My Interesting and Exciting Life

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2011-05-14T13:35:00.001-07:00

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Why I'm a Miranda

2011-02-17T13:25:00.000-08:00

Writing about Sex and the City in the year 2011.

Brought to you by the Department of Irrelevancy.

But that is what it do here at myinterestingandexcitinglife.blogspot.com, in between poppin' bottles, poppin' cherries, and poppin' weasels!

TBS shows reruns of The Ladies (Okay, I might "demand" it every so often. Read: often) so while I'm hunched over a bowl of Puffins, sloshing spoonfuls of milky slop over my magazines, I get to take a little walk down memory lane. THE NINETIES! Things were so optimistic. Smoking indoors! Cosmos! Making bold statements with fanny packs and wristlets, ironically?

But more than anything, it makes me nostalgic for the conversations I used to have (in earnest) with my friends.

Who's the Samantha? That always went to the biggest slut in the group obviously, making it difficult to divine whether that consensus should be taken as a compliment or an insult. "You're such a Samantha!" So either you were too horny to function or you spoke only in suggestive innuendo on all subject matter. Both are unsustainable.

Perhaps you yearned to be Charlotte. That meant you were just a drag, a moralizing ninny who probably referred to herself as "the mom" of the group. Sure, you might have coveted her Michael Kors off the rack fashions, but you also had cankles and were most likely a virgin in college.

Carrie! Everyone wanted to be fun, feisty Carrie. She dressed like a streetwalker and straddled big city glitterati scenes, and straddled Chris Noth and even John Slattery for one episode until he asked her to pee on him and she wouldn't. Who wouldn't pee on Roger Sterling? That demonstrated a clear lack street cred and initiative, and 65% of her speech is in the language of pun.

Carries wears the least well (clothes and character) over time. And I done been a freelancer. You wear Vans, or house slippers, should you ever venture outdoors.

And then there was Miranda. No one, but NO ONE wanted to be the Miranda. Being the Miranda back in the day meant you were a fire crotch man hating lesbian spoil sport in Armani shoulder pads with an early incarnation of the Justin Bieber haircut. Sad sad you if you were the Miranda.

Maybe, even once, when you were lamenting the point of going out at all when you could just stay home and watch East Enders and eat Chinese takeout in your comfy pants because that's more fun anyway, someone might have muttered through the phone "Don't be such a Miranda!" Oh, you stripped down, hosed off, and put on some tragic Steve Madden stilettos right away, didn't you? DIDN'T YOU?!

But now, from my perch of retrospection that only time and the daily beatdown of one's hopes and dreams can bring, I can only hope to be the Miranda. Despite her dolphin teeth, her appearance got steadily better over the course of six seasons unlike the other characters who looked progressively more insane. And she got *Steve* a doofus with a heart of gold, while Carries ended up with Big (who has the personality of a surfboard), Charlotte is stuck with Harry Rosenblatt (who looks like a thumb) and Samantha is left rubbing her loins on living room furniture.

Miranda is a lawyer, so she gets paid, and she has a house servant and spawned a little ranga baby. Cute!

She also gets the best lines in the show, and they don't rely on puns. Many of them also deal with the timely topic of flatulence, or farts (philistine). Like when she's pregnant she says, "I'm so bloated and gassy I'm like a floatation device!" or when she's in a shoe store trying to pull of a ring and accidentally farts and says "I just pulled my own finger!" Now that is good.

Over a glass of wine the other night (this is now enough for me to get hammered. Finally, I'm a cheap date!), I gave Brooke D a drunken exegesis on the relative merits of Sex and the City. Some bullshit like "We hear those lines as so cliché now, but in fact it's because the writing was so good that it got co -opted into the vernacular." And Brooke was like, "Girl you drunk. You are being such a Miranda right now." And I was like "Thank you."

Let's Go To The Couch!

2010-12-29T11:41:00.000-08:00

No, not the therapist's couch. The good kind of couch. The TV couch.

A quagmire is something you can't get out of, right? Then I find myself in a couchmire. Mired in couch. And for the first time in my life, I don't want to watch TV anymore. I've watched so much TV in the past week that I'm saturated. This is truly depressing because I love TV more than anything. Once, in this illustrious online forum, I said that I'd like to marry going to the movies. Well, I cheated on the movies with watching TV and and married watching TV

and now we're getting divorced. Don't worry girl, you know I didn't sign a pre- nup. I'm getting HALF of everything that TV earned aka what's rightfully mine aka MY DUE! See what I mean? It's time for an intervention.

Oh, it started out dignified, the way courtships do. I began with the serious HBO dramas: Season 4 of Big Love, a few Boardwalk Empires (sucks, wicked boring), then re- watched AMC favorites Breaking Bad and Mad Men,

then before I could say "Mazel" I'd gone through two season marathons of TWO Real Housewives casts! That's the thing about year- end programming, what with all the marathons and the back to back episodes resulting in bed sores and muscle atrophy from a vegetable torpor of my own creation. Disgusting.

When I found myself crying during Bethenny Frankel and Jason Hoppy's televised wedding ceremony on the eponymous episode of Bethenny Getting Married? yesterday morning, I knew I had to call it quits with TV, at least for a few days.

I even turned off TaxiTV, which I do enjoy, in the back of a cab last night. Art reflects life, as I'm really into abusive relationships. My M.O is to be like, "Ha! I'll show you what life is like without Paloma Zenaida!" and then I call in a few days when he hasn't called me and I just slink back and pretend the whole unsavory affair never took place.

My relationship with TV also mirrors my real- life relationships (wait, I thought TV was my real life relationship. This is getting too meta) in that it's masochistic. I don't have cable, just a big boxy set with a DVD drive that rarely gets used because I'd rather watch free episodes on Hulu cuddled up with my laptop in bed. After exhausting the choice free shows on Hulu, like my beloved Housewives and the sole episode of The Fashion Show with dueling drag queens Iman and Isaac Mizrahi, I scan through the shabbier options and sometimes stumble upon a gem. Like SoapNET's Real Southern Belles of Lousiville. It's like a really really boring episode of the Hills with older, less gamine, stouter protagonists. Their molasses- like

accents and uptake lull me into a hypnotic trance that leaves me wanting to shop at Kohl's and set my hair in rollers and eat foods made with Crisco. But that could be said for a number of things.

As it stands now, I get basically nothing worthwhile done. I've taken procrastination via napping and cleaning to a kind of performance art. Sometimes when I'm supposed to be "writing" I just lay down on the cold hardwood floor and stare up at the ceiling and replay sassy maxims from Real Housewives of Beverly Hills in my head.

"Some may think I have it all, but I want more." -Taylor

If TimeWarner were to bestow upon me the ultimate gift of friendship (because the people on TV are my friends, and I'm not just talking about Rachel and Ross and Chandler), then I would really get nothing done. And besides, not having a TV actually enhances my social life. I invite myself over to my more upwardly mobile friends' apartments and demand to be taught how to operate their remote control, and then languish for a few hours catching up on Jersey Shore and Millionaire Matchmaker. This dependency has actually preserved, maybe even fomented, many friendships because my friends don't have to talk to me. They just step over me like a bag

of old clothes they've been meaning to take to Beacon's Closet. And if I've deemed this friend worthy enough to grace them with a return visit of moi I'll even reset their DVR to my programs. That's right, I have my programs.

One program I simply adore is AMC's Rubicon. It's a really spooky show about all the things I like: spying, subterfuge, terrorism (oh come on, I don't mean like it like it) and conspiracy. And the even weirder thing about it is the leading man of the show looks just like that closet case teacher on Glee and both their character's names are Will. They should do some synergistic cross marketing for the two shows and have Rubicon Will sing a show tune about oil wars in

Nigeria.

If Columbia offered an MFA in TV, I'd be teaching it. Except I don't love talking about TV, I love watching it. I'd teach all my classes from a bean bag chair wearing a Snuggie and bring snacks to every class and all the students would love me. Maybe they could be my new TV friends. Literally. Figuratively. Who am I kidding? It would be an online course.

The Financial Crisis

2010-12-14T10:13:00.000-08:00

This holiday season I find myself in a Dickensian orphanage of my own making. I'm broke! Don't get me wrong, I still employ a staff of Bosnian refugees to tend to my needs(pillows FLUFFIER please!) and receive my regular caviar delivery. But now it's the Christmas and the Hannukah and everyone cries for their PRESENTS, waiting in line for their handout and to reap the bounty of Mommy Warbucks Zenaida... they're nostalgic for the opulent gifts of the go- go '90s I used to bestow upon friends and loved ones: Mediterranean cruises, gadgets from the Sky Mall catalog, jewels. But like Celine Dion says, those days are gone. So I've been brainstorming how to hush the incessant chatter of gimmegimmegimme from my staff and so- called "friends."

Here's what I've come up with:

1. Get a divorce.

Conventional wisdom/ Real Housewives decrees that marrying some tragic geriatric with one foot in the grave and a fat life insurance policy is the way to go. Not so. Then you have to live with him and wear the tacky showgirl ensembles he buys

for you to show you off to his business associates and you're totally embarrassed and like "How much longer til he dies?" This is too unseemly.

The other day I was having lunch with a writer friend of mine, and I was like "Girl, I know how much money you made on that teen novel you wrote, how are you living and dining out with me, your rich friend?" And she was like, "Girl I gotta divorce! I got paid! Go and get you one!" And I was like, "Oh, damn girl! Let me go get it!" Getting a divorce is so much better than being married, because you get paid and you're not married and embarrassing yourself and answering questions like "Do you change that guy's diapers?" No, thankyouverymuch, I have morals and dignity. Pop out a few kids and you're golden.

2. Crack sale

This is one my boyfriend (He is not imaginary! He is real!) has been pushing lately. He wanders around my apartment picking up Hermés scarves being like "How much is this worth? How much can you get for it on eBay?" I will be face down in the gutter before I ever hawk my scarves. They are literally the only thing of value I own, save that six- year- old Bosnian living in my closet. She's been growing and really getting in the way of my shoe rack. I won't part with the scarves, but I do have a sweet VCR in mint condition. Ten dollars? Ok three? I have a ginuwine polyblend futon cover with a few mysterious stains. Five dollars?

Ok, a nickel.

3. Cash my royalty check.

4. Get philanthropic.

According to Luc Sante's Low Life (I cannot recommend this book enough. Learn about the real gangs of New York including the Patsy Conroys, the Plug Uglies, and the Hookers) enterprising Bowery bums would start non- profit organizations for a cause near to their hearts: themselves. For example, in the late 1890s ne'er do well Chuck Connors founded the Chuck Connors Association for the sole purpose of hosting a ball and selling tickets "whose profits were transmitted directly to Chuck's pocket." The Paloma Zenaida Association accepts cash donations, as well as canned goods and in- kind donations of proseco and well, anything else. To cut back on costs, the Paloma Zenaida Association will be holding its annual winter gala at Scores where her mother and sister are employed. Please make checks payable to Paloma Zenaida.

5. Modeling

At a recent promotional event at Bergdorf Goodman, I offered my services as a model. As a professional, I arrived early while fashion minions and PR girls were still setting up overpriced accessories and racks of clothes. The elevator doors opened, and I sashayed into the showroom and announced "The model is here. Where you need me? Who wants to see me walk? Do any of y'all wanna know how to model? Work! Work! Work!" I showed them a few runway pointers, like my signature move of clapping my hands twice and dropping my derriere to the ground when I reach the end of the runway. Tyra Banks has extended an invitation to guest judge America's Next Top Model Cycle #44 to teach the young ingenues. As I was in the middle of pushing display tables and store employees out of the way, some six foot tall woman with the body of an Asian boy blinked her glassy, vacant eyes and said meekly, "I'm the model. Do you know where I should go?" Home, bitch! This is MY show! Double- booked! I never!

6. Open the Paloma Zenaida Modeling Agency

This is a plan that's been marinating for a few years now, and considering my financial crisis and the relatively low overhead needed to open the business (human capital) I think the time is right. So many pretty young ladies in Manhattan, so few modeling agencies to manage and sculpt their talent. With moi as their matron, I will open a hybrid modeling agency/ orphanage in my apartment, where I can oversee my young charges, make sure they keep trim (my household tasks should provide a strenuous fitness regimen), and manage their finances (self- explanatory). I think a 90% cut for such expert advice and cultivation is only fair. The other 10% will cover rent in my orphanage.

Well, I feel better now that my stock is back up. Maybe Christmas won't be cancelled after all. God bless us, everyone!

Prague: It Was Kafkaesque

2010-11-30T18:31:00.000-08:00

My little sister was abducted into an Eastern European sex trafficking ring where they don't let you cut your bangs. So me and my mom flew over to rescue her. Her captors were pugnacious and determined, and forced us to fulfill a series of challenges. We had to:

Take off our shoes.
Pet a puppy.
March with the soldiers. They're kind of hotties, in a ghoulish Slavic way.
Overcome our fear of marionettes.
Play the washboard.
Use a toilet on the precipice of an abyss.
Send in the clowns.
Eat dinner.
And then we got her back.

My Time in the Clink

2010-11-10T07:24:00.000-08:00

Sorry I've been away for so long. I've been serving my debt to society in the clink. I was picked up on a disorderly charge at Coyote Ugly when I jumped up on the bar and performed the choreography of the fabled "Devil Dance," in which a sassy barmaid writhes and thrashes to "the Devil Went Down to Georgia" to the delight of the rotund and sallow patrons. I had been rehearsing privately for some time now. Apparently I left broken glass and a few scraped John Goodman lookalikes in my wake. As I was hauled off the bar mid- line dance, I apparently threatened violence against the unappreciative audience. I don't quite remember, I made a special cocktail of Klonopin and St. Germain to ease my nerves before my big debut.

Since my legal counsel Brooke D is still earning her JD online through Phoenix University, my incarceration was longer than expected. Pup finally sprung me with a special cake on visiting day, with a file baked in the middle. Those are my brass knuckles that knocked some bitches out. And here are some of my friends from jail:

This is Mary Wiley aka "Wiley Lady." Were are just friends. She was picked up on a shoplifting charge. She used her hat to smuggle large quantities of beads and silk flowers out of arts and crafts stores to gussy up her other hats. I don't know why she got to keep her hat and I didn't get to keep my knuckles. Our justice system is so flawed.

And here's good old Charles Iburg, aka Pervert Charlie. He got nabbed "corrupting the morals of minors." I'm not sure exactly how he corrupted the morals of minors, and I didn't press him on it. He did mention something about not being able to live within 1,000 feet of a school upon his release... Maybe he was teaching the kids roughhousing?

And here's the style icon of the Bowerey, Jimmy the Gent. He got his nickname for his dapper dressing and gentlemanly manners. Jim's favorite expression was "Why, if what I say isn't true, then I'll eat my hat!" In an improbable romantic twist, he and Wiley bonded over their passion for millinery, and now sell specialty headware to barkeeps and old- timey bands in Williamsburg. But don't fuck with them. Wiley and Jimmy will shank you.

Dulce Et Decorum Est

2010-10-04T12:28:00.000-07:00

Here are a few poems in the style of World War I poet Wilfred Owen on the subject of urban warfare, in two familiar theaters: commuting and online dating.

Enclosure

Our brains ache, in the salmonella corridors that confines us

Wearied we wait because the train isn’t coming…

An incident, the robot voice booms, vague and mysterious…

Exasperated by waiting, people groan, encumbered, frustrated,

But nothing happens.

Watching, we look for the dim light from far away,

Like reaching for the summer sun in January.

Across the platform, incessantly, uptown trains arrive and depart

Far away, like a lottery ticket one number off.

What are we doing here?

The quiet torment is broken…

We only know the light means train, train goes, and people go home.

The light of the train blurs past her melancholy army without stopping

Cars crowded full with limbs and faces pressed against the glass,

But nothing happens.

Sudden bursts of tinny noise break the grumbling din

More oppressive than the man playing xylophone, with whose hammers I want to hit him,

Mr. Brighton Beach is testing out his ringtones;

We listen as he scrolls through his choices: Camptown Races,

Phantom of the Opera, Greensleeves,

But nothing happens.

Phantom water smelling of wet asbestos drips from the ceiling—

We wince as we jump over a wet crack, as it gathers to a puddle of sludge,

Deep in the trench among soda cans and rats. Where does that water come from,

It hasn’t rained in weeks. Someone should call 311.

Is it that we are dying?

Slowly the train pushes forward, glimpsing the sunk faces,

Grimaced

With streaks of mascara; tears gather;

For seconds the doors stay closed, the train is theirs;

Windows and doors, all closed: even once in the station the doors stay closed,-

We turn our back to our dying.

Since we believe not otherwise in the goodness of man;

Nor in the industry of youth, or teen, or child.

When the boy peddles his snacks not for a basketball team, but for himself;

You think “I should do that, and I’ll probably make more money if I don’t claim taxes,”

For love of God seems dying.

To- night, or some night, the R will open its doors to me

Ferrying passengers, reinforcing misanthropy anew

The hungry ghosts, briefcases and thermoses in their hands,

Stampede over unknown faces. All their eyes hungry.

But nothing happens.

Ego Mos Intereo Unus

Hunched over, fingers scroll the categories,

Dark- shamed, yet hopeful still, I fill out the survey,

“We have the perfect match for you,” the commercial told the stories,

E-Harmony promised to unite our souls, but how could I convey,

The riddle of me to blithe mentions of NPR and ethnic cuisine,

“Would you consider yourself independent, content to be alone?”

My stature tall and Rubenesque, but no box I can check to preen,

Three hours to finish, and not a match in the tri- state zone.

Try! Try! Quick, girls! Love is a science to conspire,

At least check J- Date, find a doctor or a broker,

Even if you’re not Jewish, you could be his shiksa for hire,

When the dinner check arrives, his generosity is less than mediocre…

Ennui, it cloaks you in its thin sheet before you’ve shook hands,

Him in pleated pants and boring, you feel your insides crying,

Call with a sudden emergency, to your friend you do demand

So I can feign alarm and hail a cab, running, fleeing, crying.

But one fellow from the World Wide Web, we met through a site called Match

Brown hair and eyes with gainful employ, a mimic of heterosexual sanity,

We went to his apartment one night, he undid the latch,

But he locked and unlocked, O! The humanity!

What a security system, and for only Fort Greene,

And when he tapped his table and paced the halls,

I realized he suffers from obsessive- compulsivity,

To a car service at once! Yet another desperate call-

Homegirl, disregard your gay friends’ Grinder and Manhunt success,

Or the veracity of your friend’s friends’ story,

To the old Lie: I met my husband on the Internet

Ego mos intereo unus mori

The Town and the City

2010-09-20T13:14:00.000-07:00

I have a love/ hate relationship with Boston.

This New England girl came home to roost last weekend when I made the glacial journey in a bus full of enthusiastic Asian college students to visit my life partner Brooke D. She recently moved to enroll in a prestigious law school in the City on a Hill. Isn't it inspiring, democratic even, that Phoneix University now offers law degrees? I tried to explain to her that she didn't need to relocate for an online degree, but there was just no convincing her. She was really just looking for an excuse to file for undergraduate housing.

The things I love about Boston are limited to a few base pleasures. Like the fact that you can go to a club in pajamas and face scrubbed clean of any make- up and still command the attention of the room. If you deign to dress above and beyond the standard issue uniform of North Face fleece, Red Sox baseball hat, and Mom jeans to accentuate your FUPA, then you are a veritable fashion icon.

