leavin' on a bolt bus

Okay, boys and girls. I'm heading down south this afternoon -- well at least if you asked the nutjobs who live around here, that's what they'd tell you -- to Washington, D.C. for a little shindig we call the Hugh O'Brian Youth Leadership World Leadership Congress. Or HOBY WLC for much, much shorter.

Anywho. I'll be kicking it for about a week with some highly ambitious, talented, smart and excitable teenagers, and a volunteer staff of grown-ups who aren't too different. I'm going to try my best to get in some updates from the field while I'm there, but experience tells me it'll be tough. We're usually pretty busy, and when I'm not running around the city with 400 16-year-olds I'll be staying up all night giggling and drinking slurpees until I experience simultaneous sugar rush and brain freeze. It's a hard job, but someone's gotta do it.

Worst case scenario, I'll see you in August. Hopefully I'll get to say hi before then. Hopefully Jersey City won't blow up while I'm gone. (This may be the first time I've ever said that and really, earnestly meant it.)

cheers,
elizabeth

setting the record straight

I love Justin Timberlake. I need to make that one fact very, very clear before I go any further.

I own every *NSYNC album, I had an entire wall of my room as a pre-pubescent teeny bopper covered with posters of Justin, J.C., Lance, Joey and Chris AND I have two of his solo albums and know all the words to every SNL song or sketch he's ever written, been in or contemplated on the toilet. I love him. I'd marry him. I'd have his beautiful Aryan babies.

But.

Justin Timberlake is not from Memphis.

Before you start throwing sharp objects and lighting your torches to storm the village, let me explain. Justin grew up in Millington. He went to E.E. Jeeter Elementary school. And after that, he was homeschooled. In Millington. Millington is about 35 minutes north of Memphis, far enough that I would hesitate to call it a suburb.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I did spend the greater part of my formative years in Bartlett, Tennessee, a suburb of Memphis. My parents currently reside in Bartlett. However. I was born in a house on Tutwiler Avenue, I went to pre-school at the Union Avenue Church of Christ, I rang the bell in the Evergreen Presbyterian Church belltower with my brothers when we lived on Lyndale Street, across McLean from Snowden Elementary, where I went to kindergarten and first grade. My parents both graduated from Memphis State University, my mom works for Memphis City Schools and my dad works for the City of Memphis.

And my blood also tastes like barbeque sauce. I kid, I kid.

So yes, my folks do live in the burbs. I lived in the burbs. But I am a Memphian, born and bred, and I can tell you one thing with certainty -- if anyone else besides JT tried to be from Millington and pass it off as Memphis, we would not be having that shit for one hot second. We would've called shenanigans LONG ago. And I definitely get it. Like I said, I love JT just as much as the next red-blooded American woman, and I understand why we continue to claim him.

But the best part of all of this to me is not just that we wouldn't let someone of lesser celebrity status get away with it -- it's that I can think of several times in my life when I have been describing someone to another Memphian, used the phrase "She's from Millington," and had to say NO MORE because those three words summed the whole thing up. So maybe we decided that Justin shouldn't have to suffer that fate. Maybe it was conscious. We didn't want him to be from Millington (shudder) so we scooped him up and adopted him as our own.

And y'all know I love him, but that boy ain't from Memphis. But as long as he promises not to commit any sacrilege, like calling anything other than pork "barbeque" or remixing Al, Otis or Booker T, I guess we can keep him.


cheers,
elizabeth

new additions to the family

I've run out of ways to go on and on about this with the sense of grandeur and occasion I think it deserves, but here are the facts: we're welcoming two brand new residents to the Apartment 2 mailbox today.

Niyaliz Diaz and Madeleine Medina, welcome. And of course, there was also mail for Belen Garcia and Jean Solano -- like my third grade teacher Mrs. Leppanen used to say, "Make new friends and keep the old; one is silver, the other is gold."


cheers,
elizabeth

the things i'll leave behind

This morning I made a little trip to my fruit and veg place down in McGinley Square, which happens to be about a half-block from the place where all those cops got shot the other day when the news-chopper woke me up at the ass crack of dawn.

