Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

Last Saturday started early with a little festive cheer at Swedish Club. I decided to bring a mini-Christmas tree to ignite the holiday spirit. At the end of the party, I suddenly realized I had a partner for the evening. The mini-christmas tree and I took the subway downtown to catch Kent's band, Marlowe Grey , at the Mercury Lounge .  Me and the tree salmoned through the middle of the crowd, all the way up to the front by the stage. I cleared a path by stabbing people in the ass with boughs of evergreen. We missed Kent's band, but got there just in time to watch the next act set up and hear Adele predict, "That Asian chick up there in the jumpsuit is gonna fuck shit up." Tom rocks the selfie. Upon the conclusion of the jumpsuit excitement, Tom, Darcey, Kent, the mini-Christmas tree and I dipped out for a slice of pizza before Hank and Cupcakes took the stage. It was great pie, but I forgot the mini-Christmas tree on our table! Oh the non-horror.  ...

a few of my citizens enjoying their repast "Yabba Island Grill is the perfect spot in town for the grandchildren, grandparents and the kid in all of us! " Whatever, bitches, I'm the mayor here. I deserve the job, my darling coffin-dodgers. I bellied right up to that YabbaBar and enjoyed a YabbaRita. It was majestic and fluorescent. And then I came back the next day and stuck with bottled beer.  Two check-ins in two days, you can dribble your awe near the tips of my closed-toe shoes. My mayorship commenced just after Suzanne's informative discourse about a place called Vergina's, an alleged restaurant right across the street. Several pudgy dudes also listened with keen interest to Suzanne say "Vergina" early and often while "You Take My Breath Away"lilted from the bar surround sound and melted our hearts. It is possible I bellowed "I am your Mayor" with a flourish of spirit fingers to the bar area in general. Mostly my ...

After 13 days without lights, electricity, heat and hot water, your house becomes a pigsty of mystery. When the lights finally flicker to life, you get to see your wonderous cluster fuck of a living situation bathed in glorious incandescence. Hurricane Sandy: Accuweather Power Outage from Space In our house, clumps of dried leaves had rubbed themselves with great vigor into every square inch of carpeting. Understandable. When you cook pots of coffee, 10 pounds of freezer waffles and a 50-pack of half de-thawed mini party weenies on the grill, that's a thousand trips in and out the backdoor. I didn't even notice our indoor nature fest due to the pitch-black-darkness problem and the working-during-daylight problem. But even if I had noticed, it wasn't like anything was going to happen. Vacuums do not run on D-batteries. We found a fleece jihad in the bedroom. Rejected items littered the perimeter-- goggles, a broken pole strap, half a trail map and a pile of...

Bryant Avenue by 167th Street, but not in 1955. Pop grew up on Bryant Avenue in the Bronx: "I never saw a real tree until I was maybe 13. There was this large vegetation out front our building that I thought was a tree. But then my mother broke the news. It wasn't a tree, just a big bush."

I bought Tom a gift online at Fab.com .   Thursday Morning: A kind of large box arrives and Tom pounces on it with a pair of scissors and single-minded intent. He loves a gift. In short order, Tom reaches into the box and pulls out one pair of electric purple underpants on a hanger. He takes the hanger, with the dangling underpants, up to the closet and hangs it next to his work shirts. Friday Morning: Tom forgets about his new hanging underpants until after he's already pulled on an old pair and has both legs in his jeans. Go-to drawer habits are hard to break. Tom decides he will be late for work if he disrobes to switch up his underpants. But he wants to wear his new ones at the first possible occasion-- meaning Saturday in new york city. So he unclips the underpants from the hanger and throws them in one of the bags we take with us to the city. Saturday Morning: Tom cannot find his purple underpants. He settles for an old pair after finally conceding tha...

