goddamn your righteous hand.

like many of you with brains, i watched the republican national convention last night... not all of it cos i was working, but lawrence live-twittered the filler stuff so i feel like i got the gist of it. i walked into my living room and flipped on the tv at the exact moment palin was stepping out onto the stage, so i caught the big deal speech.

i have many feelings about sarah palin. like the rest of the country, i have been excitedly following this whole baby scandal for the last week - it's everything i love about celebrity gossip, mixed with a tremendously unlikeable uber-christy woman who could very well be our fucking president soon. it's irresistible. from questions about trig's real mother to this whole levi the impregnator deal, this has been a wonderful week for the casual american yenta. i'm not going to say anything about it that hasn't already been said, although my mother did yell at me for jokingly insisting i was going to vote for mccain because those obama girls are such boring goody-goody girl scouts and i'm totes gonna miss the bush twins.

ok, so the speech.

i guess since i was raised in northern new jersey and have always lived in primarily democratic cities, i'm not used to seeing that many republicans in one room. it was unsettling to watch that many crazy-eyed white people who hate me and many of my friends for the various things we represent (as an uber-liberal northeastern tree-hugging vegan jew with occasional homo tendencies, i think i fit into a lot of unpopular boxes [that's what she said - ok, move on]). it's so easy when you live in the northeast to forget that the rest of the country is really 100% just like this. i learned this stuff the first time i visited the great state of texas.. a story for another day.

i agree with jezebel that if you strip away her values and religion, palin could be considered some sort of feminist, for having chosen family and a career in politics and sacrificing (arguably) none of it, regardless of how it turned out and what an awful example she actually is. however, in her own way, she is their hillary clinton, and that's an unsettling thought. she represents a lot of republican women well (even if her choices are not necessarily what i'd consider good for women), and republicans seem to love those folksy, aw-shucks types. while she delivered her speech with all the personality of a good morning america host, it was obvious that the crowd were eating it up.

[oh, i fucking loved watching her little daughter piper... she kept poking poor trig in weird spacy little-kid ways and there were no responsible adults around to calm her down - who was going to stop her? bristol? levi? cindy mccain? dad was oblivious. that kid is going to be the champ of the family - trust me.]

alright, brace yourself, cos i'm about to spout off some super liberal vegan hippie crap that's going to make you vomit. ready? go!

among other things, sarah palin is a champion of aerial hunting, a barbaric practice in which the hunter chases a wolf or bear or another animal via aircraft until it's too tired to keep running, and then lands so he or she can shoot the exhausted animal point blank in the face. really seriously, this is something people do. alaska is home to the country's largest remaining population of grey wolves, and yet this practice is not only kinda-sorta legal in alaska (via loophole; it's been technically outlawed for more than 30 years) but apparently encouraged. sarah palin has proposed paying a $150 bounty for the left foreleg of each dead wolf, and has approved a $400,000 state-funded propaganda campaign to promote aerial hunting. what the fuck are you people DOING up there?! last night when she kept talking about how the elitist liberals were trying to take away her guns, i couldn't help but think really? you want to hang onto your guns? you don't want to harm an unwanted fetus but you want to keep shooting fucking WOLVES in the face?! the idea is that if you kill more of the predators, there'll be more moose and caribou around - for you to shoot! with your guns! for fun!

("i would be so much less nervous if i could just KILL something... not a baby!")

here is a video about aerial wolf hunting. it is not for the weak of stomach.


the palins seem like the kind of family who'd have a dog. i feel like if i poke around on the internet long enough i am going to find out that they have a black lab or a golden retriever or some other big, friendly family dog named something even weirder than track or trig (or maybe something totally insanely normal). doesn't every family in alaska have a team of huskies waiting near their sled on the front lawn? with all those kids, they've at least had a fucking hamster. where do you draw that line?

the message here is that human lives are all sacred, even if they're the product of incest or rape, even if the potential mother is underage, unwilling and unprepared financially, emotionally or otherwise to raise a child, but killing innocent animals who are struggling to survive is something you can do for fun. sarah palin believes that one life is to be protected at all costs, and she is willing to defend to the death her right to take another life for sport alone. how do you reconcile these two concepts? where is your respect for life? i know that the issue here is my own belief that an animal's life is just as valuable as a human life, but i am completely disgusted by sarah palin's disregard for the wildlife that makes the state she governs so fascinating and valuable. her campaign against polar bears is well-documented and similarly disgusting.

i cannot believe this is a real person who could become the leader of the free world.
that's all i got.