I was disappointed that everything seemed to be back to normal, there was no caution tape, no ongoing investigation. Then again, the shooting was last week, and I imagine in this neighborhood they have the recovery time from a major criminal event down to a two-hour-turnaround. Also, everyone involved in the criminal part of the event was shot dead. So, probably less to investigate. I'm just guessing.

So since there was a lack of cool post-shooting stuff to look at, the most interesting thing at the farmers' market this morning became the gentleman who was buying things one item at a time by asking the lady at the cash register how much they cost, and paying for them individually. First he bought some blackberries that were outside. He came in and put some money on the counter, she bagged his blackberries. Then, he came back inside and asked the cashier, "How much is milk? A gallon of milk?" Keep in mind, of course, that the milk is all the way at the back of the store in the refrigerated section. He puts money on the counter, goes back and gets milk. As I was paying for my oranges and grapes, he was inquiring about a third item. Fresh bread, maybe? I can't remember.

These spontaneous moments of ridiculous have become one of my favorite things about Jersey City. The South does boast its fair share of crazy, but I think when I leave the great wintry north this'll be something I can definitely mark in the "Things I'll Miss" category. Right next to Bagel Man Bagels.


cheers,
elizabeth

breaking a few eggs

This past week, after discovering that I had an alarming number of Facebook friends (1,195 to be exact, and I can't even think of 50 people I know off the top of my head much less people I'd call a friend) I decided to take a tip from Holly and do a good old-fashioned purge. Get rid of the dead weight. Trim off the excess.

I was able to get the number down to around 955, though if I had my druthers (again, what the EFF is a druther, we may never know) it would be much less than that. In the purge went people I went to high school with but never talked to then/talk to now, HOBY kids whose identities I couldn't determine upon reading their names, people I was only friends with because of whoever I was dating at the time and other randoms who've popped up along the way. For Christ's sake, I was friends with at least a dozen people that I met on New Year's Eve several years ago when I went party hopping in Murfreesboro with my friend Bekah and Allah knows I couldn't pick one of those people out of a line-up.

Mostly, I think these people will never notice I'm gone, because I feel pretty confident that if they had been the ones friend-purging, I'd be axed, too. But there was one person who was a little verclempt about the whole situation, and I received a lovely message in my Facebook inbox just a few days after the purge.

We're going to need to rewind a little bit here. Remember when I went speed dating? And I went on some dates with this one guy I met there? (Sorry I didn't fill you in on all this before, it's just awkward blogging about someone you want to buy you dinner again.)

We had a nice enough time, he bought me drinks, gave decent compliments, took me out for Mexican and had other talents that shant be mentioned here. Mostly because my dad and brothers read this, too. Sorry, Internet. Anywho. He was fine for a few laughs but it was nothing serious, and in fact I started to realize on about date three or four that when he was talking and I wasn't at least a little drunk I just wanted to hit him in the face to make him stop. We didn't really have anything in common, other than apparently being over the legal drinking age, so all of our conversations seemed to devolve into Stories About Times I Was Drunk. Which, okay, is maybe fun for half a second. With your friends. Or your family. But someone you're dating? And just sort of met like, I don't know, A WEEK AGO? It's all a little much.

So first I tried just ignoring his texts/calls/Facebook messages/smoke signals, but then my friend Mike convinced me that I was building up bad dating karma and I surely did not want to be messing around with karmic dating curses. So I ended up seeing him again. But then we had a conversation wherein he explained the sport of bullfighting to me for 20 EFFING MINUTES the entire way from his apartment to the train station, despite my first, second and THIRD polite requests to please STOP TALKING ABOUT BULLFIGHTING BEFORE I RALPH ON YOUR FLIP FLOPS. Did he stop? No, no he did not. And I felt that urge to hit him in the face creeping back up and I said to myself, I said, "Self? We are NOT doing this anymore. Capiche?"

So since then, he's texted once. Maybe twice? And of course I have not responded. Which didn't get him too upset, no -- it was the Facebook defriending that sent him over. And why? Because he wanted to still be friends.

Here's the thing. I have a few ex-boyfriends who I consider myself friends with, or at least on friendly terms. But these were people who, I don't know, I had something in common with. Spent some time in conversation with. Did not want to hit in the face. (At least not all the time.) Me and Mr. Speed Date? In case you forgot, we did meet at speed dating. We weren't friends before, we're not friends now. We were hardly friends in the middle bit.

