I often speak of my undying love for J Crew, because lets face it I don’t have a life. Its become an almost unhealthy obsession, to the point I will walk around its hallowed corridors and showcases at Columbus Circle to blow off steam after carbo-loading at Whole Foods. Oh to revel in the clothes for the dapper lifestyle I yearn to afford, but can probably only attain through hooking and/or gold digging (since they are synonymous with one another.)
However, I have to give Anthropologie props. The store interiors are glorious to say the least, and are reminiscent of the fairy tale settings we became so used to as children. Except now we’re older and these fairy tales are trying to sell us cutlery and aprons. Nothing like turning the tedium of homemaking into a magical experience, all you need are some clip on fairy wings and a fifth of vodka to bring it to life.
“Mommy, why does dinner taste like cigarette ash and despair?”
“Shut up, you didn’t tell me how much you liked the new lobster motif in the kitchen. We’re turning your room into the British countryside next, don’t even try and fucking stop me.”
But honestly, I do tend to blow too much money on their clothes. It’s a wild stab at pretentious bohemian with a belligerent attitude geared towards superfluous ruffles and layering. If you don’t know what the hell I just said, neither do I. But that’s irrelevant to how pretty their riding jackets and dresses are.
On another note, the store does make good use of their Facebook as well. I like getting the new collections on their news feed, or the ability to “like” an outfit or article of clothing on the website. Sperry Top-Sider has been doing a good job with their Facebook as well, generating content that appeals to their audience and making them feel more at home with the brand. Example A:
8 “likes” in under a half and hour and growing. G-d bless America and boat shoes.
I just got really nervous because Marty was on Grinder, and the doorbell mysteriously rang while I was blasting Cyndi Lauper. I half expected a man with whole grain tortilla chips and homemade salsa to burst through the door, but it was just my roommate. However, it would be my fault for consecutively playing “Into the Nightlife” and “Jai Ho,” thus giving away our exact location.
Its been one of those weeks where you feel like it should be Thursday night already…but it’s Tuesday. A day when you’ve eaten nothing but carbs and sugar, making you question your humanity, or what you have added to the world other than a carbon footprint and inappropriate tweets.
While I ponder my existence and everything I shouldn’t have contributed to the vast and terrible world of social media, I have to admit it’ll be nice to head back to campus...if only for the social atmosphere. The school work not so much, but at this point I feel like I can get away with being a pretentious bitch in class. Or simply drink the pain away when my Freudian branded vegan restaurant doesn’t go over well in critique. (True story)
I can always preemptively drop out and produce some sort of bastardized sleep aid in lieu of a diploma. How amazing would a melatonin candy necklace be? It would be fabulous to give to children, turning nap time into an obligation rather than some sort of petty fight. In an oversaturated market, this qualifies as a necessary item.
We waste so much of our lives sleeping. Our lives are too short as it is, and it’s hard enough to accomplish everything we need to do in the few years we’re given, let alone during the light of day.
Monday night a friend from school called me at midnight to tell me he wanted to go to late night bars in NYC. He and a friend then proceeded to drive from Philadelphia in an hour and 45 minutes, and we hit up a bar in Times Square until it closed. It was one of those bars where men go to cheat on their wives in the middle of the night, trying to literally recapture a youth. I saw a few cougars as well, but they were far too wasted to hit on any of the guys I came with. I despise Times Square in its entirety, but I haven’t spent a lot of time drinking there and I wanted to check out everything available to me within the short amount of time I have left in NYC.
On that note, with the summer winding down and the depressing inevitability of labor day fashion laws destroying an eighth of my wardrobe, Brittany and I decided we needed one last hurrah at the beach this past weekend.
Jones beach was the closest and far cheaper than the Hamptons, so after a brief encounter with our personal shopper at Anne’s Boutique (located within the Hell’s Kitchen Flea Market) we ran to Penn Station with Steph to catch a train to Long Island. I say run but really I was quickly walking while Brittany sprinted on her tiny midget legs. We barely made the train, but the stress was well worth our delightful ride. We got to pass by exotic locations such as “Jamaica,” and “Queens” and watch a gaggle of Swedes devour an entire buffet in the seats in front of us. It was the International experience IHOP strives to provide but falls short upon.
