rest in peace, babe

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don't you remember you told me you loved me baby

well, i'm still sick. i am drinking tea with honey and whiskey. i like old remedies better.

i'm feeling melancholy today because i miss all of my friends in faraway places, and i'm listening to summer songs and thinking of happy times in texas, new jersey, and california. the fall is glorious and school is better than it's ever been (academically speaking) but things are very lonely.

i am going to be dead karen carpenter for halloween.

right now i'm listening to tha carter III. it makes me feel like abusing many substances.

i've been thinking, living in a dorm really sucks. i wish i had opted to live in a house like all the other times i've lived on campus. in a house you can go into the common room and hang out with people. in dudley, there's the picnic table, the politics of which i do not care for. it sucks to hide beer in the salad crisper in the dudley lawrence fridge next to fred smoler's office.

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shit...

school is tomorrow.

my room in dudley is cute and just like a tree house. i've been really lucky with the places i've been able to live. lynd was like a little forest cottage, kober was like a castle. it will be nice when the weather cools down, but i'm sad for summer to be over. it's my favorite season. i would like to live someplace hot when i get older, i think. but the really sad news is that astroland is closing down today. i contemplated going, but i decided that i didn't want to ruin all the happy memories i had there over this past summer. it gets exhausting to hold onto things. even so, R.I.P., astroland, you will be missed.

i had to do alternate registration on saturday, which was deplorable.

today i visited dustin for falafel in park slope and then took the train to manhattan to go to this salvation army that i like. i was annoyed to see that it was closed. are all of them closed on sundays? i feel like the one on flatbush avenue isn't. anyway, i instead took a walk across town to washington square park. i found a shady spot by george's dog run and read and drank glass bottle coke. i'm reading l'morte d'arthur by sir thomas malory. it's really good, but slow going. i had forgotten how much i really like stuff about king arthur. i want to get tennyson's idylls of the king next.

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packing for school

is there anything more tedious?

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two lists

songs on my ipod i am most ashamed of:
1. "dancing queen," abba
2. some of "rumors" by fleetwood mac
3. "slow ride," foghat
4. "get down tonight," kc and the sunshine band
5. "she's like the wind," patrick swayze
6. "never gonna give you up," rick astley

things i have recently found on the street:
1. califone 3130 AV cassette recorder (tenderloin district in san francisco)
2. a mug like you see art teachers sipping from in the movies plus a tiny little creamer
3. two issues of the illustrated london news from 1916
4. an issue of the international studio from 1913
5. an unwieldy book from 1910 entitled around the world with a camera
6. a really creepy children's story book (no date, but probably from around the same time period as the others)
7. february 1925 issue of science and invention in pictures

(numbers 2-7 were found in brooklyn. i love brooklyn sundays! you can make a killing simply by walking down the street.)

i start school on monday. errrk!

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the opposite

one of my favorite episodes of seinfeld is the one titled "the opposite," in which george decides that he should do the opposite of what his instincts tell him because his instincts are always wrong. when i first watched it i remember thinking that it wasn't such a bad idea, especially for somebody like me, whose instincts are not wrong per se, but often repressed due to nuisances like insecurity and shyness. when dustin and i arrived in texas for our vacation, the realization that we were not in new york anymore was strangely terrifying: "oh my god," dustin said, "what the hell are we doing here? i'm a fucking jew from new york."

yes, culture shock had indeed set in, even before we had set foot off the plane. for months i had been ingrained in my new york mindset, which was decidedly misanthropic and hypersensitive. though i had been to the west many times before, this time i was at a complete loss. i felt as though i had forgotten how to exist in any place other than new york. it had me feeling a bit depressed for most of my time away, and for the first time, i started to worry about what will happen to me after graduation. after this year, i believe my time in new york will be done. while i was out west, i decided to try my best to do "the opposite." it was surprisingly harder than george costanza made it seem. i tried to adopt a sort of west coast sensibility, and while i do know that things like that take time, i felt that it was something that would be good for me. my new york self fretted over every comment that could be construed as hurtful and offensive while my west coast self told me to relax and take the joke. i know that people's problems don't just magically disappear, but basically what i'm saying is that i really, really want to move to california. i never thought that i would get tired of new york, but i just feel like i'm wasting my youth here.

