pumpkins!

For me, it isn't fall without candy corn and the smell of rotting pumpkins. Let's not glamorize it. Every year, we stuff ourselves on sugar and corn syrup and revel in the aroma of a hollowed-out, slowly dying vegetable. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

I think I'll always carve a pumpkin. I did it last year, alone in LA, because I had very little to cling to that was normal, sane and familiar. I bought it at the Hollywood farmer's market, carved it with a kit my parents sent me, and let it live in my fireplace, where I normally kept my shoes.

This year, in New York, I had people to carve with. Wine, knives, pumpkins. I bought this one at a bodega, which, unless you live in New York, you can't really grasp. The bodega is part of the thread that holds it all together. They sell everything, including pumpkins in October.

This guy (pictured above) is a hefty fella, and as you can tell, my knife skills, especially after a few glasses of white, aren't stellar. But he's endearing. Even jolly. And how can you resist a pumpkin with eyebrows like that?

goodbye blue monday

I am off to my first book club. The book? Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, which I read in middle school (far too young for such things.) Anyway, I'm not wild about it. But I do love this sentiment: "It is harder to be unhappy while eating Craig's ice cream!"

oh the places i've been

After an unseasonably warm October thus far, Fall hit New York this past weekend. And though it may have just been a tease - they say this week will make October one of the warmest on record - it was my most "I love New York" weekend yet.
I won't go into too many details, but let's just say it involved a rather magical combination of Williamsburg bars, free hugs, French photographs in Soho, a dinner party, Issey Miyake cologne, organic apple sauce, a gondola and a run along the West Side Highway. Hard to beat.

just because

This picture is from a friend's apartment in Austin. I'm posting it because it's Saturday, I'm hungover, I just did laundry and part of me has always wanted to be the girl who pops out of the cake.

the last movie i saw

One of the best columns I wrote for my college newspaper was called "Movies by Myself" (named after that great Rufus Wainwright song) about my love of going to the movies alone. After two nights of non-moderate fun (Thursday was happy hour and a gimlet-laden bad date and Friday was Lower East Side bar-hopping and a party in Chelsea in which I fell for the hostess' boyfriend) I needed a quiet night. So, last night I went uptown and caught Michael Clayton, the new George Clooney legal thriller.

It's a slick, stylish character-driven thriller that resembles a cold, steely hybrid of Michael Mann's The Insider and a cynical, unsentimental Erin Brockovich. Clooney is the titular "fixer" for a high-profile New York law firm that is in the midst of representing a corporation being sued for poisoning hundreds of farmers with a lethal weed killer. When the lead lawyer for the defense (Tom Wilkinson) goes crazy and threatens to leak incriminating evidence to the prosecution, the corporate backstabbing takes a literal turn. It's high-intensity filmmaking with stellar performances. I wouldn't be surprised if Wilkinson nets awards attention - the audience I saw the movie with really connected with the performance. Tilda Swinton, as the chief counsel for the corporation, is also excellent (as usual). It's a chilly exercise in malevolence, and I can't remember a time when an actress' physical transformation has been such a crucial part of the performance. With sweaty armpits and significant belly fat, the art house goddess really looks like a fierce career woman beginning to crack.

meg ryan's best friend

In the movie version of our lives, most of us would like to think of ourselves as the Meg Ryan type - a plucky, adorable singleton who will find love in the end despite all quirks and flaws. Reality, though, casts most of us in the best friend role (think Rosie O'Donnell in Sleepless in Seattle), and asks us to provide immaculately timed comic wisecracks and a shoulder to cry on over a side dish of fries.

I find this analogy particularly fitting because a good friend of mine (who will remain nameless) recently went on a date with a celebrity (who will also remain nameless ... I have no interest in dealing with the personal entanglements of those who can afford to eat at nicer restaurants than I can ... if that is your fancy then please refer to Gawker on the sidebar). As my friend revealed detail after tabloid-ready detail, I felt dumpier, sadder and even more romantically helpless. Hello, my name is Rosie, please pass the cheesecake.

I'm not the green-with-envy type, but there was a very vocal part of me that wondered, "Why can't this happen to me?" It's not entirely out of the question. The New York experience so far has been romantic and cinematic, I could see myself being swept of my feet. But, it seems that this is one of those times when all people can be split into two groups. In this case, those who date celebrities and those who hear about it. And, for now, my ears are wide open.