Category Archives: life in new york

family, life in new york, mawidge

"what’s an iPhone?"

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My office gave us a free half day today — to prepare us for the glories of a free day tomorrow, I imagine. I live such an exciting life that my first thought was, “Terrific! I can go to the library!”

But it’s weird, you know? That the library is generally only open during work hours, and I, um, *work* during those hours. To fill my obsessive need for the library (or rather its resources) I spend a decent amount of time trolling its website and planning my Saturday mornings. But today! With my unexpected freedom, I skipped over at my convenience carrying three books to return (Handler, Eisenberg, Sayers), and skipped back, carrying three books that I found on the hold shelf with my name stamped on their spines (Vowell, Ferris, and more Sayers, cuz I can’t get enough). I am not ashamed to admit I was giddy both ways. At least those writers would forgive me for my unrepentant dorkitude, unlike my brother, who rolls his eyes at me just because I occasionally use the word Accio.

In an ideal world, my job would be to read a lot of books and write some of my own, with occasional breaks to shop for shoes. My hobby would be watching movies. To serve God, I would spend time with my friends, encouraging them to read/write books and watch movies. And to disturb the monotony, I would eat excellent food.

Oh, and I’d have a dog. And a lovely apartment somewhere by Prospect Park. And though the city would be Brooklyn, the weather would be Berkeley’s. Is that so much to ask?

Mr. Ben survived his bachelor weekend. I suspect he and his friends spent 48 hours and $30K at Scores, but I will not debase myself to ask. Frankly, even if they did, they could not have matched the fun my friends and I had over my bachelorette weekend: our landlord neglected to mention that the oven had a gas leak and so, in cooking our first night there, we were merrily sauteeing on the range while filling the kitchen with propane. He also neglected to mention that by, “You can boat” he meant, “If you try to boat, the neighbors, who have a restraining order against me, will try to get you to testify as witnesses in the ongoing civil suit.”

No thanks to him, we really did have a lovely time. And last weekend, which I spent in DC with my parents and my grandmother doing wedding stuff and being thrilled that my father seemed much more like himself, was also productive & worthwhile. I am not really, when I think about it, too far from my ideal world. Today I also got to buy a pound of dates from Sahadi’s and Mr. Ben and I get to eat them. Even Scooter “Scot Free” Libby isn’t that lucky.

fuelos, life in new york, mawidge

my party!

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my party!
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.

Look, it’s my bachlorette party!

Just kidding. Actually, my bachlorette party was more like this:


my actual party
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.


Okay, okay, actually it was like this:


oh shit it’s cold
Originally uploaded by shorterstory.


Up in the Catskills, where those oldest wonderfullest friends of mine took me for a weekend escape, the most risque thing I did was sleep in a super bed for debauchery. It was only afterwards, once we’d returned to the city, that we indulged in my newest favorite thing, Yolato, and everyone’s all-time favorite thing, nudity.

The weekend was refreshing and nostalgic and lovely, and I’ve hardly had time to think about it (let alone blog) since. Too much to do! After feasting with a friend n her parents into the wee hours last night, I had to rise at 6:45 for an office day trip to Connecticut: 8+ hours on a bus for 4 hours of New England sun — fun, but an investment in bonding that I’m not eager to repeat anytime soon.

And Friday afternoon I get back on a bus to toodle off to DC for the weekend while Mr. Ben has his bachelor fun in Philly. After that things will calm down for a bit. Or, um, until the wedding, I guess. Which is really *awfully* soon …

life in new york, mawidge, politix

ho hum

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There are things I’m supposed to be doing besides agonizing over Michael Bloomberg. It only makes me feel slightly better to realize that everyone else is agonizing too: now that he’s an Independent, will he run? Will 2008 be a joke that begins, “So an Italian New Yorker (R), a WASP New Yorker (D), and a short Jewish billionaire New Yorker (I) walk into a bar. Who do you want to have a beer with? SUCK IT UP, MIDWESTERNERS: YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE”?

Personally, I’m glad Bloomie (no relation except via the Global Conspiracy) has turned all (I) on us. He was always too good for the stodgy gay-bashers and immigrant-hating Scrooges of the GOP; and now it’s like he’s giving those of us who like him so much license to continue without feeling dirty. You know what I like about Bloomie? Congestion pricing — I’ve walked by three car accidents recently, not counting the one that nearly took down Mr. Ben’s best man. Get the cars off the streets of Manhattan!