Whenever I'm inside the city limits of Boston, I will without fail be called "Paris Hilton" at least half a dozen times. Apparently no one in Boston has seen a statuesque blond before. The only other time I get this comparison is from the urban youth I teach, and they have an excuse. I am the only real- life Caucasian they have ever met. But there is one difference between me and Ms. Hilton: I would never mistake cocaine for a pack of gum.

Boston is not short on ignorami philistine white trash, or what we politely refer to as "lace curtain Irish," and it is long on heterosexual males. Allegedly, some of these fabled creatures reside in New York City, but they are as rare as a wizard unicorn. A charmless, unemployed leper can score a super hot girlfriend in NYC. But in Boston they make up for in quantity (they are everywhere) what they lack in quality (they might beat you up or wear Timberlands unironically). They are everywhere! But everywhere! They go out in packs in their traditional costume of chin strap facial hair, St. Christopher medal necklace, Celtics jersey, cargo shorts, and white sneakers. Think Pauly D crossed with a leprechaun.

Testosterone pours into the ether like Drakkar Noir cologne at a junior high dance. As a result, I saw three dudes leave a bar in handcuffs on Saturday night. That's right, I was thinking the same thing: major turn- on.

If I were to list the things I hate about Boston, I would have to start a satellite blog.

A smattering:

- Bad imitations of Boston accents: There are actually no parking spaces in Harvard Yard, it is purely a pedestrian zone. In both senses of the "pedestrian."

- Lack of civility: In Boston you can wear sweatpants to a funeral. Your best muumuu to your child's open school night. On Saturday evening in Boston's alleged "nightlife" district I saw a herd of young women charging down the street in cocktail dresses and bare feet, their Steve Madden stilettos in hand. Perhaps Mike's Hahd Lemonade was giving away free samples.

- Racism. Don't let any Yankee tell you that northerners are enlightened when it comes to multicultralism. Boston is the most racist city in North America. It makes Birmingham, Alabama look like the Hague. I had a Mexican friend on a post doc at

Harvard, and he said he had never been treated so poorly in his life, and he is but a shade darker than a Werther's hard candy.

- Inflated self- confidence. Boston is like the stand- up comedian at a local open mic night who ruins dates and forces his audience to consider breaking their beer bottles and slashing off their ears. After a slow- clap of applause he runs backstage and cries, "I KILLED!" Boston has little sense of self.

- Provincialism. Boston thinks it is amazing because Boston has never been anywhere. Boston has never taken a vacation. Boston has never even visited FLAH- rida because Boston can't figure out how to book airplane tickets. If each city could be reduced to a single adjective, New York would be ANGER, San Francisco : LAZY, London : EMBARRASSED, and Boston : AFRAID. And it's sad.because deep down Boston really wants to escape the frigid tundra of its seasons and culture to Flah- rida, but worries that its credit card number might get hijacked if it purchased tickets on the internet, that terrorists might hijack the plane, or security might confiscate Boston's tweezers.

This is why Boston's supposed "rivalry" with New York is so tragic. Thousands of thin- lipped, alcoholics decry "the fahkin faggots down they-ah," all rooted in their pagan hero worship game of baseball. But Boston doesn't even cross New York's mind. It is a total non- entity. It's like every crush I had on every hotmaster in high school- he doesn't even know I'm alive.

But you see here's the most provincial thing about it. I am allowed to criticize this piss poor excuse for a city because I grew up 39 miles west Worcester, Massachusetts. Worcester is the punchline to many area jokes. Here's an example:

Q: What did the girl from Worcester say after sex?

A: Get off me dad, you're crushing my Marlboros!

But Worcester knows what it is: a rust belt city where your best prospect for life is

marrying a firefighter and working at the local sandpaper plant. A fitting metaphor for the abrasive character of its inhabitants, but it's all true. I am not nearly that skilled a rhetorician- Norton Abrasives was for a long time the city's biggest employer.

That's befoah they moved to fahkin' Mexico or some homo country down they-ah. I'm happy to stay in Wuhstah. Boston's too friggin' fancy anyway.

Let's Go to the Movies!: Eat, Pray, Love

2010-08-17T16:18:00.000-07:00

The day finally arrived. After going to Sex and the City 2 for the fortieth time ("Lawrence of My Labia!") and even settling for some artsy fartsy I Am Love bullshit (NOT a romantic comedy! Do not be fooled by the title), my visualization prayers have been answered. Eat, Pray, Love hit theaters. Ladies, we have lift off.

As devoted readers know, I frequent movie theaters solo at least once a week. I feel at home in the darkness of the theater, eating popcorn and M and Ms for dinner with a man masturbating under his jacket a few seats away. It makes me nostalgic for childhood, really. Now I don't go to the movies alone because I crave the solitude. I go because no one will go with me. It's the opposite of Eat, Pray, Love's heroine and author Elizabeth Gilbert taking a vow of celibacy before she embarks on her year- long journey around the world. Some of us don't choose celibacy. Rather, it chooses us.
If ever there were a movie to view alone, Eat, Pray, Love is it. The haute bourgeois- Caucasian- middle- age- foodie- porno implores women to do things like abandon responsibility and guilt and treat yourself to the decadence of a matinee. Because girlfriend, you are worth it! So of course I went with Brooke D. We went equipped with all the requisite Eat, Pray, Love gear: vision boards, crystals, journals, yoga mats, and my color prescription from my chromotherapist. Burnt sienna brings good tidings.
Needless to say, there were so many women in the audience that our cycles synced up by the end of the film. I'm surprised we didn't all go Sapphic. Save, of course, the two eunuch boyfriends dragged along by their girlfriends. I have such a problem with this sort of thing for a few reasons.

1. Why do you want your boyfriend there? There's always the one weird girl in the group who insists on dragging her boyfriend along to all the birthday dinners where he's the only guy at a table of gays and girls and you're like, "Really? Must we force this guy to endure a three- hours discussion on whether it is ok to get a Brazilian while you have your period?" Seeing how your friends actually are will not make him like you more, it will make him like you less. Leave him at home for an evening. More cake for me!
2. Doing girl things with straight guys is a major turn- off. You may as well hand a guy his balls on a silver platter if you want to go shopping or see chick flicks together. Not hot. That's what gays are for. And they will tell you that yes, you do look fat in the dress.

3. What kind of horrible life/ relationship talk will you have to have after the themes of the movie that include but are not limited to: divorce, self- discovery, getting fat, marriage, and God? Gross.

But apparently like most things in love, I am wrong. I guess one woman's self- obsessed indulgence is another woman's aphrodisiac, because one couple sucked some serious face before the lights dimmed, throwing Brooke D into a blitzkrieg of unadulterated rage and jealousy. She threw popcorn and yelled "Stop! Stop!" until they came up for air. She then proceeded to chew a cup of ice through the entirety of the movie, forcing myself and those surrounding to change seats.

There's so much to say about what's wrong with Eat, Pray, Love: the white person- ness of the whole endeavor, like the fact that Julia Roberts and James Franco are the most unbelievable couple of all time. She look like his mama.Or the floppy straw hat our heroine wears in Italy, which is not a small tragedy. But that's like totally redundant and you can read that in any other review. There are a lot of good things about this movie too. Like how Julia spends a good portion of screen time sitting on a eating gelato by herself like a big time creep. I can relate with that. Or the part when she says, "I'm having a relationship with my pizza." Isn't that sweet to resurrect the punchline of every Cathy comic strip ever, just in time for the cartoon's final run after 34 years? Or finding Signor Right in the jungle where he cooks for you and says stuff like "You don't need a man, you need a champion"? I don't really know what that means, but I think it's about empowerment. Because shouldn't everything be about personal empowerment? I think I'll do some journaling around that quote after I have a good cry. I love being a girl.

I Was Told There Would Be Lions

2010-06-13T15:36:00.000-07:00

The concept of propriety, in its most essential Emily Post definition, seems arcane in today's slovenly society. Dressing for dinner and sending a thank- you note have been rendered obsolete by the texting and the sexting and the gamy immediacy of it all.

I wish I could believe this as I write it, but alas, I don't. I am a sucker for propriety: addressing friends' parents by Mr. and Mrs. (or in my case Mr. and Mr.), bestowing generous gifts upon my host or hostess (usually a single rose in cellophane from the bodega), and always dressing appropriately for the occasion.

So imagine how I felt upon my arrival to the 10th annual Young Lions Fiction Awards Ceremony when, as walking up the marble stairs to the New York Public Library, I felt a cool breeze on my behind and the unmistakable weight of scorn upon my brow. It would all be revealed (ahem) that I was revealing myself in a too- short cocktail dress from H and M Spring 2009 that was resurrected from my closet hour earlier. My invitation to this glittering event must have been lost in the mail, but I fortuitously received a press invite just in time. Would I be able to attend on short notice and take the place of the free subway magazine A.M. at the press table? I cleared my calendar that was actually booked solidly with my usual evening activities, dusting and masturbation (that was not intended to be redundant, thankyouverymuch), and gleefully accepted!

The short notice of this event and my double digit bank balance left little possibility of coming up with an elegant ensemble befitting such an illustrious event, I consulted my closet. I dug up a sweet little number capturing my signature style- slutty kindergartner. I vaguely remember wearing this dress a few times over the past months, once when I threw up on myself outside of Doc Holliday's on Avenue A and another time when I threw up on myself at my mother's book release party. However, the unforgiving northeastern weather always necessitated tights. I always felt the three- inch slit up the derriere as a kind of ventilation system on an already minimal hem threw on some Forever 21 heels, and I was off to the races!

Riding the D train uptown, my gazelle- like limbs encased in the poly- blend fabric earned the affections of a few homeless fellows, child break dancers, and commuters who mistook me for a tranny. That's what they call your "core demographic" in the modeling business. I begin to worry when I'm not propositioned for a half- and- half on my way to work. But as I approached the marble staircase on 42nd street, the precarious proportion of hem length/ slit height became all too clear. As I met my plus- one Brooke, I did my customary bend- and- snap to accentuate my rotund curves and to incite envy at God's generous hand in creating my butt. I wish my friends were jealous of me for anything, and they've told me time and again that it isn't writing. But instead of the typical sex riot that ensues after dropping it like it's hot, her jaw dropped in horror. Did I get dressed in the dark? Did I look in the mirror before leaving the house? Did I try to smear my family name? Did I aim to bring shame and ill- repute to the venerable institution of the New York Public Library?

So for the rest of the night I attempted to obscure my buttocks by walking crotch- first like a cowpoke . This was no easy feat as I spent the cocktail hour maneuvering through blond blowouts and navy blazers balancing several free full champagne flutes on a free stack of novels by the nominees, a few of which I will not be selling on eBay. When the house lights dimmed to begin the readings, I sauntered over to the press table, spoils in hand, my public bone leading the way. I took my rightful place centerstage, just behind the evening's champion, Wells Towers. But this advantaged seating arrangement wedged me between Wellsypoo, my hero and my love, and the Young Lions committee table. A woman actually shushed me for whooping too loudly when they called his potent, libidinous name. And that was just to announce that he was in attendance. When NYPL director Paul LeClerc announced him as the winner, I ran around the room with a table cloth tied around my neck as an ersatz cape, high- fiving a stunned and silent audience.

But fear not! Not even exposing myself to New York literary society and a school marmish shaming could dampen my soaring spirits on that enchanted evening. For one, a bowl of jelly beans adorned the table, but not for long, because I ate it. For two, Ethan Hawke hosted the event! Oh, Ethan Hawke of slacker love, you are more than a hotmaster but an aging emissary of a more innocent time- a time when cigarettes cost less than a down payment on a motor boat, a time when indie bands held some kind of cultural capital, a time before texting and sexting and the world wide web.

I'm so glad I remembered to pull my recording device out of my Strawberry handbag and press play, because he has a sexy- ass voice and I plan on utilizing that track for non- journalistic purposes later. He has cheek bones that could make a girl cried, and he apparently knows how to read, and he married the nanny. And that gives me hope.

Hawke brought along a cadre of celebrity friends, including Mark Ruffalo, who I would ride like a buffalo, Emily Mortimer, whose droopy English features only enhances her appeal, Josh Hamilton, who seemed surprised to be there, and Alessandro Nivola, who makes up in enthusiastic clapping

for what he lacks in comprehensible English. All the actors read excerpts from the nominees' books. Enduring a fiction reading in a methadone drone, out of context from a book you have never read before and have no investment in whatsoever, is sometimes akin to water boarding. But this was water boarding with the stars! I tried to get a pool going at the press table, but nobody seemed amused. Everyone knew the award would go to Wells Tower anyway because that is a name that intersects with destiny. After the applause and pomp and circumstance, my crotch led our way to the exit, burdened with all the bounty of the evening- the empty jellybean bowl, the books to sell, the business cards, the tear- stained cocktail napkins. I go through all the emotions when I drink champagne. As we lingered by the door hoping to catch a whiff of Hawke's long locks, a bewildered Mark Ruffalo stepped out into the night, as if he were creeping from of a dark dark cave of book learning. He approached me and said, "Hey don't I know you? Didn't you play one of the dead tranny hookers on that Law and Order episode a few months back?" Finally, the recognition I deserve!

Top Ten Things Not to Say to a MacArthur Fellow

2010-05-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

So I hijacked the New Yorker online today under my nom de plume Elizabeth Greenwood. Aw shit that's right! I am classing it up! An esteemed periodical like the New Yorker employs fancy editors who comb and massage your two bit hooker of an article into a coiffed and polished lady who lunches.

But we here at the equally urbane myinterestingandexcitinglife.blogspot.com give the people what they want! The dirt, the dreck, the juicy bits. So here's the biting journalism from the cutting room floor that didn't make it to the hallowed pages (er, screen) of the New Yorker...

First, the hard- nosed questions I posed to Mr. Lethem in our interview. A primer in literary muckraking:

1. How does my hair look?
2. What's the biggest word you can use to describe how my hair looks?
3. Is it too early to go to sleep?
4. Did you actually finish Infinite Jest?
5. Do you know anyone who has finished Infinite Jest?
6. Which Sex and the City girl are you?
7. Which Sex and the City girl am I?
8. How much is too much?
9. What is your spirit animal?
10. Do you want to see my tattoo?

Farewell to Chronic City

On a late afternoon in May at Brazenhead Books on the Upper East Side, the oracle of New York City, Jonathan Lethem, is holding his final class for his MFA students. In this intimate setting, he is saying goodbye to friends, students, and mentors as he gears up to move to Claremont, California to take over David Foster Wallace’s job. Brazenhead is the first in a series where the writer would work in his lifetime, from Brooklyn to Berkeley. It is where 14 year-old Lethem asked owner Michael Seidenberg to be paid in books instead of cash. These three small rooms become a setting in Chronic City three decades later. Lethem, now 46, is coming full circle, leaving New York to go West, as he did as a young man. But this time around, the books he earns will be his own.

After David Foster Wallace’s suicide two years ago, the Roy Disney Chair in Creative Writing at Pomona College, located 50 miles east of Los Angeles, remained vacant. Lethem, a writer synonymous with New York, accepted the offer to replace him. Because he is totally identified with this urban setting, his fans might see it as creative death to leave his context. He disagrees. “I take a lot of pleasure in New York but I’m always kind of here in my mind. In a way, I need to be dreaming my way back here. The longing and exile are part of my relationship to writing about this place,” he said.

Lethem was scouted for the position at Pomona over a year ago, but didn’t realize it at the time. “I have a wide- standing blind spot for academia,” he said. Not in the market for a permanent position, Lethem was enjoying adjunct teaching at NYU and Columbia, “parachuting in, in a guest star kind of way.” Stepping into the long shadow of the literary giant of a generation feels markedly different. “Dave Wallace had become a legendary teacher there. In the very place that he left a hot trail of teaching, I’ll be going and trying to pick up that trail. I just think it’s charged.”

Although Lethem and Wallace ran in the same literary circles, they never met face to face. Instead, they shared a long non- acquaintance. “We had indirect gestures in one another’s direction. He said some very nice things about my work and I returned the favor by plagiarizing him in [“the Ecstasy of Influence”] Harper’s.” The closest they ever came to meeting was when they were college students in the early ‘80s. A mutual friend at Amherst College told Lethem he should meet his friend Dave “who wants to write too.” Lethem, who describes himself at the beginning of his career as “poky in comparison,” watched Wallace catapult to critical and commercial fame. The eerie symmetry of their careers without intersection “makes it strange and ghostly and almost like a Henry James story of a mysterious great man whose footsteps you walk into,” says Lethem.

As a college drop- out with an honorary doctorate and a tenure track professorship, Lethem’s relationship with academia is complicated. “I was a sophomore on leave and still am,” he said. By his own admission, he was a terrible student. Teaching undergraduates gives him the opportunity to rectify aspects of his own experience. “It’s very glamorous to write and sit around a workshop table and congratulate and attack one another’s work, but reading is the ground of this activity.” His students will read Balzac and Gissing and Beattie, and even Wallace. “Everything,” he said.

In a recent conversation between Lethem and Patti Smith at Cooper Union, the singer told the audience that New York is over for aspiring artists, that they ought to “find a new city.” Lethem hesitates to agree, but sees the need to retreat for young writers, as he lived in Berkeley in his twenties: “There was something about working from the margin and not right under the shadow of the publishing industry. You should find a way to slow that down and dwell in your apprenticeship and take pleasure in being playful and unfinished while you can. And once you professionalize this activity, there’s no turning back.”

The change of scenery from brownstones and brick to palm trees and surf seems at odds with the stories Lethem writes. Just his name conjures images of lonely men trolling deserted streets by the Gowanus Canal. He documents a Brooklyn that is barely recognizable today. Still, given the new job and the temptations of the new environment, it’s easy to wonder if Lethem will go Hollywood, or at least California. He says, “The way people respond to this news is ‘Oh no, what will this do to your writing about New York?,’ as though I have to be on the streets. I wrote most of Fortress of Solitude when I was living in Toronto and most of Motherless Brooklyn at Yaddo.” He is plugging away on a book about Queens, which will keep him busy for the next few years in Claremont. Perhaps a pastoral setting might change the landscape of Lethem’s novels. “I don’t write about anything so directly as that,” he said.

Lethem’s New York will be right where he left it. Transcending the close associations with the five boroughs and taking on a job with such residual energy allows little room for complacency., “Jonathan works as if he weren’t a success,” Brazenhead Books proprietor Michael Seidenberg says. “He approaches reading and writing as he did when he was beginning. He lives the way we want to live- by getting better at it.” And New York might even be better for it.

Face in a Hole

2010-05-03T09:42:00.000-07:00

Oh, lecherous philistine, you thought this post would be about a different face in a different kind of hole, didn't you? How very dare you! You offend my delicate sensibilities with such salacious assumptions about the content of this heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Had we known each other better, you would know that I am a WASP, so the topic will most certainly not about sex. I can talk about not- sex for days! Rather, this is about something I view with rivaling fear- procrastination.

There is no excuse for procrastination. None whatsoever. As a daughter of steely New England puritans, I am still haunted by the schoolmarmish proverb that hung prominently displayed above the blackboard in third grade- "Never put off til tomorrow what you can do today." I took that advice from the teacher Mrs. Clifford, who always stepped away from the blackboard with a white stripe of chalk on her boobs or butt, and I never put off laughing about that. If Catholics are haunted by guilt, then Yankess are charged with bearing the cross of the Protestant work ethic. The Nazis echoed this sentiment with their epigram "Abreit macht frei," or "Work sets you free."

And we know how that turned out.

