Nevermind the destination, just sit back and enjoy the ride

There's nothing sexy about turning 24.
I've already turned 21, therefore there's Nothing to Look Forward To in the landmark birthday department, ever again, except being 80 or 90 and not cacking over dead. The only thing turning 24 has going is that it's the last birthday before I turn 25, and then 30, and 40, and 50 ...
But somehow, being halfway to 48 is slightly less scary than being halfway to 46. Maybe that's why god made the ability to see gray areas something that improves with age.
When I was about 9, I conflated the term "adult" with "grown-up." I thought that I would wake up on my 18th birthday a grown-up.
When I was 18, I thought going to college would make me a grown-up. Then I realized that college (at least for the first couple of years) was like summer camp, but with more reading and fewer rules. Around that time, I said screw this grown-up stuff. I figured that I would graduate, enter the world of grown-ups, and become Old and Boring.
And then I came here.
Which was a jarring experience. One day I was eating generic macaroni and cheese, pulling all-nighters, driving a car my dad owned while my mom still made my doctor appointments. A few weeks later I was sitting in MY apartment — just mine, no one else's — working a full-time job and drinking responsibly. And buying my own health insurance.
Maybe I'm biased because I've never been anything resembling a grown-up back at home. But here it just seems a lot easier to be a fully functional adult — as opposed to a post-college student who isn't sure how to proceed — without becoming Old and Boring.
Most of the people I hang out with are older than me. As one of them puts it, I see people out until 4 in the morning who are old enough to be my grandparents. And they're having more fun than I am.
The biggest fear I've ever had is that someday I'll look back and realize that I spent so much time trying to grow up and focus on what I'm supposed to do that I haven't really done anything, and then I'll look forward and realize that, barring random life-changing events that tend to crop up when you least expect them, all the uncertainty is gone. It's not that I don't have any direction, but I've always thought of life more as a series of crazy-ass stories to write — anecdotes, even — than a series of goals to achieve.
Which is the joy of living here — so many random people and places and movements and ideas all in one place, I don't get the urge to dash across the country/world every time I get existentially stir-crazy. I can just go outside.

Things I am Thankful For

In honor of the upcoming holiday, naturally.

I'm thankful ...
that my boss let me change my shift so I can go to at least part of a Thanksgiving dinner.
that I *have* said job, in the best city in the world.
for my fabulous friends and family and fantastic boyfriend.
for getting to go home and see everyone for 10 days.
for my apartment, and my random Craigslist roommate who is, thankfully, sane.
for the fact that I can get around without a car.
for the fact that Alex has a car.
for all of the workers at the food establishments around my work who remember me when I come in.
for elaine's and all the people thereof.
for getting to sleep in most days.
for the people in the city who know how to walk in public.
for the fact that the hamsters staying in my apartment are only temporary.

(Did you know hamsters are nocturnal? And louder than you would think.)

*edit* Another thing I'm thankful for — 99-cent lattes from Dunkin' Donuts. Best way to get through the last day of my work week. On that note, I'm thankful that I don't have to work tomorrow.

President Obama!

There's nothing to be said about the joyousness of Barack Hussein Obama's resounding thwomp of John McCain that has not already been said by every journalist and pundit and blogger on earth (yes, on earth, not just in America. Foreigners are ecstatic that we finally pulled our heads out of our collective ass and voted for the smart guy for once.) But a few things come to mind:

1. Every time something goes wrong, I think of the fact that Barack Obama will soon be president and my mood gets a little better.

2. I think it's time for me to take a little siesta from politics. At least until Inauguration Day.

3. That point aside, I have a very important question for you all. When you think of the fact that after eight long, dark years, Obama made it to the White House, and you think of the future, what song comes to mind? I'm making a CD chronicling the Bush presidency, and I need something really good to end it with. I know you guys are not big commenters, but please enlighten me if you have a suggestion. Thoughts on other songs that bring to mind other key moments in the Bush presidency are welcome as well.

4. Obama represents a lot of things to a lot of people. He comes into the presidency after several months of promising everything up to the receding of the of the oceans, and is about to step up to govern a giant clusterfuck. I hope he doesn't disappoint us too much.

Happy Thoughts from the McCain Campaign

"Crystal meth. Me, personally, that’s how I’m going to do it.”

McCain adviser, speechwriter and biographer Mark Salter, on how he was going to cope with the last day of the campaign.

(Via Gawker.)

Election Day Buzz ... Buzz ... Buzzzzzzz

Babeland is giving out free vibrators to people who vote.

But if you're not into the kinds of things that are illegal in Alabama, you can also get a scoop of ben & Jerry's ice cream or a cup of Starbucks coffee for voting (or even just saying you voted.)

Signs I've been following this election too closely

The other night I had a dream that I was trying to vote. I wasn't sure if my registration had gone through, so they told me I should just cast my ballot and if there was a problem, they'd just arrest me.

To be fair, though, it's not totally a random dream since I sent my registration really close to the deadline and still need to check and see if it went through. New Jersey (and New York, for that matter) have no same-day voter registration and therefore are not as cool as wisconsin.

Still Not Kidnapped, don't eff with the bus driver edition

OK, so I'm getting really terrible at this blogging thing. The main reason for this is Alex. Alex is a computer programmer, photographer, really good cook and all-around pretty amazing guy. It's not so much that I spend so much time with Alex that I don't have time to blog, although that is partially true. It's that snark and ridiculous giddy happiness fight for a limited space in my brain and lately the latter has been winning. (It also has a little to do with the fact that Alex lives 45 minutes away, so I spend more time on public transportation.)

Speaking of public transportation, I'm flying home Dec. 2-12 for a little Thanksgiving/Christmas celebration and, hopefully, cross-state roadtripping. Alex, good sport that he is, is coming with me so I can show him off to y'all. If you are a person for whom I should be buying a Christmas gift, please let me know what you want, since I'll be shopping early this year.

Also speaking of public transportation, it took forever to get home from work tonight because some dude was talking so much ish to the bus driver that the driver called the police. A little drama in my night.

Earlier today they evacuated the 13th floor of the Times building because they found an envelope containing unidentified white powder. By the time I got in, everything was back to normal; they sent the powder to the lab and it was non-hazardous. But we must be doing something right if nutjobs feel the need to threaten us.

Sarah Palin Haiku!

Check it out. Contribute. Link's in the sidebar.

"I know the knife is supposed to go next to the spoon, but where does the gun go?"

OK, I'm getting bad at keeping up on this. I've been too busy with my eyes glued, trainwreck-style, to the Player-Hatin' Palin craziness and the stock market clusterfuck. But here are some pictures.

Places I've Been: Long Time Gone Blowout Edition

I've been on a little hiatus from this blog, as you've probably noticed. It started when my former Spain roommate and traveling partner Erin came to visit me a few weeks back, and it just spiraled from there. (Haven't made it to the gym much either lately. Oink.) But in the meantime, I've been to lots of amazing restaurants and bars that you should consider popping into if you're ever in town:

RESTAURANTS
Serendipity 3, on 60th Street between 2nd and 3rd avenues (Upper East Side), is the restaurant from the movie "Serendipity." The place is filled with Tiffany lamps and there's an extremely random gift shop. Their specialty, pictured above, is frozen hot chocolate. Don't ask. Just drink.

UN Delegates' Dining Room, at the UN headquarters, 46th Street and 1st (Midtown East), is a good place to go if you're a tourist but don't want to feel touristy. Serves food from around the world, and the dessert table alone is worth the $20 buffet price tag. A good view of the river, plus you can eavesdrop on important people having important conversations. Reservations and dressing up are required. Get there at least half an hour early because you have to go through security.

Meson Sevilla, on 46th between 8th and 9th (Hell's Kitchen), is a tapas bar that has most of the good stuff I remember from Spain (mainly, tortilla and croquetas). But more importantly, there's cafe con leche — the champagne of coffees — and, naturally, sangria.

