gives you wings…and a heart murmur

“Dude, how many Red Bulls have you drank today?”

“I’m on my fourth, why?”

“I can hear you breathing from across the room.”

instead, i leave you with the gift of music

I simply can not blog right now because I have so much writing I need to be doing that every time I want to sit down and write a blog, I am plagued with guilt that I should be working on one of the fifteen articles and editing assignments I have due by next Friday. And then the guilt weighs down on me so heavily that I have to eat a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice-cream and decompress over multiple episodes of How I Met Your Mother in order eliviate the pressure. Plus, I started a new job this week and I’ve been very busy trying to be better at it than the other person who started this week as well. I know it’s not a competition, but I will still make it into one. I basically should just start wearing a t-shirt to work that reads DOES NOT PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.

Anyways, I will say this.  Knocks From The Underground, a publication I regularly contribute to/organize events for/creatively dream about held our biggest, baddest assest show of the year and the turn out was huge. Seriously, we packed the Studio at Webster Hall, something I didn’t really think was going to happen, but did. And it was great.  I think we are really getting at something here. Also, our New York compilation album (which the concert celebrated) is available for FREE DOWNLOAD (yes, that’s right, FREE) HERE. So if you are searching for some new music, look no further. I personally recommend MixTape, Life and Times Of and Carlon.

Ok, shameless plug over.

Also, while you are listening you should read THIS amazing article in New York Magazine which I think really beautifully sums up the growth of indie rock in Brooklyn, specifically profiling The Dirty Projectors, a band I’ve written about here before and am currently looking into selling my left tit in order to go see this weekend at the Bowery Ballroom.

just doing my part to get the facts out there

won’t be hosting the neighborhood super bowl party in coming years

My boyfriend is into sports. I, on the other hand, am not. It’s not that I don’t like sports. It’s just that I was never very good at them and once I turned into a grownup I figured I was done with them. I no longer had to feign interest or skill in order to fit in. Literally, that was the best thing for me about finally making it to college- that I was amongst my fellow brethren of “inside kids”- kids that would much rather smoke pot and talk about the socio-political messages in Shakespeare’s cannon than who would be the number one NFL draft pick. And I’ve been OK with that. I’ve been OK with enduring the Super Bowl because the upside of all that boring shit was wings and really great commercials.

Random tangent… but it’s necessary to point out that somewhere in the course of my life I did become really invested in a sport and that particular sport was basketball and even more specifically, the New York Knicks. I had New York Knicks everything including a 14K gold pendant that I wore around my neck that now has lovely home in a box in my imaginary attic labeled THINGS I’D LIKE TO FORGET I EVER OWNED. It’s wrapped around a Backstreet Boys CD behind a collection of gymnastics leotards and bright pink lipstick. I was so into the New York Knicks that when they lost to the Chicago Bulls two years in a row and then to the Houston Rockets once they finally made it to the championship, I proceeded to lock myself in my room and cry for days on end. Which is probably why I decided to make art and theater my hobby- tears are accepted there, where as in sports they are besides the point. Sports are supposed to teach you about well…sportsmanship. Not leave you crying like a little bitch when your team loses.

Anyway, the point is that I am now living  with the world’s biggest of fan of EVERYTHING sports related and I love him very much and up until this point I’ve pretty much assumed that I could sneak by by feigning interest like I have in past relationships. But like much of my other game playing, he sees right through it and says to me…get this…

“It’s OK if you don’t care who wins the World Series. I just think that, you know, baseball is one of my favorite things and I think it’s really interesting once you actually get into it and understand the mechanics of the game. I think it would be awesome if what meant a lot to me meant a lot to you.”

Which is really a polite way of saying,

“Look at this puppy dog face and then just let your natural Irish Catholic guilt set in nice and slowly.”

And it did. So for the past week I’ve been making an effort to keep track of the goings on in the World Series. Even last night, though I was exhausted, I suggested we pop into a bar after the movie we saw to check the score. And only jumped up in the air a little when he said that it was OK, he could wait until we got home.

So, cut to tonight when I am home alone and lo and behold…am actually interested in the score of the game. I don’t how or why this has happened to me maybe it’s just because I am missing him but regardless of the rhyme and reason…I proudly and confidently go to my computer to check out who is winning. And then I type in the web address and wind up HERE.

As it turns out the abbreviation for the major league baseball site is NOT MLBA. Don’t ask me why I thought it was. But it cracked me up. Especially since it led me somewhere where I feel my opinions and experience are much more useful: a website about booze.

