D is for Denmark...Again

One of the many things on the long list of reasons why I hate New York winters is that I don’t get to ride my bike. My ex, who never went anywhere without his wheels no matter the temperature, used to get annoyed that mine always went into a winter hibernation. But truthfully, as much as I love riding through Brooklyn on a beautiful day, I just get too cold come winter time. But maybe I should suck it up and change my ways; I just found out that 80% of people in Copenhagen ride their bikes all year-round despite the snow, sleet, wind and rain. And, Denmark has topped the World's Happiest People surveys for the past 20 years. Coincidence?

P.S. Last night was the coldest it’s been in NYC in three years. Brrr.

Thanks A CUP OF JO.

Speaking of Sisters

I am so lucky to have so much of my family with me in NYC. I never thought it would be this way, being a California girl and all. But seriously I don't know how I would deal with out Dad, Jackie, Aaron, Deanna, Maisie and baby India. I spent a lot of time with them all over the holidays of course, here are some pics:

Midweek Movie

I snuck away and saw Rachel Getting Married yesterday and although there were scenes that caused more anxiety than last night’s drama and parts that moved at a snail’s pace, I really enjoyed it. The juxtaposition of the sad life that Kim has lead and the beautiful life that her sister Rachel is beginning, makes for the perfect bittersweet recipe. Not to mention that the wedding was pretty much exactly how I want mine to be, well minus the sari wedding and bridesmaid dresses and of course the sister in rehab (even the mom was like my mom). A backyard, a bbq, amazing live music and all your friends and family; what more could a girl ask for? Now I just have to get my dad to buy a big house upstate and well, go track down the dude from TV on the Radio. Oh and one last thing about the film, it really made me wonder what my life would be like if I had a sister. There is a bond between sisters that I will never know, it’s something that shapes who you are. It’s so intriguing; I guess I will just have to live vicariously through Maisie and India.

If Only I Lived in Austrailia

I need this. That is all I have to say.

Say Prune

Little baby India is already taking after her crazy auntie. Trouble.

While I’m on the Bush Tip

I love this quote from the guy who's collected all Bush’s verbal slip-ups dating back to his first Presidential campaign in 1999 (there's been over 500):

“People often assume that because I've spent the past nine years collecting Bushisms, I must despise George W. Bush. To the contrary, Bushisms fill me with affection for the man—and not just because of the income stream they've generated. I find the Bush who flails with words, unlike the Bush who flails with policy, to be an endearing character. Instead of a villain, he makes himself into an irresistible buffoon, like Mrs. Malaprop, Archie Bunker, or Homer Simpson. Bush treats words the way he treated recalcitrant European leaders: When they won't do what he wants them to, he tries to bully them into submission.”

Ever since I saw W I have kind of (yes just kind of) feel the same way. Read his top 25 Bushisms here.

A Whole New Bush

I was actually kind of speechless after I watched this — he is kind of funny and sarcastic and smug and real. Still Bush, still a douche, but certainly a more candid and honest one. Watch it; my favorite line is at the end when he’s asked about retirement. It’s also pretty good when he mimics people wallowing in self-pity. And did he always have a lisp?

Happy New Year Part Deux!

The day has finally come where I can truly start living like it is 2009. After many nights at my desk with a glass of wine (or maybe two) and many days with a bit of a hangover staring at my computer screen trying to formulate sentences that somehow show the true me, I have completed and submitted my application to Columbia Graduate School of Journalism. It’s gone. Done. There is nothing I can change now. If I get in I am stoked, if I don’t, well I will probably breathe a sigh of relief. We will just have to wait and see.

