Gotta Get Down on Friday: Fashion’s Night Out 2011

September 9, 2011 5 Comments

As previously mentioned, I’ve being doing the whole Fashion’s Night Out thing since its inception. In the past I’ve met a few models (um, yeah I “follow” models the way some people follow celebrities. just thought I’d toss that out there). Last year I met Liu Wen and Constance Jablonski (the latter I’m sort of unfamiliar with actually). The year before I met Karlie Kloss, Karolina Kurkova, Daria Werbowy, and Caroline Trentini…and watched Coco Rocha do a jig at DKNY. In terms of meeting/seeing people, I definitely had the most fun the first year because I’m actually a fan of both KK’s and Daria. So you know, that was cool. But I really enjoyed hanging out with my friend Stephanie this year even though our excursions mostly involved eating food and drinking. A brief rundown of what we did:

Bookmarc All right, so this was the biggie for me. Fashion photographer David Armstrong was signing copies of his new book 615 Jefferson Avenue, so I got a copy of that and got a free Marc Jacobs tote with my purchase (the tote has a clown on it… I don’t really understand why)

Bloomingdale’s There were loads of events going on at Bloomingdale’s but the highlight for me (and Steph) was the shrimp hors d’œuvre.

Dooney & Bourke This place was absolutely empty. Because it’s just off the avenue, I suppose a lot of people didn’t realize anything was going on. There was free chocolate and cider.

DKNY We were in and out. Very crowded. Chocolate wasn’t being handed out freely so you know, we bounced.

OC Concept Store I still have absolutely no idea what this place is on about. Very odd store. They had an Oktoberfest theme going on. *shrugs* Downstairs there were martinis and more chocolate. Steph grabbed 2 chocolates for each of us but then a girl standing there grabbed more for us, telling us we definitely needed more than that. Her friend (?) then opened up her bag and showed us that she had stocked up XD

Hermès Failed attempt. The store was closed even though they were supposed to be giving out cocktails.

Longchamp Got perved on by a perv. OK, exaggeration. But there was a guy there who seemed especially interested in my friend. Might have been interested in me as well but I did the whole I REFUSE TO LOOK AT YOU OR ACKNOWLEDGE YOUR EXISTENCE thing that I do when creepers start creepin’

Alice & Olivia They had a carnival theme going and were serving popcorn and cotton candy. YUM.

Lanvin I don’t actually know what was going on here as we got there fairly late. BUT! they had the comfiest chairs on the 3rd floor. If I could’ve taken the chairs home with me I totally would have.

Dolce & Gabbana My friend wanted to get a free t-shirt but I don’t know what happened. I don’t even know if there were actual free t-shirts quite frankly. It was crowded as all hell on the 2nd floor as well. Booze was had by Steph.

Louis Vuitton Why were we in there again? Recollection fail. I swear I didn’t drink though!

Henri Bendel Our last stop. Saw the cutest little dog and there was a great deal of food, from Melt Bakery, Millie Peartree Cupcakes (I swear those cupcakes had diamonds on them), and Mimi & Coco New York. All part of the Hester Street Fair, which I’d never heard of until today but now I want to go to. My mom likes street fairs, and this one seems to actually be famous and have different foods from your typical run of the mill street fair.

All in all, I had a lot of fun, without doing anything significant. SUCCESS!

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Gotta Get Down on Friday: #3000

July 15, 2011 Leave a Comment

Baseball posts two weeks in a row? What fresh hell is this?! I know, I know, but I figured, well, I should update you all on the games last week right? RIGHT? OK, whatever. Last Friday, I didn’t go into a whole lot of detail about Hit #3000 because I was more interested in telling you how I became a Yankee fan. Friday’s post was written before I actually had tickets in my hand. My friend and I waited until 4PM Friday to purchase tickets off StubHub because the prices were dropping steadily (despite outside predictions that the prices would skyrocket). I had already purchased two tickets for Saturday’s game, as insurance. Those tickets were meant to be backup.

HOW BROMANTIC

As it turns out, thank GOD I bought them because Friday’s game was rained out (how RUDE!), sending a wave of panic through my friend and me. Neither of us exactly trusted the old captain to get even 2 hits in one game. It just seemed like too much to hope for. In my head, I was already trying to figure out if I’d be willing to get Sunday tickets and unbeknownst to me my friend was doing the same. It didn’t matter though because Derek Jeter delivered on the first two hits, going deep for #3000. He then proceeded to get three more hits, going 5-for-5 and driving in the game winning RBI. Not too shabby Jeter, not too shabby at all. Rivera closed out the game. There was a moment, against the 2nd batter, where it looked like the ball was going to sail out of the Stadium and the game was going to be tied again, but thankfully it didn’t and Granderson caught it. Mo shut it down. We won the game. All was well in Yankeeland.

