06.02.06

happy june, all! time for another installment of come here, go away (still tm tomato nation).

come here, the descent, you crazy foreign horror flick. you've got an all-female cast, you're the scariest thing i've seen in years, and your advance screening was free. you could have chipped in for the stiff drinks we needed afterward, but hey.

go away, cesar dog food commercial featuring the magnetic fields' "i think i need a new heart." i've gotten past the idea that indie bands should hide in my CD pile and refuse to shill for corporations - hell, i actually enjoy the jaguar commercial with spoon's "i turn my camera on" - but cheap dog food? joe supposed that stephin merritt feeds the stuff to his dog, to which i say two wrongs don't make a right. then i think of the culinary implications of the title and - ew. that's like "judy and the dream of horses" in an elmer's glue ad.

come here, replacement wedding florist - no, really. sure, my mom is the queen of last-minute event planning and could pinch hit if you continue to flake on me, but i've given you money, and we're way past the point where you could tell me for three weeks in a row that the estimate would be ready "tomorrow." i will cut you.

go away, crappy american economy. a bride-to-be shouldn't be worrying about the federal reserve, but my ignorance of projected exchange rates is killing me as i plan this wedding. the british pound is kicking ass and taking names: if i'd made today's reception payment six months ago, i'd have saved a cool $200.

come here, knitta, please! - i wish i'd thought of tagging car antennae and telephone poles with fuzzy scarflings and half-socks. much like the leekspin girl (via douglas), your crew takes me to a happy place where i don't want to beat florists to death with ben bernanke.

05.24.06

as promised, ye olde outsider art:

is it upside down? should it be ninety degrees clockwise? is it a cautious nexus of control and inevitability? is it an acid sandwich? this is why i need you, dear readers. it's the mystery canvas challenge!

mischa barton quote of the day (courtesy of julia):

Q: Are you going to walk her [the dog]?

MB: Yes. She's never seen SoHo or Tribeca, and I grew up there, so I feel it's necessary. But it's horrible, because she's way too little to put down. I have to walk around with her in my arms, and I look like one of those girls who has a small dog.

(newsweek, 5.29.06)

05.23.06

it's been a giveth and taketh away couple of days in these parts. the boys and i followed the trail of free shit down to design week kickoff events in the meatpacking on saturday, where pretty ladies gave me complimentary sangria and we flinched at the surprisingly hardcore victorian porn films at wonderland beauty parlor's wallpaper exhibit. joe found an amusing ratty old canvas at the local housing works thrift shop; i'll post a picture tomorrow for a rousing game of "outsider art: which way is up?". we also met the indescribably comfortable argo chair at karkula, which is where my money would go if i wanted to drop $4250 on something for my butt.

on saturday night i became the very last wannabe hipster to discover the backroom, a latter-day speakeasy (funded by tim robbins, of all people) hidden behind a mysterious gate on the lower east side. i didn't get the chunky-necklace-and-victorian-shirt memo, so i hid in a corner with my teacup of diet coke and tried to hide my bad pedicure and target flip-flops. is it normal to feel like a square old fart at twenty-seven?

yesterday was a lovely crunch day, as i wrote three wee pieces for the next issue of the magazine and was asked to take over a regular page. i was feeling like a very together young lady right up until i poured a pint of chili into my purse. well played, new york monday. well played.

05.18.06 [spoiler alert]

kidchamp HQ isn't the best party venue in town, as the bathroom is on the other side of our often dodgy bedroom, we have only two chairs and approximately eight square feet of table space, and the cats like to vomit on strangers. were we in the habit of throwing big to-dos, though, we'd certainly have one tonight. from gawker:

You see, Access Hollywood sends daily press releases plugging whatever will be on that night’s show. Tonight, it’s an interview with O.C. starlet Mischa Barton (who coincidentally used to date charming Brandon Davis). Well, that’s nice. Except that the email completely spoils tomorrow night’s season finale. IN THE SUBJECT LINE. No warning, no looking away, no escape — if you so much as glance at your inbox, Access is going to fuck up your Thursday.

Sure, the season’s outcome was rumored in a few publications, but to have it confirmed by the show’s star? Via Access, of all places? That’s just not right. It’s like when the Times spoiled Million Dollar Baby. Except more retarded.

[...]

