latkes + osso buco + beer == good new year's.
posted at 10:07 PM

i was standing outside grand sichuan intl. on 50th/9th yesterday afternoon waiting for an irc d00d to meet me for late lunch/early dinner when who should walk by but my friend rishauna. we were best friends in elementary school, the kind of impossibly platonic relationship where one of you (okay, her) beats up the other one (okay, me), pulling hair, kicking ass, loving every minute. she had this bedside built-in that ran the length of her bed back to the wall, and when my mom would come to pick me up we'd both hide inside, convinced our parents would never find us no matter how many times they did. when she got a couple of dwarf hamsters in middle school (where we had recently learned about pavlov's dogs and set about training the little rodents to respond to a bell), one of them was honorarily mine, and i was appropriately devastated when he escaped and failed to return. she had a husky named juneau who drank from the toilet and seemed, for the most part, awfully dumb. and when katarina witt took gold at the seoul olympics, she spit rage-spiked saliva at the old tv on her back porch as we watched the axels and lutzes.

then she got even more into the ballet that was her life, and i became more of the tomboy that i continue to be today, and we grew apart, and she went to interlochen for high school, and we both ended up at umich, and we both ended up in nyc. she lives 10 blocks from me.

sometimes life is really weird.
posted at 6:45 PM

i was sitting on the couch a few minutes ago (what's new, pussycat?) and i heard a commotion in the hall. figuring that the bad men were finally coming for my chastity and wide array of electronics equipment, i went to the peephole and was about to push down the lever to see out when BANG BANG BANG somebody started attacking my door. adrenaline started. and then, the magic words: "DOES SOMEBODY HAVE A FIRE?" i opened the door to find several firemen in the hall, wearing those charming black and yellow slickers and hats, armed with massive axes, which they were aiming at my door.

that's when i smelled the burning. i was momentarily paranoid that the burning was in fact coming from my stove, but that was unlikely since i haven't cooked anything in a few weeks and hadn't even stepped in the kitchen today. after more door-pounding and megaphone-shouting from firemen bill and phil, after i strapped on my shoes and snatched up my dearest possessions (roach spray! dope case pending dvd!), after i took one last look at my earthly possessions before they were melted into puddles of plastic goo, i stepped out into the hall only to be informed that they had found the source of smoky stench, which was some idiot on the first floor who had managed to burn water in a pot. i love my neighbors.

on top of all this, when i came home from the airport last night i found a court summons taped to my door. i'm being sued! well, not me. the former tenant, who has a lot of debt - and a lot of mail that she has yet to forward to her current address (a cardboard box on 42nd and 7th? who knows). she's a deadbeat of the first magnitude, it seems. hopefully the creditors won't come repossess my stuff.

and let us not forget the evil pajama-stealing maids of the moon palace resort. i'm convinced it was an act of housekeeping revenge rather than an innocent mistake of grabbing the pjs up with the sheets for the laundry; earlier in the day i had called housekeeping and asked for a "special" pillow like my aunt had in her "just married" room (don't ask), a big huge down pillow, to replace the awful, neck injury-inducing (paging melanie griffith!) two inch thick foam "pillow" (i use the term loosely), which they kept telling me didn't exist. as in, "we only have the standard pillow, only one kind, sorry," which is total bullshit because i saw the special pillow with my very own sleep-deprived eyes. i got a bit snippy with them, insisting they find me one of the special pillows, and they basically, well, hung up on me. fuckers.

Twingo16: you've accumulated so much scandal in so little time
oppsie1: yes.
oppsie1: i am a scandal magnet.

posted at 11:01 PM

cancun, by the numbers:

?? beers consumed
37 members of the family
27 scantily clad, siliconed women starring in the palace resorts infovideo, one of whom seemed to be simulating sex acts with a palm tree
5 days of rain
5 days with less than 5 hours of sleep
3 days suffering erin's patented and not entirely unexpected low-grade vacation cold
2 days of zero sleep
2 irreplaceable articles of clothing stolen by non-english speaking housekeeping service
1.5 books read (a confederacy of dunces, half of a portrait of the artist as a young man)
1 pair of shorts sacrificed to the briny deep
1 day of hardcore sun contact;-5 rating of tan
1 ultimatum to dad after the first night consisting of "either you get one of those anti-snore nose strips, or you get another room"
1 incident of full or partial water submersion
0 incidents of full or partial water submersion that were worth it; will report later on if i have acquired herpes or athlete's foot from the snorkel equipment
0 satisfactory meals, not counting the airplane food on the way home, which was tasty
0 announcements by dad that he was divorcing his wife, a lovely change from the last cancun trip
posted at 12:28 AM

apparently to have good water pressure every morning, all i need to do is get up at 430a.

