I love this guy

Not so secretly, my dream job is to be on SNL. I've been told impersonations are my X-Factor.

When they announced the new cast members this season, it stung.

But alas, I'm too tall for television, and I'm reassured that it would probably be a life riddled with textbook showbiz substance abuse. And, uh, that would kind of be counterproductive for what other things I want to do with my life.

And, I am also known for laughing hysterically before I can finish telling a joke, something that may be problematic if I were performing full character impersonation sketches.

But I am really in love with SNL newbie Jay Pharoah. His imitations of Will Smith and Denzel Washington are SPOT ON!

He's only a month younger than me.... ah, now that stings....:)

Head of the Charles Regatta

My mom was in NYC last week and we had so much fun walking around, eating seafood at every occasion (sea urchin, scallops, oysters, shrimp, bouillebaisse, sole all within about 2 days!), seeing Billy Elliott and In the Heights, and going to Eataly a couple times.



Then we headed to see one of my sisters and the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. A festive, glamorous, very East Coast event.

I had never been before, but it is an event of special significance for my family- both of my parents competed in the race at one point or another, and it is officially where my brother and sister-in-law met the first time (Apparently, she was sitting on a blanket reading a book, and was about to leave for home to finish reading, but my brother persuaded her to linger a while longer and chat. AWW.)

My dad, at 6'4" at one point had to make a 150 pound weight requirement for the lightweight crew, subsisting on jello and gum for days on end. Yeeeah, he is where I get my intensity.

versus my mom: "Rowing hungry would be a total dealkiller for me."

Them, in a nutshell.


I was so inspired! Of course it doesn't hurt that the mens' rowing teams are all so tall and handsome. ;)

And of course, you can't ignore the reality of knowing there were innumerable unglamorous, very cold, very sore, very tired 6 am morning rows and lifts and runs.

Both my sister and I admitted we were on the verge of tears when we thought of our mom coming to visit! And here we thought we were so tough forging around on our own across the country. Miss you already, mom!

MINE, all MINE

Indulge this Veruca Salt-esque post:
I have a New York Public Library Card (my grandma, great-aunt, great grandparents would be so proud - long story short, I am fuzzy on details but they spent time and were good friends with many people affiliated there, among them being the first US children's librarian, after whom my aunt and sister are named).

(yes that is my french manicure necessary for THE...to be unnamed.... interview. went swimmingly, thanks.)

As well as 'my' library, I have also found 'my'

-Trader Joe's.
- Starbucks.
- laundry place
- yoga studio
- sporting goods store
- shops for the essentials. Louboutin is not in the budget yet, not that I'll ever need a 5 inch lift ;)
-dermatologist (to live in NYC blemish-free is to have a relationship with prescribed benzoyl peroxide-based topicals)

but maybe most important, an authentic French Macaron place just 4 blocks from me! Good thing they're kind of expensive so I can't go everyday and/or buy 10 at a time. ;)

(grossly vainglorious but you needed evidence, right?)

Ah, I love living within a 15 block radius of everything I'd ever really need in the city-slash-in the entire world.

Except maybe a gooood waterfall.

Parakanui Falls, (Southland, Catlins National Preserve), New Zealand.

But for now concrete is just as delightful!

A preview

Many stories to come, including...

-A solid minute my breath was taken away, from something viewed inside an Amtrak car.

-The hell that is Bed, Bath and Beyond and decorating (what I consider a nightmarish experience).

-The painting at the Met today that brought me to tears.



Thanks for all your comments- calls, texts, emails, gchats, comments- that tell me you enjoy my little musings from this isle formerly known as "New Amsterdam."

Also, I turned 23! YAY. Finally an age where the real world takes you seriously.

9/11 in NYC, 9 years later

Just a few pics from tonight.

(Flatiron building on the left, twin tower lights in the middle)

(higher up view)

Spotted

So much to say, so little time to do it in a New York minute.

Yes, I'm back.
Yes, I'm happier than I've ever been.
Yes, I smile ear to ear walking down the street.

Gossip Girl Season Premiere starts on my birthday next week. Anddd, I just passed by Leighton Meester (aka Blair Waldorf) on the street.

NYC loves me back. I'm glad I gave it time to figure things out between us.

