shiny happy people

We were at Lakeside Lounge last month, waiting for a friend's gig to start, when we decided to jump into the photobooth for four very distinct faces - asian-face, tongue-sticky-outtie, goofy, and then normal. We had shared a lovely dinner together, we were a couple of glasses of plonk wine into the night, and none of our faces came out as planned. Poor Kate is almost hidden by Conrad's seemingly enormous head. In one, Conrad looks like those early-century pictures of schitzophrenics made with too-slow apertures. Jen and I look like insane french burlesque dancers in another. (go through to flickr to see the entire strip.) But it was a fun night for the four of us, a good gig, and an awesome photobooth strip.

uborking

I never did really post about our delightful visit from the Uborkites, or Karen and Pete as they're known in the real-and-more-important-world. And seeing Pete's recent pictures on flickr of Karen's hair in their back garden made me realize that I had things to say that I never did say. Isn't that life, the things you have to say that sometimes you never get around to saying?

I was nervous, I think, because our earlier meeting had been so brief and they're both so cunningly good at being guarded on their blog so I didn't know them like perhaps I know other people whose blogs I've been reading for an equally long amount of time. I was nervous that'd I'd be too flighty or loud, that our apartment would seem too cluttered or domestic, that New York would seem dirty and annoying in comparison to their beautiful and charming England. I think I was also nervous because lacking that outspoken affection that a lot of bloggers have and claim to have for their blog-friends, I really wanted them both to, well, like me. I felt very aware that I was the wife of the blogger they knew first, and felt the corresponding need to impress and the corresponding tummy-sinking feeling that I'd fail to do so.

Anything I could possibly have been nervous about is ridiculous in hindsight. I adored them both and it was one of the most singularly pleasant houseguest stays I've ever had the honor to enjoy, and I've had a lot of fantastic houseguests. At the end of Pete's first day, arriving at the cafe with Kate in tow, he sat down and said, "I love this city!" and it just warmed every possible cockle of my heart. He also did the most amazing thing - he helped me figure out the surprise slideshow for my Mother's Day gift that was giving me the biggest headache. Also he is SO TALL and I'm enormously fond of people that are that tall, just because they're unique and so different from me. Pete also has the easiest laugh ever. These are really qualities you should be looking for in the people around you.

My favourite thing about Karen was sitting in our two window armchairs in the living room with her, while the boys played endless rounds of Midnight Club on the nearby couch. I was tinkering with photos on my laptop and Karen sat in the immense leather armchair, dainty feet tucked under her and a few strands of hair routinely slipping out from behind her ear, writing calmly in a journal. No, that's not true, that wasn't my favourite thing. My favourite thing was how every time Pete would say something, even if it was just to the game or to Stuart or "gah!", she'd look over at him even if briefly, just to connect her eyes with his face and it was belovedness defined. My other favourite thing about Karen, though, is how intensely sharp and aware she is of the world around her. This self-assurance, which people normally think is obvious in louder, more attention-grabbing people, may not immediately come across from her gracefully quiet first impression - but damn if the woman doesn't have a mind like a steel trap.

On their last night in town, I caught them hugging, for no apparent reason other than adoration, when I met them at Lincoln Center. Pete has his long arms around Karen's shoulders and they were staring at each other in that way that you expect people to do in the first week they meet but there they were. Adoring, you know, to the exclusion of everything else around them. Even several years into their relationship, they still truly adore each other. This is something to be cherished, and I felt bad even noticing something as private as that, as secret as a letter.

It's funny how friendships form, how ease slides between people as quickly as offering a bite of a sandwich or laughing about a TV show. I never did thank them for that, and something about Pete's photos of his true love's hair made me want to, made me imagine them so poignantly standing in their lovely garden, and it made me actually miss them. So here it is. Thanks, Karen and Pete, for coming to visit the city and us. It was a beautiful week, we'll always have this lovely memory of your visit. And there will, I know, be other visits - just as easy, just as worthwhile, just as serendipitous.

10 things i could post about but instead will make a list telling you about in not enough detail:

1. Really excited about Stuart's new job. He's all, Stuart.Lastname@workcompany.com now! He's all official and shit! Cool.
2. My mom's birthday tomorrow. My mom, she may be cooler than your mom.
3. Shiv, she leaves us for two months this summer. I won't see her until I see her in a big poofy white dress. How crazy!
4. House, I command you clean thyself! No? Really? I have to do it? Seriously?
5. Going to a Brooklyn Cyclones game soon. WOO CYCLONES.
6. I'm a fairy! I'm a badass fairy! I get to be bitchy on stage! Why did I ever give up acting? This is awesome!
7. I'm wearing this awesome pink silk tunic that my mom lent me. Thanks, Mom!
8. Wow, there are a lot of exclamation points in this post. Sheesh.
9. I have spent a lot of time with Kate and Jen in the past few weeks. I have spent not enough time with Shiv and Biscuit, both of whom are deserting me for months on end. Dudes, what's up?
10. This weekend is my ten-year reunion with people I knew back in '95, in Kenya, where we all listened to Coco Jumbo and made out with each other. We are meeting first in NYC, then DC. Should be fun entertaining somewhat disconcerting all of these things.

that's my man

I'm unabashedly proud. See also; profoundly relieved, extremely excited, and completely unsurprised.

