things to do while waiting for the unattainable

Where you'll find me...

2008-09-26T19:32:00.000-04:00

seduced by movie magic.

Picture Monday: Crabs to the slaughter

2008-08-18T11:51:00.001-04:00

IMG_1672, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Usually I try to stay above the political fray

2008-08-14T04:09:00.000-04:00

But these t-shirts are cute!

Support a small business.

Something you said the other day

2008-08-05T06:38:00.000-04:00

"I'd like if I could get a permanent fourth wall installed. Then, I could go to Cirque de Soleil and they could try to break it and get electrocuted to death."

Miscellaneous food from California

2008-07-23T16:32:00.006-04:00

These items didn't fit anywhere else. First up, the giant donut:Chocolates in the shape of the Buddha in Berkeley:
Excellent selections from Thai Boom in Culver City, this is tiny chunk of bacon-like pork chunks deep fried and served with Chinese broccoli:
Green curry at Thai Boom:
This was weird, I went to this fabulous restaurant supply store in CC called Surfas. They had all these whimsical but slightly scary retro foodstuff, apparently all essential for the making of carnival snacks:
Dipsy Dog--don't try to make corn dogs without it!
Flavocal:
A raspberry in sis's backyard in LA:
Beautiful potatoes at the lavish Santa Monica farmer's market:
Cupcakes!!!
Fish tacos in LA:
An all-omlette restaurant. Why not?

California, it sure was tasty!!

Picture Monday: Wish they all could be...

2008-07-21T06:51:00.000-04:00

California eats: Father's Office

2008-07-20T18:23:00.003-04:00

The word on the streets of LA was that Father's Office was the greatest burger phenomenon since Micky D's first opened their doors. With the burger craze in NYC in full swing, I was anxious to try it. Cue the requisite hipsters and remember you're not at Fette Sau:

This is apparently the second version of Father's Office. This one is down the street from my sister's place in the charmingly revamped Helm's Bakery. The restaurant has a host of weird rules that New Yorkers would love: no vodka, no ketchup, no diet soda, etc., etc. Also, it's swank but totally open seating. You order at the bar and then some dude delivers it to your table. When I heard this I started to panic, but apparently ordering at the bar at a mega popular spot isn't as horrible as it is in Gotham.
More about the bar...they've got a million obscure beers on tap, blah, blah, blah, you've been to Spuyten Divul, you've heard it all before. They're really locovore, with a host of brews from microbreweries up and down the coast. Bit of a shame not to have their east coast brethren up there, though--Six Point and Dogfish Head to name but a few.

I might point out they are selectively locovore--one of the specials was a soft-shell crab dish.

I of course ordered the burger, plus a beet salad and a famous appetizer composed of smoked eel, a poached egg, dill and some other stuff.
I'm a bit hazy on the burger. You're not allowed to change it's composition. I believe it actually has two kinds of cheeses--blue and Gruyere--plus an onion compote that reminded me of brisket in texture.
LA Weekly food critic Jonathan Gold compares FO to New York's the Spotted Pig, and I could see where he gets that. The thing is, if you can squeeze into Spotted Pig, the burger there is really amazing. This one, I don't know...I feel like I'm being finicky lately, but it struck me as a bit cloying. The food hit a lot of rich/sweet notes, so maybe that's why I wasn't so jazzed about it. The ever divisive shoestring fries seemed to get better with time.

So, Father's Office...fun place to go after a long day slinging screenplays at the Sony lot, if you're a New Yorker, maybe not so much. Perhaps if you're able to get over your East Coast microbrew enthusiams and expand your horizons, and maybe aren't too picky about the food.

Review Thursday: Oceans

2008-07-17T13:48:00.005-04:00

In a freak coincidence, the past week has seen me floating on my back, toes pointed toward the sky, in *two* count 'em two oceans.

First: the Atlantic. Covering approximately 22% of Earth's surface, the Atlantic Ocean is second only to the Pacific Ocean in size.

Cultural significance: Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, Hart Crane, The Pearl, The Old Man and the Sea, Jaws

Pro: always freezing cold, which is nice on the hottest, muggiest days of August.

Cons: Scary. When we went swimming on Fire Island, the swells were four feet and breaking close to the short. Strong cross-current = large chance of panic and drowning.

Second: the Pacific. Above, me at Santa Monica beach.

Cultural significance: Baywatch, Hawaii 5-O, Gauguin, Life of Pi.

Pros: bathwater warm, easy, rolling waves, lack of sharks (at least in L.A.)

Cons: too many people, slimy seaweed.

An East Coast sunset

The winner was easy--I had so much fun in the Pacific. Realizing you're not to old to body surf? Priceless.

A bite of the Big Artichoke (or whatever Los Angeles is calling itself these days)

2008-07-16T06:00:00.002-04:00

Okay, first things first...

After I satisfied my long-standing double-double fixation, I went to the Culver City Farmer's market, where there are flan stands and cops on Segeways:
The catch of the Pacific:

The largest peaches I've seen in a while:

Move over Treats Truck, L.A. has a cheese truck!

Strawberries on steroids, the kind that comes from the California sun: Boozing it up at the Trader Joe's:

You know how everywhere frozen yogurt is the new obsession in NYC? Well, the Angelenos started it, and here's the offerings from some new Pinkberry knockoff chain. It's pink grapefruit. I like.
All that foodie adventuring made me hungry. So I went home with my bag of goodies and considered the potato.
Look at me! I'm a vegan now!
Well, at least until tomorrow...

No cliches were harmed in the making of this video

2008-07-15T11:42:00.003-04:00

Let's not lie...air travel is the place where it's totally cool to watch eight hours of Kathy Griffin. On my first Virgin American flight, I got drunk on chardonnay and played video DJ and watched the following. Not having had MTV for quite a while, I was unsure about what the kids were into these days. Herewith, a sampling of my amateur observations.

Lupe Fiasco "Superstar"--In spite of myself I love this song, right down to the "Chris Martin called, he wants his act back" stylings of whoever it is does the chorus. Matthew Santos? Yeah, time for a new shtick, your whispery falsetto warbling isn't fooling anyone.

When I heard this song, judging from the verse where Lupe raps:

"So just take me home where the mood is mellow
And the roses are grown
M&M's are yellow
And the light bulbs around my mirror don't flicker
Everybody gets a nice autograph picture
One for you and one for your sister
Who had to work tonight but is an avid listener
Every song's a favorite song
And mics don't feed back
All the reviewers say you need to go and see that."

I pictured him as a chilled out, self-deprecating dude. And when you've written a song about wish fulfillment, you've got to cut against expectations. You have to, right?

I can't imagine was fool they hired to conceptualize this video. It bummed me out because I bet there was a million cool ways to do it. It could have been the hip-hop Hard Day's Night. You could have cast it with playacting kids like Bugsy Malone.

Instead, you get a dry ice filled cheesefest. Pyrotechnics spark out from his fingertips. Hoochie mamas coming out of the limos. Flashbulbs pop along the red carpet. What cliches did they not employ in the making of this video?

My grade: F

Yael Naim, "New Soul"--Okay, so Apple made you famous with your cute little ditty. To start, this video seems promising, with Yael moving into an apartment, no lip synching. But then she puts up some woodsy wallpaper, and then Yael is tickling the ivories, she's singing now, and the video inexplicably cuts to some dude in a field with a horn. She puts up pictures of all of her bandmates and then does crude drawings over all of them. Suddenly, there's a porthole in her apartment, she knocks down the walls and she's on some kind of hippie barge. The bandmates, on handpainted inner tube, will be right there. She dumps the goldfish in the river. Hey, that goldfish will never survive...but it doesn't matter, the hippies are dancing. You don't have to pay rent when you live on a barge. Score!

My grade: C-, sorry, cutie.

Fiest, "I Feel It All" (Embedding is disabled, but you can see it here.)

Fiest, I love Fiest. Sure, she's a chart-topping pop chanteuse, but she's not exactly a young thang, she's striking without being perfect looking (she wears a pair of jeans and an old striped sweater in the video). She has Peaches and Canadian music scene bona fides. She makes great videos that don't seem to have been dreamed up in an ad agency.

All the creative choices are kind of weird and non-commercial. I mean, are those red isotoner gloves meant to pick up the lipstick red of the oil drums? It may have been the Chardonnay talking, but I was just sitting back and thinking, this is the first time I've really felt something while working my way the queue.

I've got to hand it to Fiest. You get the sense that despite how annoyingly catchy her songs are, there's still something original about her, that she's really doing something that she cares about and that comes out in everything she does.

Love the crazy exuberant dancing, the sheer romanticism. I'll be the one to break my heart, indeed.

Grade: A+

Picture Monday: You're such a wonder that I think I'll sleep instead

2008-07-14T20:46:00.002-04:00

Stereotypes about Los Angeles I have absorbed from the pop culture

2008-07-08T06:25:00.000-04:00

On the eve of a transcontinental jaunt, these notes to self:
The streets are empty and filled with whimsy. Paul Thomas Anderson made me think this, Punch Drunk Love. I remember thinking, this is the way Southern California feels: flimsy, spacious, bruisey pastels. A little like a forgotten backlot.
They have a vastly superior food scene. Many things have cause me to think this. Going for Okonomiyaki (savory Japanese pancakes) with a friend and her father when I was a child. My sister's hole in the wall vegetarian Indian place in a strip mall near her house. Reading Chowhound posts about Taco Trucks. Jonathan Gold's expeditions. Diddy Reese.

If accepting J.C. as my personal savior would bring an In 'n' Out to NYC, sign me up. People, come on. If you'd tried it, you'd know.
Despite NY's superior literary heritage, Angelenos have Miranda July. How does she do what she does without being totally annoying? I don't know. Why can't I be more like her? The jury's still out.
The music scene rules. Again, this started in childhood, Sean and I driving to the Roxy in his Ford Escort, going to see Lush or the Pixies at the Hollywood Palladium. Now I listen to Morning Becomes Eclectic every chance I get. In New York, seeing a show invariably a hassle; in L.A., enchanting singer-songwriters grow on palm trees. They work at Book Soup.

These ideas I have are crazy. I am a native Southern Californian, and I should know better.

