I Don't Pay A Billion Dollars A Month To Live In NYC So I Can Sit Inside All The Time

I've been spending a lot of time indoors. One, it's frickin hot outside. Two, I have a cute little office set up and I get a lot of good, creative work done here. Three, every time I leave my apartment, I spend money. Four, there are people out there with guns and anger management issues. Four good reasons to spend time indoors! Ha ha ha ha ha! (Anyone get that reference?) (Also, RIP Jerry Nelson). 

So, since I pay a small fortune to live in Nuevo York Ciudad, I've decided to try to start going out of my way to find reasons to leave that won't cost me a ton of money, will educate me, and give me things to do and think about.

Yesterday, I went to my friend's apartment who is out of town and worked out in the fancy gym there for about 2 solid hours. I did each muscle machine and walked on the elliptical. I read most of a New Yorker while I ellipsed, and even did a little texting with some friends. I guess that taught me, or more reminded me that I hate working out. It also taught my muscles that they are weak and flabby.

After the work out, I showered, put on a cute dress, then walked from Fort Greene to Long Island City in my seemingly impossible quest to shed 30 pounds this year. *By the way*, I have shed 15, but the other 15 have been very hard to lose. My final destination was The Creek and The Cave's 10 year anniversary and Mindy Tucker's photo exhibit of the last year of comedy in NYC, which about 2/3s of my face has a cameo in.

I saw some pallies like Victor Varnado, Jena Friedman, Livia Scott, Myka Fox, Glennis McCarthy and a few other comedians who I, in a word, adore. Mindy looked lovely and I had a great time talking to that Matthew Love, comedy editor of Time Out NY. I sure like that guy. He's been nice from the get go, and that's all I ask for in this world, is kindness from others, and in return, I give it. I even give it not in return, because I believe that a little kindness goes a long way. Plus, it's fun to be kind to assholes, just to see how they react. Will they get meaner? Melt? It's always a fun guessing game.

Today, I went to the Heirloom Tomato Festival which was every bit as awesome as it sounds. Sure, to some it may appear to be something old people would do in between watching their stories and getting ready to die, but that's just not true. Loving good food and seeking it out is smart, not boring, and I rewarded myself by buying lots of yummy fresh tomatoes and then making a caprese salad for dinner.



So take that, nay sayers. There were about a dozen booths of farmers with fresh produce, artisan bread and cheese makers, presentations like "how to can tomatoes" and lots and lots of beautiful, colorful heirloom tomatoes. My mom handed down her love of yummy foods to me, which is why I have a giant, bubblicious Sicilian Italian ass.

 

After that, I rode my bike over the bridge to Williamsburg Bridge to meet up with my friend Our Lady of Perpetual PMS and her bf at a vintage bike fest on Wythe and 14th that spoke to my inner bad ass bitch. Though I'm more a scooter / moped aficionado, the motorcycles there were pretty awesome looking. I wanted to hop on the back of one, grab onto some antique biker's long grey mane, rip the bottom of my shirt off so my semi-flabby tum tum was exposed and all of a sudden have a tramp stamp on the small of my back that said "Ride or Die" or "Losers Take The Bus", but instead I just snapped a few photogs with me iDingly-doo.





My friends and I decided we were hungry so we went to grab a bite, hoping we'd run into Tina Trachtenburg who I heard sells her homemade tamales on Bedford Street. It was kind of late though, and I didn't expect it to happen, but hello fate, there she was at Bedford and 7th. I ate the shit out of a priceless cactus tamale in a record 13.2 seconds.

I parted ways with my pals around N. 3rd Street, when they decided to walk to our friend's shop, Sanford and Sven's. I was coasting down the Manhattan side of the bridge when she texted me that at Sven's, there was a bbq and lots of our pals were there. I was totally bummed and contemplated going back over the bridge, but was psyched when I got back to my hood to see an art show on Division Street, and to find my friend Audrey Crabtree was involved. I then succumbed to a weird political interview, something I'm not super at voicing my opinions about (I'm better at writing out my thoughts any day), and was wholly inspired by the entire shindig.

 

Not a bad weekend haul. How is Monday going to try to top that? 

Summer's Eve-ing My Office aka reviewing TaskRabbit.com

I'm fortunate enough to have an apartment that's on the large-ish size, so large in fact, that I have a home office. My office itself is not large, and my apartment is not large, it's just large-ish, so let's just get that straight. Don't go hatin'. For it, I pay dearly, out the a) wazoo, b) bunghole, c) insert your own euphemism here.

