Burnt Man

I'm not a Burning Man kind of girl but my friend Jane has been there for what seems like years building a temple that will include a memorial for our friend so I've been thinking about her and the time she is spending in the desert. Anyway, I just read that some asshat arsonist actually prematurely burnt the man.

Here is the video.
http://link.brightcove.com/services/link/bcpid285859616/bclid294430730/bctid1155331328

New Job

I started my new job and as in all life changes, I am physically exhausted. I, however, wanted to share this quote I saw in one of my coworkers email signatures today. I'm totally in my element now.

A celebrity is any well-known TV or movie star who looks like he spends more than two hours working on his hair. ~Steve Martin

And You Thought I Was a Dumb Blonde

Check out the stupidest beauty pageant contestant EVER! Miss Teen South Carolina exemplifies what's wrong with our American school systems.


Check out Mo Rocca's hilarious commentary here.

Feel Better Butterscotch Stallion!

Owen, MJ Cat and I hope you feel better soon! Get healthy and give us a call when you are ready! Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go

Most of my good friends know that despite my obvious affection for 80s New Wave, Brit Pop and reggae, in my quiet times I listen to a lot of Bob Dylan. Along with Willie Nelson, Bob Marley and Stevie Wonder, I never tire of Bob. His music always reaches me in a fresh way as a lyric will suddenly make sense to me although I may have heard a song hundreds of times before. As the summer fades, I always feel nostalgic for my college days and vividly remembered a story today involving the music of Bob Dylan and my old friend G whom I met my first semester of college. G is very blonde, tall and WASPY. He also has a very dry sense of humor and he's smart. He also used to be kind of silly, but I don't think many people knew that about him. To impress me upon our first meeting, he invited me to his room at his fraternity house and played me his top 10 favorite Bob Dylan songs in descending order and we discussed each song. I remember that "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go" was his #1 although G will deny this today. After that year, G disappeared from school for some years. I think he went to Vietnam or somewhere like that. When he came back during my senior year, he lived downstairs from me. Most of his friends had since graduated and we resumed our casual friendship. He confided to me that he didn't have many friends left and that he "appreciated me." One night, G came knocking on my door at two in the morning. He appeared raw and exposed in a Holden Caulfield sort of way. He confessed that he had taken a train to the city to attend his grandfather's funeral. He then confessed he was wearing his dead grandfather's Brooks Brothers boxer shorts he had swiped after the funeral. He asked if he could spend the night with me in my room because he couldn't be alone. He was so visibly shaken and vulnerable, I said yes and over 6 feet of George slept with me in my tiny little single college bed. After that morning, G stopped talking to me but every morning I'd hear from my open window, Bob Dylan coming from his below and I convinced myself he was sending me Dylan messages rather than speaking to me in person. One morning, I remember hearing Like A Rolling Stone and the lyrics, "You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns when they all come down and did tricks for you. You never understood that it ain't no good. You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you." And at the time, that particular verse felt like a shot through the heart from G although today I understand the song on different level as a meditation on lonliness and success. I don't know why I'm writing this now, but as I was thinking about the Todd Haynes film, this memory came back to me. G and I have since made up (after graduation we started hanging out again) and we see each other every other year or so and he still denies that You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome was his favorite Bob Dylan Song.

