Displaced

Me: Shall we get a cab?
R: In the spirit of being frugal…
Me: Subway.
R: My iPhone/Google app will tell us what train to take.
Me: I can tell us what train to take.
R: My iPhone will tell us when the next train is coming. And how long it’ll take to get there.
Me: Your phone can bite me.

Ten minutes later:
Me: We can take this F.
R: Let’s wait for the B.
Me: They go to the same place.
R: I’m following instructions. [F train leaves. D train arrives.]
Me: We can take this D.
R: Let’s wait for the B.
Me: They go to the same place.
R: I’m following instructions. [D train leaves.]
Me: Your phone is stupid.

We have dinner.

R: Let me figure this out…
E: It’s Emma Time. We’re taking the 6.
R: Hang on…
E: We’re taking the 6.
We go through the turnstiles.
R: The next 6 won’t be here until 11:15.
E: It’s 10:40.
R: See? The phone knows all. You should’ve listened to the Google.
E: The phone is full of #$%$(&.
R: No. The phone knows all, sees all.

5 minutes later
E: Isn’t that a 6 train? Or would you rather wait another 25 minutes?
R: ….. I don’t know what’s going on …
E: I do: the Google has fallen. It can’t get up.
R: But the Google is always right.
E: The Google hasn’t met New York. Or me. Take that, stupid Google. Emma wins. Booyah!
R: You are not at your most attractive right now.
E: Whatever. I win.

For more subway fun, hang out with Christoph Niemann’s sons and the subway on his art blog.

So far, it’s been a trip marked by reversals. You know when you know you’re scattered and you can give the people around you a heads up, “Hey – I’m scattered. Don’t count on me to return the ball after the first bounce”? That’s not where I am. Where I am is racket back, watching the ball come over the net, I’ve got it covered and at the last minute realizing we’re playing water polo.

There are two sides to every story though, right? Same day, two stories.

Thursday: Red eye. ‘Nuf said.
Thursday – the other version: I do not die.

Friday: Feel desperately tired and overwhelmed. In an effort to regain equilibrium, walk so many miles around lower Manhattan that I practically maim myself.
Friday – the other version: Find stripey hat for $16 at Muji. Cannot stop wearing it even though it’s very possible I look deranged. Go see Mike Birbiglia (funny) and have excellent sandwich.

Saturday: Regain equilibrium. Have great dinner at Raoul’s in SoHo with friends.
Saturday – the other version: Same.

Sunday: No sleep. Equilibrium lost track of again, possibly under bed. Make plans to be in three locations at the same time with three different people. As am not able to bend laws of time/space continuum (still), spend the day making excuses on my cell phone. R leaves for Baltimore. Attend Oscar party featuring a woman I used to loathe but have not seen in several years. Turns out, I still loathe her. Some things do not change. Good to know. Lose all my Oscar bets. Go to bed at 3AM upset about not having neutralizing ray gun to take down enemies.
Sunday – the other version: Discover the French toast at 202 (squishy, tasty) and their perfect cafe au lait. See my brother, which could be fraught but isn’t. Help R with some of his work, which never happens because he is Señor Executivo and I am the one who usually needs assistance because Excel is stupid, stupid program and R is a genius. Have play time with friend’s perfect baby (after convincing said baby that I was not a kidnapper). The Academy Awards show wins Most Improved.

Monday: Finally get some sleep. Have lunch, write, scrap all plans outside a 20-block radius. Chat with David at 19 Christopher (which is not going out of business like their neighbor, Hus, thank God). Do not buy the Serge Thoraval necklace I desperately want at Destination. Nice British dude at Tea & Sympathy with ’70’s hair makes me an excellent cup of tea to go in the bitter cold. Overcome urge to buy everything at Murray’s Cheese due to personal recession incurred by leaving job. Instead, pick up red velvet cupcake at Amy’s Breads. Have more Pegu drinks with bro. (Is there any liquor in the Pisco Punch at all? Or has the sustained stress of the last month upped my tolerance for liquor somehow? Does your liver also process stress?) Have dinner with excellent friends at Stanton Social. Order everything on the menu + many cocktails. Get 25% off total bill because we rule. (Also because that is, in fact, their rule: after 9PM Mondays, 25% off.)
Monday – the other version: Same.

