You Gotta Have Class

Sometimes I wish I were old and my life were laying out before me and I could look back at things. I'm watching "Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid" and was reading about Robert Redford and Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. They are three people I really admire, not just because they're famous and talented actors but because they didn't let that define them. They seem to have led full and interesting lives because they didn't think that all they were worth was as an actor. They found other things that also were important to them and let that lead their lives. But my guess is that the money they earned from the movies gave tthem the capital to do that. Man, what can I do to get some capital? And why the hell can't I stay on course? I was supposed to be talking about how much I liked those three but now all I can think about is if I could make it as an actor. Maybe I'm charasmatic enough to let things like looks not matter. Or maybe I'm secretly quite talented. Probably not. Or at least not enough for movie standards.
And then I think about writers I admire and the young generation like Jonathan Safran Foer and the older generation like Joan Didion and wonder if maybe I'm a good enough writer to at least get a book published. And then I hate myself for wanted to sell my passions for cold hard cash. But that cash doesn't seem so cold or hard when I could use it to keep me warm and have a nice place to live.
Then I just think about how much I like Joanne Woodward in "The Long Hot Summer" and I wonder if maybe I could a classy dame like her when I'm older. That's what I'm hoping for. Money or not I want to be a classy old lady who doesn't give a shit but is also compassionate, intelligent and kind. Maybe I'm projecting. I don't care. That's what role models are for after all.

Lost New York

I've loved New York since before I realized it was a place to love. When I was 5 I was watching Sesame Street and I asked my parents if we could move there. They, thinking I would forget about such an outlandish idea immediately agreed and I was so excited. Soon I too would be sitting on those steps having conversations with furry animals and adults who were only there to educate and encourage. Maybe I could even get Oscar to be friendlier. Or I could find out exactly how he lived in such a confined space. Was the garbage can just an entryway and his real home was underground? Or was it like Mary Poppins' carpet bag? I would be in the know. Obviously I cared very much about the community aspect of Sesame Street, and I can only conclude that my five year old self understood that Sesame Street was a microcosym of a real New York street where all sorts of people from different walks of life passed by. Obviously.
Anyway, as you might suspect the whole move didn't quite work out. I blame the fact that I had younger siblings for somehow influencing my parents in their decision not to move into a city apartment, but I've always been a little disappointed that I didn't grow up in the city. Of course lots of people will cite statistics showing that a kid growing up in the city is exposed to all sorts of risks and bad influences, but when I was fifteen and reading 'The Basketball Diaries' or 'Frannie and Zooey' I felt differently. Not that I wanted to become a drug addict or anything, but I wanted to escape the boredom of a small town and the placidity of that life.
Now that I am here I still wish I could be experiencing New York. But, as usual, I'm living in the past. I wish I could experience the New York of yesteryear. I want to know the world of the avant garde poets and playwrights in Greenwich Village, the excitement of social change in the Lower East Side and the immigrants who made this country. I want to know the diners and coffeeshops of New York during World War II and the air of glamour during the fifties. The radicalism of the liberal 60s a and the party scene of the 70s. I wish I could really know what it would be like to see New York through all those times. Through the good years and the bad, the transitions of the neighborhoods and watch the kids of immigrants grow up.
Lately a new era has sprung into my mind as something to have seen in New York. I never really considered it before but it definitely has had an influence on how I perceived New York as well. The Eighties. Ahhh. Was there ever such a strange decade as that? I wish I could have seen the East Village in all its day glo glory. To meet the young musicians, filmmakers and artists that came to its streets dreaming of fame, beauty and freedom. To hear the music of Arthur Russell in the early dawn after an all night party and to feel the rush of punk music at CBGB. Or watch the rise of Jean-Michel Basquiat and an unusual form of music called hip hop. And can anyone forget the fashion? It seems to me that the clothes were just a joyful embrace of the ridiculous. None of this hipster pretention. It was all pretty crazy. My perception of what made the East Village and the Lower East Side so cool at this time was that a lot of people who were the social outcasts of their hometowns moved to New York to be with others like them, and the excitement of finding likeminded people spilled through. I know a lot of tragedy has since ended some of the exuberance of this decade. AIDS and drugs made the world look bleak and garish in the harsh light of reality. But at the same time, the pictures I see in the books I've been absorbed by at the bookstore make me wish I could have been a part of that crazy, free for all scene. Where it was all about the aesthetic and the fun. New York these days seems watered down in comparison to the life of the party it was then. Too many kids pouring in from all over trying to get a taste of the big city and all it has to offer. I'm one of them. But I wish that just for a little longer, just for my sake, it could have remained the city it was then.

