We were visiting our friends live in Pennsylvania, about 45 minutes from Philadelphia and 30 from Villanova, their Alma Mater. "We describe you as our hipster friends," they told Ken and I. That seems inaccurate, I thought.
"Why do you think we are hipster?" I asked. Ken is currently trying to get back to his hipster roots, so I can almost agree with describing him as such. He is growing his hair and at that moment was wearing a t-shirt with skinny jeans and a Jason Mraz hat (which is a straw fedora from Urban Outfitters. I assume Jason Mraz wears this hat. However, this is coming from a girl who doesn't know for certain that Jason Mraz, Josh Grobin, Dave Matthews, and probably about two others are not the same person.) But me? True, I was wearing a bird shirt (also from Urban Outfitters), but this was recent purchase. I have since purchased two more t-shirts from Urban Outfitters, and am now the proud owner of exactly three t-shirts, but I mostly wear clothing from Anne Taylor, Loft, Banana Republic, or other like stores, and the recent influx of t-shirts marketed to girls 7 years younger than me happened within the last three weeks and could not have influenced my friends' impression or description of me.
"You guys dress cool, and you take the subway," they told us. I found this interesting, because the reasons they cited for us being hipster are the same reasons (minus "you guys cook!") that Caitlin, my 28-year-old sister who has a husband, a PhD from Stanford, a job at Google, and her name on her own mailbox, finds me and Ken to be very adult. (I think Caitlin is very adult for the reasons listed above, not to mention her car and the pool at her apartment complex.)
I am starting to get the sense that people who don't live or work in New York think that taking the subway is very impressive. I know that the subway system is intimidating; I grew up on Long Island and didn't really understand how it worked until I went to NYU, but what these outsiders don't understand is that I have to take the subway. I can't get around otherwise. But it's nice that it makes me look cool.
Monday, August 15, 2011
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
Sexy Gel
The word “sexy” caught my eye from where I stood in the bathroom.
Is it possible that the name of Ken’s shower gel includes “sexy”?
Ken’s last few bottles were Old Spice, a brand he thought was pretty cool because of the commercials (“He’s on a horse!”), but for the past few weeks, and maybe even months, he had been using something out of a sleek, teal blue container. I had never bothered to look at it carefully before, but today I picked it up and sure enough, there it was: “Very Sexy: For Him.”
I cannot imagine that he 1. chose this abomination off a shelf that included a wider selection, and 2. carried it in his own hand to the register and paid for it, thereby admitting that he found Very Sexy to be the *best option that that particular establishment had to offer. I hoped there was a better explanation.
Being the modern girl that I am, which includes both impatience and a plethora of high-tech means to find the answer to any question I might have, I responded to Ken’s text of how much he loved me (it’s a lot, by the way) with an inquiry about his soap.
“I finally noticed the name of your shower gel,” I typed on the touch screen of my iphone. “Sexy something? I hope you were embarrassed making that purchase.”
(That is an appropriate response to the “One reason I love you” text that he sent me, right?)
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. I haven’t waited for anything since 1990, and I certainly don’t want to start that up again. I won’t make you wait, either. Ken let me know that his mom bought the shower gel for him, but he is not sure if that is better or worse than purchasing it himself.
Is it possible that the name of Ken’s shower gel includes “sexy”?
Ken’s last few bottles were Old Spice, a brand he thought was pretty cool because of the commercials (“He’s on a horse!”), but for the past few weeks, and maybe even months, he had been using something out of a sleek, teal blue container. I had never bothered to look at it carefully before, but today I picked it up and sure enough, there it was: “Very Sexy: For Him.”
I cannot imagine that he 1. chose this abomination off a shelf that included a wider selection, and 2. carried it in his own hand to the register and paid for it, thereby admitting that he found Very Sexy to be the *best option that that particular establishment had to offer. I hoped there was a better explanation.
Being the modern girl that I am, which includes both impatience and a plethora of high-tech means to find the answer to any question I might have, I responded to Ken’s text of how much he loved me (it’s a lot, by the way) with an inquiry about his soap.
“I finally noticed the name of your shower gel,” I typed on the touch screen of my iphone. “Sexy something? I hope you were embarrassed making that purchase.”
(That is an appropriate response to the “One reason I love you” text that he sent me, right?)
Fortunately, I didn’t have to wait long for an answer. I haven’t waited for anything since 1990, and I certainly don’t want to start that up again. I won’t make you wait, either. Ken let me know that his mom bought the shower gel for him, but he is not sure if that is better or worse than purchasing it himself.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Karaoke II
Even though I recently swore off ever performing Karaoke again, I was at a Karaoke bar in Boston and thought that it would be a good idea to have another go at it. I wasn’t much better this time around, but I didn’t drive away any suitors.
