A List Of Things To Do Before I get Hired

I spent the afternoon watching episodes of The Buried life and trying to come out of my emotional coma.  I thought it might be inspiring to see people my age not only employed but also doing what they love.  It caused a casual spiral. Afterwards I rejoined the human race at a friend's apartment and the question came up: what are you going to do tomorrow? For the first time in a long time I don't have work, a meeting, an errand, any money to go shopping with- I don't have anything.  So, what the hell am I going to do tomorrow {besides look for a freaking job and apply for unemployment?}? One friend said I should go exploring the city, which is a given, but I don't really feel like pulling a Mary Tyler Moore and smiling like a goon while walking around Manhattan.  Tomorrow I actually plan on "GTL" but then what?

I was thinking about maybe sitting outside the Dunkin Donuts on 14th and third with the other transient youth and playing guitar for money.  I don't know how to play, but then again, neither do any them and their strumming keeps them and their dogs in Atomic Wings and gatorade. Unfortunately for me, my viola back up player has a 9-5 so I don't know how fiscally sound this approach is.  Here are some other things I'm thinking:

1. Read all the books I was supposed to read as an English major.  I've already started in on this, but now I actually have the time to read.
2. Learn to cook.  I mean, I can't afford my sushi lunches anymore, so as they say... no time like the present.
3. Go to some Museums.  Having lived in or around New York city my whole life I've gone to all these places but I was more interested in the gift shop than anything else.  I want to go to The Whitney, The Guggenheim, Moma, LES Tenement Housing Museum (even though I essentially live in one) and then for the grand finale.. Elis Island.
4. Get lost in Central Park. Easy.
5. Empire State Building- never did it and now I can finally pencil in some time to go see it.
6. Volunteer.  For real.  I need to put my feminism where my mouth is and start working for a women's shelter.

That's all I got for now, suggestions are highly welcomed. So are job offers.

I Felt Impotent And Out Of Control

I changed the name and address of the blog as an homage to my favorite movie, Clueless and to better represent my current state of mind.  On Friday I went to the beach employed.  On Monday I came home unemployed.  Clearly I've been on a manic emotional spiral, but also it's strangely liberating that I might be able to do what I actually want. I'll be 23 next month, sans income, a job or direction (except of course, towards the mall). I may not have any working capital at the moment, but I have some amazing friends, amazing friends with some great prescriptions.  Last night my cheapest friend in the entire world surprised me with a blown up picture of the two of us (when we were skinny), some sedatives and she treated to dinner.  I don't know how long this gravy train is going to last, but I'm riding this wave into the sunset.  So a few tall boys later I'm walking home from a bar and right into a pyschic's "office."  I find that the best advice comes from those who are crazier than you, which is why Miss Dee was right up my alley.  I've been to a physic once before when I was a freshman in college.  A few of my friends and I were walking along the rural Pennsylvanian streets of our College town and decided to pop in for a five dollar palm reader.  Much to all of our surprises, she nailed all but one on the head. Last night was shockingly the same experience.  Homegirl Dee told me to come right in as soon as I got in because she could sense I was in a great deal of turmoil.  Understatement of the century.  Good news though, I'm apparently carrying a lot of anger for things that happened in my past life, but it should all get resolved in this one.  Well she told me she could heal me tomorrow for $110 dollars and gave me a cat's stone to rub above my navel for three minutes and chant "I have no room for negativity" before I went to sleep.  Well, I did and surprisingly I don't feel as low as last night. I'm hoping it has more to do with the cat's eye stone under my pillow rather than the pills on my desk.

