All the cool kids are doing it...

And by that I mean Katie has shown me the light! I, too, am making the jump to Wordpress since I have now been converted and firmly believe it to be vastly superior.

So please update your links and note that I am now found at http://corrance.wordpress.com. It'll be fun, I promise! And, if that were not enough of an enticement, my newest post (only on Wordpress!) delves into the murky Mac vs. PC debate. Drama!

Thinking Buses

This morning I took the bus to work. Normally, I am a strict subway girl and I only revert to the bus when the subway breaks down and I don't mind being late to work. Today I had a spare twenty minutes and couldn't really justify not taking the bus to myself. Bizarrely, the bus is a kind of a luxury to me. It offers me space, new sites and fantastic people-watching, but, most importantly and most splendidly, it offers me time. The subway is merely a way to get from A to B as quickly as possible and with as little human interaction as possible. But the bus. The bus is a time machine. The bus is affected by weather and other people and madcap taxi drivers and traffic and stop lights with the result that the bus is going to take as long as it's going to take no matter your hurry or your deadline.

To some this may seem a trifle inconvenient or even frustrating. But not to me. To me, the bus gives me the gift of this time spent in traffic that the subway so neatly avoids. On the bus you simply can't do anything other than await your stop. And this gives me the ultimate luxury: time to simply sit and think.

I always get on the bus with the absolute best of thinking intentions. I'm going to finally plan out the plot to that novel I've always wanted to write or I'm going to make a mental to-do list of things I need to buy and errands I need to run. But I never do. I've been (magically!) given an hour to just think, it hardly seems appropriate to waste it on mundane topics I could think about anywhere and anytime. So my mind inevitably wanders over topics that I wouldn't get to think about otherwise: my future life-plans (real and fantasy), my personal life, places I’d like to live, people I know, interactions I’ve had, animals I’ve seen. This doesn't make any of these topics unimportant. No, oftentimes what I think about on the bus is the most important thinking I'll do all day. It's a beautiful thing, watching the city blur by as it shifts from the residential pre-wars of the Upper East Side to the midtown glassy high-rises and back down to the low-scale of the East Village, all the while thinking about your life and the things that actually matter, not the insignificant things like errands that you must do in a day.

So I’m grateful for the bus this morning and the time it bestowed upon me and the thoughts I therefore had time to think.

Moments of Music

My friend Emily recently took an education class wherein she had to write about the books that changed her as a reader. This got me thinking about all the things that make us who we are: books, music, speeches, television and conversations; they all change us in some way and form us into the person we have become. So, while I’ll probably do a book-version of this (and probably over at Literary Transgressions), here is my musical life-moments and how they made me the musical creature I am today.

Pre-1989: I don’t remember a lot before 1989 (musically or otherwise), but I do remember my mom singing “You are My Sunshine” to me a lot. This is substantiated by a story she likes to tell about a cross-country all-night flight we took when I was two or three. The plane was filled with a bunch of crabby businessmen and, as Mom and I were the only two people on the plane who didn’t care about the stock market, we apparently got a lot of glares throughout the night. But as the plane came in for a landing and the sun rose over New York, I apparently started to sing, in the middle of the hushed quiet of the airplane, my own little rendition of “You are My Sunshine.” Needless to say, I won the businessmen over.

1989: Following the success of my one-night-only engagement singing on the airplane, I proceeded to write my first song, featuring such Dylanesque lyrics as “Well, a desert is a desert, but you’ll never see a desert/Whysackyergone!” The infectious tune proceeded to be stuck in the confused heads of my devoted fans for years to come, almost all (myself included later) wondering what the heck “whysackyergone” was.

1991: A family vacation to Yosemite National Park provided five-year-old me a perfect opportunity to be quintessentially my generation when I spent most of the vacation plugged into my tape deck Walkman (heck yeah!) listening to “Little Mermaid” soundtrack. To this day, “What do they got? A lot of sand!/We’ve got a hot crustacean band!” often reminds me of Sequoya trees, pine needles, and the beginning of an ongoing and beautiful relationship with Disney soundtracks.

1995: By the mid-90s, I was listening to soundtracks and (oddly) Cat Stevens almost exclusively. It was 1995 and I was goofing around with my cousins in their basement in Indiana. We were lip-syncing to some music and just generally being silly. I didn’t know most of the songs, but that didn’t stop me from being a goofball, until the song changed and “You know you could have been a candle…” (1) boomed out of their speakers. I was completely entranced and from that moment on, I was hooked on Motown and oldies music from the 1960s. The Beatles, the Monkees, the Fifth Dimenson, the Mamas and the Papas and Oldies 104, the local oldies radio station, followed. To me, it seemed like I had discovered a magical new world of music that resulted in me knowing absolutely nothing about pop culture or the music the rest of my age group was listening to, but having a precocious knowledge of Beatles trivia. (“Hey, Dad, wasn’t that song on ‘McCartney,’ not ‘The White Album?’” “Um, yeah, I guess it was…”) This was beginning of the era when I thought people talking about Marc Anthony, meant the guy who loved Cleopatra and when they said “Leo,” they meant “da Vinci,” not “Di Caprio.”

1998: A few years later, I was increasingly frustrated by the fact that there were never any new or different songs on the oldies radio station and started rooting around from something else. Fortuitously, the late 1990s were a veritable golden age of alternative rock, so it didn’t take long before I discovered Alice 92.9 (still, in my opinion, the best radio station ever created). Just like it had been with the Temptations in my cousins’ basement, “If you would step back from the ledge my friend” was all I needed to hear of Third Eye Blind’s “Jumper” before I was hooked. I went from being the girl who, when someone laughingly explained a word association game as “We went from Seth Green to Savage Garden!” and I densely wondered how a garden could be cruel, to rocking out to the Goo Goo Dolls, Third Eye Blind, Matchbox 20, the Barenaked Ladies and almost anything on the Canadian radio stations we got because we were so close to the border.

