For the eye

I thought thin was in

2007-08-22T21:36:00.000-04:00

My September Vogue is so enormously fat, it didn't even fit in our mailbox. I have to go pick its tubby ass up at the post office.

Goodbye, sweet girl

2007-07-17T19:39:00.001-04:00

We'll miss you, Miffy.

I Know You're Always With Me

2007-03-14T15:01:00.000-04:00

My grandmother died when I was eight years old. She was young, not yet 60 years old, and the cancer took her quickly. I was too small to understand, though I remember small pieces of what she was going through. I remember her and my mother driving to Mexico for some experimental treatments with me laying down in the back of my mom's gold 300ZX. I remember a long chain with a pendant that she would suspend over food - if it swung left and right like a pendulum, the food was ok for her to eat, but if it circled, it was unhealthy. I remember visiting her in the hospital just once and being frightened at how thin she looked.

While she lived, my grandmother was a strong woman - some would go so far as to say intimidating. She was petite, but carried herself with grace and strength. She had a hard early life and had terrible luck with men, so she learned quickly to become self-sufficient. She made many of her own clothes and taught my mother to sew as well. Finally, her hard work and drive paid off, and she was able to open her own business. Once she began doing well, she stopped sewing with such frequency and instead went shopping. I remember at least one pair of tight black leather pants, and many pairs of high heels. Things were great for a while, and then she got sick. After she died, my parents and I moved into her house. Her clothes and shoes were too small for my mother and too large for me, so my great aunts (her sisters) took everything from the old, hand-sewn dresses to the new designer shoes.

What they left was my grandmother's sewing machine. She bought two identical machines sometime in the 70s: one for herself and one for my mother. When my parents moved from her/our home in southern California to Virginia, my mom's machine came upstairs, but my grandmother's remained in the basement.

This past Christmas, mom and I packed up the machine, and I brought it back with me to New York. It sat for months tucked away in the corner of our bedroom, as I had no idea whether it would work, and even less of an idea where to take a 30-40 year old Bernina for repair.

A few weeks ago, I decided to give it a chance. Having never wound a bobbin without my mother's supervision, getting the machine properly set up and threaded was a challenge. I held my breath as I did some test stitches, which came out perfectly, as though the machine had only been purchased yesterday. I happily altered my shirt, thinking all along of how much this little machine has seen in its long life.

(Fashionably) Late

2007-03-05T13:41:00.000-05:00

So I'm a little late to the party on this, but I don't usually pay much attention to accessories (aside from shoes, of course).

Alex + Chloe are L.A. jewelry designers with a slightly aggressive yet undeniably cool twist. While they offer sterling and 14K, their black acrylic and oxidized silver designs are the true show stoppers. All the cool kids probably layer the shit out of these, but I am neither particularly cool nor a kid, so I'll keep it to one pendant at a time.

I'm in love with the (velociraptor?) claw in black, and at only $48, you really can't go wrong. Shown here is the Coco is Dead - Knife Fight necklace, which is no longer available on the main site, likely due to copyright infringement. Luckily, Coco is Dead can be found on eBay!

My So-Called Post

2007-02-12T16:09:00.000-05:00

This weekend while Luis was playing Magic, I plopped myself down for some quality time with our DVD player. As I flipped through our binder, I considered Crouching Tiger, Amelie, and The Last Unicorn before deciding on one of the greatest, prematurely canceled TV programs ever.

Do you remember seeing your first episode of My So-Called Life? My mom and I watched it together and both really enjoyed it. We never quite got my dad into the game, as he had been burned before by my insistence that 90210 was "reeeeeeeally good."

So what was it about MSCL that was so amazing? It spoke directly to teenagers about teenage issues in teenage language. Hair flips and bitten lips came to mean more than their accompanying dialogue, and there was more weight in an awkward silence than in any other interaction. Kids drank and smoked, lied to their parents, and made out in the halls. Friends betrayed each other and shifted alliances for petty reasons, and enemies found common ground in the girls' room.

Perhaps MSCL was too real, and it frightened parents and the network into clipping its wings. Fortunately it is now available on DVD for future generations to enjoy - I know my nieces will be getting these sets as gifts when I think they are old enough.

What are your favorite MSCL episodes and moments?

- Krakow pulling a Cyrano and writing Jordan's love letter to Angela.
- The entire Boiler Room episode (remember Buffalo Tom?)
- The Christmas episode with Juliana Hatfield which makes me cry every time.
- Saying "Go, now. Go!" along with the opening credits.

Proenza update

2007-02-10T13:06:00.000-05:00

I just received the two Proenza Schouler for Target pieces I talked about last week, and they are SO cute. The skirt is all sold out on target.com, but the dress is still available in the purple bubble print and navy blue.

I'm glad things are running true to size, because I also ordered this adorable green top last week. And while I was at target.com, I couldn't help but check out this laptop case by your friend and mine, Isaac Mizrahi. I love how obnoxious it is - can't wait to carry it!

If You Could Do Anything...

2007-02-09T18:45:00.000-05:00

What would you do? If money and location were of no importance, what would you do for a living? I would...

Become a pastry chef
It sounds like such a cliché, but ever since I was young I've loved to bake, and have always been told that I'm good at it. Wouldn't it be amazing to be responsible for everyone's favorite part of their meal? Granted, the hours and the pay are terrible, but perhaps the personal satisfaction and pride in your work would more than make up for it. As you can tell from my Argentine flag cupcakes, I've got a long way to go in the piping skills department, but my heart is in it 100%.

Be a fighter pilot or an astronaut
As a teenager, it was my big dream to go to the Naval Academy and become a top fighter pilot. Specifically, I wanted to be the first woman to fly the Harrier AV-8B. For various reasons, it didn't work out as planned, but I still think of how great it would have been. As for the other career listed in the heading, well, who doesn't want to be an astronaut?? If I got a phone call right now that said come down to Florida for training, I'd be all over that.

Train horses and give riding lessons
I love riding, and can think of no more comfortable seat than a saddle. To the left is a picture of me circa 1984 or so learning the fundamentals of dressage. How great would it be to be on a ranch, working each day with a horse until you finally earn his trust? Then you can share your knowledge with others, training the next generation of horse-crazy girls to do the same.

Looking for Temp Work?

2007-02-06T13:54:00.000-05:00

I've got a great agency to recommend. Luis' friend Tracy passed their info along to me, and I've had nothing but positive experiences. In my ignorance, I thought that temp jobs were a dime a dozen, but I've come to find out that agencies never call you and don't follow up. Leafstone is an exception, and I'm happy to give them my full and earnest recommendation. Happy hunting!

Leafstone Staffing (part of the CORESTAFF group)
www.corestaff.com
212.921.4900
1156 Avenue of the Americas, 3rd Floor

Does Hat Hair Have You Singing the Blues?

2007-02-06T10:28:00.000-05:00

Then try this on for size.
Frederic Fekkai's Winter Hair Lift-Define-Shine Styling Compact (what a mouthful) claims to combat the two major winter hair woes: flattened roots and fly-away ends. For only $25, the cute little compact will easily fit in your purse or maybe even jacket pocket, if you're a dude and care about this sort of thing.

A diversion

2007-02-02T10:42:00.000-05:00

I am really trying not to turn For the eye into a fashion blog, because I know many of our readers are straight dudes who couldn't care less. Still, I hope you will permit me a few posts now and again...

Let's talk about John Galliano. His Spring 07 couture collection for Dior well and truly melted my face off. Inspired by Madame Butterfly (and who isn't!), he returned to the interplay of form and color for which he is so well-loved, taking a turn away from his recent hyper-aggressive work. This aqua and yellow dress is the garden party attire of my fantasies, and what is couture really but an expression of the imagination? This neutral gown evokes a progressive Victorian lady, and a red and black gown makes me want to shout, "Konichiwa, Toreador!" Finally, who could not love this bride? She's all softness and form at once - romantic and sentimental with an stimulating origami twist. This is a gown for a woman who wants to be a pretty princess on her wedding day, but is unwilling to abandon her intellect and her strength to do so. Had I all the money in the world, I couldn't buy a more perfect gown.

Proenza Schouler for you, and you, and you!

2007-02-01T22:19:00.000-05:00

If you love Proenza Schouler as much as I do, you were no doubt thrilled when Target announced that the boys would design the next GO collection. Also, you were no doubt concerned that you would never make it to Target in time to beat out all the fashionistas (aspiring and hardcore alike).

Never fear! When I read this post on one of my favorite new blogs, I knew there was hope. Sure enough, I just ordered two pieces from the line pictured here, which should be in my hot little hands within a week. Yes, I'm missing some of the visceral thrill of wrestling other gals for my new clothes, but I can always wait for the next H&M collection for that.

Speaking of which, did anyone else find Viktor & Rolf's latest H&M line terribly disappointing in person? I was so psyched about the photos, but when I went to try everything on, I couldn't find anything with a decent cut. Such a disappointment after my phenomenal success with the Lagerfeld collection, and I know lots of girls who love Stella's stuff. Who's next, I wonder? (No, Madonna does NOT count.)

Is it just me...

2007-01-29T16:56:00.000-05:00

or does Luis look a lot like Sam Talbot from Top Chef?

I'm so sad that Sam was knocked out of the final, as he was my favorite to win the whole damn thing.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

2007-01-29T16:05:00.000-05:00

Poor Luis. Yesterday he made the ultimate sacrifice for me - he gave over an entire Sunday afternoon and evening to the watching of Pride and Prejudice, the BBC miniseries.

All the ladies reading this know exactly what I'm talking about and why it is so fantastic. Most of the men are, I'm sure, living in blissful ignorance. Allow me to enlighten you.

First off, it's just over five hours long.

Wait, come back!

So it's a little long. So what? It's an extraordinarily faithful adaptation of one of history's greatest works of literature. It also has Colin Firth being all sulky and verklempt, and a veritable parade of questionable English beauties. (For those who have seen this: how on earth are we supposed to believe that Jane is more lovely than Lizzie? At least the latest Keira Knightley remake cast a beautiful girl in the role!)

Even if you have never read the novel, or, like Luis, lump all the Jane Eyre/Pride and Prejudice/Sense & Sensibility/Wuthering Heights novels together, give this one a try. Luis did, and his manhood remains intact. Trust me, the woman in your life will thank you.

Come join the Black Parade!

2006-10-27T10:52:00.000-04:00

So Liz loves My Chemical Romance, and has for about a year now (has it been more than that?). I'd heard a few of their songs on the radio, and thought they were ok, but she just fell in love with their teenybopper style, :-). Anyway, she eventually bought their first big album, "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge", and made me listen to it, and I thought a lot of it was cool, but not exactly my stilo. This week their second album, "The Black Parade", came out, and man was I in for a reevaluation...

In short, The Black Parade rocks. It's got intensity, it's got catchiness, it's got melody, and it's got kick-ass sound. They draw heavily from bands like Queen (and even Pink Floyd on one song [Mama]), and I think they show a lot more maturity/versatility than one their first album, which might be why I like it so much. I listened to it like 3 or 4 times in a row at work on Wednesday, and a few more times since then. It's got so many awesome songs: This is How I Disappear (my personal favorite), The Sharpest Lives, Welcome to the Black Parade, House of Wolves, Cancer, Disenchanted, Famous Last Words, etc.

Anyway, Liz and I both highly recommend this album, even to those people who didn't like previous MCR songs or have just never heard them. You can actually listen to the entire thing for free on The Black Parade's official website, so you have no excuse, :-)!

Hugs,
Luis

Four weeks to awesomeness!

2006-10-11T12:34:00.000-04:00

Yep, it's been a while. Sue me, :-). Liz and I have been pretty busy with work and life in general, so that explains the lack of updates (but it doens't excuse them, hehe).

By far the most major development since you last read us is that we're taking Intro to Japanese at NYU's School of Continuing Education. It's two hours, once a week, so it's not incredibly time-consuming (though our homework has been taking progressively longer every week). Today will be our fourth class, and I think we've actually learned quite a bit! We know a handful of useful expressions, have learned 15 hiragana (the character set used mostly for Japanese words, as opposed to katakana, which is used for foreign words/expressions), can count, know the days of the week, the months, etc. It's obviously still confusing, but so far so good!

The main thing I wanted to share with everyone is that in just under four weeks Guitar Hero 2 comes out. Yup, you heard me right, :-).

The main songs of the game have been confirmed, and there will be 8 tiers with 5 songs each, for a total of 40 songs. There'll also be 24 unlockable bonus tracks, and unlike the first Guitar Hero these won't be all indie rock bands that we've never heard of. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by most of them! It's a bummer that there won't be Led Zeppelin or Metallica in the game (licensing issues, though I guess there's a chance that there'll be some song of theirs in the bonus tracks, but maybe that's hoping for too much), but I'm quite happy with what we're getting (the list was officially announced yesterday, though some tracks had been announced piecemeal):

1. Opening Licks
Motley Crue - Shout at the Devil
Danzig - Mother
Cheap Trick - Surrender
Wolfmother - Woman
Spinal Tap - Tonight I'm Gonna Rock You Tonight

2. Amp-Warmers
Kiss - Strutter
Nirvana - Heart-Shaped Box
Police - Message in a Bottle
Van Halen - You Really Got Me
Kansas - Carry on Wayward Son

3. String-Snappers
Foo Fighters - Monkey Wrench
Alice in Chains - Them Bones
Iggy Pop and the Stooges - Search and Destroy
Pretenders - Tattooed Love Boys
Black Sabbath - War Pigs

4. Thrash and Burn
Warrant - Cherry Pie
Butthole Surfers - Who Was in My Room Last Night
Mathew Sweet - Girlfriend
Rolling Stones - Can't You Hear Me Knockin'
Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine

5. Return of the Shred
Rage Against the Machine - Killing in the Name Of
Primus - John the Fisherman
Sword - Freya
Thin Lizzy - Bad Reputation
Aerosmith - Last Child

6. Relentless Riffs
Heart - Crazy on You
Stone Temple Pilots - Tripping on a Hole in a Paper Heart
Stray Cats - Rock This Town
Allman Brothers - Jessica
Jane's Addiction - Stop

7. Furious Fretwork
Anthrax - Madhouse
Living End - Carry Me Home
Lamb of God - Laid to Rest
Reverend Horton Heat - Psychobilly Freakout
Rush - YYZ

8. Face-Melters
Avenged Sevenfold - Beast and the Harlot
Suicidal Tendencies - Institutionalized
Dick Dale - Misirlou
Megadeth - Hangar 18
Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird

There are a bunch of tracks I don't know, but in just a day I've been able to download almost everything I didn't already have, so I'm currently listening to my GH2 playlist on iTunes with 36 out of 40 tracks. Yeah, I love this game that much (and it's not even out yet!).

Additionally, there was a GH2 demo disc available with the November issue of Official Playstation Magazine, so I obviously got that as soon as it came out. It included four tracks (on all four difficulties): Shout at the Devil, Strutter, You Really Got Me and YYZ. All of them were fun to play, and YYZ was a real bitch on Expert (I managed to just get through the solo and finish the song on my first try, but it wasn't pretty). The big surprise were 3-button chords, which I knew about, but they still take you by surprise when playing a song for the first time. I think they only appear on Expert, which means that the progression is probably as follows:

- Easy: only use the first three buttons (Green, Red, Yellow)
- Medium: add the fourth button (Blue)
- Hard: add the fifth button (Orange)
- Expert: add 3-note chords

It's apparently also possible to play Co-Op mode on the demo, which lets the second player play either bass or rhythm guitar (depending on the track), but you need a second guitar, so we haven't been able to try that yet.

Can you tell I'm excited? Liz is, too, but I don't think quite as much, :-). A potential problem is that Final Fantasy XII comes out on October 31st, so that means that as soon as GH2 comes out a week later the two will be jockeying for my attention. Since the FF series are my favorite games ever, but GH quickly became my second-favorite, I'm curious to see what'll end up happening...

Not much else is going on right now, other than that my sister finally found an apartment out in Park Slope. It's official: the Newman invasion of NYC is in full effect!

Ok kiddies, back to work. You'll definitely be hearing more in the weeks to come...

Luis

P.S.- by the way, what are people doing for Halloween?

Guess who's back...back again...

2006-09-11T12:39:00.000-04:00

Yep, I'm back from Argentina, and at work again. Le sigh, :-(... I had a good time down there, though it was a bit stressful to be around the paternal units for two weeks. They're moving to an apartment in downtown Buenos Aires, and leaving the house I grew up in (which makes total sense, since my sister Victoria and I both live here in the States, leaving just the two of them). Consequently I had to go through a TON of old boxes and stuff, letting them know what to throw out, what to keep, what to give away, etc. For those who are interested, here's a selection of pics. Captions are in Spanish, so if there are any burning questions just let me know.

Last Friday afternoon I got to go to Atlantic City with work again, this time to the Trump Taj Mahal (last year we went to The Borgata), and it was a pretty good time. We were supposed to go to Mohegan Sun instead of A.C., but apparently rooms there are worth $300 a night, and only $70-$75 at the Taj (it was still huge and pretty nice). Oh well, the four seasons of Mohegan will have to wait! I lost $100 at the Blackjack tables, but I played for a solid two hours, so I got my gambling fix without ending up too far into the red. My coworker Roman ended up down ~$200, and Robert ended up down $120, so I guess I ended up alright, :-).

The other newsworthy item is that, after about 5 years, I decided to shave off my goatee. I did it on a whim this past Saturday afternoon, after getting back from Atlantic City, and I've regretted it ever since, sniff sniff. Here is end result (I tried posting one of the photos earlier, but apparently it doesn't always load).

While I don't hate it, per se, I much prefer how I look with the goat. I think it really suits my face. Oh well, it'll be back in a week or two, so it isn't really that bad!

Ok kiddies, back to work, since there's a lot of it.

Hugs,
Luis

Goin' down to the deep, deep South!

2006-08-15T12:23:00.000-04:00

Hey kiddies,

Tomorrow (Wednesday) I'll be hopping on a plane down to the deep, deep South, a.k.a. wintery Buenos Aires (I can't say I'm too bummed about it being winter, :-)!). I'll be down there until Labor Day Weekend, but if I'm inspired I might try to post something. In the meantime you can expect a long overdue review of our dinner at Morimoto, as well as a review of our recent dinner at Babbo. Liz can't come with me this time (she doesn't have the extra vacation days, and a bunch of deadlines are right around the corner), so she'll be holding the fort while I dine on fine steak.

Hugs,
Luis

Our little chubby is famous!

2006-07-13T13:15:00.000-04:00

So Liz has a knack for taking some great photos of Conan and Fosse, especially in the past few months. After some gentle prodding and reminding, she submitted one particularly awesome/cute pic to StuffOnMyCat, a really cool/funny website that I discovered sometime last year. Well whaddya know, it just got posted!

Just try and tell me that this isn't the cutest kitten you've ever seen:

Some of the comments that this pic got:

- "Gorgeous kitty and great photography."
- "Spectacular picture! The eyes are so expressive! Wonderful!"
- "Oh what wonderful composition in this pic, the wooden floor, the curtain, the "I'm going to play or pounce" expression on Conan...it all comes together into a masterpiece. It belongs on the wall."

Ah, the life of a proud parent, :-).

Luis

"Yes, I should like to think so, too."

2006-06-19T12:56:00.000-04:00

Last Saturday Liz and I rented a car and headed out to Long Island for the Nine Inch Nails concert at Jones Beach Theatre. What a show, folks...

We got great seats through The Spiral, and were in the eleventh row of the orchestra pit, pretty far towards stage-left, but still with a pretty awesome view. Despite the fact that the temperature was in the 80s, once we got to our seats we were freezing, since we were right on the water and the breeze was absolutely ridiculous. It was nice to not be all schvitzy and such, but it sucked because after about ten minutes of waiting we were both all goose-bumpy and cold! Fortunately it occurred to us to head over to the merchandise stand and get some new shirts to keep us warm, hehe. Liz got an olive-green NIN hoody, and I got a sand-colored NIN t-shirt. Good times.

Peaches started her show on time at 7pm, and played for half an hour. We sort of felt sorry for her, since she was only playing to a partially-full venue, but whatever, she rocked anyway. I hadn’t heard any of her stuff before, and while it’s not my favorite thing in the world she put on a fun, energetic show, being extravagant and oversexed all the way through. I think she’s getting a bit old for the costume she chose to wear: a short leather one-piece that seemed a bit too small (after one song she said, in response to the audience’s applause, “My camel toe thanks you”), and underneath it a hot pink bikini. Still, mad props to her for being ballsy and entertaining.

