Thursday, December 22, 2005

Transit Strike Update

total trip time from 55th/5th in manhattan to my house in brooklyn: 2 hours
total walking time: one hour, forty minutes
pace: brisk
random things accomplished: browsed at abc carpet & home, bought final christmas present at holiday fair in union square, got eyebrows waxed, obtained two (2) slices of pizza
neighborhoods traversed: midtown, chelsea, union square, greenwich village, soho, financial district, brooklyn bridge, brooklyn heights, boerum hill, carroll gardens
ran into: one friend (Jason) from the climbing wall, on the brooklyn bridge. he was eating a snickers, which i coveted
total miles: approx. 8.25
rides offered: one. but decided to "get into the spirit of it all" and walk, besides, the transit strike means no gym
degrees outside: too few to count. in the low-two-ish digits
quadriceps: currently sore

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Tipster

My friend Lockhart mans the helm of several great sites here in New York. One of them is Curbed, which follows New York real estate. I send him tips, and sometimes he prints them (I was his 505 Court Street mole during the condo conversation). You can click here to read Curbed's coverage of the new Balducci's in Chelsea -- and my complaint about it. "Sluice of rotten veg." I am a poet.

Transit Strike

Since my inbox is filling up with curious onlookers wanting to know what I'mm doing about the transit strike, I thought I'd just put it up here. I'm surprised anyone thinks commuting is that interesting.

No subways are running. It's freezing out. This morning I rode to work in my roommate's boss's SUV. There were four of us so we were fine -- have to have four people per vehicle to get into the city. After work, I am walking six blocks to my church for our Traveler's Christmas Eve service. After that, I could catch a taxi and go home. But, I will probably just find a couch to sleep on in Manhattan, as the night will mostly be over anyway. I could go about this two ways. 1) I could go to a bar, get drunk with a bunch of strangers and see who would inevitably try to lure me back to their lair (this happened a lot during the blackout -- there was reportedly lots of "blackout sex" and even a few "blackout relationships" that sprung from that night or 2) I could go sleep at my friend Sophie's. She has a very comfortable couch. I guess I'll go to Sophie's, I don't have the heart to go be cheery at a bar. This transit strike has a lot more suck to it than the blackout did; that was definitely more of a party. This is just... cold and annoying. However, it's nice to see that the city doesn't screech to a halt just because we have neither cars OR trains. We're unstoppable.

As for the strike, I know I'm supposed to be a dyed in the wool Democrat and union supporter and all that, but as a former member of a (weak) union, I am just having trouble mustering much sympathy for these guys. They get paid mid to high five figures (i.e., more than I make in a bad year) to drive trains around in a circle all day; are we to give them greater recompense simply for their boredom? If they don't like the job, it's an open market guys, go elsewhere. And they want their pensions at 55 instead of 62? I mean, I'd want to retire early too if I had to live a subterranian existence for 35 years, but that's 10 years or MORE earlier than most americans could hope to retire. I don't know, seems like they have it pretty decent to me. Making millions of grumpy New Yorkers hoof it in weather that seems to have come from the moon is not earning them much sympathy.

Go on, ruin yourself

There's a scene in the movie "Circle of Friends," (which is not a great movie, but is kind of a nice movie to watch when you're feeling hopeless or nostalgic or something) where Bennie, the main character, sits at a table at a dance as she watches the boy she longingly pines for dance with all the other girls. Minnie Driver gained 30 pounds for this role, and Bennie is rather, well, jiggly (although certainly, it's difficult to make Minnie Driver unattractive). Certain in the knowledge that Jack, the fellow in question, will never ask her to the dance floor, she plunges into a pile of dessert and tells herself, "Go on, ruin yourself, Bennie." Of course, this being the movies, it is at this point that Jack comes over and asks her to dance, assuring her that he saved the best for last. There's a nice performance by Alan Cumming in this movie, by the way, if you're a fan of his.

