Blogspot, block o' nonstop Queen songs.

Go to weather.com right now. Check your local weather. Look at the Doppler radar. You are seeing the future.

At first I was shocked that the forest-greens (heavy rains) and oxygenated-blood-reds (severe thunderstorms) of my youth had been replaced by this mess. The new version looked pale and sickly, like a mat of green scrambled eggs with flecks of ugly yellow parsley overlaid on a map of New York. Then I started playing around with it and realized: Praise be to the host of hosts--this is Google Earth WITH WEATHER.

Blows my mind.



I'm currently looking at a map of cloud temperatures of thunderstorms over the Philipines. It's a good thing I'm doing laundry today because I just creamed myself. Twice.

Blogspot, dispatch from baby's first fashion week.

Wikipedia once told me that The Nanny, Fran Drescher's masterpiece sitcom, was inspired by her interations with her friend Twiggy on a cruise they once took. That Pygmalion tension of mixing rich and poor, fabulous and horrifyingly unclassy--I was meditating on these issues as I urinated at the Gotham Ballroom after the Cynthia Rowley show on Thursday night.

I had just physically collided with Alan Cumming as he came out of the bathroom. He, being fucking awesome, brushed it off with a 'oh, terribly sorry.' My response was 'Oh my God', followed by a weasel-quick fleeing into the bathroom.

Thinking of this experience now, a story of one of the physician's assistants I volunteer with comes to mind. During a female pelvic examination in her early years, she had taken a peek into this one woman's vagina, stepped back and shrieked 'Oh my God.' This is perhaps a little more mortifying than my collision with celebrity, but in my mind now, Alan Cumming and massive yeast infections will be coupled until I die.

As for the show itself, I took issue with some of the detailing on the shoulders. Remember in middle school Home Ec when you made stuffed animals and had to leave about an inch between the seam and the edge of the fabric pieces you were sowing together? Probably not, but they disappear when you flip the sown fabrics inside out. The shoulders on two or three of these dresses looked like the edges of unflipped 7th grade stuffed animals or the crinkled edges of a well made empanada or pot sticker dumpling.

I took issue with one of the looks in particular, a metallic dress with flame print covering the bottom of the skirt. I'd like to RSVP on this invitation to call this dress "The Firecrotch." Granted, I didn't have the greatest view of the models, but I did have the most amazing vista of Tim Gunn's grimaces. He was clearly not digging the empanada shoulders.

But I a lot of fun and bonded a bit with the gays. And the open bar at the afterparty was nice. Cynthia Rowler herself is adorable and elfin. She even deigned to speak with me! A big thanks to Svedka for sponsoring both the fashion industry and my Friday morning hangover! A big thanks to Leigh Watts, the greatest publicity intern ever. Whoever is reading this: hire him.

Blogspot, delicious on steak, soups, seafood and pasta.

Lately at work I’ve been largely ignoring the task at hand and reading TV reviews of shows I don’t watch. Generally, I enjoy reading reviews. It makes me feel more like I’m part of the zeitgeist. It’s also interesting to experience media through different lens—a movie as impressed on someone else, then transcribed into words and then posted on the internet. Interesting, yes, but not always pleasant. For example, reading a Stephen Holden review is a little like looking through lenses that are irrelevant and retarded.

But I do love me some David Edelstein.

I think TV reviews are a little different from most. For the most part the shows being reviewed only air once (unless it’s on Vh1) so it’s not so much like a movie review, where the point is to gauge whether or not Shortbus might have been worth my hard earned $10 (as it turns out, no).

Regarding my views on TV critics: Writing about a medium as closely intertwined with the mass and popular as television, I think these people are freer from necessary pretension than their counterparts in cinema or literature. Television’s vapid, as it were. So to mirror that, it’s generally acceptable for a review of a TV show to say absolutely nothing beyond “this show is shit”—which is why it’s a really nice surprise when TV reviews are really well written. Since, as social animals, humans have an inborn desire to systematize life-experiences into a hierarchy, in my head I have arranged TV critics into a pantheon—a system akin to a media criticism Santeria. In such a spirit I shout ‘Ashanti, Ashanti!’ to my choice for chief among these saints, Salon’s Heather Havrilesky.

She almost makes me want to start watching 24, only seven years behind the rest of Amerika! Almost.

I like how she references her 2nd grade experiences in her reviews. It reminds me of innocent, non-English speaking times. Jesus Christ she is funny! Ok. Now that that’s out of my system, back to work.

Blogspot, gift of sight.

Six years after my first attempt, I finally went ahead and got contact lenses. The optometrist I went to confirmed what I had suspected all along, that it is more difficult to get the lenses into my eyes because I'm Asian. My mom's theory for why I failed last time is that I couldn't bear the thought of touching my precious peepers (read: a loss of resolve on account of me being a spoiled princess).

This is not the case. As it turns out, I have no problem raking my hand across my eyeball in order to remove the lenses. Insofar that I have no regard for the physical well-being of my eyes, I am very manly--I daresay an anti-princess of opthalmological health.

Such an anti-princess am I that it might just be an inborn thing. After my eye exam the optometrist told me basically that my fovea (the part of the macula responsible for discerning detail) is crazy-shaped and my optic disk is gigantic. This all means that I'm at high risk for developing glaucoma later on. The upside of this I guess is bascially that I might have a good excuse to smoke lots of pot in the future. The downside is blindness.

But back to the contact lenses! I'm getting used to putting them in already. On Sunday morning it took me about 20 minutes in the bathroom of my parents' place to shove these puppies in. I was expecting a similiar ordeal this morning so I got up early, but it only took about ten tries with each eye. As a result I got to work about half an hour early and realized that the sunlight really pours in the window at 8:20. It's nice to sit in for a few minutes, especially on a cold day like today.

So that, combined with that whole thing where I can now see shit, is the good part. Bad part: Being unable to discern detail at any distance, I never noticed this before but--Jesus fucking Christ--winter really kills my complexion (insofar as crushing self awareness of my skin tone, not so manly).

In other unmanly news, I'm going to a Cynthia Rowley show for fashion week on Thursday. Emaciated teenagers! Handbags! Unnatural stomping down runways! God, I can't wait. I'll even be able to see them now, so that's a nice bonus.