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.

top ten

i've been out of town for the holidays in d.c., but i head back to my beloveds (ny and the boy) tomorrow, just in time for new year's eve. in honor of the end of this year and the start of the next, i would like to present my top 10 list of things that happened this year. some are specific, and some are more general, and all are previously referenced in this here blog (which means you can go back and read more!) and everything meant something to me, whether meaningful or just fun. now we've had plenty of ado. and so . . .

10. i enjoyed all that restaurant week had to offer. i love a fancy night out to dinner and drinks, and restaurant week is a great way to experience places i might not normally be able to afford. i've marked my calendar for this year, too.

9. i heard a lot of new music. from hearing friends play downtown, to the mars volta at terminal five, to eric bibb on governor's island, to fred sherry plays zorn, we had a lot of great auditory experiences this year. i look forward to discovering more new music in 2009.

8. i watched men battle to eat the most hot dogs at coney island. i know it may sound strange that this was one of my favorite things, but the contest was hilarious, coney island was as weird and wonderful as i had expected, and the day was all-around perfect. i will always remember my view from the top of the wonder wheel.

7. there were some great celebrity sightings this year, including christian bale, tony danza and the johns (hodgeman and oliver) of comedy central fame. i promise i'm not a rubbernecker, but come one--there's something kind of cool about seeing someone famous right next to you.

6. i went to a number of museums, and saw courbet at the met, miro at moma, and the next generation at the whitney biennial. there's a lot of art in this city, and i aim to see more in 2009.

5. s and i enjoyed "spring awakening" and my mom and i were enthralled with "gypsy", among other shows. i saw some fabulous theater, and even got an autograph from miss patti lupone.

4. we got to see a game in the soon-to-be-old yankee stadium. all team loyalties aside, there was something special about going to a game in the same stadium my grandfather had visited. as new york grows and changes, the opportunity for that gets smaller and smaller (my g'pa lived here in the 20s through the 50s--this is a different city.) plus i am a huge nerd for baseball, so it was a great time for me. we'll see if i can convince s to go again this spring.

3. i've had some "only in new york" experiences, including seeing paul simon perform at "revenge of the book eaters" and crashing a vampire weekend after-party with some delightful new friends. for me, this is why i moved here, why i stay here--i don't always love the challenges, but i do enjoy the rewards.

2. i made a lot of new friends, like mk, aa, my neighbor, ls, and others, and got to reconnect with other people, including jay and zp. for me, it is the people that make the place, and i am thankful to have such wonderful people in my life here in the city.

1. we moved into our own apartment. we'd been in progressive co-habitation since college, and of course we lived with the boys in boyland when i first arrived, but this was the biggest step we've taken towards saying "you are the one i will be with for good." and it feels good; it feels great. even when things are not so perfect, there is no one in the world i would rather buy towels with, wake up to in the morning, cook dinner for on the weekends, share a tiny apartment with. in a year that often felt like growing pains, this was the easiest, best and most rewarding step towards adulthood.

thanks for following me down memory lane. what did you love about 2008? (oh, and if one thing you loved about 2008 was this business, magical new york, fear not: my new year's resolution is to blog more. yay!)

saturday night alright

saturday night was epic. jay and i started the night with dinner on st marks in the snow with a new friend. romantic yes, but good schlepping-to-the-subway weather no. this led to a cabbie who had no idea how to get to williamsburg, which is always an adventure, and eventually we got on the right track. we had headed cross-brooklyn to the lovely kat's ugly christmas sweater party (an excellent event last year as well.) we were first to arrive and first to leave--we couldn't stay forever, as the possibility of rap stars was calling my name, but we did get in some good goofy picture-taking in ugly christmas sweaters. thankfully jay's friend l-t was driving, so we were spared further cabbie distress, although there was some real celebration when we finally navigated our way to DUMBO. we had planned to attend the book party for "digging for dirt: the life and death of ODB" (did you know about my love for the dirt? it is bottomless), but we arrived too late for the party, probably just missing the RZA (i wish.) the party had moved on to drinks at superfine, where we took more goofy pictures, this time in l-t's wonder-woman jewelry. while deciding on our next move (bar? home? chicken fingers?), the girls got a call inviting us to party at vampire weekend’s sweet apartment “the boneyard” (i think it’s hilarious when people name their homes.) it was a little like being back in college--a small space packed with hip kids mixing vodka in red plastic cups, although clearly we hadn't gone to the same school. everyone there was a columbia grad except for the girl who asked us if we were also columbia grads, and sighed with relief when we said we were not. it was a fun mix, but by that point we'd had enough of the evening, and i had to work in six hours, so we called it a night. i (luckily) got a doorstop drop-off, and a pillow-side recap with s. and then promptly passed out.

it was one of those "anything could happen!" nights that i love. saturday night was why i moved to new york, for the possibility in every evening.

