::kidchamp dot net::

07.22.08

one of my coworkers grabbed a bunch of laundry supplies from the casa de ladymag free stuff table and realized she'd gotten a bunch of fabric softener and no detergent. since no one has room at home for three bottles of fabric softener, she offered some to me: "aw, no thanks," i said. "i don't do my own laundry." a chorus from the nearby cubes: ho ho ho, milady! doesn't do her own laundry! i tried to explain the sketchy laundromat situation near my apartment, and how joe and i only have a little time to go to the gym and eat and loaf after work and - no, too little too late. i'm the asshole who doesn't do her own laundry.

i loved (well, didn't mind) washing our stuff when we lived in san francisco: the missing sock just above us on hyde street tried pretty hard to be the nicest laundromat of all time (well lit, good magazines, fellow customers who didn't steal your stuff, little missing socks hand-painted on the floor tiles - really, it should have been neil patrick harris's laundromat in dr. horrible's sing-along blog). i had no problem holing up there with a book for a few hours at a time - i even felt comfortable making trips back to the apartment to drop off clean loads and bring down more dirty ones. doing laundry, in short, was sort of a joy.

laundry...is a different critter out here. we're within a few blocks of half a dozen laundromats, but none of them seem interested in my hands-on business: there are no chairs, tables, or aisles, really, and most of the washers and dryers at any given place are full of the laundry people have dropped off. if you're lucky enough to snag a machine, you guard it with your life until you're finished with it: unattended clothes are fair game. you don't snag a machine, though, because the laundromat wants you to surrender your bag and vamoose. and...i do, because i figure that after paying manhattan prices for detergent and dryer sheets and use of the machines, i wouldn't save all that much by washing my own underpants. if i factor in how much a few hours of my time are worth (mentally and literally), less-than-impressive ladymag salary or no, i wouldn't even break even by washing my own underpants. so i hand them over to a stranger, and after five years i have stopped feeling like marie antoinette. i wonder every now and again if the guys at the laundromat pay attention to what we give them ("ah, miss haphazard hot sauce is back!"), but i tip well, and i don't give them gross stuff: i don't lose sleep over it. i do lose sleep over the demise of our local, which went down suddenly while we were in california last month and caused laundry havoc on surrounding blocks (never did i think i would bond with a bartender over how delicately a third party folded our jeans). no one knows quite what happened to our guys (renovating? lost their lease, like our vet did on the same block last year? got sick of our underwear?), but i hope they're okay: they weren't the missing sock, but they were good neighbors.

07.21.08

the dirty dozen, part four: fin

10 new york, she is like a fancy european cheese: her footiness is detectable at low temperatures (fall and winter), but it's when she sits around and has a chance to warm up that you really get a feeling for the funk she can perpetrate. i'm talking about the celebrated smells of summer, mostly, but we're learning that the funk can be palpable, too: poor joe has been waking up with various combinations of sinus headaches and phlegmy coughs since june, and i've been feeling a little foggy in the AM myself. it sucks, but i figured we were doomed to pay the price of superpolluted city living (we're not about to close the bedroom window overnight: it would get way too stuffy in there*). cue the 'duh' moment, when i read a coworker's blog post about the life-altering air purifier she bought to tackle her fiancé's asthma. it worked for him, predictably, but she started waking up feeling like a million bucks. a fancy airway makeover for the non-asthmatic, you say? from a space-saving beetlejuice-esque pod that activates our dorky design receptors? i asked the coworker if her paean to her purifier was sincere and aye, she said, it's been worth every penny - so a little white 'henry' is now on its way to us. here's hoping the splurge is worth it.

11 according to walk score, san francisco is the most walkable large city in the US. to quote the excellent tara ariano,
I don't want to start, like, an East Coast/West Coast rumble, but IN NO WAY is San Francisco a more walkable city than New York. With all those goddamn hills, it's barely a more driveable city than New York! The last time we were there, I swear we drove up a hill that you couldn't walk unless you had a harness and a spotter. Bullshit.
hee. apparently the "walkability" index considers factors like population density and ignores things like elevation (which, as i discovered in san francisco in the months i made regular trips to the nearest supermarket on foot, via lombard street, is rather key). the city by the bay is cuter (and smells a lot better) than new york, but more walkable? i'm unconvinced.