Life, it seems, has a funny way of working out for us.

minding his business

I'm sitting at a Starbucks on Court and Joralemon in Brooklyn, and I'm looking out the window after a particularly pleasing paragraph and the last dregs of my black tea. This dog walks by.

Let me clarify. A dog just WALKS BY. Midsized, got collie in his bloodlines somewhere, sort of mangy dog just walks on by. No leash, no owner ambling after him. Just a dog. And he's walking like he's got someplace to be. Like this happens everyday, dogs just walking down the sidewalk.

At least three other people on the street turned around to watch the dog go by.

Odd.

suffering pants for my art

The funny thing about my outfit is that I am wearing black pants, a black tee, black ballet flats, and big dangly white earrings, but also Stuart's worn blue Oxford button-down over it with the sleeves rolled up because I knew it'd be chilly in the office and in the Starbucks I'm going to be holed up at writing tonight, and plus also because I look like an interestingly debonair French painter from the '60s and office whore that I am, I like to rock the "interesting creative type" look from time to time.

The funnier thing about my outfit, though, is that it'd look a thousand times better without the pants because i am wearing frilly black underwear with white polkadots and a bow on the bottom and nothing says "interesting creative type" like NO PANTS.

(the thing about "now with 100% more vagant" is

that it's a word play, a joke, and I could tell you but I think it'll be more fun to see if anyone figures it out. If you do, send me a note to krissa at gmail. If no one does, I'll explain it in a week or so. Seriously, though, you won't think it's that funny so don't stress your pretty heads about it too much.)

Mae'n bwrw glaw, so dal fy llaw

I've decided I want to learn Welsh. I've been casting around for my next language and I think the answer is Welsh. I mean, the subject line for this post means "It's raining, so hold my hand". THAT'S ACTUALLY TEXT FOR A WRITTEN LANGUAGE, guys, not my usual keyboard spasms. Who wouldn't want to learn THAT?

"What languages do you speak?"
"French, Portuguese, and Welsh."
"Welsh?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Hsmef sfdw sdefle skfgjwfdkje*."
"Oh."

*this is actually gibberish. but you wouldn't know it, WOULD YOU.

Also, this morning on the subway, I sat next to a very pregnant Italian woman. She was talking animatedly to the man standing above her, holding on to the subway bars. I could see her wide gold wedding band but I couldn't see his, so for their entire jovial conversation from which I understood words like, "Francesca" and "cosa" and "perché", I wondered if he was her husband, and hoped he was because they were so cute, but you know, whatever, it's New York, one should never assume, right?

So she got off at 5th avenue and he waited until the next stop, left hand jammed in his pocket the entire time and I kept my eye on it like a HAWK and then as he was leaving the train, he pulled it out long enough for me to spot the matching wide gold band and I have no idea if it's because the day was young and nothing else really exciting had happened but I was really glad to know that he was her husband.

being introspective about your blog is oh so 2005

It's hard to blog these days because everything I'm about to say either ends up sounding rehearsed and stilted and like it came straight out of a can labeled "Things That Are Both Introspective and Yet Simple" or it's going to get too real, too un-photoshopped, and there are only some people that want to see the un-photoshopped versions.

I could blog about the wonderful day we had on Tuesday, with tennis and beer and laziness and cheese on toast. Nope, it'd just seem like it came out of the can with the label, where I'm all, "look at the harmony and simplicity, isn't it divine?"

Or I could blog about how Stuart and I are learning the edges of our disagreement maps, we're in the Here Be Monsters territory where we're starting to learn each other's weaknesses and while most of the time our better impulses lead us away from the napalm shots, sometimes we cave, sometimes we're not the best people in the world. But nope, parents and real-life friends read this who'd then start asking about the state of our marriage, offering unsolicited advice, or just ... I don't know.

I could blog about pressures at work, trying to find new avenues for my creativity, trying to see the middle road between the huge highway signs that say BOOORING and the one that says SELL OUT. About looking for freelancing gigs and trying to keep this space pure and alive and fresh and about learning to spend less time criticising other people's writing and more time making my own better. But that's job related, isn't it, and there's an embargo on that.

All around me, I'm seeing blogs falling to the wayside. Either I'm just not interested anymore, a writer has gone in a direction that's no longer what it was when I first started reading, or they've become peppered with too many links and not enough content, or - more gracefully than quitting - they've just quietly stopped writing. And I think, that's the way to go. Why am I still here? But it's because I love this space. I love that every now and again, it's an immediate receptacle for an inspired idea, a funny conversation, the need to rant.

I don't want to give up blogging but I've just written an entire entry about how I can't see the forest for the trees. How can I get more personal without essentially telling people to not comment to me anything they read about, or without vetting it with Stuart first? How can I still blog if it's just going to be pat, neatly-tied-up-with-a-catchy-moral tidbits that bore me on other sites?

