Friday, June 30, 2006

killer biscuits



So, I honestly think this is one of the weirdest things that I have ever read.

I am so gullible that I actually wondered for a moment if it was true.

I guess the joke is on both of us blondes.

p.s.--the regina spektor album currently playing on kittypod is not to be missed.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

the blonde in the shirtdress

First I noticed her.

Then I wrote a blog entry about her.

Then I decided I'd rework my entire hair color plan to be like her.

Now it appears that I am trying to actually beher.

Today I am wearing a shirtdress. It has been hanging in my closet for three months. It belongs to Melissa, who lent it to me 4 months ago. I never wore it & never gave it back. It is red.

I have been looking at it longingly since I saw the blonde in the shirtdress exactly one week ago today.

Yesterday I even tried it on. But then, in a fit of PMS body hatred, I took it right off, proclaiming that everything in my closet INCLUDING AND ESPECIALLY THIS DRESS makes me look fat. (I was talking to the Mathematician, but he was still asleep.)

Magically, when I tried the dress on today, it looked okay. (Admittedly, this "magic" of which I speak may have been the fact that I was giving myself a once over in a more forgiving mirror at the Mathematician's house.)

It's a little short, which I didn't realize until I was walking into Emack & Bolio's to get coffee before work. Standing in front of the mirror, the length was deceptively fine. Only when I started actually walking did I realize I was showing a lot of leg. Length aside, though, I think it looks pretty cute.

Who needs a full-process? I think all I needed was a little shirtdress.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

reactions

The conversations that ensued when I announced to a few very important people in my life that I had decided I was going to go-for-broke-blonde, get a full process, and thus be as blonde-beautiful as the girl I wrote about in this post:

    JASON's reaction
    Jason is the stylist extraordinaire who got me this blonde in the first place. I run into him outside of Toro, where I am dining, not working, with my brunette girlfriend.
    JASON: Okaaaayyy, honey...sure...you've been drinking, haven't you?
    ME: Yeah! I've had a lot to drink! We're inside, having dinner. But seriously, I think we need to do a full process next time. What do you say?
    JASON: (nodding his head as you would while affirming for a small, gullible child that there is, in fact, a Santa Claus) Mmm-hmmm...yeah...sure, we'll talk about it next time you come in. You have fun tonight, honey, and try not to drink too much, okay?


    SHANNA'S reaction
    Shanna is the brunette girlfriend that I am dining with at Toro. She is a.k.a. my pretty, petite, publishing industry friend from previous posts and nights of general debauchery. She is standing right beside me as I announce my decision to Jason, and immediately interjects, as any good friend would.
    SHANNA: Can I offer my opinion? I don't think you should that. I mean, seriously. You're blonde, honey. If anything, you might want to consider some lowlights.


    THE MATHEMATICIAN's reaction
    I announced my decision to him the next day, while meandering thru my cute little neighborhood, coffee in my right hand, holding onto his with my left.
    THE MATHEMATICIAN: (heaves a very heavy, audible sigh) Yes. (sounding defeated) Sure. You should do whatever makes you happy.
    ME: long pauseSo...you don't think I'll look good, do you?
    THE MATHEMATICIAN: (he stops walking, turns to look me deep in the eye) No. No, I don't.


There you have it folks. As usual, my loved ones are there, ready to talk me down from the ledge as needed.

Friday, June 23, 2006

toro blondes

I've been picking up hosting shifts at Toro, while their usual girl is in Spain for a month.

My roommate Michael called me a traitor and an industry whore for doing this. I say, whatev--a girl's gotta make a buck. And since Toro is paying me almost as much by the hour as I make as a lowly publishing peon, how could I say no? Besides, working the door at one of Boston's hottest new restaurants, owned by one of Boston's most highly acclaimed chefs, is sure to give me lots of material for my little blonde vs. the world experiment. I've sat many, many blonde women, in the two shifts I've worked thus far. Last night, however, I sat this ethereal blonde woman who made me rethink my entire experiment: she made me think that I need to be striving to take my blonde-ness to greater heights.

