Downton

As previously mentioned, I am super into Downton Abbey, and am simultaneously enchanted and puzzled by how much drama they can wring out whether or not Gwen will get a job as a secretary.

Also by the clever trick of turning us all against Homely Edith (left).  Who knew I'd be rooting for Beauteous Mary (center)?  (although let's be honest, Progressive Sybil (right) is obviously the best).

AHHHHHHHHHH NEED SEASON TWO WHY DO THE BRITISH GET EVERYTHINGGGGGGGGGG3245(*&&$@#!*

Oh, NY Post

"Baby boy for Huma and louse."  Never change, Post.  Never change.

What Should I Be Watching?

Occasionally people ask me what TV they should be watching (I am a professional, after all).  So, some suggestions with what to do with that swath of time between Christmas and New Year's, because you better not be at the mall returning things on the 26th.  Wait until January like a normal person!

Set Your DVR/Catch up on repeats
The following are currently on the air and worth checking out.  Sadly, it's a small list: this year's crop of new shows was underwhelming.

Revenge
An uber-campy, over-the-top revenge story so thoroughly unrealistic that you start to question whether it even takes place on Earth.  Which is why it is AWESOME.  Great one to dissect with a group.  Like, when did Emily get a sensei?  Aren't they supposed to be peaceful?

Parks and Recreation
In my opinion, this is currently the best comedy on television.  If Ron Swanson doesn't make you laugh, you're probably European.

The Good Wife
Do you need a satisfying crime procedural with less child rape than SVU?  Do you like KILLER guest stars hamming it up every week?  Are you human?  Do you have a soul?  Are you (probably) female?  This show is for you.

Currently Streaming
These are the shows you should be streaming via Netflix , cursing yourself as you immediately watch three hours in a row because you can't say no to your own request for "just one more."

Breaking Bad
First three seasons available legally.  Season four available... elsewhere.  I have so much to say about Breaking Bad that it needs its own post, but suffice to say that the hype is accurate.  This is up there with The Sopranos in terms of a great, epic show.

Party Down
The downfall of this particular show was that its cast was too good: they all left for networks that pay better and the show got cancelled.  But enjoy this brief, shining moment of comedy perfection and join the Party Down crew as they cater a variety of events from hell.  If you have ever worked in service or the arts you will find it particularly biting.

Friday Night Lights
Sorry to get all "best show everrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!" on you, but it really is so perfect.  For everyone.  Settle in with a hankie and prepare to start telling everyone that clear eyes, full hearts can't lose, and steel yourself for the realization that you and your spouse will never be Coach and Tami Taylor.

Downton Abbey
I started this one last night, watched half of season one in a sitting, and take back all the times I referred to it as "DownTOWN Abbey" - this show is richly satisfying.  A friend currently has black market season two screeners and I am determined to make them mine.  My favorite line so far is when the Dowager Countess asks what a "weekend" is.

It's Only Tuesday?

We have been very busy and I am wiped out.  Maybe you are too?  If so:

Jackie's Packie

Paul and Lucia continue on their slow crawl to internet domination.

Hm

Does anyone else see the irony in a line of Hunger Games-branded nail polishes?  Ie beauty products inspired by a book that spends several chapters excoriating the vanity of the villains as a symbol of their shallowness, excess, and sponsorship of youth-on-youth murder as a form of entertainment?

Although that gold one does look pretty sweet.  I hope they use it on Cinna.

A Very Nice Wedding

Soooooo... Dan and I kind of figured we were in for a nice wedding after receiving the eight-piece engraved invitation and finding a fifteen-pound Christmas sleigh-style welcome basket in our hotel room.

This was compounded when we walked into the church for a pre-ceremony "Christmas concert" and saw that a full orchestra had been brought in for the occasion.

The reception was at the bride's childhood home.  After walking down the driveway, past Rockefeller-center style decorations and costumed carolers, we entered the gorgeous foyer:

-featuring a double staircase with violinists, of course!  The cocktail hour involved walking from room to room, each decorated with a different Christmas theme.  For instance:

Santa's sleigh gliding into the moonlight!

Please note that the above two pictures were taken indoors.  They created a FOREST INSIDE THEIR HOUSE.  It felt like a jolly holiday-themed Sleep No More, or Epcot in December.  An immersive Christmas cocktail hour theatrical experience?  Yes please.

Once we had exhausted the five bars and open crab claws, a bagpiper summoned the revelers to a massive tented structure in the backyard.  It was only then that we realized the entire party thus far had technically been in the basement.

I can't over-emphasize how nice this tent was.  It had a bar/lounge and dessert wing.  It was CARPETED.  Guests blinked at the decor, threw their heads back, and howled at their own good fortune.

Christmas, Christmas everywhere.  

And in the ultimate class move, a 30th birthday cake for Dan.