[ more info ]

cartoon recap: we heard about this place they called the united states

this week was dedicated to cleaning up messes. like, i thought i had my entire fall figured out and i thought i was turning my luck around like lindsay lohan's character in just my luck, but apparently i made out with the wrong person (uhh, have you seen that movie?) cos i've had the rug yanked back out from under me and i'm back at square one! vague much? basically i thought i had gotten a cushy job on a really good tour, and then at the last minute they changed their minds about bringing someone. i'd been looking forwards to it lots, but this isn't the first time it's happened and i'm getting through it.. i'm a survivor like beyonce and like this girl, and i will be ok. i'm a big girl. some people have real problems.

perhaps you are familiar with my friend riese? approximately 90% of you who are not my friends in real life found this blog through her blog, so i imagine you are. riese is a sparkling beacon of positivity in this bleak, grey world. ok no she's not; that's why we get along (sometimes). anyway she needed help moving this week due to circumstances beyond the realm of human understanding, and because i am very strong i offered to step in and move furniture.

here is an actual picture of me literally packing riese and her fancy friend (the indomitable alex vega) into a large cardboard box:

and since i do not own a digital camera (wondering what to get me for hanukkah?!), here is the rest of the events that transpired, captured as only ms paint truly can. unfortunately, my bootleg of photoshop discovered finally that it was in fact a bootleg, and photoshop is no longer possible in my world (i have a pc - can you help?), so ms paint is all i've got. i present:

monday morning top 10: how to auto-move in ten easy steps

"blah blah blah blah," says riese. she has five days to get her shit together and nowhere to go. alex and i say: shut up, we're packing you. for extra help, we consult haviland, californian oracle - like miss cleo but thinner and better looking. this step was also brought to you by our best friends, xanax and vodka. yay friendship!

alex and i waste no time getting down to business. fortunately, i have still not thrown away most of my materials from when i moved to sparlem in december - i still have boxes my dad had gotten for me, as well as a couple of large plastic bins donated by the kind chaps in the hold steady. also, the [dead] chick who used to live in my room was kind enough to leave her own supply of cardboard under my bed. for good measure, i strike some sort of a deal with the guy who sells fruit out of a cart on the corner. he doesn't really speak english and my spanish is piss poor, but i end up with a bunch of boxes that previously held bananas in the sun for many hours. i'm not sure what he expects in return and i'm not interested in returning to find out.

anyway, alex and i carry those across town. they're heavy. it's about a mile walk. we bitch a lot. on the way there, we stumble upon a bunch of extra boxes that some random harlem gentleman is pleased to donate to the cause. by the time we collapse on riese's stoop, we're bitter and sweaty. we buzz up and gasp for the move-ee to come down and help us haul the boxes upstairs. while we wait for her to meet us, we pause to breathe for a minute, and then we see it - right across the freakin' street - a storage place that sells boxes. son of a fucking bitch. we like to think it was worth it cos of our bulging muscles.

finally we get down to the very important task of sorting through riese's endless piles of magazines, books and papers. some things are donated to the salvation army, some things are packed, some things are thrown away - but some things are too weird or worrisome to throw away, so we set up a separate bag, a burn bag. in many ways it's like the burn book in mean girls, ie trang pak is a grotsky biotch, but mostly it's all stuff that we theoretically could shred, but you know what's more fun? BONFIRE ON THE ROOF!

we found an empty grill up there, and since riese was moving in 2 days and there's no such thing as grill etiquette in harlem, we thought it'd be safer to burn all the documents in that. we started the fire with atm receipts and worked our way up to photos, folders and entire works of great literature from days gone by.
we're pretty good at starting fires, although not as talented at putting them out - is that a metaphor? we discover that the fire is great for one thing - providing light so we can read riese's plays aloud. when we finish a page, we crumple it up and throw it into the fire. in case you're worried that nobody will ever get to experience those great pieces of drama or their impassioned final performance, fear not - we filmed it. things to look forwards to: but they are mad!!!!!, the only play i've ever enjoyed.

just as we finish burning the last item - the burn bag itself - the super appears on the roof, convinced we are trying to burn his building down. whoops, is this illegal? probs. way to kill the party vibe, maaaan.

uhh, then we took a break! this is probably the least eventful cartoon recap i have ever done.

