All Around New York

As we lumber through workaday life, sometimes we can't help but settle into a immutable pattern. For five consecutive days, we follow essentially the same routine as the day before: rise, commute, work, commute, a little dinner, a little TV, sleep. In fact, the French have a patented phrase en argot for this : "Metro, Boulot, Dodo," but I digress. Even in a city as grand and exciting as New York, it's easy to get stuck on the treadmill of trudgery. That said, living in New York, when you do manage to get down off the merry-go-round of monotony (I like alliterations - sue me), one often thinks "What the hell have I been doing with my life? I should be doing more of [insert fun activity here]!"

That's exactly how I reacted to the events that I've attended over this past week. Whether you're a resident or here on vacation, I suggest you...

1. See a show - that's what NY is good at. In the past two weeks I've seen 'God of Carnage' on Broadway and 'Twelfth Night' at Shakespeare in the Park. The former cost a pile of clams, the second was free (less the cost of standing around in the rain for two hours waiting on line). Both were fantastic productions that left me dazzled and in a mood to skip around like an 11 year-old.

2. Go to a museum. In case you've been living under a rock, there are an assload of museums in the city. There are ones you know (MoMA) and ones you probably have never heard of (The Rubin). There are little ones (Neue Museum) and big ones (The Met). There are ones dedicated to the city (The Museum of the City of New York) and ones dedicated to, well, a 15th century monastery in the middle of France. That's the one we went to, a.k.a. The Cloisters. Like most New York museums, they request a "donation" to gain entry, but you can pay whatever and everyone still wins (you're supporting the arts, after all). Take the A train up to 190 and walk straight through the park until you see the big chateau straight ahead. And because John D. Rockefeller was such a forward thinker city planning-wise, visitors to Fort Tryon park can enjoy pristine, unadulterated views of the Hudson and Palisades without being exposed to typical Jerseyness like smoke stacks and interstate offramps. I'll let the cute redhead docent Katherine tell you about the Cloisters; all I'll say about it is that it's worth the trip.

3. Go to a park. And I don't mean just Central Park (although I love that park -- LOVE IT). The city is filled with awesome parks. In fact, parks are one area in which the city knocks it out of the park (okay, that was lame). Walk along the Hudson on the Hudson River Park, stretching from waaaaay up Riverside down to the Financial District. Or kick it in a landlocked neighborhood park like Tompkins Square, where you can be entertained by Bongheads to the left or a dog run to the right. My new park of choice is The High Line, which just opened at the start of June. Here's the history in a nutshell: an elevated train used to run above Tenth Avenue years ago, which would bring meat to the meat packing district. It was abandoned after interstate trucking basically usurped the usage of train transportation for perishables, leaving an unused train track with mucho overgrowth on the far west side of Manhattan. In the 80's people got the idea to turn it into a park. Giuliani was a dick and said no like 100 times. Then Bloomie said yeah, why not, sounds cool. Edward Norton came to fundraisers looking cute and speaking on behalf of Friends of the Highline, and thus many rich people were happy to hand over some cash to the non-profit to make them a nice park. It's an amazing study in parkitechture -- it's a functional space, while retaining the look and feel of the abandoned rail line. And, you can sit in a space like a giant movie theater at 17th Street and watch cars go up Tenth Avenue. Also, there are a couple secret wooden chaise lounges with train wheels on them that roll against parts of the railway. All aboard!

4. Eat. I'm going to rue revealing this secret down the road a piece, but here it is: the Shake Shack at 77th & Columbus rarely has a wait at 6:00 p.m. Even for tables. Then walk a couple blocks to the south and stuff a Magnolia cupcake down your gullet. Chase with an Alka Seltzer martini.

5. Go dancing. Right now is the thick of Midsummer Madness at the bandshell behind Lincoln Center. For $15 you can take a dance lesson and then stay on to listen and/or dance to live swing, jazz and latin bands. Or you can just freeload in the surrounding area of the park and do all the stuff you can do on the dance floor. But there you'll miss the old guy in uniform (that he must've worn in the Crimean Wars) Lindy hopping with a chippy about a half-century his junior, or the middle aged ballroom dance couple tangoing in sequins, or any number of women swallowed into the vortex of their partner's repeated spinning. Leaving out the thumping and the body slamming and general hysteria associated with my dreadful dancing skills, there is something to be said for dancing cheek-to-cheek to Kermit Ruffins & the Barbecue Swingers, outside, under the stars, the moon casting a soft glow on the dance floor, Blue Eyes in my arms.

