Tag Archives: living in new york is neat

Guess Who Took a Picture of Don Cheadle’s Sexy Thighs

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 25, 2008 – 4:28 pm
Filed under bigtime celebrity, living in new york is neat, there's a difference between films and movies
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My friend Sonya, my doctor boyfriend, Kamran, and I took a bus from Kamran’s office in Rockefeller Center to Union Square last Thursday night and then cut down a side street to get to the East Village for dinner. As we were passing by the movie theatre on Broadway, we saw some fancy black cars across the street and flashbulbs going off as someone stepped out of one of them. We continued walking like New Yorkers do but kept our eyes trained on the area in case something was going on that we’d need to brag about to our friends later.

When the person being photographed turned to face us, Sonya said, “Hey, it’s the guy with the big mouth who used to have dreads!” I, of course, had no idea who it was, but Kamran is pretty much an original gangsta and recognized him right away as Busta Rhymes. We crossed the street to get a better look, because while we don’t have any interest in movie stars, we understand that it’s important for our families in Orlando (Sonya), Orange County (Kamran), and OHIO (me) to hear about these sorts of sightings, since they can’t imagine any other advantage to living here.

Out of the next car came Guy Pearce, whose name we couldn’t remember but whom we all knew as “that guy from Memento“. And out of the next car came, most importantly, Don Cheadle, who I totally had a crush on after Crash and totally had a bigger crush on after Hotel Rwanda. So naturally I took out my camera and captured:


Blurry Don Cheadle, who very well might be looking right at me here but we’ll never know for sure so I’ll say he definitely is!


Don Cheadle’s leg beside some lady with a cast!


Don Cheadle in profile!

There were boards with Traitor posters all over them propped behind where the stars were having their photos taken, so they must have been there to premiere the movie, but of course I can’t look it up and have Google start showing “celeb” gossip in my gmail ads. So you should do it for me.

And while I have you here, here’s a List of All the Famous People I Can Remember Having Seen Whilst Living in NYC, complete with highly personal stories, which can now also be found in my sidebar, in case you want to reference it many times in the future.

Seen on the Subway: Pure Booze

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 20, 2008 – 2:55 pm
Filed under fun times on the subway, living in new york is neat
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This delightful bit of graffiti was on the wall of the L platform at 1st Street:

It’s funny that I didn’t, you know, notice that the Unicef logo on the truck was obscured by the overhead lighting, but I don’t get paid to pay attention, yo.

MGMT at the McCarren Park Pool Party

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 6, 2008 – 1:19 pm
Filed under all of my friends are prettier than i am, concerts, living in new york is neat, music is my boyfriend, restaurant ramblings
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So I pretty much live in the hippest neighborhood in all of New York City–and certainly in Brooklyn–yet I never actually do anything there, because I’m too busy hanging out with Kamran the Boyfriend in his richie-rich when-you-look-out-my-bedroom-window-you-see-the-Chrysler-Building neighborhood. But on Sunday, that all changed on July 27th when I finally went to see the band MGMT at

my very first McCarren Park Pool Party!

I was pretty pumped, because my friend Sonya had been forcing MGMT on me for weeks before that to get me ready for the show, and to see them for free seemed like such a I-am-poor-and-I-live-in-Brooklyn-and-I’m-seeing-a-Brooklyn-band rad thing to do on a Sunday afternoon when I’d usually be watching Kamran do laundry. Plus, what beats watching a concert from inside a drained pool?

The gate was set to open at 2, but knowing that a line would form before noon, we decided to show up late with the hope that we’d be able to walk right in. We leisurely ate some faux-chicken buffalo wings and strawberry/peanut butter/cookie “milk”shakes at my favourite vegan restaurant, Foodswings, near Bedford Avenue while some mean stormclouds formed overhead, and then at 3:30, we approached the park.

The line was still huuuuuuuuge. Like, down three blocks and wrapped around the park with eight people across on the sidewalk. Sonya and her boyfriend, Adam, had been waiting since 12:30 and had barely moved. So naturally we cut in front of them, and then two seconds later, Jesus punished us for it by making it pour. Seriously POUR. For, like, an hour. The line looked like this:

and at the end of it, we looked like this:

Almost too horrific to share, right? But I can’t help myself. Plus, we didn’t look nearly as bad as the huge group of girls (+ 1 pimply boy) behind us who had brought the bags from inside boxes of wine and were drinking the stuff out of the spigot. And screaming. Incessantly. This kid near them said, “You girls are drinking wine from bags, and that is fuckin’ badass.” And then they all had a big screamy orgy. They were approximately 16 years old but already had the haggard faces of their mothers, and that pleases me.

