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  words not fun to hear when hungover and looking down the barrel of a ten hour work shift (what bright side?!)

skinny white-boy manager: what happened, where've you been already, what happened?

me: sorry, late night. (ahembottleofvodkaahem)

skwbm: okay, listen, the ice machine's broken, the heater's broken--

me: WTF??

skwbm: --and it's just you and jamie today, i have to go to court.

me: i don't speak spanish.

skwbm:

me: and JAMIE doesn't speak ENGLISH.

skwbm:

me: okay, never mind, i have my spanish/english dictionary-- wait a sec-- court?

skwbm: some -- ah -- violations. i'll be gone all day.

me:

skwbm: oh, look on the bright side. it's freezing in here. at least you don't have to worry about what's left of the ice melting!

  ¶ 7:06 PM

  pirates!

sure, gwen stefani's sold out since her days singing backup for sublime, but her rich girl video makes me smile: the fusion of queens borough bling, japanese schoolgirl charm, vintage pirate smashing-pumpkins-esque glamour and rastafari hats makes for great costumes . . . plus, she managed to turn a song from Fiddler on the Roof into a candypop chart-topper. What goes on in this girl's head, I wonder??

side note: Queens has 2 million people and is supposedly the most diverse place in the world. I heart my borough.  ¶ 2:36 PM

  bright eyes

A blizzard hit New York City yesterday. I trudged through the ice trying to find cheap coffee to warm my gloveless hands and keep me awake long enough to get back to Queens. Finally seeing a trembling red OPEN sign, I swam towards it. I stopped short when I saw Conner Oburst’s picture slathered all over the front of the cracked, frozen windows of the Polish deli.
How different my life had been when I had last seen that face! For one thing, I had been warm. I had been in Los Angeles. My mind had been full of theology then, my stomach full of food, my pockets full of dollars, and my eyes full of stars.
It had been the spring of senior year. Three of my little catholic school friends had scored tickets to see Bright Eyes, and asked me to come. We piled into someone’s soccer-mom van, stopped to get beer, and drove the forty minutes from our tiny catholic school to Los Angeles. I could still get away with drinking in the afternoon on a weekday then; it was college, and things that seem shockingly alcoholic now were a necessary part of freewheeling rebellion then.
By the time we showed up at the Wiltern, I had a good Christian buzz. “Isn’t it interesting,” I philosophized dunkenly to my friends, as we took up the tail end of the long line of hipsters, “That in LA kids wear shirts that say Omaha and Kansas, whereas in Kansas kids wear shirts that say LA or New York?” “Yes, Marian,” they quieted me. I knew they were rolling their eyes, so I proclaimed my desire to get backstage. They laughed at me, turned my wish into a triple-dog dare.
What could I do? My dignity was on the line. I seized someone’s beer, chugged it, and searched the theater walls for black doors. Finally I hit on the right secret passage, and passed through it into an alley filled with trash, flowers, and rock stars.
Conner was propped against a wall, smoking an American Spirit. I seized the opportunity to interview him:

Me: Do you have a light?
Conner: Sure.
(It takes us awhile to connect his flame to the tip of my cigarette, but we get it eventually.)
Me: How drunk are you?
Conner: Very drunk.
Me: What’s something you believe in?
Conner: Love.
Me: Good answer. (I kiss him on the cheek and leave him to the sex-starved roadies.)


I paid for my coffee in the deli with frozen nickels, three thousand miles and half a year away from the alcoholic sweetness of Los Angeles. Outside, a red-faced baby cried. I looked at Conner’s picture on the storefront, his face smeared with icy slush. “Well, now that we’re in New York, what do you believe in?” I asked the picture. It did not respond.
  ¶ 1:05 PM

  unreal

i can't wait to see this.  ¶ 7:36 PM

  pants

christopher walken and cowbells: what more could you ever ask for?

corollary: suddenly i want a mix CD with cowbell tracks only. there would be a lot of beastie boys . . .

help me out here people, who else showcases the cowbell?  ¶ 11:23 AM

  atlantic f%$#ing city

it was a rough night, but we won money.  ¶ 8:12 PM

  more pros and cons of new york

con: movie tickets go for $10 a pop. at least.

