Molly Friedman

"Hysterical Sensationalism is the Poorest Weapon Wherewith to Fight for Righteousness." -Roosevelt

2010-09-02T20:19:00.008-04:00

The only lesson I remember from American History 101 had to do with muckrakers. Mostly, Roosevelt's 1906 speech about what they can do:

"We should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake."

I decided I should try and be one. Life is short and probably pointless. Causing a bunch of weird and annoying people to pout and maybe, try raking away some muck too, makes me kind of happy.

http://gawker.com/comment/28580416/

"Let Me Entertain You, Let Me Make You Smile. And If You're Real Good, We'll Have A Real Good Time." ~Gypsy

2010-05-13T22:19:00.006-04:00

(Josh Safdie, Ben Safdie, biting Ariel Schulman's arm)

I first met Josh and Ben Safdie in an Upper West Side studio, decorated with piles of foreign passports, Jerzy Kosinski books, and at least eight different table lamps placed on shelves, closet floors and the balcony (anywhere but tables).

I was 21 and it was the summer of 2005. The studio belonged to recent Sundance star and Catfish director Ariel Schulman. I’d met Ariel (and his brother Nev, the on-camera Catfish star) just weeks before, on a different kind of balcony at a spring gala for the NYC Ballet. Ariel grew up with the Safdies in Manhattan and, due to similarly chaotic yet creatively inspiring childhood narratives, created Red Bucket Films together. That summer five years ago, RBF was still in its own chaotic childhood; their website featured a dozen or so very short films they’d shot in the city using the same kind of video cameras my technologically-challenged mother would be able to “figure out.”

(Josh, Ben, me)

Also there that night was Casey Neistat, one half of yet another filmmaking brother duo known as the Neistat Brothers. Unlike the RBF crew, Casey and his brother Van were, aside from older and wiser, successfully building the beginnings of a real career. Their short, “iPod's Dirty Secret” began as a YouTube blockbuster hit in 2003, eventually noticed by the chattering classes in the media.

(Casey Neistat, me, Nev Schulman)

We listened to confusing music I’d never heard before but made sure to download as soon as I got home, passing a joint around, and sitting on the floor using gigantic markers to fill in cardboard bubble letter props. Well, the boys did the drawing while I babysat the joint. After gazing in awe at a new double-ended marker Ariel presented as though it were a blood diamond, the lamps were all turned off, Casey put an unmarked DVD into the TV and we all stopped to gather in a city night-lit circle to watch.

Having been the designated pot chaperone, I don’t remember specifics. I do remember the general concept: a recreation of Jurassic Park using only Claymation. And re-told as a comedy; the dinosaurs spoke English and wanted off the island. Hints of Maurice Sendak’s mythology, Michel Gondry’s cinematography and Wes Anderson’s glib dialogue were all apparent in only three colorful minutes.

(Ariel teaching me to ride a Vespa)

Today, I remember this night the way my dad must remember his first encounter with Al Pacino in the late 1960s (Pacino was a little-known off-Broadway actor auditioning for my dad’s never-made musical version of A Mother's Kisses; apparently he sang “Luck Be A Lady” and the producers were not impressed.) This week I wrote a piece for Interview about the Safdies’ Sundance hit Daddy Longlegs; the Neistats have signed a series deal with HBO; Ariel and Nev will achieve “wide-release” status once Catfish opens this fall.

Stars, before they are born, were always stars. I highly suggest falling in love with them before the rest of the world does. Not for bragging rights or VIP groupie status, but for the same reason everyone should fall in love: once they eventually get what they want, you realize you’ve always wanted them to. Their dreams coming true means a few of yours do too.

"A Day Without Sunshine Is Like, You Know, Night." ~Steve Martin

2010-03-08T20:33:00.008-05:00

I first met Jim Signorelli when my mom wore a maternity wedding dress in the backyard of our first house in Water Mill. He was the best man, and the maid of honor. (There were only five people present, including me).

I grew up hearing initially frightening Saturday Night Live tales involving my parents (at 11, do you really want to know that John Belushi once carried your mom home drunk from the Odeon?), then anecdotes now firmly included in my own personal Friedman family folklore. When my mom first invited my dad over to the apartment she shared with Gilda Radner on Bank Street, she hid any signs of messiness in Gilda’s room, a room she told my dad was “just the closet, no need to look in there…”

I don’t have an official “godfather” despite all the rampant genetic tendencies towards familial outsourcing running through my blood: my father’s Jewish side nearly suffocating me with reminders of “who I am,” and my mother’s Irish Catholic side overflowing with new cousins, brothers-in-law, third and sixth cousins, even mysterious cousins so distant I still don’t know for sure whether or not I’m actually related to, popping up every month. But Jim, the sole Italian influence in our clan, has acted as a substitute godfather since my parents' wedding when he gave both my mom and me away.

Skipping over the more sentimental attachments I have towards Giacomo Due, my most recent visit to SNL this weekend reminded me that I too have participated in my family's nostalgic history of the show thanks to Jim. I doubt I’ll be able to one day re-enact the day my dad showed up at my brother Drew’s first New York apartment on East 6^th street with Dan Akyroyd in tow, sending Drew (the brother with whom I share what my dad calls “the Smirk,” a too-cool expression Drew used whenever he somehow caught a fly ball in middle school; the apparent nickname I earned among private school admissions officers after prep school interviews) into uncharacteristic hysteria. The closest I came was at age 9 when Steve Martin called our house, asking for my dad. I skipped over to his office/cottage underneath the apple tree that would eventually collapse on top of it during Hurricane Andrew, and announced the caller. My dad had expected me to be a bit impressed, but apparently I turned on my imaginary heels and sniffed, “well it’s not like it’s Jim Carrey…”

But ever since the first time I walked past a very long line on the 9^th floor on a Saturday night around 10:30pm, glancing at the black-and-white photos guiding my way towards the dusty set of sets and endless array of lighting fixtures that crowd Studio 8H, I finally feel at home surrounded by the blinding bulbs and whizzing acrobatic directors’ chairs. One of which, for the past thirty years, has held my very non-acrobatic godfather Jim.

A look back:

April 12, 1997: Rob Lowe / The Spice Girls
At 13, I still hadn’t given up my grunge-y tomboy wardrobe, the first real sartorial aesthetic I’d fully embraced after receiving In Utero as my first CD. But the Spice Girls released “Wannabe” and it was so goddamn catchy. Plus the sporty one wore pants. I told everyone my favorite was Ginger Spice, showing early signs of rebellion (she was always creeping up towards video cameras as though she wanted to eat both them and the men behind them, wasn’t she?). So my first visit was with my mom, and I made the strange decision to wear a big white t-shirt and even bigger Adidas breakaway warm-up pants. Jim greeted us and said, “Well Molly! You’re dressed just like a Spice Girl, huh?” I went back to school adhering more properly to the preppy dress code, and gave up the grunge for good. Side note: This Rob Lowe-hosted episode is the “one where Norm MacDonald cursed,” getting him fired. I remember watching him say the f-word during Weekend Update, and my mom joining the rest of the audience in “ooooohhh…”s. I didn’t get it. I thought the Players were the only kids on TV allowed to, well, play. But apparently, they were now Ready for Prime Time.

October 4, 1997: Matthew Perry / Oasis
Later that year, I used Oasis’ upcoming appearance as an excuse to see my childhood best friend Simone again. I’d just started high school up in Connecticut with new friends and a closet full of J. Crew button-downs, and Simone was still back in Southampton going to school with all the kids we’d known since our parents used to sit us next to each other in booster seats at Bobby Van’s. Simone and I had been obsessed with Liam Gallagher since the Wonderwall video, to the point where we dragged our moms to their Jones Beach concert to sit 34 miles away from their hairy faces in beach chairs. So Jim gave us the same seats, front row and directly in front of the band’s stage. I’d since become less enamored with the grisly Gallaghers and was more of a David Duchovny fanatic. But watching Simone’s epic cheekbones nearly bust through her cheeks sitting just 34 feet away from Liam was more the point.

November 6, 1999: Dylan McDermott / The Foo Fighters
The summer after my sophomore year, I went to sailing camp for four weeks. Pretentious, for sure, but I didn’t know that. I just knew it was what the cool kids at my school did and I wasn’t cool and wanted to be. The only truly cool thing about my trip, aside from being assigned Navigator on the only day our boat would eventually wind up in the middle of the Caribbean with no land in sight, was meeting a boy named Graham from Nantucket. First he was hot, then he was my friend because thanks to the Smirk, boys in high school thought I thought was too-cool. But he actually was too cool, so we spent those four weeks being very popular kids at camp. But! As it turned out, he was transferring to my high school that fall. So then he was a big gigantic crush. The kind who plays the guitar in the band room and sings “Everlong” to you. And is tall and gorgeous and all of those typical things. Sadly, my attempt to make the crush mutual by taking him to see the Foo Fighters at SNL backfired, after we left the show and bought an enormous bottle of Captain Morgan’s. I’d never drank before, so I gulped it down like water. We were 15 and waltzing around the West Village at 1:30am, so of course we would inhale rum for the first time. Then I blacked out, somehow purchased an excellent fake ID, and do not remember this picture being taken. We remained…friends.

October 12, 2002: Sarah Michelle Gellar / Faith Hill
In college I met my first actual boyfriend. We met during Freshman Orientation and fell in that real kind of old-people-disguised-as-young people love only Diamonds commercials and Michel Gondry movies accurately portray. So we went, just because being in love in college, though great, makes college life very boring. The only memorable moment of this show has to do with watching Faith Hill sing “Cry” and finally realizing just how wildly talented SNL’s music production staffers are when they can make watching a country singer belting out a forgettable ballad feel like watching Cream at MSG.