2000: By 2000, alternative rock on reached its zenith and I was entrenched in love for “Bent” by Matchbox 20, “Everything You Want” by Vertical Horizon and “Absolutely (Story of a Girl) by Nine Days. We had cable by then and I spent every morning before school glued to Vh1 watching all the latest “You Outta Know” artists and videos. Frankly, it was all musically downhill from here.

2004: In 2004, I went away to college and, like most first years, was immediately struck by how adult I was and how much mature I felt as compared to high school. I saw “Garden State” a week before classes started and I immediately began pretentiously referring to it as “the movie of my generation!” I got the soundtrack almost directly after seeing it and proceeded to immerse myself in the indie rock of Zach Braff’s choosing. I was delighted that there was this whole new genre out there for me to discover and tried to poke around and find more music I would like by the indie rockers I was now constantly listening to: the Shins, mainly, with some Colin Hay, Cary Brothers and Nick Drake. I ended up sticking mainly to the “Garden State” soundtrack and its chill tunes came to define my first semester at college.

2005: By spring, a roommate détente allowed my roommate and I to amiably spend a lot of our time listening to the “Almost Famous” soundtrack. It was one of her favorites at the time and it introduced me to a world of oldies I had never explored. Indeed, there was something beyond the 1960s and she opened the door to me into the 70s rock of Led Zeppelin, Yes and Thunderclap Newman. That spring, to me, will always be defined by the easygoing, semi-drugged out chillness of the Beach Boys’ “Feel Flows.”

2006: As I went through college and actually matured, rather than just being a week in and thinking I had, I finally started coming around to the music my parents had always loved. Summer 2006 was the peak of this, when I discovered James Taylor and, to my surprise and pleasure, my newfound study abroad friends loved him, too! Who knew? This came after the discovery of Carol King (earlier, in high school), Joni Mitchell and Aaron Copland and a resurgence in popularity for my old favorite Cat Stevens. Summer 2006, my summer in England, will forever be associated in my mind with “Mexico” by James Taylor, a new-found favorite and something we listened to endlessly in various stairwells, buses, dorm rooms and gardens. It was something everyone could agree about and I loved it.

2008: In the autumn of 2008, I had been out of college for a few months and had got my first “real” job in New York. It was at the beginning of this new life-phase that I discovered “The Darjeeling Limited” soundtrack. Like the “Garden State” soundtrack before it, I listened to intensively and it came to define that moment in my life. Maybe it was because everything felt so foreign that I felt compelled to surround myself with Hindi music or maybe because the Kinks felt comfortingly familiar even though I’d never heard their songs before. Either way, it defined me for a season. I also spent a lot of time listening to really mellow stuff as I tried to acclimate, get through personal issues and not freak out all the time. Iron & Wine, old Sheryl Crow stuff (“Strong Enough” mainly and obsessively), Jack Johnson and slow rock all comforted me, particularly as I stood on the roof of our building, wind tearing at my hair, thinking hard and feeling both the community of a big city and terribly alone.

Today what am I listening to? Well, after a brief Beatles kick prompted by a subway singer who only did Beatles music, I am now back on the Goo Goo Dolls’s “Dizzy up the Girl” and am increasingly convinced that the late 1990s was the best music ever recorded. It has become what the 60s were for my parents and that provides a nice kind of symmetry.

The Decline and Fall of NBC: A Rant

I read an article today on IMDb about how NBC is continuing to fade away as they failed to place even one show in the Nielsen top ten this week. Well, jolly good I say! I like to think that this is much-deserved comeuppance for all the poorly-managed, meanly-served and high quality television shows NBC has screwed over in the past.

"Examples, please?" you say? Well, my favorite example is also my favorite show, "The West Wing." After six seasons of critical acclaim (okay, maybe not the fifth season, but bear with me), NBC ousted the show from its Wednesday night slot to Sunday nights, aka the place where television shows go to die. Unsurprisingly, viewership dwindled and NBC soon had a network-created reason to pull the plug on the show. This was infuriating enough (as many critics and talking heads alike rightfully pointed out: it was just starting to get good again!), NBC then widely advertised a farewell retrospective to be played before the final episode. Unexpectedly and about a week before this retrospective, NBC axed it too and ended up playing the pilot episode directly before the series finale. "West Wing" gets no love from the network it brought millions of viewers, a record number of Emmy awards and some much-needed class to.

Along a similar vein, "West Wing"'s Aaron Sorkin then pitched a new show, "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," about all that was wrong with SNL and NBC eagerly won a bidding war to get it on their network. After only a few episodes, it was clear NBC had lost all faith in the show and it was put on hiatus for five months. Having successfully scared off any viewers who might have been watching it the first place, NBC then canceled the show but semi-graciously (and rather ridiculously at this point) aired the remaining episodes through the summer months late on Thursday nights. Ironically, those summer episodes were by far better than the original few aired by NBC, proving that had the network simply allowed the show to get its groove, it might have had another great dramedy on its hands. Mais non.

"Scrubs" has been similarly mistreated by the peacock network as it has been jumped around in various timeslots and has been put on hiatus more times than are plausible for a show that hasn't been canceled. NBC kept a death grip on the show for the last few seasons as everyone from the star, Zach Braff, to the creator, Bill Lawrence, stated that they very much wanted to leave and were sick of making the show. Instead, NBC stubbornly kept the show on the air (sort of, in between all those hiatuses) before finally releasing it into the wild this year. (Unfortunately for Braff, Lawrence and everyone else who wanted off, ABC picked it up for another, primarily unwanted, season.)

