It's been a crazy few days. If there is anything I've learned about living in New York it is this: the winter makes people disappear into hobbit holes. When the temperature reaches 60 degrees, they come out of said hobbit holes, whip out their iPhones, and begin calling all the friends they forgot they had over the last five months.

Despite the craziness, nothing really strange has happened or weird or even funny. Nothing I feel warrants a story. Some drunk frat guy puked a few seats down from me on the F train on Saturday night. It held up the train for a half hour which I found disgraceful. A cab driver gave me his personal card in case I ever needed him (after a hilarious cab ride in which he told me about his salsa-dancing roommate he's convinced is a whore) and said "Listen, when you call me to pick you up, TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE! Don't just call and say 'Come get me' cause if you don't tell me a location, I won't know. I'm not magic, okay?" I met a cat I actually liked named "Balzac:"
I went to Brooklyn Flea and found these:
There is, however, something I would like to address. Like most people, I have a stat counter on this blog. Because I refuse to actually spend money on it, I only have the basic one. Included in the basic one is the most common keywords that bring people to my blog. For those of you who don't know what that is (Mom, I'm talking to you) the keywords are the words that people type into Google or another search engine that bring up my blog. Usually it's Katie Friel or Anna Friel and Katie Holmes or vodka or Mormon housewife sex.

However, over the last few weeks, OVERWHELMINGLY, the most prevalent searches that bring people to my blog have been things like:
"what does it mean when pet boa lies alongside owner" "snake stretching body" "sleeping on the same bed with pet boa constrictors"

How many people are out there and sleeping with their boa constrictors? If you are reading this and I do not know you and you sleep with your boa constrictor, why? Please let me know. I really, really need to know the answer to this. Is there a secret subculture of people that Dick Hebdige failed to uncover of people who sleep with their snakes?

Blondes, Boston, Rachel Zoe & Witches.

I tried. I tried really, really hard. I even said things like "I feel more like myself as a brunette" (which is true cause, you know, I am). I got into a fight with my mom about it. I took a mental tally of how many blondes I saw on the street versus brunettes. And I did like it. Until it became a brassy, red as a Macintosh apple color that reminded me of strawberry's gone rotten. It wasn't until this weekend, sitting with Amelia in Salem, Massachusetts that I turned to my consummate blond friend, looked her in the eye and said "I hate my hair."

So I'm back to being a blond and for CHRIST'S SAKE the next time I say I'm dying my hair, remind me of this post.

Now that the requisite narcissism is out of the way...

I went to Boston this weekend. At 10 o'clock on Thursday night, I realized I was beaten down by the city, sick of not getting replies from jobs and internships (INTERNSHIPS- NON-PAYING JOBS), tired of spending time in my apartment, so I sold my old iPhone and with that money decided to hop on a bus to Boston. Under the pretense of checking out the city for next year, I called Amelia and told her to save me a place on her couch cause I was on my way.

At the bus depot, she picked me up in consummate Amelia style, cranked up the first of the 11,000 Lady Gaga songs we would listen to over the weekend and we were off. When asked if we were going back to her place first to freshen up and chat, she looked at me and actually said (verbatim) "No. We gotta get started if we're ever going to finish."

This weekend wasn't only just a wonderful because I got to spend time with my friend. Oh, no, no, no. This weekend was magic. MAGIC! Why you may ask? In 1993 a gem of a film was released by Walt Disney Pictures. It starred Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, Kathy Najimy, Omar Katz, Thora Birch & Vinessa Shaw. In the movie, which took place in the small, idyllic town of Salem, Massachusetts, a virgin lit the Black Flame Candle thus unleashing three sisters from Hell who were hanged for being witches in 1693! This movie is, of course, Hocus Pocus.

On Sunday, I was given the opportunity of a lifetime to go to Salem. Salem is the location of the Salem Witch Trials, a showplace for quintessential New England, the literary inspiration of The House of Seven Gables, and, of course, the hometown of the Sanderson sisters. It was, in all honesty, a dream come true. Something I literally get to check off my life list (#167- Go to Salem, Massachusetts).

A quick recap:
First we saw Bunghole Liquors and indulged our inner 11 year-old little boy.



Then we saw it again. This time we got matching Bunghole Liquor key chains.

Then we saw a scary cemetery!

Then we went to a museum! With dioramas! (We weren't allowed to take pictures there.)
Then we saw this:
Why yes, that is the house where ALISON LIVED IN HOCUS POCUS.

The time Lyle told a story that haunted my LIFE.

“Australian Aborigines say that the big stories—the stories worth telling and retelling, the ones in which you may find the meaning of your life—are forever stalking the right teller, sniffing and tracking like predators hunting their prey in the bush.” (Robert Moss)

I love stories. I love hearing them, I love telling them, I love reading and listening to and seeing them. They are truly my great passion.

That being said there are certain stories that haunt me. Stories that make me shudder and think and laugh and cry and recoil in horror. From the books I was read as a kid (most notably "Tikki Tikki Tembo" and "The Crack of Dawn Walkers") to the things I remember growing up to the stories people tell me now... every once in a while I come across something that truly HAUNTS me. They are few and far between and when I hear one it consumes me. I think about it and find myself retelling it over and over again to anyone that will listen.

The last story to do so involved a dead girl on the New York City subway. It was so upsetting that when I retold it to my friend Amelia, she wrote me a few days later and chastised me for giving her nightmares and introducing her to such horrifying thoughts.

This past Monday I heard another such story. While sitting in a Williamsburg restaurant with two friends, I was told the following by Lyle:

A young woman had a boa constrictor for a pet. The snake lived freely, out of a cage and followed its master around through this room and that room. The woman and her snake were so close that they even slept in the same bed. At night, the girl would stretch out on her mattress and the boa would curl up by her feet, undoubtedly enjoying the heat his master's body was giving off.

Needless to say, the girl and her snake were close.

Then, one day, the boa stopped eating. Not only did it stop eating, it stopped sleeping in it's normal position. Instead of spending the night curled up at the woman's feet, it started to lie stretched out alongside her body. Scared he was sick, the woman took her non-eating, stretched-out-while-sleeping boa constrictor to the vet.

While at the veterinarian's office, the woman explained what was wrong with her beloved. "So you're telling me that your snake doesn't eat anymore and is now spending it's nights stretched out alongside you?" the vet asked. "Yes," the woman nodded. "You have to get rid of your snake immediately" the vet said. "Why?" the woman asked. "Because you're telling me it no longer eats and it's spending every night stretching itself alongside you in your bed. It's preparing its body to EAT you."

I've found that the stories that stick with you have a few of the same elements: an incredibly strong visual image (a dead dog; a terrified girl; a boa constrictor), an element of humanity (a moral dog-sitter; a strong subway neighbor; a vet who tries to break the news gently) and an element of mortality (again, a dead dog; a dead girl on a subway; death by snake). What makes the snake story so sad, so funny, so tragic, so haunting is: (a) that this woman obviously loved this snake (b) that she slept with the snake (c) the snake wanted to kill her (d) this woman who loved a snake as a pet did not realize that this animal she had raised and fed and kept healthy wanted to eat her alive while she slept.

On a completely different note, I saw Anderson Cooper, Ariana Huffington, Mike Huckabee and DL Hughley speak at Radio City Music Hall last night. It was truly a remarkable and memorable experience. And Anderson has cheekbones so sharp they would probably cut that snake in half.

(he could probably hack down that vegetation behind him with those cheekbones!)