March 6, 2010: Zach Galifainakis / Vampire Weekend
After eight years, I asked Jim for tickets days before last week’s show. As usual, he obliged. I’d stopped asking Jim for trips to SNL over the years, instead asking him for more Godfather-type favors. Career advice, boy advice, and use of his summer house in Springs (leading to a very Jim kind of email: “Whose underwear did you leave in my freezer!” I told him that’s where I assumed one puts Jay McInerney’s underwear after he hands them to you in the middle of a book party.) But Kelley was turning 26 that night, and it was time to revisit 8H and sit down in those snobby friend-of-the-director seats with nothing between us and the stage but dust and bulbs.

"It's A Short Walk From The Hallelujah To The Hoot." ~Nabokov

2010-02-09T04:41:00.008-05:00

"An artist is a creature driven by demons. He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."
~William Faulkner

One of my dad's favorite anecdotes has to do with one of the first times he had writer's block. The real kind. The kind that allegedly forced John Cheever to attach a metal chain from his ankle to his writing desk, give his wife the key, and make her promise never to use it until he finished what he needed to finish. So my dad went to an attractive female therapist his friend had promised would, if not solve his problem, at least provide Kathryn Grayson-style arousement. He explained the writer's block. Ten minutes into the session, she said to him,

"What you do is very hard."

My dad pursed his lips, stood up, handed her a check, and walked out. That sentence is now scribbled on a decades-old yellow Post-It taped to his laptop.

"The good writing of any age has always been the product of someone's neurosis, and we'd have a mighty dull literature if all the writers that came along were a bunch of happy chuckleheads."
~William Styron, 1958

"I Love Beautiful Things That Break My Heart."

2009-11-19T08:35:00.011-05:00

I first read about An Education in an early Sundance review on the front page of The Hollywood Reporter. For over a year, the LA trade known mostly by New Yorkers as The One That's Not Variety, mysteriously shows up outside our door before 7am daily. We aren't subscribers, and quietly wonder whether THR selected an elite group of East Coast Academy members to receive the daily (right outside their apartments, even), or too many circulation staffers were let go and the whole thing is a mail room mishap. Sometimes I flip through it quickly on the subway, sometimes a neighbor steals it, and very rarely do I finish a feature. On January 22nd, I finished a feature.

THR began their review by saying An Education had "taken Sundance by storm." Peter Saarsgard. 1960s London. Nick Hornby. I kept reading. Then the description of Carey Mulligan's Jenny, whose "ambition is to wear black, smoke cigarettes, read books and try anything new." I found the trailer and watched it seven consecutive times at work. Ten months later, our screener arrived. Yesterday, I watched it.

Another rarity for me is to jump out of bed to pause a movie so I can scribble down pieces of dialogue. In fact, last night was the first time I ever did.

"I'm going to talk to people who know lots about lots."

"You have no idea how boring everything was until I met you."

"Action is character. If we don't do anything, we won't be anyone."

"My choice is to do something hard and boring for the rest of my life or to go to Paris and have fun!"

"It's a funny world you people live in."

"I feel old. But not very wise."

When I was 16, I also wanted to finish high school and begin wearing all black, speak French, go to Paris with someone I loved, and have fun. By 21, I'd done all of the above. And like Jenny, was swiftly given an education on what happens after all that fun. Black ensembles were burnt by cigarettes, my French was charming but useless, a romantic weekend in Montmartre ended with a croissant thrown at my boyfriend's face and tears on mine, and every fun adventure always ended. Either at the end of a party, the end of a motorcycle ride to to the Cloisters, the ends of too many relationships, and the end of an education I wanted so desperately, and learned too quickly.

When it comes to film critics, I've spent enough years reading David Denby to trust his often-cynical, borderline-over-analyses of movies I'm curious about. He explains Jenny's initial decision to fall down a rabbit hole far more seductive than Alice's. This rabbit is Peter Saarsgard (more of a hare), and this mysterious guide "introduce[s] her to answers all the romantic dreams she has of life’s possibilities...a heightened eagerness for pleasure of any kind, and Jenny is caught." As was Alice, and as was I.

Alice, caught in a nonsense trial, escapes by waking up from what was just a dream. Jenny, caught in between reality and fantasy, escapes by feeling her heart break for the first time. As for me, I'm still waiting to see if I'll soon wake up from what could plausibly be a long night of nightmares and gorgeous dreams, or throw out all those cigarette-stained black dresses, feel my heart break a few more times, and continue this education for the rest of my nightmarishly gorgeous life.

"He knows immediately she is who he has been searching for. This is not a love story."

2009-10-12T14:57:00.000-04:00

Maybe my limbs are made mostly for decoration.
You can’t really eat them, but I remember you trying.

If you grab my soft skin with your fist, it will feel funny.
Like you’ve been here before and uncomfortable.

Like you’d rather squish it between your teeth impatiently,
before spitting the soft parts back up to linger on the tongue like burnt sugar or guilt.

It was all an accident. We cut the right branch and the light grew dark and needy.

Think crucial hanging.

Think crayon orange.

There is one low, leaning heart-shaped globe left.

And dearest, can you tell, I am trying to love you less.

------------------

It was bring-your-own if you wanted anything hard.
So I brought Johnnie Walker Red along with some resentment.

Which was not helped by the sight of little nameless things
pierced with toothpicks on the tables, or by talk that promised to be nothing if not small.

But I’d consented to come. I knew what part of the house
the animals would be sequestered, whose company I loved.

What else can I say, except that old retainer of slights and wrongs,
that bad boy I hadn’t quite outgrown— he brought himself along too.

I was out to cultivate a mood. My hosts greeted me, but did not ask about my soul.
Which was when I was invited by Johnnie Walker Red to find the right kind of glass, and pour.

I toasted the air. I said hello to the wall, then walked past a group of women dressed to be seen.

Before long I felt like a wild thing, ready to mess up the party, scarf the hors d’oeuvres.
But you animals said, No, don’t do that. Calm down.

After a while they open the door and let you out, they pet your head.
And everything you might have held against him is gone.

"We’re good friends again," I lied.
"Stay," he lied.

"I Felt Like a Wild Thing, Ready To Mess Up The Party. I Toasted the Wall."

2009-09-14T01:46:00.035-04:00

New York may never sleep, but I'm pretty sure it's taking a disco nap. A few signs the city's little siesta has gone on long enough:

April, 2009: R.I.B.
At this point lamenting the absence of Beatrice was a popular ice breaker when bumping into another regular at whatever replacement bar we vigilantly sat in, pretending to enjoy. We'd shout over lousy loud playlists, "Oh, it's definitely re-opening." Or, "Yeah, we'll go on Tuesday - it's in Page Six and stuff."

But those mythical Tuesdays kept passing, and our collective grief went from Denial to Depression. The Free Bea parties seemed like such a sweet kind of reassurance, a subtle winking promise that they'd be back soon. If we wore our Free Bea t-shirts often enough, we'd be just like those plucky prohibition fighters and Stonewall schismatics. Revolution would be ours.

And now? I highly recommend the double Jameson at Avenue. It's only $56, and it did help me move on from Depression to one of the more fun stages of grief: Bargaining!

Spring 2009: New York Nightlife Better than Ever, Insist Journalists
We read in the Post, the only reliable source for anything hip, trendy, edgy or sexxxy, that debauchery after dark lives on. A two-page spread on private, exclusive "underground" bars introduces us to places like Greenhouse, where people known as "high-rollers" are involved in something called "bottle service." And a club known as 1Oak apparently serves "alcoholic beverages" and features "sexy cocktail waitresses." Alas, these hot spots are tougher to get into than Harvard.

Luckily, New York Magazine came to the rescue with a list of the top five best new bars in town. An East Village lounge with jello shots, the latest Unlisted Phone Number bar where, if you're awesome enough to get it, you'll find posters of Aerosmith and even a smoking patio. Also, some place in Flatbush and a dungeon in Queens that sounds suspiciously like a Medieval Nights restaurant. But with quesadillas.

July 2009: The Day the Disco Cried
I agreed to accompany my boyfriend to his friend's birthday party at Bungalow 8. Vague memories of sharing a joint with 50 Cent on the balcony, watching Mary-Kate Olsen's friends turn a bedsheet into a trampoline for her to jump on wearing nothing but a Hanes t-shirt, losing at least 5 credit cards and 3 winter coats floated through my head. Four years later, I walked inside high on memories, and quickly felt those come-down shakes after seeing what's become of the bunghole. But then I spotted Him. Disco hugged me hard. I asked him what he was still doing there, and he said, "I'm the last one standing." Then the gentle dreadlocked giant actually teared up, like a Wild Thing crying "Oh please don't go, we'll eat you up! We love you so!" The fairy tale was over. No one knows where the wild things are.

August 2009: Requiem For That Dream
A few recent quotes from friends:

"Going out is boring the hell out of me."

"I miss Bea. Even the bathroom line."

"I've reached the point where I just don't WANT to be 'on the list.'"

"I've been at this party before. I've made out with that girl before. I've fallen asleep in that bar before. I've...done all of this before."

"When I went to a party upstate and wasn't shoved, pushed, or had wine spilled on my shoes ONCE the whole night, I wondered if I was actually at a party at all."

