(no subject)
It's finally Saturday. And I finally slept a decent number of hours. After devouring jalapeno covered nachos and swilling too many margs with Sarah and all the gay boys last night (oh, and Jeffrey -- metrosexual, as evidenced by his highlights, snappy dressing, and owning up to having a stylist -- but decidedly not gay) after their performance in the Gay Men's Chorus show. They did their impression (via hand gestures) of female masturbation, which they affectionately term "duck duck squirrel" and "finger bang bang" (or perhaps it's "tuck tuck squirrel" -- I like "duck duck squirrel" better because it sounds like a children's bedtime story). Silly, lovely boys.
And silly, lovely Sarah who sang old school rap to me on the cell phone the whole way home ("The Humpty Dance", "Ice Ice Baby", and "Paul Revere"). She kept saying, "Do you have me on speaker, darling? Take me off speaker!"
I have a new fondness for Kander and Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret, Funny Lady, Kiss of the Spider Woman, etc). The show was a tribute called, "They Had It Coming," and don't we love that sort of sassy double entendre that is so common in gay culture? Yes, yes we do. Anyway, Sarah said she'd let me burn all her CDs of musicals. I'm so excited! I think I'm going to go into another musical watching phase -- once I get through all these Gilmore Girls DVDs.
All I want to do this weekend is lie around with Maude and Jeffrey watching Gilmore Girls, perhaps drinking Prosecco and eating Ding Dongs (my new fave combo). Also on the agenda: hot tub, extensive reading, and much playing in my garden. Actually there is much weeding and pruning to be done out there, and I need to extend my beds. My zucchini plant has become a monster, edging out all the plants in its vicinity. Oh, and I got my first tomato while I was away! Can you say caprese salad? Jeffrey and I had a great one the other night at La Terza -- with burrata instead of mozzerella.
My NYC Adventure
Song
The flight was just fine. Even better than fine. We love Delta's Song airline. It's the airline for ADD people like us. You get your own screen with satellite TV (including all of our faves: TCM, BBCA, Food Network, Travel Channel, HGTV, etc.) as well as lots of music. You can actually make your own playlists and it wasn't all Celine Dion and Kenny Chesney -- they had ELO and Air and the Flaming Lips and the Ramones. Sarah and I read our trash magazines (if you haven't see Radar yet, it's great fun -- the more intellectual, sassier Us Weekly) and we got to watch Casablanca on TCM. I cried, like I always do.
The Palacial Accomodations
Aaron's apartment was beyond belief. He lives in a historic building in the East Village/Alphabet City (Iggy Pop lived there when he wrote Avenue B and Gershwin had his very first performance there) in not just 1 but 2 penthouse apartments. He knocked down some walls, transforming it into a colossal 3-story bachelor pad with a pool table, hardwood floors, gourmet kitchen, down comforters and sheets with a very high-thread-count (yes, I am the Princess and the Pea), and best of all, several terraces and views views views. You can wash the dishes and look at the Empire State Building. Only you don't wash the dishes because (a) you have a dishwasher and (b) the maid does that.
Food Porn
Rick and Chris joined us in the penthouse for wine and then we all had dinner in the neighborhood (deep-fried pickles, sweetbread poppers, coffee brisket, pulled pork, greens, fantastic summer squash, and some kind of ginger dessert). The next day was Ricard at Pastis, lychee and ginger martinis in SoHo, shopping at H & M and B & H (for my digital camera). Sadly, we never made it to H & H (bagels), but we did have orgasmic, religious-experience worthy pizza at John's on Bleeker (I had to have the t-shirt) and my second favorite, Lombardi's on Spring. We could get into a long philisophical discussion here about pizza but we must press on.
How I Love Sarah
The next day was my birthday (best birthday ever) and Sarah woke me with coffee in bed (2 kinds -- iced and hot, since she didn't know what I would be in the mood for) and gave me her gift: a signed first edition of my very favorite novel ever, Jennifer Belle's High Maintenance. She opened all the blinds and I felt like Donald Trump lying there on the high-thread-count sheets, gazing at all the skyscrapers; if we had been in a movie, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" would have been playing). Then we sipped coffee and I read to her our favorite passage from the book (which is all about NYC, of course), the part about real estate mogul, Barbara Corcoran and Dale, the psychotic lesbian, who is in love with the main character, Liv ("Dale loves Liv. Liv Liv Liv").
