Abandoned Factory

Asher came to town for two seconds and in those two seconds I ditched work so we could tromp out to the abandoned factory in Yonkers. It was Asher, Jason, and me. We brought various recording devices to capture this momentous and historic moment in its entirety, but I fucked up and didn’t charge the camera all the way.

It was a good adventure anyway.

We spent the whole while trying to get to the smoke stacks. We got inside them the last time, but now we couldn’t figure out how. We climbed up to the roof and saw some little middle school girls with big teeth and flip flops wandering around among the broken glass and twisted metal. We had just smoke a joint and were giggly as hell, so it was real difficult to hide from them, Asher throwing pebbles every now and then to make them look around confused. We’d duck down quick, stifle our giggles then look up to see them try to figure out where the rocks were falling from. Finally we let them see us, but instantly regretted it because it would have been great to haunt them the whole time.

They were annoying little kids, so we ignored them when they tried to talk to us and instead balanced along and did our perfect and graceful high wire act along the catwalks and steel support beams. The cool kids—that was us.

Finally we found the stairs that lead us to the smoke stacks. Inside those huge brick columns is what I imagine it’s like inside a crematorium. A round, hollow dungeon of brick, miles to the little window open to the sky up top, and exed over with a cold metal grate.

Into the woods

Last weekend I went camping with my dad. It was a much needed relief from the city; in fact I already wish I was going back again this weekend. When I mentioned the trip to people they said “oh, so you get along well with your dad.” To which I was compelled to shout “no!” But then I thought about it and I guess I that when we’re camping we do get along pretty well.

In the woods he’s in his element. He becomes able and sure and even jubilant, so different from the confused old curmudgeon he is when he tries to visit me in the city. He came to see me a few months ago and when I told him he couldn’t stay with me because I’d just moved in with new roommates I’d never met before, he insisted on parking his van outside the apartment and sleeping in it, coming upstairs to shower, shave, and make coffee in the morning. I was irate. It’s not like he’s poor, the man can afford a hotel just fine.

That’s when we decided that the next time we met up it should be in the woods. I took the Metro North out to Beacon and then we drove to a camping ground in the Catskill State Park. The campsite was called Beaverkill (kill meaning river, not death) and we did see one beaver, but no chipmunks. We also heard a turkey in the woods, but we didn’t see it. It rained a bit, but we did ok.

When it was too wet to start our camp fire my dad declared a beer party in the van. So, we sat in the back and poured cups from the two big jugs of Ale he’d brought from Massachusetts. After a while the rain cleared and we took our newpaper and soggy sticks and went to start a fire. I got one going fast and it was high impressive, but then all the newspapers and little sticks burnt away and it died. My dad started over, building one bit by bit, small but steady and eventually the big logs lit and we knew we were all set. We roasted wurst and I made smores and I got along well with my old dad.

Rotten Mouth

I went to the dentist today. In two weeks my mouth will no longer be a fillings-virgin. I have two cavities. Two! I’ve always been blessed with perfect teeth. I’ve never had a cavity in my life. They’re minor little guys, but they’ve got to be dealt with nonetheless. The dentist assured me that he’d fill them in white and no one would ever know, but I was still disappointed. My record has been tainted.

I know why the cubed bird sings

Well, we were told today that come September 1st we will be blocked from checking non-company email at work. It’s times like these that I feel like a sad little Oompa Loompa and I wonder when I will give up on all this ladder-climbing-making-a-living-business and do something useful.

I went to a little seminar thing over at the 826 Superhero store a while back. Sort of a cheesy thing to do, but I have a cheesy little crush on Dave Eggers and he was going to be there. It was about how to write and publish a novel. The whole second half about publishing was useless for me and the writing part turned out to be something that’s hard to explain. Plus the panel didn’t seem to be too varied in their circumstances. When they started writing they all either passionately hated their lives and quit their jobs to run off to a writer’s colony or they had gone to grad school. The only one who’d ever had a real job while writing was Jonathan Lethem who worked in a bookstore while he wrote on of his first books. He said that while he did this he thought about nothing but the novel, he would scribble away during his 30 minute lunch break and write as soon as he got home.