September 2009: Fashion Weak
Little Shop of Horrors composer Alan Menken called New York "Skid Row." Bob Dylan called it "Desolation Row." The Stones? "Heartbreaker."

An old friend I'd always considered the most optimistic, glass-half-full guy in my life (from California naturally), someone whose eyes I never thought could stop sparkling, told me how fashion week was going:

"A bit like hell. Quasi-suicidal actually."

My personal solution?

Follow in my parents' footsteps once they tired of ol' New York back in 1979. Their paradise island started to disintegrate post-Studio 54, eerily similar to today's post-Beatrice collapse. So they left their Bank Street townhouses and Upper East Side penthouses for the sticks. Got hitched in their backyard, my mother in a white linen maternity wedding dress. Had me. Planted vegetables. Shoved snow. Rode horses, watched me in the local Nutcracker, hosted lawn parties, and insisted they'd left New York for all the right reasons.

I may just do that. And, just like my parents, finally miss this messy fantasy camp so much that I inevitably move back within ten years. The city may be sleeping now, but as soon as it wakes up, I'll personally destroy its snooze button.

"Easy-Peasy, Quickly Over, Fun And Games"

2009-08-23T04:50:00.027-04:00

A friend recently showed me this photograph of Mick Jagger and Bianca on their wedding day in 1971. I'm an art world dunce when it comes to recognizing iconic images like this one (despite sharing genes with the most talented contemporary artist living today). But as soon as I saw this Patrick Lichfield classic, I couldn't stop staring at it. The phallic champagne bottle in between Mick's scrawny legs, the possibility that he might actually be singing (and singing what?), one hand decorated with a cigarette, the other with a ring. Bianca's asymmetrical cleavage, her veil still on, the way St. Tropez sunlight somehow manages to add color to a black and white photo.

But most importantly, Bianca's smile. In Lichfield's UK Times obituary, this image is described as "a glimpse...capturing a moment of rock ‘n roll frivolity." And Joanna Lumley (an icon herself for we cultish Ab Fab fans on Team Patsy) described Lichfield as "a light going on, or a champagne cork popping." Bianca the newlywed was not posing. She isn't looking at the camera and, after seeing other photos of her the same night, something about this smile is purely frivolous, the way a face lights up when champagne corks pop.

I have a bad habit, inherited from my father, of relating everyone else's stories and epic anecdotes "back to me," as Dad would put it. I opened my MFPhotos folder and tried to figure out if I'd ever been part of a moment like Mick and Bianca's, if anyone had ever flashed their lens just when I'd briefly stumbled into just the right room, with just the right company, feeling just...right.

A few moments in my life that come close:

December 2006: We wore what we felt like wearing, ignoring freezing weather. We still smoked in bars without fear. One of us wore bright red lipstick, one wore endless black leather bracelets, and one wore blue silk. That's when a Polaroid camera appeared.

October 2008: The first night I met my then-boyfriend, I asked for a pair of shorts (my dress, which he described as a "cupcake", was uncomfortable). He pulled out a pair of corduroys, then a pair of scissors, and tore them apart. I was comfortable. So much so, that I began running around his dining room table just as he changed his digital camera's tint to a shade of blue I'd only seen before after staring for a dangerously long time at the sun.

Spring 1988: I grew up as an only child in a big house with lots of closets. Only children learn pretty quickly how to entertain themselves. I pulled a garden chair out of one closet, a ladies-who-lunch hat from another, and perched myself atop our leather couch next to (who else?) my dad. Just as I was trying to figure out how to hug my father gracefully without breaking a window or our lab's ear, my mother appeared with a camera.

June 2008: Bea, RIP.

October 2006: Didn't we almost have it all? My dream job, my at-the-time perfect boyfriend, a comped week-long trip through the South, and a hotel room with a desk like this one.

March 2009: The worst best tattoo given to me by the worst best person I know.

January 2008: I spent my last night in Israel on a Tel-Aviv beach. Drunk on ice water and joy, I'd lost my tights and shoes hours ago. The first and last time I've ever smiled so hard my face nearly morphed into diadem fireworks.

"Everybody's Youth Is A Dream."

2009-07-23T16:45:00.004-04:00

For the last three years, I've hosted a party at my parents' apartment when they go on their annual vacation. As an embarrassingly obsessive linguistic freak, I've always enjoyed the word "party." Like the words "entertainment," "family," or "sex," they instantly catch your attention, encompassing infinite meanings (Entertainment: a Danielle Steel novel v. a Lenny Bruce act; Family: a cancer-stricken father v. the moment "I Do" means the love of your life is now family; Sex: Juliette Lewis dancing in her jail cell at the end of Natural Born Killers v. Juliette Lewis dancing with Mickey in the bar in the opening scene.)

All of us hear words like these and instinctively, engage in a mental Rorschach test. I hear "entertainment" and a Broadway stage appears in my head. I hear "family" and see David Hockney's eerie, enormous "Parade" my parents have hung on each of our houses' most prominent wall. I hear "sex" and the last time I had it is reenacted in my mind. Then there is that funny little word "party." Without fail, I imagine Gatsby's lawn in the wrong Egg.

Each of the three parties I've thrown here at Casa Friedman have varied so wildly, looked so different, and sent me to bed dreaming of fantasies vastly unrelated to those dreamed of the year before. Gatsby obviously threw parties far more often than me. But he and I had one party habit in common: we both end these evenings staring at the sky, drink in hand, wearing an ensemble colored only in unstained shades of black and white, alone. Alone, of course, despite knowing the love-of-life-at-that-time was sleeping on one side of a gigantic and comfortable bed inside, waiting for us to join them in satiated, anxiety-free sleep on the other side.

Last week...

...there were bookshelf-decorated rooms filled with people either brilliant or beautiful, or both.

There were women smoking cigarettes...

...on rooftop floors.

And there were moments captured on film like these, moments when we followed Fitzgerald's advice:

"His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours."

Or living out a line from Gatsby about the meaningless of knowing who your party guests are, and how little knowing them means...

"...The air is alive with chatter and laughter and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names."

Finally, there is the reason why both he and I would end the night looking at stars alone:

"At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness, and felt it in others too...wasting the most poignant moments of night and life."

However many jovial smiles you see lunging towards you, handsome acquaintances turning into summer flings, champagne glasses smashed, or profound talks with distant friends you finally discover are somewhat interesting...every party ends. Weeks later, it doesn't matter whether you (maybe?) imagined the whole thing like so many Lit professors theorize Nick Carroway imagined Gatsby himself, or if the evening was just as lively as you remember. Until someone dives into a pool with no intention of climbing out, a party can be as enchanting or dull as possible: it, as the Jewish saying goes, "too, shall pass."

So what's the point? To improve upon the negatively designated spin assigned to post-millenial "parties" in Manhattan, I'll borrow an admittedly cliché quote from Hemingway, a man I imagine could have convinced even Gatsby that glasses are never half-full: "Isn't it pretty to think so?" Maybe I dreamed the whole thing, maybe I did wind up alone on my roof contemplating the night's many meanings, maybe the night existed and everyone's lives went on without affect. I like to think, prettily so, that the city's lights shined slightly brighter that night than on other nights. Guests smiled without that familiar need to force it.

I looked up at those non-existent city stars from my rooftop, and decided not to dive off.

Sometimes, it's prettier to know so.

"There Is A Near-Hysterical New Beat In The Air"

2009-05-14T17:05:00.023-04:00

This afternoon, I was looking for a story collection called Nelson Algren's Book of Lonesome Monsters: 13 Masterpieces of Black Humor. My dad suggested I look at our anthology bookcase. (Yes, our bookcases are full, genre-designated, and replace what are known in other people's apartments as "walls.") I grew up walking past the bookcase dedicated solely to my dad's books and plays every day, meaning a) I only recently learned God does not live in a steambath off-broadway, and b) I wound up asking my father, Daddy, what's a "dick?" at age 5. But there was just one mysterious book on those BJF shelves that I never once inquired about: Black Humor, a collection of essays by Joe Heller, Nabokov, Edward Albee, and Thomas Pynchon (among others) he edited in 1965. Recently, whenever I'm working on my book, the title keeps haunting me. Judging by these excerpts from my dad's introduction, I now know why:

"There is a new mutative style of behavior afoot, one that can only be dealt with by a new, one-foot-in-the-asylum style of fiction."

"If you are doing anything as high-minded as examining society, the very best way to go about it is by examining first its throwaways, the ones who can't or won't keep in step...Perhaps 'bad' behavior of a certain kind is better than 'good' behavior."

"The novel is the proper place to open every door, to ask the final questions, turn over the last rock, to take a preposterous world by the throat and say okay, be preposterous, but also make damned sure you explain yourself."

"If you are alive today, and stick your head out of doors now and then, you know that there is a nervousness, a tempo, a near-hysterical new beat in the air, a punishing isolation and loneliness of a strange, frenzied new kind."

"The Black Humorist is a kind of literary Paul Revere, a fellow who unfreezes his mind, if only for a moment, and says, 'For Christ's sake, what in hell is going on here?'"

"There is a fading line between fantasy and reality, a very fading line, a goddamned, almost invisible line."

BJF wrote this in the 60s–over forty years ago. But somehow this "near-hysterical beat in the air," the need to confront a preposterous world, and rising prominence of "society's throwaways" is eerily relevant today. Despite lacing his definition of the then-emerging genre with such ominous, esoteric themes, he ultimately noted that "the effective social critics are working through humor." And then I had a kicker for my book's elevator pitch: a black humor renaissance.

