Bride to Be Laura and I
Later that night, at Chuck's Bar
Sorority sister Stacey & I outside Hendricks Chapel
BEST MAN (and boyfriend) + Myself
Boyfriend wants the Tiffany cake!
Newlyweds...and one pesky garter!
Reverse garter!
Best man playing bartender...
Congrats, beautiful couple!!
The part of the whole drama that perturbs me is that everyone takes a gander at Black Canary Barbie and judge her by today’s standards. Do they know that she was created in 1947 by male animators!? She’s a post-war symbol for female empowerment (I like to believe). Her fishnets are characteristic of her costume. Yes, costume. On Jezebel, they think she’s 80’s. On Perez, they think she is a street walker (except for one awesome commentator - heath - who delightfully retorts “Pants get in the way of fighting crime!)
So people, please. It’s a superhero. You don’t have to buy it if you don’t want to (I would if I had a daughter). But stop giving these stupid Christian conservatives ammunition - these are the people who thought Tinky Winky was gay, remember? And he still hasn’t come out!
Dreamworks has set up three websites to promote Ben Stiller and his movie “Tropic Thunder”, coming out this August. They are part of a viral marketing campaign to introduce “Tugg Speedman”, Ben Stiller’s character in “Tropic Thunder” to an unsuspecting audience, not unlike the famously fun “Why So Serious?” website to promote the new Batman installment “The Dark Knight”.
Tugg Speedman has his own website and websites for his movies “Simple Jack” and “Scorcher 6″ which chronicle Tugg Speedman’s life as an action star - the ins and outs of the fickle martial arts film industry, his failed turn as a serious actor in the aptly titled “Simple Jack” and his future plans of starring in “Scorcher 6″, part six of a six part movie. “Scorcher 6″ reveals what “Zoolander” and “Meet the Parents” already explained to us about Ben Stiller: he is amazingly clever at playing dumb people. So here are two conversations I believe could happen if these websites were for real:
Two dudes walk out of Tugg Speedman’s new film “Simple Jack”
Dude: Dude. That was just wrong, yo. I don’t care who you is, that Rebecca chick was mad hot and so should have jumped on Jack. Who does she think she is? Yo, she is retarded for not mackin’ on Tugg. And did you see him with that horse? That was magical, dude. Whoa! Is that Tugg Speedman?
Tugg Speedman: Yes. It is Tugg Speedman and I’ve come here personally to tell you this movie does not suck. Sure, it’s about a retard and a sexually under satisfied woman, but it’s got puppies.
Two dudes win a contest to meet Tugg Speedman and talk about his new film
Dude 2: Where’s Tugg? Yo, he said he’d be here. Oh, there he is. Hey dude!
TS: What’s up dudes.
Dude 1: Hey man! How’s the world treatin’ you?
TS: It’s good, it’s good man. Tropic Thunder is comin’ out in August and that’s really big for me.
Dude 2: Ya, especially after that “Simple Jack” drama.
TS: Yes, well sometimes you want to step away from the ass-kickin’ once in a while. I stepped, and well, sometimes you just don’t make it. I tripped, big time, dudes. I had to though; those kung-fu nuts back in China were killing me.
Dude 1: So what can you promise us from “Tropic Thunder”..your new flick?
TS: I can promise you…a lot of blowin’ shit up. Crazy atomic, I mean, nuclear, no, wait, submachine gun weapons. And ass-kickin.
Dudes: Ya! Ass-kickin’!
Alex and I in front of the Alamo - Remember the Alamo, y'all.
On the RiverWalk
said dancehall, and a little infoz
with happy graduating cousin, about to nom some BBQ in GrueneFor masters’ graduates, the future has been swept under the rug for far longer. When their peers were scurrying, crying, and worrying about their interviews or faltering job prospects, these captains of industry (in their minds anyway) retreated into their books, thesis writing and nights of drinking. My graduating cousin, Cristiana, in turn, felt liberated. From Tulane to UT-Austin, non-stop, she’s actually relieved to find work and a new environment when she moves to Seattle in the fall. She asked me to come visit for the graduation weekend, arguably the busiest time for UT-Austin’s 50,000 students. People graduate, people move out, people move in, the expiration of the last year reverberates through the town.