Homesickness is a disease.

My sister and her best friend came into town for a vacation that totaled about 36 hours. In that span we took a crazy trip from LaGuardia in a cab, shopped at H&M, hung out in the East Village, made friends with my local cute coffee providers and movie renters and made a general mess of my room. We spent an inordinate amount of time lying in my bed and being silly and now I miss them more than words can express. It almost makes me want to give up on this crazy thing called New York and revert back to simpler times. I do like it here but nothing can replace the simple joy I find in getting lost in Queens with my sister because we can't figure out the bus system/are too poor to afford the bus so we decide to walk from LaGuardia, over the pedestrian bridge and to the subway. A beautiful day, oddities in Queens and a couple of cigarettes are all we need to have a strange bizarre time together. I wish she were here with me. This whole town would seem small and we would be unstoppable! I can't write about this anymore. I risk crying at the coffeeshop and embarassing myself in front of the cute boy the girls decided I should date since they both have boyfriends and don't live here. Not a good way to begin the relationship.

The ONLY way to see movies

Tonight I forayed into the wonderful world of movie premieres. It really is the only way to enjoy a movie. If you have the means I highly recommend it.
My roommate's girlfriend had the tickets and couldn't go so I invited my new friend Lynne to come with me. It was the movie Reign Over Me with Adam Sandler, Don Cheadle, Liv Tyler, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Ryan from 'The Office'.
When Lynne and I were walking to join the line of other lucky ticket holders we were stopped right in front of this blakc SUV and out climbs Liv Tyler in the midst of the flashing paparazzi lights. We continued on after she had been ushered past and joined a long line of young college aged people like ourselves wondering how we had gotten there. We were given green slips of paper with numbers on it in exchange for the ticket I brought. I was worried that we would be kicked out because we weren't "officially" invited or anything and it said they'd be checking ID and reservations but neither happened. It makes me want to sneak my way into some of the events my boss gets invited to. After waiting in the cold for about 50 minutes Lynne and I were given tickets in exchange for our green pieces of paper and told to go towards the theatre. And then we were told to join some other line, and then finally we just cut with all the other people who were told to enter the theatre. As we made our way down to our seats we passed by Liv talking to some man, looking utterly gorgeous and serious and little girlish even though she's a mature, grown woman. There's just something little girl innocent about her. It's adorable.
Lynne and I were seated in the front, great seats really, not too far from the stars. We tried to stargaze without straining our necks or looking like the other audience members, who weren't shy about trying to get a better look at people. I saw Will Smith and Lynne saw the back of his head. I saw Tim Robbins but there was no Susan in sight and I think I saw that dumb Howie Mandel looking like just another douche. Maybe Steve Guttenberg. But I don't know. I'm just glad I saw Liv.

Anyway, the moral of this anecdote is: Movie Premieres, while a great and free way to see a movie are not nearly as cool as they might seem. especially if you're low on the totem pole. Then you're just going to get the run around. Nobody gives a shit about you. Understandable I guess but still kind of sad in this day and age.

two fun things to do

These are my two newest favorite websites. Ze Frank and Smith Magazine. Check them out!

The Chinese Really Know How to Rub It In

I was reading the BBC and came across this article. Apparently some rat poison manufacturer wanted to name its product after a Chinese official indicted (or whatever the Chinese do to you) for bribery. Because he was bad for society they wanted to name something else bad for society after him. So you'll be all like, "Yo! Hand me that Zheng! I've got some rats to kill." And then stop and remember that bad official who also tried to cause destruction. Can you imagine if we did that here in the United States? Instead of stadiums named after people or companies we'd have sub-machine guns named MCI/WorldCom. Or kitchen cleaners named Scooter Libby. It's tagline could go something like this: 'For when you don't care how the mess gets cleaned up, you just want it taken care of, reach for Scooter Libby." It'd be a crazy world.

