White Girl Two Step

While I was perusing Facebook profiles last week, I came across one that listed the "white girl two step" as an interest. As in all white girls' have subpar dancing skills and look like lumbering robots. I denied that I danced this way, but once I figured out what this person was talking about I realized that is the way I dance. On Saturday when I was asked to dance I declined because, I was too embarrassed to do the white girl two step in public.

Brunch w/ the Sunday Magazine

Sunday was my turn to host the brunch for the Florence girls. I feel like some kind of dowager-empress-lady-who-lunches octogenarian saying that. Although I love my girls and it was really fun. It’s really special to me that we still have our Sunday brunches even though now we’re back in New York and no longer in Florence. It just felt like a big deal to have friends over at my own place and feed them real food. Alice brought me a cake and a gift certificate to Crate and Barrel. I was super excited about both. I told her it was my favorite store, which is actually entirely true. She told me she had made her decision between C&B or Home Depot. I said I would've been happy with either. A statement that is also true. I feel like this is a coming of age moment. See up until the age of 10, I only wanted toys, and until recently, I only wanted clothes, but now I want home furnishings. I mean, I'm probably going to spend it on silverware. Silverware! If Alice had picked Home Depot, it would have gone toward light fixtures. I should just move to a Florida retirement community right now. I just had to point out something I read in the NY Times. Apparently Rick Santorum, New York Times Magazine cover boy, called Dubya, "''the first Catholic president of the United States." As the Times points out (a) Dubya is not Catholic and (b) even if he was, he still wouldn’t be the first. When questioned Santorum had this to say, "''What I meant was if you look at the two major issues of the church, it's sanctity of life, sanctity of marriage and the family -- and third is care for the poor. And you have a president who is consistent with Catholic social teaching on all of these issues." And oh yeah, according to Santorum, Kennedy was not Catholic, because Santorum is apparently the Pope and can excommunicate the dead. Yet despite this idiocy, many of his Republican cronies are praising him for not backing down. When I was little and would do something stupid or bad and lie to cover it up, my dad would always tell me that lying only made it worse. He was wrong. Now I know it gets you elected to the U.S. Senate.

NYU, I try to love you, but you make it so hard.

Basically since my first semester at NYU, I've been wondering whether I made the right choice by coming here. (Current consensus: No.) Maybe I would have liked to live in a college town. Maybe I would have liked to go to football/ basketball games. Maybe I would have liked a campus and done sports/ clubs again. Maybe I didn't get enough of high school. New York would always be there waiting for me; was I missing out on an intrinsic part of my post-adolescence, the quintessential college experience?
Probably not. A college town would be fun for a semester and I didn't really like the football games all that much in high school. I could work instead of wasting my time in club meetings. I miss track (sort of), but I can work out whenever I want. Oh except I can't. I found out today that I can't use Palladium or Coles because I'm not a summer student or living in housing. What NYU, you haven't taken my money recently enough? Will it be ok once my check for fall tuition clears? I especially love how they don't publicize this fact at all. Can I still use the library? (That's the first non-rhetorical question. I really don't know.)
For a school so dependent on tuition for its operating expenses, NYU doesn't have much regard for its students. When I worked at the telethon, for a week, we were constantly reminded that NYU's endowment is extremely small and that our alumni give so little to our school that it actually hurts our rankings. Between the decrepit, vermin-infested dorms, the professors who can't learn my name after an entire semester, and the suicidal depressants, drug dealers and embezzlers that make up the student body, it's no wonder that people graduate and don't look back. Sure, NYU had to temper my extremely high expectations of college (it's the best four years of your life! It's non-stop fun) that were fed by teachers and parents in high school. And it's not like my time here has been all bad. I have made good friends, had some amazing experiences, and gained independence and awareness of both my self and the world. But I feel that all of those things are a result of my efforts. The few things that I do expect from the school: a decent dorm room, a gym, and an office of career services; I haven't gotten. The dorm rooms have been uniformly dirty and decrepit and the office of Career Services might as well be a part of Stern. Those were two of the reasons that I picked NYU! It's become a cliche that NYU students complain a lot (and kill ourselves), but I think we have more than enough reason too.

Cable

If I don't call you, answer emails or IMs, just know it's because I once again have cable. It's just as wonderfully brain-numbing as I remember.

Ashes and Snow

Recently I was thinking about how few celebrities I have seen recently in New York. It has been a dry stretch. Then this afternoon as I was walking along the West Side Highway, I passed this guy and thought hmm, that looks like Chris Martin. Then I noticed the baby carriage. Then I heard him arguing with this guy, who had apparently been following them for quite some time. It was loud enough for me to hear over my headphones. I kept walking like I see rock stars and their babies arguing with potential papparazi all the time. Sadly my nonchalence kept me from seeing either Apple or the resolution of the argument. When I finally turned around after walking another 30 feet, they were gone.

The reason for my being on the West Side Highway was to go see the Ashes and Snow, an exhibition on Pier 54 by Canadian artist Gregory Colbert. It was a beautiful meditation on human communion with nature. The photographs and the film had this amazing sepia-toned timeless quality to them. The film was particularly unearthly. It was live action but the only soundtrack was instrumental music and a voiceover. It reminded me a little of Un Chien Andalous, but with amazingly beautiful images instead of disturbing ones. They both used montage to conjure emotions without plot or even dialogue. It also reminded me of those 19th Century photographs of "primitive" people, the humans in the photographs were just incredibly self-possesed, but that could be because they were mostly children. I just left with this incredibly peaceful feeling.

