eh, spaghetti!

i totally forgot this excellent overheard from friday night (that i overheard with my own ears.)

toy soldier guarding fao schwartz: the store is now closed. no exceptions.
a man wearing pants that could only be european: (said in the worst italian accent i have ever heard, sorry if it was real) but meester, we are from eetaly!

we almost died laughing. seriously, my italian accent is better.

on vacation in my own backyard

i had a lovely long weekend with my parents. i really like my parents, in large part because they are my parents, and in large part they are also my really nice, smart, interesting friends who don't let me pay for my own cupcakes. we have a lot in common, aside from being related, and i really like talking to them. and i would write that even if they didn't read this.

friday we took them to clemens for incredible fresh tex-mex and my dad bought a mexican wrestlers mask from the proprietors. then we took the subway (it was weird for me to picture my parents on the subway; they don't strike me as train people, so it was funny to ride with them) up to bryant park, where their lovely hotel was. we walked a square up to fao schwartz (everyone loves giant toys!) and along the park to my office, and then down 9th avenue to a delicious little italian place. then back to bryant park and to bed for us all.

saturday we brought them terrace bagels (i am a really good daughter) in the city, and all trekked to various museums, my dad to the met for the jasper johns gray show, my mom, s and i to the guggenheim for the incredible cai guo qiang show. it was a really intricate installation, with site-specific work about the intersection of cai's ancient chinese heritage, modern chinese upbringing and current new york life. it is the kind of show best experienced in person (so that you can walk among the wolves or take the yak canoe through the built river), and really a once in a lifetime opportunity, since some of the pieces were created specifically for this space. it was a lot to think about, and we talked about it the rest of the weekend. after an adventure (two closed subway stations and a bus!) we headed down to the village and the deliciousness that is john's pizzeria. once on bleecker it is difficult, of course, to not go to magnolia for some buttercream love, and my kind pa stood in line while we cooed over marc jacobs. (in retrospect, i should have tried something on. i probably could have gotten the sweet gift of good design.) i then walked us back up to the flatiron (with a stop to buy cushier socks and shoes) to fishs eddy, where we all admired the cheeky dinnerware. my mother and i, always the avant-garde pair, saw a really great new play at nyu, "i have loved strangers" (by anne washburn.) it was set in ancient new york, and various plotlines about a corrupt king, true and false prophets, and revolutionaries were intricately woven together. (a post-modern apocalypse play is a great follow up to an installation about controlled violence and painting with gunpowder. and cupcakes.) we cabbed uptown (i think i walked them out) and met s in the hotel bar for a drink.

sunday they made it to brooklyn on their own, and we walked park slope, stopping in to cutesy shops and spending lots of time at brooklyn superhero supply. after a gourmet market lunch, i sent them off and spent the afternoon looking for apartments (we are still future-homeless.) it was a full weekend, but a grand one, and now i am looking forward to the next one. i plan to sleep in.

let the right one in

for future reference, when i say "i don't like scary movies, and i get scared really easily", a movie about a vampire and a little boy who fall in love is still likely to scare me, despite all the love stuff. especially if set in 1980s sweden.

tonight mk, aa and i went to a screening of "let the right one in," a very sweet swedish film about oskar, a loner who is ostracized by his peers but befriended by a strange girl who lives next door. when eli and her father move in, people in the town start dying mysterious violent deaths, and oskar soon realized that eli is a vampire (with a heart of gold), and his only friend. i really liked it. it was incredibly atmospheric and the acting was superb, especially by the two children, and i was on the edge of my seat most of the film. it was interesting, too, where the film found its heros (in an outcast and a monster) who were the most human characters of all. the film was picked up by magnolia pictures, and will be released soon in the us, and i definitely recommend it.

we waited around to say hi to aa's movie exec boyfriend (thanks for the tickets!) and i looked in vain for famous people, and then we decided to look for food. i remembered the dessert truck was quite near us, so we shared a chocolate bread pudding with creme anglaise (oh my goodness, so delicious) sitting on a washington square stoop. then we came home to brooklyn and had drinks and cheese at sample, which was cute though not necessarily my style. (i am not a huge wine and cheese person, and while my drink was good, it was tiny.) plus it was a little on the warm side, and it's not hot enough outside yet to be too hot indoors. anyways, very cute, and i appreciated that they suggested it because of my well-known love of vintage maps. (which were wonderful.) mk and i cabbed home (no way was i walking as possible vampire prey) and now i need to clean before my parents arrive tomorrow. till next time.

oh, and because i know a few people read this, i'd love some feedback. what are you doing this weekend?

low art on the lower east side

i am sorry blog, but with my new love the apartment search, i have been neglecting you. (last night i sat by the phone waiting for a landlord to call, and when he said i was very nice but it just wouldn't work out, i hung up the phone and then cried. this is just like a bad relationship!)