My nephew Jackson and I were hanging out by a garbage truck. Watching it parked by the curb. Its dusty green exterior not glistening at all in the sunshine. This is how we roll. Every five minutes or so, a very African American twenty-something guy walks by us carrying a bunch of empty produce boxes and tosses them in the back of the truck. He wears I-work-in-a-kitchen checked pants and a white T-shirt. At some juncture, I have about enough of the starry-eyed garbage-truck gazing, so I suggest to Jackson that we consider moving on. The kid looks up at me and asks, "Can we just stay here until the white guy goes by one more time?" I am momentarily confused. Only one guy keeps going by and he is most assuredly not white. Then I realize the guy has on a white T-shirt.

All I hear is a huge crash. Like huge. Some thrashing around and Tom shrieking like a little girl with a vile potty mouth. I sprint into the livingroom. Tom stands amidst an explosion of broken glass. Some blood trickles off his cheek at a non-fatal velocity.  Alex the Cat hovers nearby, puffed up like one of the more gigantic Uggs spaceboots. It all began innocently enough. Apparently, Tom was just lushing on the sofa watching the prequel to Planet of the Apes , starring James Franco. Alex nestled on his lap, sound asleep. Suddenly, an Ape lets out a wild Ape wail. Alex, in a singular apoplectic freakout, pops straight up in the air and lands on top of Tom's head. His claws cling to Tom's face and he perches up there like a demonic hat. With some quick battle reflexes, Tom yanks Alex off his head. The cat lands on a glass bowl and smashes it into a million pieces. Luckily no one was injured beyond:  the Lord, whose name was definitely dropped ...

"I'm much better than your father at mini golf. He chokes in the clutch."

We stood in the middle of the festival, people dashing all around us eating ice cream with sprinkles. My nephew Jackson gestured for me to lean over so he could whisper in my ear. He said he wanted to take a look at the garbage truck. Of course I agreed. I'm his yes-aunt. We shoved past some kid getting his face painted up like spiderman and dodged the line to the bouncy house on the way behind the food carts. To stand before the garbage truck. Gazing at it. Parked there. Kind of smelly. Parked there. Silently. After awhile, I made a shimmy like I was about to head over to the giant lollipop booth, but Jackson clutched my hand in his tiny vicelike grip and told me that this garbage truck had a dual ops compactor. And he would just like to watch it a little longer. Parked there. Silently. Jackson is into front loaders, rear loaders, side loaders, pneumatic collectors and grapple trucks. He will gaze at you with a very disgusted expression if you mix up a dumpster...

Seats right in back of me. One Asian guy flirts with the other Asian guy. "I got us a room in a nice hotel. Here's a picture of our room." "No, there's only one bed. They may be able to get us a room with two beds. We can ask. I mean. If you want." "Hey! There's no pocket on the seatback!" "You CAN't sleep on the soFA! It will be LUMpy!" "We'll go down and have at least one drink at the bar in the lobby. But you have to dress nice. Do you have a nice shirt I can borrow?" "Are those your headphones? I have nicer headphones. Do you want to use them? You take this here and you stick it in your ear. Just slide it in there." "Can I split the headphones with you? I use the one earbud and you use the other one?"

Probably one of my finest unsisterly moments transpired during the fight over the slingshot with my little brother. Nutchie had the slingshot in his vice-like grip. I had the sling. My brother yanked to. I yanked fro. Then I guess I got bored. "Whatever. you can have it." Five stitches on the forehead for the Nutch.

Today I encountered the self-check out at the acme supermarket. It was wonderous. Tom marched right up to the sleek contraption and started scanning yogurt cups like Herr Badass. Even though my hands started to sweat a little bit, I definitely saw a place for myself in the action. Tom totally dominated the scan pad. Every time I tried to siddle over with my boxes of Kashi Mega Crunch, he would accelerate his swiping to sub-teriyaki speeds. But my noob ass could not be  thwarted. I timed my thrust and got my barcode in there first. Eureka! How you like me now, Fast Hands?

