I’m a Jinius

-I totally forgot to renew my domain name so I spent the better part of Wednesday frantically emailing my host server. I was scared that if I didn’t renew right away that some spam spider would kidnap my domain and make it into a porn site (this is what happened when I deleted my blogger account). So if one day you click on my blog only to find nsfw content, then you know it’s because I am too irresponsible to maintain a blog.

-Speaking of flakiness, I unwittingly walked around the office wearing one brown high heeled shoe and one black high heeled shoe. It’s not like they are even the same style or heel height. Sometimes I also leave books in the refrigerator. And sometimes I buy groceries but leave them at the checkout counter. I guess I am just always wrapped in reverie. Or I’m just exhibiting early signs of Alzheimers.

-My weekend was awesome. Spent most of the time catching up with peeps I haven’t seen in forevs. On Friday, I met up with Vidya and her boyfriend for happy hour(s). Devoted most of the time crushing on Don Draper on Mad Men. Then I went home and caught an episode of Mad Men and fell asleep. Was awakened at midnite by a phone call from Henri saying that he was at Angels and Kings so I got my ass out of bed and met up with him.

-Angels and Kings is owned by Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy and Flat Ironed Hair Fame. The bar is okay but I am convinced that there are no more good bars in the East Village. ANOTHER good reason to move to Brooklyn SOON.

-There was a group of underaged girls in black wigs there. I know they were underaged and wearing wigs because Henri’s friend hooked up with one of them.

-Don’t trust girls in black wigs.

-I don’t wear a black wig thank you very much.

-On Saturday, went to PS1 with Henri and Vidya. If you guys have never been to PS 1 then hurry up and go now! Basically, it’s an afternoon dance party at the Museum of Modern Art’s Long Island City location. They have DJs and you can drink beer while looking at LOTS of attractive people. Oh, and art installations. But SERIOUSLY I think all the attractive people came out of hiding and went to PS 1.

-I even saw this dude I sorta dated in high school! (I say sorta because is it really considered dating when all you ever did was hangout at your locker between classes?) Anyway, I didn’t say hi because I was afraid he wouldn’t recognize me. And he obviously didn’t because he walked right in front of me and didn’t say anything.

-After PS 1, Henri and I went to a beer garden in Williamsburg. Drank too many belgian ales and ate bratwurst. Met a boy and exchanged the digits. We may have exchanged smoochies as well. Tee-hee.

-On Sunday, I had Sunday FunDay with Vidya and Sabbie. We started off at Inoteca and had panini and rosaaaay. Sabs had to leave afterwards so Vidya and I headed to Spitzers for more rosaaaay. During Sunday Funday it is imperative to drink a minimum of two alcoholic beverages and bar hop to at least two bars. It’s called Sunday FunDAY for a reason. It has to take up the entire day.

-The bartender at Spitzers kept commenting that we looked like we were having alot of fun. For some reason, Vidya and I always manage to be the loudest people anywhere. We are probs the loudest people in Manhattan.

-Then we drunk dialed Ursy–an original member of the Sunday Funday clan. She didn’t pick up so we left a long, rambling message. Something to the effect of “Omigod I’m so drunk and Sunday Funday isn’t the same without youuuuuu.”

-After Spitzers we headed to Schillers for jalapeno margaritas and mac n cheese. The bartender totally judged us for being too drunk. He said, “You’re drunk.” I don’t know why he thought that. I mean, we had only been drinking for,oh, seven hours.

-I’ve been trying not to go out during the week. Instead I spend my time watching old episodes of Mad Men and trying to finish The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. If you like tales about comic books, the immigrant experience, and World War 2, then you will probs like this book. I’ve already teared up about three times. The first time I cried I was on a plane to Vegas and thought it was just the altitude but I don’t have an excuse as to why I teared up the subsequent times.

-I am swooning over the clothes in Mad Men. I even went shopping for high waisted pencil skirts. From now on, I will prance around town in pencil skirts and heels whilst brandishing a cigarette in one hand and a glass of rye on the other. This may prove problematic on the subway.

-Oh, and between watching Mad Men and reading Kavalier and Clay (which takes place in the 1940s when the U.S. produced more tobacco than food), all I want to do is smoke cigarettes.