12 so, the nancy pelosi Q&A in harper’s bazaar: like her look in the opener, both powersuitastic (the armani top) and a little Gypsy Queen of Congress (the trailing bill blass skirt). i think she handled the inevitable beauty regimen and shopping questions well, and struck a few nice strong notes (on sexism and how she'd like to be remembered). i’m kind of fixated on this exchange:
HB: In your book [Know Your Power: A Message to America's Daughters], you write about not cooking.

NP: My daughter Alexandra once told me, “Mother, you’re a pioneer. Now hardly anybody cooks, but you were one of the first to stop.” After 20 years of cooking, I started to appreciate the value of other people’s work. So I would, say, go get a duck in Chinatown. I always had the salad and set the table, but I didn’t have to clean the pots.
a substantive quote about cooking – about not cooking! – from one of the most powerful women in america, and it’s completely inoffensive! really: the little hyperdomestic part of my brain that worries about such things actively tried to be offended by it, and no go. hats off to the pelosi press team: there’s hope for lady dems yet.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 do you use a purifier (or a humidifier, or an atmosphere-altering-fill-in-the-blank)?

02 what are the must-haves in a walkability algorithm? should, say, weather be a factor? how about neighborhood safety? hell, how about odor?

03 how much cooking goes on at your place?

*vaguely related: "why i hate summer," a chord-striking essay by rachel shukert. i love her lines about the heat, which "brings a unique blend of fury and lethargy -- I feel like I could murder someone, and be totally indifferent if they killed me back."

07.17.08

the dirty dozen, part three: the latest issue of the ladymag is dead and you, dozen, you are next

07 my friend meg, a sort-of newcomer to san francisco, asked me about "adorable yet affordable" restaurants in russian hill (the neighborhood where joe and i lived for three years) yesterday afternoon. oddly, i had nothing for her:* we didn't do a lot of dining out close to home, and we also lived in SF at the height of dot com weirdness and flux ('00-'03): a lot of things that existed back then are long gone now, even in our slowest-to-change old 'hood. i'm not especially helpful with recommendations here in new york, either, come to think of it: only a handful of restaurants in hell's kitchen get my seal of approval. is it that proximity breeds contempt?** that i'm extra-conservative when local cred is at stake? that when we bother to get up from the couch, we go far, far away to make the most of inertia? is this problem familiar to you?

08 speaking of food that is awesome, i am frequently disparaged for recommending and/or preparing things that are too spicy for most people to ~~enjoy~~ eat. the feedback that fire burns out the other flavors in my chili is particularly hurtful; i can still taste everything else, thank you. i asked the internets to exonerate me, but science flavors the bland, at least on this point: researchers have found that capsaicin decreases sensitivity to sweetness, bitterness, and umami (the element of taste triggered by MSG). that said, sensitivity to sourness and saltiness aren't affected, and everyone knows those are the two best elements of taste, anyway. also, capsaicin prevents cancer, has anti-inflammatory properties, increases metabolic activity, and makes you a better lover. you can take or leave my chili; i'm just saying.