6. Run into somebody famous. Okay, I'm not sure if Pinch Sulzberger would be considered famous to anybody but New Yorkers, but it was a good, solid sighting. After Shake Shack I had wandered over to Dovetail to check out the seasonal menu, and when I got close I realized the scion of the New York Times publishing dynasty was sitting on the stoop waiting for his dinner companion. As I perused the menu, he stated that he loved the restaurant. I concurred, to which he responded "Well, then I will no longer preach to the converted." Because I suck (e.g. am kind of shy), I missed a great opportunity to pimp out Blue Eyes as the food critic to replace Bruni. Meh. What are you going to do?

New York is such an amazing city. It's also expensive as fuck, but if you look hard enough you can find fun, relatively inexpensive (or even free!) ways to amuse yourself. You can start by subscribing to all the hip e-newsletters, like GothamList or Manhattan User's Guide, or going right to the source (Bloomie!) by checking out NYC & Co. (it's not just for tourists),
just to name a few.

Of course, the best intentions ("We have to do one fun thing after work each month"), which I voiced to Blue Eyes last night will probably work out as hit-or-miss over the next 12 months, but I'm going to work like hell to hold up my end of the bargain.

I Can't Believe it's July.

This is a mixed bag of crap because I do not have an attention span today.

Do you know what freaks me out? The fucking coffee maker at work. Apparently, this Flavia machine is sweeping the nation. Whatever happened to a pot of coffee sitting on a warmer all day, slowly emulsifying into an non-potable goo? This 'machine' has a screen that runs advertisements of itself while you're brewing your chocamochalatte or whatever the hell button you inadvertently pushed. It also makes "tea". You know what else makes tea? Hot water. So what the hell do we need this thing to make tea for us for? All I know is on the off occasion when I do stoop to using the machine, it explodes the packet of junk they're reporting contains "coffee" with such violence that I've taken to removing myself to another room while it's working, like a nurse in an X-ray room. Psychotic.

Anyway, it's July already, can you believe it? What are you doing for the long weekend? I am not planning much, honey. It might be looking a little like the Wizard of Oz up in the neighborhood this weekend because apparently a bunch of midgets (er - little people) will be hanging in the BK this Independence Day holiday.

Like art? Try this site. It's kind of funny and noirish. And racy, if hardware can be considered racy.

You know what's good? 'Twelfth Night' at the Delacorte (a.k.a. Shakespeare in the Park). Blue Eyes and I survived torrential rain to secure a spot on the stand-by line, and I have to admit it was TOTALLY worth it. The actors were great, the direction was spotless, the set pristine. I wanted to skip through the park and click my heels when we were leaving the production. So if you like to stand on line for long stretches of time, I suggest skipping Statue of Liberty's crown this weekend and try to get tix to the Bard. Culture yourself a little, for godsake.

Ciao xoxo

The Human GPS System

I’ve never believed in fate. It’s implausible to me that God has a plan for each of us and as such, we are destined to go through life as automatons of His will. Where’s the fun in that? If you were God, wouldn’t it be more interesting (and certainly funnier) if you just plopped down a bunch of souls on the Earth, wound them up and watched them go? No, predestination never made sense to me; I’m more a student of chaos theory.

That said, I am disinclined to believe that our lives are just a cosmic mistake and that we’re destined for nothing greater than food for worms. My personal philosophy centers around speculation that we’re all inter-related at a microcosmic level. Quantum physics. Perhaps String Theory. I’m not quite sure how it works or the extent to which we can quantify it, but just like big-D “Destiny” doesn’t make sense to me, neither does ignoring the prospect that, at a molecular or subatomic level, there’s got to be some kind of something going on.