More Food Porn and Indie Rock
We spent the day shopping for food at Garden of Eden in the Village and then cooking, Sarah serving as my sous chef. We made potato salad with thyme and fennel, tapanade with capers and L'Oliver olive oil infused with herbs de Provence, baked beans, and my famous apple pies -- 3 of them. Everything from scratch of course. Then we headed to Battery Park for the (free) Yo La Tengo concert. They sang a cover of the Ramones song, "Sheena is a Punk Rocker", which made me excessively, stupidly happy.
Pie Orgy
Aaron's BBQ party was a smash success (of course we watched the fireworks on the terraces -- plural -- while drinking Lillet on ice and smoking cigarettes), as were the pies. People kind of went nuts over the pies, lining up in long lines in the kitchen and adjoining rooms, wielding their plastic forks like swords, paper plates like shields, dumbly parroting, "Is it ready yet?" and "How much longer?" Someone stuck a sparkler in one of the pies and they sang Happy Birthday to me and everyone looked so very happy, euphoric even, but I knew it wasn't because of my birthday that they were so happy -- it was because they knew they were about to get their forks into the pies. "Do you have ice cream?" they asked, their eyes pleading. Did I have ice cream. What a silly question. Who serves pie without the requisite vanilla ice cream?
Drunken Yanni Poetry
After the pie orgy, we drank 18-year-old single malt Scotch with real NY sculptors and painters and pianists who taught at places like Juliard until 5 in the morning and mused about whether Yanni was a good lover (an epic poem was spawned by the very hot, metrosexual Yale-educated sculptor with good hair; it involved Yanni captaining a vessel on the open seas, and landing upon the shore where lichen grew on the rocky shale). I think there may have also been some waltzing.
My Woeful Lack of a Rock Star Entourage
The following day Chris and Sarah made fun of me because I had that dazed, spaced out, sleep-deprived and very much hungover je ne sais quois that is so easy to make fun of. They said, "This is why you should be a rock star. You need an entourage to surround you and take care of you when you are in this state." Later, in the photography gallery, I guess I was dawdling off in a corner by myself (if you want to know the truth, I was popping ibuprofen and guzzling Diet Coke), and Chris said to Sarah, "Is she having a rock star moment?" We then met friends for a squandered lunch (bad deli food in midtown which could not be helped), hit Nat Sherman (for Sarah's smokie chokies), and then sipped Prosecco and nibbled lemon poppyseed gelato with the lovely and hilarious Bethany at La Lanterna in the Village.
Bethany Anecdote
Sarah and I lit up the new American Spirit Organics we had just purchased, and we figured it was OK because we were outside on the patio. The waiter came up and said, "Sorry, there's no smoking out here." He pointed to several signs posted along the walls and fences. "Oh, we said," stubbing out our smokes, "we didn't see those." Bethany apologized to the waiter, "They're from LA. They don't read."
Mixing With the Literati
Then we were off to Cooper Union for a literary extravaganza: an evening of readings from a new book of stories edited by David Sedaris, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. David Sedaris published the book to support 826 NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York (with sister organization to 826 Valencia in San Francisco and 826 Venice in LA, all founded by Dave Eggers to tutor kids in writing). We got to see Sedaris himself (naturally hilarious and cute as a button, wearing his ribbon belt and summer blazer), Sarah Vowell (also cute and naturally hilarious), Lorrie Moore (love love love her), Joyce Carol Oates (so willowy, so Olive Oyl, and so fabulously dark and twisted). Plus two wonderful writers I had not heard of before, Charles Baxter and Akhil Sharma -- I am going to buy everything they have written -- fantastic! And lastly, a surpise guest: Steve Buscemi read "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff.
