In a New York State of Mind
A lot happened last week. Unfortunately for you, I'm not ready to talk about a lot of it. Also unfortunately for you, I'm in the mood to do one of my awesome photojournalistic blogs.
My original topic was one so obscure some of you would have gone away, scratching your head and wondering if I'd finally gone off the deep end. But I'm going to save that for another day and instead tell you about some of my adventures in New York.
As most of you know, I'm visiting my sister Parisa. This is the two of us in her kitchen:
Parisa, of course, is the one on the left. She's fond of telling people she's the cute one. I just humor her.
Because I suddenly have more work than any sane person would agree to do, I've been hanging out in a lot of cafés. The café culture is different in New York than on the West Coast. People go to cafés to socialize, not work. I know—it's the strangest thing ever. A lot of cafés frown upon laptops even.
But there are a few choice ones that people use as their office-away-from-office. One of them is the B-Cup in the East Village:
One of my sister's friends saw Julia Stiles hanging out at the B-Cup. I haven't seen her yet. The cute Israeli boys who work here are especially friendly.
Speaking of working... My agent and I have had a number of meetings with industry folk. One of our meetings took place in a chocolatier. As we left, among the chocolate-covered Cheerios and Easter baskets, we spied Peeps dressed in chocolate tuxedos. When I (foolishly) let it slip that I'd never eaten a Peep, my agent decided that it had to be remedied. And documented...
My hands shook from the sugar for hours. I also realized that my agent has serious sales skills, if she can get me to eat fluffy marshmallow crap.
I was at the MOMA with a friend, looking at an exhibit of live naked people hanging on the wall (seriously) when suddenly he asked me if I'd ever had a true New York deli experience. I hadn't, and he felt compelled to fix that. So we ended up sharing a reuben at the Carnegie Deli, apparently the most famous deli in town:
Yeah, that disgusting looking pile of goop was the reuben, hence the reason we shared one. Actually, we shared less than half. I've been eating leftover pastrami for days now. I've never seen sandwiches the size of what they served there. It was obscene. Also obscene were the slices of cake. No, I didn't have one, but I may have to go back to try.
The next photo is of a friend, who came into the city to hang out one afternoon. However, you're going to have to imagine the picture because I forgot to take it. Duh. It's too bad, because we had a cupcake orgy in the park.
Stay tuned for another week, when I may or may not have pictures of the Hachette offices, the Doughnut Plant, tangoing, Culture Espresso Bar, and the firemen at the grocery store.