Well, procrastination needs a new PR person. Let me be clear, I am the consummate procrastinator. And due to the shrill echo of Mrs. Clifford admonishing me to "make good mahks," my stolen moments have been marked by guilt and shame. So I guess that makes me a dyslexic procrastinator, putting off onerous tasks with other equally onerous tasks. I wash the windows so I don't have to write, I write this opus so I don't have to write anything worthwhile, I write this blog so I don't have to engage in life. Of course, amateur philosophers speak at length on the relative merits of procrastination. One must let one's fields go fallow occasionally, or "marinade in one's own juices," as my friend Eric once surmised. Productivity has been at an all time low at the Zenaida Brilliance Factory, because I learned the greatest lesson of all. That you and your friends can be anything you want to be. And here's how...

You can be trannies, neé the Plastics! But I'M the Regina George, obviously- the Head Tranny In Charge.

Or if you're feeling patriotic, like Old Man Mullin here, you can be Uncle Sam. Patriotic for the other side, that is!

And here's my wife! We can do it wife! We can waste the whole day creating humorous avatars of ourselves and friends! Oh my how we laugh!

And why waste all that time at the gym and money on human growth hormone when you can build hulking muscles with a few simple keystrokes? I think I see a new Match.com profile pic...

So when working doesn't particularly appeal to you and experimenting with your identity in a safe way sounds like a nice thing, go ahead! Like most things, it sounds worse than it is, and is even more fun when you're the one doing it. So go forth! Seize the day! Put your face in every hole!

The Philosopher King

2010-03-29T07:05:00.001-07:00

Here's a joke, paraphrased, from that famous funny guy Milan Kundera:

Frederich Nietzsche is in the throes of his syphilitic insanity in 1889, skittering about the streets of Turin proclaiming God is dead, et al, when he comes across a coachman whipping his horse. Nietzsche runs over to the horse, throws his spindly arms around its neck and bursts into tears. He was attempting to apologize to the horse for the Descartes. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

This joke holds significant weight in the history of Western thought for two reasons. First, it marks Nietzsche's break with humanity. But more importantly, it prompted the hero of this blog post and my life Jeff Paris want to become a philosopher. Why? Because he wanted to get the punchline! So if you don't get it, maybe you too should consider a change of career.

Paris is a philosopher, like, for realsies! Isn't that a funny thing to write on your W-2? When he is not sitting cross legged atop a rock in the woods and stroking his beard, he is blowing the minds of students at the University of San Francisco, my alma mater, and home of the endowed Paloma Zenaida Chair in Male Anatomy. I had to swing by USF last month to check in on my well- endowed chair, and ended up following Paris around like a lost little philosophy puppy, just like I did for four years.

There are a few things you must know about Jeff Paris. First, he's an anarchist! Isn't that exciting? That means that he doesn't do a lot of things, like vote or wear figure- flattering trousers, but he does do things like roll his own cigarettes, drink coffee out of a beat up plastic travel mug, and often gets mistaken for a homeless person.
Did you think that Jeff Paris is French? Well, he's not! He is of some kind of Russian extraction, and his ancestral, consonant- heavy surname PARISENCHEVSKY was shortened at Ellis Island. Do you find Jeff Paris a slippery character? You're correct, he is. This only enhances one's infatuation.

Speaking of infatuation, people are obsessed with him. When he's not being questioned by campus police who think he's an indigent hobo, he is running away from hoards of screaming fans who just want to be close to him, seeking enlightened by proxy. He's like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, except reading excerpts of Foucualt instead of Whitman, and with less jaunty scarves. He actually travels from class to class on the shoulders of his students, like a Roman emperor. But it's not so taxing for the kids, because he weighs like 90 pounds. I sat in on one of Jeff's classes, a freshman seminar on Philosophy and Science Fiction. They were reading Philip K. Dick's "We Can Remember it For You Wholesale," which explores reality vs illusion, the problem of memory, blah blah blah. In an attempt to extrapolate the proof of one's perception, the professor used me as an example to provoke and horrify these young people. "We see Paloma, and we think she is female. But how can we be sure?" Hands shot up, the scamps offering up answers like "Because her regal air recalls Princess Grace of Monaco! Because her certain je ne sais quoi is so ethereal and girlish! Because her ample Coke bottle proportions serve her so well in Reggeaton dance competitions!" And Jeff was all, "Good, students, but how do we actually know she is a woman?" Thanks, Jeff! I have enough trouble convincing people I'm not a tranny. But as a lover of philosophy, I'll take one for the team.

This is just one example of the way Paris toys with the minds of his fangirls/boys: like a puppet master. He'll start out by teaching the first text as gospel, pushing the hard sell for, say for example Camus (again, NOT KAY- muss) in my Existentialism class. He was all, "Camus is the man," but in esoteric philosophy jargon- "subjectivity, the subject is not an object, but is phenomenology, the construction and projection of the self, lalalala," And I was like, "Oh, damn I love this Kaymuss guy, he's all bad ass and a rebel and shit." So then once you've bought in totally and are sketching your full- sleeve Camus tattoo, Paris flips the script and brings a new hero to the table. After Camus, Paris brought a wiry, disgruntled little fellow into the fold, one with a feminist life partner and poindexter glasses, one editor of Les Temps modernes Mr. Jean- Paul Sartre. Now he is the boss. So confusing! This will throw you into a spiral of despair, questioning all that you ever believed and held sacred. Since I have the memory capacity of a golden retriever, I experienced this crisis at least twice a semester. Jeff has since revealed to me that this is not a sinister plot he concocted to fuck with my emotions, but it is called the Socratic method.
Did you know that Jeff Paris worked at TGI Friday's? I bet his "flair" was a little pin with a picture of anarchist and enfant terrible Emma Goldman's mug, because she owned an ice cream parlor in my hometown of Worcester, MA! Junk food and evading the long arm of the law go together like popcorn and M and Ms, or like me and elastic waistband pants. Jeff Paris was working at the TGI Friday's because he escaped to California after dropping out of NYU because "it was too high a price tag to smoke pot and do LSD." Too true, Jeff Paris! Not only is he a phenomonologist, he is also a pragmatist.
So after his tenure at Friday's, Jeff went to college, then to Purdue, where he studied with Martin Matustik (who is, like, a big deal in contemporary philosophy, philistine) and became a professor at the tender age of 30. Whew! Other than being my mentor and my friend, one of the coolest things Jeff Paris did and continues to do is work in the California prison system, namely at San Quentin. On teaching in universities and prisons he says:

I SOMETIMES WOULD SAY THAT SINCE UNIVERSITIES ARE MODELED AFTER PRISONS (AND STUDENT BEHAVE LIKE PRISONERS) I HAD TO GO TO PRISON IN ORDER TO FIND STUDENTS WHO WERE FREE. THERE'S SOME TRUTH TO THIS: INMATE-STUDENTS WERE TAKING THE CLASS NOT BECAUSE THEY WOULD GET A JOB OR AVOID ONE, OR BECAUSE THEIR PARENTS TOLD THEM TO, OR BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANYTHING BETTER TO DO, OR BECAUSE IT WAS JUST WHAT EVERYONE DOES. THEY WERE THERE TO IMPROVE THEMSELVES, TO DEVELOP AND ARTICULATE THEIR VIEWS AND THEIR KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD, AND THEIR SKILLS IN COMMUNICATING THAT KNOWLEDGE. THEY WOULD SOMETIMES SAY THAT PRISON DID NOT REFORM OR REHABILITATE THEM, BUT THAT THEY HAVE BECOME BETTER PEOPLE IN SPITE OF ALL THE OBSTACLES THE PRISON HAS PLACED IN THEIR WAY. I THINK THERE IS A LOT OF TRUTH IN THAT.

WOW! Even though that's in all caps, don't be afraid. Jeff Paris is not yelling at you. But wait! There's more! You too can have your beliefs shattered time and again from the comfort of your own home:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Critical-Theory-Essays-Liberation/dp/0742512770

Or if you're feeling especially self- abusive:
http://infinitetasks.wordpress.com/
Because Plato was a smart guy and didn't trust the masses to rule themselves [see Tea Party movement], he contended that the ideal society will be ruled by philosopher kings. Essentially benevolent despots. While Jeff Paris is far too humble to ever consider ruling as a true philosopher king, let's just say that if he ever does indeed create an off- the- grid, anarchist, utopian project, then I will be the first to join. Unless it's vegan and there's no cable. Sorry Jeff! But you'll always be a philosopher king in my book, er, blog.

Well, He's a Little Light in the Loafers...

2010-03-23T19:14:00.000-07:00

“One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan.” If this quote feels anachronistic, it’s because it is. With the relative ease of the L train and the literary patrimony of brownstones from Boerum Hill to Fort Greene, Brooklyn’s cultural cache in the five boroughs is undeniable. Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge, playing at the Cort Theater through April 4^th, harkens back to a time when Red Hook was not a euphemism for IKEA.

The family dynamics of love (more of the kissin’ cousins variety than filial) and loyalty sear from beginning to end. Liev Schreiber plays Eddie, a longshoreman in love with his precocious orphaned niece Catherine (Scarlett Johansson). They are not blood relations, as Catherine is the niece of Eddie’s wife Beatrice, played by Jessica Hecht. Beatrice is the consummate first- generation Brooklyn mother, meddlesome and anxious, not far removed from the shtetl or aldea, much like Woody Allen’s on- screen mother in Annie Hall. But Hecht is raw, wise, and sympathetic, rather than simply shrill.

Eddie’s paternalistic affection to doe- eyed Catherine keeps her flitting about, fetching his slippers and cigars while Beatrice looks on with equal parts revulsion and resignation. The threesome might live forever in this incestuous- polygamous, arrangement until Rodolpho (Morgan Spector) and Marco (Corey Stoll), two illegal stowaway cousins arrive from Sicily. Marco and Catherine begin a puppy love courtship. This riles Eddie, who fears Marco’s ulterior motive is to attain citizenship, as he seems to be a bit light in the loafers, given his random outbursts of song and dance- “like a regular chorus girl,” as Eddie puts it.

The trajectory in A View From the Bridge is so taut that ruining it might be challenging. But Schreiber’s performance seethes with such desire and defeat every moment he is on stage. As Eddie’s family betrayal leads him into neighborhood perdition, Schreiber’s bulk diminishes into his work shirt and trousers. If his leading lady stood on equal thespian footing, the dynamic between Catherine and Eddie would not have felt as lopsided. While Schreiber transforms throughout, Scarlett Johansson never ceases to be ScarJo.

Though the themes of loyalty and impossible love span the human experience, the story is so rooted in the red brick tenements of Brooklyn that it feels as if the story could only have taken place here. Scenic designer John Lee Beatty captures the fire escape walk- up grit and homespun chintz parlors of IRT Brooklyn in a phenomenal rotating set.

The play ends tragically, as we sense it inevitably will from the beginning. Perhaps the Brooklyn portrayed in the play is mythologized- of the boys on the docks and Old Country tribalism transplanted on the shores of the East River. But the real tragedy may be that in the era of the organic food coop and yoga studio, we will never truly know.

The South!

2010-03-15T17:37:00.000-07:00

There's an old saying about the state of South Carolina: "Too small to be a country, too big to be a mental asylum."

Just like Miss Scarlett O'Hara, I too am a prototypical Southern Belle. The Zenaidas of Virginia arrived to the New World from Scotland. As an alternative to smashing rocks in a debtor's prison, we journeyed night and day in steerage to fulfill our destiny: to become white trash. But then we moved up in the world, literally, to the steely rust belt of central New England to fulfill our true destiny: to become Yankee white trash. Mama, why'd ya ever take me out of Dixie?

This past weekend I flew to the Palmetto state, and boy are my arms tired! Here's South Carolina's favorite son, John C. Calhoun. When he's not rousing secession among his compatriots, he redefines facial hair and grimacing- two of my favorite things.

I visited a petting zoo. No, not the state, elitist scallywag.
I caroused with the thugs who loiter the rough and tumble streets of downtown Charleston, committing unspeakable acts for no other reason than "they like to be bad."

I encountered the two of the most unfortunate of drunken coeds on spring break, pictured here to my left. They were pleading for someone, anyone, to pay them the slightest attention by dancing atop their stools and begging the bartender for more Hot Fries. I indulged their overtures by taking this photo. As I exited this seedy den of unsavory characters, the pair were trying to fashion an ersatz stripper pole from a beleaguered mop resting innocently in the corner. The poor dears. But nothing captures the zeitgeist of this precious town more than the fellow below, the Charleston Hat Man. He is a man made entirely of hats, so the city's illiterate inhabitants know where they can acquire a bonnet of their liking. With problem solving skills these, who's to say South Carolina couldn't secede again and make their own republic?

What The?! Notes from the Whitney Biennial

2010-03-08T18:18:00.000-08:00

Life is full of surprises. There are good surprises, like snow days and birthday parties, and there are bad surprises, like your boyfriend telling you he’s gay. You’re confused and disillusioned, but you think, “Hey, maybe we can still be friends.” So then you spend an awkward afternoon together brunching and cruising guys.

This year’s Whitney Biennial is kind of like that. Since the museum commissions the artists rather than the works of art, curators can never fully anticipate exactly what will spring forth from the crate. Abstract artist Richard Aldrich submitted a cartoonish drawing inspired by Stranger in a Strange Land, not a spare, large- scale piece he famous for. Sculptor Charles Ray worked in the medium of Magic Marker instead of clay. The shows’ artists may have ambushed the museum, but the same spirit permeated the galleries- general puzzlement with moments of delight. A whimsical “WTF?”

Take, for example, Aki Sasamoto’s contribution 2010, Strange Attractors. Video camcorders dangle from the ceiling in pendulous mesh bags, the kind that usually carry oranges. The cameras record visitors and project their images on the wall. If you go, you will see many perplexed faces and furrowed brows lining the walls of the Whitney, maybe even small children crying. According to the museum’s program guide, Sasamoto “jumbles her recent obsession for doughnuts, fortune- tellers, hemorrhoids, and things detected in the world.” I couldn’t have made that up. You can catch Sasamoto in some kind of interactive presentation with her installation between now and May 29. However, she will only perform on dates including the numbers six and nine. No, not because she is some kind of oral sex pervert, but because she is interested in perfect circles. Of course.

If the show captures one cohesive theme, aside from “things detected in the world,” it is about processes- both artistic and historical. The Biennial’s two- year cycle aims to reveal shifts in culture, aesthetically and socially. The smoke in Pae White’s Still, Untitled swirls so crisply it appears to be a gelatin photograph. But upon closer inspection, the unfurling tendrils are actually a tapestry. Surprise! This emphasis on methods and materials surfaces in Tauba Auerbach’s textural paintings. She spray paints canvas and folds them up while still wet, creating a three- dimensional look. This results in paintings that seem like bed sheets fresh from the package. High and low? Illusion versus reality? Oh no, I’m confused again.

For the more literal- minded, photographers Stephanie Sinclair and Nina Berman document the horrors of war in graphic detail. Sinclair’s series Self- Immolation exposes Afghani women who have lit themselves aflame to escape prolonged domestic abuse. This practice apparently occurs often enough that rudimentary hospitals exist to care specifically for this type of burn victim. The unrelenting images of charred skin haunt and disturb. Berman’s Marine Wedding is the most affecting work in the show. She followed Ty Zeigler for one year, who was seriously injured by a suicide car bomber while serving in Iraq. He returned home to Texas missing an arm, and his face so badly disfigured that his nose and eyes look like pinholes. The series unfolds with his marriage and ultimate divorce to his high school sweetheart. Despite his maiming, Zeigler wields guns and sports his Marine dress blues. Berman says these photos suggest “a comfortable acceptance with military culture despite the cost.”

For the first time in the Biennial’s history, over half the featured artists are women. That’s a surprise too, and maybe explains why the exhibit is so complicated. Like it or not, it will give you plenty to chat about with your proverbial gay ex- boyfriend.

Are You Gonna Finish That?

2010-03-05T05:28:00.001-08:00

Millennial pop culture will be remembered for a few marked trends- communication in 140 characters or less (which will hopefully be laid to rest in the cemetery of anachronistic bad ideas, alongside bustles, the pet rock, and tribal tattoos), vampires with Victorian sexual mores, and the apocalypse. Fascination with end times saturates the current cinema. The Book of Eli, The Road, and 2012 came out within months of each other. Dime store psychology suggests anxiety and alienation about our modern moment. And what better stage for the existential dramas of our time to implode than in a McDonald’s?

While wading through knee- deep February slush down 29th street to the Peter Blum Gallery, one may think they have indeed entered the apocalypse. But the smug anorexics behind the reception desk will assure you that people still populate the city, even west of 10th avenue, so one can resume wallowing in the low- grade misanthropy to which one has become accustomed.
The Superflex “Flooded McDonald’s” video installation provides a moment of repose from the living. The Danish collective, founded in 1993, scrutinizes power, agency and ownership. This is the group’s first solo show in New York City, and they make a strong statement in the financial capital of the world, with the consummate symbol of America, homogenization, free markets, the neoliberal devil, et al.

The 21- minute film takes place in the lurid browns, reds, and yellows of an older McDonald’s, a garish, muddy predecessor to the sleek McCafés of late. There are no lollygagging teenagers or screaming toddlers in the store, just their half- eaten French fries and unwrapped Filet- O- Fish linger after the Rapture. It looks as if people vacated the premises in frenzy. For a few moments, before the eponymous, inevitable flood washes the restaurant into a watery grave, one’s baser appetites might beg the question “are you going to finish that?” as the camera pans over newly minted Big Macs. Like Morgan Sprulock’s Supersize Me, utilizing McDonald’s as a symbol for deconstructing gluttony— in health or economics—can be problematic, as the audience may end up craving that which is being criticized. Not that I would know.

The exhibit is so captivating because it avoids the esotericism characteristic of many gallery video installations. McDonald’s patent uniformity provides a universal experience that any viewer can sink into, making the immediacy of the flood tangible. It is us who are drowning. We recognize this apocalypse.

As the flood waters rise, the lights go out, cups and soggy fries swirl like algae, the submersion envelopes, and the film begins to feel less like high art and more like a documentary that is all too real. The images are hypnotizing and grotesque, suggesting the groups’ commentary on mass food production or globalization or whatever. So much can be read into this allegory that it is a worthy endeavor to slog through the gray puddles of the west side to interpret “Flooding McDonald’s” according to you own political inclinations and fast food preferences. And your distaste for humanity will be lifted after you leave, as you will be relieved to return to the land of the living.

Blog Roll

2010-02-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

The price of playing a muse does not come cheap. There are long hours of posing for portraits, carpel tunnel from autograph signing, indigestion from all the gratis bottles of Moet, and of course the stitches that cramp my side after narrow escapes dodging mobs of rabid fans. Have you ever seen the Beatles classic A Hard Day's Night? Or tried to get down the FDR when the president is visiting the UN? Well, my life on any given day vaguely resembles either of these eminent scenarios, just with more glamor, pancakes, and falling.

Of course, being a muse to wannabes and the masses does have its pratfalls. Like the time a "musician" composed a song about being rejected by me entitled "You Made Me Hate Music." Oops. I mean, I guess those hours sitting on his floor, giving his best community theater- inspired imitation of Van Morrisons' "Astral Weeks" recording session might be considered an artistic endeavor by some subcultures, namely fanboys and Bears. Probably just saving him time and involvement in a pyramid scheme in the long run.

Or there was the time I posed nude for some "tasteful, artistic" photographs. Imagine my chagrin when riding the subway just a few weeks later I saw my own foot as the BEFORE shot for a Dr. Zizmor ad! Well, I never! Well, I always...