Call it what you will (my aunt likes to refer to it as Abundance): if you pay attention to the signs there’s evidence of its existence. Having a bad day? Spend the morning with a crabby countenance and watch how things will continue to snowball downhill until your head hits the pillow that night. Conversely, perform one small act of kindness and watch good come back to you tenfold. Because the ebb and flow of abundance is imperceptible, it’s often hard to remember it exists in the first place. Most of the time it’s as inaudible as the flight of a bumblebee, but sometimes it’s as loud as Bourbon Street on Mardi Gras Tuesday.

The latter, I will call Gut. Or Guidance. In a nutshell, it’s when Abundance tells you what to do.

People don’t listen to their gut enough in this society. I surely didn’t. I’m a math person, practical, an INTJ. I can always reason my way through a decision. Sometimes, though, too much reason can fuck you. It certainly did to me when I moved back to New York in 2004. In my frenzy to land a job as quickly as possible, I ignored my Dangerometer. I should have known before I even showed up for the interview that accepting a position working for Piranhahead would be a recipe for disaster. What about my boss’ brusque and suspicious demeanor – which I sensed during a telephone interview 3,000 miles across the country – made me think that working for her would be a trip to Disney World? I should have shelved the rationalization and gone with my Gut, the same Gut that was pleading with me not to take that job.

People won’t listen to their Gut, but they’ll follow the commands of a disembodied British person telling them how to drive to the nearest Olive Garden. I recently read an article in which a doctor imagines a world where humans have their own GPS system. “‘Take the job in New York.’ ‘Get the biopsy.’” Like, if we could magically turn on an internal Garmin we would know how best to live our lives. For me, the question is not whether we have a GPS; it’s whether or not we choose to listen to it.

In the latest issue of InStyle, Michelle Pfeiffer makes a seemingly off-the-cuff comment about her lack of direction. “I finally learned how to use the GPS in my car, and it changed my life. It took me so long because I have trust issues. I just didn’t trust that it wouldn’t get me lost. But I realized that nothing could get me more lost than me.” She’s speaking literally, of course, but I interpret her confession metaphorically: she’s finally learned to listen to her internal GPS.

I finally learned to listen to my internal GPS in late October 2007.

Some of my more tenured readers may remember that for about two years Gawker had a feature they called Blogorrhea, where they would link to posts from New York-based blogs. They featured my blog about a dozen times, and each time netted me a stable of steady readers. I also got a lot of free stuff: a bottle of wine, tickets to a musical, a shitload of Aveda product. I also got an email from the man who would later become my fiancé.

It was succinct, yet provocative. He had read my blog for a while and wanted to meet me in the flesh. Everything he related about himself was infallibly above board: his name, where he lived, where he worked. Whether or not I wanted to meet him in the flesh was entirely up to me. After ruling out that the writer could be a crazy sick lunatic commencing a career in serial killing, I gave it three seconds of thought before saying out loud to nobody: “Oh, who the fuck is this?”

And then a funny thing happened: my internal GPS turned itself up to 10 on the volume dial and screamed at me “DO NOT DELETE THAT EMAIL.” It was almost as if someone else was in the room with me – a life coach, Big Yellow Hair or my mom or someone – shaking me and yelling at me to just “PUT THE EMAIL ASIDE FOR NOW AND JUST THINK ABOUT GOING OUT WITH HIM, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD AND ALL THAT IS HOLY. YOU CANNOT CONTINUE TO BELLYACHE ABOUT NOT MEETING QUALITY MEN IN NEW YORK AND THEN JUST DISMISS THIS GUY OUT OF HAND. HE COULD BE THE ONE, FOR CHRISSAKES!” Of course, I really didn’t believe he was the one, but the possibility was there, the very remote possibility.

It was my Human GPS that’s what made me proverbially sleep on it for a day and then reply to the email that yes, I would love to meet a reader for drinks. Really, what did I have to lose? An hour and a half of my life? That’s not so bad. After all, the dude would pay for drinks. Well, now that I’m sitting here typing with a very pretty engagement ring in the shape of a daisy adorning my ring finger, you can guess what transpired on that first date. The details stay with me, but I will say that when I was walking back to the subway that night I caught my reflection smiling back at me as I passed by a store window. And I never smile after a first date.

