Above you can see four-thirds of my badass rocker friends Kickstart, whose last summer camp show at Trash I'll be seeing tonite. After that I plan to never go to Trash again, at least not on a Tuesday, if I can possibly help it. I've only spent the last eighty Tuesdays of my life at Trash, or so it would seem.
But tonite I'm all about it. Live Girls!!! is playing too & I haven't seen them in ages, so I'm stoked. I think I'm going to invite Isaac, but I can't decide on the best time to call him. I don't want to wait so long that he makes plans, but I don't want to be overeager & call at noon. Paul told me to play it cool & wait three weeks, but I'm pretty sure he was joking. He also said I should skip the game-playing & call whenever I feel like it, but that's an even funnier joke.
Speaking of game-playing, my blind items seem to be causing confusion and/or hurt feelings. Who knew Williamsburg residents were so sensitive? Sorry, dudes. If you thought I was talking about you, I probably wasn't.
So the Republicans are here. Lame. & the weekend is over, & it was too short. I spent yesterday at Jacob Riis beach with Anna. After we were as hot & sandy as we could stand, we made our way to Park Slope, where we sat in dark, bare O'Connors for hours, drinking Bloody Marys & somehow making ourselves thoroughly depressed. To cheer ourselves up, we decided to go see Without a Paddle, which was a terrible idea.
I'm starting to run out of things to blog about. It's not because I don't have anything to say; it's because too many people know where my blog is, which is entirely my fault. I'm going to have to start doing that blind item thing they do in gossip columns, where they hint at what's happening but don't name any names.
Like, which crazy Southerner just won't take a hint?
Which well-meaning friend needs to stop acting like a wuss & just talk to her already?
Which hottie watched three episodes of 24 with me on Friday nite, & stayed over later to make out?
Which Williamsburg resident is getting on my nerves by forcing our friendship?
Which former co-worker better not move to Queens?
Which Sex & The City star did I see crossing Canal Street on Saturday, pushing a stroller, wearing no makeup & looking totally chunked-out?
OK, that last one was Cynthia Nixon. But you already knew that, didn't you?
I was walking home this morning from my f.b.'s house. It was 7:30 & the sun was shining & it was about 65 degrees & I was happy, enjoying the walk of shame down North 6th, my white high heels clicking on the sidewalk. Suddenly someone ran up behind me. It was a guy in a plaid shirt & a red baseball hat & he fell into step next to me & said something I didn't quite hear.
What? I said, not nicely either, because I thought he wanted to sell me something.
"I was just coming over to say hi," he explained, a bit out of breath from his run & looking at me with wide, manic eyes.
Hi, I said, in my coldest voice (which is, by the way, quite cold indeed).
& suddenly he was gone. I even turned around barely a second later & couldn't see him at all. Confused, I looked harder & finally spotted him on the opposite side of the street, headed in the other direction.
I’m going to have to use that voice more often. It was magical.
I think I might be having a fashion crisis. Ever since I started my new job, which I so far like pretty well, I've had almost no interest in shopping. The other day I was at Macy's & when I finally forced myself to stop noticing the merchandising & color groupings (or "stories," in garmento-speak) & concentrate on the clothes (a word that seems never to be used in fashion), all I could see were the various "fabrications," "novelties" & "directional stylings." According to Sheri I should probably just kill myself for being in this business at all, but when you compare it to my last job it's actually a step up.
Big up to Mike "I wish his blog was here" Toole for devoting two sentences to moi today. Thanks to his blogging stardom my sitemeter has hit a new record. See you tomorrow, Mike! Don't forget to bring your blog!
My new boss is running a bit late this morning so I have a couple of minutes/seconds to blog. I'm sure I will become more comfortable with blogging here in the near future; for now, I'm on my bestest behavior. Everyone's been great & I've actually got piles of work to do already, but it's pretty yucky being new. You don't know who anyone is or how to do anything properly. I wish I could fast-forward to two weeks from today. Sigh.