Bauhaus was next, and they did not disappoint. They started around 7:45pm, and played for just about an hour. I didn’t know what to expect from them, but Liz was über-excited and said I’d love them, and I heard from my co-worker Inacio that they’re really good live...

Peter Murphy waltzed out wearing an awesome blue velour suit with an old-school tie and tuxedo shirt. You could tell he was going to be very theatrical, and a true showman. Their guitarist, whose name escapes me, was wearing tight leather pants and a white fur vest with poofy shoulders. Their bassist and drummer looked pretty normal, surprisingly.

After their first song there was a pretty big ovation from the crowd. Once they quieted down Peter Murphy looks at us and says: “Yes, I should like to think so, too.” Awesome.

Their set was:

Double Dare
In The Flat Field
A God In An Alcove
She's In Parties
Adrenaline
Severance
Silent Hedges
In Fear Of Fear
Endless Summer Of The Damned
Rosegarden Funeral Of Sores
Stigmata Martyr
Bela Lugosi's Dead

I can’t remember which songs I particularly liked (since it’s so hard to hear the lyrics to most of them), but I was very pleasantly surprised, and really enjoyed their set. They of course closed with Bela Lugosi’s Dead, their biggest song, during which a creepy chick in a medieval robe just stood on stage under a white light and looked scary. Why was she there? No clue, it’s Bauhaus, :-).

Some other funny/interesting moments included Peter Murphy dry-humping their guitarist, said guitarist absolutely rocking out on an alto sax during one of their songs, and Mr. Murphy using a big bamboo pole to give roses to a few lucky ladies in the audience…as well as one of the security guards. Definitely an entertaining fellow!

After Bauhaus the NIN roadies began setting up, and a little after 9pm an awesome light cage (no other way to describe it, really; it was a grid of bars that were actually light tubes that had tons of little lights on them) descended, and Trent and co. came out onto the stage and went right into “Somewhat Damaged”, from The Fragile. It was a great way to start the show, since I hadn’t heard this song played at either of the other two NIN shows we went to in the past year.

One of the coolest things about this show was the lights. The MSG show had a great lightshow, but this one blew it out of the water. There was the previously-mentioned light cage (which also conveniently provided Trent with something to hang onto for dramatic effect, hehe) as well as the huge diodes at the rear of the stage. There were also copious amounts of smoke, though the sea breeze at the venue made it hard for the smoke to really stick.

The setlist was:

1. Somewhat Damaged
2. You Know What You Are
3. Sin
4. Terrible Lie
5. March of the Pigs
6. The Frail
7. The Wretched
8. Closer
9. Burn
10. Gave Up
11. Help Me I'm In Hell
12. Non-Entity
13. Only
14. Wish
15. La Mer
16. Into The Void
17. The Big Comedown
18. Dead Souls
19. Suck
20. Get Down, Make Love
21. Down In It
22. Hurt
23. The Hand That Feeds
24. Head Like A Hole

After “Dead Souls” (a Joy Division cover) Trent gave a little speech, where he said that 5 years ago he was in the worst place he’d ever been in his whole life, and that he wanted it all to end, but that he made it through because of us and wanted to thank us all for supporting him. It was nice to hear him say that (even if he probably gives that speech every night).

The only songs that he generally plays that we didn’t hear were Reptile (that Liz doesn’t like much, anyway) and Something I Can Never Have. It was AWESOME that he played Down In It and La Mer, which were definitely the highlights of the evening for me, :-), as well as old reliables like March of the Pigs, Wish, Head Like a Hole, Hurt, etc. I was sooooo hoping that he’d do “The Great Below” right after La Mer, but alas, it was not to be… No matter, though, as a great time was had by all. The NIN logo they had on the light cage after Head Like a Hole was pretty sweet, too.

NIN is definitely the best live band I’ve ever had the pleasure to see, since they’re always so incredibly tight, whether it’s Trent’s vocals, Jeordie’s headbanging or Aaron’s crazy antics (after the show he came over to our side of the stage, unplugged his guitar and threw it into the water! The security guards had to make sure that no one jumped in afterwards to try and retrieve it!). We’ll definitely go see them every time they come to the NYC-area (though Trent said that this will be their last tour for a while, since he wants to work on their next album).

Summing up: awesome venue, awesome opening acts, awesome show. You can see all the pics I was able to find here.

Luis

Argentina vs. Serbia-Montenegro

2006-06-17T00:13:00.000-04:00

Wow. Just wow.

I decided to "work from home" this morning to watch the game, and boy was it worth it. It was probably one of the best games I've ever seen, though it wouldn't be hard to argue that it was completely one-sided, and as such not "good" at all. Serbia looked decent coming into this, having only barely lost to the Netherlands last week, and a 6-0 result is something that not even the most hardcore Argentine fan would've predicted. Nice surprise, ;-). Argentina's second goal is also pretty much the undisputed best goal of the World Cup (so far).

Argentina and the Netherlands have now both qualified for the knockout rounds, and the outcome of their match next week is irrelevant at this point (other than for national pride, obviously). My guess is that there'll be lots of subs playing, to keep the stars ready for the Round of 16.

What a good way to end the work-week... Vamos Argentina, carajo!

Luis

NIN at Jones Beach

2006-06-14T12:50:00.000-04:00

This Saturday will mark my third Nine Inch Nails show ever, and my third show in just over a year (I'm not gonna try and keep track of how many Liz has been to, hehe)! They're playing at Jones Beach Theater, out on Long Island, so it should be a different experience than seeing them at Hammerstein or Madison Square Garden. For one it's an outdoor venue, but it's a nighttime show, so hopefully it won't be too bad. I'm sure the pit will be pretty frickin' hot, though...

The opening acts this time are pretty impressive: Peaches and Bauhaus. I've only heard a few Bauhaus songs, and while they're not my favorite band ever I've heard that they're awesome live. I haven't heard any Peaches songs (I think we have a few of her albums at home on iTunes, though [ah, the wonders of borrowing friends' external hard drives and copying a ton of music...]), but I've enjoyed all of the opening acts that I've seen at NIN shows so far (Dresden Dolls, Death From Above 1979, Queens of the Stone Age), and I don't expect this weekend to be any different...

Rather than taking the LIRR and then a bus we decided to just rent a car instead, since it'll only be about $70, and this way we don't have to worry about the hordes of other people who will also want to take the train and bus after the show. Yay Avis!

We'll post something after the show, for sure.

Luis

Who's a rock god? I'm a rock god.

2006-05-29T22:07:00.000-04:00

So yesterday Liz and I hosted a Guitar Hero tournament at home. We had an impressive turnout of 7 people (one of which left early, however, and one of which decided that snoozing on the couch was a better idea than shredding [wtf?!]) , and it was a smashing success.

The rules were simple: everyone would play the same set of 5 songs, and the person with the highest combined score after all 5 songs would be the winner (everyone had one free "do over", in case they screwed up on a song they know they're good at, for example). Each of the main five contestants (i.e.- the people who own and play Guitar Hero on a regular basis: Frankie, Mike, Bettina, Liz and myself) picked their favorite song, and it was added to the setlist. This way we wouldn't get stuck playing challenging but not-so-fun songs (e.g.- Crossroads, Cowboys From Hell, etc.).

The official setlist was as follows:

- Stellar (by Incubus)
- Ziggy Stardust (by David Bowie)
- Heart Full of Black (by Burning Brides)
- Killer Queen (by Queen)
- Higher Ground (by the Red Hot Chili Peppers)

After all five songs and do-overs, the final positions and scores were as follows:

- 1st place: Luis, with 818,662 points
- 2nd place: Mike, with 687,979 points
- 3rd place: Bettina, with 657,878 points
- 4th place: Liz, with 642,774 points
- 5th place: Frankie, with 594,048 points
- 6th place: Alice, with 97,889 points (only played 2 songs)
- 7th place: Kansas, with 43,845 points (only played 1 song)

Was the outcome a surprise? Well, that depends on who you ask. I personally expected it to be much, much closer, especially since we knew what the songs would be for a few weeks. But hey, I can't really complain, :-).

The next stop on the Official Guitar Hero circuit has been tentatively scheduled for late-2006 at Mike and Bettina's new place downtown. It'll have to wait until at least September, however, since that's when the eagerly-awaited Guitar Hero 2 comes out, hehe. Damn straight I'll be looking for a repeat!

Bonus track: in honor of yours truly's landslide victory, today we decided to try Bobby Flay's coffee spice rub on some gorgeous ribeyes we got at Todaro's after catching The Da Vinci Code at Loews (not bad at all). Needless to say, they were delicious!

Mmm mmm good.

Luis

Vacation Recap Part 2 - or - Liz Is Very, Very Lazy

2006-05-24T10:09:00.000-04:00

Sorry for the delay! I suck. As usual, there are pictures. Without further ado…

LV to LA – Merrily We Roll Along
Luis and I made it to Avis a bit earlier than expected, so we hit the road in our cute little convertible a full hour ahead of schedule. Hurray for the ol’ OCD, right? The drive took just about 5 hours and was wholly uneventful, aside from the not-so-epic battle Luis and I had over the convertible top. I wanted it down for the whole time: after all, we paid extra for the damn thing so we could have a fun drive through the desert! Luis wanted it down only when it was above 65 degrees because apparently he is a delicate flower. I keed, I keed. ;) He was right, I must admit. Had we driven all the way to LA with the top down, I’m sure we would’ve been miserable. At any rate, the scenery was amazing as we drove through the complete flat monotone of the desert into California’s mountains. Luis was surprised that there was so much sky, and I fell back in love (at least a little) with my birth state.

We stayed at The Standard in Downtown, L.A. – a slightly odd location I admit, but I chose it based on the great rate and its proximity to multiple freeways, the lifeline of California travel. Our room was modern and interesting, though certainly not designed with modesty in mind: the bedroom looked directly into the shower/bathroom via a floor to ceiling glass wall. The idea sounds sexy, sure, but we always shower together so there was no one to gawk at, and it was sort of unappealing to have to draw the shower curtain every time one of us had to take a dump. ‘Scuse me honey, I’m just gonna drop the kids off at the pool. Aye!

After freshening up, we drove up to Burbank so that I could show Luis the old haunts, school, and house. We ate dinner at The Castaway which has an amazing view of the entire San Fernando Valley. You have to see it to believe it – it’s really breathtaking. Unfortunately, the food leaves quite a bit to be desired. I was particularly keen on going there because it was one of my grandmother’s favorite restaurants and I fondly recall our Sunday brunches there. Then again, she died when I was eight, so the kitchen has had a lot of time to go downhill.

M-I-C-K-E-Y-M-O-U-S-E
Friday was el dia de Disney – this was carefully orchestrated on my part to ensure that we didn’t have full-force weekend crowds but were still able to see Fantasmic which is my absolute favorite thing about Disneyland and only runs on the weekends during the non-summer months. Luis had never been to Disneyland or any other theme park, so I was determined to pack his day full of fun.

The first order of business was clear: Indiana Jones Adventure. By far the best ride at Disneyland, this ride always has the longest wait, so I wanted to hit it first to be sure that we didn’t run out of time. Poor Luis has heard me wax rhapsodic about this ride ever since we first started dating, so I think it was probably a relief for him to finally ride it and shut me up. He was really into the décor and theming of the line, though many of the little gimmicks weren’t working – most notably, the bamboo pole that you pull and cause the spiked ceiling to fall was clearly busted. Phooey! Once we finally boarded the ride, Luis was having a blast. It’s a very active experience to say the least, and he had a huge smile on his face. At the end, he said he wished it was longer, and I whole heartedly agree. I could ride that thing all day long. I don’t want to spoil some of the ride’s surprises here if you haven’t been on it – if you don’t care about spoilers, check out the link above for a full description.

Our ride order is listed below, alongside what I can remember of Luis’ color commentary:

Indiana Jones Adventure – awesome, wish it was longer

Haunted Mansion – meh, too old school (I was shocked, I love this ride – maybe it’s to do with riding it as a kid?)

Splash Mountain – we’re not going to get wet, are we? KerSPLOOOOSH (heh heh heh) Also, Frankie called Luis right before the drop – fortunately he had the good sense not to pick up, because he would’ve said goodbye to his phone then and there!

Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride – for kids (again, I love this one due to the nostalgia factor)

Matterhorn – really fun, fast and sharp turns (I’m working on him – he’ll become a roller coaster enthusiast yet, mark my words!)

Space Mountain – awesome! (They’ve changed this ride a lot since I was a kid – it’s darker and faster and they took away the music. I think this is the best version yet and I’m glad it’s the one Luis got to experience.)

Star Tours – pretty cool (I hate this ride, it makes me motion sick. It ended just in time, let me tell you! Burf…)

Autopia – awful (sigh… I can’t win ‘em all, I guess)

Big Thunder Mountain Railroad – lots of fun

Indiana Jones Adventure – awesome squared

Can you believe that we got all of those rides into one day? It wasn’t even 6 p.m. and we had done everything we wanted to do, short of watching Fantasmic. I was wiped out, so I told Luis to go have himself some fun in Tomorrowland (he rode Space Mountain again and hit up the arcade). I sat down right up front by the Rivers of America so that we would have good seats for the show. I have never been this hardcore before, and it is hard work sitting there for three hours on the pavement. In the rain. Boo hoo. I was worried that they might cancel the show due to the intermittent showers, and in fact, they came very close to doing so! Fortunately for Luis’ sanity (since he would hear me bitch for all eternity if they had cancelled after all that waiting), the show went forward as planned and was just as spectacular as I remember. I cry every time I watch Fantasmic, and of course Luis got a spectacularly humiliating picture of me doing just that.

Hooray for Hollywood, but Where Are the Hookers?
Today’s plan was to drive around (with the motherfucking top down) and see all the touristy sights. I drove west from The Standard all the way to Beverly Hills and took Luis up Rodeo Drive. Then we went up Laurel Canyon into the hills and saw how the other half lives. Mulholland Drive gave Luis many more opportunities to see the Valley below. A strange road closure prompted an odd and really windy descent into Hollywood, where I was…. how to put this… distraught. Now, I knew that Hollywood had undergone a significant facelift with the addition of the Kodak Theatre and the new Hollywood and Highland development, but I didn’t realize that we were basically going to Disneyland all over again. Where are the hookers? Where are the pothead skaters? Where are the stupid stores that sell only buttons, stickers, and Che t-shirts? Gone, that’s where, replaced by stucco and escalators and chain stores. I’m sure that tourism is up, and I’m sure that these changes are ultimately for the better in terms of public safety and crime rates, but I couldn’t help but shed a little tear for the way Hollywood Boulevard used to be – a hot mess.

Of Dickies, Chucks, and Universal Studios
With so much already done on this trip, today became sort of the “spare parts” day. We began by doing a little shopping out in Burbank for Luis who liked the LA look and wanted to get himself some new gear. First he bought some high-top black chucks and then he got some Dickies in khaki and navy blue. Isn’t he just precious? He looks adorable in them.

Now that shopping was checked off the list, we decided to check out Universal Studios. While not the best theme park in the area, Universal has a certain appeal, especially if you’re a movie buff and have never been on the studio tour, which is actually a crazy staged tram ride. See? – that’s JAWS comin’ ta getcha! We also went on the Back to the Future simulator (Luis proclaimed it to be just okay), the Jurassic Park water ride which has a drop at the end that goes on forever, and the Revenge of the Mummy roller coaster. Luis liked the Mummy so much, he went on it again through the (much faster) single rider line. Told you I’d turn him into a coaster enthusiast. Next time we’ll go to Magic Mountain and see if we can’t make him hurl. :)

Ain’t No Class Like First Class – the Perfect Ending to a Great Trip
Luis and I made it to Burbank airport with plenty of time to spare for our early flight home with a connection in Denver. As we were waiting, one of those horrible announcements was made that our flight was oversold and that they were looking for volunteers to give up their seats in exchange for vouchers. Then, terrifyingly, they called our names! Luis went up to see what was the matter, and we got possibly the best news ever: we could be upgraded to a direct flight from LAX to JFK that left in a few hours, getting us home even earlier than our original flight plan that included the connection. Further, we would be given Business Class seats and two vouchers for travel within the next year. As she was explaining the deal, Business Class became unavailable, so we were bumped up to First! Naturally we accepted and were put on a shuttle bus from Burbank to LAX.

First Class is phenomenal. The seats are epic in size and gymnastic ability, putting your back, ass, and legs in just about every position you could want. The leg room was absurdly abundant – if I wanted to get something in the pocket in front of me, I had to unbuckle myself, stand up, and take a full step. Then there was the food. Tablecloths were placed on our tray tables, drinks were served in real glasses, and food was eaten off of china with silver utensils. Amazing. We were served three courses with our choice of appetizer, entrée, and dessert – I had a sesame shrimp appetizer, three cheese ravioli, and an ice cream sundae. Then we were given personal DVD players with ten different new releases to choose from. My only gripe is that once we were finished with the dinner service, there wasn’t enough time to watch a two hour movie before landing. What a problem to have! A girl could get used to this.

Parenthetical post

2006-05-23T16:10:00.000-04:00

While Liz tries to find time to finish up the L.A. recap of our West-coast trip, I figured I'd post a little something, :-).

This past weekend was Commencement at Yale, and my little sister Victoria is now officially done with school and ready to enter the real world. Well, after her 7-week world tour with her a-capella group...sheesh...

Liz and I headed up to the Haven on Sunday morning, getting there in time to grab a quick bite at Claire's before Class Day on Old Campus. The carrot cake, Lithuanian coffee cake and banana chocolate cake did not disappoint, let me tell you that! The weather was horrible for Class Day, and true to predictions it started raining pretty heavily about half-way through the ceremony. Anderson Cooper was the guest speaker, and let me tell you, he was really funny! His speech was sooooo much better than Tom Friedman's (my Class Day speaker)! I'm sure a transcript will be available soon, and when it is I'll link you to it, but in the meantime here's an excerpt from an article on the Yale Daily News website:

"Cooper also remarked that standing on stage in front of the 1,281 graduating seniors made him feel old -- especially since he was already in his senior year of high school when the class of 2006 first entered the world.

'The only thing about high school I remember is my senior prom … if what I remember is true, it is very possible that some of you are my children, especially you with the blue eyes and freakishly gray hair," said Cooper, pointing at an audience member. "Let me just say that if that is true, for legal reasons I can't say that whether you are my children, but I'm bursting with pride today, and I'm sorry for not being around for the last 20 years.'"

Good. Stuff.

Maybe Yale finally got the memo that the students like hearing funny/entertaining speeches? After all, Harvard has had Conan O'Brien and Ali G and Princeton had Jon Stewart!

That night I hung out with my sister and her boyfriend Joseph (Liz had to head back to NYC that night), ran into and shot the shit with some old friends (Conor, Josh, Amanda), had a beer or six, etc. You know the drill.

Sunday was Commencement, proper, and after several speeches, presentation of honorary diplomas (notable recipients: Sandra Day O'Connor and Edward Albee) and the like, my sister finally got called up to receive her piece of paper:

"Victoria Emilia Newman."

Yup. Her dean got her name wrong. Sigh... You have no idea how often this happens to me, despite there not being even a hint of a "w" or a "u" in my last name. Heck, her dean even contacted her before the fact to make sure she got the pronunciation ok! Chalk another one down to a dean's inability to read from a piece of paper... At least my sister took it in stride, and afterwards was joking around and doing her best Jerry Seinfeld impersonation. "Newman!"

After that we neglected to pay $25 a head for the privilege of eating in the Morse dining hall, and instead headed to Yorkside (that was surprisingly empty; I guess all the other parents and students sucked it up and paid) for some grub. I was almost lured by the sound of a chicken parm grinder (and I have fond memories of Yorkside's chicken parms), but in the end decided on a slice of pepperoni and a slice of sausage, since I had to eat quickly to make it to my train.

By 5pm I was back home in NYC, with a bit of a sunburn from the day's gorgeous weather, and ready to start packing for my business trip to Boston (first ever business trip! w00t!). Hopefully by the time I'm back (Thursday evening) Liz will have posted the L.A. recap, ;-).

Luis

P.S.- some pics from Commencement can be viewed in the usual place. Just click on the "2006 - Yale Commencement" album.

The long-awaited vacation report, Part 1

2006-04-06T12:53:00.000-04:00

EDIT: for some reason people are having trouble viewing the photos I put in this post. I think we might've exceeded our bandwith or something, so I'm just going to remove them. To view all of our Vegas photos, go here.

Hello faithful readers, :-)! Since we know you're all dying to hear about our trip to Vegas and L.A., here's a recap of the first part of our trip. The L.A. recap will have to wait a few more days (I can only ignore my work to write for so long!). Enjoy!

