slinking back in, tail between my legs.

so this little blog baby has been neglected for some time, no? apologies all around, but i've been cuh-razy busy this summer, including:

- a get-away to montauk, where we got ENGAGED (!)
(thumbs up for weddings!)

- visits nearly every weekend from family and friends
(eating our way around the city with guests--this was at co)

- major work events (including a promotion and the departure of two of my coworkers)
(the goodbyes are killing me!)

- some wedding planning
(didn't pick this one. duh.)

- trips out of town (upstate new york, d.c.)
(miss you, spitfire lake.)

consider this my (maybe) comeback.

art attack

i've had family in town off and on for the last two weeks, which is both fun and exhausting. it has meant some home-town-touristing, which i always enjoy.

this past weekend my cousin was visiting, and was very interested in visiting MOMA. i am always game for some modern art, so saturday morning we got up early (crack of 9 am!) and headed up there. we started from the top to try to beat the crowds, and s and i spent a good hour enjoying the fantastic show joan miro: painting and anti-painting i have long enjoyed miro's work for his whimsical reinterpretation of familiar subjects, a kind of soft picasso i think (all of the creative placement without the sharp edges of cubism.) my favorite part of the show was a series that placed collages side-by-side with the paintings they inspired. miro had given himself the exercise of painting from combinations of cut outs from machine catalogs, and it was incredible to recognize the curve of a handle of the plummet of a lever in the painting. it is the kind of display of process that you don't usually get to see, and that i think is so interesting. i think my love of art history stems from a kind of nosiness--i don't just want to look at the piece, i want to understand it in a larger context; who made it, and why, in what time and place, in response to what or whom. it also gave me an idea for a show i would like to curate (either in life or my head.) s was looking forward to looking at music, but i felt it was poorly arranged. there were some interesting pieces, but with little access (only one pair of headphones, MOMA? in a media exhibition? seriously?) we only had a couple of hours in the museum, so we moved much faster than i would've liked through their permanent collection and some new photography, thought it was wonderful to see what we could. and now i know i need to go back sooner rather than later.

(we skipped their big show, van gogh and the colors of the night, in part because it required timed tickets and in part because i didn't feel the need to stand ten-deep in front of the night cafe. i would like to try to see it some other time, however, perhaps on a weekday.)

a couple of weekends ago, i took myself to the guggenheim to see my beloved building uncovered post-renovation. i admit to being somewhat divided on the current exhibitions. catherine opie: american photographer is a well-curated look at her career, from early portraits of friends and self to later series' on families and nature ("icehouses" and "surfers".) her portraits are gorgeous, often close-cropped faces or bodies on display with vivid saturated backgrounds. her early portraiture focused on members of her los angeles community, with a lot of tattoos, piercings and indeterminate (or undiscovered) gender. (it was pretty interesting to watch the faces of my fellow gallery-goers.) i was especially taken with her later series, "domestic", in which she photographed lesbian families at work and at play, in really intimate, touching photographs. her outdoor work was really lovely as well, especially the "freeways" series, which looked like something out of an apocalyptic italian art film, all swooping curves and abandoned stretches.

i was less taken with theanyspacewhatever, the major exhibition that has taken over the rotunda. i enjoyed pieces, but felt the whole was lacking a unified theory. there were some interesting interactive bits--i took my shoes off to sit on the pillows and view "chew the fat", i enjoyed a beverage as i watched a film in "cinema liberte", and i would've killed to spend a night in the revolving hotel room. i particularly liked the hanging signs, though embarrassingly i now cannot remember who created them. i think that there were also pieces missing when i attended (this space left intentionally blank for performance, perhaps), which made it oddly empty at times, which felt strange for the exhibition supposedly welcoming back the museum after their big renovation. i don't mean to sound cranky--i love the guggenheim, i've just seen better shows there. i will go back, however, to see the jenny holzer illumination one friday. i love me some jenny holzer.

thank you, mood

my mother visited this week, in town for some work meetings and some nyc-touristing fun. we packed a lot into tuesday (i know, this is a much-belated post), so bear with me!

we started by heading down to brooklyn heights and walking along the promenade. i think brooklyn heights is one of the city's prettiest neighborhoods, and the view of lower manhattan is an unusual one (and something you of course cannot see when you are in the city.) we meandered down to brooklyn bridge and fulton ferry state parks, and through DUMBO, window-shopping and coveting (well, for me at least) bridge-view properties.