comedy club cocktail waitress

I started my first day at the comedy club last night and finished it in the wee hours of this morning. I got home at three a.m. after having ridden a bus five hours from D.C. to NYC. From Chinatown I went directly to work and had to bring my bags along with me. I didn't have a minute to spare, in fact I was late. I watched the other servers for a few minutes, looked over the menu, was given a quick tour and then thrown overboard on my own. I had the smaller room for two shows and if you ever want to learn something quickly, I recommend just being thrown to the sharks. Cause you learn pretty quickly. Let me tell you. (Tell me what? I always wondered.)
I was exhausted by the time I left and I had to be at my internship in six hours. I dozed a little but mostly I channelled stand up comedy. After about seven shows I have almost all of their routine memorized. There's about eight comics that perfom a night and they do back to back shows. We have shows running simultaneously in two rooms and sometimes they'll get off stage in one room and about ten minutes later they'll be on stage in the other room. It's amazing to watch them do this, but also fairly repetitive. Some are pretty good at making it seem almost all spontaneous and stuff but even that is pruned and changed around but basically the same. I can tell you all about Xycine's husband and his curious pronunciation of 'guppies' because he is from Amsterdam and apparently 'all the children had herpes' and how he went to Morrocco on his honeymoon and was always checking his cell phone for BBC updates because he was a gay, Jewish American in a Muslim coountry. Or James' joke about having a white girlfriend with a black ass--no she doesn't have a big one. It's flat. It's just the color black. Or....well it's already kinda old.
I don't know if this job was such a good idea. I'm not really one to force people to have a two drink minimum or interrupt them while they're listening to a comdiean. And that all the waitresses are going to be the type of girls who used to do theatre and might possibly have moved her so they can be actresses or something. They were friendly and everything. I just don't imagine that we'll be best friends. They were loud and I was shy. The bar manager I think secretly wishes he were up on stage with the comedians because he's always trying to tell these jokes that everybody ignores. Things he thinks are funny but really are just sad and pathetic. Like when he told me alcohol is his friend when no one else wants to be. See, coming from the right person that could be funny. Tired and used but funny. From him it's just sad and a little weird.
I doubt if anyone here is going to be the next Seinfeld but it is definitely interesting to learn what this world is like.
I don't know how long I'm going to work here. I have a couple of other jobs I'm going to check out. One is the Tribeca Grill, which is right under the production office. It's quite nice and I'm going to try really really hard to make a good impression on the manager so he'll hire me as a hostess.

Internship a Success

Did you ever have a special place to go when things seemed rough as a kid? Mine was a little corner in my parents' closet when we lived all lived in an apartment. I had my notebooks set up and could spend hours sitting under the hanging pants and skirts, writing and escaping my younger brother and sisters. It was a relief to crawl under there and get away from it all. That was like a safe place, where the realities didn't matter.
Now that I've grown older my need for such places has lessened, but since moving to New York, and especially after I moved into my apartment in Brooklyn, I've needed a place to get away from it all. I like my roommates but the actual apartment makes me desperate to get out. It's dirty and dusty and cluttered and smells of cats. I like cats, well, I did. I like these cats too, it's just a little much for me. All of it is. I never realized how much I need clean, organized spaces. I thought I could put all that aside in order to have a cheap, moderately cool place to live but I can't. Every morning when I come down for a cup of tea I fantasize about being elsewhere. And now that I've started my internship I've found that place. That safe place where things go according to a system, dishes are clean, the refridgerator is neat and it doesn't smell of cats. People are dressed well and friendly. Celebrities drop by (sort of. Kate Winslet, my Kate, was here for a reading but I didn't get to see her.) and everyone is efficient but easy going. Making a cup of tea in the morning I breathe a sigh of relief. I would stay here all day every day, running errands and getting coffee forever if they'd let me. As it is I'm only here two days a week. I hope someday the rest of my life fits as well as this aspect of it. I can't imagine things going that smoothly but I can hope. It is my version of the American Dream.

"Let's Face It, A Bit of A Crush, Actually"

I've never cared that much for the French. Not that I have lots of experiences with them, they've just never really crossed my mind as a civilization to give much thought about. Perhaps it's my aversion to anything popular but I've never cared that much about going to Paris either. The whole romantic aspect of it and the fact that so many women seem to think it's this magical dream land makes me not care for it much. Not that I'd turn down a trip. I've just never daydreamed about it, except maybe as a European escape. Especially when I think about all the writers who escaped to it and some images I've been shown of it. I'm sure it is a place I'd love, I just haven't given it an opportunity yet. But if they keep turning out young actors like Mr. Gaspard Ulliel above and Mr. Louis Garrel below:



I should plan a trip there immediately. With dimples like Gaspard's, which are so odd as to be incredibly charming, and give the impression that they are only seen when he is shyly smiling, or quite happy; and the cigarette smoking skills of Louis, not to mention their acting abilities in two of my favorite French films, these boys are hope enough for a country that already has 286 kinds of cheese going for it.
Sure, the English boys are cute, and the Swedish boys are pretty, but I wish they all could be French boys...