March 2012
2 posts
on the jersey shore
I suppose I’m about three years late to this phenomenon but it’s only recently that I’ve seen even a few moments of an episode of the Jersey Shore. For whatever it means, I did not own a television for the first season or two of the show. And then when I did have the opportunity to actually watch it, I had absolutely no desire to. My attraction to reality television had always ended with...
the usher from hell
I am not a wedding kind of person. I am not even a marriage kind of person. My future seems more common-law-no-need-for-celebration (well, maybe something small so that someone else can buy me things like this). So, last summer when, due to some bizarre reasoning, I was asked (via my mother) to be a fill-in bridesmaid three weeks before a wedding for people to whom I was so distantly connected...
August 2010
3 posts
breeding giants?
It was one of those pleasant days in June that makes going outside imperative but the actual moments outdoors not entirely enjoyable, with too cool breezes piercing that constant glare. My mother and I went down the block to the fifth avenue festival and walked through crowds of chubby Brooklyn boys with flat-brimmed Yankees caps, thin lines of facial hair, and even thinner...
ayurveda
I have an article up on Lemondrop!
my dad can play that
It is a small suburban home. Stone steps surrounded by shrubs curve up to the front door. Inside, it is kitschy and bright, but obviously a family home. Each room is painted a different color (I would later see the paint cans stacked in the basement), old food and drink advertisements are framed on the walls, and a retro salt and pepper shaker collection is displayed throughout the house. The...
July 2010
3 posts
homeless
There is a homeless man in my neighborhood who wanders the streets in an almost stereotypical manner. He dresses in coarsely-textured, earth-toned, torn and oversized clothing, his long matted hair falls not to his shoulders but rather radiates softly around his head, and he walks crookedly, always talking to himself and gesticulating madly. He is indeed simply mad—schizophrenia, I...
rule #1
Rule number one is strict—shirts must be worn at all times, unless granted prior approval by me, or to be fair, by every single person who will have to see you sans shirt. Automatic approval is granted at beaches but revoked immediately upon ascending onto the boardwalk. Keep this in mind.
coney island fireworks
Last night, I took my first trip of the season out to Coney Island to see the Friday night fireworks. I hadn’t been there since the renovations, and was surprised to see that besides a few refurbished rides, some clean bathrooms, more trashcans, and cashiers with computers, there were not many drastic changes.
The fireworks began at 9:30 and the boardwalk was packed well in advance. It...
June 2010
9 posts
abt
The hindquarters of male ballet dancers resemble nothing so much as those of horses. This is accentuated by their light brown tights stretching taught across every expanse of muscle, plunging into every crevice, and shiny as a thoroughbred’s coat. For the first dance, the Brahms-Haydn Variations choreographed by Twyla Tharp, the five principal couples all wear outfits made of this tight pale...
3 tags
thanks for the truth, roberto bolaño
“And then he began to think about how repulsive adolescent artists or pseudoartists were when viewed from up close.”
6 tags
animal doppelgangers
If you were an animal, what animal would you be?
3 tags
an exploding sky in two acts
sicily:
the amazon:
2 tags
a portrait!
check out more!!
4 tags
façades
I was disappointed to learn that even when you think people are genuine oddballs:
You then realize that they’re just the average bigot:
3 tags
hunger mountain
I have a short story up on Hunger Mountain.
2 tags
the artist is present
I realize that I like watching people only when they don’t know that they are being watched. Performances of any kind make me uneasy—I feel an embarrassment for those on display, whether or not their performance actually warrants shame. I find preparation boring but improvisation unsettling. This is not to say that I do not enjoy performances and get something positive out of them,...
3 tags
marketing 101
Rapidly melting, I read in Union Square this afternoon, to kill time between appointments. Though I suppose that on some level I already knew it, I was reminded that most people in New York City are pitching something. Hidden behind neon yellow reflective lenses, the man beside me on the bench took part in a phone conversation that included the phrases: attract visibility; creativity with the...
May 2010
11 posts
4 tags
recent movies
The Perfect Storm is one of those movies that I missed watching in middle school when the special effects were impressive and my standards were lower. Seeing it too late, one realizes that it is really just inappropriately triumphant music playing in the background of short scenes that celebrate an obviously ignorant and ultimately fatal machismo.
