02.23.06

the dirty dozen [part 1, since i'm too lazy to come up with twelve bullet points in a day]:

001 we've (i've) been on a movie binge for the upcoming academy awards. this hasn't involved actually watching nominated films (with the exception of the constant gardener - very pretty, but i'd be surprised if rachel weisz won for it), but i like to think we're offering broad support to the industry as a whole. we saw one of the greatest films of all time (r. kelly's trapped in the closet, which we both own and watched for the first time with my mother) and one of the worst remakes in recent history (the fog). the latter was such an inversion of all that is right and good that it actually caused a new york post reviewer to say something awesome: "How many out there have nightmares about leprous sailor-skeletons reaching up to grab you through the drain while you do the dishes?"

002 still slumming with wedding books; those listed at right are the tip of a dirty, dirty iceberg. repellent sentence of the day, on diamonds: "For your fiancee's sake, the larger the better, and she probably only likes talking in whole numbers...one carat, two carats, three carats, four." mine is not a whole number, per my request, thanks much. which is not to say that we don't refer to it, in our best sean connery voices, as The Rock.

003 yeah, there's a ring; we bought it (and ordered a wedding band for joe) before the blizzard started the weekend before last. the first flakes were falling as we left the store in soho, just in time to commemorate the freakishness of my liking a diamond.

004 ace young is the next american idol. his voice isn't the best this year, and he doesn't make my own personal liver quiver, but he's species hot - one of those seamlessly, freakishly attractive people who look like they were bioengineered to destroy the earth via mating. freakish is the operative word: even the television without pity crowd is responding to the way he shuddered through george michael's "father figure" last night. i'll keep watching for a few weeks just to see which pop songs are considered most conducive to the end of the world.

02.13.06

fo blizzle, my nizzle. part of me needed to work out yesterday because i'd been slacking, but most of me wanted to say that i'd gone to the gym in new york's biggest snowstorm - and to plompf through this.

new yorkers will go to great lengths for anecdotes;* twenty minutes ago a guy** just north of the carnegie deli offered me $5 to sled down a pile of plowed snow with him. it's now full of exhaust and pee, mind you, and will deposit you in the bus lane on 7th avenue; anything for a story, though. the guy's still out there with his plastic toboggan.

joe and i bundled up for a grocery / rental movie run at ten yesterday morning, when ours were the first footprints and hell's kitchen was completely silent. the streets were waking up by the time we walked home, and the local dogs were clearly having the best morning romp of their lives. three cheers for snow.

*and, yeah, photo sets. i'm only human.

**said guy didn't look crazy, but he did look like a guest host for new york noise. gotta watch out for those.

02.10.06

did anyone see the episode of supernatural with the townspeople who sacrificed sweet-looking couples on road trips to a bloodthirsty scarecrow to keep their apple orchards alive? no? it was pretty creepy. i think the florist up the street saw it.

02.08.06

one turns up odd stuff while planning a destination wedding. of interest today (though not quite right for 'lauren and joe's guide to oxford') are the ten worst paintings hanging in britain (per the guardian). the blurb on julian opie's portraits of blur is rather depressing:

Almost anything in the National Portrait Gallery is irritating, but this is particularly so because Opie's done such a smoothed out, contemporary, stylish painting without any real originality or feeling or emotion. It's not anything that couldn't have been done on a computer. I know it invites comparisons with Warhol and Richter, but with both of those there are great painterly touches and emotions, but not with Opie. And Blur themselves are embarrassing subject matter. They're the quintessence of Britpop and what was supposedly hot in our culture in the 90s. Now they're just deeply unfashionable.

call me anyway, damon. in questionable art news of a personal nature, i'm scoring my first byline in the march issue of the magazine. the name-in-print part is undeniably titillating; the name-in-print-after-stuff-that-isn't-offensively-squidgy-but-only-vaguely-resembles-what-i-wrote part is a bit odd. getting one step closer to writing for fun and profit, now that's unequivocally good.

02.01.06

101 in 1001: 007 go vegan for at least 1 month [completed 02.01.06]
there it is, bitches! no celebratory german chocolate for me, though the thought of the snazzy stuff mari brought me for christmas makes me want to weep; as previously noted, i've folded the vegan thing into Operation Infinite Pulchritude. the good news is that joe reports that i appear to have lost weight; the bad news is that it seems to have fled my face, which is one of the only parts of a bride that doesn't have to worry about getting into a crazy dress.* in a broader sense, i've gotten used to finding critter-free food and eating enough of it that i don't want to kill everyone. restaurants are still a problem,** but i'm learning to pre-party with snacks at home. the skills, they develop slowly but surely.

*speaking of, settling on a dress has been weird. i'd planned to stick with the one i'd picked out back in 2000, but i befriended an indie pop DJ a few weeks ago whose non-superhero job, as i learned in one of those random streets-of-new-york run-ins last wednesday, is at bergdorf goodman; he hooked me up with a local couture guy who's slowly convincing me that i want to trade lots of money for chiffon, of all things. resisting him (and a wedding dress story that begins with ride's "vapour trail") ain't easy.

**especially the den of asshats we tried last saturday. i know french cuisine is virtually off-limits for me, but i didn't deserve a rude lecture for asking if their salad dressing was vegan. you, bar tabac, can suck it.