Tag Archives: Broadcast

Today Sucks

Oh, man. I hate today! It’s usually very hard for me to hate a Friday but…this one really sucks. And it’s not even like anything unusually bad has happened today. It’s just been a dumb, shitty day.

When I went to bed last night, it felt like I had been drugged. I was exhausted. But also I was having like, really weird dreams before I was fully asleep. I woke up at 6:20 when my alarm went off because I need to be in Manhattan at 7:45 on most Fridays. Needless to say, I hit the snooze button at least twice because I didn’t fully wake up until 6:45. So then I was rushed to take a shower, get dressed, pack my lunch and blow dry my hair. I decided I would just bring my make up with me and put it on when I got to work. This was a real gamble because I wasn’t sure if I’d see my barista crush or not when I picked up my coffee on the way to the subway. My only stroke of luck today was that he wasn’t working.

Actually, I was also lucky in that I didn’t have to wait for the subway for very long today. (This has been a particularly bad commuting week for me.) However, I was struck by a mild panic attack after I felt like my foot was falling asleep on my walk to my subway stop and I got kind of hot and sweaty and I felt a little pain in my right leg, which I convinced myself was a blood clot that was going to lead to a stroke, which would occur specifically while I was on the L between Bedford and 1st Ave. Upon making it all the way to Union Square, I felt a great sense of relief that I was not dead. Indeed, I was alive! I walked sweatily up the stairs and onto misty 14th Street, which is not as terrible as usual before 8 am.

I left my appointment at 8:30 and walked 15 blocks to work in the rain. It was worth it not to get sweaty again. Also, my hair was already ruined. But the only thing worse than being on the subway on a rainy day is walking down a New York City sidewalk full of shuffling, inept assholes who don’t know how to carry their umbrellas. I’m not the first person to complain about. You all know what I’m talking about. And I’m not sure just how enraged I can get about this because I’m sure we’ve all been a shuffling, inept asshole who doesn’t know how to carry an umbrella to someone else at least once in our lives.

Hm, okay. What else sucks? I dunno, just being at work. I won’t go into too much detail but I will say that I am not being made happy by the collective terrible energy and general creepiness of atmosphere in my office.

Also! Oh, this one was annoying. UPS has not been able to deliver a package to me at work for the last two days. I needed this package on Wednesday, so. It’s too fucking late now. I had to call UPS to see where the package was and it took me like 10 minutes to figure out their automated system and then I waited for 20 minutes to speak to a customer service representative who told me it was my fault that the package wasn’t delivered because I had entered an incomplete address. (I hadn’t. At all. And besides, I chose the address that Amazon/UPS suggested after I had entered it when I was ordering this item.) I told him that I realized he had nothing to do with this, but that it was very frustrating situation and I guess I kind of yelled at him, which made me feel a little bit empowered but also a little bit embarrassed because I sit in an open office space. Anyway, now I need to go out and physically buy this thing that I ordered or reorder it from Amazon and have it sent to my home address. (Um, I realize I was vague about the item before this and that’s sort of weird, so I’ll tell you right now that it’s just a book that I had ordered as a gift for someone.) Amazon, by the way, refunded me for the item since it was technically sent back to them, so I guess that’s cool.

I had a shitty lunch because I have been packing my own lunch to save more money and I am not happy with anything that’s not a $12 salad from Sweetgreen anymore. So, I’m starving right now and am about to go to town on a huge thing of minty holiday M&Ms we have in the office.

Other tiny things that are bothering me:

– Rain, in general
– How dark it is outside
– How tired I have been all week
– My renewed anxiety about money, which is hitting me big time for a few big reasons right now
– What, in general, I am going to do with my life
– Year end list anxiety, which happens every year as lists roll out before I am done making my lists of my favorite things of the year (something I genuinely enjoy and have never been paid to do), which I only share with friends and you, readers, if you are lucky

Things that were somewhere between OK and cool today:

– Listening to the Sky Ferreira album on repeat
– Drinking a regular Coke for the first time in forever
– Being able to write out my frustration in under 20 minutes