And sure, I have "friends" on Facebook who aren't my BFFs in real life. But I keep connected with them so that I can view massive photo albums of pictures from their weddings, critique their bridesmaids' dresses and gossip about who is or is not taking to pregnancy well, IF you know what I mean. I do not, as it happens, have much interest in looking at Mr. Speed Date's photo albums of what are essentially slightly varying versions of the same photo of him chugging beers in different locations around Manhattan and taking body shots off barmaids dressed like slutty Catholic school girls.

This, it seems, has hurt his feelings. But like they say -- if you want to make an omelette, you gotta break a few eggs.

And I have literally no clue what that has to do with this situation, but it seemed deep.


cheers,
elizabeth

oh, no she didn't

I like to play this game while I'm walking around Jersey City. It's called Pregnant or Obese, and it's pretty straightforward. I spot a woman in the vicinity who qualifies (read: is hefty in the front quarters) and I spend a few moments trying to guess whether she's pregnant or just really, unfortunately fat in all the wrong places.

Of course there's no true resolution to the game, because I don't actually ask the women if they're expecting or just on their way to the McGinley Square Dunkin Donuts. And there have been some that really left me with a big question mark, like the woman whose breasts were collectively the exact same size as her heinously protruding belly. This would typically indicate pregnancy, but she was also drinking malt liquor from a can in a paper bag.

Although that could be equally irrelevant to the discussion, really.

Am I a bad person? Maybe. But I don't openly stare (I wear sunglasses, obviously) and it's not like I'm pointing and snickering. And sometimes, I get mine. Because really, it would be better just not to look at all at some of these grotesque ladies. Like the one I eyed today on the way to the grocery store, whose stretch-mark covered stomach was coming out of an RIP MJ tee shirt with black and silver glitter letters.

My retinas have not stopped burning.


cheers,
elizabeth

welcome to my neighborhood

This morning around 5 a.m. I was awakened by what sounded like a low-flying plane. I got up, went to tinkle, came back to my bedroom and peeked out the curtain to see if I could catch anything in the sky.

Sure enough, my groggy early-morning eyes caught sight of a helicopter (with the letters NJ something or other printed on the side, but I was half-asleep) floating just above my house. I was annoyed, but it was 5 in the morning so I accepted that me and the helicopter were going to coexist for a little while and I crawled back in bed.

So when I actually got up and out of bed this morning, naturally, I Googled the whole sitch to find out what was so important that I needed to be roused from my sleep at such an ungodly hour. Turns out that down the street from my apartment, actually right near the place where I buy my fruit and veg near McGinley Square, there was a full-blown cops-and-robbers shoot-out going down. Perps shoot at cops, cops shoot back, perps hole themselves up in nearby drug house, local residents are evacuated, five cops get shot, perps get shot dead and the whole thing is captured by the ABC news-copter that wakes me up at 5 in the morning. (You can read the full story here.)

I don't know what's worse -- that the shooting itself even happened in the first place, that I was totally unfazed when I finally got to the bottom of the story and realized what had been going on literally two blocks from where I was sleeping peacefully, OR that the emotion I still feel most strongly about the whole shebang is straight up aggravation that my slumber was interrupted by the GD news-copter.

Just send a dude with a camera next time, ABC. You're messing with my beauty sleep.


cheers,
elizabeth

a message from my bum

I saw a woman at the gym today with black sweatpants on that said "CHAMPAGNE" across the butt. Now without delving too deeply into my feelings on ass billboards, if you're going to advertise something across your cheeks shouldn't it at least have something to do with you? An adjective, like "Bossy" or "Sexy" or some word that (you believe) describes you?

I mean, I may not be fully up-to-date on the rules of rear-end sky writing. I really might not. It may be totally kosher to write whatever the eff you want back there. But "champagne?" Really? What does that have to do with anything? Not only does it have nothing to do with you, it's not even a name brand. It's just a generic thing. You might as well just write "Beer" or "Cookies" or "Store Brand TP." If it said "Christal" on your ass, though I'd probably judge you even more, I'd at least think you were making some sort of personal statement. You like to drink $3,000 champagne and then buy sweatpants to let the world know. I get it.

But champagne? I'm just not sure.

Unless, of course -- yeah. It's probably her first name. My bad, y'all.


cheers,
elizabeth

the waiting

In case you were wondering, I have not, in fact, heard anything yet about THE job. And since it's taken longer than I was initially told, I've pretty much convinced myself that I'm not getting the job. Blerg.

But I don't know that for sure, of course. Pergatory.

Blergatory.

sacrifices

I have this money. I call it promise money. It's 100 pounds, in an HSBC bank account in London, and it is my promise to myself that I'll be back in London before too long to spend it on a Tube pass, a few beers and a pub lunch.

This weekend, I slept. I went to bed at 7:30 on Saturday because I was having a full-blown financial mental meltdown, and I felt so overwhelmed, so at ends about everything that I didn't know what to do other than shut down completely. I cried because for the second time, I found a rotten orange in a bag of oranges and knew I couldn't afford to buy any more. Sunday, I slept because I didn't have enough food to eat lunch and I didn't want to get too hungry. So I slept.

And at some point, I woke up, and I knew I was going to have to do what I've been putting off and putting out of my mind for months. Spend the promise money.

This morning I went onto my HSBC account online and set up a transfer to put 60 pounds (about 95 dollars) into my account here in New York, because I couldn't bring myself to take all of it. 40 pounds of that promise money is still safe and sound. It was an especially hard decision to take this money for a bevy of reasons -- it meant admitting just how bad things had gotten for me financially, which was difficult in and of itself, but it also opened the floodgates to a lot of fears and concerns I have about the future, about getting back to London.

I worry that if the New Era calls me up today and offers me this job, I won't have the chance to travel back to London for perhaps another year. I worry that if I get any job at any newspaper that the case will be similar. I worry that I am in so much debt and in so far over my head that I might as well kiss a trip to England goodbye for years. Plural. And since there is still a very strongly lingering part of me that wishes I'd never left, they are hard fears to swallow.

Taking the money just feels like robbing even more from the possibilities.

But I'm not in England now, sadly. I'm here. And I'm poor. And that $95 will buy groceries and pay for bus tickets and electric bills. And maybe for just a few days, a tiny sliver of peace of mind.

Till I start thinking about those pub lunches again, of course.


cheers,
elizabeth

The Craziest Thing I've Ever Witnessed

I see a lot of crazy stuff here every day. Some people -- myself included, once upon a time -- might consider this to be another one of my PNYs: Perks of life in New York. Unfortunately, most of the time the crazy stuff you get to see also smells like urine or tries to touch you with the hand he wipes his ass with while tap dancing and begging for money on a crowded N train. Because usually, the "crazy stuff" is actually just certifiably crazy homeless people doing their typical, everyday-type shit while regular folks look on in horror.

Growing up in Memphis, I saw a lot of crazy stuff. And what crazy stuff I didn't see, my dad regaled me with stories of, like the time an obese lady in a house dress was chasing some city officials down a street with an ax and her robe flew open. And there was NOTHING UNDERNEATH IT. With that kind of background I tend to be fairly unimpressed with most weird stuff that happens here, but the other night while I was walking home from work the crazy quotient got taken to a whole 'nother level.

I'm walking from Penn Station to the PATH train at 33rd street. It's about 9:45 p.m., after an evening shift. I step out onto Sixth Avenue to cross over when the light changes; traffic is heavy, so the cars are lined up all the way back to the cross walk. All of a sudden, out of the traffic comes running a guy in baggy jeans and a white tee shirt, zig-zagging through the cars and now, through the people in the cross walk. Not two seconds later, out runs a cop, chasing the guy at full speed. The perp runs into oncoming traffic and GETS HIT BY A CAB. Women scream. There's gasping and shrieking. The guy rolls off the hood of the cab and it looks like it runs him over a little bit. The one thing I know for sure is that it hit him hard enough to knock his shoe off, because there is a big black high stop sneaker underneath the cab. The cop catches up and starts cuffing the guy while the guy is still lying, SHOELESS, on the ground.