Still...I want my trip to be weird, illuminating, delicious. Look for me at sporting a copy of No One Belongs Here More Than You at Father's Office.

Picture Monday: tunneling

2008-07-07T12:19:00.002-04:00

IMG_1097, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

OMG! Crack for wordsmiths: Wordle

2008-07-03T14:58:00.002-04:00

Dudes, check it out...cut and paste chunks of your blog, you novel, your screenplay into Wordle.net, and check it out, you get a very artistic tag cloud. Wowowowowow. Genius.

This one is apparently from a german edition of that Ben Kunkel book:

...words, originally uploaded by Sebastian.r.

Try it now at www.wordle.net!

Review Thursday: It pains me to say it, but...

2008-06-26T06:08:00.000-04:00

It's unfortunate when you are the second book to write about layoffs and office life in the first-person plural. Man, would that suck, but such is the zeitgeist. I'm trying to write about fictionalized office life, so I'm interested in books that do it well. Because working is boring, writing about work is boring. When a writer captures the mundane and stifling in a fresh, even inspiring way, it's a truly remarkable accomplishment. When books about work take off, I think it's through capturing some kind of idiosyncratic singularity (like Ferris's book or the underrated Big If by Marc Costello) or the workplaces is a kind of accessory to the an overall commentary they are making to American culture (Palladio).

Another book I'm looking forward to reading is Among Other Things I've Taken Up Smoking, if for no other reason as it has an amazing title. Also, More Than It Hurts You, by a former teacher, Darin Strauss. It's gotten great notices, and I like the is-it-or-isn't-it premise about Munhausen by Proxy, and the attendant satirical tone.

Review Thursday: Taco Time

2008-06-19T07:38:00.001-04:00

Taco Porn., originally uploaded by Kevin Church.

I have mixed feelings about this new taco-reviewing blog, Lost Taco. The writing and visuals are very good, but as a native Southern California who moved to New York quite a while ago, I'm kind of over this whole "why can't I find a decent taco in the city"? The pejorative perspective people have of the Mexican food situation in NYC is a holdover from the time, a decade or so ago, when we had very few bona-fide Mexicans living and cooking here, and most of your tacos would be slung by someone from China. It's true that East Coast natives have grown accustomed to inferior, Benny's Burrito-type concoctions. But immigration patterns have changed, and there are thriving Mexican scenes in Sunset Park and Jackson Heights that are emblematic of the way Mexicans are weaving into the culinary fabric of city life. Transplants who whine about the lack of good Mexican food haven't gotten out enough.

The second thing I've come to understand (despite being a reformed sanctimonious taco snob from the Left Coast) is that taste in tacos is really very subjective. Lost Taco gives the thumbs up to Pinche Tacqueria, a Nolita sliver which I think epitomizes flavorless, gringofied hoity-toity Mexican. Thought she does rightly single out Zaragoza in the East Village. One adjustment Californians must inevitably adjust to is eating real Mexican-from-Mexico food, and not Cal-Mex food. That means tacos (just meat, sprinkling of cilantro, onions and cheese, no guacamole, no kiwi fruit), and not burritos, which are Cal-Mex.

I have to admit that my favorite taco place on the planet (please, 8 readers of the blog, keep this to yourself), is located in New York City. It's called Tehuitzingo, and it's a little bodega on 10 ave between 47th and 48th St. It's run by a couple from Puebla, MX. Squeeze past the gregarious man in the front and find two Spanish-speaking ladies in the bag slinging the most sublime tacos enchiladas (spicy carnitas) you've ever had in your life. They are two dollars a piece, and you can grab a beer from the convenient refrigerator case nearby to ease the heat. I returned from a foodie crawl in San Francisco's Mission District craving these delectable specimens, with the realization an incredible taco place can be found in the most unlikely places. And when you've found your bliss, you'll keep coming back again and again.

Picture Monday: this dog's life

2008-06-16T07:04:00.000-04:00

Jackie, our weekend guest from Puppies Behind Bars.

Review Thursday: My new favorite show

2008-06-12T00:01:00.003-04:00

I remember seeing the warnings posted around "campus" when I was a student at NYU. Beware a well-dressed woman who claims she's found a wallet right near you. Beware when she asks you to hold onto the money until they can find the owner of the wallet. Be especially on guard when some other stranger become involved in the debate. These notices appeared frequently one year. They told a little story about gullibity, street theater and greed, for they outlined the specifics of a con called the "pigeon drop" which has been around since the Depression.

I found the notices as compelling as a soap opera in miniature. I follow them avidly, and began to do my own research on this kind of American folk hero, the con man. I read books like the Big Con and watched movies like The Sting and David Mamet's wonderful House of Games. In short, I was totally obsessed with con artistry.

And you could chalk my ardor for the FX series the Riches to that initial obsession, but in fact I think there is much more to it than that. It's a show about the American version of the gypsies, the Traveller clan, and concerns a family of grifters headed by Eddie Izzard as Wayne Molloy. Overall, the show's definitely got a little FX low-budge clunkiness in terms of the writing and production value. But Minnie Driver and Eddie Izzard are both sensational in completely unique ways, and together they are a force to be reckoned with. Who knew that two Brits would play a couple of white trash Southern thieves so soulfully and convincingly?

The Riches starts out with Driver's character Dahlia getting out of prison after two years. Driver as Dahlia actually looks like someone coming out of prison, not a dressed-down movie star, and her performance in the series is continually rich and surprising. She bears both the wounds of being let down by Wayne, and also the drug habit she picked up in prison, and often the pain she's able to express in the role in wrenching.

That's not to say the show is depressing; to the contrary it's often hilarious. Part of it is the fish out of water premise--through a twist of fate, the Molloy family assumes the identity of a pair of wealthy suburbanites, the Riches of the title. Part of the humor comes through Izzard's hilarious, charismatic performance. He discovers the man he's playing is a securities lawyer, and goes so far as to con his way into a job. One further surprise about the show is that Wayne Molloy et al are not the best con artists. Much of the fun is watching them fail and weasel their way out of another mess. It's cheesy, but I guess that's what makes them so "relatable" and appealing.

Even when the script falters, Driver and Izzard pull it up through their talent and chemistry. And I think that a lot like another one of my favorite shows, Weeds, the casting here is really superb, from Margo Martindale as a pill-popping neighbor married to a gay man to Hartley Underwood as the high-strung, one armed neighborhood bitch. I've been watching the first season on DVDs-through-the-mail, and I highly recommend it for anyone who likes a good dark comedy with indelible characters.

Picture Monday: on the roof of the Metropolitan Museum

2008-06-08T13:21:00.000-04:00

Ode to Bryant Park

2008-06-06T06:00:00.001-04:00

Central Park is for weekend warriors, rollerbladers, ramblers. Prospect Park is where mad Olmstead's vision found it's full flourish. You are the park of the corporate citizen. The great green heart in a sharply delineated empire of shiny boxes.

Bryant Park, Friday, 1:15 PM 6/6/08

See white-shirted men flip their ties over their shoulders and squint at their Blackberries from 1:14 to 1:54. Glossy-haired women in slim, neutral colored skirts and alligator slingbacks throw their heads back and laugh. Oh, gotta go, another project to manage, pencil to push.
You are a patch of land we can stake our claim on for an hour or less. You defy the ring of skyscrapers with your flat expanse of green. Your lions guarding reams of paper valuable only to the bookish and anachronistic.

You are completely wi-fi enabled, which means that completely invisible to the naked eye, the trees and posting updates to www.bryantpark.org that say: "The lawn is closed. It is resting after a major event" and your human inhabitants are soundlessly running algorithms that will surely help them crack the quest for true love.
You are the place where, in my youthful adventurousness as a camera assisant, I floated high above the tree line on a crane. Basically, we were going to start tight on a mitten that was lying on your sidewalk. When a delicate woman’s hand entered the frame, the crane would begin its graceful arc, pulling back to follow the woman as she walked away from camera and towards the opposite side of the park. The cameraman and I, strapped to the end of the long crane arm, would then start our ascent, up to above the trees, where I was to quickly rack focus the on the glowing Chrysler Building in the distance. Today I looked up at the top of your trees and thought that they must have grown in the past few years.
Today I wandered through the flocks of watchers. Those of us who come here after work to watch movies like Hud and Superman, or during, to glaze over among the masses. To feel like our lives are intersecting, even when they aren't, and in the middle of the grid, to gaze on something alive.

Review Thursday: Dissolute Cities

2008-06-05T06:49:00.002-04:00

“Nothing in this book can be considered reliable or accurate,” reads the jackassy disclaimer of James Frey’s third foray into fiction, Bright Shiny Morning. I haven’t read the book, so I can’t comment on whether or not the writer who’s making self-aggrandizement cool again has mastered a sense of originality, I only remember being in the minority of people who thought A Million Little Pieces was corny and overblown. At the time I received of the phony memoir, I was reviewing books for the Quality Paperback Book Club, and I couldn’t fathom all buzz the book was getting. It’s main claim to fame seemed to be using Capitalization and punctuation incorrectly to Make. A. Point. Man. Also the bloody, no painkillers airplane scene. That was Intense. But it never seemed particularly Real. So Oprah revealed him as a Big Fake. Big Whoop.

This time around, people seem to be responding to Frey’s portrait of LA, or at least Janet Maslin is, pulling a Michiko Kakutani and writing the review of his book in his style. I just want to know why are people so impressed with writing like this, when there are so many similar, better books? It’s the same thing I thought when I picked up Charles Bock’s Beautiful Children. I had read it talked up in Elle (don’t mock me, they actually devote an admirable amount of ink to books), and so reserved a copy at the library. From all the advance notice, the book promised to be a riveting portrait of sketchy types in Las Vegas—you know, criminals! Broken dreams! Strippers! The porn industry! I like my salacious literary reads as much as the next girl, and I was all primed for a seedy vision of Las Vegas to wash over me.

Man, was I let down by this book. It felt as though the writer tried really hard but a book that should have been populated by the richness of intersecting lives had tumbleweeds rolling through it.