Beware of Gang Initiation On The 4-5-6 Lines

So I'm not really one to stress over a possible break in/rape/beating/murder etc.  I've always subscribed to the thought that if someone wants to abduct me he will send me back within thirty seconds of meeting me and always laughed at one of my friends who would call the cop at the site of someone without a collar on their shirt walking past our off campus house.  Lately, and I don't know if its the warm weather or I've been taking the subway solo more, but it seems like the freaks have been out to play.  The crazy man with a thick Jamaican accent announcing to everyone he only loved his gun and his gat, the legless crack addict shuffling down the aisles and the cops following him telling no one to give him money, having to hit a man for grabbing my ass, the homeless man who whipped his crack on one of the polls... I mean its all a little unsettling, but its big city life at its finest. Until this.  The Sunday of the Puerto Rican day parade this well dressed man stopped me and asked me for the time around 5:30pm.  The thing that wierded me out was he asked me to come closer.  Hell no Shaniqua. So I walked away but had a sick feeling in my stomach about it. Last night I'm coming home from babysitting late and having a conversation about how the subway has been scary lately and my neighbor is having a cig in the hallway (like.. really?) and stops me.  She tells me that there is a gang initiation going on where guys ask girls for the time and if you tell them the time they cut your face, especially on the 4-5-6.  I wanted to give her another cigarette and set up a whole smoking parlor right outside my door I was so thankful for the heads up.  So please, please, please be careful! Something else to beware of? This:

High High... Low Low

{photo}

Sometimes you just don't walk that quickly when crossing the street.  Its not that you want to get hit or anything, its just that getting nicked by a speeding cab won't be the worst thing that happened that day.  Sometimes the creepy man blowing kisses at you as you walk back from the gym is the best thing that happened to you that day and sometimes you want to scream "you tell him girl!" to the hygienically challenged woman without a bra, drinking orange juice and screaming at a tree.  Sometimes your little sister gets her dream job the day before you get thrown another speed bump in your quest for career happiness and sometimes, or most times even, you feel like nothing is going your way when everything seems to be working out for others.  Sometimes this is personified by a failed relationship or extra water retention around your ass. Everyone talks about how amazing their twenties were, living on your own for the first time and "just starting out." Did I forget to RSVP for that party? Bueler? Bueler? Anyone? I mean, when is life going to start sounding a little less like an Alanis Moresitte song? Just asking...

You Just Graduated? What Do We Have For Him Johnny??

I'll give you a hint: NOTHING.

  It hit me around 3pm today.  Normally the "it" is either an intense hunger pang, need to chug a diet coke or my fist to my face just to remind myself I'm alive. Today, however, that "it" was that exactly a year ago today I was drinking margaritas, sand in my nether regions with the only people I admit to liking and unbelievably happy. The kind of happy pychatrists try to capture in happy pills. Trust me.

I wrote an article the other day for work about Gypset fashion and using items from vacation in your home decor, which is funny because my last vacation just so happened to have been that vacation or "senior week" to the perpetually class Myrtle Beach, SC.  If I decorated my apartment with the things we brought back from Myrtle my roommates would be sitting in pink beach chairs and my window treatments would be chintzy dolphin towels.  I'm not embarrassed to admit that this was the best vacation of my life; it was the perfect culmination of the best four years I've had so far.  A time where you truly lived in the moment, where the decisions you made could easily be repealed and didn't stick with you past a semester.  Sure I have MANY moments that make me cringe (one or two from that week) but so do you.  When the week was over, graduation was over and then school was over I was like a heroin addict coming off a four year high.

I slept for a week straight, I sweat out alcohol for longer than I'd like to admit- I even gave up diet soda and ate only grilled chicken and brown rice not because it was bikini season but because I felt like I was going to DIE.  When that passed and I stopped scratching the paint off my walls there was suddenly this moment of extreme clarity the likes of which I'd never experienced.  I had no best friends to influence me, no torrid romance to preoccupy my mind and no papers to occupy my time.  I was stuck at home watching the Mets with my parents and going to bed sober, waking up not hung over.  And I was so f-ing scared and alone.  Now came the time to do something with my life.  Had all I really learned to do after four years was not choke on my own vomit?  Graduating was lonely for me, as for many of my friends.  Very few of us had found jobs and even when we did, even fewer left their homes.  Each month it got better, but each month felt like months, not like in college where a month seems like it's own calendar year.

Finally I moved out and moved on and the world instead of feeling so cut off suddenly felt so open. Too open. I felt like I had fallen in and it swallowed me up. I still feel like that. Shiz son, living is hard. Its, like, work. You're parents tell you that, but they are your parents and clearly you don't listen to them so its not till you are writing a massive rent check that is the equivalent of most people's electric bills that you realize... they were right.

