Mercer
October 15th, 2006 / 6 comments »P and I got up and did brunch right on the Upper West, where the best diners live, and caught the 4:15pm of The Departed @ Lowes 68. It was really long but I hardly noticed. You know how everyone feels like Tom Cruise is scary and evil now? And how when we all look at that Oprah clip it makes us feel scared? That’s how I feel about Matt Damon, I just don’t trust his smile or find him charming at all. I see him doing that big toothy grin thing that made everyone love him and it just has the opposite effect on me, it turns me off. I’m a hater, whatever.
Ran downtown after the movie to meet Mishy for dinner @ Mercer Kitchen. It’s gorgeous and sexy, I send ppl there for brunch all the time but had no idea it was so cool. Had pineapple mojitos, strip steak, and a split a slice of chocolate volcano for dessert. Mishy looked beautiful, all leggy and wispy and with the bedroom eyes. Her boyfriend was just here visiting for 10 days so she was happy and had lots to tell me. She talked to me about school in Switzerland and her ideas about what’s next after she’s done, about her new passions. I talked to her about how full my heart has been this year and how Right everything has felt… and how I wonder what’s next for me. Sometimes I just really want to level with folks and confess that I worry about whether or not I’m wasting my time, that I’m 27 and often feel directionless, that I’m not sure if it’s good that I found my Magic Three early (the job, the apartment, the relationship) or if I’m supposed to be looking for better passions and trading up later. Not with the relationship, just the other two. God, just blogging about this is weird. Shut up.
Cabbed home. Called P, he was too in love with his new futon to come back to mine. Crashed alone. Big bed little me.
Cock Master
October 10th, 2006 / 4 comments »Spent the morning going through my closets and cases, weeding out things I no longer need (mostly from unsupervised trips to the clearance rack at Bang Bang sprees) and filling up a jumbo laundry bag to take to Goodwill. Hardly a good deed cuz I probably wouldn’t have done it if there wasn’t a drop-off donation center 10 minutes from my apartment but whatever. Somebody else might really need those pleather jackets, you never know. Plus I needed the closet space. Spent the rest of the day wandering across 181st Street, which is always fun to do. It’s like the Canal Street of NoWa.
181st Street
Met P for lunch @ the diner around the corner from his place. 9 months have passed (today) since we met and we still have a such blast hanging out together. Despite the Hallmark effect and how much I’m gonna regret putting this out there into the universe, it sometimes feels like he’s the person my I Love You was waiting for. Group vomit, go.
He kept trying to cock his eyebrow up at me today, all suspicious like — a skill he sadly does not posess. But it’s cute watching him try. I masterfully showed him how it’s done.
I am the cock master.
And yes (sigh), my face really is that fat these days. I’m working on it, ya’ll. I wasn’t joking about that group vomit, ok? Anorexia is a journey, not a destination.
See Hope Cry
October 9th, 2006 / No comments“.. like, gym class is so stupid!”
I just discovered Hope Is Emo and I love her, she’s like a little Fairuza Balk from The Craft. How can you not fall for an emotionally bare soul who stares at you and confesses, “I usually go to the park everyday b/c nature doesn’t judge me”? I have her videopodcast on my iPod so I take her with me everywhere I go in case I need a jolt of little darkness and angst. Checkout Hope and more of her emonologues@ YouTube, iTunes, or her website.
See Hope cry! Cry, Hope, cry!
Plunge
October 8th, 2006 / No comments6 days in a row from work finally at an end. Metup with Jax afterwork but couldn’t find the bar she was at, even tho it was a block away from work. We went to Cafeteria but the wait was half an hour and none of my peeps were there to hook us up so we wound up @ Tavern on Jane. We had burgers and fries and Vanilla Vodka Cokes. It felt great talking to her, I think we were semi-celebrating our 8 years in New York (hers is next week, mine was Sept. 25th — and yes, I totally forgot). We talked about everything. We laughed about school and people we knew, former jobs and bosses, exboyfriends and our parents, the weather and upcoming plans. I feel like her Mover/Shaker ambition infects me anytime we hangout. She’s just amazing, it’s like she’s lived 8 different lives in the 8 years we’ve been here. I took her around the MPD, enjoying the fresh fall weather, and we had mojitos @ Plunge, the rooftop bar @ Hotel Gansevoort which has the my favorite view of Lower Manhattan. Each time I’m there looking over the Hudson and downtown lights I get all surreal. Could just be the mojitos, though.
I was reluctant to leave Jax and go home cuz I knew there’d be no cute boyfriend in my bed tonight, he’s in Jersey with a friend. I waved at him from the roof. Kissed Jax and our 6hr date gnite and rode the A train home.
Radar Down
October 6th, 2006 / 1 comment »My phone was buzzing in my pocket @ work. It was my sister, who never calls me. I stepped outside to catch her. “Chris…?” She was crying, my heart stopped and my mind went 100 bad places in 2 seconds — Mom has cancer, Dad he fell asleep at the wheel and hit a small child, they’ve been robbed and the checking accounts are cleaned out. “What’s wrong?” She was at the vet with my mom, they were having to put our little papillion to sleep.