More than that, both books seem a pale shadow of an overlooked favorite of mine, a novel that takes a panoramic view of Los Angeles and delivers something funny, powerful, emotional, authentic and edgy. Not just James Frey posturing “edgy,” either. Really edgy. That book is I’m Losing You by Bruce Wagner.
In an overflowing plot too complex to explain, Wagner gets up close to the lives of everyone from a heartbroken studio exec to a crazy masseuse who believe she can steal people’s energy. What continually impresses me about his writing is how well he modulates tone—one minute biting and satiric, the next, emotional and lyrical. I’ve always thought that his deserving novels are not given the praise and attention they deserve because they are about Hollywood, and regular people, for some reason, don’t read Hollywood novels. But in I’m Losing You and the later Still Holding (and you have to get past the groaning phone lingo inspired titles) he draws a bead on the human experience in extremity and comes up with something as invigorating as it is wrenchingly emotional. Wagner’s books always make me want to write, and for a populated panorama of a dissolute city, these more recent contenders just can’t hold a candle.

The revolution will not have a Facebook page

2008-06-04T07:07:00.000-04:00

It’s like it’s 1997 again, said one of the industry vets I was having lunch with at the IAB Social Media and User Generated Content Conference on Monday. If that’s the case, I want to know, where’s my ping-pong table? Why can’t I have a margarita machine in my office? Where is the launch party and, more importantly, my stock options?

Let’s face it, this is 2008. I’m not a millionaire on paper or anywhere else except the land called make-believe. Friendster, once the boon of noncommittal urban hipsters is now relegated to popularity only among Pilipino teenagers, and your grandmother has a Facebook page. Is social media the next big thing? In case you do not have the time or the cash to attend such an event, here is a summary of the day’s events:

Keynote: Seth Goldstein of Social Media

He talked about the social media challenge, how volume is up and effectiveness is down, but what struck me the most was how he mentioned his wife had come up with the term “social media” a couple years ago and they registered the URL. Which just goes to show you that when picking a mate, whimsical brilliance can go just as far as sheer dollars and cents in terms of net worth. Try to shack up with someone who thinks of good ideas and registers those domains, as your beloved may be in possession of the next google.com type idea!

It's All About Performance.... Isn't It?, with a bunch of people from DoubleClick BuzzLogic and AvenueA Razorfish

I love it when marketers talk about harnessing the power of the social media frontier. They are herding cats, as it were. That’s not the right expression exactly. What’s the term for taking a giant grass-roots movement and when your brand happens to come up, acting like you’ve influenced it? David-and-Goliathism? When David is the marketers and Goliath is the user base? There’s an anarchic side of me that loves this—that if you were in a pessimistic mood, you could say that marketing is in everything, or if you’re a believer in the social media space, you could say that people are taking control of brands from marketers.

Consumer Panel with Ideas to Go

Couple of things that I noticed here: focus groups are always funny. This was a group of so-called “creative consumers” who are impaneled by a group called Ideas to Go. They are like these strange animals, these people who do not work in marketing. They are seventeen year olds worth being flown out to sit on a stage in front of two hundred puzzled marketers in suits. The company had them list “social medias” that they consume. The moderator seemed like a sort of actor who rolled big, jargony words around on his tongue.

Facebook workshop

Again, I sat there wondering—are these marketers really creating phenomena on social media sites, or at they witnessing phenomena and then claiming credit? There was a dude who markets Proctor and Gamble brands like Tide with public outreach efforts like one called “Loads of Hope.” You can buy a hipsterish ironic t-shirt with a retro Tide logo and all proceeds with go to New Orleans, where presumably laundry detergent money washes away all sorrows. I was thinking there’s so little brand differentiation among detergents—they are all bright boxes with splashy comic book-like lettering—that it seems a bit of a lost cause to try and stand out. Yeah, it may be cool to wear your retro Tide shirt, but does that really make anyone think about the brand? I wasn’t sold on it.

There are days I long to escape to a land with no marketing in it. What would such a world look like? Is it a magical place in Canada that you can only reach by dogsled? And can you give me some directions?

Picture Monday: W'burg

2008-06-02T18:13:00.000-04:00

W'burg, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Review Thursday: On the ampersand

2008-05-29T06:00:00.001-04:00

via Conor and David

In movie credits, the ampersand is a code. It means: John Doe & Jane Smith duked it out in a room over this script, one choking the other with second-hand smoke and the other spitting in the other's coffee. The dreaded "and" means different writers were employed at different times: John & Jane got sacked and Quentin Tarantino was called up for a punch up job. As a device to help me remember the difference, I think: tied together, the ampersand means the writers were tied together.

With it's curving sweep, the ampersand is a saucy shorthand for "and," which is why it surprises me that it's so common in the British writing I see at work.

Wikipedia notes the growing use of the ampersand due to text messaging.

And if you enjoy this seductive bit of punctuation as much as I do, you may want to check out the Ampersand blog, a treatise on all things, and only things, ampersand-related.

Foodie tour of Chicago

2008-05-27T18:12:00.003-04:00

In Chicago last weekend to see my friend Carrie graduate from law school, which ended up being the perfect opportunity to sample Chi-town's range of special regional eats from hot dogs to organic scones. This city seriously doesn't mess around with the food.

The menu at Hot Doug's

Our first stop was the Flying Saucer, which keeps it real by serving breakfast only seven days a week. It's the kind of funky, expansive, laid-back type of place that you just don't see in New York, where everything is small, and creative brunch means a quail egg sitting atop three matchsticks of taro root. This is the Midwest, people, and portions are huge: For breakfast I had a sort of hearty, everything-but-the-kitchen sink bowl of eggs, rice and tortillas. Really good!

Cupcake heaven at the Bleeding Heart Organic Bakery

But our real undoing was when we stumbled upon the Bleeding Heart Organic Bakery. Over the weekend, Josh and I must have spent forty dollars sampling the colorful cornocopia of baked goods. It was like some of New York's best bakery ideas--the cunchiness of Birdbath, the goey comfort food staples of Magnolia, the special diets focus of Babycakes and the culinary insouciance of Baked rolled into one amazing, Willy Wonka-like shop. I mean, where else can you find vegan cupcakes and an Elvis brownie made with chocolate, bananas and bacon? We tried the fruit soup, smores brownies, vegan raspberry bar, and shortbread made with artisinal salts. All amazing--the only miss here were the handmade chocolates. With a price point similar to Kee's fantastic chocolate, these came up short in the flavor department.

Chicago hot dog at Scooter's

We had plenty of opportunity to sample Chicago's famous hot dogs--at Scooter's, with a side of the shop's famous frozen custard in a root beer float. We also hit Hot Dougs, which features a range of weird gourmet offerings named after members of the Buzzcocks and containing bacon infused duck sausage or wild boar sausage with fennel. Our favorite was blue cheese pork sausage with toasted walnuts and fiery apple salsa. We got cheese fries so as not fully embrace snobby foodiness. Chicago makes it easy to bridge high and low.

More of the wares at Bleeding Heart

Our last meal was room service at the Chicago Marriot. Four dollars for two strips of bacon! It was worth it to not have to venture out until afternoon.

My only regret is not getting to my favorite carne asada burrito place, La Pasadita. But Chicago, trust me, I will be back!

More pictures from the foodie tour are on this flickr map.

Picture Monday: Travel edition

2008-05-22T08:41:00.000-04:00

International electric closet, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Wonder what goes on in there?

5 Boro Bike Tour: Astoria Park

2008-05-09T08:50:00.000-04:00

Astoria Park, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Liveblogging the Brooklyn Blogfest

2008-05-08T20:38:00.003-04:00

I feel like such a cliche...but if the shoe fits. They won me over with the free nosh.

To do list

2008-05-07T18:58:00.002-04:00

Arrive at Penn Station.
Call Sally Hayes
Grab a taxi.
Ask cabbie about the Central Park ducks.
Check in at the Edmont Hotel.
Set up appointment with Faith Cavendish
Go to the Lavendar Room to meet Marty, Laverne, and Bernice Kregs.
Ernie's in Greenwich Village.
Walk two miles back to the Edmont hotel.
Talk to Allie.
Pretend bullets in gut.
Go to sleep.

My week without the internet

2008-05-05T17:29:00.001-04:00

I feel bad about depriving my loyal readership of six or seven people of their daily dose of news about Britney Spears and Paris Hilton, not to mention the macro photography of erotic scenes painted on grains of rice they have come to expect. I have my reasons for the silence however; inspired by a documentary I saw on the Amish, I decided to unplug for a whole week, and lucky for you, I kept a diary of the whole ordeal...

My week without the internet

Day 1:

9:22 AM: So I’ve finally decided to do it. No Internet for seven days. Figure I would be capable of so much if I didn’t spend so much time on Gawker and Celebritysighting.com.
Like a surgeon, I open up my laptop, lift out the beating heart its wireless connection, and hide it from myself.

12:01 PM: Sit outside and look at trees. Wonder what kind of tree that is in my backyard. Or why plants grow toward the sun. Or why the sun circles the earth. Or what ancient cultures thought the world was round. Or whether Earth, Wind, and Fire ever wrote a song about the sun, and whether I should write about it for when I can update my blog again. Redouble effort to read entirety of Proust. Wonder why they changed the name of Remembrance of Things Past. Wish I could still use Google. I’d only need it for 10 minutes. Know I must resist.

Day 2:

9AM: First day of work without Internet. Explain to boss I won’t be online. But you’re a web designer, he says. You don’t have to surf the web to be a great designer, I reply. But what about Outlook? I say to him that all of us sit in a big round open space. We can just shout back and forth.

Day 3:

Days at work seem long. Have much time to sit and think. Hours seem sharply delineated and endless. Pain in head getting worse.

Day 5:

10:50 PM: Take a copy of Cook’s Illustrated to a local watering hole, where I sit and nurse a Jack and Coke and pour over directions for a crown rack of lamb. Some dude comes up to me and asks if he can buy me a drink. I want to say, what is this, the ‘70’s? but he does seem cute and nice. Realize I have dated anyone I’ve met IRL, as it were, since 2004.