Las Vegas - Intro and Day 1

We got up bright and early on Monday the 27^th (4:15am, to be exact), finished getting ready, and left the house around 5:15am. We weren’t sure how bad traffic would be, since it was a weekday, so we wanted to have ample time to spare. We immediately found a cab, and managed to get to Newark with a TON of time to spare, so we found the food court and got some grub. The flight was pretty uneventful, though my newfound hatred of turbulence manifested itself again (I’m not exactly sure when I started getting so freaked out when planes go through turbulence; I don’t think I was always like this, but for the past few years it’s been making me really nervous every time it happens), and we touched down in Vegas right on schedule, around 10am PST.

McCarran Airport is an interesting place. Right off the bat there are a ton of slot machines, and while I can’t say I’m surprised I guess it caught me off guard , :-). We had to wait a while for our bags, since they must’ve been some of the first ones on the plane, and then went outside and waited in The Longest Cab Line Ever ™. During the wait, however, we kept seeing all these weird looking people and making fun of them, true to New York form. They included “Bucky” the spring break co-ed, who never ceased to amuse us with her buck teeth every time our paths crossed in the loopy line. Anyhoo, we finally get to the front of the line and hop in a cab, destination: THE Hotel at Mandalay Bay. And yes folks, the name of the hotel is “THE Hotel”.

Vegas isn’t particularly large, but we had to take the long way around the airport to get to the city, and during the drive we got a pretty great view of the strip. The Mandalay Bay (and, consequently, THE Hotel) is at the Southern end of the strip, as opposed to more “central” hotels like the Bellagio, the MGM Grand, etc. THE Hotel is absolutely awesome (we had a great Northern view of the strip from our room), and is one of the few non-themed hotels in the whole city. No corny medieval décor (the Excalibur), no gondolas and canals (the Venetian), and no middle-eastern flavor (the Aladdin). We weren’t technically allowed to check-in until 3pm (it was about 11am at this point), but they were nice enough to give us our keys anyway, though they mentioned that the room wasn’t clean yet.

Our room’s previous occupant(s) were slobs, and there was garbage everywhere, so we just left our bags in a corner, relaxed for a few minutes, and then decided to head out for a walk to do some recon and get some lunch! The plan was to head up to the Paris (that has a pretty big replica of the Eiffel Tower) and eat at their French bistro, Mon Ami Gabi, since it’s directly in front of the Bellagio and its famous fountains.

It turned out to be a much longer walk than anticipated, even though it was only a few blocks away, since Las Vegas blocks trump even NYC’s mighty 23^rd-between-5^th-and-6^th-type blocks! We were also on only a few hours’ sleep at this point, so I got a bit grouchy, hehe. It was also unusually hot and humid there (and by unusually I mean that it wasn’t the weather we expected based on Weather.com), so the walk wasn’t as pleasant as it could’ve been, but the sights were still cool. I got my first taste of themed-casinos (the previously-mentioned Excalibur, as well as the Luxor, the Ancient Egypt themed hotel that’s right next to the Mandalay Bay), saw some classic sites like the Tropicana and the MGM Grand, and eventually got to the Paris, hungry and exhausted from the flight, lack of sleep and hunger. Liz had some steak frites at Mon Ami Gabi, while I had my usual French bistro fare of mussels and frites (accompanied by an outstanding beer from the French Alps, called “Yeti”). The food was fine, but nothing special, and we discovered that the Bellagio’s fountains only start running later in the day. We’re pretty tired after lunch, so we decided to try and find the tram to take us back to our hotel. It turned out to be a lot farther than we thought, cost $5 a person (we thought it was free, but I guess nothing’s free in Vegas!), and only got us as far as the MGM Grand, so we had to walk some more after we got off the tram (needless to say, my grouchiness kept increasing).

Once we got back to our room, we discovered that it still had not been cleaned, even though the proper check-in time of 3pm was approaching. This was a real bummer, since we wanted to take a well-deserved nap before heading out to do something that night. I called the front desk and they said that someone should be coming to clean the room shortly. We decided to just watch some TV and wait until the room was clean. About an hour later we heard a knock on the door, and when the maid was done we took a quick shower and were finally able to lie down for some quality nappage. Our nappage was so quality, in fact, that we never woke up! We had planned on going out for dinner and maybe a show that night, but instead we just slept…and slept…and slept! I woke up around 11pm and realized what had happened, proceeded to brush my teeth and hit the lights, and then went back to Dreamland.

Las Vegas – Day 2

Since we’d been sleeping for so long (my guess is that we passed out around 5:30pm), we woke up around 6am and couldn’t fall back to sleep! I guess the combination of 12 hours’ sleep and our internal clocks telling us is was 9am was pretty persuasive on our bodies! We got some room service (including some delicious hot chocolate that must’ve been Godiva or something, since it was so rich!) and started watching this old Marilyn Monroe/Yves Montand movie that turned out to be pretty cute (a bit heavy on the musical numbers, but hey, it was the ‘60s!).

Our plan for the day was to hit up The Forum Shops at Caesar’s Palace and do some shopping (well, Liz anyway), have lunch at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, walk around some more, and then play the rest of the day by ear, possibly catching a show at night.

The Forum Shops were pretty cool: a standard mall-type place, but with Roman décor.

Liz’s first order of business was to find the Jimmy Choo shoe boutique, and she was actually pretty disappointed at what we found. She was convinced that this was not the JC boutique that she’d visited some years ago when she went to Vegas with her Mom, so a mission for later that day would be to find the other Jimmy Choo. She also saw a shirt, a jacket and some shoes that she liked at Christian Dior, but they were all pretty pricey ($2k+ for the jacket, folks; if you want to see it, click on the link, choose USA, Top 10, then click on 1 [it's sort of camouflaged in the middle of the page]), so she didn’t actually buy anything, ;-). I saw some jackets I liked at Hugo Boss, but didn’t feel like paying $200-$300 for them! There was a cool exotic car store at one end of the Forum, and I took a photo with what I think is a Lamborghini Murciélago.

After the Forum we went into Caesar’s Palace proper and wandered through the casino in search of Mesa Grill. Liz wasn’t much of a fan of Bobby Flay (at least not from watching him on Iron Chef America), but after eating at this place she’s started respecting the guy! The place was sort of empty, since it was still a bit early for lunch, but right after we were seated the hordes started wandering in (us, trendsetters? Nah!). I started with a spicy tuna tartare with plantain chips and a Negra Modelo while Liz worked on her Macallan 12-year old scotch (their bread was also delicious, especially their fresh cornbread!). She had a fried chile relleno that looked (and tasted) delicious, while I went with the highly-recommended Mesa Burger (yum!). For dessert we split a peanut butter/chocolate crème brulee. We figured it’d be a good choice, since crème brulee is her favorite dessert, and peanut butter and chocolate are one of mine. It was pretty good, though it was dense as all hell, and sort of felt like you were eating a spoonful of pure peanut butter, which Liz wasn’t a huge fan of. I finished off my meal with a yummy espresso.

After this whopper of a meal we decided to walk around a bit more to help digestion. We walked up the strip some more, heading towards the Venetian, since by this stage we’d discovered that the other Jimmy Choo boutique was located in their shops. The Venetian is the only themed hotel where we’d stay next time we go to Vegas, since it’s not as corny as the other ones, being modeled after a city as opposed to, say, medieval or Ancient Egyptian times, :-).

We didn’t end up taking a gondola ride, since the line was long, but Liz found Jimmy Choo and did some shoe-shopping, settling on a lovely pair of golden heels that she got for half of what they’d cost here in NYC! She was disappointed that none of the other sale shoes were as cool as the ones she was getting, so she had to settle for just one new pair. We even got two coupons for free Bellinis at Wolfgang Puck’s restaurant in the Venetian, so that was our next stop. I was lured into having a pint of Old Tire Pale Ale (fine, but not particularly memorable) by the bartender, who must’ve smelled my hop-fancy as soon as we walked in, hehe, and Liz had her Bellini. Having that beer was a mistake, since I was still so full from lunch, but whatever…

After the Venetian, we walked back down the strip in the direction of the Bellagio, to catch their
fountains in action.

While we were walking it started getting a bit windy, and when we got to the Bellagio at 3:30pm an announcement was made over the PA system that due to the weather the fountain show wouldn’t be occurring at that time. Seeing as we’d seen a Prada sign on the walk to the Bellagio, Liz wanted to go explore that store for a bit, and we did. The plan was to return to the Bellagio fountains for the 4pm show, but once again we were out of luck and the show was cancelled due to the windy conditions. Grrr… Oh well, at least I’ve seen them in Ocean’s Eleven!

It started drizzling and then raining on the walk back down the strip, so we got to whip out the umbrella (never leave home without it!) and chuckle at the people who didn’t have one, ;-). Some woman even offered to buy ours off of us! Ah, Vegas… Our plan for dinner that night had been to head up to the Mirage to check out their buffet, but since it was raining we didn’t want to have to go outside again, so we decided to eat at Aureole, a French restaurant in the Mandalay Bay that was supposedly very good. We got back to THE Hotel just in time to make a reservation for 8:15pm, and then we headed back to our room to relax for a bit. We somehow managed to not fall asleep again, and after some TV and a shower we were ready for Aureole, even though we weren’t all that hungry. The restaurant had a very yummy prix fixe. The amuse bouche was a spicy tomato bisque (delish!). Liz started with Charlie’s Onion Soup (that she was absolutely raving about), followed by the Duo of Filet Mignon and Beef Cheek Hash, and finishing up with an Orange Vanilla Scented Crème Brulee. I had the Trio of Ahi Tuna, followed by the Aureole Surf and Turf (spice seared tuna loin, some AWESOME tender beef shortribs and horseradish potatoes), and finished off with some fruit sorbet, since my stomach couldn’t handle anything else at this point. We definitely ate like pigs throughout the whole day, but since we “missed” dinner the previous night, it wasn’t such a big deal, right? Right? Sigh…

After Aureole we promptly called it a night and passed out.

Las Vegas – Day 3

Ah, our final full day in Sin City! Up to this point we hadn’t gambled at all, and I was itching to hit the Blackjack tables for at least a few hours, so that was the plan. Liz also wanted to try and find this one particular game machine that she remembered from a few years ago, that involves a horse track with 5 electronic jockeys, and you bet on what number combinations will take 1^st and 2^nd place in the race. Fun, but not my style. It’s apparently an older game, and none of the casinos in our area of the strip had them, so the plan was to head to the MGM Grand, since their casino is arguably the best one.

Before gambling, however, we hit the breakfast brunch at the Mandalay Bay, and then paid a visit to their famous Shark Reef, that turned out to be pretty cool! It’s essentially a huge aquarium with a TON of different fish, including many species of shark (alas, no great whites, hehe). Their slogan is “Come kill an hour or two.”

After that we started heading up the strip, taking our usual route through the Luxor and the Excalibur, inquiring in vain about Liz’s horse track machine. We make it to the MGM Grand, and after admiring the lion cub show we start scouting the place for the cheap Blackjack tables (it’s not that I’m afraid of higher-stakes tables, just that I’m really into Blackjack for the fun rather than for the money [though it’s obviously nice if you make some!], and I put a priority on playing for a long time rather than making a ton of money). Anyway, I do see some $5 tables, but they’re pretty crowded, so I decide to play at the $10 tables. I find one conveniently located next to a roulette table, since Liz wants to play that for a while. I sit down at my table, cash in $100, and start playing. My first 3 hands are Blackjacks, no shit, so it’s a damn good way to start the day. The lady that was dealing was really good to me throughout the day, :-), and she was also really nice. From Thailand, I believe. Liz is up a bunch at roulette at first, but then proceeds to lose it all. Not a big deal, though, since it was only $40. She then wandered off in search of her elusive machine, and luckily found one not too far from where I was playing.

After about an hour and a half or two hours I’m up $200, which was a nice feeling. The question is: when do you stop? I’m having a great time, and want to keep playing, but having an extra $200 is also nice, so I’m not sure what to do. I was actually up around $250, but then this other dealer came to the table and started getting really lucky, so I cashed out when my profits were down to $200. I of course realize that this is nonsense, and that the dealer has nothing to do with what cards I get or he gets, etc., but like my dad told me: do whatever you want in order to play comfortably. Yes, I know that logically the dealer is a non-issue in the game, but if for some reason it’s bugging me or I think that he’s giving me bad luck, it’ll affect my judgments and my gameplay, so it’s not wrong to get up and leave, walk around for a bit, and then maybe come back.

Anyway, I went to check up on Liz, who was roughly breaking even (she was playing with $20 worth of quarters), and she said she still had a while, so I decided to head back to the Blackjack tables. I immediately put away $200 in chips (my initial $100 and $100 of my winnings) and decided to just play with the other $100, since it was still free money. I played for another hour or so, and my total profits were up to $330. When that evil dealer once again showed up I cashed out after a few hands of similar nonsense (seriously, when you have a 20 and the dealer is showing something like a 2 or a 3, do you really expect him to get to 21 with small cards? I didn’t think so…). When I checked up on Liz again she was still going strong, but I felt like being up $330 was a really good place to be, and I didn’t want to risk losing it. I walked around the casino for a bit, found a potential place for dinner, called my folks, etc. When I returned to find Liz still playing (but doing worse than before) I decided to play with $130 of my winnings, saving $200 as a definite profit. I played for another hour or so (Liz ended up losing what was left of her $20 and coming to find me, but was able to play with just that for like 4 or 5 hours!), during which I was down to only $10 of those $130 at one point, but then I got back up to $100 and decided to cash out for good, finishing the day with a profit of $300, which was fine by me, :-). I definitely want to go back to Vegas in the near future and play Blackjack more seriously, for more hours, and see how well I do.

After leaving the main gambling area Liz and I ended up at Diego, a Mexican restaurant that had been recommended on Chowhound (Liz’s online restaurant bible), and had another great meal! We decided to skip the appetizers and just pig out on their delicious chips and salsa, and ordered some guacamole that was made fresh for us right at the table! I asked for extra lime, so it was über-refreshing, hehe. We also had some yummy margaritas. What I had isn’t listed on the website menu, but it was some absolutely fabulous lamb chops, and Liz had chiles rellenos again, though they weren’t as good as what she had at Mesa. Other than that the meal was great, and turned out to be very inexpensive.

We were pretty wiped out after this day of gambling, so we headed back to THE Hotel, started packing our bags and then watched some TV before passing out.

Las Vegas – The departure

The next morning, bright and early, we checked out and headed down to Red White and Blue for some breakfast. We headed over to Avis to pick up our convertible (Chrysler Sebring, silver), and around 11:15am (an hour ahead of schedule) we were en route to the City of Angels (and it was windy as all hell!).

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

Ok folks, that's all for now. The L.A. recap will be up in a day or two.

Hugs,
Luis

Headin' West!

2006-03-26T22:38:00.000-05:00

So in just about 6 hours Liz and I will have to roll out of bed, get showered/dressed, and hop into a cab to head to Newark Int'l Airport. Our destination, I hear you cry? Vegas for three days, then the City of Angels for four days. Should be good times. We'll most assuredly post an exciting play-by-play once we're back, complete with photos.

Luis

The Force will be with us. Always.

2006-03-20T10:36:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone that joined us for the Star Wars Marathon (and mini Guitar Hero sessions). While we only ended up watching Episodes III-VI (and the last 15 minutes of Episode II), they are arguably the only important/good movies in the hexalogy, ;-).

There might be a more complete post on the event, but since we're leaving for Vegas and L.A. next Monday I have a feeling that our weeks will be a tad on the crazy side...sigh...

Luis

Jean Georges Review

2006-03-15T17:37:00.000-05:00

On Monday evening, Luis and I went to Jean Georges to celebrate our birthdays in style. What follows is an extremely detailed account of our meal there. Needless to say, the experience was terrific, and one that wed be happy to repeat every day if only we could afford it!

We arrived at 7:15 for a 7:30 reservation and were seated immediately at the east side of the formal dining room. We were seated side by side at a long, rectangular table, which was odd at first but made for a really spectacular service experience. We aren't big wine drinkers, so I stuck with scotch and he was pleasantly surprised by their decent beer selection.

While we did receive a take-away menu for our reference, a lot of what we actually ate was not listed, so please pardon anything I may have left out. Without further ado...

Amuse bouche
We began with a wonderful trio: A crispy mini-springroll type thing on the right, a creamy soup in the center, and a slice of orange topped with some sort of cheese served in a spoon on the left. Obviously, you can tell that I didn't write down anything about the amuse bouche trio, but I can assure you that it was outstanding.

Jean Georges Signature Tasting Menu
I ordered this tasting menu and was absolutely delighted every step of the way. The first course was the egg caviar, a gently cooked egg served with vodka-infused whipped cream and topped with caviar. The whole thing is served in a brown egg shell. This dish was perfect - somehow light and hearty at the same time. My second course was sea scallops topped with caramelized cauliflower with a caper-raisin emulsion. What a delicious combination. Luis hates cauliflower, but even he conceded that it was yummy. The third course was a buttery, rich young garlic soup with sautéed frog legs. Smooth, creamy, and wonderful. The finger bowl with rose petals floating in the warm water was a nice touch, too! The fourth course was turbot topped with diced tomatoes and zucchini served in a château chalon sauce (best described as a salty, tomato/cream sauce). I normally don't like fish but this was tender and delicious. The sauce may have been too salty for some, but I loved it. Fifth, I had lobster tartine in a lemongrass and fenugreek broth topped with pea shoots. Although delicious, this star shined a little less brightly than the other courses - I think the lobster may have been ever so slightly overcooked. Still, the combination of flavors worked very well, and I love anything tartine. My sixth course was broiled squab served with an onion compote, corn pancake, and seared (?) foie gras. Again, this was not my favorite course of the evening, but I think that's mostly due to the fact that I am not much for game birds or foie gras. Still, it was an excellent combination of flavors and textures. Also, this course had a huge amount of food on the plate! After everything that had come before it, I doubt I would have been able to finish it even were I the world's biggest fan of squab.

Winter Tasting Menu
Luis ordered the winter menu. He began with a hamachi (yellowtail) carpaccio topped with grapefruit sorbet and cilantro sauce. It was out of this world - very light and fresh. Ever the foie gras fan, his next course was a foie gras terrine topped with dried sour cherries and candied pistachios. The foie gras was carmelized on the top side. Even though I haven't developed much of a taste for foie, I must admit it was excellent. I didn't taste his next course due to a shallot allergy, but it was a wild mushroom soup with five or six different kinds of mushrooms and topped with grated parmesan and chilies, that he proceeded to devour. His fourth course was seared black sea bass over pureed parsnips, covered in fresh chopped coconut and lime and served with a coconut/lime juice concoction, with a mint emulsion on the upper-right corner of the plate. Yum! The flavor combination was hearty and fresh with a little snippy zing at the finish. The fifth course was a butter-poached Maine lobster served with lemon-paprika puree and salsify tagliatelle. Our waiter must have thought we were daft because we had him repeat the salsify bit over and over. It sounded like "salsa di" to us, but what was on the plate was clearly not a salsa di anything! Anyway, we have since learned that salsify is a root vegetable like a carrot, but it's white. They slice it thinly lengthwise, char it on one side, and then roll it up into a little rosebud. For all that work and explanation, I'm not sure it was worth it, as he didn't eat more than a few exploratory bites! Oh well. His sixth dish was loin of lamb served over some sort of sweet puree. The lamb itself was excellent, he pointed out, but the puree/sauce that it came with weren't particularly impressive.

Dessert
Now, here's where I really start to get confused on the details - the take away menu we were given did list dessert, but it didn't correspond with what we were actually served. I ordered from the winter menu, and Luis chose the honey nut menu, both of us being way too stuffed to even attempt the chocolate choices. Each menu consists of four mini desserts that complement each other and follow the basic theme of the group. My winter menu began with a cylinder of pear and chocolate praline mousse cake with poire William gelée. Wonderful! Next came a butternut squash soufflé served with prune armagnac ice cream, which was by far my favorite of the four. Next was a granny smith apple tart(?) with caramel, and the last of the four I can't remember for the life of me other than that it had dried fruit in a sweet broth with something creamy on the side. All were delicious, and the only thing I didn't finish was the chocolate mousse base under the pear thing - it was simply too rich for me.