anyway after that the steps aren't very cartoon-worthy:
step 6: give whiny move-ee a job (because lifting boxes ain't it)
step 7: move stuff downstairs (the most fun anyone has ever had with that mattress... hey-o!)
step 8: find burly man to help move the heavy stuff

i feel like we can sum that all up here:


so we get a storage unit in the place across the street, and become acquainted with a guy who works there named louis. we love louis; i am not sure where he is from exactly but he has a great accent and says cute things like "geev me some meenutes." we will always remember louis and carry our great love affair in our hearts. remember in monster where charlize lived in a storage locker? it didn't look pleasant.

ooh, i really liked when i was sitting outside on the street with the cart, waiting for alex and her friend to bring down the desk or something and some random guy came up to me and asked if i liked black guys. what a friendly neighbourhood!

step 10 is simple enough, getting the hell outta there. i wasn't around for that part. i imagine it to look something like this:
honestly, i'm pretty beat. i wasn't made for moving furniture. this is reason #21423432 i know dating women isn't really for me; i make a really awful lesbian. alex though - champion all around, definitely woman of the year.

on the plus side, i am totally jacked and full of good karma...?
hopefully things fall into place this week.

what good is sitting alone in your room? come hear the music play...

ok, i know the internet is a valuable resource that i could probably use to find the answer to my questions on my own, but i would rather send my bitchings out into cyberspace and implore that the answers i seek come and find ME.

my good friend kim's boyfriend jason (not pictured) djs once a month at hanger bar. jason and his dj partner play good music - a sweet mix of britpop, new wave, indie rock and random silly things. i like their party a lot; it's a guaranteed fun way to spend one's saturday, and the d-bag quotient is relatively low. also, i have been there on other nights for other parties, and those are good too - basically, hanger bar is a cool bar that books good djs and supplies me with very strong, relatively cheap drinks, so i feel like they make my precious few dollars feel very valuable and well-spent. we jews are all about value.

today i found out that hanger bar is being shut down after this weekend, due to nyc's bullshit liquor board. it feels like every other week, some place my contemporaries and i like to gather at to listen to music, get sloshed and make bad decisions is being shut down because the kids are making "quick, rhythmic movements" there and they cannot handle a 'cabaret' license (the annex, rififi, etc). i do not know what one needs to acquire and maintain a cabaret license, and i am too lazy to look up this information on my own - however, i have the energy to bitch and moan about it. soon all that's gonna be left is don hills, and everybody hates don hills.

i ask you, nyc: what the fuck?

look, i'm 24 years old and i'm gonna be 25 soon. i'm still relatively young and passingly stupid. i'm not very cool and i never know where the good stuff is happening, and if you keep closing these places down i'm gonna run out of ideas. all i ask is that a few nights a week i can count on going out, getting trashed and dancing badly with sketchy strangers. i'm in my 20s and this is new york fucking city - if not here, WHERE? and if not now, WHEN?

if you don't give me places to get drunk and dance, i'm gonna start finding places to do drugs and start fights. my logic is flawless; do not question it.

anyway, see you saturday for the last hurrah. i'll be drunk. it's been a hell of a week and i've earned it.

just bein' miley

it's been kinda silent in blog land. um, i have no excuses; i think every blog i write lately starts with an apology for not writing more. here is a list of things which have been distracting me:

the great torontonian invasion #2
attention cute tegan quin-lookin' ladies of toronto: see this mysterious stranger? my friend kat is one gorgeous, tough, whip-smart broad with a sweet, sweet rack and a heart of gold (and she's wayyy too good for you). when my plans got weird at the last minute, darling kat took me in, fed me whiskey and had miley cyrus sing-alongs with me in her living room. i also spent a good amount of time with fallon, who is a heart-breakin' powerhouse of awesome, and also with my good friend michael j fox rainbow, who is currently writing new music that sounds like 'damn, i wish i was your lover,' but with electrogoth keyboards and shredding guitars, obvs. whatever. this trip was dedicated to the howling, cackling squalor that is me, kat and fallon in the same room. anybody who can handle being around the three scorpios at once can probably handle ANYTHING. oh GURL.

anyway, toronto is beautiful, their subway system is very clean (the fares cost $2.75..), everybody's polite and charming, we formed a(nother) band, there are raccoons, we found a restaurant called DISGRACELAND (amazing), some catcaller referred to fallon as "lil' bit," and if i ever had to drop everything and leave new york i'd move there in a heartbeat. on the way home i got held up at the border for four hours because THE USA'S COMPUTERS KEPT FREEZING. thanks a bunch, george w! kisses! i came home with a mega-cute accent that i'm very unwilling to lose.