I'm Still There

The Summer of Magical Thinking

Tomorrow, I start a new phase of my life as I begin a brand new job. This summer has been a blur. I've been reading Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking and this book really does provide the best account of grief I have ever read. She describes physically feeling cold, exposed and raw, all emotions and sensations I am experiencing. After Teeks'memorial service, I became so cold that I started shivering and my teeth uncontrollably chattering. Despite our friend Hunter providing me his jacket (actually it was Teek's old jacket), I still couldn't stop shaking. And, nobody wants to hear anymore that I'm still feeling sad and exposed and I'm trying so hard to hide it, I sometimes I feel like I am going crazy.(Didion also describes this as well.) And, the thing is, sometimes I feel as if I've completed some major rite of passage and that my life will become more meaningful and purposeful. Today, I saw a little boy release a helium balloon in Father Demo Square. When I was a little girl, my mother used to get me a balloon when she dragged me to the mall. From the moment it was tied on my wrist, I remember feeling a sense of panic that I would lose the balloon, which I almost inevitably did before I reached the front door. As I watched my balloon float into the great beyond, I remember encountering feelings of lack of control, regret, sadness, loss and wonder as I watched the balloon float into some unimaginable destination in the sky. As I watched the little boy today release the balloon, I realized that those feelings I encountered at the age of 5 weren't much different than the grief I experienced thirty years later. So, tomorrow is a new beginning or one of my new beginnings and it's all going to be alright.

It's Longan Season!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today I picked up some crazy fruit in Chinatown. It turns out they are called Longans and they taste like a melon grape. Get some while you can!

I'm So There

I can't wait to see the new Todd Haynes movie "I'm Not There." I have no idea what it's about except all these different actors and actresses portray different parts of Bob Dylan's life. Any film that combines Bob Dylan, Cate Blanchett and Todd Haynes is already my most anticipated upcoming movie. I'm not even thinking twice cause I know this is going to be alright.

Happy Birthday To Me

Today, I woke up and realized I'm fucking 36 years old which for the first time in my life, just sounds plain old. Last night my friend Joe told me this is going to be the best time in my life but I'm not sure what he means. Let's hope he's right. It's also MJ Cat's Founders Day, which is the day we celebrate moving in together since nobody knows his actual birthday. I bought him a 12-pack of fake furry mice. He bit me on the ankle when I got out of the shower.

Balance Transfer Complete

Today was my last day pushing credit cards on the young, poor and balcon populations. My banking days are done. I lasted 1 year and 9 months which is A LOT longer than anyone who knows me thought I'd stay. Aside from learning how to read a complicated P&L and learning about complicated sourcecode structures, the most important thing I'll take away from my job is that I'm pretty damned smart. I may not have a MBA but my math skills, creative ability and ability to build relationships is much stronger than many of my former colleagues at one of the world's largest companies. During my final hours, MBAs I never even met where making desperate phone calls asking me about how to reach the youth market, leverage social networks, make friends at Google or assess a media buy. I apologize I don't have over ten years to explain all I know to you (which is how long it took me to learn all this stuff). And I did make some pretty awesome friends. If it weren't for colleagues Scott, Anittah, Nadine, John, Jen and Michael, I never would have lasted as long as I did. Thanks, guys. You saved my smart out-of-place ass.

The Man Who Got Away

Well, at least one of them....

My birthday is on Sunday so I'm feeling nostalgic for the days when I was young, fun, cute and fabulous....

Web .5

My friend ANP has inspired this post. Friday is my last day at my job and I've also been in the process of interviewing for new jobs and starting a brand new one on 8/27. One of the most fascinating trends, I've seen at a variety of companies across different industries is this bizarre sudden desire to create an "email strategy." It's almost as if corporations can't graps how to leverage Web 2.0 so they are going back to reinventing the wheel by leveraging their outdated email lists or renting them from elsewhere. When I have these conversations, I feel like I'm time travelling back to 1997 to talk about the World Wide Web and "viral." I find it insane that rather than invest in their brands through advertising, set upaffiliate marketing programs and test new marketing models such as social networks, companies are creating task forces and hiring people to send out some SPAM. How much unsolicited email are they opening themselves? Instead of creating new applications for facebook in their spare time, are they going into their filter and finding out how to send money to some desperate Nigerian? Are they interested in how to score Ambien without a doctor's prescription? Do they want to purchase a ProSun Bed? So, to all you crazy email marketers out there, here are some SPAM headlines that I might actually open. Now, try to get these through your legal department.