And One Last Bite of Food Porn
After the reading, we ate blintzes and pierogis and stuffed cabbage and potato pancakes at Veselka (the East Village 24-hour Ukranian Denny's). And that was the end.
Okay, I'm starving now after all that talk of pizza and pierogis. Must go forage for brunch. Pictures coming soon.
And silly, lovely Sarah who sang old school rap to me on the cell phone the whole way home ("The Humpty Dance", "Ice Ice Baby", and "Paul Revere"). She kept saying, "Do you have me on speaker, darling? Take me off speaker!"
I have a new fondness for Kander and Ebb (Chicago, Cabaret, Funny Lady, Kiss of the Spider Woman, etc). The show was a tribute called, "They Had It Coming," and don't we love that sort of sassy double entendre that is so common in gay culture? Yes, yes we do. Anyway, Sarah said she'd let me burn all her CDs of musicals. I'm so excited! I think I'm going to go into another musical watching phase -- once I get through all these Gilmore Girls DVDs.
All I want to do this weekend is lie around with Maude and Jeffrey watching Gilmore Girls, perhaps drinking Prosecco and eating Ding Dongs (my new fave combo). Also on the agenda: hot tub, extensive reading, and much playing in my garden. Actually there is much weeding and pruning to be done out there, and I need to extend my beds. My zucchini plant has become a monster, edging out all the plants in its vicinity. Oh, and I got my first tomato while I was away! Can you say caprese salad? Jeffrey and I had a great one the other night at La Terza -- with burrata instead of mozzerella.
My NYC Adventure
Song
The flight was just fine. Even better than fine. We love Delta's Song airline. It's the airline for ADD people like us. You get your own screen with satellite TV (including all of our faves: TCM, BBCA, Food Network, Travel Channel, HGTV, etc.) as well as lots of music. You can actually make your own playlists and it wasn't all Celine Dion and Kenny Chesney -- they had ELO and Air and the Flaming Lips and the Ramones. Sarah and I read our trash magazines (if you haven't see Radar yet, it's great fun -- the more intellectual, sassier Us Weekly) and we got to watch Casablanca on TCM. I cried, like I always do.
The Palacial Accomodations
Aaron's apartment was beyond belief. He lives in a historic building in the East Village/Alphabet City (Iggy Pop lived there when he wrote Avenue B and Gershwin had his very first performance there) in not just 1 but 2 penthouse apartments. He knocked down some walls, transforming it into a colossal 3-story bachelor pad with a pool table, hardwood floors, gourmet kitchen, down comforters and sheets with a very high-thread-count (yes, I am the Princess and the Pea), and best of all, several terraces and views views views. You can wash the dishes and look at the Empire State Building. Only you don't wash the dishes because (a) you have a dishwasher and (b) the maid does that.
Food Porn
Rick and Chris joined us in the penthouse for wine and then we all had dinner in the neighborhood (deep-fried pickles, sweetbread poppers, coffee brisket, pulled pork, greens, fantastic summer squash, and some kind of ginger dessert). The next day was Ricard at Pastis, lychee and ginger martinis in SoHo, shopping at H & M and B & H (for my digital camera). Sadly, we never made it to H & H (bagels), but we did have orgasmic, religious-experience worthy pizza at John's on Bleeker (I had to have the t-shirt) and my second favorite, Lombardi's on Spring. We could get into a long philisophical discussion here about pizza but we must press on.
How I Love Sarah
The next day was my birthday (best birthday ever) and Sarah woke me with coffee in bed (2 kinds -- iced and hot, since she didn't know what I would be in the mood for) and gave me her gift: a signed first edition of my very favorite novel ever, Jennifer Belle's High Maintenance. She opened all the blinds and I felt like Donald Trump lying there on the high-thread-count sheets, gazing at all the skyscrapers; if we had been in a movie, Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" would have been playing). Then we sipped coffee and I read to her our favorite passage from the book (which is all about NYC, of course), the part about real estate mogul, Barbara Corcoran and Dale, the psychotic lesbian, who is in love with the main character, Liv ("Dale loves Liv. Liv Liv Liv").
