C’mon can we just get this storm over with already? Sheesh.

Perhaps this is just part of my pre-birthday malaise or maybe it’s been brought on by witnessing a woman on the sidewalk across from my office this morning in a stretchy pink ensemble pull down her pants, hike up her top, and adjust her underwear. And on the street just now I laughed at a junkie who was holding an ice cream cone and sobbing uncontrollably.

Because every last bit of my empathy has been sapped. That’s it! That’s all she wrote!

I’m going up to Brimfield again next week, so at least that’s…something.

Anyhow, this picture. This is my Kim’s Video membership card. I got it right before I moved to NYC. My boyfriend at the time didn’t have a credit card and Kim’s required one, as a deposit. For those of you who are not from NY, Kim’s Video was a NYC institution, staffed entirely by bitter cineastes and musophiles who made it quite clear that your taste sucked. There were two locations, one in the West Village and one on St. Marks Place. (Both of those have since closed, and all the movies were sent to Italy, but now there is a new location on 1st Avenue that I’ve never set foot in.)

St. Marks Place between 3rd and 2nd Avenues, though rapidly gentrifying even 13 years ago, was still quite a bit different from how it is now. There were junkies everywhere and we still had Coney Island High and See Hear Books and various used record stores and performance spaces. These have all been replaced by four frozen yogurt establishments, five Korean fried chicken restaurants, 17 stores that sell bongs and NEW YORK FUCKING CITY t-shirts, and a SuperCuts. I’m not saying it was necessarily better back then, but at least it didn’t look like a wing of a mall in Delaware.

The first movie we rented was Streetwise. I remember it well, because it was one of the only times the Kim’s clerk didn’t sneer at my selection.

Soundtrack: Mark Sultan, I Am the End

It’s been 14 years since I started polishing the chains of the patriarchy by taking up shaving again (after a six-year boycott that really pleased my parents and my myriad backwoods dating prospects, I should add) and to this day I’m still no good at it. I use those supposedly foolproof ergonomic rubbery pink kind with the guards and I still end up gouging myself every time. The women in the commercials make it look like they’re doing ballet and when I do it I look like a monkey washing a cat.

I just came up with an awesome idea for a rom-com: Jennifer Anniston goes out on a blind date with some A-list actor (Gerard Butler? Is he passe?). They have a great time and go back to his place and when she goes to use his bathroom she steps into a time-space vortex and is transported 30 years in the future where she finds that they’re married and also that he’s a reincarnation of Hitler. So then she travels back in time to the present and has to decide whether she should kill him or not. But first she needs him to get her pregnant. It’s going to be called One Crazy Night.

Finally, I was walking up Broadway this morning and saw this guy walking down the sidewalk who was either shouting a lengthy insult at someone or proselytizing crazy stuff like “FAGGOT COCKSUCKER grar grar grar JESUS grar grar grar GET YOU” etc. And in the middle of his oration he stops, fishes an envelope out of his pocket, drops it in the mailbox, opens the door again just to check to make sure the letter went in, and then continues shouting GRAR GRAR GRAR and walking down the street. I don’t have much to say about this apart from wondering how it is that crazy people can remember to mail their rent checks and I can’t.

• Whispers, by the great Tiger! Shit! Tiger! Tiger!, off their new album, which you should go buy now
• State Control, by Poison Girls
• Graceland, a Paul Simon cover by The Tallest Man On Earth
• Revolution of One, by Thatcher On Acid
• This Love of Mine, by Jonathan Richman

Too bad I won’t be able to see it for a few years, when it finally makes it over here to BBC America.

Which is not to say that I’m taking BBC America’s current offerings for granted. Against my better judgment, I really enjoy Being Human, the premise of which sounds like the lead-in to a bad joke. (Though it’s more melodramatic than funny.) But my current favorite show is Come Dine With Me, a reality show in which four people hold competing dinner parties and score each other on a scale of 1 to 10 — and the winner gets £1000.* Every episode is set in a different town (like North Umbermanwickhamptonshire) and the contestants seem to be selected more for their personalities than their cooking abilities. Often represented: The Crazy Red Hair Lady in the Puzzling Evening Gown, The Socially Repressed Bearded Man, The Borderline Personality (sometimes also the Crazy Red Hair Lady), The Ethnic Stereotype, The Landed Gentry, The Barely Holding It Together Person, and The Mysteriously Normal Person.

In the UK, CDWM each competition is stretched out across four days. Here in the US, we get a one-hour show. The three-course meals prepared are sometimes quite impressive — and always meaty and creamy. I’m not sure whether there are rules governing the ingredients, but I’ve come to suspect that serving vegetables other than carrots or potatoes is discouraged.

Sometimes the contestants judge each other really harshly (on one episode, a contestant complained in all seriousness that the food was awful and the portions were small), and other times, they politely offer 7s or 8s when they’ve actually hated the food, often sympathetically commenting that the person really seemed to be trying.

And sometimes, there are teaching moments. In last week’s episode, a contestant who performs as a drag queen professionally was being goaded over and over again by his competition to put on a performance for everyone, and instead of getting pissed off (like I would’ve) he calmly responded by saying, “My work is my work and my home life is my home life. You can see Betty Legs Diamond any day of the week but I’d rather you see me as a person.”