At any rate it was a lovely weekend. I had a party on Friday at Union Pool & a Texas-themed party at my house on Saturday. I made queso & Frito Pie & we drank a lot of tequila. Sunday I had a late brunch & went to Coney Island with my friend Eric. & then tried to be in bed early that nite as I had to start the new job the next day; all the same I ended up, Jamesons in hand, on a couch at Zablozki's well past midnite. Oh well.
So -- that's enough blogging for me for now. I'll write more when I get a chance.
So it's pretty busy & it's my last day but the most exciting thing EVER happened today. It was like payday, getting a beautiful bouquet of flowers & the last day of work all rolled into one (wait, that actually happened)...
Anyway what happened was my best friend Melissa started a BLOG today. Now not only can I read her awesome blog but I can link to her name every time I write the word Melly. Plus her blog is all about making fun of morons she sees around town in Chicago. That warms the cockles of my evil, evil heart.
Also today I'm obsessed with Svetlana. She is sort of evil too. In a good way.
Today I'm way hungover & doing mind-numbingly, eye-stabbingly nightmarish work today. It makes it nicer that tomorrow is my last day. If it weren't for all the eye-stabbing crap to do I might actually be sad or something.
Blogger has this new navigation bar thingy that allows you to flip from one person's blog to another. On the one hand I like it, because unlike most bloggers I don't surf blogs that much, except for my friends' blogs. But with the nav bar it's really easy to skip around. On the other hand, looking at all these other blogs is giving me a goddamn complex. I found out most people are blogging about politics & art & Paris Hilton & other important stuff like that. Some people are even writing in foreign languages, so they must be writing about something profound. I finally came across a blog I was sort of into, because it reminded me of something I might write (there's that narcissistic streak again) & it turns out the blogger was born in 1989. Christ. So I feel sort of guilty about the sort of fluffy, teenage crap I write about. Like for example...
Last nite I went out with Isaac. He called me back after all, but I couldn't be fucked to write about it yesterday. We were off to a terrible start because I was wearing too much perfume & he showed up half an hour late. I was sitting at the bar smelling myself worriedly & joking around with the bartender about how I'd been stood up, when he rushed in somewhat bedraggled & said he'd accidentally fallen asleep. After that we sat on the back porch of the bar & drank vodka & smoked cigarettes & talked. The (bloggable) highlight of the evening was when we found a discarded table on the sidewalk. The base of it was this giant bear on all fours, but upside down, so that it would hold the tabletop with its paws. I guess it was a polar bear, because it was painted white. The top of the table was a huge glass circle. The glass & the bear were not connected anymore but they were both massively heavy. We were only a block from my house & we utterly refused to take two trips. Isaac took the glass bit, which was heavier & more unwieldy than the bear. It was really hard work. He kept telling me to let him know if the bear got too heavy, so we could stop & rest. Instead of doing that, when we were mere paces from my front door, I suddenly dropped it, decapitating it in the process. It was a good thing too, if rather violent for the bear, because Isaac had also dropped the glass top & it now had disturbingly dangerous sharded edges in places & anyway it was sort of a hideous piece of furniture.
I cut myself rather badly sometime during the ordeal but whatever. We poured tequila on it & it got better. Plus I have a pretty white bear's head in my apartment & I had a stellar date.
Yesterday I summoned all my nerve to call Isaac, the guy I have a mini-crush on, but he didn't answer his phone so I left him a dorky little message & then he didn't call back. After that I kind of sat around for awhile, waiting for him to not call back, which consisted of me smoking a bowl & watching men's gymnastics (stoned, I was very confused when it looked like the same guy was finishing up his routine & awaiting his scores, & suddenly simulataneously chalking up for his turn on the horse-thing -- turns out it was twin brothers Morgan & Paul Hamm.)
So anyway, as I was sitting there, annoyed at being ignored by Isaac, my phone rang & it was the guy with the dead girlfriend of my namesake. I was too flustered to ask him why it had taken him almost three weeks to call me back; it seemed simpler just to accept a date with him. So I should have more to report re. that on Friday.
Boys. It is nice when they come in pairs. Somehow they're easier to put up with that way.
