Word on the street, as of an hour ago, for those of you who need to keep up:
Sea salt is the new harissa.
Pomegranate is the new sea salt.
Lavender is the new pomegranate.
Pomegranate is so over!
Ultimately, it's really all about tea.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Thursday, September 20, 2007
My Date with George Clooney
Alright, fine, I'm exaggerating. I haven't actually gone on a date with George Clooney. But he's filming the new Coen Brothers movie right around the corner, starting tonight, so it's only a matter of time. (OMG, what am I going to wear?!?)
In other famous-hot-guy news: Clive Owen for President! I just went to see "Shoot 'Em Up," the second movie this year in which Clive (my boyfriend) plays post-apocalyptic midwife during a raging gun battle. This one's a little funnier than "Children of Men," though. It's an insanely ultraviolent live-action comic book, basically, and it goes so far over the top that it ends up on the very, very bottom - you know, where all the fun stuff happens. But here's why my boyfriend Clive should be president, even though he's British: his character, Smith, is the ultimate Liberal Superhero. Check it out: He hates litterbugs and careless drivers; he loves dogs; he protects helpless women and babies; based on his constant carrot-munching, he's probably vegetarian; he's anti corporal punishment, pro gun control, and against rich white jerks driving luxury cars. He's perfect! But instead of whining feebly about these issues on some useless television news program like your average modern-day lefty, Clive is out there living in the world, fighting for justice, stabbing the bad guys to death with carrots or machine-gunning camera-sized holes in the backs of their heads, or even hurling them toward spinning 'copter blades in midair while parachuting away from the scene of a pretty unambiguous left-leaning political statement. All he needs is a cape. And maybe some tights.
Anyway, tomorrow morning I have to hand in a paper about the movie and the world and my reactions to the movie in the context of the world and so on. Wish me luck.
More to report soon - updates on the Brooklyn Book Fair (pretty much as thrilling as a blockbuster action movie!), "Night of Lust," the Holy Greil and (once I get security clearance) some very exciting motorcycle racing news.
In other famous-hot-guy news: Clive Owen for President! I just went to see "Shoot 'Em Up," the second movie this year in which Clive (my boyfriend) plays post-apocalyptic midwife during a raging gun battle. This one's a little funnier than "Children of Men," though. It's an insanely ultraviolent live-action comic book, basically, and it goes so far over the top that it ends up on the very, very bottom - you know, where all the fun stuff happens. But here's why my boyfriend Clive should be president, even though he's British: his character, Smith, is the ultimate Liberal Superhero. Check it out: He hates litterbugs and careless drivers; he loves dogs; he protects helpless women and babies; based on his constant carrot-munching, he's probably vegetarian; he's anti corporal punishment, pro gun control, and against rich white jerks driving luxury cars. He's perfect! But instead of whining feebly about these issues on some useless television news program like your average modern-day lefty, Clive is out there living in the world, fighting for justice, stabbing the bad guys to death with carrots or machine-gunning camera-sized holes in the backs of their heads, or even hurling them toward spinning 'copter blades in midair while parachuting away from the scene of a pretty unambiguous left-leaning political statement. All he needs is a cape. And maybe some tights.
Anyway, tomorrow morning I have to hand in a paper about the movie and the world and my reactions to the movie in the context of the world and so on. Wish me luck.
More to report soon - updates on the Brooklyn Book Fair (pretty much as thrilling as a blockbuster action movie!), "Night of Lust," the Holy Greil and (once I get security clearance) some very exciting motorcycle racing news.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Picture Time
My poor old eyes are temporarily tired of looking at words, so for now I'm copping out and globbing photos only. Here are a few from my first two weeks in town.
View from the window of the hotel where I stayed the first couple of nights, at the Gowandus edge of Park Slope:
Below, the only slightly less glamorous view from the window of my apartment in Brooklyn Heights:
A random street close to where I live (there are much prettier ones even closer, but I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me when the light is nice):
On the way back to Brooklyn from school:
And finally, a bunch of scenes from my commute -- I live just a couple of blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge. Sweet!
View from the window of the hotel where I stayed the first couple of nights, at the Gowandus edge of Park Slope:
Below, the only slightly less glamorous view from the window of my apartment in Brooklyn Heights:
A random street close to where I live (there are much prettier ones even closer, but I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me when the light is nice):
On the way back to Brooklyn from school:
And finally, a bunch of scenes from my commute -- I live just a couple of blocks from the Brooklyn Bridge. Sweet!
Friday, September 07, 2007
Little girl in the big city
So far so good, man. Been here more than a week and I have yet to be mugged, lost, or trampled beneath the shiny-shoed feet of excited stockbrokers. My new hut is pretty awesome. I have my own little studio apartment, without the annoyance of a kitchen, but with a fridge - an implicit endorsement of eating only uncooked snack food at all times. (There is a microwave down the hall.) The building is an old hotel in historic Brooklyn Heights, two blocks from this waterfront promenade with awesome views of the Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan skyline and Statue of Liberty. It's the nicest neighborhood I've ever lived in. And the subway practically stops in my basement.
