i used to have a girlfriend known as Elsie...

Natasha Richardson in Cabaret, 1998


Thank you for helping to ignite my love of musical theater. Rest surely in peace.

I have a crush on Richard from Gawker

because of this, because it speaks to my ongoing battle with New York:

Goodbye! The city said. She wandered off, so did he. And the camera hovered. Somewhere in the East Village a girl sat while her laundry rolled around and around and around in a washer. She thought about Oregon, about Danny, about her mom. She missed all of them. On the Lower East Side an old man stood waiting for the light to change. How the neighborhood had changed, he thought. How everything has changed. The walk signal came on, and he pressed on. In Gramercy a husband rolled over in bed and pulled his wife close to him and began falling in love with her all over again. In Hell's Kitchen a boy looked across the bar at another boy and they both felt that something dangerous was about to happen. In Times Square a tourist stood lost and bewildered and amazed. In Harlem a man waiting for the bus watched skeptically as a stream of new arrivals came spilling out of the subway. Kids. College kids. In the barrio there was a party for Danielle, who got the job. In the Boogie Down a dad saw his kid sleeping in the car seat next to him and things made sense again, for a moment. Over there in Astoria they opened a second bottle of wine. They yelled in Jackson Heights because he was gone and was never coming back. In Greenpoint they spoke Polish on the phone, they told jokes that couldn't be translated. In Red Hook they finished moving the last of the furniture out of a TV show loft. In Park Slope a writer said goodnight to an otherwise empty apartment. In Midwood, the wait was worth it. The pizza was delicious. In Brighton Beach they watched the waves. Spring was almost here. In Tottenville a mother walked the quiet house and thought about summer camps, beach vacations, the spit-spit-spit of the sprinkler she'd need to get out of the garage.

And there was Whitney still, wandering lost and utterly unaware through this place. This wonderful place. These blocks like bones, these buildings like skin, these trees like hair. This mystery. This love. This sad stony expanse. This bright gleaming embrace. This hope, this fear. This silly, marvelous home. This City.


sampled from Richard's review of the final episode of MTV's The City.

A brief service announcement from Rachel

"Hey Brutus...what the fuck?"

Beware the Ides of March, all.

A brief service announcement from Rachel

On the Fancy Food Show due in New York on June 28-30th, 2009:

"Why do we have to wait? Why do we have to wait so long? Why can't it be now? Why can't it be every day? Oh God -- I have a problem. I have Fancy Food Showitis!"

New York, I'm Yours

I was listening to The Decemberists on the way to work this morning -- "Los Angeles, I'm Yours" specifically -- and it made me wonder: why do I stay in New York? Reworking some already well written lyrics, here's why:

There is a city in the sea
A restless company
I don’t suppose you want to
And as it yells its angry tale
In sadist detail
Its affinity will haunt you
Its streets and avenues
Manics and ministers it hears
A destructive harmony
Shattering symphony
Hope and hopeless on the shore,
New York, I’m yours

Oh fellows, cocksure with allure
Empty of the pure
You can see my fear
And all the boys you drag about
A weeded crescent fount
From Saturdays to Saturday
You up and downtown crowd
Eyes hanging at your lips
We hope for the realest thing
As ancient choirs sing
One anxious cherub wheels above
New York, my love

Fuck, what a surge of pained brio
Seething on senses
Salient and surrogate
But oh, the smell of destiny
The heartache and vanity
It only makes me stoned
Oh great catastrophe,
Ditch of iniquity and tears
How I abhor this place
Its sweet and bitter taste
Has left me wretched, retching on all fours
New York, I’m yours