So I'm a little bitter.

In any event, I have been personally boycotting the channel for two years and I'm glad to see the rest of the nation has taken up the cause as well! (Probably unknowingly, but, hey, a girl can dream.)

Cursed book, cursed subway or cursed me?

I started reading a new book on Monday that calls itself “a history of collective joy.” Since starting this presumably joyful book, the universe has done its best to prove that collectivity is anything but joyful.

Tuesday morning I got on the train as usual. As a first insult, it was unusually crowded and I was obliged to stand the entire way. Since my collective joy book is so handy and far less unwieldy than my Rutherford, I was pleased to discover that was able to read the book while standing and proceeded to do so for a few blissful stops. Somewhere around midtown, the train pulled up to a stop abruptly and this slovenly-looking man lurched into the subway car and stood next to me, gripping the metal railing in one hand and a Dunkin’ Donuts cup in the other.

On any other day, I probably wouldn’t even have noticed him and I would have gotten to work unimpeded. On any other day, I probably would have been seated and thus even less aware of his presence. On any other day, I wouldn’t have been reading standing up. As it was, all these things combined with a brake-happy conductor and, as the train lurched abruptly to a stop at the next station, the man next to me also lurched forward and sloshed a good deal of liquid on me, my book and the man sitting down in front of me. “S’okay!” he informed me and the other man in a chill, beatnik kind of voice, as if we needed to be told that it was quite all right that he had just spilled his drink on us. “It’s just water!” he added with a dirty smile at us. The smell of coffee permeated the area. I sniffed my wet hand. Coffee. I glanced at the newly-damp pages of my newly-purchased book. A brown stain and numerous brown splotches stained the open pages and had started to seep down onto others. If it was just water, then I was most certainly the Queen of England. I glared at him, a gesture to which he was utterly oblivious as he took a swig of his coffee.

He got off before I did and the rest of the ride was crowded but without incident. This morning, I got on the subway again. Admittedly, I had quite forgotten about the “water” from the morning before and was happy to give the MTA and the citizens of New York a second shot. So I got on the train, again as usual, and was again oblivious to my seat-mates, only noting them in so far as to notice that they were not very large and that we all fitted comfortably in the space allotted without anyone having to squeeze. So far, a good commute day.

This brief idyll lasted less than a stop. As I sat there, reading about collective ecstasy in ancient Greece, the woman next to me pulled a can of Crush out of her bag and—fitzzz—opened it. Unsurprisingly, it went everywhere (who in God’s name opens a can of soda after it has been sloshing around in your bag for who knows how long?!). Orange splatters flicked my face and my book’s pages. I couldn’t believe it. This sort of thing has never happened before or defaced any of my books in this way. Was the universe sending me a message?

Meanwhile, the woman stared, clearly at a loss as to what to do, at her can of soda, which was still oozing, and at the pool of sticky orange liquid that had gathered at her feet. Her friend laughed. They got off at the next stop. The next stop. She couldn’t have waited to open what she could have realized with just a little common sense would be a messy soda situation after she got off the train?! I glared after her, too, but she was long gone and all that remained was a trail of that sticky liquid on the floor to mark her presence. Someone else sat down immediately and squished me into the side of the woman on my other side. Great.

Clearly, tomorrow will be the judge of the curse. If it happens again, I’m going to assume that a) the book is cursed and there is no such thing as collective joy; b) I am cursed and the universe is telling me to stop looking for happy endings in a cruel, cruel world; or c) I should not take any deeper meaning from the situation and simply be more mindful of my surroundings and those carrying liquids around me. We’ll see what liquid the universe throws at me next!

Feminism?

I recently spoke to my dear, feminist mother about changing your name. This conversation started out very generally about name-changing and quickly morphed into a minor rant on the absurd inability of men to change their names upon marriage compared to the relative equanimity with which women do so. My mom bemoaned the fact that my father stoutly (in a rather “oh but I wish I could!” kind of way) refused to change his name to hers when they got married, even though hers was by far a nicer name. And this got me thinking. So I decided to ask a male friend of mine his opinion on the matter. The resulting uncomfortable conversational shimmying that he displayed was singularly impressive for its attempt to dodge the bullet alone, but also because he illustrated a definite difference in the way men and women view their last names.

Men seem to view a last name as a legacy, as part of who they are and what their family stood for, and something that (like their freedom!) can never be taken away from them. More basically, they tend to be more plain old attached to it. Women, I find, seem to have a more fleeting relationship with their last name. It’s there, it’s nice but when that right guy comes along, it should be easily given up and traded for his name, bizarrely used here as a symbol of their unification as man and wife. (It seems to me that something that inherently requires one partner to give something up and become the same as the other hardly shows a unification so much as a hostile take over.)

Why is this? Is it simply society once again impressing something different upon little boys versus little girls as they grow up? As a female, I must say that changing my last name has always seemed inevitable if a little strange (why should I be forced to deal with the weird feeling of having a different name from my own?). Perhaps it is a generational shift that while I do assume I will one day change my last name, I still firmly insist upon “Ms.” My mother’s generation unthinkingly changed their names upon marriage and hopped on the “Mrs.” bandwagon and perhaps the next generation will not be so eager to do so and will equally unthinkingly use “Ms.” Maybe we’re just in the middle of a shift, but even if that’s the case, it still seems highly unlikely that the opinion of men regarding last names will ever be changed, judging by my dad (previous generation) and my male friend (new generation, same old protests).