Luis' honey nut themed desserts began with a warm orange blossom honey tart, served with charred orange and walnut butter. It was a very nice opening, and he particularly liked the walnut butter. Next was a cranberry honey nougat glace, served with cranberry-anise star compote. This dessert was very impressive, and was full of flavor. He's not the biggest fan of anise, but it was very subtle, and didn't detract from the overall experience. Third up was a vanilla panacotta with sharp ginger ice cream. The panacotta itself wasn't that great, but it certainly wasn't bad. The ginger ice cream was the star of this dish, he thought, as it was nice and spicy and sharply contrasted with the bland panacotta. My guess is that that was probably the idea: to set up a nice counterpoint between the two halves of the dessert. His theme concluded with a wonderful meyer lemon sorbet, served over some very dense honey. He's a big fan of citrus, and had been wanting to have something with meyer lemons since they have been so prominently featured in the last few episodes of Iron Chef America. He also had a shot of La Combe espresso that he was very impressed with, and in fact wants to go out and buy some at a market in Chelsea that carries it.

We finished the meal with marshmallows in vanilla, espresso, and grapefruit (wow!) flavors, mini macaroons, and little chocolates in interesting flavors such as peanut butter and jelly and black licorice.

Service
As expected, the service was well-oiled and flawless. Questions were answered with a smile and everyone was wonderfully kind.

As you can probably tell from how effusive I’ve made this review, we enjoyed ourselves a great deal and would recommend Jean Georges to anyone with an open mind and a full wallet.

Awesome birthday

2006-03-13T10:55:00.000-05:00

Yes folks, I'm a quarter-century old, as of yesterday, :-). For all of one week, Liz and I will be the same age, teehee!

It was an awesome birthday, by all accounts. The day started late, as any good Sunday should, and when we were just about ready to roll out of bed Liz decided to shower me with gifts. She got me the three Sandman volumes I'm missing, as well as an awesome Sandman Companion that I'll have to dive into once I plow through said three volumes.

The best part of my birthday gifts, however (no offense to Neil and his brilliant cast of characters), was the card she made me. Now, those of you who read my last post know how enamored I am of Guitar Hero, and that I'm pretty much at the end of the game. Along with my gifts I got a card saying "Happy Birthday to my Guitar Hero!" with the following image on it:

She calls it "Dimebag Luis". Hellz frickin' yeah. Don't I look like a real rockstar with that Confederate axe? She took a photo of Dimebag Darrell (late guitarist for Pantera, for those who don't know) and used her mad Photoshop skills to create this adonis, :-). Now if I could only play "Cowboys From Hell" on Expert mode to justify the photo, sigh...

To top it all off, yesterday afternoon Liz made me an absolutely delicious key-lime pie. We didn't have time to let it cool as much as it should've (and by "We didn't have time" I mean "I didn't want to wait any more before having a slice"), so it ended up being more like key-lime pudding, but I'm sure that by tonight it'll be right as rain. We are, however, going to Jean Georges tonight for a dual-birthday dinner, so I don't know if there'll be room in my tummy for a slice, but hey, there's always tomorrow. We're becoming such cosmopolitan eaters lately! First Eleven Madison Park, then Nobu, now Jean Georges! Babbo should be on the menu sometime soon, hehe.

Ok, gotta fly. I have to actually get some work done today. Phooey.

Luis

Best. Game. Ever.

2006-02-13T14:50:00.000-05:00

Last week Liz and I were introduced to the supreme awesomeness that is Guitar Hero.

Most people have never heard of this game, but I'm sure gonna do my best to spread the love as much as possible. The best frame of reference is something like Dance Dance Revolution. Here's the twist: instead of a pad to dance on you get a plastic replica of a Gibson SG guitar (75% of real-life size) to shred on, and instead of electronic stuff you get rock classics. The game has 4 difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, Hard and Expert.

Here's the full track list (courtesy of Wikipedia), broken up by the set list for each concert you have to play (at first you only need to "pass" on 4 of the 5 songs, but at later levels you need to nail all of them):

1. Opening Licks

· I Love Rock & Roll - Joan Jett & The Blackhearts
· I Wanna Be Sedated - The Ramones
· Thunder Kiss 65 - White Zombie
· Smoke On The Water - Deep Purple
· Infected - Bad Religion

2. Axe-Grinders

· Iron Man - Black Sabbath
· More Than a Feeling - Boston
· You Got Another Thing Comin' - Judas Priest
· Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand
· Sharp Dressed Man - ZZ Top

3. Thrash And Burn

· Killer Queen - Queen
· Hey You - The Exies
· Stellar - Incubus
· Heart Full of Black - Burning Brides
· Symphony Of Destruction - Megadeth

4.Return of the Shred

· Ziggy Stardust - David Bowie
· Fat Lip - Sum 41
· Cochise - Audioslave
· Take It Off - The Donnas
· Unsung - Helmet

5.Fret-Burners

· Spanish Castle Magic - Jimi Hendrix
· Higher Ground - Red Hot Chili Peppers
· No One Knows - Queens of the Stone Age
· Ace Of Spades - Motörhead
· Crossroads - Cream

6.Face-Melters (become unlocked when you beat the first five stages on the Medium setting)

· Godzilla - Blue Öyster Cult
· Texas Flood - Stevie Ray Vaughan
· Frankenstein - The Edgar Winter Group
· Cowboys From Hell - Pantera
· Bark at the Moon - Ozzy Osbourne

There are also close to 20 extra tracks that you can unlock by spending the money you earn playing live shows, but I don't think Liz and I are going to bother for now, since they're all by relatively unknown bands (plus we'd rather unlock new guitars and guitar skins, :-)!).

Obviously it's impossible to include everything that one feels should've been in the game, but we're pretty sure there'll be an expansion/sequel at some point, since this game got so many good reviews and won so many awards. Some artists we were surprised to not see included in some capacity: Guns 'n Roses, AC/DC, Van Halen and Led Zeppelin.

With the songs included in the game there's really a good progression from the simple ("I Wanna Be Sedated") to the complicated ("Killer Queen") to the hard ("Crossroads") to the incredibly tough ("Cowboys From Hell", "Bark at the Moon"). Liz and I have both completed the game in Easy and Medium modes, and are working at Hard mode. She's at the first show, and I'm close to completing the third one (I managed to pass "Killer Queen" and "Hey You" this morning before heading out to work, leaving just "Heart Full of Black" in my way!).

The difference in difficulty between the modes is also very noticeable. To see just how complicated Expert mode is, check out this video of someone (who is clearly a Guitar Hero god) playing "Cowboys From Hell", which is one of the toughest songs in the game.

Anyway, keep your fingers crossed for us (lord knows our fingers are crossed from trying to hit all those notes).

Luis

UPDATE (2/23/2006): last night I was on a tear and I somehow beat 4 of the 5 songs on the last tier of the Hard difficulty, one right after another! After trying to finish "Cowboys From Hell" a few times (all in vain), I finally nailed it (and by "nailed it" I mean "I got through the song, finishing deep in the red"). After that "Godzilla", "Texas Flood" and "Frankenstein" all felt my wrath (first Cowboys, then the world!). "Bark at the Moon" remains the last hurdle between The Death Metal Ninjas and the Expert difficulty, mwahahahahaha!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE (2/27/2006): this weekend I finally beat "Bark at the Moon" on Hard, hahaha! I then proceeded to clear the first 4 tiers of songs on Expert Mode, which really psyched me up. I'm now left with the hardest stuff in the game, obviously, with tracks like "Crossroads", "Cowboys From Hell" and "Bark at the Moon". If I don't clear a single other song, though, I'll still be pretty happy with myself, :-).

Oof

2006-01-20T12:29:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so maybe he's gotten a little fat.

NIN in NYC, part deux

2005-11-04T15:46:00.000-05:00

Nine Inch Nails at MSG. Aw yeah.

Y'all know that Liz and I would be representin' Northern Gramercy/Southern Murray Hill/Western Kips Bay at the Garden, yo.

We got General Admission tickets through The Spiral (the NIN fan club), and since we got the pre-sale ones, we had access to the pit, so we got up really close to the stage, about two "rows" of people back from the metal fence, and slightly towards stage right. We were far enough from the middle to manage to avoid the mosh pit that inevitably formed, but still very much in the middle. The scene was set for a kick-ass show.

The opening bands were Death From Above 1979 and Queens of the Stone Age. I'd obviously heard of the latter, but not the former. Death From Above 1979 are a bass and drum duo. The bassist can play some sick stuff, à la Cliff Burton. The drummer isn't bad, and he sings while playing. He actually reminds me of the singer from At The Drive-In and The Mars Volta... Overall I wasn't a fan, and neither was Liz, despite having one or two good songs. I think they could do with some variety, probably by adding a guitar.

Queens of the Stone Age were fine for what they are: pretty frat-boy-ish rock and roll. A lot of their songs sound very similar, but they did have their share of good songs, much more so than DFA 1979. They played the three singles of theirs that I'd heard on the radio (Little Sister, Go With the Flow, No One Knows), and I really liked some of their other songs, but alas do not know their names. I'm thinking of just downloading their stuff on BitTorrent (best way to download music/movies/TV shows and such) and trying to find those songs.

One thing that I need to mention before getting into NIN's performance, though...

[rant]One song into the Queens of the Stone Age set these two totally alpha-male-jock-meathead-type dudes totally wedge themselves in front of Liz and I, displacing not only the two of us but a lot of other girls that had been at the front of pit with us since before DFA 1979 even started setting up. They just muscled their way forward and got right in front of us, which is totally an asshole thing to do, and just not good concert etiquette. They were taller than most of the girls they displaced, so I just don't get why they were being suck dicks... Liz was fuming, but didn't say anything. Then while NIN was getting set up one of their fellow alpha-male-jock-meathead-type friends shows up (they'd been on the phone with him and madly gesticulating into the vastness of MSG hoping that their buddy would see them) and proceeds to wedge in front of us from the other side, meeting up with Asshole A and Asshole B (thus making him Asshole C). Liz completely blew her top at this and started telling them they were dicks for doing that and such, and rightfully so. She even called one of them a "thickneck", I believe, :-). Anyway, these guys started talking back and obviously weren't going to move. One of them was like "Well, if you don't want this to happen then don't go to a concert", and more B.S. like that. I enjoy being up close and personal with the band and moshing as much as any other guy, but I still have concert etiquette...[/rant]

Sooooo, after managing to calm Liz down and cheer her up (so she wouldn't let these turds ruin the NIN show for her), Trent and company took the stage. They first lowered a see-through curtain, and proceeded to fill up the entire stage with a metric fuckton of smoke. They then took the stage to Pinion, as usual, and then started their set, which clocked in at about 95-100 minutes, which ain't too shabby. This is the complete setlist:

Pinion
Love Is Not Enough
You Know What You Are?
Terrible Lie
The Line Begins To Blur
March Of The Pigs
Something I Can Never Have
The Frail
The Wretched
Closer
Burn
Gave Up
Eraser
Right Where It Belongs
Beside You In Time
The Collector
Wish
Only
Reptile
Hurt
Suck
The Hand That Feeds
Head Like A Hole

Some highlights included Eraser, that they don't generally play live, and Right Where it Belongs, that they didn't play when Liz and I saw them at the Hammerstein back in May. I was very happy with the set, as was Liz, and my one complaint is that they played so much stuff from the new album. Then again it is the With Teeth Tour, so it's quite understandable. I would've loved to hear Starfuckers Inc., but I've heard the song a bunch, so it's no biggy.

I also wanted to add that I totally called when they were going to play not only March of the Pigs but Wish. I guess I've heard enough live NIN shows to recognize when they're going to follow-up with those two moshers (and the setlist was way different from the Hammerstein show, too). Damn I'm good, :-). I should also mention that during Eraser I was confused and thought it was Help Me I'm In Hell, whereas Liz realized that it was Eraser. Who'd have thought that she'd make such a NIN fan out of me!

Overall we both tremendously enjoyed the show, and in future whenever we go see NIN I'll be sure to try and get General Admission tickets, so we can be in the Pit. My ears are still ringing from the sonic assault!

Hugs,
Luis

Underwhelmed

2005-10-03T13:19:00.000-04:00

Don't see Corpse Bride... It seemed, ahem, dead (pun intended but not really funny).

Liz and I are both Tim Burton fans (her more than me, though), and when we came out of watching it this past weekend we both felt underwhelmed. It looked really good, just like The Nightmare Before Christmas did, but it felt lacking in every other aspect. I don't know that I can pinpoint any particular thing about it that bothered me, but I know I was falling asleep during some parts of it, and Liz made a good point about it having a weak/predictable plot.

Oh well, at least Willy Wonka was good, :-).

Hugs,
Luis

Huh...

2005-09-29T21:13:00.000-04:00

Luis and I were just thinking, and neither of us could come up with a single movie trailer that uses a female voice-over. In a world where we listen to the same "IN A WORLD..." guy over and over, why isn't there room for a woman to strut her stuff in the movie trailer genre? I understand why action movies might want to align themselves with their core demographic by using a husky male voice, but why does a similar voice try to sell us saccharine romantic comedies?

I can't remember which movie theatre chain does this (perhaps Clearview?), but one of them shows a reel all in sillouette that illustrates the evils of leaving your trash, talking during the movie, etc. In each instance of wrongdoing, it is the woman who screws up, talking during the movie or not taking her trash with her, while the male sillouette lectures her. WTF!

I would love to be proven wrong here. Can someone come up with a trailer that has a female voice-over?

A food hangover?!

2005-09-20T13:20:00.000-04:00

We all know that weird things can happen to our bodies if we ingest large quantities of something... I've had a few nights of boozing where I've actually drunk myself sober (something that's hard to explain and understand unless you've had it happen, too). I've seen videos of what happens when you down some ipecac. But I've never experienced what happened to me this morning: a food hangover (for lack of a better term).

Going back a bit, I'd like to explain yesterday's activities that led up to said "food hangover"...

For starters yesterday I had my new-hire lunch with the CFO from my new job. Really cool guy, and he took me and a bunch of other new people to Churrascaria Plataforma. For those of you who've never been there, it's a Brazilian steakhouse located near Times Square. The way it works is that you get a coaster that's red on one side and green on the other. Waiters are constantly walking around the restaurant with different cuts of meat (beef, pork, lamb, sausages, chicken, etc.), and if your coaster is green they'll stop and offer you some. They'll then slice off a piece for you right then and there, and you grab it with a pair of tongs they give you. Really good stuff, even if they are Brazilians (just a little Argentine pride, ;-)).

So I have a bunch of meat for lunch, as well as some of the things from their salad bar (the CFO warned us not to go overboard with the salad bar, to leave room for the meat), and I try to control myself (knowing what awaited me that very evening [more on that in a minute]), so I end up throwing in the towel earlier than I normally would. I'm still stuffed, however.

Some explanatory photos:

Back at the office I proceeded to do nothing productive for what was left of the afternoon (we finished lunch around 2:15pm, so we didn't get back until approx. 2:30pm), and planned on meeting up with Liz, Frankie, Mike and Gaetan for dinner later that night. And guess where we were heading? The mecca of all that is beefy: Peter Luger, in Brooklyn.

(As a parenthetical, I lived about two blocks from Luger for a year, but never got sufficiently organized to make a reservation a few weeks in advance.)

When we decided to head to Luger I was surprised that we were able to find an available slot only about two weeks beforehand, even if it was on a Monday night. Now, you may be asking yourselves: "Luis, why on earth did you make a dinner reservation at Luger on the same day that you were having lunch at Plataforma?" Well kiddies, that wasn't the plan. Originally I was supposed to go to Plataforma for lunch on the day that my company was taking us to Atlantic City, but the CFO had to reschedule. When the rescheduling e-mail went out last week I nearly cried when I saw the date: September 19th. We had already made the reservation at Luger, and I wasn't about to change it. So I just braced myself mentally, spiritually, and stomach-ly, for the barrage of meat that 9/19/2005 would entail.

So going back to last night, we get to Luger right on time, and after a 5 minute wait we get seated. At this stage I'd had about a 6-hour break between lunch and dinner, so I was feeling fine and ready to eat again, :-). Despite everything we heard about the service being rude, our waiter was a guy who certainly knew his stuff, and he guided me through the order process. We wanted a typical Luger meal, so we get everything he suggested. There were 5 of us, so we ended up ordering 5 slabs of their bacon (ridiculously good), tomatos & onions (we didn't realize that we needed to add their famous steak sauce to them until we were about halfway through), 3 steak-for-2s (giant porterhouses; two medium-rare and one medium), creamed spinach and fried potatoes. Oh, and we also had Brooklyn Lager (yum!). We somehow managed to leave room for dessert, and split a great sundae and apple strudel amongst the five of us. They even gave us official Peter Luger chocolate coins!

So what was the final damage? $85 a head, which we were all happy to pony up. We had a veritable mountain of food, no one was still hungry, and it was all delicious.

The steak itself was really good, and I think it lived up to the hype pretty well:

However, and I know Liz agrees with me, we both feel that the porterhouse we had at Keen's was not only better, but cheaper. This is not a slight towards Luger at all, since we all really enjoyed the food. Having said that, however, now that we've eaten there once I think in future we'll be sticking to Keen's when we need our steak fix.

Anyway, back to the main point of this post, my so-called "food hangover". First off Liz and I were feeling incredibly full, bloated, etc. when we got home. She'd pre-emptively had some ginger before the meal, and I had one at dinner. I was feeling ok, just stuffed beyond belief. When I woke up this morning, however, I had an absolutely splitting headache. I don't usually get headaches, so it must've been something from last night.It couldn't have been alcohol-induced, since I only had one beer (and they were in McSorley-size mugs, so they weren't particularly large, shall we say). I've never heard of food, of all things, causing a headache, especially since I'm used to eating large quantities of meat from growing up in Argentina.

The only remaining option was that it was food-induced. While its origins remain a mystery, there can be no doubt as to what calamity befell me this morning: I had become a victim of a food hangover! Fortunately I'm feeling a bit better now, and will probably be able to stomach some lunch in a bit!

Luis

Atlantic City, baby!

2005-09-13T11:24:00.000-04:00

Yeah, so this post is coming a bit late. I've already gone and come back from Atlantic City, and only ended up $40 down (shocking, I know), but I figured I'd treat our readers to some storytellin' love...

So we left work at about 3pm, and walked over to 45th and 9th to hop on the bus. We had a solid 70-person squad, I believe, so they split us into two different buses. Needless to say ours was the fun one:

Each bus had a cooler of cerveza (and some cider and soda, for those so-inclined), and Roman even brought a bottle of Vox Green Apple vodka, that went really well with the cans of Red Bull that we bought at the deli. Ashley baked some chocolate banana bread, and while it was making the rounds it fell on the floor, so I never got to sample it (I'm sure if Liz had made some it would've been much yummier anyway, ;-)).

Once we got to the Borgata we each got our room-keys (yep, no room sharing!) and had about an hour of free time until happy hour and dinner in one of the hotel's conference rooms. I went to my room, vegged out on the bed while watching some TV, and eventually got changed and headed down. At the happy hour I met a bunch of new people from the firm (this trip is for FinOp [Financial Operations], of which Compliance is technically a part of, but I had never met most of the traders, bigwigs and such), had me some Grey Goose tonics, and eventually sat down for dinner. I focused mainly on the parmesan-crusted filet mignon, but everything else was good, too, as were the dessert cannolis, cheesecake and eclairs!

Around 9:30pm is when our free time began. I decided to hit the blackjack tables, and after finding the $10 tables I started waiting for a seat (there were only two left by this time, and the other were all $15, $25 and $50 minimums). I ended up playing for about two hours, and despite being up around $70, I ended up down $40, which ain't so bad. My goal was to make it to +$100 and call it quits, but I hit a bad streak and lost like 6 or 7 hands in a row (and when you're upping your bet when you lose, as you're supposed to, those losses start adding up!), so I decided to quit and cut my losses. In retrospect I should've kept playing, I think, since I had decided that I was perfectly willing to lose $200, so I should've tried to get my money back. Oh well, fortunately A.C. is only about 2-2.5 hours from the NYC, so I think Liz and I will be going back sometime soon.

After calling it quits at the blackjack table it was time to hit the dancefloor. The Borgata has its own nightclub, called Mixx, right in the middle of the casino floor. We had a VIP area specially designated for us, and we all got a stamp on our wrists that says "SMOOTH", hehe. We had a self-service bar that kept being restocked with Grey Goose and tons of mixers, which wasn't so bad:

I was there with Inacio, Roman and company until about 3:30am, when they closed up the place. I enjoyed a bit of clubbing, since it had been a while since I got to "shake my skeleton" for a few hours, as a friend's mom used to say. I think I wondered back up to my room around 4am, and hit the hay.

