9 posts tagged “new york”
In chronological order (or as close to as I can get, things tend to be... hazy.):
- New Years Eve is the best of my life thus far. Ben Savage shows up to our party. Everyone kind of freaks about it. He and I wind up talking in a corner with a Alex and Mary, I think. I tell him that I would rent My Pet Monster every sick day when I was in Kindergarten and first grade. He tells me he'll come to my next stand up gig, but never shows. I wasn't looking for him, but everyone would have known if Ben Savage showed up to a bringer night at the Comedy Store. So, that was that...
- Girl Talk's Night Ripper went into the CD player on my car on December 27th, 2006 and stayed there until March, when I took it out to let someone burn it.
- Lily Allen came into my life:
- Mary finds a pink and purple Marc Jacobs jacket at the Salvation Army for two dollars. Because she's a better person than I am, she hands it over to me no questions asked. I proceed to wear it into the ground.
- I lose my job and therefor am uninsured. I stop taking antidepressants. I feel a lot better. I still miss the klonopin, though.
- Pomegranate martinis were all I drank from January-March:
- I found out my friend Jim from Lexington High School was also living out in sunny LA.
- I spent my first single Valentine's Day in three years at a coffee house with Mary for a open mic/poetry slam. It was awesome.
- I got hired to work at HBO/AOL's ThisJustIn.com. I still am not sure what I did there, but whatever it was, you can bet that I did a lot of it.
- Peter, Bjorn and John's Writer's Block became my jam.
- A cute boy leaves me a missed connection. I never respond.
"Friday night, and you were the petite, adorable girl sitting at a table in front of me with four of your friends while having dinner at El Chavo. Though you were facing the same direction I was, you kept turning your head back to look towards me. Now, as a single heterosexual male, this kind of behavior is cause for rejoicing, a news van, and quite possibly recognition of a new federal holiday. Still, I realize there could of been a few reasons for your behavior:
1. You are a retired cop who is accustomed to sitting in a place that allows you to keep your eye on all the entrances. Frustrated by having your back to the main door you felt compelled to repeatedly turn around. Then again, you were in your 20's so the grizzled ex cop thing doesn't quite fit.
2. You were attracted to me and the guy next to you was just a friend. I like this scenario so lets just move on before I have time to think about it.
3. You were amazed by the bad jokes my friend was making. No worries, I completely understand. And hopefully you didn't catch the part about a goat named Leroy.
4. I had some mojo going. Maybe you even heard that I got hit on by ten women within a one hour period during the previous night. Apparently you missed the part about it being in Vegas and the women being escorts. Actually, it was interesting to finally feel what it must be like to be the "hot girl". Those escorts, literally staring at me and waiting for me to accidentally make eye contact so they can justify approaching and aggressively hitting on me. Ladies, I now know your burden. Which brings me to...
5. That guy sitting next to you was your boyfriend, and you kept looking at me out of the corner of your eye because you were shocked that I was literally staring at you and waiting for you to accidentally make eye contact with me so I could justify approaching and aggressively hitting on you. If this was the case, I apologize. You were ridiculously beautiful and it was hard not to admire you. Also, it was either look at you or the goofy guy playing the little guitar so I think I should get some leniency here. (The performance was fine, but if you're going to play a mini guitar you have to be prepared for a little good natured mocking)
Regardless, my apologies if you were on a date and you did catch me staring.
By the way, there's one other possibility. You weren't actually looking at me. Which would make this entire post pointless. Except the part about a goat named Leroy."
- I saw Neko Case in concert with Slippy. Billy Bob Thorton shows up with the now late Porter Wagoner.
- I suffered from the never-ending urinary tract infection. I am so uncomfortable all of the time that I start announcing my condition to co-workers, family friends and strangers.
- I decide to stop doing stand up in LA because I'm getting paid to write for HBO. One of the best moves I've made since moving here. My life now has about 80% less anxiety because of it.
- Los Campesinos! prove to be the new jam.
- I found the new Of Montreal album growing on me and turning out to be one of the best (start to finish, every single track) that I've heard in awhile.
- My parents send me to Phoenix to visit them on vacation. I swim and drink vodka for three days.
- I move to a new apartment. I move 75% of everything by myself, including a 300-pound beanbag chair.
- I watched hundreds of YouTube videos at ThisJustIn. This one is one of my all-time favorites:
- Five men laid the pipe all the way in to my heart.
- A girl I work with is mean to me because she has a crush on the boy I'm dating. I go to brunch and with Ed and in a drunken haze we decide to get me a dog to cure my sadness. I named him Wagandstuff. He changes my life for.ev.er.
- I hear two songs in late spring and make my prediction that they would be the biggest songs of the summer. I think I was right. I am awesome.
- Ed and I start taking Improv 101 at UCB with Johnny Meeks. We love our teacher and spend a great deal of time talking about what he must do in his free time, how much we like his station wagon and wondering how much he loves his wife (probably a lot!)
