Last night I did my writing at the Tea Lounge where they had movie night, the movie turned out to be Terminator 3, and since I went to bed as soon as I got home I had a terrible nightmare that the world was quickly dissolving and I had to drive to the few parts of the earth that were still intact. Which is weird, because I saw all kinds of scary movies when I was a kid and never had nightmares.

Yipes!

At work a guy was talking to me about an Irish bar in the LES we both frequent, he told me they had the most amazing food, and then he asked if I'd eaten there.

Me: Well, just a salad.
Boy: Wait, are you like vegan?
Me: No.
Boy: Oh thank god.
Boy sitting next to him: Yeah, it's already bad enough you're a leftie liberal and a feminist.

the problem with having lots of friends is....

I have realized...maintaining friendships takes a lot of work. (Especially in New York.) Sometimes it's quite exhausting.

neediness

At work yesterday the guys were talking about the lack of communication in relationships and girls being overly needy and emotional, I tried to argue that I knew men who could be needy and/or the one screwed over in relationships. This ended with one guy saying that Americans have shitty relationships because they lack communication skills and the other saying that women are far too needy in general in relationships.

One of the guys walked over to me and said "Yeah Adrienne, stop being so needy," and patted me on the head.
I turned around and said, "Do I really seem overly needy?" And raised my eyebrow at him.
He stopped and said "Actually...well..I don't know because you're not in a relationship, or maybe you're in a secret relationship we don't know about. But you seem like you would maybe need to be needy but you wouldn't ever let yourself be. Like you would very closed off and cold and never talk about anything because you wouldn't want to be vulnerable. Like you might be very hurt or angry, but you wouldn't show it, you would just bottle it all up and disappear for long periods of time."

I said, "Alright, that sounds much better to me."

I guess that was semi-accurate for someone who doesn't know me personally, I would hate to think that I come off as an emotionally needy person. Really, D is the only person I show my neurotic, insecure side to. But she's shown me the same ten fold, we're like in our own group therapy

I don't do romantic comedies

I read a blog this afternoon that had reposted a BBC online article stating that watching romantic comedies leads to failed relationships as viewers will develop false notions about sex and love. The blogger reposting it offered the conclusion that romantic comedies are to women what porn is to men, which made me realize that when it comes time for me to plunk down my hard earned cash at the cineplex, it's pretty much never on the romantic comedy fare. The last three movies I saw have been Zack and Miri Make a Porno, Happy Go Lucky, and Role Models. None of them were chick flick rom com stuff. Rather, when it comes to comedies I tend to favor the more frat boy variety, the stuff marketed to men primarily. Crude jokes about sexuality I suppose are just more appealing to me than a comedy centering on a woman who is always a bridesmaid and never a bride (27 Dresses, awful movie.)
Maybe also it is the fact that unlike many other women in my age range, I do not have aspirations of finding a husband or falling in love. Perhaps to me sex is just all a big joke, and not the stuff of sentimentality.





With that said, I totally stood in line opening weekend for the Sex and the City movie.

(Role Models and Zach and Miri are extremely funny, if you're in a noncerebral mood they're good fun.)

a charming coincidence

yesterday while on the F train going to Broadway Lafayette I was sitting and listening to a Tegan and Sara song on my ipod. Then at Delancey I noticed a girl get on the train and stand in front of me, she had some plastic thing in the outer part of her ear so I did a double take, wondering if she was deaf. Then I looked at the girl's face and realized that it was Sara/Tegan standing in front of me (I can't tell them apart, but I think it was Sara.) I stared at her, she stared back so I just smiled and resisted the urge to ask her if she was in town for a show.
That's one of the weird things about New York, there really is a chance the person you're playing on your ipod will magically materialize. I think if it had been Cat Power that had magically appeared I would have let out an audible yelp of surprise.

gaitskill interview

This Thursday I am going to be interviewing Mary Gaitskill at her home in Red Hook. Because mail seems to mysteriously vanish before it gets to my hands (my Juliana Hatfield Cd and book also never made it to my door) I have not yet gotten her new collection of short stories so I am fretting that it might not get to me in time. I'm nervous, because not only is Gaitskill one of my favorite writers, she is also the subject of my MA thesis (which I finally finished last week.)

I was thinking today as I walked through cold, austere Prospect Park that perhaps what made me connect so much to her work during my late teens--early twenties is the fact that she has always written on the darkness and trauma that seems to be inherent in sexuality, something that I was always aware of growing up.