09 after returning to salon's broadsheet blog to re-read a horrifying post on pre-wedding dieting (one fifth of the women in a fitness survey said they'd postpone their wedding if they hadn't met their weight goal in time; more than half of the women in a cornell study said they'd use "extreme dieting methods" to lose weight), i hopped to a new post on a love song for ladies' rooms from the wall street journal online:
[L}adies' room banter is an endless source of wisdom and comfort. My ladies' room crowd includes a fashion maven, a globetrotter who knows every good cheap restaurant in Paris, Berkeley and Hong Kong, a marriage counselor, several cancer survivors and a bevy of super-moms. They've guided me about how to survive pre-school interviews and college tours and which internist to choose in my health-care plan. They've advised me about where to get the best cocktail dress, haircut and beach house that won't break my budget. The time I've saved shopping, searching for doctors and worrying about my daughter because of advice gleaned in my office ladies' room has added up to months of work for my company and saved me from numerous multitask meltdowns.
the WSJ piece feels wildly outdated to me: i have the occasional significant conversation with my boss in the loo, but that's because we coincide there more than anywhere else (she's almost never at her desk). my office chats graphically all over the place all the time, which could be because we're one big ladies' room; i think the candor is more generational than gender-based, though. then again, i've been in situations like this one for most of my working life: how would i know?

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 do you find yourselves resenting strangers at the gym, internets? if so, what are their crimes?

02 spices: proof that the universe is fond of us, or brutish dish-killers?

03 is the ladies' room a special, special place?

*i of course thought of something just now, though. go to nick's crispy tacos (a nightclub that turns into a taco shack during the day), meg! draped velvet and cholula, together at last!

**lord knows i'm hard on The Canadian Whimperer, a frighteningly hairy old regular at our gym who cranks his treadmill too high and grips the heart rate sensors like his life will end if he lets go.

07.15.08

the dirty dozen, part two: fruit of the luge

04 the sexy peaches i brought home from the columbus avenue farmer's market this weekend seemed to want to be made into something other than a dessert (probably because i'm not especially handy with desserts), so i got very excited about the peach chutney recipe* i found yesterday afternoon. it is indeed a very good recipe (the kind that makes your kitchen smell fantastic, and it doesn't require any hard-to-reach exotic spices - i had everything but the fresh stuff in my kitchen already), although whoever noted that it yields eight cups of chutney is smoking the crack: i'd say i ended up with three cups of savory-sweet peachy marvelousness. i haven't actually followed the serving suggestion of chutneying with goat cheese and flatbread, but if the combo tastes as good as it sounds, i may have a new secret weapon for potlucks. apparently i am now the sort of person who uses "secret weapon" and "potlucks" in the same sentence; maybe i'm ready to turn thirty after all.

05 i was tempted, while politely explaining to a terrified-sounding obama fundraiser that i'll almost certainly donate to the campaign again but am unlikely to drop $100 at once and/or give my credit card information to some guy over the phone, to ask about the infamous "politics of fear" new yorker cover. the local news told me yesterday morning that i should be buzzing about it, and buzzing about the buzz about it, but i'm having a hard time: even the missus, a professional democrat, said, "enh, it's more that it wasn't very funny," and lost interest. the buzz-about-the-buzz is a bit juicier, especially (when i'm wearing my magazine journalist hat) the part about how it's the media's responsibility to present information in small, soft chunks for society's most vulnerable thinkers. then again, as i find myself arguing every election cycle, conservatives consistently underestimate the american people, and we liberals overestimate them - and we frequently get our asses handed to us for doing so. is "the politics of fear" a recruitment poster for the right wing'? probably, but what isn't?

06 friday was a dark day here at the ladymag: someone gave me a facebook transcript to support a few facts we're including in an upcoming piece. social networking as bibliography: really, internets? i hate facebook, hated myspace before it, and hated friendster before that. i'm not a public figure, and ye olde kidchamp is the only patch of web i need to expose myself to strangers; most of the people who need my contact information already have it, and searching for it online can't be all that difficult for the few who don't; i am perfectly satisfied with my non-facebook access to scrabble. but! my editor in chief is registered, as are most of the senior editors and all of the associates and assistants i know. that transcript feels like a last straw, and i sometimes feel that i should suck it up and join for professional reasons. i also feel that caving would mean having a high school / college / family reunion in my office, except some people would be tipsy, others would have no pants, and there would be weird strangers milling around trying to sell us shit. and i am too old for that shit.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 any other peach recipes i should know about? potluck weapons in general?