A random assortment of highlights:
• the dudes sitting behind us in the Grandstand seats were HILARIOUS. Each of them wore a shirt with a letter/character on it to spell FREDDY SEZ: 3K. At one point, the 3 stepped away, so the shirts read FREDDY SEZ: K, which for anyone unfamiliar with the sport basically translates to FREDDY SEZ: STRIKEOUT. Whoops!
• I didn’t get any merch at the Stadium (the lines were crazy long at the main store, and the pop-up shops had less merch) but I did go to Modell’s the next day to pick up the t-shirt on the right.
• fans were invited to stay back and watch the press conference on the Center Field screen. I stayed largely because I didn’t think I’d make it home in time to catch it on the YES Network.
• Christian Lopez, the fan who caught the ball, was given 4 championship suite tickets for the rest of the season including the postseason (lol @ postseason assumptions), memorabilia, the opp to meet Jeter, etc. in exchange for returning the ball…which he was planning to do regardless. Some people are saying he shouldn’t have given it back and instead sold it on eBay. That’s fair I suppose. I probably would’ve done the same though I would’ve specifically asked to meet Mariano Rivera (as well as Jeter, though I’ve actually stalked met him before). Signed memorabilia is a given I think. And I can’t scoff at those championship box tickets though I think I would’ve wanted them beyond this season…
• And what of the rained out game? Well that game has been rescheduled for Sept 22, which is actually the day before the last cluster of home games against the Red Sox — games that are almost certainly going to matter because the Red Sox have totally kicked our asses this season and unless we start winning some games against them, I suspect those games will be the difference between winning the division…and not. To be fair the Devil Rays are not that far out of first place so maybe those games will also matter more than I’m giving them credit for. Still, I’d rather see a game against the Sox ;)

EDIT: The Devil Rays are actually the Rays now (and have been for 3 years) but um, as with the Anaheim Angels, I say what I please.

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Gotta Get Down on Friday: Yankees Baseball

July 8, 2011 4 Comments

Today I will go to my first baseball game in six years. I can’t believe it’s been that long but when I look through my pictures I can’t seem to find anything beyond 2005 so I suppose it must be true. My friend Stephanie (HI GIRL HI) and I are attempting to see Derek Jeter’s 3000th hit. We’re hoping for today or tomorrow. If it happens Sunday, well, we can’t be held accountable for our actions.

in 2001, I had no idea who this person was

My earliest MLB-related memory is probably the strike in 1994. I remembered being appalled (I still am, to be honest). What the hell could these people who got paid millions to whack a ball around possibly be complaining about? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?! The next memories aren’t clearly defined: Yankees games interrupting The Simpsons during the summer months — a problem that was eradicated with the arrival of the YES Network. WHY THE HELL WAS IT ON ALL THE TIME?! I remember the seemingly endless streak of Yankee World Series wins, my next door neighbors screaming with joy when the Yankees beat the Mets in the 2000 Subway Series. I remember I changed the channel to catch the last few minutes of the 2001 World Series Game 7 against the Arizona Diamondbacks, only to see the Yankees FINALLY lose. I did not know then that I was watching one of the most best closers of all time (who would eventually become my favorite player) blow a save. But in 2001? I didn’t know jack shit. Baseball was boring. I shrugged and changed the channel.

oh sure I'd HEARD of Derek Jeter, but could I pick him out of a lineup pre-2003?

I did not become a baseball fan until college when I found myself in RED SOX NATION. I don’t know if it’s possible to go to school in (or near) Boston without being bombarded with talk of the Red Sox…or their hatred of the Yankees. In fact, I’m pretty certain I encountered the hatred first, which at the time seemed in danger of eclipsing their love of the Red Sox. There was some talk of a curse. Is this for real? I thought. It didn’t matter that I didn’t really like baseball, I was from the Bronx, I could walk to Yankee Stadium. I was NOT okay with the constant barrage of insults. Oh and did I mention my roommate was from Boston as well? She wasn’t much of a fan of the sport either but you know, Boston was HER home, so of course, she was a Red Sox fan by default.

My first year there the Yankees faced the Red Sox in the 2003 ALCS. This was my introduction to baseball. I sat with my best friend day after day while she explained the game to me. When the rules of the game were explained, baseball got a whole lot more interesting (yeah, I know, WHO would’ve predicted THAT?). Tensions ran high. A fight broke out in Game 3. Pedro Martinez tossed a charging Don Zimmer to the ground. This is all I remember. I can’t even remember what the hell started the fight in the first place. (I’ll go with ‘What is a plunked batter?’) The whole thing seemed was absurd.

