Biscuit: Tasty Doesn't Get You A Date To The Prom

Some days are just perfect.

Take this past Sunday, for example. I woke up early, met Luke and Lavina at the Tea Lounge, got a mocha. Walked down the stairs just as a train was pulling into the station. Spent the morning at the NYT book festival in the sunshine, in Bryant Park, where we met up with John and Heather and Neff. Bought a bazillion used books, thought about going to a reading. Didn't. Saw Will Shortz there and got a little wobbly in the knees, and was way too scared to ask for an autograph in my crossword puzzle book. Was driven to brunch, ate pasta and drank five pounds of mimosa. Drove uptown to the medieval festival, ran frantically through the park to find a place to pee before the mimosas punched out through my chest cavity. Watched a swordfight, looked at costumes, pretended briefly that I was walking the streets of Caemlyn. Went home, spent the evening with We Love Katamari, leftover omelets, and a down comforter. Absolutely fucking perfect. The kind of day that makes you jump for joy that you live in New York and not any fucking place else.

Of course, the longest-lasting impact of Sunday was the acquisition of a stack of books three feet high. The deal with the book festival was this: pay $25, get a tote bag, stuff said tote bag with as many books as you can fit. Lucky for me, I brought my dimensional portal and put that in the bag first; otherwise, I can't even begin to imagine how they would have fit.

Somehow I'm going to have to find room on a bookshelf for:
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them - Al Franken
Dave Barry's Travel Guide - Dave Barry
Light Before Day - Christopher Rice
A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
Madam Secretary: A Memoir - Madeleine Albright
Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
More Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
Firther Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
Babycakes - Armistead Maupin
Significant Others - Armistead Maupin
Sure of You - Armistead Maupin
The Emperor of Scent - Chandler Burr
Lake Wobegone Days - Garrison Keillor
Carter Beats the Devil - Glen David Gold
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
The Stories of English - David Crystal
The Plays of Oscar Wilde - Oscar Wilde
Wizard's First Rule - Terry Goodkind
A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
The World According to Garp - John Irving
A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Bad Beginning - Lemony Snicket
The Blue Sword - Robin McKinley
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
The Sirens of Titan - Kurt Vonnegut
Welcome to the Monkey House - Kurt Vonnegut
Jeeves - P.G. Wodehouse
The PIcture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat - Oliver Sacks
Mary Poppins in the Park - P.L. Travers
The Once and Future King - T.H. White
and last, but certainly not least,
Royal Cookbook: Favorite Court Recipes From The World's Royal Families.

Seriously. Some days are just perfect.

1) We Love Katamari might be the most fun video game in the history of thumbs.

2) When my feet got cold for the first time a week or so ago, I roasted a chicken and saved the bones to make stock. This is my sign that the seasons are changing. Be on the lookout for cream sauces, and also Thanksgiving menu planning.

3) I fucking adore bagpipes. I've been listening to bagpipe music all day. I may have finally found something to roust Avril Lavigne from her spot in my daily rotation.

4) I'm going to get paid to write a book about the clap. Yes. THAT clap.

5) I just bought a ticket back to Colorado for Christmas. Now, unfortunately, I have no reason to avoid my high school reunion being held the next week. What on earth am I going to wear?

6) Secret confession: I honestly don't understand why people go so crazy over Magnolia cupcakes. I think they're just dreadful.

I SMELL SO BAD OH MY GOD MY ROOMMATE AND I JUST CLEANED OUT OUR TRASHCANS I CANNOT IMAGINE A MORE HELLISH TASK OH MY GOD. I have scoured my hands and they still smell like stewing-in-tweo-week-old-rain mudge and muck and I could go jump off of a fucking bridge right now this is the most repulsive I have ever felt in my entire life for the love of sweet merciful jesus please let her be done with her shower soon so I can attack myself with a scouring pad fucking jumping jesus FUCK this is horrible. A big shower of rainwater poured itself into my shoe and all over my feet and I could die from this, I could honestly catch a horrible disease and die oh my FUCKING GOD.