Veselka, at 9th Street and 2nd Avenue (East Village), is open all night. The service is terrible, but it's cheapish for manhattan. And there are pierogies. Like ten different kinds of them.

L'Express, at Park Avenue and 20th Street, is a French restaurant that's open all night. Menu has one page of food, three pages of beer and wine. I wasn't terribly impressed with the food (I had calamari), but hey, it's open all night. Also, probably the only French restaurant where you can hear "Ice, Ice Baby."

BARS
Ulysses, on Pearl Street in Lower Manhattan, is what CitySearch calls a gold-diggers' goldmine, and they are not making it up. If you want to meet yourself a hedge-fund sugar daddy, this is the place to be. And it's open until 4 a.m. every night, so take your time and be picky.

I'm not quite as impressed with Beauty Bar (14th St between 2nd and 3rd, East Village) now that I know it's a chain. But it's a cute little place, with old hair-dryer chairs and a dance floor. Go there to get a martini and a manicure for $10. Hospital-grade sterilization it's not, but I didn't get eaten alive by fungi and the polish lasted me a good week.

SUSHI
As I mentioned in an earlier post, there is a certain subset of New Yorkers who love their sushi. And since that same subset tends to settle in Hoboken, there are more sushi places here than you can possibly imagine. On Hudson Street is Sushi Lounge, as well as a place directly across the street. Pretty self-explanatory: eat sushi, listen to lounge music. But if you want better sushi, head a few blocks down to Sushi House, at 1st and Bloomfield (There's one around 14th and Washington too, but I've never been there).

Not Kidnapped

For those of you still reading this after I vanished for two weeks, you rock.

These ads popped up around hoboken a few weeks ago (around the time of the Georgia craziness):



Makes me sort of want to buy a bottle of svedka out of respect for their well-timed and just subtle enough hippieness.

Dear Men Everywhere,

Please don't call women you don't know "sweetheart." It's rude.

Where a sandwich can kill you

A Hezbollah sympathizer opened a terrorist-themed restaurant near Beirut. It's called Buns and Guns, and they serve you food named after weapons that you can eat while listening to the pleasantly appetizing sounds of gunfire. A guy at my work went there with a friend and was questioned by Hezbollah when he tried to take pictures in the area. So the food won't kill you, but being a shutterbug will.

All Hail the Chunk (or he will sit on you)

This 44-pond cat, found wandering around after his owner abandoned him when her home was foreclosed on, is currently the biggest story in New Jersey. Thinking he was a girl, the shelter nicknamed him Princess Chunk; the former owner has since come forward and said he's a boy named Powder. More than 200 people have applied to adopt him. Here's a video.

And the biggest story in New York right now? Click here. I dare you.

Wow. That's all I have to say.

I try to keep politics out of this blog because in the journalism industry, partisan rants on personal politics are frowned upon. But partisan-ness aside*, have you seen the latest McCain ad? Has the campaign lost its mind? Obama as The One? Moses parting the Red Sea? Are you serious?

This is one for the Willie Horton and Harold Ford hall of fame.



*Find me an equally beyond-the-pale Obama ad and I'll be glad to call it out.

Random cultural note

In New York, knowing about that little (insert ethnicity here) bakery/restaurant that's been in the same family for 114 years is a skill with equal social value to having actual cooking/baking skills. Or possibly greater value, if said establishment has a unique specialty item that's obscure and yummy and ethnic.

Angry Journalists, Part 2

Courtesy of the former Times Foreign Desk intern Adam, here's what copy editors have to put up with. And here's the editors' response.

WARNING: Not safe for work!

Easily Amused: Health Food Store Edition

One of the joys of living in Post-College Yuppieville is that there are lots of natural food stores. At least two large ones and a smaller produce store that calls itself a farmer's market within three blocks or so.

But the reason I like these places so much is not so much because of the healthy food, although that helps. It's because I spent the last four-and-a-half years grocery shopping at Wal-Mart, and even after six months I find actual variety to be utterly amazing, and thus if I'm not careful grocery shopping turns into recreational food shopping. Today I went to one of these stores looking for a bottle of vanilla extract and I came out with a $2.60-on-sale box of organic macaroni and cheese (Annie's, though. totally worth it) and a jar of marinara-and-zinfandel spaghetti sauce (which actually tastes like wine). Oh, and the vanilla was a) organic, b) fair-trade and c) cheaper than the bottle of pure vanilla extract I bought at Wal-Mart, used a teaspoon of and left in Eau Claire.

The best, though, is Trader Joe's. There's only one around and it's in union square, but it's totally worth the trip every now and then because most of it is random stuff that you can't find anywhere else. Also, it's relatively cheap.

While I'm usually lazy when it comes to cooking, I am in the process of baking cookies. From scratch. From a recipe in the Times that came with this article. I say "in the process" because the article says you should let the dough sit for awhile (upto 36 hours if you have the time. I'm settling with overnight.) So tomorrow I'll see if the wisdom of The New York Times makes for a better cookie or if I should have stuck with prepackaged refrigerator dough.

Intern Blog

My post is up.

Pictures

Wow. I just found this, from my freshman year of college. Apparently, even though the screen name has been defunct for 4 years plus, it's still floating around. Let that be a lesson to you kids: whatever you put on the internet is public record forever.

Dr. Trayes hasn't posted my blog entry yet, but he did post this lovely shot of us News Service interns, past and present.

Pathways

bloody hell again.
You'd think being tired from not sleeping much last night would make it easier to sleep tonight, but not so much.
Blogging did the trick for me last night, though, so maybe this will do it.
I think when you're a little sleep-deprived a neural pathway opens up in your brain that makes creativity flow a little more. It's good for getting writing done. (editing or reporting, not so much.) But there's only a very limited window of tiredness that it functions for; any more and you just start rambling, much like I am now.

Argh!

This is what happens when I work too many 6 p.m. shifts in a week ... eventually I become quasi-nocturnal. But even then I normally don't feel the need to stay up until 6 a.m. Not even the My Neighbors Suck Playlist (which worked without fail to drown out 4 a.m. rap parties in the old neighborhood) is doing the trick. I could watch TV until I fall asleep, but the roommate will be getting up soon. Naturally, today is the day I have to go in at 2 p.m. instead of 6.

My last semester of college when I couldn't sleep, I read from my class textbook on the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict. That always did the trick. I even learned a little about the Arab-Israeli conflict in the process.

The sun is completely up now. Bloody hell.

Wasting too much time on blogs so you don't have to: Angry journalist edition

(Otherwise known as links I stole from Gawker).

At Angryjournalist.com, you can rant anonymously about your co-workers, your recent layoff or how you feel your journalism degree isn't worth the paper it's printed on. For the views of laid-off journalists, the hopeful and the hopeless, on the future state of the news industry, there's Parting thoughts, recently started by the Columbia Journalism Review. (Sample thought: "I still want journalism. Journalism just doesn't seem to want me.")

On a less negative note, are you a reporter scrambling for a source? A publicity whore looking to get your name in the paper? Then check out Help a Reporter, the free site that links reporters and sources. Gets good reviews from Gawker commenters, for whatever that's worth.

But why am I wasting so much time on Gawker? Because I am taking a break from working on a blog post for the Temple University Editing Residency blog, started by Dr. Trayes and this year's crop of interns. So I'll let you know when that's posted.

My blog, as a word picture

With the words sized according to their frequency. And there's not a swear word on it! damn.

Places I've Been: Pier 66

Pier 66 is a bar on a boat docked on the Hudson River, around 26th Street. When I went last night, there was a pretty good DJ, but rumor has it the DJing won't last much longer. There's also food if you go early enough.

Downsides: It closes at 1 a.m., and it's a pretty good hike from the nearest train stop (the C,E at 23 st and 8th ave, although there's a crosstown bus too). But for the experience — and the view — it's definitely worth going out of your way.