My life is a poem after all

There is still SO much up in the air, so much potential, so much ambiguity ... but I thought it ironic that for at least September, I will be in Manhattan, NYC...

..on the same numbered street as the California beach house wherein I began my life.

"It's poetry," as my mother says.

There are only so many 360-degree spins on Google Street View I can click and drag before I start squealing and dancing around my room in pure glee.

This Friday, I'll be in Boston to watch my sister and her injured-but-cortizoned shoulder play volleyball, and then shlepping myself and my baggage on the Amtrak into the concrete wonderland of New Amsterdam!

PS- Anyone want to come to the city for my birthday weekend, Sept 10-12? Eee!

Foreign Babes in Beijing

Found this post - a sort of book review - I drafted from a while back and I thought I'd get over my hangups of potential further embellishment and polishing...and just publish.

(My NYU summer school '08 professor Betty Liu's voice rings in my head often, "Condensing is an art form!" She is one who encouraged me to publish this...here I am, months later!)

My friend Al lent Foreign Babes to me...yes, the one with Hodgkin's. The one who BEAT Hodgkin's.
She is doing awesome...finishing up radiation, heading off to Venice in May to do an internship at the Peggy Guggenheim Museum. Such a rockstar.

Anyways, Al went to NYU, so naturally she had all these cool professors with rad worldly stories to impress upon young minds.

So she lent me Foreign Babes in Beijing by one of them, Rachel DeWoskin.



In a nutshell: it's Sex and the City meets The Office meets Lost in Translation.

Adventure is synonymous with life for DeWoskin- she grew up being tucked in with Goodnight Moon on trains throughout the Chinese countryside.

Her family bases themselves in Minnesota, and for college, it's off to Columbia, then immediately to China. (Today, DeWoskin splits her time between Manhattan and Beijing.)

She wanders around Beijing and China to find herself, but because of her background, it's a sort of 'coming home' in a sense.

Foreign Babes is a quirky, insightful, and self-deprecatingly humorous, and ultimately a neat insider's view to 1990s Beijing: a city struggling with young streaks of modernism while still rife with suspicion over the infiltration of Western ideals.

DeWoskin's title is the life and the soap opera she finds herself starring in. Literally. She becomes an overnight star to 600 million.

She has consistent insights comparing her life to her on-screen character Jiexi's, who like Beijing has an identity crisis centered around themes of tradition, sacrifice, love and opportunity.

DeWoskin's descriptions resonate through you: you can taste the hotpot, feel the wind of fellow bicycling commuter comrades pedaling along through gray industrial Beijing, chuckle at her apartment building's 'elevator schedule' ...to the point where you wonder if she is some sort of Master diplomat-slash-expatriate, where every cultural rift simply contains no irritation or fascination, like water off her own duck-lo-mein back.

Finally, she admits she never gets over the culture shock... the essence of what I perceive as that mystical Asiatic allure I have yet to personally experience.

Top it off with humorous conversations with fellow expats, as well as insightful commentary and surprising humor from the locals DeWoskin befriends, and you have a great cultural-type autobiography of sorts.

For fellow foodies

I found this article analyzing food marketing & placement on menus very intriguing...

see if you agree!

image via NY Mag

Concrete jungle part deux

As if PART I wasn't enough of a love song!

I like this one's softness...

Brand new and inspiring

No explanation needed!

Where Kanye and healthcare converge

In New York City (of course, duh) subways.

Below are some new ads set to go up:

image via NY Times

And I guess some experts argue this subway marketing works- after all with the nutritional labeling and trans-fat ban, NYC is one of the "thinnest" cities in the US.

Adding my two cents to the healthcare debate (Partisan pigeonholers be forewarned, I think mine's pretty independent):
One of the most essential but hugely unspoken element of the healthcare debate is that of what Americans are eating. I don't need to regale us with all the statistics of how obese we are or how large our portions are or how much we spend on weight-loss products...it's all a mess and too much money goes towards something that is not progressing.
Maybe I am not one to talk because I am not obesity- or diabetes-inclined, nor do I work in or formally study the healthcare industry. But when you see numbers like $263 billion going toward funding the two combined, I don't think it's entirely fair in some way that I am paying into something that is, as it appears (pun intended), for the MOST part (not all- type I diabetes anyone?) entirely preventable.