The Ting-Tings had played while we were still in line, which was a real shame, because they sounded great. Instead we had to endure Black Moth Super Rainbow, who I will not link, oh no I won’t, because they were that uninteresting. To endure their set, we bought some fruity beer and checked out the intense dodgeball game that was taking place off to one side of the pool:


This picture is cool because a guy is getting hit in the face with a ball in it, but you can’t really tell that at this size.

And then MGMT came on.

They opened with a really slow song, and I was like, “This is a weird way to start a dance party,” but I expected that they were just working up to the awesome stuff. And then they played another slow song. And another. But, like, people were cheering and clapping, and Sonya was smiling her head off, and everyone seemed to be having such a good time. It didn’t make any sense to me. Sonya asked me how I was liking it, and I couldn’t help myself; I blurted out, “This is BORING!” And then I felt bad.

It’s just that I was expecting this and this, and I wasn’t getting it. I had specifically not brought a purse just to be able to dance like a wild woman, and this was not wild woman music. Not liking it made me feel like one of those shallow teenybopper who comes to a show and only knows the words to the single.

With the lame music and the crappy weather, the day felt like this:

But then! They played this, and it was great! And then they played “Kids”, and then they played “Time to Pretend”, and it was glorious! Look at how happy we are, with our wrinkly foreheads:

So in the end, I totally loved the show, and I’m glad we stuck it out. Especially because we got to have Korean BBQ at Dokebi afterward:

And just because I can’t help thinking this is the awesomest thing ever, check out this amateur music video of MGMT’s “Kids”. Soooo good, right?

A First Trip to the New Brooklyn Ikea

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 4, 2008 – 9:33 pm
Filed under living in new york is neat, narcissism
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The weekend before last, Boyfriend Kamran and I decided to explore the new Brooklyn Ikea and buy a tiny dresser for me to overflow with the zillions of polka-dot shirts that I’m currently storing folded on a chair in the corner of his apartment. We’ve always had access to the Ikea in Elizabeth, New Jersey, via a free shuttle bus from Port Authority, but the new Brooklyn Ikea is located in an up-and-coming neighborhood that we want to explore, anyway, AND it’s accessible via a free water ferry from lower Manhattan.

But of course we took the free shuttle bus outside of the Borough Hall subway station. (Which, if you’re oddly here for informational purposes, is on Joralemon Street near the northeast corner of Court Street.) And instead of buying a dresser, we:

1) Played with the plush

2) Imagined my future library when I can finally afford to buy books again

3) Defiled a sheepskin rug by pretending I was wearing nothing underneath it

4) Appreciated the old industrial Brooklyn while surrounded by the new-Brooklyn aging-hipster dads with their thirty-is-the-new-twenty mentality and their ANNOYING CHILDREN

5) Ate some really weird stuff in the cafeteria

6) Didn’t eat some other weird stuff in the grocery section, thankfully

7) Tried to figure out the difference between hand-blown and mouth-blown

We ended up buying a set of plastic containers for me to haul salad fixins to work in (which will never actually happen) and a wooden artist’s model, which Kamran named Chip and kept petting while murmuring, “You’re my only friend.” We are truly a pathetic lot. But we have a good time.

If You Leave a Stupid Ad in a Public Place, We WILL Have Fun with It

Posted by plumpdumpling on August 4, 2008 – 11:46 am
Filed under creepy boyfriend obsession, fun times on the subway, living in new york is neat
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These are the sorts of things we do on weekends to amuse ourselves:

Zig.

Zig zag.

Zig zag ZOOM!

Kamran’s flailing arms aside, my favourite part of the video is the beginning where I have to tell that woman she can walk in front of the camera. I swear New Yorkers are only polite when they’re being filmed.

Also, I should mention that this is from months ago, just in case you get freaked out by my short hair and the fact that we’re wearing coats in the midst of summer. Because I know our every move affects your emotional health.