Hell, I Still Love You New York

Living in South Florida, you learn to dislike New York very quickly. Every winter, New Yorkers descend on your life like locusts who can't drive and make everything miserable. There's more traffic, more lines everywhere and worst of all, more Jets/Yankees fans -- I swear, they're like sperm. Only one in 30,000 has a chance of being a human being.

So, the idea of a South Floridian hitting NYC for the weekend is, in theory, a pretty terrible idea. But I've had a crush on big cities ever since I can remember and a weekend in one of the biggest seemed like a pretty great way for Dan and I to celebrate our anniversary.

My crush quickly bloomed into a full-blown love affair.

The noise, the crush of people, even the smell -- a heady mix of bus fumes, perfume, street food (particularly roasted nuts and hot dogs) and that X-factor makes you grimace momentarily. It's amazing and I can't wait until we go back.



Because we're all about riding in style, we took the Bolt Bus to NYC. It's efficient, it's clean and it only cost us $20 each for a round trip. Highly recommended.



We're here! The first thing we did was head over to see our friend Bryan at work. He was sweet enough to play host/tour guide all weekend and he was amazing. Bryan works at HBO and because of this, we actually got to eat at the HBO eatery, cleverly titled tHe BistrO. Get it? Yeah.



Because I am a nerd, I dragged Dan to Nintendo World where I spent a good ten minutes searching frantically for a Link plush toy. My search came up empty. Sadface.



Ladies and gentlemen, my fiance is a member of the Dharma initiative.



Dan and Bryan at the Brooklyn Promenade. God, I'd kill for this view. It's gorgeous.



We had breakfast at the Nectar Coffee Shop on Madison Avenue. I had a bialy -- which is like a bagel crossed with an English muffin (a buffin?) and the best iced coffee I've ever had in my life. Seriously, after drinking this -- I wanted to start a petition to change the name of Dunkin Donuts to Dunkin Garbage.



My breakfast was so good, I became a little gangsta. Just a little. Polish Ashkenazi cuisine will do that to a girl.



Then, we headed to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They have the coolest exhibition going on right now called Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy which not only features actual superhero costumes (Christian Bale's from The Dark Knight, Michelle Pfeiffer's from Batman Returns, Rebecca Romijn's from X-Men, Tobey Maguire's from Spiderman....) but also interpretations on each costume by designers like Marc Jacobs and Versace. It's amazing and I highly recommend it.



There was another pretty fantastic exhibit on the roof of the Met. Jeff Koons' exhibit runs through October 26 and if you get a chance, you should check it out.



My favorite of Koons' pieces.



All the pretty artwork got to me. As Bryan put it, I look like, "the overaggressive girl in second grade who just had to kiss you."

After the Met, we headed to Broadway where I saw my first show titled [Title of Show]. The plot's very clever and very meta -- it's about two guys playing themselves writing a play about two guys playing themselves. It's hysterically funny, the music is great (Heidi Blickenstaff has an incredible voice) and there's a shirtless guy and a lesbian kiss. A perfect musical.



55 Central Park West. Also known as "the Ghostbusters building." Dan was so excited to see this in real life. Cutest. Movie Nerd. Ever.



"Nobody steps on a church in my town!" -- Peter Venkman.



Red Mango frozen yogurt is effing delicious. As witnessed by my bare-empty cup here.



Keeping with the dessert theme, even the cookie cake knew what was up.



So, in closing -- yeah, the place is filled with Jets fans (i.e.: scum of the earth douchebags) and schmucks who are stupid enough to roll joints right there in the middle of the street (you know what's funny? When a gust of wind picks up and blows all their weed away. Hilarious), but in the words of Ryan Adams -- Hell, I still love you, New York.

Food + Work = Fork

One of the reasons I like the ladies I work with so much is because they all really appreciate food. Example: today, we decided to have a Thanksgiving-in-September Pot Luck Lunch.

Everyone's going to bring in a Thanksgivingy dish, we will feast like hell-damn-ass kings and then, I'll probably fall asleep at my desk and wake up with Post-Its stuck to my hair and an imprint of a paper clip on my cheek.

Being English, the glory of Thanksgiving was lost on me for eleven tragic years.

There were no cute little palm turkeys, no parades with giant inflatables and certainly no mashed potatoes and stuffing come the fourth Thursday in November.

Then -- I moved to the States and met The Best Friend's family. Wonderful, glorious people who introduced me to mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, Indiana corn, pecan pie and soft buttery rolls that practically floated off of the table and onto your plate.

Needless to say, Thanksgiving quickly became my favorite time of year. Football, family and enough food to quell the appetite of Kobayashi . What's not to like?