Game 7 was DO or DIE. My very first thought waking up was WE HAVE TO DO THIS. Really. I was already thinking in terms of WE and I was already thinking LIFE WILL BE HELL IF WE LOSE. I was anxious all day. And once the game was underway, things weren’t looking so great. Roger Clemens was shitting the bed, giving up 4 runs in as many innings. We made some headway, putting 2 on the board by the 7th inning, only to have David Wells give up a solo shot on the first freaking pitch in the top of the 8th to make the score 5-2. Welp! But then, ~a ray of light~ in the form of Grady Little failing to take out Pedro Martinez when he should’ve. Bottom of the 8th, Martinez had thrown 115 pitches and just given up 2 hits back to back. THAT was the warning. Once he gave up another double, putting runners on 2nd and 3rd, THAT was the second warning to pull him before any real damage was done. But instead, Grady Little left his ass out there and we scored three runs against him before he finally pulled the plug. Too little, too late. Enter

that pile on the ground is Mo, post Game 7

Mariano Rivera in the 9th, 10th, and 11th innings, shutting it down and holding the game at 5-5 until Aaron Boone* hit a home run in the bottom of the 11th. My best friend and I slowly rose as the ball sailed through the air, willing that sucker into the stands. GONE. We screamed and jumped up, hitting our heads on the low attic-like ceiling in my room. But no matter, WE HAD WON. It didn’t even matter to me that we didn’t go on to win the World Series. And even though losing in epic fashion to the Red Sox the following year burned (when we go down, we go down HARD), I’m still grateful that it didn’t happen my first year there. And I will always remember how I felt when we won the 2003 ALCS**

*Aaron Boone would fade into obscurity shortly after.
**I may or may not have had a framed picture of Mariano Rivera from that game that I kept in my room throughout college

I totally did.

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Gotta Get Down on Friday: 15 Radiohead Songs I Can’t Live Without

June 17, 2011 4 Comments

In honor of OK Computer Day (what? what’s that you say? You say June 16 was Bloomsday? Sorry, never heard of it), I’ve decided to move this post up a week and save my review of Red Riding Hood for next week.

Thom Yorke obviously knows how to get down on Friday

Short version: I love Radiohead, and the 15 Radiohead Songs I Can’t Live Without are
1. All I Need
2. Climbing Up the Walls
3. Exit Music (For a Film)
4. Fake Plastic Trees
5. Fog (Again)
6. How to Disappear Completely
7. Karma Police
8. Life in a Glass House
9. Like Spinning Plates
10. Morning Bell
11. No Surprises
12. Nude
13. Paranoid Android
14. Videotape
15. You and Whose Army?
Bonus: Codex

Long Version which includes background of my love for Radiohead as well as why I love each song

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Gotta Get Down On Friday: What would you most like to redo from the past 10 yrs?

June 10, 2011 3 Comments

Via twitter, Penguin (USA) asked What would you most like to redo from the past 10 yrs? I tweeted that I would double major in English and Women’s Studies rather than majoring in Psych. But because twitter only allows for 140 characters, I thought I’d go into depth here because it’s definitely an interesting question and there’s actually more than one thing I would consider redoing.

At Harvard, you had to declare your concentration (i.e. major) at the end of freshman year. If you chose to do a joint concentration (i.e. double major), you were also required to do a thesis combining the two subjects. I had considered joint concentrating in Psych and English but because I had planned for Psych to be the dominant subject (I was planning to be a clinical psychologist at the time), that meant my thesis would have to follow a psych structure, i.e. it would have to be a psychological study. I couldn’t figure out how I’d be able to fit English into that. My only other option would have been to make English the dominant subject and take a psychological approach to literary texts. I don’t think this would have been impossible, but again, I wanted to be a clinical psychologist so this wasn’t realistic. I ended up not joint concentrating at all, and instead just went for the Psych degree. Of course now I feel that I should’ve just gone for the English degree since nothing came of my Psych degree. But where does Women’s Studies come into play? Over the years, I’ve realized how much I really enjoy Women’s Studies (the department was changed to Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies during my time there), and I kind of wish I had majored in that as well. Hence the “I wish I had double majored in English and Women’s Studies.” And this would have actually been a lot more doable than Psych and English. I could have minored in Women’s Studies, but minors didn’t exist until my last year at Harvard, when you could retroactively apply for minor status. I missed getting a minor in Women’s Studies by one course. Had they existed from the beginning, I probably would have planned my course of study a little differently.

this was me in college

Which kind of brings me to the second thing I’d consider redoing: going to Harvard at all. This might just be the most privileged thing you’ll hear come out of my mouth, but I wish I had gone to Brown instead. I hated taking all those core classes. With the exception of two (my fairy tales class and my Greek heroes class), I hated them all. So yes, I wish I had gone to Brown with their open curriculum. I also didn’t know a whole lot about schools like Bennington and Sarah Lawrence, but I wish I had because I also really appreciate their more progressive approach to education and may have considered them as well. Choosing a different school though is trickier because I actually went to college with my best friend (who met her husband there). There’s a possibility that we wouldn’t still be friends today if we hadn’t gone to the same college. This is not why we both chose the same school by the way, but it is something I think about. Who knows? There’s also the fact that I hated Cambridge and Boston and a lot of that had to do with the sheer size of the two cities. So would I have liked Providence better? I don’t know. And knowing my firmly New York personality that I didn’t know I possessed until I actually left New York? ehh probably not.

Better to be safe and just say I’d double major in English and Women’s Studies. I think even that little bit would have made a world of difference in my life today.

Now it’s your turn, what would you most like to redo from the past 10 years?

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