We caught the bus from the station to the beach, and once again were subjected to the beauty and elegance that is public transportation. There were small children climbing everywhere and the bus engine died, stranding us on some g-dforsaken road until another one picked us up. Then one of the aforementioned small children was left on the other bus, but I’m assuming it got out alive because we saw it a few hours later.
The beach was somewhat cloudy and like every other outing I experience with Brittany, we were verbally sexually harassed by every ethnicity under the sun.
We have had little to no luck with dealing with people on a whole this entire summer. The night before we were accosted by drunken random’s at the Bowery Hotel, who in the midst of casual conversation made it a point to mention that they were multi-millionaires and then scream at the wait staff across the room.
After quickly exiting that scene, we stood on a street corner contemplating our next move. Within moments another group of randoms were asking us to come smoke with them, and then one of them asked out Brittany. While I often speak of slut magic (which I plan to conduct my senior thesis upon, Drexel don't you dare try and stop me) I think there is something to be said of midget magic. I haven't encountered it before, but so far it has proven to be a fascinating case. Whatever it is, it hasn't enabled Brittany to walk faster.
Nothing speaks to your own mortality more than a funeral or a KFC doubledown. Both make you face the inevitable end with grim acceptance, and the injustice of not knowing what it’s truly made of. Given my distrust of spirituality and processed meats, I honestly don’t want to know because I’m afraid of the answer.
Whenever I do something socially irresponsible and bitch about the repercussions to my “friends,” I usually get the “yes you will die cold and alone and left be to eaten by a horde of cats” response which usually doesn’t help. But isn’t that everyone’s greatest fear? Personally the cats add insult to injury because I’m allergic to them, but the poetic description does momentarily strike a chord before Coors light is thrown in the direction of the offender.
I’ve spoken of my general fear of complacency before, but it’s the idea of not accomplishing what you want to do in the time that’s given that is the truly terrifying part. Watching the mind fuck that is Unfaithful before going to the chapel probably didn’t help either. Who metaphorically knows when they are going to be murdered because they screwed Diane Lane? Nothing is certain, except how damn good she looked for her age.
On another note, it was nice to see how everything and nothing changes at home. Most of the former lake staff had come and gone, but my obnoxious signature remains the only unpainted place in the shack. My yard is slowing being turned into some sort of distorted wildlife sanctuary where JAP rabbits and turkeys roam free. My mother held up a check out line to count pennies in Saks. My room is still a humiliating ode to 2006 (I thought NIN lyrics “spoke to me” and Diesel ads were the most poignant testament to American culture.) And my brother has once again grown in the past two months since I’ve seen him. Shit happens, life goes on, and we can always look back and cringe at our horrible horrible decisions and decorating choices.
This morning when I boarded the Amtrak back to Boston, I was amused how they herded the coach passengers to the back of the train like cattle. However, complaining about the difference in treatment or the poor selection of snacks in the café car would be nothing short of communism. There are divisions among the classes for a reason, and it’s a necessity in keeping the glory of capitalism alive. The persons in business class stretching out their legs, playing bejewled on their iphones, and texting their mistresses deserve to be there. They paid the paltry extra dollars, and deserve better treatment. I have no qualms with being a lowly student or intern and riding in coach, nor with letting said persons buy me drinks when I’m out.
Situations like these always seem reminiscent of Titanic. How they loaded the life boats with first class, a few members of second class, and used the floating corpses of third class to plug up any holes in leaking life boats. It’s also evocative of how they loaded the “women and children first.” I wonder if they would still do that today, or if it would turn into a free for all with people stabbing one another with their stiletto heels and cuff links. Granted the children should go first, because they are our future and all that happy horseshit, but do the women really need to go first as well? The kids would want their moms in their lifeboats with them, but they could equally want their dads. Stay at home dads are quickly becoming a popular trend, and I remember plenty of DILF’s when I was a lake lifeguard. The norms of society are quite fluid, to the point where one doesn’t think twice about the tranny couple with their tranny child. Henry will grow up to more fabulous than Hannah Montana could ever be.