"There is an awful lot of questioning these days, some of it despairing, bleary-eyed, bedazzled, some of it young, vigorous, outrageous. And a group of novelists, very often working obliquely, coming at you from somewhere in left field, throwing you some laughs to get you to lower your guard [will] follow every labyrinthian corridor to its source."
~Dad, 1965

Somewhat related is the fact that, while eye-ing our anthologies, I spotted a tiny red paperback called The Rascal's Guide: Naughty Women and How to Tame Them, with my father's name barefaced in bold-face on the spine. This odd collection was his very first Editor credit, published in 1959, making him just four years older than me at the time. Among the story titles:

"What to Do When the Lady Is a Tease"
"How to Be Unfaithful"
"Southern Girls–Lousy Lovers?"
"Secrets of a New York Free-Loader"
"The Grande Olde Sport of Girl-Tickling"
"How to Lush It Up and Influence People"
"Making It on Madison Avenue"
"A Tip for Rogues: The Wildest Party in the World"
"How to Be a Damned Fool at a Convention"

Then I remembered the time my dad disliked one ex-boyfriend because he used the word "awesome" twice over dinner. When he disliked another because he had never "shown much interest" in my dad's books. Another because he "just seemed too calm."

The point? My elevator pitch may fail. My first manuscript may wind up in several recycling bins, stained several times by several manicured D-girls' red polish. Ideally, Knopf will publish it, commission a glossy Chip Kidd-designed cover, and feature it prominently in every Barnes & Noble across the country. But someone like my father was first published in the form of a 35¢ cringe-inducing cad's guide, earning the most laughs not from a reader, but fifty years later when his daughter recites its chapter titles back to him. But then? He went ahead and canonized Black Humor, instantly earning himself a spot in every index of every book dedicated to the genre written after his own.

I'd love the Kidd/Knopf treatment, for Sam Tanenhaus to deem me a post-millenial McInerney detached from D words, a movie option sale pre-publication from Weinstein...the works. But knowing I could pull a Rascal on the first at-bat, then "obliquely" hit a Black Humor on the next swing? These last forty pages I've bent my brainstorm-heavy head over suddenly feel less like labor, and more like that last rock my dad insisted should be turned over without fear.

My Watch Is Exactly Two Days Slow.

2009-05-01T16:32:00.013-04:00

I like to hyperbolize springtime, even before it arrives. But all that embellished anticipation never disappoints. The trees turn pink, we suddenly can't find our jackets, and the deep end of this chaotic city is now an unrestricted area. I recently decided not to wade on over, but dive right in. To start making money again, to take risks in love, to demolish so many follies I'd created mid-winter. I'm even writing my book again, and this time I know why I'm writing it in the first place. More on all these adventures and misadventures soon, but in the meantime, a nostalgic quote-plus-photo post.

I may or may not be appearing in a groundbreaking documentary, shot in the very best of mumblecore style. Above is a still from my five-hour interview.

"Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it–don't cheat with it."
~Hemingway

"It's not men who limit women. What limits people is lack of character. What limits people is that they don't have the fucking nerve or imagination to star in their own movie, let alone direct it."
~Tom Robbins

"Where's your will to be weird?"
~Jim Morrison

"The Edge...there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."
~Hunter S. Thompson

This is a photo of my mother around my age. I recently interviewed her on camera and asked her what was going on in her life, in her head, in this photo, at the time. She kept trying to explain it all to me, but in the end, told me it didn't matter. She was now here, and all that was now there.

"I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope that they won't."

~F. Scott Fitzgerald

"Linguistic Fuego"

2009-04-15T18:59:00.030-04:00

A Manhattan Fairy Tale

Scene I: "Once Upon A Whirl"

Characters: BEV REY (pr. BEV-ray), blonde female, athletic and flirty, tan cleavage; MOLL FRIE (pr. MAWL-free), brunette female, lean and jaded, long legs.

Set: NEW YORK CITY, 2009.
Dir. Notes: TEXT EXCERPTED FROM BLACKBERRY MESSENGER; Until Scene II ("The Ballad of Bevs 'n Molls"), characters are synonymous (GIRL ONE and GIRL TWO).

GIRL ONE:

I hope I don't fall out my window.

GIRL TWO:
Why would you fall out of your window?

GIRL ONE:
If you compel me to write the letters LOL on my Blackberry, you'll need to cab it to Gansevoort and scoop me up quickly before they turn me into a Tory Burch store.

GIRL TWO:
You've officially just forced me to L O far too L for my Blackberry to forgive. I've just fallen right out my window to the gutters of Chelsea. Please retrieve me before I become a pair of American Apparel tightie-bluesies about to make my debut as part of "Matt's-A-Dame-On (West-25th St.)"'s 11pm show.

GIRL ONE:
I am the saddest girl to ever hold a martini.

GIRL TWO:
Poor pretty young thing, you. No black Amex, no Bea, a belly full of Thai food. Those kids in Darfur don't KNOW from misery.

GIRL ONE:

He wants to come pick me up in the city and have another go-round. I told him my chin was still erupting.

GIRL TWO:
I think you need to plug that tub. Mine is a verklempt gent and sweet as Suge Knight.

GIRL ONE:

My chin, though. I've tried excess moisturizing, scrubs, acidic sprays...

GIRL TWO:
It still looks like someone cast it as the lead prop in Meth Face Returns.

GIRL ONE:
At least it makes the marquee.

GIRL TWO:
My vodka is yum. I just toothpasted my face. How sweet-sixteeny bop. I set my alarm for midnight to alert myself that this Proactiv Info-Star Understudy should put down the substances and sleep like beauty.

GIRL ONE:

Please don't be your incredible whirl of a girl self right now. I've got a cheek full of red sitting on a crisp white bedspread.

GIRL TWO:

Fate Says Holla Back Bevs: my wit balloon just popped. Coincidentally, just as my vodka headache commenced.

GIRL ONE:

I just started choking. I miss cute things, like dads and blankets. I want Nyquil.

GIRL TWO:

We live in New York. Nyquil never sleeps, dear.

GIRL ONE:

You're kind of on linguistic fuego this eve.

GIRL TWO:
I'm kind of in love with you.

Scene II: "The Ballad of Bevs 'n Molls"

Set: Two corporate offices, one uptown and one downtown. Both BEV REY and MOLL FRIE sit near large windows in private key-required cubes as springtime-esque weather provides the only source of cinematic color to otherwise monochromatic atmospheres.
Dir. Notes: TEXT EXCERPTED FROM FACEBOOK WALLS.

MOLL FRIE:
At approximately 2:02pm, debaucherous sneaker whore Bev Rey was overheard screaming, “I belong on a tour bus four months out of the year!” Somewhere high above Manhattan, Moll Frie, an eccentrically-monikered muppet, jotted down a note: “By the time I finish writing this, I will have fallen asleep in my risotto.”

BEV REY:
Moll awoke to find a furry creature dragging her across the newly appointed Archbishop's annexed section of Fifth Avenue, leading her towards a black van with the letters "D.E.A." scrawled on its SVU-But-No-Thank-You-esque apparatus in heartbreakingly hacked hues of J. Crew Ecru. For no apparent reason, the muppet looked up at the badge-appointed mutt with a sly smile, winked, and finally cooed, "I wasn't aware there was a Dior.Escada.Armani trunk show today."

[Pause as planet proceeds spinning.]

What are you actually doing?

MOLL FRIE:
I’m exchanging pleasantries with the guard dog in our lobby. You?

BEV REY:
I’m wrapping band-aids shaped like cupcakes around my fingers. I need a work flask.

MOLL FRIE:
"Excuse me, where do you keep your work flasks?"
"Ah, Aisle 7, alongside the other inordinate items designed for alcoholics."

BEV REY:
If I were a dog, I would play dead. Not fetch nor play.

MOLL FRIE:
Before leaving the office, Bev tapped her boss on the nose and transformed him into a happy meal, then asked the receptionist if she had any new messages. “The scrapes on your fingers are imaginary,” she replied. Bev considered this, and then wondered aloud "whosoeth knows whether anyone has ever had sex in the city of Portland before?” Moll gazed through her never-ending set of eyelashes at the mutt, once an orphaned APSCA pup now playing the role of Narconsense Wonder-Dog, and asked him why he looked so sad. “My foot. It sleeps,” said the furball, and Moll kindly corrected his carnal syntax.

Scene III: "Fireworks"

Set: Manhattan's post-millenial, Recessionist zeitgeist, as depicted with Depression-reminiscent, yellowing newspaper headlines. Script entirely VO over B-roll.

BEV REY:
NY Post's "Page Six" Column, Apr. 16th, 2009:
Friends and downtown debacles Moll Frie and Bev Rey found themselves shackled together for sidestepping The Law circa the "wee hours" of their collectively vintage and nostalgic vision of New York City when it never slept. Rey, the duo's doyenne, looked at her muppet and said, "Hi, babe. Did they find you in aisle 7?" Frie, the frisky ephemera of minds lost and laughing, nodded in the affirmative, then spoke of risotto, bestial dialogue, and the importance of always employing the vernacular. Before Frie could Rey about her night, lighter fluid and Metrocards fell from her pockets.
"Fireworks," Rey giggled.

MOLL FRIE:
Shizzle yo, gimme summadat Bucayne and a Metrocard? Bitch be happy as a mollfrey in an oprey, jigga wut. Check this fo' you wreck...

[Changes dialect from young, urban male to conservative, white lawkeeper.]