From the major delays prevalent in the US airline industry today, I unfortunately never even made the graduation ceremony. Landing in Austin after missing a connection from Houston late in the evening, all I wanted to do was grab a slice and drink a brew. But this is Texas, and they do things differently here.
I walked with the graduate (my cousin, Cristiana) to “The Parlor” for a late nite pie & brew with Boyfriend, her parents, her roommate’s parents…you get the picture. We ordered the Dejay & Pete’s, and while I loved their vegan options, no one would go in with me.
It is Tejas, after all. I’m a pizza baker’s daughter, and while this pizza - think crispy, thin crust and a mountain of toppings - did impress, I’m siding with my parents on this one.
I went to Texas with my father some time before the applications were due. We share an affinity for chocolate in the way monks love God. Hell, isn’t chocolate a religion anyway?
1886 is a classy, white tablecloth sort of place nudged inside the Driskill Hotel with a beautiful patio overlooking the pedestrians on Sixth Street, the main thoroughfare. Since vacation is no time for a diet, I proceed and order the “Hippy Hollow” skillet and the aforementioned chocolate cake.
My cousin gives me a knowing smirk as I tuck into my egg-and-potato skillet delight. What I don’t know and what comes to light later, the “Hippy Hollow”…might actually be an elderly nudie beach near Lake Travis.
In this badass, not-monkeying around hard-drinking establishment, Chris Marsh has made a shrine to Johnny Cash the likes of which have never been seen (outside of a private trailer park, that is). “Mean-Eyed Cat”, named after one of Cash’s classics, has been lauded by everyone from Conde Nast Traveler (my personal fave…well….I think we know why) to CMT News.
Growing up in Maryland, we have loads of crabs, and crab-smashing parties. BBQ escapes me somewhat and I guess I can’t be called a real Southerner for that. Trying to make for my lack of eduation, it’s been my goal to (try, anyway) visit the best BBQ smokehouses in the country. At Syracuse, I always was a sucker for the Chicken Diablo platter (before I was a red-meat eater) at Dinosaur BBQ and haven’t been able to find a decent BBQ place (besides Dino) in the city since I graduated. Needless to say, Salt Lick was a delicious, delicious surprise.
Boyfriend with a delicious plate of snaaasauge!
Salt Lick is about 25 minutes outside Austin proper but it’s so worth it. Just look at this sausage! We pulled into a extremely large (think state-fair large) parking lot where, literally, the Po-lice was helping park cars. There were 18 of us in our party, sitting around huge platters of BBQ chicken, grilled sausage, coleslaw & brisket, savoring every last bite.
With my delicious Lone Star beverage...love those riddles!
Ohh baby when I came back to Manhattan I was cravin’ some TEXAS bbq (the only BBQ in my opinion)…lucky for New Yawkers, we have our very own Salt Lick bbq stand, courtesy of Big Apple BBQ Block Party . Yes, I waited for 30 minutes to enjoy a delicious brisket & white bread sandwich. If you know what I’m talking about, who wouldn’t?
More pictures coming!
It’s summer again, so it’s off to Europe I go. Having the majority of my family in Romania makes for some pretty interesting tales - like, hopping a jet, zipping into a bridesmaid’s dress for my cousin’s beach wedding.
So I just booked my tickets for Berlin for Aug 13 - 28th. This will be the third time I’ve been to Germany, but I have this major major desire to creep into the capital of East German socialist nostalgia.
Maybe it’s because I went to the Statue Park in Budapest two years ago.
This slideshow from the New York Times would have benefited me two weeks ago and since. Aside from picking up some nosegays to protect my delicate olfactory sensors from the pungent aromas of garbage dumpsters, the only way I seem to figure out how to beat back my sweat glands is to revert to wearing a dress.
I love a good dress. The weight, the color, the length. Everything about it screams “easy chic”, which is what I strive for (but rarely achieve, it seems). The trick to a dress is garnering the right accessories. A cute belt, cute shoes, a bracelet or two, boho earrings.
While I love a dress, I never experiment and get the perfect outcome. It’s always missing something. That’s why the women in the slideshow make me so happy (especially Ms. Trump, from who I will soon gather inspiration!). They are simpe, not laden down with anything heavy, obtuse or ornate, just easy chic. And that’s how summer should be. So I shouldn’t have a heart attack when I’m getting dressed in the morning. I’ll slip on my havaianas, throw on some gold eyeshadow & be out the door in 5 minutes flat. When there are busted fire hydrants outside your apartment, you run!
