halloweve

good evening, britney spears was ordered to childproof her house, so i guess this means she wil be moving out?

today i resigned my lease and revisted maremma. maremma is a restaurant on west 10th street that is roughly two doors down from where i used to live with my ex. in case you're wondering that means, basically there are two doors and my ex lives behind one of them.
we ate here once when it first opened two or three summertimes ago. it was better this time around, mostly because the bar looks smashing with pumpkins and gourds. also, they serve a particularly spicy bean dip and gooey molten chocolate cake, and i'm not mad at that. it was the men's mag family, plus ali, michael, and david grieco. david created this line called Justice Bodan and it is really gorgeous. if you don't believe me, ask her because she thinks it's great, too, and i happen to think she's rad. speaking of which, i got stuck in an elevator yesterday with four interns. i couldn't make out most of what they were saying because they had too much gum in their mouths, but i think they were talking about how they are going to bring back the word "rad." i wanted to say "how can you bring something BACK when you never BROUGHT it?" but i was afraid they were going to bitch-clock me with their juicy couture bags, and we all know the reality of being blasted with 50 pounds of metal, so i cut them off at the salad bar instead.
i don't have much else to say because it is quite possible that i shouldn't have had that last macallan. but i will say that tomorrow is halloween and while i am not stepping up my costume game, i will be watching it from such great heights.
peace with your lease,
ninJa

the incredible inedible egg

yesterday, i had an omelete for brunch. it cost $7.50 and it was the worst omelette i have ever eaten. i truly believe that it is hard to make bad-tasting eggs, especially when they are cooked in a vat of grease with fried vegetables and served with nice bread and butter, but it was awful and i considered sending it back which, in my culinary career, is something i have never done. this, however, was a special case. the omelette appeared flattened by a giant timberland boot and the vegetables tasted like a duck pond. it was inedible. it broke my heart. despite all of this, i saved the receipt and i grabbed a business card on the way out.

which brings me to this.
have you heard about it? it's a traveling exhibit and people can donate things that remind them of relationships gone bad, like an axe or a blackened liver. at first i thought WOW, i totally don't relate to this, but then i remembered, WhatTheFuckEver, you have the largest psychotically captured memento museum of all. somewhere in a crawlspace in my childhood home lies a barely-post-WWII trunk with a large shoebox inside that may as well be a withered organ. the withered organ contains things that make you want to weep, like a little pink spoon from baskin & robbins and a birthday candle and several gatorade bottle caps that say things like "bulls in five," and mix-tapes and a finger puppet made out of newspaper and about 246 match books and 369 restaurant business cards. i don't remember the significance of about 98.4% of these things, but i'm quite certain they meant something at the time.

i guess i hold onto these things more for the breakup than for anything else. i sit indian style on my bed sifting through little scraps of paper, blubbering, "we shared an apple on that bench." "it was cold in that movie theater." "that omelette tasted like feet." it's not like i would save them if the relationship actually worked out. i sure as hell don't need that kind of fire hazard in 25 years. maybe i should have a little more faith, and stop hoarding scraps of paper. maybe i should donate the shit to a museum. or better yet, here.

TYPICAL

tonight, i stopped at duane reade to buy unscented lotion, eyeliner, and inside-out junior mints, because i saw them on the show "unwrapped" and they're limited edition and they're awesome. anyway, i'm over at the maybelline section and i hear someone yelling:

"YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS NOW! YOU'RE THE MANAGER, DO SOMETHING! THERE'S A LINE NOW AND YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF THIS. NOW!"

my initial reaction was that an employee was yelling at the manager to open up another register because the line was too long, and i thought it was pretty ballsy and kind of great, because as we all know, DR is notoriously slow as hell and i have always dreamed of unleashing my fury when there are four registers open, two people on line, and it still takes 45 minutes to complete a purchase. but as i got closer, i could see the the man was not, in fact, an employee. he was all sorts of crazy wrapped up in an enormous maroon sweatshirt and topped with an olive fishing cap. he stood to the right of the register and continued to scream.