Radar.
1992 – 2006.
“Awww,” I sighed, kinda relieved that everything else was okay. Then suddenly tears were filling up in my eyes and I was pretty sad. I haven’t spent much time in my mom’s house since I left for New York (is it weird that I say “my mom’s house” and not “my house”?) but I really loved that little dog. So yappy and perky. My dad called him our million dollar problem, cuz we’d spent so much on his medical bills over the years. He’d gotten hit by a car and needed surgery. A year two later a big dog bit his neck and put him into a little coma, he was actually hooked up to a little IV and everything. When I went home to visit back in January of this year, they’d had to put a little diaper on him and have his teeth removed, so his tongue always hung out of his mouth. Adorable. He’d gotten old and weak and it was best to put him to sleep, but it’ll be a sad few weeks in my mom’s house for awhile.
Wandered around Chelsea for a few hours after work. Just needed to clear my head from stuff that’s been bothering me in general. Finally checked out The Container Store in Chelsea, seems pretty boring. Almost bought some cinnamon-scented pinecones @ Bed Bath & Beyond but put them back when I realized I was buying fucking pinecones. Almost bought a pair of green Converse @ Old Navy. What is it about Old Navy? I always browse and grab things that look cute but always end up walking out emptyhanded — nothing there fits well on me, everything’s huge. Sat @ Barnes & Noble for 2hrs reading Sharon Osbourne’s autobiography, just curious as hell about her. I didn’t know they’d ended up practically broke from law suits after their show. Came home and ordered some Domino’s, watched the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica. Kept Mo close to me all night.
I Live Here
October 5th, 2006 / No commentsAfter a longass day at work (and an ugly little spat with a comrade) I just wanted to go home, wrap myself up in my favorite blue blanket, and practice destroying the world with my mental powers. P called and said he was getting out early, did I wanna meetup? NO, I HAD A HORRIBLE DAY AND I NEED TO BE ALONE! Ten minutes and a Passion Lemonade Iced Tea later, I’d cooled down back to normal and buzzed him back. While I waited for him to meet me downtown I wandered through Soho across Prince Street to the Lower East Side, a neighborhood I never seem to ever hang in, and along the way (not even with my headphones on) I just got lost in the attitude and energy of the area. Passed all these little shops and cafes I’d never seen before, tiny ones that probably aren’t don’t have websites or are even listed in any city guides (things a Concierge relies on), watched residents slipping in and out their buildings with babystrollers and little dogs in tow, stood at the corner of Bowery & Houston at 5:00pm under the warm sun and cool breeze just taking it all in. I got hit by one of those random “I live here” moments that become so elusive the longer you live here. And for a little bit I started to relax and not think about what pisses me off, or my work schedule, or what defines me or challenges me, or where I fall short, or how I feel about the way I look, or whether or not my It-Boy years are being wasted, or about anything at all but just how glad I am to be in New York City. For 40hrs a week I deal with people visiting the city for the first time, they look to me to build them a frame of reference, to make their experience special, to make their passage fun and one they’ll always remember… it feels cool knowing that every once in awhile I can rediscover the city and re-appreciate my life here. All by myself.
P met me back on Prince and we spent the afternoon shopping and kissing. He loved my new haircut. I bought 2 shirts, underwear, and a winter hat @ H&M (“Does anyone still wear a hat?”) and blew a giftcard @ The Lounge where everything is sexy and deconstructed and way overpriced. All $200 bought me was 3 shirts, which are cool and I just love but still… $95 for a beatup/studded long sleeve black knitjersey? Insane, but I’ve been dying to shop there forever. Had late lunch @ that brand new Soho Park (adorable with all the candles and indierock asian waitresses) and went to see the 7:15pm Shortbus @ Sunshine Cinema, which I have plenty to say about.
It turned out to be a really nice day.
ShortBus
October 5th, 2006 / No comments(naughtier SHORTBUS trailer here)
I really wanted to love this movie. It’s from John Cameron Mitchell who did Hedwig (which everyone should see if only just to marvel at how much Hedwig looks like Rachel Griffiths) and it’s all about young attractive people in search of sex and lonliness and love in New York. For those reasons alone I went to theater excited and ready to be moved, and those are the reasons I think most people are going to say that they loved this movie b/c it spoke for them and the way they feel, the same way everyone jumped on the Garden State bandwagon. Garden State was a train of love I didn’t jump on, by the way — I liked it and yeah, of course I identified with it and connected with that whole “Home doesn’t exist anymore” feeling, but shit, I had an issue believing that Zach Braff’s character could leave the Natalie Portman so flippantly in the end. A plain, Average Joe lands this impossibely beautiful girl on a weekend trip home, and, once he gets her in bed, rides his afterglow “I bagged a hot girl” ego back to his L.A. life. Yeah a ton of other things were said and done but ultimately isn’t that where it went? YES I KNOW he ended up coming right back but still, did you see how OUT of there he was? Wasn’t anyone else sitting there watching the airport goodbye scene going, “Why is he leaving Natalie Portman? What, he’s already over her? Why is she sitting there crying over this guy with big lips? A guy that gawky would NEVER get such a hot girl in real life.” (And yes I know Zach Braff dates Mandy Moore in real life but that was post-Garden State, ok? Think about it). In the way Melissa can’t sit through big action flicks w/o knowing in the back of her mind that it’s just “adults pretending to fight”, I can’t sit and watch (and believe) romantic dramadies with ugly men dating hotass women and then trying to act like that’s just how they roll. Whatever, I digress.