Also thanks to Bloomie: no trans fat lurking in the french fries and no smoking in the bars. He’s working on schools and affordable housing and he gives off the sense that if he were running the damn 9/11 monument project the ribbon would be cut already. To me, he combines sensible “big government” policies with intelligent mad managerial skillz, and he does it without incurring the wrath of the unions or the ACLU.

Not that I would vote for him for President in 08. My eyes are not that starry. We need a big D in office, if only for the symbolism. But hang in there, Bloomie — maybe in ’12? ’16?

Meanwhile, I need thoughts of ’08 to distract me from August 07, which is like a giggly little kid crouching behind a door ready to jump out and yell, “Boo!” This weekend I’m going to be Bachlorette-ing with four of my oldest female friends (they knew me when I was angry and bitter!) at a lakehouse in the Catskills. It will be fantastic. We will kayak and go see waterfalls and cook food and talk about our sex lives and reminisce about how I used to be angry and bitter before I had a sex life and oops family members sometimes read this blog. Well, anyway. I’m going to be an honest woman soon, or some feminist approximation thereof.

This chicks-only getaway was one of the few concrete wedding-related things I really wanted. I am super excited. Thinking about the wedding itself makes me palpitate a little bit — walking down an aisle? Really? How surreal. Will everyone be crying? Will I? How will I NOT be crying? — but this trip, and the 2-week trip to Tokyo & Hokkaido that Mr. Ben and I are planning for early September, are much easier to fathom.

life in new york, poetry, teeth

it’s early for fireworks

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It sounds like the city is practicing for the Fourth of July outside my window. Sadly my apartment faces the wrong way — even if I go out onto the fire escape, I can only see towards Manhattan, whereas the city sends the fireworks in the other direction, over the river by the Promenade. Maybe we’ll keep that in mind when Mr. Ben and I opt for a bigger apartment in this neighborhood.

Technically I should be in Prospect Park at the free Joan Osbourne Sings the Blues concert, one of countless free events NYC has begun to offer in honor of the delicious weather. Just the other night I was swaying to the enthusiasm of Sharon Jones in Rockefeller Park. But this evening I felt compelled to attend to one of the characters in my novel, the mother, Abby. She’s been sort of shortchanged. Things tend to happen around her, not to her, and it occurred to me I should fix that. And I haven’t had time: this week has been as packed as last week was.

Yesterday, for example, after some necessary but fucking expensive dental work, I wandered around, continuing to make purchases, on the assumption that solace could only be found in the hair of the dog that bit me. Although this experience in the dentist’s chair wasn’t as bad as the last one with the x-rays that left me in tears, it wasn’t fun. Once again I resorted to reciting poetry in my head to keep my mind off the fact that my jaw had been hanging open for an hour.

It’s funny, the poems that go through your head at such awkward moments. In fifth grade, when my teacher assigned us all to memorize and recite a piece, most people came in trotting Shel Silverstein behind them. When it was my turn, I got up in front of the class and began at verse 52 of Macaulay’s Horatius at the Bridge:

But meanwhile axe and lever
had manfully been pried
and now the bridge hangs tottering
above the boiling tide …

I was an overachiever but more importantly, my father was. I still think about poor Horatius from time to time, like when I’m immobilized and Novacained and being prodded with sharp silver sticks.

But fiercely ran the current,
Swollen high by months of rain:
And fast his blood was flowing;
And he was sore in pain,
And heavy with his armour,
And spent with changing blows:
And oft they thought him sinking,
But still again he rose.

I rose; I tried to ignore my lopsided facial numbness as I ran errands. Shopping for flatware when you can’t feel your mouth is an experience, let me tell you.

I’m also very partial to the Pied Piper of Hamelin from listening to Gielgud recite it over and over again on a tape I had as a kid. But my memory of it is spotty, sadly. You should read it if you haven’t: it’s fantastic, full of wickedly clever rhymes.