However, I pay less than I would pay if I had a separate office, somewhere else, and so I consider it to be "worth it", whatever it is. What is it? Let's examine for a moment: "It" is hours of physical labor attached to a pay check, loud hipsters and neighbors who don't really give a shit factory about the neighborhood or each other, having my bike stolen once every 6 months or so, et al. 

Recently, I took a look around my office and saw shit everywhere. The shit had been there for awhile, but it had been slowly creeping up on me. I have a family history of hoardsmanship and I do a lot to stay on top of the growing heap of shiny crap encroaching on me and my space. For example, I recently emptied my Chelsea Mini Storage space and threw out just about everything from my childhood. However, I still have a lot of stuff. So now what should I throw away? The guitar my friend made me by hand for my birthday? Or one of the first guitars ever given to me? Do I toss a ukelele from the 30s or the autoharp given to me by HBO as a birthday present?

I give up. You tell me.

OK, so it's not all valuable stuff. There are the folders of love letters from men I'd just as soon fart on as ever look at again (in addition to a few I still kinda like and keep tabs on), duplicates of just about everything you can think of including headphones, tape dispensers, blank note books and folders, etc. 

And that is why I hired a professional errand dude to come over and essentially help me douche my office. 

One of my ukelele students referred me to a website called taskrabbit.com where basically, you post a job, and the site's "task rabbits" financially undermine one another to get their hands on the gig. After about a dozen people emailed me with notes ranging from "I do dis job" to "Well, is it gonna take a long time?" to "I'm a trained professional with 20 years organizational experience", I settled on one of the nice strangers to come over, put their sweaty paws all over a lifetime of my experiences and memories and help me choose which ones to throw away. 

It took me about 2 and a half hours to pore over the boxes of old Conan O'Brien writing submissions (I didn't get the job), boxes of business cards of comedy managers (they never returned my emails) and posters of me from younger days (I look almost the same), clean the 50 sq foot room where most of my creative ideas come out of and toss everything back into it. The job cost me $50 of my hard earned duckets. $25 an hour - not too frickin' shabby.

The website was pretty easy to use, as long as you have fingers, can read and have an IQ of 7 or higher, you should be fine. The "task rabbits" ranged from professional to questionable. The fellow I finally settled on was a nice enough guy in his 50s who really loved my cat. He helped me mostly in that he was present, and made me actually do this big job I'd been putting off just by having eyes which observed my sloth and slovenliness, and embarrassed me into doing something about it. He did a lot of physical lifting and moving, and advised me on what to keep and toss. But when it came to putting it all back, well, let's just stay there's still a huge pile to my left that was never tended to. He was a fine fellow, and I think if I'd have said the job would have taken 4 hours, it might have been completely finished, but who'd work for $10 an hour in this economy, I ask you?! That was an attempt at sarcasm.  

Will I use taskrabbit.com again? Depends. How much would it cost for someone to come over and feed me pudding while massaging my feet?

JD In NY Times For NY Funny Songs Fest

On Friday, I was hanging out with a friend in his living room. We were chatting about how he had a date that evening with a girl he'd met on Match.com, and I was talking about the festival that has basically taken over my life, the NY Funny Songs Fest. Basically, I got this brilliant idea to cram every single comedy musician I knew into 4 days worth of funny musical meets comedic events in the Lower East Side. Oh, and it's next weekend, by the way, June 7-10. What am I doing writing a blog entry when I have 100 million things to do??

While I was chatting with my friend, my phone made a dinging noise to let me know I'd gotten an email. I checked it, and it was a link to a story in the NY Times featuring a giant photo of me. I read it, and it was pretty awesome, written by a woman who mentioned me once before in a story about a friend's show I was in. She called and interviewed me about the festival, but I didn't know that the piece would actually run. I've had bigger things than 1/2 page NY Times stories cut and cancelled before. 

The festival begins this Thursday, June 7 and goes til Sunday, June 10th. Opening night is at Lolita Bar, 266 Broome St. @ Orchard St., at 6 PM. There's  a party with free food and very cheap beer and booze, and then showcases at 7:30 and 9. At 11, there's a funny video show just down the road at The Dressing Room, 75 Orchard St. in the Lower East Side. There is free snacks and fancy cheese at that event. All shows are $8 in adv., $10 at the door. See ya there? 