Anyway, the line about ruining yourself ran through my head today as I woefully picked at a bad cheeseburger and cursed the fact that in real life, Bennie would just go on sitting there, eating every slice of cake in the room until it was time to sweep away the balloons and the crepe paper and go home. Obviously, I am feeling offensively sorry for myself, and it's not pretty. NOT PRETTY.

How are you supposed to react when someone tells you they asked someone to marry them and instead of thinking, "Well, naturally! That just makes sense. Congratulations!" you think, "Um. Holy shit? Please do not do this."? It would help if they themselves seemed a little more excited about it.

As for me, I'll just ruin myself. What a fool I can be when I let my imagination run wild. I shall now return to my policy of "not feeling" for an undetermined amount of time.

Monday, December 19, 2005

In case of a French kissing crisis

One of the drawbacks of being the daughter of a dentist and a dental office manager, the sister and cousin of a dentist and the sister of a dental hygienist is that when you go home for Christmas, conversations tend toward fascinating subjects such as "prophys," "subcutaneous emphysema" and "temporomandibular joint disorder."

I usually ask a few times if people can "speak in English" (which I tend to regret, because as it turns out they're just using doctor-code for disgusting things like worms crawling out of holes in people's mouths, severe halitosis, or meth-mouth). Eventually, I just give up and let the multisyllabic words wash over me, occasionally half-heartedly piping in with something lame and writerly such as "Did anyone read the latest volume of McSweeny's?", whereupon someone asks me what kind of peer-reviewed journal that is before going back to their organic-chem chatter. Then, typically, we get in a big fight about Medicare funding. After dinner, they go to gleefully roll around in their piles of money while I search for any change they might have accidentally lost in the couch.

But one of the advantages of having so many dental types in the family -- besides free prophys for life! (prophys are just a fancy-name for those six-month checkups where they scrape all your plaque off) -- is that whenever you have some kind of problem someone can 1) send you a nice, free bottle full of a strong antibiotic that will kill anything in a 10-block radius or 2) offer you some actual, helpful medical advice without requiring a $50 co-pay.

So I have had this wicked sore throat for going on seven days now, and I can't seem to shake it. I have even, during the height of the holiday party season, abstained from alcohol for SIX OF THE LAST SEVEN DAYS. That is some kind of record, people. But it feels like I swallowed a ball of razorblades, which is now jammed in my throat, and I can't open my mouth all the way, which has really put the kibosh on any French kissing I want to do. Obviously, something had to be done, and if it meant not pickling my liver, so be it. Because who doesn't love French kissing?

ANYWAY, I finally caved and called my brother (the dentist) to talk about some family crap and then beg for advice. He recommended alternating adult doses of ibuprofin (which you may not know, is 800 mg -- each pill is usually 200 mg; this I already knew from all those doctors I dated) and acetaminophen (about 1200 mg) every four hours. I had been gobbling as many Advil as my swollen throat would allow, but Dr. Brother said the ibuprofin alone might not offer much relief. REAL DOCTOR STUDIES HAVE PROVEN IT WORKS, he said. And he actually reads this stuff. So.

I gave it a shot, and I'm feeling much better. I recommend alternating four Advil with one packet of nastily lemony Theraflu four hours later. Repeat until better. I highly recommend it if you're ever feeling like the bottom of a shoe.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Weekend Ode to Vice

From my friend Todd Munson, who bikes approximately 2,734 miles a month. He writes: "Forgot I wrote this the other sunday over dinner at Barney's Beanery. And I wonder why my gut never shrinks...":

French toast with bacon
and a Pabst Blue Ribbon
my Sunday dinner

Save us from the stirrups

The word "stirrups," for those of us who don't ride ponies, brings to mind only two things, and it's arguable which is more unpleasant: a visit to the gynecologist ("that's right, scoot down a few more inches...") or one of the most horrible fashion trends of the '80s: stirrup pants.