New York County Residents Be Advised:
NYPD Relinquish Myriad Policepeople On Quest To Capture And Straitjacket One Miss Bev Rey (Known Alias: "Debaucherous Sneaker Whore"), And Miss Moll Frie (Known Alias: "Eccentrically-Monikered Muppet") Across All Five Boros. BR Last Seen Procreating In Portland, Oregon; MF Last Seen Skipping Down Horatio With K-9 Unit. All Squadronauts On Fluorescent Alert. Over, Outsies.

"You Make Every Day Feel Like Kindergarten."

2009-04-01T10:03:00.000-04:00

I took a Facebook Quiz today. It was called, "Which Crazy Bitch Are You?"

I'd taken two already. First, Facebook told me that Elton John's "I'm Still Standing" was the song that illustrated my life. Then Facebook told me that I should be living in Seattle. Anyone who really knows me (all three of you?) knows that any song with the chorus, "I'm still standing, yeah yeah yeah" has nothing to do with me. Twelve years of ballet did little to perfect my posture, I spend most of my time in repose, and the rare moments I do stand up, I'm usually akimbo. I don't think I've ever said "yeah" three times in a row, ever. "No, no, no," maybe.

As for Seattle, aside from spending four years at Southampton Intermediate in a permanent sartorial state of Kurt Cobain-esque cargo pants and flannel button-downs, searching for someone to be my Heart-Shaped Box and convincing myself that maybe I'm Dumb, the dreary epicenter of grunge never fully enticed me.

Third time? The charm. As it turns out:

Molly completed the quiz 'Which Crazy Bitch Are You?' with the result Mallory Knox.

"Sweet when you want to be but tough as nails when you need to be. You are disgusted by humanity and are not afraid to make them pay. You want revenge. You want infamy. Even if it means getting your hands dirty. You do have a sweet side and a fondness for unruly, angry, psycho badboy prince charming types. You would do anything for true love."

So let's call a truce, Facebook. Go ahead and clog my home page with all the mind-numbing status updates from "friends" telling me how "way-sted" they are, which "honey pot" my ex-boyfriend's index finger is currently "fingerbanging," and what exactly some girl I haven't seen in 10 years is wearing at 6am ("a t-shirt and jeans!!*!"). Now that you've outed my Mallory esprit de corps, I forgive you.

"Meet Me At The Playground. Let's See How Far We Can Run." ~Sia

2009-03-28T10:34:00.004-04:00

Last night I found myself walking up Fifth Avenue with an old friend. I wasn't wearing tights, my hair was in a ponytail, and I spent most of the walk smiling. We were walking in that part of the 60s where getting inside Central Park means climbing over very tall rusty gates. The last time I'd spent a springtime evening in Central Park, I wound up thrusting my body against one of the Met's glass walls, barefoot, arms outstretched, in an effort to "hug the museum." But that was an April night. And I'd ridden there on a motorcycle.

New York nights change in April. Part of it means bare legs, messy ponytails, and suddenly deciding that climbing a 10-foot rusty gate with gothically sharp tips isn't such a bad idea. But most of it has to do with that "kind of magic" Freddie Mercury and other folks like Jonathan Richman and Shakespeare and Vonnegut tried putting into words.

Richman sang,

"Say what you want, but I feel my heart beating. Cause I love springtime in New York. Springtime is wild, New York is exciting."

Vonnegut informed us,

"To whom it may concern. It is springtime. It is late afternoon."

Shakespeare wrote,

"The April winds are magical, and thrill our tuneful frames. The garden-walks are passional, to bachelors and dames."

Even T.S. Eliot insisted April is the "cruelest month," but had to admit,

It "breeds lilacs" and "mixes memory with desire."

All I know is this:

1) My favorite New Yorker covers always seem to come out in April.
2) I've fallen in love three times, and every time I fell, it was springtime.
3) Those impossibly pink flowers that suddenly show up on every Manhattan street? They blossom on the same day every year: April 26th. It's my father's birthday.

"Some Pretty, Bright and Bubbly Terrible Scene." ~Neutral Milk Hotel

2009-03-15T23:04:00.016-04:00

I've just spent what felt like the coldest winter playing a far less glamorous, but still eerily similar, type of Edie alongside a far more talented, and eerily more captivating, type of Andy. Consider these bits of dialogue from the so-bad-it-was-good "Factory Girl":

Edie: To me, New York was Jackson Pollock sipping vodka and dripping paint onto a raw canvas.

Edie: And what would I have to do in one of your movies?
Andy: Just be yourself.
Edie: Well, which me?

Andy: I wonder if people are going to remember us?
Edie: What, when we're dead?
Andy: Yeah.
Edie: Well I think people will talk about how you changed the world.
Andy: I wonder what they'll say about you... in your obituary. I like that word.
Edie: Nothing nice, I don't think.
Andy: No no, come on. They'd say, "Edith Minturn Sedgwick: beautiful artist and actress...
Edie: ...and all around loon.
Andy: ...Remembered for setting the world on fire. Made friends with eeeeverybody, and anybody...
Edie: ...creating chaos and uproar wherever she went. Divorced as many times as she married, she leaves only good wishes behind. That's nice, isn't it?

I am no Edie. I'm still here. Among our infinite differences, I'm pretty sure the reason we took opposite exit routes from the kind of purgatory only an artist whose ego overwhelms his art can place you in, has to do with family. Edie notoriously spoke of her parents as "horrifying," and despite how obvious her deterioration became, her elevator-inventing grandfather may have thrown cash her way, but buckets of money can't cure Stockholm syndrome. My dad can.

I will never again dismiss a single token of my father's advice, including those most recently given and ignored:

"Do not marry a writer."

"Be charming, but not too charming."

"No man should ever keep you waiting. By the phone, in a restaurant, or anywhere at all."

"Love means loving being able to love them with wrinkles." *

"You usually know the first time you see him whether or not he likes the same Broadway songs as you. Different productions is one thing; it's the songs you'll see when he smiles."

"Only boring people get bored."

"Men are not good or bad. They are either good to you, or bad to you."

"Be wary of wactors [waiter/actors]."

"If you hear the line, 'I'd like to get to know you as a person,' he might as well be asking if you're a Capricorn. Anyone you want to get to know as a person will not ask you that." *

"Try not to make promises." *

"So what?"

My mother had her appendix taken out a few years ago. My father and I left whatever it was we were doing to be there when she woke up in the East 30s, dizzy from painkillers. The doctor had given us only one strict instruction: we were not allowed to make her laugh. As soon as we walked into her sad little corner of the ER, she burst out laughing. We did too. My father said:

"I will listen to absolutely everything a doctor tells me to do. But I will not stop this woman from laughing."

* From a BJF book or story.

"Even Ugliness Looks Beautiful Next To You." ~Mickey Knox

2009-03-07T17:54:00.003-05:00

An ex-boyfriend once told me there are only two types of people: those who "get" Bob Dylan, and those who don't. There are infinite dichotomies like this. You either "get" Michel Gondry or you don't. You're a Mac or a PC. You either rooted for Mickey and Mallory or you didn't. (My cat's name is Mickey, by the way.)

And then there's the one character-defining either/or I could never choose between: was I the type of girl who gets a tattoo, or the type who doesn't "get" one? Last week, I joined Team Tattoo. Bored by childish notions like hearts or initials, I wanted words; a phrase that summed me up, that no one would understand. I considered quotes from Gaitskill, McInerney, Waugh, Wilde...but then, for whatever reason, I remembered an obscure review I'd read of a Gwendoline Riley novel. The critic said Riley's books are drenched in "love and dysfunction." As a chaos theorist who insists the point of living is to fall in love, I knew these two words would become my tattoo. Serendipitously (and without telling me first), my tattoo artist decided to draw a red heart in front of the phrase. Lovely, since sufficiently summing me up includes the fact that I am, and always will be, in a slightly dysfunctional sort of love with childish notions.

"Give me back my broken night, my mirrored room, my secret life. You don't know me from the wind, you never will, you never did."
~Leonard Cohen

My Brother, The Hero

2009-01-22T14:58:00.004-05:00

"I wish I had this guy's talent."
~R. Crumb

“She Is My Best Friend, But I Suspect I’m Not Hers.”

2009-01-14T18:33:00.008-05:00

At my last job, I spent every minute of every day trying to be creative. From, literally, the minute I got out of bed in my pajamas and turned the computer on, to the end of the (Los Angeles) work day, my mind was turned on. I had to be as funny and smart as I possibly could without any breaks. So I’ve taken a long break from creativity. I’m slowly coming back to life, but in the meantime, I’m happy to see friends churning away. Without them, this not-so-leisurely hiatus from doing the only thing I know how to do might have lasted forever.

"I don't want life to imitate art. I want life to be art."
~Carrie Fisher

"Instant Gratification Takes Too Long." ~Carrie Fisher

2008-12-24T18:33:00.009-05:00

Bruce Jay Friedman, my hero and father, has not been reviewed in the New York Times Book Review since 1995, when his highly celebrated collection of short fiction was called a "bona fide literary event" by Newsweek. At 13, I cared less about the fact that the Times had called the book something that "finally establish[es] him for what he is: sui generis," than figuring out exactly how one straightens unruly and frizzy adolescent hair. My silly dad added another leather-bound book to his shelf, and I aggressively tried (and dramatically failed) to become popular at boarding school.