I "moved in" on Saturday, which entailed dropping off my suitcase and backpack and getting the mailbox key. (Send cookies!) Then met up with my friend Brenda, whom I've known since about 5th grade or so, and a friend of hers who lives right across the street from me, it turns out. We went on a little tour of the irritatingly named DUMBO neighborhood, then headed to Chinatown and some Lower East Side wandering. Stops included Moby's tea shop, a Vietnamese sandwich joint and a place that serves only rice pudding.
That evening Brenda and I went over to Williamsburg to hang out with our friend Damian, aka Mr Handsome, aka DJ Dieselboy (he's famous!). I've known Damian since kindergarten. He still looks the same:
(I'm the one in the Ernie shirt.)
Damian has this awesome loft in Williamsburg and an adorable girlfriend who cuts the hair of famous people. He travels the world as a highly sought-after drum-and-bass DJ. And he's from Rye! Hilarious. Anyway, he took us out on the town in a fashion that I won't be able to replicate ever, probably, or anyway not until I win a couple of lotteries and hire a fashion consultant. First we had dinner at the coziest little Italian place, somewhere on the Lower East Side (I think). After that it was time for the cocktail tour. We followed him obediently, and he led us into...a tiny, fluorescent-lit hotdog joint. Hmm. Then he disappeared, apparently to make a phone call. Confusion reigned...until the back of the phone booth opened up and, voila, there was a fancy cocktail bar on the other side. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to me since I arrived in New York. A secret bar, entered through a phone booth! Can you beat that?
Plus, the cocktails in there were tasty as all get-out.
The place is called PDT, for Please Don't Tell. Oops. After that, we went to Death & Co., another very fabulous cocktail lounge, where I had something called the Cinder - tequila something something something, with smoked sea salt on the rim. It was excellent. Smoked sea salt! Are you kidding me? I wanted to order something like a WD40-infused PBR-and-sweat margarita, to combat the weirdness, but then I thought they'd probably be able to make it, which would just be too weird.
We finished off the evening back in Damian's hood, at a cafe thingie that I really want to go back to, but can't remember the name of - but it had the best dessert on earth. Will investigate further.
Next day we all met up for brunch - it came with a salad! (Says the bumpkin, amazed.) Brenda and I explored junk shops and stared at area hipsters. Williamsburg is where the Hipster Shuttle from outer space crash-landed back in 1986; the few starving and exhausted hipsters who arrived on Earth in the shuttle, much like Gremlins, multiplied and became hideous when exposed to a combination of beer and college rock. They of course went on to infest the nation and the rest is history, but this is the neighborhood where it all started. Sort of thrilling!
That night, after a dinner of expensive pizza and a failed attempt to replicate the previous evening's cocktail bonanza, Brenda and I and my friend Snively (from college, a million years ago!) accompanied Damian to work. He had a gig at a rave on a boat that started at midnight and sailed until 3am. It was awesome. Each beer cost twentyfive dollars, but we got to ride the boat free of charge, heard three DJs (Damian was best), floated under a bunch of bridges and circled the Lady Statue herself in the crazy hours of the night. Pretty fun. At one point we floated toward this featureless concrete building. "What's that big slab of concrete over there in the middle of the river?" I asked Damian. "New Jersey," he said. (I'm still not sure.)
I had my first class on Tuesday. My professor said all the right things; so did the one today. (The profs are Susie Linfield and Katie Roiphe, respectively, if anyone's interested. The third class is a nuts-and-bolts reporting class taught by Alyssa Katz.) It's like they've been reading my diary (not that I keep a diary, and not that I'd write about work stuff in it if I did) and figuring out what to say in class based on their efforts to bolster my spirits, just me, personally. Our reading lists are excellent, too. I ordered a bunch of the books from Powell's, but picked up the rest at Shakespeare & Co by the NYU campus, and the guy at the checkout there said, "Wow, you're going to have fun!" It's true. All the books I've kinda wanted to read for a while but never had an excuse to make time for. In today's class (called The Cultural Conversation, which means we read a bunch of really old critics and essayists and sort of follow the thread through the eras up to now) I realized that the exciting part was being in a room with a bunch of people most of whom were really, really excited about the process of constructing sentences. It's been a while since I've talked about words and language in that way, and I guess I've missed it without realizing I did. It's also fun just to geek out on journalism in an arena that's purely theoretical. You can talk idealistically without appending something like "...but of course no one wants to hire that kind of writer" to every sentence.
Anyway. Sorry for babbling on and on, particularly when I'm talking about sentences and writing. Hypocrisy in action. Oh well - it's Friday night, I'm tired, I think I'll go read for a while, maybe daydream about what the Portland boys are doing, or rather the ones who aren't busy racing tiny motorcycles on the salt flats at Bonneville, because I already know what they're doing, and I am jealous as hell. Oh man do I have a lot of reading to do. Hooray!