I forgot where I was going with this. I really enjoy the show. And I’m looking forward to This Is England ‘86. THE END.

*Apparently there was one season of an American version of the show, but really: How many Americans would compete in a reality show where the prize is only $1000? You probably get paid more than that for being perp-walked on an episode of Cops.

[Ed note: I remember going into the amazing and (sadly erstwhile) Erl Records in Albany around the time that record came out and the owner/cashier dissuaded us from buying it because the Dwarves were misogynist and the cover was demeaning to women. I respect that.]

Because I am a helpful person.

So yesterday morning, after semi-successfully vanquishing my lousy mood at the gym, I’m heading to work. And up ahead of me on the sidewalk I see this guy talking on his cellphone. And I’m thinking, this poor guy. He has all these freckles, and red hair, and poor eyesight, and obvious problems with his adenoids, and no grasp of flattering fashion. And also, he’s wearing a Yankees cap and jersey, which leads me to suspect that he might be retarded. (I know it’s not very zen of me to keep this running inner monologue that consists mostly of stranger-judging and Death Wish-style fantasies. If I could learn meditation I’m sure the voices would quiet a bit. I have a number of meditation albums on my iPod. I only listen to them on the subways to drown out everyone around me. But I’ve learned that it’s important to remember how strangers are dressed and what they look like because as a Hysterical Feminist^®, I believe that all men are potential rapists. As an added bonus, this enables me to follow men’s fashion trends pretty closely.)

But I’m saying this because this guy is standing right in my way on the sidewalk, talking on his cellphone. And me, I’m listening to my Getting Psyched for Quietly Resigned to Work mix, which begins with “Can I Say.” And I’m looking at him because now I’m right in front of him. He’s pretty tall. And he takes his phone from his ear and starts saying something to me and because I AM A HELPFUL PERSON I pull my headphones out of my ears and I’m expecting him to ask for directions to one of the myriad neighborhood methadone clinics (because maybe he’s not retarded, just addled) and I say, “Pardon me?”

And he says, “I said how you doin’ this morning, mama?”

In terms of threat level, dickhead was more along the lines of Annoying Pinstripe Fedora Dude than Schrodinger’s Rapist. But you know what? Fuck that guy. I generally just shake my head and keep walking in situations such as these*, but yesterday? I was irritated. So I say to him, “Is this your strategy? Do you just interrupt women you don’t even know on the street to harass them?”

And he gets all exercised and hoots and says “YEAH!”

And over my shoulder I shout, “GOOD LUCK WITH THAT, DICKHEAD!” What can I say, why should I try, indeed.

But seriously: Fuck that guy, and fuck YOU if you’ve ever been that guy.

*And of course the one time I actually engaged in conversation in one of these situations it turned into some Herzog short. I was in Prospect Heights, running an errand, and this guy driving an ambulette van slowed down to talk to me. (It should be noted that the sole requirements to become an ambulette driver in NYC are that you be a) insane and b) completely unaware of driving rules and regulations.)

Him: “Hello there.”

Me, walking, pulling headphones off: “Hi.”

Him: “Did you know that you’re beautiful?”

Me: “Yes.”

Him: “Can I give you my number?”

Me: “I’m married.”

Him, cars honking behind him: “Does your husband tell you every day that you’re beautiful?”

Me, trying to get him off my case, though clearly the honking isn’t deterring his mission: “Yes.”

Him: “Because I think it’s real important that a woman gets told that she’s beautiful. Every day.”

Me, hitting the street corner and turning left: “That’s nice.”

Him: “Especially when they’re on their period.”

Me: [???]

Him, driving off: “You have a nice day, beautiful.”

Epilogue: I still can’t tell if that was serious street harassment or performance art. Naturally as soon as he was out of sight, I spun my skirt in a 360 in the middle of the sidewalk, just to check…well, you know.

Five days of sun, water, booze, eating, and card games. I brought two books with me and didn’t read a single page. I have a few breached writing deadlines. I also have the darkest tan I’ve had in years. (My genetic tests told me I have Middle Eastern ancestry and a lower-than-average risk of melanoma, so I figured what the hell.) Indulged in gluttony and sloth, which I consider two of the lesser Deadly Sins.*

There was never a bad time (well, minus the nerve-wracking traffic jam on our way to the airport yesterday), but highlights included body-surfing the scary-but-not-deadly waves, finding a conch shell just as the waves spat it out, playing frisbee WITHOUT SHAME (and falling down in the water with only some shame), eating North Carolina peaches**, walking out to the beach at midnight and discovering bioluminescent plankton everywhere, and looking over at N as we bobbed in the ocean and seeing a look of supreme relaxation and happiness that perfectly mirrored mine.***

Oh, also, watching a drunk NY cop be denied boarding at the airport last night — that was pretty great too.

fIREHOSE: Sometimes

*Although, when you find yourself sitting on the beach at 11 am drinking cheap white wine straight from the bottle, you do start to feel a little like CC Deville.
** North Carolina, I have somehow neglected you in my southern journeys, and I am filled with remorse — your peaches are merely one outstanding feature of your statehood and I will return for more.
***CHEESY BUT TRUE.