Wasn't it so nice of them to throw this whole party for Dan's special day?  Thanks guys!  And Mazel Tov.

DK30

Dan and I had a great weekend in Chicago.  He liked the various electronics I got him for his birthday (there's also an epic sushi dinner waiting tomorrow), and then we attended an out-of-control extravagant wedding.  I'll post some pictures later.

But MEANWHILE, over in Las Vegas, Dennis was having his own legendary 30th birthday bash.  For example:

One of the many things I love about Dennis is that he just goes for it.  I mean, the reason we're friends is that he picked up the phone six years ago and invited me over for Chinese food and gay dancing after meeting me once for like 10 minutes.  He didn't care that I might end up being lame, or that we might not hit it off one-on-one.  He started his own business to accommodate the lifestyle he wanted, rather than the more traditional path (mine, for instance) of shaping your life to fit your work.  It's pretty cool.  Anyway, I've heard him say over the years that he's always wanted to walk into a party and start chucking dollar bills around.  So now, years later, now that's he able to do something insane like literally throw eight hundred dollars away - he made his dream come true!  Congrats DK!

Wetfoodwetfoodwetfoodwetfood

Our cats' thought process used to go:

Sleep sleep sleep hair tie hair tie hair tie sleep hair tie soft surface naptime eattime cuddletime soft surface warm lap sleep hair tie.

Carla and Bianca, gamboling about the window seat in simpler times.

Then we introduced C&B to wet food, and they immediately went all Jesse Pinkman's Junkie Girlfriend on us.

WET FOOD.  WET FOOD.  WET FOOD.  hair tie? no, wet food. wet food.  GET UP, FUCKER, AND FEED ME SOME FUCKING WET FOOD.  YOU CAN SLEEP WHEN YOU'RE DEAD.

Wet food has turned our snuggleballs into jittery little assholes.  It starts about ten minutes before our alarm goes off in the morning: sensing that we will soon be awake and capable of filling their bowls with stinky chunks of processed meat scrap, Carla and Bianca begin their assault, first crawling on top of me and then all over Dan, kneading their little paws into my bladder and resting their full weight on various pressure points.  When one of us eventually gets up and staggers to the bathroom, they sprint ahead, their little bellies flapping side to side, and then stand by their bowls, glaring.  Bianca inevitably shoves Carla to the side as Dan (it's usually Dan.  Thanks, hubby!) spoons a can of slop into their bowls.  Carla then sits just outside the bathroom, looking longingly at the wet food until Bianca is done.

Whenever we run out of the wet food cans and force a temporary switch to dry kibble, I see them staring at our television, trying to figure out how best to steal and sell it for a fix.

Who am I kidding.  This crap entertains the bejesus out of me.  Wet food 4evr!

Scandals of Classic Hollywood

The Hairpin does a great series called "Scandals of Classic Hollywood," written by a woman with an actual doctorate in celebrity gossip (really!  Ok fine: Media Studies).  I found her explication of Clark Gable particularly illuminating.  Apparently after Gable, ever the ladies' man, knocked up his publicly virtuous Catholic co-star Loretta Young, she "pulled what might be the greatest Hollywood non-publicity stunt of all time: 

1) She hides the pregnancy.
2) When she begins to show, she flees to England “on vacation.”
3) When people start asking where the hell she is, she says that she’s dealing with a “condition from childhood.”
4) She somehow smuggles herself back to her mom’s house in Venice, California, where she gives birth. I’m picturing nuns in gray, with lots of whispering and pulling of the drapes.
5) She sends the baby to an orphanage, trims herself down, and goes back to work.
6) 19 months later, she tells Louella Parsons that she plans to adopt “two babies” and embrace the life of a single mother.
7) She picks up her daughter at the orphanage, then tells the press “Oops! Second baby got reclaimed, Imma just adopt this one baby WHO LOOKS SO MUCH LIKE MEEE!!!!” ...
8) She refuses to tell her daughter the identity of her real parents, even when the daughter’s HUGE CLARK GABLE EARS betray her true identity to all of the world." 

Their daughter's obituary was in the Times today, and along with a collection of fairly damning quotes from the daughter about her asshole parents (she had her ears surgically altered at age 7 to de-Gable her appearance; her mother refused to publicly acknowledge her parentage until 2000), it includes a picture.

(Reference photo of dad):

Why, hello, female Clark Gable!  That must have been a fun high school experience.

I think sometimes it's important to remember that people in the thirties and forties could be just as selfish and awful as they are today.  It's just that there was no TMZ to catch it.

Sigh

Another member of the Worst American Family Ever just nails it in the wedding dress department.  Sigh.

The Kim Kardashian headpiece though?  And changing her name to Lauren Bush-Lauren?  Not so much.  

It's Here! It's Here!

This trailer looks great.  I am so excited for the movie.  It honestly gave me chills, and it didn't even show any of the Games itself!  Eeeeeeeeeeee!

