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

 Wow I have had this blog a loooong time. Here's a recap of what I have been doing at the beginning of November for the past 15 years: November Blog post in 2008 :  finding shit on the street   over on 28th by the 1 train where my great grandpa had a heart attack and died. May that add cheer to your day. November Blog post in 2009 : a halloween party where everyone dressed up in costumes and it was really fun.  November Blog in 2010: going to a Lower East Side absinthe bar on Halloween that has long since closed November Blog in 2011: Swedish Club party , right after the most gigantic 11|11|11 corduroy club party that apparently I never actually wrote about, which is sad. November Blog in 2012: Pop telling stories about growing up in the Bronx November Blog in 2013: The pre-pandemic situation when I had lots of back to back meetings in Mid-Town and needed to find places to work for short stretches in between them. November Blog in 2014 : Terribly embarras...

 Today was definitely a day of recovery. We were up until the wee hours last night. It's hard to leave when you can't find the door, as they say. And also because we were at our own house. For the first time since pre-pandemic, we hosted band night. We had two basses (because no band is complete without two basses) a drummer, a guitar/piano player and a singer. The beautiful thing about playing bass with another bass player who is way better than me is that there was more than one moment last night when I surprised myself by how great I was playing. I turned down the volume on my bass and my playing got even better. Nothing is more gratifying than when it all clicks and the music sounds great. Hot tip: This "sounding great" isn't really all that hard (for me) when there are a critical mass of former pro-musicians in your band. I cannot fathom how they do it... learning a song in like T-minus 2 minutes and then just... playing it.  Frankly, it wasn't rocket sci...

Friday turned into Saturday and family turned into friends. Then other friends bearing Gibson Les Pauls and Fender amps (twinsies!). And drums. And a ukulele. And some kind of weird cigar box slide guitar thing. We found Tom a microphone and. Band Night. Darcey with the recap: "I don't mind talking into a microphone. But singing...." "I can play Gs and As all day." "We should be called The Soft Pants." Now it's 1:30AM and we're watching old music videos. Everlong. Closer. Karma Police. Toxic. Toxic?

Tom and I decided to go hiking in Scotland this summer. The Island of Skye. The Highlands. It’s all very romantic and mystical.  photo credit: Planetware.com But we were seriously busy flexing our lip synching muscles in preparation for the biggest most contentious lip synching championship ever. So we phoned in the travel planning and just booked a trip with a sort of glamping outfit. Except it’s more like gled & breakfasting. As I understand it, we roll up to some kind of bucolic country inn, roll our suitcases up to our lovely duvet covered bed and hike out the next morning with tiny little daypacks to investigate castles and the moors while someone hauls our luggage to the next stop. A place where I could eat some eggs. photo credit: faerie magazine Deposit. Plane Tickets. Done. Back to trying to figure out how to construct a portable 60 square foot screen for our audio-visual lip synching dust up. Except I kept getting emails in increasing ...

It all started with this email from my friend Michael about this new iPhone app for podcast listening: From: Michael To:  stacey Sent: Monday, June 17, 2013 11:26 PM Subject: New Rogue Wave iCatcher will overwhelm you with options and configurability. I love it. Like to listen to WTF at 1.5x speed but Sound Opinions at 1x, no problem. Download all new episodes of Song of the Day but want to pick and choose episodes of Bieber Aficionado, no problem. Options galore. It's great.  http://joeisanerd.com/apps/icatcher Of course, I immediately bought iCatcher and checked how fast I could listen to podcasts. I'm a playah. Andrew is not a contender, in case you were wondering. Michael discussed iCatcher with Andrew but Andrew fully poo pooed the whole idea. Andrew does not understand the finer points of frenetic media consumption. He said as much while power walking back to our apartment after the Swedish Midsummer Celebration in Battery Park at two o'cl...

photo credit  Consulate General of Sweden in New York Lots of feet, an ass, another ass, the sky, Andrew's ear, garbled polka music. "It's hard to frolic and take movies at the same time," complains Tom. He sadly deletes his footage of Swedish Midsummer 2014.  Inarguably it's difficult to capture a thousand swedes holding hands and hopping like little frogs of anarchy. Video simply cannot capture the full impact of the "no ears, no tail" reptile shout out.  One gripe: WHO EATS POTATO SALAD THREE FEET FROM A MIDSUMMER POLE? It's more dangerous than hang gliding or going to a hospital. Last year, I stepped in plate piled high with potato salad. It was an Extreme Ooze situation and treacherously slippery. I'll never forget the death glare of the ex potato-salad eating woman hunkered down nearby. After three hundred people skip over your potato salad, just maybe you think to yourself, "huh, perhaps I should not have plunked my a...