-So the dude I met on Saturday was actually pretty cool. He’s half Jewish and half Latin. Works in the film industry so he’s creative but also smart. He’s really nice and NORMAL. Oh, and he’s MY AGE. And he has a BEARD. He’s like a walking Jinius archetype!!!

-But then the next day I freaked out and hoped he wouldn’t call me because I am so fucked up with intimacy issues. I like to sabotage things before they even form and make excuses like “oh, what if he gets in the way of my social life or oh, what if my friends don’t like him?” I mean, who does that after meeting someone for the first time? Oh, yeah, ME.

-So the title of this post is a line from Mad Men. Don Draper jokingly tells his beatnik mistress that they should get married. She dismisses him with: “I don’t make plans and I don’t make breakfast.” This line captures my view on relationships. Oh, except I will make challah back french toast.

-But, of course, now that he hasn’t called, I want him to call me.

-I need therapy!

Now that we are approaching August, I am trying to live each day like it’s the last day of summer. That means every day should involve at least one or two of the following: barbecue, pool party, rosaaay, Daisy Dukes and bourbon.

And this weekend my friends and I manage to do all those things. (more…)

1. So last night I am out with Michael and his friends at Spitzers (be tee dubs I am OBSESSED with their BLT&E sandwich. I want to carry its picture in my wallet and call it every night) and I get a text. It is from the bearded guy. He has sent me about three texts in the past week and I have not responded. I feel like at this point it is just better to ignore than respond. I mean, how do you break up with someone when you were never dating in the first place?

His text says: Hey are you mad at me you don’t answer my text

I am with a bunch of dudes and they all think that I should just politely tell him I’m not interested because it’s the nice thing to do and it will impede him from texting again. I don’t know about you, people with feelings, but if someone sent me a text expressing they were not interested in me I think I would cry and then eat the entire contents of my fridge.

So I text my girlfriends and ask what they would do to show how differently girls and guys respond.

Ursy says: Tell him you are supermad at him or tell him you moved.

(I like this one)

Vidya says: No u should not respond. unless you want that kind of attention which I assume u don’t.

(For the record, I do not appreciate slightly creepy verbiage via text. Although I would have nothing to blog about if i didn’t receive them.)

Sarah says: If you must, say: I am not angry or upset, this is just not going to work.

(Sarah sounds like a dude)

2. Mean Girls was on the other day and it’s just one of those movies that gets funnier with each viewing. My new favorite line is: I don’t hate you because you’re fat. You’re fat because I hate you.

I am soooo gonna say that to my friends.

3. I texted the bartender last night and he never wrote me back. I am tempted to text: Are you mad at me? You don’t answer my text.

4. See, guys do this shit to girls all the time. And as long as women refer to men to make their moral decisions, the world will continue to be populated by assholes and liars.

5.So that was the first time I ever texted the bartender to hangout. And I think it will also be my last. Whatevs, at least my texts make sense. The bartender’s texts are like the Da Vinci Code and I need Tom Hanks to explicate them.

6.I can see the search words people use on this blog and I guess guys I formerly dated are reading it because they are typing their name in the search box. Are you really that vain to think that I would blog about you and use your real name? Because everyone knows I use really creative nicknames. Like the bearded guy!

7. I have stomach cellulite. I know, I know, HOT. So I googled how to get rid of it because I thought you could only get cellulite on your legs but apparently you can also get it on your stomach and arms. Ugh.

So these are some of the causes:

Cellulite on the stomach, especially in the lower portion, are thought to be linked to digestive disorders. Indeed, many women with stomach cellulite have irritable bowel, constipation, or liver disorders.

True. True. Double True.

It is so hot in New York right now that the city feels like it is wrapped in a hot, wet towel. It is so hot that I had three nervous breakdowns in the span of half an hour. It is so hot that you could get drunk off of one beer. It is so hot that when I said goodbye to Ursy on her last night in New York, I cried and had no tears left because I was so dehydrated. No, I still cried like a big baby. But more on that later.

Thursday

For Ursy’s last weekend in New York, we decided to eat at Supper Restaurant in the East Village for her last supper.