I have one more dentist appointment before this horror series is over (it’s my fault for putting off visiting one for three and a half years–and, um, for not flossing). Maybe I’ll work on memorizing something meaty and substantial in preparation. Let me know if you have recommendations.

books, life in new york

the lusty month of may

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Book news! Not about mine, really. If I want to fulfill my dream of (1) not working in an office forever and instead 2) travelling around the world in part trying to (3) escape publicity, I have to get back into a routine of writing & revising. Because sadly one has to deserve publicity before one can escape it. Unless one is Paris Hilton.

Did you know the Astor Place Barnes & Noble is closing? I find this mind-boggling, a bit like Tower Records succumbing to the fate of its tarot card.

I guess I’ll have to find a different place to buy my literary lover’s latest. Actually, more precisely, since I don’t buy from chain stores, I’ll have to find a different place to use the bathroom when I’m downtown and in need. And let me add, it is a measure of my devotion that I even think of purchase, anywhere. I am a loyal footsoldier of the New York Public Library, with cards for Manhattan & Brooklyn branches. As I am not (yet) dashing incognito to Buenos Aires when being chased by paparazzi becomes too fatiguing, I simply cannot afford to buy every book I read.

Speaking of which, though, I’ve gotten absorbed back into these Dorothy Sayers’s Lord Peter Wimsey mystery novels I loved when I was younger. They’re wonderful: witty, thoughtful, exciting, really hard to put down. I recommend them highly even — or especially — if you’ve always turned your nose up when confronted with mysteries or genre fiction in general. The ones with Harriet Vane in them are about as romantic as I get.

books, life in new york

Society

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For a while there, I had a dearth of things to read, especially novels. No one could recommend something — or better yet, plunk something into my hands — that I got really excited about, and that left a hole in my heart.

So I overcompensated.

Scattered on my bed currently are:
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
Midnight in the Dragon Cafe
Devil in the White City
and two by Colson Whitehead:
Apex Hides the Hurt
and John Henry Days.

The glut is the library’s fault, really. I requested a number of things that all arrived together. I have three weeks to finish four of them (the fifth, Apex, was leant to me by workfriend Stephanie).

After a Scrabble game this morning in which I put SQUIRE on a triple-word score for 83 points and got IODINES for another 60-something, I started Midnight in the Garden and went all googly-eyed for it. Yes, I know I’m years behind everyone else in the country in this respect. It’s just so charming! It’s all stories! I love stories. I love Americana. I love Magnolia trees and piano bars and gay-seeming, rakish gentlemen. Clearly this book and I were made for each other.

I hope the rest of the list lives up.

Meanwhile, I had a lunch at Morimoto that did indeed fulfill expectations. Sumptuous sushi arranged like architecture; really good service. The guests of honor, the author and his wife, regaled my two workfriends and me with stories from their life in Utah. They’ve lived in Vegas, Phoenix, and Tuscon, so they were braced for Mormon country, if not entirely prepared. At their first dinner party, when the wife poured herself a glass of wine, the neighbors they’d invited said, “Oh! We’ve never met an alcoholic before.”

Crucially, they seemed to have a sense of humor about it. I told them, for extra hilarity and solidarity, they should read Dooce.

After the wife visited the bathroom, she whispered to the rest of us that we had to try it. Obediently workfriend Laura and I trooped downstairs. The toilet, as reported, was studded with buttons, and while sitting but without thinking, I pressed one of them.

“Jesus!” I shouted, jumping to my feet.

“Are you okay?” asked Laura from the next stall.

I would have answered but I was too busy trying to dodge the forceful stream of water shooting out of the toilet bowl right at me. Damn thing was a bidet. If I’d been prepared I might have enjoyed it; as it was, I just got wet.

life in new york, really good food

oh so quiet

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It’s oh so still in here today, empty enough that I could take off my headphones and listen to Brian Lehrer out of computer speakers the way god and WNYC intended, if I were so inclined. Everyone from my department is at CCCC (aka, 4C’s). Although I don’t get to enjoy those specific festivities, there’s a company-sponsored bash at Tavern on the Green this evening, and before that, the small team I’ve been working with on a project gets to take our author & his wife–in town for the conference–to lunch, Iron Chef style. Yes, that’s right: we’re going to Morimoto!

