RENT,RENT,RENT,RENT,RENT

It's not often that I am creatively inspired by external forces; for me, the inspiration to write has always come from within, as cliched as that sounds. So when I am particularly taken by someone else's art and can actually apply the meaning I extract from someone else's work to my own writing, it's somewhat profound. I saw the film RENT last night and it was fantabulous. The actors were brilliant, the music divine, but the message is what got to me the most. I saw the Broadway version years ago, probably while I was still in either grad school or college and therefore sort of without direction. But this time, what struck me most about the story told in RENT is that every single artist—wealthy or poor, painter or poet, novelist or actor—struggles to produce what their heart tells them to. Of course some artists do physically struggle with hunger or bills or disease, as those in the movie do. But it seems that the other artists, the ones to-the-manor-born, or the best-selling ones, or even the Pulitzer-prize winning ones, struggle internally on an almost daily basis.
In Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking, this is somewhat of a recurring theme: how she gets depressed while thinking about her work, how she thinks she'll never produce anything as lofty as the work of her late husband, how she wakes up to write and thinks, "This is the last thing the world needs." I suppose that it's quite comforting for me to know that all artists, even the most brilliant ones, do not find the creative process to be facile. However, I do find the actual act of creating something quite easy. Words pour out of me onto the page and they are cohesive; I've been able to write in a stream-of-consciousness style for as long as I can remember. The struggle, for this particular artist, comes after the work is finished. Where does it go? What do I do with it? How do I put it out there without losing a piece of myself in the process? Perhaps I'll learn some of these answers when I finish the manuscript I'm working on now, because I don't like the answers I got the last time around . . .

Teriyaki Turkey

Thanks to all the friends, family and random people who've been reading this and complimenting me! I will be participating in the longstanding Jewish tradition of eating gourmet Chinese food on Thanksgiving. Have a happy one . . .

Another day, another death

Disclaimer: Much of this blog is fiction, much of it truth. Many of these "dead" exes are not my own—I don't like people shitting on my girls, hence the massive amount of obituaries of late. Who these victims belonged to is immaterial I suppose, but I've certainly hit a nerve . . . power of the pen and all that.

Ethan was an oil trader who readily admitted he knew nothing about oil save for when to buy it, hold its position and sell it. In an effort to expand his knowledge base in order to grow his newly formed trading firm—for his business was all he held dear to him, all that seemed to keep him warm at night—he decided to take a trip. His travels took him to Alaska, where he managed to finagle himself a tour of an offshore rig. After being guided around the rig by one of the drillers, Ethan—a curious, bookish, isolated fellow—decided to wander off on his own. Now, as most everyone knows, save for the oddly ignorant oil trader himself, oil rigs can be rather hazardous places.
It was a bitterly cold day, so Ethan was layered up sartorially, no doubt in designer duds. As he was climbing one of the decks, however, his rather expensive but functionally useless designer hiking boots caused him to trip on a slippery patch of oil. He tried to grab onto a ladder, but alas, his Loro Piana gloves provided cashmere comfort, but no grip. He fell hard on the deck and hit his head. Disoriented and concussed, he stood up and backed up several feet, right into the ice-cold (literally) water. His heavy designer clothes weighed him down and made his death a forgone conclusion, for Ethan, even though he'd grown up in California, had never learned to swim. He drowned in the freezing water with nary a scream. And since Ethan had no family and few friends, he'd never bothered to draft a will, even though his net worth, one presumes, was well into the millions. Thus his treasured material possessions that he'd spent his lifetime accumulating and cultivating in favor of love, friends and family were all donated to charities.
And as he drowned and froze, one wonders whether he was thinking of material things or of people he'd known. When his life flashed before his eyes, did he see dancing dollar signs or missed opportunities for human contact? Did he think of money, power or his myriad superficial, ostentatious pursuits or did he think of all those people he could've known and loved who he chucked in favor of insignificant possessions? We'll never know, I suppose, but one thing did manage to float to the surface of the water and survive the horrific accident: his Breitling timepiece. I gave it to my dad.