But when my muse powers realize their combust into their highest potential and burns burns burns like a fabulous yellow roman candle exploding like spiders across the stars, one can just stand back in awe. I do it for the little people really. Drumroll please....
MY WIFE IS WRITING A BLOG!

http://ijustwanttoconquerpeopleandtheirsouls.blogspot.com

Ok, white people, calling a lady your "wife" or "wifey" is urban shorthand indicating a close affinity to said lady. I'll let you conspire over whether that affinity is amorous or not. Really, my wife and I are more like the Monkees wherein we sleep in a big bed in nightcaps and nightgowns then spend our waking hours engaging in subterfuges of mistaken identity, saving the day, and running from throngs of admirers. In our wife/ Monkees dynamic, she is definitely the Mike Nesmith because she's effortlessly whimsical and adorable and I am the Mickey Dolenz because I'm bossy and wear ponchos.

Isn't she a scream?

And then there's this new publication
www.ybny.com
to which I am contributing in my "serious" persona. That one rears its head on the days between "Jesus" and "martian."

Ok, adoring public, happy reading. I have fans and people harboring crushes on me to ignore now.

Your Anti- Valentine's Day Party Is Still A Valentine's Day Party

2010-02-10T15:52:00.000-08:00

The photo above, an excerpt from my "thought book," provides a portal into my current state of mind.

Another non- issue I have been stewing over is the relative benefits of optimism and pessimism.

The party line of self- described intellectuals slants toward pessimism, such as capitalist robber baron John Kenneth Galbraith's dime- store philosophy of "We all agree that pessimism is the mark of superior intellect." This means that if you're somewhat evolved, that you swam up to the shore, brave little fishy that you were, and slithered upwards, eventually growing little fish feet, then you bear witness the relentless injustice and ultimate futility of the human project. Or as Jean- Paul Sartre named our charge on this mortal coil, "anguish, forlorness, despair." Evidence abounds to support this claim and requires no further explanation, unless you are retarded or maybe an optimist. The pessimist's favorite holiday- Valentine's Day- swiftly descends upon us. Wait a goddamn second, whaddya mean?! Pessimists don't fall for fuzzy bears 21st century "email me" conversation hearts and corporate commercial crap. Exactly! It's their favorite because it's so easy and so obvious to hate!

Pessimists, in this case, take the path of least resistance. It’s easy to criticize things as they are without offering any alternatives, while you marinade in your ego and haughty self- satisfaction, while you drink your VitaminWater, the official haterade of haters. No one explains this lazy impulse of the psuedo- intelligentsia better than the hero of the Elegance of the Hedgehog, who also goes by Paloma, which is the name of all heroes everywhere! She contends that all pessimists were once optimists, and then one day they realized that shit like hardly ever works out and most people are a huge disappointment. They then turn to "pessimism," a ready- made ethos that coddles you and keeps you safe from the hairy, scary outside world because you will automatically dismiss everything as shit, and you never have to try and fail again.

Pessimists sneer at Valentine’s Day, either because they’re cheap (“It’s a Hallmark holiday), lazy (“I don’t need a special day to say I love you!”) or single (obvious). New York City in February is a veritable purgatory, except it’s somewhere between hell and hell- er. It’s bleaker than Co- op City in an ice storm. One finds herself pondering not so much “why do I live here?” but “why do I live?”

Valentine’s Day, with all its frothy trimmings and gaylord lovey dovies to distracts you for one glorious day and stops you from listening to “Needle in the Hay” on repeat. It is meant to make one feel special, and not special education special.

I looooooooooove Valentine's Day because I love love, and my mom still sends me a Valentine every year. I know this is essentially like going to prom with your cousin because you can't get a normal guy to ask you out, but I'll take it. I never met a marshmallow heart I didn't like.

I know, I know, such an overwhelming display of sweetness is garish, gauche even. But guess what smarty pants? Even Sartre saw anguish and despair not only as ubiquitous and palpably real, but also as a humanism, because you get to decide what to do with it all, and even help out all the philistine ignorami that surround you: "I am responsible for myself and for everyone else. I am creating a certain image of man of my own choosing. In choosing myself, I choose man." Well, if that doesn't just drip with gooey optimism then slap my ass and call me Susan!

So you can, like, have an anti- Valentine's Day poopy pants festival with all your best single gal pals and catch the Jennifer Aniston marathon on Lifetime, guaranteeing you a life of spinsterdom and inevitable lesbianism, or you can send a Valentine to a lov- ah or family member of platonic friendo or a friendo with whom you want to get familiar and stop being an insufferable bore! Or have it both ways, like some Antonio Gramsci: "I am a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will."

Tim Burton's Garden of Earthly Delights

2010-02-06T16:41:00.000-08:00

Every big city girl must count on a few requisite items: an unlimited MetroCard, a pocketbook sized- taser, a good relationship with her pharmacist who will graciously look the other way when she's exceeded her annual allotment of Plan B prescriptions, and her best gay to accompany her on outings to the museum on a Sunday afternoon, because God knows Giacomo from Greenhouse won't!

After nearly eight years under my tutelage, trying on my clothes, and criticizing my eating habits while simultaneously submerged in a tub of generic- brand ice cream and "topping," young Pup thrusts himself (primary and secondary definitions withstanding, however the latter is more of a dry thrust) into the world. That's right, he signed off from Manhunt.com and the Domino's Pizza Tracker long enough to start his own BLOG, which serves as a temporary substitute while he negotiates his reality show contract with Bravo. It's called Single, Poor, and Hungry in NYC. He took the words right out of my mouth, except the hungry part that is, because there's lots of food in my mouth:

www.singlepoorhungry.blogspot.com

Baby's first post creates a Roshemon effect for the following review I wrote in my "serious" voice, just another character from my cast of multiple personalities, but his is actually funny. So save yourself a few moments of your dwindling days on earth and just read his humorous, xenophobic account of another dejected and beleaguered Sunday in the cruel, cruel world.

But I know you're a masochist, dastardly reader, so here's mine:

Tim Burton’s Garden of Earthly Delights

The name Tim Burton conjures figures: Edward Scissorhands’ exaggerated shadow, Jack Skellington’s spindly silhouette against a full moon. Or the gawky goth girl in chemistry class who carried her clove cigarettes in a lunch box and wore black and white- striped knee socks like the Wicked Witch of the West.

These menacing figures skulk and slink (and their fans obstruct, as the show often sells out daily, enhancing the Burton’s visual claustrophobia to experiential) on the walls and screens of the filmmaker’s show at the Museum of Modern Art, from now until April 26^th. Mr. Scissorhands and Mr. Skellington receive their due, along with lesser-known character studies. The Joker’s exaggerated grin and bulbous nose apparently went through multiple mutations. Work by animators Carlos Grangel and Joe Ranft reveals the collaborative process of Burton’s evil genius.

“Cinematic ephemera” from Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Mars Attacks, and Beetlejuice dangle from the ceiling, creating a morbid effect. There are puppets and props that appear to have been lifted from the bowels of an S and M dungeon, and potato- headed stop- motion animation figurines from Corpse Bride and the Nightmare Before Christmas. Burton basically invented the smart, subversive device of making that which appears to be for children- PeeWee Herman! Catwoman!—categorically for adults. This realization visually seeped across the face of one mother, when her toddler inquired after the purpose of all the straps and buckles on the Penguin’s baby carriage. Bondage straps, that is. It’s pretty terrifying stuff, but always with a wink and a smile.

Tim Burton’s art is not resplendent. It’s more Goya than van Gogh, more along the lines of Bosch’s fetid, hedonistic scenes and Alfred Kubin’s nightmare monsters. The “Corpse Boy” photos show a bloated, blue baby, alongside ribbons of sutures coiling around disembodied limbs. His monster illustrations painstakingly detail every hoof and horn, with technique that looks almost pointillist. This show should be filed under the category “If You’re Into That Sort of Thing.” And from the overwhelming response, it seems that many are.Burton’s MoMA debut auspiciously coincides with the release of his new interpretation of Alice in Wonderland, slated for release March 5^th. The opportune timing raises questions over the intersection between museum exhibitions and their commercial interests. This is hardly a new phenomenon, as artists and museums have historically relied on patronage, from benefactors in the past and from corporate underwriters today. But sponsorship by featured artists themselves seems to be a growing trend in New York City museums recently. The Metropolitan Museum’s Costume Institute “Model as Muse” exhibit last year was sponsored by Marc Jacobs, and his confections filled nearly all the final gallery. Burton’s show, in spite of being deeply engaging and disturbing, may be intended to instigate chatter around his latest project, a kind of culturally sanctioned preview.

Perhaps direct sponsorship, whether from an individual, their studio, or a public relations team is just a new reality in museum going, a way for institutions to grasp at survival in a climate of diminishing donations. Like all decisions around art, what it is and who is celebrated, the process is never democratic but highly deliberative. Maybe a filmmaker receiving his due from a major museum is a step forward in redefining the limits of what institutions declare and disseminate as art. We’ll have to wait and see if “cinematic ephemera” from Alice in Wonderland makes it into the next show.

Enn- WHEEEEEE!

2010-01-28T17:04:00.000-08:00

Have you ever stopped to consider the true meaning of the word "ennui"? First of all, moron, it's pronounced "ahn- WEE", not "EN- yoo- ay." This is how it sounded in my head until I said it out loud to Zoe one day, and she quickly corrected my ignoramus pronunciation, because I generally don't hang out with people learned enough to use this term in everyday conversation. The majority of of my friends are illiterate, stumped by common street signs and baffled by shiny objects.

The literal translation of ennui from its original French equates to "boredom." Go figure, the French are such bores. But it contains so much more than boring. Really, it also suggests weariness from the mundane and disenchantment from the formerly enchanting. It means getting exactly what you thought you wanted, then taking a moment to look around, to shrug your shoulders, and say "is that all there is?" It's like ordering the Baked Alaska, or if you're me, having sex.

Here, Peggy Lee explains ennui in a lecture- song. Only individuals like Peggy Lee and Barbra Streisand can pull off this genre of half- sing/ half- intimate pillowtalk (thank you Zoe). Seriously, click on this link! I can't figure out how to make this go from that internets to this internets.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe9kKf7SHco

Aren't you thrilled and relieved by the fact that there exists a noun so elegant and precise to sum up your nebulous existential angst and everyday malaise, and it's only two syllables?

Now, don't get me wrong, I don't believe in "boredom," just as I refuse to accept "shy." "Shy" is a euphemism for "sociopath." If you're an adult and live in the world and are forced to engage with humans on a daily or at least weekly basis, then get over your shit, look someone in the eye, and SPEAK! If the norms of social interaction prove challenging for an individual, there are always apologists who pull this, "Oh, Sabrina. She's just shy." NO! If you can't at least do the little song and dance of meeting and greeting, then you are a bonafide weirdo. Shy, my ass...

I don't believe in boredom, in theory at least. Although I bemoan its persistence in my life on a daily basis. No curious person should ever be bored, because the world is full of so many delights and things to know, there are infinite books to read, gratuitous blogs to write, and new opportunities abound wherever you look. In the words of another hero of mine, Betty Draper, "Only boring people are bored. Go bang your head against a wall."

But alas! I betray my own ethos again and again. I am bored as fuck. And I'm boring, but you all knew that already. Seriously, I've extinguished every TV series available on Netflix (except the Wire. I don't dislike the Wire, I loathe the Wire. I know, I know, you find me even more reprehensible now, a feat you thought impossible, I'm the only person on God's green earth to ever make this claim, blah blah blah. I mean, McNulty's kind of hot or whatever, but I cannot keep these plots straight! And what with all the cops- and- robbers talk, if I only half- listen it sounds like they're speaking Arabic or something, and I can really only deal with shows that require half- listening, as I usually fall asleep within the credits of anything I'm watching after 6pm. I endure this affliction, which is a congenital disease know as "Fernitis," for my grandmother, a lowland German peasant, who fell asleep the moment she sat down on any stationary surface in the evening because she worked on her feet from sun up til sundown. I'm just lazy.)

I even started on Grey's Anatomy, which is possibly the most boring show in the history of TV. I experience ennui when I while those plucky interns fall over each other to observe unorthodox medical procedures, and even more ennui with the cold realization that I've watched the last episode and there are none left to fill my days. These dark, dark days. Oh well. But then I remember that there exists a word like ennui, so perfect in its little chrysalis of vowels, and then I feel slightly less anguish upon my brow. Then it's all, "enn- WHEEEEEEEEE!!!!"

Stuff White People Like: Nick Flynn Reading at BookCourt

2010-01-23T15:42:00.000-08:00

Most of my literary crushes are posthumous, sadly. This reveals two tragic flaws in my character that should be obvious at this point . Firstly, that I self- sabotage and secondly that I'm pretentious in that special way where you're totally sincere about trivial, fundamentally inconsequential endeavors, like reciting all the vice- presidents from memory. I mean, once you turn, like, 23 you realize that Jack Kerouac wasn't all that great a writer outside of his cultural relevancy, but he is still so sexy that who the hell cares? Oh yeah, and he was basically a homo. Refer to tragic flaw #1.

But when it comes to living, breathing literary crushes Nick Flynn wins this highly coveted prize of Zenaida Baby Daddy Numero Uno. The prize is autographing a restraining order against yours truly, followed by identifying me out of a lineup, which is easy because of my unusual body shape.

Flynn looks like he crawled out of a forest, he is primordially handsome. His cheekbones are up to his eye balls! These pictures do not do justice, because I know you're judging me all like, "That guys looks like he should be strumming an acoustic guitar in a subway station begging for pocket change! Why don't you finally remove your head from the depths of your rectum and get some taste?" Whatever!

Friday night I found myself adrift in a sea of earnest bespectabled, behoodied and bebackpacked caucasians (fuck I hate Brooklyn) to feast my eyes on Flynn and feel his gravely voice resound through my cells (I wasn't kidding about the restraining order). Prior to his reading, a three- piece group performed a few songs in some Cyrillic language, which were actually covers of "one of the most important singers of the Soviet punk movement." I couldn't make this shit up. After this awkward slog through musical stylings in a language that should never really be spoken let alone sung, Flynn shared a few delights from his new book the Ticking is the Bomb. Flynn has a special forte for naming books, and I'm wicked pissed at him for stealing the title of MY memoir, Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.
So other than working it as a full- time hotmaster, Flynn is a pretty good writer too. His latest genre- bending journalistic memoir-y thing the Ticking is the Bomb looks at the use of torture in the Iraq war and Flynn's childhood, which I love because I can make ANYTHING all about me too, like I am now in this post. Appreciating Flynn's biography makes the link between Abu Ghraib and growing up on the North Shore of Massachusetts a bit more believable, what with his single mom who ultimately commits suicide and a con- man deadbeat alcoholic jail bird father, Jonathan Flynn, who I'm not sure is supposed to be funny but I found pretty hilarious at times in Another Bullshit Night in Suck City. Not the homeless parts, of course, but his original nicknames for friends, like "Eno the Beano," and his flawless check forging scams. Robert De Niro will portray Jonathan Flynn in the film adaptation, so I foresee De Niro doing funny- sad just right, Travis Bickle- ing all over Boston.

Did you know that Nick Flynn is married to Lilli Taylor? I hope she's not as much of a domestic ball buster as she was to Nate on Six Feet Under. If she is, pretty Nick, you know where to find me: outside digging through your garbage.

Let's Go to the Movies!: Crazy Heart

2010-01-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

I stated a few weeks ago that outings to the movies are my current raison d’etre, which is a euphemism for a sociopathic misanthropy and lack of interest in real life humans. This is slowly but steadily resulting in a Unabomber- esque lifestyle/ appearance. If this keeps up I’m going to have to start a satellite blog called “Let’s Go to the Movies: The Unraveling of a Bottle Blond with Weight to Lose.” Or maybe this recurring column synecdochially represents the whole: me, alone, in a darkened room, buried under empty snack wrappings with popcorn in my bra, crying.

But how will I ever rejoin “humanity” and get back to my modeling career when movies like Crazy Heart are playing at a theater near you? Well, maybe not near you, this gem probably hasn’t come to your bullshit town yet, where they’re still playing “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry.” Once Jeff Bridges wins best actor (That’s right! I’m calling it! You heard it here first! I’d like to thank the Academy!) it’ll probably show alongside the Method Man vehicle “How High is Too High When My Homeboy Christens Himself Big Baby Jesus."

Holy mackerel! This movie is good. Paloma Zenaida is a little bit country after all, and will only speak of herself in the third person from this point forward. Crazy Heart is a resplendent tale of a washed up country singer named Bad Blake, and boy is he bad! He’s a- drinkin’ and a- smoking and a- effin old lady butterface party moms until an angelic but not cloying aspiring journalist (I can categorically relate) played by Maggie Gyllenhaal saves him from himself but then he fucks it all up because he’s a psycho and a wino but all is not lost for our anti- hero as he realizes that redemption doesn’t always come in the form of narcissistic romantic relationships but rather from doing good deeds and fishing with Robert Duvall and cleaning off the cigarette butts and collection agency notices the floor of your scumbag jack shack apartment and making art and whatever and there you have it! I allow that the story lends itself better to the big screen, if you can believe it.

There are two parts of this film that make it a modern classic other than Jeff Bridges stumbling around, simultaneously hilarious and tragic, or tragicomic. One is the T-Bone Burnett soundtrack, especially the catchy tune “Funny How Falling Feels Like Flying,” to which I am writing a companion piece called “Funny How Falling Feels Like Falling Directly On My Ass.” The other is the shots of the great American southwest, the grizzled, withered, desolate landscape reflecting Bridges’ character. There are so many shots all the seedy motels with half- filled pools that make me doggone patriotic and restless to hit the ol’ road with nothing but my expired driver’s license and childlike wonder. It depicts a down-on- your- luck world that feels almost foreign on this smug little island, a world where the Angelika crowd (impatient, aging hipsters) walks out of the theater saying, “Oh well isn’t that sweet, poor white people have culture too! I’m so glad I just saw this independent film to broaden my limited definition of personal triumph over addiction and Nashville’s hegemony over country music.”

Holidays on Ice

2010-01-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

January is a glorious month, if for no other reason that the holidays are officially over. This past season, strife and proverbial internet hair pulling exploded between Chelsea and the Castro, all played out via bitchy text messages. Pup, my twink BFF with a penchant for arts and crafts projects and hoarding meats (you should see his freezer, it looks like your grandma's who lived through the Great Depression and kept her life savings in a coffee can), initiated a cat fight when he received this photo from a friend on New Year's Eve, who assumed he would receive laudatory marks on his Birkin, eyeliner precision, and jaunty pose. But Pup was of a different heart, and channeling all the bitchiness of 2009, captioned it thusly :

"Tranny, faggy, PeeWee Herman, wannabe woman."

At press time, they are not speaking. A wind of gay détente blows (yes, I meant to do that, thank you) between the coasts. Mention this post at the Ramrod and get a free Flirtini.

Let's Go to the Movies!: The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond

2010-01-04T14:38:00.000-08:00

I've been going to the movies with remarkable frequency lately. I tend to go at least once a week, but since it's the depths of winter in New York City and I've managed to alienate most of my "friends" through unorthodox behavior in public (random outbursts of song and dance, did I mention I'm also, like, way into musicals too?! I've never been the same since purchasing the soundtrack to A Chorus Line), I have no choice but to disappear into the dark bosom of the most sacred of all sanctuaries, where for $12.50 plus some thirty- odd dollars on snacks one can spend an afternoon alone and in fantasy land with wild abandon... the movies!

