Hey Dere

I think they're trying to make "Hey dere" a new catchphrase (they = SNL peeps). Only if you say it a lot, it just sounds like "Hader," one of the cast members, and then you look like an obsessed fan and everyone wonders who brought that chick to the afterparty.

Ummmmm I got home at 6:15 this morning; I went to a party with Cameron Diaz; I got a private Kanye West performance; I had so much fun.

Good Week

First, I got Conanized, which is sweet.

Second, Biz picked her college, which is also sweet. I am tempted to write about the nasty memories it dredges up from my own senior year and how admissions workers are evil, evil liars, but I will just say Go Sis instead.

Third, SNL premieres tomorrow, and I just might be there.

Fourth, I saw Bjork perform yesterday and Bruce Springsteen this morning.

Fifth, I'm seeing the RSC production of The Seagull tonight.

And sixth... only two days to fairytale eggplant.

Yesssssssss.

Amusing E-mails That Get Bandied About By The Underpaid

Subject: Weekends off = eviction
On 9/20/07, J----- ----- <redacted@gmail.com > wrote:
Does anybody want to sacrifice his or her weekend shift to me, preferably working 7+ hours? I will assume a non-reply to mean you simply want me to be homeless...which is rude.

Thanks,

J----

Subject: Re: Weekends off = eviction
On 9/20/07, M------ ------ <redacted@gmail.com> wrote:
Fear not J-----! The long arm of the law to the rescue! As long as you have been living there for 30 days you have squatters rights! Here's how to f@*k the system:

In New York City, if the landlord sues you for eviction, a Housing Court judge will let you live there in perpetuity, for free. Or at least a really, really, long time.

Of course, you don't ask to live there for free. Here's the script you should follow if you don't mind being a scumbag and destroying your credit. A fabulous plan if you live in another country and want to vacation in NYC for cheap.

Step 1 -- Stop paying the landlord. The landlord will probably figure out within 30-60 days that you're not planning to pay them rent. Lets be conservative and say 1 month. The landlord will file eviction proceedings. He cannot throw you out, threaten you, or change your locks. If he does any of these things you may have him arrested.

Step 2 -- When the landlord finally orders you to evict, he must make the eviction date be exactly 30 days after the last payment-missed due date. This means that if your rent is due July 1st, and the landlord waits until August 1st to decide to evict you, the earliest he can order you evicted is September 1st. Add one more month.

Step 3 -- You haven't left by September 1st. The landlord must now have a court date scheduled. It can take upwards of one month before your case will be heard in court. Figure it'll be on October 4th.

Step 4 -- When you appear in court and the judge asks you why you haven't paid, tell the judge that you lost your job/have become sick and you're trying so hard to find a new one. The more pathetic you sound the better. Dress nicely but look like it was a struggle. Developing a drinking habit is a good start. The judge will grant you between 1-3 months. Bear in mind that you have not paid the landlord a penny in almost 3 months now while he has property taxes, a mortgage, and any other utilities that were included in your rent to pay.

Step 5 -- 1-3 months has come and gone. The judge will ask you again why you've not left. Come up with a few good excuses ("had a job for a bit but lost it, job market so tough, etc"). The judge will gleefully grant you another month or three, and why not? It's a no brainer, they can evict what could possibly be an innocent tenant who has run into bad luck, or they probably are scumbags as they would appear to be. Why lose sleep debating it in your mind? Stick it to the landlord, they deserve it anyway right?

Step 6 -- Repeat ad naseum. The judge has absolutely no motivation to relieve the landlord's burden, and if the judge has a shred of sympathy for you, he's effectively issuing his generosity against the landlord's checkbook. You can probably drag this out about a year or two. You can probably go for much longer if you have kids.

Step 7 -- If the case is starting to go sour and you detect that the judge has really had it and will have you evicted, your next step is to bring in a roommate. See, when the landlord sues for eviction, they name you directly, not the property. New York City has what's known as "squatter's rights ". If you live in a residence for more than 30 days, it is automatically considered your living space and the landlord must sue to evict you. Since the landlord has not sued your roommate, he has to start over with them. The landlord may be able to amend the case, but maybe not. Imagine starting over from day one. In any event, get a good excuse ready ("my brother has lost his job too and has nowhere to go! I HAD to help him!"). Even if the person on the lease is evicted, they can most likely be invited back by the now squatting resident. If anything this complicates the case enormously, and the judge is probably going to be cautious and give the benefit of the doubt. At least for another month or two.

Step 8 -- Oh, you can put an automatic halt to any eviction by paying all of the rent you've owed to date at probably any step of the way. The landlord may not refuse payment. The case is thrown out entirely.


Subject: Re: Re: Weekends off = eviction
On 9/20/07, J----- ----- <redacted@gmail.com > wrote:
Man, I really wish you would have sent this prior to me slitting my wrists. I wonder....will I dream...............

Back From ACL!

ACL, you ask? More than an easily torn knee ligament. Much, much more. Details to come.

For now: breakfast tacos.

Weekend Roundup

I had TWO DAYS OFF IN A ROW this past weekend, which is a rarity. Last time that happened, Dan and I grabbed my parent's car and went to Newport. One time my work friend and I fantasized about three consecutive days.

"Oh man," he said. "I'd go on a cruise."

It's a perspective thing.