Mom, Dad, Tom and I roundtable Mom's declaration: "Dad has the clap?" "Yes." "No I don't have the clap." "He sleeps on his back with shorts on and he's going like this, clap clap clap, with his legs. It's really loud." "Your mother exaggerates. I was just dehydrated." "Maybe duct tape some throw pillows to his knees." "You could just duct tape my legs together." "That would be easier. Except when you have to get up to go to the bathroom." "He can just hop like a frog." "If Dad puts cymbals between his knees he can join a monkey brass band."

Attended a one-man-show called "Hoaxocaust" last night. I'm glad I went; the production, hopefully a work-in-progress, has given me cause to limber up my floppy brain cells. Although probably not in the way that the playwright intended. The whole affair was a fiesta of cognitive dissonance. Let's start with two statements made by the production team in a Q&A after the performance: 1)  The play was written in part to highlight that only a paltry few know enough facts to successfully argue the holocaust happened. 2) The play's holocaust content is tailored for a "graduate-level" audience— who presumably know enough facts to successfully argue the holocaust happened Thus, we can conclude: The target audience of this play is those paltry few. So there is a rather obvious problem with the producer's stated goal: "We are hoping to show this play to a broad audience." But here's the more important oxymoron: If I...

There are two gigantic problems with this sms I just got from my mother, and I'm not even counting that she always signs her texts. 1) Ruthless and brazen newsflash! She has been selling my historic mementos and possibly treasured personal effects. 2) Her advertisement describes attire I wore at one point in my life as "vintage." Vintage? I just graduated from high school a couple years ago, give or take twenty!!!! And here's one more thing I just thought of: 3) She wrapped up a big box of my old track and cross country trophies and gave them to me for Christmas. Now I know why: She couldn't sell them, probably even after substantial mark down.

Well today was a busy day: Ran 4 miles, minding my own business on the shoulder of the road Got bitten by a little dog Screamed "Your fucking little dog bit me" so loud doors opened and neighbors came out on yards Had a protracted altercation with the old man owner who said things like, "Fluffy didn't really bite you, he just ripped your skin off with his claws." Ran 4 miles home with blood dripping down my leg Called the cops Went to the ER While waiting at the pharmacy counter for my antibiotics, bought a tube of really excellent Blistex After that, nothing much happened for the rest of the day except Tom cramped up something fierce and I had to get him a banana. Also, despite a limp arm from the tetanus shot, I am enjoying rehydrated lips protected by a five-star rated UVA/UVB moisture shield. (Apropos tetanus shots, the last time I achieved one, Tom and I were administering intravenous fluids to a cat. The IV bag hook slipped off the top of...

Hawt! First off, Loki rules. Really zesty. Definitely put me in a blue funk when he got hauled back to Asgård in a space-age hannibal lector mask. Spoiler alert, there. Seriously. What do those Avengers know from badass? Loki had by far the best outfit. Lots of supple black leather bespoke tailoring. Slithering toothy reptile ships are fucking magnificent. Thor might have had the best outfit if it was a much smaller outfit. Are you kidding me with the maxi-vest? By the Power of Greyskull show us your abs. It will distract us from your curiously inert dialogue. It was 3d surreal walking out of the theater onto 23rd Street after watching midtown get its clock cleaned for two hours.

I thought taking on Billy Jean in 2009 was some kind of brinksmanship, but the Bohemian Rhapsody? Bite my spandex bewinged ass! Freddy Mercury is to lip synching what the Sally who met Harry is to orgasms. After I finally figured out Andrew was not dressed up as Aerodynamic Harry Houdini, I marveled at the sizable sack of balls required to tackle such a big Queen. Finding the caliente in Andrew's 2012 magnum opus was like finding hay in a haystack. Here's my short list: 1) I liked the tufts of artisinal chest hair. I like it when a spandex unitard comes kitted out with a deep V-neck and ravenous fur. Shot of Andrew's pre-show desk, courtesy of MJG. 2) What foxed me was the Beelzebub sidekick posse over on the side. They popped in like a demonic bold flash powerpoint animation. 3) I liked the stage swathed in darkness. It smelled like anticipation. 4) I liked the florescent aria and the cross-over fake piano spirochetes. Even Scaramouch would appreciate the gen...