Here are two gorgeous examples from ModCloth.com
1. My closet. In the brownstone, there were two big closets. 1 in the bedroom, 1 in the main room. 1 closet for the bedroom? My thoughts exactly. Alex doesn’t take up much space, but I often fretted and huffed about where to put my beloved shoes - which were banished to the main closet! The new Closet (it deserves the C) is my own. It even has shelves in the back for all my shoes! It seems a little empty, so I’ve bought a pair of Christian Dior white patent leather pumps and a gauzy Malandrino to try to fill more of it.
2. Big Living Room. I love to entertain, so a dealbreaker is a bad living room. My bedroom is half the size of my old one, but I’m never in the bedroom! What do I care? The living room fits our massive, comfy couch, the TV, the bookcase (which I never got a good look at before because it was in the kitchen, but it is a beautiful and massive piece - and FULL of books!), my desk, Alex’s desk, our DVDs, and gave us the opportunity to purchase a bench - something I’ve always wanted! It’s from the Island Collection by Target (which, apart from our horrible TV stand, isn’t too too bad on the affordable home furnishing end).
3. Greenflea. Alex & I discovered this farmer’s/flea market browsing the interwebs and it stole our hearts. We used to venture “downtown” (for us anyway) and shop, buy produce and then go to Jacques-Imo’s Cafe on the corner of 77th & Columbus to chat up the bartenders, nosh on fried green tomatoes and shrimps, eat po’boys and drink the best Bloody Marys this side of the Mis’ip. Sadly, Jacques-Imo’s is no more (broke my heart!) and I have yet to go to Bourbon Street Bar. But…50 cent beer is almost as good as the Marys are. Almost.
There’s probably plenty more - what with my new gym (Jewish Community Center), my amazing gold BCBG strappy heels REPAIRED (after going to 5 different shoe places no less!) at Planas, my new laudromat, new dry cleaners…I could go on and on. And there’s sushi. A Planet of Sushi.
Now if only I could get this pesky recession to work itself out…
I never expect to find good things when I head back to my hometown. It is a perfunctory experience. At best, I spend most of the time in my bedroom or playing with my dog or the random friends I still keep in touch with since high school graduation. At worse, I run into particularly shady ex-friends.
But the pleasant surprise still comes my way. I met up with my friend Rachel in Adams Morgan to check out a funk band, Mojai , and I’m sure glad I did.
While the video is, I’ll admit, a bit poor, the music is transcendental, transparent and rhythmic in its sometimes lullaby-quality, sometimes jazz-jam quality, even with little notes of hard-rock. The keyboards, guitar, bass guitar and seemingly millions of saxophones mesh into brilliant notes. Great for dancing, great for the general vibe of the bar (The Space).
And, I love music sometimes that is just purely instrumental. Lyrics sometimes get in the way of, however cheesy this sounds, the “melody”. You can’t ignore dueling saxophones, but you can ignore (or try to) bad lyrics.
During a funky long keyboard sesh
Something reminiscent of Frederick, though transplanted to South Carolina.
More line dancing in Greenville, SC
Something reminiscent of living in Syracuse, though transplanted to New York City.
Insomnia Cookies on W. 4th...not Marshall St.
I arrived in Baltimore’s Penn Station this morning at 9:50 am after a 2hr train ride from - you guessed it - New York’s Penn Station. original.
Another leg of the journey takes me to oft-traveled highway 695 W to Frederick. It’s a lazy drive with hardly any cars on the road for distraction. A brownish grey Maserati GranTurismo 4.2 passes us - and it seems my two lives have just crossed over.
No rest for the weary - by 11:40 I’m sitting outside my restaurant with some fresh mozzarella sticks and - my favorite - cherry italian soda. Downtown Frederick is sleepy and cheerful and I’m just doing my part to help customers feel at home. Strike up a conversation about coffee mugs. Get more pages read of “The Geography of Love”. Enjoy the sunshine. Today’s the busiest day of the weekend - the day I think I feel like I never left New York. Hustling to a meeting with a financial advisor (please, tell me how i can retire by 40), doctor’s meeting (bad news), eventually, a much - needed facial at The Strand. The sun (84 degrees) is making everything too hot; like summer surprised me when I was looking for more hot cocoa and warm soup.