I began lusting after Thanksgiving food. March would roll around and I'd start to crave stuffing or I'd get a vicious jones for mashed potato volcanoes with green bean casserole lava (What? I make my food fun).

Thus began my bastardization of Thanksgiving dinner.

A couple of years ago, The Best Friend and I decided that waiting until November for Thanksgiving food was ridiculous and that lead to the birth of the Gobblewich-- a sandwich so delicious, it makes everything else on the planet taste like hot, wet garbage.

Although the name is genius, the sandwich's true genius lies in its simplicity.



A breaded mashed potato-and-stuffing patty served with slices of turkey and cranberry sauce on a buttered roll. Add a couple of green beans and a side of homemade macaroni and cheese and you'll be dropping into a food coma before you've had time to wipe that errant smear of cranberry sauce from your chin. What's not to like?

Hmmm....I'll bet this is exactly how Ben Franklin felt when he invented electricity.

See The Dark Knight

I took the day off work today.

Why? Because Dan and I had tickets to the 9:00 a.m. IMAX screening of The Dark Knight. This meant waking up at 6:20 and waiting in line outside of the theater by 7:00 a.m. When we arrived, there were about ten people ahead of us.

At 11:38 a.m., I was back outside of the theater, blinking in the sunlight and completely mesmerized by what I had just seen.

Even if I could manage to string together a sentence on how shit-rockingly awesome this movie is, I wouldn't want to because I would hate to ruin it for anyone who has yet to see the film.

If you like movies in any capacity whatsoever, see this film (preferably on an IMAX screen). It's brilliant. Seriously.

It's the weekend, I have the day off, I just saw a fantastic film and I'm in a hell of a good mood, so I'm sharing the love:

Dark Night -- Tito and Tarantula

Completely unrelated (kinda) but equally badass! Enjoy!

P.S.



Christian Bale has earned himself a permanent place on the Laminated List. Like a bag of hammers, I would.

Val Kilmer Sucks. George Clooney Sucks.

In honor of The Dark Knight, it's Batman month at Casa Awaiting-A-Name. This means reading all about the Caped Crusader and the Rogues Gallery that terrorizes Gotham, checking out Batman Unmasked: The Psychology of the Dark Knight on the History Channel and watching all the movies.

Having already watched the camp-tastic 1966 film starring Adam West and Tim Burton's takes on Batman a couple of times earlier this year, I decided to plunge headfirst into the mythos by watching the subsequent films.

I started with Batman Forever.



Since I'm hungry, I'm going to serve up a compliment sandwich -- a juicy criticism served between two thick slices of whole-grain compliments.

Compliment: Before Nolan reinvigorated the series with Batman Begins and put Batman/Bruce Wayne center stage, the movies had always been about the villains. Nicholson got top billing as The Joker (although Jack would probably get top billing if he was playing a background extra) and anytime you combine Michelle Pfeiffer and black vinyl -- well, does anyone really care who else is in the picture? [Sidebar: It's ridiculous how beautiful Michelle Pfeiffer is. She's as gorgeous now as she was twenty years ago]. Batman Forever continues this tradition.

Jim Carrey's Riddler and Tommy Lee Jones' Two-Face looked like they were having a blast wreaking havoc in Gotham. Jones bit a bit too much of his performance from Jack but his riotous laughter and Gollum-esque usage of plurals made for some pretty decent popcorn entertainment. As for Carrey, he played The Riddler as a complete lunatic whose mind is almost as elastic and flexible as his face. He also spits out two of the best lines in the movie -- "If knowledge is power, then a God am I" and "Was that over the top? I never can tell!" The latter being a deft jab at critics of Carrey's comedic contortions.

Criticism: The movie is completely unremarkable, lacks a strong sense of story and aside from the villains, the performances are thoroughly lackluster. Kilmer is morose and wooden, O'Donnell's Robin is not only completely unnecessary but whiny to boot and although Nicole Kidman has the femme fatale thing down, her breathy whispers don't compare to Kim Basinger's va-va-voom vixen Vicki Vale. In short, the movie is boring. Really, really boring.

Compliment: As bad as Batman Forever is, I've been told Batman and Robin is even worse. When I mentioned watching Batman and Robin to Dan, he looked at me like I was insane and said, "When you're watching it, you'll wish you were watching Batman Forever." Not exactly high praise but praise nevertheless. Sorta.

I think I'll watching Batman and Robin solo, but I mean -- how bad could it possibly be? After all, if I sat through Da Hip Hop Witch Project, I can definitely survive this.