Y'all, this might actually be the craziest thing I ever witnessed in my life, real close up. With the possible exception of this time a Camaro came flying through a red light, hit the car next to me and spun off into a median back a few years ago, and I miraculously did not soil the car seat.

But, no. This was nuts. And is therefore officially to be known from here on out as The Craziest Thing I Have Ever Witnessed.


cheers,
elizabeth

being a local snob

Local snobbery: the art of judging someone for believing that any other locality could produce a regional specialty with equal or greater caliber. Ex.: If a man from outside Philadelphia argues that the cheese steaks in X City are better than the ones in Philly, we reserve the right to judge him based on local snobbery.

As you probably know, I am a tireless proponent of local snobbery. Mostly this is because I've always had LOTS of reasons to be a local snob, what with all the cool things that are known to be regional specialties of Memphis: barbeque, soul music and the roots of rock'n'roll.

But in the past few years I've called a number of different places home, and in each of those places I picked up some different local snobberies. Since living in London, I pretty much won't accept that there are equal or better fish and chips outside of an authentic English chippy. I'll eat them, but you won't convince me that they're better, or even just as good. Just not having it.

And truthfully I'm pretty snobby about all English cuisine, but there are only a few particular dishes -- like the fish and chips -- that tend to get replicated here.

So naturally, since living in New York, I've become quite the local snob on a number of fronts. I don't believe you can find better cheesecake anywhere else but here, and I really believe that the very, very best cheesecake comes from Junior's. Now endorsed by both me and P. Diddy. I think the best New York pizza comes from Grimaldi's in Brooklyn. And I personally believe the best bagels come from The Bagel Man in his cart at the corner of 65th and Broadway across from Lincoln Center.

Now that last one might be a bit of a stretch, but the bagels here are just better. There is something different about them that I can't quite explain. It's like drinking Guiness straight from the source. It just tastes better.

Back when I was working a lot of morning shifts at the Philharmonic -- which I would call my "pays the bills" job, but that is sometimes comically untrue -- I used to frequent The Bagel Man. He knew my name, he knew my order, he knew where I worked. He always remembered. It's one of the only times I can think of in this city I've ever experienced such genuine hospitality and customer service. And the man works in a cart. WITH WHEELS.

But in the past month or two, I've become a little too destitute -- and luckily started working more night shifts -- to be regular clientele at The Bagel Man. On Wednesday, though, I worked a morning, my first one in ages. And I spent the better part of half an hour on Tuesday scouring my room, emptying old purses, backpacks, digging in suitcase pockets, going under furniture and in couch cushions, desperately trying to scrounge up enough change to get my bagel.

And I did it.

I didn't manage enough for the bagel plus O.J., which is a total of $3, but I found enough for my bagel with cream cheese -- $1.25 -- and then some extra change to get apple juice out of the vending machine upstairs at work. It was a glorious breakfast, but the most glorious part was that the sweet, sweet Bagel Man said "Welcome back!" when he saw me, as if I'd been gone on vacation.

Oh, Bagel Man. How I had missed you.


cheers,
elizabeth

I'd just like to take a brief moment to make some formal remarks to welcome Helen Borge to the Apartment 2 mailbox. Helen, we're so glad you're here.

Though today you only received one piece of mail, it was but the inaugural envelope in what I have no doubt will be a never-ending stream of misguided parcels. We certainly hope you'll find things hospitable here at the Apartment 2 mailbox. Everyone, let's try to make Helen feel welcome.

I'm talking to you, Jean Solano. And for Christ's sake, your Motor Trend subscription is up for renewal. This is your second notice. Let's wrap that up, okay?


cheers,
elizabeth

bring in the awkward, bring in the funk

Today I had what I like to call a PNY moment: Perks of life in New York. Those things that can only happen here, in the city that never sleeps or properly deodorizes.

Today's PNY was lunch with my boss at HeadCount (if you're not familiar with the work I'm doing now with HeadCount, head here when you're done reading) and two guys who happen to be pretty important. One of them was Lockhart Steele, who my media-hungry friends will know as former managing editor of this modest little blog and creator of Curbed, a New York neighborhoods and real estate blog. The other was Richard Gehr, a well-known music writer who's contributed to Spin, Rolling Stone, Blender, currently writes for The Village Voice and edits our HeadCount blog.