Her hair was definitely a 12. It was so platinum, so light in fact that it seemed to glow. It looked almost white, like an ethereal (but not exactly angelic) halo around her head.

She was definitely a full process kind of girl.

She looked at once totally innocent and vampishly sexy. Her skin was tan, and her blue eyes popped with bedroom intensity. Standing next to her, with my level 10 color, in the same outfit I'd picked out to wear to my day job, where I hardly care how I look, I felt utterly dowdy.

As I felt that I'm-so-ugly-standing-next-to-the-prettiest-girl-in-the-room feeling seep into the pit of my stomach like spilled ink, I looked closely, carefully at her outfit, her body, did a part by part comparison of what this blonde had to offer that I didn't. (This is research, mind you--not sheer cattiness. Right.)

It must be the outfit, I thought. She's out on a date and I'm still wearing the same thing I threw on for work at 6am, over 13 hours ago. She's dressed up, and I'm just freaking tired--I bet she would be too if she had to work 2, sometimes 3 jobs. But the dress she wore was just a simple shirt-dress, black, short sleeved, well cut, but nothing to write home about. I think I even sat another girl wearing the exact same dress on the patio just a few hours earlier.

Well, the shoes must have something to do with it, I thought next. I'm wearing flats, and she's wearing heels. Heels increase your sexiness quotient by like 50%. But hers were low heels, 1 1/2-2 inches, and her shoes weren't particularly sexy. That wasn't it either.

I looked closely at her face, which was pretty: cute, ski-jump nose, square jaw, big eyes, pretty mouth. But pretty is all I saw, Kate Hudson or Reese Witherspoon style pretty. Not Angelina Jolie striking, or Gisele exotic, or anything more than pretty.

All of these parts on their own seemed so average, yet there was something about her that was absolutely striking.

Then I realized: It's the hair.

I have to talk to Jason, I thought. What is she doing that I haven't been doing? For this experiment to work, for the project to come to fruition at all, I need to be more like her.

Full process, here I come.

Friday, June 09, 2006

olivia and the goldie locks

Today we had a staff meeting at the 647. We usually have these about once or twice a year, to whip the new staff into shape, and to just generally make sure that we're all on the same page about how we do things here in Andyland. Staff meetings at 647 can be recognized by the following things:

  • Some manner of food or treats, compliments of Andy. Today they were pastries from flour, the place where I go every day for coffee and they were delicious. I had a full-fat scone, thank you very much. And I even took half of one with me after the meeting, for the road.
  • Some manner of race, which is intended to be a team-building activity, and usually entails running down West Brookline Street while balancing an egg on a spoon. Usually I am too tentative about this, speed-walk down the street instead of running for fear of breaking my egg, and talk all the while about how non-competitive I am, how I always lose the egg race and most other races because I have asthma, and how I don't know why I even participate in the stupid egg race anyway. I usually finish LAST or next to last, second only to, say, the cook who broke his foot and is on crutches, with a lovely, uncracked egg and confirmed suspicions that when it comes o all things competitive, I am a LOSER. Today, however, I had to hold hands with fellow waiter, Chewy, while balancing my egg. Chewy shared neither my fear of getting egg all over my new ballet shoes, nor my distaste for competition, and he made me run with my egg. And guess what? We WON...well, kind of. We got second place. First place was nabbed by the lightening fast pair of Tsering (the 60 year old Tibetan man who makes momos for us, who still has a bullet in his leg from the time he was chased out of Tibet by the Chinese Army) and Alex (a Brazilian prep-cook/busser, who has an equally insane immigration story, I'm sure.) But still. We were the first front-of-the-house team to complete the race. Yay, us!
  • A run down of policies that I now know by heart, most of which end in the phrase "or don't work here." e.g. "Know the menu...or don't work here"; "be on time...or don't work here." You know, standard HR sort of stuff.