But now, I have no excuse; I have to go back to being a social normal person that doesn’t wear the same sweatpants all weekend only leaving her house to go to the bodega. But more importantly, I have to start on all those New Year things people do. I have the usual resolutions: smoke less, drink less, eat less, workout more, blah blah blah. But this year I am more focused on some goals or just shit I need to get done. Here's my list:

*Apply to grad school (check!)
*Learn how to play chess (dad is gonna teach me)
*Take pictures with my new camera (other than at my parties)
*Meet someone who keeps me interested (in a good way)
*Keep someone interested (in a good way)
*Sew all the clothes in the bag underneath my desk (finally)
*Take weekend day trips (yay Mary’s car!)
*Make my bed everyday (been doing good so far)
*Take advantage of all the art in New York City (this weekend)

Random Sunday

Although this picture was taken in Venice in 1984 it reminds me of when I was in Spain and it rained— all the women had colorful, vibrant, usually floral umbrellas and all the men had black ones. That was just the way it went. I remember seeing a bunch of older women huddled in a circle in the plaza in the rain, all you could see was bright patterns and little feet.

Someone Almost Made Me a Table, Once

For some reason this story really made me smile. Maybe because it’s about the Brooklyn Navy Yard right behind my house, but not really—it’s just nice to know that even with our shitty economy, small random businesses are thriving, or at least surviving. Picturing two or three guys in some warehouse making beautiful wooden shelving (which is so much more lovely than picturing some factory line), you might think that in a recession they would be the first to go. But in fact, niche manufactures are making it. These guys quite often sell their products locally, fucking the mass market. And there is just something incredibly sexy about a man who works with his hands. Yes?

P.S. Will someone please get rid of the snow so I can stop listening to Bon Iver?

I is for Israel

A few things I pulled from an article on the Huffington Post in which a timeline shows that Israel broke the ceasefire, not Hamas:

"We have no solution, you shall continue to live like dogs, and whoever wishes may leave, and we will see where this process leads." - Moshe Dayan, former Israeli Minister of Defense speaking about Palestinians in the occupied territories

• Israel, contrary to popular opinion, never left the Gaza strip and still controls taxation, the sea, air and land borders. If China had the same control over the United States, would Bard understand if Americans wanted to defend itself?
• Israel cannot bomb schools and hospitals just because it believes Hamas may be hiding there. It is a direct violation of international law, and therefore constitutes a war crime.

And finally here is a quote from Khalid Mish'al the head of the Hamas political bureau:

“Our message to the Israelis is this: we do not fight you because you belong to a certain faith or culture. Jews have lived in the Muslim world for 13 centuries in peace and harmony; they are in our religion "the people of the book" who have a covenant from God and His Messenger Muhammad (peace be upon him) to be respected and protected. Our conflict with you is not religious but political. We have no problem with Jews who have not attacked us - our problem is with those who came to our land, imposed themselves on us by force, destroyed our society and banished our people.”

P.S. My roommate told me last night that Israel receives more foreign aid from the U.S. than the entire African continent. Hmmmm.

H is for Haiti

It may be beautiful but it is a sad, sad place with chronic problems. One of the worst places for women to live in the world. Here are some sad, sad facts. Makes you realize how spoiled we really are. Well, at least all you need is a ball to play soccer.

• Haiti is the third hungriest country in the world after Somalia and Afghanistan
• The richest 1% of the population controls nearly half of all of Haiti’s wealth
• The poorest country in the western hemisphere
• The world’s fourth poorest country in the world
• Ranks 146 out of 173 on the United Nations Human Development Index
• Has a life expectancy of 52 years for women and 48 for men
• Adult literacy is about 50%
• Unemployment is 70%
• 85% of Haitians live on less than $1 U.S. per day.
• Haiti ranks 38 out of 195 for under five mortality rate.

Do You Miss Her?

Sometimes we all need a little bit of this cunt (sorry) in our lives, it’s just not the same making fun of the chicks on The Bachelor. So Sarah Palin is back and she actually tells us which publications she reads and why she couldn’t let us know before, well, sort of. My favorite part is when she says that a "grizzly rises up in her" when she hears Tina Fey make fun of her daughter. Oh that’s good, I need to use that phrase, gosh darn it.

What You Don't Know About Gaza

Interesting and informative facts. Read on my friend.

Snow Day

Why is Bon Iver such perfect music for when it’s snowing sideways out my window? I don’t know, maybe because he wrote it in a remote Wisconsin cabin, I’m assuming surrounded by snow. Oh boys from Wisconsin, such trouble.