*when they turn this into a movie (which hello, totally gonna happen), there will probably be a few key differences: we'll probably start the night out with some simple goal, and then each event will lead to another, escalating throughout the film, teaching us things we never knew about ourselves and each other. also (and sorry s--steady long-term relationships do not a good "wild and crazy night" movie make), there will need to be some romance. probably one guy we see everywhere we go until we end up together at the end. also, i will not have to work the next day. totally cramped my style. anyways, i digress.

revenge of the book eaters

s and i felt very privileged to attend "revenge of the book eaters" last tuesday, the fundraiser for 826 NYC, the wonderful writing-tutor secret lair behind brooklyn superhero supply (which i have written about here.) i am on their mailing list, and got an email a few weeks ago about the fundraising event, and bought tickets immediately. (poor s, i emailed him afterwards and was like "i'm going! you can come too! give me $50!" i'm lucky he loves me and books.)

it was described on gothamist as a music-saturated nerdfest, and boy was it. ira glass opened the evening with two stories. i have to say, seeing ira glass while listening to ira glass is a wholly different experience, especially sharing it with so many other people. usually listening to ira glass is fairly intimate for me, as i mostly listen to podcasts on myPod, so it's just me on the train with ira in my ears. john oliver, of daily show fame, mc'ed the event, and was totally fantastic. we loved his comedy, and were laughing to tears at some points. two new musical acts followed, very good in their own right but not necessarily my taste. kyp malone (of tv on the radio) read a really sweet story by 826 students about monkey love. then my heart almost stopped because paul simon, my life-long musical love, came out and played "mrs. robinson" and "the boxer" and a brand-new song he had recently written and never. before. played. (be still, my heart!) it just felt so special. he played with a very talented man whose name i cannot remember (so sorry!) who played guitar, cello, and a haunting woodwind (maybe a pennywhistle? not usually described as haunting, i know.) it was wonderful. equally wonderful was the next performance, a surprise from angelique kidjo. she has an incredible voice that sent chills down my spine, and sang two songs, the second an african blessing that she had everyone join in on. it was so powerful, hearing hundreds of voices soar through town hall.

dave eggers and sarah vowell (president of the board of 826 NYC) came out to do some thanking of the attendees, performers and volunteers, and to make some palin jokes (oh sarah, you're everywhere!) then the piece de resistance, a new play by jonathan franzen, read by the author with bobby cannavale, patricia clarkson, parker posey, and tunde adebimpe. it was adapted from the new book state by state, about the fifty states, and it was a love letter to new york state. it was a really wonderful end to a truly magical new york evening.

the play's the . . . oh, you know

september was my no-fun month, so i made the decision (consciously or unconsciously) that october would be full of fun, and it has kicked off with a bang.

seeing a broadway show is on the us map, so thursday night s and i went to see "spring awakening" the 2007 tony award winning coming-of-age musical about love and rebellion. it was really fantastic, so full of energy and emotion. it reminded me of "rent" before it reached mythical status, when it was still new and invigorating. the songs and music have wonderful range as well; loud and exciting at times, soft and touching at others. (i'll admit it; i cried at the end.) the cast was really great as well, though it would have been something special to see the original broadway cast. almost every young actor was making their broadway debut, and their energy and joy in the opportunity were infectious. s got the soundtrack last night, and i can't stop listening to the songs.

i've been getting over a cold (well, i've had a cold for over a week now, so i hope i am getting over it), so we laid pretty low this weekend, working, running errands, attending a bake sale for obama. sunday night, however, i went to see "the seagull" with aa. i feel chekov is better appreciated with age. now that i am older and have experienced the slings and arrows of outrageous life, i can better understand the emotions simmering under the surfaces of petty interactions. it was a truly beautiful production, both the acting and the artistic direction. kristin scott thomas is wonderful as arkadina, pulsing with pent-up energy and anger and jealousy. her aging actress is almost pitiable in her need for affection and adoration, but too cruel in her treatment of her son and nina to inspire true sympathy. i was very impressed by carey mulligan's nina as well (even though my actor-brain was giving my own line readings and admiring her physicality), and liked some of the men. mackenzie crook, or gareth from the british office, was pathetic enough as konstantin, and i liked art malik as dr. dorn very much. in fact, only peter sarsgaard as trigorin seemed out of place, but i think that was more his spotty english accent than his acting. (although i recently read that chiwetel ejiofor did trigorin in the original english staging, and i wish wish wish i had seen that--i think he's a really fantastic actor.) the production values were also really wonderful, mostly spare with hints of elegance. aa and i were particularly jealous of arkadina's costumes, simple yet gorgeous, and i really liked the delicate, keening score. (oh, and lest you think i suddenly found a pile of money on the ground, i scored both tickets through the theater development fund, which provides discounted tickets to members who work for arts non-profits.) it won't be here for long, and i recommend it very highly.

seeing theater always makes me miss the stage. i spent my whole life identifying as an actress, and yet here i am in new york city, sitting behind a desk. and today the director of our theater program and i were talking about something and he said "oh, you like theater, don't you?" and it made me realize that i know and work with people who have no knowledge of whole parts of me. i have always been a performer, from the plays of emily dickinson's life i staged at age five, to improv and theater productions in college, and it is only now that i no longer have that creative outlet. it was theater that brought me to new york in the first place, when i came out here to attend nyu's tisch school of the arts, and i hate to think i could give up on it so easily. i can ignore the longing when i haven't seen any shows, or spoken recently with my "theater friends", but seeing these two very, very different and yet equally impressive shows has made me miss the theater more than i have in a long time. i need to find a way to express myself again.

tomorrow night s and i are headed out once more, so check back soon. i promise more posts this month, as things are looking up.

rock stars

as i have mentioned before, my friend my neighbor is in a band that plays around the city, and as friends, we all try to support him by going to concerts. (easier said than done--many nights i am more into pjs than djs. ha ha ha ha. just kidding.) last night, his band was playing a festival he had organized at fontana's on the lower east side. (fontana's was actually pretty nice inside, and much larger than anticipated. i did not enjoy wading through the garbage of eldridge street, however. but i do want to go back for the dance parties.)