Walker Percy said it best in his existential and imaginatively titled novel the Moviegoer. The hero Binx (!) ruminates during an outing to the cinema with some numbnuts girl who clearly doesn't understand his broody essence and says:

"There was this also: a secret sense of wonder about the enduring, about all the nights, the rainy summer nights at twelve and one and two o'clock when the seats endured alone in the empty movie theater. The enduring is something which must be accounted for. One cannot simply shrug it off."

To endure. To endure! Is there anything more noble than enduring? I wish I could marry going to the movies. Well, I sat my rotund bottom in one of those movie theater seats this past Sunday at a picture show from another southern gothic dandy, none other than Mr. Tennessee Williams! "Wait a second, how can he make movies when he's been dead for decades?" Now, now, don't think yourself into another dizzy spell, dear philistine reader, with such questions of time and space and mortality. He wrote it fifty years ago, and the screenplay has subsequently been DISCOVERED which is EXCITING.

Tennessee Williams is the Pedro Almodóvar of the American south, because he loves women on the brink of nervous collapse and he is gay. Tom Wolfe is kind of like a modern Tennessee Williams, because he is a fine southern gentleman but he much prefers to write about dudes, except for in I Am Charlotte Simmons, which should be required reading for any homegirl who dared attend a private university. And Tom Wolfe is our contemporary Truman Capote, obviously. Whoa! I'm giving myself a literary gay analogy migraine!

Anyway, the Loss of a Teardrop Diamond is currently playing at the Quad Cinema, which has the size and charm of a Mexican bus. If you chose to overlook the marquee, you would think you stumbled into a McCain town hall meeting in Boca. The elderly and infirm LOVE this movie theater, probably because there's no stairs (bad for the joints) and no escalators (confusing). Old people are really annoying because they do all the things for they condemn the young for doing. They talk loudly, and throughout the movie. I gave the whole audience a big SSSHHHHH from the back row during the previews because I knew what was in store from these geriatrics. This is the "unorthodox social behavior" I referred to earlier, because it actually managed to embarrass Brooke D, something I imagined impossible prior to this moment. She found herself even more humiliated later in the day when we went to Victoria's Secret and I demonstrated the generous proportions of her cup size by putting a bra on my head. The bra covered my eyeballs and almost my nose.

So in between the coughing fits and shouts of "What did she say?! I can't hear anything!" resounding throughout the theater, I reveled in the fetid, festering 1920s Delta this movie portrays. All the classic hallmarks of the grotesque preened on the silver screen: live oaks, creepy twins, flasks of whiskey in coat pockets, a lady's descent into madness, assisted suicide, and the unintentional murder of sharecroppers by a carpetbagger industrialist! The main character played by Bryce Dallas Howard has a crazy name (craizer than her own) that only unhinged southern women with a flair for the dramatic can carry off- Fisher Willow! Ooooo, and there's class conflict too. Just like the relationship in After Miss Julie, Fisher entraps a hottie mcbody peasant into a romantic dynamic with an intoxicating asymmetry of power in which the dude ends up hating her because she's so insufferable and spoiled and retarded but OMG did I mention what a hotmaster this Jimmy Bovyne is?! Holy mackerel, I want to play a parlor game with him!
Ay chiuaua!

Alright, so Fisher Willow is no Blanche DuBois or Maggie the Cat, but Williams is Williams, southern gothic nourishes the soul and we need to take whatever morels we can scavenge in the withered, frigid northeast. Beggars can't be choosy, but someone needs to go tell the rest of the audience from the 3:15 show to go home. They're still wondering what the characters are saying on the darkened screen. To enduring!

A New Year's Gift for You

2010-01-02T07:56:00.000-08:00

Little bird feet in the snow.

Albeit little pigeon feet, but come on! Delightful.

My resolution is to have more fun.

Hallo from the Weltuntergang!

2009-12-29T12:17:00.000-08:00

Greetings from the end of the decade, and from the looks of it, the end of the world! Life at the close of the aughts (oughts) is an untenable place, but bittersweet like everything else. It was the best of times (my blog, the Jersey Shore) and it was the worst of times (Joe Lieberman, my station in life) Staring down the barrel of this decade shows us two undeniable trends, and not silly New York Times Style trends like beer bellies on men and nasaly voices on female twee icons, like Kristen Schall and Sarah Vowell... but really, what is up with that? Twenty first century female Castrati in the name of quirk, if you ask me.

Oh yeah, so the ubiquity of vampire romance and apocalypse in the cinema must indicate something sinister about our modern moment, and whatever it is, it's not looking good. Finally! Something herein you can relate to! Sexy vampires and 2012 conspiracy theories!

Another marked trend in contemporary museum programming is a fascination with art from the Weimar Republic, which is actually the precise intersection of vampires and the apocalypse. The MOMA is currently showing and exhibit on Bauhaus. Designy stuff always makes me feel like an aesthete failure because I think it's boring, and I'm all, "If I wanted to look at tables and chairs and shit I would've gone to IKEA!" But if you too want to get your Deiter on, then check out "From Klimt to Klee" at the Neue Galerie.

My last dispatch from the Neue involved me beating my breast and crying for mommy in the middle of a gallery, the pictures were so scary.

(http://myinterestingandexcitinglife.blogspot.com/2009/01/alfred-kubin-he-freak.html)

And little has subsequently changed. Although a guard did inform me thaat it is strictly verboten to drape one's coat jauntily across one's forearm while perusing the galleries. Patrons must either put on or check their outerwear. I know I look skanky and shabby and should probably wear a snowsuit or burqua at all times, but come on now! Then I remembered where I was, a museum dedicated to the Germanic arts, so fascism is just part of the experience. Although if you ever visit Germany, any hausfrau or hinterwaldler will quickly remind you that Hitler was Austrian and Beethoven is German!

They say that the symbols of post- World War I Germany are the war cripple and the prostitute and you will certainly see those two along with many other unsettling and pervy images. Ok, full disclosure, the works from this exhibit are Weimar- ish, dating from the late 1800s til like the late 1930s or a few months ago or whatever, but give me a break, I'm promoting a thesis here! At any rate, the German raison d'etre is a constant quest for rules and regulation, for creating order in chaos. Sustaining that kind of anal retentive zeal results in inscrutable artistic subversion, like depictions of nude preteens and men in ladies' undergarments, for example.

You can find momentary solace in the elegant Enrst Kirchner woodcuts. Although enjoying these prints is like reading Raymond Carver: it seems too easy, so you must be missing something. You mean it's not just a story about getting wasted and drawing a cathedral with some blind guy?!

I wish it wasn't the case, but when I look at works like this finger painting thing by Paul Klee there will always be a tiny philisitine in my ear whispering something to the effect of "I coulda done that in pre- K! Why is that piece of shit in this museum?"

That impulse reminds me of what Joan Didion said about the Getty Museum in Los Angeles: "The Getty collection is in certain ways unremittingly reproachful, and quite inaccessible to generations trained in the conviction that a museum is meant to be fun, with Calder mobiles and Barcelona chairs." Except I feel like a member of the generation that came before that one, people wanted to see "'fine art,' in the old- fashioned didactic sense."

Harumph! So, put your inner- philistine at ease and go see this exhibit, if only because you will see things by men with immeasurably awesome names, like Otto, Egon, and Max (pronounced Mocks). Nuthin' wrong with that. And frolich weltuntergang to you and yours!

Anthropology: The Mating Rituals of WASPs

2009-12-19T13:57:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite jokes is as follows:

Q:What does a WASP say after sex?
A: I'm sorry, it will never happen again.

Oh, now don't go and get all offended from my inflammatory ethnic profiling, I am a WASP, or at least a half breed (though the other half hails from Appalachia and grew up eating squirrel pie, but no matter!). So I am a self- ordained authority on WASPs and consequently have license to make sweeping stereotypes for comedic purposes while revealing the hypocrisy and tawdry underbelly of a culture. Just think of me as the caucasian Chris Rock.

So I spent this past Thursday evening safely ensuring that I will never have sex again at a Young Republican bacchanalia, hosted at Orsay on the Upper East Side. I used to live just a few blocks away, and never went inside the restaurant but did find some delectable vittles in the dumpster just behind after being shooed away for pressing my nose against the glass. Anyway, this was a gorgeous soiree, all the boys busted out their best pocket squares and all the girls their most potent sedatives. Everyone was in high holiday spirits. Even Lauren Bush was in attendance, who I threatened to "jump" outside, but quietly and under my breath, to my plus- one (Brooke D). Despite all the poetic and physical justice I planned on delivering to a member of the Bush family, this sadly did not transpire, as the party was open bar and the only thing that got jumped that night was Brooke D when I pushed her into a pile of garbage. The open bar drove Brooke D in a more amorous direction rather than violent, as she spent the majority of the night staring at her own reflection on the mirrored walls, enraptured by and victim of her own beer goggles.

WASPs display curious social mores and proclivities. For example, if you ask a WASP where they went to school, they will invariably respond with the name of their high school. What the?! A small group of swans exchanged looks of utter bewilderment when they asked me this question and my response was "Doherty Memorial." "Oh, I've never heard of it, where is that again?,"one bauble- headed lovely asked me. "Yeah, it's really exclusive, it's in Worcester." "Oh, England?" "Uh, yes."

When you ask people how they know each other, they will often respond with "the Vineyard." When a man in a tie emblazoned with the Edgartown Yacht Club symbol asked Brooke and I how we knew each other, I quickly interjected with "Necker Island," which impressed this group momentarily, until they looked down at my polyurethane Forever 21 shoes and knew I was lying. Brooke's unbridled elation at the fact that "the drinks are freeeeeeeee!" didn't help our case either.

It's also completely appropriate for heterosexual [questionable] males to wear pink pants. What else do these haberdashers like? They like cuff links, truffles, gin, dancing in circles with other men to Neil Diamond cover bands, and not me. This one guy with movie star good looks and a Harvard MBA handed me his empty glass after he was finished with his umpteenth Maker's. As if I were the help. WASPs, curiously, are offended by the generous proportions of my rear end, which they find vulgar, but is always a hit in Harlem. These boys hadn't seen anything this wide since the finish line at the Head of the Charles!

I studied the fair- haired ladies in the crowd to see what I was doing wrong. First of all, their dye jobs are much more of the Bergdorf Blonds variety rather than Courteny Love, which is what I've got going on currently. WASPettes (yes, I WILL invoke Jersey Shoreese at this juncture) seem to have an affinity to monogramming, scowling, and anorexia. Also, the theme of the night was "speak softly and carry a big bag." Gotta keep that Xanax somewhere!

Stranger in a strange land.

And this is where the evening ended, like many others that came before. But it did not come to a close until after being chastised by a group of high school girls when Brooke dropped her slice of pizza and the floor and proceeded to consume it without the slightest moment of hesitation. As we parted ways, I turned to Brooke and said, "What shall we do to-morrow? What shall we ever do?" And I threw my head back and laughed with a voice full of poverty.

American Beauty

2009-11-22T12:12:00.000-08:00

When the anvil of unconditional love for one’s fellow man drops upon your nebbish little pinhead, the only thing to do is run, not walk, out into the unforgiving world and flit about in it for a while. Harboring a significant crush on the world, walking around town with a grin on your face like a big gaylord propels us forward against the series of disappointments and ennui that is the human condition. These, my friend, are moments of grace, and they slink back to Graceland as quickly as they come.

So in a fit of unbridled stranger love, I hosed myself down, put on pants for the first times in several weeks, and flung open the door of my tenement building. I minced on over to the Metropolitan Museum (no, it's NOT the same thing as the M and M store you fucking retard, alliteration notwithstanding. The M and M store is a Times Square tourist trap, really, you should think before you speak, even in the solitude that surrounds you after having lost all friends and acquaintances due to these fatuous outbursts) and found my love for humanity momentarily extinguished, and then dramatically rekindled by lots of purty pitchers.

Robert Frank’s book the Americans was released in 1958, after two glorious years of bourgeois bohemian ramblings sponsored only by his vagabond wits, I mean, a Guggenheim Fellowship. Frank is from Europe, Switzerland to be exact, meaning that he is "neutral" i.e. hates freedom. Usually, I find it loathsome when foreigners, especially smug Europeans, or worse yet Canadians, take the subject of our great Republic into their soft hands. But oh man I am forced to rescind my comments once again because I felt like this exhibit was made for me! Like Edward Weston’s photographic rendering of Leaves of Grass, Frank’s images could play roadside companion to On the Road. Truly, because they “burn, burn, burn, like fabulous roman candles,” et al. Why did the Beats say everythingng in threes threes threes?

The exhibit is about values. The photos show the pomp and circumstance of the democratic process in political rallies led by union bosses in Chicago, marching bands, boater hats and all. You’ve got the diner waitress as an exhausted beauty, the Hollywood starlet and her adoring public at a premiere. Consequently, the photos also show what Americans do not value. Images from Charleston, South Carolina show a black nanny holding a white infant, and the masthead for the exhibit captures Jim Crow in a New Orleans trolley car. There are flimsy road signs compelling wanderers to repent in open stretches of western split lane highway, trucks hauling migrant workers to the fields, Puerto Rican trannies in Harlem, and hobos sleeping in public parks in Cleveland. Who knew there were public parks in Cleveland?! The only thing missing was Pentecostal snake handlers. I love that. Next time the Met brings me on board as an art consultant, I’ll be sure to mention that.

I tried so hard to restrain myself from whipping out my moleskin reporter’s pad and recording all my brilliant insights for the day.

I resisted doing so during the Welsh mining boys and indigenous Peruvians in bowler hats, two more favorite things. Then I came to the photo of the blind accordion player, and all bets were off.As I stood in front of the glass admiring the grotesque beauty and journaling (Yeah, I said it, so what who cares?! You judgemental judge, you should dedicate all that judgy energy into practicing the alphabet) about all the contradictory feelings it brought up in my belly, I felt the cumbersome, unmistakable gaze of an unsavory man’s eyes burning into places that should not burn. “Where did you get those shoes?” the smarmy fellow asked. I mean, I was wearing amazing shoes; I can’t condemn him for admiring, but what a homo pickup line, right? Then on to, “Why are you writing? Are you a student?” “No, I’m writing for a publication.” “Which one?” “The Paris Review.”

And then I fled the scene of the crime, lest anyone realize that I am pathological. But no matter! This buoyancy was unsinkable, not even the unscrupulous overtures from museum predator could bring me down. I've said it once and I'll say it again: God Bless America!

Let's Go to the Movies!: Nights of Cabiria

2009-11-09T18:17:00.000-08:00

Not since Bridget Jones or the male lead in 500 Days of Summer has a protagonist resonated more profoundly with me than Cabiria in this Fellini classic. Of course, my cinematic taste hovers between the tawdry and the deplorable, faves including Joshua Jackson vehicle The Skulls and cultural patrimony of the Dominican Republic Sanky Panky.

I really related with Cabiria for several reasons. First, she's a prostitute, but not a very good one, just like me. Instead of slithering into pencil skirts and teetering along the cobblestones of Rome in hooker heels, she abounds in stripes and flats. I enjoy donning matching stripy outfits with unsavory characters and taking photos. The resemblance is uncanny. Between Cabiria and I, dummy, not that guy upon whose head I am posing provocatively.

Cabiria's umbrella shares about 80% screen time with the actress, and as I watched this whole psychodrama play out between the fickle rainclouds and our heroine, I thought to myself, "Oh my God, I carry an umbrella on my person at all times too!" She even checks it at a nightclub, which I have also done, after using it to lambaste the doorman and "make a scene."

The nightclub scene really struck a chord, especially when Cabiria entangles herself in a velvety curtain over the entrance to the dance floor. She then proceeds to humiliate her dance partner by clearing the floor with exaggerated mambo number. Not that I've ever done that, per se, but let's just say the members of my party and/ or security may have requested that I descend from the cocktail table while throwing my skirt over my head and doing a bastardized Charleston/ Jamaican dance hall thrash that could easily be confused with a seizure, all while demanding that a busboy pour tequila in my mouth like that time in Puerto Vallarta. Oh well.
But the crux of Cabiria's character lies in the fact that throughout the entire film she is routinely shat upon by men, but never gives up on true love. While that may sound like some hooker- with- a- heart- of- gold conceit, I assure you it's not. Cabiria is a rebel, rejecting the notion that her experiences are the rule (that members of the opposite sex only show any remote interest in you because they are motivated by malicious intent like pushing you into a river and robbing all your earthly possessions, for example) and that they are the exception instead. Two different dates make attempts on her life TWICE, bracketing the film with a lugubrious symmetry. A guy hasn't tried to kill me (yet) but one did steal my identity. Would you believe that there is a check- cashing operation in Plant City, Florida, owned and operated by an Albanian named Paloma Zenaida?

Just listen to what Fellini himself said about his film:

"The subject of loneliness and the observation of the isolated person has always interested me. Even as a child, I couldn’t help but notice those who didn’t fit in for one reason or another—myself included. In life, and for my films, I have always been interested in the out-of-step. Curiously, it’s usually those who are either too smart or those who are too stupid who are left out. The difference is, the smart ones often isolate themselves, while the less intelligent ones are usually isolated by the others. In Nights of Cabiria, I explore the pride of one of those who has been excluded."

Okay, so I definitely fall on the latter half of that elegant equation, being all but shunned by my peer group and society at large, under the charge of "unorthodox social interactions" and violent dancing. But what of it?! Like my heroine Cabiria, I refuse to accept circumstances as they are, despite every signpost and omen otherwise. To the river!

On the Waterfront

2009-11-07T17:12:00.000-08:00

Have you ever circumnavigated the island of Manhattan? Does eating swordfish on City Island appeal to you? Would you like to ride the Staten Island ferry on a sweltering August afternoon, semi- noxious fumes from the Buttermilk Channel cooling your sweat mustache? Ok, asshole, how about drinking a Schlitz while you ogle handsome individuals in DUMBO from behind dark glasses? I knew we would meet somewhere in the middle...

Well, if any of those scenarios appeal to you even slightly, or if you've ever fetishized working class heroes like longshoreman or fish mongers, then you must visit the photo exhibit "The Edge of New York: Waterfront Photos " at the Museum of the City of New York, on display until November 29. It is an enchanting exhibit that might bring up feelings or ideas like loneliness, industry, fragmentation, tradition and change, fear of terrorism by port entry, empathy with your neighbor, and man's place in the natural world. And the entire exhibit will take you less than fifteen minutes from start to finish, and you can seamlessly resume your daily regimen of kicking cats and gobbling down non- FDA approved diet pills.

The exhibit is split between contemporary depictions of the waterfront and historical photos, many of which were shot by Works Progress Administration (WPA) workers in the 1930s. Was there ever a better government program than the WPA? Now that is what I call cultural heritage. Why can't they create a WPA for this recession? I know a few individuals who need a state guidebook to write or a mural to paint, and I'm not even taking about myself surreptitiously, then again... If you look at the photos by Berenice Abbott (WPA all the way!), you actually start hearing "Rhapsody in Blue" and smell roasted chestnuts and pickle brine wafting through the air. No, not literally, you simpleton. But maybe you will, given your proclivities to hallucinogenics. What if you, like, went to a museum on, like, PCP man??? Imbeciles, all!
Here's a collage I made, inspired by the exhibit. This creative portrayal would suggest that I am a classically trained visual artist, but nope, that's just raw talent. Note the self- standing design and the unsettling slope of my desk. The Museum of the City of New York will next be showing an exhibit entitled "the Leisure Time Hobbies of Paloma Zenaida: The Demand for a New Works Progress Administration."