Here are some important links: 

Official site: www.nyfunnysongs.com

Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com/event/250824

Twitter feed: www.twitter.com/nyfunnysongs

Facebook page: www.facebook.com/events/329487250441561/

I Got My Feet Scraped By A Professional

OK, so if you are the type of person to get grossed out easily, look away. I have something terrible to admit. I have bunions. As in plural, more than one. Not bunion. Bunions. No, it is not a kind of dim sum. It is a horrible lump on the side of my foot that makes my feet look like old soldiers marching in from a lost battle. Not that I ever had great feet to begin with. My feet are flat, so they look like frisbees. And I don't get manicures every week like some people, mostly because I pity the professionals who have to touch my feet and I want to spare them the horror of it. If my feet were creatures, they'd be bedraggled trolls who hang out under bridges and eat children.

Why am I telling you this? Because I am compelled to simultaneously disturb and amuse. Ask God for more details. 

I met my podiatrist the way that we all meet new people these days -- on line. I made an appointment, which I was 15 minutes late to because even though I've lived in NYC for 10 years I still don't understand midtown, and I saw his face literally light up when I walked in - a younger woman who didn't look as though life had been repeatedly punching me in the face with my own fist, saying, "Stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself?", like the other dozen or so people in the waiting room. 

He was unnervingly cheery and friendly, and we developed immediate rapport, so I was almost embarrassed when the doctor suggested I take my socks off and let him look at my feet. I said, "OK, but you're not going to like this," as I exposed my two little hunchbacks. He assured me that he had seen it all. 

He poked and squeezed my feet, telling me things I already knew - that I had flat feet, and that I had bunions on both feet. I was still somehow crushed. I was hoping he'd tell me that I just needed some lotion and a foot massage and everything would be fine. But instead he ex-rayed my feet and told me I'd probably need surgery. 

As we waited for the ex-rays to develop, I complained about the callouses on the bottom of my feet, which sort of resemble my very own built-in sneaker soles. "They come from having flat feet," he explained. "Can I get a special acid to burn them off in the privacy of my own home?" I asked. He joked that he could just sizzle them off here and pointed to a giant vat of some menacing looking bottle on his counter. "Let's do this," I said, without missing a beat, hoping it was a viable solution. Then he asked, "Have you ever had your callouses professionally removed?" Obviously, I had not, because they were still on my feet. "No," I said cautiously. "Well, let's do it now," he said. I began to get scared and excited all at once. I had no idea what this stranger was about to do. 

He opened a drawer and took out something resembling a scalpel. He put on gloves, sat at my feet, and immediately started cutting and shaving. He moved so fast and with such skill. It was like he was carving a turkey. Chunks of flesh went flying off my feet, like he was squeegeeing snow off a car's windshield. I tried to keep chatting and let my humiliation go. "It's no big deal," I told myself. "He's a professional. He chops people's excess foot flesh off every day." 

After about 10 minutes, he finally stopped slicing and scraping, and put the scalpel down. "Can I look?" I asked. "Sure," he said. I took a foot and bent it up towards my face to get a good look at the bottom, and I couldn't believe what I saw. I almost started crying when I witnessed the bottom of my foot. It was like a baby foot. Pink and fresh and as good as new. I actually got sentimental. I felt like I  was in the movie "Peggy Sue Got Married" and I got to go back in time to visit my feet when they were still the feet of the kid me. I was beside myself with joy. 

I thanked the doctor, covered up my wildebeasts and slipped them back into my shoes. Prancing off, I had a pep in my step. I wanted to take off my shoes at the subway station and show everybody, yelling, "Hey! Look at my feet!" But instead, I just went home and had a sandwich.

So hey, if anyone out there ever wants to see the bottoms of my feet now, just lemme know. The tops, though, are still off limits. 

How (Not) To Give A Great BJ

Recently, I was...ya know...blowing...sucking...what's the scientific term for fellatio? Well, whatever it is, I had much of my boyfriend's penis in my mouth. It can be a pretty intimate time, as we all know, and a sensitive time, where you can broach certain topics that you just may not be able to find the right time for, say, during other times where less saliva is involved.

Incidentally, this is also a great time to ask for things -- favors, cable, puppies -- whatever.

During this moment, a thought crossed my mind. I'd never asked my boyfriend how he liked his bjs. I'd asked him how he liked his eggs (unfertilized), how he liked to be kissed (only by beautiful women), even how he'd like it if I told him to get lost, but never, "Hey, any special requests regarding my tongue around your man regions?"