The clocktower in Baker Park, Frederick, MD
Even though I’ve made the switch from Southern Belle to Uptown Girl, it still feels like a part of me is irrefutably linked to this place. History was made here, even if it was so inconsequential that it didn’t affect anyone outside a 5 mile radius. Life was much smaller when 21701 and (301) were my only history - before I moved to 13210 and (315) or 10031 and (212). My first boyfriend, proms, endless school trips and “please stand for the pledge” and Field Day.
I really miss Field Day.
How often do people end up in their hometown for the rest of their lives. Close by, maybe, but not “in it”. Have your kids go to your schools, become the Mayor? A line gets crossed from “I gotta get the hell outta this town” and finding that you never left. I never wanted to stay in Maryland and I trade jokes with a colleague (originally from Upper Marlboro) about the “Fredneck” pride I have even now. I love County Fairs, In The Streets, Velvet Lounge, Pit Crew, La Paz chips and salsa, Mudd Puddle, Denny’s, Frederick Coffee Company, C. Burr Artz PL, The Bridge, Wonder Book and Video, Wa Wa’s, Sheetz MTO sammies, The Mall, Barber’s Darkroom, My Darkroom, Bob Evan’s (Rt. 40), Belles’, Teal Lane, and all the rest of my haunts (21+ - Firestone’s & Old Towne…never fails).
But I’m wondering, as I’m walking around the room I spent the past ten years living in, how do you know when your “room” isn’t yours anymore. When you can’t recognize anything. When it’s so stripped bare to create your new life that it’s rotten and empty…and you don’t even want to set foot inside it? I was 15 and had a vision. I was so over the pastel pink walls and tidy preppie furniture. I wasted no time signing up then-boyfriend (now married) to help me paint the room navy blue. It took a gallon of paint before I realized 1 gallon does not = one wall.
I let my friends write witty quotes in Sharpie all over my closet doors and I put up “Evil Dead” and “Trainspotting” posters on my walls to show off how cool I thought I was. I burned mixes of Dashboard Confessional, The Get Up Kids and Reel Big Fish for the boyfriend and chain-smoked cigarettes on the roof outside my window when my parents fell asleep in the room next door. I stayed up late chatting on the phone until said parents, weary from my contradictory combativeness and ambivalence, half-heartedly told me to shut up. And, let’s not forget my 15th birthday, where as my mom was singing me happy birthday with a homemade ladyfinger cake, a combustible mix of cliques were present - goth kids, druggies, photo nerds, skaters, Cool Juniors. I made home movies about interviewing famous, albeit, invisible, diplomats and Rwandan warlords (fancying myself a Eastern European Christiane Amanpour, I think). I set up a volleyball court in my backyard for my graduation party but ended up playing spades and drinking non-alcoholic beer. Spades was a theme that summer, but we quickly realized non-alcoholic beer was not.
Leaving my old room for a dorm wasn’t a change in scenery. There, I could always sneak out, sneak food, sneak boys and phone calls, and still keep a part of myself hidden and mysterious. My sophomore year in college, I came home to find the reliable silver futon had found new roommates: whitewashed desk/bureau set from the early 90s and a great big plasma TV. It all fit wonderfully, but now it’s empty. The shelves hold books I don’t want to bring to my apartment, scratched CDs I feel too nostalgic about to throw out, old yearbooks and high school photos, endless cables I have no use for, piles and piles of journals, VHS tapes (both commercial and homemade), discarded negatives and Mini-DV cassettes. The scrapyard of my life is in this room. Projects started but never completed-unopened acrylic paints from my “painter” phase. Gaelic and Russian language books and cassettes - though I did succeed in learning conversational Gaelic at one point…but the possibility of actually going to Ireland was depressing, and that was abandoned as well.
I’m in no hurry to clear it out. Where will it all go - all the things I simultaneous want to hoard and toss? My life, being packed into boxes, but also boxes I don’t want?
Until I went away to Syracuse, I hadn’t slept on a proper bed for four years. Bringing the Biologist (the going Boyfriend pseudonym) to F is met with groans and forgetting to pack ibuprofen (for backs made sore by aforementioned futon).