Supper is one of my favorite Italian restaurants in the city. It’s laid back, the food is good, and it’s inexpensive. My only complaint is that the hostess acts like the Mayor of Stankonia. I don’t understand the need for such attitude when ostensibly the hostess’s role is to greet and welcome the customers. The hostess sets the tone for the rest of the evening. And she started it on a bitter note. Hello, we are in a recession. If you want asses in your seats then you need to treat people like you actually want them in your restaurant.

Basically, she wouldn’t seat the two of us until Sabbie showed up. Okay, I get that some restaurants don’t like to seat you until your whole party arrives–especially if your restaurant is busy and there are other parties waiting. But we were just three people. It’s not like we were a party of twenty and only two of us had shown up. And the restaurant was not that busy. Plus, did I mention how freaking how it is in New York and that we were grilling on the sidewalk like fucking shawarma?!?!

So Sabbie shows up and we are finally seated. And the rest of the meal was lovely because it’s not really about the restaurant but the people you are with. And these are my favorite lizzadies. Oh, and it also helped that the waiter gave us a bowl of icecream on the house. Fabulosity! (more…)

I just returned from a blissful weekend on Fire Island. Will post the weekend details tomorrow. Because what happens on Fire Island gets divulged on the internet for anonymous strangers to read.

On Sunday evening, I come back into the city and go out for drinks with my funny Jew friends. Or as I like to call it : The Summit of Funny People. Liz, Prom Date, and Sarah (Prom Date’s sister).

We sip on grassy white wine at EU and then head to Yuca bar where we meet up with the Bearded guy (yes, I have uncreative nicknames). I wanted my friends to meet him and give me their opinions because I’ve had such cloudy judgments on people lately that even my gaydar is screwed up and I need a tribunal to deem if someone is worthy or not. My friend Sarah thought that at first he was just some skinny hipster boy but he’s actually pretty smart and cool. “Someone should give him a burger though,” she says.

I ask him how his week is going and he says, “Pretty shitty. My best friend died.”

You know when you’re at that point after having a couple of drinks and your synapses aren’t firing so quickly so it takes you a while to register what people are saying and then it finally hits you that someone just brought up death at the table and and now you have to actually figure out how to respond to a statement like that?

Yeah…

And all you can come up with is “I’m sorry.”

It turns out his friend died of a heart attack, most likely from a drug overdose. He was 31.

My friends leave and I ask the bearded guy for more details about his friend and it turns out that it was the friend that was with him that night we first met at The Room.

Snickles.

They held a little memorial for him at The Room on Wednesday night. That explains the late night drunk texts and calls. Or more like emotional drunk texting.

He was telling me how he remembers emailing with his friend last week, making plans to meet up for their regular happy hour, and now he has to get used to not having that exchange anymore.

It’s the mundane things.

So we chat more. Talking about family and obligations. It was actually kinda nice to hear that his family is just as fucked up as mine. In fact, our family dynamics almost mirror eachother.

And then we head out of the bar hand in hand. I tell him that I want to sleep alone tonight. I don’t know. Something about all the emotional intimacy was overwhelming for me and I just wanted to be alone. So instead we just hug on the corner for like two minutes.

Sometimes a hug can be more powerful than any other physical interaction. Sometimes all you need is just contact with another person’s skin to know that you are not alone.

He says that he’s going to Philly for work and that he’ll bring back lobster mac and cheese since I didn’t have a chance to get it last time. I tell him it’s okay, he doesn’t have to do that. But, in my head, I am thinking: That would be fucking amazing!!!!

It’s the mundane things.

It is a wonder that I am somehow still alive.

Despite my proclivity to drink like a Vietnam Vet and turn into a stumbling zombie by the end of the night, I still somehow manage to find my way home. I’m like a cat. I just have an inner gps system that directs my sleepwalking self to my apartment.

But on this particular 3rd of July, my inner gps system must have exceeded its battery capacity. Pay attention because this is what they refer to as foreshadowing!