- Kendall takes me to Bootie LA. I party until 4 am with strangers. It's the second best night of LA so far.
- I throw in the towel and start shopping at American Apparel. I find the colorful sweatshop-free cotton to be more pleasurable than I initially expected it to be.
- My ex-boyfriend (the one I moved to LA with) writes me a seven-page letter apologizing for all that went wrong. I can't believe he's still thinking about it.
- 90s music is all I hear when I go out at night. I begin revisiting some of my favorite jams from back in the day.
- I am selected from the audience at UCB to be in the MySpace show. They look at my pictures in front of the audience, including the picture of Shovelhead with Will Arnett. Will Arnett happens to be sitting in the audience. I die inside.
- Ed and I see Paris Hilton outside the House of Blues. We decide that this is not Our Paris Moment and we avoid stalking her.
- I meet the blond chick from Reno 911. I have a mini-breakdown in front of UCB. She tells us that she's read ThisJustIn. No one believes her.
- HBO lays us all off via-Variety and The Hollywood Reporter. Most of us are surprised it lasted as long as it did.
- I audition for the position of Videographer at the parent company of one of my favorite websites, Defamer. I get the job.
- I get a MacBook Pro to replace the one I was using at HBO. It changes my (internet) life.
- Ed let out his inner Frenchie in the first of 48 YouTube videos I made this year:
- Ed and I start eating Carl's Junior ALL THE TIME when we are drunk. We get to know the staff of their 4th and Western location.
- In the first month of working for Gawker, I went out thirty-seven nights in a row to film videos. This is when I become an alcoholic.
- After this song came out, Ed and I would hit on men in bars by saying "You can be my black Kate Moss tonight"
- I discover that "working from home" can also mean "poolside at the Hollywood Standard". I worked exclusively out of my home for the first month of my job.
- I see The Clipse and Pacific Division at the Roxy. Pac Division gives me a great interview that unfortunately was never published.
- I meet Adrienne Curry of America's Next Top Model at the Maxim Style Awards. She tells me I am "adorable". I die inside.
- My mom and little sister visited me in Los Angeles. We went Disneyland. I continued to lose faith in mankind.
- I discovered Mark Ronson:
- September 13th, I interview GirlTalk before his two shows at the Echoplex with Dan Deacon. I spent the entire day leading up to the interview crying. I cried the entire next day. Things had come full-circle.
- I dated an actor who showed up at my door at 5 AM claiming that Kevin Connolly from Entourage punched him in the face. I stop speaking to him after I jack some of his Valium.
- Wagandstuff "broke his leg". He proceeds to fake a broken hind leg for a month.
- Ed and I hit up the Stony Awards. Tommy Chong tells me I look like a "dope dealer". This is my greatest accomplishment in life. It's like having Queen Elizabeth describe you as "regal". For serious.
- I become a full-time Gawker/Defamer Employee
- I visit a porn set with Gram Ponante. I witness a nice Asian lady having her nipples sucked on by two other nice Asian ladies. I threw up on the car ride there because I was so hungover.
- My new salary kicked in and I can officially pay my rent on time for the first time in four months.
- I go on a mushroom trip in Griffith Park. I spend the day in emotional turmoil, debating my worth as a human being. When I came out of it, I decided that I was awesome and shouldn't stress about such things. I haven't had a doubt about my character since.
- I start covering the writers strike. I got two dates, a kiss on the head and a stack of business cards out of it.
- I "invent" Image Parties
- I visit Shovelhead in New York and Boston. They put on the best show that I have ever seen (including the shows that I was in).
- I have a small YouTube success:
- I am fired for five minutes or negative two hours, depending on how you look at it. (If someone is fired for negative two hours, does that make them extra-employed?)
- I found Heartbeats by The Knife in my iTunes and can't stop listening to it:
- I get a Blackberry. My life is over.
- I spent Christmas in Boston after not seeing my brothers, aunts, uncles or cousins for an entire year.
- Alex Goldberg's number one fan makes fan-art featuring my face:
- Alex J, after not speaking to me for several months, has a change of heart. Hopefully he loves me again.