But more interestingly than my recent comeback is the story of the Taylor Swift singer coverist.
The reason that I was in Boston was to see my former roommate in his play, Shear Madness. Though he has been in various plays in New York, I have forgotten to go to every one and it was becoming embarrassing that I had never seen him perform. Around the same time that I was contemplating my friendship neglect, my mother told me she had hotel points that were going to expire soon and someone needed to use them. Finally, I have Friday’s off from work in the summer, and most people don’t so I didn’t have a lot of Friday plans. It was the perfect storm. I would go to Boston to see my roommate’s Friday night performance, while *erasing any of my mother’s guilt over what was almost a wasted hotel stay.
I spent the day sightseeing in Boston by myself, which was one of my top 5 summer experiences, and in the evening, attending Shear Madness. After this, I joined my roommate, his friends and other cast members in the theatre’s bar that was also a karaoke lounge. “Didn’t I just swear this off?” I thought, but after absolutely no need of convincing me to come out of retirement, I began looking through the book of songs, hoping to find one of the three that I know well enough to sing publicly. I ended up with “Walk Like an Egyptian.”
I told my karaoke tale of woe to the group, and a very pretty girlfriend told me her “trick” to karaoke. “I always sing a Taylor Swift song,” she said. It seems that people like Taylor Swift enough to enjoy her performance, and I guess it isn’t done all the time, like Queen is. Also, a fair amount of Taylor’s songs are fast, and fast is always more fun to listen to.
The Taylor Swift-singing girlfriend was a petite and completely adorable girl-next-door type who everyone should be jealous of. Not to mention, she is a successful karaoke artist! I was looking forward to her turn, while thinking, “I wish I had chosen Taylor Swift!” and also, “I wish I was half as pretty as her.”
When her name was called she proceeded to the stage area, looking dwarfed—and all the more precious—by the empty space around her and even by the microphone in her hand. She began to sing, “I was riding shot-gun with my hair undone…”
Oh god, she was terrible. She awkwardly spoke-sang, like a child would, and on top of that, missed half of the notes. She wasn’t a belter or anything, so it wasn’t painful to listen to, it was just sweetly awful.
“Oh honey,” I thought, “it isn’t your ‘trick’ that makes people like watching you sing.” And regardless of how terrible she was, I was not alone in encouraging her to go up and pick another song.
But more interestingly than my recent comeback is the story of the Taylor Swift singer coverist.
The reason that I was in Boston was to see my former roommate in his play, Shear Madness. Though he has been in various plays in New York, I have forgotten to go to every one and it was becoming embarrassing that I had never seen him perform. Around the same time that I was contemplating my friendship neglect, my mother told me she had hotel points that were going to expire soon and someone needed to use them. Finally, I have Friday’s off from work in the summer, and most people don’t so I didn’t have a lot of Friday plans. It was the perfect storm. I would go to Boston to see my roommate’s Friday night performance, while *erasing any of my mother’s guilt over what was almost a wasted hotel stay.
I spent the day sightseeing in Boston by myself, which was one of my top 5 summer experiences, and in the evening, attending Shear Madness. After this, I joined my roommate, his friends and other cast members in the theatre’s bar that was also a karaoke lounge. “Didn’t I just swear this off?” I thought, but after absolutely no need of convincing me to come out of retirement, I began looking through the book of songs, hoping to find one of the three that I know well enough to sing publicly. I ended up with “Walk Like an Egyptian.”
I told my karaoke tale of woe to the group, and a very pretty girlfriend told me her “trick” to karaoke. “I always sing a Taylor Swift song,” she said. It seems that people like Taylor Swift enough to enjoy her performance, and I guess it isn’t done all the time, like Queen is. Also, a fair amount of Taylor’s songs are fast, and fast is always more fun to listen to.
The Taylor Swift-singing girlfriend was a petite and completely adorable girl-next-door type who everyone should be jealous of. Not to mention, she is a successful karaoke artist! I was looking forward to her turn, while thinking, “I wish I had chosen Taylor Swift!” and also, “I wish I was half as pretty as her.”
When her name was called she proceeded to the stage area, looking dwarfed—and all the more precious—by the empty space around her and even by the microphone in her hand. She began to sing, “I was riding shot-gun with my hair undone…”
Oh god, she was terrible. She awkwardly spoke-sang, like a child would, and on top of that, missed half of the notes. She wasn’t a belter or anything, so it wasn’t painful to listen to, it was just sweetly awful.
“Oh honey,” I thought, “it isn’t your ‘trick’ that makes people like watching you sing.” And regardless of how terrible she was, I was not alone in encouraging her to go up and pick another song.
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