s met us at the morgan library to explore "drawing babar", an exhibition of the paintings and processes that created babar, the be-suited elephant my sister and i grew up with. the morgan is a beautiful space, especially now that they've completed a beautiful renzo piano-led renovation. the exhibition was really wonderful. jean du brunhoff created the story, and his son laurent continued the tradition. they both had very different processes. jean would sketch and re-sketch, in pencil, moving the text and pictures around the page up until the final draft. laurent, on the other hand, would paint huge swathes of color across the page leaving space for his text. it was a great exhibit, and if you grew up with babar, i highly recommend it.


fabrics galore!

we walked west and headed to mood, the fabric store of project runway fame (well, for us, at least. i'm sure FIT design students know it for their own reasons.) my mother used to sew us halloween costumes and christmas dresses, so it made her happy to peruse the organzas and satins.

my mother is a long-time fan of patti lupone, and gave me the recording of "evita" at an impressionable age, so i have long time as well. so i knew that it would be special for us to see patti in "gypsy" on broadway. we had a wonderful dinner at nizza, a new restaurant on 9th ave. it was delicious, and it is always nice to discover a new place to dine in the theater district. we had center-mezzanine seats at the st. james theater (thanks again to tdf), so we had a great view of the stage. unfortunately, laura benanti wasn't performing that evening, but the understudy to louise did very well. patti lupone, of course, was the highlight of the performance, putting her heart into every word. she has an incredible voice, not even always a beautiful voice, but so full of character and experience. i had chills during her final number, and we lept to our feet with everyone else for the standing ovation at the end of the show. she is a real treasure. when we were leaving, my mother noticed that people were waiting for the actors, so we decided to wait and see patti. we thanked her for her wonderful performance, and while usually i am too embarrassed to do this, we got her autograph, which was very exciting.

wednesday my mother had meetings all day, but we were able to meet up for coffee and shoe-shopping before i put her in a cab to the train station. ccome back soon mama! we've got so much more to do! i love having visitors. who else wants to come see new york?

the 'klyn

s and i went to terrace bagels--per usual--on saturday and saw a man wearing a t-shirt that said "the 'klyn", which i found hilarious. i assumed it referred to brooklyn, but if it is something inappropriate, please let me know.

my sister was in town this weekend, hanging out before her red-eye flight to uganda for a photojournalist assignment. (she's the exciting one.) usually when people come to visit, i run us ragged walking the island of manhattan, but i realized this weekend: i live in brooklyn. there's plenty of great stuff here. let's spend the day in my neighborhood.

we started out slow (i am a notorious over-sleeper), and then wandered park slope, checking out the greenmarkets and stopping by brooklyn superhero supply. we walked down to root hill cafe (on carroll st and fourth avenue), a newer coffee spot opened by a woman i used to work with. they have one of the last clover espresso machines made pre-starbucks, and they brew an excellent cup of coffee. even my sister, the snobby barista, liked her beverage. (if you go hungry, i recommend the amazing grilled cheese, although splitting it is better, if not for your stomach than at least for your heart.) we hopped on the R and headed down to court street, to wander through cutey-cute-cute brooklyn heights and walk along the promenade. my sister was very impressed with the view of manhattan, as she had never seen it that way before. we wandered along the water to brooklyn bridge park, which seems to be under-construction and headed towards a better, brighter future. (it looks like it is going to be wonderful... someday.) we walked around in dumbo, stopping into adorable, over-priced stores. it started to rain, so we trained back home to grocery shop and stop into a few stores on seventh ave. i made falafel for dinner, and we played rummikub (the fast moving rummy tile game!) and then i tried to get some sleep. (i've been having super-weird dreams lately; i wish i had a dream-decoder book, cause i want to know what vampires mean.)

we'll have dinner out tonight, someplace fun in the neighborhood, and then i will pack her and her backpack into a car bound for jfk and uganda. it was fun having someone to explore with.

guest post: magical-detroit

not really. detroit was a little gross. a little too deserted for my tastes. (as my dear zp said, he lives in bushwick, and there were parts of detroit that made him nervous.) but we were there for a wedding of two of my dearest friends, not to take in the sights of the motor city.

i always wanted an older brother, but i wanted him to be funny and smart and really nice to me and sort-of goofy and date someone really cool that i could look up to. that's how i feel about alex and katy, like they are my friends, but also like they are a part of my family. (i cried when he told me they got engaged. from happiness. that is how much i like them. and weddings.) so for them, i would go to detroit. zp, s and i flew out friday afternoon, escaping nyc's sudden torrential rainstorm on friday, and were picked up by alex and joe ro. we ate lasagna at alex's parents' house in grosse point and played pool and darts in the basement (i felt about as far from new york as possible) and then went to our hotel. the renaissance center (or "ren cen" as the locals call it) is three towers of hotel, gm office buildings (which explained the cars parked in the motor lobby), and restaurants, shops, bars and weird mall-like space where a country festival took place our first night. we caught up over drinks in the bar and then spent the rest of the evening filming lip dubs on the various hotel floors. (never done a lip dub? they're too much fun, especially with the boys you did improv comedy with for three years in college.)