Today, they presented me and my co-workers Alexander and Tanis with flowers. Why? Because we've all worked at 647 for almost 5 years. It was a token of appreciation and thanks, and totally made my day. I've rarely gotten flowers "just because," and have never gotten flowers at all from a boss, much less "just because" flowers from a boss. Shucks.

A surprise guest of today's meeting was Olivia (who is pictured here) the amazing, gorgeous ten-month-old baby of Tanis. Olivia was dressed up all in pink: pink camouflage shirt, pink hat, pink cotton pants (not unlike the short pink Victoria's Secret sweatpants I'm wearing as I write this.)

Olivia was way into me when I was first saying hello to her, as most babies are. I think this is because I wear jangly, shiny jewelry and open my eyes real wide and smile as big as I can, and they like that. After just a few seconds, though, she started looking all above and around my head, like she was looking past me, with this pensive look on her little face. Whatever she was looking at, she was considering it very deeply.

"Blonde hair, baby, that's what that is!" Tanis says to Olivia.

"What? Really? Is she actually looking at my hair like that???" I am appalled. Now she is frowning, as though she doesn't know what to make of it all. Then she glances quickly back at my eyes, and breaks out into a big baby grin. Presumably this is because I am opening my eyes really big at her.

"Yeah," said Tanis.

"Oh my god, is she scared of it? I know it's really...voluminous today." My hair is in fact, enormous, a real tribute to my Jersey roots. Thank you 2 weeks of frizz-inducing rainy weather.

"No," said Tanis , bouncing beautiful Olivia on her hip. "She's just not used to seeing it that often." Which is true: Tanis's hair is brown, and Adam, her husband, rocks a Bruce Willis-sexy, shaved head.

An hour or so later, Tanis hands Olivia to Auntie Kitty while she cleans up the mess Olivia made by throwing bits of the aforementioned pastries from Flour all over the floor. Immediately the baby wraps her apricot-sized fists firmly around a chunk of hair on each side of my face and tugs. In fact, before I know it she is all tangled up, but tugging ever so gently, so we're cool.

Now I know why so many moms rock short hair.

Wednesday, June 07, 2006

Book Expo Lesson #3

Book Expo Lesson #3: You never know who you're gonna run in to at Book Expo.

It could be an agent whose name you remember, and at first you can't place it, until you reach back, way back in your memory and eventually remember that the reason his name seems like a part of your life is not because you were friends once or ever even met before, but because he did the same children's theatre as you when you were in middle school, and his name is so unusual it is like a tongue-twister, and your director made you chant it over and over as part of your theatre warm ups when you were just 11 years old. He played Peter Pan.

Or it coud be a diifferent agent, who it just so happens went to your Hebrew school, who knows all the same kids who went to the weird Quaker school downtown with you for 12 years, who's still in New York, who's still in publishing, and so are you.

Or it coud be a woman that you waited on once, maybe twice, at the restaurant where you work in the South End, who you can't stop staring at because you can't figure out where you've seen her before, who looks at you funny on the escalator because you won't look away, until you figure out why she has you mesmerized: she ate steak, medium rare, with a beet salad to start. She drank vodka tonics with a lemon, and the sweat beading off the glass in the close restaurant air formed constant rings on the table where it sat. And that drove you nuts.

Or it could be an old friend, turned agent, now pregnant and happy to no longer have a boss.

Or the next New York Times bestselling author.

Or Paula Poundstone, but all you can think is "bitch, why won't you take a goddamn flier???"

Or a guy from South Texas whose book about hydrogen gas is "perfect" for the Everything series, who won't stop grinning at you like a cat eyeing his mousy dinner.

Or it could be your neighbor, who covets your boyfriend's Audi A3, who drinks at your restaurant every week, who loves Sauvignon Blanc, who you never met until now, this moment, at Book Expo, hundreds of miles away from your apartment, in a completely foreign city.

It's a small world, and the publishing world is even smaller.

You just never know who you're going to run in to at Book Expo.