Skeletons and Celebrities (By Lauren)

I saw a skeleton jog past me this morning on West End Avenue. Ok, actually it was a girl in her twenties who only looked like a skeleton because she was so obviously underweight. Should I assume she had an eating disorder? Or is that an unfair assumption?

I am personally fascinated with eating disorders, and I think most of society could say the same thing because they buy the US Weekly and In Touch magazines that claim to know all about the eating disorders of celebs like Nichole Richie and Mary Kate Olsen. A friend of mine who works at an New York PR firm also claims that Hilary Duff has an eating disorder because she saw her at some event they were working and she said her head looked humongous because her body was so small. Maybe its natural? (like in the case of Calista Flockhart or Portia de Rossi...who both happened to become much healthier looking after Ally McBeal finished airing....I guess their naturally skinny frames just became naturally bigger once the camera was off of them...hmmm, lets think about that one....)

Really, if I had that many people looking at and admiring (or judging?) me everyday, maybe I'd have an eating disorder too. Though I think eating disorders may be more of an LA thing than a NY thing. What do you think Mer? Maybe its not chic to have an eating disorder in NY, and maybe I should have told that to the skeleton who ran by me this morning. She must not know.

Happy Memorial Day weekend. I hope you eat your hearts out (and don't regurgitate it on purpose!!) Love from your favorite optimist, ~LB

Crazy New York Citings (by Lauren)

Now that we have been properly introduced, let me begin by sharing a few of the crazy things I have witnessed/experienced since moving to New York almost 1 year ago (yes, these are cheaply recycled from my other blog):


July 2006:
- An 80+ year old woman budged in front of me in line at the grocery store to buy menora candles. (For all of you non-jewish people out there, the menora is the candleabra you light during Hanukkah...which is in December. However, apparently this lady was so desperate to get a good deal on them she felt the need to budge in front of me.) When I said excuse me she just smiled and patted her box of candles. I let it slide.
- I witnessed a woman changing her 1 and a half year old kid's diaper in the middle of a department store on a bench. I'm not talking about on the side of the department store, like near the ladies rooms or anything. I'm talking right in the middle of the frickin store! I swear.

August 2006
- As Scott and I were walking to the grocery store, I saw a man carryingwhat looked to be a large rodent in rigor mortis. I moved over, runninginto Scott, who didn't see the animal, and he asked me why I ran into him. He totally didn't believe me until we were leavnig the grocery store andthis crazy crazy man was showing his new rodent friend to another man onthe street. The other guy said "Why didn't you leave that on the street?! It's a dead rodent!" Scott knew then that I wasn't making it up and we got our butts out of there.

October 2006
- Scott and I saw an old lady using her walker on its front when walking back from the grocery store one evening. And no, she didn'tlook comfortable. My first inkling was to stop and help her correct thewalker's position, but having been a 5-month experienced New Yorker, I decided to let it slide while noting to Scott that the lady was using her walker incorrectly. A few minutes later we heard someone screaming behind us "Get off! Get off!" Who was it but this crotchety (and crazy?) old lady trying to fend off a nice young gentlement trying to help herresituate her walker. About a week later, I saw the lady again, walkerincorrectly postured and all, and yelling at someone to "MIND THEIR OWNBUSINESS!" Apparently she's quite sensitive. WHat a nut. (May 07 Note: We later found out that this woman lives in the apartment of Scott's classmate Nick. Small world, no?)
- Was mistaken for Anna Paquin in a bar. First time I've EVER been mistaken for a celebrity. I'll take it!

December 2006
- A week or so after Thanksgiving, when the holiday spirit rightly began to rear it's head in NY, I stood in the subway station, attempting to read before the 1 train came for my morning commute. Across the tracks, on the downtown side, were many people, including parents and their children, probably on their way to day care, school and work. Sitting on the bench sat a man, presumably homeless, reading a newspaper. I was drawn away from my reading when the man announced in a loud voice "Huh, well look at that. I can't believe it. SANTA CLAUS DIED! No Christmas this year!" Oy. Naturally, I rolled my eyes. The ranting of the mentally ill are not unusual in New York, and if you ignore them, they often stop. However, apparently this guy was feeling especially crazy this day as he didn't stop here. "Did you hear that everyone?!?!" He screamed. "Santa Clause died! Ah ha ha ha! No Christmas! He'd dead!" This man continued his ranting and raving about the supposed death of Jolly Old St Nick for a couple of minutes until the downtown sub came. The arrival of the train, however, did not prevent many parents from having to comfort their young children, including the man and his daughter who were sitting on the bench next to the raving man. Even after the dad moved off the bench with his daughter (no older than 4), she continued to stare in frightened disbelief at the claims of this guy. A funny thing about this story, is that down the bench from Mr.I'm-going-to-announce-the-death--of-Santa-Claus-in-front-of-young-children-a-month-before-Christmas, sat an older man, homeless, who I'd seen many times. And while homeless, and quite frankly a bit dirty, there sat a rotund man with long white hair and a white beard, snoozing at the end of the bench. My nick-name for him before this incident was Santa Claus...but apparently not many parents want to point out to their children a possible Santa Claus who lives in the subway station. Typical New York craziness.