Tuesday: 202 breakfast. Writing. Good start. Downhill from there: go to Met, decide against Calder jewelry exhibit as being too blah to justify $20 entrance fee ($20?! I know everyone else got upset about this a long time ago, but the sticker shock has, um, stuck.) Do not buy snowglobe I wanted as, like many celebrities, it is not good looking up close and in person. Go across the Park to UWS. Lose wallet. Recover wallet. Am unable to find the hoodie I want. Go back downtown hoodie-less. Have walked self lame (again). Hurt shoulder injury due to overpurchase of heavy things like books and conditioner (don’t ask). Go to Hable, which is closing their store on Perry St. this Saturday. (So you should go now and get that cool bird lamp I didn’t buy. You’ll know which one I mean: it looks like I made it for you in shop class.) Kristen Johnston is there (and ridiculously too thin). Cannot tell if she is drunk, wildly insecure or just super annoying, but she takes up all the air in the place. Have 100 crossed wires with friend re: evening plans. Have emotional tantrum because am overtired and have had only Levain cookies and no lunch. Get very depressed. Go out anyway. Have wine with friend at Riposo 72. Lose wallet again. Am too tired to care.
Tuesday – the other version: 202. Write. Recover lost wallet (twice). Levain cookies. Find Banksy book at the Strand. Get bag at Hable. Get time with friend, despite Oscar fiasco + tangle of crossed wires + tantrum. Do not die.

Wednesday: Pack. Feel organized and self-satisfied. Leave apartment for leisurely breakfast and to write. Realize will do no such thing as have miscalculated schedule despite checking itinerary four times because that’s how I roll and am bad at math. Panic. Call car service. Car service goes to wrong address. Car service drops me at United. United says flight is with USAir (one mile away, other terminal) despite ticket having been purchased from United and stating United flight number. Miss out on together time with the shuttle lounge, which is a happy place: plugs, comfy chairs, business men who know how to travel (quietly). Have somehow permanently scratched my glasses. Arrive in Boston. Find out that R is attending a conference for the next two days. Have mini breakdown contemplating re-planning next two days.
Wednesday – the other version: Have superior latte (albeit speedy). Score rugelach at Amy’s. Catch flight. Find R. Am definitely not dead.

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1. Best-Dressed (And Let’s Not Be Stupid Here) Award:

• Tina Fey. Definitely went a long way to make up for that terrible number she wore to the Golden Globes.
• Jennifer Aniston. Didn’t love the front braid on the hair, but the dress was lovely.
• Meryl Streep – not the dress but the color of it. Why? Because I look great in that color and I’m the one handing out these awards.

2. “Girlfriend, Please” Award: Screw the “fashion-forward” garbage, Reese Witherspoon’s dress was terrible. Close runner up: Amy Adams’ necklace. Seriously people. I don’t care how much it cost, it looks like it escaped from the circus.

3. “Worst Feeling I Avoided This Year By Losing All My Bets” Award: You know when you want something to win, like, Best Screenplay, because you’re a writer and dammit that one screenplay deserved it but you don’t vote for it because you think it has an ice cube’s chance in hell of actually winning but then it does win and then you feel like a heel for not trusting your instincts and for voting against something you thought deserved it and you lost the point on your ballot as a result? Yeah. That feeling sucks. Know how I avoided it this year? I voted for what I thought would win and what I wanted to win and I lost on both counts. Whew. Close one.

4. “You Suck and You Never Should Have Been There In the First Place But Your Show Is On the Network That Broadcast the Oscars” Award: Zac Efron. Did we all catch his comment on the red carpet when asked about Slumdog Millionaire?