We end up talking about all sorts of things, the Great Wall of China and skateboarding. Why there’s no nutrition in celery. It’s the most stimulated I’ve been for, well, weeks. At the end of the conversation, he asks for my email. I tell him I’m not using the Internet for a month, and my various reasons for my decision, and maybe I went on too long, because this look came over his face and he said: If you don’t want to see me again, you don’t have to be sneaky about it. I said, wait, you can have my phone number. I’ll make you a rack of lamb! But by then he’s gone. Some people are just insecure.

Day 7:

Some things that people might not be aware of about old-timey hobbies: knitting takes a lot of patience. The costs of setting up a blacksmithing shop are prohibitive. And beekeeping? Let’s not talk about beekeeping.

Now, where did I put my wireless card?

Picture Monday: Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

2008-05-05T06:13:00.000-04:00

IMG_0275, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Picture Monday: Top Secret Attack Band in Prospect Park

2008-04-28T08:26:00.000-04:00

IMG_0185, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

A great day in Brooklyn

2008-04-22T18:17:00.000-04:00

New House Passover reunion 2008

When I first arrived in New York, I sublet a room the size of a twin bed in a fifth-floor walkup tenement flat just south of Washington Square Park. I hated it, could touch both walls with my fingers at once, but like much else in my life at the time, I was too complacent to do anything about it. In my seven years living there, I grew convinced through observation that if you split MacDougal Street down the middle, there would be rings and rings of the same kind of tacky decadence going back two hundred years. When Edgar Allen Poe did his time on West 3rd St., he must have been slumming, pounding his head against his garret wall at all of the drunks and out-of-towners, clogging up the sidewalk and going: “Wither thou a good plate of spaghetti?” Dylan and the Beats were easier to picture, cheap bastards trawling MacDougal Street for a fast drunk in tack city.

Finally, I let myself be kicked out of that apartment and landed in the least likely place: a collective house in Brooklyn. A commune. And there was subsumed in the topsy-turvy feeling of sharing intimacies you would not share with a lover, four falling down floors of a crumbling brownstone, six grown-ups, one child, no locks, poor boundaries. We played this game of trying to recognize the footsteps of people coming down the stairs. I ran. They told me I always ran.

Even accepting the sacrifices that were required to live in that place, when we were forced to wear heavy coats while playing poker huddled around the kitchen table in the dead of winter, plumes of hot breath visible in the air, there was this tangible sense of something meaningful that assuaged the solitary self that I left behind me.

I remember one night early on during my stay there, Mars orbiting close, all of us clamored to the roof. Among five other bodies strewn across the expanse of black pitch and looking for the red planet, closer now than it had ever been in 60,000 years, I was floating down to earth, finally coming to rest.

I've moved on but every year go back for Passover, a messy/delicious improvised celebration with this family that I found there, these people who have become my family.

How is this house different from all other houses? I don't know how to put it into words exactly. You'd have to see it for yourself.

When I smile, people apologize.

2008-04-22T17:54:00.000-04:00

Found this in my files, an abbreviated take on the MMPI I found on the interwebs, and it is a classic. Whoever wrote it, you are a genius.

Please indicate TRUE or FALSE next to each of the following statements:
1. [ True False] When I was younger, I used to tease vegetables.
2. [ True False] Sometimes I am unable to prevent clean thoughts from entering my mind.
3. [ True False] The sight of blood no longer excites me.
4. [ True False] I think beavers work too hard.
5. [ True False] It is important to wash your hands before washing your hands.
6. [ True False] Recently I have been getting shorter.
7. [ True False] When I walk quickly, I can feel my legs moving.
8. [ True False] When I was a child, I was an imaginary playmate.
9. [ True False] I believe I smell as good as most people.
10. [ True False] As a child, I used to wet the ceiling.
11. [ True False] When I grow up I want to be a child.
12. [ True False] Sometimes I feel that things are real.
13. [ True False] I have many enemies who secretly love me.
14. [ True False] I think I would like the work of a robot.
15. [ True False] As a youngster, I was suspended from school for attending.
16. [ True False] It makes me furious to see an innocent man escape the chair.
17. [ True False] I think I would like the work of a hummingbird.
18. [ True False] My tongue has been depressed.
19. [ True False] It makes me angry to have people bury me.
20. [ True False] People tell me one thing one day and out the other.
21. [ True False] I am easily awakened by the firing of cannons.
22. [ True False] I can wear my shirts as pants.
23. [ True False] I feel as much like I did yesterday as I do today.
24. [ True False] I always lick the fronts of postage stamps.
25. [ True False] When I smile, people apologize.
26. [ True False] It is hard for me to say the right thing when I find myself in a room full of mice.
27. [ True False] I never liked room temperature.
28. [ True False] I line my pockets with hot cheese.
29. [ True False] I can smell my nose hairs.
30. [ True False] My dog is someone else's best friend.
31. [ True False] Walls impede my progress.
32. [ True False] My toes are numbered.
33. [ True False] My best friend is a social worker.
34. [ True False] No napkin is sanitary enough for me.
35. [ True False] I've lost all sensation in my shirt.
36. [ True False] It takes a lot of argument to convince most people that they are lying.
37. [ True False] I try to steal other people's thoughts and ideas when they are not looking.
38. [ True False] I was not very strict with my parents.
39. [ True False] My sex life is satisfactory, except when I am with another person.
40. [ True False] I get nervous when I handle $100,000 bills.
41. [ True False] Most of the time I don't like to read newspaper articles about nuclear accidents nearby.
42. [ True False] I often dream of Kate Smith.
43. [ True False] I like to put chameleons on plaid cloth.
44. [ True False] I am liked by most people unless they know me.
45. [ True False] I believe I am following others.
46. [ True False] I don't like any of my loved ones.
47. [ True False] I salivate at the sight of mittens.
48. [ True False] I'd rather go to work than sit outside.
49. [ True False] As an infant, I had very few hobbies.
50. [ True False] Some people look at me.
51. [ True False] I often use the word "feh".
52. [ True False] Sometimes I steal objects like medicine balls and aviaries.
53. [ True False] I become homicidal when people try to reason with me.
54. [ True False] I never seem to finish whatever I

Sketch comedy: who do you love?

2008-04-21T18:00:00.002-04:00

"Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer" featuring Phil Hartman

Yesterday, I was talking to someone about our differing tastes in sketch comedy. I was really influenced from a very early age by Saturday Night Live of the late 80’s-early 90s Carvey-Myers-Lovitz-Farley-Sandler era (Wayne 's World, Church Lady, living in a van down by the river, etc.), and I also really loved the random absurdity of MTV’s the State.

"Porcupine Racetrack" by the State

He ix-nays my formative influences by being a rabid fan of Mr. Show, though he shares my ambivalence about the Kids in the Hall. Also, we agree that dorks have drowned out the contribution that Monty Python has made to the canon. I’m just like, whether you like Mad TV, Chapelle’s Show, SNL or UCB, can’t we all just get along? So I was glad to see that Nerve has posted their list of the 50 greatest sketches of all time. Many of these skew towards the ‘70s, but it makes for a great look-back at the defining moments in comedy history.

Picture Monday: It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry

2008-04-21T06:25:00.000-04:00

Why men love birches

2008-04-20T17:02:00.000-04:00

So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

--From Birches by Robert Frost

Review Thursday: Into the Wild, book and film

2008-04-17T08:21:00.000-04:00

You're either the type of person who comes alive in the presence of others, or else you need to get away from people in order really feel yourself. I mention this because I think your identification with one role or the other will probably determine much of they way you feel about Into the Wild, either the Jon Krakauer book or the Sean Penn film.

Watching the DVD the other day reminded me how engrossing I found this story when I first read the book. The hero of the nonfiction story, Christopher McCandless, aka Alexander Supertramp, really calls into question the prevailing attitude that solitude inevitably means loneliness. Conjuring an archetype honed by everyone from Henry David Thoreau to cranky naturalist and Desert Solitaire author Edward Abbey, the Krakauer book grapples deeply with a forbidding yet fascinating topic: being alone.

What would it feel like to just check out of society? Burn all your money? Spend day upon day by yourself, out in the wild? I don’t know many people who could embrace such deep solitude, so, by virtue of that accomplishment alone, I’m fascinated by McCandless.

At the same time, I know that the book and movie are both guilty of romanticizing this character. They want him to be one-of-a-kind, when certainly there are things about McCandless that are of a kind: there’s something about the guy that suggests the sort of self-righteous, fanatical hippie that probably everyone knew in college (exhibit A: when he gives himself the dopey moniker Alexander Supertramp). The hubris of a young twentysomething man--also, of a kind. The Penn film, particularly, lets McCandless of the hook for not having developed the skills to survive in the Alaskan wilderness.

Still, I was surprised how much the film was able to evoke fundamentally internal states. In both the book and the film, there is something really haunting about McCandless’s demise, when it’s certain that McCandless wasn’t feeling the life-affirming joy of self-reliance, but instead desolation…and loneliness.

How easy it is to slip between solitude and loneliness is certainly a worthy subject, and one that the book is able to cover much better than the film. But both portray a fascinating story that I think is worthy of consideration.

"Everyone is unusual in their own way": an interview with the creator of functionally ill

2008-04-16T08:32:00.004-04:00

Laura-Marie Taylor has been a friend of mine since we met when we were teenaged aspiring writers at the California State Summer School for the Arts. Geography separated us then; she was from the Central Coast and I from SoCal, but we still managed to visit with each other from time to time throughout high school and college, and now that we are separated by 3000 miles, the internet has brought us together once again. It's online that I discovered Laura-Marie's blog, Dangerous Compassions, and also one of her zines, functionally ill: adventures with mental health, that offers a personal view of mental illness, its treatment, and implications in one person's daily life.

What struck me when I first started reading functionally ill was how much my ideas about mental illness were formed by books and movies that portray sufferers in dramatic extremes: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Girl Interrupted, Prozac Nation, etc. functionally ill really got me to thinking about the reality, that there are millions of people are living with mental illness, holding jobs, going to the grocery store, etc. We just don't get to see accounts of the day-to-day experience. I found functionally ill's treatment of the subject really fascinating, and I wanted to open up a conversation with its creator about what inspired her. So what follows is our interview, conducted over email last week.