{Actually a Gamma Phi Beta Chapter}

Its been a year and I don't feel like I've gotten very far but I feel like I have time, something we were always racing against at school.  When I go out its not a countdown to THE LAST TIME I EVER GO TO THIS BAR or THE LAST TIME I EVER GO OUT TO DINNER WITH MY FRIENDS.  As much as I miss college the only thing I really miss is being around my friends everyday.  Its scary discovering that you are finally figuring it out and recovering from always being on a HIGH HIGH and then a LOW LOW.  In no way shape or form did college really prepare me for the working world but then again the working world that our generation knows isn't like anything anyone has seen before. I'm thinking about the current crop of graduates and as much as I envied them in the beginning of this year, I wouldn't switch with them even if it meant going back to a club called "Spanish Gallion" and dancing in cages.

We have our own issues to deal with, but hopefully everyone has begun to figure themselves out just a wee bit more than back then.  There are still plenty of tables to dance on, we just get to do it in nicer shoes... and isn't that what its all about anyway?

{Sorry for all the words}

East Side Story

Even though I work from home most days and often don't leave the house before 5:47pm, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the lay of the land down here.  I surface around sunset, feeling like powder who has just been let out of the basement for the first time, just in time to be annoyed by everyone I bulldoze along my way to degrade myself at the gym.  I've decided that the East Village inhabitants can be divided into gangs, gangs who should be forced to duke it out to the death so that when I do leave the house, I don't need to see ANYONE and my plan to live in total isolation of the human race will be realized.  Here are the teams:

1. Crasian couples who hold hands and walk slow.  They are probably the first to go because even the Sushi cooks who chill outside Panya smoking and wearing socks and sandals are discussed by their lovey-dovey nature and slow cadence.

2. Hood girls who eat on the go.  Who eat slowly on the go. They also divulge far too much information on things I don't care about like who that slut Selena is sleeping with and if Mikey went down and got his test or not. That's a stereotype, so I'm sorry and I normally wouldn't use it had I not heard it despite turning my ipod up HIGH.  I mean, its amazing how much they are able to reveal while walking in a straight horizontal line, while eating their subs.  They are also 15. My money is on them.  Their remarkable multitasking skills alone makes them a front runner, their smuckers cherry lip balm makes them winners.

3. Gaunt hipsters who smoke and carry NYU student ID cards.  They are probably one step below the crasian couples in this rat race, although their ability to seek refuge in the NUMEROUS NYU buildings gives them a clear advantage. Honestly, who knew that every other building south of 14th street would belong to either NYU or Parsons- excuse me, The New School.  I saw a purple NYU bus accepting metro cards the other day.  When will this end? When the Hood girls give them wedgies and toss them to the side? Yes.

4. Gay men straight women don't know are gay.  It's the easy route to assume that most men in Manhattan are gay, but there is a distinct breed of gay that has every woman looking twice.  They are well toned, well dressed, don't carry Goyard tote or walk like something hurts yet while uou may be looking at them... they ain't looking back sister.  Second place.

5. The crazy homeless. CRAZY homeless.  I babysit on the Upper East Side and I really must say in addition to having the most square footage for the money and Central Park, they also have the best homeless. While eating dinner one night at Molly's Pub I had a homeless guy approach me asking "Would you like tickets to the gun show?" And then in an act of true creativity he crouched down and showed us his "gun", which for a part-time heroin addict, full time unemployment office fixture, was pretty toned.  It almost made me wish I believed in the trickle down system.  Our homeless are just crazy, dirty and contribute to my constant fear of having my throat slit at random. I liked the guy who did a great rendition of Madonna's "Like A Virgin."  He only knew the chorus though, which goes a little something like "like a virgin, touched for the very first time.  Like a viiirrrriiigginnn..." There's more but he didn't know it and you have to respect the guy who knew its not really a good enough song to know all the lyrics to.  I probably should've been more creeped out by the guy who said "Watch out ladies, big black cock coming through", but I wasn't.  He was really just being responsible and alerting my friends and I to a possible safety hazard approaching and after doing four years of hard time in a frat driven school, I'd heard worse.