This also begs the question of chivalry. Is it completely dead, or did the knight just misplace his white horse while he was wandering around the forest on shrooms? (He comes back from his spirit quest to realize he was gay all along)
If someone had asked me about chivalry several months ago when I was still at Drexel, I would have answered that it was dead, and that I couldn’t care less. The only better treatment I received was how I didn’t have to pay to get in or drink at any house party or fraternity. I might also have a skewed opinion because I go to an engineering school, and girls are akin to mirages with boobs for most of the population. However after some time in NYC (half a year…whaaat?) I would like to say that it’s still out there, but things are becoming equal in both the workplace and social situations, and it’s definitely for the better. I am in no way, shape, or form a feminist, but I don’t think women necessarily need to have doors opened for them or seats given up for them. We’re perfectly capable of doing that on our own, unless we’re completely blacked out and miss the door handle or are passed out on the subway floor. At this point we don’t need a white knight, we need some damn aspirin.
Because my body is a temple, I decided to purchase almond milk today to make up for facing a bottle of wine and then drinking enough vodka to kill a small horse last night. It had a slightly sweet and nutty aftertaste, which was well appreciated and I found it more fulfilling than coconut milk. Coconut milk in my highly cultivated opinion tastes like egg nogg’s slimmer and more boring cousin. The one who ended up getting into her first choice school, but quietly died on the inside after she realized the futility of being a business ethics major.
I’ve been on a downward spiral as of late in the healthy eating department. I thought I was doing well this morning when I ate my obligatory hangover mango, but then I met up with a friend from high school and our quick dash to the McDonalds ATM for margarita funds turned into a full blown disgraceful meal. He was still somewhat jetlagged from Paris, and I was simply fulfilling my duty as a good friend and American to force feed him the grease that keeps the cogs of our economy slowly and painfully turning.
Apparently this was his fourth trip to France this year, courtesy of Yale. The last time Drexel did anything for me was not fail my classical social theory midterm I banged out last week. It was an argument concerning Durkheim’s discussion of pre-ordained social facts, and I tried to explain that any qualities or conceptions I possessed were a result of my white middle class discourse. Any attraction to douschebags in boat shoes is out of my control and yet another failure on society’s part. I think my postulations would bring peace of mind to worldwide, and I even went so far as to abstain from quoting popular movies. I fucking deserve to go to France.
After two days of lounging about my apartment living the dream (heavily medicating myself with Nyquil and watching Chappelles Show) I decided that my health and breathing in general was overrated, and left air conditioning.
I rarely get sick, but when I do it’s with a clusterfuck of symptons. Asthma kicks in, I can’t really walk, and my delusions of grandeur become that much more enigmatic. I’m also not very coherent, but when I heard there was a summer clearance sale at Loehman’s my jewdar told me to get the fuck out of bed.
There isn’t much to say about my shopping expenditure except that it was successful, so successful in fact the bag ripped as I was exiting the building. I don’t know if it was the lack of caffeine or food, or my cold medicine paired with the searing heat, but within seconds the fact that I had to clutch a ripped bag the entire walk home paled in comparison to that the street vendor in front of me sold corn. I was so excited, I bought seven ears of it.
In retrospect it was probably because whenever I think of corn, I think of my childhood and husking it on the deck with my brother. Then we would have a husk whipping competition to see who can get theirs the furthest into the woods, because my mother liked to think she ran some sort of JAP farm. I always lost, but clearly it hasn’t been keeping me up all night. Just most of it.
However, now I was hacking and coughing on the upper west side, clearly dehydrated and clutching multiple bags full of shoes and corn.
It was in this shining moment of clairvoyance that I realized I should probably go home as to avoid being seen. And that I didn't own a big enough bowl to boil water in.
