our music video, dance concerts, le fooding, why i'll never get married

roberto! this guy was my regular when i waited tables at the soho house during law school. he'd be there from morning to night. he added me to his mailing list for new films. i started getting these envelopes with my address handwritten in red sharpie. the writing resembled my grandma's; slanted, slender cursive the way you'd have been taught in the 30's and 40's. inside, a crude photocopied flyer about whatever his new film was.

they remind me of the letters my mom used to get from emo phillips. i was in high school and we saw this production of damn yankees with jerry lewis (who was definitely drunk for the whole performance and was beyond awful) and my mom swore emo phillips was sitting next to her. she looked him up, wrote him a letter asking if it was him. she got back a letter, written on a typewriter (how kitsch!), saying that it was him. they were pen pals for several months. the letters were as odd as you think any correspondance from emo phillips would be. if i can get my mom to dig them up, i'll post some. they're amazing. typewriters! used unironically!

i've been listening to this cover by lady antebelllum pretty much constantly. and i wouldn't even consider myself a country music person. also: i'm yours, jason mraz from the casa nova sessions. listen hard to the muted trombone at the end. the bouncy, meandering, off-beat 16th notes or whatever. so cute. and i've been waking up with bon iver which has been lovely.

le fooding: not great, but it was for charity, so fine. it took an hour to get in and then you had to wait in a separate line for each booth. some of these lines had 45 minute waits. i did witness dave chang yell and swear a bunch about something. and 5 minutes later he's smiling and has his arm around this older woman who was a security guard at the event. we did wait in line for the bourbon vanilla ice cream and lo, it was good.

ryan and i attempted hollandaise. i think i added a drop or two too much butter because it was a tad thick. and it needed flavor. julia only called for salt and pepper. anyway, it only took three tries because we weren't paying enough attention and kept doing things in the wrong order and hollandaise, i learned, is really more about temperature control than anything else. if i were you, i would not try it at home. actually knowing what hollandaise is made of makes me never want to eat it again.

we made the video. the corporate loft was insane. there aren't words...but, if i had to pick two i'd use: pimped out, or bitch ass, or even holy shit. for example, see: the pool table. there was a recording studio with a perfect view of the empire state building. two hot tubs. each table and chair was probably worth at least 15K. and we were given free rein of this 20 million dollar space so that we could play around and make a funny music video for an ailing friend. it was bananas. one of those moments where i had to stop and say, "is this really my life? OMG IT'S AWESOME" people went all out with some sordid outfits from burlington coat factory that involved much faux fur and some ed hardy and, possibly, huge gold earrings that said "apple bottom". one scene involved me, ted, lots of fake dollar bills, a rubber chicken and a magnum of champagne in a bathtub. there was a dance sequence. it was silly and just an unbelievably good time.

i had a discussion recently with a bunch of friends about how our tastes had changed as we got older. foods we hated when we were little but die for now, etc. my example was how i used to be a prince william girl but now, oh, now i'm SOOOO prince harry. not sure why/how/when it happened, but how cute is this?

latisse: changed my life. they're actually so freakishly long, that now people are saying to me, "your eyelashes are amazing! latisse?" and then i sheepishly have to admit that, yes, i totally bought these gorgeous things. they are not mine. the knowledge of how well this stuff works is widespread. it's changed the look of my face. i never wore that much makeup to begin with but a simple curl of the lashes has my eyes popping out all over the place and i need nothing else but maybe a spot of bronzer. in short: WORTH THE MONEY.

colin is out of the hospital and is doing pretty well. well, as well as one can be on a no fat diet. since they messed with all his innards and basically had to remove and then replace all his intestines, his digestive system is sort of delicate at the moment. we've been spending a lot of time trying to keep him company though he's still getting pretty fidgety at the house. i'm going to cook him dinner thursday. any non-fat recipe suggestions welcome!

trying to plan a 30th birthday dinner for rebecca. would love to go to locanda verde but not sure we have enough people. also, we need pasta (why go to locanda and NOT eat pasta?!) and the 4-course meal is pretty pricey. pricey enough that i could walk in and order and entire 4-course meal by myself and still probably not spend what they're asking per head for a group. BUT we'd get glimpses of chef luke ostrom at whom i can only really glance because i'll never talk to the man. why?

not only is he successful/talented (with the good judgment to get on board with carmellini who is genius-like) and kind (i've seen many a friend stop in to see him so one assumes he's not a huge dick), he's the kind of good-looking that takes my abundantly socially graceful self and turns it upside-down, wherein i become a stuttering, quivering, dopey mess. i'll probably get an e-mail from peter saying something like, "you're hot, stop being ridiculous." but i cannot help this. so it's best for me to imagine luke happily married with a tall gorgeous wife who gives better head than me (unlikely, but not impossible!) and who has naturally luscious eyelashes that she didn't have to get a prescription for. this, folks, is why i'm totally going to turn into molly shannon's character in "year of the dog" i will adopt 20 dogs and fall in love with a gay man (wouldn't be the first time!). then i'll get a visit from that hoarders show. BUT, and i'll side with peter on this, i'll probably be the hottest person they've ever staged an intervention for. or, at least, i'll have the best boobs that show has ever seen.

anywho, we'll likely end up at hearth for the birthday dinner instead. and since canora has peaced out of insieme, maybe he'll actually be in the kitchen. chefs in the kitchen = a good thing.

in what i'd call a severely passive attempt to become fluent in spanish i've taken to listenting to a puerto rican talk radio station all day. i'll report back on whether this actually works. i find myself with a high level of comprehension on news subjects but i keep missing all the jokes. the pertinent words are not in my vocab and then i hear raucous laughter and i'm left guessing at what was so funny. this happens several times a day.

saw the third fall for dance program on sunday. basil twist's petrushka was mesmerizing. the puppets are tall and each manned by three people. the coordination in making these things move is pretty astounding. and two of the puppets totally get hot and heavy at one point. monica bill barnes had in impossibly cute piece called, i think, "i feel" to james brown's sex machine. (which, incidentally, is still stuck in my head and the head-nodding i've been doing to it at my cube is embarrassing.) also on the program: crowd-pleasing male ballet dancers in drag, the trocs! one of whom, as a woman, was definitely prettier than me. and as a finale, the female-objectifying-scream-inducing dancebrazil. each guy had, i dunno, 4 sets of abs more than the average person and they danced in teeny boxer briefs in red, the color of love. and these women LOOOOOVED all over these men, bulls, ready to charge. literally, screaming. i was embarrassed for my gender. it was chippendales but sans alcohol. and with children scattered about. at 4:30pm. in midtown. on sunday, which, need i remind you all, is GOD's day y'all. or so i hear...

epic post. and i didn't even get into my healthcare rant and all those fuckers on the finance committee doing their best to kill the public option today and somehow forgetting that you only need 51. READ IT 51 votes to pass a bill, not 60. i want to see republicans filibuster a healthcare plan that 60% of americans say they want.