02 what's your take on the new yorker cover?

03 facebook: evil?

*the link is currently down; perhaps oprah's site has been overwhelmed by survivors of those who spontaneously exploded after following her lead** and trying the vegan-no-sugar-no-caffeine-no-booze-no-gluten quantum wellness cleanse.

**that link is down too, natch. don't worry, i'm sure the oprahbots will be on both of them soon.

07.10.08

the dirty dozen, part 1: back from CA for a week, still catching up on work (hooray!)

01 my new favorite thing about ikea (admittedly, not a hotly contested thing): free shuttles to the new red hook location (where people camped out for several days to score free sofas*) are filling up with non-shoppers. according to gothamist,
The free coach style shuttle buses that deliver riders from two Brooklyn subway stops to the new Red Hook IKEA are filling up with passengers who never set foot inside the Swedish retailer. "I'd say before one o'clock, about half the riders from Smith and Ninth Street don't even go into IKEA," one bus driver told the Daily News, adding that many riders are going to a local methodone [sic] clinic for treatment. And, as predicted, freeloaders are pulling the same move with the free Water Taxi between IKEA and lower Manhattan, an area also renowned for its methadone.

02 while it is not my custom to think highly of bars that think highly of themselves, i did fancy s bar, one of the stops on our one-night-only los angeles bar crawl with little sis and her boyfriend. the s probably stands for (philippe) starck, as he designed the place, but in practice it stands for satan in a most excellent way: the bar is lit by dozens of elegant, mismatched table lamps, suspended upside down from the ceiling. the effect is ever so slightly fucked up - how one would imagine a possessed room might look (the bathrooms give the same vibe: each stall is lit by silent movies playing from televisions embedded in the ceiling). old scratch appears on the menu and a few wall murals, so the devil thing is literal too, but it's really all about the lamps. they (and, okay, the fact that we got past the velvet rope even though joe was wearing his "support the right to keep and arm bears" tee shirt) are the reason i didn't break a bottle and start a bar fight when asked to pay like $16 for souped-up hard lemonade.**

03 two months after deadline, i finally made headway on one of the most infuriating items on my 101 in 1001 list (089 frame my college diploma). my dad's garage was the very last place the wily diploma could have picked as a hiding spot, and it wasn't looking good - until i mentioned that it had been wrapped in some kind of blanket, which turned out to be as significant as the "jesus was a carpenter" line from indiana jones and the last crusade. "oh," said dad, "like this!" - and there, right in a cabinet by the door, it was. thank god, as The University wanted $50 for a replacement diploma that 1) wouldn't have the all-important gerhard casper signature and 2) would say COPY at the bottom (assholes). now i have to frame the thing, which is a new problem: should my frame be identical to joe's? i kind of want to go my own way, but i worry that getting something other than the ol' alma mater special will look weird, since they'll be hanging next to each other. then again, he has a white mat and mine would be black (the design changed a bit over the past few years), so we'd have the spy vs spy effect to offset the cheesiness. hmm.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 what's your relationship with ikea? harvard friends told me years ago that in their circles, thrift store hodgepodge was considered wildly unhip and ye olde mass swedish design was much more acceptable (then again, most of them were tech guys); i'm at the other end of the spectrum, obviously, though i'm also extra-mean about big box stores.

02 would you feel guilty about freeloading on the swedish bus?

03 do those of you in long-term relationships find it weird to hang out at It Bars?

04 what did you do with your college diploma?

*the most horrifying of those was a woman who told a local news crew that she didn't really want the sofa but had "never camped out for anything before."

**which is TOTALLY RIDICULOUS, i acknowledge, but worth it for the one-time design inspiration. my drinks usually cost about $3, so it all evens out in the end.