best graffiti in toronto:
'uncle sam is a liar! this ain't the land of the free!'
'we're in canada you fuckin' idiot!'

i'll be back soon - quite soon actually. more on this later.

allison the duster-huffer
so my roommate and i had the bright idea the other day to paint our bathroom completely gold - gold shower curtain, gold walls, gold toilet seat. omg golden showers, LOL. anyway, the only way we can get the metallic sheen we so desire is with spray paint, so we've been doing a little bit at a time (spray cans don't have that much paint in them, and the fumes are incredibly toxic). it looks amazing, fyi - we're one step closer to our barbie dream house. of course, we've been a little cracked out and lightheaded, and THEN there's the paint fumes... and then my friend heather (pictured, right) introduced me to allison and her brilliant, astounding story, and since then we've been much more careful.

ok, i know a&e's intervention isn't supposed to be funny and allison's story is actually incredibly tragic and awful, but every time she puts the can of computer cleaner to her lips and inhales and it's all SNORRKKKKK and then she turns to the camera with her glassy black eyes and grunts something like "I WISH I HAD A FATHER!" i lose my shit and crack up uncontrollably it's fine - i knew i was going to hell a long time ago. anyway, i have watched this about sixty times and have enjoyed all the inevitable "walkin' on sunshine" youtube remixes. here is part one of five (you'll want to watch them all):

ok, so again:

hush.. hush, sweet charlotte
every once in a while i go through tivo and record say, all the joan crawford movies, or all the lindsay lohan movies, or somesuch nonsense, so when i feel like curling up and watching a movie i already have a smörgåsbord to pick through. this week it was bette davis. WTF, HOW DID I NOT KNOW ABOUT THIS MOVIE?! this is the campiest thing i've ever seen - a black and white horror movie starring bette davis, melanie from gone with the wind and samantha's mom from bewitched, set in louisiana so they all have ridic accents. this was made like two years after what ever happened to baby jane? so bette davis was already in a ridiculous state... apparently joan crawford was supposed to be in it too but backed out at the last minute, and since they already hated each other there was DRAMAAAA. i love this campy, queeny shit. WATCH THIS, for real:


um, anything i add after THAT will seem anticlimactic. i'll be back later, for real.

haiku tuesday: rollercoaster of love

hi, sorry, sometimes i feel like twitter has eliminated the need for a blog. why organise my thoughts when i can just text every single thing that pops into my head?

i am supposed to be leaving for toronto tonight. the scope of my trip has changed significantly in the last few days, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. it's not like boston, i haven't been ditched, it's just different. i wanted to get out of the city and i've got that. i'm excited to see my wonderful, amazing friends fallon and kat and to have canadian adventures. when we're together, things are good automatically. we'll see how it goes from there.

i am supposed to be packing, and it is not going well. i am easily distracted and anxious. i am working tonight before i spend the night on a greyhound, and i'm in no mood. my current new york-based "fancy friend" is driving me a little bit insane, and it's starting to feel like i'm taking care of a stray cat - while i might get to scratch its belly once in a while, unless i make the effort to put food and water out every night i cannot guarantee it will come back to my yard. jesus, what a metaphor. um, i also can't find my passport, but i guess i don't need it. driver's license, birth certificate, it's on. bring on the maple leaves and loaded soda. i'll probs come back with an accent; i always do.

we went to coney island yesterday, and i wrote some lovely poetry about it. i shared my haikus with my travel companions and they also contributed. surprise! haiku tuesday is back. i'm posting on a freakin' MONDAY, cos if i don't post now i'm likely to forget.

ahh coney island
freezepops, feet in the water
look! floating band-aid!

men of brighton beach
bald and shirtless, hairy backs
put a shirt on plz

cyclone is not safe.
if we perish on the ride
ben can have my stuff

red moon on the beach
rising quickly, visibly
we've got french fries. SWEET.

oh! when we were leaving there was some guy on the boardwalk with a screaming cockatoo on his shoulder and i ACTUALLY thought: awesome, i have an excuse to use my 'unexpected cockatoos' tag! i hate you, internet. anyway, we had a lovely day, but some of us had a better time than others and the aftermath resulted in the destruction of one of my favourite parts of my friend's backyard garden. this was contributed by the offender's lovely roommate bri:

she can turn it on
in one seductive beach day.
poor broken hammock

to which the offender responds:

i am not amused
inappropriate haiku
what's wrong with some fun?