It's a fine, fine day today, even tho it is grey & damp, & I am at work. I have decided not to write about the Olympics, or hurricanes, or gay governors, or anything else that might be crossing the wires today. Today I'm not going to feel guilty that I only ever write about myself (what a narcissist!), the bars in my neighborhood (mmm... bars) & quirky spam subject lines (I got this one today: Stop and Look Around Frisky Commandeer -- to me it sounds like a band name à la Godspeed You Black Emperor!). It's my blog after all. There doesn't seem to be any point in feeling obligated to write about things.
Last nite Margo & I finished up a long evening at her friend Isaac's place. He served us sake from a giant bottle labeled SHO CHIKU BAI & cut up a large pineapple into chunks in a bowl. I felt a very strong dejà vu; maybe that isn't the right way to describe it, but the sake & the words on the bottle & the pieces of pineapple were working their way thru me, reminding me of the old days, but not in an unpleasant way.
& today Margo & I woke up early, & it was the sort of day where the clouds were low & the air smelt of raindrops but it somehow stayed dry, & we ate at Enid's & made our way back down Bedford to sit in front of a café watching everyone go by, & I told her I had a mini-crush on Isaac, & she said even tho it was sad to be ending her vacation she would be happy to be in Italy again, & then I had to get ready for work & she had to go to the airport & then she was gone.
Today is my best friend's birthday. It has sometimes been remarked that I have an annoying habit of calling everybody on earth my best friend, but the truth is I have one best friend & one best friend only. This is in part because we're the same type of person & we speak the same fucked up language, but mostly it's because Melissa is the most rocking chick in all the land. She is hilarious & kind & generous & radmobile & beautiful. Happy birthday booface. Here is a funny little Corgi just for you.
Last nite I missed it, I missed the old Sweetwater more than ever. Walking home from a friend's place I felt this sad little tugging feeling when I turned down North 6th. Zablozki's was packed, but it was packed with drunk strangers & it wasn't the same. Even when Sweetwater was filled with drunk strangers it was Sweetwater. I wanted to find someone who could tell me where it went, or where I should go. There was a large group of people standing in front of the new Sweetwater Bar & Grill, or whatever they're calling it now. It looked like they were from Long Island or Bay Ridge or somewhere I imagined people like them to live. They were classic drunk strangers, very clean-pressed & cologne-scented & shiny-faced, four men & one woman; they surrounded me on the sidewalk. They said they wanted me to join them.
But what are you doing, I demanded to know, what are you doing at the old Sweetwater? "Having a drink," one of them answered, perplexed at the question. They explained that they were on bar number 9 of a 12-bar bar crawl.
It felt so final, that answer. Sweetwater thru the glass looked so clean, & there were so many candles. ("They've turned it into a funeral home," Matt half-jokes these days.) It was already gone, everybody was always saying, but they were wrong. Back then it wasn't gone, but now it is.
Thanks to whatevs i found this site. i love this one. I feel the same way about number 2. & this one.Who is this Merlin person??? My soulmate, or what?
I actually dated someone named Merlin for a hot minute once, back in college. His name was really Merlin. It said so on his driver's license. Merlin sticks out in my memory for making terribly mean things sound flirtatious, like "Wow, you look like shit in the morning, don't you?" and for once escaping the cops in a high-speed car chase.
That was right before we got together. He might have even been telling me the story the first time we hooked up. What happened was, Merlin was driving home from the bar one night, after a few drinks, when a cop behind him put his lights on. M. pulled over, but as soon as he saw the cop get out of his car, he took off like a bat out of hell. High-speed chase ensues, M.'s going around a steep corner, & his car flips over on the side of the road a few times. The cop gets out to see if he's okay, but M. kicks open the window, jumps out & runs home. I thought that part was so badass. I think he was about two miles away from home but he made it. The next day the cops show up at his place, looking for him. This is when a normal person might faint dead away, but not Merlin. Your boy comes to the door, shirtless, covered in wizard tattoos, talking about "Merlin who?"
They got him anyway, but escaping arrest is a misdemeanor, whereas drinking & driving is a felony. So it was worth it after all. Plus, running from the cops is so devastatingly sexy. I mean, it worked for me.
