Always with a drink, always gesticulating for emphasis, per the newspaper of record

Here's an accidental picture of me in the Times.

An Open Letter to Padma Lakshmi

Just because I really like your Top Chef show and follow it religiously, and for that matter like all of those Bravo reality shows, as I may be constitutionally required to do so being both a resident of New York and a New School student (Inside the Actor's Studio was filmed in the same building I teach in did you know?), does not mean that you can eye-fuck my date for the sketch comedy show while I am standing right next to him. Twice.

Letterman

If you live in New York - and you're me - you regularly have this conversation with friends:

"We should go to Letterman/Conan/The Daily Show/Colbert/The View/SNL"
"Yeah"
"How do you get tickets?"
"I don't know. But we should go."
"Yeah."

Well, today I went. And the theatre is smaller IRL, and it takes an army of 20-year-old interns to process the crowd, and Rupert G is wonderfully boring IRL, and the bass player was exceptionally twitchingly coked out and messed around with his blackberry throughout Robert Downey Jr's entire interview, and the coolest part was when they were setting up the stage for Alicia Keys' performance and all the backdrops were raised and you got a peek into the Late Show garage: plain pine shelves with a hundred forgotten props, an office chair, a tricyle, a wheelbarrow...

Bluestockings

The other day I was in mid-drunken rant when I realized that all the exhibitions I had wanted to see at PS1 had closed the day before, and got really depressed. It's that thing I've mentioned before about never going to stuff here because there's a ton of options (catch that, Kate?), but you have a routine and that routine is bed, work, coffee, books, class, drunk, bed. So for the thousandth time I remade that resolution to get out there and do stuff, and went to see Avi Lewis (hot Canadian radical) talk at Bluestockings (radical New York bookstore). Back in high school, when I had such a big fat crush on him, I never would have been able to converse with him on consumer debt.

omg, people on the streets of Brooklyn are so articulate and good-looking

New celebrity sighting total: 2

Steven van Zandt - also known as "Little Steven" and "Silvio Dante" and "Townes van Zandt" - came in and bought flowers at the place where I always buy coffee. I'm pretty sure it was him. If it wasn't him, there are in fact two human beings out there driving a Lamborghini and wearing a really long do-rag.

Look at me

What with Kate & Mike in Africa and Nicole Kidman (?) back in Australia, as of this week I've finally been hit by all five continents.

(Disclaimer: that's a six weeks' worth of hits in that chart, not one. I had to do that because I didn't receive a hit from every continent in a single one-week span. So I had to expand the date range. So basically, my blog's not as popular as it looks here. I didn't mean to imply that I got all these hits in a week. If you look closely, it's not actually implied by what I said. But still, not bad, right? That's kind of a lot of hits. Although I think a lot of that is random one-time visits from the blogger homepage, when I update my blog. It's still exciting, though. Of course, if I really wanted lots of people to read my blog I would give the url to people in New York. Like, besides Suz. Or I could put my webpage on my commenter profile on Gawker. But you know, it's hard enough to find a voice you're willing to exercise to the broad spectrum of people you know back home, including your mother; adding people here to the mix - people who are with me when I have the experiences I blog about - just seems like it would make me feel hemmed in. I mean, those people could call me out on all the subtle massaging of the truth that one does in order to turn out good copy. Mind you, it's not any more than most people do in a casual retelling of a story to a friend, but still - I've become more and more of a Kantian with regards to lying.)

You know who you are, vol. 2

A propos of that conversation we were having, I present my compilation of

THE VAGINA IN POPULAR CULTURE

Century 21

Friday the city was innundated with 6 to 8 inches of snow cone material, which cancelled all flights and made the streets a mess. I hung out with my neighbours whose spring break plans were rapidly falling apart. The next day, I went with one of them to Century 21, which is a big department store down the street that sells discount designer stuff, and as we were standing outside finishing our lattés (cuz the security guards wouldn't let us into the store with them), a giant chunk of hardened snow cone material fell off a high ledge and smashed to the ground inches from my friend's head.