mk and i dragged s along to have a drink before we paid the cover and went to hear the bands. (he had a late-night session, so he couldn't stay.) the band that played before them, king charles, was actually a lot of fun, very high energy, falling all over the stage. sad red is, as the name might imply, a little quieter than a band of old rock and roll covers, but they played an excellent show. i think they played new material, or at least it was new to me, and it was louder and faster, with more words, than i had remembered. (the last show we went to, though it is a little hazy in my memory, felt a lot sleepier.) i had a really good time. i also got to meet his dad, who you may remember i heard speak about his work at the national gallery back in june. i told him my dad was a long-time admirer of his work, and he thanked us for supporting his son. i love having friends in bands; i really like going to live music, and it's always more fun when i know someone on the stage.

the f wasn't running downtown from delancey (thanks, mta) so we had to take a cab. our driver had no idea how to get to park slope, so we tried to direct him. (i have little sense of direction, but after two gin and tonics, i was even more confused.) i finally got home around 1 am, which made this morning a little rough, but i only had to work a half-day, so it could've been worse. i had originally planned on visiting my sister in boston this weekend, but i had a long week and she has to work on sunday, so we decided we would plan for a future weekend when we would both be less tired and more available to do fun stuff. (plus she's coming to visit in a few weeks before she flies to uganda.) this means that instead, i get to sleep in tomorrow before s and i meet up with some friends to go to governor's island. more to tomorrow, then.

fun and money

last night was the much anticipated work happy hour. i left work early on wednesday feeling ill, but i managed to rally to see my coworkers thursday evening. i have never been a happy hour person, i don't actively seek out those kinds of deals, but when i can get a bombay sapphire and tonic in nyc for $3, i think it may be time to change. anyways, we started at a fratty bar on the UWS (beer pong, anyone?) and hung out with everyone we work with under the age of 40 (minus my neighbor, who had to work.) then aa, mk and i came home to brooklyn for some delicious greek food and wine at olive vine, which is a neighborhood favorite of mine. (their hummus is great, their grape leaves are excellent. and so cheap!) we got drunk and gossiped about work. and then we decided we weren't going to talk about the office, and instead talked about "the office" (s and i haven't seen the season finale, so don't tell!) and then talked about work some more, because really, it is inevitable. we also have a love of theater, food and brooklyn in common, but it was thursday and we just got a new coworker, so office it was. i walked aa to the train and myself home (i feel pretty safe in my neighborhood, although the apartment we are moving to feels even safer, so i am very excited for that!)

this is not necessarily a post about new york, but i will be doing it in new york, and you'll get to read about it later (and if you donate i'll give you a major shout-out on here) so here goes:

i know that everyone i know is broke and trying to make it here, and usually i am not one for begging for cash, but i am willing to ask when it is for a good cause. my work friends and i have formed a charity bowling team to help raise money for HIV/AIDS research through broadway cares. it's sort of like an old-fashioned jog-a-thon, but you don't have to sponsor my every pin bowled; if you go to the link i have so helpfully included, you can donate online. (you can also mail cash and checks to me in brooklyn. email me for my real live mailing address.) every $5 helps (although every $25 helps even more!) if you donate, i promise i will bowl my best in your name, and in the name of raising money for a very important cause. you can click on this link to donate $5, $10, $25 and $100,000,000 to the cause. i know it can feel like a lot, $5, but it would make a real difference to those working to find a cure. if you have ever read something i wrote and liked it, or laughed at it, or thought about it again, please consider donating. i promise even a little bit makes a big difference.

also, if you know of anyone looking for a way to donate to a great cause, please pass this link along. thanks! m

old new york, young new york

one of the things i like about my job is the variety of people i get to work with. i especially like the elderly people, because they are so comfortable with themselves. like marthann, who wears the most amazing outfits i have ever seen. like an all-denim outfit that included denim wings on her pants legs, and a necklace and earring set she had hand-made out of house keys. or joyce, who has worn heidi braids every day of her life, and probably cat's-eye liner for the last fifty years. or evelyn who gave us all copies of a cd she had made of herself singing french opera songs. she is my favorite, evelyn, in part because she always seems completely surprised that i recognize her, pleasantly surprised, and calls me things like "lovely" and "sweet". today she looked at my name plate and said "oh, lastname? is that how you say it?" i have one of those impossible-to-pronounce-unless-you've-heard-it-before surnames, and when she pronounced it perfectly, i was surprised and said that yes, that was it. then she asked if it was czech (and it is slovak), so i was even further surprised. she went on to tell me that she was israeli, and was shipped to prague when she was a young woman to work for a diplomat there. a real idiot, she said. she was pregnant and had to hide her pregnancy (or she would have lost her job), and he used to call her into his office every five minutes for various reasons. there was a safe in her office that she had to lock every time she stepped away, and every five minutes her little tiny pregnant self had to lock and unlock and open the door of this giant safe. "i had an easy delivery," she confided, "after getting up and lifting the safe so many times." she still remembers driving through czechoslovakia in the middle of a rainy night (which i told her was still more than i had seen of it.) now she lives in new york, with the daughter she put through college ("she has more education than i ever had" she told me) who chairs the german department at nyu. she almost stopped her story half way in, claiming i wouldn't want to hear her old story. i told her to remember more for the next time she came in.

tonight i met up with a good friend of mine from college, in town for a few days for an interview, at pianos on the lower east side. (it's been a real reunion week for me.) we talked the usual, discussing current relationships, jobs and living situations (that adult stuff), and he made me laugh like he always has. he is not seriously considering a move to new york, but it was good to see him and catch up, to pretend this is what it could be like if he moved here. (i think my goal is to eventually get everyone i care about to move out here so that i have my circle around me again.) i stayed out later than i usually do when i am alone (i'm a real wimp about that train ride home late), in part because i was sad to say goodbye to him. i miss people, ya know? but it is good to feel young and free in new york.