We All March Together!

2009-11-04T15:49:00.001-08:00

"Is there anything worse than a staunch woman?" No there's not, and all bets are off when a staunch woman concocts an homage to her reclusive hero and her show biz dreams. Thus spake Little Edie Beale, whose scarf I feebly attempted to fill this Halloween. Edie wore didn't wear clothes, she wore"costumes," as she referred to her eccentric sartorial choices. This costume in particular really captured my essence. I was SO happy all night, mincing around with my flag and 'do rag, and I fucking hate Halloween (but not Halloween candy). Even when I accidentally stumbled into the Bowery Hotel, and a thousand eyes glowered over thirty dollar cocktails and prompted some very self- conscious feelings about the state of my thighs in short shorts, I still felt awesome. I wish I could wear this costume everyday, but that would probably prompt imprisonment, and even more gays following me around, like this guy for example.

Please note the soldier. He offered his services in defending my person from swarms of admirers. Hagiography is not for the faint of heart!

A Mitzvah: Joy Behar and Susie Essman at the 92nd street Y

2009-10-25T19:30:00.000-07:00

In 1990, Susie Essman played the role of a Hasidic woman named Malka in the Hallmark TV movie "Loving Leah." Barbra Walters interviewed Essman on the View about her research of the role earlier this year, asking what the actress learned about the ultra- orthodox community. She answered, "That they're not very good dressers." Of course, this flippant and hilarious comment attracted ire from many. In order to rectify the situation, Essman suggested that the View host a Hasidic fashion show. Joy Behar said that in the lull of summer programming, the producers seriously considered it.

How did I learn such juicy showbiz gossipy bits? BECAUSE I was seated last row (literally dead last, vertigo- inducing last) at an Evening with Susie Essman and Joy Behar at the 92nd Street Y last night! I just adore these two brassy broads and purchased tickets ages ago and told my so- called "friends" to do the same. Of course, none of them did, they are all very preoccupied crafting their slutty Halloween costumes (Chris has been working on his "Downward Dog" creation all week and Brooke D's "Nancy Kerrigan Nasty" is just skating along) and experimenting with new jello shot flavors (Anna is perfecting "malt liquor and sriracha " and Brooke G will soon patent "college dorm room"). I was the sole Gentile in the audience and companionless. Needless to say, I felt like a curious aberration in a sea of peri- geriatrics and Larry David doppelgangers. Brooke D, Brooke G, Anna, and Chris: If you are reading, I hate you.

But no matter, just more Behar and Essman for me! Joy "So what, who cares?!" Behar instigated a lively conversation with Essman, so much so that you really felt like you were just having cawefee tawk with a couple of yentas. They reflected at length about hustling as female stand- up comics in the '80s, which sounded like a cross between Punchline starring the cast of Beaches taking place along the Trail of Tears. Susie Essman had so many pearls of wisdom to share, for example:

On rambling stories:
" I hate detail- laden stories. Give me 'salient point, salient point, punchline.'"

On Curb Your Enthusiasm character, Susie Green:
"She suffers from high self- esteem."

On how to know if your husband is gay:
"If you catch him blowing the neighbor or reading my book."

On aging:
"I don't give a shit what anyone thinks of me anymore."

Totally! I give, like, 15% less of a shit in my 26th year than in my 25th... by the time I hit thirty I'll be clogging traffic on the sidewalks of Park Slope with my Rascal, wearing a nightshirt emblazoned with a kitten face and emerald rhinestones as its eyes, having ballooned up to 300+ pounds, wearing my hair in two long braids. Age shmage, some of us do not have that far to fall.

You can readily define any individual who deigns to ask a question in the Q and A period of a lecture, can't you? First off, you know they are bold and brazen, I (contrary to popular belief) am debilitatingly shy when it comes to public address, way too shy to pose any questions in front of an AUDIENCE, even if they can be written on note cards and handed in anonymously. I can barely make eye contact with the bodega guy. Here are some stock personalities and their corresponding questions:

1. The Pundit:
"Joy, why didn't you really give it to Ann Coulter when she was on your show?" [Ed. note- That person is an asshole. How dare you criticize your host, about something so trite anyway? Ill- mannered cretin, have you ever turned off Air America and left your apartment prior to that moment?.]

2. The Benevolent Sycophant:
"What can we do as a community to promote women and women comics?"

3. The Rabbi:
"Susie, you say that the acting on Curb is spontaneous, but that you often will shoot up to 25 takes for a single scene. How can one act with spontaneity after 25 takes?"

4. The Comedian:
"Tell me a joke"
Essman's response: "I don't tell jokes. Go fuck yourself."

It was a wondrous night, a star- studded Spectacular of ball- busting, Judaica- referencing (mentions of brisket: 3, shout- outs to the JCC in Boca Raton: 1, discussion of various medical ailments: too many to keep track) Did I mention that I walked directly into the impressively sturdy frame of Dan Aykroyd in the bathroom? I felt so shy! He is Elwood! Also because I was in the men's bathroom... See what you missed, friends?! When the next uplifting cultural event comes around I'm sure they'll be huddled in line at the blood bank trying to sell their platelets.

To The Lighthouse!

2009-10-13T14:12:00.001-07:00

In Virginia Woolf's day, when ladies got the post- partum or wanted to do something crazy like work outside the home, they were sent to the nervous hospital. Or they went to the lighthouse, or to the waves as a final act of defiance: "Against you I will fling myself, unvanquished and unyielding, O Death!" Today, when ladies are teetering upon the edge of losing their shit, they take a long weekend to Block Island, Rhode Island. Not that I would know, I just wanted a holiday in the country... Here's what I did:

I spied behind rocks.

I served as a mercenary against the white man for the Pequots. Oh right.... sad.
... the elusive Riis Beach monster of summer 2008 surfaced on the sands of New Shoreham, RI.
... as did the oft- mythologized Block Island boulder humper.
I destroyed.
The town historian gave a provocative lecture at the Indian Cemetery, entited "Totem or Totemic?: King Philip's War and the Southern New England Tourism Industry."
I found boyfriends.
I stumbled upon this perverse mascot of small town inter- species breeding: the Rhode Island cow horse.

Have you ever stopped toponder the significance of the Rhode Island state flag? I thought so! Roger Williams, upon the founding of 'Lil Rhody in 1636, quoted Hebrews 6:19- "Hope we have as an anchor of the soul." Indeed! pRIde!

Ze Post- Eet ees in ze microfeelm...

2009-10-12T10:30:00.000-07:00

... OR the Post- It Note reading series comes to KGB Bar!
While you are probably just itching to learn what exactly a "reading series" entails, great unwashed illiterates, even YOU know what Post- Its are. There you are, alone in your cubicle or home office [the floor], affixing the colorful squares to your face when you think no one is watching, creating a prismatic rainbow trout effect, as you contemplate your sorry state of existence in the reflection of your computer screen, sullied Post- It fool! Or, like Romy and Michelle, you attempt to pull a fast one on your peer cohort at a high school reunion, claiming to have invented Post- Its and you humiliate yourself in front of the same doughy French Canadian townie whores of yore, and they're all, "Shut up, idiot, that movie is on TBS, like, thrice weekly."

In The Elegance of the Hedgehog (which has apparently been a hot shit book for like six months now, and that I was enchanted to learn of just the other day, as I write this from a dungeon in Tikrit) Mauriel Bauby writes, "With the exception of love, friendship, and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life [. . .] I'm not talking about great works of art by great masters. No, I'm referring to the beauty that is there in the world, things that, being part of the movement of life, elevate us." Yes! The high, the low, the joy, the sorr-ow! The Post- It Note series is another one of those slices of sweet grace in the grind of unyielding ordinariness.

So here's how it works: Illustrator/ bearded heartbreaker Arthur Jones sets readers' stories to a backdrop of silly drawings, creating delightful comedic punctuation. Last week, they brought the show to KGB Bar's Every Tuesday True Story Non- Fiction Event.

I had the DISTINCT pleasure of catching three outstanding and achingly funny readers, not a dud among them. First, downtown darling Mike Albo described a renewing vacation to Hawaii under eat- pray- love auspices, illustrations of the author frolicking with dolphins and hilarity ensued. The disembodied voice of This Americn Life contributor Starlee Kine bellowed with tales of a childhood trip to the Nixon Library and young love, and Andrew "NOONDAY DEMON" Solomon headlined the evening with a story of his participating in a traditional Senegalese depression- ridding ritual. It involves entering a marriage bed with a goat, ladies washing away the animal blood that covered Solomon's body by spitting, and being hog tied in intestines. Who says anthropology has to be paternalistic?! I was so impressed not only by Solomon's epic storytelling and the good natured benevolence he brings to the room, but also by the velvety coat he wore that looked as if it had been robbed off the back of Raffi. Solomon is truly a god of a man, the kind of guy with whom you'd just like to throw on a schmatte and watch Golden Girls. His winning the Pulitzer really hasn't garnered the author enough media accolades, so I figured I'd step in and help.

So, philistines, if baby wants to get literate, this is the place to start. It has PICTURES, for chrissakes, and they read the stories TO YOU! And it's free! That's right, more money in your tattery pockets for Yu- Gi- Oh cards and grape drink. Here's the Post- It Note series blog, although it looks as if it hasn't been updated in some time... they must not have a staff of models and interns like this publication.

http://www.postitnotestories.com/

BOXCARS! BOXCARS! BOXCARS!

2009-10-03T10:16:00.000-07:00

Out of all the iconic figures of Americana mythology none resonate so romantic as the hobo. Did you know that hobo actually is short for "homeward bound?" I learned that in Eat, Pray, Love but so what?! Hobos are actually just homeless people with more wanderlust, gumption, and personal style. Already possessing all these virtues, and growing weary of living the life of a pauper/ reverse stripper [a getting dressed-er] while masquerading as a bonafide person, I am considering this whimsical life with more and more measured consideration. And hello we're in a recession, and that's kind of like the Depression! Now is the moment to walk away from modernity and all its unsavory elements, like credit default swaps, bottle service, and socks. But then I stop and think, "Riding the rails and eating beans and singing Woody Guthrie anthems would grow tedious, and a mere bindle can't contain all my celebrity scrapbooks and half dried Diorshow mascaras." Life as a hobo is not for the faint of heart. But what is truly truly romantic, something I've been spending much time fantasizing about lately, is the idea of packing a bag, walking out the door, and just keep on walking. Walking and walking into the great wide open! Wandering the earth as a hobo! I will pack up my knapsack, put on my Vans, and walk. Jon Krakauer will write a book about me. The line between being a hobo and a homeless person is pretty thin in New York City. The logical median lands around "St. Mark's gutter punk," which is frankly dreadful. So I concocted an experimental hobo life just the other day, when I walked to the idyllic village of Cold Spring, New York. And by walk I mean walked to the subway and got on the Metro North. But don't worry, I rode in on boxcars! boxcars! boxcars! I have come to terrorize your town.
Here I am at the filling station, after liberating a cooling pie from a window sill. My hobo name is Jelly Belly Octo Limbs.
My new house. It lends a very Dick and Perry, old world charm.

And here's my new hobo stuff. The requisite non- descript cart and vaguely menacing rusty drawer.

And here I am walking the world with my traveling companion Jimmy Nine Toes. What happened to the nubile blond in the short shorts? you ask. Why do you look like a Steinbeck made- for- TV movie salvaged from the cutting room floor? Like I said, hobo life is not for the faint of heart, you bourgeois judge. Don't judge me!

Will You Please Be My Friend?

2009-09-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Remember in pre- K, when you could friendship holler at another individual because they were of your same gender and there? You'd be like, "Do you want to be friends?" and they'd be all, "Sure," and then you'd do something hilarious like fall out of your chair with very little provocation, just to get a laugh from your new friend? Well, it's not so easy any more, is it? There is so much criteria to fulfill, so many ways in which you must complement each other, you might as well just have your friends fill in that fucking free eHarmony survey that takes like four hours, not that I would know.

Friends first have to be hilarious, but in a special way that makes most people uncomfortable or afraid of you because they think you might actually be retarded. And they can't be exceptionally richer than you, because that's really annoying when they go to lunch at Per Se or in Monaco and you can't, or when they go to rehab and you can't even though you wish you could just be sent away, oh nothing would be better than being sent away. And your friends can't be butt, because they won't be able to get in the club and then they have to get all humiliating with the doorman, claiming that they're a distant Kennedy cousin. How does anyone make new friends anymore? They join Meetup Groups, that's how!

Well, I've heard that people make friends through this online avenue, but I wouldn't know because the Meetup group I tried to join REJECTED me! At this juncture in my life, I am quite accustomed to rejection. I have been rejected from jobs, from the Chipotle counter (apparently they are enforcing some kind of quota system), from boys (related to the Chipolte situation?), from house plants. Oh and did I mention that the Meetup group that I pursued was not a philosophy discussion group, or a book club, or a capoeira dance fighting troupe or a whistling choir or anything that would require some amount of skill or prior knowledge. No, I tried to join the LOST group. That's right... I WAS REJECTED FROM A GROUP THAT WATCHES TELEVISION! Their rationale was that I didn't answer their questionnaire properly, but my fingers were tired from the eHarmony survey, and John Locke is so much hotter than Desmond and Jack put together and I would follow Ben Linus to the ends of the earth, but whatever. [Please note the salutation of "Namaste" in my rejection letter. Condescending false sincerity in a state of Dharma Initiative nirvana.] So what did I do to wreak my vengence upon these LOST losers? I'll tell you what I did! I went in secret with a Meetup group member, my friend Dave, and judged them from afar all night! HAHAHAHAHAHA!... I'll still join though if I hone my questionnaire skills, please accept me potential BFFs, please please.

So the NYC Losties were meeting up, as it were, at Dave's Tavern and then attending a pre- screening of the new series Flash Forward. Here's the chapter president, who cheerfully obliged my photo request, and nearly shat himself with glee when I whispered seductively "I'm on a race around the world, Brother." He's so earnest, isn't he?So there they were, having a ball in their LOST t- shirts and '90s haircuts, and there I was, sitting in a booth with a cup of peanuts and icy contempt, an outsider looking in.

And then on to the screening! (Please note the sponsorship. I almost had to experience heart wrenching rejection twice in one night, but I am nimble and the Chipotle quota gatekeepers were thrown into a frenzy by my fancy foot work.) Flash Forward was a part of the New York Television Festival, also known as "my apartment on the weekends." Despite some Keanu Reeves- inspired acting moments and Harold from Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle, the show features a few of my favorite things in the world: the apocalypse, the FBI, slutty babysitters, and a member of the Fiennes family. Top marks!
So all the Losties arrived to the theater, like, stupid early, scoring seats altogether. And I was so jealous. I sat in the back row with my snacks just fuming. And then the curtain! And then the lights! And as the credits rolled to herald the commencement of a new prime time darling, the Losties tried to incite a riot. No really! At any quiet moment over the course of the show they would shout "Oceanic 815!" When a guy was engulfed in flames from an exploding car on screen they laughed! That is so embarrassing! And such poor manners! Now I might fraternize with the borderline- mentally retarded but they are nothing if not decorous. I was horrified by their Joe Wilson- like behavior, but truth be told, it did make me feel a little better. I guess the whole unseemly experience just credits the old Groucho Marx adage: I don't care to belong to a club that would accepts people like me as members."

Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?

2009-09-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

Writing for a high- traffic web- based publication has many perks. For example, I'm actually pushing a stripper off my lap right now so I can get down to business and "work." I am often stopped in public (airport security, for example), I get all the NPR I can listen to streamed LIVE right to my desk (for free), and as sole proprietor, my boss (me) assigns me heaps of sleuthy investigations. My latest charge of undercover gumshoe work turned out to be a wild exercise in anguish and newly enhanced misanthropy. That's right, I joined a millionaire matchmaker service. Not the Millionaire Matchmaker, I would have never made the cut. My figure fluctuates between zoftig and Rubenesque.

Because life is essentially a series of humiliations spiced up by disappointment, one needs to pursue romantic companionship to add that other necessary element: despair. Since my type-- the homeless, Okies, hunchbacks-- have not been loving me lately (I recently had a guy bail on me because he "didn't know what day it was." This was almost as good as the last guy, who said, "I don't know where my body is in space.") So why the hell not turn to the affluent, the flush, the bourgeois, the robber barons, the carpet baggers, the MILLIONAIRES?! Show me the money, daddy!

Please let the following encounter read like an Edith Wharton morality drama that teaches what happens to shabby girls who play with the richies. Or like Gossip Girl. This is a didactic tale of Windsor knots and woe. Everything that follows is so central casting, not even I could write something so trite.

Ok, so I arrived to the restaurant, which was a pre- recession, Carrie Bradshaw monstrosity of ice sculptures, lycheetinis, house music, banquettes, and Buddhas. How uncouth in our piss poor economy! Shaming these ostentatious displays of opulence has been the sole subject of The New York Times' Style section for the past 12 months. So instead of the lithe models who frequented this establishment a decade ago, the clientele consisted mostly of eastern European tourists and Japanese businessmen, who probably queried my date in regard to my madame and day rate when I excused myself to the ladies' room. I saw my millionaire, who I recognized instantly by his dazzling sparkle shirt and thimble sized- cufflinks. Here's a direct transcription of our first meeting:
MM [millionaire man]: Did you drive here?
PZ: Are you kidding?! I haven't driven since 2001, much to the benefit of society at large. I took the subway.
MM: Oh, I don't take the subway. It's dirty and I'm afraid of getting mugged.
PZ [aside]: What the?!

So after we discussed his hovercraft and I informed him that Koch cleaned up the subways way back in the '80s, we ordered Kobe beef (serious) and moved on to the subject of travel.

PZ: India is top on my list, right after Tijuana.
MM: I had the chance to go to India for work, but luckily got out of it. I don't like seeing poverty or poor people.

[Amazing! It's Dickensian! The massaged calf arrived and I gobbled it up like an orphan, and then on to home decor]

MM: I have three plasma screens in my living room.
PZ: Oh you'll have to excuse me, I forgot where my body is in space.
You guys, seriously, I don't hate rich people nearly as much as MM hates poor people, but this guy (who is obvi tres nouveau) was talking like Marie Antoinette. And do you know what I say to you, millionaire matchmaker? Let them eat cake! The millionaires, that is! I'm going back to the methadone clinic to find me a man! Forgive me, baby daddies, if you thought you were forsaken. And I'm filing a complaint against my boss for making me endure such muckraking. Wait a second....

God Bless America!

2009-08-30T12:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm fresh back from a few days in our nation's capital, and I feel patriotic, goddamnit! I know patriotism isn't "cool" or whatever, but nothing inspires good- natured jingoism in our national fabric than overhearing a man staring blankly at the Washington Monument and wondering aloud, "What is that torpedo looking thing?!" True story!

And as long as you stay in the white people parts of D.C. it is, like, immaculately clean. That is one thing D.C. has no shortage of: white people. They lurk around the streets after six p.m., their ties loosened and side- parted hair slightly askew, trolling for a bar with music to which they can dance offensively. If you went to a St. John's High School Dance around 1996 and dressed the revelers in Thomas Pink shirts and gave them a sense of authority on just about anything, then you would know this type of horrible white person. Oh, and the subway or "Metro" is CARPETED! I am so glad it is not this way in New York City, despite my tendency to pass out on the train and wake up in Coney Island with inexplicable contusions in ungodly places.