"DO SOMETHING, YOU NEED TO TAKE CARE OF THIS CAUSE I'M GONNA STAND HERE ALL NIGHT! I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE, I WILL STAND HERE ALL FUCKING NIGIHT, THIS IS WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" he said, jumping, jumping, jumping!

had the man been robbed? was someone lying in a puddle of blood in aisle 3? the manager continued to ring customers up as though this was nothing out of the ordinary. people in line looked bored and perplexed like all new yorkers do when someone is having a rage.

"WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT TWO FOOT MAN? HUH? WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO ABOUT IT?!"

i imagined him pulling out a gun and shooting all of us, eating a box of junior mints, and calmly exiting the store.

a big hipped earth mother walked over to him.

"what is with all of the racket? are you okay?"

"NO! i am TRYING to buy a glue trap."

"oh?" she said stifling a laugh. "that's not such a big thing now, is it?"

"YEAH, but because there is no BAR CODE on it, he won't just RING ME UP! AND I HAVE been to every duane reade in the city and i FINALLY find it and he won't sell it to me. AND I AM NOT GOING ANYWHERE! I LIVE THREE BLOCKS FROM HERE AND I CAN YELL ALL NIGHT!!! I CAN YELL ALL NIGHT LONG TWO FOOT MAN, ALL NIGHT!!!!"

earth mother shrugged. i was next in line.

i paid for my things, trying to avoid the spit storm.

then, a security guard entered the store.

"oh good," i thought." someone is finally here to take care of this."

he sized up the situation. he looked at the man, the manager, and the line of people. and he walked past ALL of us, to buy some doritos.

facehookers

on thursday, i had lunch at "Grayz." it is opening next week. the name is bad but the bread is crusty and the butter is creamy with fennel-laced oil in the middle. i usually don't like fennel, but in this particular case it worked. as i'm standing there trying to hail a cab, a bike messenger comes flying down the street and high fives me. it was fantastic. a real exchange. we need more of these and less of facebook.

facebok is a make-believe land apparently worth $15 billion and it scares the hell out of me. in particular, i am talking about the boys and girls who are in high school and college posting pictures of themselves throwing back shots and snorting lines and dancing half-naked and thinking these things will not come back to haunt them when they try to get a job at an ibank in 15 years. or maybe try to be the president of the united states, although i don't think that has ever held anyone back.

i am also baffled by the "mood" board, where iPeople update what they are iFeeling on the hour. "jenna is bored," it says. why not just BE what you are, where you are, with whom you are spending time with? and finally, you are not "poking," "licking," OR "touching" these people, and you never will, because you are relying on your computer to have a sex life for you.

do you remember the scene in Minority Report where tom cruise is walking through the mall and all of the stores are communicating with him because he has a chip planted in his eyeball? "welcome back, mr. anderton," they say.

i fear we are becoming robots and facebook is only the beginning.

fun fact

do you ever get so into brushing your teeth that you push up too hard and scratch your cheeck? no? well, i do it quite frequently with my electric toothbrush, usually when i lean over to turn on the faucet. i think it has something to do with my inability to multi-task. i can't do two things at once.

for example, being sick and working out. here's the thing. normally i would be plowing my ass to the gym in a blizzard if i felt it was going to save my life, however, i recently discovered that it's not. if you belong to a new york sports clubs then maybe you know what i'm talking about. they have a "clubcom" channel that plays videos by the great musicians of our time like nickelback and hinder, plus "fun facts." the videos are too loud, so i am deaf three minutes into the workout, but the fun facts are silent, like a well behaved child. one of them says:

"women live an average of 1.3 years longer than women who don't work out."

that's all?!?!! i'm sorry, but in the world that i come from, which is not real, i get six months younger for every six months that i work out, so that by the time i'm 85, i'm 25*. would it kill them to say we live, like seven years longer? it's only a little white lie and then more people will sign up to go to the gym and everyone wins. sometimes honesty destroys me. i mean, what's the point?