You guys, sadly, aren't even the ones to answer those questions. I guess I am. And that's the other thing - comments. Why do I have them? If I really just wanted to write, wouldn't it be easier if I knew I wouldn't have people's immediate reactions? Wouldn't that mean I'd just write, get it out, and forget about what people thought of it because I would be deaf to their opinion? Or would the loss of the instantaneous connection of commenting actually make me lose interest in something I was convinced I would lose interest in two months after I started, in 2002?

Oh, look, I just found some lint in here. Fascinating.

fear ganesh!

You wouldn't believe it but we broke another frisbee. Well, since Frisbee is a brand, we broke another flying disc. Well, the first one was called TecDisc and this one was called Professional Flying Disc.

I can't tell if it's because we're absolute utter crap at throwing flying discs or if we really need to stop buying two dollar frisbee knockoffs.

Maybe it's just that after an hour of tennis, the sixth time in ten days, we're both fucking superhuman.

Nah, it's probably the cheap disc.

summer in the RI

This weekend I:

- stood on a six foot ladder and helped clean out gutters.
- got a little nauseated at the sight of Stuart's cut hand where he sliced it opening a bottle of beer.
- ate two steaks, both New York Strip, both done to perfection.
- sprayed a high-power hose in the air repeatedly, only to enjoy the tiny rain shower two seconds later.
- played with and broke a frisbee.
- taught Stuart how to make 'smores.
- bought two dresses for two weddings we're attending this summer.
- found the perfect summer nightgown.
- drove along the highway listening to Fleetwood Mac with the windows down.
- played an hour and a half of tennis.
- found a decent bikini.
- played with a german shepherd.
- had a beautiful dinner with Stuart.
- decided we needed to do a canal-boat vacation in the Norfolk broads.
- turned down a cupcake.
- stole Stuart's sunglasses a lot.
- nearly fell down the stairs holding a cake.
- didn't eat chips and salsa.
- slept a lot.

movin' right along

Bugger THIS for a lark, we're off to Rhode Island.

Dear Queens,

I would like to send a letter with my condolences to your entire borough. I just read the article about you in the New York Times. It broke my heart a little to hear so many people, even your own residents, give you the bum rush. So, Queens, I'd like to thank you for a few things. Things that, Queens, only you've got.

Thanks for having Astoria. She's a great daughter and I know she's probably your favourite. She may not be as pretty as other borough's choice neighborhoods but damn if she don't got a certain kind of funny class. She's got a great sense of humor, is sort of a party animal, and loves her food. This makes her sound sort of fat. She probably is sort of fat. That's okay with her, and that's okay with me. Astoria is the kind of friend that's never at the right parties but she's never really bummed about it because there's nothing that can't be fixed by an evening hanging out with her, drinking white zin out of plastic cups and watching cheesy eighties films with Bill Murray in them.

I'd like to also thank you for the elevated trains. The rest of the city you hang out with was all, "no way! you can put them underground? LET'S DO THAT." and you sort of got lazy about it. Maybe you didn't get to the sign up sheet in time or maybe you thought all that underground thing was sort of a fad or something, and if there's one thing you're no good at, it's fads. You leave that to that slut, the Bowery. So you kept your rickety, screetching, loud above-ground trains, at least a few of them. And you know what? They work for you. They're shelter for your people who forgot their umbrella. They're awesome for when you absolutely NEED to make a cell phone call before you get home. Best of all, though, you know that they give you the best thing about Queens - the view.

Really, I'd be remiss for not thanking you for your airports. Man, I live ten minutes from LaGuardia, which I have to compliment you on. Ten minutes! Who lives ten minutes from an airport and still has a nice view and a short commute? I do! Even JFK, which is out there in the ass-other-end of the borough, has that handy little airtrain at the end of the E. You think of everything, Queens!

But most of all, Queens, I've got to thank you for your sense of humor. Your more sensitive people, people like me who choose year after year to stay at your side because you've got the right stuff, we got a little miffed and saddened at the article, at the second-choice-Olympic bid jokes, at the ways in which Manhattan and it's -ites constantly and unthinkingly snub you and your virtues. We've got your back, Queens, and we were all fisticuffs and "but all the restaurants!" but you didn't care. You didn't care when all the snobs in Manhattan had to take cabs to get to your brief shining moment as the home of MoMA, because they had no IDEA what trains came here. You don't care that Fresh Direct won't even deliver to the neighborhood that houses its warehouse, and you don't care that most maps don't even show you to tourists.

Thanks for being tough, Queens. You're a lot of things, but the loser borough, you're not. You're Corona and Swingline and ConEd and the Triboro and tennis and Rosie and falafel and the airports and the cheating livery cars and dirty snowbanks and glorious sunsets and ladies who lunch and wild rosebushes and Steinway pianos and bridges and chubby Latino babies and row houses and souvlaki and Trade Fair and backgammon and nescafe frappes and warehouses and P.S. 1 and Jackson Hole and community and history, and you're my favourite borough, baby.

my kingdom for a ...

Does anyone own a horse? Anyone know anyone or is sleeping with anyone who owns a horse? Anyone want to invite me to ride it around for a couple hours one of these days?