In the morning most people were getting their massages/facials/spa treatments, since we were allowed to charge $100 to our rooms. After brunch I still had about an hour to kill before our bus back to the city, so on the fly I decided to get a haircut at their salon, and it looks pretty nice! I also picked up some Art of Shaving products and some nice shampoo/conditioner, to hit my $100 mark.

The busride back was pretty uneventful, since most everyone were exhausted, so I just put my headphones on and zoned out for a few hours. I got home around 4pm, which was earlier than expected, and my pup greeted me with kisses and hugs, which is exactly what I had been wanting! So all in all it was a great trip, and lots of company-paid fun. God I love my new job, :-)!
Hugs,
Luis

P.S.- here's another funny pic from A.C. (don't ask):

My new favorite band

2005-09-04T19:21:00.000-04:00

I'm not (that) embarassed to admit that it's My Chemical Romance. Have you seen the video for Helena? No? Go watch it.

Earth to Liz and Luis...

2005-08-15T17:10:00.000-04:00

Yeah, I know, we're awful people. We haven't posted anything new in a while, though I don't know if we even have any regular readers who'd be upset/disappointed... Things have just been so crazy lately, as they are wont to do...

About a month ago I started my new job at a big hedge fund. Not knowing anything at all about finance when I started certainly contributed to me being busy, since I've been working really hard to put myself up-to-speed with industry lingo, learn what everything means, try and be helpful around the office, etc. So far so good, I think, because I really feel that I've learned a lot, though I have so much more still to-be-learned.

My new job is great. First off (and this is huge for me), there is no dress-code! Yes, the days of corporate-casual attire (a.k.a. the yoke of my previous oppression, ;-)!) are long gone, and now my daily garb consists of shorts, a polo shirt (sometimes a t-shirt, if I'm feeling so-inclined) and either sandals or sneakers. My dressiest day so far was last week when we had our firm's summer party at the Boathouse in Central Park and I put on some jeans. Heck, I even wore regular-length socks! So yeah, no dress code = teh r0ckz0rz.

I'm also super-psyched because the firm is taking all of its employees to Atlantic City for an evening of fine food, drink and gambling! They're putting us up at the Borgata, that I've heard is a nice place, and rumor has it that they even give us $100 each to start off the night, though I certainly plan on ponying up some more money to hit the blackjack tables, hehe. As my pup told me a few days ago "Mama needs a new pair of shoes!". So on the night of September 9th keep me in your thoughts and pray that I come up a winner, for Liz's feet's sake!

Just to give you an update on her: she's crazy busy for about another month, with constant deadlines for Awards and such, so she probably won't have much time to post anything, either. I hope I can convince her to take a trip somewhere when her craziness is done, :-).

Before I go, I just wanted to share my lastest obsession: Old Grandma Hardcore. First off, for all you pervs out there, a few words: it's not what you think. It's a blog written by this guy whose grandmother is a hardcore videogamer. She's quite good, apparently, and also curses like a sailor! What I find super cool is that she loves Square-Enix games like Liz and I do, so I wonder if that's what we'll be like in our old age...but I digress. At any rate, scroll down to the bottom and start reading. It's not too long, since the blog is only about a month old. They also have some funny videos, listed on the right.

Ok campers, time for this kool kat to get back to work.

Luis

P.S.- also check out Stuff On My Cat! If we could get Fosse or Conan to sit still with stuff piled on them, I assure you we'd send in the pics, hehe!

Some Things

2005-07-19T16:49:00.000-04:00

An update to this site is so overdue, it's beyond embarrassing. I have to admit that part of what has been keeping me away is a lack of anything to really say. I have tons of ideas for posts, but they are all half-baked and mostly-retarded.

This is why I've decided to do the ultimate non-sequitor post and just sort of regurgitate everything that I've been thinking about posting? OK? No? Too bad.

Crest's new Vanilla Mint toothpaste is awesome. I want to eat it.

As long as we're discussing dental hygiene, I'm now flossing every day. Ehhh, ehhh? :: nudges you in ribs :: I'm probably a little too proud of myself for doing something that I should have been doing all along.

Aw hell, still on dental hygiene, I'm overdue for a cleaning. Am I the only one who hates that ionized water thing? I bleed every time. I find it off-putting, and so I'm putting it off.

I know that I spend a lot on shoes compared to most people, but this summer, I've been spending a lot on shoes compared to me! One word: Bergdorf.

On the other hand, I've cleaned out my closet and gotten rid of many old outfits and pairs of shoes. Also, I've decided to take a few pairs of my better but ill-fitting shoes to Tokio 7 to try to sell them on consignment. If you wear a 40 1/2 and like Prada or Lagerfeld, hie thee hence and buy them so I can get my money. Woo!

After our awesome Argentina trip, I've fallen in love with a designer I'd never heard of: Maria Vasquez. I can't seem to find a web site where I can order her stuff - has anyone ever seen it at a department store or boutique? This is Manhattan for the love of god, I must be able to find her clothes somewhere!

Finally, Luis started a new job this week. I'm so proud of him. :)

I know, I know

2005-06-22T09:13:00.000-04:00

Dude, I totally suck. I owe you guys an update and I've been scholocking it. Major proposal due, but I'm on jury duty next week, so I ought to have all the time in the world.

Anyone know if the courthouse waiting room has wifi? Kidding... sort of.

Back from the other land down under!

2005-06-07T17:20:00.000-04:00

So Liz and I just got back from Argentina on Sunday, and we had a great time! Tons of steak, sleep and shopping. My friend Pablo's wedding was a lot of fun, we got to see the city and go see a great tango show. Since a picture is worth a thousand words, I'll let them speak for themselves. Check out our Argentina albums on my Yahoo Photos site: Pablo's bachelor party/wedding (don't worry, just the family-friendly pics) and the rest of the trip.

Since for me there wasn't much that was new on the trip (I did grow up there, ya know!), I'm sure Liz will have more to say about the trip once she catches up on work and such.

Hugs,
Luis

A papa mono...

2005-05-23T10:16:00.000-04:00

We're off to Argentina, so no new posts until the second week of June. Adios!

NIN extravaganza comes to fruition!

2005-05-17T15:41:00.000-04:00

So after about two weeks of listening to the new album (that we both highly recommend) and many many listenings of older albums at work, the day finally arrived for us to go see NIN at the Hammerstein Ballroom. It was a really good show, and honestly I wish I'd been exposed to NIN much much sooner, because Trent is a fucking genius. I'm a convert for life, and I know we'll go see live shows as often as we can. I just read today in his interview with Spin that he has a new album almost ready that he hopes to put out within a year, so there's something else to look forward to, :-)!

Just some random musings and comments about the show...

- We were seated in the second mezzanine, and the seats we ended up getting were actually not bad at all. Liz even said it was the closest she's ever been to Trent onstage! Go me!

- I got to see just how tiny Trent really is (though he's really jacked [kinda hard to see in this pic, though]! His arms were ripped as hell when he took his shirt off [and yes, I'm comfortable enough in my masculinity to make that remark, ;-)!]), and Liz commented on how his shortness was the dealbreaker for her, and that that was the reason her and Trent couldn't be together.

- The opening band, the Dresden Dolls, actually weren't half bad, and I know Liz mentioned that she wanted to go buy their album. They're this sort of quirky cabaret-punk duo (according to their website they're "Brechtian Punk Cabaret") with a chick on piano and a guy on drums. She had a really cool, full voice, and his drumming was actually quite good. They played two great covers: Black Sabbath's War Pigs, that caught everyone (myself included!) by surprise, and Radiohead's Karma Police. When we heard the opening chords from War Pigs played on the piano I must say it was quite a surreal feeling, and I was sort of skeptical at first, but they really kicked ass. Karma Police was really well done, too, and they had Jerome Dillon (the current touring drummer for NIN) guest-drum on that cover, while the guy from Dresden Dolls was on acoustic guitar.

- Throughout the Dresden Dolls' entire set there was a loyal contingent of rabble-rousers on the other side of the second mezzanine that kept yelling for the Dolls to leave the stage, yadda yadda yadda. It was great that the dude from the Dolls took that in stride and actually egged them on during an interlude, prompting everyone who wanted them offstage to yell at once.

- Right after one of the Dolls' songs, a guy sitting near us yelled "Free Bird!", prompting jovial laughter from Liz and I. There's always someone who yells for Free Bird, even at a frickin' NIN show, ;-)!

- I knew most every song NIN played, even if I had to ask Liz what the names of a few were if the beginning wasn't immediately recognizable to me. I did not, however, know the lyrics nearly as well as most everybody else in the audience (e.g.- I thought the beginning of Head Like a Hole was "Got-money", as in a person who has a lot of money, sort of the opposite of a "have-not"; I also wasn't sure if the lyric in Terrible Lie was "Hey guy!" or "Hey God!", and it turned out being the latter). I guess that's ok, though, since I only heard everything for the first time about a year and a half ago anyway! The only song that was completely new to me was Burn, from the soundtrack to Natural Born Killers. Good solid track, and I'll be copying it from the soundtrack CD for sure.

- Standout tracks (for me): Wish, The Collector, The Hand That Feeds, Gave Up, Suck, Terrible Lie, Hurt and Head Like a Hole. Apparently they never play Head Like a Hole live, which made our first joint concert experience even better! We were both really glad they played a lot from Broken, since it definitely "plays well", as Liz said.

- I discovered that I could've worn whatever the heck I wanted to the show, as there were people in goth garb, polo shirts and shorts, Euro club garb and even jeans/t-shirt. I was really worried about looking like a jackass if I didn't dress properly, so Liz offered to get me a black t-shirt while I was in NJ visiting a friend, and I'm glad she did. Thanks, pup!

Like I said before, I really loved watching NIN live, and will do it again as soon as I can. I've read rumors of Trent having a second-phase tour later this year, and the other headlining band will be System of a Down! That would really make my year...

Alright folks, back to the yolk of corporate law slavery.

Hugs,
Luis

(This post was written listening to Marilyn Manson's Antichrist Superstar, another great record I hadn't really heard before meeting my dear Lizochka, and this is actually the first time I hear anything from here other than The Beautiful People, that got lots of rotation on MTV Latin America, weird as that must sound, hehe.)

I'm gonna burn this whole world down

2005-05-17T15:25:00.000-04:00

Luis and I went to a Nine Inch Nails concert on Sunday, May 15th - his first, my third. Here are some of the highlights:

Trent in a tight white shirt
Trent in a tight black shirt
Trent at all, really. (Ahem. Hi, Luis! Sorry.)
Wish
A water fight between Jeordie White (formerly the bassist Twiggy Ramirez of Marilyn Manson) and absolutely batshit insane guitarist Aaron North
The opening act, The Dresden Dolls, playing War Pigs. How awesome is that?
The Dresden Dolls playing Karma Police. Lo que??
Some smartass shouting "Freebird!" during the Dolls' set
The lighting - several times I thought I might actually have to sit down, it was so intense
My cub worrying about what to wear, thinking that everyone would be all gothed out

More to come as Luis and I remember different details...

NIN extravaganza!

2005-04-28T15:01:00.000-04:00

So I have my dear Lizochka to blame to giving me her love of NIN, back when we started dating...

By the time I got to college I'd obviously heard a few NIN songs that were well-known, like "Head Like a Hole", "Closer" and "Perfect Drug" (the first NIN track I ever heard, since I caught the video on MTV Latin America one day back home in the deep deep South and really liked it), but I'd never had too much exposure to their whole body of work. During freshman year my friend Brian bought The Fragile and so I had my first taste of a full NIN album, and I was intrigued. I didn't like it that much at first, but it grew on me slowly.

Yet for some reason I never went out and got the previous NIN albums that were available, not even as part of my shirt-lived-Napster-download-fest (if you'll recall my school was one of the initial universities sued by Metallica over Napster in early 2000 [damn you, Lars!]), and I sort of forgot about NIN for a few years, though some songs were still on my playlist.

Enter my beautiful girl.

One of my first times at her old place in Astoria I noticed her stack of NIN albums, and my curiosity was immediately piqued, since I had a chance to do what I meant to do 4 years prior. So I started borrowing them and listening to them, and I really got into it. It turned out that the two of us even liked one album in particular the best: Broken. I remember when she asked me which one I liked the best, and I was so happy that it was the one she liked best, too. It really showed me how much the two of us have in common, how much our likes are similar, and how well we mesh together, something that has been proven to me time and time again in the almost year-and-a-half we've been together (June 1st the 1.5-year mark, and we'll be celebrating that one in Argentina, over a big plate of cow).

So where am I going with all this?

Well, about a month ago the first single ("The Hand That Feeds") from NIN's upcoming album (With Teeth) started getting heavy play on K-Rock, and I really liked it a lot. Just last week Trent released a GarageBand version of this single, for people to play around with, remix and create their own versions (you can see the hundreds of results here, and many of them are quite good). On a sidenote: that actually got me really into the idea of giving music-making a try. In fact, I'm buying a MIDI keyboard from a friend of mine and getting a copy of Reason in order to give it a shot to see if I'm any good and if I like it. Wish me luck, 'cause I'm gonna need it.

But anyway, today, while checking out people's remixes of THTF I went over to nin.com to check out when the new album was coming out, and lo and behold did I get a surprise... No, not that it comes out in a week (that was a surprise, too, but it gets better), but that you can listen to the whole frickin' thing over on NIN's official Myspace page! It loads up a little Flash program and you can stream the entire album, from start to finish. Not only that, but you can also listen to it on Much Music's webpage, if you want to go track-by-track.

So yeah, all this coupled with the fact that I have absolutely jack-squat to do at work right now and am billing to "downtime" (legalese for "Do your thang, g!") means that today has become one big NIN extravaganza. I've been sitting at my desk with my headphones plugged-in for a few hours now, and I anticipate doing the exact same thing until the appointed hour arrives and I head home, where I will proceed to load all this stuff up for da pup to listen to when she gets home.

God DAMN I love the internet.

It's wonderful, it's wonderful, it's wonderful, I dream of you

2005-04-21T23:58:00.000-04:00

Watching Slava's Snowshow with a friend this evening, I realized more than ever how badly I want to return to Russia.

The show was conceived (and is sometimes performed) by the Russian clown, Slava. Trapped behind the iron curtain, Slava truly pioneered mime and clowning as an art form in eastern Europe. Though perestroika has since wiped away those once all-too-tangible differences between soviet and western cultures, there remains a distinct Russianness about everything that this troupe brings to the stage.

Perhaps it's the splashes of red in his costume.
Perhaps it's the glaring red wash that glows through a stage-full of roiling fog, hissing and swirling.
Perhaps it's the sound of the train that greets you when you enter the theatre and pops up again throughout the show, bringing to mind a transient existence and a willfull escapism.
Perhaps it's the sight of Yellow saying an intimite goodbye to a coat and a hat hanging from a coat rack - a sort of makeshift lover animated by his own arm in the most touching and heartbreaking way.
Perhaps it's the note left by Yellow's coat lover which he reads and then tears up, ripping into shreads that which he believed in so strongly only a moment before until it resembles nothing more than the snow that surrounds him and us.
Perhaps it's the long periods of inaction and limited movement.

V: Well? Shall we go?
E: Yes, let's go.
They do not move.

Almost certainly, it's the finale, a full theatre snow storm that quite literally blinds you with powerful lights and gale force winds carrying imitation snow that flies from all directions into your eyes, ears, shirt, pants, and shoes, all set to the last minute or so of "O Fortuna." It's an experience that takes your breath away and could never be adequately described.

Yes, there was humor. Yes, it was child-appropriate and even cute at times. Most of all, to me it reeked of Russia. It spoke of waiting, of long lines and unanswered questions, of finding color and imagination within the bleak, of hope confused and deferred, but never wholly extinguished, of disillusionment, resentment, and finally, a cathartic redemption of sorts as the snowstorm Yellow anticipated finally came to pass. It made me think, this show, really think - which is unfortunately something I haven't done in entirely too long.

A conversation with my father

2005-04-18T15:02:00.000-04:00

“Daddy, just push tab.”
“Push what, now?”
“Tab, daddy. Tab.”
“OK. Tab. Where the hell is the god-damn, oh, there it is.”

:: pause ::

“Daddy?”
“Well shit.”
“What happened?”
“I erased the internet.”

Put it in your mouth

2005-04-15T11:12:00.000-04:00

Whenever I see something really cute, be it a baby's chubby cheek or a fluffy fat kitty, all I want to do is pop it in my mouth. I have this great vision of popping a little fluffy something in my mouth, with only its tail sticking out. Seriously, how cute would that be? So cute! Fluff! In my mouth!

This is usually the point where most people walk away from me in disgust. Rest assured, I do not actually want to chew and swallow these cute things. I just have an all-consuming urge to put them in my mouth and hold them there. For safe-keeping? Maybe - it happens in nature.

While trying to validate my insanity by finding examples of other sickos like me, I googled the following things:
chubby cheeks, in my mouth
so cute, in my mouth
put the kitty in my mouth
tail sticking out of mouth
in my mouth, dooce (figured maybe a cite from a reputable internet mother wanting to put her baby's cheeks in her mouth would silence the critics)
in my mouth, smartypants (ditto)
with babies in mouth
I want to put it in my mouth (NEVER google this)
cute, put it in my mouth

I have proven a number of things through this exercise:
1) I am the only person in the world who wants to put cute things in my mouth
2) Crocodiles carry their babies around in their mouths, but only for safe-keeping, not because they are blinded by the cuteness
3) People are really, really fucking twisted

A Toast to Absent Friends... and Absent Toast

2005-04-11T18:05:00.000-04:00

This weekend I spent time in the DC area with good friends from Hopkins. It felt really nice to just have some time away from New York and not visiting my parents. Not that I don't love my folks, but most of the time when I'm out of town, that's where I am. This was a welcome break, though I missed my cub very much.

Erica, J.R., and Jenny certainly took good care of me. I was well-fed with whiskey marinated steak, mashed potatoes, salad, and Amanda Hesser's chocolate cake for dinner on Saturday, and apricot ginger chicken with sweet potato pancakes for lunch on Sunday.

Aside from the food (yum yum), some other key weekend moments include:

"I am the god of weather!"

"Love, remember that thing about not singing songs to me one instrument at a time?"

"We're parked in A-G2. Remember that."
"Right. Agh-tchoo. Bless you."
:: groan ::

"A kazoo is so totally an instrument."

"Baya-hee! Baya-hoo! Baya-hah! Baya-haha!"

What fun! Thanks guys.

I'm not sure how to feel about this

2005-03-28T17:21:00.000-05:00

Something I wrote has been published. Unfortunately, it's not in my name. Also, it's in the New York Post. Should I be happy or sad, I wonder?

Big bummer

2005-03-16T16:46:00.000-05:00

So I get a call this morning from the woman who would be my boss at the hedge-fund I was going to switch over to in a few weeks, and she drops a bomb on me: yesterday she gave her two weeks notice. Yup, she quit two weeks before I was supposed to start there. Talk about good ways to start the day...

Sooooo, I'm in a bit of a pickle right now. I can still accept my offer to go work there, though I wouldn't be working with her, who I'd interviewed with and developed a rapport with. But the problem with that is that I don't know who I'd be working with, I don't know if they'd even have a new General Counsel by the time I got there, I don't know how my relationship with everyone else in the office would change now that she's not there, etc.

To top it all off, after dropping this bomb on me she proceeded totell me that she's not sure that I would've liked working there anyway, that the environment is really stressful, that there's a lot of politics and that it would probably be rough on me if she wasn't there. The question is: how much of that was motivated by the fact that she quit after an argument with one of the principals and is thus mad with the fund in general, and how much is actually true?

Talking about it with two attorneys here who have become quasi-mentors to me, they think that I should definitely not jump into that kind of environment, and I've got to say that my gut feeling agrees with them. It's gonna suck to not get the pay-increase I thought I'd be getting, but whatever, I'll live. I'm having lunch with those two attorneys to brainstorm, and then this afternoon I guess I'll have to go to my firm's paralegal coordinator and tell her that something's come up, and see if it's ok for me to stay here until I find something else. Wish me luck with all this...

[several hours go by...]

So everything's cool, and my current boss is ok with me staying here as long as a I want. I've already filled out a profile on Glocap, a company that does recruiting for all kinds of financial and legal-sector jobs, and a friend already submitted by resumé to a friend of hers who works at a hedge fund that needs someone to do legal compliance for them. Well whaddya know!

So by now I'm feeling a lot more positive about everything, and trying to look on the bright side: at least this didn't happen a month or two from now, cuz then I'd be screwed! :-)!