After reading those two disparate articles mentioning GPS systems I was reminded of that October day I spent sitting on the big chair considering replying to the nice man’s email with a “thanks but no thanks,” but instead getting stopped by a voice or a force bigger than myself. If I hadn’t pulled my head out of my ass and obeyed Abundance, I’d probably still be spending weekends alone doing whatever I did, which wasn’t very important, fun or particularly memorable.

Sometimes I think about what a near miss life can be, usually in the context of the latest catastrophe: the people who were home sick the day the Twin Towers came down, the lucky ones who missed their connecting flight from Brazil to Paris. These are the happy examples, the people who escaped disaster unscathed. Less painful but far more tragic is the missed opportunity. The thought of not having Blue Eyes in my life because of my own short-sightedness is absolutely heartbreaking to me. Of course, if things had transpired that way I probably wouldn’t be cognizant of the heartbreak, I’d just wonder from time to time: what if…

But I can’t get too hung up on these morbid thoughts. Thanks to my internal GPS, I said yes to the date in October 2007, and yes to the proposal in January 2009. Now all that’s left is the happily ever after.

Outwitted in the Fashion Department, Part Deux

FUCK.

[Sorry mom.] But seriously, fuck. I *just* went to the eyeball doctor on Tuesday (because I had to get them to fill out a form that says I'm not a Magoo so I can just send in my DMV renewal instead of having to take half a vacation day to stand around that hellhole = totally worth it!) and got two pairs of new glasses. I walked in with the intention of only purchasing a backup of my night driving/movie watching prescription, but lo and behold the eyeglass store was having a 2 for 1 so I decided to get a set of prescription sunglasses as well. In a fit of spontaneity, I chose a round frame.

What did my beloved Pat Kiernan choose to focus on this a.m. for 'In the Papers'? The Styles section in the NYT, touting the hot new trend this year: round sunglass frames.

Two days from an impulse purchase to 1,200 word coverage in the New York Times. Two.

I guess I could jump up and down for joy and exclaim that I am on top of the fashion curve and PEOPLE follow ME, but I must plead ignorance, just as I did with the Wellingtons. *I* chose round because I was feeling lighthearted and saucy and they looked cute on me. Not because I'm tragically hip. And not because I wanted to look like Harry Potter or The English Patient or that I give two shits what Marc Jacobs or New York Magazine says is "hot" (God help me).

Call me conspiratorial, but the writer must've been the dude who tailed me all the way from Clark Street to Montague and into the store. The guy who watched me juggle about 13 sets of frames in my precarious grip and systematically reject all but two of them as he waited his turn in the very uncomfortable guest chair. He couldn't write about the wire-rimmed glasses-glasses I picked from the Dolce & Gabbana line, he had to write about the round glasses that weren't even proper sunglass frames that I picked from from a non-designer line indigenous to Pearle Vision Center.

Yesterday I was congratulating myself for branching out of my comfort zone; today, thanks to this article, I'm cursing all the Williamsburg hipsters and Upper East Side mavens who worship the Gods of Fashion and will be sporting similar specs as they strut around the Hamptons or the Lower East Side this summer. I hope their skinny jeans give them a yeast infection.

I mean, what happened to the shutter shades of 2008 so popular with Kanye and the Cash Fan guy? What, they haven't yet migrated into the pantheon of American Classics?

*sigh* At this point, my hands are tied. For the remainder of summer 2009 I'll have to suffice to sport my ur-hip (now ur-played out) round sunglasses until they make way for the trendy sunglass frames of summer 2010 and I can finally wear them in peace. Until then, I'll have to take succor in the thought that -- bucking any fashion trend -- both pairs of my reading glasses are Cat's Eye. One even has rhinestones on the edges, just like those of the ladies of Mad Men.

Because cute eyewear is how I roll, goddammit. Despite what the stupid Styles section says.

PS: The graphic of those glasses above is not representative of my pair. Mine are cuter and less pretentious. I'm not an Olsen twin, for godsakes.