Needless to say everyone in the audience left feeling defeated.

I thought about it for a while afterward though. There are plenty of people who work and write. It’s not about whether you have a job—it’s about boldness. You have to be cocky and self assured enough to ramble on for two-hundred pages and think people will want to read it. It’s boldness and maybe being kind of obsessive. I keep hoping that maybe being broke and ruled over like a high schooler will make me bold and obsessive. It hasn’t quite come to that yet, so far I’m still just looking forward to my raise.

Hello World

Well, I have to admit that I'm amused by the fact that Frank waited until I decided to go on a rant about birth control to announce to his 300+ friendsters that they should read my blog. Now that you're all here I'd like to point out the fact that when you google lady colossal my blog and this come up. I would also like to give a shout out to Liesa, the one co-worker I've told about the blog.

I just got home after being driven by a very odd cab driver. I'm a little tipsy and when the mini-van cab stopped I accidentially opened the front door. He said it was ok, so I got in the front. I urge you never to do this (I think it sends the wrong message). He was an Indian man with an oddly mocking lilt to his voice and he asked me many questions about my night, about my job, and whether or not my baby face gets me carded a lot. He was even so bold as to grab my chin to get a better look at said baby face. It was all very friendly, but I have to admit, I found it disconcerting. I thought I might put him off by taunting him for thinking he didn't need the plastic bullet proof barrier, but he called me on the fact that I wasn't actually carrying a gun. In the end he dropped me off promptly and without incident, so I suppose I should have just taken the baby face comment as a compliment.

Lady troubles

I’m in a shitty mood. I’ve always thought myself pretty immune to the side effects of birth control pills, but I’m starting to wonder if I’m over estimating myself. Lately every time I’m hit with “the curse” I find that by the evening hours I’m prone to angry outbursts, on the verge of tears, and pretty much feeling all around suicidal. For the past few months I’ve taken these reactions as the norm for most menstruating ladies, but in the light of recent conversations I’ve had about birth control I’m wondering if this is a chemically induced funk. My friend Amber suggested I switch to The Ring.

I’m sure that once the movie came out the manufacturers of this ominous sounding form of birth control were really kicking themselves, or perhaps they saw it as free advertising—who knows how these things work. Anyway, The Ring is a new contraption. It’s a little ring that you stick up your cootch. It slowly emits hormones—the same as in The Pill, but in lower doses I think. After three weeks you take the thing out so you can get your period. You throw it away and after a week put in a new one.

Just when you thought birth control couldn’t get freakier they come up with something like this. Well, apparently there are less side effects than with The Pill and you don’t have to worry about remembering to take it everyday.

So now I’m wondering, should I switch to The Ring, despite it’s weirdness, or just stick with what I’ve got? I have to admit there’s something cathartic about the outbursts, but it also kind of sucks. The thing is, getting your period sucks no matter what—and I’m not about to start taking that drug that keeps you from getting it but once a year—talk about fucking with nature. For now I think I’m just going to hole up in my room and wallow.

Baby Boom

What is the deal with nannies lately? They’ve been such a hot topic, from Jude Law fucking his, to Robert DeNiro’s thieving nanny, not to mention the nanny and baby who were crushed under that collapsed building uptown.

My roommates get the weekend edition of the New York Times and every time I pick it up there’s some obnoxious editorial by one of those uptown mommies about who they try to love their nanny, want ever so badly to love their nanny, but try as they might they are filled with loathing at the very thought of her. I just keep picturing these mommies as the evil queen in Snow White, so jealous and despising of their younger counterpart.

Why do ladies who have nannies always hate them so much?