And though I had read all the reviews saying...
4 tags
consider the name of the juice
Trying to order a juice at lunch today, it came down to a choice between the Hangover Helper, the Muscle Head, or the Lower My Cholesterol. I had neither a hangover, a desire for building bulk, nor high cholesterol, though I did develop a bit of contempt for the juice-namer.
4 tags
when in doubt
Just guess that everyone’s dead.
4 tags
regret of the day
I did not have a camera with which to capture my first faux-hawk dreadlocked mullet combo.
3 tags
Cary Grant-a-thon
As part of our on going Cary Grant-a-thon, a friend and I watched “North by Northwest” last night. Points of note:
the admirable rise of Cary Grant’s pants
the surprisingly straight-forward (for 1959) sex-talk (eg: “Why, you’re the smartest girl I’ve ever spent the night with on a train.”)
the way that Cary Grant’s attractiveness...
1 tag
attractive opposites
After a printmaking workshop, I’ve concluded that the qualities that often constitute an attractive print are the opposite of those that make an attractive person:
fine lines
assymetry
either garish or faded coloring
equal opportunity
Recently, a friend, speaking of a boy, told me that she could have made out with him. While I don’t doubt this, it means little to me, since I know the boy in question and know that any girl could make the same statement with just as much truth.
2 tags
because even the hipsters are chubby... →
take me out to the ball game
In the past three days, I have heard two different men suggest sports over school. The first was my grandmother’s ophthalmologist, who was only half facetious when he advised this path for my cousins.
“College graduates can’t get jobs now,” he said. ”And ball players get paid more than anyone. Tell them to forget about school and keep playing ball.”
My...
2 tags
pétanque in bryant park
It’s a Tuesday, eleven o’clock and the park is crowded with, I assume, the lunch break crowd. I wonder, though, how many of these people aren’t working—today or in general—and how many New Yorkers have jobs with unusual schedules. A group of five men play pétanque. There is a sign beside the court explaining the rules of the game, but I doubt any of these men ever...
1 tag
abandoned house
We had lingered across the street until we saw no cars or people in either direction, and then we quickly ducked into the house. It wasn’t really trespassing—there weren’t any signs and clearly no one cared about this property. Shane figured that if people stopped us, he would just tell them the truth, that is had been his great-grandfather’s place, though neither of us thought anyone would...
April 2010
8 posts
3 tags
brazil
A few summers ago, my father, sister and I went to the Amazon. It was a vacation somewhere between relaxation and adventure—we stayed in a hotel, but it was in the middle of the jungle, our windows were screens, our showers were outdoors, and our meals were camp-style. We went on hikes, but we had guides before us, bushwhacking the trails. The guide who did most of this bushwhacking was...
1 tag
wardrobe personalities
I realized recently that most of my clothing makes me look like a sailor, a cowboy, a mime, or a six-year-old girl. I’d like to add another persona. I’m thinking mentally-unstable European peasant.
1 tag
supermarket sociology
Crawl down the cereal aisle and look up at the shelves. Notice how, at this height, all the characters are staring down at you. Now imagine being five years old.
1 tag
it's really not that viscous or vibrant
Based on movies I’ve watched recently, I can only conclude that people must not have bled before 1989.
2 tags
"I've been outsourcing my thinking on a host of...
Early thoughts from Subject to Debate:
“A society in which one in six people has no health insurance, in which millions cannot afford dental care, eyeglasses, or medications, is not going to offer women free abortions on demand or pay doctors to spend time explaining to poor women the pros and cons of different methods of contraception.”
“The realities of modern life ensure...
2 tags
a happier way to look at a stuffy nose or another...
The lining of the nose contains erectile tissue, which, like erectile tissue in other locations, is made erect by increased blood flow. Simply put, nasal congestion is an erection inside your nose.
3 tags
rear window
The kitchen window of my father’s first apartment after the divorce, looked out across the driveway into the kitchen window if our neighbor’s. Both families could see each other as we went about our daily routines and we would always try to catch each other’s gaze, smile and wave. We would silently greet them, and they us, as we sat down to our separate dinners every night....