Let's talk.

for richer, for poorer

If you live in New York City and have a lot of money, I suggest you spend every single weekend this summer in the glitzy Hamptons, sitting poolside and sipping grey goose.

However, for those of us that don't, I suggest the following extremely gratifying plan. Look at the schedules for Celebrate Brooklyn, Central Park's Summer Stage, the New York Metropolitan Opera's Met in the Park, the New York Philharmonic's Music in the Park, and the Film Festival in Bryant Park. And those are the free ones. If you're willing to drop about fifteen bucks, then go to Lincoln Center's amazing Midsummer Nights Swing.

Look at the schedules. Pull out your palm pilot or pocketPC or small squawking dicto-bird and jot this stuff into your calendars. Leave yourself post-it notes, reminding yourself not to miss this stuff. Me? I've already got a date with Stuart for Puccini's Tosca, two Philharmonic concerts (one all Dvorak), Lyle Lovett and a Nick Drake tribute, three movies, and my eye on some salsa lessons under the stars. All written down in about 20 minutes.

When I was about twelve, I went to my first Philharmonic in the Park. My mother took me, and she bought me the tee shirt that said, "Priceless Music, Absolutely Free". And that's the point. It's this stuff that makes the city worth it. So book yourself some free culture - and enjoy your glorious New York summer.

native wildlife in the BK

"He can't even talk yet but he can point to the ice cream cart," a spry blonde woman said, pointing to the little cherub in the stroller. She unwrapped the king cone for him, and he mushed it directly into his face. It was then that I noticed his legs were covered in sand, probably from an invigorating turn in the neighborhood sandbox. I laughed, in a friendly way, and she did too, saying, "that'll be a full body wash down when we get home."

"That's why they make them that small, so that they fit in bathtubs," I answered, and kept walking into Prospect Park.

As the boys played the footie, I sat with Keena, a six month old German Shepherd who'd been tied with generous leash to the tree I was sitting under. She had the enormous ears and paws of her eventual size, and her owner (dad if you're so inclined to call him that) would take a break in the match to come by and get covered in kisses. Keena would leap at the edge of the leash she'd forgotten she was tied to the minute he went back to the game. As he disappeared over a hill at one point to go find a toilet, I watchd her eyes as I stroked her worried forehead. I've never seen a dog look more desperately miserable as she did, or more gleeful and full of uncontained joy as she did when he came back.

"Jonah STOP IT," was what the woman yelled as a towheaded little dervish span directly into Shiv's legs while she talked about the shoes she wanted to buy. If the little tyke had slammed just a few inches over into the back of her knee, her leg might have done that oddly helpless crumple. Her eyes registered irritation and politeness that only rumbled her for a minute - by the time the errant bounceball had been corralled by his mother, she was composed again. The mother, either not noticing the fender bender or not thinking it was worth a smidgen of shame, didn't apologize to Shiv.

It was chilly on the Q train home, and I was wearing the beloved sweatshirt of Stuart's that I'd carelessly (shamefully!) left behind in a store and gone back two stops and ten blocks to get. He had gone on home, sweaty and tired from two hours of the footie, and as I rode home finally, a couple boarded at Atlantic, and parked themselves and their young son across from me. They were obviously on their way OUT for the evening instead of heading home on account of the fresh looks on their faces, the filled juice sippy cup, and the total lack of mud/ice cream/sweat on the little toddler. His parents both had almost waist-length hair, his dark and black, hers fine and grey-blonde. I wondered if pulling on those sheets of hair had been a pastime for him when he had been at that age where he could do little more than lie tummy-up in a crib and wave his arms and legs like a sea anenome. What remarkably patient parents. The little charmer was about two now, and he spent the entirety of the subway journey making coy faces at me and then looking away when I winked or smiled.

As he got off the train, I smiled again, and he said, "buh-buh" which I understood to be the toddler equivalent of doffing your hat at a fine lady passing by. I laughed, said goodbye to him, and told his mother he was gonna be quite the heartbreaker some day. "He already is," she laughed.

And the train sped on to Manhattan, away from the wilds of a Brooklyn Sunday.

squatter's rights

In case you guys don't realize it, I've also been blogging over at Biscuit's while he's in Jamaica getting drunk and forgetting all of our names. So go there and read that, y'see?

the true meaning of the words street price

I was on a long lunchtime walk when it occurred to me that I was both 1. hungry and 2. enjoying my brisk walk. The solution to this rare dilemma is always a street dog, known to the rest of the world as "a hot dog sold from a cart on the street corner" but since that's far too many words, it's just known as a street dog.

So I stopped at the next cart (in midtown they're only a block apart) and asked for a dog with ketchup. I pulled a single out of my wallet and started poking around for a quarter while saying, "how much?" The smiling grey-haired vendor said, "one dollar" and pointed to the sign.

I stopped fishing in my bursting wallet for a quarter. "That's a good price", I told him. Usually, they're at least a buck and a quarter, or a buck fifty. Two fifty, if you're stupid enough to buy one in Central Park. "Yeah," he said, "I sell for one fifty, I only sell ten, but I sell for one dollar, I sell 20. Good price, I think," he said, and I laughed back, saying, "that's some good economics, man."