There are a few reasons why this is, but mostly just one main one: I don't mean to brag, but I've always been told I give great bjs. There's no trickery, magic or rocket science involved. I use lots of saliva and just do a perfect impression of the chicks in porno movies. They all seem to know what they're doing. Why mess with a tried and true formula? No one has ever complained, or asked for anything different, so I assumed all was well. But in this moment, it occurred to me, hey, why not ask.

So, I removed my boyfriend's penis from my mouth, and said, "Hey, what do you like in a bj?" My boyfriend seemed kind of amused, and stammered for a second, as if to answer my question by not answering at all -- "I like you not to stop", I realize in hindsight, is probably what he was thinking. But at the time, I was oblivious, so I continued on. "How about this," I said. "What if I just show you a few different techniques, and you can tell me which one you like the best?" He smiled and agreed to be my scientific bj experiment.

But at that instant, I couldn't help myself. The timing was just too perfect. So I said, "OK, this first one is called the lazy sailor," and before I could illustrate, we both fell into a laughing fit so drawn out and furious, we collapsed in hysterics and he lost his boner. I didn't even get to illustrate the lazy sailor or any of my other bj techniques.

However, I did learn something very important to add to my oral pleasure tips cache -- that making jokes during bjs is not a strategy that is likely to result in the successful completion of one.

Yet, I think deep down somewhere, I probably already knew that.

Big Dicks Are Big Business

aka

-- the Vagina $ongs challenge --

I was listening to the comedy music station at Pandora.com, and it was pretty funny and rather entertaining. But after a little while, I started to make an interesting observation. Just about every other song was on the topic of dicks. Dick In A Box, I Have A Dick, My Big Old Dick, Where's My Dick?, Do You Like My Dick?, etc. There were a lot of statements, questions and inquiries about the infamous, age old topic of dick and other dickery.

Interestingly, I didn't hear any vagina songs. No Box In A Box, no I Have A Vagina, no My Big Old Vagina, no Where's My Vagina?, no Do You Like My Vagina? and certainly no My Pussy Is Magic, which was especially troublesome, since I sent it to Pandora awhile back and they said it was too dirty.

Now, peeps, this is not an angry feminist post about how I'm so pissed off that dicks rule the world and all that shit, because I thought the dick songs were hilarious. I enjoyed them immensely. And I understand what makes cock so great. I truly love it. I like big dicks, I like small dicks, freckled dicks, dicks with weird curves in them, dicks that I pretend are microphones, dicks that I pretend are stick shifts, dicks that smell like pizza, old dicks (they were once young and firm), whatever. Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses of dick. I love them all.

But COME THE FUCK ON, man. WHO doesn't love vaginas, I mean, besides lesbians? Wars are fought over them. Bar fights are fought over them. People act crazy as well as non-chalant over them. People spend a month's salary or more to be the proud or shameful owner of one. They are the Jaguars of body parts. Perhaps that's why they are called pussies.

In the 60s/70s, we had the sexual revolution, where women discovered how great the dick is, but we never had a sexual revolution where men discover how great the vagina is. It's still so underground. Only the really cool guys love and support vaginas, and all the shit head guys are all, "Well, let's see here, liking vaginas makes you weak, and weakness means you are a homosexual, therefore, anyone who supports women is a homosexual, and I don't support women, because I am not a homosexual" and that's faulty math. It goes more like this: "I support women, because I'm confident in myself, and I like vaginas, because I'm confident in myself."

So then, why are there so many dick songs and not any vagina songs on Pandora, etc? Because people who sell things don't know / aren't sure that there is money to be made on songs about vaginas. But there is, because anything that exists can be a money maker. Cases in point: the Shamwow, the Slinky, the Everlasting Gob Stopper, the dildo, jacks, Snooki.

So let's make some money -- and here's how.

I dare Hot 97, or any radio station, or Comedy Central or HBO or any major mainstream music or comedy source to take the Vagina $ongs Challenge: Put "My Pussy Is Magic" on the air and let's see what happens. If it becomes a success, whoever had the balls / vagina to play the song will share the benefit$. If everyone revolts or alternatively, does nothing at all, I'll stop writing songs about vaginas. Forever! You'll never hear another vagina song by me, ever again. You can even beep out the "pussy" part, fine. We all know it's there.

Just like the vagina itself. You can pretend it doesn't exist, and we can wear pants, but everyone knows it's down there, somewhere near the butt.