The Internet's Opinion is Moo

Did you ever do one of those “- is” Google searches? Well, it is simple and endlessly entertaining. One might say it is the perfect way to wile away a few purposeless minutes at work. Anyway, all you type is type in “[your name] is” with the quotes and everything into Google and see what the World Wide Web as to say about you. I did mine, of course, and here’s what I got:

Corey is the Master of Brilliance
Corey is a lifelong upstate New Yorker who recently took the plunge and moved to the city
Corey is an excellent choice for professionally-oriented student groups
Corey is keeping his or her particulars a secret
Corey is underappreciated
Corey is not a member of any Causes
Corey is a cultural clown, a parody of literacy
Corey is a great competitor, as well as a positive role model for the youth of America
Corey is top-billed as an idealistic soul who doesn't believe in killing

You try it! What will the internet have to say about you? (Yes you!)

Incidentally, if you get the reference in this entry’s title, I will…well…I’ll think highly of you for lack of a better prize. Cyber-hugs!

Also: In a move of cross-pollination and in keeping with my new title of Master of Brilliance, I direct you most humbly to Comics by Corey for some good times and great oldies.

A Year in a Brown Tweed Coat

I bought a brown tweed coat about a year ago. A girl who I considered to be a mythical being finally personified, that is, the alleged best friend for life you meet in college, accompanied me and was extremely helpful since she had once worked at some sort of coat-selling establishment. She told me to stretch out my arms in front of me and make sure the back fit and then walked around the store with me to see if I was comfortable in the tweed coat. Not too hot, not too cold.

I bought the coat because it was getting warm and my winter coat simply seemed too heavy to bear. So I bought the thinner brown tweed and dubbed it my spring coat. It was more autumnal than anything with its dark brown buttons and black spots and it proceeded to do little more than take up space in my small closet for the rest of the year. As it hung forgotten and increasingly pushed to the side by brightly colored spring skirts and tops, my relationship with that girl similarly withered and was pushed to the side by new friendships and increasing amounts of unspoken misunderstandings.

I hung the brown tweed coat up on a metal hook at my still relatively new job today and for a moment pondered it. I bought the coat about a year ago, but never really used it much until this winter. My heavy black winter coat now simply seemed too warm and too dreary to come out very much and the brown tweed has become a daily part of my wardrobe. I looked at the brown tweed coat on that metal hook that would have been utterly foreign to me a year ago and is now so familiar and was struck by how much can change in a year.

A year ago, this now slightly ratty-looking brown tweed coat was completely new. The buttons were firmly sewn to the coat and didn’t dangle in a worn way when not in use. The pockets didn’t sag out a little bit from stuffing too much in them and there was no pilling on the arms. A year ago, I had this friend who I thought was going to finally be the one to carry forward. I had a great apartment and great roommates and I was a student, and all that entails. Now I come to work and hang my brown tweed up on that crowded metal hook five days a week and I haven’t heard from that friend in over half a year. School is something that exists in the past and future for me, but not in the present, and most of the people I knew there have ebbed away.

This isn’t to say everything is now a dreary overcoat. Oddly, even though retrospectively I feel like I had it all a year ago, I’m vastly more optimistic in this January moment than I was that January a year ago in Target as I perused the coats, tailed by my friend. There is more hope now and less bleakness. There are fewer friends, but more keepers. There’s a smaller apartment, but a bigger possibility. There is a thinner, more worn coat, but I like to think I have more places to hang it.

Iberian Intrique

The New York Times recently published an article in their science section called “Gene Test Shows Spain’s Jewish and Muslin Mix”. This article, while on a personal level full of interesting tidbits as I am descended from those very Moors who were so violently ousted in the late 1400s, reminded me just how much the Iberian Peninsula is completely intoxicating to me.

The article, while brief, shimmies through most of Spain’s major historical events while making a broader point about Spain commonly thought of as being primarily racially pure since that 1492 expulsion is in fact much more of a mix than anyone previously thought. As I said, this is interesting as its own scientific discovery, but those brief little bullet-points of Spanish history really only got me salivating for more!

In 2007 I was inexplicably and suddenly seized with the desire to learn all I could about the royal family of Portugal. Wikipedia beautifully served here and I spent a few days utterly immersed and in awe of the convoluted and intertwining paths of the Portuguese/Brazilian royal family. It was fascinating and I couldn’t get enough. Spain holds a similar allure for me for reasons that I think are fairly basic: I am an British historian and if there is one thing I hold in common with the Britons I study, it is a firm view that Spain is an undeniable Other, one which is wrapped primarily in mystery but one that is also enticingly interesting because of that obscurity. I know very little about Spain beyond the typical things that have leaked out (expulsion of the moors, Christopher Columbus, Catholicism, etc.) and those little pieces only make me want to learn more and as quickly as possible.

To that end, I decided I wanted to know more about the period between 700-1600 in Spain, which would take me through the Muslim rule (while neatly avoiding the earlier battles of the Romans and Carthaginians) and the Spanish imperial state (before it fell into decline somewhere after the defeat of the Armada by my wonderful Brits). Searching for books called “history of spain 700-1600” unfortunately didn’t get me very far since there are both a million books answering that or part of that description and also few who cover so broad and specific a range. So perhaps I am doomed forever to the broad strokes of Wikipedia. If anyone out there reading this has any suggestions of better ways to find good Spanish history books or knows of any personally, I would be much obliged for the recommendation. Until I find that perfect Iberian history book, I shall remain intrigued and awaiting more dispatches from that mysterious historical front.