Overdue update

2005-03-15T13:41:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I'm officially the worst excuse for a blogger I've ever seen... If it weren't for the diligent work of one Elizabeth Austin this blog would surely not have been updated in months. In my defense I guess nothing of too much consequence has been going on lately, and "the rant" is my preferred form of blog-expression, as I'm sure some of you remember, ;-).

Things with us are great, as I'm sure you have deduced from da pup's posts, and we're even going to a cute little B&B in Old Saybrook [CT] this weekend for her birthday! Our package includes an hour's massage, that I'm letting her have in its entirety, since I'm as averse to having my back rubbed as most cats are to water (though not all of them, teehee! [and yes, I realize that that was yet another gratuitous cute-cat-shot, so sue me]). I'm definitely sure she'll be as happy as a pig in shit for the duration of said backrub.

On another note, my birthday was last Saturday, and though I'm now 24 I can't really say I feel any different than I did a week ago. Birthdays have never been big in my family, and I find it incredibly hard to get excited about my own birthday, or even care too much. I know that sounds sort of sad, but hey, I'm a giver, and I care a lot more about other people's birthdays than I do about my own. Hey, this way you all can get away with not getting me anything but still getting a little something! Ok, fine, that was a bold-faced lie. IF you want to get something good, at least hook a brotha up with a cerveza, :-).

Anyway, last Friday we went to the Brooklyn Brewery with a bunch of our friends, and it was a really fun time. Fine brews at Spuyten Duyvil followed, and I believe we hit the sack at 2am, which has got to be a record for the two of us in the past few months. I mean, seriously, who can get motivated to go out and party hard on a Friday/Saturday when it's freezing out, there's snow/slush everywhere, and you've got Final Fantasies to play at home? Ok, we've only done that once or twice... But still, the point stands.

A final point of information, before I head down to the 16th floor to get some much-needed sustenance (or attempt thereof): I GOT A NEW JOB! Yes yes yes, Luis continues to whore himself out to the system, but this time working at a hedge-fund, so at least he can get paid more for whoring himself out. I'll be doing the same thing I'm doing now, but exclusively for the hedge-fund, working in legal compliance. Everyone was super nice, the location is good (57th and Park) and the pay is more than I was getting here, with the prospect of a much larger Christmas Bonus, hehe, though I don't think I'll be waiting in line at the Masserati dealership come December like all those bankers... But yeah, Newman's got a brand new bag, and he starts on April 4th, after finishing here on the 25th and taking a well-deserved weeklong vacay.

To Market, To Market

2005-03-14T17:54:00.000-05:00

Ever since I read that a developer was going to slap up a new residential high-rise (barf) on Third between 23rd and 24th, I've been bracing for impact. Yes, construction is sure to be awful, and yes, it's bound to be loud and stinky in that bizarre, wet concrete way, but most of all, it means that my beloved Garden of Eden is gone.

It's not even that the Garden was that wonderful - it's that it was close, things were fresh, and it was much, much better than D'Agostino.

Now that the GoE has been gone for a few months, Luis and I have tried a few options. Of course, there is always the D'Ag around the corner for little stuff and non-perishables, but for fresh produce, forget it. Todaro Bros. is up on Second right near the Petco (where the pets go!), and aside from being a bit of a hike with heavy grocery bags, it is a perfectly acceptable alternative to GoE, and with a much better meat selection to boot.

It seemed like we were going to be just fine, Luis and I, with this new arrangement: D'Ag for emergencies, and Todaro for real food. Everything changed this Saturday, for this Saturday, we set foot in the Associated on the corner of Second and 23rd.

Sweet baby Jesus. This is a supermarket the likes of which I haven't seen since I lived in Burbank and shopped at Pavilions with my mother. This market is so large, it has whole areas that you can't even see from the entrance. I went into the baking aisle and nearly burst into tears. There was the unsweetened cocoa I'd been trying in vain to buy all day. It sat there gleaming right before me at three different price points - store-brand for value, Hershey's for name recognition, and something fancy-pants for the aesthetes. Three different price points! Wow.

And. And! Do you know what else? They have an immense beer aisle. I guess you can figure out where I lost Luis. Not only that: they stock Tripel Karmeliet, our favorite beer from our trip to Brussels. See? Here's Luis enjoying a tasty Tripel.

Unbelievable. How pitiful that we've lived in our apartment for nine months now, and it has taken us this long to find this place. I really hope that someone doesn't come along to tell me how Associated is really a horrible chain and that they mutilate baby seals or something, because I am happy as a pig in shit right now.

Ten Things I Have Done That You Probably Haven't

2005-03-11T12:57:00.000-05:00

Inspired by Michele:

1. I once won a stroller-folding competition.

2. I have worn a bathing suit on stage in front of thousands of people and TV cameras.

3. I've had to swim down the street during a flash flood in Moscow.

4. I have been hit on by Gene Simmons.

5. I have spent an entire paycheck on shoes.

6. I have flown a plane, including takeoff and landing.

7. I once got a boy's ass kicked by a mob of men including my father and brothers.

8. I played a blind woman and got so immersed in the character that I found it hard to look people in the eyes for a long time.

9. I have gone on Viper seven times in a row.

10. I have hired someone based solely on their appearance.

Also

2005-03-06T00:56:00.000-05:00

I love the new Tori Amos album, The Beekeeper. It's certainly not her best ever (From the Choirgirl Hotel holds that distinction for me), but it is definitely enjoyable, and it's passed the test of making me tear up at least once while listening to it. The much-anticipated duet with Damien Rice, "The Power of Orange Knickers," is a little lackluster. I'm not sure I can put my finger on the exact problem, though - it almost seems as if their voices don't match properly or something.

For as much as Luis bitches about singer-songwriters and teases me about how vulnerable I am to their manipulations, he's the one who bought The Beekeeper for me a few days ago. What a sweetheart, huh?

Now we've got the new NIN album to look forward to (and the live show at the Hammerstein that Luis and I are going to in May - huzzah!)*. I feel like I'm back in high school or something. Is Prick, Marilyn Manson, or Psychotica coming out with something new? Seems like they oughta be...

*This reminds me of the last time I went to see a Nine Inch Nails show in Maryland with Jenny. We were sitting in the last covered row of seats at an outdoor ampitheatre, and so we were standing on our chairs to watch the show. I had been expecting my period, and just a few songs into the set I felt it start. I didn't want to run to the Andy Gumps in the middle of the concert, so I decided to forget it as best I could and just deal with it when we got home. Jenny and I enjoyed the concert very much, and once we got back to our apartment, I was shocked to discover that I had not, in fact, started my period at all. I was just that happy to see Trent Reznor. I wish I could tell him this story without seeming like a scary stalker girl - I would get a kick out of it, were I a completely hot rock star/sex god.

The Domesticated House-Girl

2005-03-05T23:18:00.000-05:00

Luis left the house early in the morning, but I was so sleepy that I barely noticed. I finally woke up late, covered in sleeping fuzzballs, and spent most of the late morning and early afternoon naked on the couch with a box of Cookie Crisp. Finally, when I could find nothing good on TV, I padded around and took forever to clean the house, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing the tub, and making one big pile of magazines and papers for Luis to sort through when he got home.

I left the house only once at 7 p.m. to go to the supermarket. I decided that I would make lasagna for dinner, since it sounded really good to me and I know that Luis loves it too. Right at the beginning of the preparation process, Luis came home and helped me fix dinner right down to the garlic bread.

At one point in my life, this would have sounded like a very disappointing Saturday; however, I can honestly say that it was truly magnificent.

It's official

2005-02-25T09:10:00.000-05:00

I'm regressing back to those school days, school days, happy golden rule days.
First, the case of the evil chin zit. Now, pink eye.

I feel like the world's most disgusting creature, one gimpy, crusty eye cursing the bright sun, the cold air, and its own reflection. I feel infected, and really, well, I am. Ick.

I never had pink eye as a child, and never really saw it in action either because as soon as one kid in class came down with it, he or she would be sent home stat. I can certainly see why! I don't feel sick, but you can tell that this sucker is majorly virulent.

I wore sunglasses from the front door of my apartment all the way to my desk at work today. The last thing I wanted was for fellow straphangers to stare at my one puffy monstrosity, the crowd parting like the Red Sea before Moses as I walk through the car to find a seat. Children screaming, women crying, men throwing themselves in front of their families - "Look away, kids! She-Beast, take me instead! They've got so much to live for."

Pete assures me that he's had pink eye, and it goes away in a few days. Keep your fingers crossed for me, and remember to wash your hands!

This is a red-letter post

2005-02-22T22:36:00.000-05:00

It is the first time I am posting from my brand spanking new Powerbook. Please direct all abject worship this-a way.

It is the first time I am posting while ganking someone else's wifi. Thanks, whoever you are! You're the best.

It is the first time I am posting from the couch.

It is the first time I am posting from the couch while watching Luis kick ass at Final Fantasy VII. Cloud so sexy. Sephiroth also so sexy, and so evil. Neither so sexy as Squall, whose game, thank god, we play next. I think it's all about the scar. :: pant pant pant ::

Hey, it is the first I am posting from the couch while watching Luis kick ass at Final Fantasy VII and simultaneously fantasizing about writing some wicked Squall/Cloud slash.

Right. Where was I?

Well, no matter. I am always one of the last people to hop on the gadget bandwagon, so it makes sense that only now would I truly understand the glory that is wifi and the supreme beauty that is the Powerbook. I've always been an Apple girl, but now I'm falling in love all over again.

Funny Things My Dad Says

2005-02-18T11:37:00.000-05:00

In honor of my father's 64th
Happy Birthday, you big dork

"She's been rode hard and put away wet"
- about a woman who looks like she's busted/tired/been around the block

"I clicked on the link and now the damn computer's just sitting here playing with itself."
- adventures in dial-up

"Hit the bricks, bitch."
- said to a nun

"Shut yer pie hole."

"Junior was busy running off at the mouth."
- the way he described Luis after their first meeting

"Uhhhh, booger."
- the first thing he came up with when asked to pick a password

"Maaaa, I want the Krispy Kreeeeeme!"
- screamed at my mother in the Cartman voice in the middle of Walmart

"You smell what?"
- his response to anything you say to him - going deaf, he never hears you the first time around

"All the river. Mercy buckets."
- making fun of me and mom speaking French

"He's just practice."
- said about every boyfriend I've ever had, except for Luis. I guess it's game time now, baby!

"He's a little light in his loafers."
- describing my first real crush, who really did turn out to be gay

"Heaving your burritos"
- euphemism for throwing up

Doing the iPod Shuffle

2005-02-11T17:53:00.000-05:00

How do you use your mp3 player? Are you the sort of person who listens by album, almost like a digital CD player? How about the guy who makes playlists for all occassions? (Luis, I'm looking at you, Mr. "Chill.") Could you even be like me, the person who always keeps their music on shuffle by song?

If so, then you probably spend most of your time skipping ahead to the next track like I do, since for some reason, the iPod consistently picks songs from the same artist in close succession, or worse yet, gives me all opera when what I really want is some fucking System of a Down. Sugaaahhh!

As an experiment, I decided to get out my crack pipe (oh shit - sorry - iPod) and write down the first ten songs it came up with on shuffle. Ladies and gents, drumroll please:

"Liberi Fatali" (Opening Theme), Final Fantasy VIII
"High and Dry," Radiohead
"There's a Doctor," The Who
"Rock N Roll," Peaches
"Somewhat Damaged," Nine Inch Nails
"Goodbye," Kevin Shields (Lost in Translation)
"Paranoid Android," Radiohead
"O Mimi tu Piu non Torni," La Bohème
"Ikebana," Kevin Shields (Lost in Translation)
"Rushing," Moby

Hrm. I'm pleasantly surprised by this for a few reasons.

(1) It is a pretty accurate illustration of my musical taste.

(2) It illustrates the precise problem I have with the shuffle feature: out of ten songs, two are Radiohead and two are Kevin Shields. I almost always skip past Kevin Shields, only listening to the Lost in Translation soundtrack when I'm in a severe funk.

(3) I'm really, really glad it didn't churn out five Dashboard Confessional tracks in a row like it did on the way to work this morning. There's only so much breaking of hearts and rending of garments that one girl can take!

Tjuzing

2005-02-09T17:25:00.000-05:00

Do you ever find yourself in front of your closet, late for work, frantically trying on everything you own? Nothing fits right, the shirt that goes with these pants is dirty, you forgot to sew that button on, this skirt would really look better with those shoes you can't afford...how can you have a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear?

This is how I feel about our apartment.

Let me clarify, lest Luis take offense: this is how I feel about every place I have ever lived, including my childhood bedroom. All of the components are there - I just haven't hit upon the exact arrangement of light, color, and style that will finally make me sit down and shut up, satisfied with my efforts. Instead, I tweak, I reorganize, I bitch, I fantasize about Benjamin Moore.

Our place looks fine. I know this. Hell, it even looks fucking fantastic by some standards. The problem is, it doesn't look as good as my imagination allows it to look, barring the limitations of time, budget, room size, and feisty cats.*

Another large component is the necessary compromise involved in living together. For example, Luis is emphatic about not painting the walls, so we don't paint the walls, much as I would love to slap something bright and fun up. I was emphatic about buying a new duvet cover after the Fosse/Vaseline incident (don't ask), so we bought a new duvet cover, much as Luis' life probably wasn't grossly impacted by the grease stain. Compromise is good, and probably keeps some of my more insane fantasties in check. What if I covered one wall of the living room in suspended chains and added some uplighting for extra drama? Naah, Luis would never go for it. See what I mean? I actually considered this uplighting/metal thing with ball chain, but I digress...

I wonder if I will ever be able to look at my living space and be 100% satisfied, be it our current apartment in Gramercy or any future place we may call home. Maybe I missed my calling - I should have become an interior designer so I could act out my design fantasies on someone else's dime. With someone else's space, I could put a restriction on myself, know when to tjuzs and when to put down the paintbrush and step away from the découpage.

* This semi-lucid rambling was inspired by a contest going on at Apartment Therapy for the most beautiful bedroom. I would love to be able to enter ours and win, but I fear the criticism from the public judging poll. In a way, it's sort of like putting your picture up on HOT or NOT: if you have to ask, you're probably not.

Fame

2005-02-08T14:49:00.000-05:00

Listen up world, for truly, I have made it. Lo, I made a contribution to Gawker Stalker, and it was published. Scroll all the way for the now famous (in certain circles) Matt Dillon at the Magician encounter.

Shameless Overachieving

2005-02-02T11:44:00.000-05:00

Do you remember when the Simpsons first came out and dinosaurs roamed the earth? Back then, when my brothers and my parents were still on speaking terms, my oldest brother decreed that we were just like the Simpsons. In fact, he still refers to my dad as Homer from time to time - an uncanny likeness if you ask me.

For my birthday one year, Bla bought me one of those "Lisa Simpson - Overachiever" t-shirts. She was shown jumping rope, counting (1,001, 1,002...), and everybody thought this was just hysterical. At the time I was offended, but now I realize that being an overachiever is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, I finished my taxes on February 1st, 2005. E-filed. I think I'm probably within the first 100 in the state, nay, the country! This somewhat unremarkable achievement leaves me feeling warm and fuzzy inside.

I suppose this is due to the fact that we don't get graded on things as adults. In school, I was never satisfied until I got an A, paid my own bills, did the laundry, put up the spring musical, balanced my checkbook, you get the point. Never one to procrastinate, I could always count on my own ability to multitask and achieve. In the workplace, I multitask all the livelong day, but there isn't anything exciting to show for it: no GPA, no Employee of the Year award. Instead, achievement is measured in adult terms: salaries, bonuses, a muttered "good work" from a superior. While these tokens of achievement are certainly more valuable in a pragmatic sense, I can't help but wonder why they leave me so unfulfilled.

The Road Goes Ever On and On

2005-01-26T14:12:00.000-05:00

Last Saturday marked the first real blizzard of this winter, and Luis and I spent it holed up in our apartment with good friends. Did we drink wine and cook a nice, hearty dinner? Did we sit around and talk about work, friends, school, and life? No and no: we spent the entire day watching the extended editions of The Lord of the Rings.

Everyone in attendance had seen the movies before, so we were free to discuss, complain, MST3K, and offer abject worship without worrying about ruining someone's virginal LotR experience. This was truly fortuitous, as some of the night's most memorable moments came from our side conversations and remarks:

About Shadowfax
"Buckbeak, show us the meaning of haste!"

Something is rotten in the state of Mordor:
"Shuffle off this Morgul Vale"

FIGWIT!

Frodo's neck
Seriously, look at the size of it. He's like a fucking linebacker.

Elrond Hubbard

Theodin's horse totally takes a shit in the water as the party is riding up to the steps of Isengard to speak with Treebeard. Plop, plop, plop!

Mumbles Mortensen

"...and smote his ruin upon the mountainside."
Luis and I cracked everyone up when we said this in perfect unision with Gandalf.

Gimli blowing away the ghostly hands of the dead
Stupid. Just... stupid.

Spotting Peter Jackson
In Fellowship, he's a drunkard in Bree. In Two Towers, he's one of the barbarian horde. In Return of the King, he's the captain of one of the Corsair ships.

All in all, the extended editions are better than the theatrical releases. There are some cringe-worthy moments, like the afore-mentioned Gimli smoke thing, Sauruman's death by impaling, and Eowyn doing her best impression of a cat in heat at Theodrid's funeral. Many awesome additions were made, such as the mouth of Sauron, Aragorn addressing Sauron through the palantir, and the backstory of the Faramir/Boromir/Denethor triangle. All the same, much was still left out, like Denethor actually having the palantir (implied in various scenes, but it might have been nice to see him using it at some point), and some scenes were awkwardly cut or rushed.

Bitching aside, the movies are rad, and it was a wonderful task to sit down and watch them all in one go. Thanks to everyone who came!

Casual Introspection

2005-01-19T14:37:00.000-05:00

Things I am good at
Horseback riding
Teasing Luis
Making dessert, from spiced bread to cookies to rum pecan pie
Craft projects
Burning things in the broiler
Cleaning the house - it's down to a science at this point
Being a mommy
Shopping and bargain hunting
Encouraging others to try new things, especially when it comes to style
Dropping five pounds really quickly, and then gaining it all back right afterwards
Doing my own makeup (hey, it's a skill... nay, an art)
Being a vindictive bitch when the situation calls for it
Multitasking
Walking in heels

Things I enjoy, but am not-so-good at
Singing, particularly if harmony is involved (what's my note again?)
Ice skating - I can stay upright and go fast, but I always wanted to do jumps and spins
Playing video games
Hosting - I always forget something important
Playing the bass
Interior decorating
Playing Magic with Luis

Things I am bad at, and that's OK, really
Keeping in touch with people
Photography
Exercising, running, playing anything that ends in -ball
Being patient
Lying (oddly, I can keep secrets just fine)
Debating - I take it too personally
Talking (or caring, for that matter) about politics
Drawing and painting
Letting go
Eating, especially somewhere new
Holding back tears

Celebrity Skin

2005-01-14T16:57:00.000-05:00

Growing up in L.A. and working retail, I have had many occassions to interact with celebrities. Nevermind that I was usually fetching their size for them or helping them pick out layette...

Pamela Anderson
Very, very short. Enormous knockers, but only in proportion to her frame. Put those tits on a normal-sized woman and there's nothing special. Her skin was quite freckly, and not in the aren't I cute way, but in the yiiiikes sun damage way. I feel bad talking shit about her, because she was really very nice. She bought a round crib.

Marlee Matlin
Marlee was always nice to me personally, but she was very demanding and always had her saleswoman with whom she dealt exclusively. She hated the owner of the store, and made no bones about shooting her nasty looks. I never knew the backstory, but it was definitely a strange interaction.

Carmen Electra
This bitch is busted. She was wearing an unbelievable amount of makeup (to go shopping at the Glendale Galleria, wtf??), had two bodyguards at all times (again, at the Galleria, wtf??), and was beyond rude. She looks great in pictures, but up close the milk has most definitely gone bad.

Jennifer Love-Hewitt
OK, so she isn't the best actress in the world, and her singing abilities are questionable, but she is one of the nicest customers I have ever had. I was working a Sunday shift by myself (!), and she was not only patient, but sympathized with my plight. She bought about six pairs of shoes, too. She was little and thin, but not in a scary way. Really, she looked good.