P.S. The Working Class party was last night and it went off fabulously. It really does seem that each time it just gets better and better, and that just feels good.

Beach House

Listening to the Baltimore band Beach House’s album “Devotion” on this rainy Wednesday is just perfect. Rightfully so, the music is ethereal and dreamy and makes you feel like you’re (or at least you should be) floating in a pool looking out over the ocean, with a warm valium breeze blowing past. Of course I would also be wearing a head scarf, over-sized sunglasses and sipping on some sort of refreshing elixir as I gaze into the sunset. But you know what, at the same time, I could just be sitting staring at the snow fall outside the window of my log cabin sedated in blankets. Either way, it involves solitude and daydreaming. If you haven’t already, listen. I love them.

Remember Him?

Oh Eliot Spitzer is back from the dead and criticizing Obama’s “New New Deal” in which Mr. Pres wants to invest in the bridges and roads that hold our country together. Spitzer on the other hand thinks those roads and bridges are a lost cause, and that we should instead invest in robots, well sort of. Read it here, it's interesting and he has some good points. Maybe he would have been able to use them in the future if he didn’t, you know.

I almost felt sorry for Spitzer with the whole prostitute deal—sure a man likes to get laid by someone other than his wife and has such power that he thinks it’s his right to do so—not to say that it’s right but I get it. And that doesn’t devalue his ideas or make him a bad politician. But then you throw in the whole hypocrite deal, and any feeling sorry for him is out the window. As the attorney general for the state of New York his thing was prosecuting prostitution rings and their patrons, he was that guy. So yeah, he might have a valid point but is anyone listening?

Random Sunday

If only we could be riding bikes and swimming, instead of trying to find plastic to seal my windows and keep some of that expensive heat in.

Happy New Year!

BERLIN—People celebrate New Year's Eve near the Brandenburg Gate after the fall of the Berlin Wall, 1989.

My New Year’s Eve might not be as memorable as that, but I am happy about it for the first time in a long time — well three years to be exact. And I am excited for the coming year. It feels good to be going into it like this, it’s almost like a clean slate. As Ms. Diebel just told me, 2009 is year of the ox, for reliability and sturdiness. Who doesn’t need a little of that in their lives? I know I am ready for it. And goodbye to the year of the rat, there were certainly a few of those in all of our lives in 2008. So long!

No pressure tonight, just the people I love in the home I love, drinking some champagne and eating some seriously expensive cheese. What more could a girl ask for? And Mary will be the most amazing New Year’s kiss!

Random Sunday

An unseasonably warm day makes me dream of 1950s dresses, lemonade with ice cubes, and cute boys with a few sprinkled freckles.

G is for Gaza

My roommate woke up this morning to a text message from her Palestinian “friend” telling her to look at the news, at that point the death counts weren’t in and the news was still shocking. Now we know that over 200 people in Gaza have been killed and over 600 injured after Israeli airstrikes hit the Hamas security facilities. This is the highest one day death toll in decades.

I know the problems in this area of the world of so deep-rooted that an end is never in sight and I know that this Israeli attack was in response to Hamas’s refusal to end its rocket fire in Israel, but to hear of such death and first from someone who grew up in that part of the world (can’t even say country) is heartbreaking. People all deserve there own land, I know I am ignorant, but it seems so simple.

The photos in the New York Times are hard to even look at and this excerpt is chilling.

There was a shocking quality to Saturday’s attacks that began in broad daylight, as police cadets were graduating, women were shopping at the outdoor market and children were emerging from school.

The center of Gaza City was a scene of chaotic horror, with rubble everywhere, sirens wailing, and women shrieking as dozens of mutilated bodies were laid out on the pavement and in the lobby of Shifa Hospital so that family members could identify them.

I'm not Smiling

I’m sorry, I know I don’t normally put gossipy stuff on this blog — I save that for my professional life — but I was so astonished by this little number Lily Allen is wearing I couldn’t help myself. I mean yeah girl, we know you lost all this weight, but really? It’s not just simply the outfit (who the fuck makes things like this!?), it’s that according to my sources she sported the getup going to some sort of business meeting. Was she interviewing to be a high class hooker?