pro: pirated DVDs, sold in subways by asian women and children, are $5, or if you haggle, $4-$2.

we're watching appleseed right now. it's the only movie we've ever seen to get a zero rating on rotten tomatoes, but it's also by the same guys who did ghost in the shell. the tagline says, "if you can't kill yourself, build a machine to do it."

i heart anime.  ¶ 7:23 PM

  dialect

in new york, people are constanty asking "what happened?" they use this phrase all the time, for the smallest things, sometimes even for nothing. if i call, "hey, so-and-so!" instead of saying "what?" or "sup?" or "waddaya need?" the response is invaraibly, "what happened?!"

nothing happened, i just wanted to know what time it is.

this reaches the most paranoid heights. i'll just be standing there, staring out the window, and my young manager will come up and demand to know what happened. i stare at him, amazed. "dude," i say. "there isn't anything wrong. really. everythings fine. nothing happened."

as my roommate just pointed out, from a purely literal standpoint, it makes more sense to ask what happened than to ask what's up-- at least no one's going to say "the sky. duh."

plus, i think this dialect goes with the new york way of life. in a city where big things are constantly happening, what seems paranoid to me is just reality for them. after all, today our main soda supplier got shot in the stomach, and now we have to go through someone else.

  ¶ 6:03 PM

  rip

austin ferrier has shot his blog in the mouth.

so let's have a moment of silence please.

(isn't he a bastard?)  ¶ 8:27 PM

  this year, treat yourself. x10, and around the world.

and you thought donnie darko was moody and existential.

1. Noi. iceland. weird, beautiful, spiritual. these people brought us bjork and sigur ros, after all. this movie wound up in our apartment because of josh mayer's moxie example.

2 & 3. A Matter of Dignity. greece. rich girl, proud parents, web of lies, little children in car accidents, card games, cigarettes, greek ruins, dramatic scenes in drawing rooms shakespeare would envy. see also: A Girl in Black.

4 & 5. Dinner Rush. new york. as anyone who has worked in food service knows, the best drama is in the kitchen. this movie is wicked good, as they say in queens. (translation for west coast: "hella good.") see also: Big Night, which is lucinda's favorite movie.

6. After Life. japan. is it a movie about movies or a movie about heaven?

7. The Dreamlife of Angels. france. they couldn't decide who to give the best actress award to at the cannes film festival in 1999. it was a tie between both leads in this movie, and they both won. john marie said it had a lot of zen. and for what it's worth, if i had to pick a favorite movie of all time, this would be it.

8. Rebecca. england. the best hitchcock i know of. can't find it on dvd, unfortunately. the main character doesn't have a name, and rebecca doesn't have a face. happens to be armani's favorite film.

9. The Misfits. the wild, wild west. arthur miller wrote it for his girl, marilyn. she plays a newly divorced young woman who's psyche is gradually torn apart by drunken cowboys and their emotional problems. anyone who ever drank at the pit will appreciate more than one scene of wilderness debauchery. arthur and marilyn were divorced by the time the picture was finished, and clark gable died soon after that.

10. Wings of Desire. germany. wim wenders works wonders. my mother loves this movie, and my mother hates movies. bonus- nick cave and the bad seeds play themselves.
  ¶ 6:41 PM

  signs of the apocalypse

1. the war
2. tsunami
3. seldom and i have been sober for three nights in a row

it's bad. we're very irritable. it occured to me that when we're having screaming matches and the neighbors finally call in the domestic disturbance, the NYPD will be very surpised when we tell them the problem was not that we were drunk, but that we were sober.  ¶ 6:56 PM

  resolve

1. to stop saying "i'm so tired." i've noticed that only really tacky characters in movies say this.

2. to drink less. so i can enjoy it more.

3. to keep smoking. it's so good for you.

4. to put on a couple pounds. the starving artist thing is not really that cool.

5. to stop doing such obviously exhibitionist things such as posting new years resolutions on the internet . . . .   ¶ 11:01 AM

  gossip

matt peterson and mary giesla are engaged.

he proposed in central park.

they make a really cool couple.
  ¶ 9:51 AM