Writing

I know I said that I would stop using the word, “hipster”. You’re tired of it, I’m tired of it, WE’RE ALL F’ING TIRED OF IT! However, I couldn’t think of a better name for this post. Something about, “How To Have An Ironic As Shit Thanksgiving” just didn’t sound right. So will you please forgive me and let me have this one more usage?

When I think of Thanksgiving, I don’t think of hipsters. Unless I’m thinking of the movie, Pieces of April. Something about a dark Thanksgiving comedy taking place on the Lower East Side just screams pretentiousocity. Something about Katie Holmes makes me think of nothing at all though. Most of us will be having your pretty run-of-the-mill turkey dinners with the family: wearing that one Gap dress we bought in college and only pull out for dinners with the family, remembering why we pay $500 a month to go to a therapist, and getting drunk off of Grandpa’s stash of whiskey hidden in the floorboards.

If you’re interested in spicing things up and bringing a little (more…)

Or: Why Twitter Is The Best Thing That Ever Happened To Only Children

Hi, my name is Lauren and I am an alcoholic.
Wait, I mean, I’m a Twitter addict.
I forgot which blog post this was for a second.

I love Twitter.
I’m so infatuated with Twitter that my imaginary boyfriend hypothetically found me holed up in my room this weekend, pant-less, with the glow of my computer screen accentuating the glimmer of drool running down my chin. He asked me what I was doing and I lied and told him that I was watching porn. HAHAHAHA I LIED!

There was a time when I hated Twitter though. In fact, I wrote a poorly-composed blog post about it. To me it was like reading Ikea instructions. At first I was all like, “F yeah! I’m going to make this really neat-o Swedish asymmetrical thingy!” and then after trying to decipher instructions that looked like they were in a foreign language but were actually in English and graphics that looked like a 6 month-old monkey drew them, my voice dropped an octave and I started (more…)

…and I was just about finished with it too.

I should actually work, so I’m not going to rewrite it until tonight.

So this is what you’re getting instead….

My default ass picture.

DAMN YOU BLOGGER!

my grandmother at 19 years of age

Looking at this slide show made me think about my 83 year-old grandmother, Nan, and her recent bout of depression. Depression might not be the right word for it. Sheer boredom, having no job to wake up to, no family to take care of, realizing that most of your friends are dead, and dealing with a domestic partner that is in the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s Disease is more like it.

my grandmother in her 40’s

I talk to my grandmother multiple times (more…)

A new report issued by the Pew Research Center shows that 4 out of 10 people think that marriage is obsolete. Of course most of the people who share that sentiment are us- jaded twenty-somethings who watched the nuclear family crumble before our eyes. We watched our parents bicker and barter until there was nothing left or maybe we were completely blindsided by a surprise dissolution. Either way, we got the craped scared out of us.

The famous New York Times article, “What Is It About Twenty-Somethings?“, explains that two thirds of Generation Y live with a romantic partner without getting married and that the median age of marriage is up from 21 to 26 for women and 23 to 28 for men in less than forty years. I know I for one can be counted in that 40% represented in the Pew Research report. It was only as of recent that I warmed up to the idea of marriage and I’m 27! This was the age my mother got married and that was considered late in 1977. I still don’t believe marriage works, but I’d (more…)

And when I do, it’s not the city I physically experienced, but rather the romanticized one I pieced together through years of watching movies, TV shows, and listening to music about the beautiful, yet fragile place where the sun always shines.

You unpredictably come to mind when I hear a song- a song I never even heard while I was with you- but for some reason reminds me of our imaginary time together. They’re songs full of minor chord viscera. Synthesizers and beats I danced to on the beach, in Hollywood, and in my car before I was ever born.

It brings me to my knees. Every absolute and artificial memory intertwines into a billow of what I no longer know is certain. I take on the emotions of character’s lives I never lived. I experience flashbacks of times I never endured.

I always thought that the day I stopped thinking about Los Angeles would be a sad day.

Annie Hall is my number three favorite movie. Ask me on days when I’m feeling romantic and melancholic, and I’ll tell you it’s my number one favorite movie.

I’m in an East Village mood today.
The sort of day where I daydream about waking up in my rat-infested loft next to my boyfriend who is lying next to his boyfriend who is lying next to a nightstand full of hypodermic needles and a vinyl of Talking Heads: 77.

When I feel pretty uninspired, I just think of all the music and art that came out of New York City in the 70’s and 80’s.
Some of it was great.
Some of it was pretentious and overhyped.
Nonetheless, people were always creating.

And that’s what I gotta do…

If you can guess everyone in the pictures below (for a few of them guess the photographer), I will give you a copy of “Low Rent: A Decade of Prose and Photographs from The Portable Lower East Side“. It’s a fantastic collection of short stories, poems, and photographs from artists who lived or live in LES.

So, I’m really into ruin porn.

I’m glad to finally know that there is a name for this because I’m tired of listing, “I like abandoned stuff”, as an interest on bios and applications. Ruin porn sounds so much better.

Ever since I was a little kid I’ve been fascinated with run-down, derelict, and vacant structures. I love history so to me each building tells a story- a moment that was captured in time yet all the players have been removed and is ever so slowly deteriorating back into the earth.

My love for “abandoned stuff” often poses a problem during family vacations because I could care less about things, oh say, like, the Grand Canyon. I’m off looking for some shack someone left behind.

In fact, during our Grand Canyon trip, I couldn’t wait to get to f’ed up place known as The Salton Sea. That was my Grand Canyon.

Here are some of my favorite examples of ruin porn:

Ambassador Hotel– Los Angeles, CA

I’ve been listening to a lot of Bryan Ferry lately- particularly the song, “Slave to Love”. If I had a time machine, I would go back to 1985 and tell Mr. Ferry to change the song title to “Slave to Blog” because that’s what I feel like as of lately. He would be all like, “What the bloody hell is a blog?” and I’d say, “JUST CHANGE IT, BRIT, OR I’LL TAKE YOUR PRECIOUS CIGARETTES AND MODELS AWAY!” I’d also tell him that I would have to be in his music video and that we would be making out in said video.