Interviewer: What do you think of the movie? We just spoke with Dev Patel and…

Zac Efron: Yeah, he’s a great kid.

I’m sorry, what? “Kid”? You, my condescending friend, are all of three years older than he is. And by the way, Patel is always gracious and enthusiastic – and was in an actual f*cking quality movie that, by the way, WON and you are on a stupid teen musical television show. Geez. Get over yourself.

5. “Thank You For Remembering” Award: To the producers for making sure Harold Pinter was on the In Memoriam list. I am so sorry he’s gone. I always hoped I’d meet him. Rough year losing Paul Newman and Paul Scofield as well.

6. “I Am So Right and Stop Arguing With Me” Award goes to ME. Yes, me. For what? For knowing that Hugh Jackman is completely gay and saying it all these years and now we all know it, so don’t deny it. The man is a song and dance machine, a total charmer and I love him even through his mutton chops Wolverine look. There’s nothing wrong with being gay and stashing the wife in a different apartment and having kids with her. Well, maybe there is something wrong with that, but we all have to get ahead how we can. But stop telling me he’s straight, ’cause he ain’t. And I have no gaydar at all, so if I think he’s gay, he’s gay. Full stop.

7. “I Feel The Same Way, Sean Penn, and Thank You To Everyone I Know”: “I want to be very clear that I do know how hard I make it to appreciate me, often.” (Although I definitely would’ve remembered to thank my wife, especially after I cheated on her with Russian prostitutes.)

8. “Thank You For Making a Liar Out of Me” Award goes to the Oscar producers. They said it would be different. They said they were changing it up. They said they recognized that they sucked at keeping the show interesting. The first step is recognizing you have a problem, so good for them, but I never thought they’d deliver anything interesting. And they did. Quibble with some of the details if you will, but overall the show rocked a new vibe.

The countdown to departure from my job has begun in earnest. On Thursday evening the light at the end of the tunnel flared enough so I could see it. I think it was because my computer’s hard drive was thrown on the burning pyre.

The drive crashed Thursday morning and I spent two of my remaining six days at Williams Sonoma, Inc., recovering files and rebuilding a machine I will use for four days before returning it to the company stockpile from whence it so recently came. That crash was the last of the last straws, and it pushed me beyond the village of strain where I’d set up camp, shrugging into the land of What Are You Gonna Do?

Now all that’s left is buying the rest of the goods we so urgently need for our kitchen at 40% off. This is driving R bananas. He contends that not only do we need nothing else but we should consider returning some of the things we already have. He is clearly wrong.

What home does not need a Pineapple Easy Slicer? R maintains that the ratio of “pineapples consumed in our apartment” to “space consumed in our apartment by said Easy Slicer” is out of whack. I maintain that the Easy Slicer made its value apparent on the very first demo pineapple and it should not be required to reestablish that value on a regular basis. How would you like it if you were reevaluated every couple of weeks on your utility-to-space ratio when your ability to do your job had not apparently diminished? So what if you were not actually required to do your job in that time frame? You still could do your job if asked. That’s all I’m saying.

The item I will be most certain but sad to leave behind unpurchased is the Electric Vacuum Marinator. That’s right. You heard me. The Electric Vacuum Marinator. It does exactly what its name suggests: “Just press a button, and the marinator creates a powerful vacuum seal (no pumping required) that stretches and opens fibers. This draws the marinade juices deep inside the food for maximum flavor and tenderness.”

The “no pumping required” note still baffles me after 2+ years with the company. Was this product preceded by the Hand Pump Vacuum Marinator? Or is it a reference to other vacuum products requiring pumping? My vacuum cleaner is not hand crank, is yours? I guess the Swedish penis enlargement pump works on the same principle, but that can’t be what they’re referencing, can it?

At first, I thought, “If you have time to discover the EVM, earn the $200 to buy it, learn how to use it, use it and then clean it, you probably have time to marinate meat in a Ziploc as God intended.” But then I thought, “Who am I to stand in the way of progress? This is a wondrous application of modern vacuuming / pumping technology to a problem no one knew they had! What’s not to love?”

Even if R would let me buy it for our home – which he won’t – I almost certainly would not use it for its intended purpose. I would put cheese and olives and hard drives and other things that don’t need marinating in it, just to see what would happen and no doubt it would be broken in a weekend, so he’s probably right to veto it, but it’s still a sad loss for our crowded cupboards.

So I will live on without my beloved, intriguingly useless and surprisingly compelling Electric Vacuum Marinator. Farewell! Adieu! I’ll be over here with my unmarinated but smoothly cored pineapple.

My friend Molly teaches first grade and got a handmade Christmas card from one of her kids. She produced it the other night and I almost got a cramp I was laughing so hard.

There’s a Christmas tree at the bottom and several oddly shaped gifts floating around it. Across the top, the child tried to write the message, “Happy Holidays Molly,” but a couple of things went wrong.

First, he ran out of space for the first two words on the top line, so “holidays” breaks at the “s”, leaving

HAPPY HOLIDAY
SMOLLY

He also used a yellow crayon on yellow paper for his “h”s, so they’re pretty much invisible, reducing the message to

APPY OLIDAY
SMOLLY

Try saying that out loud. Go on. Say it loudly. Pretend you’re Eliza Doolittle. Or a chimney sweep. “‘Appy ‘oliday, Smolly!” You definitely have a cockney accent. I can hear it from over here.

Now that it’s in my head, I can’t stop using it. The message is surprisingly universal: “Smolly”, being no one’s actual name, makes a good all purpose nickname, and it is Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day, and those are still ‘olidays, so you can get some mileage out of it for another day or two. Enjoy. ‘Appy Valentine’s, Smolly!

Who has a Wii Fit out there? Raise your hand. Yeah, I thought so. I have a question for you.

You know how, when you first set it up, you have to get on the platform and it asks for your birthdate and it checks your weight and then it makes you do all those balance tests and after, like, 20 minutes, it tells you your “Wii Fit age”? ‘Member that? So here’s the thing: without telling specific secrets, R’s “age” was 15 years older than his actual age, even though he’s not overweight and has pretty good balance (by which I mean I’ve never seen him fall over spontaneously). From what I hear, that’s how the Fit rolls though. I get that: motivate your audience. Get ’em Wii Fitting like crazy.

Here’s what I don’t get: some kid’s “age” was 19. Is that good, if you’re 8? Is that a compliment, like a 19-year-old is in prime condition? Or does that mean that the 8-year-old is already in decline??

Also, and this is that question I was gonna ask, what happens on your birthday? See, I finally ran the gauntlet and sorted out my “age” about a week ago. Guess what it was. No, seriously: guess. Come ooooonnn. That’s right, cats and kittens: I am “37”. Given that I am also actually 37, I’m pretty impressed with myself.

But if your Wii Fit age stays where it is, even when you pass a birthday, I am getting set to be seriously psyched in March ’cause then I’ll be 38 and still “37”. How sweet is that?

So what’s the word? Will my “age” hold even if my age doesn’t? I’m guessing yeah, ’cause my living room slalom skills sure aren’t getting worse, suckahs.

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So what’s been going on? What’s with the chaos?

All right, I give (under your imaginary pressure and questioning): we’re engaged!

While we were in Belgium in November, R asked me to marry him. I didn’t mean to tip you off with the, “We’re engaged,” comment, but I said, “Yes.” Well, what I actually said was, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me,” which R tells me was not reassuring.

It was in an ivy garden at night behind the Church of Our Lady in Bruges and really could hardly have been more lovely and romantic. We’re very excited and, no, we haven’t made any wedding plans yet.

Those photos of me running are not me running away (as some have suggested). I was just taking a quick lap to let off some steam. They shouldn’t leave convenient paths lying around if they don’t mean for you to use them.

I have to get this off my chest before the election. I’ve been mad at David Mamet for a while now. I know I shouldn’t be: if it weren’t for him, I wouldn’t have won that playwriting award (twice). I can’t help it though. He’s disappointed me like if my oldest kid started coming home with F’s. No – like if Madeline Albright dropped states(wo)manship and took up juggling. No – that’s not right: juggling’s rough. Like if Madeline Albright took up hacky sacking. That’s what it’s like.

First there were the unfunny cartoons on the The Huffington Post. Diletantish but whatever. I got over it.

Then, in February, I made the mistake of going to see his new play, November, in its inaugural run on Broadway. It’s about an idiot president during his run for re-election. I ignored the mixed reviews and went because if there were ever a girl with a soft spot for Mamet, it’s me. I shouldn’t have ignored the reviews. It sucked. It was the worst thing I’ve seen in a long time. Was it really that bad? you may ask. Yes. Yes it was. Was it worse than the stuff I’ve seen at fringe festivals? Really? Honestly? Yes. Because, I expected more of him than his start-up brethren, that’s why.

In case I haven’t been clear, it was fucking terrible. It was glib, cheap and played to the worst of the audience. It said nothing important and it wasn’t even well-written. I cringed at every stupid, stupid punchline. If he weren’t David Mamet, it never would have made it to a reading, let alone the stage. (Of course, I’d like to be powerful enough to get whatever I write produced too, but with rights come responsibilities, David. Keep that in mind.)

Then, he published “Why I Am No Longer a ‘Brain-Dead Liberal‘” in the Village Voice in March. He went from being someone who shared my liberal political views – regulated freedom and shared burden – to being a free-market conservative. He posits that the marketplace will work itself out without any regulation, whether you define the marketplace as an economy, a theater of actors or a stranded bus and its passengers, to pick up two of his examples. Let ’em fight it out without the benefit of a director or a bus driver.

(On a side note, Mamet’s a big fan of guns, which adds a level of threat to the proceedings that doesn’t help his case with me.)

I think we all now know where unfettered free markets have gotten us. Even Alan Greenspan’s not on that sinking ship anymore. And God love him for being willing to admit his mistake. Mamet says in his piece that he’s a fan of changing your mind once corrected. Maybe, in light of the collapse of the free market system, Mamet will come around too.

I don’t know if the banality and populist humor of November were a result of Mamet’s free-market thinking, i.e. I can get away with writing beneath my talents because people will pay for it. I hope so. Because that means that if he does change his mind again, his writing will improve. And I would like that. I really would.

Me: My glasses are always smudged. I wonder if my eyelashes are too long.
R: Or it’s because of your flat face.
Me: I don’t have a flat face…
R: And your protruding eyes.
Me: That’s nice talk.

It’s the second day of summer and Midsummer’s Eve and hot as blazes in San Francisco. Even if you didn’t know how hot it is, you’d know something was off because the tourists have come out of their hovel hotels and are crawling all over the place. Go home silly people blocking my bike’s path! Go home! This city is not for visiting.

Our place is usually lovely and breezy but since we’re on the third floor, beneath the black tarpaper roof, we bake in the heat. I make spa water – charcoal filtered water with oranges or lemons – so we stay hydrated. Glasses of spa water are everywhere. Our studio has begun to resemble the house in Signs. Remember that movie? The last good one Shyamalan did?

The little girl is always asking for a glass of water and leaving half-full glasses all over the house. And it turns out that the aliens are burned by water. Remember? And the brother is a former baseball star. And just before the wife died years earlier, she tells Mel Gibson to tell him – the brother – , “Swing away, Merrilll. Swing away!” And Mel Gibson doesn’t know what she means, thinks she’s delirious from pain, until the aliens are there in the house and the water glasses are everywhere and Merrill’s bat is above him on the wall. And Mel Gibson says, “Swing away, Merrill! Swing away!” And he does, breaking the bat and the alien and shattering glasses and glasses of water onto the otherwise invincible alien. Remember?

That’s what our apartment looks like, minus the alien.