Maybe my dollar dog was made from grade J meat instead of the usual paltry grade D, but man, the simple joy of entry level economics working the way it should more than made up for the inevitable parasites.

the subway, a short story of two hours

so at 1:10 i bought a soup and pasta salad at whole foods and headed to the uptown platform for the N/R/W at Union Sq.

then i got on the N and it started moving.

then at 1:15 i was stuck underground for 30 minutes on an unairconditioned train with my hot (but un-utensiled) lunch.

then at 1:45 the train turned back to Union Sq. and they told us there was a track fire at the 5th avenue station and the trains uptown were locked for now.

then at 1:50 i came aboveground in a harrumph and went INTO whole foods again to get utensils and eat at the cafe there.

then at 2:20 i got back on the train and waited for 20 minutes for it to start creeping forward at a glacial pace.

then at 2:40 i got off at 42nd because they'd said the trains would terminate there and the damn thing kept GOING so i'd missed it.

then at 2:45 i got onto the next train which unbeknownst to ME was a freaking Q so then i skipped my stop entirely.

then at 2:50 i got off the Q at 57th and walked halfway the length of the platform and crossed over to the otherside to catch a downtown train.

then at 2:55 a downtown N arrived and I jumped on it only to realize i was at the southernmost-tip of the train and would thusly come out at the 47th street end, not the 49th street end.

then at 2:59 i got out at 47th street and walked three blocks to my office.

then i sat down at my desk at 3:10 i realized it would have been faster if i'd walked the whole goddamn way uptown from union square.

[p.fucking.s.: there are no capitals because it is too hot to capitalize, bitches.]

the pumpkin lives

Beth has written a post that's inspired me to write a post just like it. Someone once told me there was a word for this, it had two m's and two e's in it, but lucky for me, I've forgotten it. So, without further new-vocabularizing, here is my list of ten childish things I still do:

1. I stomp up stairs all the time. Stuart said I make noise completely disproportionate to my size. Which, actually, I think holds true for the next item.

2. I can be incredibly loud, in general. I laugh too loud. My mother always said to me, "if you want to get attention, whisper", lovingly but erroneously trying to guide my boisterous nature into something aloof and demure. It won't work. I'm not aloof and demure. I'm loud, even when I'm trying not to be. And when people tell me I'm loud, it hurts, because it's something that's nearly impossible to change and they're making it feel like a flaw.

3. I chew my fingers. This is incredibly embarassing to me. Wow, this is becoming a list of things that are embarassing. Which is ironic because children are almost never embarassed.

4. I put stuff down wherever I want whenever I want. My adult impulses (I like to think of them like the shoes your mom bought for you that are two sizes too big but she says you'll grow into them) tell me to be neat, so I try to obey that with my weekly tidying binges, but my very first impulse is to just drop everything on the floor because this is the most immediately easy solution. I am working on growing into my adult impulses.

5. I am one of the most effective pouters I know, and have been since a very young age. My bottom lip was like, MADE for quivering. Also and conversely, I continue to use my large brown eyes and general cuteness to get me too many things in life, from not having enough spare change for my morning coffee to asking Stuart to bring me something from another room.

6. I still daydream about the future. It's less varied now that I'm married, because that's one constant (as opposed to "maybe he'll be named Henry!" or "What kind of hair should he have?"), but I still play little games where I imagine vignettes from my future that please me.

7. I burst into dramatic tears on the turn of a dime. Not to get my way, necessarily, but as a genuine emotional reaction. I am starting to feel as though I need to stop doing that because it forces everyone involved with my sobfest to drop their own concerns and deal with the sobbing kid, I mean, adult. See?

8. I will still run to things that I need to get to faster (the bus, the bathroom, etc) even when I am wearing completely the wrong shoes which never happened when you were a kid. I also totally love skipping. In fact, I often move my body like a little kid, since I jump around a lot when I'm excited and slump and whine when I'm tired.

9. I am fixated, often immovably, on things I want. And when I get them - when I was little it was my patent leather red mary janes and currently it's a new pair of jeans - I'm delighted beyond all reason.

10. I eat the marshmellows and the marshmellows ONLY out of a dry box of Lucky Charms.

11. I hate following rules, often including the ones I set for myself. Like, only choosing ten things.

just gotta be meeee

I don't know about you guys with your hearts made of stone, but damn if the preview for March of the Penguins didn't nearly make me:

1. cry
2. move to Antarctica.

it's just you and me now, lock of hair

Not blogging seems to be the new blogging. Shiv, Kate, Daniella, Biscuit, even the normally-prolific Newman. Hell, DOOCE isn't updating because she's gone. It's like the wild west after all the gold was found. My kinja account, I kid you not, sent a tumbleweed rolling across my screen instead of offering any updates.

