Twenty-three floors worth

Please, do not small talk with me about the weather. Your obvious statements about the rain do not make my elevator ride any more comfortable as my shoes slosh under me.

Monday, a list

1. Dear Sir, I'm worried your bedazzled "Thug 4 Life" shirt is harming your street cred.

2. This is a sideways rain.

3. The 10-foot sub delivered to the office is impressive and intimidating. I feel like a cat who has cornered a gigantic mouse. You want to eat it, but you're slightly terrified of what it might do if you try.

4. Pez-o-saurus

certainly a highlight

The Valentine's Day Cactus

I've named it Cupid.

William, It Was Really Nothing

I celebrated Valentine's Day the way I have for the past four years: with my closest friend, doing things much too frilly for an average weekend. Our girlish pursuits center around sweets and love stories, the sillier the better.

This year's Valentine's Day entertainment was the film of the same name. It had some nice moments, but I have a problem with love being about large gestures or I-had-no-idea-I-was-actually-in-love-with-my-best-friend revelations. The six degrees of separation plot line seemed in place just to allow certain celebrities more screen time, and half of them cheaply referenced their real-life fame. The story never flowed and seemed to be made of chunks of thrown out screen plays threaded together in an attempt to one-up Love Actually. (It didn't.) Still, Jennifer Garner was cute, and Julia Roberts can always save a film otherwise in distress.

And just as Jessica Biel went into yet another misanthropic melt down about being perfectly beautiful and perfectly unlucky in love, a ripe burning smell followed by blasting fire alarms rushed us out of our seats.

The childish fear of being trapped in a burning building swooped in for a few seconds of premature group panic, until the usher stopped the group at the door.

"We're really sorry for the inconvenience, but there's no fire."

One man addresses the obvious. "Then what's with the smoke?"

"Well, there was a little fire."

We ended up missing about 10 minutes of a movie that really never had a plot in the first place, so catching up was never an issue. In the end, two best friends fall in love and those who opted to be alone were marked as villains. I kept wondering if Hallmark put them up to this? I never saw Valentine's Day as romantic. I'd rather spend it carelessly smirking at a version of love that doesn't exist, no roses required.

After a night that almost went up in flames, I needed something less polished to fill my head, and The Smiths happily carried me home.

Skating in the Park With Wolves

Friday was the annual 'Skating Under the Stars' event at Brooklyn's Prospect Park. Admission gets you free booze, snacks, (candy cigarettes!) and three hours on the ice. (I managed not to fall!)

Wolf howls were signatured by the DJ, dubbed 'DJ Moonlight' by someone in the group, and due to the presence of the pack, came other ingenious mash ups:


1. He's Just Not That Into You With Alligators
2. Saw With Cats
3. Babar With Down Syndrome

And for good measure: Razor Train, where the doors are – surprise! – razors.

...Stand clear of the closing doors please.

5 things that happend at IKEA

1. Organized chaos. Efficiency is sexy.

2. Swedish meatballs!

3. "What is this?" "I have no idea." "I want it." "Me too." "Swedish bastards."

4. Kid on the shuttle who squealed "FASTER!" at the driver with getaway zeal.

5. New friends:

organizational elephant
& financially responsible hippopotamus

Hello, Park Slope

It's moving day!

Spotted:

Half of a coconut on the subway, still packaged. It slid out from it's hiding nook as we left West Fourth Street and planted itself in the middle of the car.

Staring was collective. No one said a thing.

The other night

"How are you feeling?"

"Honestly, I feel like I could connect with my partner more. I'm not really feeling good about it. Some thing's off balance. I felt a heaviness all during yoga today."

In the bakery, a man sat with a woman. Over coffee and snacks, their dialogue was straight from a Woody Allen film – simply a lot of waxing on about the complexity of relationships and ethical dilemmas, all wrapped up tightly in cynicism.

The boy a few tables away broke from his frozen focus to stand and pace. He went back and forth for a while and then balked – a characature Eureka! moment. He returned to his chair, typing, then raised his left hand and waved it in the air as if he were conducting the words on the screen.

Hey Ladies

If you want to be hit on, take a stack of comics to a Brooklyn coffee shop.

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday

1. Hall & Oates sings the perfect soundtrack for a sleepy afternoon. Fleetwood Mac on vinyl blasts through dinner. "Rumors" is a perfect album.

2. The cancellation of the writing workshop goes unexplained. To make my uptown jaunt seem less inconveniencing I waif my way through the magazines, trying to find one that's "me." I can't. Marie Claire is too fussy; Cosmo, too dumb; Oprah, too soccer mom. I feel at home with men's magazines. They provide the blunt delivery that real friends should and don't feature a vocabulary threaded with "BFF," "perfect" or "accessorize." I appreciate that.

3. I can't imagine a world without Frosted Flakes.

4. The large pool of vomit on the train platform is not so much disgusting as it is impressive. The physics of that barf are surely something to behold.

5. I like my city full of troubadours. I like my trains full of library-appropriate volumes. New York musicians seemed to have misplaced my memo en masse.