Overheard in Corey's Life

If we all clap our hands and believe…

Automated Subway PA: We are delayed because of train traffic ahead of us. Thank you for your patience.
Crazy train guy: That’s what you say every day…
Train Conductor over the PA: There is an express number four train passing in front of us, please be patient. We’ll be moving in a minute…
Crazy train guy: Fuck! Damn!
In a minute, the train does in fact begin to move only to stop again a few minutes later.
Crazy train guy: What’s passing in front of us now? A pink elephant?!

--Overheard on the uptown 6 Train

They grow up so fast!

Enthused second grader to visiting educator: Oooh! Can we do research?!

--Overheard at the British International School

Cleanliness never goes out of style

Seven-year-old to his bored-looking mother as they enter the bathroom: I’m going to wash my hands! I’m going to wash my hands! I’m going to wash my hands…!

--Overheard at the outlet mall

Power to the Sisterhood

Preppy NYU girl #1: I'm sorry, but I don't know why she does this...I mean, we decide who we have sex with! We aren't desperate! We decide!
Preppy NYU girl #2: Mmm-hmm.

--Overheard on E. 13th Street

The Lost Song from The Little Mermaid

Father to super-excited four-year-old son: Yep. That's a squid.

--Overheard outside the M2M Asian Convenience Store

Got some good ones to add? Comment and I'd be happy to add them to this post! It's not as rewarding as actually being on Overheard in New York but it's an easier process and you are guaranteed a post!

Obama's Attempted Pacification of a Hillary Supporter Fails: News at 11!

I feel I must at this time vent my annoyance regarding President-Elect Barack Obama. Before I do, I think you should know that I voted for him and think he is an amazing orator, a good man and an inspiration to many people, but that I am also one of those “die hard” Hillary Clinton supporters. I am still rather embittered and, though we as a group may come across as a trifle crazy, I agree with the Clinton die hard consensus that she was robbed. I know the election or the nomination doesn’t belong to anyone (which, I might add, is more or less Ralph Nader’s stance on the 2000 election, so mind your bedfellows), but, honestly, she was robbed.

Leaving that hardened bitterness aside, I turn instead to the more recent actions of our noble President-Elect. Upon his election last week (was it just last week?) I decided to let myself be swept up in the tide of optimism that he brought with him. I grew excited about the possibilities for his Cabinet rather than focusing on his election which still wasn’t really getting me all excited. A friend mentioned to me that John Kerry was vying for the Secretary of State position and I allowed myself to get all happy about the wonderful possibility of John Kerry as our ambassador to the world. I thought pleasantly back to his 2004 jaunts to France, where he exhibited his fluency in the native language. I was reminded of all the reasons I voted for him in 2004: his intelligence, his experience and his passion to change things for the better. I was reminded of Teresa Heinz Kerry’s worldliness and her own proficiency with languages (English, Spanish, French and Italian, not to mention her native tongue of Portuguese). I got hopeful and excited and I crossed my fingers that Obama would choose Kerry.

I woke up this morning to the news that is has been leaked by some source or other (“two Democratic officials in close contact with the Obama transition team,” claims the AP wire) that Obama is considering Hillary Clinton for the position of Secretary of State. This information was painted with the brush of “he’s doing this to appease the die hard Hillary people because they’re still pissed she didn’t get the VP slot.” As a die hard Hillary person who is, in fact, still pissed about not just the VP slot but the entire presidency, I cannot think of a worse way to appease me then by giving Hillary the Secretary of State position. I was all geared up for Kerry and I was all excited that his exit from the Senate would leave Hillary the opportunity to become the next Ted Kennedy, the new Liberal Lion of the Senate. Now he’s ruining that dream, too? Honestly, Mr. Obama, can you do no right by the die hard Hillary people?

I am only slightly heartened by the fact that the AP also mentioned, in a dinky sentence at the end of the article, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry and Bill Richardson as other possible candidates. All the same, I can’t help but wonder if the leak was the metaphorical test balloon to gauge people’s reactions to the idea of Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State. From what I understand of these matters, things do not get leaked unless someone wants the information out there. Excuse my paranoia while I go off to hope that Obama doesn’t ruin this for me, too.

Once Upon a Time in New York City...

As this increasingly becomes the New York City randomness blog, I still feel compelled to share this lovely little New York love story.

Once upon a time in the West Village, there was a little apartment building with two spires that was appropriately called Twin Peaks. It was filled with little tiny wood-paneled garrets that were populated by the artsy and the literary in accordance with what the Village used to stand for. One particular year, an Italian bachelor and a French bachelorette both happened to come and try to make their way in the big city. As fate would have it, the Italian bachelor and the French bachelorette both found their home in Twin Peaks, just one floor apart.

As they came and went in the course of their new big city days, the Italian bachelor couldn’t help but often catch the eye of the French bachelorette and visa versa. One day, the apartment across the tiny wooden hall from the Italian bachelor became available and the French bachelorette, much taken by just the look of him, snatched it up and bought it.

Now that only a tiny hallway separated the pair rather than the rickety green stairs, they saw much more of each other. In fact, what began as a look and a “hello” as they entered and left their respective apartments soon became conversation and from there friendship and, soon enough, our Italian bachelor and our French bachelorette had fallen in love. They soon wed but couldn’t bear to leave the environs of their courtship. Thus, for the next eight years, the pair lived out of the both the tiny studios, trading back and forth between the apartments and generally being very much in love.

Finally, the back and forth had just gotten too much and they decided it was time for them to have their happily ever after in the country. So they put the wonderful little apartments up for sale and headed off into the sunset of Westchester or Long Island or wherever the wind would take them.