And I realize that was a whole lot of buildup for a not so great punchline. Welcome to my blog.

on halloween, everything is another word for whore

I love Halloween. I always have. It was my mom’s favorite holiday so she always made a big deal out of it and through the years that just stuck with me. My brother always hated Halloween because though few people know this my brother was actually born with a disease called old man grumpiness that caused him to act irrationally displeased during typical joyous holiday occasions such as Halloween, Birthdays, and Christmas. Seriously. The first Christmas my brother was really aware of what was going on he awoke to a room full a presents and instead of proceeding to die of a happiness heart attack he was all WHO IS THIS SANTA CLAUS AND WHY WOULD YOU LET HIM IN THE HOUSE THIS IS THE MOST HORRIBLE THING THAT’S EVER HAPPENED TO ME.

I forget where I was going with this but I think the point is that it now falls on me to be the sole bearer of future generations of holiday happiness in our family and for me the season really begins with Halloween. I can’t wait to have kids and take them apple picking and carve pumpkins and bring them trick or treating in the crisp fall air. And then not let them eat any of the candy because obviously people put razorblades and poison in them.

However, while I have these great memories of past wholesome Halloweens, and great aspirations for future ones, from the ages of about 16 through 26-7-8 Halloween is about two things and two things only: getting fucked up and dressing like a ho. That’s it. And no matter what you think you are dressed as, it’s always a ho. You’re not a character from Star Trek you are a whore as a character from Star Trek.  I’m pretty sure the real Satan, if he does exist, does not where a red sequined string bikini top. Women of this country have never made cats, rabbits, nuns, princesses, faeries, nurses, maids, what have you look SO WRONG. And in true tradition, I join the crowd every year. This year I am going as a bumblebee. But not just any bumblebee. A bumblebee, that if the situation called for it, would be willing to work the corner of 41st and 11th for a little drug money.

God bless this holiday. Now someone do a shot Jager off my boobs.

the blog post where i reference the mta without mentioning how it is the worst organization on earth

I saw this work of art in the subway a couple of weeks ago and wanted to post it here because I think it oh so perfectly illustrates the two type of douchebags you will find in New York City. The A type of pretentious douchebag who is so obviously upset with the MTA’s poor use of grammar that it almost trumps the fact that his train isn’t running. So much so that he has to whip out his pen and correct it. And then the type B  type of douchebag that saw the word ‘as’ and just couldn’t resist turning it into something dirty. Just then I wasted two minutes of my life questioning which type is worse and then I realized I’ve slept with them both and they really are one in the same.

I should mention that while you can’t see it from the crappy camera phone picture the second ’s’ was written in blue ink, while the first half was in black. Just in case you thought I was lying, which I would never do. Because Jesus would find out.

 

deep thoughts

It’s been officially decided by the National Committee on Body Odor that going outside and rubbing dirt under ones armpits is frequently more effective than Tom’s All Natural Deodorant.

sometimes, it seems like i would be better off flipping burgers for minimum wage

My student loan company called me yesterday to inform me that despite my believing that I’m doing an OK job at being a responsible adult, the minimum payments I am making on my student loans is simply not going to cut it for much longer. They have figured out based upon the amount that I owe them and my monthly income that I can pay somewhere around the general figure of 1,114.50 a month. And at that rate, I will have my loans paid off before my grandchildren are ready to embark on their own higher education journey. Except I won’t have grandchildren. Because at the rate I’m going Sallie Mae will actually lay claim to my first born and take them away from me to work the phones in their evil factory. And probably my second born as well. And after that they will try and sterilize me. And then my husband will leave me because he has good credit and his parents were fortunate enough to be able to shell out six figures for him to get an education and why would he want to be associated with the likes of me? And all of this because I wanted to get an education.

I am on a first name basis with my student loan officer now. Her name is Rita Turner she works in Ohio and sounds like she has averaged about a pack a day for the past twenty years. I try and be polite to Rita, but when she says things like, ‘You should be paying at least an additional thousand dollars a month on these loans’, I am tempted to tell her that my three-year-old nephew is higher up on the intelligence food chain than she is. Because claiming the world is flat is a truer assertion that claiming that I can afford a monthly payment of over 1,000 dollars per month.

And I know that I should just be the kind of person who shakes it off, realizes that this is how these people work– they eat away at your sense of security and confidence until you agree to eat Ramen for the next decade in order to meet the ridiculously high standards they’ve set for you. But then she tells me that if I don’t start making these payments, they will start to call my co-borrowers who happen to be my grandparents to essentially tell on me, and they will have hearts attacks that Sallie Mae is going to steal all of their assets, and I just can’t be held responsible for the death of an elderly person. Because surviving the Depression was easier than putting their granddaughter through college.

The worst part of the whole thing is, is that while I know deep down that I’m on a good track with my career and that probably wouldn’t be possible without my education, when I think back to what I really did with my time at Fordham the only thing that comes to mind is drugs and really bad theatre.

currently listening to…

Lots and Lots and LOTS of Dirty Projectors:

Also, I won’t lie this Jay-Z song kind of makes me fall in love with New York all over again:

deep thoughts

I’ve started wearing rubber gloves when doing the dishes. Is this a sign of aging?