Also, if you're sick of dropping $7 for a bottle of beer, there's Rudy's Bar & Grill on 9th Avenue at 45th Street (in Hells Kitchen), where you can get a $9 pitcher. And free (nasty) hot dogs.

Fotos!

Today being my day off (yay!) I laid out in the park by the river and then took some pictures.

The only thing better than laying out in the sun when it's nice out is laying out in the sun when it's nice out and you have a panoramic view of Manhattan.

Here's downtown ...

and midtown.

Here's Hoboken along the riverfront. there's a walking and bike path that connects to another pier with its own park. (The rest of the city looks more packed-in East Coast townlike, but all the commuters were coming back so I couldn't get a very good picture.)

Some of the older buildings on Washington Street still have street signs on the sides. 

Some more things you may not know about Hoboken:

• The hipsters/artists/yuppies started coming here from Manhattan in the late 80s, before which it was pretty industrial and somewhat dangerous. Around 2000 they rezoned a bunch of old industrial space and turned it into condos and artist lofts (most of the artists have since moved on to Jersey City).
• Hoboken is a little over a mile square and has about 40,000 residents — including a concentration of immediately post-college people that borders on the ridiculous.
• Frank Sinatra was from here, but disowned Hoboken after facing nasty heckling here early in his career. Even though they named a street after him (there's also a store on Washington Street called Spreading the News.)
• Some people claim baseball originated here.
• Hoboken was most likely named after a city in Belgium. There is a story saying that that city was named when a little boy dropped a sandwich in the river and shouted "Ho, boken!" ("Stop, sandwich!" in some Dutch dialect). 
• Hoboken has the occasional chicken emergency.

More Police Blotter

Thanks again, mom! (via the Appleton Post-Crescent)

Brett Favre: Bigger than John McCain

Well, obviously. But it's true.

Favre’s interview—which was receiving top billing over an interview with presidential candidate John McCain in promos for Van Susteren’s show that aired during the day Monday—is the latest development in what is looking more and more like an irreparable schism between one of the NFL’s most storied franchises and perhaps its most beloved quarterback.

Personally, I think he should have just quit gracefully instead of coming back and being a damn diva about it. If I were Favre I'd quit playing the game while I was ahead and make the most of my OG status — assistant coaching, announcing, sitting on my bum and living off the pile of fat cash that I made by being an icon. But as I'm not Favre, I'll leave the analysis to more qualified commentators.

*Edit:* Barack Obama is bigger than Elvis. And, on big news days, Jesus.

Things I didn't know when I lived in Harlem

Governor Paterson has an apartment about 3 blocks from where I used to live. Sen. Chuck Rangel does too. Actually, he has four of them. In the same building. All rent stabilized. One gets used as an office, which you're not supposed to do in a rent-stabilized apartment. Interesting.

Police Blotter

From the Appleton Post-Crescent, courtesy of my mom:

I copy edit life

At the end of my hall there is a room with a sign on it for the garbage "shute." Seriously, who writes these things? Also, the New Jersey Transit buses warn me to walk "alertly." Which I guess is technically a word, but it just doesn't sound right.

Speaking of walking alertly, I had an incredible experience today ... I was at a crosswalk in Hoboken, and a car STOPPED for me so I could cross. I was starting to think those lines meant 'honk horn now.'

The Boys and the Subway

So here I am wasting time at work in the sanctioned way of reading the paper online (you know, as opposed to blogging) and I found this illustrated story. It might only be interesting if you live in New York, but I thought it was pretty funny.

Advices for the day

One of those lessons that gets presented to you over and over until it sticks:
Think about your relationship drama. If your best friend was in your place, would you tell her to stick by that person and work it out, or would you tell her to move on because she deserved better? If the latter, it's probably time to DTMFA.

News Service wisdom:
Every so often, you need to copy edit your household goods. As my editor at the Leader-Telegram would say after commanding a writer to cut a story to 12 inches, keep only the best stuff.

Become a more interesting person in a few minutes a day:
If you're looking for conversation starters, Slate is the place to go. Start out with this article, on the life cycle of a catchphrase. One they didn't mention: "I suck at life." I think it's jumped the shark, as they say. Can you think of any other ones? Leave 'em in comments.

Apartment Love

Welcome to Hoty Takes Manhattan ... live from New Jersey!

I'm finally in my new apartment. Actually, the movers are still unloading my stuff. I never know what to do with myself when movers come; I feel weird sitting around and watching them do all the work (of course, for $100 an hour plus tips I don't feel *that guilty.

I think this the best decision I made since I moved out here. Seriously. Come see my apartment. It's GORGEOUS.

I'm so happy right now I could almost cry — though that might have something to do with the 3 hours of sleep I got last night.

duct tape

So the movers are here and they just did something that totally blew my mind ... they used a roll of duct tape (with the tape rolled on the outside) as a door stop.

Didn't want to forget that one.

What I'll miss about this neighborhood

Today I was at the bodega across the street and this lady came in and asked the guy at the counter:

Lady: Are you Alex?

Alex: Yeah

Lady: My mom lives down the street and she said to come get her a turkey sandwich. She said you'd know how to make it.

Alex: OK. (calls over to the guy at the deli counter for a turkey sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes on it in some foreign language).


These are the kind of things people worry about losing when they think about communities getting destroyed by developers. Manhattan is a small island, and this neighborhood is one of the few patches left to exploit. Uptown, most of the affordable housing is being bought up by private equity firms who have a vested interest in getting rid of long-term residents and jacking up the rent. Downtown, the city is rezoning 125th Street, the main drag of harlem, for high-rise condos and such. (Not to mention the battle of morningside heights over the expansion of Columbia a little further downtown.)

While it may be an isolating and sometimes scary place to live for a transplanted 20-something midwestern white girl, this is the kind of neighborhood where families have had roots for many, many years, where everyone on the street seemingly knows each other, where people sit in chairs outside their places of residence (or employment) and chat with people as they go by. Progress and safer streets and better stores are all good, but I really hope I don't come back to visit this place in 10 years to find that it's turned into the upper-upper west side and all the longtime residents have been pushed up to the south bronx.

The tyranny of stuff. And creepy voicemails.

Moving is a process that makes you acutely aware of the sheer amount of stuff you have.

The thing about stuff is that at one point or another, the stuff you have inevitably becomes the stuff you need to get rid of.
Unless you die. Then that stuff becomes someone else's problem. And that's an even bigger problem, because some stuff has a lot of emotional significance, and when you die and leave someone else your stuff, some of that emotional significance gets passed on with it.

Why do we put so much emotional stock in stuff? Specifically, furniture.

The Times ran a piece that did some time on the most e-mailed list about the perils of inheriting furniture. Oftentimes, you're stuck with it, because to a lot of people, the person from whom you got the furniture (or ugly portrait or whatever) lives on in that stuff, and getting rid of it would be like getting rid of *them*.

My herirloom furniture, which is pretty much all of it, was all wanted furniture (of good quality too), and I have so damn much of it that getting rid of a few things isn't cutting any one person's material memory out of my life. Also, it's kind of comforting having such a variety of passed-on stuff here. I've got stuff from both parents, both sets of grandparents, my sister, my house on menomonie street, hell, even my ex-boyfriend.

And that will still be the case after I downsize a little bit, but it's been kind of a struggle to prepare myself to get rid of a few things I won't have room to take with me when I move on tuesday. I'm still struggling with the economic guilt of essentially giving away some good stuff, but the flip side of that is on Craigslist there are plenty of other people in the same situation, so it *is* possible to get good stuff for cheap here.

And the fact that I'm blathering on about this is proof of my point. It's just stuff. Sentimental value is a social construction. Don't let it imprison you.

And another point: If you're moving here, bring as little as possible.
(That said, I wouldn't trade my living room furniture and big comfy bed for a teeny studio on the upper west side. I'm a midwestern girl and I need my space.)

