetting about it until I got there. But in my world, this involves:

1) carrying it to the bus, which is only an avenue block away but is very slow and could force me to stand holding the bag for 45 minutes, because I’m not putting my gorgeous white duffel with the light brown suede bottom on the bus floor, or

2) carrying it to the subway, which is three avenue blocks away and will involve navigating heavy foot traffic but will get me there much faster.

I could also take a cab, but it’s $30 from Kamran’s apartment to mine and sort of defeats the whole purpose of being able to fly out of the airport that’s a convenient $2.25 subway ride away from my apartment.

So I stressed about this all weekend. I thought about bringing the bag to my place tonight after work to avoid the crowds. I thought about leaving home at 7 a.m. to miss rush hour. I thought about how I just need to suck it up and become one of those people who pulls a collapsible grocery cart behind her wherever she goes. But instead, I left at the normal hour and hoped some kindly man would feel unnecessarily guilty about depriving a woman of a seat.

And of course the best happened. A couple of buses passed as I was walking toward the stop, which pretty much guarantees a ten-minute wait until the next one, but a third one miraculously pulled up mere moments after I arrived. It hadn’t been long enough for a new crowd to gather, so the only other passenger waiting to board was a woman I gave bus fare to out of the goodness of my heart when her card was expired last week, and she gave a friendly hello. The bus was almost entirely empty, so I took a seat at the front and gave my bag a seat of its own. Barely anyone got on at the next stop and the next stop and so on for my entire ride to work, so I never had to worry about piling my duffel and my purse and my lunch bag all on my lap. It couldn’t have been a better situation.

When we’d passed all of the stops where a lot of people usually board and rush to steal the empty seats from each other in ways that I think should embarrass them, I looked over lovingly at my duffel, so comfortably nestled next to me, and thought, “Everything always works out in my favor! Boy, the bus sure is great.”

And then I reflected on my own self lovingly and how I manage to have such a sunny outlook. Of course I’ve had many a trip on the bus where I got shuffled to the center where there are no seats and was forced to hold a heavy bag the entire way, but that’s not what leaves an impact on me. I tend to think of the great things in my life as the norm and the worst things as momentary riffles in an otherwise exceptional existence. I don’t think about the time I requested a window seat at Per Se and they didn’t oblige; I think about how comfortable the banquette they did give us was. I can’t recall a single gift I asked for as a kid and didn’t receive–although I’m sure there were hundreds over my eighteen years of childhood greed–but I can remember how special the presents I did get were. I really don’t even dwell on my dead mom but instead think of how great it is that her absence made me closer to my dad.

As Kamran would say, I AM THE GREATEST AMERICAN HERO.

You?

Only You Can Prevent Romantic Comedies

Posted by katie ett on December 11, 2012 – 12:00 pm
Filed under there's a difference between films and movies, why i'm better than everyone else
Tagged as ,

Last Thursday night, I went out with Kim for Shake Shack (burgers, cheese fries, and sweet potato and marshmallow custard with marshmallow creme topping and shortbread)

and Anna Karenina at one of the big Times Square theatres. The movie was so artful it’s kind of hard to describe how it was done: it has sets, like a play, so that characters can walk from one place to another just by going through doors, but it’s not bare and janky like most plays are. The costumes are as elaborate as the sets are, space and time are messed with in exciting ways, and there’s morphine!

But the point of this story is that as Kim and I were approaching the theatre, there was a huuuuu-uuuuu-uuuuuge line stretching to the end of the block. Figuring it probably wasn’t for the movie based on a novel about nineteenth-century Russia, we bypassed it and headed on into the theatre, turning back to read the sign that said it was for . . . Playing for Keeps, the Gerard Butler/Jessica Biel romantic comedy about a soccer dad.

Which has . . . 2% freshness on Rotten Tomatoes.

We are too good for this world.