I went to the open house for one of their apartments last night and I am here to tell you that this story is even cuter once you see the apartment. A New York Times Streetscapes article for Twin Peaks is here, but that might not be enough. The listing for the apartment is here, but that might not be enough. I don’t think anything is really enough short of going immediately and seeing the place. It is wonderful and their story just makes it better.

I [heart] New York?

Since my week is rapidly becoming one of those where I end the days shouting purposelessly from our roof garden "I HATE CITIES WHAT AM I DOING HERE?!" I thought it might be a good idea for my mental health to think more about what I like about cities, namely the one I'm in, New York.

1. Public Transportation! Even if the subway never seems to be at the cross-street I want and the bus doesn't come when I am passing out from walking too far, I have got to give New York some serious props for their public transportation system. I love how easy they are to use, how convenient they are (yeah, I know, I'm in Manhattan and things can get dicey in the outer boroughs, but props!) and, generally, how on time they are even at rush hour. Perhaps this is just the 6 train and I'm pampered, but at the very least New York gets props for the 6 train.

2. Parks! New York is best known for Central Park and that is probably my favorite part of the city, but there are all these other, lesser-known parks scattered all over the place to generally improve your City experience. You can go to these lovely parks and pretend you're even not in the City and try to star-gaze (although, let's face it, there's probably still going to be too much light pollution to do so). At the very least, you can vicariously enjoy some puppy love since many of these little parks have great dog runs (notably Union Square and Tompkins Square Parks).

3. Helpful Hobos! If you are ever lost in New York, odds are there will be some kind of homeless person on hand to help you find your way. As I wandered aimlessly with friends this Monday looking for a seemingly invisible Thai restaurant (see below), a Helpful Hobo helped us out and pointed us in the right direction, only afterwards soliciting us for our spare change. I happily emptied my purse of its loose change and then enjoyed some high quality dumplings. (Admittedly, you're just as likely to run into the Helpful Hobo's polar opposite, the Insane Itinerant, but here's hoping for the former!)

4. Food! Everywhere! Say you want some Thai food at eleven o'clock at night. I defy you to find a place where it would be so readily available (outside Thailand!). Any given street is entirely likely to have twelve different kinds of food so you need never be bored on your nights out. And, yes, some of the best pizza in the world is here if you want to play it safe.

5. Subway Performers! Yeah, subway panhandling can be at best annoying, but the subway performers in New York are not just asking for your money, they are playing their hearts out for it and they rock! Apparently, there is this intense interviewing process before you are allowed to play in the subway and, I have to say, whatever the system is, it works! Subway performers are remarkably talented and extremely varied in terms of their talent. I've seen a guy play a bunch of old cans and it was just as amazing as a pair of middle-aged doo wop brothers who sometimes haunt the 6. Equally impressive, I'm told, was a group of subway car break dancers seen on the R Train. And let's not forget the mournful and mysterious Chinese stringed instrument played beautifully by the old man outside the E and V trains. The list could go on, but they are all amazing, talented people and they can really brighten up a day with their music, dancing or what have you!

That said, I'm off to go partake of number one and maybe number 5, if I'm lucky.

The Fiction and Reality of Central Meeting Places

As some of you might be aware, I am a rather big fan of the television show How I Met Your Mother. I see them at McClaren’s week in and week out and feel a surge of slight envy that they have their little group and their little hang and that they—gasp—actually meet people at this place. It turns out that McClaren’s is actually based on place in New York called McGee’s. It looks basically like McClaren’s and today I felt compelled to seek it out.

Like any good internet stalker, I took my first steps online to learn more about McGee’s. I found this nice little piece about it: “McGee's is a lively Irish Pub with a strong emphasis on great food and drinks as well as friendly service. Our main bar area boasts big screens, surround sound and a huge selection of draft and bottled beers. This pub offers a lot of booths comfortable for dining and sports viewing. McGee's serves hamburgers, salads, potato skins, fried calamari and a variety of other appetizers for guests to enjoy.” Sounds yummy, I thought to myself. So now McGee’s/McClaren’s is a good time, a good place to meet people and it has good food! Forgive me if the jealousy was more than a little slight at this point.

Then I stopped and thought about it. I often think wistfully back to my Northampton days as some kind of heyday that I can never replicate. There was a bit of a tradition (I say it this way because we went with only slight regularity but often enough that it could be called a tradition) for me and my three friends to go out to a place called FitzWilly’s. It too could be characterized as a lively Irish pub with strong emphasis on great food and drinks. It too has a lot of comfortable booths as well as a bar (and even more bar next door at the Toasted Owl if the FitzWilly bar was just too small for you). And it too has some great potato skins that we almost always ordered.

And that’s about when I had a rather pleasant realization. All that time I was watching How I Met Your Mother (or Friends or Seinfeld or really any show with a central meeting place) and feeling those twinges of envy, I was basically living the dream. I had my three friends and we went out to FitzWilly’s and drank and ate burgers and potato skins and laughed and generally had a good time. So while this may be bittersweet, I guess it reinforces those old lessons about being grateful for the present and being careful what you wish for. Who knows? You may have already had it.

Puffers in the City

I feel like every new Life phase I enter, there is incrementally more smoking. Given logic and positivity, you would think that this would not be the case. Considering the amount of advertising now done against smoking and what we now know about the health risks, you would think that this would not be the case. And yet, it is.