Maybe I've hit a nerve, and if so, I apologize. But please, do yourself and all other Americans a favor. I don't need to tell you to get '5-a-Day' or to work out or to not drink milk and all of that ... but I guess I just did.

I really liked President Obama's speech actually ... (revoking cancer treatment halfway through IS extremely wrong) ... and we shall see if his promises pan out. Even flaming conservative libertarian Glenn Beck, who TIME accuses as a fear-marketing "Mad Man" said
"I don't know personally a single Democrat who is a dope-smoking hippie that wants to turn us into Soviet Russia."

But politics is something in which I cease to find much satisfaction, as the more I read about it, the more confused I find myself. Maybe you could argue that anything worthwhile is, in it's essence, confusing at the core. But I can't seem to catch a break from this little thing called the US political economic system.
And coming from a politically apathetic family (read: Beltway Burnouts turned Carefree Californians) doesn't help.


But I think all of us can agree that in light of the pathetic and utterly rude Kanye antics of last Sunday's VMAs...

THE jackass comment is totally justified...

and maybe you totally disagree with me above on healthcare, but below here, can see why I deemed this the best subway ad of summer 2008:



T. Swizzle: you're welcome.

NYC: You can't come soon enough.

Happy weekend.

Remembering

I don't have a particularly memorable 'where were you on 9/11' story (as if it matters)- except for the fact that my high school teachers did not let us watch footage (it was onward with their lesson plans) ... so I confirmed the nightmarish rumors back at home circa 3pm PST.

But what is memorable is the unity and hearkening back to values our country experienced. My favorite gospel principle is that of remembering who I am: a child of God. Puts everything in perspective.
It's why I go to church, why I pray, why I study the valuable lessons found in ancient scripture: to remember where I came from and where I'm going.

Kind of like this sister missionary for my church who serves in Chinatown NYC.
(Click on link for slideshow)

via long story short

Yankee doodling is oh-so dandy!

Last 4th of July, I boarded the Q train to Brooklyn (with bing cherries bagged fresh from Whole Foods), and spent the day hanging out with a couple cousins in Park Slope. It was raining that night, so instead of watching the NYC firework spectacular, we watched it on TV with the residual firework sound coming from outside the window.

This year, my dad did not have quadruple coronary bypass again, so we're all up here at the lake seeing this darling Yankee town's parade down Main Street, going boating, and eating fresh watermelon with the East Coast cousins. Besides honoring veterans like my grandpa, this is what my 4th of Julys have looked like throughout the years.


And don't forget the nice, thick New England accent! ....love this part of the USA.

"Poor Little J"

Spotted: Upper East Siders losing their NY 'cool' factor, getting starstruck.

Gossip Girl (my guilty pleasure) regularly films outside my 13-year-old UES Cousin J's school...nbd.

Chace Crawford...named by People magazine as this year's hottest bachelor.

"Yes, he is quite attractive" -J

"I was too embarrassed to have him sign my water bottle!" -J, as she showed me this pic on her Blackberry (yes, she has one).

Will Ferrell in red (always representing the Trojans!). Yankees Game.

Remember his Rose Bowl Skit with McConaughey?? FIGHT ON.







AND...I'm a fan of the writing on SATC (and the glamour), so naturally I find the rumor of SJP moving to Park Slope unbelievable.
Carrie Bradshaw is supposed to be an eternal Manhattan-ite!
(The townhouse looked familiar because I remember coming across it as I was poring through this luxury blog last summer at my internship.)

Best waffle you'll ever have

After our study abroad, my roommate/friend/esposa Sarah and I went to Brussels for 36 hours en route to Berlin.

Most of the time was spent eating waffles (and chocolate). They are nothing like you've ever had before. They have this certain sweetness in their thick dough-y batter that will blow your mind.

But now, no Belgian trip is needed...

Because now there is an authentic Belgian waffle place in SLC.

They are the best either plain or with a dusting of powdered sugar.
Seriously, no chocolate needed.

There were two waffle places on my NYC street last summer - actually, one was a waffle truck that periodically sat on 14th street...Emily and I would call each other if we spotted it (Gossip Girl style ;) - it was that amazing.
The best was eating one on the steps of Union Square watching the night scene unfold.


Who says America isn't getting better by the day?!

HYPERVENTILATING

And THIS is why.