I am too excited. I keep hearing the Chairman’s voice in my head. Funny, I didn’t have this problem before I had lunch at Bobby Flay’s restaurant, Mesa. There’s something about the idea of top-notch sushi that sings to my stomach like nothing else. That must be why Japan is on tap for the honeymoon.

life in new york, movies

Labyrinthine

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I celebrated a snowy St. Paddy’s Day here in New York the only logical way: I enjoyed Burmese food in the company of Mr. Ben and a couple of his friends, and then (finally) saw Pan’s Labyrinth. To kill time before the show, the group of us wandered around the upper-LES a bit, eventually venturing into Katz’s Deli to see what there was to see. Although, like 3/4 of those assembled, I’d never been there before, I felt an odd sense of deja vu scanning the huge crowded cafeteria, attributable either to my connection to a Jewish oversoul or to my having seen When Harry Met Sally too many times.

I think I mentioned, I’d been afraid to see Pan’s Labyrinth — it turns out I had good reason. It’s a beautiful film, really well-crafted from the sound effects on up, and, like Children of Men, it’s a serious punch to the gut. In fact there are a number of similarities between the two movies, and um, *SPOILERS AHEAD*:

– violence, of course, the random senseless kind;
– the grim realities of life under fascism;
– the necessity of underground resistance movements, although that’s dealt with with more complexity in COM;
– both have main characters who die at the end of the film while
– a baby lives on.
– COM is sent in the near future while PL was set in the recent past. Both arguably are about risks of today.

PL upset me more. It was harder to watch. A grown man giving his life for something, even one as lovely as Clive Owen, can’t be as harrowing as a little girl giving her life for nothing. It took me a few minutes to get past my original emotional reaction to that and be able to appreciate the artistry and the creativity, the way that the same themes emerged in the real life storyline as did in the fantasy one. Not to mention the wonderful actress from Y Tu Mama Tambien for whom, at least, the movie ended well. That’s some comfort.

i hate ann coulter, life in new york, race

a modest proposal

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Instead of banning a word that no one is allowed to use anyway except black people and Quentin Tarantino, why doesn’t New York do something useful and necessary like banning Ann Coulter? True, she probably wouldn’t set foot in our slanderous, treasonous, godless city, but in case she were tempted to have a meeting with her publisher or a wax and yet another micro-mini, I would love to have it on record that should she cross city limits, should the sun set on her presence in this sane corner of America, we will boil her in oil and feed her to the homeless.

What’s that you say? My rhetoric makes me almost as bad as she is? Oh, my friends, if only that were true. Ann Coulter drinks of the fire of Mordor the way you or I might enjoy a lemonade. Her skin is synthetic, pieced together by sweatshop third-world labor, and her soul is made of the ash of Rome on which Nero fiddled. Nothing I could do could put me on the level of Ann Coulter. Seriously? She called John Edwards a “faggot.” Seriously.

It’s time for action. Big Apple! I call to you. AC is at least as harmful to my heart as trans fats, at least as toxic to my lungs as cigarette smoke. Let’s start a nationwide trend, making it clear we have no room for such horror in our city.

life in new york

hi friends.

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I have nothing of serious interest to report, except that I’m okay. And maybe that’s worth saying. Once I stablized last week (it actually took a few days to feel normal again) I had a week like many other weeks: I went to my friend Erin’s house in Queens to play cards Wednesday;

spent Thursday evening with the remote, shuffling from Ugly Betty to The Office to Grey’s Anatomy to Thirty Rock, wondering why the only shows I watch are packed into a two-hour time block;

had dinner with friends, saw a really cute new Spanish film, then hung around in the village drinking expensive tea on Friday;

and Saturday evening, Mr. Ben and I had pizza under the Brooklyn Bridge with his dad and his stepmom, and then listened to Barge Music from the last four seats available — lined up on the side of the stage. I had a perfect, and perfectly surreal, view of the inside of the grand piano.

Sunday I did laundry, errands, cooked.

At no point did I mourn Anna Nicole Smith. At no point did I feel a twinge of satisfaction that I least I was demonstrably less crazy than the Astronut with the diaper and the pepper spray. I did however appreciate everyone’s good wishes, and do. It’s nice to feel supporting when you start taking steps.