Adventures in Subway Life

Sometimes I forget New York isn't the center of the world. For example, sometimes when I Google things, I forget to add the "New York" part to my search. I'll type "movie theaters" and then get angry when the first hit is for a cinema in Minneapolis.

I had this experience last night. I left a friends birthday party around 2 and managed to arrive at my apartment at 4:30... TWO and a HALF hours later. Somewhere between Roosevelt and 75th Ave, someone jumped in front of an F train. For an hour and a half, re-reading an old issue of New York magazine and listening to the same Rhett Miller album on my iPod, I stood, teeter tottering on my high-heels. I finally decided I had enough and teeter tottered out of the subway and onto the streets of Jackson Heights.

This is where it gets annoying.

First, there were no cabs. Not only were there no cabs, there were no PEOPLE. And not only were there no people, there were no BODEGAS. Or STREET SIGNS! This isn't supposed to happen. I'm supposed to live in a city where I can do anything at anytime. You can do the flying trapeze over the Hudson River and then scale the New York Times building before getting cocktails at 1Oak (is 1Oak still cool?)

Eventually, I found a cab after teetering tottering around and frantically refreshing the GPS locator button on my phone. Ironically while driving home, I passed Wiggles again.

The nice thing about getting stranded on the subway until 4:30 AM is that when you get home, Post Secret is up! I've been reading Post Secret for years and it is a huge part of my weekend life. My Sunday's are spent reading Post Secret and the paper.

This was written on a postcard from a restaurant whose branding I worked on and was designed by my good friend Minou. I thought it was really special:

new york i love you, but you're bringing me down

A few weeks ago, I joined Zipcar. Since then, I have used it twice including today to go to Target to buy a cupcake baking tin.

In order to get to Target, I have to drive down Queens Boulevard, also known as the Boulevard of Death. With SIXTEEN LANES OF TRAFFIC at some points, people are apt to simply close their eyes and run across when they need to be from one side to another. It averages 10 deaths a year. In order to curb it's reputation for being a human carnival game, NYC has installed cameras AT EVERY SINGLE CORNER of Queens Blvd and sometimes randomly in the middle. So needless to say it's a long, arduous journey from my apartment to Target.

But not today. No, not today.

Today while stopped at a light I looked over and saw a sign for a strip club called "Wiggles."

yes, we did.

This day is electric.

Since 10 AM this morning I have scoured queens looking for a copy of the New York times. In my little hamlet of Briarwood, in between Forest Hills and Kew Gardens and Jamaica, there must be no less than 40 bodegas, gas stations and stationery stores. ALL of them had sold out of newspapers long before I got there. I ventured into the Hasidic area, hoping there was a lone copy hidden underneath the Jewish Daily (a real newspaper, thank you). There was not. I strolled down Union Turnpike to the Hispanic area and was met with giggles when I inquired if the Shell station had any copies hidden in the back. The attendant said "We were sold out hours ago." He then added: "It's an important day!" Yeah, I think I heard something about that.

I re-read some of my blogs from 4 years ago. The devastation I felt that day was palpable. I was sad for days. I felt like I had worked and worked and hadn't been heard.

But not today.

Today is electric. And as I walk through all of these different areas and different streets passing by people who look different from me I realized: things are going to be different. We are breaking away from our station as the world's police, a beacon of over-consumption and lack of culture and reminding everyone else: we are a great nation... dare I say the greatest. A place where the answer to any dream is "yes, you can!"

I was continually impressed and humbled by my friends who worked tirelessly campaigning and talking and fighting for this day. I was even more impressed that some of them could not even vote and yet dedicated their time and energy and were right next to me drying tears from their eyes when the winner was declared.

I do believe that one of the greatest moments of my life was when I looked up at the television screen and saw the projection of who would be our next President. I will treasure that for as long as I live.

Now, if only I could find a New York Times...

grandpa turns 80, cake is eaten

this weekend i woke up at 5am to get into a car with my aunt, uncle, cousin, cousin's girlfriend and a dog and proceed to drive for 6 hours only to wake up 24 hours later and do it all over again.

this weekend my grandfather turned 80 which, when you think about it, is an incredible accomplishment. eighty birthdays, eighty christmases, eighty flu seasons and eighty tax returns. it's a lot of eighties.
this is my grandfather and my uncle jack:


so the party was lovely EXCEPT FOR ONE THING: i had to share a hotel room with my cousin and his girlfriend. it was a pivotal moment in my life when i realized: i am a 24 year old spinster.

who is who?

i am watching the redskins/dallas game right now. it's the masculine side of me that likes to watch sports. the lady side of me thought #14 on the redskins was cute and so i put down my knitting:


and went over to the computer, pulled up google and was planning on writing "who is #14 on the redskins" but only got to "who is".

now, sidebar. firefox has a feature where it "guesses" what you are going to search for based on the most popular searches throughout the whole world.

i never did find out who #14 is because i started laughing so hard at what the most popular "who is" searches are.



more people want to know who the two cute jonas brothers are dating and who michael phelps father is then god and jesus, respectively. what's even stranger is that i IMMEDIATELY asked "wait, who is nick jonas dating and why haven't we ever seen michael phelp's dad?"


update: #17 is Durant Brooks
(yeah... i don't think so either) and michael phelps father is Fred Phelps

awkward events, obama and SKINS.

as the subject line would suggest, i have a few things i would like to cover in this post. to avoid confusion, i shall write it in list form.