January 2007
- Our apartment was invested by baby cockroaches which looked like little ants...except they weren't. Horrible horrible experience. Took us weeks to get rid of them all.

March 2007
- New Yorkers seem to think that the world is the garbage can. People often just throw things on the ground instead of making it over to a garbage can. This month, I actually saw a guy eating candies that were individually wrapped on the subway, and each time the subway stopped and the door opened, he would throw his little wrapper straight out of the door onto the platform. You’re kidding me right?

April 2007
- For those of you who have never ridden on or seen a subway train, you’ll need to know that in between cars there is a space, where people can walk from one car to another. They’re not supposed to do this while the train is moving, but like most inconvenient rules in NY, that rule is broken quite often. So I was sitting in a subway car one day (why do so many strange things happen to me on the subway??) and saw a guy walk through my car and set down a few bags on the seat at the end. He proceeded to walk in between the cars and stop, turn to the side and from what I could tell, he urinated off the side of the train. The awkward thing is that the train stopped part-way through his business so he was sitting there peeing while people were staring straight at him from the platform. He didn’t seem to notice. He came back into the car where his bags were and rode the train as if nothing strange had happened. Eww.


Oh New York fun. This is what I meant when I said NY isn't as glamorous as Sex and the City makes it out to be. At least for those of us who can't afford to take cabs everywhere. By the way, did you notice how Mer and I always seem to write these blogs during work....brilliant. We make such good use of our time.

In other news, stay tuned for a feature we'd like to call "Friday's Hunks" (creatively thought up by my cutie.)

More soon....~LB

Why, oh why, oh why-o, did I ever leave Ohio (that's where I went to college, so you see this title almost works)

In the vein of Lauren's second introductory post...allow me to explain why I ended up in the City of Angels.

First off, let me share that for most of my natural life, I . Was. Never. Moving. to. Los Angeles.

Granted, nearly all of my impressions of LAlaland were gleaned from one of two sources- a family trip at age 12, the most vivid memories of that trip being hooker-watching in Hollywood (this was pre-Disneyfication of H'wood, natch) and crying on my 12th birthday in Disneyland. The other source was the media. As most anyone familiar with American tv, movies, and news can tell you, Los Angeles is home to a race of thin blonde celebrities who wear brightly colored clothing, wear 10-15 designer logo-ed items simultaneously, and spend days lying by the backyard pool while pondering the mysteries of Scientology/Kaballah/organic foods. Oh, and gangs. Violent gangs. LA has those, too.

You can see why I was quoted as saying something to the effect of, "Southern California could float off the map because of an earthquake? This is wonderful news, indeed!"

In my defense, this is a view held by the majority of East Coast and Midwest denziens. Well, at least the ones I'm friends with, anyway. When I first announced my move, I think I would have been faced with less to justify had I been moving to Antartica. At least everyone knows exactly what's there- a lot of ice. And penguins. Who doesn't love penguins?

So now that's I've established my feelings on the greater Los Angeles area prior to moving here...let's get to the "why" of why I'm living in the land of (artifically transplanted) palm trees and other such monstrosities...

(pie graph forthcoming once I figure out how to make an attractive one with Microsoft Office)

40% - glorious weather/ completely ridiculous inability to deal with cold temperatures consider the fact that I'm from Minnesota
20% - career opportunities- LA's actually a pretty great place to start out being an opera singer
15%- boyfriend
15 %- very favoritest roommate EVER moving here and wanted a roommate
8% - lots of extended family in California
2 % - interesting adventure!

(more to come tomorrow...time to head out of work for the day!)

One of those classic post-college dilemas

While I was sitting at my temp job today, I started thinking about how many friends I have in Los Angeles. Hmmm...of course there's my roomie and also my boyfriend (these are not one and the same person- Lauren is much braver than I and lives with her bf.)

There's EO and her boyfriend, MB, AC and DC (resisting making obvious but horribly lame joke here), NA, and ST...and that's about it. Oh, and RH, but she and I still haven't seen each other in an entire year of living in the same city for the first time ever.

Now, of course this is a decent number of people to know. And don't get me wrong, I adore each and every one of these individuals, even the couple I'm still getting to know. They are all wonderful friends and wonderful human beings.

Here's the catch. I've lived here for nigh on seven months now. And exactly two of these people are really new to me since I moved here- and I worked with one of them.

Yes, of course it is (almost) always difficult to become acquainted with those around you when you are young and new in a city and not part of an educational institution. See, I was looking forward to having a chance to meet people outside of the confines of school. Most of my favorite people in life I've met through some sort of work situation or by very interesting sets of circumstances (once waiting for a bus in Pittsburgh, PA, I kid you not) Hmmmmm.

I'm not looking for *vewwy bestest fwiends* I'm fortunate enough to have more than a couple of those, and I don't require them to be within a 20 mile radius of me. Just knowing they're a phone call away (cliche! but true!) is lovely, at least for now.

What I'm after is widening the circle of people I consort with and frolic with and have a drink with. I want to expand my little world here. Expanding my little world always helps it grow roots and follow gravity.

Well, those are my thoughts for today...
I fully own up to their cliche-dism (yes, it's a word now. Why? Because I say so.) But hey, I'm young and "artsily" inclined- and if I can't spout cliches, well, then who can?