Now that you've made it through that rant, you need to listen to this. A woman named Olga got hit on by a man named Dmitri. They talked for about two minutes, she gave him her business card (probably to get him to go away). These are the messages he left her.

Rent Control

So I'm trying to sell off some of my furniture that won't fit in my new apartment (that's the downside to having an actual closet, it takes up wall space so you can't cram in as much.) A woman who lives downstairs came to look at it, and she was telling me how her apartment's been in the family for 65 years and it's rent controlled. Know how much she pays for it? $300 a month. (My apartment is more than 4 times that).

ShitPissFuckCuntCocksuckerMotherfuckerTits

RIP, George Carlin.

Reading Way Too Much News So You Don't Have To

There's been lots of debate over the not-quite-verified teenage pregnancy pact in Gloucester, Mass. — What would possess a group of high schoolers to take on such a life-changing responsibility when they're so unequipped to handle it on purpose? In response, someone linked to this photo essay on poverty in upstate New York. Go read it. Seriously.

In contrast, I'm reading this book right now that I found on the free table at work about the world's super-rich and powerful who fly around the world on private jets to network with each other and make decisions that affect billions of people. There's your daily dose of inequality.

Also, don't pay for marriage counseling with a credit card.

In Review: Lil Wayne: "Tha Carter III"

When it comes to hip-hop, reviewers at highbrow publications are mind-blowingly easy to impress. Saying that all rappers are talentless wankers who write little more than glorified ringtones makes a critic sound curmudgeonly and out of touch. But the thing is ... most rappers these days *do* write little more than glorified ringtones. So a reviewer will salivate over any exception (see also: the second to last graf on the first page of this review).

Hence the hype over Lil Wayne's sixth official album. Though it doesn't hurt that Tha Carter III went platinum its first week, which has been practically unheard of in the last few years (Kanye West's newest album, which came out last year, hasn't sold a million copies to date).

Is it worth the hype? Rolling Stone gave it 4 1/2 stars. I wouldn't go that far. But on the whole it's a solid album, which is saying a lot for any genre, and even more in a genre that produces a disproportionate number of bloated albums.

Whether or not Lil Wayne is in fact the self-anointed "best rapper alive," you have to give him some credit. Mid-90s OutKast comes to mind. Back before Big Boi got swallowed by Andre 3000's George Clinton complex, he brought the street cred and Andre brought the crazy. Lil Wayne can do both. He does the requisite smack-talking. He waxes political. He claims he is a Martian. And being that he is one of the most prolific mainstream rappers in history — he's done a ton of mixtapes and guested on more than 100 songs with other people — he has plenty of tracks on which to do all of that, and manages to not come off as an egghead rapper, a la Nas or Kanye West, which is no easy feat (nothing against either Nas or Kanye).

Tha Carter III probably won't be the album you play while you get ready to go out. But it's full of lines that will make you go wait ...what?! So put it on in the car when you can actually appreciate lil wayne for the brilliant MC that he is. (See also: "Georgia ... Bush," "Go DJ," "Shooter").


Unrelated note:
The democrats in Congress are a bunch of pussified, ball-less, spineless, useless saps. Except Russ Feingold.

And John McCain ain't any better.

It's most definitely not all good in the 'hood

When I got off the train after work there were a bunch of people (of the 20-something male variety) who looked like they were being chased up lenox avenue. One of them tried to run into a bodega but they locked him out. I'm not entirely sure what was up and I wasn't going to stick around and find out. (I did listen for gunfire and didn't hear any, thank god.) All of which sucked because I really wanted to go to the corner store and pick up some food but after that I was scared to leave the building. Man I'm glad I'm moving out of here.

Work on sundays is always a slog. Even though I don't have to stay until 1 a.m., and even though for me it's more like a thursday. And then I always say I'm going to go home and crash and then I get home and don't feel like sleeping.

So now that it's 2:46 a.m. and I'm still awake ...
Always check the page one last time before you send it to print or this will happen. Or, perhaps, this.

Also, if you've been living under a rock for the past 6 months (in which case I kind of envy you!) Here's the entire democratic primary in eight minutes.

ok I'm going to bed now. Foreals.

I have a mover

and it's only costing me $600. Recommended by stefania (aforementioned wise broker) and has pretty good online reviews, so hopefully all goes OK.

Today I went to the management office to get out of my lease. The guy said that because it's so easy to rent out an apartment in the city, there's no reason any landlord here should give you a hard time about getting out of a lease, other than to harass you.
And when I asked if they were going to take post-move-out cleaning costs out of my security deposit (my roommates from eau claire and I are down at least $150), he said, "that's not the way we do things."

There are some advantages to renting in the most brutally competitive market in the country.

Hot damn ...

Two summers ago I lived in Eau Claire and did manual labor for the Menards distribution center. There was a week or two when the temperature broke 100 degrees every day. The Menards warehouses are decidedly not air conditioned. Neither was my house. That was not a fun summer.

So I'm trying to keep a little perspective ... but damn, it's hot in my apartment. I think tomorrow I am going to go out and buy 3 or 4 more fans so I don't have to keep moving my one broken one around with me. But only three more weeks and I'll have air conditioning.

Remember the guy who was banging on my floor because my neighbor was playing loud music all night and he thought it was me? I met him today. He says when he called the landlord to complain, the landlord said, "I really don't think it's coming from her apartment. She works for the New York Times." Apparently, journalists don't have loud parties.* The neighbor, incidentally, also works for the Times. Crazy. And he did apologize for banging on my floor. And I forgive him because he actually put forth the effort to complain. And the noise has since stopped.

Know what I realized today? Once I move, my new place will be the fifth place I've lived (like, for more than a month) this year. And the third state.

*LG, are you reading this??

Home Sweet Hoboken!

I signed a lease Thursday, so I am officially moving to hoboken. Yay!
Next Step: Finding a mover.

It's Spiderman ... twice!

I came out of Dunkin' Donuts on my way to work this afternoon and everyone on the sidewalk was gawking at the Times building. I looked up and around the 50th floor, there was a guy. Climbing up one of the tallest skyscrapers in manhattan.

It was crazy. The police had half the block roped off. When I got to work the security guard told me the guy made it to the top and was immediately arrested.

The guy was Alain Robert, a French stuntman who's climbed other skyscrapers before. On the window outside the international weekly, where I was working today, he put up a green banner that said "Global warming kills more people than 9/11 every week."

A few hours later we were watching the footage on the news. After a few minutes we noticed that it said LIVE in the corner of the screen.

A second climber. Seriously. What the hell?!

So we all ran to the corner of the building where he was, but he was up to about the 30th floor by that time. Traffic in the entire neighborhood had completely stopped and people crowded the sidewalks for blocks and blocks. On the news you could see employees standing inside the windows gawking.

This second guy did not seem as sure of himself. He stopped by the windows to rest at every floor, and a few times it looked like he was going to slip. We all cheered as he finally made it to the top — 52 floors up — where the police were waiting on the roof to arrest him.

Had the climbers done some research they would have realized that the Times building his a history of things falling off of it. They got pretty damn lucky.

Alain Robert said he chose our building to make his statement because it's a green building. Which, incidentally, is why Renzo Piano decided to do the whole outside in WHITE FUCKING HORZONTAL BARS to make it more energy efficient.

I'm not surprised that someone climbed the building. I'm surprised that it took this long for anyone to try.

Update

While I was furiously posting the previous rant, I got a call from my management company about a whole bunch of places that they're showing in Brooklyn in my price range. No broker fees and they can just transfer my security deposit over. So that lowers the panic level a little.

waiting ...

On Sunday I looked at my first apartment, in hoboken. The place, for $65 a month less than I'm paying now, is roomier than my current place even considering that there's another person living there (who seems quite nice). And the building is super-close to everything I would need (ie, the train to manhattan). So yesterday, not having seen any other ones, I went to the management office, dropped $75 and applied for it.