#1. i quit my job last month. it was one of the most awkward experiences of my life. it involved me giving my notice and then being IGNORED by my boss for the next two weeks. no word was uttered other than a single "thank you" after i handed him the bathroom key one day. on thursday i met up with some old coworkers at el rey del sol (now know as kileby's!- an irish themed mexican restaurant). i had just arrived, sat down, had not even ordered my drink yet when who should walk in? my ex-boss. and he sat down next to me. awwwwkward. it was one of those moments that happen in the movies but very rarely happen in real life where you go "oh, shit" and you can see the other person mouth "oh, shit." and then you both smirk awkwardly and pray that the other one can make a feasible excuse as to why they have to leave immediately. alas, neither of us could come up with an excuse quickly enough.

#2. i stayed in with a bottle of wine and some tofu yesterday to watch the debate. i am just using every forum i have to possibly mention the name barack obama. so, here it is: BARACK OBAMA.

my father sent me this link the other day and it's quite hilarious: http://www.thegreatschlep.com/site/index.html

#3. this is my new favorite show. i watch it on bbc america pretty much every chance i get. it's like gossip girl but in england with normal looking kids who can say "tits" and "whore" without being beeped cause it's on the BBC.

oh and it has the little kid from "about a boy" in it except he's grown up and not creepy and weird like he was back then.


lindsay and mia came to visit this past weekend. here is a highlight from their visit:

why hello there.

so, you may remember 6 months ago my promise to myself that i would write more often. a lot has happened between then and now but, alas, i did not keep my promise.

oh well, let's just jump right in. i'm sitting in an apartment in hollywood with two strangers i met three days ago and have spent almost every waking moment with. LA is weird. all anyone does is just sit around and wait for the night to come. you sit around at a restaurant then you sit around at a coffee shop then you sit around at someones apartment then you sit around at a bar then you sit around on a roof then you sit around until you eventually pass out. then you wake up, sit around and do it all over again. i'm not sure if it's how everyone in los angeles lives their lives, but it is how unemployed actors, musicians, writers and aspiring porn stars do. i'm sort of in love.

yesterday (while i was sitting around at a coffee shop) i saw someone almost get mauled, someone almost get hit by a car and someone almost steal a bicycle in a matter of moments. the almost-maul was the best one. this girl (who had obviously just come from yoga) brought her cutey-pie black lab to the coffee shop where i was sitting outside. she tied him up to a metal table about three away from me. the dog sat there calmly as people passed back and forth. suddenly he stood up and started barking. not just barking but a sort of snarly, teeth bared, neck hair up, yanking on the leash barking that caused everyone to turn around a look at what the dog was barking at. there was a man about a half a block away. he was fairly nondescript, wearing khakis and a black jacket and carrying a satchel. he noticed that the dog was barking manically at him and continued to walk towards him. see, this is where i start having an issue with this guy. he's too confident. he knows the dog is barking at him, he knows it's not just barking but wants to attack him yet he continues to walk towards it. i looked around and noticed that pretty much everyone else is having the same thought: "cross the street!" "walk the other way!" "don't carry satchels cause they're lame!" "WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?" so what does the nondescript khaki wearing man do? he walks right up to the dog, looks at it, raises his satchel and hits the dog square on the head. everyone (including myself) simply said "whoa." (it's the only thing you can say. on the one hand, the dog is tied up and therefore pretty much rendered defenseless. but on the other, that dog has made it pretty damn obvious that if that leash snaps, he's going for the jugular- or at least a finger.) so once that satchel comes down, the dog (who is just as shocked as the rest of us) stops barking and watches as the man simply turns and continues walking down the street.

i found this photo recently:


i took it about three years ago in a bathroom in washington, dc. i remember looking up at the bathroom stall and then laughing really, really hard mid-pee and promptly whipping out my camera to take a picture.

i'm back. i hope

so, i made a new years resolution to start blogging again, or at least writing again. i've spent the past two months figuring out how to get back on the writing bandwagon. i also noticed how many freaking pictures i've taken over the past five years. and so between the blogging and the picture taking, i have decided to at least start this blog up again telling a story about one of these pictures. i am original. but, eventually, this will also help in my self-effacing memoir i hope to write in twelve years after my second stint in rehab and my sex tape with colin farell is leaked on the internet.

alright, here we go. sound the trumpets.




so this picture was taken in prariedog town, kansas. it was taken in july 2006 during a road trip i took with my friend michelle. and this point, we had been on the road for a month and some change, we had subsisted on beer, string cheese, camel lights and diet coke, completely ran out of things to talk to each other about, got the car impounded in san francisco, rebuffed the sexual advances of former mormans in utah and in general were sick of being in a mercury sable.

anyway, back to prariedog town. according to maps.google.com, prariedog town is on route 83 between spica and oakley, kansas. it is, quite officially, between nowhere and boringtown. michelle and i decided to go because the advertisements that started somewhere back in colorado advertised the largest prariedog IN THE WORLD. unless you plan on making the trip out there, don't scroll any farther or else you will be disappointed and your trip will be ruined.




(it's the one on the left).

but back to the original picture. prairie dog town is full of animals (including prairie dogs!) but for some reason this baby goat followed me and my supercool pac-sun studded belt around the petting zoo/ strangest place on earth the whole time we were there, all the while continuously head-butting me and nibbling my pants (boot cut, btw). our relationship

so that is the story of the baby goat and the studded belt.

i do believe that somewhere that not so baby goat is falling asleep, curled up next to some prairiedog whose name he won't remember in the morning, dreaming of that studded belt.