Thursday or why I need a chaperone

I go to Jack’s 3rd of July roof top party. Roof top parties are an imperative for a 4th of July weekend. Grilled meat and ice cold beer just taste better against the backdrop of the city. I didn’t take any pictures of the impressive view because my hands were occupied by food and a glass of rosaaaay at all times (more foreshadowing!) but I shall paint this lovely urban portrait for you.

Picture it: Jack’s roof. July 3, 2008.There are about a hundred hipsters squeezed onto this roof. There is Famous Fat Dave manning the grill. We ask him how he got designated as grill master and he replies, “I just love grilling. I’m doing it for the community. For the kids.” There is genuine love and content in this man’s grilling. But after a couple of hours, I think he is a bit overwhelmed because he is deluged in sweat and he eventually turns off the grill and throws off his apron.

We are near the ipod so Ursy puts on some Michael Jackson. Nothing creates party unity like some old school Michael Jackson. Hmmm, maybe Obama should consider playing Man in the Mirror at the Democratic Convention? So we all start dancing and by “we” I mean me and my group of friends, when all of a sudden one of the party guests turns off the Michael Jackson and puts on some indie song that we’ve never heard of.

From that point on, we kept referring to that man as THE MAN WHO KILLED HAPPINESS.

So I just keep drinking more rosaaaay. I start talking to one dude at the party about Carl Jung– a subject that should never be brought up at a party, especially after one is already on their second bottle of rosaaaay.

So lets fast forward to the end of the night. I get to my apartment building. I go up to the my apartment and try to open the door. Except my key will not go in. I keep jamming my key into the keyhole, thinking that will surely enable the door to open. I furiously bang on the door. I call my roommate and tell her to let me into the apartment. She says, “But you’re not at the front door.”

So after about twenty minutes of pounding on the door and CRYING–yes, I am actually so frustrated that I start crying–, I realize I am at the wrong apartment. I call my roommate again and she can’t figure out where I am and I can’t figure out where I am or even what planet I am on at this point, so she tells me to meet her at this spot near our building. We meet. Apparently I was at the building next to our apartment this entire time.

Dear Future Boyfriend:

THIS IS WHAT YOU WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH.


Friday or how you can get a guy to kiss you after eating kimchee all night

I wake up and immediately check the contents of my purse. Wallet? Check. License? Check. My dignity? Nowhere to be found.

I call some of my friends and tell them what happened. I am swimming in embarrassment. I’ve been living in my apartment for like four years. How the hell could I get lost? But my embarrassment is allayed when my friends tell me that the same thing has happened to them. It’s nice to know that we’ve all been there. Some of just have just been there more than others.

We head to K-town for our 4th of July dinner. Because nothing says I love America like Korean bbq. We go to my favorite Korean bbq spot. This place is so nice to us even though everytime we go there we end up dancing on the tables and smoking cigarrettes. I guess this is why they always isolate us in the private room. Oh, and they hook us up with free beer! (more…)

My two main goals in life are: a) eat and drink in excess and b) stay skinny. You would think that those two agendas are diametrically opposed and that is because you would be right. But such is the leitmotif of my life. The battle between the devil on my shoulder and the angel. Saint vs sinner. Moderation vs excess. Going home vs going on a journey for pizza. (more…)

Her refrigerator has seen better days.

A bleak landscape of dannon lites, diet cokes, and whole wheat toast greet her every morning like corpses of a diet revolution. Today she will treat herself to a key lime yogurt. This is because yesterday she had the coconut creme pie flavor and she was disappointed to discover it did not taste like coconut creme pie. She closes the refrigerator door and scans the neon colored schedule taped to her wall. Today she will do Yoga Sculpt. It is her favorite class. She enjoys classes that allow her to meditate and gather her thoughts while also pumping an 8 pound dumb bell over her head.

I’ve never talked to this woman.

But every time I go to the gym, I see her in the corner of the locker room preaching to the other gym devotees about her favorite classes. She’ll tell you the level of difficulty. The instructor’s personality. And even what kind of music they play.

She looks like she’s in her mid thirties, with a thin frame and dark colored hair that is so brittle it makes uncooked pasta look sensuous.

Her acolytes listen attentively. Then they disperse and run off to their jobs and families. Leaving her alone.