This past Sunday, the Times reviewed my father's latest collection. Now 25, having mastered the hair-straightening technique and abandoned those ancient desires for acceptance (useless these days, considering how much of a damn I've apparently given about my reputation), I read the piece at least six times. Having read both collections at this point, noting that both books are dedicated to me, and include stories with characters transparently resembling me, I remembered something my dad recently said in an interview:

"Don't bother just to be better than your contemporaries or predecessors. Try to be better than yourself."

Okay, Dad. Will do.

"Don't Threaten Me With Love, Baby. Let's Just Go Walking In The Rain." ~Billie Holiday

2008-12-20T15:03:00.003-05:00

"If a man hasn't worn a suit by the fifth date, what's the point?"

~Naveen Andrews

"He was one of these people who…you see his face and you sort of instantly and secretly like him, because it’s obvious that he has all sorts of unspoken and subversive opinions. Meaning, an expressive face."
~Rudolph Denson

"It used to be that I would worry I shouldn’t have fun and be happy until I had proven that I wasn’t a failure. Now I am eager to accept that I am a failure, so long as I get to have fun and be happy. And, so long as I still get to disparage the preposterous people who actually enjoy life."
~Rudolph Denson

"Comeback Is A Good Word, Man." ~Mickey Rourke

2008-12-17T16:13:00.001-05:00

"As happens with people who love a thing too much, it destroys them.

Oscar Wilde said, 'You destroy the thing that you love.' It's the other way around. What you love destroys you."
~George Plimpton

"I want to top expectations. I want to blow you away."
~Quentin Tarantino

"Cock Your Hat. Angles Are Attitudes." ~Frank Sinatra

2008-11-01T13:29:00.002-04:00

"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us."

~Vonnegut
On that note, please wish me luck.

"Is everyone in my life bananas?"
~Tony Soprano

"Here We Are, Trapped In The Amber Of The Moment. There Is No Why."

2008-10-09T17:50:00.002-04:00

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center." ~Vonnegut

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different." ~Vonnegut

"I Was Raised To Be Charming, Not Sincere."

2008-10-03T15:32:00.005-04:00

"How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being?"
~Oscar Wilde

"A little advice about feelings, kiddo. Don't expect them to tickle."
~Ordinary People

"I think we're just gonna have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that."
~The Royal Tennanbaums

"My Ambition Was To Live Like Music."

2008-08-28T10:31:00.002-04:00

"A phrase began to beat in my ears with a sort of heady excitement: 'There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy, and the tired.'" ~ Fitzgerald

"We cherish our friends not for their ability to amuse us, but for ours to amuse them." ~ Waugh

"Women Should Be Obscene And Not Heard."

2008-08-06T15:31:00.001-04:00

"It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more." ~Woody Allen"We're not sweet or real. We're evil and imaginary. We're downtown, you're uptown. We don't produce theater, we are theater. We think we know, but we're sure we don't care."

"Come, Join Our Little Circle Of Love And Dysfunction."

2008-07-13T14:37:00.006-04:00

"What is the point? That is what must be borne in mind. Sometimes the point is really who wants what. Sometimes the point is what is right or kind. Sometimes the point is a voice, an intimation, a thing said or unsaid. Sometimes it’s who’s at fault, or what will happen if you do not move at once. The point changes and goes out. You cannot be forever watching for the point, or you lose the simplest thing: being a major character in your own life. The point has never quite been entrusted to me." ~Renata Adler

"A Lot Is My Favorite Number."

2008-07-01T19:56:00.004-04:00

"And then, before she could get out another one of her queries, with her eyes dancing, he sunk down beside her in the unmade bed in the tangle of beers and mysteries and laundry and cigarettes and bluejeans that was his life whether he liked it or not and hugged her so hard he almost broke her bones. He loved her wet green eyes, the chuckle, her rough hands, the right one extended, palm up, when she wanted to make a serious point. He loved her whiskey voice, her teenage breasts, her crazy hair after a shampoo, and before one, too, and if she didn’t want to be buried right next to him, he’d be disappointed, but that would be all right too, as long as she gave it some serious thought. He wanted her, and if he didn’t know it the instant he met her, he knew it ten minutes later. Her. The very word made him weak.” ~Dad (on Mom)

"Here’s to the rock star with the crooked teeth. Who broke my heart that night I tied his pink tie at the bar. Who smoked. Who locked me out. Who pulled my hair. Who toasted to women, to abundance, to enough." ~Emily Moore

"See, I will always have this penchant for what I call kamikaze women. I call them kamikazes because they, you know they crash their plane, they're self-destructive. But they crash into you, and you die along with them." ~Husbands And Wives

"Nothing Really Frightened Her Or Seemed Impossible Yet."

2008-06-12T13:56:00.004-04:00

"Oh, what a lot of parties... Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Circus parties, parties where you have to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and nightclubs, in swimming baths and windmills. All that succession and repetition of massed humanity. All those vile bodies." ~Evelyn Waugh, Vile Bodies

"Who among us cannot testify to the possibilities of the night? To the mysterious, shadowed intersections of music, smoke, money, alcohol, desire, and dream? The hours between dusk and dawn are when we are most urgently free, when high meets low, when tongues wag, when wallets loosen. Night is when we are more likely to carouse, fornicate, fall in love, ourselves fall prey. And if there is one place where the grandness, danger and enchantment of night have been lived more than anywhere else, it is, of course, New York City." ~New York Night

"I am my own biggest distraction." ~Hurlyburly

The Day A Rolling Stone Hugged Me

2008-04-01T13:57:00.001-04:00

Suddenly, while working the red carpet at the New York premiere of Shine A Light, an actual Rolling Stone agreed to hug me. Eerily enough, my mother tells me the same Stone hugged her approximately 30 years ago. But they were at a party. My mom is officially cooler than me.

Shalom Shadyim Shalee

2008-01-25T20:44:00.001-05:00

That's "Hello, My Tits!" for you non-Hebrew speakers (myself included). But it happens to be one of the few expressions I learned out of er, 87 more important ones I learned during my ten days in Israel. I think the way to say "You're welcome!" and "Goodbye!", though drilled into my head daily, weren't quite as catchy. But this one, all alliteration-happy and random, is my personal fave. Especially since I learned it from a Jim Morrison lookalike Israeli soldier while floating in a salt water hot tub after fifteen gleeful minutes spent tumbling weightlessly around the Dead Sea. Anyway! GO TO ISRAEL. Beyond words. Pictures don't even do the place the slightest bit of justice, but maybe some of the euphoria can emanate better from them than text.

And lest my trippy trip friends forget, a few of the more memorable quotes from my infamous quote book (only 42 people know what this means, but only 2 people read this blog anyway!):
Me: "What are we doing tomorrow?"
Joshy: "Digging for gold I think? Like in the desert?"
Me: "A bunch of Jews digging for gold? That's really not good for our cause, is it."

Thomas: "How many hipsters does it take to change a lightbulb?"
Me: "How many?"
Thomas [in best hipster impersonation]: "Ughhh...you don't know?"

Carly: "How do they get their curlies so perfect?"
Me: "We should ask them. Wait, but they're not allowed to talk to us."
Carly: "We could just chase them down and yell at them, like 'We know you can't converse with us, but how do you get your curlies so curly! Is it Aquanet?!"
Iana: "If the soldiers aren't hot, I'm blaming you."
Me: "What are you going to do, rape me out of horniness? You can't rape the willing."

Me, to Jesse and Joshy: "What's with you guys and asses?"
Joshy: "Well...where do I begin..."

Jesse: "So Lior, where do you come from? Like what's your story?"
Hannah [whispering]: "Well! There was this dude named Abraham..."

Me: "I don't believe in maternal instinct."
Raffles: "Really? But it's real."
Me: "Yeah I guess. It's in my genes or whatever, right?"
Raffles: "It kinda depends on what kind of jeans you're wearing."

Me: "Jewish babies. I totally get it now."

Me: "What's the point of life? Making people happy or something?"
Carly: "I dunno, smoking cigarettes?"

Rachel: "Why is everyone snapping at me today?"
Me: "Maybe cuz you're makin' us pick weeds?"

Lior: "Today we are picking herbs."
Josh: "Ooh, we should find some rolling papers and salt."
Me: "Yum. Israeli parsley high."

Me: "Greggy, can you take a picture of me picking weeds?"
Greggy: "I'm posting it on Gawker: 'NY Socialite Does Manual Labor.'"

Jesse: "Did you, you know, do it last night?"
Anon: "Oh yes. It was like an episode of Tell Me You Love Me: sex, fighting, making up. A one-hour drama to be continued."

Me: "What was that lyric again? 'Everything's going wrong, but we're so happy'?"
Thomas: "You're like that dorky 3rd grader who scrawls Nirvana lyrics into her desk."
Me: "Wait, what's dorky about being that girl? That girl is awesome."

Ofer [on Masada hike]: "Whose job was it to like, build stairs in the middle of a mountain?"
Me: "And little useless guard ropes."
Ofer: "I want that job."

Ofer: "What would you prefer: a guy who's tall, thin, non-smoking and charismatic, or a short smoker who's an alcoholic womanizer?"
Me: "Uh, the latter?"
Ofer: "You just picked Hitler over JFK."
Me: "That's not really the funniest joke I've ever heard."
Ofer: "Yeah...I guess I didn't laugh when I heard it either."

Joshy: "Wait, is Molly on the bus?"
Me: "Yes Joshy!"
Joshy: "Oh I didn't see her! She must have turned sideways."

Israeli Phillip: "I cannot listen to any more of this American music. I'm going to fall in love or something."