Sally, NyQuil and the After School Special

I don't know what is wrong with me this year but I've been sick like 200 times since November. No, I'm not licking the subway pole, I'm just catching every foul microbe in the atmosphere. It's alarming, because I'm not even on the subway that much (1 stop) and I'm still getting colds every other week. Now it's June so I can't even blame it on cold season. Anyway, I was OK for a while until last weekend, when Blue Eyes got a cold. I shouldn't have caught it because he was very intent on keeping his germs to himself, but I thought he was so cute all sniffly on the couch with a blanket and I couldn't help kissing on him all weekend even though I knew he was a danger zone. So I caught his cold.

But I didn't admit it, because like Monica Geller, I never admit I have a cold until I'm flat on my back with the chills. Instead I toughed it out at the Yankee game Tuesday night (the one where the Rangers pitcher kept beaning Teixeira and then Burnett clocked Cruz and a day later got suspended for it), and when I came home I downed two knockoff NyQuil liquigels.

Apparently I showered, dressed, and got myself to work the next day, but I have about 5% recall of any of it. What I do remember is my system being so depressed I could hardly keep my eyes open, even in a meeting with my boss and my boss' boss where they were asking me about response rates and shit. Even though I had downed 2 coffees at home, one medium + espresso shot at work, then had two coffee machine coffees (and this was all before 11:30 a.m.) I could not wake up. I was in such bad shape, it was probably good that I went to work because otherwise I probably would have ended up taking the eternal nap. Okay, probably not, but it felt like it was possible. At the very least, I was thisclose to reinacting Shirley Maclaine's overdose scene in 'The Apartment', complete with the slaps.

In fact, I could've used a slap. I should've asked my boss to slap me before I went into the Big Meeting. That would've been funny, especially since the walls are glass and everyone would've seen him slapping me. But it's not April Fool's.

My point is: if you feel like economizing with the no-frills NyQuil? I would stick to just the one pill to start. This is exactly why I don't like to take OTC medication. Gah!

The Gams of Summer

I have a problem. It's called my legs. Specifically? They're pale. Not the pretty alabaster pale like Nicole Kidman's coloring, but the wan, anemic pale of someone locked away in prison for the past 12 years.

Are you familiar with the comic stylings of Jim Gaffigan? (Probably not). Do you watch 'My Boys' on TBS? Gaffigan's the big Scandinavian-looking guy who plays PJ's brother. My legs look like him. "He's so pale..."

Here's the issue: I'm going to a wedding this weekend and I want to wear a dress. Dress with no pantyhose because Sally DOES NOT DO PANTYHOSE. This wouldn't even be an issue except recently I happened to get a good look at myself in a full-length mirror and realized I have a farmer tan from New Orleans (yes, I vacationed there again - no judgment) yet my legs are so white they look like they've been wrapped in gauze. In short, I needed to find a solution to my diaphanous gams if I wanted to wear a dress to the wedding.

So I bought self-tanner.

No, my legs are not zebraed with orange streaks, no my hands do not resemble those of an Oompa-Loompa. Because while Sally is often ditzy, self-tanner has been on the market for years now and I'm not a fucking moron.

Here's the prob: although I'm on Day 5, my legs look like they're still on Day 1. Still, the tanner has tinted my legs ever so slightly enough to amplify the mess of bruises I have all over my shins from tripping over my suitcase on the jetway of the plane to New Orleans. Now I look like a palish victim of domestic abuse.

I didn't think it was possible, but this morning I realized my legs look worse than they did a week ago.

Stuck, I did what any reasonable adult would do in this situation: I bought a new dress for the wedding, one that reaches mid-calf. Covers the bruises, camouflages the color. So nobody at the wedding will be the wiser.

Except Blue Eyes, of course.

Curse of the New Manager

After being unceremoniously laid off last November, I was out of work for about 3 months. Three months is bad enough – three months in the dead of winter is a recipe for suicide. Fortunately, there were three lights at the end of the tunnel in the form of (a) a gigantic, glinting engagement ring (January) a bartender-friend calls “the disco ball”, (b) moving in with Blue Eyes, and (c) starting a new job with the director-level title I’ve been campaigning for for years.