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!

new crush: gustave courbet

he's pretty good looking, right? the bohemian artist crush?

friday night i met s after work, the plan being to head up to the guggenheim to see the cai guo qiang show that i am desperate to see. but when we walked up to the museum, the line stretched out the door and down the block, and i just didn't want to peer past ten pairs of shoulders, even if i was paying what i wanted. being in the neighborhood and the proud owners of memberships (thanks again, mom) we decided to spend the evening in the met. they've got two really fantastic and different shows right now. we started with the gustave courbet show, a remarkable collection of paintings. we'd spoken briefly about courbet in my college survey courses (which tend to hit the "big points"), and we talked mainly about his social paintings, depicting the peasant classes in his hometown, never before the subject of serious paintings of great beauty (if included in art, they were idealized or background characters, which is what made realist scenes like the burial at ornans so shocking and spectacular.) so what i didn't know is how prolific courbet was, at realist scenes, portraits of friends and family, nudes, land and seascapes, images of the hunt, and my favorite, self-portraits. courbet was pretty handsome (hence the crush), but what i really loved about the portraits is that he liked to paint himself in character.

the desperate man has been incorporated into the show's logo, and stares you down as you enter. his eyes are mesmerizing (i promise the internet does this no justice), and while he looks crazed, he also radiates with purpose, a desperate man on a mission.

i also really liked the wounded man (i mean, he's an old-hollywood heartthrob, am i right?) this originally included a sleeping woman, and no wound, but when he broke up with then-girlfriend virginie, she got painted out of the picture and he shot himself with crimson paint. (ladies have never had an easy time in the art world.) aside from my new crush, it was a really interesting show, and i felt i developed a new appreciation for an artist i mainly knew from a throw-away joke in picasso at the lapin agile.

we followed courbet with the jasper johns: gray show, which was really beautiful and powerful in its simplicity. johns, a prolific artist fond of exploring the repetition of familiar images and motifs seen in new ways, is particularly interested in the color (or lack of?) gray, and this exhibit is full of paintings, assemblages and prints in the monotone. it's actually much more visually arresting than it might sounds, especially because johns is a master of so many different art-making techniques (i was particularly wowed by his prints on plastic--they have a really incredible translucency to them) and employs a variety of patterns and images. i think s was less impressed by johns (he really liked the courbets), but i was in modern art heaven.

post-museum, we headed down to e 6th street for some indian food. when i went to london a few years ago, we went to the east end for dinner one night (london's curry capital.) it was the only place where i have ever walked down the street as people tried, one after the other, to lure me into their restaurant. s had never experienced this before, so 6th st and its hawkers caught him a little off-guard. we got ambushed into one restaurant, and narrowly escaped with our lives when i realized it wasn't the one we wanted (seriously, they chased me shouting "miss! miss! this table!" as i ran for the door, politely refusing all the way) before finding some delicious food, chewed to the dulcet tones of a sitar player one table away.

saturday was our lazy day (s paid his taxes, i did crossword puzzles in the sunshine from the window) until we decided to go out with our roommates to union hall last night. have i written of my love for union hall? it's what i imagine a turn-of the century men's club to look like, with red velvet sofas and bookshelves to the ceiling, indoor bocce ball courts and painted portraits of shriners on the walls. we put ourselves on the list to play, but bocce is quite popular with park slope hip kids, and i was content just to watch. there was burlesque in the basement last night, but we stayed upstairs to talk and drink and talk some more. union hall feels cozy, like you're hanging out at the apartment of your coolest uncle. we went out early, and got home in time for me to go to bed and wake up ready to head to work this morning. it's about as perfect as a saturday gets, i think.

best weekend ever

some weekends, i think, are really fun and relaxing and you see people you like and have fun. some weekends are productive--you get some chores done and feel good. THIS weekend, however, was a fabulous combination of the two.

thursday: s and i went out to dinner at the delicious miracle grill, this cute little southwestern place in park slope. i like anything with tequila, but the limon fresco was particularly good. we had one of those big relationship talks over dinner, too, and i was further reminded of why he is so important to me, why this relationship is the best i've ever had (and ever will have.) i took him out for amaretto sours at 12th street bar and grill, which i like better in the daytime. (it's quieter, with fewer dudes watching basketball on tv.) but it's a nice spot, and it feels like a neighborhood place, which i like a lot. we ambled home to push a few epis of house m.d. and fell asleep.