6. The diaspora kids.  Great, this is the second time my people have been displaced from their homelands.  High rent and low paying jobs have forced many a preppy white kids of the suburbs from the desired West Village and Soho to the more unkempt East Village streets.  Every once and a while you'll catch a kid in lacrosse shorts and find yourself smiling at one another, not because you know each other, but because you know each other.  There is even a kid in my building who has a Barbour that isn't my boyfriend.  Sadly, I think he belongs in gang 4. I THINK.

And the winner? Picking one would just confirm I spend more time speculating rather than interacting with my fellow humans and thats just sad.

Appropriately on Project Runway last week the remaining designers were asked to create an outfit based on different Manhattan neighborhoods.  Jay Nicos Sario and Mila Hemeerionlymakeblackandwhitethings had the daunting task of tackling the East Village and in the process failed miserably.  Where are all the hole infested sweaters, skinny jeans, red lipstick and oxfords? I mean we are better dressed than this, we have an Urban Outfitters after all!

 

picture this

John Mayer, A Word...

Okay, I will count myself among the many young suburbanite teeney-boppers who used to think they were going to loose their virginity with Your Body is a Wonderland in the background, rather than Peaches and Cream, but after recent attacks of verbal diarrhea on behalf of crooner John Mayer, I'm beginning to reconsider how anyone could've been fooled that he was an all American good ol' boy.  Mayer has been known more for what he tweets and twats rather than producing any good songs of late; he new album Battle Studies is a total snooze-fest.  The bad-boy took kissing and telling to the next level during his new interview with Playboy coming out this month.  While reading The New York Times, also known to me as The Superficial, I nearly lost my instant oatmeal.  Read on if you aren't eating or drinking:

On Jessica Simpson:
"Yeah, that girl is like crack cocaine to me. Sexually it was crazy. That's all I'll say. It was like napalm, sexual napalm. Did you ever say, 'I want to quit my life and just fuckin' snort you? If you charged me $10,000 to fuck you, I would start selling all my shit just to keep fucking you.'"

On Jennifer Aniston:
"There was a rumor that I'd been dumped because I was tweeting too much. That wasn't it, but that was a big difference. The brunt of her success came before TMZ and Twitter. I think she's still hoping it goes back to 1998. She saw my involvement in technology as courting distraction. And I always said, 'These are the new rules.'"

On nailing groupies to get over their break-up:

"I'm going to say four or five. No more. But even if I said 12, that's a reasonable number. So is 15. Here's the thing: I get less ass now than I did when I was in a local band. Because now I don't like jumping through hoops."

He even looks like a tool here

And he don't look any better here either!

For serious?  First of all, go Jessica, who knew you did more than fart and fluctuate (we're all there with you sister).  Apparently saving yourself for marriage IS great for your sex life, that is, if you leave your husband- no one can have good sex with the person you swiped your V-card too, it would be like wearing whatever you wore to your first day of middle school at age 27.  If I was Jennifer Anniston however, I would slap a bitch silly.  The little d-bag called you old.  Not just like older, but old. He basically compared you to my mother trying to figure out the complexities of writing on someone's facebook wall.  The silver lining here is obviously that it only took him 5 chicks to get over you. WTF?!  Furthermore, does he think he is being funny? Witty? Was comparing Simpson's libido to coke supposed to be some tribute to the late J.D. Sallinger's prose?  Cuz, guess what, it ain't working.

Mayer went on to prove that he is not only an self important ass, he is also stupid making some borderline racist comments I won't dignify with posting.  On his Twitter page he said he is going to stop being so "raw" in his interviews, but why doesn't he stop giving them? Oh, because he can't stop talking about himself? Got it.

Oh No You You Didaaantt: Bitchy Quotes

“The fact that thin is in — who cares? It's why I stopped eating. I think food is for fat people and poor people. Rich people don't eat. They get dressed up and go shopping.”—Stylist Robert Verdi 
Bitch Says: Robbie, being thin is half the battle, you need to be good looking as well and, your not.


"If you look on the Internet, it seems pretty obvious that a lot of people like to look at naked people fu.cking...I was on Perez Hilton all day." Zac Posen to NYMAG.com
Bitch Says: I agree with you.  Completely. Now give me a dress.