Anyway, this past weekend was more chill. I had a sneezy head cold and woozily left my phone in a cab, so Saturday was spent retrieving it and watching the third Bourne, rather than the original plan of Bronx Zoo.

Have you seen the third Bourne? Have you seen Live Free Or Die Hard?


Because I could see liking Bourne if you have never seen LFODH and are therefore unversed in the experience of a top-tier premium action movie and also-- true joy. I, however, have known the phenomenon that is Die Hardest and Jason Bourne, you are no John McClane.

Also fantastic and sadly underseen: Stardust.

You guys, ignore the terrible poster and godawful marketing campaign. This movie is awesome. Robert DeNiro in a tutu is just the beginning.


Also, not so fantastic and seen about a thousand times (realistically 14, which is still too many) since coming to work (damn you, MSNBC in background):




Oy.

Darth Federer

David Foster Wallace says everyone has their Federer moment. His:

It's the finals of the 2005 U.S. Open, Federer serving to Andre Agassi early in the fourth set. There's a medium-long exchange of groundstrokes, one with the distinctive butterfly shape of today's power-baseline game, Federer and Agassi yanking each other from side to side, each trying to set up the baseline winner...until suddenly Agassi hits a hard heavy cross-court backhand that pulls Federer way out wide to his ad (=left) side, and Federer gets to it but slices the stretch backhand short, a couple feet past the service line, which of course is the sort of thing Agassi dines out on, and as Federer's scrambling to reverse and get back to center, Agassi's moving in to take the short ball on the rise, and he smacks it hard right back into the same ad corner, trying to wrong-foot Federer, which in fact he does -- Federer's still near the corner but running toward the centerline, and the ball's heading to a point behind him now, where he just was, and there's no time to turn his body around, and Agassi's following the shot in to the net at an angle from the backhand side...and what Federer now does is somehow instantly reverse thrust and sort of skip backward three or four steps, impossibly fast, to hit a forehand out of his backhand corner, all his weight moving backward, and the forehand is a topspin screamer down the line past Agassi at net, who lunges for it but the ball's past him, and it flies straight down the sideline and lands exactly in the deuce corner of Agassi's side, a winner -- Federer's still dancing backward as it lands. And there's that familiar little second of shocked silence from the New York crowd before it erupts, and [MB note: did you read all that? I'm sorry. It gets better] John McEnroe with his color man's headset on TV says (mostly to himself, it sounds like), ''How do you hit a winner from that position?'' And he's right: given Agassi's position and world-class quickness, Federer had to send that ball down a two-inch pipe of space in order to pass him, which he did, moving backwards, with no setup time and none of his weight behind the shot. It was impossible. It was like something out of ''The Matrix.'' I don't know what-all sounds were involved, but my spouse says she hurried in and there was popcorn all over the couch and I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs.

Anyway, that's one example of a Federer Moment, and that was merely on TV -- and the truth is that TV tennis is to live tennis pretty much as video porn is to the felt reality of human love.


Ugh he's wordy.* Anyway, I follow tennis only vaguely, but Dan's roommate is somewhat obsessed, so I've been watching more Open than usual. I wasn't particularly familiar with Federer beforehand; I knew simply that he's the best, except on clay, that he is from Switzerland, and that he plays second fiddle to Thierry Henry (?) in a very unintentionally silly Gillette campaign that must also run in Europe:





I didn't know that he comes off as kind of a hoity. And I didn't know that he is an infuriatingly perfect tennis machine.

"Wait, watch," said Ameet, as we watched a pre-game interview before Federer played Diaz (was it Diaz? Something like that), in which Federer explained in mild tones that it would be nice to have a break from playing good players, and then we rewound further to watch Diaz's interview, about which Ameet postulated that Diaz would weakly protest that he wasn't going to lose as badly as everyone was expecting, and that's exactly what happened.

But that wasn't really a moment. An intro, maybe. Then last night Federer played Roddick and you could totally tell that Roddick was playing a nasty, nasty game and Federer won anyway. Without visibly sweating. And at one point Roddick served up a ball at 140 mph and Federer kind of stuck his racket out and drove it into the corner. And that was my first Federer Moment. In a game of which he said, "I don't know if it was my best match or not. It's irrelevant, I think."





*I was thinking about giving Infinite Jest another go, though, two bookmarks and all. I'm not typing this with much enthusiasm. Thoughts?

Schmirk

You know how sometimes you really, really, really don't want to be at work, and you're fantasizing about having protective uncles in the Mob who you can hang above your supervisor's head unless s/he apologizes for yelling at you in a really humiliating way even though you were the one who technically screwed up but like Jesus, come on, that wasn't necessary and now your morale's all low and will likely affect your job performance and whose fault is that? That's what's happening right now.



Should it be "whom" you can hang? I don't know.

Let's Build Some Bridges

Mommy and Scotty came to the city Sunday to celebrate my having two days off in a row (okay not really), walk across the Brooklyn Bridge (really), and drown me in alcohol following a disastrous week at work (okay, one Bloody Mary).

Post 600

I don't wish to detract from Dennis's blogging talents. He put together a lovely and evocative post on our sail about Manhattan.

He also used some Photoshop.




(How you know it's Photoshop: um... I'm not sure, actually. It looks pretty real. You just have to know that if I needed to puke I would run away from my boyfriend, rather than request that he hold my hair).

So whose vomit was it originally? The world will never know.