What are you guys reading that IS still going?

orthodoxy

As I walked up Park Avenue at nine AM on a Sunday morning, toting a tripod and a camera bag, a lot of the doormen smiled and said hello, pointing the hose with which they were washing the sidewalks away from me respectfully, or just stepping out of the building to greet me. Everyone else on the quiet Upper East seemed to be going to church or on a jog.

I was headed to a quiet little Russian Orthodox church that happens to be the Synod of the Orthodox church outside Russia, to photograph a service as a favor to a friend. I spent two hours trying to catch the right moments and stay out of everyone's way, trying to blend into the gilt background with my flashy modern camera.

When the service was over, I was offered lots of food and thanks, and asked a lot of questions about what I do and my photography. It was everything I always think a small community church should be, and I got to see a side of a friend's life I don't normally see, where they call her Jenny and old women smile as she walks by, full of life. I got to hear her sing, and I talked to one of those old women about - imagine - megapixels.

I'm not really a practicing anything, except a respectfully content atheist. I was glad to help, though, and I know my way around orthodox services well enough to not be uncomfortable or a nuisance. I took about two hundred pictures of their Bishop conducting the solemn, ancient rites of the Divine Liturgy and bowed my head - and my camera - in the right places. But of all the pictures I took for them, this one, I took for me.

two thousand and three stylee

Since linking to my OWN recent entry where I ask what happened to Friday Things would be, like, the most meta thing I could do on this blog short of writing yet another blog post about being unable to write a blog post,

and since stealing memes from your husband who you met through your blogs is, like, so self-referential as to cause my own face to fall off itself,

and since there's already a stupidly long post that you don't want to read ....

... this very rare petit Hiboux music meme is going to be "after the jump". I am such an asshole.

Total volume of music files on my computer:
Well, my iPod that's currently in my pocket says 6 GB, and I have all my itunes library on my pod, so there. Pathetic, non? Anyway, this is kind of a dumb question, isn't it? Who cares?

The last CD I bought:
Um, "bought"? Pathetically, the last album I actually bought was that one Bright Eyes one, the one that made him famous. I bought it because I wanted to know first hand what all the fuss was about. I listened to it exactly once. I can't stand it. Sorry.

As for the last album I "bought", you know what I'm saying, it's The Decemberist's new one, Picaresque. Intriguing, I knew some of the songs from concerts, not as instantly likable as Castaways and Cutouts but with the same promise of complexity and staying power than Her Majesty eventually gave.

Song playing right now:

Athlete's Tourist, off the epomonyous album. It took Stuart a long time to warm to this album because Vehicles and Animals meant so much to him, but when we'd listened to Tourist enough, we realized it was all about love, all about being far away from the person you love, all about being in a foreign place and just missing someone. That alone makes it one of my favourite albums of this year:

I would like someone to make a map
Mark my home and draw some lines that match
All of the reasons why
It can be like you said

One day it's gonna happen
I don't know when
I'll be on your street
But I know one day it's gonna happen
You're gonna be swept off your feet.
- Street Maps

And all that I've seen means nothing to me without you.
So when I see you next we'll make the most of it,
Tell the sun to start moving again,
The taste of your kiss I still got on my lips,
And I'll take you there with me.
- Half Light

See?

Five songs that I listen to a lot, or that mean a lot to me:

Radiohead's "Black Star" - I went through my token depressed phase during my junior year at college. I took the car on long winding drives up the Taconic State Parkway, learning how to smoke and mourn, and listening to Radiohead and R.E.M. It's a miracle I survived with my healthy sense of fun intact. But mocking depression aside, there's something about the line "I get on the train and I just stand about now that I don't think of you; I keep falling over I keep passing out when I see a face like you" that really compacts exactly what it feels like to be bereft of someone you've loved.

Athlete's "We Got the Style" - I know I'm stealing Stuart's favourite song away from him, but we're married so he has to SHARE. He introduced me to Athlete the very first week we met, and this album (Vehicles and Animals) was left as a gift for me when he left that day. I drove straight to Philadelphia to see friends the day he left, my heart picking itself back up off the floor after the most painful goodbye ever. The sun was shining, I was in love, and I rolled down the windows, stopped crying, called his voicemail to tell him I loved him immensely as his plane soared away from my coast and back to his, and listened to his favourite song. It's become one of mine simply for that moment on the Jersey Turnpike when I stopped crying and started smiling.

Chico Buarque's "Samba de Orly" - Buarque, exiled to France during a period where the Brasilian government wasn't too fond of him and his left-leaning song tendencies, wrote this about standing in the Orly airport and saying goodbye to fellow Brasilians that had come to visit and had the luxury of going home to his beloved homeland. I can't even attempt to translate the entirety of its beauty and heartbreakingness, as Buarque talks about saying hello to his old friends but please to not tell them that he was crying, and telling them to really enjoy that perfection that is Rio, to appreciate home. But I'll translate the first line - "Go, my brother, don't miss that plane, you've got a good reason to hurry like that, from this cold country, but please - kiss my Rio de Janeiro for me." The longing, the homesickness (saudade), it brings that tightness to my throat every single time I hear it.