The store calls itself New York's best kept secret, but the bargain hunting hordes reminded us why, as residents, not to mention as students with copious free time, we should NEVER GO SHOPPING ON A SATURDAY. Among the horde though was Patricia Field, the clothing designer behind Sex & the City. Very skinny, fire engine red hair, very wrinkly, dressed 20 years too young. My friend recognized her and told her she was a big fan. Patricia Field told her to fuck off. Well, not in so many words.

Dangerous Nevermind

My job teaching has been cancelled due to lack of enrollment in the class. But the joke's on them: now I have a social security number. I can get a cellphone contract without putting down a $500 security deposit. And collect veterans' benefits.

Yesterday I went to my corner grocery store and noticed that the street was blasted with floodlights. I have learned that this generally means that a scene is being filmed. Now, I'm not one for celebrity sightings. When Sheryl Crow checked in with me at the airport, I asked for her name. Tom Selleck was pointed out to me after I bussed his table. And I only noticed Hilary Swank had been sitting in the lounge for an hour when she came up and asked me for Corn Pops. So god knows how many celebrities I elbow past on a daily basis in New York. Anyhoo, the streets were lit up when I went to the Jubilee, and I didn't bother to see who was filming. But a few hours later when I went back to the store with a friend, she suggested we take a look. Lo and behold, there was Chris Noth filming a scene for Law & Order: Lawfuller and Orderier, or whatever incarnation of that series he's on. We stood ten feet away from him, which was weird because we could see the acting but not hear it at all. He trash talked some perp, then threw him in the back of a squad car. IRL, he is not baggy-eyed or jowl-y at all.

Celebrity sighting!

The other day, I was walking through Washington Square Park on my way to borrowing some books from the well-endowed school down the street (NYBoo), when I passed a very scruffy homeless man sleeping on a park bench... in a full Santa get-up. Red hat, white hair, white beard, red suit, black belt, black boots, goggles... Ok, he didn't have goggles. Naturally, I didn't have my camera on me, though I probably wouldn't have taken/posted a picture of him anyway, since who am I to distribute an unauthorized reproduction of his image just because he is homeless and dressed like Santa. So I googled "homeless Santa" just now in the hopes of showing you an approximation, and got nothing. But if you picture Dan Ackroyd at his nadir in Trading Places, you get the idea.

New York is for lovers

Having a wonderful, wonderful time with Andrew here. He arrived after much organi- zational debacle at 2:00 am, so our first date was at a 24 hour Ukrainian diner (I know). The next day we lay low at the dorm, dying my hair and finally leaving the house at sevenish for risotto at my already favourite New York restaurant (fill up on the incredible breadsticks and pinot grigio, pack home the risotto). We followed that up with a few beers in Tribeca, then home.

Saturday we visited the farmer’s market and had brunch with another couple in Brooklyn, on a street that was very reminiscent of 4th avenue in Kitsilano. Then we subwayed back to Manhattan so that I could get my gym membership at the Y (as a student, I get to take advantage of the rock-bottom price of $50 a month) before their no-sign-up-fee promotion ended at 5:00. After that we went to the top of the Empire State Building, which is sort of the worst way of enjoying that particular site, since you are funneled through a lot of ugly, dry-walled, souvenir-laden corridors, masking the art deco sublimity that is the building itself. I know – you go for the view. I actually like the neck-craning view from the ground better. The 86th floor vantage just puts it all in perspective and proportion again, and the city loses its grandiosity.

That evening we wandered into Little Italy and found spaghetti bolognese, and today – having done the requisite East Village/Lower East Side drinking binge and noon sleep-in – we wandered into Chinatown and found dim sum. It’s great being able to do that. Of course, you can’t tell anyone about the fantastic places you find when you didn’t bother to take note of the sign on the door, or even what street you were on at the time.

We also spent a good chunk of the day in Central Park, me reading Kierkegaard, Andrew on my cell phone making hotel reservations, then the two of us wandering for hours on the picturesque walkways, under and over bridges, around ponds. We finally emerged at 78th Street (about 20 blocks north of where we started), and took Madison Avenue towards home. That is where all the obscenely rich people buy obscenely expensive clothing and jewelry and custom made fragrances. We bought two obscenely expensive cappuccinos. It feels like a different city compared to the grunge of downtown. There’s certainly nothing for me to do up there. I’m sure we saw some famous people (we saw enough body guards and limousines), but I was too busy powerwalking to my next meal to take note of who they were.