Welp, here’s hoping I can add more more things to that second list before this day is done. And I will leave you with this, my favorite rainy day song, I guess because it fits the weather and my current mood and I’m listening to it right now:

Geeking Out

On Sunday, I met my friend Alli in my old neighborhood to do some writing. I’d intended on working on a short story that I’ve been revising – well, mostly deleting and rewriting – for a few months. Of course, I didn’t end up deleting or writing another word of it. Instead, I started writing a sort of sad sack essay on being lonely in Paris when I was studying abroad there in the fall of 2007. I’ve been thinking a lot about that recently because, well, it’s fall and I was in Paris in the fall and I just happen to be thinking about that time rather than the falls of my childhood or high school or college. Anyway, I mention this because someone else published an essay on Paris and loneliness this week. You can read the beginning on The Hairpin but to read the rest you have to buy the story – it comes with all of the other ones in the same series about travel – on Amazon. (After I’m done writing this post up, I will go back to trying to turn my own essay into a not-super-depressing piece of garbage.)

Also on Sunday, I went to The Strand, as I like to do when I’m in that neck of the woods, to buy my book club’s next read. We’re reading Geek Love by Katherine Dunn, which I read, I think, after my freshman year of college. It’s one of my favorite books, but somehow I’ve never acquired my own copy. Now I do have one of my own, which I got by asking one of the booksellers at The Strand to climb a ladder and take it from one of the higher shelves. I usually don’t even get books from the high shelves because I mostly  go to the Strand to browse and end up with too many books anyway, so I always tell myself that I don’t need the ones I can’t reach. (Also, I am afraid of ladders.)

Anyway, I started rereading Geek Love yesterday and was flooded with memories. First of all, I am still in awe of the prose. I think I got the same giddy feeling I had while reading the first chapter when I was 18 or 19. And secondly, I have been thinking about Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea pretty much constantly since I opened the book. I happened to be super into that album while I was reading Geek Love the first time and it was perfect. Like, I have never been simultaneously obsessed with two pieces of art that, I thought, so complemented one another. But I’m staying away from that album for now. Making the same magic happen again seems pretty unlikely and I don’t want to be disappointed.

While I’m on the subject of music…I don’t write enough about it. I usually write about what I read here every week, but what I’m listening to takes up just as much space in my brain. My fall soundtrack has been inspired by a few things:

1. Music for Maniacs: I’d totally forgotten about this blog. But then I noticed that WFMU was linking to it on Twitter and…I fell down a Music for Maniacs black hole. This dude mostly covers eccentric/outsider music and puts together some pretty great mixtapes. He also made me see Annette Funicello in a whole new light.

2. Kurt Vile’s KV Mixtape: I saw this on Stereogum yesterday and haven’t stopped listening to it. Well, haven’t stopped listening to most of it. The songs on here inspired his recent album, Wakin’ On a Pretty Daze, one of my favorite albums this year. (Back in April, I wrote something about going to a Kurt Vile show.) I highly recommend! (The mixtape and tracklist are at the link, on Soundcloud).

3. Wikipedia: Sometimes I just re-go-through this list of Jangle Pop Bands. Like you do.

4. Modern Vampires of the City: I have listened to and seen a lot of Vampire Weekend in the last few years. (Most recently, I saw them perform at the Barclays Center this past Friday.) I didn’t really listen to Modern Vampires of the City until the middle of this summer, but I’ve found that it’s one of very few albums released this year that I keep going back to, so.

5. Stuff that sounds like Broadcast: So, mainly Broadcast. And also The Postmarks. (Who, incidentally, I was very into when I was in Paris six years ago.)

That’s that. Except I have a few other quick links to share today!

I read a two week-old New York Magazine on the elliptical last night…I got through an article on the GOP’s plot to kill Obamacare and this other one on Rebel Wilson (which was not as good or as enlightening as I had hoped, though I found out that she also likes Hello Kitty, so that’s a thing).

And today I’ve been reading this Paris Review interview with Woody Allen, which was conducted between 1985 (mostly at his table at Elaine’s) and 1995.