friday: i had an appointment to get my taxes done, which i know sounds all fancy, but i had five jobs in three different states last year, and i am not so good with the math and the numbers, so i walked down to colacino partners and handed over my w2s. s had to bring me my checkbook, so in thanks i took him out to brunch at dizzy's, which is one of my favorite neighborhood spots, and usually packed full of local families. we ate and chatted and squeezed out to head home so that s could go to work. i did laundry (the machine is finally fixed) and then headed into manhattan to the park avenue armory (which is such a cool building) to meet up with a friend from work, bhr. he's also a former art history major, so we had a great time discussing the pieces in the whitney biennial. (unless you read this and go sunday, you've missed the chance to see some very cool stuff, at least at this satellite space.) i particularly liked the piece by mk guth, ties of protection and safekeeping (2007-08), an interactive installation, where the artist had people write on red flannel in response to the question "what is worth protecting?" (which of course provides a multitude of responses, some faux-profound like "children" and some silly like "catties are god's favorite creatures," which really made me laugh.) the flannel flags were then braided into long ropes with artificial hair and strung around a room, so that the pieces brushed your shoulders as you walked through. it looked like a strange set-piece, and i liked the feeling of standing in a room strung with wished-for protection. also worth my free admission was dj olive (gregor asch)'s triage (2008), a tented room with cots that we laid down on in order to listen to the soundscape. it was a totally different way to experience an installation, and i loved listening to the piece. (also, this middle-aged asian tourist was totally freaked out by a woman who had fallen asleep experiencing the piece. she didn't believe us when we told her the woman was real and just asleep, and got really close to her, just to check, and then jumped back in fright and ran away when the sleeper turned her head. then the woman took pictures. it was hilarious.) last night was the co-worker park slope happy hour no. 2, as organized by myself and ls, another work friend. bhr and i took the train to bar tano, a totally cute bar on a not so totally cute corner. my owf, her boyfriend (whom i had not yet met, but really liked), my neighbor, his roommate and ls were all there, and we had a nice evening talking work and non-work. (i also had the most delicious drink ever, the tano, which is muddled orange, whiskey, triple sec and some other things. to-die-for, i thought. i know this now sounds like the weekend of acohol, but it wasn't really.) after a while, and being joined by another co-worker, we decided to get mexican food and hang out at our apartment. the six of us converged on boyland and ate, drank and played wii for a few hours. i really really like the group i've met at work. the young contingent, at least. everyone is a lot of fun, creative and smart and looking to find new ways to hang out. (next up: basketball on the roof playground.)

saturday: s and i spent our morning in ritual, eating bagels, drinking coffee and watching tv. (i love our saturday morning tradition. i look forward to it every week.) i mentioned i wanted to clean up the kitchen before we did anything else, and my off-handed comment turned into an intense afternoon of spring cleaning. i scrubbed the kitchen and did four more loads of laundry, s cleaned and organized the bedroom, and together we tackled the living room. (the bathroom is its own beast, to be done sometime this week.) it feels like a new apartment (almost), and i took great delight in opening the windows and letting in some fresh air. now i am blogging and he is talking to his parents, and soon we will settle down for the night.

i love getting to do new york things, like experiencing some art or getting a drink with co-workers. but i also like doing things that remind me that this is where i live, and this weekend made me feel really at 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.

"gutterball" sounds totally inappropriate

but in a fun way!

last night i met s, his workmates, the roommates, and eventually some college friends of the roommates at the gutter bar, which, as it sounds, is a bar with bowling. which is the best idea ever in my opinion. i LOVE bowling. like a lot of things i find hilarious and a lot of fun, i am super bad at bowling (which generally ups the hilarity on my part, and the eye-rolling on the part of my companions.) i don't necessarily want to get better, either. i've had lots of people try to coach me and it's a no-go. i am particularly bad without bumpers. oh yeah, and after a few beers.

we took the train after work, and had to wander through williamsburg, which to me usually looks like a set from a movie about hip kids living down-and-out lives. which i guess it is, and is why it appeals so much to people who are not me, who hyperventilates about walking alone down streets of what look like abandoned warehouses. i mean, i wasn't alone last night, but still. anyways, the gutter bar looks like another abandoned warehouse until you get inside and then it looks like a sweet bar. four of us were earlier (by about two hours) than everyone else, so we drank beer and told jokes and watched the place fill up. the bar and lanes are divided by old windows (it sort of looks like an old auto shop) and they have eight lanes, which means there is a bit of a wait. which also means that you get progressively more likely to be bad at bowling as the pitchers flow. there was something like eight or nine of us by the time our number got called, so we decided to bowl in loose teams. well, s and i bowled as an acceptable team, r. love and camp bowled alone, i think cole and brian also went solo, and dsil (my other roommate) occasionally let some cute girl throw it into the gutter. we were all uniformly pretty bad (i mean, no one even broke 100), but it was pretty hilarious watching us. i kept waiting to throw a ball that would skitter cartoon-style across the lanes and down someone else's gutter. i really need those bumpers, man. and speaking of bumps, i am the dumbest. i bowled some horrible bowl, and slank back to my seat and, trying to be funny, went to put my head in my hands and instead cracked my head against the chair. it hurt so bad that i actually cried. in the bar. (i have never cried in a bar before. i'm not that kind of girl.) i awoke this morning with a doozy of a bruisey (ha ha ha! i made that up this morning. so maybe there was some kind of head trauma.) but it makes me laugh now, not cry, so i think i'm gonna be ok. anyways, these are the kind of nights i need more of. i had a lot of fun, talking and drinking and laughing and meeting new people and bowling and making a fool of myself.