06.28.08

06.19.08

i think we all knew that kidchamp was capable of degenerating into amateur floral arrangement by committee and/or multiple disembodied head photos in a week; don't act so surprised. our neighborhood wine shop has a bunch of shelves up front near the street where they display and sell vintage glassware, cocktail accessories, serving dishes, and so on; the pieces are usually inexpensive and nicely edited, so i ogle them while joe takes his sweet time with the booze (i still let interesting labels guide me, which still seems to work, so i don't hem and haw much over wine). last night they had this ceramic horse head vase (there's a 4"x2" hole for flowers along the mane) for a mere $12; it clearly needed to come home with us. i promised the amused australian wine guy that we'd bring back a camera phone picture of whatever we ended up arranging in the head; he was joking when he asked, but i jump at opportunities to show my flowers to strangers. call it the wholesome version of what bai ling does on the red carpet. i feel like i really need to bring it, so i could use some help: internets, what sort of flowers would you put in a disembodied horse's head? and what would you name said head? the naming is also key.

06.17.08

[upper west side, via cell phone]
1: just find a bar to take cover in and i'll meet you there!
2: no, YOU find a bar, i'm going to get our tickets!
1: you're fucking crazy!
2: I LOVE SHAKESPEARE!

one of the nicest things about having a website is my apparent ability to make things happen by bitching when they don't (see: getting love from mcsweeney's, winning money with a scratch-off lottery ticket, winning a trip to iceland*). i learned last week of the virtual line for shakespeare in the park (that is, you can sign up for a lottery between midnight and noon and then check back in the afternoon to see if you've gotten tickets; in previous years, you had to actually languish on the street all morning). that was the good news; the bad news was that hamlet is only running through the end of the month, and we're going to be in california for a week as of this saturday, and the number of tickets distributed through the virtual line is comparatively teensy.

it worked, though, and i was all set for my dub-shakes fix when the apocalypse kicked up at quarter to seven. i can't say for sure that little dogs on leashes were taking to the air like box kites as i scurried past the museum of natural history, but i can't say for sure that they didn't. joe said a huge tree branch came crashing down at his feet when he was en route to the box office, which is why he was yelling so loudly on the phone. i probably should have hidden somewhere, but the storm really was more excellent than scary. also, i really do love shakespeare, damn it. how often is it situationally appropriate to yell that into a cell on a street corner in the middle of a hellacious thunderstorm? we both made it to the delacorte, where it poured for about half an hour, but the theater staff assured us that the show would go on if the weather let up at all; a few nights ago, they'd played through the rain and just pushed water off of the stage between scenes(!). we bought cheap hamlet garbage bag ponchos** in case it got bad again and settled in.

the show itself was marvelous in spots and disappointing in others. sam waterston (who played the last hamlet in the park in 1975) gave polonius a single, devastating moment of dementia (in act 2, he falls silent for about twenty seconds while instructing reynaldo) that was one of the show's emotional peaks; i think that vulnerability made his death much more tragic than it usually feels. i left the theater convinced that my favorite lines in act 5, scene 2 had been mangled - i could have sworn that "there's a divinity that shapes our ends" and "the readiness is all" were part of the same speech - but apparently i give my memory more credit than it's due (see: manhattan locations of wendy's, previous post). i could also swear that the play most certainly should not end with horatio taking a bullet in the head, execution style, but i am historically resistant to hypermilitary versions of the tragedies ('99 royal shakespeare company othello, i'm looking at you). michael stuhlbarg is a fine hamlet, especially in the first few soliloquies; his soft, breathy delivery is much more interesting than that of super-manly hamlets i've seen, and it pairs nicely with the hysteria of his manic scenes later on (he reminded me of jonny lee miller as sick boy in trainspotting). lauren ambrose was meh as ophelia (she didn't have much chemistry with stuhlbarg, so her insanity wasn't very tragic), and i really don't care to see anyone other than derek jacobi as claudius, but still: i love shakespeare.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 have you ever powered through a foul-weather show? was it worth it?

02 if you could cast one of the tragedies however you liked, who would you conscript? i'm going to have to think about that one for a while, but i'm pretty sure robert loggia would be old hamlet.