From: NBC flack
To: Gawker
Sent: 4:14 PM
Subject: ON THE NEXT “ACCESS HOLLYWOOD:” MISCHA BARTON CONFIRMS HER CHARACTER ON “THE O.C.” DIES AND REVEALS WHAT THE SHOW HAS IN STORE FOR FANS

i'm virtually certain that i haven't passed the spoilage on to you, dear readers, as 1) jacob could be the only man alive who follows this site and watches the o.c., and $10 says he saw these rumors weeks ago, and 2) even i guessed that mischa would get it, and i'm so slow that saved by the bell twist endings used to shock me. all that, of course, is beyond the point - the point is that unless the spoiler hoax theorists on the television without pity boards are on to something, our bony little friend will no longer be blocking a small sliver of my view of newport beach on thursday nights. zounds!

since you can't all make it to the HQ, i declare this space the virtual mischa barton deathwatch party. predict how marissa will snuff it!* tell us, courtesy of seventeen's quiz, which o.c. character you most resemble! most importantly, raise a glass at 9 pm: skeletor, we hardly knew ye.

*best guess gets my august 20, 1990 issue of us weekly. cover lines include harrison ford: presumed cool and spike lee: why is he so angry?

05.08.06

on saturday night, joe and i wandered up to lincoln center to see david blaine in his giant manbowl. almost a week into "drowned alive," his experiment in self-pickling, several hundred people were watching him blow bubbles and make mysterious gestures at foreign tourists (and, let's be honest, a lot of locals).

"No one would analogize what David Blaine does to what occurs on our stages," said Reynold Levy, the president of Lincoln Center. "But the emotions he evokes, the feelings he has engendered, are universal. He is doing to New Yorkers what almost no one can. He's stopping them in their tracks. I look at their faces, and I see complete wonder and bewilderment."

Ann Sheridan, a Manhattan resident who took in Mr. Blaine's watery world about 10 p.m. on Thursday with several friends, drew comparisons to the public art project by Christo and Jeanne-Claude that swaddled Central Park in sheets of saffron last year. "It's like 'The Gates,' " she said. "Nobody understood what 'The Gates' meant, but everybody went and saw them."

(new york times, 05.07.06)

i was thinking of christo as we stared at blaine, actually; are blaine's performances public art? can they be compared with, say, performances at the lincoln center (or 'the gates')? i'm not particularly fond of DB (and we fell quite a bit short of "complete wonder" at bubblefest this weekend), but i'm having trouble with a definitive 'no.' peanut gallery?

05.03.06

so busy! but i still need to share my new favorite passage. because i love you.

According to Aldous Huxley, D.H. Lawrence once said that Balzac was "a gigantic dwarf," and in a sense the same is true of Dickens.

(George Orwell, "Charles Dickens")

also "no one wants to play sega with harrison ford" - also because i love you.

04.28.06

today's lesson in wedding strategy is that it isn't always a good idea to muffle one's inner bridezilla. i'd been handling our florist with kid gloves because i was afraid she'd back out on us; after waiting a week for a return message and finally resolving to make a polite transatlantic phone call this morning, i got dumped via e-mail anyway. why this couldn't have happened a week or two (or, hell, a month or two) ago - so that i could have had that time to work with the person who inherited (see 04.18.06) her flower shop - is beyond me; what i do know is that it's really, re-ally tempting to be an ugly american when english reticence fucks with my planning. don't mess with the bride, young man. you'll get the horns.

i caught the last fifteen minutes of pretty in pink on cable last night. for those of you who lack total brat pack recall, that's when molly ringwald bounces back from being dumped for prom by whipping up a weird dress and making all of the rich kids look like conformist suckers. when i burst into tears (as i always do) as the soundtrack kicked into OMD's "if you leave," i realized why this wedding stuff is giving me zombie-filled stress dreams* and making me flip my shit over save-the-date cards; while i can shrug off traditions and don't exactly need to feel like a princess, i do need to feel crafty. i'm hoping the stuff i throw together will stand the test of time a little better than molly's dress did, but the temporary "huh? wow!" is what matters. so...which one of you is going to teach me how to pour my own candles?

*the zombies themselves weren't the problem - it was that i was supposed to be revivifying a horde of them while shopping for a rehearsal dinner outfit and my syringes lacked the proper amount of serum, so they kept coming halfway to life and stumbling all over the store and getting in my way. also there was a small dog on fire.