For some time Brittany and I have been lamenting the fact that we can’t tan by a pool, and are restricted to the tedium that has become my roof deck or Central Park. At the very least on my deck Brittany won’t scare small children while she eats an entire watermelon in a midget-like frenzy, and in central park there is always the small possibility of my stealing a purse puppy.
After some research and the sobering realization that we were going to have to stoop so low as to sneak into a hotel pool, Brittany came across the public pool at Central Park and we so naively believed all of our problems were solved.
I walked the 57 blocks from my place to the pool, given my distaste for public transportation and spending money on a cab instead of more important things like liquor or shoes. Along the way I was taken aback by how much nicer central park on the upper west side was in comparison to the Columbus Circle section I’m so used to. Even after I saw the homeless man covered in feces and blood get attacked by a piece of white trash because he said he was “stealing his shorts.”
When I first got there, I should have known something was up when I saw some natives fighting with the guards because they hadn’t brought bathing suits. Then they wouldn’t let me in because I hadn’t brought a pad lock for any of my precious belongings. I told him there was no way in hell I was getting in their water, and I wouldn’t let my bag out of my hand. I got ‘tude right back until the helpful overweight lady in day-glo spandex told me the deli across the street sold padlocks.
I was pissed I blew around $8 on a lock and a samosa, and as far as I was concerned I had just purchased my summer membership to the damn pool.
When Brittany and I finally got past the first gate, the second guard stopped us and said we were required to lock up our belongings, nor were we allowed to wear cover-ups into the pool area. We were confused to say the least, and questioned the cover up rule. I thought he was simply partaking in sexual harassment, and considering it’s one of my favorite hobbies as well I thought I could find it in my heart to forgive him. Then he responded that we couldn’t wear cover ups because he was going to make us go through the showers.
The Holocaust was only some 60 odd years ago, and the last thing you want to tell a pissed off Jew is that you’re sending them “to the showers.” I decided against lecturing him on his poor choice of words, and submitted myself to the locker room.
It was a nasty room with lockers on the sides, and a lone woman to guard our already locked possessions. I wrapped up my ipod, phone, book, and cover-up in my towel so the pool Nazi’s wouldn’t suspect anything, and subjected myself to the Auschwitz of public pools.
Brittany and I were two of the most in-shape people there, and comprised of two of the five legal adults there without tattoos. I’ve never seen so many poorly rendered back pieces or tribal crosses, and it finally broke me out of my tattoo mindset. I’ve wanted one for most of my life, but considering my low pain threshold and my parents tendency to go bat shit crazy over any body modifications, have decided against it thus far. I still don’t think they’ve fully recovered from my belly button ring, but in my defense it was 4/20 and I was celebrating surviving after accidentally setting my hair on fire. I only had to cut off my bangs.
It was a dog eat dog world out there, and I was getting nervous because of the total lack of control. I thought lifeguarding at the JCC outdoor pool was hard because none of the tummy tucked bitches watched their kids, but here if one went under it just meant one less welfare darling.
I also didn’t like the way a lot of the patrons were looking at us, especially the 12 year old boys. Granted we stuck out like sore thumbs with our absence of belly chains, and I looked like a jackass by coordinating my accessories with my polo bikini. We were also oddly one of the few people there without phones, and were frequently accosted for the time.
At three the lifeguards started blowing their whistles, and demanding that everyone get out of the water. I was confused, and immediately assumed someone had shit in the pool. Even worse, what if they had discovered there was a Jew on the premises.
The park rangers were walking around and making all of the tanners leave as well, and one woman told Brittany and I if she saw us with our phones or ipods again she was going to fine us. Apparently it’s a $250 charge for each electronic device brought into the pool, which is completely unfair because that’s probably equivalent to rent for most of the patrons.
I decided to ask a less bitchy looking lifeguard why we were being told to vacate the premises, and he said that everyone had to leave until the pool re-opened at 4. At this point I was fed up with the indignity of the situation, and after an obligatory hair flip said that I would never receive this type of mistreatment from the Soho House pool.
8 “likes” in under a half and hour and growing. G-d bless America and boat shoes.