ANYWAY. my documentation of my trip did not extend past austin (the REAL trip started in california, my friends), but after the jump i have included some of my journal entries from our time there. on my next post, i'll try to sum up act two: california.



8.9.08
so, i have been in austin, tx, for the past six hours. i am insanely tired, having only gotten three hrs. of sleep last night. i can't decide if i like it here or not. sometimes i think i really do, but then other times i think that i absolutely could never live here. when we began our descent into AUS, i suddenly felt really scared, almost as though i had no idea what i had gotten myself into, if that makes sense. so far, being here is strange. it's weird to see andrew, ben, kristen, and meg apart from the new york landscape.

so far, austin is (as i said before) really weird. we've already run into leslie, who is apparently a homeless transvestite who once ran for mayor? anyway, he's a local celebrity. we saw him at this austin "hotspot" called bauldin creek that serves really great vegetarian food. it was pretty good, but the staff def. had major attitude. the woman who took my and dustin's order was hella rude. she was one of those people who don't shave their armpits or legs and makes a really big deal about it and wears sleeveless shirts and short shorts every single day on principle. it's like, okay, we GET it. anyway, she asked me if i wanted a corn or flour tortilla with my chorizo taco. me, having gotten almost NO sleep the night before, told her that cornflour sounded just fine to me. "no," she said firmly, "it's either CORN. or FLOUR."

"um... okay, i guess i'll do corn," i stammered, too exhausted to think of a real zinger, let alone act like the bitch i felt like being to her.

"we were up really early today," dustin explained as i stared into the day-old muffins in embarrassment.

"oh," she said, loudly closing the change drawer of the register. "how'd THAT work out for you?"

she plunked dustin's change into his open hand, a few wrinkled bills and three delectable quarters. dustin eyed the change, and then the tip jar, and then the bitch who had so unpleasantly taken our order. without removing his eyes from her, dustin closed his fist around the change and stuffed it into his pocket.

8.10.08
today dustin, ben and i went to meg's house and sat on the porch while meg packed her things inside. we made polite conversation with her hipster roommate who had moved to austin from williamsburg. he kept talking about how he imagined that new york in the seventies was just so cool and all this other romanticized stuff. meg had this old lighter that she was giving to andrew that was in the shape of a guitar, and when you lit it a bunch of tiny lights would go off up and down the neck. when the roommate asked if there was a lighter around, i offered him the guitar, but he refused in his "too cool" way. when we asked him about spider house (another austin hotspot) he was quite dismissive, claiming that it was "too cool for it's own good." (even though he probably goes there like every night.) he was completely foppish in that really annoying, really williamsburg-ish way. to top it all off, a few moments later a car filled with hipsters pulled up in front of the house, two girls and a guy. the guy loudly proclaimed to the roommate that he had just purchased a new pair of jeans and a righteous brothers tape. i felt completely nauseated at his self-congratulation. and for what? a fucking "ironic" tape and a pair of nut huggers? THERE IS MORE TO LIFE THAN THIS, PEOPLE!

anyway, they all went inside, leaving me, dustin and ben to ourselves. it was really fucking hot. as we were sitting, ben was playing with meg's mini-synthesizer and these two little babies started crawling around in the driveway next door. i couldn't believe that these babies, who were probably only about a year old, were just crawling around on that scorching pavement on their bare hands and knees like it was their living room floor. with the melodies emanating from the synthesizer, it was very surreal.