I don’t know, it just makes me feel weird. Wasn’t this the girl that used to wear vintage 50s dresses, gold door-knocker earrings, and the occasional pair of dunks. Wow, I don’t think I have ever said that word. But anyway, I know we all grow up, and our styles and our bodies change. But I just don’t understand this at all. Will someone explain it to me. I added a picture of her before just for clarification.

F is for Fiji

As it snows and snows it seems almost appropriate to speak of the country of Fiji, a distant fantasy land that a poor and lowly New Yorker can only dream of on such a cold winter day. Honestly though, I am thankfully not yet (the operative word) at the point where I would give one of my toes, possibly two, to have just a bit of sunshine on my little bare feet, even toeless.

Anyway, did you know that Fiji is actually made up of 333 different islands, but only one third of them are inhabited? And like the United States, Fiji is a multiracial, multi-cultural nation, and has people of all the major religions of the world. But in Fiji race relations are generally harmonious. I mean it does seem like a place that would be easy to be harmonious. Maybe we really should go there.

Let it Snow

A picture of Central Park in 1992. Do you think it looks like this right now?

Maybe it was the perfect day to stay in and be sick (am I turning into my mother?), but part of me wishes instead of spending the day sleeping, drinking tea, watching the flakes fall outside my window, and transcribing a rather lengthy interview (who wants to be my assistant?) that I could have ditched the head cold, put on my new snow boots, and frolicked in the white abyss before it turns to ice and sludge. I hope I have the chance again.

This snow makes me nostalgic, but I’m not exactly sure for what. I didn’t grow up in the snow and can you by definition be nostalgic for just the last year or year before? And if so, I don’t actually think that is the case as I am really trying to block that time out of my head. Or is that in fact nostalgia? Okay, I am no longer making any sense. Maybe it’s the fever? Anyway, I am going to venture out of the house now for a dinner with my dad, my new best friend. Big Friday Night!

Come On Man

Despite how cute these pics are that just came out of Obama in college, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed in our man. Obama has selected Rev. Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Although this evangelical believes that Christians should expand their agenda and confront global problems like poverty, AIDS, climate change and genocide in Darfur, he still is against abortion and same-sex marriages. That just ain’t cool, and the gay community is not happy about it.

Read more here.

E is for Egypt

When I first moved to New York, this dude I used to hang out with had an Egyptian landlord with an American husband. He was a bit crazy, the type who talks so much and has no sense of overstaying his welcome, that you couldn’t help but question if he was partial to a certain white (well more like yellow) powder. Anyway, he would tell us stories from when he visited Egypt, saying it was that Cairo is craziest place he had ever been. There are no speed limits and not really even any lanes on the roads and no police. A girl from my work just visited there too and said the same thing, she also said that it has one of the highest noise pollution indexes in the world – about twice the normally acceptable level set by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Salamanca 2001

My productivity is at an all time low right now. I am hungover like the olden days of, you know, last year. Seriously, I haven’t been this foggy headed in my cubicle in a long time. It’s all I can do but explore this Facebook thing. Yes, I finally gave in, and it seems that everyone I’ve known, especially those kids from Marin, have too. Surprise! Now I can join the ranks of all the other stalkers out there.

So yeah, I am doing that and I find that this friend of mine who I studied abroad with has an album from our time in Spain. It was kind of amazing to flip through those photos from over seven years ago. This one was my favorite — I can’t tell you how many days we spent by that river, drinking wine straight from the bottle, smoking cigarettes, playing guitar and feeling like we were the coolest kids on earth. Oh to be 20...

D is for Denmark

Danish architecture seems to be full of color — like Buenos Aires, or my home city of San Francisco. I keep dreaming about the baby pink, yellow, blue, mint green and orange Victorians climbing up the hills above the Castro and weaving around to the Haight.

And also with a similar SF mindset, did you know that in 1989 Denmark become the first European country to legalize same-sex marriage and offer gay couples the same rights as heterosexuals? Harvey would be proud.