So now I wait.

Apparently, some management companies actually, like, do background checks.
Note to my current and former bosses and landlords: Please say something nice :o)

On the other hand, do I really *want* to move there?
I love hoboken, it's an adorable town, about 2 miles square, with lots of bars and shops and restaurants and a few lovely organic grocery stores. And it's cheaper than manhattan — and closer to most of it than I am now.

But there's still the nagging, somewhat illogical voice in my head that says why are you moving to JERSEY??? Also, the fact (for those of you not up on this, as I'm keeping it off the record*) that I'm dating someone there. Have been for about two months now. Most definitely not long enough on which to make a geographical decision, even in New York. He doesn't believe me when I say this, but the fact that he lives there is not part of my decision to move there except that had it not been for him I never probably would have seen hoboken in the first place.

Oh, and also, there's the fact that I put in 30 days notice to my current landlords and have to be out by July 1.

I think there needs to be some kind of bureau of housing counseling in the city. I could really use some assistance from someone knowledgeable who doesn't stand to make huge amounts of money off me. Seriously, New Yorkers spend more time, money and energy thinking and talking about housing and neighborhoods and apartments and gentrification and rent than anyone else in the damn country or possibly the world. With the possible exception of people whose houses have been foreclosed on them. And they have an excuse.


*To protect the innocent, and the not-so-innocent, this is NOT a dating blog. All personal details are off the record.

Update

The property manager called me today and said he'd let me out of my lease, so that's half the battle (OK, more like an eighth of the battle). Also, I just e-mailed him a random question (at 10:30 at night) and he got right back to me. I reserve the right to rescind this judgment if they pull one over on me in the end, but I heart my management company ... it's too bad most of their properties are in upper manhattan (if you ever want to move in that direction, let me know and I'll hook you up. It's not all as scary as central harlem has been of late.)

So for now I'm Craigslisting it in Hoboken ... I sent out 7 replies tonight. Wish me luck.

Oh, and yes, you are going to hear all the details of my apartment search. Because, unless you live here or are my mother, you just don't understand. But as a wise apartment broker once said, it is what it is.

Places I've Been: Yum Yum Bangkok

Welcome to the latest sporadic feature of Hoty Takes Manhattan: Places I've Been, in which I chronicle clubs, restaurants and such. This is just as much for my benefit as for yours, since there are so many amazing places in the city it's easy to forget where they are.

Yum Yum Bangkok, on 9th Ave. at 46th St. (Midtown/Hell's Kitchen), is actually three restaurants built next to one another, called Yum Yum Bangkok 1, 2 and 3. Which makes it pretty damn confusing if you're trying to meet someone at one of them. (I've been to 1 and 3.) They serve the same food, though I think they all have separate kitchens. I paid $8.95 for pad thai there; you can order a massive prix fixe meal for $15.95. Rumor has it they have good Thai tea there. And Thai beer, naturally.

Restaurant-wise, you can't go wrong in Hell's Kitchen. Just start at 42nd street and walk uptown until you find something to your liking.


Oh, and by the way, there were four other unrelated shootings in Harlem Monday night — one guy was shot three times allegedly because he bumped into someone on the sidewalk. Oh, and the Marcus Garvey Park shooters are still at large. So yeah, I'm getting the hell out of here, that's not a question. But man, it's going to be a pain. An expensive pain. This is a lot of shit to deal with all by myself.

Harlem is Burning ...

Well not quite. But eight people, most of them teenagers, got shot a few blocks from here Monday night, just a few minutes before I got off the train from work. Which is a sign, I think, that it's time for me to move the hell out of this neighborhood.

What to do next I'm not sure. Hoboken is right across the river in jersey, it's a little cheaper and it's adorable so I'm looking into moving there. Though I'd gladly move to the upper west side or of course to the east village if I could afford it. I would really like to live with someone else but subletting is going to be hard because I'm kind of a prisoner of my furniture. So if any New Yorkers/Jerseyites are reading this and looking for a fun, responsible roommate with a full apartment's worth of furniture, give a girl a holler.

memorial memories

Happy belated memorial day everyone! I hope you all took a moment to honor the sacrifices of our brave men and women in uniform, and another second to honor those of our high school band geeks in wool uniforms, providing you with painstakingly memorized and endlessly practiced patriotic entertainment while sweating profusely and praying that the good Lord will have mercy on them by allowing them to lose consciousness. Those were the days!

My big Memorial Day adventure was that they stopped the train before I went to work because there was an accident so I had to take the bus (AGGRAVATING) to another train and was 20 minutes late for work. The joy (if you can call it that) of living in New York though is that it happens to everyone occasionally so the boss was pretty chill about it.

Memorial Day weekend also means that, give or take a few days, it was a year ago that the other interns and I got dumped off at Penn Station. Ah, DJNF boot camp. If you want some idea of what boot camp was like, they have a blog this year. I think I spent most of my first weekend in New York sleeping. It was pretty amazing. Speaking of which, I think it's time for me to go to bed.

Edit, 2:44 a.m.: I just heard the garbage man outside the building. As he was throwing the bags onto the truck he yelled, "Best smell in the world! WOO!"

OK, I'm really going to bed now.

Dear Hillary Clinton, Please Stop

Every time Hillary Clinton says something mind-bogglingly offensive, vindictive and wrong, I think there's no way she could possibly top it. But then somehow she does.

But I don't know how it's possible to get any worse than what she said a few days ago, which was basically that she should stay in the race because, hey, Barack Obama might get assassinated. Mind you, Obama has gotten death threats and already has his own Secret Service detail.

At this point, I doubt there is much more damage Hillary can do to the party since she's clearly flipped out (well, maybe there is, I'm surprised it has gotten this bad in the first place). But according to Slate's Hillary Deathwatch (For the candidate who has NOT faced death threats and does NOT need her own Secret Service detail), the mathematical chances of her winning stand at about 0.7 percent. So Hillary, for your own future political good, please do yourself a favor, cut your losses and get out of this race.

I could go on, but Keith Olbermann says it all (literally, he does — this clip goes on for about 9 minutes.)

The Newspaper Industry is Fucked

See the job losses in map form!

Paradox: Some of these places are still hiring even as they're firing all their veteran staffers. Ah, cheap labor.

Goodbye, Student Ghetto!

Watching the movers carry all my stuff out of my college house four months ago was one thing, but now that our lease is up and the people who have been my surrogate family for the last five years are all moving on, it's definitely the end of an era.

Three years we've lived in that same house. So many memories. Domestic disasters and critter infestations and endless piles of dishes and late-night pizza ordering and pancakes and a few parties and occasional catty drama, birthdays and homecomings and halloweens, a peeping tom, a horrifically failed attempt at wop, and even one time a random guy passed out on our porch.

It's been a damn good run. And as my roomies and I sat in our empty living room last weekend delaying the inevitable cleaning I couldn't imagine having spent it living with anyone anywhere else.

When life gives you lemons, paint that shit gold

Here's a fun time-waster, as a promo for atmosphere's new album, which I recommend.

On an unrelated note, I would just like to say that I hate Times Square with a burning passion. Well, not so much Times Square, but the tourists. Not so much the tourists in and of themselves, but cram a hundred thousand of them together within a few blocks and they all adopt this hive mentality that sucks out all of their common sense. You know, that part of your brain that tells you not to stand in the middle of the sidewalk when you choose to stand and gawk at something or not to stop and take pictures IN THE MIDDLE OF THE BLOODY ROAD. And the part that acknowledges the guys who try to sell you comedy tickets, therefore encouraging them.

Political Ringtones!

So you just can't get enough soundbites of the presidential candidates? Do you light up every time you hear Hillary Clinton laugh? Get giddy when John McCain berates his questioners? Well now, courtesy of Slate, you can download some of your favorite snippets as ringtones. And it's free, apparently. They don't support Verizon or I'd be all over that, purely out of morbid curiosity.