AC

We went to Atlantic City for Willis's 30th birthday.  Pictured: Willis and Dennis with their hundred-dollar bets by the roulette table.

It didn't go well.

Kill Me

Guess who got selected?

Or rather, guess which complete fucking dum-dum didn't bring a doctor's note to jury selection and instead made a DISASTROUS roll of the dice thinking they'd never get picked?

See you in two weeks.

Foodz

We joined Mellis for a tasting with their potential wedding caterer on the North Fork over the weekend.  I think they should totally hire him, because BLTs in tomato cups and mini lobster rolls are really good:

Then we drove around charming beachy/vineyard-y Long Island, checked out their wedding venue (it's beauteous!) and stopped by a giant duck.

Hot Tip

Go buy the Momofuku Milk Bar Cookbook.  Like, today.

Chocolate chip layer cake.  Liquid cheesecake filling.  Best cake I've ever made.  Do it!

Better Call Saul

Dan and I have been on Breaking Bad binge, and Saul Goodman is new favorite television character.  That is all.

Mostly Yummy

I've been trying to eat healthfully lately.  I think it all started with the epic three-day drink-and-eat-a-thon that was Hurricane Irene, which left me with a vague sense of having caved in several smaller arteries and neural pathways that I will want to access in the future.

(pictured with my fellow degenerates at the Ace Hotel bar.  What?  It was open and they allow dogs; how could we not).

So part of this "push to live longer" is eating a nice health-reviving lunch every day.  Sometimes I bring my lunch, but sometimes I forget, or Dan eats all the leftovers.  Enter Souen.

Souen is a macrobiotic restaurant near my office that has all these tasty organic dishes guaranteed to make you feel virtuous as shit.  I go probably once a week.  Things are left as whole/simple as possible and the flavors are deliberately mild: nothing is going to knock your socks off, because there isn't a lot of salt, but I like it.  Plus the lunch deals are relatively reasonable, by which I mean a price that I'm not going to write down here because it will sound ridiculous to anyone who doesn't work in the West Village, aka Manhattan's most expensive neighborhood.  The super hippy-dippy macro plate, which includes steamed greens and seaweed in addition to what you see above, usually lasts me two days, since it's also full of brown rice and beans and other things that leave you un-hungry for days.

Plus the place inspired me to develop a killer tahini salad dressing, so you should come by sometime and try it.  I'm about to pour it all over some kabocha squash and kale.

PEACE OUT!  Time to go cancel out that hijiki seaweed salad with a glass of wine.  It's a start.

Hehe

The idea that I could do something giving and seemingly selfless and still be the center of attention seemed magical.

-Marc Maron on cooking

So true.

I Need a Hobby

Or maybe I should say, a more productive hobby.

Hm

Netflix might want to keep working on that "Suggestions for You" feature.

Jumanji Live

This is heartbreaking.  I sincerely hope it spurs Ohio to enact bans on owning exotic animals.  Apparently you need a permit for bears, but if you want a lion, whatever, it's cool.  A LION.  Jesus Christ, whatever happened to just getting a dog?

Countdown

Ok fine.  I'll watch Beyoncé's Countdown video.  Finally.





(Thank you, Beyoncé, for looking awesome in sixties gear while having legs and an ass and a BABY INSIDE YOU it gives me hope for the future.  I am totally ok with you being famous).

News You Can Use

Awesome Q&A on Reddit recently with an NYC subway conductor.  Finally, a definitive answer to "what should I do if I fall into the tracks?"  Answer: do NOT copy the subway hero and lie down.  RUN.

Serious question: If, god forbid, I fall onto the tracks or someone I am willing to risk my life for falls into the tracks and is knocked out - and a train is coming (lets say 30sec away) - what should I do? Are those pits between the rails by the platforms made for people to hide in in a worst case scenario?

Aw

I was looking through some Peru pics that Scott put on Flickr (I really need to make a central album of all our pictures) and came across this one of me and Dan getting on the train to Aguas Calientes, the super-crappy tourist town at the base of (jaw-dropping, ridiculously awesome) Machu Picchu:

The train ride was SPECTACULAR.  However, as you can see, Dan was unable to enjoy most of it as he was about to die of My Body Hates Peru disease.  Aw.  My poor hubby.  He got better for the big Machu Picchu visit though!

Feminist Ryan Gosling

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

Sometimes it's depressing that the Internet understands me so perfectly.

The Concerns of Mindy Kaling

Mindy Kaling launched her new blog!  Since I've mentioned her old blog on here somewhere between 5 and 1200 times, you can imagine my excitement.

So...

...today I turn thirty.  DIRTY THIRTY.  The big 3-O.  Old enough to run for the US Senate (still five years short for the presidency).  You get the idea.