Andrew and Tracie in the late 90s In the late 90s, Andrew claims someone stole his credit card. He called Citibank and strenuously denied making the following purchases:      --A hair weave      --Lunch at Popeyes      --One jug of kerosene      --Four tickets to a Luther Vandross concert      --One honey ham. Eventually, his creditors believed him, but the incident cast a lingering psychological shadow that stretched across the years like long sticky fingers. A snippit of the provided 400-point protocol to safely enter the Tracie/Andrew domicile which history would reveal to be somewhat flawed. So it is no wonder that Andrew froze, traumatized, when ADT called to say I was breaking into his house. He was at a big work conference, possibly swanning about the banquet hall enjoying a plate of vanilla macaroons when the dreaded security ale...

Today we babysat Jack and Ella and may I say we are the best babysitters ever. We only lost the children for a very short period of time. On the way home from lunch at the Ramen joint, the two of them took off across a field and vanished. Not only that, but Jack had Tom's iphone clutched in his sweaty little palms. What a fly in the ointment to lose not only two kids but a phone besides. Of course it didn't take us long to put the pieces together and mastermind an ingenious plan because we are, as aforementioned, the best babysitters ever. I called Jack on the phone. The crumbsnatcher let me go to voicemail. Eventually, I went with the "find my phone" GPS feature and Jack and Ella were located in their livingroom curled up before the dim light of an iPad playing Angry Birds in Space. Jack had not wanted to answer the phone while he was running. We rewarded his safety-first attitude by letting them watch Tracie's rendition of the Aerosmith/RunDMC Walk This Way ...

Style matters when it comes to the Dance Battle Friday: Tom and I went to the theater and saw Silver Linings Playbook. I came away mighty inspired by the Dance Move whereby a crotch was thrown squarely into the face of a crouched sexy man. (Spoiler alert, there). In that phantasmagoric moment, I knew there would be a Kinnect Dance Battle in my future. I vowed to line up some worthy foes. Saturday: I bided my time, went through my closet, readied a headband. Carbo-loaded on whiskey beneath a decadent forest of fake pine boughs, sparkling glass icicles and baby dolls strapped firmly to the ceiling. Sunday Morning: At the crack of noon, I hit the streets, on the way to brunch with Ron, Gina and a posse of onlookers. Ron sat across the big round table in a flannel shirt and tough-guy jeans and talked about jack hammers and building permits but i was not fooled. I know Ron has a bachelors degree in ballet and he can jump in the air and kick his legs really fast. That i...

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...

Kick Ass and Red Myst kept running by our booth, but I never did see the Green Fairy. Honestly, the absinthe didn't look all that green even, but maybe it was because the White Star Lounge was bathed only in the dim light seeping from LED bulbs on Tron's spandex outfit. Tom and Tracie were scared, but Andrew and I manned up to the bar and ordered the fancy hooch. The bartender shuttled this absinthe fountain in front of us and filled up the reservoir with ice water. He positioned two glasses under the little spigots, balanced a silver spoon on the tops of the glasses and popped on a sugar cube. Cold water dripped over the sugar and dissolved it into the glass. It was all very decadent. It would have been more decadent if Sexy Sailor Moon hadn't flounced past right there at the end. Hola panties. Charles Baudelaire , Paul Verlaine , Arthur Rimbaud , Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec , Amedeo Modigliani , Vincent van Gogh , Oscar Wilde , Aleister Crowley , and Alfred Jarry were all ...

I took it as a lucky sign when the freakishly tall flower stalk twanged out of nowhere and clocked me on the side of the head, spilling a river of dewy rainwater into my ear canal. You know the Jack Reduction Sauce is going to be brazenly fucking awesome when shrubbery defends the perimeter. Tracie had a little hitch in her giddyup. Her bunyonless foot dangled limply, wrapped in the love child of a bed sheet, a snack bag, and the lead actress's costume from a little-known musical called Harriet Carter's Big Black Bondage Sandal. T-"less one"-bone rocked a confined area from a reclined position. She is lucky Chef Andrew is such a master of culinary talent and furniture moving. If I were in charge, we'd both be eating a lot of canned vegetarian chili off a floor mat. In the seven-helpings slackjawed aftermath, the guests: Janet, Marc, Tom and I, were shown some onscreen fashion shit. Luckily, there were subtitles because I got a little lost at several points durin...

I should have known the day would unfold auspiciously because I found three pennies on the pavement in front of the ticket machine at the train station. Of course, I picked them up and stuck them into my pocket. One penny is lucky. Two pennies are really lucky. But three pennies? It was unprecedented. Tom and I showed up at the holiday party only a little bit late. We hovered around the garlic shrimp and the cupcakes and I started talking with a guy named Larry. Larry had recently been elected to the board of a condo association. He and four other revolutionaries staged a coupe and overthrew the earlier board. I inquired if there had been any defenestration* involved in the coupe but was told no. *Defenestration. noun . The time honored tradition of throwing somebody out a window, generally in the context of political uprising. Larry introduced me to his friend Michael, who almost immediately revealed that his lucky number was 13. I, of course, rebutted that my lucky numbers are 11, 3 ...