The Numbers:
1 = Number of awards I won
2 = Number of dudes I actually cared about
3 = Number of relationships I am arguably to blame for ending
4 = Number of movies seen in the theater (by FAR the least in a year of my whole life)
4 = Number of recreational drugs done
4 = Number of people who I could probably could have gotten fired for sexual harassment
6 = Number of solid friendships made
7 = Number of sentences spoken during Improv 101 show at UCB
11 = Number of concerts attended
12 = Number of pounds gained this year
12 = Number of pregnancy scares (totally kidding, guys)
15 = Number of martinis consumed on 23rd birthday
17 = Number of hours of footage taken
25 = Approx. number of In and Out burgers eaten
33 = Number of credits on Defamer (sometimes I am uncredited, so take that into account)
47 = Number of dates I went on
75+ = Number of movies seen at home
100+ = Number of people interviewed
120+ = Number of shows seen at UCB
237 = Number of business cards collected
335 = Number of posts on this blog since August
1545 = Number of tracks added to my iTunes this year
1940 = Number of Google search results for this blog
2400 = Approx. number of hours spent working
13595 = Number of page views on this blog between 10/25 and 12/29
[VOX crapped the bed mid-update so only about half the media is here that should be. I'll update later with all the images/music, et c. that I wanted to include]
Two years ago I went to visit my college writing partner Ryan in Tenafly, NJ for a long weekend. We smoked pot with his friends from high school, ran around New York, and ate these cookies his grandma makes in his basement. They are called "melting memories" or something. Every time he'd say the name, I'd crack up and shove more cookies in my mouth. His parents were nervous about us sharing a bedroom (LOLzzzz), so he slept in the basement and I took his bed. He had free AOL CDs taped all over the inside of his bedroom closet and his parents had a cross hanging in their room. Also, his mom has a sign above their back door that says "Back door guests are the best guests". I probably made a few jokes about his mother being an anal whore, which she is not. Actually, she's a very nice lady. It was a fun weekend.
Yes, I used to be blond.
I no longer give in to the munchies ever. They are simply a mind trick, and if you give in you will end up like Carnie Wilson, I swear to you. I read an article with her in which she laid out that the only reason she used to be completely obese was because she used to get blazed and eat her face off. That pretty much kept my hand out of the Cheeze-It box. If guilt doesn't get you, vanity will.
Let me start off by saying that my trip to New York/Boston to see my friends/the Shovelhead show/check out the Gawker offices was both long over due and extremely necessary. I hadn't been amongst my people in nearly a year and I hadn't left LA since July, so it was very important for me to get away and go on a booze-binge.
When I was in NYC, I stayed in Long Island City, one subway stop out of Manhattan. George and Kevin put me up at their place, where I passed out face first a fully clothed on their futon every night.
The first night I was in the city the entire Shovelhead gang met up one by one until we were all together. Then we went to a bar.
I liked being in SoHo most. Canal Street was both offensive and wonderful. I refused to shop there, but it was really interesting.
Oh! Also! I went to Bootie NY! Bootie LA, but in NY! It was awesome. A much smaller crowd, but what you could expect-- chill people, awesome music (we heard Tender Umbrella!) and great vibes. Kevin, Deborah and I went together, and while we were there we met up with Kendall and some of her high school friends who I've known for a few years now. It was great to see everyone. After we met up with Lauren from Shovelhead '04 and one of her girlfriends for another quick drink. Kevin and I went to get hot dogs after that and I demanded two pickles from the counter boy, who Kevin says I called "Pickle Man".
My boss, the scandalous Blakeley, took me out for drinks the same night as Bootie. I drank four mojitos within an hour and a half. We went back to the office to chase those down with Bud Lights while I put on eye liner, rolled a joint and grabbed my camera bag. I was easily the drunkest I managed to get the entire time that night. Blakeley came to Johnson's show and while we were walking through the E. Village, he tripped over a homeless person who he thought was a pile of trash. The homeless dude was all "HEY!" and Blakeley was all "Woah, that trash just talked" and then I was like "Dude, that was a person". And then we laughed and laughed and laughed and I went on a drunk rant about how I'm trying to avoid herpes more than anything else in my life. Don't you guys feel like if you get genital herpes, you're kind of fucked really bad? Like, if you get AIDS, I feel there's an automatic sympathy and understanding level you receive from the general population. Everyone feels pretty bad about AIDS. No one really feels all that bad for you if you get herpes, even though you probably did something on the same level as an AIDS patient to acquire it. For some reason, theres nothing worse/dirtier than genital herpes. It's not like you're gonna die... you're just banned from having carefree sex/a normal relationship forever. Maybe that's on the ignorant side, so I'll take it back and say that you've significantly increased the awkward factor by picking up herpes, and you're going to have that terrible "I have herpes" conversation any time you want to get ass for the rest of your life. Even if you don't have an outbreak, you still need to tell people. Can you imagine that being your one-night stand? I told a guy recently that if someone gave me herpes, they'd have to marry me as punishment, because there's no reason why I should have to walk around the rest of my life defending my vagina's worth.
After our marathon night we all woke up the next day to take the bus to Boston. There's a long story here about how my friends almost left me in New York by accident, but I'm not even getting into it. (George almost left me in NYC. If Kevin hadn't been in Dad mode, I'd still be in Long Island)
When I got to college, this is the first picture I took.
Video games and pot. Pretty much sums it up.
The Shovelhead show that night was amazing. I am blown away by the show that those kids were able to put together. No one missed a beat, every sketch was on point, every topic they covered was fresh. I was so fucking proud of those kiddos. Here are the pics: