Remember to take your nice pills today.

One of the greatest things about living in New York is that there's this strange camaraderie that defies the stereotype non-New Yorkers seem to have about this city, the stereotype that you can only discredit personally after you've lived here at least a year. That is to say, one of the best things about becoming a New Yorker is realizing that you're part of a huge, dynamic community, which is NOT filled with assholes.

There are, however, the exceptions. A few weeks ago I was walking up Fourth Avenue to class, when some boulder of a man who's hollering at the top of his lungs to his companion walked straight into me. As I kept walking, he turned around, looked at me like I had just shot him in the foot, and screamed, "DON'T YOU SEE ME???!!!" Why yes, fat ass, I did see you. I believe I saw you from Brooklyn.

Special topics in conceptual marine life

It's been a baron two weeks since I last paid any heed to this blog, and for that I apologize. To my fan base of what seems to be, like, three people, I'm sure this has been a veritable drought for you. Please forgive my neglect in the wake of yet another shitfest which befell the New Kennedys, codename: my family, eleven days ago (see, Caroline, I have an excuse to abandon my responsibilities- get to it, sister). I'm not one to turn a blog into a daily chronicle of my (not always so) pedestrian life, however, so on to my inner monologue - hurrah!

I only read about three books a year. I find this truth - like you, I'm sure - exceedingly unsettling and disappointing, considering my effort to augment my rich vocabulary, well-rounded mental bank of culture, and overall savoir-vivre. Such a thin reading list is also kind of fridiculous considering the fact that I work in and hope to pursue a career in publishing. A blazing sign of my mediocre literary pursuits also vests itself in my plebeian tastes: I only seem to go for books that are a step up from trashy romance rags that you'd find at Safeway, or similar deviations of The DaVinci Code. The only books I have read in the past twelve months include the final Harry Potter and Special Topics in Calamity Physics. Looking past Harry Potter, since it's a blaring chef d'oeuvre in the Western canon and therefore there's no need for me to defend it, I picked up Special Topics because it promised a strange mystery and a healthy wealth of cultural trivia that was vital to its plot. Its fresh quirkiness really, really resonated to me, and I found its puzzle admirably well executed.

I guess the reason I'm disappointed in myself for only choosing these sorts of novels is that they're so fast-paced that they demand absolutely no effort on my part to commit my voluntary attention to the book. They're so captivating that I feel I "can't put them down," if you will.

Such was the case with the third book I've read this year, The Raw Shark Texts by Steven Hall. Any book that would do well advertised in Maxim or Playboy is a book for me. Not only because I think about naked girls and Ducatis all the time*, but also because I think I crave the sort of story-telling that a man would love: perverse, violent, and wickedly imaginative (I'm embarrassed to admit that Chuck Palahniuk is the only author I've consistently stayed loyal to, save whoever wrote The Babysitters Club series way back in fourth grade land). Shark Texts was the epitome of this kind of language, and I don't disagree with the praise its received as a ground-breaking new genre. The story and concept were a bizarre, existential amalgam of psychoanalytical theories not unlike those glorified in The Matrix. Lucky for the reader you just don't have to suffer through two and a half hours of Keanu Reeves and Cari Ann Moss humping in a cave. I don't want to divulge too much about the book, but trust me when I say that it beautifully embraces mystery, thriller, and even romance, without sacrificing original thought. In fact, (while the abstract theories are sometimes overwhelming), the psychological questions and mechanics Hall evokes are simply... exciting? The pace was absolutely perfect, and even the ending, though it threatened to be a little weak and macabre for a minute, was perfect.

Basically, buy it. Read it. You won't be sorry.

OK. I wrote an entry about a book. Now my blog is intellectual!

*I don't really think about naked girls and Ducatis all the time.

I'll stick to the pretty pictures, thanks.

So, last night on the train I set myself to a new challenge. Trying to groom myself culturally, I have recently been making a sincere effort to buy magazines other than Cosmo and similar flippant sex rags which espouse twenty-first century female mania. For a more exhaustive, and hilarious, examination on why people shouldn't read these magazines, please see Jezebel's astute collection of observations. By the way, this has not deterred me from still wanting to pick the publication up from time to time. Sometimes we all need a little literary narcotic. OK? However, at the train station, perusing down the news aisles, I just didn't feel ready or smart enough for something as heavy as Newsweek or The New Yorker. Say what you will, I just don't find the "Talk of the Town" anything to write home about. Also, considering that the phenomena upon which I form my most cultivated opinions are VH1 and Project Runway (Gah! I'm so lazy. My hearty oped on Christian Siriano to come later - for now just read the musings of the authority slash God: Tim Gunn), I just didn't feel up to the mental challenge of indulging in the woes of America's intelligentsia. Therefore, I decided to go for the next best thing: I would pick up the mammoth issue of Vogue (for Anna Wintour's monthly love letter to the FAH-bulous does in fact include very astute diatribes) and encourage myself to read it cover-to-cover. Not a small feat, considering page count the cover boasts. This meant turning each page, and actually reading the articles, rather than just looking at the glossy pictures accompanying and then drooling over the Marc Jacobs double-page spread on the next page. Reading the articles actually shouldn't be considered so trying, especially because 80% of the magazine consists of advertisements and pompous photographs of people you wish you were. However, the treatises contained within typically profile a larger social issue or something about a foreign film or indie flick no one's going to see, because it's completely stupid, until it makes it big at Sundance. Therefore, it did command some sort of opinionated effort on my part. Touché.