snow! just in time for me to leave, of course. oh well. off to the airport.
posted at 4:59 AM

cancun game plan: seven days of alcoholic stupor, to be interrupted only by sleep.

looking at about three hours of fitful slumber at this point. i hate early flights, since i'm such a late-to-bed girl. but my bags are packed, batteries are charging, cds are selected, notebook and pens snugged away. what have i forgotten? hopefully all my petty little troubles. but one lingers: can't find my glasses. haven't seen them for a month or two or three, which is really ungood. did i leave them somewhere? did the roaches spirit them away in the dead of night? it's a mystery. i did a pretty thorough search tonight and turned up nothing. will try again when i return north of the border.

reading material for the trip: stephen king/on writing, john kennedy toole/a confederacy of dunces, james ellroy/l.a. confidential, james joyce/portrait of the artist as a young man.

augh! itchy ear! itchy ear! make it stop!
posted at 12:18 AM

finding a car to take me to the airport tomorrow morning (in, oh, about 10 hours) is proving more difficult than i expected. of course, it's the last minute, but there's still five days til christmas - you'd think that somebody could ferry my ass to lga. but no, carmel is booked solid, as are half a dozen other places i've called. i even tried citywide, who's listed on my timeinc car voucher (oh that i were leaving tonight so i could just use a voucher and not have to pay), but they refused to take me without a voucher. what kind of company refuses a paying customer?

oh, yay, dialcar will take me. also grabbed from the voucher, but apparently they're not as snooty as those fuckers at citywide. if only cabs cruised my area. if if if.

saw finding forrester this afternoon, skipping out on work with ethan to do so under the guise of factchecking. very well done, perhaps a bit too close to good will hunting for comfort given that it was directed by van sant; couldn't he have stretched a little, surprised a little? aside from that, though, top-notch performances from connery and brown, a solid story with solid dialogue from first-timer rich. odd to see it almost exactly - if not on the nose - three years after i saw gwh in the very same theatre. not too heavy-handed, left the alcoholism alone, for which i am profoundly grateful. score not too sappy, although the reaction shots of the minor players at key moments were a bit much. ah. feel-good movies.

thai for dinner. that's a winner.
posted at 7:03 PM

POKEY THE PENGUIN is branching out!!! BEWARE THE ITALIANS!!!
posted at 11:10 PM

completed (almost) all assignments, against all odds, including dvd sidebar completely from scratch. when i got done with it i realized that the 20-odd hours i devoted to watching disc supplements over the last two weeks were totally unnecessary and i could have constructed the entire thing from reading the back of the box. such is the curse of a 250-word assignment. it's over before it begins. my intro survived the edit process, at least, which makes me feel like slighty less of an incompetent boob. but we'll see what they have to say tomorrow about the embarrassing auction intro i handed in.

what to do with the rest of the night? recover.
posted at 8:05 PM

the opening strains of olp/are you sad? remind me uncannily of roxette/it must have been love. this is not a good thing, but i'm willing to look/hear past it.

just knocked out an intro for the auction round-up. it is heinous and every time i write something for a section other than internet i get paranoid all over again that this is going to be the time i totally blow any chance of ever acquiring a real job. this insecurity is really annoying. what's left for the rest of the day (but sometimes, oh god, the green mile is so long): internet meeting where i will inform them that the domain name box is coming tomorrow (maybe); movies wts (memento); dvd film school in a box sidebar. that last is going to be the worst, and the angstyest. great.
posted at 11:26 AM

why is it that whenever family members visit my apartment for the first time my intestines stage a revolutionary war for the next few days? i've been living here for nearly four months and it never fails. you'd think i'd be more confident in my choice of living space by this point. or that i'd learn to be independent and trust myself and not have this constant need for them to tell me i did right. sigh. think again. every time i start to feel comfortable i just get torn right back down to square one, unsure and wanting to crawl under my bed and hide with the roaches.