Earlier in the week, I showed our Lip Syncho De Mayo video to someone whose only comment was, "That is very weird."  Violence and smut are of course everywhere at LSdM. You cannot attend the event without seeing them, although sometimes you are forced to wait a little while. The night began with a fiery opening ceremony engineered by Andrew. I saw ample evidence that LSdM performers are surprisingly resilient-- how they chase gold, year after year, with different shortpants and different configurations of hair. Kully and Sharon did not take the stage until after the first or second intermission. As a reporter, I probably should know exactly when they went on, but achieving accuracy is often so terribly inconvenient. To the muted, warm milk tones of Roberta Flack's Killing Me Softly , the two pulled off a sequel to their LSdM signature performance in which they demonstrate there is a fine line between cuddling and duct taping someone to a chair so they can't get...

Periodically, Friday night has the central nervous system of a magic eight ball. Is this a bad thing? Au contraire, my fairy. I'm all for a night in a parallel universe. First, Tom and I manage to get to Brooklyn, the borough of no return. As we alight from the L, I say, "Think we'll ever get back?" Tom should have replied, "Outlook not so good." Or, "Sure. I've sent in my three easy payments of HA HA HA." In hindsight, it was definitely a sign when I collided with two bunny plushies chasing each other around the turnstiles like squirrels in mating season. We make it to Mercedeh's "sentience" photography exhibit at the Greenpoint Gallery. She has the entire second floor dedicated to portraits of intriguing humans plucked from crowded, sweaty streets. We also see large amounts of blue foam spray-mounted to available surfaces and zebra stripes. We see a very short girl playing a very large guitar very near a cauldron of fire da...

In this lifetime, here's my advantage: people usually get to know me before they decide whether or not to hate me. God knows I can be an asshole on occasion and some people really don't like me. The good news is that I earned my haters one by one. I was born a whitebread majority in terms of race and sexual orientation. I might get a few points deducted for knowing too many yiddish words, but luckily this isn't twenty years ago and I don't live in a red state. My experience with discrimination and its side dish of festering hate may be limited to Rush Limbaugh, certain other misogynistic commentators and the politicians they pay. Although these talking heads clearly hate powerful or outspoken women, they (probably) don't hate all women sight unseen. My point is this: I have no viable personal experience being despised for what I am, not who I am. I simply cannot empathize with my gay and non-white friends because empathy requires a shared experience and I have n...

I have just spent the past five days in Las Vegas varying degrees of completely lost. On my best day I can barely make it from one end of a straight block to the other. If I'm distracted at any point, chances are 50/50 I'll wander back the same direction I came from. I've learned to accept my Achilles head as an easy way to accidentally investigate places where lots of prostitutes hang out. Maybe if I were a gambler I would feel otherwise, but Las Vegas befuddles me. It's a lite-brite babylon with the desperate, frenetic energy of a recent divorcee on New Years Eve. I am simply not turned on by looped video footage of various fat middle-aged men passed out in twinkling pools of vomit while a country music version of "We are the Champions" blares in the background. I wander around looking about as terrified and uncomfortable as Mitt Romney at the Leatherati Black Party Expo. If the watered-down swill I non-enjoyed was any benchmark, Las Vegas is not a place...

Although it sounds all romantic and maybe even handy at times, I'm glad I don't have a tail. Grooming a tail would probably add at least fifteen minutes to my morning routine. I have enough trouble remembering to comb the hair on my head, let alone fluff out my hindquarter. Whenever I reflect on this subject, I always assume the human tail is fur-covered. I picture a puffy spaniel-like appendage, as opposed to bald, pink and rat-like. If humans had rat-like tails, we'd most likely go in for wallpaper tattooing and bedazzling. Half the sites on the internet would peddle tail slings, muffs, pouches, hoists and other prophylactic devices because no one wants their naked tail dragging on the sidewalk. Personally, my tail-lette would be a woodland-print knit with LED lights. I might get a tassel or a pompom to hang on the end of my tail. Nonetheless, a rat-style tail may have some advantages over a hairy-style tail. Hair would require all sorts of product to stay on top ...

Occasionally, Pop decides he's unhappy with the current ski trail, shrieks "Shortcut!" and takes off into the woods. This is probably not the worst of it. What might be worse is the gut-wrenching fear that comes from watching my mother, who tore her ACL and is supposed to be, but is not, wearing a gigantic knee brace. She skis down black diamond trails at a perfect, rail straight, 90-degree angle to the hill. Meanwhile, Dad decides it's boring to walk back to the hotel so he skis right through the middle of the Winter Carnival, right past the teenagers in the toboggan line and everybody out front the hot chocolate stand. He waves 'hi' to the ice sculptors and tells the ticket takers chasing him down that he's "just passing through." The rest of us slog out down the road with our boots on. Mom rolls her eyes and says Dad's probably hypoglycemic. Other than that she's not concerned. She swings around, skis in hand, to let me know t...

My brother was excited to report he biked 4000 miles in 2011. Until he talked to Dad, who informed him that the 700 miles on his stationary bike did not count. "Stationary bike miles are easier than road miles so you can't include them. If you used a formula, like an indoor mile is worth .68 of an outdoor mile, then... Maybe. I wouldn't do it." "Running miles, I round to the tenth of a mile and I round bike miles to the whole mile. I always round down. I have always done it that way. I can do it however I want." "My friend Ed always rounds up." "I would never ride my bike, for example, 20.95 miles and have to round down to 20 miles. I always look at my computer as I ride down the hill in front of the house. I would just ride down the alley and up Elm street to clock the extra .05 needed." "At the end of our trip to Ireland, we were at the airport when I realized we had biked 998.8 miles. I took my bike out and rode up and d...

4:30 - Meeting called to order. Freden i Knäred 2 After all my cash fell out of my pocket Friday on my way to the Lower East Side, I immediately keep the trend going by forgetting my credit card and metrocard on a back table. Luckily, the Danish Unit commandeers the table and keeps an eye on it for me. I keep an eye on the Danish Unit just in case they decide to hoist their large Danish flag, invade other tables and hold them for ransom. Special Guests Arrive We meet Awe's fästmö Annika at long last. At first, they only speak with other people whose names begin with the letter "A." Luckily, Leslie is very charming and insists they meet the rest of the alphabet. Snakke snakke snakke Topics under discussion include banks, 16th street, the punjab region, jazz and Leah's lovely blouse. At one point, the owner of the bar tries to convince me we should meet there two-five times a month and Alex mentions his new Galaxy tablet. We all agree Petrina's new shop-coo...

Hottie Jake Snider manhandles his guitar "A rare and spectacular clusterfuck" is how Pitchfork , Ian Cohen specifically, described one of the Minus the Bear albums which I happen to melt into a puddle over. Further, Ian claimed Minus the Bear's vocalist Jake Snider sings like a "disinterested outsider." I need to explain some things to Ian. First of all, Neat-As-A-Button is dogmatic and predictable and irons his white cotton underpants. Not that I have anything against Pitchfork darlings like Cults, that last School of Seven Bells record, Rome, or Neutral Milk Hotel*, but their music is unrelenting in its symmetrical perfection. It's like two trendy little chairs perfectly angled by a trendy little sofa. And attractive as your modern euro-design 3-piece livingroom set may be, I'd prefer to be draped across a night-colored canapé surrounded by vintage taxidermy, a tray of really good tacos and five "over-produced" math rockers from Sea...