*scream.* I was cyberstalking Edward Cullen and obviously I'm very good at it. I scored an e-vite to the party he and Victoria were throwing for Glenda the Good Witch. I KNOW. We all thought Edward ripped Victoria into tiny little vampire chunks at the end of Book 3, but apparently it was all a publicity stunt. He and Victoria shack up in Florham Park. I tottered up to the secret location with Captain Christopher Pike, and Edward greeted us at the door. He was rigged out in a very stylish grey pea jacket setup. OMG. After I came to, I noticed there were a lot of other vampires at the party, but they were the caped, incisored kind. There were also a bevvy of witches, warlocks and warrens. Actually there was only one Warren, but he would have dominated the category even if more had shown up. Quite frankly I had a bone to chew with Captain Christopher Pike, first commanding officer of the Enterprise, NC-1701. Earlier in the week, he thought it would be a good idea to take apart my iPo...

First I wasn't sure if Marc was vomiting over there in the corner, but when I saw the buck knife, I realized it was just some mischievous harikari. His shaving theatrics and stunning mongoose-like beauty underpinned the entire video sequence. Meanwhile, Janet, wrapped in a glorious white feather boa, egged on the proceedings with some randy episodes of tushy shaking and un-lipsyncmanlike whooping. Stage right could barely contain MJ Andrew's dance on the floor in a round of downtempo pantomime. First, he's all nooooo, with the head shaking. Then there's some sidebar comments and beer drinking and Kabuki theatre references. Next comes a mimed sequence where he possibly unlocks a door and rides away on a smallish Huffy BMX bike. The grand finale is a bout of one-legged triple PG dirty dancing. The lead singing trio, Tracie, Heather and Heather's various hand puppets and finger-guns, enjoyed karate high-kicks, surfing, barbering, choking, Charlie's Angels fighter ...

March 6 on the island of St. Lucia, two sources independently revealed that Tracie, Bride, told Michael, Best Man, that Lynn, Senior Stylist, had something important to tell him in twenty minutes. Not just then, but in twenty minutes. Michael harbored a trustingly low level of suspicion in regard to the suspenseful 20-minute stay-put directive. Especially given the tropical preposterousness of standard delay-makers such as traffic, long lines at the deli, or a spellbinding episode of House Hunters. ***Twenty Minutes Later*** Upon questioning, Lynn informed Michael that a blue bag had been stashed in his closet. Michael was to present the blue bag to Andrew, Groom, at a poignant moment prior to the vows ceremony. On a sidebar, Lynn also relayed that Tracie had asserted Andrew would recognize the blue bag and know what it contained. Micheal hustled back to Plantation House and located the blue bag secreted in his closet, right next to his gumshoes. A cursory inspection revealed a smaller...

The synchronized swim in Marigot Bay spontaneously generated. This lack of rehearsal proved dangerous when Andrew was kicked several times on and about the head. Kully did not participate. He floated like a cadaver nearby. Warren also did not participate. He was unaware of the goings on until it was all over. He waxed mildly enthusiastic about the possibility that the synchronized swim had been executed in secret, which is why he did not know about it. Heather also did not engage in any synchronization of swim. She stayed in the boat because she was cold. Allegedly.

Just before sunset, during Jeannie and Ray’s reading celebrating the vows of love, José sat quietly beside his wife Patti, his hands in his lap. Suddenly, a glossy pink flower drifted out of the sky and settled in his fingers. He gave it to Patti under the shadow of the Pitons and the light of the setting sun.

The exit poll bar-chart resembled two Piton mountains. Disregarding statistical outliers and those too drunk to speak coherently, most guests attending the week-long celebration of Tracie and Andrew stated for the record that they most enjoyed either the Catamaran excursion on Monday or alternately, the 60’s Party on Tuesday. Both events were terrible ideas. “I told Tracie the Catamaran reservation had been stolen by a one-armed man,” possibly confessed Kully, Senior Party Planner. Kully had spent a week last summer trying to talk the headstrong bride out of the terrible Catamaran idea. He locked in on three key downsides of marine pleasure crafts: Being stuck on a boat all day baking in the sun with the same people, It is impossible to dance at sea without looking like you have an inner ear infection, and 10% of people suffer from seasickness, and said seasickness lasts approximately 3 days after disembarking. This would knock out 3-4 people and severely disrupt the seating chart for ...