Indigo Girls' "Gallileo" - This seems like a pretty cheesy addition, and I'm not a huge Indigo Girls fan, but when I started listening to them at the tender and impressionable age of 16, it seemed amazing to me that there was good music out there that wasn't just moaning about love and loss. Gallileo remains one of my favourites (along with Least Complicated) because they're singing about thinking about life. And it reminds me of the young girl I was, and how I was trying to teach myself to be the kind of person that could think about the pesadas of life and still love shoes. I think I'm doing okay.

Billy Joel's "Vienna" - Because I was always pretty sure this song was about me.

labels, libel, and an incredibly long blog post wherein i attempt and fail to justify my hatred of hipsters

I have to explain what I'm wearing today to give you some idea of where this post was born. After a criminally fabulous and quadruple-cosmo bachelorette party last night, I didn't have the energy to shower this morning. I was already running late and washing the two tons of glitter off my face took enough energy. So I pulled on my jean skirt, a green tee shirt, a red velour zip hoodie, and my new shoes.

My new shoes are awesome. I found them yesterday at DSW for a decent price after despairing at the price tags of comparably expensive brands. They're non-lace sneakers, slim and tan colored, with flat soles that are perfect for city walking. I wanted something that I could wear with a jean skirt that wasn't my beautiful black leather ballet flats that are getting too much loving wear already. So I found these, and I'm in love.

I tell you all this because it's what I was wearing as I stood on the subway train heading towards the city. In my jean skirt, tee, hoodie, city sneakers, and ubiquitous iPod cords dangling from my ears into my pocket. Do you see what I saw when I looked down? This is what I thought when I saw myself in my mind's eye:

"You are such a trend whore."

And it made me think a lot on that 30 minute ride about labels, and trends, and looks, and why we simultaneously trash them and then follow them to the letter. How can I live with the paradox, the hypocritical nightmare, that is the following two statements that I believe with utter certainty (except in moments like this when I challenge them)?

1. This is New York City and one of the things I love about New York City is the elbow-rubbing familiarity we all have with the "types" of people we would never otherwise travel in similar circles with.

and

2. I fucking hate hipsters and trend whores and people that otherwise spend 30 minutes making sure their attitude is appropriately disheveled and ironic before they leave the house.

Do you see the problem here? Do you see the snake-eating-itself problem my logic is undergoing? Someone Sarah Brown brilliantly said recently (I think it was in New York magazine but you'll have to forgive me a lack of credit because of the afore-mentioned cosmos), "why call them hipsters when what you really mean is asshole?" and it's completely true. What do I have against that type of person, what is the vitriolic snarky bile that rises in my throat, when I stand here claiming that the diversity of personality and lifestyle types is the very essence of what I love about New York?

I have a couple of theories, and I put them forth to you because if you're really honest with yourself (and it seems that after a night of cosmos, I am really honest with myself), you'll admit that you're this much of a hypocritical asshole as I am.

(But before I go on, perhaps you are not. Perhaps you get on the subway in the morning, roam around this glorious city, and take delightful, child-like glee in the varying groups of people, living their wildly different lives. Perhaps you see the bullish investment banker yelling his sandwich order at the deli guy and then turning to his friend and saying, "JESUS, doesn't anyone speak English?" and think how forthright and patriotic he is. Perhaps you see the mother with the double wide stroller who throws a hissy fit when she can't get to the coffee line because other people are standing there as protective and assertive of herself and her children. Perhaps you hear the twenty five year old unemployed artist waif behind you in the movie line talking about how she's so broke because her dad hasn't sent the monthly check for her two thousand dollar penthouse on Ludlow and think how lucky and happy she must be to have such loving parents. PERHAPS YOU'RE ON TOO MUCH ZANAX, okay? I'm describing things I've actually seen and if you want to be holier than thou about how patient and non-judgemental you were, go touch yourself. )

This is how I see it, this is how I'm trying to understand my own hypocrisy. Either I'm jealous, I'm right, or I'm a complete asshole:

Let's start with the hypothesis that I'm right, that we're all right, that these people are obnoxious scum taking up valuable space for the rest of us hard-working and decent people. What is legitimate in my dislike of example #3, the artist waif with the parentally-endorsed lifestyle? Well, for one, I think the phenomenon has taken and possibly ruined an entire interesting and historically diverse neighborhood of New York City (the L.E.S., once the home of pickle vendors and Jewish grandmamas). Secondly, I've been around enough of what we disparagingly call "hipsters" to form a legitimate opinion of the way this culture interacts with itself. I remember being at an artist's party in Williamsburg for a friend's photography show a few years back. I really, truly like the guy. I like his photography. But this party was more than I could handle for the following reason - it didn't seem like anyone was actually talking to each other. Everyone was mentioning the names of people they knew in common, mentioning which recent parties they'd been to, what openings were cool right now, how totally hilarious it was when that one guy ran around naked with a pig mask on. I stood in about four conversations and thought, "these people aren't being artistic. They're NETWORKING." And networking, while a valid and important part of business culture, isn't what I DO with my friends. And these people were, ostensibly, FRIENDS. It was just so surreal.