Quel weekend! I was still coming off the new job elation & the universe was conspiring, in its way, to make things work the way they should. After a perfect, drunken Saturday nite that started in the East Village & wrapped itself up at Kings County, I spent Sunday shopping with Belkys: the junk store from Driggs has moved out to Bushwick, & it's better than ever. I almost hesitate to blog about it because I don't want anyone else to know about it. But Belkys already told a million people so it's too late now. We spent at least an hour wandering around the store, looking at all the great furniture, before we even noticed the CLOTHES. So that was at least another hour spent trying on as many pieces as we could before we could hardly breathe from the dust. I found a black sweater with leather trim & a zipper running up from the bottom hem, a floral fifties suit, with fitted jacket & pencil skirt, & a backless gray sweater that was covered in 80s sequins. I spent the better part of yesterday in front of the television (Days of Our Lives & Passions) with a pair of scissors, removing the sequins one by one. Sunday evening I met my friend Anna at a rock & roll brunch party at the East River bar in Williamsburg. We had Bloody Marias & saw a couple of bands & we walked down Broadway to Moto where I had what must be the perfect light dinner, a steamed artichoke with garlic mayo & a Nutella panini for dessert. We wandered south of B'way to the Hasidic neighborhood, smoked a bowl as surreptitiously as we could & took the JMZ into the city to see Sahara Hotnights @ the Bowery Ballroom. Stepping off the train onto the street, a little bit stoned, getting ourselves more or less together, we were verbally accosted by a passing group of neighborhood boys. It was no big deal; annoying & typical, definitely, but nothing out of the ordinary. Then suddenly from behind we felt a hard cold shock of water splash against us. They fucking threw water at us! We were quite shocked & hoping it was only water; Anna had the presence of mind to yell something after them but mainly we were pretty surprised & didn't really do anything. We had to stop at a bodega for batteries for Anna's camera & the backs of our tee shirts were soaking & my ass was a bit damp too. "I'm so sick of this shit," I told Anna vehemently, "& I'm not going to take it anymore!" Even tho, actually, no one had ever thrown water at me on the street before. It was a brand new tactic in street harassment, & may I add, an unwelcome one.
By the time we got to the show tho, our clothes were drying & our anger was fading.
We were blown away by the rock that is Sahara Hotnights. My Scandophilia was rekindled to the nth degree. It was 100% pure rock & roll. The only thing that was weird was I kept noticing this really fat girl with black hair & poofy red bangs who was dancing very close to me. She knew the words to every song & she sang along the entire time & jumped up & down & something about her fatness & the ugly red bangs & the way she knew all the words made me feel sad. But then I would just look back up at the band or over at Anna & all would be well again. On the way home Marcello said, "That's what it was like to see the Clash."
It's boring as hell today in work-land. I'm trying to sort of get my shit together so that I can extract myself from this desk & computer for good. That basically involves me "cleaning out" (read: reading) a lot of old emails & whatever documents & photos are saved on my desktop & various other drives. I have about thirty photos saved here at work & I just forwarded them all to my monstrous gmail account for safekeeping. Lovely large gmail was completely unfazed: I've now gone from using 1% of my storage space to a whopping 2%.
Last nite Anise & I met up with a relative of mine from Sweden. She's like a third cousin or something. She's visiting New York with her friend Ingrid, who is, by the way, the most beautiful person I've ever seen in real life. My third cousin is actually super hot too but Ingrid is from some other planet or something with the personality to match. She had platinum hair & a mole in just the right spot next to her nose & this very bright pink blush that was sort of breathlessly swooped across her cheeks. I got all nervous & felt the pressure of where to take these perfect beings, with their Chanel bags & Skando accents. It didn't matter because they loved everywhere we went, from the roof of the Hudson Hotel to a beer-soaked table at Zabloski's. We stopped at my place to smoke a bit & analyze my new paintings, then off to Red & Black where we danced our Swedish tushies off for ages. I left messages with Mike & Joe earlier in the evening, to see if they wanted to meet us out, but they declined. Boys, cue kicking yourselves right about now.