saturday was the wedding, and we got up and ready and headed to the whitney, a well-restored old mansion. alex and katy got married on a landing in front of a gorgeous stained glass window with traditional vows and then some words they had written themselves. i cried, of course, as s squeezed my hand. then we had brunch in a warm, sun-filled former parlor, and laughed as their parents and friends toasted them in the main room. (and ok, i got a little teary again.) they cut the cake (seriously, so delicious) and took pictures, and we hung out with alex's little brother, a detroit artist. then it was back to the hotel for naps before we went to the russell industrial center, a space that has been converted into beautiful, light, enormous artist studios. (i said to zp, "this is what new york used to be like," except the stairwells smelled better.) there were some great things and some ok things, but i love wandering through studios or gallery spaces looking at new work. it was a great way to spend some time before we headed to the majestic for the afterparty, with bowling and karaoke and pizza and beer. i am not the best bowler, nor am i a stellar karaoke-r, but i have a lot of fun doing both, especially after pizza and beer, and double-especially with those boys i love so much. we hung out until late, and headed home to the ren cen for more drinks, food and goofiness before everyone passed out at four am. i was nervous about missing the flight, so i stayed up to pack and check their breathing, and slept very little.

sunday was quiet, and we napped in the cab to the airport. zp, s and i boarded our tiny plane in the rain back to nyc, and joe ro headed home to la. we spent the afternoon lazing, tired from the trip. it was one of the best trips i have taken in a long time. i am pretty good at fooling myself, distracting me with new places or people or shiny things, but then it hits so hard: i miss my friends a lot. zp, joe ro, alex and i saw each other at least three times a week for three years in college (we were in an improv troup together), more than i saw my family. they were my family, and i miss them so much. it was so great to see them again, to laugh at the stupid things we've always laughed at, but also to revel in grown-up life together, to celebrate each others' successes, and to celebrate alex's marriage. i write about what makes me feel like an adult, but nothing has made me feel more grown-up than flying in to see one of my dear friends get married, to have a reunion with people i love and haven't seen in almost a year. it was a great weekend, and while i was glad to come home to new york, i was sad to leave their company. (though it should be noted: zp lives here in bk as well, and it is shameful that i see him as rarely as i do. we made a promise to see each other more often, and i plan to try to follow through.)

now i am back, and with good news to boot! we got the apartment we thought we didn't get! we sign our lease wednesday, and i am already majorly nesting, daydreaming about sleeper sofas and wall colors. seriously, i am overjoyed.

oh, and also: i added a new blog to the list: cellphone pix, zp's photoblog. (it is as it sounds.) i like it a lot, not the least because you can see a picture of me trying to quick-dry my feet at laguardia on friday after the rain.

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.

family part 2: 24 hours in boston

my sister goes to college in boston, a city i know mainly for airports and bus terminals, and that i've been wanting to get to know more about. she keeps insisting i come visit, and since she'd been to new york twice since my arrival (independent of my moving here, but here none the less), i felt i owed her a visit.

while fung wah and its tales of woe terrify me, there are plenty of other cheapie chinatown buses that go to south station in boston and twice now i have enjoyed lucky river. i missed my 9 am bus by ten minutes (me to s: "i missed the bus by ten minutes! what a bummer!" s: "i knew you'd never make it." my reputation precedes me, apparently.) after going bus to t (the boston t is like a baby subway, if your baby was dirty and not particularly convenient) to shuttle to campus, i was finally greeted by my sissy. i got a tour of her house first. she lives in the "arts haus," a campus housing option for particularly creative students. they live in a big rambling old house and throw elaborate costume parties (past themes include: 70s porn, space porn, circuses. a wholesome lot.) after meeting her lovely friends we went vintage shopping at garment district, a huge warehouse of clothing from a variety of decades and home to the famous (also: scary) "dollar a pound," a pile of clothing you literally wade through ("jump on in!" my sister said) and literally pay $1 per pound of. upstairs (in a more traditional shopping setting) we found the world's most amazing purple sparkly jumpsuit, and it was decided that i would purchase said garment to wear to the night's party. we t'd downtown to the ica and explored part of their permanent collection and enjoyed "the world as a stage," about the intersection of the art world and theatrical performance (gee thanks, college degrees in theatre and art history, for helping me to make sense of it all.) while there are four floors inside the brand-new building, only one displays art, and we had plenty of time to eat delicious tibetan food before the party.