i had a four day weekend that s and i didn't really know what to do with, so we went to a friend's band's show and cooked food and looked at apartments and took naps and did laundry and walked around in the sunshine and ran errands and just generally lazed.

tonight mk and aa and i went to see a show on the lower east side (i will not print the name, i don't want to hurt them) that was one of the worst pieces of theatre i have seen in a long time. the show itself was awful, pieced together and incoherent, awkward and not funny when it meant to be and unintentionally hilarious at other times. it included clearly fake weapons, a "crazy audience member" who interrupted three times, a random lesbian kiss (that came out of nowhere-ha! a great pun), gratuitous cursing and drug references and songs that i might've written in third grade. AWFUL.

we prefaced it with a delicious dinner at veselka, where we shared pierogis, latkes, stuffed cabbage, beet salad and kielbasa--they ate it, not me--like the good little jewish center employees we are. seriously delicious, we all walked out fat and happy (into the trap of awful theatre.) have i mentioned how lucky i feel to have made such fantastic friends from work? it makes the job worth doing, sometimes.

tomorrow we are going to a premier at the tribeca film festival, and this weekend my parents are coming to visit, so i should have lots to say soon. stay with me, readers in sweden, chicago and lake charles, louisiana. i promise to write more soon!

baby love

new york is filled with adorable babies in strollers and walkers, climbing on subway seats and toddling through the parks. today the cutest little mini downtown boy got on the train. he was probably about four or five years old, and he was wearing a plaid fedora over curly hair, a tan jacket, tan pants and little plaid airwalk slip-ons. (clearly dressed by his dad.) he was kind of squirmy, and i think he kicked or bumped the lady next to him, because she had the sourest look on her face. i think his dad just ignored her though (which i would have done too) because she kept over-exaggeratedly rubbing her leg or ankle. some people aren't kid people, which i totally respect, but come on.

i am definitely kid people, however. i love children. and i think i might have some spring baby fever. last night i dreamt s and i had three little kids, the youngest was named owen, and i carried him around on my shoulders. a few nights ago, i dreamt i was about to give birth to a new baby (we already had a son named parker) that i wanted to name molly, but i was waiting for s to get to the hospital. parker, molly and owen, huh? still better than one of my most favorite overheards:

angry woman to friend: i have a contention with the way people pronounce my daughter's name. i did not name my daughter 'lady nasty'! i named my baby girl 'la dynasty.'

ah-ma-zing.

he's just not that into you

i know that it is a great writing cliche to say that "___" is just like dating! seriously, it is just like a relationship! but i can't help it, and here i go being trite, commonplace and hackneyed: trying to find an apartment in new york is just like dating.

1. you answer ads on craiglist. i've had more than one missed connection with a cute apartment drenched in sunlight and newly renovated all for just $1200/month (no brokers fee!) just off the f train. it's about as much a fantasy as the idea that that cute hipster was really eyeing you on the L train monday morning.

2. you find yourself dressing up for the occasion. sometimes i think "yes, jeans and sneakers! i'm a casual girl, no need to pretend i'm fancier than i am! i'm hip like this neighborhood!" and then sometimes i think "better put on those pearls, i want to look like i can afford this place." (well, fake pearls. but it was the UES.) i put as much, if not more, thought into what i wear to look at apartments as i ever did back in my datin' days. (i think about what i wear around s, too, but let's face it: he is as impressed as he will ever be.) and on days when i have to go straight to viewings after work, i am concerned about what i am wearing, and if it is good enough. seriously.

3. you wait by the phone. these landlords and broker, oh they promise to call you back. but they don't. not for minutes, sometimes hours (occasionally days), toying with you as you wait breathless by the phone. or the gmail. seriously, i can't stop checking my gmail. but that might not be new.

4. you do things that are out of character. have you ever met me? i love to sleep. i value sleep higher than most other things in life, and this morning i got up to look an apartment at 9 am before work, when normally i would roll out of bed at 9:10 (cursing the fact that i had overslept, yes. but that is beside the point.) last saturday i dragged s into manhattan to look at apartments on the man's one morning off. we skipped bagels, that is how serious i am.

5. sometimes it's not you, it's them. sometimes the apartment has just been rented. sometimes it gets rented as you are deciding. sometimes you fall in love with a perfect no-fee park slope beauty and four hours later when you call to write a deposit, it has just been deposited-on. you have been deposited-on. and even though it's them, it still hurts.