So the boy with a dead girlfriend hasn't called me. That sucks. I was excited to meet someone who doesn't know where my blog is, so I could dish all the details to everyone who does. That's what I'm looking for in a man: he must not know where my blog is. For some reason it's important to me to be able to talk about him on my site without him knowing. I've been trying it the other way & it's not nearly as much fun. I'm so over censoring myself.
In other news, I got a new job! I got offered the job today & I took the job today! Just like that! I'm going to be a copy editor for this fashion company here in NYC. Emphasis on New York City, not Jersey City, which is where my current company has decided they want everyone to work. This is also good news for ye olde blog. Don't worry little blog. I inspected the place pretty carefully & it seems like a nice environment for you. Plus no one there knows about you yet, so I can tell you all kinds of crap about them.
I can also tell you some crap about the nerd from Friendster who sent me another message. I had replied to his first message, basically saying thanks but no thanks, but he never responded to that, rather understandably. Then suddenly, weeks later, he wrote me again. The weird part is it was as tho he didn't realized he'd written me before. It was the same damn message, but everything was worded a little differently. Like, instead of describing a "risible" comment I made in my profile, this time he used the word "waggish." It ended with the same line about meeting up for coffee, or emailing for awhile on Friendster, if the coffee thing was too soon. It's like he is using a cover letter that he sends out to everyone & then tweaks accordingly. I think I'm going to write him back tho. I have to admit I'm intrigued by his utterly extreme douchiness.
If anyone is interested in learning what was cool months, years, or even many years ago, I'm your girl. I don't know anything about what's cool now, but I'm slowly catching up with the times. Remember that South Park where they found that dude who had been frozen since 1996, & he was really into Ace of Base & the movie Fargo, & to fit in he had to move to Des Moines, Iowa, where everything is two years behind the times? Basically I'm that dude. I figured it out last nite when I became probably the last woman on earth to notice that Tom Cruise is a sexy motherfucker. To my credit tho, I think he's gotten hotter over the years. Despite the ugly grey hair he's sporting in his new movie, he looks better than he ever has.
The other embarassing thing is that I finally picked up an album by The Walkmen (on vinyl, natch), after about two years of all of my friends talking about how great they are. It's really fantastic. It reminds me of Bob Dylan for some reason. Hopefully I will get around to Franz Ferdinand by about 2006.
So if anyone needs me I'll be over in Des Moines. Which is probably not as un-hip as still living in Williamsburg, which was cool about three years ago. Quelle loser!
After an evening of drunken carousing at Kings County, I was persuaded to go to Fire Island the next day at the crack of dawn, splitting headache & all. I rode down in the Le Baron with Belkys, Jade, Carlos & Utz the dog. My head was pounding harder than ever but we were listening to It's Alright Ma & then lots of Against Me! & the day was getting brighter & we were all pretty happy in spite of everything.
We took the ferry out to Sailors Haven. The ferry was full of the fattest teenagers I've ever seen. We were hungover & smelt of tequila but we were making fun of them anyway. The beach was utterly perfect. It wasn't blindingly sunny but it was hot & the waves were cold & strong. We claimed a spot of sand for our cooler & towels & a stake for illicit Utz the dog, who was supposed to be confined to the boardwalk. We took turns sitting with Utz on the sand & swimming in the lovely cold ocean, riding the waves & getting salty & cool.
Another thing that happened over the weekend was that I acquired my first piece of Art. My friend Anna, whose other work can be seen here, made me a beautiful triptych called Kiss, & installed it for me herself. Afterwards we sat around smoking a joint with Leyla & I kept looking up at my new paintings & being really stoned & happy with them.
The third thing that happened (I'm actually going in reverse order here) was that I met a boy on Saturday at the Ale House. He was really good-looking & we were playing a lot of pool & hitting it off. He kind of threw me off at the end tho, when he asked for my number. He was putting it into his phone & he asked me what my last name was. I asked him if it was because he already had a Kat in his phone.
"My ex-girlfriend's name was Kat," he replied. & then he said, "She died a few months ago."
Sigh. Leave it to me to find the really fucked up scenarios. Well, she may be dead... but at least that means he's single! Which is more than I can say for some other dudes who've asked for my number regardless. Right?