8.11.08
earlier today andrew, ben, dustin and i helped meg pack up her truck. she had these two car chargers for some random cell phones in the cab, and dustin and andrew started dueling with them like that schoolgirl in kill bill, gogo:



it was HILARIOUS.

later on we went to thrift town and goodwill. andrew bought a remote control car. when we got home, he pried the plastic car part away from the wheels and the motor and attached in its place a paper mache head that had been a part of his first grade halloween costume. he said that he and his mom had made it together, and that she was happy to make it with him because "it was the first year that i didn't want to be the devil." i don't exactly remember what the costume with the head was supposed to be, but i do remember andrew saying that the head was supposed to resemble his own. he attached the head to the motor by stretching black tape over the forehead and connecting it below the wheels. he proceeded to race it around the patio, thoroughly freaking out the cats.

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peace and love

well, my summer class is through and tomorrow i leave for vacation! first we hit austin, and then san francisco. i'm so excited to go back out west. the air is so nice and dry, and i love that dry feeling. wherever you walk, it always feels like you're floating. 

i'm scared to leave home, though. as much as i love stealing away, the night before one does so is always so stressful. i'm just glad that i'll have my favorite person in the whole world as a traveling friend.

goodbye east coast! and hello west coast: it has been far too long.

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incense and peppermints

new york is great and all, but lately i just can't stop imagining the vacation out west that i'll be taking in a week. that there picture is of humboldt county, where we'll be camping with some good friends for a few days. i'm looking forward to nature, redwoods, perpetual intoxication by means of tequilla, and expanding my mind by means of some hippie bullshit. i've been thinking, you know, hippie bullshit is so underrated:





yeah baby. in the middle of humboldt county, i can still live the dream! but hopefully without any zombie hallucinations.

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maggie simpson: totally rad

how cool is maggie as a teenager? the above screenshot is from the episode entitled "lisa's wedding," in which a fortune teller at a renaissance fair predicts lisa's future: she becomes involved with a loathsome (albeit devilishly handsome) cur named hugh to whom she becomes engaged. however, she calls off the wedding because of hugh's failure to accept her family. (it's seriously one of the most heartbreaking episodes.) at one point, we get a glimpse of maggie at age sixteen, who apparently can't stop talking on the phone. but of course, we never hear her speak. maggie has always been my favorite simpson. i know lisa gets all the credit for being a feminist icon, but maggie has that cool stoicism that we all wish we had.

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happy fourth

i still don't really know what i'm going to do to celebrate. our building is opening up the roof so that we can drink and watch the fireworks and whatnot, which sounds nice, but i don't want to be forced to chit-chat with the neighbors, who tend to be very park slope-y and generation x-ish and generally not very cool. it feels really weird to be in new york for the fourth of july. last year i was in humboldt county and all the years before that i've either been in virginia or new mexico. i like new york okay, but i admit that it would be nice to be someplace else right now.

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martin scorsese: fat people ruined las vegas

so, dustin and i were watching casino the other night, and they include this shot at the end to illustrate the demise of the glamor of casinos:

yyyyeah...

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something to blog about

on monday evening, dustin and i went to a place from which we try to stay far, far away, that place being st. mark's. i remember when i first journeyed down to st. marks as a first-year. i expected it to be cheap and dirty and sleazy, but of course it was none of those things. anyway, we were in the neighborhood because ben's final dinner on the town was being held at kenka, which is this really intense japanese place that doesn't serve sushi. it was, as ben later remarked, a rather masochistic dining experience.

we walked in and the first thing i thought was, it smells like fish in here. we were seated, and the chairs were very rigid and very close to the ground. the din of other, less sober patrons made it difficult to hear. accordingly, we ordered a pitcher of kirin ichiban. the menu was large, unweildy, and splashed with unappetizing, unflattering photos of the often-intimidating dishes that kenka had to offer. one of the menus depicted a woman gagged and bound and looking none too pleased. we couldn't make sense of who she was or what she was doing on this menu, but we guessed that perhaps it had something to do with the dish advertised on the same page, the one called "rape blossoms," whatever those are. also on the menu was a pretty self-explanatory dish called bull penis.