AJM: Can you talk about whether you've thought at all about where your zine fits into the pantheon of mental illness literature? Maybe you could also talk a little about what inspired you to start the zine in the first place.

LMT: I don't consider functionally ill as having a place in the mental illness literature pantheon, but I do see it as having a place in the zine world. Years ago I read a zine by Megan Gendell called Clark 8 which is an account of a stay at the mental hospital: articulate, sharp, intimate. I will always be grateful to Megan for showing me what's possible in mental illness writing. There's a whole genre of mental illness zines, mostly about depression, anxiety, and self injury. I'm happy to find myself within this genre and believe I have something to give.

As for what inspired me to start the zine in the first place, I wrote issues one and two with an intense need to communicate my truth. Another reason was to shed light on a shady topic. Friends wanted to know what my voices say, for example, and I was happy to provide that information. I've been creating zines for a long time, and it's natural now. Also, I write functionally ill for my mom. She readseach issue multiple times. I feel safer knowing that other people understand my life. I'm expanding the community of people who care about me. And I've received the most moving feedback from other mentally ill people and their family members.

AJM: Another idea in your zine that really intrigues me is the idea of "identifying" as a mentally ill person in the way that someone might identify as gay. You write about how the ability to take up such a mantle is something of a relief, because it allows a person to stop having to pass for somebody else's idea of "normal," whatever that might mean. The other way of looking at such an identification is, of course, political. The Icarus Project, for instance, critiques the concept of mental illness as a dysfunction rather than a different way of being in the world. How do you feel about such constructs?

LMT: I struggle with these constructs. Ideally, everyone should be out about everything. So many people are suffering in closets of isolation. Telling the truth about our lives is a step toward authentic experience. Also, a good example helps other people feel okay about telling their truths. We discover that everyone is unusual in their own way, and life becomes more refreshing.

I remember after I wrote issue one of functionally ill and gave it to friends. A week later, my friend Paul said, "So, you're crazy."

I said, "Yeah."

"Me too," he said. "Everyone's crazy."

Later he and I had another conversation about it. I asked him, "Do you hear voices too?"

He said, "No. I wish I did. That would be cool."

In my life, it's mostly fine to hear voices: they're just chatty. They're not a big deal. But some days it's really a burden, the days the voices get screamy in particular. It's scary to have something going on in my head that's disturbing and I can't make it stop.

I told Paul that we all draw the line somewhere, and I would say someone's actually mentally ill when she's dangerous, to others or to herself.

"You don't seem dangerous to me," Paul said. And I don't seem dangerous to most people. Does everyone have a secret life? I've spent my whole life refining my wellness performance. Some days I do a better job than others.

I guess everyone has performances. But I never gave Paul issues two or three.

AJM: Many of the history's greatest artists and writers, like Van Gogh and Emily Dickinson, have been "diagnosed" as being mentally ill. What do you think about the role mental illness plays in artistic creation—a means of insight or a hindrance? And how do you think medication might interact with the thought and creativity required to create writing or art?

LMT: Sometimes I want to go off all my medications and be crazy because my best art has been created during extreme emotional states. Also, when I'm manic, I write with an incredible urgency. I feel compelled to stay up all night writing: issue two of functionally ill was written during a manic episode.

Mental illness is a hindrance to making art in that it causes artists to kill themselves. If I could get away with it, I would live without medication, but I don't want to die. When I made the decision to try mainstream methods, it was a last resort, and medication is part of that package.

As for what role mental illness plays in artistic creations, that's a fascinating question. I don't think it's a coincidence. It must have to do with extremes. My favorite bipolar hero is my favorite novelist Virginia Woolf. I actually don't know a lot about her life besides a few basic facts—a little about her relationship with her husband and her death. I want to be like her in all the good ways and not be like her in all the bad ways.

Check out past, current and future issues of functionally ill. For more information write to: robotmad at gmail dot com.

Picture Monday: Baltimore

2008-04-14T21:31:00.002-04:00

"And you pointed your headlamp towards the horizon
We were the one thing in the galaxy God didn't have his eye on
900 cc's of raw whining power
No outstanding warrants for my arrest
Hi-diddle-dee-dee
The pirate's life for me..."

-The Mountain Goats

Review Thursday: Lush Life by Richard Price

2008-04-10T08:36:00.000-04:00

I confess: I’m a huge Richard Price fan from way back in the Clockers and Freedomland days. I stuck with him through the slim and somewhat unsatisfying Samaritan, and it was with excitement and trepidation that I discovered that he’d tackled a scene much more familiar to me than the Jersey projects that form the environment of most of his novels: the gentrifying Lower East Side.

“In New York, 30 is the new 50,” I heard Price say in a radio interview, and his novel piles the humiliation onto one of its key protagonists, Eric, who works at a sort of Schiller’s doppelganger in the Lower East Side. Eric has glimmers of talent, but in his mid-thirties is confronting the fact that he may not have enough to make it in the big city. When he’s on hand for the shooting of a fellow employee, his life is turned upside down when the cops suspect him of the crime, which readers know early on was the work of a couple of nervous projects kids.

Pick up Clockers and Freedomland, and you’ll basically find yourself clearing your schedule in order to finish the doorstoppers. Written in highly literate and yet suspenseful prose, the dramatic setup in both books are humdingers: Freedomland goes inside an explosive Susan Smith-like child murder and Clockers takes you inside a crack dealing subculture through a gripping Cain and Abel story that contains an electrifying twist.

Lush Life, on the other hand, has no such fundamentally gripping archetypical struggle at its core. The murder is kind of, for lack of a better word, underwhelming, and what’s more, you know who did it early on. From the point of view of Matty, the lead detective on the case, “Most murderers, when he finally caught up to them, pretty much never met his expectations. For the most part, they were a stupid and fantastically self-centered lot…Survivors, on the other hand…always appeared to him as larger than life.” The passage struck me as odd, because for much of the book, Price seems to sympathize more with the murderers than the defeated Eric.

I admired Price’s quest to depict colliding worlds on the Lower East Side: the worlds of the projects, the hipsters, the cops, and the Chinese, but I thought the panorama was more compelling than the meat of the story. Without a strong story hook, everything’s world got kind of equalized, and in that case, it’s easier to see the hipster interlopers with a kind of contempt. What’s happening with Eric, the survivor, and the victim’s family don’t seems as compelling when there’s no larger dramatic question to solve.

Lush Life has Price’s usual crackling prose, his top-notch dialogue, but in the second half, the book really feels inert. I finished it and enjoyed many parts of it, but can only recommend it with reservations.

Highway 1: An Appreciation

2008-04-09T07:25:00.000-04:00

A love for small-scale character-drive auterist masterpieces was not born in me at NYU film school. That happened much earlier, thanks to my late father, who introduced me to Raging Bull at age ten (whoa) and later, Clint Eastwood's directorial debut, Play Misty For Me.

Amazingly enough, American independent film wasn't born in a convenience store in New Jersey, or even in Austin, TX. No, way back in 1971, Clint and co. scrapped together the financing for this 16mm production which made incredible use of location photography in Carmel-by-the-Sea, including passages of the famous Highway 1. Still worth a spot on your Netflix queue, Play Misty for Me is a suspenseful precursor to Fatal Attraction with Clint as a late-night DJ stalked by an obsessed fan.

Yesterday, I was helping a friend plan her first roadtrip in California. Anyone who's done it know that there are three options connecting north and south: the superfast, superhighway 5, the slower but more scenic 101, and the mind-numbingly beautiful coastal Highway 1.

I got to thinking about all my experiences on that legendary highway, especially in that mythical land between Big Sur and Monterey. I've done it a few times, once with my high school best friend Sean, who white-knuckled it over the frighteningly steep cliffs which are total car-commercial territory. I've done it more recently, when flooding in California shut down the perilous passage for weeks because of the threat of mudslides. I thought about Clint and also the final scene of Harold and Maude, where Harold veers over to the 1 in his tricked out hearse.

I'd love to end up in Big Sur someday as a bohemian old lady, wearing lots of white linen and tending to a garden filled with fragrant herbs and driftwood sculptures, having coffee with lumberjacks and novelists down at the corner store. For my friend's trip, I told her definitely to hit the funkadelic Deetjens Big Sur Inn. And have a meal at Nepenthe, which is this crazy restaurant that looms 800 feet over the Pacific Ocean. If you're a romantic who loves the solitude of the open road (even if you bring someone else along!), Highway 1 is a trip you must take before you die.

Things to do in Philly when you're English

2008-04-08T08:33:00.001-04:00

My English coworker Tom asked me the other day what's so great about Philadelphia. Well, the sixth borough of New York has got a lot going for it. Throw down twenty bucks in Chinatown, and within a couple of hours, here are all the wonderful things you can experience:

1. The Philadelphia Art Museum. Yes, it's something of a rite of passage to bound up those steps, Rocky-like, and triumphantly gaze over the whole of the city of brotherly love.

2. The Mutter Museum. A total heebie-jeebie fest, this Victorian medical museum houses body parts in formaldehyde, skeletons, and other disturbing remnants of medicine before doctors, like, knew anything about disease.

3. Hoagies. Back when I was a student at Simon's Rock, there was a weekly institution at the dining hall called "Hoagie Day." The blend of cold-cuts, shredded iceberg lettuce, oil and vinegar, and fluffy bread ensured that this was my favorite day of the week. Well, every day is hoagie day in Philly. All the focus on cheesesteaks may unfairly overshadow this deserving Philly invention. The go-to spot is Sarcone's.

4. Cheesesteaks. You go to the corner where Geno's and Pat's duke it out to see the rivalry for yourself. But don't try to start an argument about which cheesesteak is best in Philly. That's like trying to prove the existence of God.

5. Reading Terminal Market. Have you noticed how many of these reasons are about food? That's because Philly has insanely concentrated areas of foodie delights, including Reading Terminal Market and the Italian Market, so if you are still hungry after all those cheesesteaks and hoagies, you can hook up with some gourmet provisions.

6. The BYOB restaurant phenomenon. I don't really understand this, but I guess Philly has worse blue laws than NYC. So you can tote your own bottle to a schmancy restaurant like Matyson. The boon of broke gourmands everywhere.

