Real New Yorkers ride the subway in a ball gown...

...actually, probably not. Real New Yorkers take a car service when wearing a ball gown. The problem was, THIS was the view from my (well, Judy's) window yesterday:

I love Gay Pride. It's one of the coolest, most positive events in the city every year. The vibe is truly empowering. It is NOT, however, conducive to catching a cab when all the streets are blocked off for people like this guy:


So, given that the only way to catch a cab would have been to walk FURTHER than the nearest reasonable subway stop, I decided that the best way to get to the wedding would be to hop on the good old R train. I thought about asking someone to take a picture of me in a subway car with my dress (I liked the idea of the juxtaposition of the grit of the R train with my fancy dress), but I figured that my "tool quotient" was already pretty high and that I shouldn't augment it with asking someone to take a picture of it, haha.

In any case, this is only a very small sample of my pictures from both gay pride and the wedding. The rest can be found here.

This was a complete Jewish wedding, so it started with the Bedeken, in the desert room of the conservatory. Jessica's dress was custom designed for her, based on North African Jewish traditional patterns. Yeah, it's stunning:


Isaac, the groom, is an artist. He made the Chuppah, which also took our breath away:


He made the Ketubah too:


And they had a great party afterward, complete with the chairs, of course:


Isn't Jess' dress gorgeous, even without the jacket?


Me with Caryn, a broadway actress who knows Jess from way back:


So yeah, all in all a highly successful evening. And I did indeed take a cab home, by then gay pride was over and all was well. But it was one hell of a party--incredible food, great band, REALLY high quality alcohol (haha). Some of the best champagne I've had in my life, in fact. Now the happy couple is off to their honeymoon in Iceland, which is equally awesome.

After all that overstimulation, I started teaching today. So far so good! And I survived the day reasonably well, despite the fact that Harley Obama BIT ME ON THE NOSE at 5:15 this morning. I was not impressed. I threw him off the bed, in fact. He's ridiculously spoiled. Lovely cat, but damn, genuinely convinced that the household revolves around him (when Judy's here, I think it does). I fed him and then went back to bed for a few minutes, but he was back and ready to rock at 5:45ish. Bastard.

Ok, never mind, figured out how to do the email notifications on
comments!

RIP MJ...

Well, just like our parents' generation remembers where they were when Elvis died, I guess the same will be true for us and MJ? I, for one, was at a bachelorette party. And it was the talk of the evening all night long, the consensus being that it's probably pretty miraculous that he even lived this long, considering what he had done to himself in the past. Nonetheless, quite shocking news indeed.

Anyway, the bachelorette party was a smashing success. It was for my friend Jessica, a PhD student in history at CUNY who is getting married on Sunday. The evening started at her friend Dory's place, where we made her get all dressed up in cheesy bachelorette party attire, haha:


At this party I discovered elderflower liqueur. I don't know where it has been all my life, but I don't think my drinking habits will ever be the same again, haha. This stuff was perhaps the best liqueur I've ever had, HAHA. A few drops with champagne and I'll never have a different cocktail ever again. Man that stuff is delicious.

From there we went to Nomad, an Algerian restaurant on 2nd Ave. I probably should have taken a pic of the decor (straight out of the Casbah), but I didn't think of it. Oops. This is Jessica with her friend Dory:


After dinner we headed to a pretty hilarious gay bar called Marie's Crisis, which is basically an underground piano bar where one sings show tunes all night long. Again, I probably should have taken a picture of it, but I didn't end up staying all that long. Since the crowd was a bunch of hard core showtune people, they were singing songs I didn't know. My repertoire doesn't extend much beyond the obvious stuff, so it was clearly way beyond me. But the atmosphere was generally quite cool--lots of drunken revelers singing their heads off, haha. I can see it being a fun place if you know the songs.

Since one party wasn't enough, however, I then headed over to catch the end of Arti's going away party. So I was able to hang out with Lisa and Cecile:


And Tamera, although I don't love this pic because it makes my head look so big. Doesn't the angle of the shot make my forehead look monstrous? I look like ET or something.


Lisa and Arti look great though:


But we'll sure miss having Arti around!!!

On an unrelated note, I'm still figuring out how to use this whole blogger thing. Does anyone know how to set up an email notification when I get comments? It seems like that must be possible. hmmm...

Back to Blogging?

It's been ages since I updated the old blog, so I thought it might be time to start fresh. I was sort of thinking I'd wait until I got to France, but then I was having too much fun this summer to pass up the opportunity to post some amusing pictures. So I decided to jump in now and contribute tout de suite to the exploding overproduction of the ego that seems to be fundamental to the current zeitgeist. I will NOT be tweeting, though, don't worry.

Anyway, here goes:

This first one comes from about two weeks ago. Willemijn met this dude on a bus (well, waiting for a bus that never came, I believe) who turned out to be an artist. And he had this installation going up in Bococa. It is motion-sensitive so that when you walk down the street, its eyes follow you. hahaha. Obviously we had to go check it out and walk back and forth down the street like the tools that we are. But it was pretty awesome! It was meant to integrate with the theme of the grate that comes down, like the poor creature is trapped and looking at the outside world from a jail-like cell. Poor creature. But pretty awesome technology nonetheless!

But now, for people who haven't heard, I'm rockin' out on Washington Square in my dissertation advisor's amazing apartment, cat-sitting for her lovely cats. This is Harley Obama, a Maine Coon/Ragdoll mix. He's only 10 months old but he weighs something like 14 pounds! I thought this picture gives a nice image of just how big this bad boy is--that's a double bed he's stretched across!

Last weekend was the Coney Island Mermaid Parade, which, from what I can tell is basically just an excuse to get drunk and dress up like mermaids, haha. I went with the Armstrong-Crumbs despite the ridiculously awful weather. We definitely got soaked.

But, how can you pass up pirates?

This was another of my favorite costumes, it's all body paint!

The Mermaid Parade has an honorary king (Neptune, obviously), and like at any good drunken parade, King Neptune was brought in by Mummers. Yesssss!


This year Harvey Keitel was King Neptune himself:


Finally, my other favorite group was the Splashdancers, complete with welding masks, HAHAHAHA.


After having a few hours to dry off and clean up, I met Lisa and Arti for a drink at Solas, since I can't make it to Arti's going away party tonight (bummer). But I discovered pear vodka at Solas and now I've got some experimenting to do.


Anyway, this entry is rather rushed, but I figured if I don't get something up sooner rather than later, I'd end up with my week running away from me. More than it already has, that is. I've seen three Broadway shows in the past 4 days (Mary Stuart, Next to Normal, and August: Osage County). Tonight is a bachelorette party for a BLACK TIE WEDDING AT THE BROOKLYN BOTANICAL GARDENS on Sunday. Yeah. Updates will clearly have to follow from these events. But now I must go buy a wedding gift, since I'm a slacker and have not done so yet.