Carson Daly
Carson came in with JLH (this is back when he was cute, they were dating, and dinosaurs roamed the earth). Now, Carson was a celebrity of sorts to me long before he started doing that TRL nonsense, because he was a DJ on LA's best radio station, KROQ. As the host of the Furious Five at Nine, my teenage mind looked to Carson to announce that Nine Inch Nails had held on to the number one spot with Perfect Drug. Naturally, when he and JLH came in, I was much more excited to see him, but he turned out to be a pompous jerk. V. unimpressive. Also, he looked like he was coming down off a ridiculous bender.

Zheng Haixia
If you didn't live in L.A. in the mid to late nineties, I won't begrudge you the fact that you have no idea who this is. L.A.'s WNBA team is the Sparks, and since we had Lisa Leslie (who I guess was a big deal), everybody was paying attention to the team. In 1996, this absolutely enormous Chinese woman was drafted. Now, I've seen basketball players in person before, but this woman was unreal. She came into the shoe store to buy a few gifts for her sister and her mother in China, and she picked up our display shoes to examine them. They looked like little dolly shoes in her gigantic mitts. Her hands had to be over a foot long. She had to duck when she came in the door, and when she sat down on the bench to wait for the shoes to come out, her knees were up past her ears. Never in my life have I seen a larger person. Check out this picture. ZHENG HAIXIA SMASH!!

Jerry Seinfeld
I worked for Steve Madden shoes, which at the time only sold women's footwear. Jerry Seinfeld walked in, looked around, and said, "Man's name... women's shoes!" Then, just as quickly as he'd come into our lives, he left.

Just got back from Philly, and boy are our butts tired!

2005-01-09T16:55:00.000-05:00

Actually, the drive back wasn't bad at all, especially since we hit literally NO TRAFFIC WHATSOEVER at the Lincoln Tunnel... We didn't even have to wait a single minute once we got to the toll booth! We were flabbergasted: we actually completed the drive from Philly to New York in just a few minutes more than the time Mapquest said it would take, and that's counting the quick stops at EB Games (we needed a PS1 memory card, ok people?) and 7-11 (mmm, irish creme coffee!).

But getting back to what's important: the wedding was super super fun, and I got to meet and hang out with a bunch of Liz's friends from Hopkins. I really like them a lot, and it was awesome to hang out with them. The wedding itself was also great, and the food was outstanding, as was the dancing. I put the less-blurry photos on my Yahoo Photos page, so be sure to check them out. Liz in her bridesmaid dress? H-O-T. So hot that I asked her to wear it to the wedding we're going to in Buenos Aires in May, hehehe.

Auld Lang Suck: the Failure of New Year's Eve to Stimulate and Entertain

2004-12-31T13:35:00.000-05:00

Introduction
This study has been undertaken by the research team in order to delineate and quantify the level of displeasure with New Year's Eve as experienced by Manhattan worker monkeys. The research team has elected to put forth this effort as a direct reaction to the tiresome, small-talky elevator conversations that have transpired from 12.28.04 through 12.31.04. In this study, we shall prove that New Year's Eve is not only a stupid excuse for a celebration, but also a disappointing chaotic mess when experienced in Manhattan.

Materials & Methods
The study was conducted on Friday, January 31, 2004 from 10:30 a.m. until 12:30 p.m. at the desk of the principal investigator. All worker monkeys were questioned by electronic mail, shouting across the room, or telepathic communication, and submitted their responses to the research team similarly. Participating worker monkeys were selected on an entirely subjective basis, and should not be construed to represent a random sample of worker monkeys, but rather a complete sample of intelligent, like-minded worker monkeys. To protect the identity of each participant, their responses will be preceded by an arbitrary letter and amusing characteristic. Data was analyzed using a complicated spreadsheet with lots of pretty colors.

Results & Interpretations
The responses gathered have proven the team's hypothesis that New Year's Eve is an absolute abomination, as well as a blight on all other respectable holidays and occassions for getting wasted.

Worker Monkey A (gigantic feet)
"Dude, New Year's can suck my ass. Every year I look around at the crushing mass of humanity and realize that they are all pretending to have fun."

Worker Monkey B (drops horrific SBDs every afternoon)
"Last year I paid $150 to go to a bar that was completely full of vapid, over-cologned people. What can I say - I thought it would be fun! Instead, I spent the evening getting completely blitzed on $18 martinis and throwing up in a cab on the way home at 12:02."

Worker Monkey C (attached earlobes)
"Where do they pee? All those Times Square idiots, I mean. Tell me that! It's disgusting."

Worker Monkey D (sensitive new-age guy)
"I got all my drinking out of my system in college. I'm an adult person now. Is it too much to ask for the other adults to quit acting like 18 year old girls at their first frat party? Come on, now."

Worker Monkey E (nice watch)
"When you're single, all you can think about is who you will kiss on New Year's Eve. When you're in a relationship, you've got the person to kiss, but the big midnight moment is always sort of a letdown. Somehow it isn't as magical as you think it should be, even if you're in love."

Worker Monkey F (popcorn fiend)
"Last year, I saw this trashy drunk bitch totally hit the pavement. That was awesome in a wow-humans-are-totally-disgusting sort of way."

Worker Monkey G (nervous tic)
"Most nights, I'm in bed by 10:30. On New Year's, I have to fight to stay awake until midnight, and even so I'm yawning and have a glazed look in my eyes. If I'm with friends, they inevitably think I'm bored or uninterested in hanging out with them. Not at all! I just can't function so late at night, especially if I have a few glasses of something alcoholic."

Discussion
The research team expected the primary factor in the negative New Year's Eve experience to be related to the consumption of alcohol and subsequent hangovers; however, we were surprised to find that most respondents described their feelings more in line with disappointment and/or disgust in others. Does New Year's Eve bring out the worst in people? Does it allow us to see, with too focused and far-reaching a scope, just how base and moronic human behavior can be?
The team invites further discussion on this topic from the scientific community. We look forward to including the New Year's Eve experiences (past and present) of readers in future reports, so please document them using the comment system below.

Further Reading
Old, but still relevant
Apparently, "suck" is too subjective an adjective
From the other side of the bar
Oooh-kay
What's the hemisphere got to do, got to do with it?

In light of recent posts

2004-12-28T13:03:00.000-05:00

Ha! Boy will Luis hate this! I, on the other hand, can't wait to get it. Mich, Chooley, I assume you agree.

Post-script to previous...

2004-12-22T13:50:00.000-05:00

So I just made the trek over to the Virgin Megastore in Times Square to pick up the soundtrack to "Life Aquatic", since they don't carry it at the Altitunes in Grand Central that is right by me... A minute after walking into the Virgin Megastore I walked up to the first Virgin employee I saw and asked where to find the soundtrack to "Life Aquatic". He looked at me, looked down at the pile of CDs he was carrying and pulled out a copy of the soundtrack. "You rock," I said to him, and 5 minutes later I was on my way back to work. Bitchin'.

From the liner-notes written by Wes Anderson: "Seu Jorge, as Pelé dos Santos, translated, adapted, and performed eleven David Bowie songs for us in Portuguese. He sang on the decks of our ship, the Belafonte, while we were running at full steam on the open sea; he sang from the stage of an opera house in Naples; he sang on our studio sets at Cinecitta; and he played one song sitting on the roof of a lighthouse we had built next to a medieval castle. I tried to understand the Portuguese. Thinking of the lyrics in English, I asked, "Jorge, which word means 'cigarette'?" because none of them sounded anything like it. He nodded and said something very poetic about friendship and hope and the future -- but no 'cigarette'. I took a minute and thought about this, and then I said, "OK, but every once in a while add in a 'Rebel Rebel', will you?" I never read any complete translations, but in the end I am convinced that Jorge's words -- and unquestionably his beautiful performances -- capture the spirit of David Bowie's. Exactly what we were looking for."

Steve-Zi

2004-12-22T11:28:00.000-05:00

You know you're venturing into uncharted waters when in the first five minutes of a movie a bizarre Brazilian guy with a named Pelé dos Santos starts strumming the chords to Space Oddity on his guitar and singing the lyrics in Portuguese...

If someone were to ask me to summarize the plot of "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou", I honestly wouldn't know what to tell you. "It's about a father being reunited with his long-lost son," I could say, or "It's about an oceanographer's quest for revenge, searching for the elusive jaguar-shark that ate his friend and colleague Esteban," or even "It's about a reporter trying to write a story about the man whose photo hung on her wall as a little girl." Any one of those things is true, but yet any single one of those fails to capture the whole experience that was "The Life Aquatic".

I really disliked "The Royal Tenenbaums". I'm not sure why, exactly, but I do remember that it was incredibly slow, not particularly funny, and I just didn't care about the characters (if you ask Liz I think she'd answer the same thing, but also mentioning how much she detests Gwyneth Paltrow [kind of like my absolute hatred of both Kirsten Dunst and Tobey Maguire, which explains why, despite reading Spiderman comics religiously as a kid, I have yet to see either of those films]). I wasn't sure what to expect going into the theater last night, but having seen the trailer for "Life Aquatic" I was optimistic, since it promised to be much better...

The misgivings I had about "Tenenbaums" were not present in "Life Aquatic", and I found it to be a very refreshing movie with good pacing, great (and wacky) characters and a frickin' awesome soundtrack. David Bowie, the Stooges, Paco de Lucía, some original compositions and Pelé dos Santos (who is a real Brazilian musician named Seu Jorge, that I now highly recommend, based on his performance in the film). The soundtrack is a very worthy successor to the soundtrack for "Rushmore", that I really enjoyed despite never having seen the movie (I'd say something about "The Royal Tenenbaums" soundtrack, but I can't really remember it).

Bill Murray's performance as Captain Steve Zissou is awesome, and I really hope he gets another Oscar nod and an actual Oscar win for this one (I love him in any role, from "Caddyshack" to "Groundhog Day" to "The Razor's Edge" to "Lost in Translation"). I'll keep my fingers crossed...

The rest of the cast is also great: Owen Wilson as Steve Zissou's probable son, Cate Blanchett as the reporter doing the story on Zissou, Anjelica Huston as Zissou's estranged wife, Jeff Goldblum as the arch-nemesis, Willem Defoe as the "Intelligent. Organized. German." first-mate, and so on... After seeing this movie I think I'll definitely go see Wes Anderson's movies from now on, and I guess I'll have to give "Tenenbaums" another chance, and check out "Rushmore" as well.

I highly recommend the movie, and everyone should trek up to the Loew's on Broadway and 69th to see it, since it's currently only playing in limited release and it's the only screen in the city that's showing it (get your tickets in advance on Fandango.com [they have this cool thing where you print out your receipt, that has a barcode, and you take that directly to the person who rips your tickets, and they scan it and hand you your tickets right there, with no lines or waiting for a ticket machine!], since they're always sold-out).

Things I remember about Russia

2004-12-21T18:48:00.000-05:00

The pervasive smell of laquered wood
Women in footwear that eclipsed even my own in impracticality
Dinner for 15¢
A dead dog's corpse lapping gently on the banks of the Yauza
A fellow student trying to explain to the Professor, in his intermediate Russian, why we were all staring at the river. He said we were looking at a "soboka kotoraya ne zhivyoht" - a dog who doesn't live.
Feeling the presence of Stalin, despite Khrushchev's best efforts to eradicate him
Living here
The opulence and the tragedy
Old widows selling produce on the steps of the metro
Mayonnaise: condiment, dairy-substitute, gastrointestinal doom
The amazing long, swift, and steep escalators on the metro
Talented but unemployed musicians performing for spare change everywhere - on street corners, in the perehod, whereever there is room to stand
A young beggar fiddling in front of Ismailovsky Park, saying the only English phrase he knew to all of the tourists: "Hello, my friend."
The Militsia
Being mistaken for a Chechen rebel each and every day. I know I'm terrifying-looking, but come on already!
The surly old man who checked our student IDs in front of Mendeleev University
My host mother asking me if I had ever met any black people, because she heard that America was "just full of them." !!
People laughing at my patronimic
An overnight train ride from Moscow to Saint Petersburg
Dancing with Yakov
Wishing I had kept a journal
Wanting to cry at the beauty and strangeness of it all

Singer-songwriters and their agony

2004-12-16T18:14:00.000-05:00

Ok, I must admit that this was inspired completely by two things: a) reading about Shirley's obsession with the song "The Blower's Daughter" (just scroll down to where it says "Listen" and "Cheat") from the movie Closer, and b) hearing about Liz's current obsession with that song and consequently Damien Rice ("can-oo suck-oo my balls-ooroo" [sorry, folks, private joke for the Pup]) first-hand, with her playing the song a few hundred times at home the other night (not really, but it felt like a few hundred times because of this one repeated lyric [more on that later]).

Listening to those 3.5 minutes of singer-songwriter angst made me remember just how much I hate singer-songwriters and and want to bash their guitars like John Belushi in Animal House(and I’m sure many of you know the scene I’m about to mention): he’s at his frat’s party and he sees this one totally hippy-looking dude with 5 or 6 girls huddled around him, and he’s strumming on his guitar and singing a song that went:

"I gave my love a cherry that has no stone

I gave my love a chicken that has no bone

I told my love a story..."

At this point Belushi looks at the camera, raises his eyebrow slightly, and grabs the guys guitar and proceeds to smash it against the wall and stairs, shattering it to bits. He then gets this sheepish look on his face, grins and says “Sorry”, and walks away. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Beware the ides of March, Damien Rice!

"But why such hatred?" I hear you cry...

First off, if a musician's stage-name is a first name followed by a last name, I will in all likelihood not like him/her (there are, of course, exceptions to this rule). John Mayer? I'll turn his body into a wonderland...a bloody pulp of a wonderland. Martin Sexton and Jeff Buckley? I'll hallelujah all over their candy-asses. Tori Amos? I'll break her CD in half and eat a bowl of cornflakes, girl. Bob Dylan? I'll roll on you like a stone. I've got more, people, but I think you get the idea... (In all fairness there are actually a few Bob Dylan songs I like, but I figured I'd throw that one in there for good measure.)

See, I love music, I really do. I love all kinds of music, too many kinds some people have even said to me, because I can find redeeming qualities in almost every genre. Some people like pop and listen to Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan (by the way, wtf is up with her?! She's frickin' 18!), which I can accept. Others listen to hipster-rock like The Strokes, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and god knows what other "The" bands are trendy these days, which I can accept. Heck, I can even accept the fact that half of our nation listens to country music trash like Martina McBride, Tim McGraw, Shania Twain and anybody else not named Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash (who rock).

I cannot, however, for the life of me understand the appeal that something like Damien Rice's "The Blower's Daughter" has... All he does for 3.5 minutes (or however long the song is) is strum on his guitar and sing this one lyric over and over again: "Can't take my eyes off of you". In fact, he sings that so often that when I saw the trailer for "Closer" and that song was playing in the background, I thought some dude was playing a lame-o cover of Gloria Gaynor's excellent song "Cant take my eyes off of you"! What a bizarre coincidence... The least he could've done was come up with something more original to whine about!

Another reason I think I hate singer-songwriters is that, for me, it's all about the music, as I was telling Liz last night, and almost nothing about the lyrics, save for very rare occasions (it's so rare, in fact, that I can't even think of one of those occasions right now). Take Led Zeppelin, my favorite band: can you guess what the appeal of songs like "Stairway to Heaven", "Kashmir" and "Achilles' Last Stand" is to me? Let me give you a hint: it's not in lyrics like:

"There's a lady who's sure

All that glitters is gold

And she's buying a stairway to heaven";

"Oh let the sun beat down upon my face

Stars to fill my dreams

I am a traveler of both time and space

To be where I have been";

"Oh the mighty arms of Atlas

Hold the heavens from the earth

From the earth

Whoaaaaaaaaaaa."

No siree.

Led Zeppelin is my favorite band and those are some of my favorite songs because of the mind-blowing power of their music, the killer guitar-riffs and the unison with which they all play, the fact that they're truly a band. Even in songs like "Tangerine", "All of My Love" and "Going to California", that are very calm and collected by Led Zeppelin standards, what strikes me most is the music, not the lyrics:

"Tangerine, tangerine

Living reflections from a dream

I was her love, she was my queen

And now a thousand years between."

This isn't exactly Shakespeare, is it? In fact I think it's more like Dan Brown: you really enjoy what is written (or sung in the case of Led Zeppelin), not because of what is actually written on the page (because, let's face it, "The Da Vinci Code" isn't exactly "Hamlet"...), but rather because of how he conveys those words, with a great background story. Tangerine is a kick-ass song, and it's all in the music, which is what conveys the feeling of the lyrics, not the lyrics themselves. What the hell do the lyrics I just quoted mean? I have no frickin' clue, but I know the music is still great.

Sooo, going back to Damien Rice: what can we find in his song "The Blower's Daughter"? We've got the line "Can't take my eyes off of you" or some variation thereof sung 18 times, with some guitar-strumming in the background. At least Led Zeppelin has some real music going on behind *lyrical gems* like this one, from "Ramble On":

"T'was in the darkest depths of Mordor

I met a girl so fair

But Gollum, and the evil one crept up

And slipped away with her her."

Mr. Rice can't even say he has a particularly pretty melody going on behind his whining. Maybe it's just that I can't appreciate poetry, who knows... (That's a completely different can of worms, and I feel I can be only so controversial in a single post without risking bodily injury, :-)!)

Anyway, enough bitching for now. I'm heading to my firm's Christmas Party at Cipriani's in about 4 minutes, where I will proceed to stuff myself with filet mignon, cocktail shrimp the size of my fist and Grey Goose tonics. Liz even said that I shouldn't come home early, since she'll be wrapping my gifts (yay!). It's gonna be a big one, peeps...

Afterthought: gee, maybe if Natalie Portman's character in "Closer" had a daughter then she would be the real "Blower's Daughter", get it? Thank you, thank you, I'm here every Tuesday and Thursday. Tip your waitress. Try the veal...

Miss Jackson if you're nasty

2004-12-16T11:35:00.000-05:00

This is among the most disgusting things I have ever read, particularly the very last line of the article. Not to mention the fact that all of these supposedly hot girls look completely busted, or as the divine Ms. Jones would say, "To' up from the flo' up."

Beauty is, of course, subjective. Perhaps I am a bad person for thinking that these girls are: a) nasty, b) vapid, and c) classless. On the other hand, how low can you sink? Buying a fake engagement ring so that you can supposedly ward off the advances of construction workers? I have news for you, mamacita. Those guys will still cat call you regardless of the ring's presence or perceived bling-factor. (I can't believe I just wrote "bling." Kill me now.)

All the same, what living, breathing woman hasn't had to fend off the unwanted advances of a would-be suitor? My Catholic guilt tells me that it's wrong to lie, but what about white-lying to a man to save his dignity and prevent your own discomfort? Surely that isn't so bad... or is it? In the past, I've pretended not to speak English (or in Moscow, not to speak Russian). I've said I had a boyfriend when I really didn't. I've even been so forthright (gasp!) to say, "Thank you, but I'm really not interested." How do you handle the situation?

The pain!

2004-12-10T18:04:00.000-05:00

So after weeks of stinging pain every time I ate/drank anything hot/cold, I finally went to the dentist today (I was supposed to go a few weeks ago, but that day my attorneys invited me to go have lunch at The Four Seasons with them, and who am I to say no?). She basically redid the filling, saying that maybe there was just some area that wasn't covered properly, so hot/cold liquids would go into the tooth and make it hurt...

Anyway, it wasn't too bad, and my notoriously anasthaesia-proof mouth only took 3 shots to get numb, and she redid the filling in half an hour. The problem is that I just had some room temperature H2O and I got the same feeling, though less intense (the lydocaine hasn't worn off completely yet). I really frickin' hope it's just my tooth that is sensitive from the drilling and scraping, and not that the problem hasn't actually been fixed...sigh...

Off to the Brooklyn Brewery with Liz to drink more frosty beverages that will make my teeth hurt. Oh joy.

Money habla-s

2004-12-08T17:44:00.000-05:00

This morning, Luis dropped off the special holiday notecards for our super and handyman. I asked him to do this for two reasons: it's more convenient for him en route to work, and he can speak America's second language, further placing us in the good-people-who-we-won't-kick-out-because-of-their-darling-but-verboten-kitties category.

As it turns out, my manipulation is working splendidly. There were big smiles involved, accompanied by the tidy exchange of money for services rendered (and temporary blindness), totalmente en español. Now, all we have to do is ask them nicely to fix some things, and act natural about Fosse and Conan when they show up. Cats? What cats?

Christmas-time woes

2004-12-07T14:53:00.000-05:00

Why is it that it's almost impossible to get all your Christmas shopping done in a timely fashion, and more than 2 weeks before the actual gift-exchange? I've bought so many gifts already, but so many are still missing... Even when we have the webpage loaded right in front of our eyes Liz and I can't seem to muster up the strength to sit down and order the gifts we're getting for our brothers+sisters-in-law, despite the fact that the order page has been open in Firefox for at least two full days! Sigh... Maybe tonight we'll actually do it.