Shirley Manson gets C-listed by Times health section

From the artcle "The Growing Wave of Teenage Self-Injury":

Celebrities, too, have contributed to its higher profile. Among those who have confessed to being self-injurers are the late Princess Diana, Johnny Depp, Angelina Jolie, Nicole Richie, Richie Edwards, Courtney Love and the lead singer on the Garbage band album “Bleed Like Me.”

Interesting.
Also, who is Richie Edwards?

I heart Jay Smooth

"A politician is just like a plumber. When you need someone to take care of your plumbing, you get a plumber. When you need someone to take care of politics, you get a politician. Both do a service that we really need them to do, but if you watch too closely when they do their jobs, you get grossed out, because they have greasy, dirty jobs. ... We do need to be real about what this job is and remember that we're not hiring a saint. We're hiring the nation's new plumber." —Jay Smooth

I know I've linked to him before, but seriously, Jay Smooth is my hero. Brilliantly snarky people are a dime a dozen, but precious few are those who can be brilliantly snarky in such an un-hostile way. He almost makes me want to take up video blogging. Almost.

Edit: whenever I take random multi-week-long hiatuses (hiati?) from this blog, keep this in mind.

Famous people at my work!

Today Governor Paterson was in the lobby of the Times building, so some co-workers and I went down to gawk and take cell phone pictures. He was surrounded by a bunch of reporters, quietly answering questions, and like most famous people (such as Russ Feingold), he is much shorter than you'd expect seeing him on TV. As a co-worker pointed out, you wouldn't think the governor of New York would be a short, quiet guy.

Image stolen shamelessly from my co-worker kenneth, a much more adept cell phone photog than I am.

I heart playlist.com

I really don't feel like sleeping right now. What I *do* feel like is listening to random songs ... and with Project Playlist I don't even have to download them, because it links to streaming music on other sites. The downside: the links go bad and cease to work if whoever's hosting them decides to take the song down. But a small price to pay. Try it if you're bored, it's pretty much amazing.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is why I'm a compound modifier nazi

As opposed to a compound modifier-nazi.

via xkcd.

Sushi

A few days ago I went to a sushi-making class (by the same lady who put on the last cooking class I went to.) I don't think I will attempt to make my own anytime soon, though, because:

a. Making sushi is hard. Those ones that are sitting on their sides and falling open? Those were my first attempts (they tasted pretty damn good though ... smoked salmon and cream cheese and green onions. I call it the New York roll.)

b. Too paranoid about using the right kind of fish and keeping it fresh enough.

But I figured when you live in a city where the number of sushi bars is eclipsed only by the number of people who spend every moment of their lives trying to appear cultured, sushi is a good thing to know about, kind of like wine. Also, after spending a LOT of time last summer at sushi bars, I think I'm finally to the point where I'm not just choking it down but I actually like it.

Oh, and it's GORGEOUS outside. The trees are starting to get leaves on them, which makes everything cheerier-looking, especially in the 'hood.

Get Lite

The kids at Harlem Live are all about this. or at least about trying to do it.

Mama I'm coming home

I'm flying into Appleton on May 14, flying out on May 20 and I'll be in Eau Claire for a while in between. Yay! I'm excited. To quote Nikki, I miss you all like Paris Hilton misses carbs.

Get Some.

My city has its own brand of condoms. Does yours?


I'm too lazy to look but I'm sure the condoms were a Mayor Bloomberg idea (doesn't seem like something Giuliani would have been into). He's all about public health initiatives (farmers market stands in poor neighborhoods like mine, calorie counts on fast-food menus, $7 cigarettes ...) I don't follow city politics enough to make an informed judgement, but how did Mike Bloomberg ever convince people he was a Republican? To me he seems almost european-style socialist. Mind you, he still gives TONS of money to the GOP, so go figure. Maybe it's just that he's so obscenely rich that he can do whatever he wants.

From what I understand, he does do a fair bit of pleading and cajoling and bullying to get what he wants, and the NYC government is not exactly a squeaky-clean organization so I'd take them all with a grain of salt. But I'll give Bloomberg the benefit of the doubt, because, at least as far as I know, he's not cashing out big time on everyone else's economic suffering.

And then I did not come to the end

Every Saturday I have to do the most boring part of my job, which is proofreading the Book Review. Imagine proofreading the Billboard music charts, and then proofreading them again with most of the miscellaneous numbers removed. It's kind of a buzzkill, but the upside is that it makes me want to, like, read actual books. Also, I spend a good chunk of my life on public transportation. So I read a lot.

In light of the terrible state of the print journalism industry, I'm currently reading And then we came to the end, by Joshua Ferris. Which is about stupid office drama as people at at ad agency get laid off and occasionally suffer nervous breakdowns. It's a lot like "the office" in book form, only kind of depressing, and I mean that in the best possible way.

But on that note, I found out today that my job is safe from the current round of layoffs. Praise the Lord and pass me my Mastercard!

Ladies and gentlemen ...

This is an important message from the New York City Police Department. We are aware that our trains smell like all kinds of nasty things, but PLEASE REFRAIN FROM SPRAYING YOUR CHEAP-ASS COLOGNE ON THE TRAIN. In the event that you choose to spray your nasty cologne and other passengers bludgeon you to death with canes, purses and stiletto heels, the MTA will not be held responsible. Thank you for riding New York City Transit, and have a safe day.

Oh crap.

I just saw a mouse run across my bedroom floor.

Better a mouse than a cockroach, I guess.

Please God don't let me get roaches ...

mini-updates and coffee. And an emo rant.

The other night I met my first white cabdriver who, incidentally, also lived in central harlem. He said he was Israeli and that he'd gotten into cabdriving two weeks ago because his friend told him he could make a lot of money, but that so far he hadn't found that to be true.

The landlord yelled at my next-door neighbor for playing his damn music so loud into all hours of the night. Finally a little peace and quiet on that side ... but the church partiers across the street are another story.

Currently I'm reading "Mortified! Real Words, Real People, Real Pathetic." Basically it's a bunch of grown-ups who sent in entries from their teenage diaries, and what results is bloody brilliant because it's so true. When you *are* that age, you think that you are a huge dork and that everyone is judging you and that no one could possibly be as emo as you secretly are, until you grow up and realize that everyone, to some degree, was once a huge emo dork. (In my diary I had a running section on the "7th Grade Soap Opera," where I would give the rundown of who was dating whom that week. And of course it changed every week, sometimes multiple times).

Lately Starbucks has gotten a lot of publicity for their new plan to make coffee that, like, tastes good. which only serves to highlight the point that plain old starbucks coffee is, in fact, absolutely terrible. There are rumors in some circles that it's bad on purpose so customers opt for expensive girly latte drinks instead. I mean, seriously — you have to dump at least three sugars into it just to curb the bitter taste, and the utter futility of adding skim milk to it gives me an excuse to put whole milk in my coffee.

Mind you, the fact that it's terrible doesn't stop me from drinking it. Hell, Starbucks coffee got me through many, many morning college classes and post-obscenely-late-deadline Spectator workdays. I think the bitterness and rocket-fuel consistency give it a kind of placebo effect where it makes me feel a little extra buzzed.

I miss Holiday coffee. On that note, I miss my Holiday gas station and the man who was always behind the counter when I came in at 6:47 a.m. before every single Leader-Telegram shift, without fail, except for the ones where I overslept. (I don't miss working at 7 a.m.) Every time I fry eggs I miss my kitchen on Menomonie Street where the floor was so slanted that both eggs would slide to one side of the pan. I miss making pancakes the morning after a crazy night. I miss dancing in front of the mirror that was in Nikki's room that makes you look skinny. (I don't miss my 7x12 bedroom.) I miss the ho box and redundant water street bars and kicking it with whoever happened to be in our living room at the time. (I do not miss the living room furniture). And I miss Jeff and Jim's. No slice of pizza in this city will ever be Jeff and Jim's.