i worked six days this past week, swapping friday for sunday, so i am now in the midst of a glorious three day weekend. hooray for presidents! which means that today is like a free day, so it is totally ok that i slept in, ate a bagel, watched project runway, took a nap, took a shower, and am now sitting here, reading and blogging. s is working until 9-ish, and then i think we are going to a movie. tomorrow we are going to the whitney, i think (unless we go the free route and hit up the met) and monday my friend's band is playing at the knitting factory and i have promised my attendance. these three days promise to be lovely, so i in turn promise more updates. do you have weekend plans?

date night

i know you're totally sick of me talking about what i've gotten to eat recently, but restaurant week ends tonight, so bear with me.

i love my boyfriend. a lot. (so much so that i teared up on the train last night as i headed down to meet him, thinking about how much i love him.) but he works crazy hours and i have a weird weekend, so i don't get to see him as much as i might want to, so i was extra excited when we made plans to go out to dinner at the mercer kitchen last night to celebrate our three year anniversary (technically on monday, but i have a feeling we'll make it through the weekend.) i left work early and stood on the street waiting for him. it still makes me smile to see him walking towards me, makes me smile even larger to see his smile when he sees me. he's a handsome boy, my boy, and we looked good last night. maybe like we even belong in some fancy soho restaurant. mercer kitchen feels special (even without tablecloths, as s teased me.) we sat downstairs, below ground, in a cozy dining room with bricked walls and mirrors and candles and soft conversation and single lillies in vases and wonderful cucumber-mint martinis. we toasted our three years together with speeches and smiles. for dinner (i know you're reading for the food, not the love) we forewent the restaurant week menu and both had the butternut squash soup with black trumpet mushrooms. they bring you a plate with a bowl on it with tiny green onions and mushrooms and cubed squash in still-life and then they pour the pureed soup into your bowl table-side from a silver samovar. soup never felt so special! (also: absurdly delicious. oh my gosh. two great soups this week.) s was a major fan of his roasted chicken and mashed potatoes ("almost as good as grandma's", he pronounced, high-praise from a boy who often talks about his grandma's mashed potatoes) and i enjoyed my thin italian pizza. it was a lovely dinner.

and this is how i know we are perfect for each other: we decided to skip dessert to make it home in time to see the season premiere of lost. it took forevs, between the r train and its bajillion stops on the way to the f (though we got to hear the sweet sounds of the subtations! i love them! and they gave s fist pounds for his girlfriend! who gave them a dollar.) we were invited to various viewing parties, but my wicked cold (thanks, workday fever) kept us in, which led to some last-minute panic. the hd projector, for all its magic, is not attached to any kind of television cable, so we had to take camp's tv out of another roommate's room and using RABBIT EARS (which had to be adjusted and foiled and ohmyGOSH this is 2008 and we have an hd projector and we are watching tv with rabbit ears), we were able to get our picture. and s got dessert in the end (i had prepared these little gems for the occasion, albeit with a few changes.) it was a wonderful night.

i still have the cold, however, and have already sneezed on my blanket, my hands, and my sweatshirt. don't worry, i washed all of them.

a little local flavor

here i am with another update on the restaurant week front: delish. to the max. tonight i went out with mk (my bwf) and a (my owf) to mesa grill, which is a bobby flay take on southwest tex mex. i love a prix fixe dinner--i would never order an appetizer and an entree and a dessert, but tonight i got to try all sorts of deliciousness. mk and i started with a black bean soup that was not too thick but not too soupy, with different salsa toppings, a little spicy and a lot good. (a had a fry fread--i love! taquito which looked great.) my entree was a chile relleno stuffed with goat cheese and acorn squash with a roasted fig sauce. so good, although a little rich. mk had chicken and mashed potaotes (with a southwest twist) and a had some mango salsa'd fish with a risotto. dessert was the best sweet thing i have eaten in a long time: crunchy vanilla profiteroles. a puff pastry with vanilla bean ice cream and crunchy vanilla caramel and a spicy mexican chocolate sauce. ohmiGOSH so amazing. i would eat it again right now. it's a good thing we live so far away. dinner was made even better by the conversation. i really really like the girls i work with; they are truly fantastic women, funny and smart and really great. i just feel so lucky to have found friends in the workplace who i like so much outside of the workplace. we talked about work and men and books and theatre and the dentist, and it was just a lot of fun to have such a great evening.

now i am home, a little sleepy thanks to 1991's best margarita. but i do want to relay these two fantastic overheards.

friday night we went out for some tv-watching treats and the corner store opposite the local bar was open. after selecting ginger ale (and ok, some ice cream, it's my weakness) we were getting ready to pay when these brooklyn neighborhood guys came in, drunk and loud and having a good time. they were friendly with the guy behind the counter (mohammed called "mo") and were yelling at each other and at mo, especially "joey cheeseburgers" who loves, you guessed it, cheeseburgers. and who was really upset that they were all out of cheeseburgers. then this enormous guy in a coat with a fur collar came in, and they started shouting about the godfather, and that the godfather was here and "hey yuppies, don't be afraid of the godfather" (which sounded like "gawdfahthah".) though we were the only people in the store, it did not occur to me until stephen said later, that we were the godfather-fearing yuppies in question. what, i don't look like a girl from the neighborhood?