I think I was in about 5th grade when stirrup pants were popular (of course, South Dakota was always a few years behind in trends, so maybe they were popular in the very early 80s elsewhere). At the time, I probably weighed about, oh, 80 pounds and resembled nothing more than a walking, gangly, aspen tree with skinned-up knees and a bad perm. And still, I remember putting on stirrup pants and thinking, strangely enough, that my "butt looked fat."

Now a full-grown woman with normal-sized hips whose width would actually permit childbirth, the thought of tapered pants of any kind is truly horrifying. If they looked bad when I weighed 80 pounds, I can hardly fathom how they'd look now that I'm a healthy 130. Skinny-ankle jeans have made a comeback in New York, but so far it seems only the willowy model types have embraced them, while the rest of us just squeeze our eyes shut, cling fastly to our flared pants, and hope the skinnpants go away soon.

But perhaps that's too much to hope for because now, dear friends, Urban Outfitters is selling stirrup pants..

Please, let it all be a sick, sick joke.

Friday, December 09, 2005

B.J.s for Everyone!

I know y'all are hungry for gossip from The Office. While this has nothing to do with Our Man John Krasinski, the chaps of The Office should be aware that imposters are afoot, stealing what is rightfully theirs:

From a friend in L.A.:

"My comic friend BJ [last name redacted] met a chick when he was out and about and when she found out he was a comic, she assumed he was BJ Novak from The Office, despite looking not at all alike. [editor's note: this is true. I've seen pictures of B.J. Novak, and of B.J. the comic -- I might add, however, that the comic is not terrible-looking. In fact, he's kind of cute.]

"He played along with it to the point waking up naked at her place the next morning. He even had the balls to call her a few days later but apparently she must have looked up a photo of BJ Novak to show her friends or something because the moment she said hello she went ballistic on him saying she never wanted to see him again and damned him to hell for lying about his identity."

This reminds me of the moment in Shopgirl where Bridgette Sampras's character sleeps with Jason Schwartzman's character (again, not a terrible deal in and of itself) because she thinks he is Ray Porter, who he is not. "Oh, Ray!"

There must be a lot of imposterizationing (i know, this is not a word) going on in Hollywood, because I've also heard that Efren Ramirez's (Pedro in Napolean Dynamite) twin brother has misrepresented himself as Efren in order to score chicks. So, if you meet "Efren" while carousing L.A., and you're a social climber, you may want to take a look at his driver's license before you "Vote for Pedro."

Off to bury myself in an avalanche

Again, my apologies; I'm sure all of you will JUST PERISH if I am not here to post my insipid musings. I am going to go radio silent for a few days as I go plunge myself into a snowbank in Vermont. Hopefully five days of adrenaline on my (brand new Burton!) snowboard at Killington will push my serotonin levels up to more reasonable levels and take my mind off recent frustrating events (or lack thereof) that have left me alternately buzzing and euphoric/feeling frustrated, confused and cheated. Intense infatuation, she be a bitchy mistress. Then again, it's good to know at least that my heart didn't roll over and stop beating a long time ago. Too feel intensely (even about something that won't ever be) at least confirms my existence as a human capable of feeling this way again. And that maybe it's not too much to hope that someday (if not now) someone enthralling and enchanting will stumble into my life -- and want to share it with me. Who knows, it happened to Heather B.

I hope the new snowboard and I get along well, otherwise, I may just end up bumping down a mountain on my ass and come home with very sore wrists and pecs from doing all those pushups, and my serotonin levels may threaten to wane even further. So for my personal sanity, let's pray the gods of the mountain are kind, because I need a little pick me up right now.

I'm off to buy some pants for a homeless chap and then tonight it's keg/karaoke/kristmas party in Chinatown. What should I sing?

Thursday, December 08, 2005

More Krasinski TK

Hi kids. I know I promised you tales of shame, but as it turns out, today I am too depressed to write them. Unable to invoke my usual pithiness, I figure I'd spare you the flat prose that would likely ensue. The shame will come in a few days, have no fear.

