faithful.

painting by Chris McGraw

this makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

not that i need help in that department :-) but, no, seriously, this is my most favorite commercial. watch it. i promise you'll feel warm and fuzzy afterward. unless you don't want to. but that would be a shame, so just watch it anyway.

tell me how...

...to feel nothing.

There is a song I love this week.
You would love it too.
But you won't.

There is a store on Orchard.
You bought something there once.
It's closing.

There is my wooden chest.
I want it back.
I want to reupholster it.
I don't know how.

There is this ache in my stomach.
remember? what do you remember?
tell me how much.

are you laboring to forget,
the way that I am?
is it working?
tell me how.

do you cry silently in the blue night,
like i do?
do you hide your eyes, like me?
or are you fine?
tell me how.

p.s. she's a ghost

where is my automobile?

happy birthday john hughes. and thank you. the world would be a much sadder place for unpopular, acned, rejected, sweaty-palmed, geeky, fat, skinny, big-haired, flat-chested, gangly, acid-washed, metal-mouthed teenage boys and girls without you. (and thank you most of all for jake ryan.) xo.

thirty-one.

i had no real plans to celebrate..."I just wanna do something low key." well, it was anything but...*smiles* (thanks hans)

♥ din-din at Sticky Rice (I must have that giant blue chandelier!!)

♥ beers under the red lights of motor city (no, no doorguy yet. my long-lost brother, apparently, was there)

♥ delicious orange-flavored shots and Jimmy James at the magician (tom, what did u put in those shots???),

♥ impromptu lychee martinis, bourbon & ginger ales, and chit-chat at verlaine (stan, thanks for fixing my rosary)

♥ more beers at motor city. (uh oh)

♥ braided the doorguy's beard TWICE--added a little lip gloss and spit to help the braids stay put

♥ chatted with iraqi heavy metal band. told one I was a man. he believed me. asshole.

♥ chatted with New School students. lied about their ages (they're sooo much younger than we are). one is the spitting image of Carey Elwes.

♥ doorman wrestled a douchebag to the floor, and said douchebag was thrown out. trash talking ensued.

♥ tried to get a 20-year-old girl into bars, in vain. ahh youth.

♥ went to Iggys with New Schoolers. (i really want to break their camera)

♥ "[doorman], are you okay?"

♥ hannah won the scavenger hunt (damn you): a cigarette, a cough drop, change for a dollar. but i got the piece of gum.

♥ we didn't see a bulldog we could obnoxiously mistake for a collie nor a guy with a sports cap we could yell "go team" to...but we had a wonderful night!! (let's not even ruin it with talk of the hangover)

here are some silly pre- and post-birthday mac-pics.

it's been ages since...

...I've had a Gawker-worthy celeb siting. Last night, it was Mischa Barton, low and behold, at one of my LES brunch haunts. I noticed her because my date Liz kept ogling her feather skirt. Liz gave it the thumbs down--I gave it a thumbs-up, but did little birdies have to die to make it? :-( Liz and I had a loverly date, munching on beet and chicken salads, swooning over our hotter-than-Jude-Law waiter, swaying in the warm tawny light to what had to be a handpicked-by-me 80s mix. Liz giggled and said, "They've got your number." When "Africa" started playing, our jaws dropped and we sang along--not knowing or understanding the words. Here's the video--my first time seeing it, and not what I expected, though, in that predictable-8-member-80s-band-with-big-hair sort of way, maybe it is. There--I just referenced Mischa Barton, feather skirts, and the band Toto in one blog post. I just made your day, didn't I?

i never celebrate valentine's day...

...but i am an avid of love. Does that count?

In high school, it seemed every girl got roses and candy and bears (oh my) for Valentine's Day--and I got squat. So, I figured if I denounced Valentine's day, I'd be much less hurt about being slighted every year. That didn't work out as I'd planned. In college, I still felt the sting of rejection when I spied a girl dashing up to her bedroom with a batch of balloons, and a grin dripping with self-satisfaction that said "He loves me THIS much." And oh, let's not talk about the date stories, "He took you where?" "No way!" "Girrrrl, you're so lucky. He must really love you!"

Several years later, a sweetheart of a boyfriend gave me 9 dozen roses...yes, that's 9 multiplied by 12 equals 108 roses! holy moly! So, in his own way, he'd made up for all those high-school and college years of me getting nothing but tears and self-pity for Valentine's Day. But I wasn't as thrilled as I thought I'd be. I wasn't filled up with that "He must really love me" feeling. In fact, it didn't feel like love at all. It felt contrived, showy, boastful even--and much too easy. I pompously thought "now we're just like all the other couples who garishly feign their endless love for one day a year." I never told him that. It would have hurt him. Besides, his heart was in the right place, and it wasn't his fault he'd chosen to give roses to a complicated, over-thinking, wishy-washy woman. Instead I hugged him ever so tightly, and said "This is enough roses for a lifetime! *smile*"--and I meant it. After that day, I asked him to never buy me roses again--because I didn't need 108 roses to know he loved me. And besides, we didn't have 9 vases in our miniature basement apartment.

I asked a friend yesterday what she and her husband were doing for V-day. She said, "Well, nothing really...Feb. 13th is the day he proposed, so we don't really do anything for the 14th. Besides, if he'd proposed to me on the 14th...ugh...I doubt I'd have married him." There you have it, from one complicated woman to another.

And so it goes, I don't need one day of the year to know I am loved...tell me everyday, or tell me once every month or even once every six months...or really--just tell me when you feel it...don't squeeze it into February 14th. But, heck--bring on the dark chocolate!! These are my favorites :-) I'm in lurrve with the orange peel.

up close.

"Things that upon first, up close viewing seem completely abstract, full of seemingly random designs, but after stepping back from come into focus and make sense as one cohesive picture." --Alex Brown Near North Side, 2008, from Alex Brown's "Fodderland".

p.s. if you're in NY, or if Alex's exhibit comes to your city, i highly suggest seeing it. very alluring, cool stuff. sometimes i walk out of a gallery, and think, "I could have done that!" Well, most times I think that. But not this guy's work...I could never in a million years create anything like what he's done. And that's what you want to feel after you take time out of your Sunday to look at a bunch of paintings, isn't it?

happy birthday bob.

you would have been 64 today. i wonder if you know how much your music is revered, covered badly, and exhausted by an anxious college boy to woe a softhearted college girl--who grew up listening to bob songs on her sony cassette player.

the blackest eye.

Black eyeliner is the one (make-up) item i'd want to have with me, say, on a deserted island. "But why would you need eyeliner on a deserted island?" you ask. Well, my dear, it's not about need, now is it? That black eyeliner can double as a make-shift inkpen, for which to write on a makeshift sign made of tree bark--HELP. SOS. SAVE ME...and wave in the air when a plane or ship glides by, thus, saving your life. So, the thing you wanted, became the thing you needed. Stop me now...lol.This is perhaps the blackest eye liner...and it doesn't smear. go out and get it. Urban Decay 24/7 (shade: Zero).

to you.

today is my ex-boyfriend's birthday. (and i love him still.) he's a jolly good fellow...no matter how much he denies it. so happy birthday to him. photo by Henry Diltz, possibly taken in 1968--pre-fame Pryor