Plus another problem that's rearing it's ugly head is the fact that, while we're not sure if we're technically allowed to have them, our wonderful boys are standing in the way of things getting fixed in our apartment. Lord knows that we'd be in hot water if our super came by to fix stuff and saw two cats in a supposedly animal-free building... While I don't think it's strictly enforced, clearly it would be safer to either: a) not have them around when the super's coming over (but it's impossible to find out in advance, since he just shows up when he's free), or b) wait until after we give them some dinero for Christmas, so that they're more likely to ignore their presence, even though we can be pretty hard to ignore sometimes! The list of things keeps getting bigger, though, so we want to try and fix these problems as soon as we can, because believe you me, no one likes their closet door to fall on their leg. Do you like it? Yeah. I didn't think so. ;-)!

But back to these gift-obtaining shennanigans, I still need to get the piece de resistance for the pup, and while I have many ideas and leads, I actually need to go out and see how those ideas play out.

I also still need to get stuff for my sister and Liz's dad (I know what I'm getting him, but need to find out what other accessories and such I can get him with it), plus one or two more things for my mom. Lordy there's still stuff to do!

You get me Closer to god

2004-12-03T11:53:00.000-05:00

I'm sorry for the short notice, but does anybody want to go see Closer with me on Saturday afternoon? I would really like to see it, mostly because of Mr. Delicious himself, Jude Law. Hee. Any takers?

Hot diggity damn!

2004-12-01T17:20:00.000-05:00

So today marks our one-year anniversary! Yep. Three hundred and sixty-five days since we met. Honestly, I couldn't be happier with life right now, but I'm sure you all knew that, hehe. I'm happier than a kitty with a rugby ball! (OK, I realize that was a totally gratuitous shot of one of our gorgeous cats. So sue me...)

Work has finally resumed it's normal, sluggish pace, and all I've been doing lately is make closing sets, copy documents, etc., and no more of those "stay til 3am" days, which I'm pretty happy about, even though my OT$ will be less. But hey, that's what Christmas bonuses are for, right?

I just remembered an e-mail a friend here at work sent me a few months ago, with a link to some other guy's blog that gave you a good cross-section of life as a paralegal.

Anyhoozers, I gotta go finish some stuff before checking outta here to head to dinner with Liz at Brasserie (one of our faves). What to have? Steak and frites? Moules and creamed spinach? Steak and moules? Qvestions, qvestions...

Hugs.

Shto? Uzjas!

2004-11-29T15:40:00.000-05:00

This morning, The White Stripes came on my iPod, and now I have the stupidest lyric running through my head:

"I got a backyard with nothing in it / except a stick, a dog, and a box with something in it"

Erm, what?

OK, first of all, I realize that The White Stripes are so last year, or two years ago, or whatever. Shove off. I still listen to Industrial, mkay?

Second of all, what the fuck kind of stupid-ass lyric is that? Apparently, it's the kind that burrows deep into your brain and shakes a shimmy on the butter.

Speaking of iPods, I read this neat post and have been thinking about what a great idea a wireless iPod would be. Good on ya, Christian.

Thanksgiving in Bumblefuck

2004-11-24T09:31:00.000-05:00

Luis and I are leaving this evening to spend the holiday with my parents in Winchester, VA. God help us.

We'll be back and blogging on Sunday. Until then, Happy Turkey!

Bad Jokes

2004-11-23T17:22:00.000-05:00

Yo mama's so ubiquitous, she everybody's mama! (Credit where credit is due to the Buttered Niblets.)

What's Jackie Chan's favorite drink?
Wa-taaaah!

So there are these two muffins in a pan in the oven. The first muffin turns to the second and says, "Whew! Is it hot enough in here for ya?" The second muffin says, "Oh my god, it's a talking muffin!"

And the worst (dorkiest) of all...
Three engineering students were sitting around talking between classes, when one brought up the question of who designed the human body. One of the students insisted that the human body must have been designed by an Electrical Engineer because of the perfection of the nerves and synapses. Another disagreed, and exclaimed that it had to have been a Mechanical Engineer who designed the human body. The system of levers and pullies is ingenious. "No," the third student said, "you're both wrong. The human body was designed by a Civil Engineer. Who else but a Civil Engineer would have put a toxic waste line through a recreation area?"

Anybody else have any bad jokes? Corniness never fails to make me smile.

Mes Cheveux

2004-11-18T17:42:00.000-05:00

"Never [cut] your [hair], and [it] will soon become unlimited."
- Jean Jacques Rousseau

Since the moment of my birth, my hair has given me trouble. I was born completely bald and stayed that way through my second birthday. My mother, with a head full of curls, was understandably perplexed. Though he had already started to lose his hair, my father felt the same way. After all, this is a man who was the bass player for a 60s band called The Mohairs, because they had mo' hair than anyone else. How could their collective child be bald?

Once my meager hair began to come in, it was mousy brown and stick straight - the kind of straight that sort of globs together in clumpy, stringy strands, never falling in a shiny cascade like in the Pantene commercials. As a result, I spent most of my youth either in rollers or in the process of removing them. I remember my mother's disappointed face each time as the hairstyle she'd worked so hard to achieve fell right out of my stick straight hair. "Don't bounce," she would say through clenched teeth. No matter how still I was or how smoothly I walked, my hair would wilt like week-old roses.

When I did the pageants, I was onstage for only 5 or 10 minutes at a time during each portion of the competition, so I usually had ample opportunity to return to the dressing room and fix my wilting, hairsprayed disaster zone. My first ever panic attack was hair-related, and it happened the night before the interview preliminaries. I was crumpled on the cool tile floor of the hotel bathroom, sobbing my heart out because I could not decide whether I should re-dye my hair before the interview competition, or wait until the next night so that it would be freshly dyed for finals. Everything was slipping through my fingers - the competition, my sense of self, my sanity. I wound up dying my hair that night through tears and snot and puffy, bleary eyes. I didn't win the pageant that year. I didn't even make top 15.

I began my addiction to hair dye when I was thirteen years old, and it continued straight on through college. For most of those years, I was some version of a redhead. In my father's mind, I am forever fifteen years old, tall and lanky, with long, red hair (with fake curls at the bottom, of course). I think this is why he was so traumatized when my mother took me to Vidal Sassoon for my first real haircut before going off to college. I got the classic Sassoon cut, but without the bangs. Mom and I came home, and my father just looked at me, shook his head, and walked away. Then I dyed my hair black, and started packing my bags to leave him and my mother. I think it really was a cathartic moment in our relationship, as he switched modes from bossy you'll do what I want when I want it dad to needy, guilt-tripping dad. To rub salt in the wound, my freshman year of college I dyed my hair every color of the Manic Panic rainbow - sometimes several at once.

To this day, I get a meaningful look from my father every time I cut my hair, as though it is a personal affront to him. With every trim I get we are farther apart, and yet the older I get the more I learn to hold him close. After all, he may not be around for my next haircut, as his eyes seem to remind me every time we see each other.

I am getting a haircut on Saturday, despite the fact that I will be seeing my parents for Thanksgiving less than a week from now. This 1/3 blonde, 2/3 brown skunk look I'm presently rocking has outstayed its welcome. I can't wait to hear what dad won't say about it.

Schadenfreude

2004-11-16T17:22:00.000-05:00

Yes, I know that this term has been done to death in the media of late (sort of like metrosexual, Fab Five™, and Yeeeeeargh!); however, there is no other term to describe the truly perverse pleasure I take in the discomfort of others.

Sadly, my schadenfreude extends not only to strangers, but also to loved ones - ostensibly people who I should be horrified to see hurt. I remember getting into awful giggle fits when I was a child because my mother had stubbed her toe and was making that untypeable, sucking in "Sssssss" noise. Why is that funny? I can't explain it, but I know that I'm cracking up just sitting here typing it.

When Luis and I first started dating, we were cuddling on his bed one night when he brought his head down really hard against the windowsill. Kersmack! True to form, I started laughing so hard I was crying. I kept trying to hold it in, but I'm sure he could tell because my whole body was shaking with the effort. I apologized and apologized, but I think I really hurt his feelings that night. (Sorry again, honey!)

The most memorable incident I can think of happened when I was a sophomore at Hopkins. Levering Hall held a partially below-grade cafeteria that was only open for breakfast and lunch. Jenny and I (or was I alone? I can't remember now) were approaching the entrance below the Glass Pav, which had about eight brick stairs leading down. It had been pissing rain all day, and I remember seeing this freshman (who had very recognizable magenta hair) coming out of the doors and starting up the stairs. He was carrying a big sandwich on a styrofoam plate with one of those plastic lids that never seems to stay in place, balanced atop a large soda cup. Naturally, the poor kid completely did a face plant on the wet slippery stairs, his sandwich exploding in midair and soda cup executing a fantastic triple flip before hitting the brick below. To this day, I crack up when I think of this incident. It happened so fast too - poor kid. I wonder if he remembers me as some gothy bitch who was laughing at him as he tried to pick up the remains of his lunch and his dignity.

Of ubiquitous bracelets and nonextant blue-drink

2004-11-15T16:51:00.000-05:00

This weekend I was in Philadelphia for the bridal shower and bachelorette party of one of my dearest friends. What a fun time! The shower was held in a big mansion on the Cabrini College campus. My friend's mother really pulled out all the stops to make this a memorable and spectacular afternoon. She even made a donation to a breast cancer charity, and gave each attendee a bracelet to show our support. What a great idea! It's nice to know that her money went directly to the charity, unlike that other bracelet snafu. I'm wearing mine today, and I'm feeling very self-righteous and puffy. I am breast cancer-aware, yes I am.

The bachelorette party was a whole lot of fun and a little bit of scandal, which I won't detail here. Suffice it to say that I am exhausted, surprisingly un-hungover (actually not all that surprising due to the v. tragic exploding sour mix incident and ensuing lack of blue drink), and eager to see all my Hopkins friends again soon.

Chin-atown

2004-11-11T18:06:00.000-05:00

- "What happened to your [chin]? Somebody slammed a bedroom window on it?"
-- "Nope. Your wife got excited. She crossed her legs a little too quick. You understand what I mean, pal?"
That was ridiculously dorky. I hope somebody, somewhere, got it.

So, the chin drama continues. I bought the aforementioned benzoil peroxide and have been applying it with great fervor. It seemed to be working quite well until yesterday, when I got a bit overzealous and slightly burned my skin. It doesn't sting or hurt, but it is reddish and very dry. When I smile, my chin feels tight.

Ye gods! When will my suffering end? To date, I have tried the following on the chin zit (which is really now much more of a red chin dot/scar than a proper zit, but no matter):
1) Mario Badescu drying lotion
2) Neosporin
3) Hydrocortizone cream (it went through an itchy, awkward pubescent phase)
4) Neosporin spot treatment, 2% salicylic acid
5) Rite Aid® acne cream, 10% benzoil peroxide

Is this not enough? When will I have burnt off whatever horrible face-karma I'm currently working through? This is because I didn't have pimples as a teenager, isn't it?

:: sigh ::

2:32am and counting...

2004-11-10T02:32:00.000-05:00

So now I finally understand what it's really like to be a paralegal...

In the past week I've worked three 17+ hour days, today is shaping up to be #4, and there are still three workdays left in the week! The worst part is that this pace will keep going until about Thanksgiving, at which point I think I'll be able to retire off of my overtime pay, and maybe buy a little island in the South Pacific for Liz and I... That would be nice.

"Earth to Newman, Earth to Newman, do you read me? You're delirious again... Earth to Newman..."

"Yeah, yeah, I heard you the first time..."

"So act like it, already. Maybe you should have some more coffee?"

When I started here last October things were really slow for days, weeks and even months. I only got the occasional deal here and there, and nothing much was going on except for the usual menial tasks like photocopying, redacting, proofreading, etc. I even jokingly referred to myself as "the Deal Killer", since whenever I got assigned to a deal it went and died on me. "Dammit, man, I'm trying to save a man's life!" (gratuitous Baseketball quote) Ah, Trey Parker, Matt Stone, how I do love thee... Anyway, back to my bitching.

...well, actually, I think that was all the bitching I needed to get off of my chest. The work isn't hard, and most of the time it involves a lot of waiting around. At least they're paying me to be bored stiff circa 3am. Last night at about this time I went and photocopied my face, adding a text bubble and some words to the insomniac collage I was crafting. I have yet to decipher how to convert a PDF to a JPG on my work PC, or else that scan of my face would be all over this blog. Suffice to say that it is now on the invitation to our firm-sponsored paralegal happy hour next week. Kickass.

Alright campers, I'm pushing the 16.5-hour mark, and that means if I order a car now it'll get here in 15 minutes, which means I'll be getting home to a PTFO'd Liz just around 3am, exactly 17 hours after I got to work this morning. You know what that means?

COMP DAY #4!

Hee.

2004-11-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

Yuna: Oh god! It hurts, it hurts!
Tidus: Mmm, is that chicken? Somebody's cookin' over there.

It's over

2004-11-08T21:26:00.000-05:00

Well, after more than forty hours of gameplay, we have finally finished Final Fantasy X. I can say that it was, without a doubt, the best gaming experience of my life, and I never even picked up the controller. Watching Luis play was like sitting down for a fantastic movie I had never seen before, only the movie lasted over three weeks. My only complaint: by the time we got to the end, our party was so badass that the final bosses were a complete joke. It seemed a shame to put all that time in only to face a couple of pussies at the very end of it all.

This experience stands in stark contrast to another of my favorite games, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, otherwise known as Zelda64 for the N64. Much to my chagrin, I have never beaten this game, though I have come woefully, pitifully, tragically close to doing so. As with most games, the final boss goes through a few permutations before dying completely. His first form is the most annoying, as you have to volley a light ball with him until one or the other of you gets tired and consequently zapped. Once you beat him down, he makes the castle collapse, and you only have a few minutes to make a mad dash out of there alive with Princess Zelda. Then, on the ruins of the castle, he turns into this big, black dragon devil thingy that is an ungodly pain in the ass. Clearly, the big, black dragon devil thingy is his final form. (Duh, Mommy. [More on this another time]) I was hacking and slashing away at him when he collapsed in a smoldering heap and Zelda screamed, "Deliver the final blow!"

Now.

What does "Deliver the final blow!" mean to you? Well, to me it goddamn well means that the next time I hit him, that motherfucker's going down. I suppose you don't need me to tell you that I was wrong.

I ran up to him, clobbered him good right in the kisser, and he mauled me to death. I hadn't bothered to heal because this was supposed to be the final blow, remember? Well, so much for that. My little guy kicked the bucket, and I've never been able to get back to that part again. I guess I just don't have it in me.

Just a quick thing before I hop in the shower...

2004-11-03T07:36:00.000-05:00

Dubya: you da man.

12:30pm update - JK: to quote the great sociologist Ali G, "big up to you", sir, for not unnecessarily dragging this out.

Under Pressure

2004-11-02T16:20:00.000-05:00

I believe that there are two types of people: those who pop their pimples, and those who do not.

Luis falls decidedly in the first category, nabbing those rogue bastards the moment they are visible. Before I met him, I was a non-popper, afraid of scarring and the pain of hunkering down for the big squeeze. Now, I'd say I'm sort of entre les deux... willing to pop when the situation is dire, but otherwise too fearful to "poke a skunk," as my mother would say.

I have had a minor... situation... on my chin for a long time now, and I'm convinced that it would not have evolved into such a predicament had I not popped it several months ago. You see, I think it's angry with me.

In order to truly appreciate this anecdote, you must understand that I'm pretty much categorically insane. I anthropomorphize everything, and pepper my daily activities with a sort of running monologue. My morning routine of feeding the cats consists of me talking half under my breath to the cats, their food bowls, the cabinet door, the cans of fancy cat food, and until recently, the little antibiotic pill that I would put in with Conan's food ("OK little guy, now I'm going to crush you up. There you go, here's some beef broth so you taste good.").

Poor, poor Luis, you are surely thinking. What did he do to deserve this madness? He must be a saint. But I digress.

I have had a running dialogue with my chin for many months now. "Please heal. Please. Oh god. Why are you red? Why why why?" Each morning, my chin responds with a hearty "You know what, lady? FUCK YOU. You went and poked at me in the first place." Then my tube of concealer horns in to the conversation. "Could you two shut up, please? I've got some major work to do here." This is nothing compared to the nighttime routine.

Tube of Neutrogena spot treatment: "Diediediediediedie!"
Chin: "Wooooofah! WTF? I was asleep!"
Zit: "Is that all you got?"

Today I read about the wonderful properties of benzoil peroxide. I think I'll give it a shot in lieu of the salicylic acid spot treatment. I have to say, this is exciting. I never had zits as a teenager, so this is a brave new world for me.

And now for something completely different...

2004-11-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

First off, I'd like to say "Happy Eleven Months" to my one and only pup. It's been absolutely awesome, as I know it will continue to be. Ti amo, cara mia.

...and I'm glad she sees it my way. It's good to be right, but it's even better when you're right about something important, :-).

Sooooooo, as per my post's title (I think "As per your request..." and "Will do" are the phrases I use most often as I whore myself out to The Man every day, so why change a good thing...), something different: I got a haircut.

(DISCLAIMER: at no point in the current post's title or body did I promise something "interesting", only "different". Please for to direct all complaints and angry voicemails to 212-660-2245).

Yes, ladies (gentlemen?), the curls are gone, for now. I already envision the pep-talk I'll need to give Liz tonight when she starts pouting about my head's lack of curldom: "It's ok, honey, they'll be back in a few weeks..." Ah, if only I had a camera to delight my anxious audience with a pic... Maybe later.

But for now back to your regularly-scheduled programming, folks, whether that be the blissful nirvana of unemployment, the contemplative purgatory of pencil-pushing or the burning inferno of corporate law.

T-T-F-N.

Proud people breed sad sorrows for themselves

2004-11-01T13:22:00.000-05:00

I woke up this morning, as I do most mornings, with a niggling sense of apprehension. My brain says to me, "Elizabeth Paige Austin (my brain addresses me like an angry parent), what are you going to do with yourself?" The meager reply I eke out is, "Feed the cats, get in the shower, wake up Luis, and then, maybe, I'll think about it."

I feel like time is slipping through my fingers like so much smooth sand. I desperately want to hold on to it, slowing its passage to a bearable speed, removing each grain deliberately until I am ready, finally, to let go of the entire handful. Instead, I grab errant fistful after fistful, waking up each morning with a sense that today should be my day, the day where I do something. It never is.

I am not proud of this. I am not proud of the fact that I didn't go to graduate school right after undergrad. I am not proud of the fact that I've abandoned so many of my dreams because of their perceived impracticalities. Most of all, I resent my own indecision.

Luis is always telling me to calm down, take a look around, and appreciate what I have. He doesn't need me to tell him he's right. I'll get there... eventually.

Ch-ch-ch-check it out

2004-10-31T22:31:00.000-05:00

So I think that the best thing that Yahoo still has going for it (now that Google has officially schelacked it in every other area) is that it has a kick-ass photo page, with what is apparently an unlimited amount of storage space (and if there is an actual space limit, I sure as hell haven't found it). Soooooooo, be sure to go check out my photo page right here. It's got a ton of disgustingly cute photos of us and our disgustingly cute cats.

WARNING: IF YOU ARE A PESSIMIST OR GLASS-HALF-EMPTY PERSON, DO NOT LOOK AT THESE PICS. THEY WILL MAKE YOU CURSE YOUR LIFE FOR NOT BEING AS HAPPY AS US.

But all kidding aside, check them out. Tons of wallpaper material in there...

So yeah, that was my first post. It's been a long day of playing Final Fantasy X and eating Baby Ruths, Reese's Pieces and brown rice... My brain is fried.

Lata.

Welcome!

2004-10-31T19:40:00.000-05:00

Well, here it is - my first post to our new blog. I'm excited to be sharing this virtual space with Luis. It's my hope that it will become something fun for us and vital to our interaction with friends and family.

Per Jon's suggestion/plea/demand, we will endeavor not to wax rhapsodic about our two adorable cats, or the level of domestic bliss we've attained. (Ha! We're unwashed and playing Final Fantasy X together now - that's what I call bliss!) Instead, we'll try to keep it smart, entertaining, and dorky, with a smattering of eye-rolling silliness for good measure.

2004-10-31T19:35:00.000-05:00

Tidus & Yuna