Be reassured: I have not died of a horrible debilitating disease. I took a marvelous shower, sloughed off the stench, went to sleep, and had an incredible extended dream in which I was ditching all of my high school classes with Shiv, who was wearing a gorgeous cornflower-blue slip dress and running for student body president. For some reason, Mike was also ditching classes to bake about 30 pizzas in my oven for the Christian Youth Group he was mentoring. It was weird.

Why have none of my friends tied me down and forced me to watch Love Actually? If any of them actually liked me at all, I would have cried like a big fat stupid over this movie like, what, a year ago? Good lord, I just checked IMDB and it came out just shy of TWO years ago, which seems utterly incomprehensible to me, in that I can still remember the commercials quite clearly.

Instead, however, of crying like a big fat stupid TWO YEARS AGO, I cried like a big fat stupid just last night, courtesy of the miracle that is Netflix. To anyone that knows me, it likely comes as little-to-no-surprise that I got all weepy over adorable marriage proposals, precocious children, English accents, and a stirring inspirational speech intended to rouse British pride, complete with stirring inspirational music. Amazingly, though, my roommate sat on the Klaus and cried like a big fat stupid right along with me, which was actually a very nice surprise indeed.

It probably helped that we were taking swigs of Jameson's straight from the bottle, though.

Even if you ignore the movie, I've been in a very Englishy state of mind recently. Since I finished Knife of Dreams last week, I've been flipping back and forth between Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves. The former I can't help but read in half a dreamy trance, and the latter sounds in my head as if I were being read to by Stephen Fry, who's doing all the voices. And abbreviating words enough to make even Krissa blush.

Everyone who lives in New York City has those days where he or she wonders why in unholy fuck they would submit themselves to the rigors of living here. If you lived in a normal city, you could drive to a mall, you could keep an umbrella in the car at all times instead of checking weather.com every morning to see if you need one, you wouldn't have to get poked in the eyeball with someone else's umbrella as you try to get to your office, your sunlight isn't blocked by 50-story buildings, checks wouldn't take seven business days to clear, a fire composed of burning sludge and rats on the subway tracks doesn't mean you get to work an hour and a half late, you could have a house and a backyard, and it wouldn't take half of your income to pay your rent. You think about these things, and you scowl at passersby and earn your reputation as an unpleasant New Yorker. You stomp up the stairs to your walkup apartment carrying fifty pounds of groceries that you've carried all the way from the store fifteen blocks away, and you dream of an easier life. A simpler life.

The beauty of living in the city is that it always finds a way to make you remember why it's worth it. Shaking hands with a cab driver at 3 in the morning after a discussion of the hookers in Hamburg. Reading the paper over someone's shoulder on the train. A neighborhood deli where they always know what you want in the morning. Never having to worry about getting a DUI. Thursday night spent at a fashion show for superheroes modeled by the correspondents from The Daily Show, followed by a superb dinner of wine and duck and espresso with fantastic new friends. Friday night sitting on the floor of a roller rink cheering for the championship match of an all-girl's roller derby team. Drop-off laundry. The perpetual hope of finding the perfect apartment someday. With no broker's fee. Knowing that at any time of the day or night, you can find somewhere to be or somewhere to go that will make a really fantastic fucking story.

That's why we've moved here. Millions of people come to New York to join in a shared experience. The only thing I can compare it to is what it's like to be gay; every gay person I know has a coming out story. No matter how different the guys in a random bar are, there's always that through-line. You can always talk to them about what happened when you came out to your friends, or your parents. Straight people might know what you've been through on some level, but they'll never really get what it feels like. It's the same way with living in the city. Everyone has a story about moving here: what brought them, how long they've been here, what they love to do, what they want to do, where the best bar is for a Friday night that nobody else knows about, what the best train is to get somewhere. If you live here, you know what I mean. You always feel like you're part of a bigger story. It's a collective adventure, a shared vocabulary, and no matter how sad you are or how broke you are or how pissed off you are, there's always someone who'll understand, and probably has an anecdote to do you one better.

It's fucking rough to live in New York City. But she always finds a way to remind you why you love her, and why you'll never leave.