So a lot of people are going to say that they GOT Shortbus. I can meet them halfway on some of this shit. For instance, I loved the whole conversation about NYC being a place people come to be forgiven… and how for people who’ve been here a long time, it starts to feel like you can’t be forgiven. I totally bought the gay couple having a real gay relationship crossroads: to threeway or not to threeway? One of them is The Hotter One With the Big Dick and his whims tend to direct the course of their relationship, while the Lesser Hot One With Nice Abs and the Weird Face is just easygoing and agrees to whatever makes him seem supportive (when it’s really just him scared of losing his partner). We all know a couple like this. I loved LOVED Sook Yin Lee (I hate when ppl call her “the asian girl”) and held my breath every moment she was onscreen, she seemed like a real person and never seemed like she trying to be pretty or witty or tough like most New York women. I just really believed her the whole time and dammit, her masturbating scenes were uncomfortable and funny and that’s a fine line to walk. The music was amazing. I liked that gay actors played gay characters. I thought it was cool how power all over the city kept flickering up until the inevitable blackout, and how the blackout seemed to stop the madness. That’s how I remember the real blackout back in 2003. I also liked that somebody actually said out loud what I think all the time, “What if I lose my apartment? New York is so EXPENSIVE, what if I can’t afford to live here anymore?” and a little peice of me resented and appreciated when Justin Bond says that most of kids stay in New York despite the rent b/c “9/11 was the first REAL thing that happened to them”. Wow.
My general gripe is that I wish there’d been a more fleshed out story, a bit more shape. It felt like the beginning had all these interesting angles, and I like how all the characters were introduced to us and each other… and then the story went blurry. I read that John Cameron Mitchell pretty much let the actors improvise almost everything, not just the characters backstories but most of their dialouge too, and that seems like such a bad idea. Although I love the fact that they spent 2 years casting, workshopping, and reworking this movie? I’m not a fan of actors being given all that storytelling power… cuz they tend to milk it and show off. Speaking as an (ex)actor, I know this to be true: there’s a reason we’re not directors, there’s a reason we don’t write. Actors should just act, bring life and colors to written parts. At the base core of an actor’s soul, there’s an innate instinct to SHOW and glow for a camera/audience/roomfull of people, which is why you can’t give them full freedom to construct their own storyline. Sometimes a story needs to be subtle and sometimes the characters must be still, and only really REALLY sharp actors are smart enough to do this.
I didn’t like the campire singalong ending. You know, it took me a long time to appreciate the obscure way that indie films storytell. The first time I saw Muriel’s Wedding I was livid, when the credits rolled I simply needed to know more. What the FUCK happens next? Does Muriel succeed in life? What about her asshole Dad, is he finally going to be nice to his kids? Does the slutty best friend walk again? Implications and open-to-interpretations were not good enough, I needed clear resolution. Eventually I Got It and now of course I can appreciate that sometimes Nothing Happens and that’s okay cuz it’s real life… but shit, the Shortbus ending was just random. When you give me a group of emotionally/sexually-challenged people with special needs (hence, Short Bus) and make me watch them fuck and breakdown and be balls-the-wall REAL, you can’t just slap an abstract artsy filmschool ending and expect that be good enough.
Also, I get the sure feeling that John Cameron Mitchell really hopes everyone will think that this is really a movie about his fabulous, underground uber-hip life. That he has all these secret wild polysexual parties in Brooklyn every week and only the cool people (all of his friends) are allowed in. Don’t you wish your own life was hot like his?
Could I have any more goddamn opinions? Yeah, one more. I went to school with the guy who plays Jesse, the Trust Fund Hipster, the guy who likes being dominated. We weren’t friends @ AMDA and fuck yeah, a tiny peice of my soul turned black and broke off when I heard he got cast in this movie. Anyway, there’s a moment in the beginning when he’s jerking off and he asks the dominatrix what her special power would be if she were a superhero — her response, “The power to make you interesting” and then she slapped his chest with a whip. That little evil person who lives in my head? it was his favorite part of the movie.
Big Heavy Ones
October 2nd, 2006 / 2 comments »Some folks might find my glee over Jumbo-sized eggs on sale for 99 cents to be maybe a little on the cheap side of sad. I prefer to embrace my joy over making such a savvy purchase. I got jumbo ones!
Yes, I really just made a post about buying cheap eggs. Nonstop glamour up in my world.