nobody ordered anything too adventurous, with the exception of a small dish of raw squid mixed into a tapioca-like substance that was the same brownish color as refried beans. i can't remember who ordered it, but dustin was the only one who got it down. it remained untouched for the rest of the meal.

after we had downed a few pitchers of beer, we all began to embrace the oddities of the place: the japanese nationalist music, the rape-themed menus, the unclearly marked bathrooms (mens and ladies were designated by japanese characters), the racket, the weird bowl of squid tentacles on our table, backache-inducing chairs, and the persistently unsettling odor of fish. in the end, the food was decent and a good time was had by all, but it's the sort of place at which you have to exert yourself, similarly to mars bar, another delightfully unsavory venue. dives: what can i say, they are strangely exhausting.

speaking of seediness (or lack thereof), i was intrigued by an article in the new issue of new york mag about those annoying punk kids who hang out on st. mark's place and just won't give up the dream. the article is called "punk like them," and even though it's the same old familiar story about misguided youths traipsing downtown only to discover that the scene no longer exists, it still makes me sad for them anyway. on the way over to dinner, dustin and i saw the main "punk" in the article (the fellow with the leopard pants pictured below) swinging into a starbucks:


punk indeed, i told dustin.

he's probably just using the bathroom, he said.

still, points down. whatever happened to peeing on the street? and this is coming from somebody who has peed outside, at st. mark's place, without getting caught. did i mention that i am a female and therefore incapable of the doing the fast, easy, considerably more subtle act that is male public urination? peeing in the wild for a woman is a risky business, but if you get out alive it's like you get this weird, manic rush, much like the rush one experiences after finishing dinner at kenka. with your check, the waitress gives you a little cup of blue powder which you can pour into a cotton candy machine located out front. and so you just stand there outside with your cotton candy and your sugar rush, laughing with your friends and it feels like you've fought in a war, and when you get home you can all laugh at how surprised you were with yourselves, how you have simply no idea what came over you.

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mermaid parade 2008

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instant recap

after the jump: my week, illustrated.

on wednesday, our friend meg came to visit.



the four of us (me, dustin, meg, ben) got into mischief.



on thursday, we went to brighton beach and coney island. it was sunny and we ate borscht and drank from gigantic cups of beer from nathan's. it was a very happy day.



on friday the thirteenth, dustin found seventy-five dollars on the ground. we also watched a movie called the mist that was simply traumatizing.



on saturday, i went to see the new david byrne installation with ben and meg. it was really cool. we had to sign a waiver that said we couldn't sue the city if any pieces of the abandoned building fell on our heads.



we met zach at welcome to the johnsons, and we were later joined by bailey, matt, and two girls who were both named hannah. we had some drinks, and then we drove back to prospect heights to have a very successful taco party.



sunday was mostly uneventful. dustin and i met up with joe, ben, and meg for sushi and then we went home and watched cloverfield, which was also traumatizing. on monday, meg went home and dustin and i went to williamsburg to trade in clothes at buffalo exchange. we made thirty-six bucks, and i bought a beautiful new dress with daisies all over it. we ate at a mexican place and split a plate of enchiladas. it felt nice to split a dish together. we initially decided to go dutch on our food because we are rather impecunious at the moment, but it worked out even better because it was a lot of food, too much for one person. it makes me depressed when i think of all the food that americans waste, just because everybody is too dumb to control their portions.

and that, my friends, is the story of my week.

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somebody's cat

today, dustin recieved two picture messages from an unknown caller, both of them depicting this orange kitty.

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the absolute hunk

on sunday, dustin and i were hurrying through union square to meet his family for dinner. we were late, as usual. as we were speed-walking past that coffee bar with the enormous neon sign, i caught sight of a familiar face. as soon as i saw him, i knew that it could be nobody but jason lewis, aka the absolute hunk from sex and the city. he was sitting in the outside eating area of the coffee bar, which surprised me because that place seems kind of busted. our eyes locked and i could tell that he knew i recognized him. sadly, he was not as handsome as he was on satc. but whatever, it was my first celebrity sighting since i started my new life in new york.

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