RIP

There has been yet another tragic but timely death amongst our circle of friends and lovers. This one perhaps a bit more violent than the others. It seems that our victim, let's call him, oh, I don't know, Rat Bastard, was not only stepping out on our lovely, beautiful friend, but on his multiple wives. Yes, that's right, Rat Bastard apparently had a harem of wives and lovers, one of whom walked in on him at precisely the right moment, or for him, the wrong moment, in time.
Rat Bastard was lying in his bed with one of his wives—it seems he held dual residency in both Utah and New York State—when one of his lovers decided to surprise him with a homecooked meal.
Sara walked into Rat Bastard's kitchen—for he was clueless enough to furnish her with a key—casserole and steak in hand. She picked up a steak knife from his counter and a bottle of wine and walked upstairs to bring him the food she so dutifully prepared. Platter in one hand, bottle of wine and knife in the other, she backed her way quietly into his bedroom. Suddenly startled by loud, animalistic cries, Sara dropped the food platter and turned around to find Rat Bastard shagging an unidentifiable brunette. The brunette leaped up from the bed, bolted for the door and ran out of the house buck naked.
And, Sara, trapped in a mental state that would later be described in court as "not of sound mind or body," took the weapons in her hand and got her revenge. With one swing of her right arm, she cracked the bottle of wine over Rat Bastard's head. It was a bottle of Chianti, so the vino mixed with the blood and decorated the Rat Bastard's pristine white Frette sheets. The Rat Bastard slumped down in the bed upon impact from the bottle, but Sara was so out of sorts that before she knew what was happening, she began stabbing him with the broken glass. By the time the ambulances and police arrived at Rat Bastard's home, for it seems that a buck-naked screaming woman gets the attention of nosy New York neighbors, Rat Bastard's heart had stopped beating. Sara was briefly incarcerated, but ultimately her talented attorney convinced the jury that she suffered from temporary insanity caused by her polygamist lover. Hell hath no fury...Pretty soon, we're going to be able to fill a cemetary over here.

Sometimes pictures do speak volumes especially if you're too lazy/brain dead to think of anything pithy to say. These, taken at about 3 a.m. Saturday night at Level V, say "perhaps some Botox is not out of the question" and "take a picture of my ass!" People at Level must have thought us completely insane, snapping away at our asses, and generally causing a ruckus. I always feel like I am at a TEP frat party at that place, so I guess we fit right in acting like animals.

The Crash of 2005

Since my friends have been taking time out of their very busy daily lives to read this dribble, and since some of them have taken to promoting the blog and the book by shouting "Dishalicious.blogspot.com" out of taxi windows and to random passersby on Little West 12th Street, outside PM and Pastis, I figured I should start posting again. Let's see—I am bored, bored, bored with life in general right now, though, as usual there is no shortage of drama swirling round me. This weekend involved a cavalcade of cops on the UES at 1 a.m. Friday night, one of whom made it his mission to ask J. out while on the job. Nice work, Rodriguez, I'm sure Briscoe would be proud. Last night took me from Shun Lee to Rosa Mexicano to GoGo, which resembled a high school reunion of the class of 1980, to Home, then PM and Level V. And can I just say that I am so over waiting in lines to get into these so-called hotspots that ultimately house people no more exciting than those in, say, a random Irish pub downtown.
In other news . . . my girlfriends and I have recently learned that all (every last one of them) of our exes have died tragically in a private jet crash over a landfill in New Jersey. Tres tragic. It's still a mystery how attorneys, doctors, traders, accountants and investment bankers all ended up on the same morbidly fated, chartered jet, but it is a significant loss to all of us nonetheless. The only things to survive the crash? Their Cartier, Rolex, Frank Mueller, Breitling, Patek Philippe and Breguet timepieces. We have, natch, dutifully saved the watches and are donating them to the brokenhearted Jewish girls fund. RIP boys.
And, oh yeah, it's now my civic pleasure to report to Centre Street tomorrow for jury selection. Woo-fucking-hoo. I plan on pulling the Larry David card—should it get to the questioning process I'll be acting like the most racist, elitist, homophobic, xenophobic woman in the entire city in hopes of being promptly dismissed.
I don't know what the waitperson taking this picture was on when he snapped it last night, but I'm kind of digging the blurriness . . .