It happened last week. A roundup

Just in case you thought not working a 9-to-5 job might be boring, you better check yourself.


1. Found out my roommate’s moving out because she doesn’t want to split the broker’s fee for the apartment with me, as she agreed to do. She stuck me with the whole bill for that and gave me a week’s notice to find a new roommate and somehow twisted it around in her little mind that I was at fault and am somehow profiting from this. This will be a long, boring post once I’m not too angry to embrace syntax again.

2. Got hit on by a deaf guy. When I told (wrote) him that I didn’t have TTD (which in my mind stands for “talking to the deaf” but is actually some sort of voice thing so you can…talk to the deaf) on my phone, he told me I could call his brother, who would relay the message. I’m so following up on this.

3. Got Tiki Barber’s autograph. My dad’s a big ol’ Giants fan and my brother and I are in an arms race to see who can get him more autographs/phone calls with cool people. The Giants were in the Super Bowl a few years ago (Wikipedia it yourself) and he was severely injured in the games leading up to it, but then he was Mr. Goldenlegs on the field. They cut away to his twin, Ronde, in the stands and my dad and I were two people with the same thought…Ronde was the one playing! I meant to check with Tiki about this. Also, if Tiki got an online encyclopedia it would be Tikipedia. That’s just how my mind works. Embrace it.

4. Tiki was very concerned about my dad’s heath because…

5. My dad is starting radiation after they removed a cancerous bit of his nose. I’m so wanting a Nose Cancer Livestrong bracelet and/or run-walk. Yes, this is the same dad who came within inches of death last year around this time.

6. Emailed with the writer of an Oscar-winning movie because he wanted to see my scripts. More on this soon, you best believe.

7. A homeless man did a sketch of me on the subway. I was excited about the cool piece of art coming my way as he was working. That soon faded, as the result looks like me if my face were shot with a horse tranquilizer. I still gave him $2 since I’m nothing if not a patron of the arts.

8. I heard a guy get shot. I was leaving someone’s apartment. Although they’re in a nice building, it’s across from (what’s the P.C. way to say this?) an ungentrified area. I watched a herd of teenagers shouting each other, careful to stay across the street (because bullets can’t go across the street. Duh.) There was a huge blast and everyone started running (except for that one kid, I suppose). Girls — not women, but girls — pushed their strollers away quickly, which I’m sure disappointed the infants, because what baby doesn’t want a front-row seat to a fight in Harlem at midnight?

This man might not exist, and other things I learned today

Hey Fordham, remember when I was too poor to get into you? Here’s who you let in instead. It’s my archenemy across from me at Starbucks: All-The-Trends Girl. She’s got bug sunglasses, layered necklaces and head-to-toe 80s garb. She also says everything in not only upspeak, but in an elongated final sound, as though her own jaw is too bored with what she's saying to bother to close.

They’ve been jabbing for 20 minutes about something for their history class, and their assignment is either to list pop culture things that America exports or to list things that happened last century. Their thoughts are so muddled I honestly can’t tell which.

Here’s the liveblogging:

Girl 1 (in a Fordham sweatshirt): My mom asked me if Stephen Colbert is made up or real (presumably she means if he’s adopted a conservative persona, as opposed to a hallucination) and I’m like, “There’s no way, I mean the way he says stuff I can tell he knows what he’s saying is complete bullshit.” (She says this with the smugness that the people who cracked the Rosetta Stone must’ve felt.)

ATT Girl will take over the conversation from here. Please enjoy the highlights:

* I can always tell when Chanel sunglasses are fake, I mean I just have a talent for it. (She, without a pause, then went on to recount a South Park episode and told the group about how Oprah “totally shit” on James Frey.)

* What about that movie with Dirk Diggler? You know the one? I feel like that really encompasses the ‘80s.

* Bottled water is like a danger to our environment. No, it’s not just the environment, it’s like human rights.

* If it’s like an actual spring, couldn’t you like drink out of it? It’s underground? Oh.

(Me: Please slow down. I can’t type fast enough to keep up with your bon mots.)

* What else was big in the '80s? Reagan! Everyone hated him. Wait (giggle) That’s Nixon.

* I think I’m an English major.

* There’s a KFC in China. No! There’s more than one. (Then she recounts the urban legend that it’s not really chicken. As fact.) I’m openly staring at her at this point.

* I like snails, I think they’re cute. I don’t like slugs though. I don’t think they count as animals.

* Some come out unfertilized; hence, eggs. They play music to make them lay eggs faster. Like an aphrodisiac.

* I think we should list Hitler and Nixon as bad.

* What about that movie where the guy ate only McDonald’s for a month and almost died? I like Wendy’s; that’s the big Staten Island thing.

* I really want to get an iphone. I say I’m going to get one every weekend and I never do. (Note: iphone has been out for like 8 weekends.)

* China is like nuts, they’re going to take over like everything soon. There was a girl who just pressed elevator buttons and told you to have a nice day. That was like her job.

* Has anyone seen “Across the Universe” yet? Is it visually amazing? I want to see it on pot brownies. Hang on I gotta text my friend, Gary. Do you wanna go smoke?



At this point I black out from rage.

It’s time to kino escalate that shiznit, yo!

It’s September, which means I get to officially start thinking about Halloween. (More accurately, I can go public with the thinking about Halloween that’s been going on since July.)

Journey back with me to last year and you’ll recall I was Maternalina Jolie: Wax lips, head-to-toe black and – most importantly – dollar-store dolls with masks of her kids duct taped around my waist.

This year, I’ve got a couple of ideas knocking around.