went to the met again today, this time with gabe. spent most of our time in the egyptian wing, culminating at the temple of dendur. we were just about to go into the walk-in part of the temple when i looked out the giant wall of glass and outside was the brightest, most complete rainbow i've ever seen. it was gorgeous. if we'd been anywhere else in the city, we wouldn't have had such a view - but because we were in this huge glassed-in room, we had a panoramic view of the rainbow over the park. half expected big bird to show up. damn, that was cool.

dim sum report: hsf's remodel job is pretty snazzy, almost wouldn't know the place from a few months ago. food was good, not outstanding; i'm ready to try some place new.
posted at 8:50 PM

draco whispers, "hey, sweetcheeks."
You whisper, "my cheeks aren't sweet enough to fit in old navy bootcut jeans. so beware." to draco.
draco whispers, "hm. big ass."
You whisper, "yeah." to draco.
draco whispers, "have it transferred to your boobs."

men are so darn practical.

(i hate shopping. like, a lot.)
posted at 6:27 PM

hits and misses last night, for the most part. hit: dave and stinky threw in for movie and food with gabe and i. miss: after picking up movie tickets, we didn't allow enough time to eat and run at yama. will attempt to dine there again this evening. hit: a hard day's night re-release. miss: walked to nyonya, a malaysian restaurant sandwiched between little italy and chinatown, where we ate too much to fully have room for arepas. hit: hopping the long train ride to queens to make a pilgrimage to the sainted arepa lady, finding her in business, and eating. mmm. arepas. (we even witnessed her getting harrassed by the cops - donate to the arepa lady defense fund today!)

[jameswatch2k]: awoken at 10a by the freight train vibration of the infamous subwoofer. it's still going. my butt is buzzing. normally, i would enjoy that sensation, but to assign any sort of pleasantness to james' stereo exploits seems sick and wrong. how in the hell does my brother sleep through this?
posted at 12:22 PM

my brother arrived shortly after noon, thanks to my miraculously good directions from la guardia to my office. paid a visit to the hot dog king for some damn fine nitrate infusions, then got ice cream sodas. so much for fitting into that bathing suit for cancun.

[t o d a y ' s s p e c i a l]: failed beastie boys kickers

Pretty fly for white guys, huh?
Now that'll get your body movin'.
Yeah, this disc can front when revelation comes.
Crunch those numbers and you’ll find that when it comes to pressing play, you can’t, you won’t and you don’t stop.

yup, i suck at this. so what'cha want?

[jameswatch2k]: 641a BOOM CHAKA BOOM CHAKA until 8a, when i finally passed out again.
posted at 3:29 PM

happiness is a free krispy kreme doughnut, the new olp album (not out stateside until march, grr - but sony sent me an advance, so i shouldn't complain too much), and news from the hundred acre wood (it's okay, pooh; i still love you even if you're damaged).

i remarked today that it was obnoxiously warm outside and was accused of being grinchy. am i supposed to be insulted?

[jameswatch2k]: somebody - i'm not naming names, james - left their stereo on all night long at very low volume. got about two hours when all was said and done, and now i feel like death. maybe the solution to this is to attend more concerts, position myself next to the tower of speakers, and encourage hearing loss.
posted at 12:25 PM

what's wrong with this headline?
posted at 9:39 PM

and i thought last week when i was obsessed with britney spears/lucky was bad. this just in! praise jesus. amen.

the new york film critics circle tallied votes for their annual awards this afternoon. results were posted online as they came in, which was pretty cool (and perfect drug dealer-esque encouragement for my shift-reload shift-reload repetitive stress syndrome) - sort of like the oscars, only without the commercials or dance medleys or peter coyote. sort of like a presidential election without the whiny washingtonians. sort of like britney spears without her hymen. sort of like - ah, i think i'll just quit while i'm ahead.
posted at 3:34 PM

one is an anomaly, two is a coincidence, but three is a trend. i have yet to actually find three yet, but rest assured, i will.

the new yorker/fake job fun continues over at medianews.