The Greatest Day

Jason and I were reunited at Coney Island. There couldn’t be a more perfect setting. We planned to meet in front of Nathan’s. He called my cell phone and said, “Where are you?”
“Right here, in front of Nathan’s. Where are you?”
“I’m here.” We bumbled around, peering over heads until I caught sight of him. Good old Jason in his aviators and ragged prepster t-shirt, looking raffish and charming as ever.
“Jason!” I yelled, running toward him.
“Maaargaret,” he hollered back. Carolyn and Brian came lagging behind and they all ate hotdogs and I stole some of Jason’s fries, spearing them with a miniature plastic trident. Then we wandered over to the boardwalk basking in the tacky splendor. It was windy by the water as we admired the Wonder Wheel, the crashing waves, the freakish crowd and Jason said to us, “Today is the greatest day.”
We made our way over to a dive bar called Cha Cha’s where we were served beers by a bartender with magic marker eyeliner, sparkly lip gloss dripping off her mouth,and a dozen tattoos of hearts and roses littering her chest and arms. We sat outside and plotted adventures. We decided murder was the way to go and when Brian left to take a leak we picked him as our victim. Then we remembered we needed him to drive us home.
Once we’d finished our beers we wandered the boardwalk and spotted a crowd at the edge of the shore, including a handful of cops. We decided to investigate. What could it be? A drowning? A beached whale? A ship wreck? A fight? A drunk? Illegal use of water wings? Sea gull attack? The sea gulls were mammoth and fierce that day, so this seemed likely. We siddled over and saw a confused baby seal squirming in the sand. The fuzzy little guy was gazing up at the crowd nervously. He looked like a cute little puppy dog with no ears, no tail, and no legs.
“This is the greatest day ever!” Jason said again. We watched the thing wiggle about helplessly for a while as the NYPD ordered everyone to stay back. The five officers were a very necessary presence as without them the rambunctious crowd would have undoubtedly petted the cute little thing to death. Myself included.
We went back to the board walk and happened upon a band setting up. The bass player, drummer, and rhythm guitar were all Hell’s Angel’s, the lead guitarist by contrast looked like Jerry Garcia, the harmonica player was a Jersey girl in a long polyester gown. When the lead singer took the stage we knew we were in for something good. She was a slightly haggard, sun damaged blond wearing a cowboy hat, a low cut black gown with a slit up the side, one red elbow length glove, and thigh high white boots. As the sun set she belted out Let your freak flag fly, striking poses as the wind whipped through her hair. The greatest day ever.

Broke

So, I now have internet in the home. My first order of business was to try to sell things for more than their worth on craig’s list. I’m still pretty broke until Wednesday so I’m all about the money-making schemes and free samples.

I have to admit I’m sort of enjoying being temporarily poor. When I get over the shame and anxiousness that paralyzes me every so often I feel pretty free. At first I had some trouble accepting people’s generosity as it always makes me feel weak, but I got over that pretty quickly. The best part is not having money means scrounging around like a little street urchin. This used to be one of my favorite pretend games as a kid. When I was in high school we would sometimes spare change when we were short on $ for beer. Sometimes we'd just tell people we needed a dollar for the train and they'd actually give it to us.

The Lady Returns

Hello. It’s me! I’m back. I know probably no one is out there because it’s been so long since I’ve written, but I’m going to take this up again. I think things got a little dodgy there for a while and I didn’t know what to write about.
Here is the update, things have been going very well:
1. First of all, I encourage all of you to make internet personals ads. Go on, just do it. Do it even if you already have a significant other, you may just find someone better! It will take a year of getting messages from the freakiest of freaks, but one day you will meet someone who is taller than you, says sweet things, and reads your mind just like you always wanted. I promise.
2. I moved to an awesome apartment in park slope that has a washer/dryer and a dishwasher and my rent is a devilishly low $666! The bad news is that the wheels got stolen off my bike my first week. I was foolish and I knew it would happen. There was a move between Astoria and this, but I can’t go into it right now. Talking about my former landlord and the loss of my security deposit gets me very worked up. I will devote an entire entry to it when the impending lawsuit begins.
3. I’m less of a drunk.
4. At the risk of pleasing my mom I’ve embarked on the path of yoga. If you have any questions about the universe and meaning of life feel free to drop me a line!
5. My dad moved out to the middle of nowhere in Baja to live like the wacky desert recluse he was always meant to be, but still finds ways to annoy me on a weekly basis.
So, things are coming together quite nicely. I have been completely broke this month due to some slight credit card abuse, but it’s been a Learning Experience. Ok, I’m going to write something really punchy and sarcastic to entertain you very soon, so watch this space.