1. Home makeover and cleaning for free with no strings attached.
2. You have won a free no strings attached trip to Aruba.
3. You are fabulous and have been chosen to replace Jay Leno.
4. Your cat has been chosen as the new Fancy Feast spokescat.
5. We found the bracelet you lost 10 years ago.
6. I want to give you all of my money.

Cleaning Up

Last night, I did some cleaning to celebrate my upcoming birthday this weekend. I'm a bit of packrat and not very good at throwing stuff away, but last night I rid myself of four garbage bags of things I don't have space for in my apartment. Here they are:

1. All-in One Stereo Combo-I haven't listened to an actual CD in two years. I'm completely digital. I won the stereo in 1996 as part of a raffle.
2. Smelly old ironing board
3. Small suitcase I received as a high school graduation gift.
4. Cancelled checks from 1998. Boy, did I use to buy a lot at the Gap.
5. VHS tapes. It's bad enough I still have cassette tapes, but these were just taking up too much space.
6. Christmas Cards. I love my friends, but I don't need to keep your old holiday cards.
7. Trashy paperbacks I'll never read again. Yes, Bergdorf Blondes is in the give away pile in the hallway.
8. Datebooks from 1995-2005.
9. old lipsticks that have almost turned to chalk
10. old swimming goggles from 1986

Hot In the City

Today was hot and the subways weren't working and I am not very productive in heat.

The Lake House

I'm cleaning my kitchen and watching the most confusing movie ever called the Lake House. Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reaves are penpals except they live two years apart from each other. It's so confusing and complicated and I need to turn on Big Love.

The Beware of Father Democast

BEWARE OF THE BABYLON is live on tape this week from the new
Father Demo Square in the West Village.

* Rachel unveils her naivety by dating older gay men.

* Todd unveils his concern for Rachel dating older gay men.

* The argument over the best pizza in New York continues.

* Shout out to hair products, never tested on animals.

* A rotating cast of characters in Demo square for support.

* What social networks are advancing our web status these days?

As always, this, and EVERY, BEWARE OF THE BABYLON podcast can be automatically downloaded from iTunes.

OR, just listen right here and now with the audio player below...


play it here sucka

Me Gusta Chetes

Tea Partay

Todd sent this to me. Have a good Saturday!

Good Luck Signs

Tonight I went to the Ford models party at the Maritime Hotel. I have no idea why I was invited to this event, but I had a good time and the events surrounding the event are hopefully signs of my changing luck. Here they are:

1. On the way to the party, I swear I saw socialite Paul Judelson having a glass of wine.
2. Then, immediately after the Judelson siting, I saw a whippet.
3. Then, at the party, I saw my old boss Scott Greenstein which reminded me of how much I achieved since I worked for him back in 1995.
4. An actual cute nice guy asked me for my number in a room full of tall models.

Perhaps things are back on track for me!

Madame is a Whore!

The greatest puppet of all time Madame was spotted with Matthew Broderick in the Hamptons. I wonder if SJP knows that her husband is running around behind her back.

Blind Item

What celebrity blogger is about to make a big change in her life with the simple statement, "Because I'm worth it?"

RIP Michelangelo Antonioni

I went to bed writing about Bergman, and then I woke up and immediately read about Antonioni's death. We've lost the last links of the great days of European art cinema. And to show that bad things happen in "3s," I realized yesterday walking down Carmine that the great independent video store Evergreen Video on Carmine Street was closed forever. I know I bought into the whole Netflix craze and I work as a digital marketer and for a living I evangalizes such things as YouTube, iTunes, MySpace and shit like that, but right now I feel guilty. I loved browing the old titles and seeing my neighbors at Evergreen as part of my village routine. I'd go there, browse, rent some crazy title, then go to the cheap bookstore across the street and then finish off my night at Grey Dog (which I happened to notice has a franchise now on University Place.) This weekend, I will go to a movie at Film Forum, buy a book at an independent bookstore and read the actual newspaper.