(i say:
there is no such thing
as an inappropriate
haiku, fyi.)

and bri responds:

nothing wrong with fun
who would begrudge a possum
their wild swinging ways?

whatever you're imagining, you're right, and the hammock is broken forever. summer's almost over, and we move on to bigger and better things. like canada!

rock on, gold dust woman

last year i had a lot of feelings about the approach of THE WEEKEND. it was the one-year anniversary of the end of things - the moment when things had gotten really tense and uncomfortable and i had a lot of post-traumatic ghosts still lingering over me. this year, a lot of once-relevant dates have seemed less pressing, and i found new ways to occupy myself - in many ways i'm over everything and have moved on and found new friends and new loves and new hobbies that involve less mindfuckery and heartbreak. still, it's that weekend again this year, and some of it's still in the back of my mind.. the only solution is to keep busy. this used to be my least favourite solution to any problem, but i find that it does work.

today in particular, i ran into two semi-significant people from that time in my life within an hour. it happens i guess. new york city can be very small, especially when you're trying to hide from ghosts.

there just hasn't been time to focus. there was a really weird death and a really unnecessary fight, and then some really strange goings-on with some of my nearest and dearest, so i haven't really been feeling too sorry for myself. i worked a lot of outdoor shows last week, as well as the american idols concert in newark. that was kind of ridiculous, in that they basically sang karaoke for 3 hours while i put in an intense nine-hour day - they pulled $140,000 in merch and i'm still dirt poor. we walked out the back right when the idols were all signing autographs, and we were on the idols' side of the barricade, so we exited to a tremendous wall of screaming eight-year-olds with digital cameras and posters, all demanding autographs from these unremarkable human beings. i secretly yanked on that one guy's ridiculous dreadlocks, just to say i did.

we moved my grandmother into assisted living on saturday. her new place is nice but quite small and she had to give away a lot of her things. i inherited a lot of dishes, cookware, a jewelry box, a menorah and a set of candlesticks. my brother got our grandfather's dresser and jewelry box, some cookware and our great grandmother's rolling pin. these are things we can keep as memories of this person (our grandmother) who's been pretty much the center of our universe for our entire lives. even though she wants us to have these things, it felt a lot like graverobbing.. it was a reality i'm not ready to deal with, and i'm not sure she is either.

we found a lot of really cute things belonging to my grandfather, like his trophy for being the worst bowler in recorded history and a set of fully-redeemed "love coupons" he made out to my grandmother (most disturbing: a promise to give her a hickey anywhere she wanted it). i found a set of really glam sunglasses that make me look like johnny depp's willy wonka; they were probs actually purchased when jackie o was first lady. when grandma saw how much i was enjoying them, she told me to keep 'em. i also got the bed - a full bed, which she won't have room for in the new place. i'm grateful for it, but also a little creeped out by the idea of sleeping in it (or uh, having guests in it). everything was very emotional and heavy.

today i found out i might be gone for a month in the fall, but as always i don't like to put too much stock in these things. we also decided to paint our bathroom gold, which is probably going to be a multiple-week project (mostly because of the spray paint fumes). i have a feeling i'm going to wake up tomorrow and see a half-painted gold wall and wonder what kind of crack i was smoking this afternoon (NONE AT ALL!).

in the meantime! i haven't shut up about this but i'm excited about it - this is my friend chris! he plays drums! his band are opening for rancid on thursday (wanna go? you can't - it's sold out!)! he's in this video as the douchebag boyfriend. sounds about right. chantal is a muppet... and plays one in the video! two things i love lots: my friend chris and muppets, especially when they run all panicky with their muppet limbs flailing. fortunately, this video features a few flailing-limbs scenes. the song's been stuck in my head all day. your baby's leeeaving you....

it's the call i'll never get

my roommate bonnie and i have a strange relationship.