03 is it ethical to make a delivery guy bring you takeout in central park in the middle of a storm? (note: i did not do this.)

*trying this one next: what the hell, iceland? where's my trip?

**still in their packages since the rain never really picked back up, but i can't wait to have an excuse to wear one: they're covered with the show's skull logo. hamlet ponchos!

06.15.08

06.13.08

one of my favorite things about living in san francisco was our near-constant access to great shows. it was occasionally tricky to get tickets to see, say, belle and sebastian at the warfield,* but seeing le tigre at the great american music hall or tanya donnelly at bimbo's was like rolling out of bed. with bimbo's shows, that was almost literal: we usually walked there and walked home. hooking it up in new york, on the other hand, you have to be prepared to cut someone. people will queue for an hour for free frozen yogurt in this town; imagine what they'll do to see vampire weekend at a small venue. i usually can't be bothered with jostling for tickets, but i have felt feisty this spring: we have four shows coming up! behold!

22 september: my bloody valentine at roseland ballroom. long ago when the earth was flat and the british pound was worth less than $20, we got tickets to see MBV in glasgow on july 2nd. joe is one of those guys who feels that loveless is one of the greatest albums of all time, and i can be a competitive little brat: i figured we'd be able to win any music geek throwdown with that show under our belts. oh, and glasgow is one of the finest cities on earth (high point of our honeymoon, hands down). then we found that airfare was going to be a thousand dollars apiece; then the roseland shows were announced and i got tickets for those. internets, do you know anyone who'd like to see a free show in scotland? seriously, the ticket agent is making it really difficult for me to resell. i'd rather just give the gift of shoegazer: drop me a line.

1 october: echo & the bunnymen at radio city. o maladjusted '80s marvelousness! i've loved these guys since i first heard "bring on the dancing horses" on a taped-from-TV** copy of pretty in pink. they're performing ocean rain with a full orchestra, and i don't care that ian mcculloch has started sounding like neil young instead of post-punk misanthropy incarnate. "the killing moon" live! with an orchestra! i miss wearing velvet all the time.

3 october: hot chip at terminal 5. "over and over" showed up on new york noise a few years ago and has been stuck in my head more or less ever since. i was disconcerted at first, but it's a marvelous song (and video), so i've adapted. i imagine there will be a lot of fancy, fancy hipsters at the hot chip show; OK with me, as long as they bathe.

29 november: jim gaffigan at town hall. crowded house came through town recently, and joe (who feels more strongly about neil finn than anyone i've ever met) decided we didn't need to get tickets because they were something like $50 apiece; now we're spending only a bit less than that to hear a man talk about hot pockets. i blame george, who mentioned gaffigan's sexy tour when we were heat-dazed en route to new jersey last saturday and had the collective IQ of a raisin. it'll be fun, i'm sure, but i...yeah. hot pockets.

imaginary reading group discussion questions

01 is free frozen yogurt better than vampire weekend?

02 what's the greatest album of all time?

03 did i go to wendy's twice yesterday?

*jacob and i met a girl at that show who later appeared in a dvd extra for season 3 of the L word.

**i think it was the first dubbed movie i ever saw; i didn't realize for years that jon cryer wasn't actually calling james spader slime.

{champ status log, via twitter}

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so we kept going over it and changing it until finally it comes out as a samba.

Art - 20
lauren - 4

and you will know us by the stuff we've read (the recent dozen):

the yiddish policemen's union (michael chabon) :: goldengrove (francine prose) :: after dark (haruki murakami) :: the graveyard book (neil gaiman) :: for the love of animals: the rise of the animal protection movement (kathryn shevelow) :: last night a dj saved my life: the history of the disc jockey (bill brewster and frank broughton) :: skinny dipping in the lake of the dead (alan deniro) :: between the devil and the deep blue sky (gina wilkinson) :: thoreau's laundry (ann harleman) :: the last chicken in america (ellen litman) :: blind willow, sleeping woman (haruki murakami) :: american pastoral (philip roth)