professional disco dancing, culinary cabs, john oliver

friday night was a girls night at my dive bar. we managed to wrangle a booth which is good, but always leads to a parade of weirdos approaching us because we're a captive audience, somewhat trapped and obviously not going to get up and give up our prime seats just because some guy is being weird/annoying/homeless. this time it was a guy who was strangely rude and aggressive. it's like, "hey man, you keep coming over to us! sorry that we're offending you by not loving all over you." he introduced himself and claimed, seriously, that he was a disco dancer. he looked like ben stiller. i wanted to ask him do to "blue steel" but didn't trust his temper. then when julie went to the bathroom he accosted her in line and when she politely declined his offer to hook up with her in the men's room (at a dive bar! gross!) he told her that she was destined to have a pathetic life because she obviously wasn't a risk taker. let me get this straight: she rejects you and so, by definition, she's a psycho who has bad taste. YES. MEN IN THIS CITY ARE AWFUL.

 

speaking of awful men...over the weekend i got a note from a little birdie who reads the blog, she was sending over this article which is about this douchebag.

 

i arrive at the vma after party, am standing at the bar waiting for my drink (sprite, splash of cran because it is a school night!) and standing next to me: none other than tabber benedict! he is less good-looking than i remember. old and slimy-looking in fact. pocket square in tact. with a blonde who was just a train wreck. UGH. ugh ugh. when i got inside i was standing no more than 2 feet from gerard butler. justy and i had this conversation, "gee, doesn't that guy look like gerard butler?" him: "yeah, totally" me: "oh, someone just called him gerard" justin: "that settles it i suppose." and then there was mark ronson. oh, mark ronson. i do not know what it is about him (i doubt it's the hot pink shirts and skinny ties) but i just could look at him all day. when justy was ready to leave i said, "give me 5 more minutes of mark gazing..." would this creep him out? certainly! i'm a crazy-ass lawyer who looks like she's stalking him when, really, he keeps ending up at events where i have friends working, etc., etc.

 

saturday night i ended up at a few parties that esquire mag was throwing. my new pretend boyfriend is a guy named tyler who is an editor. dark cury hair, glasses. those are basically my prerequisites these days. david knew all these hot straight guys at the party which makes me angry because he's clearly been holding out on me all this time. i'm hoping lots of talk about my dead, shriveled vagina will motivate him to try to find me a decent date or two. if only to stop the vagina talk. for as much as they love boobs the gays HATE the v-word.

 

and sunday during the day we took a trip in famous fat dave's taxi. i highly recommend this for anyone visiting the city, people who live here who need something to do with their parents. you basically tell dave what kind of food you like and he takes you to these random hole-in-the wall outter borough places that have the best of whatever it is you're looking for. we headed north and did harlem, city island and the bronx. fried calzones, clams basilica, fried whitefish, fried chicken, the best canoli i've ever had, jerk chicken and spicy shrimp near yankee stadium. dave also happens to be a history buff so it's an educational tour as well as a culinary one. he's also pretty funny and an amazingly easy person to hang with for 4 hours. AND as if he weren't knowledgeable enough, we mention we're going to kenya and he'd just been there for several weeks and promptly e-mailed over the names/notes on safaris he took and where he stayed in mombassa. SCORE.

 

on kenya, colin insists on planning the trip even though he likely won't be able to go. between surgery and chemo, he'll have a lot of down time and he's happy to have something to do.

 

i finished the sunday times crossword and did the damn thing in pen which, in the end, was highly unsatisfying. it was obviously an easy one and i didn't feel challenged. in fact, i practically felt cheated!

 

went to 826nyc's comedy night at the highline. it's my new favorite event space. perfectly intimate without being drab. plenty of tables so you don't end up standing at the bar (i'm looking at you blue note!) if you can't be 3 hours early. john oliver performed and j'adore him. dark hair, glasses, again but also DIMPLES and he's outrageously funny so if i saw him on the street i might tear all my clothes off right there and beg him to come with me to the nearest starbucks bathroom or something. wyatt cenac from the daily show was there too. and i liked this dude ted alexandro even though several of his jokes were, apparently, too low-class for the audience (whom oliver referred to repeatedly as "mcsweeneys"). basically, a bunch of frigid liberal rich folks. they can be hard to please.

 

and from the nytimes style mag: how dreamy is this michael fassbender man? i'm not so much a movie person so i don't much know who he is but DAMN. a mix of matthew mcconaghey and kevin kline. and he probably doesn't walk around naked all the time so he's a much easier person to like and possibly isn't 100% full of himself. yet.