Olga [to me]: "I've never met anything like you. Who are you?"

Greggy [emerging from cave]: "Thank you Jesus!"
Lior: "No! In your case, Abraham, Moses...anyone but Jesus."

Lior: "We're stopping this time for as-fast-as-you-can minutes."

Josh: [Coughs].
Me: "Whoa, you just sounded straight for a second."
Joshy: "Ugh, I hate when that happens."

Me [after being saved from fatality by bus by Joshy]: "Ouch! You just punctured my baby-making machine!"
Joshy: "Maybe that's a really, really good thing."

Carly: "Shabbis Shalom."
Me: "I think it's Shabbat Shalom."
Carly: "I like to say things the way I want to say things."

Iana: "The soldiers are coming! The soldiers are coming! Shave your vadges!"

'Roid Love

2007-12-27T12:30:00.000-05:00

A photo essay on why polaroid cameras are the only cameras worth having, in one photo:

Ellen Page is Cute, Party Guests are Cuter

2007-12-14T12:10:00.000-05:00

Ah, the infamous Peggy Siegal screening/seated dinner season is upon us at last. For the record, this whole Andrew Saffir v. Peggy mini-war is just sad. There will never be another Peggy, and I doubt there will ever be another Andrew. They're kind of like Venus and Jupiter: one's a little cuter, has a fancier name, and the kids like it because of its pretty colors (Andrew/Venus), while the other commands a far more intimidating and colossal circle, deserves respect because of its loyal and impenetrable rings of support, and is quite the ball of fire (Peggy/Jupiter). I happen to adore them both, and dream of the day when an invite engraved with the phrase "The Cinema Society and Peggy Siegal invite you to join them at..." appears in one of my various Manhattan mailboxes/inboxes.

In any case, Juno is as fantastic as everyone says it is, Ellen Page is as adorable as everyone says she is (and as "beautiful" as Michael Cera calls her in the film), but even in New York, we all know the highlight of these evenings is the swank dinner that follows. Without damaging anyone's heart or reputation, I'll disclose selected tidbits I deem innocuous enough for a blog no one reads anyway:
1) Patrick Wilson's wife is a doll and may be my favorite person in the world. Armed with pictures of their son (PW is filming Watchmen in Vancouver) in her purse, I had the pleasure of discovering that a heartbreakingly handsome, big-blue-eyed hunk will make one hell of a grand entrance in 20 years or so.
2) Peggy Siegal is an excellent matchmaker: a bit less subtle than Jane Austen's Emma, but far more gifted.
3) For anyone who's interested, her assistant Andres is as cute and sweet and clever as ever.
4) A gorgeous soon-to-be-famous actress named Francesca Cecil has the secret to achieving the most perfect eyelashes on the planet. If you're lucky enough to run into her, politely ask her to reveal the Manhattan magician responsible for them.
5) Ben Widdicombe was not alarmed when I informed him that I regularly see him treadmilling away at Dolphin on East 4th, the one with the full-length windows. When I told him I belong but never go, he charmingly informed me that I don't need to. For this comment alone, he may be my second favorite person in the world, at least for tonight.

Literary Looniness

2007-12-01T18:25:00.000-05:00

Question: Being published in a literary journal is kind of a big deal, right?
Answer: Yes! Unless it's Issue 1, based in a flyover state, and only available online via an Adobe attachment on...wait for it...blogspot. Oh! Did I mention the link is "down" right now? If your fiction gets published on the internet but no one's around to read it, did it happen at all?

So this is not a big deal of any kind, save for the cutie pie editor who dared to compare yours truly to F. Scott in his introduction on page 7. And by "cutie pie," I mean "potential Bellevue patient," because F. Scott I am not. But modesty be damned, I still think it's aight. Anyone interested can find it on page 16 here (when they get that whole link thing down, of course).

Update! The lovelies magically fixed the missing link. Visit The Monongahela Review to feel all intellectual and stuff.

My Moment With L'Evangelista

2007-11-30T16:08:00.000-05:00

Just as my chat with PMc went unused at work, as did my Q&A with one Miss Linda Evangelista, blind-itemed model of the day. I once worked on a shoot with the supe, where I was assigned to take notes on master makeup artist Dick Page's brush strokes, color choices, etc., and as I stood inches away from her recently facialed-face, she whispered (loudly) to Dick, "what is she, a gossip?" Dick kindly explained that I was there for beauty coverage, and she resumed discussing very gossip-worthy stories, the sort that I neglected to share with a soul ever since (medal, please!)

In any case, if you've ever been curious who the woman who famously wouldn't get out of bed for less than ten grand considers her fashion icons (I'm sure there's at least one of you...right?), enjoy the clip above. Or just mute your Mac and enjoy her flawless face (the secrets behind that flawlessness of which I won't disclose either. Seriously, medal, right?).

Madonna Please Preach

2007-11-17T14:57:00.000-05:00

"Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion."

"A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That's why they don't get what they want."

"I have the same goal I've had ever since I was a little girl. I want to rule the world."

"Better to live one year as a tiger, than a hundred as a sheep."

"I don't get up in the morning wearing false eyelashes. I'm a nice little ducky."

"I've been popular and unpopular, successful and unsuccessful, loved and loathed, and I know how meaningless it all is. Therefore, I feel free to take whatever risks I want."

Ethan Hawke, in Three Acts

2007-11-12T22:42:00.000-05:00

I had the spontaneous fortune of being taken to "Things We Want" for my birthday this past Friday, deemed by the Times to be ideal for types who smoke cigarettes outside of bars on the LES (guilty, tragically) because of lines like "I'm going to destroy you," and "Are our lives just made up of quoting old movies and Buddha, endlessly?" and "I can't decide if you're an objectifying misogynist or a misogynistic objectifier," this last one being verbal foreplay between two alcoholic deviants about to get it on.

So it was fabulous (Variety disagrees, disturbingly, but this is very much a Manhattan play, complete with lost, self-obsessed youths, late-night bar runs on foot, and the type of redhead only a New York boy could find irresistible. Were she in LA, this wilting rose worth recsessitating would die amid the sea of perky blondes over there.), and on top of all the fabulousness, "Things We Want" is Ethan Hawke's directorial debut for the stage. Herewith, a tale starring Ethan Hawke, in three acts:

Act One: Two minutes before action, we spotted Ethan having a drink in the lounge. I had the ridiculous luck of seeing him (and his bare ass) in 2005's remake of "Hurlyburly," a three-hour long arousing epic circling around n'er-do-wells sobbing and punching walls and drinking. Ethan's ass co-starred with Bobby Cannavelle and Parker Posey and Josh Hamilton, who also stars in "Things We Want." Despite the length and weight of it all, it stands out as one of the most memorable theater experiences in my life. The theater, on a vintage-like "scary" block in the far west 30s, seemed capable of launching fireworks into the Hudson throughout each mesmerizing scene. So I saw Ethan, and had to sheepishly approach him and congratulate him on his performance. Long story short? Well, he's short, polite, cute, and gracious. For no apparent reason, as we parted, I said too loudly, "And seeing your butt was fun, too!" He smirked and held his drink up in salut.

Act Two: The play, of course. Eerily similar to "Hurlyburly" set-wise (dirty couch, cheap city apartment, liquor bottles acting as chorus members), it was the actors (Paul Dano, Peter Dinklange and Hamilton in particular) and the script by Jonathan Marc Sherman, that made this a stand-out. But like the Times stressed, this may only be due to my tendency to smoke cigarettes in between drinks downtown. I suspect other types (even non-smokers! Non-Manhattanites even!) might agree.

Act Three: Rushing to the john after finis, when I felt simultaneously proud and embarrassed to be the sole audience member performing a standing ovation, I spotted Ethan once again, this time rushing out the lounge's exit door, corduroy jacket smelling slightly of stage dust and the 90s. Yes, I stifled the urge to compliment his rear for the second time, thankfully.

My First Manhattan Maestro

2007-11-10T13:22:00.000-05:00

After covering all the major stars at last night's Fashion Group's Night of Stars, I had to grab Patrick McMullan, knowing, sadly, that he likely wouldn't make the cut for our planned feature. But I can't let my talk with him go to waste or disappear into the archives.

My very first assignment in New York was to cover the annual gala at the Botanical Gardens in December of 2004. This was also the first night I met Patrick, New York's own photography godfather. We spent an hour riding through rush hour traffic in a town car, and sitting next to him in my ratty fur shrug (at right), I learned nearly everything I needed to know about how society operated in this town. Last night I had the pleasure of chatting with him longer than the usual European-kiss, "how've you been," small talk jibberish that makes up so much of parties these days. And he proved, once again, that he is my favorite nightlife fixture not only in this city, but in the world. I simply adore this man.

To hear Patrick's thoughts on how New York hasn't dulled one bit since the 70s when he shot parties at Nell's and Studio 54, and to feel just a little more optimistic about nightlife post-millenium, check out the loveliest photog philosophize on the subject above.

I'm So Vain, I Probably Think I'm On To Something

2007-10-21T21:19:00.000-04:00

You know when you're at a party and some random guy's opening line is, "You know who you look like?" And then he says some impossibly beautiful celebrity who looks nothing like you, and you say, "Well, thanks for saying that, but you clearly need glasses," or "Aww, thanks and you look exactly like Brad Pitt!" just because you don't like being lied to or toyed with, especially when it comes to appearances?