also overheard this weekend in windsor terrace (in my building, no less.)
guy: so this is my friend dave huspah (some last name that sounds like chutzpah), but we just call him chutzpah.
girl: what's chutzpah?
guy: you know, chutzpah. it's yiddish.
girl: oh, yiddish, is that like british but not really?
guy: seriously? (she doesn't say anything.) no, yiddish is the language spoken by eastern european jews (he gives a very intellectual explanation of yiddish and its origins, which i didn't catch all of.)
girl: oh, so you're jewish? welcome!
she then proceeds to tell a long story about a jewish friend who celebrated chanukah (which she pronounced like the chan in "change") and found a cracker and got $200 and "made out like a bandit". which then devolved in a story about make-out bandits (who are, i guess, those who will make out with anyone.) ah, the things overheard.

part of your world

i am so excited to have new readers and commenters; i take great joy in inspiring a love of this city in others.

so remember when i said we are like boring old people and never do anything? well not anymore, mister. yesterday s asked me if i wanted to go out that night and i said "yes, yes and yes!" (we do things all the time, i just needed a plan to look forward to, as i worked another ten hour day.) after work, taking the train down i said to mk "i am just so excited to see my boyfriend some place other than our apartment." after feeling like this week's refrain at work was "i am so sorry about ...", i was looking forward to the evening. (so much so that in preparation, i ratted my hair. like i was going out in 1987. whatever. my hair does not achieve volume of its own volition. also i put on a headband. i am not so wild.)

i took the v downtown to the LES. the actual lower east side, not the virtual lower east side (which i find totally hilarious and antithetical to what the LES actually is. whatever, mtv. keep reaching your youth demographics.) i met s, camp and ricardo love (another roommate, now making his blog debut, i believe) at rockwood, which has a teeny tiny bar and a larger room with a stage where live music played all evening. we did not leave the bar, however, as we went there to hang out with the bartender, a friend of my roommates. (can i just say, it is way more fun being friends with the bartender. she makes you amazing key lime pie martinis, and it barely costs you. excellent.) we sat around, drinking and talk and laughing for about three hours. and because new york is the biggest small town in the world, we ran into r. love's one true love on the street corner. i love when that happens; it makes you feel like new york is just the right size, big enough to get lost when you want to but no so big that you'll be lost forever. and then, since none of us had eaten dinner before going out (sorry, mom) we went and ate pizza. and just as last weekend i was free pizza pretty (i will tell that story sometime, i'm sure) this weekend i was free garlic knot pretty. such a score!

i sang and danced on the train home (to the chagrin of my dear s--sorry, sweets.) i didn't mean to make a fool of my self, but r. love was singing disney tunes, and how can a girl not join in on little mermaid songs? we made it home and cuddled our way to sleep, and now i am eating a brunch pb+j and getting ready to meet my owf for a restaurant week lunch at aspen. (i am link-crazy today, huh?) so, blog, what did you do last night?

much music

things i like to do:
sleep
shop
eat
take in some culture
things i got to do yesterday:
all of the above.

yesterday was wonderful. i had the day off (thank you, dr. king) and so s and i woke up in a sleepy tangle at the glorious hour of 11am. we met mk and my owf for lunch at dizzy's (the "finer diner") for delicious brunch ("but you didn't have brunch!" said s, when i said how much i like going to brunch this morning on the train. ah, but i like the idea of brunch.) no work, and yet we still found ourselves together and heading to the upper west side for a piano marathon at merkin concert hall. it was such a wonderful way to spend the afternoon. stephen flaherty (broadway/film composer) opened the performance with some of his own pieces and a fats waller tune, and then our boss played a rachmaninoff piece that was really fantastic: brash, emotional, beautiful (a virtuoso piece indeed.) it was incredible watching him play; i love observing people in their element, and in this case, piano truly is his passion, and you can absolutely see it. he looks more at home at the piano than the computer keyboard. he was followed by this wonderful jazz pianist, jonathan batiste, who played his own compositions and was really fantastic, stomping his feet and getting the crowd clapping along. i was completely impressed with him and his joy for the music; again i say i am utterly inspired when watching someone at their best. the hall was filling up so we left to watch "piece for 100 metronomes" (literally 100 metronomes get set off and you listen to them wind down to completion) and enjoy some champagne in the vip lounge. i should add "hanging out in the vip lounge" to the list of things i like to do.

post-piano we went shopping. there is a banana republic across the street from where we work and i tell you, it is hard not to shop everyday. i found a fantastic gold dress on sale sale sale. and then i bought a magazine holder, for my newly re-arranged room (and cleaned! i came home last night and s had completely reorganized our closet and i was so excited and in love i couldn't believe it!) and then i went home and ate an apple and listened to boyland's dating strategies. they refuse to listen to my opinion, even though i am a) a girl and b) in a relationship. but no, they're right, they probably do know better. then i did laundry (which despite being lazy about, is also on my list of favorite activities. so satisfying to have all my clothes clean and hangered or folded!) and then i went to bed. and yes i am now blogging at work, but it is my lunch break (though i have already had to answer four different questions.)

till next time.

