April 2008 Archives

Lollo has a sort of grandmotherly role in my life, whereas my actual grandmother takes more of an angry older sibling or frenemy-like position. Whenever I see Lollo she tells me how beautiful I am and compliments my intelligence, my ingenuity, my figure and anything else that might be in my general vicinity. My grandmother, on the other hand, tends to only mention these things in me when noting how deficient they are, or if I had been lucky enough to be gifted such a trait, in pointing out how I've royally screwed it up.

The last time I was in New York, my brother and grandmother and I took an hour-long cab ride to Lollo's assisted living facility. After 45 minutes, my grandmother insisted we leave. As we walked out my grandmother said acidicly, "Get enough compliments in there?" I'm not sure if this is a sign that she genuinely believes that compliments directed towards her grandchildren are an awful thing, or if some small part of her realizes that perhaps she should be the one that thinks my brother and I are amazing. What's particularly nice about Lollo loving me is that as a non-relative, she doesn't have to. As we were getting back into the cab to take us straight into rush hour Manhattan traffic, I realized that if my actual grandmother were just a friend of the family, I would never make this journey for her.

Wisdom is meant to be passed down from generation to generation, wizened old women telling the offspring of their offspring knowledge they have picked up along their journey, secrets they have learned to lead a better life. On our last visit, I was confessing how I used the New Yorker as a barometer of my worth--the more I had piled around the house unread, the more filled with self-loathing I become. I rarely have less than three waiting insistently at my kitchen table, and have, at times, it pains me to confess, gone up to as many as eleven. I half-heartedly try and blame this more on the international mail system that often brings two or three of the weekly issues on the same day than any shortcomings on my part. Lollo raised her non-existent eyebrows at me and said in a strong Austrian accent, "Something I have learned is that you don't have to read every article of every New Yorker. I used to try when I was young. There just isn't enough time."

--Lifehacker is like, the best site ever. I realized this long before I realized that it was created by an awesome girl who used to sit a few desks down from me at my old job. This has made me depressed. Why? Because I'm bitterly jealous.

--When I heard that Heavy Metal Parking Lot was being released on DVD, I was delighted. (Heavy Metal Parking Lot is a 1986 documentary that interviews fans in a parking lot before a Judas Priest concert.) Then I heard about Neil Diamond Parking Lot and I was really excited in a sort of post-ironic way, and then I felt a little sick. Then I took a nap.

--The New York Canon: Books From Norman Mailer to Rem Koolhaas, 26 works of lapidary New Yorkitude.

--A tribute(?) to my old neighborhood, The Tenderloin. This site is amazing, it really captures the essence of one of the most horrific places in America. I look at these pictures when I'm writing and it inspires me. To bathe. This was the neighborhood that I once got mugged by a topless transgendered woman who was holding a hammer and had 2 henchmen with her, also carrying tools. I sort of miss it. I mean, where else would you get a story like that?

Right now, I'm working on my teen novel and decided that I couldn't really get in the mood unless I listened to all of the dumb albums I was listening to when I was 17, so I spent the better part of the last hour looking for my ex-boyfriend's record "Hell Bent for Rehab" and Let Them Eat Jellybeans, an album that would be described as seminal by some, and semenal by others. Other things I've decided I need to listen to before I can even begin considering writing another word: Pixies - Doolittle, Surfer Rosa and Bossanova, Fang - Landshark and Where the Wild Things Are, Skinny Puppy - Rabies, Bad Religion - Suffer, Jane's Addiction, GG Allin - Hated, TSOL - Code Blue, and sad to say it, Rancid - Let's Go. What am I forgetting, guys?