Hey You Loud Fucking Hipsters: I'm Telling On You

Sometimes, as I'm getting ready to go to bed around 1:30 or 2 am, I hear the loud squealing of a posse of women, or a group of goonish Jersey-ites hollering in the street. It can last anywhere from 10 seconds to long enough for me to actually get out of bed and look out the window, thinking, "Maybe someone's being attacked...". But no one is ever being attacked, unless you count the alcohol attacking their dumb brains.

This is life on an almost nightly basis for me. "Don't you people have jobs?" I think to myself, as they teeter down the street in clonky fancy shoes, yelling, "Taxiiiiiii!!!!!!" out into a completely empty street or group chant-singing a horrid rendition of a traditional song like "You Are My Sunshine", an alcohol fueled baritone choir of idiots.

I've thought of several ways to exact revenge on these careless dweebs, who seem to have absolutely no consideration for the sleeping children, the Chinese people who worked 15 hour days who will get 4 hours of sleep before having to get up and do it again the next day, even the frickin' dead people at the funeral home across the street who are surely woken by the awful racket. They certainly don't feel for the hipsters and artists who have slowly creeped their way into the neighborhood and are trying to make an honest living as creative weirdos, who need a damn solid 8 hours of beauty rest.

I've thought of egging them. That'd get their goat, I thought to myself, picturing myself launching eggs from my 8 story window which would not even get anywhere near them. In a Woody Allen-esque turn out, however, I imagine them spotting me and then finding their way to my apartment to kick my ass. I try to outsmart them in this scenario, by tossing the eggs off the roof. But somehow, this drunken pack of idiots have perfect night vision, and they still know where to find me. Even in my own fantasies I get my ass kicked. Other times I think of sticking my head out the window and yelling, "Shut the fuuuuccckkkkuuuppppp!!!" But not only does that not make me any better than them, that scenario turns into an imaginary screaming match where they are all calling me names and ends with me still getting my ass kicked.

Recently, I had the bright idea that I could go out into the night dressed as a character I do named Carol, and mess around with them, (wo)man on the street style, with a camera in tow. I'd trick them into thinking that they were being filmed by a popular video blog, and insist they sign a release form. Using the information on the form, I'd locate their parents whereabouts. Then, I'd take the footage of them behaving like complete imbeciles, and I'd show the videos to their mothers, recording their parents' responses to their children screaming like drunken banshees in the night, finally posting that on YouTube and their Facebook pages.

Check and mate!

Orrr...eh...I kinda like the thing that I do now, which is turn up my noise machine, read my New Yorker Magazines and Netflix / PopWords app myself to sleep. Like a proper lady.

The Kind Of Shit I'd Do On A Regular Basis
...if only I had more vagina balls

I go to therapy once a week, because I need it and I like it and I want to fix my broken parts, don't judge me. But I don't just go to any old therapist. I go to therapy at the NYC county courthouse. Why? Maybe I'll tell you the whole sordid story sometime. My therapy there won't last much longer, though, because my therapist is pregnant and about to take that baby and run. If I had $1 for every time that my therapist has gotten pregnant and quit being my therapist, I'd have $2. There's nothing quite like poring over abandonment issues with someone who is about to abandon you. But that, too, is a story for another day.

This session, I arrived on time, early even, the eager damaged beaver I am, to find a line of people longer than the o's in Goooooogle waiting to get their belongings x-rayed so they could gain access to the court house, probably see their therapists too, I bet! I'm usually the only white person in line, which says as much or more about me than it does about everyone else.

As I waited and looked around, I started doing some Tom Green style math and surmised that I could limbo the rope, shimmy between an unused metal detector machine and the wall, slide across the table, run up the stairs two at a time and be in my therapist's office before anyone even noticed what was happening, circumventing the America's Got Talent length line of people. To gauge the task, I turned to the friendly gentlemen behind me and jovially outlined my plan. He laughed but then gave me serious advice: "Don't do it, they will be on top of you in a second and you'll be in chains." The fellow behind him added, "They train for this stuff. They're ready for you."

It was somewhat encouraging to me that these guys were intimidated by the fat security guard who read a newspaper and the younger guy who was doing some yoga bends. Those guards didn't scare me one bit, and I realized it's because I'm a woman. I knew they probably wouldn't hurt me. Maybe they'd cuff me and toss me around a bit, but I wouldn't get punched in the face or baton-ed in the tit-sicle, and certainly not treated the way a man of any color would be dealt with if they pulled that kind of shenanigan.