"No one wants to see curvy women.  You've got fat mothers with their bags of chips sitting in front of the television saying thin models are ugly.  Fashion is about dreams and illusions."- Karl Lagerfeld in response to German magazine Brigitte's decision to use real women instead of models in pages starting with the Jan.2 issue.
Bitch Says: I read this in Life and Style while I was on the treadmill tonight wishing I was sitting in front of the TV eating chips and watching ugly models.  Like, Karl, I get it that everyone thinks you are a "genius" and whatever, and I am not one to judge, but like I'm pretty sure that even if Lindsay Lohan was creative director of Chanel she couldn't really snort to shiz the famous CC name. Most of the women buying Chanel are bone-fide heffer housewives anyway, so real smart move pissing them all off.  The recession just lasted a little longer for you. 

A Moment...

Admittedly I haven't really being watching much MTV these days but I am going to tune in for this one. I mean are there so many reality shows out now that these are the only people they can get to be on the new show Styl'D? Furthermore, is MTV recruiting producers from grammar school or has the letter "E" gone out of style?

Bitch it Out: HANDS OFF

Okay, here is something that really irks my inner core: When people comment on my boobs.  I am a small girl with a large rack but just because my boobs are (naturally) and ergonomically incorrect doesn't make me a circus freak or give you an invitation to grab hold and hang on for the ride of your life. The worst is when someone I mildly to moderately like comes up to me at a party and says "WOW, boobs."  No.  WHERE?!?!?!?!?!?!  Yea I have them but that doesn't mean I have to wear a turtleneck to a cocktail party.  I'd rather have Heidi Montag-Pratt as my math partner than spend another moment engaged in a conversation with someone whose only conversation starter is my anatomy.  I mean think about it, would you go up to some guy on the beach and say "WOW, look at your bulge in your speedo?"No.  Hopefully you were raised better and you wouldn't be at the beach with any guy who would wear a speedo.  Today my aunt says, "You look really good lately" which my mother took as an opportunity to demean the hours I spend at the gym and go right into the fugliest bra she bought me insisting that it's my superior foundation creating a sleeker look.  That is also not okay.  Ever.  By the same token should a guy hook up with a well endowed female that does not give them the rights to "honk" a woman's breasts OR lobster claw them.  It's poor form and it's the quickiest way to alert the woman you are with that you are a virgin.

Ohh would we call this a book?

Lauren Conrad, or LC as those who have problems saying full names call her, has written a book.  I am wary about how badly I should bash the aforementioned novel;  for starters I haven't read it nor do I have an immediate plans to do so and secondly every writing teacher I've ever had has always said to "write what you know", which Conrad certainly took to heart.  LA Candy is a story surrounding a young woman who found fame by staring in her own reality TV show where she was an intern in the fashion industry.  She gets ditched by boys and has a falling out with a friend.  Sound familiar?  Maybe because, I don't know, it happened to her?  Needless to say it's getting bashed but just like a kaftan on the beach I can see a whole lot of tweens sporting LA Candy.  Bottom line: let's leave the pop culture references to someone who can handle them. BTW, she's not going away any time soon; LC has a book deal for three more of these puppies.

American Apparel... A word please

My first American Apparel purchase came eight years ago at my town's sidewalk sale.  I shouldn't really say purchase because I'm pretty sure the store owner just gave it to me (it was a plain white AA tee with the store's name on it.)  Boy, have we come a long way from the days of plain white tees.  I mean, okay, I like the basics (You can never have too many white V-necks) but... let's once again call a spade a spade here... What the cock is going on?  Is American Apparel's target demographic rich trannys or something?  Not only are the clothes outrageous and dare I say it... just a wee bit slutty but they are also over priced.  $42 for a mesh body condom?  I don't thinnnkkk sooo. Last friday when I was getting ready to go out I tried on this skirt of the little siss' and I had bottom crack cleavage... I get the whole "hipster" trend thing, I suppose they are our hippies, but only in America would we market an entire store to the counter culture.  Let's be original here people. Oh and btw... Gap makes a cheaper tee shirt.