Also, when I finally manage to pull my shit together and quit feeling sorry for myself, I will share with you a tale of a woman who slept with someone from "The Office." Or, at least, thought she did. It's all so very Ray Porter-ish. Life imitates art and all that.

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

I'll take one pint of crack, please

So I made a big Thanksgiving dinner for a small party this year and I always like to have some nice starters out early on so the champagne doesn't knock everyone out in the first round (though it kind of did, anyway -- but that's another story).

If you're planning a dinner party, make sure you head to Sahadi's on Atlantic
for some treats to start dinner. Sahadi's is no secret but it can be intimidating -- unlike some bland suburban behemoth, it can be a little confusing figuring out which of the huge snaking lines you have to get in for which product and stuff like that. But go, dive in, and just ask if you need help. They're very friendly.

While you're there, make sure you get some of their fresh hummus. It's one of the smoothest, delicious treats I've ever had. A friend took me out for dinner a few weeks ago (to BLT Fish, which was an experience, although I found most things a tad salty, and I love me some sodium). Before we left, we had a scotch and some of Sahadi's hummus at his house. Afterward, like some crack fiend itching for a hit, the thought of this hummus kept me up at night, to the point where I undertook the madness of the always-crowded Sahadi's on the insanely busy day before Thanksgiving.

Sahadi's also has an excellent selection of olives (of which I got two pints, the black cured ones are great) and cheeses. I got a very nice, pink-veined port-wine cheddar, an aged Swiss, a gruyere with blueberries and something else that I now can't remember exactly what it was, but it was a hard cheese, kind of like parm (which is too bad, because this was my favorite).

They also have a lot of interesting fresh candies and chocolates in big, happy, clear jars. Some lady ordered something called "pretzel balls," which looked like malted milk balls, but with pretzels in them instead. I am going to have to try those next time.

I guess Brooklyn folk are just good at taking delicious food and mashing it into a ball for our gustatory pleasure (see: prosciutto balls, below).

Prosciutto Balls; Plus, Shame -- an Introduction

I am lucky to have moved from a land where people relish eating the testicles of cattle (South Dakota) to a land where people enjoy eating a much more palatable ball -- the prosciutto ball.

Carroll Gardens, my neighborhood in Brooklyn, is not only lovely, but is populated by a good number of old Italian families who still make their favorites and sell them to all the dinks, yuppies and encroaching hordes of hipsters who threaten to completely engulf the 'hood in kitschy shops, bars with indie jukeboxes and expensive baby-clothes shops. For now, though, the balance works. We increase their property values, I suppose, and they tolerate us.

ANYWAY, awhile back I read this article in the New York Times about this place a block from my house from which you could purchase prosciutto balls, which the writer made sound very delicious -- molten, crispy, hardly greasy, fried balls of prosciutto, mozzerella and ricotta. They sounded heavenly but I discovered they also sold them at Giardini's nearby so I just started getting them there.

Wow, was that a mistake. I finally made it over to Joe's Superette the other day (look for the shady-looking storefront with a missing "U" in Superette, on Smith near first place, across the street from the school) and they put the Giardini's prosciutto balls to shame. Walk in, ignoring hunch that it's probably some kind of money-laundering scheme. Ask the nice man at the counter if you can have four prosciutto balls, six if you are very, very hungry and can tolerate that much fat in one sitting. They are fifty cents apiece.

They are addictive. Consider yourself warned.

On another note, I think I am going to be starting a series on "shame" here. Why? Well, who knows. I stopped seeing my shrink so maybe I feel the need to spill my guts to someone, and none of my friends are interested anymore. Maybe I want to make you feel better when you go through your own shameful experiences. You can just think to yourself, "Well, that wasn't NEARLY as bad as what happened to that crazy internet lady." Maybe embarassment (suffered in public) is a yoke easier borne than shame (suffered in private).