Clearly with this kind of media and music related fortitude sitting across the lunch table from me, I was bound to bring my Awkward A-Game. I did manage to order one of few things on the menu that probably should've been eaten with a fork -- to be classy and whatnot -- but was easier to eat with my fingers, so I spent the better part of the meal caught in a cycle of awkwardly trying to cut pieces of my battered fish, giving up, picking at it with my fingers, getting tartar sauce on my fingers and wiping it all on the napkin in my lap.

I clearly should've ordered sushi; we were at Lure Fishbar in SoHo, and the sushi did look delectable, but my brain was so focused on ways I could be awkward that I was unable to read a menu and carry on a conversation simultaneously, making it difficult to select a roll.

I need to stop now to tell you that the people in this restaurant not only knew Lockhart, they all but worshipped the very ground he walked on. He seemed like a really cool kid to me, too, but he was clearly very regular clientele at Lure. At a few points during the meal, little appetizers and treats (that I can only assume were on the house) were delivered to our table, because they were some of Lockhart's faves. I felt like I was on VH1's Fab Life, because mostly I eat hot dogs and mac'n'cheese, and they are not prepared specially for me, and no one fawns over me while I eat them.

So I ordered the fish and chips, which were delectable, and naturally had to request more ketchup, which I always feel like is fairly awkward at any eating establishment outside McDonald's. Other than that I also whacked into the table with my knee when I sat down after arriving five minutes late because I managed to walk the wrong way out of the Subway station, get discombobulated and walk in a complete circle before back to the restaurant which was across the street from the station to begin with.

My tardiness was made all the more ironic in my mind by the fact that I'd been overly concerned about being early, because I tend to err on the side of extreme punctuality in all cases, and I had never met two of the people I'd be lunching with -- a recipe for Awkward Soup, right? So I was going to pains to nail it right at 1:30 in hopes that at least Andy would be there before me. Instead, I managed to skip the Awkward Soup of being too early and not knowing who the hell I was meeting and go straight to the Awkward Pie of being late and enjoying the intimidation factor of walking up to these guys all at once.

But despite my Awkward A-Game, I thought I managed to come off like a decently intelligent person with some decently insightful ideas. It's always nice to share an opinion you have about the way things are moving with a particular web site, blog or new media in general, and have a former Gawker editor agree with you. It's like the time I wrote a review of Ashlee Simpson's album Autobiography and saw another critic's online that echoed my sentiments almost exactly. I mean obviously I'd much rather be right about the future of new media than the future of bad pop music, but you catch my drift.


cheers,
elizabeth

the post-job-interview mental acrobatics

Remember that job I mentioned I applied for a while back, the general assignment reporting gig with a daily newspaper?

Clearly I'm going to need to be more specific.

Today I interviewed with The Kentucky New Era, a Monday through Saturday daily in Hopkinsville, Ky., with a circulation of about 10,000. The position is general assignment reporting, but will focus largely on the education beat. I spent most of the weekend up to my ears in testing results and education legislation to prepare, and I feel like the work paid off.

Of course I don't know anything for sure at this stage -- and actually, the editor is still trying to pull some strings to get me down to Hopkinsville for a face-to-face -- but the excitement has nonetheless set in. I think I nailed the interview, though it's always hard to get a full grasp on the kind of impression you make by phone. We had a great conversation and in the end I feel even more passionate about landing this job than I did when I first answered my phone this afternoon. It sounds like The New Era is a place where I will really be able to grow as a reporter. Not only by doing something I've never done before in covering education, but in allowing me to explore different projects and leads and create a diverse set of clips that will be the foundation for the rest of my career.

I actually talked a lot about blogging during the interview, because creating a blog presence is one of my biggest ideas for how to revitalize the paper's education coverage. Talking about the blogosphere made me realize just how passionate I've become about this little medium, and just how much I believe in its ability to make newspapers stronger, not drive them into the ground.

After we got off the phone of course my mind went into a logistical tail spin, trying to think of everything that would need to be done before the job starts, how I'd get it done, moving, cars, apartments, boxes, BLERG. And then I slapped myself and stuck my face in a bucket of ice and said GET A HOLD OF YOURSELF, MAN. I tend to try to race across bridges before they actually appear in front of me. It's a good way to drown. Theoretically speaking, of course.