"That almost sounds like a dare," I said to the guys. They roared with concerned laughter, which ended abruptly as they repeated their warning solemnly. "Don't do it."

I considered making an iPhone style video to see what would happen if I tried my little challenge. I considered the outcome: I get arrested and everyone I know fires me as a friend. It was barely enough to discourage me. The thing that ended up changing my mind was that I really know how badly jail sucks, having visited an old former friend there several times who used to get arrested a lot.

So instead, I waited in line like a sucker, and missed out on what I'm sure would have been a really exciting and maybe even life altering adventure.

I'm so glad for the emotion of fear, because this world -- and my life -- would be absolute utter chaos without it. But at the same time, I bet just a little more fearlessness on my part would have made this Monday a really fun day.

FREE UKULELE CLASSES @ NYPL

+ Myself and special guests perform

Pretty exciting stuff you guys -- I've just been hired to teach FREE ukulele classes at New York Public Library in two locations: Tompkins Square Park and St. George. In addition to learning how to tune your ukulele, hold, strum and play the dern thing, you'll meet a bunch of bookish and hopelessly adorably nerdy people who also call the ukulele their friend, but hopefully not their only friend. In addition to learning the uke, you'll also see some special guest performers show off their skills.

More information to come, but here are the dates:

St George Location:

Saturday, June 30th @ 12 Noon

Tompkins Square Location:

Every Monday in July, including

Monday, July 2 @ 5 PM

Monday, July 9 @ 5 PM

Monday, July 16 @ 5 PM

Monday, July 23 @ 5 PM

Monday, July 30 @ 5 PM

I think all you have to do is show up mostly sober and bring your ukulele. It's gonna be fun and interesting. If you want to get yourself up to speed, check out my ukulele how to series on eHow.com, buy yourself a starter ukulele here and dance on over to one of the above locations when it's time to be there. Cool? Cool.

Name Branding: The Best Thing You Can Do With Your Name?

At the doctor's office the other day, I was standing behind a cherubic man wearing an ugly black back pack across his shoulder. I saw the non-descript name on a tag on the backpack, the bag's maker, stamped into a small piece of metal. It was something so bland I can't even recall it now - Joe Johnson or Frank Corlett or something like that.

And it struck me. So many of us are trying to get our names "out there" for some ungodly reason. And the ways that people choose to do it are increasingly bizarre. All these fashion designers have their names emblazoned across the chests and asses of people they wouldn't even have a conversation with unless they were being forced to at gunpoint. And if you think about the historical significance of these people's names, it's kind of astounding. Many of our ancestors came here on a boat, sleeping in their own shit, starving and acquiring scurvy, suffering for months at a time. When they finally got here, if they made it alive, pretty much all they had was their name. And really, that's the best thing you could think to do with your name, Jack Johnson? Put it onto an ugly black canvas backpack that chubby dudes tote their nerd magazines and viagra in?

Well, okie dokie then.

It kinda makes me think of my own name and what I'm doing with it, what my ancestors had to do for me to be able to fling it around and attach it to so many sexy body part related songs.

I hope I'm doing right by them. If I haven't yet, I plan to make it up with my next piece of merch: a series of butt plugs with my name written in cursive across them. Because the Delfino name is synonymous with an exacting, hey, let's call it "anal" level of quality.

That's just the lineage of fine people I come from.

Did You Know? Giant Nerd Glasses Increase Rent

- aka -

I'm Feeling Kinda Racist Against White People

Damn, there are lots more white people in my neighborhood than there were before, and they are fucking shit up for everyone who was here before them.

When I moved to Chinatown 7 years ago, there were not really many white people here. Only the pioneers, hidden away in ratty loft apartments that they'd been squirreled up in for the last 20 years among a hoarding of antiques, since back when the neighborhood was an A+ crack den.

I wrote a song about how Chinese it was here. I had to sneak into renting in the neighborhood, using my Chinese friend as my pretend boyfriend to even get to look at an apartment. They wouldn't let me rent it because I was white, giving me my first taste of racism ever. The real estate agent, a Chinese woman, said, "I know a place" and got me an apartment in a building that was mostly Chinese. The hallways smell weird. People burn paper all the time in the stairwells. Laundry decorates the patios. My landlord doesn't even speak English. I pay him every month in cash. Once he took a giant shit in my bathroom when he came to pick up the rent, and acted like it was a totally normal thing for him to do.