7. Cheap real estate and cheap beer. Need I say more?

I was so enchanted by Philly on my last visit that I was inspired to begin a novel about a 30ish ne'er-do-well chef named Charlie Pepper, who takes his English girlfriend to Philly over Christmas to break up with her. You can see more about my irrational love for Philadelphia by checking out that first chapter here.

For the time being, though, Philadelphians, I salute you.

Picture Monday: Sometimes, you've just got to say...

2008-04-07T08:23:00.000-04:00

Another pic from the Flux Factory opening on Friday night, but useful in so many situations.

A journey to the intersection of art and life to say farewell to the Flux

2008-04-05T16:12:00.004-04:00

This is the story of one Englishman, one Argentinean, and one Californian’s adventure into the fringes of the Queens art scene. It all started when my coworker Tom was invited to an opening at a show called “Everything Must Go” last night at the Flux Factory.

In case you’ve never heard of this teeming experimental laboratory, Flux Factory is a live/work commune for artists in Long Island City that’s about to be demolished. At one time, I wanted to create a photo book about collective living spaces, and Flux Factory was one of the places I researched by stopping by occasionally, once for a class on bookmaking, and also for an installation piece where they had novelists living in pods in the main loft space churning out a complete manuscript in a month.

Every time I’ve been to Flux, I’ve felt like I was intruding on the living room of people far cooler and artsier than I. This visit was no exception—after we’d woven our way past car dealerships and Taiwanese megachurches to arrive at the space right on time, Tom and I found ourselves the first non-residents present. Everyone else seemed to be artists engaged in final tweaks of their installations.

The charms of the show were slow to reveal themselves—I think in part because we were initially timid to begin exploring a space where there was little delineation between public and private space. Everything Must Go is definitely one place where art is everywhere from the giant soup pot of jellybeans on the kitchen table to a loft-bed laden with homemade pies, but more on that later.

But once people started to arrive, including Tom's Argentinean friend Manolo, and the booze started to flow, Flux Factory revealed delightful secrets in hidden corners and some truly innovative uses of space.

Above is a picture of Tom adding to the wall of art. His contribution? A Fish n' Chips sign, of course!

One of my favorite installations is pictured at left. The giant cut-out figures conjured childhood and were a little bit scary at the same time. The best part was the sound, though. A sound artist had rigged up a xylophone and some other percussive instruments to play weird, whimsical music.

“This is the best experience of New York I’ve had since I got here,” Tom raved. A native of the UK, Tom has been living and working in Stockholm for the past five years before joining the British Tourist Board New York office on a temporary assignment. He’s grown very fond of the relaxed, laid-back atmosphere of the Swedish capital. “So it’s the like the Brooklyn of Europe?” I asked him. “No, more like the Berlin of Sweden,” he replied. On the other hand, Manolo insists that Buenos Aires is filled with examples of Flux Factory-like places.

Several of our favorite experience not represented here:

The pie and milkshake installation: one of the artists had transformed her living space into a salon of delectable desserts. For a nickel, she would make you a custom milkshake, but even better, you could climb up to her loft bed and enjoy a slice of pie! Not something you see in New York everyday, kids! Tom’s inner Homer Simpson gave this installation a blue ribbon.
The slide. Remember to sign the release!
The rooftop shack built by Tom’s friend Michaela
The strange percussive rattling of Manolo’s truck on our way back to the city over the Queensboro Bridge.

You can experience the swan song of the Flux Factory’s current incarnation in Long Island City during the month of April. There will be a closing party that will probably surpass this opening on Saturday, April 26. Check their website for more details.

Go for the pies, stay for the intersection of art and life.

This is dedicated to you

2008-04-04T09:22:00.000-04:00

Stuff blog readers like

2008-04-02T17:36:00.002-04:00

In honor of the six-figure book deal that two-month old Stuff White People Like recently earned, a look-back on those far-flung subjects that have often gained inexplicable traction amongst the blog-reading public. And so, without further ado, I'd like to pay tribute to:

Stuff blog readers like

1. Grammatically challenged quadrupeds: I can has laughing.

2. Highbrow voyeurism: Looking at all these truths that are at core of people’s innermost souls is almost like being close to them.

3. Girl power: Who care about the erosion of reproductive rights when there's another cracked out photo of Amy Winehouse to carp about?

4. News they can use to make the day less crushingly boring: pink writing OMG Paris Britney Gllyllenho

5. Cinderella stories with pasties: Former stripper with brain of box-office gold who you can still imagine, like, stripping.

6. Lowbrow voyeurism: The highlights of motherhood, without all the shit.

What have I left out? Suggestions welcome.

Picture Monday: Still Life With Ice Cream, Vermont

2008-03-31T13:30:00.001-04:00

Perseverance

2008-03-31T13:03:00.000-04:00

I don’t like walking around with a chair on my head. If given the choice, I’d prefer not to crazily wave my arms around and make animal noises. If you ask me to do an interpretative dance about a flower rising from the ground, I might just stand there, staring at the floor, wishing I could disappear.

So then what was I doing in an acting class? I’d always considered myself a “serious” writer and filmmaker, someone who could weave words or bits of film together into a seamless whole, so imagine how naked I felt when I had to leave those props behind in a special acting class for film students at NYU called “the Actor’s Craft”? I know I was completely out of my element with the improv games and the yodeling contests until the teacher asked us each to bring in a story. We were to perform a monologue about our “defining moment.” This, I could handle. I was a serious writer, after all.

I thought about one particular moment when I was ten years old, and I really wanted to play basketball. I thought about what I found when I showed up at the first day of practice at the City Civic Center Youth league: seven boys and the coach staring back at me as I entered the gym. I barely knew the difference between a point guard and a forward, except that one of them was supposed to be in the front, and suddenly I found myself in a group of boys who seemed to have basketball hardwired to their brains. I wasn’t sure which was more intimidating, running with these guys during games, desperately trying to find a footing, or afterwards, when I would head off by myself to the decrepit and disused women’s locker room. I remembered leaving that silent and empty space, going home and begging my parents to let me quit. They reminded me that I was the one who signed up, and so I would have to follow through with my intentions and play out the entire season.

It was this last part that I focused on in my presentation to Actor’s Craft. I skimmed over the misery and told the class about how the experience had defined my sense of determination. Every good story needs a driving theme, and I was sure that mine had one, something important about perseverance in the face of a challenge, stick-to-it-tiveness, never-give-up-and-you-can-achieve-anything-ness. Because if this story were a TV movie, could it end with anything other than this brash ten-year-old misfit sinking the game-winning three-pointer? Good stories demand creative license, drama, and by God, that was something I was prepared to deliver.

The teacher of Actor’s Craft didn’t ask for the TV movie version, though she did want us to use our defining moments for something that might demand a little creativity. She was going to assign each of us a partner, and we would meld our “defining moments” into something new and improvisatory. The details of the assignment grew hazy as I realized that I was to be paired up with my secret class crush: a brilliant flame-haired film student named Mike. I decided that I could learn to like this improv thing. The beauty of the actor’s craft was opening up to me, now that I could use it finesse a romantic subplot into the mix.

I went over to his dorm one night after class. I ignored the Grateful Dead he had playing in the background—I wasn’t going to let it spoil the mood as both of us circled in on each other’s “defining moments”. His was suitably grand and cinematic: he remembered watching the aurora borealis from the top of some mountain in Canada that he had hiked to with a Deadhead pal of his. Mike had been absent the day of my basketball monologue, so I told him the whole story.

I could see him thinking about it, as Jerry and the gang grooved on behind us. “I know it might be hard for you to relate to being the lone girl on all-boys basketball team. But really, it’s a story about . . .” I began. I could see that now was the time for self-revelation. And I decided to give him the real, unvarnished me, and not the TV movie version. “It’s a story about being . . . an outsider,” I finally said.

He thought about it, really tried to delve into his mental files of experience. For Mike was a “method” man; besides being a talented filmmaker, he had this acting thing down pat. He had no problem walking around with a chair on his head.

He scrunched up his face and frowned. “It’s just that—“ he began. “It’s just that I don’t think I’ve ever experienced that.”

I looked into his bright green eyes and they just didn’t seem as compelling. I was prepared to overlook the Grateful Dead thing, the tie-dyed shirts, the fact that he was just a touch, okay, maybe a lot shorter than me. But this? He had never felt like an outsider? My crush burned away like the cone of incense he had stationed on his tapestry-covered dresser. I could see now that we would never unite.

Still, our stories had to. “That’s okay,” I said. “Because, you know, it can be looked at in a different way, as a story about . . . perseverance.”

“Perseverance . . . okay,” he repeated. “So what about we’re both playing basketball, but we’re like really committed to the game, only the aurora borealis is up in the sky above us, while we’re playing . . .”

There’s always room for revision. An inept ten-year-old basketball player had gotten cut and so had my budding infatuation, but Mike still held out the promise of a happy ending. And as our newly minted universe lit up and took a life of its own, it was a small consolation but a real one: two happy hippies playing basketball with dogged determination while the Aurora Borealis glittered above them, the offspring of a union that was never meant to be.

Project Sunday: Bike NYC like a messenger

2008-03-30T13:17:00.000-04:00

My friend Rich and I were talking about how there are two types of messengers now in NYC. Kamikaze hipsters on fixed gears and the slightly older guys you'll see walking a Huffy over the bridges while smoking a cigarette. I love this video (made by Nada Surf for their single "Whose Authority") because it so deftly captures the former, starring the darling older brother in "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" playing a bike messenger. It's a great street view of what it's like to bike in the city, if you don't know it, whipping around businessman, smacking buses, and all. This is how it's done, people.

And I love how the hero rides off into the Williamsburg sunset at the end.

If you're a cyclist, be sure to check out my favorite bike blog for a good chuckle.

25 Things Every Man Should Know How to Do

2008-03-27T20:22:00.000-04:00

I came across this list while I was googling around. It's from Popular Mechanics.