4 tags
tuesdays
Twin Peaks Taco Tuesday has always been something of a misnomer. It was rarely tacos, usually just Mexican food: burritos, quesadillas, fajitas. And with the finale of Twin Peaks, it became David Lynch themed, instead. But this past Tuesday, it morphed into films-with-which-David-Lynch-doesn’t-want-to-be-associated and food-from-a-Spanish-speaking-nation. The meal was rice and beans with...
March 2010
13 posts
1 tag
animal snacks
When I first became vegetarian, at twelve years old, all of my favorite snack foods were shaped like animals. Perhaps I was trying to let out some repressed aggression.
1 tag
robbing the cradle
The number of people who mistake me for my father’s girlfriend is disturbing. I am twenty-two, and look like I’m about eighteen. My father is fifty-five. He looks a bit younger, I suppose, but still—he’s fifty-five. On a recent trip to Seattle, a tour guide, trying to be friendly, asked me where we’d met.
“I’m his daughter,” I stammered, a...
2 tags
no one can describe people the way John Steinbeck...
“Although an observer could not have told why, Noah left the impression of being misshapen, his head or body or his legs or his mind; but no misshapen member could be recalled…He was a stranger to all the world but he was not lonely.”
-The Grapes of Wrath
2 tags
potential friends
I imagine that most straight girls, at some point, wish that they were at least a little bit gay—if not out of sexual curiosity than simply for social reasons. I think of how much less critical of each other girls would be if they wanted sleep with one another. They would be so much more forgiving. I think that even just a three on Kinsey’s scale could up my friend potential...
3 tags
life as a scene
Looking out the window of the D train as it travels across the Manhattan bridge on a sunny day, while I listen to Lou Reed’s “This Magic Moment,” and especially because I am carrying packed duffels, I turn my life into a scene from a movie. I cannot help but stare out over the East River with a melancholy expression in my eyes and imagine there is much more at stake than there...
2 tags
tallulah bankhead
The line in Looped that made my sister laugh too hard:
“I’ll be the first to say I’m bisexual. Buy me something and I’ll get sexual.”
and the line that made my mother choke on her own breath after laughter had subsided:
“Touching a woman’s purse is like touching her vagina.”
I’m pretty sure Freud said something along the same lines.
4 tags
the unbearable lightness of being
During my sophomore year in high school, I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being for my English class. I remember liking it, and from it learning about philosophy and sex, both of which I was just beginning to try to understand. I spent a lot of time thinking about bodies and souls and then about bodies, again. My teacher said that while reading certain scenes (involving an erotically placed...
1 tag
people-watching
I sit on the stone steps and, hidden behind my sunglasses, which in reality provide me with less anonymity than I would like to believe, I create stories for the people around me. I imagine that the lone boy in the purple cap is not too cool for the other kids, as my friend suggests, but wishes that he were. I observe how the girls in this town are tightly-clothed saplings at sixteen but...
recent realizations
In a conversation I had yesterday, Alec Baldwin, Christopher Walken, and William Shatner were placed together in this odd group of men who had once been talented, attractive actors, but have aged into caricatures that they now fully embrace. It seemed an accurate description to me.
Today, I decided that the key to just about everything is to try really hard but to pretend that it’s all...
best actress
The day following the Oscars’ broadcast I watched Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? This film is rare and wonderful, I decided then, watching it for the first time. Not only is the script so carefully, intricately, and deeply written, but each of the four actors do amazing jobs of portraying their characters, pushing them to unbelievable yet realistic extremes. These are actors, and Elizabeth...
the best editing advice I've ever heard
Sometimes you have to kill your children.
what happened to coordinating?
Flipping through Vogue today, I’ve learned that it is apparently impossible to sell a handbag and remain clothed.
food i sort of miss
If you are vegan, and you find vegan pizza, you need to have some, regardless of actual hunger. Word of advice though, don’t eat a slice that is actually the size of your torso. No matter how unusual and delicious it is, you will regret it. The same goes for vegan doughnuts. You will find one and you will eat it, and then you will realize that you never really liked doughnuts that much...