So, Internet, keep your fingers crossed. I'm confident and optimistic and looking forward to being a Southern girl again very soon -- here's hoping that this will be the job that allows me to do that.

cheers y'all,
elizabeth

this one's for the boys

I've done a lot of complaining here on this little old blog about my current state of poverty and how it keeps me from doing just about anything but sitting on my rump and watching Netflix movies. And it's true, I am a level of poor that can only be described as re-DONK-ulous. However. This weekend I had a moment of clarity that made realize how thankful I should be, because things could be oh, so much worse.

I'm not talking about starving kids in Asia, or flies on babies in Africa or commercials about how many people in the U.S. go to bed hungry every night or even the homeless woman on the corner who I think poops outside the National Guard Armory. I'm talking about one simple biological fact that makes my poverty just a little bit easier to take: I'm a girl.

Let me lay it down for you. Saturday night I met up with some friends -- English friends, for the irony factor -- to watch both the Jersey City fireworks and the New York fireworks from Liberty State Park. Afterward, we headed out of the park, planning to set out for Hoboken. Somewhere along the way, my friend Siobhan struck up a conversation with this random guy, Bill. (Names have not been changed, because I don't give a hoot.) So Bill says he's walking that way and he'll make sure we get to Hoboken. Naturally, we question Bill at length to determine whether or not he's a psychotic killer who wants to cut us up and bury our parts in the swamp behind the park.

Bill walks us all the way to the light rail, listens to us rattle on about various and sundry weird and socially irresponsible topics of conversation and then, once we get to Hoboken, even suggests a good bar and offers to walk us there -- despite the fact that his "friends" (allegedly) are on the opposite end of town. We get to the bar, turns out he knows the bartender and just about everyone there. And, turns out, Bill's buying the Bud Lights.

It was right convenient for me, since I'd told Siobhan and Frannie on the way in that a gentleman was going to have to be procured fairly quick like since I have no money and would not be drinking otherwise. Lucky for me, there was Bill, and my hand had an icy cold Bud Light in it until we decided to head out around 1:30 a.m.

And as my head hit the pillow that night -- and stayed there till noon the next day, amazingly -- I felt a pang of sympathy for the poverty-stricken men out there. At least I know that no matter how poor I may be, I can make a sad pouty face and drink all night for free. Not only can a guy not count on his skills of flirtation to be enough to get him free drinks, he's the one who's expected to be buying those drinks. So here's to all the poor men out there -- I'm sorry I ever complained about my lack of dinero, because Allah knows, you've got it harder.


cheers,
elizabeth

i have thomas jefferson to thank for this

In the grocery store this afternoon I heard parents conversing with children in about three different languages. It's lovely and all, America, the melting pot. Here we are on July 4th. Diversity. Woo hoo.

But when someone is yelling at their kid in Russian, I can't tell if what they're saying translates to "Get the hell off that razor scooter inside a crowded grocery store you lousy sack of shit." And this is information I need to know, so that in case that's not what she was saying, I could use a more universal language to deliver the message. Like picking the kid up by her hair and swinging her and her scooter into a display of deli meats.

Happy Fourth of July.


cheers,
elizabeth

a few weddings, lots of divorces and reasons to be thankful

I remember the fall of my freshman year at Murray finding out that this gal I'd known from a college prep program I went through in high school had gotten married that summer, a girl who was also entering Murray State as a freshman that semester. Even when I carried the torch for Jesus I always thought getting married so young was pretty damn foolish, and when I finally realized I didn't need to be legally bound to someone to get laid I knew it was REALLY damn foolish.

My principal argument against the whole thing went something like this: "I don't even know who I am right now, so how am I supposed to know who I want to be with?" Really only part of that was true. I think I've had a pretty good handle on who I am since I embraced my liberal agnostic self my freshman year, and mostly I did before that, too. Sense of self has never been an area of weakness for me. But knowing who I want to be with? Hoooo boy, that one has proven to be a DOOZY of a problemo. Muy, muy grande problemo. Or something like that.