It’s gone quite well so far, except for a few snags, like learning a whole new industry, figuring out how to move an entire customer service and billing department over from an acquired company, and the personality quirks of my direct reports. To wit: in the course of the two months that I’ve been working here, the following incidents have transpired:

1. One took a week of vacation, then didn’t show up for the a couple days after – no phone, no email. When I asked her what was up, she said a “week” was 7 days. I informed her that a “week” was 5 business days.
2. Not a direct report, but this person – key in our department – quit in middle of meeting. Boss: “X, will you please go to this trade show in June?” X: “Oh, I’ll be long gone by then,” his exact words.
3. One junior-level person was openly insubordinate to my boss, the VP
4. Another, I have to discipline when I get back from vacation because of her fucking outfit today. She’s wearing harem pants with the sides open. Let that sink in a moment, kids. I’m not even going to make a joke here because there are so many, my head’s spinning.
5. And…I had to excuse one of our temps today because she was coughing like Typhoid Mary, yet refused to go home.

This is undoubtedly the weirdest place I’ve ever worked. I can’t wait to see what happens next.

The Blushing Bride to Be

Okay, kids! Here's an update from Fianceville. Actually, I hesitate to blog about my fabulous life now that I’m engaged. Not that I have a problem blogging about wedding stuff per se, it’s just that don't want to turn into that girl. The bride. Bridezilla. Bridey. Fuck Bridey, is usually how I react when realizing the subject of a much loved personal blog has wandered into smug married territory. Call me The Anti-Bride.

Rule #1: to all the single ladies, ears up: don’t ever bother getting jealous or rueful of your single status because planning a wedding is a pain in the balls. It's not that it's particularly hard; it’s just that there's so much to consider.

• How many people? Who’s A-list? Who’s expendable? Then you start feeling all bad about the expendables. Like, these people are expendable and they don't even know it. Soon, you're acting like a CIA agent who has to kill one of her coworkers. They're just pawns. PAWNS IN THE GAME!
  
• Where are you having it? Local or home of the bride? Home of the groom? Destination wedding? Elopement? Zeppelin?
• What will the ceremony be like? Religious or not? A friend ordained on the internet? Elvis impersonator? Marty Markowitz? (actually, Marty, if you're reading this, we'd love you to officiate)

And then there’s the reception…

• Are you having a traditional reception following a wedding ceremony? Something small followed by a bigger bash? Cookies on a plate in the church basement? Passing around a 40 of Old English then going to the tracks to shoot some stray dogs? (this is actually a thing -- story to follow in a subsequent blog)
• What are you going to eat? Are you okay with a buffet, or do you prefer seated? You can be cheap and do passed hors d'oeuvres, but you might incite a riot if you don’t tell people ahead of time. Catered by In-n-Out (that's actually a thing too, read it in one of my bridey magazines)
• Do you use a space and get the reception catered? Have it at a restaurant? If you do it in a restaurant it can get pricey. If you go somewhere that's not a wedding factory and get it catered, the price doesn't stop with the food. There are tables, chairs and linens to think about. Who's setting up and breaking down? How are the flowers getting there? Are you having an open bar, cash bar or are you bringing in your own liquor? How will the liquor get there? IS THERE ENOUGH LIQUOR? GAH!@%&$^@#@!

And all these elements are interconnected: you really can't decide where to do it without knowing who’s coming, but you can’t know who’s coming until you’ve figured out how many people you can have without breaking the bank…etc. etc.

Aren't they supposed to take girls aside in junior high school and let them in on exactly what's involved? Because I must've missed that day. When, after about two weeks of very casual discussion with Blue Eyes I started to get a sense of all the moving parts, it was a total and unpleasant surprise. Honestly, I'm not a bridey person to begin with. The Cinderella fantasy with little birds and mice making my dress and planning down to every last detail is so not my style. Not that I don't care; I’ve always had an idea in my head how I might want it to look, but that idea is more kegger-in-the-park-with-barbeque than Princess Diana’s wedding. Basically, I just want to be able to show up in a pretty dress and get my eat and drink on.