1. Patch a radiator hose
2. Protect your computer
3. Rescue a boater who has capsized
4. Frame a wall
5. Retouch digital photos
6. Back up a trailer
7. Build a campfire
8. Fix a dead outlet
9. Navigate with a map and compass
10. Use a torque wrench
11. Sharpen a knife
12. Perform CPR
13. Fillet a fish
14. Maneuver a car out of a skid
15. Get a car unstuck
16. Back up data
17. Paint a room
18. Mix concrete
19. Clean a bolt-action rifle
20. Change oil and filter
21. Hook up an HDTV
22. Bleed brakes
23. Paddle a canoe
24. Fix a bike flat
25. Extend your wireless network

I'm good with canoes and bikes, but maybe not the others. But then again, I'm not a man.

I read the news today oh boy

2008-03-25T13:39:00.000-04:00

When I first came to New York, more than ten years ago, it was a bad time to be a writer, an artist, any sort of creative person. A democrat was in the White House, the economy was booming, and crime hadn’t been so low since 1964. It was difficult to walk down the street without a venture capitalist hitting you with a sack of money. Recent college grads were landing jobs with fat stock options and titles like “Director of Advanced Mixology” and “Imagineer.” You could become a millionaire playing around on the internet in pajamas.

Even I couldn’t help but be touched by the boom. I sent a fake writing sample to some start-up called imaposeur.com or something, and got a call a few weeks later: how would you like 200 bucks to write a column? Sure. How would you like to write the lead feature of our launch issue? Sipping champagne on each level of the three-level launch party in a loft downtown, I was drunk on power. Those were different times. Who’d want toil for ten obscure years on some work of staggering genius when you could be an Imagineer, have your own office with a margarita machine? Why would you want to write about suffering when you could get a dollar a word for writing a feature about natural deodorant or slacks made out of organic cotton? We were all a little stunned then, what with being hit by the sacks of money and everything.

Of course, things have changed. Terrorism, blackouts, war, recession. Is it the 1970s again? Maybe. Alls I know is that every day NPR wakes me up with another scary warning about the economy falling apart, and at least I know one thing: I don’t have to worry about somebody luring me away from my dark garret with promises of untold riches and incredible stock options.

Picture Monday: Two Portraits with Graffiti

2008-03-22T18:49:00.001-04:00

Project Friday: O Pioneers!

2008-03-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

I was always a huge fan of Little House on the Prairie. Little wonder, then, that I imagined my very first grown-up apartment as a kind of foray into pioneer life in the BK. My mom sent me a sewing machine as a housewarming present, and I pictured myself sewing calico dresses, growing salad greens on the fire escape, and hewing together furniture by hand.

Now, a year later, my sewing acumen extends merely to straight seams and minor repair work. My agricultural operation succumbed to the fate of many small farms: complete collapse—but not before my $50 investment yielded two small side salads’ worth of hand-grown greens. My furniture building, on the other hand, had better results. And with this Project Friday, I present to you the extremely simple Crash Pad, a sort of couch/bed/storage combo.

Apartment Therapy and Ikea Hacker are two superb sites for urban pioneers, and it was the latter that inspired this project. Here’s what you need to build your own.

2 Akurum refrigerator cabinets measuring 36 by 15 by 24‘’ or to your specs (the refrig cabs are ideal because they are short and extra deep, better for making a bench)
Sheet of plywood cut into two pieces measuring 24 by 75’’ (Home Depot or Lowes will do this for you)
Sheet of high-density foam rubber from a futon shop (a standard size for this is 24 by 75’’, hence the plywood
Fabric to cover (or just a sheet or whatever if you’re lazy)
Drill (or if you’re really lazy, hammer and nails)

Step 1: Build the cabinets per those weird, all-visual IKEA directions

Step 2: Paint the plywood to desired color

Step 3: Attach the cabinets to the plywood (you’ll make a little gap in the center which is nice for storage) with drill or nails.

Step 3: Cover the foam pad and place on the bench.

Voila! You’ve got a clever storage solution, a bench for your friends to sit on, and a crash pad for overnight guests. My total costs for this were around $200. Possibly you can do better on Craigslist, but that wouldn’t be very pioneer like, would it?

what garfield has to say about about the empty desperation of modern life

2008-03-21T14:30:00.000-04:00

All you need to do is take Garfield out of Garfield.

Review Thursday: Another Dull and Lurid Year

2008-03-20T15:35:00.000-04:00

The other day I was in Posman Books at Grand Central Station, where they always have a really great browsable table of fiction. I started talking to this woman who was holding a copy of Joshua Ferris’s And Then We Came to the End. She was shopping for her husband’s fiftieth birthday or something. I was psyched that someone was actually that jazzed about fiction. So from so many great choices, I hand-sold her my two favorite books from the last year and a half or so: the Josh Ferris and Claire Messud’s The Emperor’s Children.

On Amazon, Emperor’s Children has a couple hundred reviews, and opinion is totally split. I have to say at first it sounded like some kind of hoity-toity bourgeois-fest, a novel of manners, apparently, revolving around a rootless trio of privileged 30something Manhattanites. I had seen Messud speak once at Columbia and it seemed like she wrote super thinky artsy little novels. I was swayed, however, but one of those excellent Slate Audio Book Clubs about it. They called Messud a kind of modern-day Edith Wharton (who happens to be another writer that I feel is severely underrated because she’s female and writes about the subtly of human interaction). Once I got into it, I found Emperor’s Children completely engrossing, a “literary page turner” as some critic said. It was smart and you wanted to keep reading it. That’s not to say that the characters always felt true or that Messud really has an authentic grasp of the environment she’s writing about (I've read a lot of people pointing out how she puts her own British/Canadianism into the mouths of bona fide American characters). But the book did have a lot of power and imagination behind it—and what’s more, it’s one of those books that made me want to write more.

Ferris’s book is so buzz-worthy that you kind of want to hate it—it’s the literary version of “The Office,” it’s written in the third-person plural, it uses the ad world to sort of reflexively comment on Our Times. But once I got past the gimmicks and the jokiness, I found myself thinking about how one of my teachers at Columbia, Richard Locke, spoke about Nabokov. I would always ask Professor Locke how is that Nabokov is so £*$&!*&$ amazing. His answer was that Nabokov was a master of combining pity and delight. And so in the best, most incredible moments of ATWCTTE, you’re totally buzzed on the language, the humor, the inventiveness—delight—and then Ferris will hit you with the revelation of some profound frailty in one of his characters. Those juxtapositions produce a lot of wow moments in the book. I totally agree with a lot of people that this book could have been trimmed like 100 pages, but read it, it’s worth it.

I’m one of the world’s laziest readers, I’m always starting books and then not finishing them, so a book has to do a lot for me to stick with it. These were my wow moments in reading for the last year, but I’m always open to suggestions.

And for all the DeLillo nerds out there (I can’t be the only one), Ferris’s title is the very first sentence of DeLillo’s debut novel, Americana. Neat homage!

Root for your favorite pointy-headed literate hipster

2008-03-18T12:28:00.000-04:00

Finally, a tournament for literary fiction.

Picture Monday: Kittens!

2008-03-17T14:17:00.001-04:00

Project Friday: The Best Burger You'll Ever Eat

2008-03-14T11:27:00.000-04:00

The secret of the best burger you’ll ever eat? It starts with grass-fed beef and the right cooking equipment. Read on for the burger experience of your life.

Step 1: Assemble ingredients and equipment.

You’ll need:

A miniature cast-iron skillet, 6’’
A third of a pound of grass-fed beef for each patty
A plastic take-out container lid
Condiments of choice: mushrooms, onions, pickles, jalapeno peppers, cheese, tomatoes, greens, pickled vegetables.
Bread vehicle: Brioche bun (if available), ciabatta, bialy, Thomas’ English muffin.

Step 2: Preparations

Take a third pound of beef and shape it into a thin patty on the top of the plastic takeout lid (it will puff up a bit as it cooks).

Season patty with salt and pepper.
If time allows, let patty or patties rest in fridge for a while
Disarm smoke alarm
Open windows and strategically place fans

Step 3: Fire it up

Preheat skillet on high for a few minutes until it is blazing hot
Slap a patty on the skillet, you may reduce heat a little bit if there is a lot of smoke
WARNING: not uncommon for grease fires to break out at this point in the cooking. Watch carefully and take necessary precautions.
Cook patty about four minutes on each side for medium rare (this is not a science, I figure the small-farm grass-fed beef you can eat practically raw, one good thing to do is to let the burger rest for a few minutes after cooking to let the center cook a little more)
While burger is cooking, toast bun, prepare other condiments.
Flip burger; it should have some nice charring—if not, raise heat and turn fan to high.
Place desired cheese on charred side and allow to melt while other side is cooking.
When burger is done, set it on the toasted bun and throw some thin-sliced onions in the pan to fry in the hamburger grease.
Top hamburger and enjoy.

Some good burger iterations:

The blue velvet: blue cheese or gorgonzola, watercress, grilled onions

The Senor Caliente: jalapeno peppers, bacon, Swiss, homemade pickled hot onions and carrots

The Monsieur Canard: duck bacon, Gruyere cheese, pickles, red onions.

Review Thursday: Michael Clayton

2008-03-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

As a film school grad and someone who analyzed hundreds of scripts for Miramax for a couple of years at the beginning of the new millennium, I’m intimately familiar with iron-clad, unfailingly successful screenplay formula ala Syd Field and Robert McKee. After writing enough "reader reports" to stretch to the moon and back, the beats of three-act structure have become another coil in my DNA: you’ve got your inciting incident, a major reversal by page or minute 30, escalating complications through the middle sixty pages, then another all-bets-are-off bang at page 90 and then a resolution.

In practice, what you find are movies that loosely follow this template—they hit the ground running in the first 30 minutes or so, then flag with second act problems, throw in a third act twist that feels contrived, and them limp toward the finish. It’s a structure that’s so well-worn that we take it for granted. At the same time, it’s very exciting to see a film that breaks out of the conventional beats. I felt that way—excited—when I was watching Michael Clayton.

There was something invigorating about the way director Tony Gilroy approached the stuff of story in the film, and I don’t mean starting out with a car bomb and then having the rest of the movie be a flashback leading up to that moment. It’s the scenes themselves with their elliptical quality, their curious inertia that add up to a film with a power that seems to sneak up on you.