As I've shared with you ad nauseum in the past, I've repeatedly gone for guys who are not my type, not anywhere on any planet, not even the planets where Mormons go to be their own Jesus. And on one particular occasion I very nearly had the wedding planner on the line, I was so convinced me and this sleazeburger were going to end up at the altar. (And I don't even want to get married in a church!)

Obviously there are a million reasons to thank Allah and Elohim and anything else with angel wings and a few miracles to its name that said marriage did not come close to going down. But the one I continually think of lately -- as I prepare to leave the glitz and glamour of the city that never sleeps for, potentially, a small-ish town in Kentucky that I can guarantee sleeps a whole, WHOLE lot, like maybe they're all on Ambien -- is that I am so thankful no one else had to figure all this shit out except me.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if I'd married this guy, or any of the guys who promised they'd be willing to follow me wherever it was I wanted to go (HELLO RED FLAG) and then gotten here and realized all the things I've realized in the past nine months. The poor boy would've uprooted his entire world, made things work here, all for me to say, "Actually, I don't think I like it here? I've been throwing darts at a map, and I've got some ideas."

I think "I'm married to a schizophrenic" would probably be excellent legal grounds for a divorce, but I'd hate to be on the receiving end of those papers. I may not believe in the powers that be, but I do believe in sliding doors -- things happen for a reason. I thought my whole life that I had this "future" shit nailed right on down. Big Apple, big magazines, big life. Martinis. Italian stuff. And tonight as I'm putting together some pitches and brainstorming ideas for a job interview on Monday with a daily newspaper, my stomach is in knots with excitement at the idea of being in a newsroom again.

Things change. Holly and I spend an inordinate amount of time every day chatting about which of our Facebook friends -- people our age, who we went to college and high school with -- are now divorced. As for that girl from my freshman year of college, I lost track of her after that, so I couldn't say for sure. But every time my baby fever gets to heatin' up, I just think about those divorces, most of them with less than a year of marriage under their belts. And I am instantly so grateful for the ticking of that biological clock, reminding me that I'm still single and have plenty of time to change my mind.

cheers,
elizabeth

thursday soundbites, no. 18

This week's Soundbite is another Flashback Edition. I promise next week we'll be back to the new stuff, I just had to do my musical-evangelical duty and share The Band with anyone out there who may not have been blessed to receive the good word just yet. So sue me. Actually, please don't, I really can't swing legal fees at this juncture.

I digress.

I think, if memory serves, that I can blame my genetic predisposition for digging these guys on my mother. I can remember singing "Up On Cripple Creek" when I was around 9 or 10 -- in fact I even have an oddly vivid memory of singing it in both the grocery store (Kroger in Bartlett, Tennessee) and the upstairs bathroom of my parent's house, go figure -- but I didn't start really getting into The Band until I was in high school. And really, I don't think I started truly appreciating them until I was in college. (Fun tidbit: I sang "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" in my final performance exam for my master's.)

I think The Band tends to be a little under-appreciated in comparison with some of their noteworthy peers, like Bob Dylan, for example. I love a lot of things about this music, but chief among them is Levon Helm's voice (and Robbie Robertson's, and Richard Manuel's), and the fact that my hips get to twitchin' at just about every song of theirs I've ever heard. Even the slower, mellower jams just have some little hint of soul in them that makes me want to move. A hearty sway at the very least.

I've got one of my absolute favorites for you below. If all this is news to you, I'd also recommend you take a listen to "Don't Do It," "Stage Fright," "The Weight" and "Tears of Rage."


The Band - "Ophelia"


cheers,
elizabeth

workman's comp

Things I like about working from home: I'm wearing sweat pants right now and haven't showered.

Things I don't like about working from home: The flock of fruit flies that took up residence in my kitchen while I was gone over the weekend got all up in my face while I was attempting to clean said kitchen to create an inhospitable environment for said flies, and now I feel like I have little creepy crawlies all over me. I HATE CREEPY CRAWLIES.

Also, it smells like gasoline because my next-door-neighbor has been revving what sounds like a lawn mower engine in his driveway all morning long. At least if I die from the fumes I will go out listening to the creepertown music of the ice cream man, who has been cruising the street behind my apartment for long about 20 minutes now. Please, ALLAH, get me a job in an office. STAT.

cheers,
elizabeth