That said, now that I am familiar with all the hellish little details we have to work out between now and next spring, all the little wedding factories I used to scoff at are now looking really good. Here are a few that have sparked my interest of late:

The Grand Prospect Hall

A NY1 advertising regular, I swear I’m going to this Brooklyn event space and begging for a tour from the (Armenian?) husband and wife proprietors just so I can see them put their arms up in a sweeping motion when they show me the main room. “We make your dreams come true!” How about my dream of becoming wildly rich overnight? Can you make that dream come true?

Astoria World Manor

Sapphire Room, anyone? Even though my fiancé is of Italian extraction, even he’s not Italian enough for this place. At the very least, my hair would have to be bigger to qualify. I only wish they had kept the façade like they did in the 60’s. And made it a drive-thru.

Snuffy's Pantagis

Any place called Snuffy’s sounds classy in my book. According to cousin Kristy J, their specialty is the flaming Baked Alaska, which apparently is the piece de resistance of any reception. People actually book their receptions because of it. But it’s strange - they wheel it out, then you never see it again. It’s like ice cream in flames is the floor show but no one ever gets a piece of the dessert. Intriguing…

Terrace on the Park

What a better way of spending the most important day of your life than in a weirdly-designed high rise overlooking the rotting chrome in Flushing Meadows Park left over from the World’s Fair in 1965? The only thing better is if we could get buzzed by commercial aircraft flying overhead. Oh wait – it’s right next to LaGuardia. Done and done!

And then again, even if we run away to New Orleans, there’s always this place.

PS: Sally is taking any and all wedding advice! Please leave a message for her in the comments section.

Over the Shoulder...

I realize the serious dearth of posts is annoying the few readers I have left. Well, happy May! I present my readers with a new blog post. It’s regarding a subject near and dear to both my male and female audience. Ladies and gentlemen...Bras!
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Tuesday night I bought some new bras. At Victoria’s Secret, no less. Now, normally I wouldn’t be caught dead in that store. My general opinion of the Pepto-Bismol-colored boutique is that it caters to the slutty of taste but large of pocketbook. It was fun for about 15 minutes in 1990 when I bought a sexy cami for a college date that never materialized (okay, maybe I have more negative associations with VS than just their styles and prices), but once I entered into my 30s, I quickly relegated it to amateur league.

Unfortunately, the one thing that Victoria’s Secret does extremely well is bras. They may be pricey, you may have to put up with life-size cutouts of the uber-overbranded Heidi Klum at every turn, but when it comes to the basic bra, Victoria’s Secret can’t be beat. Those bitches got some serious engineering in ‘em.

So I have these two bras; we’ll call them “I Love This Bra!” and “Fuck You, Brastraps!” ILTB is on its last legs, and every time I wear FYB for more than a half hour I want to throw it into the East River. Just go get some new brawls, Sally (you say, in a faux southern accent). Ah, but it’s not that simple, kids, for unless you are a lady yourself, you do not know the ninth circle of hell that is bra shopping.

At this moment, all the men out there reading this are like “Whaaaaa? I thought you ladies love trying on bras! I bet you go to lingerie stores to try on stuff for the fun of it all the time. In fact, we are sure you are naked and having pillow fights in the dressing room!” Well, we might make like the experience is sexy and enjoyable, especially when the guys are the ones laying down the Visa card. But hear this: when girls talk about bra shopping, we’re not talking about picking up some matching La Perla lingerie that looks like flower petals to take on vacation, nor are we talking about slumming it at Fredericks of Hollywood to turn on our boyfriends for their birthday. When we ladies talk about bra shopping, we’re talking about locating and purchasing one of the two basic constructs of female clothing: the workaday bra, or the Jockey shorts of female undergarments.

The problem with bra shopping is that there are too many variables. There is the chest size: 32 thru whatever. You think you’re a 36 for your whole life and then one day you realize all those croque monsieurs at lunch have led you down the garden path to a 38. There is the cup size: A through E, sometimes bigger. Depending on the manufacturer or time of the month you might vacillate between two sizes. Then there is the type of cup: full, demi, padded. Straps: no straps, big straps, racerback. Cut: low cut, regular cut, straightjacket. Don’t even get into the lace/no lace quotient. That’s just aesthetics.