I visited the National Museum of the American Indian, wherein indigenous people crafted curvy bricks to build a psychedelic structure to house their arts and culture.

And they constructed a water "feature" that you can't fuck with. What the?!
And 'lil idols (Meso- American Idols?). Simultaneously frightening and adorable. What squat limbs!

Frederick Douglass, another O.G. baby daddy. He's like Frank Sinatra on D.C.'s far less glamorous Walk of Fame.

I was appointed a Goodwill Ambassador to Mexico. Here's a snapshot from the embassy. My first assignment: befriend this handsome Mexican. I extended el mano de la amistad estadounidense para una Coca. Mission accomplished.

And here I am atop the Georgetown dorms after a brief tryst with an undergraduate paramour. I was so impressed when he showed me his Congressional intern ID badge that I bought us a 30 rack of Miller Light, and well, the rest is history. I eagerly await the arrival of McConaughey Brady Bush sometime in late May 2010, and neither can his daddy, who is super stoked about the Hoyas' big comeback this year, and that they finally stopped serving faggoty turkey burgers in the dining hall. God bless America!

The Worst Person in the World: A Character Sketch

2009-08-25T13:09:00.000-07:00

Jeff JK is my mortal enemy. Here he is in his natural habitat: a bar, looking smug and disinterested in me. Notice the beady eyes in imperious gaze averted above fashion glasses. From the moment we met, Jeff JK showed me nothing but indifference. INDIFFERENCE! Most people usually hate me immediately, as they have "low self- esteem," and a handful love me (often gay men). I always fancied myself a polarizing figure, but Jeff JK just ignores me, pays me no mind, looks away, shrugs his shoulders and goes back to discussing Foucault's theory of panopticism. I hate Jeff JK! Here are some reasons why:

1. He was NEVER mesmerized by me, even when I dropped knowledge about Gilded Age utopian societies.

When I first met Jeff JK, he was writing a Master's thesis examining the welding practices of the Oneida community (or something, his facial hair distracted me: ironic or earnest? You decide.), and when I was all, "Oh, you mean John Humphrey Noyes and Millennialism? That Oneida community?" He just sighed like I was exhausting him with such trifles and was like, "Whatever." My esoteric knowledge of cults and American history gets me nowhere with Jeff JK!

2. When I complimented him on his "Carl Kassel is my press secretary" button on his jacket, he did not say thank you. He just rolled his eyes at my glib practice of paying compliments.

3. He exhibits sociopathic behaviors such as atheism and vegetarianism. Atheists are heathens and Hitler was a vegetarian.

4. See that shirt Jeff JK is wearing in the first picture? He's never even BEEN to Illinois. He couldn't even find it on a map because he spends all day identifying countries like Chechnya and East Timor in case he's ever quizzed. And that tattoo on his arm is a figure eight, which is his favorite number because seven is so cliché and nine is just foolish. He just asked the artist to do it sideways because he is countercultural.

5. Once he dropped a line from a Nick Cave song into conversation (The line was "I don't believe in an interventionist God." -- Nick Cave, "Into My Arms," The Boatman's Call, Mute Records, 1997) And I was like, "Oh wow, Nick Cave is my Aussie baby daddy, we have so much in common Jeff JK!" and Jeff JK was just like, "Shut up." (But he was serious, not playful and cute.)

6. Jeff JK went on vacation (by himself) to Scandinavia (because he is racist) to try to find a girlfriend (because he ignores me).
7. Jeff JK hates the number 7! So that's where I'll conclude, just to spite my nemesis, and maybe elicit a reaction from his stone cold heart. I wonder if any of what I said will upset him? Probably not, because he'll just be like, "What blog? Paloma who?" I HATE JEFF JK!

A Fall From Grace....

2009-08-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

Hello from my sick bed!

I fell off my stripper pole the other day, and threw out my back, resulting in a "collapsed disc." I'm actually a reverse stripper: I pay people to watch me get dressed.

I found this helpful pamphlet at the chiropractor's office. It's actually a reverse stress management guide: it's a how- to for breaking office supplies, depicted by Stedman Graham.

Let's Go To The Movies!: Julie and Julia

2009-08-10T18:28:00.000-07:00

Self- described “foodies” are perhaps the most loathsome group of individuals, save imperious bloggers (I should know, I have to live with myself everyday). These precious bourgeoisie fetishize eating parts of animals that my parents transcended poverty to ensure we would never have to consume, like cow balls and bone marrow, for example. And at long last, thanks to Nora “I feel bad about my FUPA” Ephron, both constituencies- fancy food- philes and web writers in house dresses (I'm partial to the muumuu)- have found their place on the silver screen. Julie and Julia is a tale of butter and lesbian haircuts, of looking into the deep dark mirror of midlife discontent seeing it reflected in polysaturated fats.

Like my last dispatch from the cinema, the most exciting part of this outing was the events that transpired at theater. I saw this film with my mother on a typically gray Sunday afternoon in southern New England. Our showing must have coincided with a Red Hat Ladies’ trip, because the audience was dying, I mean completely freaking out, every time Amy Adams raised her voice to an exaggerated shrill (which was often) and each time Meryl Streep shrieked “Bonjour!” They were howling! Some people were even stamping their feet when our hero Julia Child flips that stupid egg. I thought we were going to have to call security. These people were LOSING THEIR SHIT. This may have been a kind of guerrilla marketing technique from Columbia Pictures to supplant positive messages in the minds of non- middle aged/ brie obsessed audience members, I’m not sure. If this had been a midnight screening of any Tyler Perry movie with the audience exhibiting the exact same behavior, they would have left in a paddy wagon. If I were evaluating this film on an applause- o- meter, rather than my own arbitrary scale based on my personal distaste for older Caucasians, it would receive four stars. But you’re in Zenaida country now, foodies.

Ok, so in the interest of full disclosure I admit that this movie gave me major blog envy. It’s set in 2002, when blogs still carry some element of hip and instead of pathos like this one. Julie Powell (Amy Adams) decides to write a wicked boring foodie blog blah blah, but she has, like, readers! What are those?!

Secondly, why the heck does she get to have this hotmaster husband who allows her to fuss about with her duck and lobsters and glycerides AND sport a lesbian haircut, and he still sticks around, and is even doting?! I can’t even find a guy to ignore me. You do not get to marry Claire’s sexy lawyer bf on Six Feet Under Season 5 and publish your blog into a book all while styling your hair into something that makes you look like Lindsey Graham in lip gloss. NO!My suspension of disbelief does not extend that far.

For those of you who enjoy tall tales and sweetbreads (SO not what it sounds like!), enjoy. Meryl Streep is hilarious, a true professional, and if you find yourself in a Sperry wearing audience in Providence, Rhode Island you will be in for a riotous good time. I am and will continue to be partially submerged in an Entenmann’s coffee cake until the premier of 2012. This is a film about apocalypse, which is a theme close to my heart, closer than beef bourguignon, unless anyone would like to feed it to me, in which case I would be very pleased and grateful.

So Sorry, Cullman Center...

2009-08-05T08:50:00.000-07:00

... that you will lose all significant funding after the world knows that you let me in for a week- long creative writing fellowship! I know, and in an economic crisis and when the whole wide world turns their rheumy, beady eyes away from books and toward the unraveling of Jon and Kate.

Ok, boorish churls, try to follow: The New York Public Library houses many books. I know you're thinking, "Oh wow, the Liberry, I've heard of that place. Isn't that where Big stood up Carrie on her wedding day?" Indeed it is, blockhead, but the NYPL also supports the pursuits of writers at the Cullman Center through the generous donations of the opulent. Past fellows include Philip Lopate, A.M. Homes, Jennifer Egan, and most prominently Edmund White, from whom I learned many things about writing and being hilarious and fabulous. During this most magical week I worked on a forthcoming polemic on the polyandryous subtext in the lyrics of the Peter, Paul, and Mary songbook. So many exciting things came to pass, here are some highlights:

Did you know that there are seven miles of books stored beneath Byrant Park? Here I am in the bowels of the stacks. Don't worry, no indigestion!

A lion! Vewwy scewwy!

AND did you know that the books are transported within the library through an intricate system of conveyor belts and dumbwaiters (a weird word)? Betcha didn't.

They screwed up the name on my office door. Elizabeth Greenwood? Who the heck is that?! This is the esteemed office of Paloma Zenaida, thankyouverymuch!

Here I am with my redheaded research assistant. She was quite adroit in the areas of coffee retrieval and foot massage.

AND I enjoyed a private audience with my celeb crush!

(See http://myinterestingandexcitinglife.blogspot.com/2008/09/celebrity-crush-paul-holdengraber.html
Yes, I just cited myself.)

We're the Brad and Angelina of the NYPL and literary things.

Thanks again, library, and again, sorry about the retrieval of funding. Totally my bad. Just wait until Peter, Paul, and Polyandry tops the bestsellers list...

I'm a Celebrity! Get Me Out of Here!

2009-07-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

So I went on a major vision quest in Costa Rica, searching for my life's purpose and challenging my mind, body, and soul in the elements. Then I went to Panama and was drunk for eight days. Then I was like, "I'm a celebrity! Get me outta here!" Some vacation highlights:

1. When Animals Attack: This monkey assaulted a woman holding an apple just seconds after I took his portrait [Ed. note: That event actually took place]. It was one of the single best moments of my life.

2. My traveling companion, Old Man Mullin, turned 43. Luckily for him, I'm dyslexic.
3. I shared tender moments with my lesbian lover.

4. I saw a man sexually objectified by a sea of drunken whores. He did not appear to enjoy it.
5. I wrote and recited original poetry in the town square for donations. I planned on splurging on the Presidential Suite with my earnings. I subsequently spent the night in Panamanian prison instead.

6. After exchanging my passport to post bail, I crossed borders as an illegal immigrant. Here I am with my coyote. "Very good price for you, rubia," he promised. La migra took our picture, then promptly arrested both of us.
7. I don't recall this photo being taken.8. I broke all the rules on this sign, save for playing dominoes. I was not fined, however. 9. Here's the morgue but I only visited, and didn't check in, fortunately. The morgue is conveniently adjacent to the cemetery. This is the one and only overture to efficiency by Panamanians I witnessed.

Ship of Fools

2009-07-27T19:09:00.001-07:00

I bet you've all just been worried sick as to Ms. Zenaida's whereabouts for the past month. How have you carried on day to day? No, I haven't been hiding out in my underground bunker where I vacationed last summer. That is so 2008. I was actually held hostage by marauders on the high seas, scoundrels dressed in costume and earnest enthusiasm. How long was I disappeared? A month? A year? Conventional time/ space continuum is moot on the stormy seas of the East River. That's right, I was being held hostage on a ship: not a friendship, rather a foeship. A ship of fools.

When my wife (pictured above, suicidal) floated the words "Saturday Night Booze Cruise"past my ears, I innocently agreed. This sounded much livelier then my typical Saturday night plans, which usually involve humiliation, crying, and a Chalupa. And this booze cruise cleverly had a theme that extended beyond "Show Your Tits." It centered on the delightful pairing of "Mermaids and Hobos." Mermaids aren't really my thing, but hobos sure are. I am most in my element around bindles, box cars, and Hoovervilles. Sounds like fun, right? WRONG! I should have known then: high concept fancy dress and veritable captivity will inevitably result in mutiny or a watery grave.

The hostage- taking episode was put on by the society hostesses (and by society hostesses I mean ComicCon Renaissaince Faire girls in their off season) Gemini and Scorpio. If you're into trance music, attention seeking behavior, Burning Man, and bisexuality, then you totally need to get on their mailing list. If not, not.

This sea slag at right was almost thrown overboard for requesting that a rotund mermaid not practice the hula hoop in her vicinity. The bespectacled nymph fulfilled her request, and then proceeded to live- blogged her feelings surrounding the incident.

It was treacherous, and I only narrowly escaped. My clumsily crafted yet surprisingly effective escape route involved tossing a tub of Vicks VapoRub overboard and watching the ecstasy- soaked masses fight mermaid gill- and patchwork pant to claim the lion's share of the booty. It was a grotesque display of avatar humanity. Since my release, I have been warming my hands by the hearth of my metaphorical bunker, from whence I dare not venture out again.

Drinking the Kool Aid

2009-06-23T18:06:00.000-07:00

So since we met last, I took a bus upstate, joined a cult, was subsequently kidnapped and deprogrammed, and live to tell the sordid tale of my misadventures in mysticism!

The Ananda Ashram in Monroe, New York is part yoga retreat, part repository for the epiphanic middle aged who have checked out of life. Or maybe they have entered into the most authentic life of all? Oh fuck me, here we go again... This gorgeous antiquey farm house set on acres of bucolic woods and meadows was founded by the Yoga Society of New York in 1958 by a vaguely menacing, bearded fellow referred to extensively and early as "the guru." His picture is everywhere, and yeah it's creepy, but you get lulled into security by the Sanskrit chanting and steady diet of vegan food and sedatives.

You guys, I had such a great time! "Well obviously," you sneer, "Everyone just has a fabulous time when they run away and join cults." I hear your imperious judgements, my new culty talents include mind reading and levitating. But just check out all the awesome stuff I did:

I slept in a monastic bed.

I got good advice.

I had a picnic.

I met the Unabomber.

I saw a deer family, and had a great idea: I will open an overnight youth hostel for deer when it rains. I don't think nice animals like deer should have to endure torrential downpour, and I don't even much care for animals.

... and I did yoga, and got Ayurvedic massage (no happy endings in this cult, sadly), saw a baby bear eating out of a dumpster, was vegan for the weekend and then promptly ate a cheeseburger with a bottle of red upon my return, as per my deprogramming. But what did I learn this weekend? That like Walt Whitman, "I contain multitudes!" And so do you, you judgy know- it- all, so go! Get thee to an ashram!

Woody Allen and the Incomprehensible

2009-06-16T17:16:00.000-07:00

At the end of Manhattan, Woody Allen's character Isaac Davis deliberates over that eternal question that ping pongs through our minds in the mute moments of the day, waiting in Trader Joe's infinite line, or being molested on the subway:

"Well, all right, why is life worth living? That's a very good question. Well, there are certain things I guess that make it worthwhile. Uh, like what? Okay. Um, for me... oh, I would say... what, Groucho Marx, to name one thing... and Willie Mays, and... the second movement of the Jupiter Symphony, and... Louie Armstrong's recording of 'Potatohead Blues'... Swedish movies, naturally... 'Sentimental Education' by Flaubert... Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra... those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne... the crabs at Sam Wo's... Tracy's face..."

Two items on "Not Offing Myself Today" list are (after baby goat faces and my popcorn/ M and M movie combo) are Terry Gross and Woody Allen. And imagine my delight when these two iconoclasts of urban intelligentsia and human behavior intersected in lively conversation on public radio. Yesterday, Terry interviewed Woody about his upcoming film Whatever Works, and you have to have to have to listen to it, philistines:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105400872

OMG, you guys, I am freaking out it's so good, and have listened to it twice. TWICE! Now I know some of you won't listen to it because you have trouble taking directions, adult ADHD, compulsive masturbation rituals to attend to, whatever. But the most tortuous and oddly gratifying part of this interview, aside from Terry getting Woody to open up a bit about his pervy May- December- Asian- quasi- incestuous romantic inclinations, is that our bespectacled, neurotic hero reveals himself to be not that at all! Not even close! We have been wrong about Mr. Allen all this time. And he knows how wrong, how very, very wrong we have been, sitting on our judgy armchairs atop telephone books. Allen on his image:

"When I first started as a comic in Greenwich Village, people thought that I was, at that time, some kind of a little beatnik and someone who, you know, was a kind of mousy intellectual, and you know, none of these things were ever true. You know, I never lived in the Village. I always lived in a very nice neighborhood uptown in Manhattan.

I was never intellectual. I was never interested in intellectual things. You know, when I explain to people I’m the guy that you see in his T-shirt with a beer watching the baseball game at night at home on television, they find that hard to square with the characters that I played in the movies. But in the movies, I’m just acting.

So it doesn’t bother me, but it is something that I’ve tried to be honest about over the years and explain to people, but they don’t feel comfortable hearing it. They listen to it, and either they don’t believe me when I say it, or they don’t want to believe me because it diminishes their enjoyment, or it’s important that they have some kind of image of me that’s meaningful to them for some reason. I don’t know why. But I’ve never been – you know, I was always a very athletic little boy, always, you know, never a loner or a loser, always the first one picked on any team."

GROSS: You were the first one picked on any team?

Mr. ALLEN: Always.

GROSS: See, I wouldn’t have believed that.

Me neither, Terry, no one in their right mind would! And he then goes on to say how he flunked out of NYU because he couldn't "get the marks," which thrills me to no end, because their numbnuts admissions officers rejected me, fuckers, and their dismissal of young Allen Konigsberg just reinforces how shortsighted an institution can be. Take that! Who's laughing now, assholes?!

Okay, enough megalomania, but this interview has thrown me into a crisis of belief and perception, a perverse inversion, a kindred agoraphobic misanthropic spirit who also goes on first dates that "are as much fun as the Nuremberg Trials (Hannah and Her Sisters)." Lies! Bloody lies, orActing! Does the fact that real life Allen is not Alvy Singer make him somehow less our hearthside companion? I cannot square these two ideas and I think my pea brain might explode. Taking things uncritically at face value is a skill I have been honing over the years, and I do not appreciate this insult to my superficiality, This is like when you first find out that Santa doesn't exist (my mom finally broke the news to me last Christmas, goddammit) or like learning about infinity, I just can't wrap my feeble mind around it. Et tu, Woody? Listen to the interview and tell me what you dudes think. I'll still be weeping in the fetal position, missing a friend I never really had...an imaginary friend!

HQ

2009-06-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

Ryan Adams once asked [me in my dreams] in a song, "Where do you go when you're lonely? Where do you go when you're blue?" If lonely and blue, I typically "take to my bed" in the Victorian manner, dressing gown, hot water bottle and all, or I cry in public and frighten people. But if the question was instead "Where do you go when it's sunny? Where do you go when it's the lunch hour in the work week?" I would throw myself into his lap and exclaim, "Headquarters, Ryan. HQ!"

Headquarters is the community garden El Sol Brillante on 12th street between Avenues A and B. Please don't stalk me, I already have enough stalkers, albeit paid employees, and they are putting a major strain on my resources.

Anyway, this is truly a magical place, a whimsical oasis amidst urban post apocalyptic wasteland.
There are cheerful gardeners who barbeque daily, and the other day when they were weed whacking and shit was flying into my lunch, they even stopped instead of doing it more. People are always throwing shit into my lunch!

Here's the local wino, he lends a touch of folksy authenticity to HQ.

And here's the baby bird I adopted. He fell out of his nest with a broken wing, but has recovered capitally under my care.

Sometimes I put on a show for the homeless who gather about, outside the garden's gate of course. Why? Because I'm fabulous and cannot be stopped.

Then just a spin in the hammock and it's back to work! Herding cats can really take it out of you, but when there's HQ, no task is insurmountable.

Two Girls and a Cow Skull

2009-05-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Oh my God! How did my modeling pictures get up here?! This is SO embarrassing, I am such an idiot!

The ebullient and talented (not to mention patient) Kelsey Bennett took these photos about a month ago. It was right after Easter actually, because I showed up on set resembling a late- career Orson Welles after the weekend, where the only words I uttered for four days, between mouthfuls, were, "Mom, just pour the food on to me." I was charged with the task of hoisting myself into a teeny tiny sparkly pink Spandex Barbie dress, a most flattering ensemble for the zoftig and future diabetic. The real star of the shoot was the cow carcass, who looked like a ghost with hollow eyes, whose scent I still slightly carry. But I didn't appreciate the superior behavior of Cow Skull. He got pretty testy after a while, demanding his own dressing room and specialized craft service. Green M and Ms and Voss water? Diva.