xo The Lady

Out and About

Friday night I wore my skin tight satin dress, white with silver flowers embroidered all over it. It was Frank’s Deb ball birthday. I drank excessively. There was wine at the birthday dinner, pink champagne and a little whiskey when we stopped at the house to dress, another glass of wine at the bar, a vodka tonic, sips of Dana’s vodka tonic, a beer bought by Mike…then Jason and I left for The Hole where, he insisted, we would do shots of tequila.

Casting a web

Well, it’s come to this. I made myself an online personals ad. Don’t think that this is an act of desperation. It is not. I was inspired by Amy Fisher, I recently read that she just married the father of her child, a man she met through match.com. Can you believe it? Through the magic of the internet ordinary people have the opportunity to unknowingly meet and eventually marry the likes of Amy Fisher.

It was Amy Fisher and the inevitable cagy feeling that follows a one night stand. I don’t mean that initial urge to make a break for the door. I don’t mean the day after either. The day after is usually a good one, sometimes even two days after I’m left with a triumphant glow, a combination of feeling like a suave conqueror and having done something that I will be keeping secret from my co-workers. The nervousness sinks in later.

Innocence is a funny thing. Until you are acquainted with an experience you don’t even realize what it means to go through such a thing, you assumed you had some idea, but you didn’t. When it happens you say to yourself here is something that I previously could not fathom. Oftentimes this feeling is a bad one, things one would be glad to have remained in the dark about.

Some months ago the term feminine itching gained new meaning for me, it was no longer lingo confined to ads featuring stiff ladies with TV anchor hair and bullet proof smiles. The standard horror of infection was made worse by the fact that this seemed to confirm by usual post-post one night stand fears of venereal disease. I’m dying I thought, or something worse…life long humiliation, forced celibacy, this is my bad karma for laughing every time the ad for herpes medication comes on TV.

Mom, if you happen to be reading this, rest assured it turned out to merely be the result of nylon underpants and a five hour bus ride. But this new experience left me knowing one more reason why it can suck to be a girl. This and other factors have led me to the conclusion that it is nearly impossible for straight girls to take on the role of conquistador. Besides, the novelty of making introductions from bed the following morning is starting to wear off. I’ve decided to go traditional.

From now on I want more than a few drinks and a game of pool, I want dinners, hand holding, and most of all a phone call. Such requests are difficult to make when you’re drunk and horny and you’re not looking forward to the hour train ride back to your apartment. I like the idea of screening boys before even saying hello. It’s delightfully passive aggressive.

Thus far I’ve been winked at by two total weirdoes. One was a guy who posed for his photo holding a stuffed animal and in his answers to almost all the questions refer to the future time with he and the reader might be having sex or at least kissing and that “Kiera Knightly is sexy, but the reader is (hopefully) sexier”. The great thing is there’s no pressure to pay him any mind. No need to awkwardly decline his advances. Best of all it makes me feel secure knowing that day and night I have the internet working for me. The computer me can be out there charming the world while I sit on my ass eating potato chips and laughing at herpes commercials.

So Po-Mo, dude

Speaking of confusing nostalgia for mainstream celebrity crushes, I just saw The Rules of Attraction. Finally someone has made a college movie that can rival the long honored canon of films about high school. Brilliantly it stars the protagonist from the corniest high school television drama ever made: Dawson.

At times this film was so dead-on it was eerie. The mailroom, in particular, so perfectly identical to that of Sarah Lawrence it gave me the chills. You don’t even want to know how hard I cringed at mention of the Dress to Get Screwed Party. There was an amazing scene with Fred Savage and Dawson. Makes you realize that we're no more real than these tv icons, remember Alex Mac and the guy from Mighty Ducks? Misti's recent appearances on Joan of Arcadia.