Why I'm glad I didn't go into broadcast journalism

Because of things like this.

Hooty hoo!

It's spring in the 'hood ... which means that about half of the locals are no longer in winter coats and hats. I myself walked to the gym in capri pants and a sweatshirt, because I just can't pretend it's cold out anymore.

Also, I need some new music. What are you all listening to?

Look at this picture. What do you see?

This image ran in the paper with a book review on "Bonk: The curious coupling of science and sex." When we picked this story for the Large Print Weekly, the graphics editor didn't get it and vetoed it in favor of a stock photo.

Turned out to be a good call on her part — there was a crap-pile of letters from readers who were completely confused and chemistry nerds who were outraged at the graphic designer's ignorance of the fact that the above is totally implausible as a proper organic molecule.

Oh, and the molecule? If you can't see it (I couldn't at first), it spells a word. With three letters in it.

Midtown Beyond the Clusterfuck

Today I accidentally went to work early. So I walked around midtown and took some random pictures.

Also, I have now caught two different instances, on different desks, in which I have had to call editors after seeing stories ready for print that mistakenly called the National Republican Congressional Committee the RNCC (Not to be confused with the RNC. I swear those republican bastards did that to confuse people). So I'm using my dirty past in service to the big bad liberal media.

Also also, I miss trees.

Some random words of wisdom

Sometimes the only sane answer to an insane question is insanity. — Fox Mulder

It's not that I'm weird. It's that everyone else is so damn normal. — Jenny

Keep knocking on doors and eventually one will open. — Someone from salt-n-pepa

Never turn Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd off the radio. — Dad

When you've lost all hope and excuses
From the cheapskates and the losers
Nothing's left to cling onto
You've gotta hold onto yourself. — Green Day

The wrong guys won't hurt you. It's the right ones that are the killers. — Ally McBeal

Thongs are the answer! — A former MHS cheerleader

You know what they say about women and trolley cars - there are plenty of them in the sea. — William Lichter, "Can't Hardly Wait"

If you think you suck, then you are going to suck. — Lynn Schommer

In college you pay to be miserable. In high school it's free. — Sra. Munig

You know what they say about corporate art - it needs to be smashed. — Dave Jacobs

Babies are highly overrated. They're not that cute, and they smell. — Norgon's take on abortion

The most valuable of all talents is that of never using two words when one will do. — A fortune cookie, on the wall above the copy desk at The Country Today

Never end a story with a fart. — Julian Emerson

All except the last few are from the quote book I just found that I kept in high school. Now all my words of wisdom get posted to facebook, where they are ultimately lost to everyone except the people who archive our profile information for marketing purposes.

Yes, you too have an accent

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
The Midland
The South
The Northeast
Philadelphia
North Central
The West
Boston
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

However, it is most definitely soda, not pop.

HTM In Review: "Run Lola Run"

OK, so "Run Lola Run" is a 10-year-old movie. Let it be duly noted that HTM in Review has nothing to do with timeliness.

I felt the need to watch this movie again because years ago it tripped me out. Basically, what happens is that Lola has to get 100,000 marks (yes, in the pre-Euro days) to her boyfriend, Manni, in 20 minutes or he will hold up a store at gunpoint. The same 20-minute scene plays three times, with slight variations, and in the end of each one things turn out differently for everybody. Set in Germany in 1998, there is, of course, techno music. And there's running.

The trippiest part of the movie, I think, is that it shows snapshots of the futures of the people Lola runs past. In one scene a guy tries to sell Lola his bike and she declines. You see snapshots of the guy eventually falling off his bike, meeting a woman in the hospital and eventually marrying her. In the second version, Lola declines again, saying the bike is stolen. The guy ends up getting arrested and put in jail.

It's nuts how, a la "The Butterfly Effect" on a smaller scale, every teeny tiny decision you make has the chance to affect everything else around it. Which reminds me of an argument the teacher made (er, adapted from some other philosopher whose name escapes me) in my 10th-grade religion class on the validity of creationism — though as far as I was concerned, it was a perfectly logical argument AGAINST God in the way most Christians believe.

He gave us each an oatmeal cookie, insisting that because the cookie was made up of so many complex ingredients, combined in just the right way, that the cookie couldn't possibly have occurred in nature — it had to have a designer.

Change the cookie to something complex that occurs in nature (like, um, rocks, the food chain, the anatomy of any living organism ...) and it's clear that it's not really an argument for creation at all if you don't believe in creation in the first place. Just because something is complicated doesn't have to mean it didn't evolve that way, as opposed to being created. Similarly, just because life is a mind-blowingly complicated web of interactions and decisions that all affect each other doesn't mean they're all orchestrated by some dude in the sky with nothing better to do than micromanaging the fates of 6 billion people.

But back to Lola. There's one part of the movie that I didn't really think about the first time: in the last scene, she screams at the ball on a betting wheel until it lands on the number that she needs. Maybe God does work in more direct ways sometimes. Or maybe the freakishly red-haired Lola has some divine powers of her own.

Cooking class!

This is me having way too much fun with the food processor.

Yesterday I went to a cooking class. It was put on by a French woman who owns a company called The Wise Cook and runs healthy cooking classes out of her (really nice Upper West Side) apartment.

The class was me, a British woman and her two guy friends and an American guy (above). We made baked herb tilapia with pureed broccoli and carrots, which is a lot yummier than it sounds, because it involves potatoes and bleu cheese. Note to Mom: I don't know how pureed veggies with potatoes and cheese (cream cheese works too) fit into USDA dietary requirements, but I bet the residents would like them.

Oh, and it was pretty too:


All in all, definitely an educational experience. And the best kinds of learning experiences are the ones where you get to eat at the end. These classes run every week, but sadly they cost $45 a pop so I don't think I'll be a regular.

I heart Gail Collins

She is definitely my favorite of the Times' weekly op-ed columnists.

Nicholas Kristof is up there too. His writing leaves you with the impression that he is a genuinely nice man (I've never met him).

For supper tonight I went to McDonalds hoping to get a meal with a Shamrock Shake (That, along with wearing my Dropkick Murphys shirt, was the extent of my St. Paddy's Day celebrating today). But sadly they didn't have them (How many years have they not been doing that without me noticing?), so I went across the street to Yoshinoya and ordered a beef bowl, which was basically fat with pieces of beef attached atop overdone rice. Ick.

Tomorrow I have to teach a class for the new Harlem Live kids about the basics of journalism. That should be interesting. I'm a little scared. Though there will only be, like, five of them, so it shouldn't be too bad ... I hope. Then I'm going to a cooking class, and Wednesday I'm finally getting around to the ritual new-phase-of-my life haircut. Should be an eventful weekend.

Overheard

I was on the subway today when a boy and a girl, about 6 or 7, sat down next to me. Their conversation went something like this:


boy: Do you like to look out the window on the train?

girl: yeah.

boy: Did you have sex with 100 men?

girl: What?

boy: Did you have sex with infinity men?

girl: Six?

boy: sex! Like when you're married.

girl: no.

boy: oh. I saw a rat on the train track. ...

Also, if I were on the Green Bay City Council I'd propose a resolution to ban the conservative talk show host Laura Ingraham from the city.

Oh, and I am very glad that we here in New York are finally starting to shut up about eliot spitzer, but this man has a point.

Yet another disaster of the week

Yesterday, a crane collapsed in East Midtown, killing at least 4 people and leveling a bar. This happened right before the Saturday budget meeting at work, so we had a little talk about how one of the effects of working in the news industry is that you're constantly aware of all the crazy things that are happening in the world. And they happen in Manhattan quite often.

There seem to be random disasters almost every other week in this city ... if you count the Eliot Spitzer debacle, we've been on quite a roll lately.