Milk Does a Body Good

Saw it last night and left tearful, joyful, elated, ready to walk home in the rain and move back to San Francisco. Two thumbs up, four stars, guy falling out of chair, loved it. Go see it tonight, it was amazing from start to finish.

Election Flashback

Oh don’t you just miss it? I wanted it to be over so bad and now, even over two months later, I miss all the uncertainty. I think I might get off on that just a little bit, but that is a whole other issue, saved only for late night conversations and therapy sessions. Well anyway, Time mag just released its Top Ten of Everything for 2008 and it was nice to look at the top ten campaign photos. My favorite pic was the same as theirs. As I said 12 days before the election, that look is priceless. Almost as priceless as when the Iraqi journalist threw a pair of shoes at George W this weekend. That old W has actually got some pretty quick reflexes, but I bet Obama could kick his ass in a pull-up competition.

C is for Croatia

My brother Andrew, the little jetsetter who has been everywhere, sailed around Croatia a couple years ago with eight others and came back saying that it was the best trip he has ever been on. That’s saying a lot for a little jetsetter. It is supposedly more beautiful than one can imagine. It’s where I wan to go on my honeymoon. Who wants to go with me?

B is for Bangladesh

Did you know that Russia’s population is slightly smaller than Bangladesh, but the actual country is at least 120 times bigger? Quite crowded, yes. It’s actually one of the highest population densities in the world.

Nice Shades

A few years ago, I can't remember if I was home visiting for Christmas or if I still lived in SF, but I was at the townie dive bar in my home town and I met this guy who had just come back from Iraq. He showed me all his photos and I made him give me the one of him standing next to a 50 ft. mural of Saddam dressed in camo with a big old gun. It's not on my wall anymore, but I still have it. I love that picture. Is that weird?

It's 1993

It’s raining, I’m listening to the Cranberries. More nostalgia on this dreary Thursday afternoon. Kind of wishing I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt sitting in Bryn’s closet.

Who gave them the right
Waltzing back into
your liiieeeeiiiife, your liiiieeeeiiiife, your liiiieeeeiiiife
Now I feel fear
I wish that they'd never come hee-ee-eee-re, hee-ee-eee-re, hee-ee-eee-re
What they gonna do, what they gonna do
What they gonna say, what they gonna say
Taking you away from
my liiieeeeiiiife, my liiiieeeeiiiife, my liiiieeeeiiiife
my liiieeeeiiiife, my liiiieeeeiiiife, my liiiieeeeiiiife
La-haaa, La-haaaaa
La-haaa, La-haaaaa

A is for Argentina

La Boca, Buenos Aires

Did you know that in October 2007 Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner became Argentina's second female president. Isabel Peron, Juan Peron's second wife, was the first female president of the country. Way ahead of us.

Three Years of Love

So as I am sweeping the fake snow off the floor from the party this afternoon (yes, I know it’s been awhile) looking at all the snowflakes hanging from our ceiling, I think maybe I should just save them all for next year. They do take forever to cut-out and luckily this year I restrained myself from tearing them all down at five in the morning. As I said, maybe we are just getting older, but this year’s festivities were a little more subdued than what we’re used to. I mean granted, we were missing a certain tie wearing fellow and a fish lover, who always brought a little bit of the crazy.

Anyway, I began to ponder about a year from now — will Sarah, Courtney, and I still be living in this big old house? Will we all still even be living in New York? I really don’t know. Maybe I’m just getting all nostalgic and weirded out because of what’s going on in my actual life, but it seems that next year is quite up in the air and we are all at points where things could drastically change. So anyway, I don’t know if there will be a fourth holiday party at 101 Waverly next year, but I still think it’s pretty amazing that we’ve done it for the last three. And yes, there have been a few people that have come and gone, but for the most part us girls have always been together. It’s nice to have such amazing friends, who will always show up, and are the only ones that matter if they do. So take a look at the last three years. How much have we changed?

2006



2007



2008

All Play and No Sleep Makes Megan a Sick Girl

This is where I wish I was right now. I need a bowl of chicken soup and a heater please.