open for business
*ding* there you are! sorry for the late opening. snow, you see, and my handsome bakery assistant [the one over there, with the lovely muscles] has been shoveling snow from our little front door for hours. never mind that, it’s warm in here and there’s a fire roaring. have a seat. switch on that phonograph and let billie holiday do that thing she does so well.
see those little cheesecakes, individually sized on flowered china plates to avoid bickering over slices? you won’t see it for long. shivery is laughing her tinkerbell laugh as she passes delicate plates with golden cheesecake out to TCHW, the charming adrian, and… who’s that? a shy lurker named neil? well, neil, i’ll be holding your coffee hostage until we’re properly introduced.
and stuart, very nearly seduced by the wiles of shiv and her cheesecake, has instead asked for death by chocolate. well, he asked for genocide, but i’m afraid the snow has prevented that delivery truck. as a consolation prize, stu darling, i’ve drawn a little skeleton out of creme icing on your cake. hope that does the trick. now, go drink your mojito like a good lad and take…
… away all karen’s winter things! this lass gets special treatment at le bakery, folks. so of course hers is served by the hostess proper. here, dear, have a dessert i’ve never heard of but managed to whip up to perfection: a csoki ciga and one of my hand-brewed-and-steamed lattes. there, and i’ve tucked some homemade ginger snaps in your satchel for later. go sit over there…
… mark‘s entirely too engrossed with the macaroons in his lap and needs to be social. i’ll bring his double expresso in a minute, i’m still finding the perfect demi-tasse for it.
*ding* oh, here’s a crowd! kate, be a dear and pop behind the counter. oh, deal with gopi, please explain that stuart already ate all the death, he’ll have to settle for cake. and marie! a stranger requesting vanilla … how exciting! here’s your french vanilla cake, in miniature of course, with lemon custard and merigue frosting. the tea, though, is raspberry. next time introduce yourself and we’ll make it vanilla!
oh, my, stephanie’s got coconut icing all over her face from the hummingbird cake. someone give her the iced coffee to wash it down. and wild darling! you’re looking well. i had to go to rootland to get you rootbeer, but i would never deny anything to someone requesting my favourites, apple danishes.
well, a bananas foster and more fresh coffee for my pal brendan and i can finally put my feet up with a delicious slice of strawberry shortcake and a tall glass of lemonade.
what’s that? yes, kate, you can stop serving coffee now. run in the back, you’ll find an entire tray of cupcakes for you, made with our very own cow’s milk and chocolates i brought straight from venezuela.
did i say lemonade? i meant vodka. right kate?
avec plaisir…
since stuart has cornered monday morning coffee racket and no one could dare replace the sublime karen and her thirst-quenching friday cocktail hour, it seemed there was no place for yet another charming hostess. but then i thought, what about wednesdays? and what about sweets? that’s right. the hosting phenomena from old blighty will be making its weekly stateside home on wednesday mornings, at petit hiboux’s le bakery.
what does your little heart crave? eclairs filled with creme and topped with sprinkles? cupcakes as big as chihuahuas? melt-in-your-mouth merengues or pluck-me-up pecan tart? a dessert so fantastical as to yet be invented? it’s like this, folks:
veruca salt: snozberry? who ever heard of snozberry?
willy wonka petit hiboux: we are the music-makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams.
so pull up a wrought iron chair. plop yourself down on the couch. watch the crystals catch the morning sun in our cushioned window seat. every tuesday evening [well-timed so the brits can join], i’ll be taking orders for wednesday morning sweet treats. from my le heart to le yours.
i love the winter weather because i’ve got your love to keep me warm PLEASE RELOCATE ME IMMEDIATELY TO SAN DIEGO.
look, i haven’t posted about the cold snap here in new york for a couple of reasons.
1. it only makes me angrier to think up elaborate, creative ways to cyber-shake my fist at the elements.
2. people who live in places that are 60 degrees and above will leave comments telling me how warm it is where they are, and how sorry they am that i’m now ice-block-shaped, and I DON’T NEED YOUR GODDAMNED PITY.
but i’m posting about the weather now. i am. i can’t help it. the freezing tentacles of cold have seeped into my grey matter and taken over, forcing me to babble incoherently at the sky in fury. this is the longest and deepest cold snap new york has seen since before i was born. it’s been under or around 25 degrees since january sixth. i have not opened my closet door in weeks, opting instead to drag yet another sweater out of my trunk and pull on the same jeans and boots. these are some of the measures i have taken in the last few weeks:
1. putting two wool jackets on top of my quilt when i sleep.
2. briefly microwaving my pillowcase.
3. sitting in a hot bath for over two hours.
4. wearing sunglasses at night to protect my eyes from stinging wind.
5. accepting any and all offers to be bought drinks, simply to have something warm in my stomach.
the most annoying thing about the weather [besides imminent frostbite and never looking up while you walk] is getting dressed. i can’t shower in the mornings anymore, choosing to shower at night when the heat is still on full-blast in the apartment. this morning, i actually stretched my arms from my bed to my dresser, pulling out underwear, tights, and undershirt. i dressed myself under the covers and then got out of bed, pulling on jeans, two pairs of socks, a wool turtleneck sweater, knee-high boots, a knee-length puffer jacket, an eight-foot-long scarf, and a wool hat made by blind sheep-herders in the brasilian mountains.
i was still cold on my way to work.
but the number one, life-saving, last-shred-of-sanity thing i’ve done during the cold snap is:
BOUGHT MYSELF A TICKET TO BRASIL. IN MARCH. FOR A WEEK.
i hope this sends the message to god or donald trump, whoever’s in charge of the weather: “fuck this noise, i’m leaving.”