04.25.06

04.18.06

that was way too serious. today is come here, go away (tm tomato nation) day.

come here, charoset and bitter herbs. if you're agnostic, passover apparently makes you need hillel sandwiches like a pregnant lady needs pickles and ice cream: joe and i stuffed ourselves with horseradish, apples, and matzoh pretty much throughout seder on saturday.

go away, saw II. i love dreadful horror sequels - for god's sake, i liked hypercube - and the only good thing about you is the "enjoy your PURPLE NURPLE!" line from the scary movie 4 commercials. when you don't get interesting until you're parodied, you're in trouble.

go away come here, wedding florist. it's professional of you to honor your commitment to our wedding (even though we didn't sign anything) this summer after you sold your flower shop to devote yourself to your new baby. i don't really understand how you're going to get it done without, um, a flower shop, but you're the best and only show in town and i want to trust you. please send us the estimate you promised to have by last week so my head doesn't break.

go away, guess the dictator or sit-com character. i am not and never will be joey from dawson's creek. have you seen katie holmes lately? when i first followed that link, i thought i was looking at kelly osbourne.

come here, magic hat circus boy (and the weird-ass fortune teller on your website). if you did taste like a hefeweizen, i probably wouldn't like you.

go away, guy on tenth avenue who tried chat me up without actually listening to my responses. i tend to distrust people who tell me that i, too, sound like a good uncle.

come here, asparagus risotto. you gobbled up twice the suggested amount of veggie broth and needed doctoring with benecol and vanilla soymilk (because that's how we roll in The Kitchen That Joy Forgot), but you did your best.

04.14.06

a few years ago, a few years after graduation, our college clique got hot and bothered (as twentysomethings do) about working for The Man versus working for The Cause. it was quite dramatic; at the time i was with the SPCA and got terribly upset whenever one of my friends, say, got a nice piece of furniture or joined an entity with punctuation in its name. i remember arguing that we were like babies of different species - we had seemed similar enough in utero, but flippers and claws and such were going to get in the way as we grew up. the discussions were shamefully twee; thank god the whole thing blew over.

the late twentysomething version, i think, is a mutation of town v. gown. i don't want to twee out on it, but this amused the hell out of me when it popped up in my iTunes today:

Come down, come down from your ivory tower
Let love come into your heart
Don't lock yourself in an ivory tower
Don't keep us so far apart

I love you, I love you
Are you too far above me to hear?

Come down, come down from your ivory tower
You'll find true love has its charms
It's cold, so cold, in your ivory tower
And warm, so warm in my arms

I love you, I love you
Are you too far above me to hear?

Come down, come down from your ivory tower
You'll find true love has its charms
It's cold, so cold, in your ivory tower
And warm, so warm in my arms

04.12.06

101 in 1001: 045 earn (and get) a raise at work [completed mid-march '06]
in a literal sense, this item was in the bag unless i got fired before 22 march (pay tweaks happen on anniversaries at The Company). figuratively, it's still exciting; i have in fact been working my ass off, and my evaluation read like one of jan wenner's rolling stone reviews. moreover, joe and the cats and you lovely people are perennial, but i don't count on a lot of other things hanging in there from year to year. congratulations to The Company, then, for sticking it out with me! and congratulations to me for...having the funds to rent an extra movie each month.

celebrities v. giant inflatable rats: the six degrees of That Guy edition.
it was a long, hard winter for both star- and uniongazing; it's much more difficult to spot the famous when their fleshless little bodies are bundled up against the cold, and i think that if the MTA strikers' rallies featured huge rubber animals, frustrated commuters would have used them as bludgeons. things cleared up recently when i was trundling home from work with a huge box full of wedding dress. visibility was poor: i lurched off the curb at one point, nearly flattening myself and kyra sedgwick. woo, now our wedding's only one person away from kevin bacon! i give the encounter 1.5 points. i also ran into That Guy, in this case a character actor with a recurring role as a serial killer on csi: miami. one could argue that he shouldn't be any points because i can't remember his name; i'm calling 0.5 because, bacon-style, he's attached to the fantastically weird david caruso. if you haven't seen david caruso as csi: miami's horatio kane, friends, you are denying yourselves a rare pleasure.

rats: 3.5
star: 7

04.05.06

it's wing, or springer, or something like that. the plaza this morning was a far cry from the drifty blizzard zone of a few months back; our view from the third floor (this is from our stoop) was a sea of blossoms. hours later it was pummeled in a freak snowstorm; snakes on a plane, man. snakes on a plane.

mischa barton quote of the day:

"There's something about not being the quintessential Hollywood person who has to drive to every meeting themselves. You're in your own little area more. Somebody drives me to work - either my mom or an assistant. Or my boyfriend."

(jane, october '04)