But we’re a lot more alike than he cares to think. Visiting Syracuse, we sleep, once more, on a futon.
Baseball is “America’s Pastime”–a great excuse to scream, drink beers, get tan and eat artery-clogging amounts of Hebrew Nationals. So, why do journalists and commentators and all these other yippity yaps in the peanut gallery going on and on about how boring the sport is. Nothing Ever Happens! Scoreless Innings! Et Al.
But I think there’s a secret reason people like baseball. However “boring” it may seem, I think it’s the speculation that makes the game worthwhile. Sitting in the stadium, sitting in front of the television, people are always discussing what’s the next play, what’s the next pitch going to be, who’s up, who’s on base…the questions are endless and the suspense is almost crippling.
A general hypothesis could be this: baseball is for readers, football is for TV watchers. I understand these massive generalizations, but football is quick animal. There’s a blitz, a passing game…even though a football game is roughly the same span of time as a baseball game, it seems like everything happens with no speculation. The game is happening to quickly to discuss strategy and options.
With Baseball, there’s imagination…trepidation at every turn, and with both the Mets and the Yankees playing their last seasons in their venerable institutions, this season will be a weeper.
The lecture mainly focused on excerpts from her new book, Can’t Remember What I Forgot, and discussed “normal memory loss”. Even I, at 22, cannot seem to figure out what my memory drifts in and out, some exaggerations, some mistakes–I cannot figure it out. On the opposite end, my grandmother is having horrible memory loss. Repeating simple questions, forgetting the ingredients to dishes she’s made millions of times — for someone who has a Ph D. in History and was a professor, I can’t imagine being in her shoes…unless I’m going in that direction myself.
The excerpts also detailed many personal experiences Halpern shared with the “memory loss” scientists she worked with, experimental memory procedures she went through, and her father’s experiences with memory loss. From a non-scientific perspective, seeing a human perspective on memory loss is better then the mumbo-jumbo scientists spill out. She espoused her desire for a “more open…collaborative” scientific community and a sort of “open source” scientific community. Doctors speaking with doctors about their findings? What a novel concept. Maybe this is a good start to the kind of change our medical professions (and our wallets) could really use.
I’m not a borough snob, I’m the opposite. Some of my closest friends live in Astoria and Brooklyn Heights, so I’m actually there a bit. Haven’t ever spent a great deal of time in Williamsburg and Greenpoint (hipster enclaves in immigrant/ethnic communities - I’m sure it’s to feel “connected”) so , partnering my love of breweries and all their byproducts, and my softness for advertisements in foreign languages ended up bringing me to the Brooklyn Brewery.
The Brewery is housed on N. 11st Street in Brooklyn, across the street from the delicious vintage clothing store Beacon’s Closet and overall awesome skate shop KCDC. Coming from a major alternative-sport-heavy town, I truly respect such a “see” then “do” shopping experience - like a board? Try it out on the ramp. So rad.
But, the true delight is the Brewery in this gritty little section of Wburg. Graffiti is everywhere, with my favorite example being a bubbly “Les Crabs” stamp on the back end of the Brewery wall. Les Crabs? A French gang in Brooklyn? I wonder if they even have sub-sects…some are soft shell, some blue, some King? Do the Blue crabs wear blue - and subsequently get expelled from their high school? Les Crabs popped up even during the ride back home, leading to these very suppositions.
So I’m not a big fan of drinking during the daytime, mainly because I’ve just been during the nighttime and I often don’t want to see another 12oz. But I sucked it up and enjoyed a delicious BB India Pale Ale (my favorite of the Ales). Arriving around 12:30pm, my boy/friends, the Boyfriend & I took a, well, abbreviated tour of the premises, which basically embodied a trip from one room, to another. But it’s ok, like many small(ish) micro brews, they contract out their recipes to larger, more established manufacturers, so they
only produce 1/3 of their total output in Brooklyn. Just like you readers, I was asleep as this was being told to me. Far more interesting was a huge plastic tub of tubes and a dark colored liquid, which, unfortunately, did not contain beer. Quite a Tease.
With a great dollar - beer ratio ($20 for 6), the ability to get delivery pizza and garlic knots and play endless rounds of Kings all afternoon without a hovering snarly waitress makes this a great bet for a Saturday afternoon…if you’re willing to get out of Manhattan.