6. you question if they like your for your money. we work hard for our money, s and i, but the fact remains that we are broke. we have stellar credit (or at least i do), and earn enough each month to pay what we are looking at, but the fact is, we are young and underpaid and if we earned the 40x the rent they require, the rent we think we can pay, well, we'd be looking for nicer, more expensive apartments. which means we have to deal with guarantors and long credit checks, and i totally get it. if i were a landlord, maybe i wouldn't want to deal with it either.

7. you're totally smitten. apartment-hunting is my new workday fantasy; i dream about finding a floor-through brownstone apartment on president street in the slope, just waiting for us to move in. it's all i talk about, too. i bet my friends are rolling their eyes about me and my new love, the one bedroom.

8. you're always a bridesmaid, never a bride. eventually you start to feel like the apartment spinster, as if everyone else has found a place, and you will be left out in the cold, living in the park with your twelve cats and hair curlers, going to bed every night with a good book, your friends politely ignoring your invites to imaginary housewarmings. "poor m, they will say. she was such a nice girl, until she fell in love with that flashy downtown condo (who took up with that i-banker), and then it was all over." i'm starting to feel a little panicky (though s, ever the rock of logic, reminds me that we have a month), a little like it will never happen for me.

9. you consider the last resort: an arranged marriage. young and naive, i thought i could find our dream apartment online by myself, without paying one of those "broker fees" i kept hearing about. the truth is, you see more and better apartments with a broker, which costs between $1800-4000 (yes, i too choked on my own whatever when she told me that.) but the more i look at random things i have found on cl and beyond, the more i think that maybe there is something to the broker after all.

i know all this sounds crazy, but just like dating (seriously, it is just like a relationship!), i have begun to doubt myself. i can't sign a lease on my charm and batted lashes alone, and the longer it takes, the more i worry. i just have to remind myself: i found my s, i will find my apartment, we will make it a home, and i never have to move again, if i don't want to. those twelve cats will have to squeeze in however they can.

florent!

dear florent,

we love you. i love the vintage maps that make up your menus and wall decoration. i love the friendly, well-dressed gay waiters. i love the louisiana crab cakes and kir royales. i love the cobblestones i teetered over in the heels i am not used to wearing on a date with my delightful boyfriend. i love the t-shirts you sell (especially the marie antionette.) i love the florent timeline on the board.

s loves "the best burger [he] has ever had in the city."

we love you. please don't close.

love, m and s

hip! hip! jorge!

saturday was the most beautiful day i have seen in a long time here in nyc, and it was perfect timing, too: we went to the yankees game. yankee stadium is in it's last season (you could see the cranes slowly building the new ballpark just beyond left field) and i just had to see a game in the stadium my grandfather used to go to. i bought s tickets for his birthday back in march, and all week they kept predicting rain, so when we woke up to blue skies and sun, i knew the day was totally blessed.

yankee stadium has its own subway stop, it's own little world. the surrounding streets are devoted to baseball paraphenalia (my favorite store: stan the man's baseball land for men, women and children.) we entered through gate four and climbed slowly to the top of the stadium, seated high above the field (sorry again, sweetie) with a view of green plaid fields and miniature men in white. it was a perfect, gorgeous day, and despite the cold breeze, i was happy in my new hat, pretzel in hand, nestled up against my love, watching the bronx bombas (as s liked to say. he does a good silly accent, that boy.)

they lost, the yankees, though not as pitifully as they almost did. we were down 6-1 for a lot of the game, until jorge posada sent some runners home. the crowd went totally crazy, which is of course why we go to sporting events in the first place, that joy in shared victory (they've done psychological studies about it, how happy people can be when their teams are winning.) the guys behind us were a powerful cheering section, going horse with their cries of "here we go yankees, here we go!", "john-ny dam-mon", and my favorite "hip! hip! jorge!" we had a yankees family in front of us, mom and dad and sons and daughters and a granddaughter, all in hats and jerseys, noo yawk voices calling down the guy carrying hot dogs. i felt like we were a part of the crowd--no one knew we weren't just as die-hard as them (i think i put on a pretty good show, too, jumping out of my seat at the exciting moments.) it was just such a perfect afternoon.

i took the cutest pictures of us in our matching hats, too. if i give up on my psuedo-anonymity (i mean, only my friends read this anyway), i shall post them.

big love

this is my most favorite thing i have seen on the train in a long time:

a man, fairly non-descript, reading The Sweet Refuge 1: I Will Love Again from Precious Hearts Romances, The Best Love Stories of All Time.

it made me smile. and furtively copy it down in my moleskin.

also, today i loved: the gangs of mormons in suits, posing for pictures like religious-pilgrim-tourists in front of the upper west side church of jesus christ of the latter-day saints. at first i saw all these men in suits and i figured there was some sort of banking convention until i saw a goofy twenty-something kid posing with hands up and a silly smile with the temple in the background. amazing. normally that kind of shameless touristing is relegated to times square.