I "moved in" on Saturday, which entailed dropping off my suitcase and backpack and getting the mailbox key. (Send cookies!) Then met up with my friend Brenda, whom I've known since about 5th grade or so, and a friend of hers who lives right across the street from me, it turns out. We went on a little tour of the irritatingly named DUMBO neighborhood, then headed to Chinatown and some Lower East Side wandering. Stops included Moby's tea shop, a Vietnamese sandwich joint and a place that serves only rice pudding.
That evening Brenda and I went over to Williamsburg to hang out with our friend Damian, aka Mr Handsome, aka DJ Dieselboy (he's famous!). I've known Damian since kindergarten. He still looks the same:
(I'm the one in the Ernie shirt.)Damian has this awesome loft in Williamsburg and an adorable girlfriend who cuts the hair of famous people. He travels the world as a highly sought-after drum-and-bass DJ. And he's from Rye! Hilarious. Anyway, he took us out on the town in a fashion that I won't be able to replicate ever, probably, or anyway not until I win a couple of lotteries and hire a fashion consultant. First we had dinner at the coziest little Italian place, somewhere on the Lower East Side (I think). After that it was time for the cocktail tour. We followed him obediently, and he led us into...a tiny, fluorescent-lit hotdog joint. Hmm. Then he disappeared, apparently to make a phone call. Confusion reigned...until the back of the phone booth opened up and, voila, there was a fancy cocktail bar on the other side. It was the most exciting thing that had happened to me since I arrived in New York. A secret bar, entered through a phone booth! Can you beat that?
Plus, the cocktails in there were tasty as all get-out.
The place is called PDT, for Please Don't Tell. Oops. After that, we went to Death & Co., another very fabulous cocktail lounge, where I had something called the Cinder - tequila something something something, with smoked sea salt on the rim. It was excellent. Smoked sea salt! Are you kidding me? I wanted to order something like a WD40-infused PBR-and-sweat margarita, to combat the weirdness, but then I thought they'd probably be able to make it, which would just be too weird.
We finished off the evening back in Damian's hood, at a cafe thingie that I really want to go back to, but can't remember the name of - but it had the best dessert on earth. Will investigate further.
Next day we all met up for brunch - it came with a salad! (Says the bumpkin, amazed.) Brenda and I explored junk shops and stared at area hipsters. Williamsburg is where the Hipster Shuttle from outer space crash-landed back in 1986; the few starving and exhausted hipsters who arrived on Earth in the shuttle, much like Gremlins, multiplied and became hideous when exposed to a combination of beer and college rock. They of course went on to infest the nation and the rest is history, but this is the neighborhood where it all started. Sort of thrilling!
That night, after a dinner of expensive pizza and a failed attempt to replicate the previous evening's cocktail bonanza, Brenda and I and my friend Snively (from college, a million years ago!) accompanied Damian to work. He had a gig at a rave on a boat that started at midnight and sailed until 3am. It was awesome. Each beer cost twentyfive dollars, but we got to ride the boat free of charge, heard three DJs (Damian was best), floated under a bunch of bridges and circled the Lady Statue herself in the crazy hours of the night. Pretty fun. At one point we floated toward this featureless concrete building. "What's that big slab of concrete over there in the middle of the river?" I asked Damian. "New Jersey," he said. (I'm still not sure.)
I had my first class on Tuesday. My professor said all the right things; so did the one today. (The profs are Susie Linfield and Katie Roiphe, respectively, if anyone's interested. The third class is a nuts-and-bolts reporting class taught by Alyssa Katz.) It's like they've been reading my diary (not that I keep a diary, and not that I'd write about work stuff in it if I did) and figuring out what to say in class based on their efforts to bolster my spirits, just me, personally. Our reading lists are excellent, too. I ordered a bunch of the books from Powell's, but picked up the rest at Shakespeare & Co by the NYU campus, and the guy at the checkout there said, "Wow, you're going to have fun!" It's true. All the books I've kinda wanted to read for a while but never had an excuse to make time for. In today's class (called The Cultural Conversation, which means we read a bunch of really old critics and essayists and sort of follow the thread through the eras up to now) I realized that the exciting part was being in a room with a bunch of people most of whom were really, really excited about the process of constructing sentences. It's been a while since I've talked about words and language in that way, and I guess I've missed it without realizing I did. It's also fun just to geek out on journalism in an arena that's purely theoretical. You can talk idealistically without appending something like "...but of course no one wants to hire that kind of writer" to every sentence.
Anyway. Sorry for babbling on and on, particularly when I'm talking about sentences and writing. Hypocrisy in action. Oh well - it's Friday night, I'm tired, I think I'll go read for a while, maybe daydream about what the Portland boys are doing, or rather the ones who aren't busy racing tiny motorcycles on the salt flats at Bonneville, because I already know what they're doing, and I am jealous as hell. Oh man do I have a lot of reading to do. Hooray!
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