The movie drops you into scenes in the middle, which in itself is quite par for the course, quite cinematic. But where I think Michael Clayton departs from the usual model is that it approaches story information sidelong and asks the viewer to put the pieces together. Moving away from the three-act paradigm, it further refuses to explain overmuch, lay out the information the viewer wants to know, and is all the more involving for it. Michael Clayton casts the viewer as voyeur, and you can’t help but feel complicit as the pieces come together.

Writing in the New Yorker, David Denby called it a “screenwriter’s movie” but I have to say I disagree. I suppose that when a movie is talky or intelligent, it’s easy to say: “Oh, I bet the screenwriter had a great time with that,” but from my own experience in the process of development, I think the idea of a “screenwriter’s movie” is as dubious as saying: “that looks like a carpenter’s building.” That is changing somewhat with a level of cult of personality rising around screenwriters like Charlie Kaufman. As wretched as I thought it was, I guess Juno could be considered a “screenwriter’s movie.” At every minute, you’re aware of how “written” the movie is—because all of the contrived cleverness had so little respect for characters or story and was so hell-bent on screaming “look at how adorable I am.”

With Michael Clayton, the notion of whatever was on the page falls away. In my mind, therefore, Michael Clayton is an “auteur’s movie.” I doubt Michael Clayton read as well as it executed. That it comes to life in the spaces around words is a testament to the sometimes subtle contributions of the director. Supported by some powerhouse performance—Pollack, Clooney, Swinton, Wilkinson—Gilroy is manipulating the unsaid unlock totally new levels of depth in the story, which is truly cinematic.

There were definitely things that I disliked about Michael Clayton, important things. I wanted the hows and whys of the car bombing to remain elliptical like the rest of the movie, because when it was explained it turned out to be both conventional and far-fetched. I love Tom Wilkinson and thought his performance was brilliant, but as the moral center of the movie, he was hard to really invest in.

Ultimately, I’m kind of a sucker for corporate conspiracy movies. The Insider, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. They don’t sound sexy on paper, but they are a lens on the world a lot of us live in, showing up to a nondescript office every day, basically unconnected to real life. At their best, they can reveal the moral character of a human being tested in an usually tangible way. In its remarkably spare scenes, I feel like Michael Clayton opened up a truly unique view of those kind of quiet tests.

Study Abroad

2008-03-11T15:38:00.001-04:00

"In addition to accumulating sexual partners, binge drinking, drug use and learning, white people consider studying abroad to be one of the most important parts of a well rounded college education."

Go totally B & T

2008-03-07T15:45:00.001-05:00

I grew up in the West, home of wide-open spaces, orange groves and concrete jungles. What enchanted me most about New York was its verticality—the way everything was stacked up, layer upon layer, the stories of a family friend who described his relatives making pasta in tiny Little Italy tenements by stretching the dough across starched white sheets. Everywhere you looked—and places where you didn’t—there was so much history.

My first few years in New York, I got to see the city as a member of various film crews, fanning out from Queens to Brighton Beach to the Village, everywhere searching for the perfect location to capture the malaise of a perpetual grad student, an inspiring sunrise, or a scary dark alley. In my mind, I could never stray from the deep canyons of lower Manhattan, where I hoofed it from river to river, hardly ever taking the subway or cab. That is, until I got a film job at the St. Augustine Church on Sixth Avenue in Brooklyn.

I’d never been so enchanted before; this landmark block of leafy trees and row houses, towering spires in the distance, and the sound of the church bells filtering down. So when, two or three years, I had an opportunity to move into this totally ramshackle brownsone shared with two other women, three men and a child, just a few doors down from the magnificent St. Augustine with her beautiful spires, I took it as a sign. Except I didn’t, not exactly. For this, I would have to leave the vertical density of the city and accept a different kind of life in Brooklyn.

Certainly, if I had secret hippie proclivities, if I enjoyed strumming a guitar over vegetarian goulash, practicing free love, or not having to shave my legs, it might have come more naturally to me, this quasi-commune thing. It would be easier to explain, at least.

The church bells rang each day, the sound filtering through the house, four floors of hardwood, huge closets, sturdy banisters. Where we might intersect in the shared kitchen, impromptu dinner parties or late-night poker games where we wrapped ourselves in blankets to combat the cold. We’d play host to people passing through, musicians, radical puppeteers, organic farmers. This was a big change for me, the space, the camaraderie, the compromise. But as I adapted to life amongst so many others, I learned to make it work, coming out on the other side, a different sort of person.

Harness the digital video frontier

2008-03-07T15:34:00.000-05:00

Found this site that aspires to be "free resource for content creators that will become a user contributed repository of information." It got me to thinking, what's so great about words, anyway?

A-Always, B-Be, C-Closing

2008-03-07T15:32:00.000-05:00

The good news is -- you're fired. The bad news is you've got, all you got, just one week to regain your jobs, starting tonight. Starting with tonights sit. Oh, have I got your attention now? Good. 'Cause we're adding a little something to this months sales contest. As you all know, first prize is a Cadillac Eldorado. Anyone want to see second prize? Second prize's a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired. You get the picture? You're laughing now?

Find a more lucrative career

2008-03-05T13:36:00.000-05:00

A no-frills guide to doing stand-up.

write poetry

2008-03-05T11:51:00.000-05:00

Rockets Red

Where we were when the bomb hit:
Left field bleachers,
Orioles at Yankees,
seventh inning stretch.
Imagine our surprise when
mid-verse into the National Anthem
the sky lit up with poisonous
green, and the automatic organ
with some other occasion in mind
continued its festive trill.

Next day, a helicopter in my neighborhood
hovered low,
dispersing pamphlets, tablets,
useful tips. Of course the sound sent
screaming figures scattering like ants.
You had to get close enough to
get your nourishment from
the beak of the dipped bird.
See that it only said:
U.S. Government Relief.

Last time, lights out
from Toronto to the Midwest,
I walked home over the Brooklyn Bridge
with a regal refugee named Hatshetsup.
She claimed she was a CBS news exec,
but I know an Egyptian queen when I see one.
Time before last,
I slogged through the smoke
downtown, checkpoints and photographs,
listened to music I hadn’t heard for years.
Called friends to hear how they were doing
over and over: did you see? And: can you believe?

End of the world or no,
it’s getting very difficult
to write with all these people running around.
But there’s always a bright side—
tonight, I’ll be the one cracking a beer
offering melting ice cream to neighbors.
Call me a role model in these
uncertain times. Call me
an old hand
because by now I know
better than to look for the stars
when everything goes dark.

Just give in already

2008-02-26T10:07:00.000-05:00

You and dream man, now, over fried rice and noodles in one of those no-nonsense Southeast Asian joints with the fluorescent lighting and the thousand-item menus. You look around at all the hipster couples with leather jackets and tousled hair, sharing dishes, awkward with chopsticks. You look back at dream man. His name is Owen. He’s funny and tall and Midwestern. He has a career, a dog, an apartment you’ve never seen. He has all the things that have been out of your reach until now.

“Man, are you a great kisser,” he tells you later, as you sit on your stoop.

“So are you,” you say.

“Thanks, I practice on grapefruits,” he says. “But you’re much less tart.”

“You shouldn’t say I’m a tart,” you scold, only half-kidding, because you want to believe you’ve grown, that this is a man you could grow with. He just moves in again, his eyes closed, chin jutting forward.

Closing your eyes, connected to his lips, his hands roaming all over your body, you lose focus on his physical features. The dream man is short. No, the dream man is tall. He lives alone. He lives behind a curtain in a converted loft in Williamsburg. No he lives with six roommates in a two-bedroom on the northern tip of Manhattan, but it’s a really great deal. The dream man doesn’t know if he’s ready to be in a relationship right now, he can’t return calls, he’s confused, he really really likes you and everything, but…

You think the way it starts each time is a surprise. Just like magic. He almost hits me on his bike. He comes up to me at a party. I see him onstage, I see him leaning against the doors where there’s a sign that says: “Don’t lean against the doors.”

If you don’t give in now there’s no way he will call. If you do give in now, he won’t call. There’s no way to win. So why not just give in?

Make up rituals

2008-02-23T14:54:00.000-05:00

A friend confides that her mind is filled with thoughts of where she’s gone wrong. It is often impossible to stop thinking about him. This is why I tell my friend that she must take a strategic approach. She must make up rituals if necessary. I tell her to carry a bag around and every time she thinks about him, she should take a rock from the ground, the biggest rock she can find, and put it in. Before long she’ll be stooped over from the effort of dragging a ratty plastic bag full of rocks behind her, and who wants that? “This is essentially what you’re doing to yourself,” I tell her. “You’ll be surprised how anxious you’ll be to unload all that weight.”

I have lots of useful advice like this.

The thing is, the thing is I can hardly invite anyone over anymore because of all these boulders.

Run away from it all

2008-02-21T16:27:00.000-05:00

Charlie Pepper had long hated Christmas.

He figured that the unfamiliar city was as good as any place to sweat out the holiday season. Charlie had spent most of his twenties in New York without ever having a reason to go to Philadelphia, but right now, it seemed a safe, manageable entry point back into the States. For one thing, Philadelphia had less obtrusive advertising plastered to poles and affixed to taxicabs than the cities he had spent most of his adult life in. And though plenty of windows there were lit from within with boisterous family gatherings, he could take it all in from a remove. It wasn’t his city—it was a borrowed city.

Read more

Follow the leader

2008-02-21T16:25:00.000-05:00

The train lurched to a stop somewhere in Queens at a station I’d never heard of: Kurtz-Marleybone Avenue.

I could just make out in the scratchy announcement that the train was going out of service. Sighing “K” train regulars straggled up the stairs for alternative forms of transportation. I walked past bright orange webbing, following hand-scripted arrows around piles of plywood. If I’m ever able to square away my work on the con men, my next project won’t be suicide clusters, the mass hysteria of undergraduates, but instead will have to do with the way people in the urban environment will blindly follow any disruption in their path, as long as they’re given a semi-legitimate reason to. Duck under this scaffolding, don’t worry, climbing these cinderblocks will only take a minute, just sidestep these piles of broken wood and we’ll have you on your way. We will dutifully weave, crouch and stumble along, as long as arrows mark our passage forward.

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