Not So Green, and Sometimes a Little Bit Clouded

These eyes are not so green anymore, and sometimes they're a little bit clouded. Sunday will be a year and half of being here, so it's funny to read back on when I was so new. I'm not a veteran -- it takes a long time to get that way -- but I'm no longer the wide-eyed newbie, though I try to remember how that felt, and to bring that sense of wonder whenever I can. Sometimes I'll spin around and see a detail on a building I've never seen. Sometimes I'll tread a street in a direction I've never gone. If it all becomes too familiar and too much a blur, I challenge myself to find the newness: in that is the gratitude I want to keep.

I haven't become jaded, but I've been for a while in a job I don't like, which is kind of like being in a marriage you don't like, I'd imagine, in all the ways you have to subvert your true self, and the ways in which you justify it to yourself to keep on being in it, even though you know it's bad for you. It's quite a blow to self-respect. That might sound dramatic, but I'm not a person who can say, this is what I do all day -- over here, this is what I am. The two have to align for me to be happy. I suppose that's how it should be for all of us, but when I'm in a position to make it so, there's probably no excuse to be unhappy in my occupation. Not the recession, not anything -- when I compel myself to do a task I despise, I lose a certain amount of self-regard. If I'm not looking out for myself, who is?

At any rate, the job I hate is copyediting, which for me might as well be sweeping the floor -- in both jobs, you're cleaning up other people's messes. It's just that I'm allowed to do so little, when in the past I've done so much and more. And the act of sweeping and scrubbing the text until it's shiny turns my own mind soft, so that, by the end of the day, my attentiveness to others' work has sucked out any energy I might have dedicated to my own.

I've made steps forward. I found other part-time work: Reporting for the irascible, irreverent, rollicking city tabloid the New York Post, for which I'm sent around the five boroughs to stir up trouble and ask questions in such a way that I can deliver the sensationalist opinions my editors demand. I like it -- it sends me where I'd never go and where I've never been before, it gets me out of my shell to talk to people, and it gives me a taste of the kind of journalism I'd previously only read about. Sometimes my editors do not so much talk to me as bark -- I imagine them in fedoras, cigars, brandy. Probably all those trappings are absent anymore, but the gruffness, the lust for the story, still remains. This is the world I should keep up -- the other I must shed.

I never used to talk about work on here, and that's because I hardly had any. Now I have a lot and I suppose it's good -- New York is a city better enjoyed with money. And yet, I was in many ways happier then, newly arrived and underemployed, eating my thrice-weekly four-for-a-dollar dumplings. There's a lesson here. I just need to find a way to reconcile it with my hungry ambition.

Action Needed

Well, after more than half a year of not writing, these eyes are a little less green. But the city is still wondrously seductive. I try to look at it every day as if I just got here, and my heart jumps each time I traverse a block I've never been down.

And speaking of seductive, about the title of this post... "Action Needed" is a step in the Chemistry.com rating process, to which I just silently retorted, "Duh, why do you think I'm on here in the first place?!" Honestly. Doesn't anyone think these things through? Maybe they're operating in Engrish. Yes, I am doing online dating, and I'm not afraid to shout it out. I am looking to fall in love, so if you know any sweet funny boys of dark hair and medium height, send them my way. (Maybe love is merely a matter of networking; if this works out, there might be a great style section story here.)

Okay, so I may be back to blogging again. It's bloody hot, but somehow the creative juices are jumping rather than sluggish. I think it's because I quite my job. Er, kidding. But I did scale back to three days a week at New York mag, so I'm no longer turning my brain cells to goop copyediting for 10 hours straight five days a week. Merely three, and I'm freelancing the rest of the time. Today I was out and about in the city. I think I walked about 10 miles in the heat. I saw things, spoke to people; I'm inspired again. Watch this space.

Woo hoo! Story on Nymag.com

If you can't celebrate accomplishments on your own blog, where can you? I've been copyediting for Nymag.com (New York mag's Website) for months and thinking, "I could write something along those lines." It's just been a matter of coming up with ideas, and I've pitched a few things that didn't quite pan out.

This morning, though, I proposed an idea that the editor liked, and by the afternoon, my story was posted on the 'Daily Intel' blog. Just the pace of Online versus print is boggling.

Read the story here. It's on the ever-important topic of megayachts, naturally.

It's happening

When I moved to the LES I knew I'd probably watch it change - it's one of those neighborhoods that has a nice mix of longtime residents (the "real" people), plus hipsters and young professionals. Which means on the same street you can likely buy a $15 cocktail and a $2 hot dog. Until recently, that is.

Thanksgiving week, both the Clinton Papaya on the corner, purveyor of hangover-busting egg sandwiches, and Mama's, two doors down, peddlers of morning cheeriness and $4 breakfast deals, both closed their doors. Since it happened at the same time I thought maybe rats? But worse than rats, rising rent. Nymag.com just confirmed that Papaya is closed for good (R.I.P.), and Mama's might revive, as I stuck my head in there the other morning and the guy informed me they were closed and changing management. So we'll see.

The lovely man who runs the convenience store across the street (no longer open 24 hours, as its sign still advertises) tells me times are tough. He's worried about next month and the month after, he said, and I think the world - as we know it, for now - may be ending. Last weekend, Bergdorf's, at up to 70 percent off, saw its elegant corridors trod by the parka-clad in a bargain-basement frenzy, with steeply slashed luxury goods tossed higgledy-piggledy, Louboutins flung thither and missing their mates. And Henri Bendel, that nattily French-monikered purveyor of not-cheap novelties for the posh set had its entire store on sale for a day last week.
In an apocalyptic reverie I snapped a pic:



I maintained the hope that my shopping experience would be interrupted by some stock-market scheudenfrauder sweeping in with a giant checkbook to buy the whole place with a single flourish of his pen.
But nobody has that kind of money right now. And I have no more cheap breakfast.