One thing I was excited about was the fact that Drew Barrymore was the feature article. So, I decided to cheat a little bit and head straight to the piece (that's what she said). Now, I'm a huge Drew fan. Say what you will, but I've always loved her, even when she feigned that inane adolescent girl-crush on her Charlie's Angels costars, and even when she stumbled through that five-month hot mess of a marriage with Tom Green ("This is the Tom Green Show; it's not the Green Tom Show...." sorry, had to reminisce). And even when she gushes about the horrid childhood that saw her drinking at nine and doing yay at twelve - AH-GAIN. (Please Drew; considering my family woes I WISH I could go back in time and encourage my 9-year-old self to take a stiff one). Whatever. Drew Barrymore = the shit. But as I progressed through this article, the more and more I wanted to stop using Vogue as a travel companion and more as a surface upon which to vom. When did feature articles stop being portraits of celebrities and start being sickeningly infatuated propaganda? Julia Reed's œuvre on Barrymore is positive dribble. DRIBBLE I SAY! I mean, I can recognize the fact that profiles of A-listers in glamorous publications - even profiles of the baser A-listers (I'm lookin at you - LiLo) - are supposed to be a little kiss-ass. But this garbage was simply nauseating. It details, in bleeding-heart compassion, the history of a regal but misguided "dynasty" of actors and performers, all weaving through Drew's meticulous explanation of everyone's need to "find their tribe," and the accounts of the astounding pains and sacrifices she made in converting herself to Edie Bouvier Beale for the upcoming Grey Gardens. Wait, Drew stopped using her blackberry for a month? What a martyr. Bring back the flower child that made peace signs on the red carpet. That may have been when I was eleven and I saw her at Nickelodeon kid's choice awards, and when she looked like a cross between a vampire and a hippie, but at least it was more credible and genuine than this charade. And the worst, most unbelievable moment of this dark horse is when Reed mentions an impromptu call she made to Barrymore, while Drew was out at lunch with her boyfriend, Justin Long. Here's Reed's account of what happens when she asks for Justin's opinion of Drew:

When she puts him on the phone, I meanly put him on the spot. 'Tell me one thing she brings to mind,' I demand, but he doesn't hesitate: 'Instant light. Beauty and light, and she shines it on everybody who comes into contact with her.'

I'm sorry, but I have a hard time believing the Mac guy would ever spew that sort of bullshit. I think I'd have a more sincere relationship with the Dell dude.

High school story

Once upon a time, back when I was a sophomore at Holy Child, I had to go through a class called Road to Perdition. Some other people call it gym.

When I was a sophomore, phys ed actually sucked a whole lot less than it started out. For one, it was only two days a week. And secondly, we actually did engage in "sports" that were more befitting of an all-girls Catholic high school - WASP pastimes, in otherwords. We were schooled in the proper mechanics of badmitton, fencing, yoga, dance, and archery. To make up for the fact that we weren't exactly burning off the calories in a carrot stick during class, we had to bring in a log each week detailing the cardivascular training we pursued at home on our own time. If you know anything about me, your guess that I forged these little weekly claims is completely iron logic, kemosabe. Every week I turned in a record which stated I had gone on a treadmill for 20 minutes a day, 4 days a week. Regardless of the fact that that kind of exercise is complete bullshit to begin with, it was still really, really false. And on top of that I forged my mom's name. Sorry, Ann.

Anyway. My whole scheme kind of came back to bite me in the butt, as the reason we were required to hand these slips in was because the at-home exercise served as training for the two-mile run we were to do from campus into "the village." Holy Child is situated deep in the equestrian utopia of Potomac, Maryland, where the people:horse:McMansion ratio is probably 2:5:1. The hills and trees look like something out of a Keats poem, and let me tell you, when you're an amoebus couch potato of a high schooler, who's idea of a workout is opening a can of Mike's hard lemonade, then running those mammoth hills aint no cakewalk. On the day of the run, as I lagged behind all the other girls, somewhere around Behnke's greenhouse, I decided it would be a better idea to stop and puke on the side of River Road. My gym teacher came up behind me, probably suppressing her vindicated laughter while she asked, "you OK, Bridge?" (due to a stubborn insistence that my name was Bridget - even when she learned it halfway into my time at HC). I blamed my pathetic disability on the fact that all I had for breakfast that morning was orange juice, which we all KNOW you're not supposed to have before a run (sike - it don't matter one bit!). She told me to get in the van, which was following our class in the case of just such a travesty. I sat in that van while it followed my class all the way to the village, where all the HEALTHY girls bought ice cream from Safeway to eat on the ride back.

My punishment was that I then had to WALK SIX miles a few days later with all the girls who had valid excuses (ie asthma, a broken leg, admittedly not filling out their exercise slips for the whole year) not to run.

The lesson learned after all this? Wait till you're at a party, and you're drunk, to vomit in front of your gym teacher.