blogs are people too
when i went surfing through the pages of nyc bloggers, i couldn’t help but notice how many people have more links to other places than their own original thoughts, in any given post. perhaps this is only new to me. but the blogs i read fall in two main categories: they’re either impressively well-written and literarily bent, or they’re highly unique personal blogs [as i aspire to make mine]. that is, it’s a given that i’m not a fan of whinging livejournals or bad poetry.
apparently, i’m also not a fan of recycling pithy news briefs in blog form. i cannot tell you how blogs i clicked through today that covered the following current topics: con-ed’s little electrocution problem, DC’s wonkette, matt drudge/moby arguments, martha stewart’s hearing, dean’s rants… i’m just naming the ones that were incredibly prevalent both in the news and on the blogs. i’m not linking to these newsbits because it’s a waste of my time to even write out the tags.
now, i write my blog for a number of reasons. first, because i’m vain and like seeing my writing somewhere. second, because i love tinkering with the design, and using pretty colors. third, i sincerely do appreciate the cool community of people i’ve built up, either face-to-face or via our blogs/emails. i feel like i have a friend in every city now.
what i don’t do? i don’t blog to simply be a conduit for information. mainly because i hate writing tags, but also because i think you come here because you want a piece of me. if you wanted to know about paris hilton’s latest escapades, you’d go to the post. if you wanted restaurant reviews, you’d go to citysearch. and most of all, as politically aware and sensitive as i am, if you want someone’s intelligent perspective on global politics, you’d read thomas freidman. it’s not reflective of me if all i post about is politics, new york city news, or hollywood gossip. it’s not a personal weblog. it’s just adding to the information overload. i don’t mean to put anyone down that has a news-or-gossip-driven site. in fact, i really enjoy gawker and gothamist, mainly because they have such interesting ways of putting things. but i don’t consider those personal blogs. i consider them news sources, to an extent.
i’m not attacking anyone. the logical answer is, “you don’t like that blog-form? don’t read it.” given. but i’m such a big proponent of the blog-medium, as a way of building community and learning how to speak your mind, that i’m not sure how simply disseminating information and calling it a blog really fits into that vision. it’s simply not original. when i write something that makes you laugh, or makes you think, or even if you hate it – you didn’t read it any where else. you may compare me to this girl, that blog, but what i put here is distinctly my own. which, ostensibly, is why you’re here.
and that seems so much more personally valuable to me than recycling scraps of other people’s words without adding your own uniqueness to the fray.
covering our tracks
believe it or not, dear bloggers, i’ve made provisions for pH in case of sudden death. half-jokingly, i emailed my best friend [a consummate non-blogger] my passcode information and told her to tell the internet i was dead if i unexpectedly bought the farm. or just feeling bored on the weekend and wanting to see how the blogisphere deals with the death of a loved one. kidding. i’d never do that. well, probably not anyway.
but it seems i have to make one more provision in case of demise. for the most part, my life is an open book. no doubt grieving friends and family would go through my emails, my letters, my journals. but my one request is this:
the IM log between myself and kate MUST BE DESTROYED by kate herself. if the two of us kick the bucket simultaneously, it must be destroyed by shiv. this is to protect the world from ever discovering how very, very evil we are. our wicked cruel merciless mocking of all things under the sun will die with us, the passwords protected in the depths of our black murky hearts.
and with that, lsfmasdlkfj sdgks dkfg sdk;gfjdsgfksd gfshg.
maybe we could even get together, maybe you could break my heart next summer
text message, 11:49PM, krissa to kate: “i totally just gave my number to the hot flamenco guy. CARPE FUCKING DIEM.”
text message, 11:52PM, kate to krissa: “carpe DICK, dude. carpe fucking DICK.”
you heard it here first, kids. i gave out my phone number for the first time last night. attending shiv’s open mic, i ran into El Flamenco [y'know, accidentally on purpose]. i’d met him months back, when i was already romantically entangled, and had verily enjoyed the body-language flirt we’d shared while smoking outside the bar. so in my new quest to get laid not die alone with my fifty cats get laid, i showed up last night to floor El Flamenco with my leather pants and come-hither eyes.
i told him it was getting late, he told me to stay a little longer, so i waited through an eternity of terrible comics in order to see him on stage with his beer and his guitar, strumming his way into my pants heart. every time he lifted those smoking eyes from the guitar, he looked right at me and i swear, i… well.
so after the show, with much gentle pressure from shiv and her boy D, i walked right up to him and said, “i’m leaving,” and he said, “come tomorrow night, i’m playing again” and i smiled as coyly as i could [only realizing later that i had garlic breath] and handed him my phone number.
carpe fucking dick diem.
for a girl who doesn’t believe in destiny…
… when i was seventeen, i watched a dear friend walk away from where i stood, without saying goodbye, because we’d fought months back and were both stubborn as mules. i watched this friend walk away, having never kissed him, but having sworn off the love our friendship was made of, and even at seventeen, i thought:
it’s not through between us.
i still think that, even though we’ve danced that danced and i’ve walked away, too much a pragmatist to stand his hedonistic belief in careless destiny. and yet for all my pragmatism, that stubborn seventeen-year-old says, it’s still not through between us as if we were a sandwich and there’s still a bite on the table to be dealt with.
the question is – can it be possible to not know how something’s going to turn out, but still know there’s more to be played?
just in case you think my life is all brunches and gallery openings, cupcakes and vodka…
last night i ate a can of cheezballs® and ONLY a can of cheezballs® for dinner. i watched the horrifically bad uptown girls instead of the .
hell, even the fantastically glamorous need an off-night.
femachoism
when they say women are starting to approach sex like men, do they mean…
“remember him? the flamenco guy? sandul or sankil or sundial or whatever his name was? it’s not like i need his name anyway. i can just call him Dick and be direct about it.”
did that really just come out of my mouth?