The gym is where New Yorkers perform public acts that should be done in the privacy of their bedroom. Wearing spandex. Sweating uncontrollably. Leaving clouds of body odor. Grunting while lifting weights. Performing Squat thrusts.

Of course, I am guilty of all these things.

On a good week, I’ll go to the gym three or four times. With this kind of frequency, I tend to see some of the same characters.

There’s the guy I call Silver Fox because he’s pretty goodlooking and has a head of gray hair. I still can’t tell if he’s gay or straight because I don’t think a straight man would perform leg lifts in public. There is something about a man being on all fours and lifting his foot up to the sky that manages to squash any ounce of heterosexuality.

Then there’s Cell Phone Girl. She garners this nickname because she’s on her cellphone when she’s on the treadmill, lifting free weights, on the machines, and even while doing sit-ups on the mat. I know cell phone girl seems like a pretty obvious nickname for this behavior but I’m not sure what else you would call her. Woman I Hope I Never Have the Unfortunate Chance of Talking To?

Then there are The Workout Buddies. They do their weight routines like synchronized swimmers and discuss their menu plans for the week. FOR THE ENTIRE GYM TO HEAR. These are the type of women that say “carbohydrate” as if they are saying “Osama Bin Laden”. They workout in such precision and go into such detail about their diets that the floor is dripping with their sweat and self loathing.

Despite their devotion, their bodies have not changed at all in the past year. Looks like someone has been sneaking in processed flour.

And finally there’s Gym Crush. He’s cute in that nerdy, I just started to exercise kind of way. We make eye contact all the time and just recently started smiling and saying hello to eachother. This was achieved after a full year. I can tell he’s single because guys in relationships don’t work out with such diligence. I see him staring at me when we are down in the weight room. At first I thought he was checking me out but now I am starting to think it is because I look like an air traffic controller when I am lifting weights. I could safely guide a Boeing Jet to my gym.

Maybe he is checking me out. But I know he’ll never ask me out. Because the gym is the kind of place where we acknowledge eachother’s existence but we also forget there are other people around.

We hog the last pair of five pound weights (Damn you! Whoever you are!) We do splits in the middle of the gym. We recount our diets. We run and sweat next to eachother. We look exactly the same despite the fact that we’d rather go to the gym regularly than a church.

In the end, we go home to an empty fridge.

Friday
I’m still on the poverty diet so I buy a bottle of Montepulciano to pre-game before going out. This particular bottle used to be 7 bucks but my liquor store jacked up the price to 9.99.

I wasn’t prepared for this extra cost so for dinner I abandon my plan to buy a slice of pizza and buy a pepperoni stick instead. The name does not leave much to the imagination. It’s basically fried dough stuffed with pepperoni and the size of–you guessed it– a stick.

I guess a smart person would have splurged on dinner and not on a bottle of wine but then how would you enjoy the rest of your Friday night?

Later on, my friend Sarah and I head to this bar Enid’s in Greenpoint for David R’s birthday.

David R is a friend of my friend Dave. They are both from Nashville. When the two of them get together, interesting things happen. And by interesting I mean one night they got really drunk and decided to smash all the light bulbs in Dave’s apartment building and Dave almost got evicted.

People from Nashville are fun to hangout with.

So Dave R currently works as a public school teacher in New Orleans. He was telling us what all the kids were saying these days. For instance, instead of eavesdropping they say ear hustlin’. They also say “no homo” after every sentence. They say it after the most benign things like “Oh, I watched Iron Man this weekend. No homo.”

I guess the phrase became really popular because Li’l Wayne says that all the time and for those of you who have been living under a rock or don’t listen to “that music”, Li’l Wayne is the reigning king of Hip Hop and kids in Louisiana follow his every word. Even homophobic ones!

Anyway, Enid’s was really fun and they have DJs who play really good music but since the place was populated by lumberjack looking dudes and girls with a BMI of 17, no one was really dancing. Not even to MJ!