Last year when a steam pipe exploded near Grand Central, someone at work commented how people were abuzz, almost faintly excited, that something big was happening. I think that part of the mystique of post-9/11 New York City is that there is that chance at any given time that you could, just possibly, get blown up, or, more likely, find yourself stranded with millions of other people in a large-scale public services disaster. But it's not in a fearful, orange-alert kind of way, but more of a realization that even if you're careful, these things happen, and you deal with them ... and at least it gives everyone something to talk about.

Update: Spitz Quits!

I'm glad Eliot Spitzer decided to be a grown-up, admit his mistake and get out of office so as not to totally disrupt the state government when he most likely goes to trial for transporting a prostitute across state lines and/or money laundering.

I think a decent number of Democrats will forgive him in the end, after they get over their disappointment. Even if he gets convicted and disbarred, he'll end up writing a book or getting some plush consulting or lobbying job down the line. Also, his lieutenant governor David Paterson is pretty well-respected on all sides, not to mention that he'll become New York's first black governor and the first legally blind governor anywhere. Ultimately, it will all be OK. Except, probably, for Mrs. Spitzer.

That being said, I would enjoy nothing more than to see Bush get busted in a sting on a prostitution ring, preferably a sting that involved wiretapping (oh the irony). Sure, he may be able to reinvent executive privilege, openly support torture and oppose health care for poor children, tell the American people 935 flat-out lies on the subject of the Iraq war alone (none of them under oath, sadly), but you'd best believe that if he got busted Spitzer-style, his ass would be impeached faster than you could say "I did not have sexual relations with that woman."

"Mr. Clean" gets dirty — and pays $5,500 an hour for it

Gov. Eliot "Ness" Spitzer, who after fighting corruption on Wall Street as an AG graduated to the cesspool that is Albany with a promise to clean it up, was forced to publicly apologize today after a months-long IRS investigation revealed that he had been visiting prostitutes.

You can bet that the investment-broker types downtown are drinking themselves silly right now in celebration. You can read an entire tome of Times metro section coverage (or check out any other major paper, political blog, 24-hour news network or highly vocal street person, for that matter). You can read the Times editorial in which you can almost feel the palpable anger. You can think that while, yes, he broke the law and betrayed his wife and flouted his anti-corruption ideals, maybe people are making a little too big a deal about the whole situation (I'm leaning toward this option.)

But really, all you need to do is watch the video of Silda Spitzer, standing next to her cheating husband as he goes down in a flaming ball of hypocrisy.

EDIT: I'm still trying to wrap my mind around this. The mere time that it takes to say "five thousand, five hundred dollar-an-hour prostitute" would cost you about $20 with such a practitioner. And if Eliot Spitzer really wanted to cheat on his wife, I'm sure he could have found someone who would have happily complied, without risking a decade's worth of his public reputation. So I take it back. Legal and ethical considerations aside, Eliot Spitzer is too big of an idiot to be running a state. Kick the bum out.

And Dick Cheney Said, "Let There Be Light!"

Happy (belated) Daylight Savings Time everyone!

Do take a few seconds to contemplate:
a. the fact that our dark overlord has the power to rearrange the clock for two weeks out of the year (OK, so Congress has to agree to it. But back when this was passed that was rarely if ever a problem).

b. that this is the only context in which you will ever see the words "Dick Cheney" and "sunlight" occur in the same sentence.

Not that I'm complaining. Not at all. I'm all about sunlight, especially when there's more of it at a time of day when I'm awake to appreciate it.

I probably would have forgotten to set my clocks ahead if it had not been for a homeless woman on the train. After she finished telling us how if we didn't give her money her daughter would have to go hungry that night, she reminded us all to reset our clocks or we would be late for church.

I gave her a dollar.

Sleep, schmeep.

The damn neighbors are blasting their music again. That, in and of itself, is tolerable.

What is less tolerable is when the people upstairs think the music is coming from MY apartment and bang on MY ceiling. Argh.

Also, every Saturday night and some Fridays, there are parties at the church across the street that don't get going until about 1 or 2. But who parties in the wee hours with music blasting at a CHURCH? Well-dressed middle-aged people, of course.

Also, due to the fact that there are approximately 83734723727 churches in this neighborhood and exactly one parking lot, sometimes on Sunday mornings there are two rows of parallel-parked cars on one side of the street. No, I don't understand it either.

bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb bob-omb

Yesterday, after I heard that a tiny bomb had exploded the night before at the Army recruitment center in the middle of Times Square, I left for work 15 minutes early to go gawk at the scene. By the time I got there, 13 hours after the fact, there was really nothing to see except some Army men in uniform and a few reporters having what appeared to be an impromptu press conference.

This morning the New York Post made a complete ass of itself by conflating some nutjob's completely unrelated letters saying "We did it" with a confession to the bombings. Oops.

Goodbye, Brett!

Today is a sad day for Cheeseheads the world over, for it is the day our beloved Brett Favre announced his retirement from the game of football.

I take back any sentiments of goodwill that I may have previously expressed toward the Giants.

HTM in Review: Diet Books

I went on my first diet when I was 6. It lasted about three hours. Later efforts have had similar levels of success. Along the way, I've read enough silly weight-loss articles in women's magazines to earn an honorary degree in nutrition from the University of Conde Nast. I am not a fan of diets; I find it a lot less effort to just make little lifestyle changes over a period of time. But I do have a soft spot in my heart for diet books, mostly because they contain recipes. Of course, being that I don't usually end up cooking most of them, I'm kind of like those dudes who say they read Playboy for the articles. But whatevs.

Since I left for the city I've read two diet books, which were nearly polar opposites of each other.

The first was The Supermarket Diet from Good Housekeeping. The basic premise being that you make all your own food (and buy certain frozen/prepared stuff), follow three decreasingly torturous phases of recipes and ta-da! You're skinny. Within the happy rhetoric about how much food you can choose from, this book is actually bossy as hell. The author promises "You won't feel hungry," But she prefaces the 1200-calorie "boot camp" phase of the diet by saying that if you just can't handle the hunger after two days, skip ahead.

I would never consider following this diet. If you're really dead-set on cutting your sodium, though, this book could be of help. Also, it does have a lot of useful information on how to read between the nutrition-label lines and pick the healthiest stuff from the grocery store. Also, there are LOTS of recipes (though I haven't tried any of them yet). For the $5 I paid for it, not a total rip-off.

I picked up French Women Don't Get Fat from a book exchange at work. I was skeptical. French women don't get fat — Spanish women don't either. But when I went to spain, I gained 10 pounds. 

This book, however, has a really good point, which is that one of the reasons Americans have such a weight problem is that we, as a country, have a massively dysfunctional relationship with food. We eat junk — in huge f-ing portions — without really consciously enjoying it. And we don't move enough or drink enough water. So the point is that you figure out what your bad habits are and over about 3 months you cut as many of them out as you can. Also lots of recipes One of which I actually tried. And it even turned out OK.

I do disagree with the author's hatred of workout machines. And she does project a certain amount of snooty French elitism. But because of this book's suggestion of mixing fruit juice with seltzer water I've given up soda almost entirely (well, that and the fact that there is a tea-brewing machine right next to my desk at work). Which may not have done anything for my waistline but it's saved me a ton of money.

And that's it for the first installment of Hoty Takes Manhattan In Review. What are you reading/watching/listening to these days?

Semicolons get me goin'

A few days ago on the train I saw a public service ad thats gotten its share of media attention:

No matter what paper you read,
Its language or viewpoint,
Please put it in the trash can;
That's good news for everyone.

Why did a story about this sign spend at least a good week on the Times' most e-mailed list, you might ask?

Because of its "impeccable" use of a semicolon.

Sadly, the irony of a newspaper praising an ad about throwing away newspapers is lost on them.

Also, shouldn't you be recycling that newspaper?