(Thanks, Turralurr)

Akin to that time when I walked by myself in the late hours of a sparkling Manhattan evening from a concert in Central Park to the Hearst building at W 57th...and then to Conde Nast in Times Square. Just visualizing, thinking...

Recalculating

My youngest sister Katherine has celiac disease, and she told me to go to this bakery last summer in NYC to send something gluten-free to her.
I, being a neglectful and otherwise self-consumed sister, never got around to it.

The other day, when I told her that said bakery had published a cookbook, she said (among other things),
"Will you promise me that we will go to NYC for an entire summer sometime in the future?? Whether we are 50?? or 27?? or in a few years??"

Cute.

Well, that got me thinking about a very plausible roadtrip this summer...that I know will be made possible only with Garmin.

Sweet little Garmin. Also known as "Garmie."

Why I would trust my life, your life and your cousin's dog's life with Garmin GPS:

A couple years ago I was driving my sisters and I back to our lake house from the Boston airport from dropping off a friend.
Even though we've been spending summers back east for 15+ years, I had never personally driven the route before.

There are 3 essential highway turn offs one must make, but even with the bazillion warning announcements and distance indicator counting down every last 0.1 mile, I somehow missed the last turnoff.

Feeling uncharacteristically hopeless, my face flushed red and my inner dad kicked in (he's a little paranoid-slash-uptight sometimes), and I started panicking a little.

With a tinge of sneer (all you with a GPS will know), Garmie announced, "RECALCULATING."

My younger sister AC, who is completely clueless with directions or any street smarts (love her, but it's true), feigned knowing what to do and eventually resorted to gazing out the window. Then Katherine piped up, "Well, just follow the recalculated route; we should be just fine."

So into the statuesque woods of New England we went, with Garmie at the helm.
We turned onto quaint little streets, into unassuming neighborhoods, two-lane 'highways' passing small lakes... and I kid you not...

a few miles of straight-up graveled DIRT ROAD.

I remember being on that ominous dark dirt road with headlights beaming, my sisters and I looking around at ourselves nervously.

In that moment, I simply made what would become a self-fulfilling prophecy: "If Garmin gets us home from this, I will never have reason to doubt it again!"

(That statement, I now realize, is riddled with spiritual entendres)

Because, to make a long story short, it did.

Bonus: we didn't lose but maybe 3 minutes of time!

To conclude, sometimes our lives get unexpectedly recalculated, rerouted to places unforeseen. But if we always have ourselves connected to something higher than ourselves (whether a GPS or God), as Katherine said, "we should be just fine."

Stand clear of the closing doors please

I was trying to hold off mentioning this, but I chose "Strawberry Swing" as the first song on my blog playlist because it reminds me of my last summer in NYC.
The Viva La Vida album was my subway music of choice.
Those hot, balmy, stinky subways...

I realized this past weekend that this time last year, I was soaking up Fleet Week in the city that Will so hilariously describes as "a bizarre mix between On The Town and Nazi-occupied France."

Oh how I miss the sleepless wonderland of Gotham...


Dear Manhattan,
Just when I thought I was doing so well...

(i.e. forcing myself not to think of you for knowing I would nervously break down if I did)

...you killed it again.



Thanks to Betty's post for helping me re-kindle this currently long-distance romance...

Down the Rabbit Hole

Above from Vogue's 2007 Alice in Wonderland fashion shoot featuring Natalia Vodianova, shot by Annie Leibovitz.

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First look at Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie!

(coming 2010)

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A 4th Grader questions Condi Rice about waterboarding.
Wow.
I think in 4th grade I was most consumed with beating boys at recess games.

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Vanity Fair slideshow of actors and directors:
"Something Just Clicked"

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Swine Flu count at 1,000 and counting: via Al Jazeera. Yikes.

Mexicans finding that (masked) laughter is the best medicine.

Full NYT story here: "Viral Humor Helps Mexicans Cope"

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Also funny: Vanity Fair's Frank DiGiacomo's The WASHMEN!

parody of "The Watchmen"

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Oh, wait, this too:

NY Mag's "analysis" of last week's Gossip Girl.


and last, but not least...
Have we swooned enough over the 6'5" actor Armie Hammer yet (aka Gabriel on GG)?

No, not enough, methinks....


XOXO, Gossip Girl