come for the music, stay for the dancing

last night, s and camp (my roommate) and i went to see the mars volta in concert. i have to admit (and i sincerely apologize, mars volta fans from whom i stole the experience, as this was apparently a sold-out show), i was not particularly well-acquainted with their music. in fact, despite the fact that s worked on their album this summer, and by worked i mean helped out in the studio while they listened to tracks and got stoned (oh yeah, that's right, my boyfriend had to get pizza for omar and cedric), i had really not ever listened to their music. but i love going to concerts, especially of artists i don't know very well. i feel like it is a totally different way to get to know new music; better than downloading, you get an experience, a feeling, in addition to new songs. plus i love being a part of a crowd at a concert, excited to hear what will come next, always surprised, always pleased. so, the mars volta. they played at terminal 5, which is a very cool venue, kind of industrial, without feeling dirty or scary-hip. there was no opener, just some el mariachi-esque horns as they entered the stage in the dark. they pretty much never stopped playing either. it was a lot to take. we had stationed ourselves on the top level at the very front, with a bar to lean on and a perfect view of everything. the volta (which i guess i am cool enough to call them now) are probably the most energized band i have ever seen live. they never stop playing, never stop moving. that was by far my favorite part. and cedric is insane. i mean, probably totally insane. his dancing is best described as "child sex marionette". in that, like a child, he acted on every impulse, including climbing the amps and the bongo drums and the other performers, he crawled through omar's legs as he played guitar, he crashed the cymbals and threw his mic around. then he would do these overtly sexual hip thrusts and shimmies and weird belly-dancing come-hither arms. but mostly he just looked like a puppet being thrown across the stage, arms and legs jangling, stumbling and stopping and jerking and going. it was incredible. and he was so damn skinny, probably because he never stops moving. ever. the only time i didn't see him move was after he jumped off the amps and walked offstage, only to emerge moments later down in the front of the audience. (then he pulled the mic into the audience with him and sang from there.) it was incredible. also, he had enormous, poodle-y girl hair. omar looked like a robot on fire, jerking around the stage while playing guitar, stiff and full of bursts of energy.

i could have watched them for hours, but unfortunately we had to work this morning, the both of us. i think they played another hour after we left (s: "didn't they know we were gone?"), but i was sleepy and still fighting this cold-that-will-not-die. also, it was absurdly loud, to the detriment of the wall of noise they were trying to create. we caught the train home, cuddled in the corner. (i need this boy to get a day job, so we can have more nights out like this. i really like my boyfriend a lot, like a lot, and i hate that he works most nights. i am more selfish about time with him than anything else.) on the f train home, a man got on with a guitar and played a heartbreaking, quiet, simple, spanish-english version of a song i always loved singing back in my church-goin' days. it was such a peaceful end to the noisy night. at 10:55 pm, we just barely missed late night and the train let us out at our stop. we giggled the whole walk home, my s and i, arm in arm down the street.

$15 worth of awesome

i promised a weekend update (because i'm magical-newyork and you're not), so here we go.

saturday s and i began with our new tradition of bagels and coffee. (i am easily coaxed out of a warm saturday morning bed with the promise of terrace bagels.) after brunch, we took the train uptown to grand central station to go to the holiday market. this trip was not without adventure. there is no easy way to get to the 6 from the f, so we went above ground to walk to the bleecker street stop. not being familiar with this stop, we got a little confused in the light of day (and had to pull out a map. which i hate. i pretended like i didn't know him when it seemed as though someone might be looking.) it was a pity we had to get off the f, one of my most favorite subway stories happened. a man got on with us, the "mta volunteer santa," and sang us songs like "rockin' around the christmas tree/have a merry christmas now/you'll get some presents/we're having fun/in the sun . . . merry christmas!" he then harassed the man who went to sit next to a woman, saying "you can't sit next to her. she isn't interested in you, she's taken. once women get married, they start wearing pants." (i was wearing jeans. what could this mean?!) then he started talking about how he didn't need a woman since his wife had died nine year earlier. he just went a got a massage once a month and that was all the female contact he needed. he was crazy for sure, but his whole "job" as santa was to bring people together and enjoy themselves on the train, and as i looked around, people were laughing and smiling at each other, and we started talking to the guy next to us. so i guess crazy santa was doing his job. the grand central holiday market was a bit of a bust, kind of expensive and not much variety (i appreciate crafts as much as the next girl, but i still didn't want to pay $50 for a trashcan.) the bryant park market was more fun, although much colder. i found something for my dad and s picked up a gift for his brother, so it was well worth it. we took pictures in front of the tree and marveled that people would stand in line for hours to ice skate. then it was time to head home.

saturday night my friend jay invited me to an ugly christmas sweater party thrown by kat. apparently these are all the rage among hip young things; while shopping for my amazing sweater at burlington coat factory (so much more than great coats), the only other people christmas-sweater-shopping has similar looks of disdain on their mid-twenties faces. i should also note that i had read kat, and therefore knew about her, in a blog way. i am always hesitant to link to blogs i like if i don't know the person (except for clink; everyone feels like they know clink), but now i can add kat, because she's really funny and smart. in person and in writing. my roommate camp came with me and jay (s had to work.) we looked pretty ridiculous (their sweaters even had bells on the zippers.) and it was a lot of fun. we went to a couple of bars in the west village, and i got to meet some new people, and camp and i eventually made our way home in the freezing sleet. it was the most festive thing i have done so far, other than fluff out my small pink tinsel tree.

this week was primarily filled with work and falling asleep while watching movies. today i was teased by my coworkers for looking "french." when i got dressed this morning, i put on tights, cropped pants, flats, a top and a cardigan, and a beret. none of these elements alone looked particularly anything, but when i finally saw myself in a mirror (while shopping on my lunch break with a), i had to admit i looked exceedingly parisien. as m put it, "you look like carrie in those final episodes of sex and the city." which is basically the best compliment ever. so, merci beaucoup. tonight i baked cookies. now we are going to watch project runway. i have a really nice life and i know it.