So since I wasn’t dancing, I decided to keep drinking. Brooklyn Lagers were only $4 so I had, um, 20 bucks worth. (more…)

This is my second week of being impoverished thanks to my student loan debt (remind me not to send my kids to a liberal arts school) and I’ve been having a hard time buying inexpensive groceries that are somewhat healthy because the only cheap foods are canned goods and hydrox cookies. Is this why Mississippi–where some cities have a poverty rate that is twice the national average–suffers from the highest obesity level in the country? I can’t be obese now! I’m going to Fire Island in July! (Oh, don’t you just love the suffering of liberal arts school grads?)

At least having no money has helped moderate my drinking problem predilection. It’s amazing when you realize how much money you spend on alcohol. I won’t take my suits to the drycleaners because I don’t want to pay twenty bucks but I’ll freely throw down sixty bones for booze. It’s like I’m spending money just so I can lose control and impair my judgment and make myself susceptible to venereal diseases.

I’ve also been handwashing stuff like underwear and bras but today I broke down and finally did laundry because I really needed to wash my sheets and it’s not like this is the Oregon Trail. I can splurge five bucks for laundry.

So in order to save money I don’t go out at all during the week and I pretty much stay at home and watch reality shows instead of, you know, living in reality.

Of course I watched the Top Chef Finale. Hello, do I not breathe? And I think I can speak on behalf of America and pretty much the rest of the world when I say how relieved I am that Lisa did not win. Oops, spoiler. My bad. I love that Adam Platt over on NYmag calls her The Gorgon. I didn’t know what that was so I looked it up and learned that a gorgon is a mythological monster. Upon reading that, I laughed so hard I cried. Some blogs have contested that the editors made Lisa out to be the show’s villain but I don’t think the editors crafted that serial killer hair cut and Jack Palance glare.

I have to confess that I got teary-eyed when Stephanie talked about how happy she was that she won (oops, spoiler!) and that she made it through despite doubting herself and now she knows that this is what she’s meant to do in her life. It is nice to know that even talented people doubt their talent. Sometimes I wonder how much I could accomplish if I just got over this fear of failing. What’s the worst that could happen if I just tried? What if I just put together a book proposal and had it slammed by every agent in the city, thus confirming all my suspicions that I am indeed talentless and derivative? What’s so bad about that???

A friend of mine suggested that I turn some of the blogs posts into a book idea and I was like awww, thanks, but you have to say things like that because you’re my friend. But I’ve been reading other people’s personal essay books and I’m like, hmmm I could do that…if my attention span enabled me to write something longer than a blog post. One book that struck me was Sloane Crosly’s “I was told there’d be cake” (Clearly if I had written the book my title would’ve been “I was told there’d be open bar”). She has a very likable voice with a wry and self deprecating sense of humor but the entire time I kept thinking: this is just another white girl writing about life in New York.

But an important lesson I derived was that you don’t need exotic subject matter to be a compelling writer–you can stick to the mundane. And it’s all about your perspective. The most successful people out there are the ones who follow their own path. I don’t have to adopt the voice of Crosly or Sedaris or Burroughs. Especially since I’m not a white girl or a gay man. I just have to keep it real. Unfortunately, right now keeping it real involves eating pasta with poor man’s sauce (butter, olive oil, and salt).

I hope there’s an audience out there for an Asian female writer who doesn’t necessarily want to exploit their immigrant experience and would rather talk about boys, booze, and LOST while making random hip hop references. Hmmm, something tells me I need to throw in a random story about my strained relationship with my reticent yet loving Asian father. Every ethnic writer needs one of those in their portfolio.

Anyway, not having any money right now has been the best thing for me. I’m not drinking (as much) and I’m working out more and I’m using this solitary time to just figure shit out. Poverty is like going to church!

I guess the important thing is just to stay focused and work hard. Like Nas says: I know I can/be what I wanna be/if I work hard at it/I’ll be where I wanna be.

Hip hop tracks with kids singing the chorus are way inspirational.

In other news, there’s this story in Slate about an 85 year old woman and 92 year old man who met at a nursing home and started having sexual relations. Oh, and they also suffer from dementia. And when their kids found out they separated them. It’s like Romeo and Juliet only with adult diapers.

When I turn 80 and senile (lets face it I’m already on that path), I hope you, dear readers, will remember that under no circumstances are my kids allowed to cock block me. As god and the internet as my witnesses, I declare that I will get booty till the day I die.