Which was probably good, because last night I watched Full Metal Jacket. I'd gotten it from netflix weeks ago, but I had been put off by how potentially gory and violent it was going to be. It was gory and violent, but I think that I've become inured to movie violence. I was expecting to be really freaked out by City of God too, and while the violence was horrific, I could deal with it. I find it much less objectionable when a movie is supposed to be violent, and the audience is meant to be taken aback by it rather than liking it. Both COG and FMJ are violent so that the audience can feel as closely as possible the tragedy of violence. Yet, I still feel like so many people watch both movies as if they are violence-porn; they can't see beyond the images. Both supporters of the armed forces and pacifists like Full Metal Jacket because Kubric told the story with a kind of ambivalence. The realism of the story does not allow for heros and villians.

Kubric is not saying that war is either good or bad; there is no good or evil in this movie. It's about nihilism in all senses of the word. In one sense, the government and by extension the army is supporting nihilism by trying to destroy the Communists who they view as a threat to American society. Of course it is our fear in the face of change, that is the true threat to our society. In a second sense it rejects our Western morality, which is based on the Judeo-Christian tradition. From the dehumanizing training in the first half of the movie to the killing in the second part, the differentiation between right and wrong is slowly worn away. It is this replacement of our social mores by a reliance on the self and the sole goal of destructive service in the name of our country that makes the army so attractive to recruits. In the war zone, morality as we know it ceases to exist; no longer enforced, it is not even practicable. But withouth these strictures, what is left of ourselves? This is the final way in which the movie deals with nihilism. Arguably our souls do not exist without the boundaries that make us human. Much like in the real war, there are no winners or losers; there are only those who are alive and those who are dead.

Fryin'

It's time for a confession. I can not fry. I'm fine with baking, satueeing (sp?), soups, sauces, stir-fry, broiling, poaching and a whole bunch of other stuff. Yet frying eludes me. Tonight I decided to make Eggplant Parmigiana. I've watched my mom make Chicken Parmigiana tons of times, how hard could it be? First of all, why is it called Parmigiana when it's made with Mozzerella? Second of all, how come I'm covered in splatter burns and almost burned my apartment down? I don't have an answer to the first question, but the answer to second is: I can not fry. The summer I was 12 I decided to make french fries by dumping half a bottle of corn oil in a pot and throwing in some potatoes. I had a huge burn on my thigh the rest of the summer, very attractive. Next time I want any fried food (maybe it's a good thing I can't fry, less risk of heart disease) I'm just going to get take out.

Be the change you wish to see in the world

So possibly you are like me, and had decided post-Tsunami to donate some of your holiday money to the afflicted and yet somehow never got around to it. Here's your chance: http://www.pamie.com/tsunami/! Everyone loves school supplies! (Don't you remember that great feeling of standing in Staples and being like hmm, do I want the folder with puppies or kittens...oooh erasers.) So I know not very many people read this, but it's a super great cause and it's for the children.

Hell, I Still Love You New York

I remember listening to Ryan Adams' "New York, New York" in high school when it first came out, and I loved it because it mentioned New York and I was kind of spellbound by the video because it was shot in front of the World Trade Center, like, two days before 9/11. I just listened to it again in the first time in 4 years and it sounds so different to me now. It perfectly captures this melancholy but gleeful feeling that I'll always associate with New York. It's similar to Coltrane's "Central Park West" in that I can imagine myself there and that I have these really visceral memories that both of those songs make me think of. I guess it's a testament to the city that I romanticize the city more after living here for 3 years than I did before I moved here.

Graduation

Tonight I went to Jennie's graduation party and it was great to Amanda, Alice and Jennie again. I haven't seen them for over two months, which is so weird since I same them every day last fall. It was a lot of fun, and I ate and drank a lot. Everyone liked my oatmeal raisin cookies too, which was cool since it was so much fun to make them. The only negative of the whole evening was the cab driver who wouldn't go to Brooklyn. I argued with him for like 5 minutes, since it's illegal for cabs to refuse a fare. Apparently Brooklyn gives him a headache. Then I found a cab that would go across the bridge, but instead of giving me back the change he asked me how much I wanted back. I have this bizarre inability to calculate tips in cabs. Everywhere else, restuarants, nail and hair salons, I'm fine, but in cabs I lose any math skills that I may have once had. So I gave him this ginormous tip. Oh well, maybe he'll tell his friends and more cabbies will be willing to go to Brooklyn.

And Finally my new haircut.

Better picture of the sunset.

This is the sunset over the Williamsburg Bridge from my apartment.

Brooklyn is like Mars

So I decided to start off with a clean slate on blogger. And every single URL that I could possible think of for my blog was already taken. One of the attempted urls was Only Living Girl (get it, get it) was already taken by a girl who had a Belle and Sebastian song lyrics as the name of her blog. Does that count as identity theft? Because I feel super un-original. Anyway, so I decided to attempt my embarrassing nickname (Vickster), but for some reason it was only accepted with the awkward hyphen, which is somehow fitting.

Here is my last post from my lj. I feel it's important enough to republish.

One of my neighbors has a rooster. It's such an incongrous noise in the city, that I only half believe its real. I can picture a rooster strutting around a concrete backyard, but I'm more inclined to believe that it's a barnyard animal noises CD put on a loop. Still it only made me realize that I'm not in Manhattan anymore. The last thing I saw last night before I fell asleep was the Empire State Building, it reminded me of high school when I could see it out my window too. But then I got that same feeling I had in high school of being so near but so far. I think I'm just meant to be a member of the bridge and tunnel crowd.

ETA: The title of this post is what my mother thinks of Brooklyn.