1. The first, my favorite, requires two guys. I really want a set of people to go as Dateline To Catch a Predator’s Chris Hanson, a pedophile and a 15-year-old girl. I’m having a surprisingly hard time into talking any of my guy friends to go as a sexual predator, so this on is up for grabs.

2. That English rapper Lady Sovereign, because I rock a mad mean sidetail, yo.

3. In the same vein, I want to be Any Winehouse. I’ve got the brown wig and plenty of newspapers to make it a beehive. Eyeliner and fake blood are pretty much the only other ingredients. The only drawback is that because I don’t do any appetite-suppressing coke, I’d have to go as Fat Amy Winehouse.

4. My latest obsession though is going as Mystery from VH1’s The Pickup Artist. I’ve been glued all season, and near as I can figure out, it’s about the offspring of lead singer of Jamiroquai and Seth Green’s character from Can’t Hardly Wait who’s taken a heard of D&D playing basement-dwellers under his wing. He also sometimes wears a lipstick kiss tattoo. That is the new hotness!

It’s with the principle of “know thy enemy” that I was bombarded with terms like “neg,” (making fun of a woman to get her interested, ie when Brady said to the stripper he was trying to pick up, “Too bad there aren’t any cute girls working here tonight”), “higher value,” (which is basically a take back on what you just said. You can add “just kidding” and she’s a bitch if she can’t laugh with you) and of course “kino escalate” (which is apparently what us women-folk do when we’re touching our hair or something.)

Mystery hooked me early in the season (see how well his plan works?!?!) when they made over a geek who said the ladies thought he was gay and they remedied that by piercing his ears and painting his nails. They also play that song “Boston” with the line “No one knows my name” when a dude gets kicked off. Yes, it is awesome.

Running on empty, also cookies

My sister and I have decided we’re going to run in this 7-mile race called the Bix next summer. It seems like a good bonding experience and just an all-round grownup thing to say you’re flying to Iowa for a race. We tried to talk my brother into it too.

Me: We could all cross the finish line together, Kevin! All three (redacted) kids. It’s a metaphor, stupid.
Him: I will make a poster and cheer you on.

So anyway, two out of three of us are in. I mostly agreed to do it because July is in the theoretical future, like a nuclear holocaust or the Red Sox winning another world series. (What? Come and get me.)

My sister bought a marathon-training book and is charting her progress in a sensible manner. I’m continuing to let New York Sports Club take money out of my account and hoping for the best. I also spend as much time as possible stretching on the mats, hoping people think, “Wow, that girl must really be a serious runner!” instead of, “Boy, that girl really knows how to postpone doing any actual running.”

I tend to run in the afternoon, away from as many prying eyes as possible. (See previous running entry.) It also ties in well with getting my Oprah on, as long as she’s giving stuff away and not talking about something lame-o like childhood diabetes or overcoming racism.

The other part of my plan is that post running I get away from the vicinity of my gym, which is really more for their benefit than mine. They have a table set up outside to recuit new members, and when I exercise, all pigment drains from my face and gets redistributed in a color I like to call “blotch.”

Between that, the struggle for air, the dripping hair and posture of someone needing orthopedic surgery, I think I’m the worst possible poster child for exercise being a fun and satisfying pastime.

Happy 1995, guys.

Having searched every golf course in three states, O.J. got word the real killer was in that hotel room. Obvs.

As a Kate who suffered through a whole lotta Kato jokes in the mid-'90s, this is a day for sweet, sweet revenge. I never thought I'd get to crack another lame OJ joke! I thought we'd all agreed as a nation that Jay Leno could have custody of all of them.

Now I'm going to go put on my best flannel, listen to a little Black Hole Sun (on a mixtape! Awwwww yeeeeah) and wait for Bill Clinton to do something that shows us how much he doesn't not like young women. It's 90s day!

Pretty high and mighty, Google.

I have to say, I don’t care for the tone Google takes with me when I misspell a word. You know what Google? If I say I want to find a lavendar dress, then you find me a lavendar dress. Save the editorializing with your snippy little, “Did you mean lavender?” No. No I did not.

On the flip side though, it makes me disproportionately sad when spellcheck can’t supply an alternative suggestion for my word, such is the depth of my misspelling.

I’m complex!

Nothing I need ... Duane Reade

Manhattan’s ubiquitous Duane Reade drugstores defy geography. They are everywhere. They’ve run out of street corners to house their paper towels and canned goods so they’ve started stacking them on top of each other, the watchful eye of God on the city.

Their sheer volume dominates in lieu of every other possible service including, but not limited to: employees who will stop talking to each other when you approach with a question , reasonably priced goods and a jingle that rhymes. (“Everywhere you go … Duane Reade!” which leads me to believe that the jingle writers are locals familiar with the chain. Logic would dictate that the song should go “Everything you need ... Duane Reade!” but I suppose they’re bound by some sort of legal obligation to not lie to the people.)

My closest Duane Reade is literally feet from my home, which is was very psyched about when I first moved in. However, it soon became famous (to me, which is the only kind of fame that matters) as the drugstore that carries olive tapenade on a regular basis, but toilet paper only half the time.

I think they’ve outdone themselves with their current back-to-school aisle though. I was walking around yesterday, looking for some shampoo when my eyes gazed fondly at the day-glo notebooks, crisply pinstriped index cards and bright No. 2s just a-beggin’ for a sharpening. And there, next to the High School Musical 2 folders: Condoms. No doubt for the havoc Zac Efron’s baby blues are wreaking (meh!) on the young women of tomorrow. Homeboy creeps me out with those undead eyes.