When I started at Smith in 2004, I was nearly blown away (no pun intended) by the amount of puffers around campus. They seemed to be everywhere as I pointedly hacked my lungs out in front of them whenever I could. I assumed that all this sudden smoking was because everyone was basically over 18 now and could thus legally obtain cigarettes. This compared with a high school full of underage smokers where smoking was the sneaky, semi-cool thing you did back behind the football field just over the school’s property line to thumb your nose at the school’s dictatorial principal. Perhaps in college, people were just expressing their newly-found right to buy cigarettes and that accounted for the difference.

Anyway, I got used to it. I chilled out, stopped my pointed coughing and just chose to hold my breath whenever I passed a smoker. I was damned if I was going to get lung cancer because that idiot couldn’t read a Surgeon General’s warning!

And then I came to New York. If I thought Smith was bad, New York was like living in a chimney. They were even more everywhere! And I couldn’t hold my breath that consistently as I walked around the city. (For any number of other reasons, that kind of oxygen deprivation probably wouldn’t do wonders for my health any more than breathing in their smoke would.) The subway was my only refuge from these people who just can’t seem to obey common laws of courtesy by keeping their addiction to themselves in some private corner. I honestly get a trifle offended by their insistence on polluting my air as well as their lungs. It doesn’t seem fair that my health should suffer from their habit.

I had a last straw moment today in the big city in terms of smoking. We had a protest at work this fine autumnal day (I work for a historic preservation organization so it’s okay and we’re not a bunch of crazies, I promise) and, of course, it was outdoors. It was there on the curb that my suspicions about my boss were realized. In addition to being a fruit juice-loving, passionately cause-oriented, gay, hat-wearing thirtysomething, my boss is also a smoker. And he just stood there on the curb talking to me about the building we were trying to save, smoking away, blowing smoke up above our heads. With each puff my respect for him diminished. How could he do this? Why would he do this? Does he really have a death-wish?

Just to cut to the chase, it didn’t resolve in me actually doing anything about it other than writing this. Because even if a smoker can’t respect my space, my lungs and my preferences, the least I can do is respect their right to make those decisions. I can be the better person in this situation by not exploding about why in God’s name they would chose to do this to themselves. So, just like I didn’t explode at my other smoking co-worker, I didn’t say anything today. I still feel imposed upon and little disrespected in terms of personal space, but there isn’t anything to say. They know the issues and they clearly can’t stop. Perhaps the number of people smoking has gone down and that I just keep entering these bigger and bigger sample areas so it just feels like there are more smokers. At least that’s what I like to think. And hope.

New Yorkers: Some Snapshots

I leave the alcove studio apartment I share with my mother at or very close to 8:20 a.m. most mornings. I take the elevator down from the twelfth floor to the shiny lobby and there encounter Melanie, the girl at the desk. She is kind of notoriously surly until you somehow pass some mental-Melanie test and you're golden. So the first three months I lived there, I was greeted every morning with a glare and silence. Now, I say "Good morning!" and she replies with a perky, "Have a nice day!" "You, too," I call back as I'm halfway out the door. It's a very strange transformation, but not at all unwelcome. In a city that is filled with unfriendliness, I would much prefer such a morning to a surly glare.

I only have to go around the corner to get the subway at East 96th Street. There, if you go before 9 a.m., there is a hunched Asian man of indeterminate years (he could quite honestly be anywhere in between fifty and seventy) handing out AM NY. He has one of this quintessentially Asian mustaches, the ones that are short above the lip and then hang limply down around the mouth, and he rarely smiles. He calls out, "Am NY! Am NY!" and attempts to foist a copy of the paper on every single person getting off the bus, going down into the subway or coming up out of the subway. The first few weeks I lived here, he offered one to me every day and every day I would shake my head with a small smile and a definite hand gesture and say, "No thank you." This daily ritual has been enough to win me over as his friend. Now, he knows me in a pleasant way that no one else in this big city has yet to rival. He sees me and grins but doesn't hand me a paper. I say "Good morning!" and he nods back with that smile on his face. The limp ends of his mustache sway a little at the unexpected smile.

Nothing happens on the train, as usual. I've heard and read so much that the train is a great place to meet people because you're stuck with roughly the same commuters five days a week on the platform and then in a tiny subway car. But the only people I ever recognize are this strangely heterosexual-looking gay couple whose only sign of their own gayness is a pair of matching, glittering rhinestone charm bracelets that they wear like wedding bands. They commute together every day down to Union Square. They get off there, like me, but I have no idea where they go. That’s kind of the thing about New York. You see people every day but don’t learn anything new. I like to think they walk each other to work, kiss circumspectly and then meet up for the commute home before ordering various kinds of exotic take-out every night because they both hate to cook.

As I trudge to and from work every day., there are these two utterly unclean old men who hang out on the stoop of a brownstone across from Webster Hall. I have no idea if they live there or are homeless, but they hang out there and sometimes one of them sings. As I was walking to work one day, I made eye contact with the African-American one and smiled (something no one in New York does, by the way). He eagerly leaned forward and grinned, "Hello!" he chirped. "Good morning," I replied civilly and continued on. These are the kind of people I meet on this street. Not international superstars. Not even people my own age. Just dirty old men.

This snapshot seems to be making an argument opposite to my usual point about New York City, that the people here are unfriendly and don't care if you live or die as long as you get out of their way. But the people in this little piece are the exception. I've been shoved by some overzealous, hurried city-person more times than I can count and the few times I've attempted to form a human bond with another pedestrian by making eye contact and saying "Hello," I've been ignored. I didn't even get past the eye contact. The people here are like this dog my high school French teacher used to impersonate: their eyes are anywhere but locked with yours. They'd rather look at a pile of garbage ("Oh how interesting!" you can almost hear them forcing themselves to say in their heads) than make eye contact let alone say "Hello." It can wear you down and I think remembering the few times someone did bother to greet you or shared a smile with you can help with the otherwise self-absorbed culture of this place.