Let's just say, there's a bit of a culture divide.

Last summer, I went to look at a large loft apartment a few blocks away with a friend. I noticed that everyone going to look at it was American. That was the first thing that set off an alarm. Not to mention, the place was a dive, and it was very expensive, and furnished with a state of the art washing machine.

More and more, I've been noticing giant glasses paired with suspenders, new bars popping up, and the local dive bar 169 Bar is so jam packed on the weekends with filmmaking hipsters that I can't even go there anymore on a Saturday night. White people are walking through the neighborhoods screaming and singing at all hours of the night. The price of dumplings has gone up at all the dumpling holes, and my rent has gone up as well. Around the corner from me, that crappy faux self-important mixology bar Apotheke is making people stand in line to pay $15 for a drink, while making themselves look like giant anuses and plain old ruining the neighborhood.

Now, every night when I go out of my building, I see white people walking around. Not just any white people, men with pink vests over ironic tee shirts and long hair, and women with short dresses over swiss dotted Givenchy panty hose atop Manolo Blahniks and their hair in a messy side bun. This wasn't the case even 6 months ago. All these beautiful people are dressed overly hipster-y, like they're on their way to a model convention. I bet they don't even appreciate or frequent our local dollar store, the "99 cent BJ". They're hiking up everyone's rent higher than their witty knee socks.

OK, I'm white too, I know. But I'm not going out of my way to be a trendy fuck wad who's raising everyone's rent with my mere pants.

Basically, the easiest thing we can do to help the city not change any more than it already has is to start wearing mom and dad outfits. It's that simple. Baggy pleated jeans with ugly belts, sweaters with puffy sleeves and Balloons sneakers, and not in an ironic way. Wear them geniunely. And in general, be more genuine. So, yeah. If you want to keep New York City affordable, wear regular clothes.

Either that, or get ready to move to Jersey City when the 4 story walk up you were already paying an outlandish $2500 / month for gets jacked up a grand overnight.

Other Countries Do Things Better (Sometimes)

You learn the neatest things from drunken strangers at a bar. I guess this is a perk to being a bar tender. It's certainly a perk to being a bar drinker.

Last night at Lolita bar, a shiny faced college grad type gal got to chatting with me for some reason, not quite sure how that happened, but before I knew it, I was knee deep in her life history, which turned out to be pretty interesting. She told me that she'd taught English in Korea for the better part of a year which I thought sounded kinda awesome. The only thing I can think of that I've done for a year straight is live in New York City, saddened that my rent is too high and wondering what the hell I'm still doing here.

Of course, when someone tells you that they know another language, what's the first thing you ask? Well, maybe the first thing YOU ask is, "How do you say, 'I love you'" or something like that. But myself and all my friends, what we want to know is, "How do you say, 'go fuck yourself?'" Luckily, she knew just how.

"Chigrlro", she said, rolling the odd word perfectly off of her tongue. "Hm," I said, trying to keep the bar chatter moving along, clearly with aplomb. "No kidding." Then she told me what it translated to, exactly, and I got very excited.

Turns out, "Chigrlro" (which kind of sounds like a combination of "chigro" and "chigaro" depending on where you put the tongue roll) means, "Do you want to die?" and apparently, it's serious fightin' words in Korea. Like, yeah, no shit. If you ask someone if they want to die, you should be prepared to have a Fight Club style duel in the street or watch a person run away for their lives.

But how totally bad ass. I love that in Korea, apparently, they are very to the point like that. So, you're out with your buddies, having a nice time. All of a sudden, some dick for neck starts messing with you. How many times has this happened? Don't you only wish you had the perfect words? Now, usually, you and your friends will be like, "This guy's a dick, check please" or you'll tell the guy to get lost. But have you ever asked a trouble maker, "Excuse me sir, DO YOU WANT TO DIE?"

I'm going to start using "chiglrlo" in every day vernacular. I plan to develop it into the newest hipster slang and make my own tee shirt.

If Korean isn't your speed, try telling someone "Go fuck your mother" in Russian, which sounds something like "Yup toy much", also extreme fightin' words, but only to Russians, probably only in Russia. If you say it to a Russian here, they'd probably misunderstand your awful accent, think that you were filming a Borat style movie or partially mentally re-handi-cap-tarded and just leave you alone.