Welcome to the Terrordome

(courtesy of Popsugar)

America is the only society in the world where effete morons like Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt not only survive past adolescence but actually thrive and prosper.
The only society where being talentless, blonde and pumped full of plastic is an EZ-Pass to celebrity -- a status that's getting easier and easier to attain with each passing day.
The only society where you can take two people whose collective IQ doesn't equal the amount of calories in a cup of cabbage and hand them lethal weaponry.

The ever-elusive "they" don't hate us for our freedom as George W. Bush has tried to convince us many times over.
"They" hate us because of things like this.


(courtesy of Popsugar)

Looking at these pictures is the only time in my life I have wished Dick Cheney was around.


On the list of things I hate about us:

- Anything even remotely related to Tila Tequila and the very concept of an Internet celebrity. Having a million friends on MySpace does not make you worthy of anything other than derision.
- Easy Mac and Crustables. Seriously, how effing hard is it to make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich?
- NASCAR. Gas costs $4.15/gallon and these assholes just use it to go around a track for hours.
- The fact that Yahoo! Mail is now blocked by the company firewall. In the company's defense, though -- Yahoo! was littered with a ton of ads. Looks like I'll be making the switch to Gmail permanent.
- Karl Rove. I thought nefarious super villains only existed in comic books. Sadly for America -- I was very, very wrong.

However, it's the weekend and I don't want to start things off on a salty note, so here's a list of things I'm currently throughly enamored with:

- The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini. Spare, evocative, heart-breaking and compelling. I read the entire book in one day and loved it. I picked up Hosseini's second book, A Thousand Splendid Suns and I can't wait to read it.

- Mangoes. Ate a sliver and then, went out and bought an entire box of them. Nothing tastes more like summer time.

- The Public Library. Thousands upon thousands of books all for free. It's an amazing and seriously underappreciated institution.

- The Dark Knight. Dan and I tried to get tickets for the 12:01 IMAX showing but they were sold out. Stupid fanboys. So instead, we'll be catching the 9:00 a.m. showing on July 18. I don't think I've ever been this excited for a movie before. Ever. Not only do I have the utmost faith in Nolan, but I am completely mesmerized with both Christian Bale and Gary Oldman. Particularly the latter.



Gary Oldman is an actor in the purest sense of the word. He's a chameleon who really bites his teeth into every role he takes on and really has the audience believing that he is Sid Vicious, Sirius Black, Beethoven, Lee Harvey Oswald, Dracula, Pontius Pilate or a lazy-eyed pimp named Drexl Spivey. The fact that Oldman has never won an Oscar is a glaring oversight on the part of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.The man is undeniably brilliant and I can't wait to see him play Lt. James Gordon again.

Look bitch -- you knew I was a snake

Once upon a time, a woman was picking up firewood.
She came upon a poisonous snake frozen in the snow.
She took the snake home and nursed it back to health.
One day the snake bit her on the cheek.
As she lay dying, she asked the snake, "Why have you done this to me?"
And the snake answered, "Look bitch, you knew I was a snake."

This is one of my favorite parables. Not only because of the Tarantino connection and the profanity ("mittens!") but because of just how true it rings.

My teen years were spent embroiled in this thoroughly ridiculous mess of a relationship. Looking back, I realize just how adolescent and pointless it was. But, when you're sixteen -- it's easy to justify sheer idiocy and I had a three-pronged attack.

1. I "loved" him and "understood" him in a way that no-one else did.
Ummm, no Miss Mensa. You didn't and you didn't. It wasn't so much love as it was wanting to be in love. See what happens when you surround yourself with movies and music? All those great scenes and song lyrics make you nuts. Just ask Rob Fleming.

2. He was different.
Wrong again, Baby Einstein. Well, actually -- he was different because unlike the men in my life now, homeboy had a doctorate in douchebaggery. A doD, if you will. Unfortunately, Sixteen-Year-Old Jaime thought he was different because he whispered all those sweet nothings that every girl wants to hear. I wasn't friends with The Best Friend yet because if I had been -- he would have smacked me upside the head and said, "Hey asshole! He's only nice 'cause he wants to get in your pants!" Damn you, Biffle. Why didn't we meet sooner?

Let's try for a hat trick, shall we?

3. We were destined.
Oh Sweet Caroline, how do you even get dressed in the morning?! It wasn't destiny so much as it was cheap rent that was responsible for putting the two of you in the same neighborhood.

If I had just realized, "Look bitch, you knew he was a snake," I could have spared myself some seriously pathetic personal history.

Instead of moping about this dude and writing endless paeans about the 'complex' nature of our relationship (in reality, our relationship was about as complex as a monotone Rubix's Cube) -- I could have been out eating a great sandwich or learning to salsa dance or whatever it is people do when they're not languishing in the throes of self-involved assery.