we tell her boyfriend that our strange relationship involves a lot of bubble baths and naked naps, but in reality we see each other something like once a week (and i nap alone). bonnie's got a great job working in the important-persons department of a fancy restaurant group, and she keeps what she refers to as 'amish hours'... she's in bed by 9 pm and takes great pleasure in waking herself up earlier and earlier every morning. i work mostly club jobs, and i'm a night owl besides - she wakes up at times i'm likely to be just getting home from the bar. anyway, we're roommates and although we never see each other, we leave each other little presents in lieu of spending time together - she'll leave a pitcher full of iced coffee in the fridge for me, and i'll buy produce for her to eat with her cereal with a note signed by the apples themselves. cute stuff like that. it works. we discuss improvement projects we'd like to begin all over the apartment, but few of these ideas ever come to fruition - mostly because she's a bouncy morning person and i'm a vampire, and we are like two ships passing in the early morning, one eerily perky and the other probably drunk.

anyway, one of bonnie's bright ideas was to leave a pro and con pad on the fridge, for us to sort through life's conundrums. until recently the pad sat sadly unused, but today i was inspired to take it for a test run. i feel like creepy problems like this will become a mainstay on our refrigerator...

dilemma: impure thoughts about the straight-haired jonas brother (henceforth referred to as hot jonas)
date: 8/7/8
deadline: asap
confidential: ___ yes _x_ no
urgency: ___ high _x_ low

PRO: according to rolling stone, hot jonas is 18 and therefore (barely) legal.
CON: this makes me a cougar, like dina lohan. at 24, this is a bit much.
PRO: he has tons of money and could buy me anything i want - this satisfies my grandmother's only remaining requirement for my future husband ("i don't even care if he's jewish anymore!")!
CON: millions of jealous 8-year-old girls with disposable income and bad attitudes
PRO: dark hair, skinny jeans, seems to be the kind of guy who's into body hair grooming
CON: loves jesus. like, a LOT.
PRO: i don't think he's the one who was sticking it in miley cyrus.
CON: he wasn't sticking it in anyone - promise rings! virgin until marriage. ouch.

BUT LOOK AT HIM ON THAT ROLLING STONE COVER - see how his geeky brother is grabbing at his tight v-neck shirt? it's totally incestuous and wrong, but kind of amazing - even nerdy mccurlylocks wants a piece of hot jonas. the other brothers look like they're trying to work up the nerve to ask you to the school dance - hot jonas is thinking about parking the car afterwards.

um.

conclusion: DANGER (for now)
plan of action: wait until he's been deflowered and divorced (max: 5 years)
problem solved: _x_ yes ___ no

two quick things:

i got a twitter. do you have one? you should. why? because this thing is less retarded if more people you know are using it. right now it's terrifically silly. how many more ways can i indulge myself on the internet today?

anyway, let's be friends on there!

i interviewed for my dream job today. it is amazing how i have been so conditioned by disappointment over the last few months that even though the job is perfect for me, pays well, offers benefits, ensures growth, is easy to get to and has a vegan market/cafe literally across the fucking street ("oh, yes, all the other vegans in the office go there all the time," the interviewer mentions nonchalantly. i explode. OTHER VEGANS?!?!?), i am convinced that i won't get it simply because i want it so badly.

this better be one bangin' thank-you note.

saving days in a frozen head

sometimes i feel like if i don't actually write about what happened, i will forget it somehow...? this is probably massively incorrect.

so let's see... a week or so ago i saw yaz with lawrence. that was terrific fun. i was the youngest person in the room, as it was all gay men in their forties (and lawrence, who is neither gay nor in his forties.. YET [ps you're old]). the BEST PART was during 'sweet thing,' when the screens behind them showed all these amazing shots of lollipops and gummy bears and licorice and then you'd look at the band and jesus christ, alison has gotten fat. she looks like the type of woman who reads mercedes lackey and collects cat figurines. whatever - bitch can still sing, so they played 'situation' and 'don't go' and 'bring your love down (didn't i)' and 'goodbye seventies' and all the other hits and we danced like retards. it was absolutely lovely.

i went to jersey, had an argument, and then went out and took part in a lot of illegal/immoral activities at rated x. while it was fun at the time, later i started to feel like i was getting too old for lots of things. at this point, leaving new york started sounding like an increasingly wonderful idea, so i booked some tickets up to boston to visit mike, one of my best friends for the last ten years, my brother from another mother. i hadn't seen him since august of last year, that theSTART/tbm mini-tour, and even then it had been too brief. it was time to play some serious catch-up with the #1 in the top 8 of my heart.