Job Title: Gramma?

Well, I didn't really think being a mother could be this official and I must say that I find it quite amusing that it can. Here's to moms who are not just mothers, but are officially deemed so by the phone book!

The Debate between the Idiot and the Articulate Person...Sound Familiar?

There is a fine line between elitist and superior. Some would say that neither are good traits, especially shown off during a town hall debate, but I would say that only the latter is truly fatal. John McCain has shown a remarkably smug superiority throughout this debate which I find utterly unappealing and even off-putting. From the very second question (when he rather patronizingly commented to a young black man that "I betcha never even heard of Freddie and Fannie before"), I have never felt more spoken down to. Yes I want an intelligent leader, but I don't want one who thinks he is so godlike that he assumes all us commoners can't possibly know everything that he does.

McCain had a number of unbelievably patronizing moments in this debate, but I think it is really his policy and issue broad strokes and attempts at a folksy Sarah Palin rhetoric that will really do him in. He over-generalized complex issues to the point that he did not seem to have a firm grasp of them. It just ended up making him seem like some potty old man who can't understand complex issues let alone explain them in answer to a question. Obviously, I'm no expert, but I do have half a brain (which allows me to have heard of Frannie and Freddie and, yes, even the internet itself which Mr. McCain openly disavows) and I think this debate did John McCain absolutely no good. Once again, the republican didn't implode, but he (in this case) certainly didn't gain any ground either.

Meanwhile, I think Obama successfully sounded calm and informed rather than superior. He may have laid McCain's faults on a little bit thick and played a little fast and loose with his condemnations of his opponent's record, especially towards the end of the debate, but on the whole he was persuasive and intelligent.

A Stolen Font and a Stolen Voice

A small and large frustration occurred today in my co-worker's calm usurpation of my font. This sounds rather petty, but I don't suppose one can truly appreciate the individuality or prettiness of a font well-chosen until one has taken a printing class, as I had the joy of doing. The class promised to make us view the world in a different way and, unlike so many college classes who say they'll change who you are, this class truly delivered. I do see things differently. It's like an initiation into this special group of people who notice serifs and the differences between the slant of an "e." Anyway, I now take fonts extremely seriously and thought very carefully before choosing one for my work e-mail. I chose Georgia, a relatively new typeface designed for clarity on the computer screen while maintaining the lovely look of something from an earlier age. I really love Georgia and, to my delight, received a few compliments on my font choice from recipients of my work e-mails. There were others in the little font society and I got to communicate with them! They recognized the importance of the font and the choice. "It's like a different voice," one commented. Exactly as I felt.

One of the people to compliment my font choice was my co-worker, E. She is a genuinely nice person who notices the little things and never seems to have a negative or frazzled outlook (unless anyone brings up Sarah Palin, of course, but that sort of thing can be excused). Whereas S manages to up the stress level with her involvement in anything, E brings it all down a notch to calmness and is generally a pleasant person. Thus, I was quite pleased when she complimented the font. She rose in my estimation by showing off, most basically, her ability to notice the tiny details of a font and, more importantly, her similar taste to mine in terms of a nice font. "It's so pretty I kind of want to use it as my own!" she joked and we all laughed.

Fast forward a week to today when I received a short, ordinary e-mail from her. It was just asking me to enter some information in the database in the most friendly, polite terms as she always did. But it was all in Georgia. It was jarring. I was momentarily confused. It was like hearing your own voice on a recording somewhere unexpected or suddenly coming around a corner to face a mirror, and yourself. It took me a moment to realize what had happened: font theft! E-mail identity theft! Theft of voice! I was, needless to say, peeved.

But how to explain this to someone who is genuinely and simply practicing the oldest form of flattery in the book: imitation? She really did just think it was very nice and wanted something equally nice. How can one argue against that? The answer is that you can't and I just have to let it go, but it still rankles a little.

A Citizen's Call for Substance

A coworker brought up Sarah Palin’s interview on Katie Couric today at work, asking us if we saw it or what we thought. I asked when it was on, she guessed last night since the Times covered it this morning. I nodded and thought to myself, oh I’ll just read that then. No need to watch the interview because, and here’s the kicker, I realized that we have reached that point in American politics where it honestly doesn’t matter what actually happened. It only matters how it is viewed the next day. It really does matter more what the Times said about the interview than what actually was said in it. Perception has so thoroughly replaced truth that I, your average citizen, no longer even feel compelled to watch something—an interview, a debate, a breaking news story, whatever—since I know it truly will matter more in the long run of the campaign what the Times or the Post says about it. Any given candidate could be incredibly articulate, intelligent and generally erudite one day but if some blogger in Podunk, USA thinks the candidate was being—heaven’s forbid!—elitist, that’s the story. Apparently, we don’t want intelligence in our presidential race and we are apparently showing it by upholding that blogger as the voice of the American people and holding his words as more important than those of our ostensibly intelligent, committed leaders.

So here I am, throwing my hat in with my blogger comrade in Podunk. But rather than complaining about words I can’t understand in a campaign I increasingly just plain old can’t stand, I am calling out for a higher level of responsibility and intelligence in our political machine. I want it to matter what actually happened. I want it to be more important what was actually said than what was inferred. I want a system where a candidate can say something on Wednesday and then Thursday just skips the round-table debate over what the candidate ‘really’ meant. Call me idealist, elitist, wishful or a Frank Capra left-over, but I am an American voter and I am calling for a higher standard than we are currently holding ourselves to by allowing perception to triumph over substance.