However, as much as I'd like to take back those countless hours where I connected to R&B tracks on a disturbingly personal level, without that experience -- I wouldn't have realized just how amazingly wonderful the Nice Guy is.

Yeah -- the nice guy. The guy who eats his vegetables, loves his mom, calls when he says he's going to, compliments you sans ulterior motive and makes your life easy. Or, if you're so inclined -- the nice girl. You know, someone like this:


(image courtesy of IngredientX.com)

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is -- look bitch, you mess around with snakes and you're going to get bitten. Granted, some people get a buzz from the venom, but this girl? She's with Indy when it comes to snakes.

P.S.: My guy loves broccoli, is taking his mom to see The Dark Knight, is pretty great about keeping phone dates, told me I looked pretty this morning and makes my life fairly easy. In the words of Salt 'N Pepa and En Vogue -- whatta man, whatta man, whatta man, whatta man, whatta mighty good man. Hmmm...that's two references to R&B in one entry. Someone's been spending a bit too much time at 90's R&B Junkie.

My name might as well be Fatty McButterpants.

I got caught in a torrential downpour after work. By the time I got home, I resembled an extra from Titanic. A very grouchy extra from Titanic.

But because I spend a majority of my time channeling Slimer, my dinner made it all better.



So, what did my fabulous dinner consist of?

Flatbread topped with hummus and fresh salsa



Idiot-Proof Salsa:

Chop:

Tomatoes
Green peppers
Onions
Corn
Garlic

If you want to get a little more creative, feel free to add:

Black Beans
Tomatillos
Jalapenos, Habaneros or Serranos (if you're not afflicted with what Mom so tactfully refers to as, 'white man's tongue')

Mix with:

Salt
Cilantro
Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

Marinate for half an hour in the fridge.
Find any flat, edible surface -- chip, cracker, flatbread....
Smother liberally with salsa.
Eat!

Avocado and mango salad with fresh lime and crushed red pepper.



And for dessert, a chocolate-covered pretzel rod. Salt + Sweet = Winner. Every time.

Pascal from Big Night said it best -- "God damn it, I should kill you! This is so fucking good I should kill you!"

Put me on a plane/Fly me to anywhere

I got really excited last night because I thought I found cheap tickets to Florida over Thanksgiving.

Round trip airfare for $260.

A steal, right? Couple that with the fact that I haven't seen my parents or sister in a year and this is the bargain of the century.

However, as with math and Kim Kardashian's fame -- my understanding of the Gregorian calendar is tenous at best.

I was looking up airfare for the week before Thanksgiving. The tickets I want cost upwards of $500.

Balls.

Happy Biffle...I mean, Birthday!

Meet my best friend, Jerry. I think I've called him 'Jerry' a total of five times in my life. To me, he The Best Friend. Or, more obnoxiously -- Biffle (BFFL -- Best Friend For Life).

He introduced me to the glory (and crushing agony) that is Miami Dolphins football. He also introduced me to video games and the fine art of talking shit ("Knock knock?" "Who's there?" "Your mother's a whore."). He usually smells good and when he doesn't shave for five days straight -- he looks like a hobo. He listens to the world's most misogynistic hip-hop....and treats ladies better than anyone I've ever met. When it comes to holding open doors, he comes up aces every time. He's a great listener -- whether I'm having an emotional breakdown or excitedly jabbering about the fact that I saw a chipmunk, he listens to every last word. (Ladies, he's also single, so if you're in the market for a sweet Southern guy who'll call you 'sweetpea' and 'darlin', get in touch!)

You know how people make time capsules and bury all this stuff as representative of a certain era? Well, if there was a time capsule representative of the first ten years of the new millennium, I’d put him in it.

Hmmm...I find myself working with an awkward 'buried alive' motif. Not really what I was going for. Let me elucidate.

I’d put him in it because even though things are terrible now – war, economy spiraling down the toilet, cost of gasoline and food, famine, the environmental strain, Tila Tequila – The Best Friend represents the fact that despite it all, there is still an immense amount of good in this world.

He is the best friend I’ve ever had. Hell, he might even be the best person I know (he's tied for this honor with my sister. Solely because she introduced me to the term ‘mouthdump.’).

I could create a laundry list of all the reasons I adore and respect him but instead I’m just going to say that he's the best. Best friend. Best brother. Best influence. Best listener. Best guy.

I am so stupidly lucky to know him and be even a blip on your radar, much less his best friend.

So to my best friend, my biffle -- Have a wonderful birthday. I might not be with you, but I’m thinking about you and sending you all the good wishes in the universe.

Love you! Miss you! Happy Biffle!

Pears Lemonade

+ + = ♥

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