But what happens when, in the span of one month (starting days after you dye your hair lighter), four out of four guys spring this line on you, but the lookalike in question is always the same celebrity? And, three out of these four guys are gay, not publicists, not drunk, and you just can't think of a single ulterior motive lurking behind the comment? On top of all this, what if the celebrity is relatively unknown? Relatively non-famous, and all four guys don't even know her name? They just know you look like her?

Bottom line: does all this mean it might, for the first time, be true? I might as well out the girl in question: Natasha McElhone from "Californication," a show watched by approximately 700,000 viewers each week, potentially 300,000 of them from New York. But ever since a party last week, when a sidewalk smoker holding hands with another guy told me on his way into a cab that I looked like her once again, I'm starting to consider the truthiness of all this. Natasha isn't traditionally gorgeous, isn't one of those stunners meriting magazine covers or fans lusting after nude pics of her, so I've convinced myself the comparison hasn't sprung from vanity. Trying to convince myself that is.

"Love is a Big and Funny Word"

2007-08-23T15:44:00.000-04:00

Eurydice and Orpheus then...

Eurydice now, as imagined by Sarah Ruhl:

A couple of my favorite, hazily remembered lines (until I get the script):

"This is what it is to love an artist. It's like loving the moon that rises above your house each night, and all the other houses are dark. But he's always going away from you. Inside his head there is always something more beautiful, and love is a big and funny word."

"I have all these notions. I have a philosophical argument laid out. It involves lots of hats."

Life, in Hindsight, is Blurry

2007-08-17T16:56:00.000-04:00

Is this really what my very first house party looked like? And that's what I looked like as hostess (I'm on the left, dearest Emi on the right)? And who on earth would have a pillow in that shade on their bed? My camera tells me yes, yes, and you, you idiot.

Cameras tell funny stories, especially about nights you vaguely remember in moments of varying clarity and haze. My camera, a digital Olympus clunker I bought two years ago, likes to tell me that everyone is pale, all girls wear berry lip stains, all boys have five-o-clock shadows, and my color choices (in outfit and decor) are faulty. This is how my world looks, and my camera cannot lie.

On that note, what kind of camera creates a world where everyone is tan, all girls wear Chanel Sirop gloss, all boys have beards like Brett in Flight of the Conchords, and my color choices make Martha Stewart pink with envy?

Why Work is Fun

2007-08-07T15:38:00.000-04:00

Ever find yourself at the zeitgeisty center of D-List magic? I do every day, smile about it, and here's why!

How To Get a Date on Astoria Boulevard

2007-05-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

As I discovered recently:

1) Wear a skirt.

2) Walk.

Please Don't Molest the Polaroids

2007-05-02T14:55:00.000-04:00

If your childhood was anything like mine, you spent a lot of time rolling around in the backyard, playing with gumballs and parasols, trying on assorted kneesocks, and blowing bubbles on the beach. An idyllic existence that you wish you'd never left, and wasn't fully captured in all those endless polaroids your mom took. But who knew that adding a few pervy elements like bras, high heels, lipstick and lace could look so...perfect? Thanks to a new discovery, Matt Schwartz of She Hit Pause Studios, we can recreate the magic, with a touch of sex and mystery. Hang these on your wall next to a few Rosalyn Drexler's (see my Reality pic on the left), and Go To Your Room!

Just Call Me Kinky Friedman

2007-04-09T11:04:00.000-04:00

Being a halfie (that's half-Jew to you pagans) has three main benefits:

1) The combo of self-deprecating sense of humor, trained education in elitism, literature and musical theater, and non-Jewish nose, tends to attract a lovely and varied group of male suitors.

2) You can be what I've dubbed a "fair-weather Jew." Example: circa-1999, whilst Seinfeld ended its magical run, you get to take partial credit for their success. But circa-1940, whilst German soldiers are knocking on your neighbors' doors, you can cling to your maternal WASP-iness and aforementioned non-Jewish nose, and live to see another day.

3) You can attend events like last night's Kinky Jewish Seder, and walk out halfway-through when the frizzy-haired S&M enthusiasts begin swatting each other's wide asses with whole scallion leaves.

From what I understand, The Grand Space is some kind of old-fashioned bohemian artists' squat, in which I imagine they gather nightly around a long and rickety wooden table before erupting into a mini-chorus of "Viva! La Vie! Boheme!" and dancing on cardboard i-bankers' heads. In any case, they host inexplicable events like the Second Annual Kinky Jews' Seder, where everyone but myself had brought along an erotic item that best explained them. Think "purple wands," "vampire gloves," and "my partner, Ivira."

Elegant, yes. My cup of tea, no. But by all means, be in touch with The Kinky Jews should you yearn, halfie or not, for some poussoise with your Passover next year.

They Say it's Spring

2007-04-05T16:37:00.000-04:00

If you've read some T.S. Eliot and listened to some Jonathan Richman (let's be friends, by the way), you know two things: April may be the cruelest month, but "springtime is wild, and New York is exciting."

After having a cig with a friend who's about to spend his very first spring and summer in the city, I feebly tried to explain what's so great about it, but all I could think of was the lack of clothing. Guys like this for obvious reasons (a matter of spending your lunch break hunched over your desk v. outside watching some sorely missed and recently hibernating T&A), and for us girls? No more struggling with tights, leggings, jackets, hats, gloves, laces, zippers, and so on. A sun dress suddenly suffices.

But then I remembered the all-time, hands-down best thing about Springtime in New York: the giddiness with which New Yorker covers jump up to the plate, splashing roses, park scenes, and most adeptly, misshaped young lovers rhapsodizing to the tune of starry skies and sweaty sidewalks:

Don't Go Lightly

2007-04-04T21:21:00.000-04:00

For the life of me I cannot figure out how this happened, but every girl born in the Northeast in the early 80s magically became enraptured with Holly Golightly at some point in their life. Maybe we all had to read about her in our prep schools while surrounded by hordes of ultra-femme Paul Varjak types who we could easily take advantage of, and who lauded us with praise whenever we looked nice at formal dinners. Being so close to the city didn't hurt. And yes, A. Hep is just overflowing with charm, I know.

But I suspect there exists a subset of us who kind of scrunched up our noses when Holly fusses over the missing kitty. And who may have even thought she was like the jewelry at Tiffany's herself: gorgeous, sparkly, void, and kind of annoying after a while. Cue Bette Davis in All About Eve.

I was on vacation in Miami Beach on winter break from some school when I first saw it in the sunlit hotel room. You only need to remember one moment from the film to get the full effect. Bette walks up a staircase, cigarette and scotch in either hand with black kohl lining her eyes, turns to a Holly-like girl and tells her it's going to be a bumpy night. If you don't know the line, keep those BatT (how similar to B&T, what a serendipitous abreev!) posters on your wall and please stay out of our subset.

Love for Lola

2007-04-04T17:04:00.000-04:00

When you meet someone at a party, nine times out of ten they'll ask where you're from. Always a complicated question. Maybe you've lived in the city a couple of years so by now you've grown a pair and you say, "I'm from here, man, you?" with an insulted, Captain Obvious look on your face.

Or maybe you didn't grow up thinking 57th St. and 5th was not only the center of Manhattan, but the center of the universe, so you smile with big Mid-western teeth or glassy West Coast eyes and 'fess up to your native roots.

However you choose to improvise, let me tell you what to say if
you want to truly confuse the inquisitor: "I grew up in the Hamptons."

"Oh, so you like summered there?"

"No, we were year-round."

"So...like where was your other house?"

I used to want to throw whatever drink I was holding in the faces of twits like these, and there are oh so many of them in New York. But then I went through a shameful phase of thinking, was growing up year-round out there somehow embarrassing? Should I just lie like the rest of the Kansans and Texans, say "Oh, from here, man," and assimilate?

Obviously not. And let me tell you why. Because of the fantabulous bad boys who make up LOLA New York, the likes of which I grew up with from day one. Rumor has it that James's mom and my mom used to get their drink on at Bobby Van's in Bridgehampton together, while bringing us, infant-size, in tow. Emmett's mom used to "chaperone" our second-grade class trips to MOMA, and Alex brought some much-needed diversity to Southampton Elementary's G&T program. (That's Gifted & Talented for those of you who aren't.)

I won't reveal which ones I've kissed during Spin the Bottle, which one taught me how to roll my first joint in my bedroom, or which one started sweating so much on my trampoline one fateful evening back in 1997 that my dad banned him from my house "for good," but what I will tell said twits from now on is: Hell yes, I grew up in the Hamptons year-round.

City Girls

2007-04-04T16:16:00.000-04:00

I used to think city girls like me were too cool for blogging. They're much better suited being blogged about, photographed, seen throwing champagne glasses behind their heads at downtown parties, asking fathers and uncles for new jobs because their current one's "a bore," or strolling incognito down Rivington Street with giant sunglasses and ratty clothes, surreptitiously scrounging for all the right Low pieces to complete their High/Low get-ups.

Hard to imagine Zelda Fitzgerald or Baby Jane sitting in front of a plastic contraption droning on about all this sparkle instead of just frickin' living it. If you need to ASK for attention, do you really deserve it?

Then again, the most common plastic contraptions those ladies of the night had to play with were cigarette lighters and coke spoons. And, as anyone worth their wild cards knows, had an open forum (ahem, a blog. See how it all comes together?) existed for such fame-seekers and debauched dolls, they'd have died with their cheeks to the keyboard.

So this city girl, despite haughty reservations stemming from icky tech-nerd visions and painful memories from Qwerty class in Kindergarten, has given in. I know Zelda and BJ would totes understand.