And of course there was the actual Sarah Lawrence character, which it turned out, did not sum up every overplayed joke about the school, but was instead an uncanny sketch of the most unexpected SLC person of all. The combination of untouchable suaveness and ape-with-tourett’s table manner bore uncanny similarity to the one and only Jason Rosen. It seemed utterly impossible, how could some one so over the top and one of a kind be so easily turned into a type? J-Ro, have you been having secret rendezvous’ at the Cock with Bret Easton Ellis all these four years? Or is life really one enormous cliché?

Bradiffer No More

Late Breaking News:
I’m told this came from a “reliable source”. Apparently Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt are on the verge of a DIVORCE!

Theories:
-It’s been said that Brad is currently sleeping with Angelina JoliE (good for her, I thought she only did freaky old men).

-Don’t be fooled by those charming dimples, Brad has been quoted as saying that he thinks Jen would give him a day pass for Britney Spears.

-How the Media Tore Them Apart. Remember the Bennifer excuse? I can see it now: All that speculation about Jen’s infertility was simply too much strain on their marriage. They considered adopting, but Brad insisted that if the baby’s face didn’t reflect his own there wasn’t much point in having one. He invested in one of those super magnified shaving mirrors, packed up his things and left.

-It was a career marriage and now that friends is over Brad has started courting Misha Barton from the O.C.

-They discovered that they are actually twins separated at birth; they didn’t discover their own incestuous secret until it was too late: the baby was born with three arms and a harelip!

-The twin theory is somewhat discounted by news that Jennifer has had a nose job. Perhaps Brad found out what her former nose looked like and now refuses to mate with her.

Perhaps I’m being a bit too harsh on Jen, but recently I’ve been thinking about Brad Pitt. Although I was critical when he fist came on the scene, calling him things like Brad Armpit (I was ten, ok?) I’ve come to realize that he truly does qualify as a Super Hunk, in fact when you consider his contemporaries it’s clear that Brad is The Super Hunk, he has outlasted them all.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

Movie Watching

This weekend I caught up on lots of random movie watching.

Cocktail
This was on Movie and a Makeover, yet they did not do a makeover. Perhaps they did one and decided not to air it because it came out crappy. By now there has got to be a storage room somewhere (perhaps in Queens) filled with rolls and rolls of bloopers of various ill-fated makeovers, I’m sure Bob Saget is hording them all just waiting to make his comeback. Anyway…Cocktail. The first half of this film consists entirely of an ‘80s Tom Cruise throwing bottles in the air and catching them while dancing around and singing along to popular oldies. He uses his usual boisterous acting techniques: punching the air, clapping, and shouting, “alright!”, but somehow these things failed to endear me as they once so effectively did. They instead seemed really forced. It occurred to me that I’d much rather be watching a Michael J Fox film. Things really fell apart when Tom starts reciting bad poetry and the drama kicks in with Elizabeth Shue revealing she’s knocked up.

Blood Feast 2
This was of course not as charming as Blood Feast 1, mostly because it was made about forty years later, it did, however, continue with the same wonderfully absurd plot involving a catered party devolving into cannibalistic worship of an ancient Pagan goddess. There are lots of naked girls with names like Candy Graham and some charmingly low budget special effects.

The Graduate
This movie has given me something to look forward to. It’s extraordinary how sexy a pushy older lady can be. I can’t wait till I’m forty-something so I can talk in a low throaty voice and make demands on insecure younger men. “Ben, unzip my dress. Now!” I love any movie about depressed wealthy people with impetuous behavior.

I didn’t only watch movies mind you, I also found time to make my first springtime visit to the beer garden and had a long after midnight walk through Astoria. The highlight was discovering the brand new open all night Euro Mart. It’s an enormous supermarket filled with every random European treat you can think of, except for Yorkie Bars (the candy bar for men). I didn’t make any purchases, but I plan to make another 2am trip there very soon.