one of the ae's was talking this morning about how she once got a hot chocolate at starbucks that was so bad she returned it and demanded a refund. i probably would have just sucked it up and called it a loss. man, i'm a simmering loser.
posted at 12:13 PM

had a bad scare with my tivo tonight. i came home and decided to check the system information to see if the upgrade to 2.0 had come through. it hadn't - and worse, phil hadn't completed his daily call since saturday night. i immediately feared the worst: a blown modem. i've read quite a few horror stories at the avs tivo forum about fried modems, particularly in apartments equipped with intercoms that run over phone lines (i'm not sure if mine does or not, but i don't think it does). after failing several times to complete test calls, i called tivo customer care for support. i figured i'd be escalated to the next tier of tech support pretty quickly and then told that i'd have to send phil in for surgery.

it took about an hour (and the expected escalation) to sort through and several possible solutions were tried, but a good old fashioned softboot did the trick. phil is now back in action, still updating as i write - hopefully to 2.0. will report on whether or not 2.0 rules as much as rumored in due course.

junkyard wars is cool. "the dipsticks are off to a flying start and appear to have found what looks like a ballistic missile!" oh, phil. it's so good to have you back.
posted at 10:42 PM

you know it's a good day when you get to write about yahoo serious. even if it's a monday.

dim sum advisory: triple 8 palace in chinatown is so-so. i don't expect to return; previous trips to hsf and golden unicorn have been tastier. spent the rest of the day yesterday watching a mind-numbing 11 hours of television, including suffering through men in black - twice! - commentary tracks, which no human should really have to experience. but from this i take today's fun fact: barry sonnenfeld's wife is also known as sweetie! this is either endearingly disgusting or disgustingly endearing. i haven't decided which.
posted at 7:53 PM

do the turks know something we don't?
posted at 12:33 AM

went to the hayden planetarium today for the second time. still find tom hanks' presence incredibly irritating and offensive, in that he opens his narration with announcing, "i'm tom hanks!" do museums and planetariums (planetaria?) really need to be touched by a star? i don't need to know who's talking to me. it's total bullshit. the rest of the show he manages to hold his own, although his admission of "that always gets to me" as if he's wiping away a tear when he shows us what a tiny speck the milky way really is in the grand scheme of things makes me want to rip his throat out. what does that have to do with teaching us about space? NOTHING. ridiculous. give me the old guy with the laser pointer at cranbrook any day of the week.

also had my usual project x flashback when the planetarium star-maker machine thing rose out of the floor. shades of virgil.

afterwards walked with ben across central park, which was nice and chilly, to the met, which was warm and culture-y.

my feet hurt.
posted at 12:08 AM

shifted around the front page here so enterprising people can actually find this. not sure if that's smart or not, but we shall see.

[jameswatch2k]: quiet bass thump at 2a. put on elliott smith/figure 8 to combat, ended up lying awake listening until dozing on last three tracks. moved to couch at 6a, napped for an hour, returned to bed at 7a, got another hour or two until loud bass began in earnest at 840a.
posted at 7:35 PM

for some reason, i find being referred to as a woman really, really funny. not to mention more than a little disconcerting.
posted at 4:08 PM

i checked my voxmail at work yesterday and somebody left me a message, as people are wont to do when faced with my voxmail greeting. it was 1:42 of when in rome's the promise, their one hit from the 80s. while it's an excellent song, i'm a bit mystefied as to the meaning of its presence on my voxmail; i don't know who left it, or why. it wasn't just hold music because at the end there's this noisy clatter of a phone being hung up, so whoever did it did it on purpose. what's up with that? show yourself, secret admirer!
posted at 10:55 PM

i'm listening to radiohead's kid a. the lead-off track, everything in its right place, destroys me on so many levels i don't know where to start. it's one of those pieces of music that hits me right in the heart, drives the organ back into my spine, just so it can ricochet out into the open again seconds later and announce, "i am alive! and i hate it! and i love it!" even the title does that, even thinking about it. it's similar to one of my favorite books, donald harington's some other place. the right place. i think what i love about the turn of phrase is the idea that such a place exists, even if i can't get there. there is a right place. for me, right now, that's enough, that sisyphean struggle to arrive at the right place. some other place. and put everything in it.
posted at 10:13 PM