I might have had mild panics about it over the past few weeks, but overall... it's not a big deal.  It's kind of weird how I don't feel all that much older than twenty, even though when I was actually twenty a thirty-year-old seemed ancient.  Actually I feel way older than twenty.  I just don't feel old, is what I'm saying.  Maybe I don't feel like a twenty-year-old's perception of thirty.  That's it.

Anyway, although twenty-year-old me would have preferred I be currently at work on my second PEN/Faulkner Award-winning novel (my college goals were weirdly specific), I feel like I'm in a pretty good place.  Wonderful husband, great friends, family I love, nice place to live, job I enjoy, and two cuddly, incredibly stupid cats... it's not a bad deal.

Here's a fun list of famous people who, at 30, were in completely the wrong career.  Sylvester Stallone: deli counter attendant.

Oops

Smash invited me to see Fuerzabruta last week and oh, I am so glad I went.

From its official website: "Fuerzabruta doesn't have a purpose.  It is."

Oh Pioneer Woman

I'm not a huge fan of the giant personal megablogs out there (by which I mean random, individual blogs like mine, except with better web design, plenty-o-ads, and over twelve readers) - it's not that I don't like the authors, or that I think they shouldn't make money off their sites, but they tend to focus on their full time job, which is... blogging (hi, Dooce).  But I'll skim them once in a while, which is how I stumbled on this picture of a kitten lying on top of a puppy on The Pioneer Woman:

Like, I'm not supposed to repost this?  Point Pioneer Woman.  Someone knows how to broaden her audience.

The Good Wife: Season 3

Season three premiered and it's great.  PHEW.

The only way for this series to end satisfyingly is if Peter goes to jail again.  And gets shivved.

Goop Goes to the Emmys!

Says Gwyneth of this photo, taken at a slightly awkward angle:

I live for Tina Fey and I love Kenneth from 30 Rock! Wait ... why does my arm look like that and since when do I have 9 chins?

Is this is to show us that Gwyneth has the same "Ahhhhh I look horrible!" reaction to pictures of herself that we do?  A pretend cry for help for her fictional body dysmorphic disorder?  Is a pre-emptive strike at us for realizing that Tina Fey looks awesome in this picture?

In any case, I think this is the last "scrapbook" edition of GOOP where GP snaps away with her BlackBerry rather than bringing along dear friend Mario Testino.

Birthdays and Wine

Melanie's birthday was last week, so she had a dinner at Antibes in the East Village.  It was really fun - the food was good, it was a big fun crowd, and we more or less took over the restaurant.  Mel even made place cards!

Before the dinner, we decided *not* to do the open bar option, which was an additional twenty bucks or so.  "We'd have to have like five drinks each to make it worth it," someone said, "and it's Tuesday."

Um... know your audience, guys.

Noisy Kittens Waiting For Dinner

I watch this more often than I should admit.

Your Friends Are Second

It was a good weekend to be my friend, particularly if your name ends in "ie."

First, Brie had a giant, above-the-fold front page travel article in the Times about traveling the outlaw road of Patagonia, also featuring her photographs.  What?!  That's pretty exciting.

And then if that weren't enough, Hallie went and WON AN EMMY.

Seriously, I know the coolest girls.  The smartest, loveliest, funniest, best-at-writing ladies in all the land!

Food and Fashion

I've been reading this blog by makeup artist Annamarie Tendler for a few years now.  I found it because her then-boyfriend posted on Mindy Kaling's old blog, which led me to his blog, which led me to her blog, and then they broke up and she got a new boyfriend and I realized like 6 months ago that her new boyfriend used to date one of my friends.  Whoops!  But what can you do, it's still highly readable and full of fun makeup tips; plus, she is very into cats.

AT's old boyfriend founded CollegeHumor and her current boyfriend writes for Saturday Night Live.  This means that she has a lot of cool and famous friends, and one of those friends, Aziz Ansari, did a feature with her called Food & Fashion.  Here's what I learned:

• I need to go to Torrisi.  I've been hearing about it consistently for the past few months and I can just feel a three-star review from the Times around the corner, waiting to dump hordes and hordes of three-star-seeking Times readers into the already long lines, a la Roberta's.
• Aziz Ansari *could* be my best friend.  He said so!  Check out the quote, re: Torrisi's chicken parm: "Trust me, this is THE must eat sandwich of 2011. Also, if you are into phrases like “THE must eat sandwich of 2011,” we can be best friends."  I say things like that all the time.  Hell, I went on a sandwich crawl last year.  Aziz, we're doing another one!  You should come!
• I like my job and all, but there's definitely something to be said for working on your own time, giving you the opportunity to hang out at Roberta's with your arty friends in the middle of the day because you're technically "working on a project."  Also, Ms. Tendler is good at makeup.

Good for you, guys!  Bring on more blog posts about food and very tangentially about fashion!

Photo by Noah Kalina