i worked tuesday, jarvis cocker happened, went home and slept for about four hours and then caught the megabus. megabus, guys - it's like jet blue on the ground. i recommend it. anyway, mike met me at the bus station and we picked up lunch in brookline, sat in the park and fed the sparrows. we ran errands in the rain, he went to work, and a few hours later i figured out the t and met him there. after he got out, we went out for a few drinks with his roommate, and when we got back to their place we intended to watch a movie but then everybody was a little out of sorts and i fell asleep. it was a decent day outside of my normal routine.

when i woke up, mike was gone, and there was a fucking note:

s - please understand that i love you and i'm truly sorry - but i can't be here right now and i can't explain why. please stay for however long you want or need... i will explain as soon as i can - and i will see you soon. love m.

um, WHAT?

look, i don't know if mike reads this blog or not and i'm past the point where i care. i had more than 24 hours between that moment and my bus ticket's intended time home, and had only rudimentary knowledge of boston transit. this is only the tip of the iceberg of Why This Sucked.

so i left.

it was pouring and i didn't really know where i was going. i had something i'd wanted to pick up on newbury street, so i walked there - probably over a mile longer than i'd needed to, and if i'd known the city better i'd have planned my trip quite differently. my umbrella was useless. i was soaked to the bone and although i was never really lost (thank you, blackberry gps!) i had a lot of lost-ish emotions floating around in my strange little brain. i just did not know how to react to that morning. i chose not to react.

thankfully, there is ben c, an old college friend who goes to berklee. when we were at drexel he mainly wrote intellient dance music; now he's studying composition, mostly showtunes, kids' music, other things you need actual talent to do. he's brilliant. ben c bought me lunch, took me to a piazzolla concert and then escorted me back to his house, where he has a set of rock band drums wired as an electronic kit. bless his heart. he asked if i could play guitar, i said barely, and we recorded this (unfinished obvs) 90s alternative song. hear my angst:



the next morning, facebook told me mike had gone to cape cod with his friend, which he described in his status update as "the best day." i still have no idea what happened.

i came back feeling a little bit worse than when i left.

how's toronto this time of year?

f.e.e.l.i.n.g.c.a.l.l.e.d.l.o.v.e.

this is the worst blog ever.

i met jarvis cocker on tuesday. OMGOMGOMGOMG. for years, my britpop crush was damon albarn, but that more or less dissolved when he a) broke up with justine frischmann and wrote an ENTIRE WHINY ALBUM about it, b) started going bald and c) started believing his own hype. since then, i have turned my attention to the fabulous mr cocker (from pulp), who as you can see here is an enormously beautiful man with very pointy knees and elbows. i present the common people video as evidence of his fabulousness. jarvis doesn't look like this anymore, but he has aged into a shaggy-haired, bespectacled, strangely sexy cartoon character who only gets better with age. in short, i heart him. a LOT. OH, yes, the video:

the story isn't that interesting actually. i sold merch for him at his terminal 5 show. the tour manager thanked me, overpaid me, and then offered to get me a glass of wine should i desire one. i desired one. jarvis was in the room where the wine was. the tour manager introduced me to jarvis, and he shook my hand.

it is here that i became aware of a warm, shaky sensation floating throughout my entire body, stopped being able to feel my legs, and suspected i was actually blushing. jarvis, being the coolest man in the world, was either totally oblivious or wryly amused.

i asked totally nerdy music journalist-y questions, because i didn't know what to say. i asked if he was working on a new album, he said he didn't like to think of it that way and was just testing out new material to see how people reacted.

"oh, well... the stuff you played tonight sounded great... the crowd seemed to really get into it." inside, i smacked myself. say something smart or cute or witty or SOMETHING AHHHHHH. he thanked me politely. clearly he was not falling madly in love with me as i had always dreamed he would. i told him i'd been at the webster hall show last year and loved it. he smiled and said he hoped i'd come next time. "of course!" NERD NERD NERD.

jarvis showed me his custom-made earplugs. "this is what the inside of me ears looks like," he told me in his adorable accent. "it's rather dis-goos-ting, isn't it?" reader, i'd have licked them. he's that hot. i asked some totally geeky question about the earplug making process or some crap, i don't even know, i wasn't cool at ALL. obviously this is the part where he was supposed to tell me he wants to sleep with common people, wants to sleep with common people like me. instead, he went off to put them back in their special case, and i sighed like a lovelorn schoolgirl.

i mean, let's be fair, jarvis is already married, to this pretty lady:

they also have a son, albert, who is probably also skinny, dark-haired and pointy-limbed.

still... if only i'd have gotten my act together.

NEXT TIME, COCKER... NEXT TIME.