So that's the possibility that I'm RIGHT, that I don't have to feel bad for launching vitriol at the subculture, that I gave it a shot to impress me, as a lifestyle, and it utterly failed.

I'm not completely comfortable, though, with how that gels with the first in my pair of truths, the part where I said I consider myself to be an incredibly tolerant person, someone who celebrates the curltural diversity of the city as well as the ethnic and racial diversity that's more prominently discussed (and, duh, not part of the cultural differences I'm talking about here). Basically, I can't be right about hating these people AND be right about celebrating people's lifestyles even when I wouldn't choose them myself. Being right, in this instance, is saying "your lifestyle is for CRAP," so I'm still being an utter hypocrite.

Hey, maybe it's just that I'm a complete asshole! No, I'm going to throw that theory out the window (but you're welcome to expound on it in my comment box) on the grounds that if I really was just a complete asshole and nothing more, I wouldn't be riding that train, looking at my unintentionally-trendy outfit and feeling really fucking BAD about calling everyone else an asshole. I'm not an asshole by virtue of taking the emotional rollercoaster ride of trying to figure out if I'm being a complete asshole. Listen up people that misuse the notion of irony - that still isn't the textbook definition of irony but it's coming sort of close.

So we're left with one ugly green-eyed monster of a theory - jealousy. Jealousy masking itself as vitriol and snark is the most simultaneously pleasurably guilty and personally offensive thing we can do to ourselves. Here's what happens - you see someone living a certain kind of life and imposing bits of that life on YOU, bits that are totally different from the bits of your life that you're imposing on them. The guy at the deli counter in the six hundred dollar suit yelling about someone else being incompetent forces you to assume that he's getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to treat everyone like trash. The mother with the stroller is being pushy because she assumes that her children and their fucking enormous stroller are more important than you and your standing room. The chick with the thousand dollar loft on the LES, well, you don't HAVE a thousand dollar loft on the LES, do you.

These people offend you because they are indulging in personality and lifestyle traits that you don't have and you find grating or offensive in their alienness. If you did, you wouldn't notice theirs. I don't really notice other girls on the train that are friendly, a little poor, read prententious books and wear glasses. But I'll bet there's someone else on that train looking at me and thinking, "HER, with her books and her glasses, who does she think she IS." And it's jealousy. It's a sneaky KIND of jealousy, because if pressed you wouldn't say, "yeah, okay, I want their life, WHAT OF IT?" That would imply that you've found something lacking in your own, something that the person right next to you has and you want it.

Jealousy, in this instance, is more complex and crafty than throwing a temper tantrum in the sandbox because you want Mikey's red truck. It's a pervasive kind of non-empathy for someone else's choices, and the worst part about the vitriol that you launch at other people is that it's belittling the perfectness of your own life. I make assumptions, cast dispersion, at someone else's LIFE because deep down in places I don't like to even admit I have, they have something I want. The gobs of money with the banker. The superior self-centeredness of the mother with the stroller. The hipster waif, with her easy debonairness of living solely off her parents and being the center of everyone's cultural and media attentions.

They have something I think is cool, but I don't want to admit I think it's cool, so instead I mock them mercilessly. Some of my mocking may even be valid, some of my points may even be legitimate, and some of it is just me being an asshole. What it really is, though, is impossible to resist. It's so easy to be vitriolic and snarky about other people, because it serves as a stunningly complete cover to the twinge of jealousy that you're ashamed to admit you're feeling. It's versatile, the snark, it wears well over insecurity.

But that's the problem. The best person I can be is the first one from my couple of truths - the person who delights and defends everyone's right to be completely different from me. The worst person I can be is the one who turns around and stamps all over that truth with the green-painted footprints of jealousy and intolerance. And if we try to get anything right in the daily nightmare of injustices we unthinkingly commit against ourselves, our loved ones, our planet, and total strangers - the one thing we should all be trying to get right is being the best person we're capable of being.

My family has a funny story wherein my brother and my father were walking into a supermarket together and my brother pointed at some guy coming out and said, "man, that is one horrific tie," and my dad turned to him with chesire-cat-like philosophy and poise and said, "some people like chocolate. Some people like vanilla." So today, with my trendy sneakers and my trendier tee/hoodie combo and my trendiest of all trendies, my iPod, I'm going to try to let everyone else be whoever they want, whether I like them or not, but I'm also going to try to let myself be the person who loves her life and loves everyone else's freedom to love theirs.

This way, when I sit on the train with my obscurely cool sci-fi book and listen to Athlete on my iPod, plotting my next blog post with a New York magazine sticking out of my edgy urban canvas bag (SEE?) and someone looks at me askance and I can hear the vitriol swishing around in their mind, I can know that I've already been on that rollercoaster today, and I've come out a slightly better person.

How's THAT for superior.

In a howling void of anything else to say, I've just remembered ...

does everyone remember the heady blogging days of 2003, when we were all in each other's cellphones as First Name Blog-Catch-Phrase? Like, Kate Fauxhemia, Mark Londonmark, that kind of thing?

Does anyone remember blogmeets? And fake awards and Friday Things?

What's happened?