friday night's party was in honor of the mash-up: only mash-ups were played, and you had to come dressed as a mash-up of two different people. with purple suit, big sunglasses, a symbol tattoo and a (faux) pet monkey, i went as a combination of prince and paris hilton (i was a big hit with the drunk college students.) we danced and danced and it was a lot of fun, although it made me realize i am done with that college world of big drunken parties and random hook-ups and vomiting unusual colors. i miss my college friends a lot, and i've had pangs of jealousy for the good times my still-in-school friends seem to be having, but the truth is, as i danced in my purple jumpsuit, laughing with my sister, i realized that i am an adult now. the next morning, they swapped stories about various night-before collegiate doings, and i listened, and smiled, because i remember those post-party debriefings, and it's just very far from what my life is now. and i really really like what my life is now.

anyways, we brunched, and sister gave me a tour of the snowy new england tufts campus and we took pictures with jumbo, their elephant mascot, and it was a pretty morning on a pretty campus, and then i packed up and came back home, to eat dinner with s and get ready to go to work the next day. it was a whirlwind trip, but just enough time to have fun and see a little more of my sister and her city. next time i want to visit boston in the spring, and stay while, to really get a feel for the place.

it's good to be home.

family part 1: next to normal

last week mk (my bwf), and my owf and i went out to the theater. i am ashamed to admit, as a degree holder in theater and a former actress (former not for long, hopefully), that i hadn't seen anything since i'd moved here four months ago. not for lack of loving it, but s isn't a big theater goer, and it's not as much fun for me to go alone. (though i have--i sobbed by myself through an incredible production of "long day's journey into night" a few years ago with vanessa redgrave, brian dennehy, phillip seymour hoffman and robert sean leonard.)

my owf made the plans (she's a big-time planner) and got us tickets to next to normal, a new off-broadway show about a dysfunctional family dealing with depression and a past death. it was a rock opera, which i have a love-hate relationship with. i love those big goofy rock numbers with their musical theater geeks belting out the lyrics, but i also have to laugh at them, doing their pigeon-toed graspy-hand song-emoting (you know the kind, it's the "rent" cliche, twisting their bodies in as they get more expressive, the minimalist rock opera opposite of the joyful arms-and-legs-splay of precursors like "oklahoma!") anyways, the music is good, good enough that songs still are popping into my head, and the acting was done very well by the husband and wife, and reasonably well by the daughter and her boyfriend and the dead son, and not very well at all by the doctor (who did not work at all as a rockstar in a fantasy sequence.) the set design was great, if a little spare, but every piece worked and helped to create some really interesting stage pictures. (i especially liked the song in which she is getting electro-shock therapy--told you it was about mental health--and she was standing straight up and it was as if she was on the operating table, and they other actors laid down so that the audience seemed to get the view from above.) the band was onstage, always a nice touch, especially since the pianist was really rocking out. i enjoyed it, it was a fun night at the theater.

it of course got me thinking about my own dysfunctional family. i adored my family, don't mistake me. i think they are great and wonderful and i love them and they love me, but i can also see them as human beings, and recognize their flaws, and i drive them crazy and they drive me crazy. i get along really really well with my parents, my mom is one of my best friends, and i can talk to them both about anything and everything. my sister and i have had huge fights, but i am in awe of her and her creative passion, and i don't believe she actually thinks i am boring. my family has struggled through a lot of things that have certainly helped define who i am and how i think about and respond to the world, including dealing with depression and mental health problems. so it was interesting to watch this kind of a show, to see such lives and problems lived out onstage. i felt that the show dealt with it as delicately as possible, not taking sides, not making crazy seem crazy. but it was still a little hard for me to watch, and i felt myself unwilling to discuss it with my audience mates, especially after my owf made a comment about how she didn't really understand why someone who suffers from depression would want to go off their medication even if they felt it was dulling the edges a little. (which i suppose goes back to the argument about creative types not wanting to medicate for fear of losing the creativity.) i think we always respond to what we can identify with onstage (unless it's pure spectacle, like those skyscraper puppets in "the lion king"), and i responded to a lot of the show in ways that i know my friends did not.

anyway, it got me thinking, that's all. and i had more to say, but i saw it awhile ago, and i've thunk my thinks already.