The second problem is that there are too many makes and models. All I knew when I walked into Victoria’s is that I wanted a bra just like I Love This Bra! because it fit well, didn’t make me look like Anita Bryant, and the straps didn’t slide down every 15 seconds. Of course, like your favorite lipstick shade, they no longer make it. So, I grab the first person I see with measuring tape draped around her neck. I tell her I need the closest to X model there is, in size Y, cup Z. She brings it to me. It doesn’t fit. I’m standing in the dressing room, my wrap dress hanging off my midriff, the overly snug satiny bra choking off any blood flow to my chest area. I now foresee the next three weeks of my free time being consumed by the fruitless hunt for the perfect brassiere: just what I did not want to have happen.

Fuck, I’m going to have to go to Macy’s. If there is a fate worse than bra shopping, it’s bra shopping during a Macy’s sale. Then cost enters into the equation, muddying the entire experience and stealing your focus from the ball. You’re into the whole “Well, this bra doesn’t fit, but I can get four for $8.00!” and next thing you know you have 26 bras that you hate filling every bit of empty space in your dresser, and you’re too proud to throw them away.

Original salesgirl must have caught sight of my desperate countenance because next thing I know three other measuring tape-clad chippies come marching into my stall with about 100 different models. “This one’s the Biofit!” “Biofit,” sighs my original salesgirl, as if it were the George Clooney of bra styles. I take a look before trying it on. It has padding. We’re not talking about padding like it’s a little help for the A cup, we’re talking pushup padding for the already nature-enhanced D cup. This is another problem with bras, they’re designed counterinutitively. The bigger you are, the more they pad the bra, exactly what a big-breasted woman does not need. It’s kind of like clothes designed for larger size women – why do designers always use the most obnoxious patterns and sprinkle sparkly shit all over the place, when all BBWs want is clothes that look nice? I hand the Biofit back to the salesperson.

“Here’s the Ipex,” another dictates, shoving it practically into my cleavage. That one sounds too much like a species of wild mountain goat, so I throw it aside. A salesgirl with a pixie haircut, seemingly still in high school hands me something my grandmother would’ve worn – the stuff of legends – a bra with enough fabric to swaddle an 18-month-old baby. For the record I’m a 38C. Not big, not small. Yet, these ladies might as well be handing me Madonna’s cone bra from the Vogue tour. I shoot pixie my best smoldering look and three dematerialize faster than my 401K.

While they’re out of my personal space, just for kicks I put on the granny bra. Not only does the rear closure take up the better part of my back, the hooks are like they were pried off a chain link fence. And the cup? Now, my breasts are sizeable, but they were positively swimming in this model. A few shoves here and there and I work out that I could get at least two breasts in either cup. I start laughing at the visual when the head saleslady, who uncannily resembles a pre-surgical Star Jones, barrels in.

She has one – yes, just one – bra in her hand and in her lilting Caribbean accent she demands me to take off the granny bra and bend over. “You drop them into the bra,” she explains. Like a B52 bomber, I finish the thought. I lean over, plop them in, she fastens me up. I stand erect and get a load of my secured self in the mirror. Gigi! While you were standing on the brink...

I take one in dark chocolate and one in nude.

The third problem is the fucking price. As I get dressed a steal a look at the price: $45.00. Forty-five dollars is a pair of shoes. It's practically half a dress – a nice one – at Bloomingdales. It's dinner at Frankie’s, with booze! I shuffle over to the cash register, hanging my head at the prospect of having to pay a C-note on two stupid bras that I’m just going to have to replace in a year anyway. Is there no justice?

There is. They were on sale.

Usually, I end my stories with a moral, but there is no moral, there is just the bra and the bra shopping. And even after a sale and perfect fit, I still would rather be waterboarded than have to do this again anytime soon.

What Can It Mean?

I had that recurring dream again where I'm babysitting the Obama girls.

It's the same thing every time: I'm watching the girls at the White House. Michelle comes home from some event (Barack's never there) and asks how they were. I reply "Well, Malia was fine, but Sasha was a pain in the ass."

I don't know why I keep having this dream or what sets it off. I've had it at least three times since Barack's been elected, which averages out to once a month.

All I know is, if one day out of nowhere I get a call from Michelle asking me to watch the girls for a few hours, I will not be surprised.