For the record, I probably won't be spilling my MOST SHAMEFUL experiences. On a scale of one to ten, I shall be sharing shame stories that rank somewhere on a scale from 2s to 8s, I suppose.

I know you *can't wait.*

Friday, December 02, 2005

Here. Have a Polar Bear.

Funny IM conversation of the week:

I have a friend who works at a company that is notorious for being niggling with its employees -- skimpy raises, long, acrimonious union battles, and the like. The ire felt for the corporate parent by its employees is thick. I share this ire, though the company shall remain nameless. This week my friend at the poorly-managed company IM'd me.

Friend: Time for a quick q?

Me: Sure.

Friend: I got the gift selection for 10 years at [crappy company], and every friggin gift sucks ass. so i'm wondering...

Me: Haha. How to sell it on ebay?

Friend: Do i get the leaf blower/vaccuum (comes without bag attachment), which is at least mildly practical considering I just spent an entire day raking backyard? Or, do I get the fucking CERAMIC POLAR BEAR, put it on my desk, and tell people "THIS IS THE BEST THING YOU GET FOR TEN FUCKING YEARS AT [CRAPPY COMPANY]"?

Me: It seems pointles to get a leaf blower without a bag attachment -- if you're going to suck up leaves, where do they go??!
Wait, you MUST send me a link to the ceramic polar bear.

Friend: http://www.boxofporcelain.com/Lladro/LladroPolarBears.htm It's the resting one.

Me: I like the "farting polar bear" better. Uh, I mean, the "attentive" polar bear.

Friend: How much is 45 pounds?

Me: About 70 bucks or so i guess?

Friend: People are nutfucks. I'm getting the polar bear out of spite.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

The person who wrote this probably makes more money than I do

And that makes me cry.

Back when I first went freelance, I was doing some travel writing, mainly for likes of Modern Bride, and my friend Paul, who was a travel writer for the WSJ at the time, passed along my name to all the PR flaks he knew. They put me on their lists so now every time they send out some press release begging journalists to come check out some "attraction" (i.e., the Poughkeepsie Sock Darning Museum, the World's Largest Bucket of Lard, etc.), I get it.

Usually I just throw them away instead of opening them, which inspires yawning, but today for some reason I opened one beckoning me to the Hoover Dam. I'm not sure which overeager 21-year-old advertising associate got their hands on this thing, but it was so bad it left my head spinning, as groans of a thousand child molesters in hell escaped my mouth. So now, for your enjoyment, I share it:

"Dear Erin,

There are some “dam” breathtaking sites to see in Vegas. One in particular that you’ll be sorry to miss is the Hoover Dam, the 726-foot concrete wonder located just outside the city. Who knew that concrete could be so “dam” exciting? You’ll have a “dam” good time as you explore the dam, and you’ll be “dam” impressed by the sheer magnitude of this Southern Nevada landmark.

Like everything in Vegas, options are key, which is why you can check out the dam from a bird’s eye view, a big-daddy hummer, a luxury SUV, or a big “dam” bus with prices ranging from $33 to $179 per person. And the folks at VEGAS.com, who begin handling on-site ticketing for the dam on December 1, have laid out some tour specifics, because they give a “dam” about making your Hoover Dam tour the best you’ll have.

No matter which you choose, your personal tour guide will take you through all the “dam” in’s and out’s. All the guides are “dam” history experts – if you’ve got a “dam” question, they’ll have the “dam” answer. And some of the the land-based tours will take you beyond the “dam” concrete walls to some other local sites, like the Ethel M Chocolate Factory or off-roading through “Rainbow Canyon.” Whether you choose to go by land or by sky, you’ll be “dam” pleased that you booked your tour through VEGAS.com.

Please contact us if you’d like any more “dam” information.

Pamela"

Again, the sad thing is, Pamela probably makes three times what I do to sit around all day dreaming up this schlock. Sigh.