Candy Corn and Pantyhose

Remember [redacted] formerly The Daily Dump? Exciting news. His homeless guy is my homeless guy too!

Baby You Can Drive My Car

So, I haven't been very good about posting photos from my trip to California. In fact, I haven't even bothered to download the photos from my camera yet. Fortunately, I did grab a few from Rajasree's set. Here is a random sample.

How do you fit eight people into a six person cabin? This helps.

An action shot. The beautiful California scenery, a delicious breakfast before us, and me going nuts on my Blackberry. My office gave me a Blackberry right before I took off for vacation. Fortunately, I didn't get service when we were down in the State Park, but elsewhere it set to buzzing like a Tse Tse Fly of doom. Lord of the Barnyard is in the background in this photo. He didn't get a single call from one of his cows the who time he was away!

And of course, congratulations Joe and Angie or, as you will be forever known in the tabloids now: Jangie! Did you adopt any local children on your honeymoon? You've got to keep up with the Brangelinas now.

So, what else have I been doing since I got back from the West Coast? Mmm, same old, same old. Pedicures, checking out the new Pinkberry competitor - a frozen Greek yogurt place in Park Slope with Super Skater, contemplating the Chinese Deliverymen strike in Manhattan ... lots of reading, lots of working.

Get it Together, Brooklyn.

These stories displease me.

From the neighborhoods that ring mine:

Prospect-Lefferts Garden
Two Police Officers Shot During Brooklyn Traffic Stop

Crown Heights
Rage of Man Shot by Police Stuns Fiancee

And the people who know don't be lookin' to no super hero for no help, neither.

All Freakonomics is Local

Last week, New York Magazine ran a really interesting piece where they did the profit (or loss) calculations for many of the stitches in the fabric of the city- everything from Goldman Sachs to a yoga studio, to a soup kitchen to a yellow cab. It was interesting to see how much money people are actually making, and how they earn it. You can find over twenty examples here.

And here's an example even closer to home: at the Met Foods across from my apartment with the extra pervy staff, a pint of Haagen-Dazs used to sell for $4.99 (Haagen-Dazs is never spelled like you think it is). Now Haagen-Dazs has released a new "Haagen-Dazs Special Reserve" line with flavors like "Brazilian Acai Berry Sorbet" and "Hawaiin Lehua Honey & Sweet Cream". I am not making this up. The new Special Reserve flavors are selling for ... $4.99. Hmm. In New York City, nothing is special, exclusive or worth having, unless it is ridiculously expensive. So now the regular Haagen-Dazs, as you might call it, is selling for $2.99. Right now it's just a weekly special, but maybe it will stick. Yeah, this is pretty much my life. What can I say? I work a lot.

Also, when I was researching Haagen-Dazs on Wikipedia (nerd alert) I was very surprised to find that Haagen-Dazs was originally an American company founded in the Bronx, of all places and that the name is just two made up words that was intended to look Scandinavian. Well played, Mr. Mattus. So now I don't feel bad about being too lazy to put in the damn umlauts.

Infamous.

Tonight I was coming up out of the subway at Grand Army Plaza. I think I had a very confused look on my face because the girl in front of me had one of those red string Kabbalah bracelets on her wrist and I was thinking, "Wait, we're still doing that?" And also, I sneezed so hard I peed a little. When I got above ground I encountered a man in a Canadian tuxedo pushing a bicycle with bike chain padlocked around his neck who sang to me, "Hey gorgeous girl in the pretty red, can this fine prince have a word with you?" The look on my face only registered more incredulity and I continued walking.

Last week I went to Duane Reade to pick up a prescription. I wasn't anticipating it to be a giant clusterfuck because by benefits administrator has not yet enrolled me in COBRA, so technically I don't have any health care at the moment, which has caused me to make several increasingly frantic calls to the slow pokes at Benefit Concepts from my very unprivate desk at work. I should just yell into the phone, "But my insulin!" and then fake a seizure during the slow four o'clock hour. Anyway, I was fretting so much about how much my prescription would retail for, I totally forget that the last time I was in that Duane Reade, I threw up all over the floor.

I approached the counter. BoogerBunny was working. "Hey," she said.

"Hi," I said anticipating the struggle that lay ahead of me.

"How you doing?"

"I'm good, thanks."

She looked at me knowingly. "You feeling better?"

Oh. Right. The last time we were face to face, I bent double and proceeded to puke my guts up. That. "Oh, I guess you remember me. I, uh, guess you're going to remember me for a long time."

"Uh-huh."

"Yeah, with the kitty litter and ... I'm really sorry about that."

"It's okay. I'm glad you're feeling better." The thing about BoogerBunny is that she is the totally antithetical Duane Reade employee. She is always cheerful even when she is telling me how she can't wait for her shift to end. She sings, raps and dances while she waits on customers. Not during a pause in the action, she's just behind the counter bustin' out while the line of customers grows. It's cute and playful and she is always nice to the customers, when she is not singing to them. I guess what I'm saying is, if I have to keep returning to the scene of the crime, I'm glad she's the chief witness. I can imagine a future where someday we both regale the customers in line with the story about how I puked all over the pharmacy counter.

Here's some more buzz from the 'hood, my beloved Prospect Heights was the profiled neighborhood in New York Magazine's last issue, the Best and Worst of 2006 issue. Here's the neighborhood map; I'll reproduce the intro here:

Wedged between Park Slope and Fort Greene, Prospect Heights has always been the forgotten neighborhood at the heart of Brooklyn's brownstone revival, quietly evolving from seventies poverty to small-scale gentrification—until Frank Gehry's gargantuan Atlantic Yards project last year. Now, this diverse triangle-populated by Caribbean immigrants, African-Americans, and, increasingly, come-lately families priced out of Park Slope—is a battleground for the meaning of Brooklyn. And it's a perfect illustration of the busts and boons of development: from Flatbush Avenue's invading chain stores to Eastern Parkway's beautifully renovated civic institutions, to the Richard Meier rising above Grand Army Plaza.

From "The Heights Report" by Logan Hill


That's my home. Check it out.