What's next? Will Tiffany start holding fundraiser "Breakfasts At" for tourists and tacky people? Will all of lower Manhattan become a John Varvatos store?

Internet-famous!

An interview on Ganda's food blog, Eat Drink One Woman, here.

I don't give a sh*t about celebrities

Oh wait - is that Adrian Grenier over there? I'll be right back.

La vida fabulosa in New York, I've discovered, is even more Technicolor than in other places. And that's not just because we have the best bars, the best restaurants, the best clothes and the best parties of anywhere, but because every now and then (more frequently, if you're kind of a big deal) you find yourself sharing space with a living, breathing, fun-having celebrity. And that's exciting.

In almost seven months I've encountered the following people in the flesh:

Sheryl Crow - slim in skintight ensemble; walking through the West Village one summer night.

Christian Siriano - at a Wednesday-night launch party for some men's dress-shirt company at Pink Elephant; pouting and trying to look pretty.

Courtney Cox, David Arquette, Jennifer Aniston and Ben Harper - at the launch party of their clothing line during fashion week, for which Irish is the fit model. I stood thi***s close to Ben Harper while Irish and others chatted, and was utterly tongue-tied.
Robb Thomas - later on at the Spotted Pig at an after-party midnight supper for 20 celebrating David Arquette's birthday. We discussed the hilarity of unisex bathrooms.

Adrian Grenier - Dancing up front to Phenomenal Handclap Band at an Adidas party in a former parking garage in Brooklyn. Swoon!

Fiona Apple - behind the bar at KGB during boyfriend (as it later came out) Jonathan Ames' insanely crowded reading. I remarked, "That bartender really looks like Fiona Apple in her 'Tidal' years." Wonder why.
In person, she's miniscule and exageratedly cute, with huge eyes.

I'm probably forgetting somebody, but it's a good list. I'm not one to get star-struck or super intimidated by those who are famous - I don't care about writing celeb news or reading People or US Weekly. The cool thing about sharing space with famous faces is that you know that these people with practically unlimited means and access have chosen to be in the same place you have. And that means wherever you are is likely one of the best places to be at the moment. That always makes me feel good.

Any celeb-encounter stories to share?

The Holidays Descend

The other day I caught the piney whiff of Christmas trees on Avenue A. Earlier, bad Christmas music blared from my falafel shop's speakers. The fruit-and-vegetable magnificence of the greenmarket in Union Square has been taken over by a mess of booths selling holiday junk no one needs. And on Wednesday, the line at the Trader Joe's wine store was this long:



The holidays are here.

On Wednesday, ventured out post-Dr. appointment to buy the makings for lasagna and a veggie tray for our Thanksgiving potluck. Dr.'s office is at Union Square, so I hit the greenmarket, which teemed with the holidazzled buying vegetables and wreaths and bacon that, at $12 a package, better truly be "the world's best bacon."

I bought kale, since the chard was done for the year, and beets in two colors, and I felt happy and grinned at everyone like a cartoon loon.

Then to Trader Joe's, which is too small here to begin with and always packed. I fended and fought those in the queue just to get cheese and the line took so long by the time I left it was getting dark. Then home, which I was late to, as Sabra had hired a photographer for us. Not hired, exactly - a Craigslist thing. She took our pictures as part of a series on those who are new to New York and someday she's going to make us/we're going to make her famous. We hope. She was a neat girl named Deidre Shoo and she knew what she was doing with a camera. Afterwards we all went to a bar in Brooklyn and drank some free rum punch. We hope to see her again soon.

I never made it to yoga that night, but it didn't matter because I was happy. Adam Rio was there, and we ordered pizza with leeks and sausage and Deidre became our friend, and on the walk home I had talked to my mom, and I felt loved. Later that night people came over and then we all went to see Labyrinth (what, what, Molly!), my childhood favorite, which was as good as I remembered and - as an adult - also hilarious.
It was the best Thanksgiving eve ever.

And then the next day I woke up late and Sabra did too and then I did some online stuff and then we cooked.
And soon it was 5 pm and we scrambled to get out the door and on the subway and over the river and through the hood to Aaron Goodman's place, which is a cottage in Brooklyn that used to be a carriage house. It's a miniature house, and I was enchanted to see it for the first time.

Aaron Goodman made prime rib and sweet potato pie and artichoke dip and pita and Joel made Chilaquiles and Sabra made mashed potatoes and Stovetop stuffing and Eric Alger made a veggie pie and Adam Rio brought a pecan pie and I made lasagna and chopped some veggies and brought hummus, and so we feasted. It was a gay boys' Thanksgiving, plus Sabra and me, and I took two hits of a joint and spent the rest of the night laughing and sleeping, rousing myself when necessary for trivia. I remembered I don't really like to smoke pot. And then we ate more and then it was time to leave.

By then it already felt like we'd been holiday-ing it forever, so yesterday I did a bunch of errands and then people came over and then we went out to a burlesque show. It was great - and only five dollars. No Box , sure, but also easy to get into, down the block and cheap. And then today woke up and was a layabout for hours - listening to music and such. I'm getting into new bands with the help of Last.fm - trying to expand my musical tastes. So far I've discovered I'm a fan of Television, a genre called the "Nouvelle Scene Francaise," and lots of old-school soul and rock 'n roll. I also recently was introduced to Beirut and I absolutely love them. And Aaron made me a soul mix, which he brought over last night, so it's new music extravaganza around here.

Tonight stayed in as was tired and feeling like I'd been doing the weekend thing for days. Caught up on my "New York" magazine and listened to music. Nice sometimes to keep it low-key. Pacing myself, perhaps, for the holiday hurricane to come.