Central Park at Eleven

It's unsettling to watch the children of New York when you finally realize that not only are they more refined, better dressed, and already wield an allowance close to my own income – but that they're more in tune and relaxed with this City than perhaps I'll ever be simply because they are home. Meanwhile my corner of New York still feels like an unfinished Play Doh creation.

I'm sculpting. I'm mashing. It's not right yet.

In transit

The delayed train means invisible scenic route due to that pesky type of nighttime that comes with being in the middle of who-the-hell-knows-where.

Traveling at night requires much more self-entertainment focus. For example: Your book choice cannot just be that one you’ve been meaning to flip through, you know, the I-hope-this-is-impressive one you bought while out with your friend the philosophy student. It must be one you’ve been plotting your attack on for weeks. Nothing slows time like disinterest.

I can only mark our trip’s progress based on a few smatterings of light – mostly orange-hued street lamps and Christmas displays shining from yards and roofs and windows. I notice something: There is a varying gap in holiday light displays that can instantly speak to the income of the family behind them. The biggest homes, inset high on hills or protected by gated communities seem to hold a chic standard for Christmas lights: white only, with the occasional use of yellow or blue when appropriate. But my favorites, they twinkle out of the small yards that mark their boundaries with chain links. I am always thankful to the family who can somehow evoke the Vegas strip in a nativity scene, with recycled reindeer replacing lowing cattle.

And when reading or counting light displays in lieu sheep gets old, take advantage of your surroundings (i.e. eavesdrop). I'm always amused and amazed by the lack of shame people have in public. Truthfully, it delights me. So did she:

The voice from behind belonged to an ex-prostitute traveling home from the South. She spent her trip on the phone with a voiceless man who had, obviously, crossed the wrong lady. (Please note: There was nothing left to do but write down the highlights.)

- I need to know what I can do to keep your cock from running wild.

- I was a hot mess when I came to Atlanta. I was looking to get fucked - might as well get paid.

- That's the difference between a nasty trick and a trick. A trick would put a rubber on you. I would know. And she fucked you without a condom? Nasty trick.

- She a trick. She a trick. She a trick. Even worse, she a dumb trick. She ain't even getting no money.

- I should call you when I get home. I'm on a train full of people and I've been loud and cussing and carrying on.

- And her ribs be good as hell.

- You know when you, me, and Boo-Boo, when we went?

- I might piss you off. I ain't gonna never hurt you.


I love the holidays.

Blizzard, oh baby.

Nothing brings out community duty like the first winter storm. Brooklyn was cloaked in snow and slush and an army of shovels dug in a line. More than one welcome mat was swept up on the curb, crumpled and frozen. Shop keepers enlisted those brave enough to march out for coffee or bagels to help lift their security gates from the snow drifts. A street worker helped a couple push their car and the little boy with all the curls threw snow balls at unsuspecting pedestrians.

Precipitation is good for the soul.

busy bee

Avatar Roundtable Discussion: Oscar Buzz, Metaphors and Blue Boobs

Fringe's Misplaced Memory Science: Sci-Fi Fact vs Fiction

Tiger Woods Mistress Quiz: How Many Do You Know?

what a week.

Excerpt

"I don't think New York City is like other cities. It does not have character like Los Angeles or New Orleans. It is all characters – in fact, it is everything. It can destroy a man, but if his eyes are open it cannot bore him.

New York is an ugly city, a dirty city. Its climate is a scandal, its politics are used to frighten children, its traffic is madness, its competition is murderous. But there is one thing about it – once you have lived in New York and it has become your home, no place else is good enough."

- "The Making of a New Yorker" by John Steinbeck

Sounds of a Brooklyn Christmas

1. Christmas carols through my headphones

2. Barking dogs

3. Car alarms

Friday, a list

1. A man on the train is hunched in the corner playing a hand-held video game. I should know the name, but don't. He wears that wilted look that children get while they watch TV. Every few minutes you can see a bit of muscle movement in his face which I interpret in the way I see fit. I can't tell if he wins after my view is obstructed by the pretty girl in the gold dress.

2. The cashier in the cafeteria is singing Nat King Cole's 'Unforgettable' to herself. It's nice.

3. Sickness gives me the right to buy expensive juices guiltlessly. Sadly, this rule does not apply to bad hair days.

4. Russian woman with the largest diamond I've ever seen. I always imagined that I'd be slightly delighted and beguiled during an encounter with a small fortune perched on a finger, but I only felt disgusted and suspicious. Purse says PRADA. Looks real. Case closed.

5. Little girl dressed in varying shades of pink is wearing a Ring Pop which keeps getting stuck in her hair. A ring of this size is much more flattering on her, I decide.

jurassic. with sprinkles.

the very picture of happiness.

Other treasurable objects/feelings/instances:

1. The first bite of a tart apple.

2. The fit of a good hat.

3. The way hot coffee feels in your stomach on a cold day.

Halloween Account

Carrie rode the subway covered in blood, three pirate wenches shopped for shoes in SoHo and a teletubby stopped for a cigarette in Brooklyn. Later on, monsters shuffled down Sixth Avenue in droves. Highlights included, but were not limited to: an amazing MJ impersonator that led a zombie pack which stopped for periodic Thriller dance breaks.