*you know i can't do math. we've discussed this before, so why would you ask me to do a really hard equation, especially when i'm sick?!

my rhino will kick your rhino's ass

good evening, i have rhinovirus. do you know what that means? it means your nose runs fast like a rhinoceros and you use tree bark with aloe to stop it.
some people refer to this as a "common cold."
there are 345,945* tips on how to treat a "common cold."
some advice is particularly helpful, especially the kind that comes from doctor's.
they like to say "the best way to treat it is to prevent it" when they are getting smart with us.
i know i will remember that the next time a 465 MPH* gust of mucous blows over.
someone else said to run a steamy shower while sitting on a nearby chair taking a sponge bath.
i don't know about you, but sitting on a cold toilet bowl sponging myself down while water runs "nearby" is something i regularly like to do.

the truth is, i know who made me get rhinovirus. it was the fancy fashion woman who sat next to me in a car last week.

my boss said "oh are you sick?"
and she said "yes."
and he said "well then why are you riding with us?"
and she said "because you said you'd give me a lift."
and he said "not if i thought you were sick."
and she said "well if i get you sick then you know who to blame."

so i am blaming you, fancy fashion woman. i am blaming you, your germs, your $658* haircut, and your $14,456* wardrobe, all of which put me in a bad mood, thereby weakening my immune system and causing me to get sick. you stink, and i will trample you with my rhinoceros the next time i see you so you better re-stock your tree bark.

*i may or may not have made up these numbers.

the gentrif-erosion of manhattan

i have lived in eight apartments in five years.
in five years, i have had one flood, one fire, two mice, and three breakups.
it's not a lot, but it's something.

have you ever lit a piece of newspaper on fire and watched All the News That's Fit to Print brown and curl at the edges? sometimes i feel as though the city is doing this very thing at a rate in which i can actually see it happening. maybe it's an epidemic. i feel it getting smaller and smaller and i don't know what bloomberg is going to do about it, but since it effects me directly maybe he will want to step in. i'm sure it's at the top of his to-do list, along with banning chewing gum and cancer-causing agents like oxygen and trees. or maybe i need to stop moving. if you connected the dots to all of the memories in all of the neighborhoods in which i have lived, it would spell something really twisted. or maybe not. it would probably resemble the shape of an apple, since i kind of moved counter-clockwise. how fitting.

i am most nostalgic when i am driving through old neighborhoods and scenes-of-crimes. my ribs fuse, my fingertips go numb, and i can feel the drumbeat on my neck. not necessarily in a bad way. not always. but i become so overwhelmed by sights and smells that take me back to exactly what i was doing at that moment. i can't drive by 20th & 1st without feeling this way. or 23rd & 3rd, or bleecker & 10th, or 16th & 7th...

if you hit "star D" on my life and add seven years, it is the summer of 1986 and i am sitting in the backseat of the blue volvo listening to my walkman. the FDR feels about 50 miles long. we exit the 20th St. ramp into an army of brick buildings with hunter green windowsills and i know grandma's apartment is near. i feel safe because i am with my mother and father and sister, but once we say goodbye, and i am all alone in the guest room and the lights are out and i see the gray shadows chasing each other along the walls like cops and robbers with sirens as my soundtrack, it is a different story. i am scared. i am on mars. the next day, in broad daylight, standing in the peter cooper oval underneath an outdoor shower in rubber jellies with "true blue" playing on repeat in my head, i feel safe. but 10010 still feels like the whole wide world to me. in my mind, all of manhattan takes place on that one beating block. everything is experienced for the first time during my stays there. the first bialy. the first blue whale sighting. the first "little brown bag."

then i grow up and i move in. and with each address, i acquire a new bodega, a new shoe repair shop, a new dry cleaner, new memories, and new sets of problems. we all do. that's life. but sometimes i feel like we're running out of neighborhoods. have you ever noticed that every time it rains, diversity and record stores flow down the street, and when the sun shines and the pavement dries, another banana republic has sprouted?

i wish the city could grow neighborhoods the way it grows duane reade's, and delete the parts of the old hoods that make it so hard to be here, but it can't. besides, they say the rotten parts are what give you character. they make you smart and analytical and tough and funny. and even if they sometimes ruin your coat or break your heart, they leave you with great restaurant recommendations and the reminder to never put plastic in the oven again.