I'm Not Sorry

At least once a day, a woman will apologize to me for something that she didn't do wrong. "Whoops! Sorry," she'll say, as she drops a piece of paper on the floor, or asks me my name. "I'm sorry, what was your name?" Wait, let me get this straight. You're sorry because I have a name?

Ladies! It's not necessary for you to apologize to me -- or to any human -- for arbitrary non-issues. Where did women pick up this behavior? I'm guessing from their own mothers. I'm guilty of it, myself. When a homeless guy asks me for money and I don't have any, what do I say? "I'm sorry," and keep walking. When someone says something to me and I didn't hear them, I say, "Sorry?" Wait, I'm sorry because you mumble? What the shit is wrong with me?

More things that do not deserve apologies:

- Passing by someone (that gets an "excuse me" and doesn't need to be followed up with a "sorry")

- A precursor to a benign question, as in, "I'm sorry, do you know what time it is?"

- In the place where a "No" answer will do, as in, "No, we don't have any soy cheese tacos"

- If you make a mistake that really primarily only affects you (drop your own cellphone)

OK, so, women aren't the only ones guilty of this behavior. Willowy men and surely transvestites or hermaphrodites also engage in apologizing over nothing. I think it's a sign of low self esteem, and I think that low self esteem sucks so hard. It's one of the biggest societal problems of our planet, and it goes relatively unschooled, unfixed and unmentioned, causing serious problems, including war, genocide and good ol' fashioned run of the mill violence - ya know, beheadings by spouses and what not.

What do I want? Stronger humans. When do I want them? Centuries ago! What am I gonna do about it? Well --

Just as I've started to make a mental note to recognize every time I say "like" in an effort to STOP saying LIKE all the time, I've started to pay attention to how often I say "I'm sorry" for things that no one deserves an apology for. I've gotten better about saving my apologies for when I really owe them, like, for when I break an antique vase, or when I drop a door on an old lady's hand or when I ride my bicycle into a person because I was staring up at the sky instead of forward. Now I just have to work on not being so clumsy and silly-hearted.

Sorry!

Oh, wait -- I mean, no I'm not.

Oscars

Who cares? The only reason I watch the Oscars is so I can tweet snarky obnoxious comments out into the world with almost no repercussion. Normally if I were to say those things about people I knew in the real world, I'd get punched or shunned or both. Unfortch I think I was tweeting with a tag that no one cared about, #Oscars2012, while others were tweeting just a simple #oscars. Ah, well, there's always the rest of my life.

The Oscars were not interesting or fun to watch, for the most part, except that I watched and live tweeted them for thelodownny.com blog at their HQ in the Lower East Side of NYC with a handful of snarky others. The dialog my associate viewers launched at the TV - via real life and twitter - was the real show.

Here are some of my tweets as well as some of my favorite Oscar tweets of other twitterheads, enjoy, and don't say them out loud to the people they are about if you know them, or you may get kicked in the groin or shin area. Also, if you are the celebrity I said them about, a heh, uh, hey, I was just kidding! ha ha heh hmm.

Some of my twingers:

Just realized my mom looks exactly like Robert DeNiro#LodownOscars #Oscars2012 #MyMom

Owen Wilson, I love you, is that too much too fast? #LodownOscars#Oscars2012

Nick Nolte doesn't look great, but he doesn't look as bad as Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler#LodownOscars #Oscars2012

What would make this back flip montage really spectacular is just one wrong move#LodownOscars #Oscars2012

Eugene Levy looks like Vincent Price now #LodownOscars#Oscars2012

Hey rich people, why not stand up for black people before they win awards? #LodownOscars#Oscars2012

I dont know about hottest guy in the room, but Oscar probably has the fewest stds of all the guys in the room #LodownOscars

Twingers I Liked:

"Just realized that it's a harder job to watch Billy Crystal host the #Oscars than for him to do it" - Comedian Liam McEneaney

"I remember when I was a kid and me and my family would live talk the Oscars." – Comedian Nikki Glaser

"The only people who look in the mirror and think, `Perfect!' are murderers and Bradley Cooper." – Writer / Tweeter Kelly Oxford

"People throw around the word "hero" too much. Use it for what it's for: a millionaire actor playing a disabled person." - Comedian Rob Delaney

"I like this years theme "Death of the Film Industry" #oscars - Comedian Jena Friedman

Hollywood is all smoke and mirrors. And by that I mean pot and cocaine. #oscars #tweetroast

- Comedian Wendy Liebman