Gratuitous.

Go West, Young Man

2009-05-18T17:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you wake up on a Sunday morning in a somewhat familiar bed, sometimes you wake up and see your pillowcase smeared with mascara and McFlurry, and sometimes you wake up so happy that it's not Saturday night any longer, and sometimes, if you're really lucky, you wake up at an intersection of all those scenarios. Yesterday, I woke up in the spindly arms of ADG aka "Hoochie Cooch" after another powerhouse night of stroking one another's hair and crying and realizing, yes, it's true, now everyone really hates me.

But not this Sunday, no, because we took the Sabbath by the balls and marched on up to the MOMA, which stands for Millionaires Only Meditate on Art, because that shit cost like 50 bucks to get through the doors! So in a moment of unprecedented grace and stealth, we got past the security guards with a disarming concoction of jive talk, bait and switch, lookie loo, general affability, and pathos (ADG told the guy checking tickets that she peed her pants and had to clean up in the bathroom). We were stealing culture!

And we found ourselves in good company because the current photo exhibit "Into the Sunset" features portraits of infamous bandits and rugged outlaws synonymous with the old west. The whole exhibit deals with that kind of California iconoclasm, mashing up different photographers' ideas of the West, spanning across several centuries. There are cholas, housing subdivisions, Hell's Angels, open roads, ragged mountains, hippies, cowboys and Indians, porn stars, surfers, roadside attractions, and all the other sad, beautiful things that make America great, and I love America! Exhibit highlights that will induce unbridled patriotism come from Edward Weston, Dorthea Lange (Okie Get Down!), and Lee Friedlander. So stop weeping and having your friends braid your hair and turn off For the Love of Ray J and pee your pants and go to the MOMA and get patriotic, philistine ignorami quasi- literate readership. It's pictures, for cryin' out loud, even less work than reading this rubbish. Pretend you're lurking on Facebook, you're used to that. The exhibit closes June 8th, mention Paloma Zenaida at the ticket counter and get a 10% off your next McFlurry.

Don't Be Tardy for the Party!

2009-05-15T14:14:00.000-07:00

You can judge a city's economic solvency by the state of its homosexuals. Walking up Seventh Avenue in Chelsea on Tuesday evening, I saw some tired looking gays, I mean SAD queens. Their once- potent muscles drooping, sallow, pallid complexions. I even saw a man wearing a denim OUTFIT (jean jacket and jean pants, slightly contrasting shades) and I thought, "Where the hell am I? This sure looks like a recession to me, Tim Geitner!" But all is not lost in the world, because 'Lil Joe threw a Real Housewives party for all the girls in celebration of the New York casts' reunion and the New Jersey casts' premier, one door closing, one giant anus opening.

I pulled a total Kelly, and was the first housewife at the party, with nary a bottle of anything, faux pas upon faux pas. We were instructed to dress up as out fave Housewife, but only Pup (far right) was up to the task. Here he is, dressed up as Simon, on whom he harbors a major crush.
Dan (in plaid, so butch) took the joke quite literally, unable to differentiate that Pup isn't Simon, he only dressed up like Simon. He flounced about all evening with his wrists akimbo, making demands such as: "Darling, freshen my drink. Mama doesn't like to be parched at a party!"

Dan admonished pseudo- Simon: "Girl, your apartment renovation is so gay it looks like the dressing room at Diva's on Polk Street!"

Pup was so embarrassed, he hadn't meant to take his costume that far, but if it walks like a Simon, and talks like a Simon....

Anyway, we watched, we drank SkinnyGirl Margaritas, we barfed. I shushed people the whole time, because I'm on Team Zarin.

Fags and and the women who love them, or hags. Two girls for every boy!

I'm in Bidness!

2009-05-12T16:18:00.001-07:00

Bonafide!

Fort Greene: A Magical Land

2009-05-10T17:25:00.000-07:00

Nestled in the bosom of Brooklyn, far far away from the riffraff and hustle bustle of Atlantic Avenue, lies a wondrous village of delightful delis and handsome interracial couples. This past Saturday was a magical day, where I had the distinct pleasure of taking a circuitous meandering through the brownstones and many wonders that this village contains.

The day commenced with a heightened level of experience, as I discovered a new key to unlocking the doors of perception. After depriving myself of all carbohydrates for seven straight days in an act of self- mutilation, I woke up on Saturday morning with a most remarkable hangover, cured only by Challah bread French Toast. I sat in a diner booth on Fourth Avenue with only my shame as company and consumed three thick slices in under sixty seconds. I was so full that I reached a new state of consciousness. I was actually hallucinating.

And so began my journey to this neighborhood that is but a ten minute walk from my residence yet worlds and worlds away. My first encounter was with a troupe of Vaudeville Players pictured here. The dark haired lady at right is the Hoochie Coochie girl, and the other three performed a rousing rendition of "Hooligan's Troubles." Then the fair- haired bicycle beauty performed the astonishing feat of riding through a double loop- the- loop apparatus, while keeping the contents of her basket intact! Amazing! Then the whole gang danced the Shimmy- Sha- Wobble and I just knew it was going to be a great day.

The family who lives in the blue house came outside and tried to adopt me. But I had to politely decline. "Sorry guys, I already belong to a healthy, functional family that nurtures the individual while simultaneously cultivating a loving collective unit."

The townspeople heard of my visit, so they just threw together a haphazard block party in my honor.

Even my legs are less white in Fort Greene.

Here are some trinkets the humble peasants tried to bestow upon me, but I would not be so bold as to accept, because....

... they presented me with the crown jewel! A unicorn and a vulture sharing the same page! Somehow, they managed to distill my essence and hand- illustrate a bizarre children's alphabet book and age it so as to look antique. Those villagers sure know how to treat a girl. On any day, I am either unicorn or vulture or both, but on that special day I was unicorn through and through. Thanks Fort Greene! I'll never forget you.

Upon the Ocassion of My 42nd Birthday

2009-05-06T17:34:00.000-07:00

I celebrated my 42nd birthday last week (that's right, I work out) and received many exceptional gifts, so remarkable in fact that YOU (mom) must see them.

1. A Friendship Collage
In the throwback of junior high, with scissors and glue, my best girlfriend Pup composed an homage on his bedroom floor to our enduring non- sexual love affair starring Barbie and Ken and Marc Jacobs and Rachel Zoe ("That's us when we're old!"). The Golden Gate bridge is a tribute to the town where I found Pup cage dancing at the Bar on Castro, slathered in whipped cream and lube, and saved him from a life of purse snatching and NAMBLA conventions. The Brooklyn Bridge means that he doesn't know or love me well enough to know that I do not take the Brooklyn Bridge to get home.

Another most amazing gift I received was given by my friend Eric, and it arrived on my doorstep in an ominous box almost identical to the one Brad Pitt receives at the end of Seven containing a human head. Instead, I was delighted to find this Rembrandt self- portrait immortalized in the medium of Etch- a- Sketch. Eric has a haircut like Frederick Douglass, the vocabulary of Merriam Webster, the rhetorical skills of Patrick Henry, and the manners of Slavoj Zizek crossed with an angry lynx. In junior high school, our peers elected us to share the yearbook superlative of "Most Individualistic," which is the prize awarded to the most bellicose assholes. (If anyone is in possession of the Forest Grove Middle School Yearbook Class of '97, please contact me.) I admire Eric very much, and will now quote him at length:

"Enclosed is a paraphrase of one of Rembrandt's self- portraits from 1659 (a capital year so far as his self- portraits are concerned). I hope you like it as much as I do: this is the first Etch- A- Sketch ever fixed and as you'll see, everything that could go wrong during the process of fixing short of effacement or spontaneous combustion went wrong. The mishap with superglue to fix the dials and the ensuing mishap with the plastic- warping 'super glue remover' notwithstanding the picture still reads well, up close and at a distance." I agree!

And my colleagues got me a Snuggie. They are trying to get me in trouble at the office for wearing it at my desk, a la Liz Lemon. And my BFFFFF (my best friend foreverforeverforeverforever I love her so much!!) Pecas gave me a card that sings Celine Dion because we love Celine Dion, especially the song "All By Myself." I think 42 will be my year! Fine in '09!

Let's Go To The Movies!

2009-04-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

There are a few things in life that I despertely fear. These include lumber trucks on freeways, Asian gangs, and being lazy. I just saw a movie that played into two of my greatest fears: being pushed off the subway into an oncoming train by a random psycho (or a trained assassin who has been ordered to kill me because the Blackwater- style mercenary group for whom I work as a double agent realized that I am going to betray them because I'd rather make out with a married, dopey, delightful Ben Affleck) and vermin. That's right, I saw the new politico thriller State of Play at the Union Square Theater.

I had the distinct pleasure of attending with my BFF Brooke D who is like a less self- aware female Michael Scott with a Massachusetts accent and an ample bosom. Among us, we shared a smorgasbord of, well, the concession stand. One preview was about some homosocial (below: The Ones Who Got Away) ritual in which Seth Rogen types whine about "the one who got away." As Brooke and I mauled one another for the last Milk Dud, we locked eyes in a moment of clarity and said, "We are totally the ones who got away, and here we are."

Anyway, State of Play is an excellent escapist thriller that captured and enraptured me for several reasons.

First, I have always wanted a exciting job, maybe one that deals with crime or secrets.

Unfortunately, it turns out that I am not predisposed to this sort of enterprise. I took the preliminary personality tests for the CIA my senior year of college, and the results demonstrated that I would give up national security information if tickled. In this movie, the crime fighters are the unlikely duo of Rachel McAdams and Russell Crowe. They are hard- nosed journalists who burn the midnight oil over styrofoam coffee cups with few costume changes. I have never understood the appeal of Crowe, he looks like a droopy eyed half wit, or as New Yorker film critic David Denby described, "like a dumpling in a wig." So this case cracking duo gets to do exciting things like steal crime scene evidence from the police and spy and secretly video tape Jason Bateman in a seedy motel.

Another riveting plot twist in the evening was that between fistfuls of snack and shouting at the movie screen, Brooke D spotted a RAT in the theater. I detest all vermin anywhere, even in little shirts and when they have jobs like in Cinderella, but a movie theater is the worst venue to spot one of the devil's creatures because a) it's dark b) it is socially unacceptable to scream in movie theaters c) you can't leave because you just spent 50 dollars at the refreshment stand and if you bring all your treats out into the world a thousand eyes will judge and d) don't touch my popcorn, rat! I refused to look and had to do my breathing exercises lest I not lose my shit and start punching myself in the head in sheer terror, but homegirl swears up and down that she saw the whiskered scoundrel. We are living in "Recession NYC '00s" where rats can go to the movies, a time that we will one day become nostalgic for, a la Taxi Driver New York. Rats in the movies! A moment in time, to be certain. So State of Play gets two thumbs up for helping me face my fears. The only downside is that I haven't left my apartment since last Wednesday...

Barney Frank Is My Spirit Animal

2009-03-28T09:14:00.000-07:00

According to Native American shamanism, each and every person has a spirit animal, which corresponds to an individual's personality and essence, and can also guide a lost soul in a moment of despair. I took a quiz online to determine mine- you should totally take it, pay close attention to #6- http://www.jerismithready.com/quiz - and it turns out that my spirit animal is this handsome specimin below, the elder statesman from the Massachusetts Fourth District, Barney Frank! Ok, philistines and ignorami, Frank was the first openly gay congressman, supports bridal registration for bottoms, and wants to legalize marijuana, crystal meth, jay walking, and wearing white after Labor Day, officially.

Now this interweb- generated conclusion probably comes as much of a surprise to you as it does to me, I was certain my ebullient spirit would manifest in something rather benign and fuzzy, like a squirrel or an Easter peep or Paul Simon, but instead I get a curmudgeonly aging queen. Well, I though about it and here are the top reasons Barney is my spirit animal.

1. I am a fag hag! Barney and me would be the most fabulous girls in pearls this side of the lanai! We would lounge around in kimonos and face masks and say things to each other like, "Well, honey if that pint of cookie dough you've been clutching to your bosom is 'lo- fat and organic' then I'm Beyoncé."

2. He talks like he has a mouth full of novacaine and bologna.

3. He's a Masshole! Sure, he's dressed it up in a sort of workaday populism to appease the voting bloc that adores him, but Barney still knows that an overturned bar stool can hospitably seat Jeter and A- Rod after they have performed fellatio on one another. In the 617, we call it TITLE TOWN! Frank does not pahk his cah in Hahvahd Yahd, he yields in a rotary, has a wicked mint summer share in Dennis Port and goes candle pin bowling after a Happy Ending sundae at Friendly's.

4. We are both polarizing figures.

5. We have the same body type. I often get confused for him, lookswise. Not only is Frank my spirit animal, he's also my celebrity lookalike.

6. Watch and learn. He is charm and grace personified...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlyJmhwa1c0

Complimenti, You Bitch!: For My #1 Baby Daddy

2009-03-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

When I was 18, I got a tramp stamp. It is on my lower back, a most unflattering area of anyone's body really. A place where everything wrong intersects. All out of love, love for a man, a thug life declaration written in Old English font. With O.E., you are either thug or fabulous and either way you win. And win I did with this shout out for my number one baby daddy since AP English and 4EVA: T.S. Eliot.

A natty dresser and fastidious follower of fashions, a banker turned namby pamby poetry boy, high Anglican, a misogynist, an elitist, and wrote at the end of his life what would become the musical Cats. Dream man! My kind of guy! A poncy haberdasher, a crumudgeonly diva. Mon semblable! Mon frére!

The tramp stamp tat I reference is a line from "The Lovesong a J. Alfred Prufrock," and no I won't tell you which, put down the crackpipe and pick up a book knucklehead. Despite it's romantic title, all garden variety Eliot scholars and semi- literate self- styled critics agree that it is really more of an ode to indecision and feeble inaction. Dude thinks he's like Hamlet or something when all he really wants to do is make out with chicks but can't because he'd rather wander around the docks of Boston with his thumb up his ass, not to mention he's actually in love with his BFF Ezra Pound. Whatever.

My non- traditional and optimistically literal interpretation puts forth that this is in fact a piece about the joy and sorrow of growing up, about trolling half- deserted streets at dusk, of works of hands and days, and slurping coffee from spoons, of feeling like a big weirdo and of being in love, uh hello, that's in the title. And maybe it's not about being in love with a woman or a man but being in love with the possibility that stretches out before your late adolescent eyes, or all that is in store for you, one night cheap hotels, the toast and tea, and the million allusions to conversations and all the great books you will maybe read in college. I took the Suessian approach of "Oh, the Places You'll Go" rather than the Dante read. Yeah I know, the inscription is from the Inferno, not Green Eggs and Ham but "I am no prophet- and here's no great matter."

And then there's the Waste Land which at my current rate of expansion I may be able to tattoo across my backside in its entirety someday soon. Another universal truth about Eliot is that Ezra Pound essentially wrote that shit by way of heavy- handed edit, a fact I will overlook along with the criticism paid to "Prufrock." Eliot was origirnally going to title the epic poem He do the Policemen in Different Voices until Pound was like, "Girl, hell no." In a 1921 letter to Eliot from Pound, which included like one hundred changes, Pound closed his letter by writing, "Complimenti, you bitch!" (True story! Those queens were like the first Paris and Nicole.) And today, baby daddy, I extend the same to you. You, my friend, are indeed il miglior fabbro, papi chulo numero uno.

"Why Don't You Call Me Like You Used To?" Limericks

2009-03-20T14:22:00.000-07:00

I’ve incorporated a new hobby to my repertoire, which includes but is not limited to writing, modeling, and fucking people up. This newly minted pastime is penning impromptu limericks for friends and family when they screen my calls, which is often. If you are the recipient of a personalized limerick on your voicemail centering on the theme of your shoddy correspondence, then you know you have been naughty.

A smattering:

I once knew a girl named Zoe
Her hair was red and blonde and flowy
She doesn’t return my calls
I say, “What gall!”
Her ass is skanky and ho- ey

I once knew a girl named Dawson
She thought she was all blingy and flossin’
She shops at the Greendale Mall
Her hair is a weave, not a fall
My salad she’ll soon be tossin’.

How obscene! That is certainly my most racy limerick to date, but a limerick must be bawdy! I really need befriend someone named Nantucket.

Here’s one I wrote for my mom. She doesn’t pick up my calls either.

I once knew a mommy we called Professor
She fancied herself a lady of leisure
She adores Frederick Douglass
But for her eldest daughter she is loveless
Mom please pick up, I am a national treasure!

Public Enemy #1

2009-03-03T19:04:00.000-08:00

Paloma the Giant has a posse.

Why I Will Never Find a Boyfriend

2009-03-01T08:43:00.000-08:00

New York City, Saturday night 10:30 pm:

Thank You For Being a Friend: The Golden Girls Musical

Style Forecast

2009-02-23T14:44:00.000-08:00

Anything for Selenas!

That's right girls, I said it, I called it, you read it here first.

Selena, who never stopped being a fashion/hair/music/ lipliner icon for some of us will resurface on the gutter streets soon, like soon soon. I'm currently wearing a long- sleeved mauve semi- precious gem encrusted unisuit that accentuates the derriere. Twink tanktop impresario Alexander Wang, who dresses the well- heeled and slovenly, is referencing the first 90210 incarnation in blazers and bustiers. Derek Lam is channeling your mom circa '91 with over sized blazers, jumpsuits abound in their ubiquity, and Mexico is all up in the hipster lexicon lately. Next stop is south of the border!

So eat your heart out Anna Wintour. Or give me a job.

Can anyone give me a job?

R.I.P.
From top right:
1. Loves it!!!
2. Perfection.
3. Channeling Asian strip mall glamour shots.
4. A cheap impostor, but you're beginning to understand...

How Paloma Got Her Groove Back

2009-02-23T14:34:00.000-08:00

Ay mamacitia boriquita pecita juega pequetitia!!!!!! Vacation slide show! Now that I have captivated you dear readership (mom) in a precarious combination of horror and intrigue, I inflict a spring break scarp book upon your retinas. No wait please don't go, you're so lovely and I'll be far too lonely....

Here are some highlights:

1. Ponies! Ponies! Ponies! Everywhere! Ponies'll getcha groove back.

2. Puerto Rican men are such cads! My menagerie of gentleman callers (wow mixing Tennessee Williams metaphors), is characterized by small time drug pushers and Romanian club promoters, now extends to the adolescent castaway demographic. A car full of these Boy Scouts did a drive- by of me and Pecas screaming, "Hey motherfuckers!" I deduced that they were either my new besties as only my friends can speak to me that way, or that they imagined this phrase was synonymous with other "F" verbage. Puerto Rican boys are full of sugar.

3. A band was born, and we are called One Man's Trash. If you are a USF alumnus or a very bad man who lived in San Francisco between 2002 and 2006, you may be familiar with the screeching shrill of the artists formerly known as the Unfuckables. As is Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds/ Grinderman, so is The Unfuckables/ One Man's Trash. A satellite project. Hits include "Slow Boat to Nowhere" and "Soverit." My stage name is Small Game. You may henceforth refer to me as such.

Please don't molest me.

I have never been cooler than at right.

See the world through Pecas' evil eyes at www.zoebanks.blogspot.com