More Food Porn and Indie Rock
We spent the day shopping for food at Garden of Eden in the Village and then cooking, Sarah serving as my sous chef. We made potato salad with thyme and fennel, tapanade with capers and L'Oliver olive oil infused with herbs de Provence, baked beans, and my famous apple pies -- 3 of them. Everything from scratch of course. Then we headed to Battery Park for the (free) Yo La Tengo concert. They sang a cover of the Ramones song, "Sheena is a Punk Rocker", which made me excessively, stupidly happy.
Pie Orgy
Aaron's BBQ party was a smash success (of course we watched the fireworks on the terraces -- plural -- while drinking Lillet on ice and smoking cigarettes), as were the pies. People kind of went nuts over the pies, lining up in long lines in the kitchen and adjoining rooms, wielding their plastic forks like swords, paper plates like shields, dumbly parroting, "Is it ready yet?" and "How much longer?" Someone stuck a sparkler in one of the pies and they sang Happy Birthday to me and everyone looked so very happy, euphoric even, but I knew it wasn't because of my birthday that they were so happy -- it was because they knew they were about to get their forks into the pies. "Do you have ice cream?" they asked, their eyes pleading. Did I have ice cream. What a silly question. Who serves pie without the requisite vanilla ice cream?
Drunken Yanni Poetry
After the pie orgy, we drank 18-year-old single malt Scotch with real NY sculptors and painters and pianists who taught at places like Juliard until 5 in the morning and mused about whether Yanni was a good lover (an epic poem was spawned by the very hot, metrosexual Yale-educated sculptor with good hair; it involved Yanni captaining a vessel on the open seas, and landing upon the shore where lichen grew on the rocky shale). I think there may have also been some waltzing.
My Woeful Lack of a Rock Star Entourage
The following day Chris and Sarah made fun of me because I had that dazed, spaced out, sleep-deprived and very much hungover je ne sais quois that is so easy to make fun of. They said, "This is why you should be a rock star. You need an entourage to surround you and take care of you when you are in this state." Later, in the photography gallery, I guess I was dawdling off in a corner by myself (if you want to know the truth, I was popping ibuprofen and guzzling Diet Coke), and Chris said to Sarah, "Is she having a rock star moment?" We then met friends for a squandered lunch (bad deli food in midtown which could not be helped), hit Nat Sherman (for Sarah's smokie chokies), and then sipped Prosecco and nibbled lemon poppyseed gelato with the lovely and hilarious Bethany at La Lanterna in the Village.
Bethany Anecdote
Sarah and I lit up the new American Spirit Organics we had just purchased, and we figured it was OK because we were outside on the patio. The waiter came up and said, "Sorry, there's no smoking out here." He pointed to several signs posted along the walls and fences. "Oh, we said," stubbing out our smokes, "we didn't see those." Bethany apologized to the waiter, "They're from LA. They don't read."
Mixing With the Literati
Then we were off to Cooper Union for a literary extravaganza: an evening of readings from a new book of stories edited by David Sedaris, Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules. David Sedaris published the book to support 826 NYC, a nonprofit tutoring center in Brooklyn, New York (with sister organization to 826 Valencia in San Francisco and 826 Venice in LA, all founded by Dave Eggers to tutor kids in writing). We got to see Sedaris himself (naturally hilarious and cute as a button, wearing his ribbon belt and summer blazer), Sarah Vowell (also cute and naturally hilarious), Lorrie Moore (love love love her), Joyce Carol Oates (so willowy, so Olive Oyl, and so fabulously dark and twisted). Plus two wonderful writers I had not heard of before, Charles Baxter and Akhil Sharma -- I am going to buy everything they have written -- fantastic! And lastly, a surpise guest: Steve Buscemi read "Bullet in the Brain" by Tobias Wolff.
And One Last Bite of Food Porn
After the reading, we ate blintzes and pierogis and stuffed cabbage and potato pancakes at Veselka (the East Village 24-hour Ukranian Denny's). And that was the end.
Okay, I'm starving now after all that talk of pizza and pierogis. Must go forage for brunch. Pictures coming soon.